Hammond Innes: Dead and Alive

The sun came out as I went down the steep path and the cove was suddenly full of colour. The earth was fresh after the night mist. The sea drowned the sound of my footsteps. I was in a world of my own — a world that belonged to Jenny and me. And yet I was not sad any more.

Perhaps I sensed the hand of Fate that had brought me back to Trevedra and down to this stranded hulk on the rocks of Bossiney Cove. I like to think so. But I don’t know. Certainly I did not know then as I walked down that rocky cliff path that my feet were leading me half across the world, back to the Mediterranean, to strange happenings, to danger and a life of adventure. All I knew was that in that moment there was no longer an ache in my breast. I knew nothing of Monique then, of her elfin beauty, her tragic story and the dark rackets of Naples and the bleak life on the hills beyond Tivoli. But I felt an exaltation as I went down into the cove that I had not felt since I returned to England — an interest in life that cut across the jagged edges of my memories.

It was strange. Jenny and I might have chosen any one of a thousand and more farms in which to spend that two weeks of holiday before the war. But only one of those thousand and more farmsteads was in the next valley to the stranded wreck of an L.C.T. when the war was over. And we had chosen Trevedra — and Trevedra was that one. Of such strange things is the thread of destiny woven.

I reached the beach. It was seemingly deserted. The landing craft towered above me, big in the confines of the cove. Its rusty sides broke the force of the wind and shut me off from the noise of the sea. The thick steel door was half down, held by one rusty chain — the other had snapped and the broken end hung dejectedly against the side of the ship. I climbed over the rocks and peered beneath the hull. Sand, piled up by the winter storms, had been dug away. Except for one jagged rent near the stern the hull seemed intact. It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen. She hadn’t broken her back and she was only holed in one place. She was resting fairly on flat sloping outcrops of rock. «

I clambered round to the stern. The rudders were both badly buckled, but the propellers were unharmed. There was no anchor and the girders that supported the bridge and deck housings were badly buckled. The pom-poms had gone — presumably the naval authorities had unshipped them — and the mast was snapped off short. The funnel was dented and on the seaward side the bridge was badly shattered and looked like a twisted heap of old scrap iron.

‘Hello, there!’ The call was faint, whipped away in the wind and the roar of the sea.

I looked up. A man was seated on one of the for’ard bollards smoking a pipe.

‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Do you allow visitors?’

He rose from his seat and came aft. He looked a wild figure, bearded and with his long dark hair on end with the wind. He wore a dirty polo sweater that had once been green, and brown corduroy slacks.

He found a rope ladder and tossed it over the side. When I climbed over the broken rail, I found him leaning against the side of the wheel-house. He was tapping his teeth with his empty pipe and his grey eyes, narrowed, searched my face.

‘My name is David Cunningham,’ I said. ‘I just came over — ‘ I stopped there for he did not seem to be listening. He made no move to take my hand, but stood, staring into my face.

‘My luck is in,’ he said suddenly. ‘I don’t know why you came — we’ll go into that later. It’s like the answer to a prayer.’ He took his pipe out of his mouth and stabbed at me with the bitten stem. ‘The last time I saw you,’ he said, ‘was on the beaches at Salerno.’

‘On the beaches at Salerno?’ I echoed in surprise.

He nodded. ‘I watched you come down from the clifftop. Something about you seemed familiar. And when you looked up at my hail — then I knew who you were.’ He started filling his pipe from a coloured silk pouch. ‘On the beaches at Salerno — you had a battered old battle bowler cocked over one eye and you steered an L.C.T. loaded with tanks straight in to my beach. I was never more glad to see a bloke in my life.’

‘I remember you now,’ I said.

The cliffs that hung above us blurred and the thunder of the sea merged into the crash of artillery. In my mind’s eye I saw a sandy stretch of beach backed by low cliffs. The shattered hulk of an L.C.T. lay on its side, half submerged in the surf. An A.L.C. full of shrapnel holes and dead bodies was beached beside the wreckage of two ducks that had gone up on mines. And peering out of the water was the cab of a drowned Bedford truck and the turret of a light tank. The beach was littered with figures, some sprawled taut in the fixity of death, others belly-flat to the scooped-out sand in the desperate hope of life.

Bullets chipped at the sea or richocheted whining, off our plates. And overhead was the constant muffled crump of airbursts from 88s high up in the hills.

And in the midst of all that hell a young captain stood knee deep in the water, waving me into the one sound berth. I had gone in at emergency full ahead, with the tank engines drowning the sound of the shell bursts. I had dropped the doors as I grounded and he had jumped the first tank as it rolled off into three feet of water.

He gave me a cheery wave and the last I saw of him was riding up the beach to the shelter of the cliffs and signalling the others to follow him and his men to join in behind the shelter of the tanks.

I had hauled off and pulled up my doors by then. And I left that shell-torn beach just as fast as I could, thinking that he was a very brave man who had little chance of life.

And now here he was, shaking me by the hand and saying, ‘My name is Stuart McCrae.’ The beard made a difference and without a tin hat his dark hair showed streaks of grey. He was older than I had thought.

He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s a bit early for “Up Spirits” by naval reckoning, but I’ve some Scotch, and the weather and the occasion call for it.’

He led the way into the wheel-house. It was comfortably furnished with a round plain oak table of modern design, three chairs, an easy-chair, a small desk table on which was a typewriter, a shelf of books and a big cupboard. Two oils and a photograph of a wide-eyed, fair-haired girl with a baby in her arms hung on the steel walls.

As he came back from the galley with glasses and a jug of water he caught me staring at the table which was charred. The chair legs also had burns. ‘Salvage from my London flat,’ he explained.

We drank in silence. I was thinking of those years abroad and how we’d longed for our homes. And now here I was alone in a room in a farmhouse and he was living a hermit’s life in the wheel-house of a derelict L.C.T. I didn’t dare ask where the girl with the child in the photograph was. I could only suspect.

‘You on holiday?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Not exactly,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just been demobilized and I’m trying to adjust myself.’

He nodded. ‘To adjust oneself — that is the most difficult thing in the world to do when — ‘ He laughed and it was not a pleasant laugh. ‘My life here is finished.’ He gave a shrug to his shoulders. ‘England is dead to me. I’ve seen too much and done too much, and the roots I had are no longer there.’ He raised his glass to me. ‘Here’s to the New Britain! May no one else find it as dull as I do.’

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked. ‘Here, in this country, the world is in the making. We’re at the height of our power — the oldest, the most mature and the most stable of all nations of the world. We have a democracy that works and a people with a sense of responsibility to the world. And the world looks to us.’