The Glory Boys Read online

  You will always be very dear to me, but …

  But was somebody she had met at a War Savings event. He had escorted her home when an air raid warning had been sounded. They were married the following year.

  He reached into an inside pocket and dragged out his old wallet. It was wrapped in a square of oilskin, the pieces stuck together, and he had not opened it since they had hauled him out of the sea.

  He prised the wallet open. Three one-pound notes, a theatre ticket, and an old mess bill from H.M.S. Hornet, the Coastal Forces base in Gosport.

  He turned the photograph of her toward the light. Cracked and badly stained, flaking apart even as he held it. He had never replied to that letter, nor would he. But suppose … The same smile. He thought of the way she used to poke out the tip of her tongue, to provoke him. Excite him.

  She might have read about him when he had been decorated. Or thought of him whenever the B.B.C. newsreader intoned, “… and last night our Light Coastal Forces were heavily engaged with the enemy in the North Sea …”

  The photograph had broken apart in his fingers. He must have fallen asleep against the table.

  It was more than that. Someone was rapping on the door. He tried to clear his throat.

  “I’m here!”

  Sturdy, round-faced: one of those anonymous seamen he had seen or spoken to. They all needed time. Like me.

  He saw the loose overall jacket, the inevitable oilstain. One of the Chief’s motor mechanics.

  “Rathbone, isn’t it?”

  The Chief had accidentally called him ‘Basil’, after the popular Hollywood villain Basil Rathbone, usually seen crossing swords with Errol Flynn or the like.

  He grinned. “S’right, sir!” and gestured vaguely. “I was down aft, workin’ on a generator, an’ I was told you was still up an’ about.” He was fumbling inside his jacket. “So I thought …” He thrust out something wrapped in a piece of spotless white paper. “You might be needin’ a smoke after a day like we’ve ’ad.”

  Kearton unfolded the paper and stared at the pipe in his hands. He had last seen it, snapped off at the stem, when they had emptied his pockets at the hospital. Like the stained wallet now lying on the table.

  “’Ope you didn’t mind, sir.”

  Kearton shook his head. “I thought it had been ditched. I had no idea …” and fell silent, staring at it.

  Eventually he said, “What were you before you joined up? A magician?”

  The grin was back, wider than ever.

  “Worked at Finlay’s garage on the Kingston by-pass, not that far from your dad’s boatyard when you thinks about it, sir. But once old Finlay took you under ’is wing you learned to tackle anything, Rolls-Royce to cigarette lighter!”

  They were both laughing.

  He dug into his other pocket and dragged out a tin labelled DUTY FREE. H.M.SHIPS ONLY.

  “Me an’ the lads thought you might be a bit short, sir.” He put it on the table.

  The door closed. As if he had dreamed or imagined it.

  He walked to the scuttle and opened it again; the air seemed cool, even cold. He could feel the hull moving beneath him, restless, impatient.

  People sometimes wanted to know the true difference between the ‘little ships’ and the bulk of the fleet. He looked at his pipe and the tobacco on the table.

  There was no easy answer. But this was the difference.

  Kearton stood by a broad window overlooking part of the anchorage, alive now with launches, and some quaint local vessels going about their affairs as if untouched by a hundred years of history. Outside, there was a stone balcony, and a telescope mounted on a tripod.

  He could see the Rock itself from here, dominating everything around and beneath it, hazed with low cloud which remained motionless despite the wind rippling the flags at various mastheads. And from this building with its old cannon, saluting guns in the vanished days of peace.

  He had been deeply asleep, although he could not recall having climbed into the bunk. And then the hand on his shoulder, and the momentary sense of danger. He was to present himself at the Signals Distribution Office without delay. A boat was being sent to save time.

  He glanced at his watch. Colours had long since sounded; he had heard the twitter of calls and the lordly blare of a bugle from the cruiser long ago, or so it felt. And he was still waiting. It was the navy’s way.

  Once he had arrived here, there had been no obvious urgency. A tired-looking yeoman of signals had called for a messenger, but seemed more concerned with a ship which was already under way, heading for the last brightly painted buoy and the sea beyond. Without looking, he had known she was Kinsale.

