The Dangerous Years (16 page)

They went to the theatre together occasionally, bumping into an embarrassed Admiral Maguire at Drury Lane with a girl on his arm as young as Charley. They went sailing in the Solent in a borrowed boat, and racing at Sandown and Ascot, Kelly in the full fig of a hired suit. They occasionally even clutched each other despairingly, kissing each other wildly, but somehow there was no truth in it. Kelly knew he should have been able to take her without asking, and one night when they were alone in the house he very nearly did. But she pushed him away angrily, pulling her dress straight and patting her hair into place.

‘Why not, Charley?’ he demanded. ‘Once you were all for it.’

‘Well, now I’m not sure.’

‘Not sure about what?’

‘Us.’

Frustrated, feeling as virile as a bull, he forced himself to understand. Since he couldn’t ask her to marry him, the faint vestige of decency that he felt still remained in him told him that he should hold back if she were contemplating marriage to someone else. In the world of the Twenties inhabited by Mabel and ‘Cruiser’ Verschoyle, it was perhaps an old-fashioned idea, but he decided he
was
old-fashioned and he felt that Charley was, too.

They tried hard to pretend things were the same as they always had been but Kelly knew he’d taken too much advantage of Charley’s faithfulness and been too long away from her. It had been none of his doing, but other men – Kimister for one – had wangled their way home early, and despite everything, despite Domlupinu, despite Odessa, he had always preferred service abroad to service in England.

In the end there were gaps when they didn’t even bother to see each other or telephone and he knew she was seeing Kimister who was now at Devonport, had even been to stay with his mother who’d taken a house near St Germans to be near her son. To his bewilderment, he found that when she wasn’t around he missed her, yet he knew that if she’d not disappeared to Cornwall they’d have found it more and more difficult to be happy. He wasn’t sorry when a telegram arrived from Verschoyle asking him to call and see him.

‘Not much of an appointment for a dashing two-and-a-halfer,’ Verschoyle admitted. ‘Exec in
Karachi
. The captain’s one of the old school but she’s a cruiser and fairly new. It’s only for a year, of course, because the job really belongs to Toady Gresham but he’s in dock at Haslar having a boiler clean. Appendicitis or something. The Owner says he wants somebody to take his place and that he wants somebody lively. I can’t imagine anyone more lively than you.’

Despite their long-standing antagonism towards each other, Kelly could have kissed Verschoyle.

Karachi
was at Portsmouth and, so great was the popularity of the North America and West Indies station, three or four times the number of men required had come forward to man her. Her captain, Charles Denham Davidge, was not an easy man, however. He had a face like a collapsed tent and an exaggeratedly upper class voice, and clearly considered himself in the running for flag rank.

Bermuda was uncomfortably hot when they arrived and there were more than a few who had volunteered who began to regret their haste. Their duties consisted of showing the flag, answering calls from any of the West Indian islands that were suffering enough from the heat to indulge in civil disturbances, and keeping in touch with the Royal Canadian Navy.

Montreal, known as the sailors’ Mecca, was a place where every member of the ship’s company seemed to have a hatpeg with some family ashore, and
Karachi’
s officers became honorary members of every club in the vicinity. Kelly was seized on by a voracious girl who was so affected by his full dress uniform he came to the conclusion she was either a nymphomaniac or not quite compos mentis. He might have felt guilty but for the apparent indifference shown at home to the letters he wrote.

The visit was without any untoward incident except when the ship’s fishing club visited a nearby river after salmon and one of the midshipmen fell in and was only rescued with difficulty from drowning. A complaint arrived from the chaplain that the paymaster – whom he disliked – had declined to help. ‘I was into a fish at the time,’ the paymaster retorted. ‘And everybody knows that a salmon’s worth more than a midshipman.’

There were a few odd jobs to do. British residents were complaining that the wreck of a destroyer which had run aground during the war on an island off Newfoundland was causing derision among Americans, so Kelly went ashore with an unlimited amount of depth charges and an explosive expert and reduced it to rubble. The explosion was a most satisfying affair, and almost removed the island, too, while the people who’d complained originally now complained of smashed windows and frightened cattle.

