Ian Slater - WW III

“A sub,” said Johnson, either very brave or feigning indifference.

“Yes,” said the cook, “a sub, and you’d better get on with it. Soon as you’ve finished with that lot, you can put them in the freezer, give Spence here a hand with the sandwiches.” Johnson was getting mad as he was forced to hold hard on to the sink as the ship rose, bucked hard astarboard, and fell through a belly-wrenching slide into a deep trough. “Only the British bloody navy would have you peeling potatoes. On the Yank boats…”

“Ships,” corrected Spence good-naturedly, more in the way one might help a friend rather than criticize.

“Quite right, lad,” said the chef. “Ship.”

“Ship, shit, what’s the difference? We aren’t sailors. I didn’t join up to peel—”

The Peregrine now bashed its way through a wave, the heavy spray like fine rain above them, the second escort a lump against moon-tinted sea a quarter mile to port.

“ ‘S’-pattern,” said Spence.

But the chef was looking at Johnson, handing him back the scraper he’d dropped in the heavy, sharp roll. “That’s where you’re wrong, Johnson. We are sailors. Without food, lad, this ship can’t function.” He handed Johnson another potato. “All right then?”

Johnson grunted.

“Besides,” continued the cook, “if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”

“I didn’t,” said Johnson, his tone turning surly. “It was either this or a year in the nick.”

“What for?” asked the cook. Spence was amazed; he’d never actually seen a real live criminal before, let alone worked next to one.

“I found some silver,” said Johnson defiantly.

“Where?” asked the cook.

“In a house. Where else?”

“What’s done is done,” said the cook, unscrewing a peanut butter jar, face going red. “Just so long as we don’t have any silver missing around here. Because—” continued the cook, handing the jar to Spence, “if we find anything missing, we’ll cut your bloody twinkie off. Like one of them ayatollahs. Right, Spence?”

Spence didn’t know what to say.

“Well it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Johnson continued, unrepentant, swinging the french fry cutter toward him. “I mean we’re all for Davy Jones.” He saw Spence’s alarm and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, mate. Food for the fucking fishes, we are. What flamin’ chance ‘ave we got next to one of them Russian subs? You answer me that.” The ship was slowing down, the bell signaling end-of-action and standby stations.

“See?” said Johnson, waving his peeler in the general direction of the combat information center in the heart of the ship. “They don’t know what’s fucking going on.”

“Probably just a drill,” said the cook.

Johnson tossed another potato into the bucket. “You know how many miles we’ve got to go yet?” he asked them ominously.

“Next couple of days,” said William, “the Americans will take over. Midway point.”

“Oh,” said Johnson. “I see. Once the Yanks take over, we’ll be all right. Don’t you know we’ll be taking their convoy back?”

Spence didn’t reply — Johnson seemed so jaded about everything that no matter what you said, he’d pick fault with it.

“You married, Spence?” asked Johnson.

“No, I’m not actually.”

“Well, actually,” said Johnson, “it’s just as well. No widow.” The cook shifted off the safety sleeve on the automatic meat slicer, then swung it around, Johnson’s grooved face distorted in its shining surface.

“Stow it!” said the cook. He was the boss of the galley and preferred informal rules, despite the British navy’s long tradition of tar and feathers, but when yobbos like Johnson started upsetting people unnecessarily, then he was prepared to pull rank. For a second Johnson said nothing, and in the uneasy silence the cook thought of his wife and two children, teenagers, in Portsmouth — and ruminated on the fact of how things had changed. Oh, there’d always been the shipboard whiners like Johnson as long as he’d been in the navy, but he couldn’t have imagined a rating daring to speak with such a defeatist streak in him since the first day out. Fortunately, for every Johnson out there, he hoped — believed — there were two or three Spences, otherwise it was going to be a long, grumpy business in Peregrine’s crew’s mess.

It wasn’t only Johnson that he wondered about. With NATO there were foreigners you had to cater to — a Yank or two at the table — usually one would like his meat rare — and a sprinkling of Scandinavians, all blond and looking as if they had just been skiing. And there were Dutch hippies who smoked a lot—”not always tobacco, mate”—and had everybody wondering whether, when push came to shove, they’d be up to it. “Democratic disease, “ the chef had explained to young Spence. And the Krauts, of course, always liked the British ships best. More beer rations. Spence was too friendly, too young really, to be on a ship with all these other blokes — and always asking questions — what wine was best with this and that, and the cook telling him no wine was any bloody good on ship because everything ended up getting sloshed and corked anyway.

“Wait till the war’s over, laddie,” the cook had finally told him. “Get this lot down pat and next thing you’ll find yourself on some shore establishment doing the hors d’oeuvres for the admiral’s party.” But William Spence had a theory — that if he could learn to make dishes for everyone, for “all the sixteen nationalities in NATO” coming from all kinds of different backgrounds, then he’d have a head start when he was demobbed. He had told the cook that he’d started a list of what wines did travel best — now, that surely had to be of use if you were going into the cruise trade after the war.

Sometimes Spence’s zeal just plain wore the cook down, but he tried not to dampen the kid’s enthusiasm. He’d seen too many go the other way. Maybe the kid had a point about the wines as nowadays they were trying all new bottling techniques anyway. In any case, the cook knew the boy had the “gift” of all great chefs. Organization. Being the cook of HMS Peregrine, one of Britain’s star hi-tech destroyers, the chief petty officer had seen hundreds come and go through his charge, and he’d known many of them who could cook meals that you’d never forget. But he hadn’t met many who could do that and who also possessed the ability to pace themselves, never to have one dish rushing in the wake of another, or too far apart, but just to appear naturally, and always, but always, at the right temperature. That’s where art came in.

“Now, when you’ve finished with those spuds, Johnson,” said the cook, “I want you to put this vitamin C on them before you start the next lot.”

“Stops them going brown,” said William. “The vitamin C.”

“I fucking know that,” said Johnson. He sprinkled the vitamin C around and tied the heavy plastic bag with double twist. “Good as dead!” he said. “Subs. That’s what we need. This surface shit is a crock—”

“We’ve got subs,” said Spence before the chef could tell Johnson to shut up.

“Nine,” said Johnson. “Jesus Christ, the Russians have hundreds.”

“So have the Americans,” answered William.

“Right!” joined in the cook.

“You know—” said Johnson, his hand grabbing the cold stove rail as Peregrine climbed up out of a trough.

“Know what?” asked William Spence, feeling a little seasick in the closed-off and overheated air that was being recycled through the galley.

“Moscow’s only got to move all their crap down the road. Yanks have to move their shit across the whole friggin’ Atlantic.”