The Dangerous Years (39 page)

The admiral regarded him coldly. ‘Indeed it did. I’m not sure whether you should be punished or congratulated for your cool cheek. On the other hand, so that you don’t take on yourself the running of the whole fleet, I’m sending Captain Corbett from my staff to take over. I trust you’ll give him your full support and – ah! – the benefit of your experience.’

Captain Corbett appeared on board after lunch and immediately called for Kelly. He was a very different type from Harrison, with a grave demeanour but lively eyes.

‘I think you must be a very good guesser, Maguire,’ he said. ‘Or else some new kind of prophet.’

It was a day of silence. The men gathered in groups on the forecastle, with the officers on the quarterdeck.

‘How are they now?’ Corbett asked.

‘I notice a few black eyes, sir. I’m not sure whether they belong to men who favoured defiance or loyalty, but either way it seems opinion wasn’t unanimous.’

Corbett picked up a signal he’d received and began to read. ‘The Lords Commissioners view with the greatest concern the injury which the prestige of the British navy has suffered…’

‘I don’t think grown men will enjoy being scolded like little boys, sir,’ Kelly growled.

Corbett gave a cold smile. ‘I shall not be reading it to them,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s also a second signal saying that the exercises must take place, and one helpful piece of advice – from the Third Sea Lord’s Department, of all people! It suggests a postponement. ‘

Verschoyle for a quid, Kelly thought. On the ball, shrewd and sharp as ever, and making sure he’s squaring his own yardarm.

Night came over an uneasy fleet. Shore leave had been cancelled but by dusk the whole length of the coast was seen to be lined with cars.

‘Interested spectators,’ Corbett observed as they watched from the quarterdeck. ‘Together, doubtless, with more than their share of newspapermen. However, the Admiralty’s finally had the good sense to come out of its somnolence and cancel the exercises, and I understand the admiral’s signalled them that nothing will be solved unless a definite decision about pay’s taken.’

The first lieutenant, who had been to
Advance
to return a loan of rope, reappeared on board with a gloomy look.

‘They’d had a lot of trouble,’ he said. ‘Things got smashed and one officer had to lock himself in his cabin. Revolver racks were stripped and ready-use lockers emptied, and they finally shoved one of the heads of departments overboard. Chap called Kimister.’

Somehow it went with Kimister, Kelly thought sadly, and he found his heart bleeding for Charley.

The wardroom was gloomy that night. There had been an unsubstantiated rumour that one of the Highland regiments had been called out to arrest the mutinous crews but had mutinied themselves in sympathy, and more than one man was weighing up his chances of succeeding as a civilian if the armed forces fell apart at the seams. The evening papers were full of accusations and wild statements. The shock of a mutiny in that most hallowed of services, the Royal Navy, seemed to have sent reverberations round the empire.

‘Been a run on gold,’ the first lieutenant announced from behind his paper. ‘You wouldn’t think a few bloody-minded seamen could knock the underpinnings from the national economy, would you?’

‘The national economy,’ Kelly said, ‘depends a lot on people having faith in the stability of England and, with the fleet in revolt, doubtless a few of ’em are having second thoughts.’

Nobody was looking forward to the next day and Kelly greeted it almost with a groan. Nobody in authority seemed capable of making decisions and, with everybody who might help on holiday, he could only see the situation growing worse.

When ‘Clear Lower Deck’ was piped, everybody appeared, but they were slow. A crowd had already appeared on
Valiant
’s forecastle and a great deal of interest was being shown in the preparations for painting aboard
Warspite
,
Malaya
and
Repulse
. As the stages were swung out and men began to climb on to them, there was such a roar of fury they were hastily called back inboard. It was clear that if somebody didn’t do something soon, the situation was in danger of getting out of control, but during the afternoon, the signals officer appeared. He looked relieved. ‘Admiralty’s signalled that ships are to return to their home ports,’ he announced.

It was like a weight being lifted off their shoulders. Corbett sighed, and Kelly knew exactly what he was thinking. The man on the white horse with the reprieve in his gauntlet had galloped up just as the noose was being put round the condemned man’s neck.

Sailing was still by no means a certainty. In
Rebuke
the temper had deteriorated considerably and the departure for the south was far from a foregone conclusion.