  He had gone out to the balcony and uncovered the telescope and focused it. Like being part of it. With them.

  Again the shrill of calls, the acknowledgment from the cruiser as she passed abeam, little figures at attention, an officer saluting from the forecastle by the empty jackstaff. Her motor-boat was hoisted, secured by the gripes, until the next time. He had wondered if the young sailor who had joined Kinsale, his first ship, had found his feet yet in the contained world of the lower deck.

  He stifled a yawn. In a minute, someone would come and tell him that there had been a mistake, there was no urgency. It was only one of those things …

  He looked around the room. A trestle table, scrubbed, of course; a couple of chairs. He could hear a solitary typewriter, very slow, two fingers at a time, probably someone translating a bunting-tosser’s scrawl into something legible.

  He remembered the faces as he had climbed down into the motor-boat. Weighing the unexpected change in routine. Some men still chewing on their breakfast, a few moving pieces of gear in readiness for washing down under the watchful eyes of a tough-looking leading seaman, the coxswain’s right-hand man. The name had slipped Kearton’s mind, but his flattened, broken nose made him easy to recognize. Some were still strangers.

  He thought of Spiers, the Number One, always ready to answer any questions, never at a loss. Duties, watches, morale. But nothing personal yet to bridge the gap.

  His attention returned to the window: a vibration, rather than a sound, had broken the stillness, an aircraft on the Rock’s narrow runway preparing for take-off. He had heard people say the experience was not for the faint-hearted, but from a distance it reminded him of his old motor-bike, a second-hand Triumph, when you twisted the grip and made the revs mount up. When Julie had been on the pillion, arms wrapped around his waist. Laughing whenever they hit a hump in the road, or some unexpected pothole, and when they had taken a short cut along the towpath, anglers squatting by their rods and yelling threats as they had clattered past.

  The old bike would be on a scrap heap now, written off. And with petrol rationed so severely, joy-riding was just another memory.

  He turned. No voices, but the typewriter had stopped, and chairs were being scraped aside.

  The door swung open and closed just as casually behind the newcomer.

  He wasted no time. “I know who you are.” He thrust out his hand. “I’m Garrick. Sorry I’m a bit adrift. It takes a month of Sundays to get things moving around here!”

  The ready smile and keen eyes, like the handshake, seemed familiar, although they had never met. Captain Richard Garrick, D.S.O., Royal Navy, ‘Dick’ Garrick as he was called in the popular press, was known to most people following the war’s progress at sea and on land; he seemed ubiquitous. Kearton had seen him in interviews on newsreels at the cinema, or photographed surrounded by armed squaddies after some successful raid into enemy territory. Often wearing battledress or camouflaged combat gear, cigarette in one hand, and usually the smile. ‘Our man of action’, one journalist had dubbed him.

  The smile was the same now, but the rest was different. Maybe it was the formality of the smart uniform and its medal ribbons, the four gold rings on either sleeve, and the oak-leaved cap he had tossed so easily on to the scrubbed table, but he seemed strangely like someone playing a part.
Maybe he was related to the great eighteenth-century actor.

  Even his movements were deliberately light, unconcerned, and Kearton imagined Captain Morgan in his office, heard the Welsh voice: “We were snotties together …”

  Garrick had a strong face and restless eyes; blue or grey it was hard to tell. Norway, Greece, Crete, rearguard actions, but always hitting back, sustaining hope and pride when others had become resigned, even ready to accept defeat.

  “I hear you’ve already settled in? No time to hang about, the way things are beginning to shape up.” He waved toward the bare wall, as if he could see a great map hanging there. “They said Rommel’s super Afrika Korps couldn’t be beaten. Egypt was next, and then on to the gates of India. They were wrong. Like the weepies who said nothing could stop the enemy from crossing the Channel to invade—” He tapped the wall. “—and conquer England! We put a stop to that, too!”

  He looked down, and tugged the triangle of handkerchief into position beneath the medal ribbons. Even that was deliberate.

