The Dangerous Years (17 page)

There were loud smashing sounds from below as if someone was playing quoits with whole cartloads of crockery and, by now, with the wind abeam, the ship was remaining at a slant. The wardroom was already a wreck, with smashed chairs and tables tangled with broken glass, newspapers, magazines, cushions and spilt food. Then the ship soared up, as though lifted by a giant hand, rolled over to starboard, crushing a wave of foaming water that was fiery with phosphorescence, and reeled back again as if she were falling into a great pit. On the horizon there was a flash of purple lightning that lit up the heaving ocean in a tumbling plain of grey-mauve water rising and falling in ghostly mountains, then the ship crashed into a trough like a pole-axed ox and the whole interior shuddered and rattled as the water boiled across the deck.

The waves now were taller than anything Kelly had ever seen, huge as blocks of buildings marching by, majestic and rhythmic, so that
Karachi
rose and fell like a scrap of wood in the swell running up a beach. Then she rolled again in a terrifyingly sharp lurch and the wind came out of the sky in a deep gloomy whine above the crashing of the waves. The barometer read 29.29.

The wind was already force nine and
Karachi
was smashing into the sea with a desperate doggedness. With her head to the storm, she was riding well but the pitching of the ship was enough to make the most experienced sailors feel queasy. The barometer had dropped to 29.20 and was still falling.

Even the blank-faced quartermasters had a worried look behind their eyes now. Their age and experience did not allow them to show anxiety but it was there, nevertheless, if only in the way their eyes moved. The chief yeoman’s expression was more forthright and he was staring at the endless procession of waves blundering down on them out of the horizon with dilated eyes.

‘Jesus,’ he said suddenly.

There was something in the simple unexcited way he spoke that snatched at their attention and, as they stared in the direction he was looking, they saw an enormous wave, a gigantic freak-wave dwarfing all the others, a hundred feet high, its crest torn by the wind.

As it broke over the ship it flung hundreds of tons of water across the hull to sweep in a grey-yellow foaming stream the whole length of the deck. smashing boats and twisting iron stanchions into knots. The ship heaved, shuddering, lurching over on her side as the battering ram of water swept across her, carrying away everything in its path and filling their nostrils with the rough salt smell of drowning. Then, slowly she began to lift, crawling slowly out of the depths, the water pouring from her scuppers in a solid stream. As she lay in the water like a floating log, to his horror Kelly saw that the barometer had dropped below twenty-nine.

Aerials were down and boat davits had been buckled, while below decks was a shambles of smashed dishes, chairs, bottles, small instruments and stores tumbled helter-skelter out of lockers. Tons of water sloshed about the alleyways, filthy brown and dirty.

A report arrived from the galley to say the meal that had been cooking was no longer a meal under preparation but cold, salt-washed meat and congealed fat spattered along the bulkheads, and that potatoes flung across the galley were spluttering and crackling on the hotplates. But that was the lot. They accepted philosophically the cold bully beef and biscuits that appeared, aware that the worst of the hurricane was passing. Though the motion was still wearying and violent, the rain had stopped and in the murk along the horizon there was a suggestion of brightness once more.

As he went below to rescue some of his belongings, Kelly caught a glimpse of the ship’s cat stepping daintily through a flood of debris, condensed milk, flour and sugar towards the miniature hammock it occupied in the petty officers’ flat. It sprang to a table and from there to an empty bunk, stepping unsteadily to the swing of the ship, then a big roll followed and it missed its jump, fell into the water, and charged through a door spitting and shrieking as if demented.

He found his cabin awash, with clothing and blankets floating in a swill of sea water. With them was the letter he’d been writing to Charley, half the ink washed off it, and he picked it up and tossed it into the waste paper basket, deciding that if nothing else she deserved something that was clean and neat. It had been a good letter and he could set it all down again as soon as he had time.

