Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

Sub-Lieutenant Robert ‘Bunny’ Fallows paused to fix his bearings, breathing hard, his head swimming after stopping at several bars. He had not gone on leave, although he was entitled to it. The idea of facing his home and all that it represented made staying aboard an easy choice, and as happened only too often he did not have the cash to spare for a hotel, something he had often dreamed about.

The blacked-out dockyard was always a trap for the unwary, drunk or sober, and Fallows had consumed too many gins to take chances on the maze of catwalks and bridges which separated the various basins from one another. The dark silhouettes of ships loomed out of the downpour, under repair or enjoying a complete overhaul as Rob Roy was supposed to have had. But all that was shelved. The minimum repairs possible, and already the dockyard workers had left the ship to work on something more important.

But Fallows, despite the ache behind his eyes and the sour sickness in his stomach, had other things uppermost in his blurred thoughts. That morning he had met Tudor Morgan and had been astounded to see he was wearing a second gold stripe on his working dress, several shades brighter than the old one.

He had been retained aboard instead of going on a long navigation course, but his promotion to lieutenant had unexpectedly come through all the same. Fallows still could not accept it. Although Morgan was a professional sailor who had started in the merchant service, their seniority was about the same, surely?

He grabbed a handrail and began to pull himself across another catwalk, on one side of him a yawning empty basin, the other containing the battered hull of a destroyer which had almost been sunk after an air attack in the Western Approaches.

He had confronted Morgan with it, but the young Welshman had merely suggested that the delay was due to some formality or foul-up along the line.

As he had drunk himself from bar to bar Fallows had considered it from every angle, until his mind throbbed like a drum. It had to be because of Tinker. That little bastard Parsons, who was leaving the ship anyway for a gunnery course and promotion to higher rate, must have told somebody. Spite, hatred, it did not really matter.

Fallows clung to a chain rail and stared up at the rain until it cleared his mind a bit.

Now they were going back to sea, to God alone knew what. Morgan promoted, while he remained a sub-lieutenant. Some of them would get a laugh out of that. Most of all his bloody father.

He saw a figure swaying towards him from another catwalk and he thought for an instant he was going mad.

Able Seaman Parsons straightened his back and wiped his mouth with his wrist. There was an acrid smell of vomit despite the steady rain: Parsons had also been drinking, saying various goodbyes to old shipmates before he left the flotilla for good to go on the course at Whale Island.

He saw Fallows and peered at him uncertainly. Then he bowed, his collar black with rain, so that his hat fell on the catwalk unnoticed.

‘We shall say our farewells, eh, Mister Fallows?’ He laughed, and almost threw up again. It was funny to see the officer’s face. Even in the darkness he could make out the anger and the dismay.

Fallows exclaimed, ‘You little bastard! After all I did, all I gave you!’

Parsons almost laughed, but said instead, ‘Take it off your back, Bunny! All’s fair in love and war, and you treated all of us like shit. And you know it!’ When Fallows remained speechless, clinging to the rail for support, Parsons shouted, ‘You’re pissed, you useless git – but if one of us got tanked up you’d slap him in the rattle!’ He leaned right over to get his eyes into focus.

Fallows said thickly, ‘You told them what I said that night!’

Parsons could hardly believe it. ‘Told who , for Chrissake? You were to$ drunk to say anything that night! Tinker never even spoke to you!’

Fallows wiped his face and yelled, ‘ You’re lying! I gave you money—’

Parsons sneered. ‘So what?’ He waved his arm over the dockyard. ‘You’ll remember me after this, eh?’

It was all a blur. Fallows stepped forward, intent only on hitting him no matter what the consequences might be. Parsons gave a high-pitched giggle and ducked away. The chain which joined two stanchions behind his back was only inches above the catwalk at its centre. Too late Parsons realised what was happening; the giggle changed to a shrill scream and he toppled backwards into the basin where the bombed destroyer shone in the rain like black ice.

Fallows peered wildly around, his mind reeling. He had heard no splash, nor even a cry for help, for unknown to him Parsons had hit the concrete knuckle of the dock as he fell and had probably been dead when he struck the water.

Fallows waited, the rain bouncing off his cap, trying to steady his thoughts, to stop himself running for help. Then after what seemed like an eternity he straightened his back and stared along the basin to the next berth.

He saw Parson’s cap, lying where it had fallen on the catwalk. Fallows started to laugh, and for several minutes was unable to stop. Then he kicked the cap carelessly into the basin and continued towards his own ship.

‘Flamborough Head bears three-three-zero, seven miles, sir!’

Ransome peered down at the chart on the bridge-table, his head and shoulder beneath the waterproof hood while he studied the pencilled fixes and bearings. He could feel the rain slashing across his buttocks and legs, hammering on his oilskin like pellets.

January in the North Sea again. Three shades of grey, all bleak and hostile. He rubbed his eyes and felt his elbows press on the table as the hull lifted and rolled drunkenly in a steep quarter sea. The North Sea never had the great storms of the Western Ocean, but this sickening, corkscrewing motion was in many ways much worse.

He heard Lieutenant Morgan rebuking the quartermaster in a fierce whisper for straying slightly off course. It was unusual for him to be on edge, but the whole ship had been like it since they had left Devonport without waiting for Christmas. That was almost exactly a month ago. Now as Rob Roy lifted and staggered at the head of her diagonal line of consorts, the Mediterranean and the sunshine, the exotic places like Malta and Alex were barely more than a blurred memory.

Even the other events of the war seemed remote, as if they were no longer a part of it. On Boxing Day for instance, when they had been sweeping this same channel, the German battle cruiser Scharnborst , the last of Hitler’s major warships, was destroyed by the guns of HMS Duke of York. It was a terrible fight in Arctic conditions and in the midst of a snow blizzard. Enemy or not, Scharnborst had always been admired by her enemies; her luck and skill had become part of naval legend. Without her lurking presence, more British warships could be spared for the buildup of an invasion fleet.

Important though that victory was, it barely touched the weary men of the minesweepers.

Ransome often thought of that precious moment beside the Barracuda. Her simple gesture when she touched the hull beneath the tarpaulin. Sometimes when he was snatching a few hours in his sea-cabin, the ‘coop’ as Kellett the P.O. steward called it, he would jerk wide awake, almost pinching himself to make her words become clear in his mind. That the cottage she wanted to call ours was not merely part of a taunting dream.

He withdrew his head from the chart-table and crossed to his chair, holding on to it, stamping his scuffed seaboots on the deck to make his circulation come alive. It reminded him of the time he had waited outside the abbey when -