When the pipe to clear lower deck went, the men moved forward unwillingly, dressed in various rigs, some even unshaven. When the first lieutenant addressed them, there were ironic cheers, but by the time Kelly went forward they seemed to have changed their mind. They avoided looking at him but there was no defiance, and they came instinctively to attention as he appeared.

‘The ship’s going to Portsmouth,’ he said. ‘You’ll be seeing your wives and families again.’

‘Fat lot of good that’ll be without money,’ someone growled.

‘Better to be with ’em without money than
up here
without it,’ Kelly retorted. ‘Or worse still, in Scapa.’ There were a few unwilling grins at that because nobody liked Scapa and lie went on quickly while he had them listening to him. ‘I have to tell you, too, that, although the Admiralty’s promised to look into your case, they’ve stated also that any further trouble will have to be dealt with under the Naval Discipline Act; and I, for one, don’t want that.’

There was a defiant cheer from the back, but it soon died.

‘I’m therefore going to dismiss you for a quarter of an hour for you to consider your action before having the bugles sounded for both watches to fall in to prepare for sea, it’s up to you now.’

As the sailors streamed aft, a cheer broke out from
Rodney
, but he noticed it was not as full-blooded as it had been and he suspected that the defiance was beginning to break as the ringleaders began to fear they were acting alone.

In dismissing the men, he realised he’d taken a great risk, but when the bugles sounded, they fell in again, though far from willingly. He appealed to one or two of them by name. Leading Seaman Doncaster was at the front, still angry from his forced incarceration in the after storeroom and looking for trouble.

‘How about you, Doncaster?’ Kelly said, taking a chance he’d get a mouthful of abuse in return. ‘You’ve got five children waiting for you. Don’t you want to see them?’

Doncaster scowled and opened his mouth. Then a voice from the back interrupted him.

‘’E’s got one or two more in a few other places, too,’ it jeered. ‘Perhaps he don’t want to go ’ome because ’e’s got a couple in Invergordon as well.’

Doncaster scowled again and blushed, not knowing whether to be insulted or proud of his virility. Then the scowl changed to an embarrassed grin, and the tense moment passed so that Kelly tried speaking to one or two more men. They looked uncomfortable and unwilling to acknowledge him but there was no abuse and slowly they began to fall in.

Numb with shame, he remembered the German officer he’d met in
Grosser Kurfürst
when the High Seas Fleet had surrendered. Jesus Christ, he thought, this is a fine bloody way to run the King’s Navee!

As they headed south past the Farne Islands off Northumbria, there was a marked sense of anti-climax and none of the sense of triumph they’d all expected. The men felt they’d achieved their ends and the officers that they’d averted disaster, but none of them denied the relief at being sent home.

Their arrival in Portsmouth was far from joyful. In the blackness which preceded the dawn they crept into Spithead, their arrival timed so that there could he no crowds along the foreshore to see them appear. There were motor car headlights along the front at Southsea, however, and they all knew they belonged to newspapermen waiting to see what would happen. To Kelly their arrival seemed shifty and smacked of the war years when they’d come and gone only in darkness.

As the ships began to move along the deep water channel, there was only a subdued hum from the engines to break the silence, and the dim grey bulks slid silently out of the murk and crept past the Round Tower towards the narrow entrance to the harbour.
Hood
vanished from sight like a ghost, the stillness broken only by the querulous trillings of the bosuns’ pipes. Fifteen minutes later,
Nelson
followed, heading for the flagship berth at the South Railway Jetty, another huge grey shadow moving between the buoys. By the time it was
Rebuke
’s turn it was daylight and there were people watching from Old Portsmouth and the Sally Port. There was no cheering, however. It was clearly a welcome of disapproval.

‘I think there are going to be a few men listening to the sharp tongues of their wives tonight,’ Corbett observed grimly. ‘
They
have to live with their neighbours and their neighbours have noticed that the country’s lost thirty million in gold as a result of what’s happened.’

The bosuns’ pipes trilled, and the call, ‘Hands fall in for entering harbour,’ was passed along the deck. The men appeared at the double, as though they were anxious to show the people ashore that there had been no disloyalty on their part, and as the ship reached the harbour entrance, they fell in amidships, only a lone officer in the bows with the leadsmen at their stations.

