The Dangerous Years (14 page)

‘There she is, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve looked on her drunk and sober, and I’d never mistake her.’

The heavy guns of
Queen Elizabeth
roared again and the air quivered like jelly under the blast as the huge projectiles thundered over the town. An area had been roped off and reinforced with barrels, carts and spars to make a clear space by the landing steps where boats were gathered, and a British naval officer with a straggly beard like a rather tatty rat was watching the only entrance with a group of seamen armed to the teeth and stopping anybody who tried to pass. As Rumbelo put down the handles of the wheelbarrow containing Princess Busukov, it dawned on Kelly that the officer was Kimister, and he gestured to his party to move ahead.

But as Rumbelo moved forward, Kimister signed to his men and two of them stepped into the breach with fixed bayonets.

‘You asking for a punch up the nostrils?’ Rumbelo asked them quietly.

Startled by the words that came unexpectedly from the big man in the ragged coat, the sailors looked at Kimister who stepped forward, stroking his beard.

‘Who’s this?’ he demanded.

‘Rumbelo, you bloody fool,’ Kelly snapped at him from under his shaggy fur cap. ‘And I’m Kelly Maguire. If your eyes weren’t full of that bloody bum-fuzz you’ve grown on your face, you’d recognise us.’

Kimister stared uncertainly at him and Kelly glared back, red-eyed and quick-tempered with sleeplessness, his unshaven face dark and angry.

‘If I’m not Kelly Maguire, you ass,’ he snorted, ‘who do you suppose I am? Czar Nicholas in disguise or something? Don’t be a damn’ fool, Kimister! I’ve got kids here who are exhausted and women who are half-starved, one of ’em probably dying. Stop arguing and let us through.’

Kimister backed away, then he gestured nervously at the women and children behind Kelly. ‘My instructions are that no one but White officers and their families, British officers and their wives, and White troops and wounded are to be taken aboard.’

‘A bit of Nelson’s blind eye never hurt the Navy,’ Kelly snapped.

Still Kimister hesitated and Kelly gestured at Baptiste. ‘That’s the French Consul,’ he said.

‘They said he was dead.’

‘He’s been resurrected,’ Kelly retorted. ‘Coffin yawned and out he came. Now, for Christ’s sake, get out of the way! I was sent here to bring him out and I’m bringing him out. His family’s alongside him. Next to him’s his secretary, but for whose guts probably none of us would have got out. The rest are the families of staff and servants and White Russian officers.’

‘All of them?’

‘They have big families.’

Kimister was staring at Vera Brasov who had moved closer to Kelly, her eyes burning in her pale face. He had clearly recognised her.

‘And this one?’ he asked.

Kelly stared him down.

‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Now get out of my bloody way or I’ll shove you in the sea! We’re coming through! All of us!’

As Kimister swallowed his pride and waved them past, Kelly stalked by him, gaunt, dirty and bearded, followed by the whole untidy string of women and children.

Orrmont welcomed them on board with a grin of relief. ‘I thought we’d lost you, Number One.’ He stared at the party filing below. ‘Were all that lot connected with the French Consul?’

‘Every one, sir.’

‘Even Princess Brasov?’

Kelly grinned. ‘Particularly Princess Brasov, sir.’

Orrmont didn’t argue. ‘Get ’em tucked in. None of ’em are allowed back ashore. Quite apart from murder there’s the danger of disease. Transports that have already left are being held in Levantine ports under quarantine and the bloody people aboard ’em are dying like flies. We’ve got sentries posted at the gangways and machine guns manned and men at all points of the ship in case the buggers try to board from the sea. Nothing’s to be put over the side that might help ’em climb aboard and no boats are to be lowered without my orders.’

Below, where the women were crowded into the mess flats with the children, Baptiste embraced Kelly, kissing him on both cheeks to the delight of the lower deck, and every one of his daughters flung her arms round him and hugged him warmly.

Vera Brasov rose as he approached. ‘I am grateful, Kelly Georgeivitch,’ she said quietly. ‘I shall never forget.’

