Алистер Маклин - HMS Ulysses

The nesting birds were singing, clear and sweet above the distant roar of the traffic, and Big Ben was booming the hour as Johnny Nicholls climbed awkwardly out of the taxi, paid off the driver and hobbled slowly up the marble steps.

His face carefully expressionless, the sentry saluted, opened the heavy swing door. Nicholls passed inside, looked around the huge hall, saw that both sides were lined with heavy, imposing doors: at the far end, beneath the great curve of the stairs and overhanging the widely convex counter of the type usually found in banks, hung a sign: ‘Typist Pool: Inquiries.’

The tip-tap of the crutches sounded unnaturally loud on the marble floor as he limped over to the counter. Very touching and melodramatic, Nicholls, he thought dispassionately: trust the audience are having their money’s worth. Half a dozen typists had stopped work as if by command, were staring at him in open curiosity, hands resting limply on their machines. A trim young Wren, red-haired and shirt-sleeved, came to the counter.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ The quiet voice, the blue eyes were soft with concern. Nicholls, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror behind her, a glimpse of a scuffed uniform jacket over a great fisherman’s jersey, of blurred, sunken eyes and gaunt, pale cheeks, admitted wryly to himself that he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t have to be a doctor to know that he was in pretty poor shape.

‘My name is Nicholls, Surgeon-Lieutenant Nicholls. I have an appointment–’

‘Lieutenant Nicholls . . . HMS Ulysses !’ The girl drew in her breath sharply. ‘Of course, sir. They’re expecting you.’ Nicholls looked at her, looked at the Wrens sitting motionless in their chairs, caught the intense, wondering expression in their eyes, the awed gaze with which one would regard beings from another planet. It made him feel vaguely uncomfortable.

‘Upstairs, I suppose?’ He hadn’t meant to sound so brusque.

‘No, sir.’ The Wren came quietly round the counter. ‘They – well, they heard you’d been wounded, sir,’ she murmured apologetically. ‘Just across the hall here, please.’ She smiled at him, slowed her step to match his halting walk.

She knocked, held open the door, announced him to someone he couldn’t see, and closed the door softly behind him when he had passed through.

There were three men in the room. The one man he recognized, Vice-Admiral Starr, came forward to meet him. He looked older, far older, far more tired than when Nicholls had last seen him – hardly a fortnight previously.

‘How are you, Nicholls?’ he asked. ‘Not walking so well, I see.’ Under the assurance, the thin joviality so flat and misplaced, the harsh edge of strain burred unmistakably. ‘Come and sit down.’

He led Nicholls across to the table, long, big and covered with leather. Behind the table, framed against huge wall-maps, sat two men. Starr introduced them. One, big, beefy, red of face, was in full uniform, the sleeves ablaze with the broad band and four stripes of an Admiral of the Fleet: the other was a civilian, a small, stocky man with iron-grey hair, eyes still and wise and old. Nicholls recognized him immediately, would have known anyway from the deference of both the Admirals. He reflected wryly that the Navy was indeed doing him proud: such receptions were not for all . . . But they seemed reluctant to begin the reception, Nicholls thought – he had forgotten the shock his appearance must give. Finally, the grey-haired man cleared his throat.

‘How’s the leg, boy?’ he asked. ‘Looks pretty bad to me.’ His voice was low, but alive with controlled authority.

‘Not too bad, thank you, sir,’ Nicholls answered. ‘Two, three weeks should see me back on the job.’

‘You’re taking two months, laddie,’ said the grey-haired man quietly. ‘More if you want it.’ He smiled faintly. ‘If anyone asks, just tell ’em I said so. Cigarette?’

He flicked the big table-lighter, sat back in his chair. Temporarily, he seemed at a loss as to what to say next. Then he looked up abruptly.

‘Had a good trip home?’

‘Very fair, sir. VIP treatment all the way. Moscow, Teheran, Cairo, Gib.’ Nicholls’s mouth twisted. ‘Much more comfortable than the trip out.’ He paused, inhaled deeply on his cigarette, looked levelly across the table. ‘I would have preferred to come home in the Sirrus .’

‘No doubt,’ Starr broke in acidly. ‘But we cannot afford to cater for the personal prejudices of all and sundry. We were anxious to have a first-hand account of FR77 – and particularly the Ulysses – as soon as possible.’

Nicholls’s hands clenched on the edge of his chair. The anger had leapt in him like a flame, and he knew that the man opposite was watching closely. Slowly he relaxed, looked at the greyhaired man, interrogative eyebrows mutely asking confirmation.

The grey-haired man nodded.

‘Just tell us all you know,’ he said kindly. ‘Everything – about everything. Take your time.’

‘From the beginning?’ Nicholls asked in a low voice.

‘From the beginning.’

Nicholls told them. He would have liked to tell the story, right as it fell out, from the convoy before FR77 straight through to the end. He did his best, but it was a halting story, strangely lacking in conviction. The atmosphere, the surroundings were wrong – the contrast between the peaceful warmth of these rooms and the inhuman cold and cruelty of the Arctic was an immense gulf that could be bridged only by experience and understanding. Down here, in the heart of London, the wild, incredible tale he had to tell fell falsely, incredibly even on his own ears. Halfway through, he looked at his listeners, almost gave up. Incredulity? No, it wasn’t that – at least, not with the grey-haired man and the Admiral of the Fleet. Just a baffled incomprehension, an honest failure to understand.

It wasn’t so bad when he stuck to the ascertainable facts, the facts of carriers crippled by seas, of carriers mined, stranded and torpedoed: the facts of the great storm, of the desperate struggle to survive: the facts of the gradual attrition of the convoy, of the terrible dying of the two gasoline tankers, of the U-boats and bombers sent to the bottom, of the Ulysses , battering through the snowstorm at 40 knots, blown up by the German cruiser, of the arrival of the battle squadron, of the flight of the cruiser before it could inflict further damage, of the rounding-up of the scattered convoy, of the curtain of Russian fighters in the Barents Sea, of the ultimate arrival in the Kola Inlet of the battered remnants of FR77 – five ships in all.

It was when he came to less readily ascertainable facts, to statements that could never be verified at all, that he sensed the doubt, the something more than wonder. He told the story as calmly, as unemotionally as he could: the story of Ralston, Ralston of the fighting lights and the searchlights, of his father and family: of Riley, the ringleader of the mutiny and his refusal to leave the shaft tunnel: of Petersen, who had killed a marine and gladly given his own life: of McQuater and Chrysler and Doyle and a dozen others.

For a second, his own voice broke uncertainly as he told the story of the half-dozen survivors from the Ulysses , picked up by the Sirrus soon afterwards. He told how Brooks had given his lifejacket to an ordinary seaman, who amazingly survived fifteen minutes in that water: how Turner, wounded in head and arm, had supported a dazed Spicer till the Sirrus came plunging alongside, had passed a bowline round him and was gone before anything could be done: how Carrington, that enduring man of iron, a baulk of splintered timber under his arms, had held two men above water till rescue came. Both men – Preston was one – had died later: Carrington had climbed the rope unaided, clambered over the guard-rails dangling a left-leg with the foot blown off above the ankle. Carrington would survive: Carrington was indestructible. Finally, Doyle, too, was gone: they had thrown him a rope, but he had not seen it, for he was blind.