The Dangerous Years (3 page)

‘I never thought we’d insist on it.’ Orrmont still seemed faintly bewildered.

Perhaps, Kelly thought, that was because Orrmont had spent most of his war in the calmer areas of the Mediterranean. The mood of the Grand Fleet had always been grimmer. Despite the feeling of contempt and pity for the Germans, not one of the men who had watched the northern waters round Britain had ever wanted anything but a surrender that was complete and unequivocal. It made up for the harshness of the winters and the toll the North Sea had taken.

As
Queen Elizabeth
passed to her mooring, there was a storm of cheering, and Beatty, standing on the bridge, lifted his cap in acknowledgement. Apart from this, the whole manoeuvre of anchoring was executed in a silence that was almost funereal. But, as each German ship reached its place and dropped anchor, its bulwarks became crowded at once with men fishing.

‘What a way to celebrate
Der Tag,’
Orrmont observed coldly. ‘Chucking out a fishing line to catch a herring. Still–’ his shoulders moved in a shrug under his bridge coat – I expect the blockade’s been biting and the poor buggers are hungry.’

As the opalescent northern dusk approached, Lipscomb, the yeoman of signals, sang out.

‘Signal from flagship, sir,’ he said. ‘“To admiral in command of interned squadron and all German COs and leaders of torpedo boats: The German flag will be hauled down at sunset today, and will not be hoisted again without permission.”
Friedrich der Grosse’
s acknowledging.’ There was a pause then Lipscomb spoke again. ‘There’s another, sir. “Flagship to the fleet. It is my intention to hold a service of thanksgiving at 6 p.m. today, for the victory which Almighty God had vouchsafed to His Majesty’s arms, and every ship is recommended to do the same.”’

Kelly spoke in a voice as flat as a smack across the chops. ‘I don’t know so much about Almighty God,’ he said. ‘I always had the impression it was us sitting up here and the pongoes sitting it out in the trenches.’

‘Quite so, Number One,’ Orrmont said dryly. ‘However. I suppose we’d better comply. It seems to be really over at last. Finis. Kaput. End. The war’s finally stopped, and we’re in for a bit of peace.’

The madness that had been in the air at the Armistice had died. By 1919, church bells no longer burst into excited peals, steamers on the Thames no longer hooted at each other as they passed, and the roaring trade the pubs had been doing had subsided. There was no more dancing in the streets and, in the disillusionment that was setting in, bus conductors who had once refused to take money from wounded soldiers were now insisting on their fares. The free drinks and the free kisses were finished and even that most wonderful prize of all to come with the ending of the war – the awareness of simply being alive – was also fading now, because the grim facts of settling down again were being faced by men who for four years had known no such thing as security.

The world was already a poorer place, and among the Australians, Americans and French who crowded London intent on a good time there were still plenty of haunted-eyed young men, veterans of bloody fighting even at nineteen and twenty, boys who’d known no other life but the war since leaving school. Most of them believed in nothing beyond the fact that they had months of living to catch up with, and it was already beginning to occur to some of them that somehow they’d been betrayed and that the ideals that had driven them to the trenches, to sea, and into the air, were being edged aside by hard-eyed politicians interested only in plum jobs and party affairs. Work was clearly going to be difficult to get because, with demobilisation, there was a flood of manpower on the labour market, and doubts about that ‘land fit for heroes to live in’ that they’d been promised were already beginning to take root; while the flu epidemic which had gripped the whole world was killing off with ease men who’d survived four years of slaughter.

King’s Cross Station was full of uniforms, a few heading home to be demobilised, a few still unwillingly joining squadrons, ships or regiments, hump-backed under their kits and enviously eyeing the half-empty compartments reserved for the staff. The platform was full of women, but the crucified look of the war years had gone and they wore instead expressions of relief, though here and there resentful looks flashed from beneath mourning veils and black crêpe.

As his train drew to a stop, Kelly stared from the window, aware of a faint sense of frustration. The German fleet was at Scapa now, sent up there in batches from the Forth, and
Mordant
had gone with them, part of the single unit of battle cruisers and destroyers which were considered sufficient to guard them. Disarmed and humiliated, there was no longer an expectation of defiance.