They had been lucky. Even the ships in harbour had been driven against the jetties and had stove in their plates, and the anemometer ashore had registered 138 miles an hour before disappearing at full speed itself into the murk. Moorings had snapped and bollards had been torn away; and two ships, one of them a single-screw sloop, had vanished, never to be seen again. Because of the damage she’d suffered and a new problem of condenseritis that had arisen,
Karachi
sailed for home a week later. There were so many smaller ships filling the repair yards, it was felt that she was big enough to make it across the Atlantic to have her scars healed in a British shipyard.

There was so much to clear up aboard, it was days before Kelly got down to writing to Charley again and, when he did, somehow all the fine words he’d put in his first letter had gone. It had been a letter full of spontaneous feeling and somehow he couldn’t remember how he’d expressed it. In the end he decided instead to write when he got home.

They docked in Liverpool on the second day of May to find the country in the grip of a general strike. Inefficiency among the mine-owners had started it with one more of the interminable disputes that had taken place between them and the miners for years. Hit by rising prices, they were backing out of agreements they’d made, the government was demanding a reorganisation of the industry, and the miners were demanding nationalisation as the only cure. The headlines were black with mourning announcements. ‘Agreement must be reached between owners and workers,’ they announced.

‘They’ve a hope.’ The gunnery officer was cynical. ‘They haven’t agreed on a damn thing for years.’

Hard-faced politicians who had never ventured further north of London than Berkshire were demanding wage reductions and, when the owners had thrown their weight behind the idea, the miners had refused to accept. Now, with the sympathy of the whole of the working classes behind them, the country had awakened to find the railways closed and buses and taxis off the streets.

‘What a bloody homecoming,’ the gunnery officer complained.

Transport was almost entirely suspended and those who still wished to work had to make their way there in the best manner they could. A few volunteers, many of them university students prompted less by politics than by their willingness to indulge in a lark, were trying with more enthusiasm than skill to drive buses and trains. There were no newspapers and all the information they received was second-hand. Anxious to head south, Kelly fretted aboard ship. It was pointless trying to write to Charley because there was no post and the telegraph wasn’t working.

Towards the end of the week,
Karachi
was ordered to supply a party of fifty men to guard stores near the docks, and they marched from the ship led by Kelly and accompanied by the navigating officer and two petty officers.

The stores were inside a wire-netting compound which didn’t look strong enough to keep a rabbit at bay. Across the road on a patch of waste ground dockers were staring at the place, looking as if they were ready at any moment to break in.

There were a few policemen under an inspector standing by, but they were behaving very circumspectly, because incidents were liable to break out elsewhere at any time and they were thin on the ground.

‘Think they’ll try anything?’ Kelly asked the inspector.

The policeman shrugged. ‘They’d like to, sir. Have you brought arms?’

‘No, by God,’ Kelly said. ‘And if we had, I wouldn’t ask my chaps to start shooting at people who might well be their brothers and fathers and cousins.’

The policeman smiled. ‘I think Winston favours drastic action, sir.’

‘Well, if he thinks
I
’m going in for it, he’s got another think coming.’

The following day, they were settled into a warehouse, the sailors, with the skill of their kind, comfortable on crates and packing cases, their blankets on straw and shavings they’d found, their only complaint that the rats and mice took up almost as much space as they did. Food came in a lorry twice a day and for the rest of the time they stood by the wire netting fence warily watching the sullen strikers.

By the next morning, Kelly had had enough.

‘I think we can do better than this,’ he argued. ‘Surely to God we can come to some agreement with those chaps out there. I don’t suppose they want to set about us any more than we want to set about them. If we can get that across to each other, at least we can spend the strike in peace.’

The police inspector was dubious. ‘How’re you going to do it, sir?’

Kelly grinned. ‘How about playing ’em at football?’ he said.

The strikers were as bored as the bluejackets and, picking his most able petty officer as a go-between, Kelly soon found they’d have been willing to while away the time even with a game of ludo.

