The Dangerous Years (40 page)

The enquiry was held in the office of the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, and the weather, which had been good during the whole of the mutiny, changed to intermittent rain from a leaden sky. As Kelly had predicted, the gold lace was dazzling. In addition to the Commander-in-Chief, the Fourth Sea Lord, the Deputy Secretary of the Admiralty and all the principal port officers were present.

They sat for two days and, by the end of it, all the anger was dissipated. Both men and officers were still nervous. The shock had been great and though nothing was said about it, the condemnation of the Admiralty by everyone was clear. News had finally come that the Government had climbed down. All cuts had been limited to ten per cent, which was bad enough in all conscience to men who were badly paid to start off with, but at least it seemed fairer.

At the end of the week, Admiral Sir John Kelly was appointed to command the Atlantic Fleet for one year with the clear object of curing its troubles. He was a full admiral with the prestige to make his decisions stick, and his personal investigations started at once.

London seemed as uncertain as the Navy. Winter was coming on and an election was in the offing because the country was being run by a body of men who hadn’t been elected to govern. After the abysmal efforts of the Labour government, everybody expected a landslide to the right.

Most of the furnishings from the house in Carlton Terrace had already been removed and most of Kelly’s belongings had been crammed into a single wardrobe. He stuffed them into a trunk with the aid of Bridget who’d accompanied him to help.

‘Where will you be living now, Master Kelly?’ she asked.

‘Thakeham, Biddy. Or in the ship.’ He paused. ‘If I still have a ship.’

‘Oh, Master Kelly, it won’t come to that, will it?’

‘It might, Biddy. It just might.’

‘What about Petty Officer Rumbelo?’

‘Your husband has nothing to fear, Biddy. I gave him the finest report it was possible to give any man.’

He drove her to the station and saw her off, then he went to the club for a meal. Verschoyle came in while he was standing at the bar, his usual chatty, cynical self.

‘I told you the Board would make a balls of it,’ he observed cheerfully as Kelly ordered him a pink gin. ‘I was on duty when Tompkinson’s signal arrived. It stood out a mile that the poor devil was crying out for help. But all the sea lords, the ACNS, the Parliamentary Secretary, the Permanent Secretary, the Naval Secretary, the Director of Naval Intelligence, and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all were all unavailable. Every man jack of ’em. I had to contact the Third Sea Lord myself and fill him in on a few facts he ought to have known already. In the end I got him to agree to a reply I’d sent on his behalf. I seem to have been the only bloody man in London who remembered there was such a thing as a telephone.’

‘I thought I recognised your touch,’ Kelly said. ‘How do the public regard it?’

Verschoyle frowned. ‘A bit too close to Jutland for comfort,’ he said. ‘Faith in the Navy’s been shaken again and the Admiralty’s at the same game now they were at then – trying to cover its mistakes by issuing statements full of half-truths that nobody’s stupid enough to believe. How bad was it?’

Kelly shrugged. ‘It was bloody bad.’

‘I think the public thinks the same.’ Verschoyle finished his drink. ‘They’re pretty incoherent except in times of crisis, but then their usually half-baked arbitrary opinions have a habit of crystallising suddenly into something near to sense. The trouble, of course, is that governments have a habit in peacetime of forgetting the fighting services that save them in war, and there’s been so much talk over the past few years about the last war being the war to end war they’ve become rather an anachronism. How’re you going to come out of it?’

Kelly pushed his glass aside. ‘God knows,’ he said. ‘You?’

‘I shall be all right. I might even have picked up a little credit.’

It seemed very normal. Verschoyle could always be relied on to pick up credit from any situation. Clear-minded, cynical and coldly clinical, he could always see to the heart of a crisis and decide his best route out of it.

They said their farewells in the hall of the club. There was luggage by the door, labelled and strapped.

‘I was going on leave if you remember,’ Verschoyle said. ‘But I decided I’d better cancel. I suppose it’s safe to go now.’

As the taxi drew up, the bags were pushed aboard and Verschoyle climbed in after them. As the taxi drew away, Kelly stared after it, frowning. Then suddenly his face changed and he gave a bark of laughter that helped to relieve his grim feelings. Suddenly he could see a joke to brighten the day. Not a big joke and a joke against himself, but, if Verschoyle was up to what he believed he was up to, then it was surely against Verschoyle, too.