As he returned to the deck, a platoon of soldiers began to file aboard, followed by instructors of the British Mission. Next to them a steamer was loading White cavalry, and rather than have their horses fall into the hands of the Reds, the soldiers were shooting them, or pushing them into the harbour to drown, so that the animals were swimming between the ships, whinnying with terror. Then, as a mob of desperate refugees rushed the gangplank, a machine gun opened up from an Italian ship in the next berth and men and women fell.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Kelly yelled in fury. ‘Stop that bloody shooting!’

A Greek destroyer went astern from the quayside in a panic, then, as though at a signal, other ships began to leave. Weeping women with children waylaid the last naval and military officers and Orrmont ordered Kelly to break out the rum and pass it ashore.

‘Better to die drunk than sober,’ he said.

From
Mordant’
s bridge the red flags of the Bolsheviks could be seen at the street ends, waiting for the moment to sweep to the water’s edge, and Red snipers on the rooftops began firing on the crowds which surged and heaved, trying to escape as people fell. Not far away an ancient paddle steamer, her starboard paddle smashed, was struggling to leave. Then on a nearby mole, they heard a full-throated scream and, swinging round, saw that the Red horsemen had broken out and were driving among the unarmed men, women and children along the quay, their sickle-like sabres swinging.

Wordless and sick, they stared at the carnage. Then Orrmont’s commands broke through the screaming. ‘Have the gangway taken in,’ he said.

Seamen with bleak faces carried out the orders without a word.

‘Springs!’

As the ropes were hauled aboard, Orrmont stared about him, trying not to see the agonised looks on the faces of the people still on the quay or their arms lifted in wordless appeal.

Mordant’s
thin plates began to pulsate and her guard rails quivered.

‘Let go forrard! Half astern port.’

The big guns of
Queen Elizabeth
lobbed a last salvo over the city, then, as
Mordant
began to swing, they saw the battleship moving, too.

‘There’s nothing to stop them now,’ Boyle said wretchedly, and as
Mordant
drew away a vast high-pitched wail went up, chilling their hearts so that, unable to look back at the land, they had to stare fixedly at the open sea, their eyes bleak and empty and cold.

Britain was no place to return to after a long commission abroad.

The Russian Civil War was over, but Boyle had only just taken a sentimental parting of Anne-Marie Baptiste in Constantinople and Kelly a rather more earthy one from Vera Brasov when the Middle East turmoil boiled up again. The arrival of Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt with the Third Light Cruiser Squadron from Malta had snatched Kelly off
Mordant
for a trip in
Cardiff
as a French-speaking aide to the port of Constanza and a long trip by train through the war-devastated areas of Rumania to Bucharest. The journey was slow and uncomfortable and even in their reserved coach all the seats had been stripped of their cushions, while most of the windows lacked glass and were boarded up to combat the cold.

At the Danube, they were obliged to get out and walk a quarter of a mile through ankle-deep mud to a bridge of boats, then another quarter of a mile on the other side to a waiting train. The journey’s only compensation was a lunch with the King and Queen of Rumania and the offer of the royal train for the return. Within a week of reappearing in Constantinople, they had hurried off to Batoum to help bring back thousands more White Russians to join those already driving cabs and opening restaurants in the Turkish capital, and from there to Chanak to support a British army eyeball-to-eyeball with victorious Turks anxious to cross into Europe and win back all they’d lost.

From the other end of the Mediterranean England had seemed like a haven of peace, but
Mordant’
s homecoming had an empty feeling about it. They were sent to Port Edgar on the south side of the Firth of Forth, upstream of the bridge and close to South Queensferry. It had originally been a small fishing port, little more than an area of mud which dried out at low water, but it had been taken over by the Admiralty as a destroyer base, and though the little harbour had been dredged and wooden jetties erected for the accommodation of ships, there was little to interest their crews.

There was time to think on the long journey south, and for the first time in his life for Kelly there was a faint unwillingness to seek out Charley. There had been a slight recovery in his fortunes while Kimister had been involved with his Russian baroness but nothing had come of it in the end and, before
Mordant
had left Constantinople for good, he had gathered from Kimister that he and Charley were in touch with each other again.