As he climbed down to the platform, he found himself studying the faces around him. There was doubt, anxiety, even disbelief in them but, thank God, none of the despair he’d seen in the eyes of the Germans.

‘Porter, sir?’ The man who appeared alongside him was young – different from the old men who had worked the platforms during the war – perhaps some demobilised soldier or sailor happy to return to the humdrum life of peace because of his joy at being alive.

Kelly nodded and indicated his luggage. But his thoughts were still in that curious limbo of bewilderment that had been with him ever since he’d caught the train south at Thurso, the same mixture of pity and contempt for the Germans he’d felt as they’d led them into the Firth of Forth. He’d gone aboard
Grosser Kurfürst
to make it clear that no boats were to be lowered and that wireless was not to be used, and to find out whether the ship might have imported infectious disease into Britain. But the giant vessel had nothing it shouldn’t have had beyond the sour smell of unwashed hammocks, blankets and clothing. Its flats were filled with litter which it seemed to be nobody’s duty to clear up, and pamphlets were everywhere, while every man seemed to wear a red ribbon on his blouse. The officer who came forward had worn no shoulder straps or imperialist badges.

Before he could speak, a sailor had stepped forward. ‘I am chairman of the supreme sailors’ soviet aboard this ship,’ he had announced. ‘I am in command here.’

Kelly had stared at him with distaste and turned to the officer. ‘Tell the captain I wish to speak to him.’

‘The captain has no power.’ The sailor had bristled with indignation. ‘He is merely a technical adviser. Everything has been changed by the revolution.’

The German officer swallowed, dumb with shame. Kelly stared at him, still ignoring the sailor. ‘Well?’ he said.

The officer’s eyes had flickered to the sailor then he had jerked to life. ‘I’ll have you escorted below,’ he said.

The completeness of their humiliation had been depressing. Inscrutably, Kelly had set about inspecting the ship. The German crew had been ordered on deck, while, with his party of men, he had moved through the deserted lower mazes, searching painstakingly for gun parts, poison gas, bombs, powder and shell. There had been a few brief attempts by the German sailors to make contact with their British counterparts but they had been treated with contempt, the British bluejacket refusing to acknowledge them with a cold aloofness that was shattering.

Even the chilly Orkney landscape must have seemed a smack in the face for the Germans. To men who’d spent most of the war within reach of Kiel’s lights, bars and women, Scapa must have seemed desolation itself. The winter had been a bitter one and the Germans, carrying the burden of defeat and the knowledge that their families were hungry and the Fatherland was in chaos, were not even allowed ashore or on board other ships in case the subversive tendencies they had brought with them should inflame the growing discontent that existed in the Royal Navy over pay.

Leading Seaman Rumbelo had expressed it succinctly to Kelly, with the frankness of an old friend who had survived the Dardanelles and Jutland with him, and was married to Kelly’s mother’s housekeeper.

‘There are leading hands in the Fleet, sir,’ he had said patiently, ‘whose seventeen-year-old daughters working in factories earn more than they do.’

The odd sense of disillusion and frustration was still with Kelly as he took a taxi to Bessborough Terrace, but the thought of seeing Charley again cheered him considerably. It had been Charlotte Upfold’s intention to marry him from the day she’d first met him. They’d grown up together and when, at various times, he’d tried to grab her, he’d never known whether she’d be as lissome as willow and soft as silk, waiting for his kiss with her eyes closed, or whether she’d suddenly develop needle-pointed elbows and knees and burst into breathless laughter. As a schoolboy, he’d regarded it all as a great joke. As an adolescent he’d regarded it as a good friendship, and for a period as a young man even as a nuisance. Finally, however, he had wisely accepted it as something that he wished as much as she did. There was now nothing they didn’t know about each other beyond the final consummation of their regard, and their mutual affection was as comfortable as an old coat.

She was in his arms almost before he’d closed the door behind him, her cheek against his in a delirium of delight.

‘Oh, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!’ She seemed unable to stop uttering his name.

‘Steady on, old thing,’ he said. ‘You’re throttling me.’