‘And bloody good luck to you with her,’ he murmured as he turned away.

Verschoyle’s labels had all been marked ‘Hotel Majestic, Cannes.’

The fleet returned to Scotland to resume its interrupted cruise. Rosyth was chosen as the base this time – to save fuel, it was said, but everybody guessed it was really to save face.

The winter wore on. It was a sad winter with everyone disillusioned, and in some places people so long unemployed they’d become unemployable. Joe Kelly didn’t pull his punches. He decided that the men were right and the Admiralty abysmal. A few seamen were discharged as no longer required in the service, but the three port admirals concurred entirely : the cuts, like the cuts in the dole, had been cold-blooded and inhuman.

The Admiralty’s reaction was vicious. The captain of
Hood
was relieved almost at once and the captains of
Rodney
,
Adventure
and
Advance
were informed they would not be given another command. It was clear that, like everybody else, the Admiralty was clearing its own yardarm.

To his surprise, instead of a reprimand and the information that he was to be passed over for future command, Kelly found he’d been commended for his foresight, the efforts he’d made to find out what was happening, and above all for his disobedience. ‘This officer not only foresaw what was about to happen,’ the report said, ‘but he also had the courage to risk his career by going against instructions for the safety of his ship and the men in it.’ It seemed that his career was not only not brought to a full stop but, like Verschoyle’s, might even have been helped a little, though there were plenty – including Kimister – who knew their careers were virtually at an end.

After a gloomy winter, the news came as a pleasant surprise, but there had been no word from Christina of commiseration or congratulation. It didn’t surprise Kelly to hear that Verschoyle had wangled a staff job at Gibraltar and had left London in a hurry. He had no doubt now that he’d been involved in Christina’s disappearance but he was strangely unmoved by the knowledge and unable to feel any dislike for him. Over the years, their relationship had changed from enmity to a curious sort of wary friendship, and he had a feeling Verschoyle had landed himself with a great deal of trouble if he were contemplating marriage to Christina.

A few days later, he received a letter from Christina’s solicitors to inform him that the divorce would not be contested. Proof of adultery – with an Italian prince, he noted – was provided.

Even Vera von Schwerin dropped him. The elections in Germany in which Adolf Hitler had so nearly achieved power brought their affair to an abrupt end. With contingents of brown-clad thugs lining the Berlin streets, she had come out into the open in support of Hitler and his gangsters, and that, Kelly decided, was something he couldn’t stomach.

When his time in
Rebuke
came to an end, he left her without even looking back at her. But leave was lonely and he spent most of his time at Thakeham making improvements and wondering, as he made them, who he was making them for. Indirectly he heard through the usual channels of information that Verschoyle, his career safely taken care of in the divorce proceedings, was contemplating marriage at last – as Kelly had expected, to Christina.

Well, he’s welcome to her, he thought.

The naval assistant to the Second Sea Lord eyed him askance when he appeared to ask what his next job would be. ‘You seem to have picked up a pretty good report from Captain Corbett,’ he said. ‘And since you’re due for a spell of staff work we’ll have to try to match it. How about Assistant to the Director of Naval Air Warfare?’

Kelly smiled. ‘Sounds modem enough. Shall I have to learn to fly?’

‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea under the circumstances.’

Installed at the Admiralty and going to the RAF station at Lee-on-Solent to learn to handle an aeroplane on Saturday afternoons, life became humdrum but at least reliable, and Kelly had just put down an elderly Fairey Flycatcher after soloing when a message came that he was wanted on the telephone.

It was the Director of Naval Air Warfare. ‘Now’s your chance to test your knowledge,’ he said. ‘They got a feeling in the Med – something Chatfield, the C-in-C, said – that attacks on ships at sea by aircraft will be unremunerative in a few years’ time. I think – and I think
he
thinks now, in fact – that he was too optimistic and the view was based on the unproven effectiveness of the new multi-barrelled close range anti-aircraft weapons that are coming out. There’s been a long interchange of opinions between him and the Admiralty on the functions of catapult aircraft and there’s to be a conference at Gibraltar. I want you to go out and hold their hands. You’ve read everything and you know what the thought is here.’

