The Dangerous Years (10 page)

‘Let’s go,’ Kelly yelled and as the train began to move off, a last despairing shell tore into the wrecked trucks where the train had been standing. Earth, stones, timbers and torn metal flew into the air.

‘Talk about the devil looking after his own,’ Rumbelo said.

Fishing into his pocket for his watch, Kelly stared at it for a while, then solemnly handed it to the fireman. The Russian stared at it, almost swooning with gratitude, then he took it, strung it across his middle, insisted on shaking hands all round, and with Rumbelo stuffing logs into the furnace as hard as he could go, he turned to the task of driving them south.

‘They want to give you another gong,’ Orrmont said, handing Kelly a gin. ‘The damn things seem to stick to you like burrs to a sheep. There’s also mail for you, and one rather tender enquiry from Princess Brasov who left her regards and said she was sorry but she had to go to Odessa.’

The weather changed. The warm summer winds vanished and, with Wrangel giving up Tsaritsyn,
Mordant
was occupied between Novorossiisk, Odessa, Sebastopol, Balaclava and Yalta, running backwards and forwards, occasionally with members of the British Mission heading for some new task, but more often carrying Russian staff officers, decorated with braid and studded with medals, who, if they were actually involved in a job, in fact seemed to be along more for the sea air than anything.

Then, suddenly, the rumours changed and they began to be aware of a new danger in the form of typhus, a disease carried by the lice which swarmed in the overcrowded houses and rooms and the filthy railway carriages and trucks packed with refugees. The hospitals in Tsaritsyn and Novocherkassk were full of victims. And, though Denikin had taken Orel and Novosil, only two hundred miles south of Moscow, the Reds had occupied Kiev and the Saratov front was pulling back. Finally, in the middle of October, the news arrived that Trotsky, the Red Minister of War, had attacked the junction between the Army of the Don and Denikin’s Volunteer Army near Kharkov and split it wide open, and the Whites were suddenly evacuating Kursk and Orel in a hurry, and a Red communiqué claimed that Kolchak in Siberia was on the point of rout, that Yudenitch’s position was hopeless and that Denikin was about to be crushed.

‘What happened to the war?’ Wellbeloved bleated.

The news continued to be bad. The entire population of Kotluban were said to have been massacred because the RAF had had its base there and the war maps – those wall posters which had so proudly showed the advances – now showed only ever-narrowing circles of red. It was clear that without more support the Whites could never recover.

Winter had arrived now. Inland it was arctic. Frosts had been coming for some time even in the south and there had been thick mists at night, with occasional breezes to drift away the grey wisps and rattle the dry weeds in the hollows. Yet, despite the horrifying stories of whole regiments dying of typhus; of whole trains pulling into stations with their passengers all dead; of wounded White officers crawling on hands and knees through the mud to the station at Rostov rather than remain behind to be butchered by the Reds; despite all this, Novorossiisk still seemed largely untouched. The cafés were open, the trams running and the theatres doing good business, sometimes with artistes who’d fled south from Moscow and Petrograd. Parties were still held in homes or restaurants, and everybody seemed to be trying, despite the news, to ignore the war.

Kimister appeared occasionally at the gatherings Kelly attended, sometimes nervously in attendance on his voracious Russian baroness. He was inclined to talk less about Charley these days, Kelly noticed, and it appeared that he was writing less letters. They had barely spoken since the train incident by the River Vilyuj. A furious Kelly had demanded an explanation for Kimister’s absence and received a vague story of a faulty valve and misunderstood orders that had led him to take his train back to guard the rear. It was totally unsatisfactory and Kelly had itched to put into his report the simpler explanation which he felt sure was responsible for Kimister’s absence at the crucial moment. There was something missing in Kimister’s make-up and always had been; but the knowledge that Kimister had been his term-mate at Dartmouth, that he’d once relied on Kelly to hold off Verschoyle’s bullying and, above all, the uneasy suspicion that he’d suddenly come to mean something to Charley, held Kelly’s hand and nothing had been set down. Nevertheless, he often thought that one of Verschoyle’s black eyes might well have put him to rights.