They did a few night defence exercises – what Kelly claimed were the quickest and surest way of catching pneumonia known to mankind – and that best imitation of a cloudburst yet invented, fire stations. Finally, they hurried south to put a party ashore in the warm silk Caribbean air of Antigua where plantation workers, deciding they were underpaid, underprivileged and undermanned, had started a riot. Armed sailors and Marines glared at them from behind rolls of barbed wire and endured a hail of brickbats in an atmosphere of tension and bad feeling until the matter was cleared up. It was just another one of the jobs the Navy had to undertake, but most of what they had to do still seemed to consist of drinking, paying court to important elderly ladies and eager young ones, and playing football against the other ships with such skill and determination they won the Admiral’s cup.

For the second time he received no letters from Charley and he began to consider that somewhere along the line he’d made a mistake over her. She’d been part of his life for so long her coolness to him before he’d left had shaken him. It was like trying to live with only one leg or deprived of the use of his right hand. He could still get by, but it felt wrong and awkward. Then, back in Bermuda, he found a letter waiting for him, totally unexpected but bearing writing that made his heart leap.

He snatched it from the rack and vanished to his cabin, aware once again that they’d been a part of each other’s life too long to be easily put aside. Charley was unexpectedly humble and he knew at once she was lonely and missed him, and was pouring out her fears and woes in the hope of making up their quarrel. Her letter was simple, pleading for understanding, and he made up his mind there and then that as soon as he returned to England he’d marry her and damn the Admiralty. She knew what a naval officer’s wife had to do, had known it all her life, and he knew she’d never mind so long as she could share his existence and not merely be left at home full of uncertainty.

He started to write back to her, his words full of promises, saying things with a feeling he’d never expected. He’d always previously been cautious in what he wrote, even to Charley. ‘Say it with chocolates,’ Verschoyle had once warned him. ‘Say it with mink. Say it with flowers. But never with ink.’

There was a tap on his door. Deep in the letter, he resented the interruption.

‘Yes? What is it?’

It was one of the midshipmen. ‘Meteorological report, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s a hurricane in the West Indies moving for the coast of Florida. It’s expected to pass the coast of Bermuda tomorrow.’

‘And?’

‘It seems to be turning north earlier than expected, sir. They think it’s due here tomorrow.’

Kelly laid down his pen. ‘We’re supposed to be sailing for Nassau, tomorrow. Does the captain know?’

‘Yes, sir. He’s been in touch with the captain of
Katmandu
. He thinks we shall be clear before it arrives.’

‘I’d better see him.’

When he reached his cabin, Captain Davidge had just returned on board after spending the afternoon at Admiralty House.

‘Ah, Maguire! You look as if you’ve heard of the hurricane?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve had a word with the master-attendant of the dockyard. He seems to think we’re going to get the full force of it here.’

Davidge shrugged. ‘I spoke to
Katmandu’
s captain and the squadron navigating officer. They’ve had reports from Washington, and they judge the centre will pass three hundred miles north tomorrow afternoon. There’ll be strong gales but no cause for alarm. We should be clear before then.’

‘The master-attendant of the dockyard doesn’t think so, sir.’

‘He’s a lieutenant-commander passed over for promotion.’

Kelly frowned. ‘He’s a good navigator of excellent judgement who’s been here a long time, sir,’ he insisted. ‘And he has a reputation as a meteorologist. He thinks it’ll strike Bermuda.’

Davidge gestured. ‘I think we’ll abide by the decision of the two seniors,’ he said flatly.

There was a strange stillness about the air as
Karachi
left Hamilton. There was no morning sparkle and low down on the horizon a thin layer of dark cloud lay like a range of mountains out to sea. The water looked dark and the atmosphere had become so heavy even the palm fronds seemed to be weighted.

Huge silky swells were moving from the end of the bay, long, leaden and slow. They looked smooth but they were the colour of steel and Kelly noticed there were no boats about. The bright hues of the island seemed to have been dulled by a strange light beyond the haze, and the thin skin of cloud that had been low down on the horizon was beginning to spread quickly and widen. People on the waterfront were staring at the horizon and he could see men working over the lines of small boats, while the barometer had become erratic and had suddenly dropped towards twenty-nine and was still falling.

