Douglas Reeman - In Danger's Hour

Directly below his feet Ordinary Seaman Boyes heard the thuds and glanced up at the wheelhouse deckhead. Beside him, the new midshipman, Piers, stared at him wide-eyed.

‘What was that?’

Beckett lounged easily behind the wheel, his eyes on the gyro tape.

‘No sweat. Just the skipper lettin’ off steam.’ He did not even bother to add sir. It didn’t seem to matter, he thought, as he watched the ticking lubber’s line.

There had been some cheeky comment when he had taken over the wheel. He would be on it until they’d done what they’d come for. Beckett was dressed in his best Number One jacket, with the shining gold-wire badges on each lapel.

He had rasped at the quartermaster, ‘An’ why not? This is the big ’un. It’s got to be done right – look proper, see?’

Nobody argued with the coxswain.

He still felt the scar on his thigh where the red-hot splinter had torn into him; but what the hell. You lose something, and you fetch up gaining something. He had been awarded a bar to his Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, which he had got when the Old Man had got his gong from the King. Made ’em all sit up at home, although his dad had been enjoying His Majesty’s pleasure in a different style.

The door opened and closed and the Buffer, carrying a heavy torch, glanced in as he made a final check on damage-control.

Beckett gave a lazy grin. ‘I ’ope you’ve got a tin – ’at for yer weddin’ tackle, Buffer! Wouldn’t like nuffin to get shot off!’

The Buffer snapped back, ‘I thought you’d be wearin’ yer brown trousers this time, Swain!’

Boyes watched the Buffer bustle away. He drew comfort from their casual banter, their warm hostility toward each other.

He tried to push Connie from his thoughts, but she kept returning. He saw her on the bed, then wrapped in his arms; felt his face flush as he recalled what they had done, and how she had guided him to that overwhelming climax.

He had tried to telephone her several times, a difficult and expensive exercise. The battery guardroom had been unable or unwilling to help him, but on the third occasion, with a queue of impatient and fuming sailors outside the only telephone box, her friend Sheila had been brought to speak to him.

‘You’re a nice bloke, Gerry, but in some ways just a kid. You’re not like Connie – you’re like chalk and cheese. She’s my best friend. I know more about her than most.’

‘But I must speak to her!’ A sailor had rapped with his coins on the glass.

She had said, ‘Connie’s fond of you, ’course she is. But it’s not the real thing.’ She had hesitated, balancing Boyes’ despair against her own betrayal. ‘She was in love once, with a bloke from this battery. He treated her badly, then he pushed off to North Africa, God rot him! Well, now he’s back, and Connie’s making a fool of herself all over again. So just forget it. Wouldn’t work anyway. You’ll be an officer soon. Then what?’

Boyes had left the box as if he was in a trance. He loved her. They would have managed.

On the messdeck it had been the tough A.B. Jardine who had asked, ‘Wot the hell’s up with you, Gerry? You got a face like a wet Sunday in Liverpool!’

The mess had been deserted at the time and Boyes had found himself spilling it out to Jardine, expecting him to mock him for his juvenile behaviour.

Jardine had regarded him thoughtfully. ‘She sounds a right little raver.’ Then he had relented. ‘See ’ere, Wings, she’s not for you. ‘Er mate was right. She’s not your sort, no more than I am. When you’ve got a bit o’ gold on yer sleeve, you’ll remember us, an’ wot you’ve gained – least I ’ope you do.’

Boyes had stared at him. ‘You knew?’

Jardine had laughed. ‘ Course! The ’ole bloody ship knows. But it’s different now, see? Maybe they was right to turn you down for your wavy stripe, but not no more they ain’t. Even if you are going to be one o’ them , you’re all right, Wings. So just remember this lass as experience.’ Then he had shaken his head. ‘ Love? Gawd, Gerry-lad, she’d ’ave you fer breakfast!’

Boyes was still unconvinced.

The midshipman whispered, ‘Do you think we’ll be going into action?’

Boyes smiled, it’s hard to tell.’ He pointed at the vibrating plot-table. ‘Now look at this—’

They all stared up as Sherwood’s voice came across the bridge intercom.

‘The float’s no longer watching, sir!’

Midshipman Piers forgot his authority and seized Boyes’ arm.

‘What’s he talking about?’

Boyes swallowed hard. ‘It means that the Oropesa float has disappeared, gone below the surface. We must have snared something.’ He looked for understanding, but there was none. He remembered Jardine’s words. Maybe they had been right to turn him down for the chance of a commission: but not any longer. In the face of Piers’s anxiety, he thought he knew what the tough seaman meant.

Beckett interrupted, ‘Stand by, my beauties. Time to earn yer pay!’

Lieutenant Sherwood gripped a davit and watched the sea boiling up beneath the stern from the racing screws. They were making slow progress, but down aft, with the water rising almost level with the deck as Rob Roy pushed into the oncoming crests, they got an impression of speed.

He saw Ranger’s murky silhouette riding out on the quarter, the spray bursting above her stem as she held station on the leader. The remainder of the sweepers were already lost in early darkness. Sherwocjd buttoned the neck of his oilskin. Inside the heavy coat he was sweating badly, but without it he knew he would soon be drenched to the skin and shivering. You couldn’t win.

Stoker Petty Officer Nobby Clarke crouched on his little steel seat while he controlled the winch, spray dripping off the peak of his cap as he squinted into the criss-cross of foam from the ship’s wake. Sherwood found he was able to accept all that was happening, what he could see around him, and that which he could only imagine from reading the intelligence packs.

They had all known it was coming. Now it was here, or soon would be. To have lived this long was the real bonus.

Had anyone else spoken such thoughts aloud, Sherwood would have torn him apart. Once. How could he have altered so much? He had believed it madness to consider a true friendship, let alone a marriage, in wartime. He could almost hear himself warning others against it. But that moment beside the parachute-mine had changed him.

He glanced around at the other shining figures in his party, the slender barrel of the after four-inch gun overhead.

Whatever happened to caution? To our disbelief in survival?

He smiled to himself as he recalled his unusual reserve when he had told Ransome, the day he had returned to the ship to take over Hargrave’s work.

‘I’ve asked her to marry me.’ He had grinned, surprised at his own shyness, his new faith.

Ransome had shaken his hand warmly and then said, ‘ Snap!’

So the skipper had a girl too, although nobody had ever guessed it. The news was another precious secret, like the one they had shared in Sicily.

Stoker Petty Officer Clarke snapped, ‘The float, sir!’

The older hands could often sense such things. By the sound or the vibration of a sweep-wire.

Clarke exclaimed, ‘There’s somethin’ there!’ His eyes showed white in the gloom. ‘Better tell the Old Man, sir.’

Sherwood snatched up the handset. ‘The float’s no longer “watching", sir.’ He saw Guttridge peering down from the four-inch. The leading hand had come back from leave with a pair of black eyes. But he was a hard character, not a man to be laughed at.