Unhappy without news of Charley and now actively disliking Kimister, he felt he might even have welcomed Verschoyle who, after all, had the courage to be his own man, someone real even if his soul was inclined to a shady tinge of grey.

Christmas came and with it a Christmas card covered with flowers but noticeably without the scrawled Xs with which Charley had once declared her love for him.

Kimister appeared at a party given by the Smalnovs, a little drunk and more uncertain than ever. It was a strange unnerving period because the bottom had unexpectedly fallen out of the White armies and their retreat had become a rout, and now, with the vengeful Reds approaching, the refugee trains were pouring into Novorossiisk full of exhausted men, women and children, all clinging to their last worldly possessions, even the smallest child clutching a package. Every family seemed to have been split up. One had lost its father en route when a train had moved on while he was searching for food, another had had a child swept away in a panic-stricken crush and never found. The station walls were plastered with pathetic little notices : ‘Sergei. Your family is in Ekaterinodar.’ ‘Piotr. Take the children to Odessa.’ ‘Dear Masha, we are with mother in Novocherkassk.’ They were heartbreaking in their simplicity and trust.

The Denikin communiqués no longer seemed to be in the realms of reality and Red propaganda moved freely among the despairing multitudes of people. There was a biting chill in the air and, with the snow now falling in huge feathery flakes, trains, buildings and ships stood out against it in an iron blackness. It was a sad Christmas – for the British full of bewilderment, for the Russians full of nostalgia and a new fearful awe because they all knew Denikin could never regain the initiative. There were still a few parties, but they were smaller now because everybody seemed suddenly to be preoccupied with the need to collect around them all their jewellery and family treasures. The few who still possessed wealth had one last wild fling in their palaces, guessing there would be no more and that from now on they’d be dependent only on what they could carry with them, and women were busy sewing jewellery into their underclothes while men were struggling to find someone who would take them to safety when the time came.

In its own way, the Navy tried to celebrate the season but there was little cheer because it was impossible to be joyful with the wretched multitudes of refugees pouring into Novorossiisk. The youngest rating wore Orrmont’s uniform and did the rounds of the ship in his place in the traditional fashion of Christmas inversion, but somehow nobody had the heart for it because every time they went down the gangway they were faced with the sight of gaunt grey-faced people and huge-eyed children begging for bread.

With the New Year the British government lost all interest in the war; and the politicians, at last realising what their folly had let them in for, were back-pedalling as fast as they could go, so that the peace of Europe suddenly depended not on statesmen, but on a handful of professional soldiers and sailors.

‘That crafty blighter Lloyd George’s behind all this,’ Orrmont growled. ‘I don’t suppose he knows the first thing about it really, and probably even thinks Rostov’s a Russian general.’

The Government’s about-face was not without its effect and there was a protest meeting on the cruiser,
Coryphée
, about having to fight in somebody else’s war, that resulted in a court martial. In
Mordant
three able-seamen who took up the objection were whipped out of the ship at once. There were no punishments but they were sent home without delay.

‘In the present climate,’ Orrmont said, ‘there’s no room for people who wish to claim allegiance to the Bolshies.’

With the disappearance of the three culprits, there was a sudden new alertness about
Mordant
that indicated that the short sharp lesson had been a good one, and a lot of innocent expressions about, chief among which Kelly noticed Able Seaman Doncaster’s, so that he wondered if they’d punished the wrong men.

With the end of January there was a sudden uneasiness in the city because the Reds were moving so fast now it seemed impossible that anything could ever stop them. Yet, unbelievably, the wealthy still seemed to have their wealth, and the expensive restaurants still stayed open for them.

‘I don’t think they’re real,’ Kelly said in bewilderment. ‘They still think a miracle’s going to save ’em all.’

What he said seemed to be true, because, while White army soldiers starved and tried to fight without weapons or warm clothing, White generals lived in incredible luxury in their train-borne headquarters, surrounded by silver, liveried servants and fur-coated women, seemingly indifferent to the collapse and to the thousands of soldiers and civilians heading south on their own two feet. The railways were chaotic enough to be impossible. Terrified refugees filled every hotel, boarding house and room in the city. Even empty warehouses began to fill up and they slept on the station and in shop doorways, huddled together against the cold.