It was a chance to get away from England that Kelly jumped at. ‘I’ll do that, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in London this evening and arrange my passage.’

The Director sounded pleased at his enthusiasm. ‘That’s all fixed,’ he said. ‘There’s a flying boat leaving tomorrow. It’ll get you there faster and show we have confidence in aeroplanes. You might even get a few flying hours in, if you can persuade the pilot to let you handle the controls.’

Putting down the telephone, Kelly went to the mess to collect his belongings and celebrate his solo with a drink with his instructor. He had just emptied his glass when the evening papers arrived and there was an immediate grab for them.

‘I see Invergordon’s still taking its toll,’ one of the younger pilots said as he backed away, the local rag in his hands.

The words caught Kelly’s attention and he turned. The pilot looked like a schoolboy as he held out the paper to him. ‘Inquest,’ he said. ‘Some poor devil shot himself. Wife said his career had been ruined by what happened. Know him, sir? Name of Kimister.’

The air conference took three weeks and the results were so disappointing, it was decided to hold another one in Simonstown.

Kelly flew south to Freetown where he picked up a destroyer heading for Cape Town, where, unexpectedly, the South African station seemed to have different views. Not only did they feel that airborne torpedoes might be of use at slowing down enemy ships when escaping, but they also felt they could be of value in attacks on enemy bases where crowded shipping would make missing virtually impossible.

The warm air of the Cape held Kelly for a few days more than he should have stayed, and when he reached home his report so pleased the Director he had to go through it all again and they set off on what amounted to a world tour of the naval air stations of the Empire.

His appointment came to an end with his return and they were into another new year with Invergordon a long way away. His leave coincided with his mother’s death and he spent most of it helping his father put her affairs in order. As he returned from his final visit to the solicitor’s he discovered a telegram waiting for him from the Admiralty. He’d been given the destroyer
Actaeon
, and was to take her to Alex as senior officer of a group of two destroyers and the minesweeper,
Glendower
.
Actaeon
was new, so they’d forgiven him the impertinence he’d shown in shifting
Rebuke
without so much as a by-your-leave, and she was waiting for him in Portsmouth, ready in every way, stored, ammunitioned, and fully manned; and the first lieutenant turned out to be Smart, whom he’d last met up the Yangtze. Things were beginning to look up.

It was quite clear the Navy was beginning to recover from Invergordon and, not only recover, but to make immense and genuine efforts to repair the damage. Port committees were at work finding out things which should have been discovered long since, and departments were examining their methods and – what mattered more – their consciences. And with good reason because, suddenly, aggressive political groups led by Winston Churchill were demanding rearmament. In a rapidly deteriorating political situation in Germany, the government had fallen, the Nazis had doubled their strength in the Reichstag, and Adolf Hitler was at the head of the biggest single party. With the aid of propaganda and trickery, he’d been appointed Chancellor and it was obvious he was now set on dictatorship and even conflict, and in the House of Commons all the talk of pacifism had suddenly come to a stop as they realised at last that the war to end war that they’d fought between 1914 and 1918 had not been that at all, and that the peace they’d put together had had in it, in fact, the makings of a new struggle. Those hypnotic qualities which hid the fact that what Hitler had to say was far from new also unfortunately had the ability to reduce his audiences to delirium; and, despite those British newspapers which kept reiterating their owners’ belief in peace, for the first time people were listening to the man who’d been crying ‘wolf’ for years. Suddenly there was the same sort of uneasy air about Europe that there’d been before 1914, with Hitler talking of rearmament and the Italian dictator, Mussolini, making bombastic claims for the Mediterranean. As
Actaeon
and her consorts were ordered to make ready, Kelly started to think about Charley again.

Smart owned a narrow three-storeyed Georgian house with bow windows in Old Portsmouth, with pillars at the door and potted geraniums on the front step. It had been a wine merchant’s home when Nelson had left for Trafalgar, and it was when they asked him for dinner that he began to wonder if he dare seek her out once more.