  “But there are still too many deadbeats left in authority for my liking.” He crossed to the window. “When the first D-Boats were delivered there was one senior officer, who must remain nameless, who looked at one of them and asked, ‘Is that the boat, or the crate it arrived in?’ ” He turned again, outwardly relaxed, but the voice was not. “If they were all like that idiot, the swastika would have been flying over Buckingham Palace after Dunkirk!” He smiled, the point made. “You were there too, I believe?”

  He did not wait for a response, a little touch of Morgan. We were snotties together. But that was all.

  They walked on to the balcony and looked out over the array of shipping. There was even a hospital ship now, red crosses like blood in the misty sunlight.

  Garrick said quietly, “It’s time to turn the tide. Attack the enemy where it hurts, and pin down as many men and machines as we can. They talk about the soft underbelly of Europe, but that’s not what the poor bloody infantry see when the landing craft hits the beach and the ramp goes down.” He waved, although Kearton had seen no one else. Perhaps on another balcony or at another window? “We can soften it for them, eh?” Abruptly, he walked back into the room.

  “You’ll be getting your orders today. Top secret, and you know what that means. I had hoped for a fourth boat, but we must be patient, as their lordships will expect of us. I’m flying to Malta. Now.”

  He picked up his fine cap and turned it over in his sun-browned hands, almost as if he had never seen it before.

  “You’ve got a good command, and probably the best crews we can hope for.” He looked at Kearton again, the restless eyes quite still. “We shall be ‘of one company’, as Our Nel once said.” Then, “You’re not married, or anything, are you?” and nodded curtly. “Good show. One thing at a time.” He pulled on his cap and allowed the moment to hang. “This is going to be very important. Who knows, maybe vital. So let’s be about it.”

  He gripped Kearton’s hand.

  “Safe passage, Bob Kearton.” And smiled the famous smile. “See you in Malta!”

  The room was empty, the harbour throwing up reflections on the glass.

  Garrick was going to board an aircraft, perhaps that same one. He could recall each gesture, each change of mood, but could barely remember his own comments or responses. Maybe Garrick had that effect on everyone.

  He picked up his own cap and brushed the peak with his sleeve without noticing what he was doing. The door was half-open, the room was needed again.

  He walked out into a passage, where someone was hovering to guide him efficiently out of their lives.

  No questions, no doubts. Of one company. The little admiral would have approved of ‘Dick’ Garrick.

  He brushed against a pillar and the bruise came alive again. He ignored the pain. That, too, was in the past. It had to be.

  Tomorrow would not wait.

  3

  Flotsam

  KEARTON CLIMBED UP into the open bridge and paused to stare at the sea alongside. He had been in the compact chartroom, in darkness but for a carefully shaded light above the table, and the contrast was impressive, as if sunset were reluctant to conform to the rules of black-out. The water beyond the bows was unbroken, shining dully like molten copper, breaking and brightening again in 992’s wash and the deep, regular furrows that streamed back from the stem. Darkness would be abrupt and complete.

  He moved to the forepart of the bridge, where the faint glow of the compass reflected on the helmsman’s duffle coat. Other figures were silhouetted against the sky, unaware of his presence or pretending to be, while they moved their binoculars ahead and abeam. Despite the regular murmur of the engines, individual sounds stood out. The twin machine-guns on either wing of the bridge rattled occasionally despite the waterproof sleeves which protected their mechanisms and ammunition, but were easy to clear away at the slightest hint of trouble. And on the forecastle deck someone was stamping his foot as if to restore the circulation. One of the two-pounder’s crew, like a hooded monk in his duffle coat, stretching now, and yawning.

  Kearton saw Lieutenant Ainslie turning away from the screen, his face in shadow. Probably wondering what he had been doing down in his chartroom.

  “All quiet, Pilot?” Kearton had only been off the bridge for an hour, but it seemed far longer. Like a demanding grip, dragging at him the moment he turned away from the ‘ifs’ and the ‘maybes’.

  He saw the smile.

  “Aye, sir. Steady at fourteen knots. I can’t complain, so far!”