Then, with the naval squadron waiting for orders to start the evacuation,
Mordant
was sent to pick up a group of Russian naval officers at Sebastopol and transport them to the Russian bases at Odessa and Nikolaev.

They put their ropes ashore in Sebastopol at the Fleet Landing Place on a quay that was dangerous with ice. A car was waiting for them, containing a French diplomat and a British Mission colonel carrying instructions for them to pick up the French consul in Odessa and bring him to safety with his family.

‘It’s some time since I saw them, you understand,’ the Frenchman said, ‘but there are four small daughters, I remember.’

As he headed back towards his car, the British colonel moved closer to Orrmont and Kelly.

‘The French consul, his family, staff and dependants
only
,’ he pointed out quietly. ‘We’ve just received instructions that nobody’s to be evacuated but White Russian soldiers and their families, and you won’t find many of those because they’re being forced further and further east.’

Their Russian naval passengers were nowhere to be seen and they eventually found them in an upper room at Admiralty House enjoying the view towards the sea, less concerned with the state of their defences or even the state of the campaign than with the dislike they felt for the British and the enormous inferiority complex they suffered from before them. They showed no repentance for their lack of effort and concentrated only on making sure their luggage was safely stowed aboard. Considering they were going to war, they seemed to have an enormous amount.

Hauling up the gangway,
Mordant
headed out of the South Harbour and turned north-east past Kalamita Bay and Cape Tarkhan, looking for a light on the point which, it turned out, hadn’t worked for some months. The coast seemed bare and empty even of fishing craft, though in the yard in Kherson Bay they saw the hulk of an unfinished battleship, rust-streaked and without even a coat of lead paint.

Odessa looked different from when they’d last been there. The sea was grey now and the trees were leaning away from the wind, while the white buildings beyond the landing steps were dulled by the falling sleet. The place was clearly in a state of panic because, with Kiev and Kharkov gone, pockets of White resistance were crumbling swiftly as the Reds advanced towards the coast, living on the country as they came and driving hordes of refugees before them.

Glad to see the back of the Russian officers, Orrmont called Kelly into his cabin. ‘I’m sending you ashore, Number One,’ he announced. ‘Any objection?’

Kelly shrugged. ‘Plenty, sir. But I don’t see who else’s going to do it.’

‘You’re the only chap on board who seems to speak decent French, so I can see no alternative.’ Orrmont looked apologetic. ‘Can I bribe you with a gin?’

Kelly grinned. ‘If it’s a big one, sir,’ he said.

‘I suggest you take Boyle and a party of men. Any particular choice?’

‘Just Rumbelo. We understand each other. With Boyle to keep an eye on the seaward end and three or four seamen, that should be enough.’

‘Contact the British Mission. And you’d better be armed.’

‘Not half, sir. With the situation that’s developing ashore, I wouldn’t trust my own mother behind my back.’

‘Good. I have to put the rest of these bloody Russians ashore up the Boug and then I’ll come back for you. Three days should be ample. Think you can do it in that time?’

‘Good God, yes, sir. It’s only a question of getting the consul and his family and traps into the car and running them down to the Fleet Landing Place. Matter of an hour, that’s all.’

As it turned out, it took rather more than that.

The Russian telephone and telegraphic system were functioning only fitfully and, with patrols of Bolsheviks within eight miles of the outer suburbs of the Odessa, nobody seemed inclined to be worried about what happened to the French consul. ‘The situation was already nightmarish and even as Kelly stepped ashore the flood of refugees was descending on the city.

It was only when he saw
Mordant’
s stern heading seawards that he realised what he’d let himself in for. Over the slap of the waves behind him, he could hear artillery and, when the wind gusted towards them in flurries of snow, the rattle of rifle and machine gun fire as the Army of the Ukraine faced the Reds beyond the lagoons to the north.

The snow began to fall faster as he stared about him. The Fleet Landing Place seemed to be full of people but none of them seemed to belong to the White Army. Here and there, ill-armed men roamed about, trudging on foot or riding starved horses. Most of them were heading for the sea, and on a corner, a soldier, muffled to the eyes against the weather, was haranguing a group of people who looked black against the snow.