The idea of marriage must by now be firmly fixed in her mind, he knew, and he felt he could hardly blame her, because she’d been waiting ever since 1918 for him to make up his mind. Though he could still claim poverty, he could no longer plead she was too young and, despite a bank account that showed more red than black, he couldn’t even claim lack of rank against the Admiralty’s entrenched ideas that naval officers ought to be wedded only to the Service, because his promotion to lieutenant-commander had come through and his next appointment might even be to a command of his own.

The country seemed to be in a strange despairing mood that was doubly noticeable after being away from it for so long. There was an air of neglect and decay everywhere because industry, which had grown and expanded in the previous century, had suddenly become out-of-date. The country needed new methods and new machinery, yet the loss of foreign markets had so impoverished the City it could not afford to provide them, and the greatest effect had been in shipping. Even the Navy was in danger because the Americans were insisting on equality of tonnage and ships and, to get it, were demanding that Britain should pare down her fleet.

At Euston, as Kelly walked alongside the porter pushing his gear on a barrow, a hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to see Kimister standing beside him dressed in mufti.

Kelly stared at him with little warmth. It was hard to forget that Kimister, for reasons best known to himself, had left him in the lurch on the wrong side of the River Vilyuj, and harder still to feel that while he, Kelly, was out on his ear as far as Charley was concerned, Kimister could do no wrong.

Kimister smiled, unaware of Kelly’s dislike. ‘At least, you’re still in the Navy,’ he said. ‘And that’s something. That damned man, Geddes, that they appointed to look into the economy, uprooted a devil of a lot of junior officers and chucked ’em on the labour market with only a small gratuity and a smaller pension.’

Kelly looked at Kimister’s civilian clothes. ‘You safe?’

Kimister gave a shy self-effacing smile. ‘I scraped through.’

‘Verschoyle?’

‘Naturally. He got his half-stripe in the same gazette as you. He’s at the Admiralty. I saw a chap called Poade the other day, though. Said he knew you. He’s going in for farming and not much looking forward to it. Felt he’d been betrayed. So does everybody come to that. Even the lower deck.’

Kelly was in no mood to discuss the Navy’s troubles. He was as well aware of them as Kimister. The shortage of men had caused time ashore to be so reduced that the old naval prayer about returning to enjoy the blessings of the land had become nothing but a mockery, and crews returning from commissions in the Middle East were finding themselves drafted immediately into ships headed for Singapore.

‘Things are different these days,’ Kimister said. ‘The new intakes are bitter because they’ve been forced in by the absence of work and, since a lot of them have been members of unions, they’re a bit inclined to air their grievances.’ He paused. ‘Seeing Charley?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh!’ Kimister smiled. ‘I’ve seen her once or twice.’

‘Oh?’ It was Kelly’s turn to be non-committal. In his nervous way, Kimister seemed to be warning him off.

‘I’ve been doing a stint at Chatham,’ he said, ‘so I’ve been able to slip up easily. She was pretty lonely.’

And a prey to smooth operators who could smell loneliness at a distance of five miles, Kelly thought, to say nothing of sad cases like Kimister who attracted soft-hearted females by nothing else but their own helplessness, How Kimister had dodged the Geddes axe he couldn’t imagine.

Kimister blushed. ‘Saw her a couple of nights ago, as a matter of fact,’ he went on offhandedly. ‘Verschoyle and I took her and Mabel to the theatre.’

Kelly’s head jerked up. ‘New line for you, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Allied to Verschoyle.’

Kimister shrugged. ‘We’re not midshipmen now.’

Kelly didn’t answer. His own attitudes were still more black and white than grey. Verschoyle was the enemy and had been ever since he’d first met him at Dartmouth, and he couldn’t ever imagine joining him for a theatre party.

He was glad to be rid of Kimister because he hadn’t progressed much either as an officer or as a human being. Dumping his gear at the Junior United Service Club and taking a cab to the Admiralty, he was shown into Verschoyle in the Second Sea Lord’s office. Verschoyle greeted him cheerfully even if warily and, to his surprise, Kelly found him a pleasant change from Kimister. As he’d decided long ago, at least Verschoyle had the courage to be something definite, even if it was only a cad.

‘Back again,’ Verschoyle smiled. ‘Turning up like the proverbial bad penny. Ginger Maguire, the most decorated man in the Navy next to Evans of the
Broke
. And what, might one ask, are you hoping for next time?’