The police inspector offered to act as referee and, before the match, Kelly drew his team on one side. ‘Just make it a good game,’ he said. ‘And no dirty play. And one more thing –
they win!
’

There was a growl of dissent and he grinned. ‘We all know you’re the best footballers in the West Indian Squadron, but those chaps across there need something to bolster up their pride. They haven’t fed as well as you gannets feed either, so go easy with ’em and see they pull it off.’

The match was a great success. The news had sped round the neighbouring area like wildfire and an enormous crowd of men, women and small boys turned up. The two captains shook hands warily but the game was hard, though with both sides inclined at first to be cautious, as if wondering what to expect. When the strikers had scored three goals without reply at half time, Kelly got his team on one side.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I told you to let ’em win, not murder you!’

Karachi’s
team scored two goals in the second half to growing excitement among the crowd, and finally drew level just before the end. It seemed a most satisfactory result and when one of the ordinary seamen, overcome by excitement and opportunity, stood with the ball facing an open goal, the situation was saved only by one of the petty officers sweeping his feet from under him in what was intended for – but didn’t look like – a mistaken tackle. The yell of laughter that went up stopped the game and when the police inspector’s whistle went two minutes later, everybody on both sides, both supporters and teams, heaved a sigh of relief.

The goodwill was clinched by four crates of beer paid for by Kelly and the navigating officer, which arrived from a pub across the patch of waste ground. Though it was out of licensed hours, the inspector not only turned a blind eye but had a bottle himself. The resentment had vanished completely and from then until the strike ended three days later,
Karachi
’s men were even the recipients of fruit pies, tea and sandwiches from the houses nearby.

‘Seems to me,’ Kelly said, ‘That it was a method we might well have used in Antigua.’

When Kelly returned aboard, there were two things waiting for him – Lieutenant-Commander Gresham, who had turned up at last, cured and recuperated and ready to take over his duties, and a telegram from the Second Sea Lord’s office telling him to report there.

He shook hands with Gresham and accepted a drink in payment for holding the job down, then returned to his cabin to stare at the telegram. He knew what it meant. Somebody had found a job for him, and for once he wasn’t sure he wanted one.

He had telegraphed Charley from Bermuda telling her he was on his way home and had framed it in enthusiastic terms so that he knew she’d be waiting for him. He wasn’t sure that he was eager to disappear into the blue again. If the job didn’t suit, he decided he’d accept half-pay until something turned up that did.

There was also a letter from his mother saying that Biddy’s Rumbelo had been posted to the Yangtze gunboat flotilla and one from Charley in much the same vein as the one he’d received in Bermuda. He left for London after a heavy night out in Liverpool, and slept most of the way south. Remembering what had happened last time, he was on the point of going to see Charley first and then to the Admiralty, but curiosity got the better of him and he decided to arrive on the doorstep with the news that he’d been offered a job and turned it down for her sake.

For the first time in his life he
felt
like getting married. The wardroom was no substitute for a home of his own. Even the house at Thakeham reflected his mother’s personality, not his, and he felt suddenly that he’d reached the time of life when he needed somewhere to put his feet up.

Once more it was Verschoyle who greeted him.

‘Just the thing for you, old boy,’ he said. ‘I always used to say I’d look forward to seeing you posted to the ends of the earth, but oddly enough I think this is made for you.’

‘I’m not interested unless it’s in this country,’ Kelly said. ‘I’m going to get married.’

‘To the Little ’Un?’

‘Who else?’

Verschoyle smiled. ‘Mabel’s more to my taste,’ he said. ‘But things are harder than they were and the Verschoyle fortune ain’t what it used to be. When I marry, I’m marrying an heiress, and poor old Mabel’s got nothing in the form of a dowry. The Upfolds are on their uppers.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘True, old man. Got it from Kimister.’

Kelly scowled. ‘What’s he know about it?’

‘What do you think he’s been doing all the time you’ve been winning fame and fortune across the Atlantic? He ain’t exactly been twiddling his thumbs down in Devonport, y’know.’

Kelly’s scowl grew deeper. Charley’s letters had never mentioned Kimister still waiting in the wings, and a niggling uncertainty started in his mind.