As they left the harbour, the daylight had become a curious grey-yellow and the sea was gurgling and bubbling along the quays. It started to rain, stopped abruptly, then started again, as if someone were turning a tap on and off, but the air was like the inside of a steam laundry, and to the south purple-grey masses of cloud were gathering. Even over the sound of the waves, they could hear a queer roaring that didn’t seem to come with the wind.

Kelly stared out to sea, still firmly of the conviction that the captain and the experts were wrong and that the master-attendant was right, and he hoped they’d be well clear before the wind really struck. As they put the island behind them, through his glasses he could see people lashing down hencoops and nailing up shutters, showered all the time by palm fronds torn from the trees. Then, as they left the shelter of the land, the wind, which seemed to have sprung from nowhere in a second, struck the ship with brutal violence and water poured across the deck. Men struggling to lash things down leaned against the gale.

The sky had an eerie light that was reflected in a purple glow along the lines of the guns and the upperworks, and the sea seemed stirred from its depths so that it was filled with grey-yellow mud. There was reassurance from the roaring of the engine room fans and the seagoing smell of hot oil and salt, but the wind struck them with increased force as they reached the open sea, heeling the ship well over; then a wave broke over the bow in a great cloud of spray that reached half as high as the mast. Kelly had been in dirty weather before around the fringes of hurricanes, and Atlantic gales were nothing, but somehow a deep-seated feeling of unease told him that this time it was different.

The navigating officer tapped the chart. ‘Barometer’s dropped fourteen points, sir, and the wind’s shifting all the time. It’s force seven at the moment.’

During the morning the wind grew worse. In the dismal yellowish light the sea was heaving like grey treacle, white streaks of foam laying along the deep troughs, and the wind was strong enough now to tug at Kelly’s eyelids and drive at his cheeks. All round them there were only ridges and valleys of water. The forecastle was inches deep in it and foam boiled along the deck, piled against the bridgehouse and sloshed over the side. Dark grey clouds tumbled overhead and the deck went up and down like a lift.

‘What’s the barometer reading?’

‘Twenty-nine point four-oh, sir.’

Glancing about him, Kelly drew assurance from the stolid faces of the helmsman and the quartermasters who clung expressionlessly to the wheel or engine room telegraphs, clearly aware that the responsibility was not theirs but the captain’s. In the moment of drowning, he wondered, would they still not worry because that wasn’t their responsibility either?

When he returned to the bridge after eating, the wind had increased again and there was a deep hollow whine in it now that seemed to come out of the bowels of the sea in a ghostly echoing note as it howled across the vast miles of the ocean. He no longer had any doubt that the master-attendant of the dockyard had been right. They were beset by a hurricane.

Davidge clearly thought so too. He was uneasy and frowning heavily, clinging to the chart table in the lurching chartroom. He pushed a signal across. ‘To all ships: There will be no tennis at Admiralty House today.’

‘Oh, charming, sir,’ Kelly said cheerfully. ‘I like to see things done in their proper order.’

The sea was a dull pewter colour now and the ship was groaning in every plate and nut and bolt in protest.

‘Better warn the head quack to be prepared for emergencies, Davidge suggested. ‘There are bound to be some accidents.’

The ship was shovelling grey seas over the bows, and the water was careering across the forecastle to end up gouts of spray sixty or seventy feet high. Below, conditions were nauseating. With everything battened down, there was no air and the decks were slippery with moisture and stank of human excrement and vomit. Hardened sailors were lolling about in acute discomfort among the creaking and vibration in a fug of cigarette smoke and thick heads.

The day seemed to have disappeared and they were surrounded by a close gagging darkness like the inside of a sack. With the fading of the light, all they could see of the ocean was an occasional flash of racing foam from the wash alongside as the ship dragged herself up the steep slopes and slid wildly down the other side.

‘Centre’s a hundred and fifty miles away, due east, sir.’ The navigating officer jabbed at the chart with his dividers as Kelly returned to the bridge. ‘I’ll be glad to see the sun again.’