  It was steady enough, but it was time to reduce speed, before they lost the light entirely. Then, the slightest swell would make the motion queasy. He looked astern again. The three boats were keeping in line. Good conditions, but that could change. He had seen it several times. Boats increasing speed in the darkness for fear of losing their leader, or worse, being left alone in enemy waters: a single burst of power, and one boat smashing into another. The watchkeeper’s nightmare.

  Ainslie was already holding his wristwatch up to his eyes.

  “Fifteen minutes, sir.”

  “Very well.” He glanced at the compass: due east. He could visualize the neat lines and crosses pencilled on the chart, the open logbook nearby. Ainslie was a good navigator. Outwardly easygoing and friendly, he had been a trainee teacher in a boarding school before he had volunteered for the navy. It must have been hard to distinguish him from some of his own pupils.

  Young though he was, he had a girlfriend; Kearton had seen her photograph when Ainslie had opened his wallet. Like me …

  Feet on the ladder; it was the coxswain. He did not need to look at his watch.

  Turnbull cleared his throat. “Ready, sir?”

  Kearton touched his arm. “You never lose it, do you?”

  “Engineroom standing by, sir!”

  The Chief would be down there, too, just in case. He was lucky to have such a good crew. They, too, were fortunate in the time they had had together before he had even stepped aboard.

  The three boats had sailed in company from Milford Haven, on the south-west tip of Wales, for most of the passage alone and unescorted all the way to Gibraltar: almost the same journey he had taken in Kinsale, but far less comfortable.

  Fate had been generous. There had been no breakdowns, and none of the foul weather that might be expected in winter. And the only sign of the enemy had been a big Focke-Wulf bomber, when they had been giving the French coast a very wide berth. They had gone to action stations and waited for an attack, or for the German pilot to call up reinforcements, but the bomber must have had a more important target in his orders. Nothing had happened. But it had been their first experience of standing together. There always had to be a first time, no matter how many actions you had seen, or if you were as green as grass.

  He peered aft, and saw some vague figures crouching abaft the Oerlikon guns. Their little dinghy had needed securing, and his Number One was down there himself. That, however,
was as far as it went. This might be a small, crowded warship, but the skipper and his first lieutenant were still miles apart.

  He thought of the chart. A thousand miles, or near enough, from the Rock to beleaguered Malta. They could make up the speed during the hours of daylight, but at night they could too easily become the hunted and not the hunters. He half-listened to the engines, the rattle of a bell near the helmsman as Turnbull took his place.

  “Cox’n on the wheel, sir!”

  And Ainslie’s, “Very good. Steer due east!”

  As if they had been together for months. And that was a long time, in this outfit.

  They had cast off from their moorings this very morning, even as Reveille was being sounded aboard the smart cruiser. In line ahead, hands fallen in, ensigns flying as they had wended past the other moored and anchored ships, exchanging brief signals while the boom-vessels and patrol boats cleared the way. Kearton had noticed that the cruiser had nets rigged protectively along either side of her hull. So even in Gibraltar there was danger. There had been rumours of attempted underwater attacks, not by submarines but by divers, frogmen, some of whom had been captured, but only after achieving their objectives. Something new: it was all very hush-hush, but it was known that bigger, more important ships had already fallen victim to this daring form of attack here in the Med.

  He heard someone swear as the hull dipped steeply into a trough, the motion stronger under the reduced speed. The D-Boats were much heavier and more solid than the smaller M.T.B.s with their sleek lines and high speed, weighted by all the extra fuel and ammunition and, in addition, the piles of tinned rations which every warship ordered to Malta was expected to carry.

  He recalled Captain Garrick’s optimistic prediction of a change of fortune after El Alamein. Perhaps Malta’s suffering would end, and the seige be lifted. But at what cost? The most bombed place in the world, one reporter had called it, and that was not surprising, with the enemy’s airfields in Sicily only sixty miles away.

  “All secure down aft, sir.” It was Spiers, peering astern. “I have an extra lookout there, in case Mostyn’s boat puts on some speed.”