Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

He glanced over the screen at the crouching lookouts, shining in their oilskins, their breath like Hargrave’s. The port Oerlikons had never worked again to Fallows’ satisfaction after being hit by the anti-tank shell. One more job for Devonport, ‘Guz’ as it was affectionately nicknamed.

Familiar shapes and outlines in the grey gloom. The hard man Jardine; Leading Seaman Hoggan, one of the stalwarts in this elite company; A.B. ‘Chalky’ White, who had a nervous tic in his eye; Gipsy Guttridge and all the rest. How did they feel? Ransome remembered Morgan’s comparison with Trafalgar before the invasion. But there were no proud pyramids of canvas this dull morning to excite and warm the hearts of the watchers on the shore, had there been any. Not this time. Just eight small ships, tired and streaked with rust, dented from numerous encounters with jetties and mooring buoys, often in pitch-darkness.

Ransome looked up at the single funnel with its usual lick of smoke trickling abeam. He recalled what Commander Moncrieff had said after their last handshake.

He felt a lump in his throat. Well, they had taken care of her. One more time, Rob Roy was coming home.

Lieutenant Philip Sherwood withdrew his head and shoulders from the shielded chart-table where he had been peering at a signal pad and said, ‘From C-in-C Plymouth, sir. Details of berthing tomorrow morning and arrangements for tonight.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘The dockyard ordnance people are coming aboard sometime in the forenoon.’

Ransome turned in his chair and winced. It was even colder, and beyond the bridge it was pitch-black, with only their sluggish bow wave to break the darkness.

A long day, and a strangely tense one, he thought. Only when they closed with the land to pass the Lizard, while the air was heady with the daily rum issue and some curious smells from the galley funnel, did he accept the reality of their return.

Then north-east with his own home, Fowey, somewhere in port, shrouded in gloom and mist; until like a disembodied island, the headland of Rame Head, guardian of Plymouth Sound and marked by a solitary winking buoy, passed finally abeam.

It was a nuisance to have to wait for morning, another day before he could take the ship into the dockyard. But it was a difficult entrance, past Drake’s Island and through the narrows, a hard passage even in broad daylight.

‘Tell Fallows about the gunnery thing.’

Sherwood nodded and resumed his position in the forepart of the bridge. It was odd about Bunny Fallows, he thought. He barely spoke to anybody these days; it could not still be pique over Tritton and Morgan’s little joke. It was something much deeper, which gnawed away at him from within like a disease. Not fear then? It seemed unlikely. Fallows did not have the imagination to feel that kind of emotion. Sherwood pushed him from his thoughts and trained his glasses astern. Ranger was somewhere in their wake, the only one still in company. The rest were on their way to Chatham and Harwich, Rosyth and Tynemouth. Repairs, a lick of paint – then what?

He heard Morgan speaking quietly to the signalman. Would it mean a breakup of this company? Promotion, courses in various shore establishments, drafts to other ships to make way for green youngsters like Gold, and Boyes, who no longer seemed so youthful.

He glanced at Ransome’s shadow framed against the glass screen. As if he never moved. Rob Roy and Ranger each carried a Render Mines Safe Officer. It was fortunate that the other R.M.S.O., like himself, held a watchkeeping certificate. It made the officers’ watches on the bridge less of a strain, spread out instead of four hours on and four off without let-up. But the captain was always here. Everyone who visited the ship remarked how young he was to hold a command. Sherwood had told more than one, he bloody well needed to be young to keep from splitting into halves.

He shied away from thoughts of the girl he had met in London.

rosemary. But she often came into his mind when he was unprepared and vulnerable. He was all that and more just now. He was coming home – to what? A big bank balance which he had done nothing to create, property which was filled with memories and a background which was worth very little in a fighting war he recalled her question. What will you do after the war? And his own cynical reply.

he might leave Rob Roy ; he was surprised that the idea seemed almost painful. Once he had believed it did not matter, that he could not care less. In that at least he must have changed. Ransome had probably done it. He remembered that moment on the Sicilian beach when he had understood Ransome’s own anxiety, shared it; afterwards he had thought it was like being privileged to do so.

Even if he did not see her again, he might give her a call. He owed her an apology for the way he had acted after – again he closed his mind to it.

I must not think like this. Next week, or the one after, he might In- called to examine some new enemy technique, a booby trap designed only for the likes of him. He smiled as he thought of the soldiers’ resentment when he had ordered them from the bombed church. Their embarrassed grins afterwards, their stammered thanks for saving them from being killed or maimed. It did no good to think that some of those same men were probably dead anyway by now.

A slight shadow crossed the bridge and he heard Morgan report, ‘Ordinary Seaman Boyes, sir.’

Then he heard Ransome say, ‘I want you on the plot full-time, Boyes.’

A flurry of snow sifted over the screen and a look-out muttered, |esus! Roll on my doz!’

Ransome continued, ‘You’ve done well.’ There was some mumbled response from Boyes. ‘I shall see it goes in your papers.’

Boyes stared at the captain’s silhouette, oblivious of the snow which froze on his eyelids and lips. In a small voice he whispered, Papers , sir?’

He tried to remember each word as Ransome replied, ‘I think you should have another go, Boyes. A proper interview at least. How do you feel about it?’

Boyes could scarcely speak. It was everything he wanted, and yet to his amazement his first reaction was one of disloyalty to the men who had helped and guided him in the brutal kindness of the navy’s lower deck.

‘T-thank you very much, sir.’

Ransome said, ‘We’ll be entering the Sound within the half-hour, so get your charts tidied up. The dockyard maties will doubtless want to see Malta’s efforts to repair your plot-table, eh?’

Boyes climbed down the ladder and saw Morgan’s white teeth set in a grin as he passed. Another go. He had not really had one before. What would his mother have to say about that?

‘All the port watch! First part forrard, second part aft, stand by for entering harbour!’

Boyes gripped the rail of the bridge wing, buckled by the shell which had cracked around the wheelhouse, killing, killing. He still found it hard to sleep; it haunted him like a nightmare which had no beginning or ending.

Leading Seaman Reeves, his eyes bulging with horror as if he had seen the shell coming, Davenport lolling against him, trying to laugh, and coughing out his blood while it drowned him. And the towering figure of the coxswain, tough, outspoken and unexpectedly kind. He still limped a bit from his wound, but was more afraid of being put ashore than any momentary pain.

When he had first come aboard he had been almost too frightened to speak. Bursts of anger born of strain, foul language and stories of conquests on runs ashore, blondes, barmaids and waterfront toms. They had been baiting him, testing his reactions. And yet at the sea burials it had been Sid Jardine who had put his arm over his shoulders while in their different ways they had shared the same grief.