‘But it’s so wonderful! It’s all over at last!’ She stared at him, noting the slightly hunched way his back wound made him hold his left shoulder, and the pink line of the scar running into the red hair that fell over his eye. He looked so lean, so fit, so capable, and yet somehow so remote with the remoteness that all seafaring men have and never lose, it almost broke her heart. She seemed to have been waiting all her life for him – certainly ever since she’d known the meaning of the word ‘love’ – and she’d barely seen him since he’d returned to duty almost two years before.

‘Oh, Kelly,’ she said again in a tremulous breathy sigh.

‘Never mind Kelly,’ he replied. ‘What about Charley?’

‘I’m still nursing.’

‘Where?’

‘St George’s.’

‘Do they give you time off?’

‘Not much.’

‘The war’s over,’ he pointed out. ‘And I’m on leave, ain’t I?’

She gestured. ‘There are still a lot of men in there, recovering from wounds.’

He grinned. ‘It always seemed to me during the war, that when you were free, I wasn’t. Now I’m free, you’re not. Gives rise to a great deal of ill-will on both sides, that sort of thing.’

She grinned back and hugged him again. ‘I expect they’ll give me an evening off.’

‘An evening? Is that all?’

‘There’s so much to do and so many girls have already given up nursing now that the war’s ended.’

‘But not you?’

‘I couldn’t Kelly. I couldn’t.’

He couldn’t help but admire her attitude. but he could see that it might lead to a few difficulties while he was on leave. He stood back and looked at her. Her blue eyes were spiky with long lashes, huge underneath the severe fringe of her modern hairstyle, and slightly moist as she stared back at him. All the youthful plumpness he remembered had dropped away from her; her face now had fine lines and her figure was slender and graceful.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. I think you’re a corker.’

‘How long are you home for?’

‘I’ve got a week. I have to go to Thakeham tomorrow to see my mother but after that the time’s my own. How is my mother, by the way?’

‘She’s had flu and so has your grandfather, but they’ve recovered. Rumbelo’s Biddy looked after them. Did you know Biddy was expecting a baby?’

‘Rumbelo told me. He tells me a lot my mother forgets. How’s
your
mother?’

She gave him a delighted grin. ‘Out. At the theatre. So’s the cook, who’s all the staff the war’s left us.’

‘That’s handy. How about Big Sister Mabel?’

‘Also out. With Mother and James Verschoyle.’

Kelly frowned and she looked at him, troubled. ‘Isn’t that over yet, Kelly?’

Kelly shrugged. He had disliked ‘Cruiser’ Verschoyle from the day they’d first met as cadets. Verschoyle’s bullying had made his life miserable at Dartmouth and there had been nothing since to make him change his mind. Verschoyle was clever and too good-looking by half, and his chief delight for years had lain in tormenting Kelly.

‘He did rather well in the end,’ Charley said, trying to heal the old enmity. ‘He was wounded and got a medal at Zeebrugge.’ She touched his breast. ‘Though not as big as yours.’

He pushed Verschoyle to the back of his mind and gave her another kiss. ‘How about him and Mabel? Think they’ll get married? He’s wealthy enough.’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘He’s too wary and Mabel’s having too good a time with everybody being demobilised.’

‘If she leaves it much longer,’ Kelly pointed out, ‘she’ll be too late. She’s getting on.’

‘So am I.’

‘Barely twenty.’

‘It’s old enough to be married.’

There was an awkward pause, because this question of marriage was the one difficult problem that lay between them. Though Charley had been waiting all her life for him, the Admiralty disapproved of officers marrying too soon – if at all, Kelly sometimes thought bitterly – and, since they conspicuously failed to give to officers the marriage allowances they gave to ratings, it was difficult to set up home on any pay below a commander’s.

‘You know what we decided about that, Charley,’ he said gruffly. ‘We’ve got to wait.’

Her face wore a stubborn look for a moment, then she thrust the mood aside and pulled him into the kitchen. ‘We’d better eat,’ she said.

‘Out,’ Kelly said, thankful that the matter had been dropped so easily.

Her eyes sparkled. ‘Can you afford it?’

‘No. But we’ll go just the same.’

They ate at a little restaurant near Victoria Station that Charley knew. The food was unpretentious but the decor was new and it made them feel they were paying more than they were.

‘The last time I came here,’ Charley said, ‘I was with Albert Kimister.’