There had been no more fist fights, but the mutineers were subdued by the chilly welcome. Startled at the hostility, they were chastened and unproud of themselves, and they all knew that though the First Lord of the Admiralty had promised in the House there would be no punishments for what had happened, the Admiralty was going to have to climb down over pay and would be looking for scapegoats.

‘We have to hold an inquiry,’ Corbett told Kelly. ‘And names have been asked for. Have you any?’

Kelly thought of Doncaster and the surly stupidity on his face as he was chaffed about his children. Perhaps
Rebuke
had been lucky that her troubles had been in the hands of nobody cleverer.

‘Just one, sir,’ he said.

Corbett gave him a sideways glance. ‘You sure that’s all ?’

Quite sure, sir. We were lucky. I think we should pass a little of it along.’

Corbett nodded. ‘I’m inclined to agree. Officers?’

‘Perhaps they deserve a little luck, too, sir.’

Shore leave was granted and the first watches headed as usual for the pubs. The Home Office had laid on detectives in the hope of picking up information about professional agitators, but all they got for their money were a lot of red herrings. Men who not long before had been grim and defiant were beginning to recover their sense of humour, and their murmurings about ‘Ginger’s going to wreck the engines,’ set the detectives searching Portsmouth for red-headed stokers.

There was less success with the attempts to impress everybody that what had happened at Invergordon was not disloyalty and that they’d been forced into it by the intransigence of the Admiralty. The city’s aloofness was unbearable. The men were guilty of defiance. The officers were guilty of indifference. In pubs and hotels, people simply turned their backs on them.

To his surprise, Kelly found Charley waiting in the Keppel’s Head for Kimister. She greeted him with a doubtful smile.

‘I thought I ought to be here when he came ashore,’ she said.

Kelly nodded. What would he have given for such loyalty? All that had greeted him on arrival was a batch of solicitors’ letters, one peremptorily demanding that he clear the London house of his belongings forthwith, but not a sign of life from Christina beyond a short, sad note from Hugh from the Hotel Majestic in Cannes… ‘I don’t like France, I can’t speak the lingo. I don’t suppose you could come and fetch me back to England, could you?’

‘What happened, Kelly?’ Charley asked.

‘The lower deck lost faith in their officers,’ Kelly said.

‘The papers said it was Communist agitators.’

Kelly shrugged. ‘If there were any Communist agitators, Charley, I never saw ’em. And the trouble didn’t start among the king’s hard bargains but among the men with families you’d normally expect to be reliable.’

‘Is the Navy all right, Kelly?’

‘I doubt if it’ll be the same again for a long time.’ He shifted uneasily. ‘How’s Albert?’

‘I’ve spoken to him on the telephone. He says he was humiliated. What’ll happen now, Kelly?’

Kelly shrugged. ‘There’s to be an enquiry. The gold braid will be blinding. Anybody involved in incidents will have to make reports and name names. A few heads will roll.’

‘Will you be involved, Kelly?’

‘They’re doubtless measuring me for the drop at this moment. After this, Charley, a lot of people who thought a great deal of the Navy are going to have to find something else to give their love to. It’s been a shattering experience, and those who’re lucky enough to be left in will have to turn the thing upside down to make it work because it can never be the old Navy again. That’s finished and done with, and I can’t say I’m sorry.’

She nodded unhappily. ‘How’s Christina, Kelly?’

He shrugged. ‘I haven’t the foggiest, Charley,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. She walked out on me.’

‘What shall you do?’

He shrugged. ‘When the enquiries are over, I shall request leave to go to London. I’ve been told I have to get all my possessions out of the house there because it’s to be sold.’

‘You could stay with us for a while.’

Kelly smiled. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Charley dear. And I think Albert will need all your attention after this lot.’

Gorgeous George reappeared, all smiles. It seemed his father had recovered unexpectedly, though Kelly suspected that he and Captain Masterson, despite the fact that they’d avoided an unpleasant duty with the oldest dodge in the world – attending a funeral, the excuse of every office boy who ever wanted to watch a football match – had not in the end done themselves a lot of good.