The Lion at Sea (35 page)

‘This must be the last place God made,’ he wrote to Charley. The influence of the lonely sea and the grey sky was having a sharp nostalgic effect on him that nudged him as it had nudged sailors from time immemorial, so that he felt sentimental, frustrated and randy, and was kicking himself for drawing back. It seemed so long since he’d seen a girl, he felt they’d have to fit him with a collar and chain the next time he went ashore. After all, he thought, as Charley had said, he
might
be killed. Though he couldn’t imagine it. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to be dead, except that it would be cold and dark and empty, like being trapped in a vast unlit room.

Charley wrote back regularly, but never about what had happened or might have happened between them. ‘There were twenty-one bombs on Ashford in Kent,’ she announced in matter-of-fact terms, ‘and they dropped forty-one in the fields near the Admiralty gunpowder factory at Faversham.’ It was almost too matter-of-fact for Kelly.

Perhaps it was harder for Charley, he decided. He found he still couldn’t think of Ayesha without pain but whether it was the pain of love or the pain of guilt he wasn’t sure. At least, however, he’d experienced love. Charley, he knew, never had.

Rumbelo appeared. A desperate letter had arrived for Kelly:
‘I have to go back to surface ships, sir. They say that bullet over the knee will efect my climbing and that I might jam the ladder in an emergency. How about asking for me, sir? I’ll not let you down.’
It wasn’t hard to persuade Talbot that Leading Seaman Rumbelo was the best helmsman in the Navy and that good helmsmen were useful in a destroyer; and a special request was sent to the drafting depot. The reply came remarkably quickly in the form of a curt reply that Rumbelo was a Portsmouth rating, that it was quite irregular for such a person to be sent to
Mordant,
which was a Chatham ship, and that he was due to go to
Partridge,
from his home port, instead.

‘It’s nothing but a piece of red tape,’ Kelly snorted and by the following day had persuaded Talbot to go ashore at Kirkwall and get in touch personally with someone he knew in the drafting depot, asking for Rumbelo’s papers to be closed in
Partridge
and transferred to
Mordant.

‘You’re bloody persuasive, Number One,’ Talbot said. ‘It’s all highly unorthodox.’

But it put Rumbelo on one of the ‘Jellicoes’ heading north, all the same.

Occasionally they slipped out through the Hoxa Gate, always hoping against hope that they were going south after the German High Seas Fleet. But they never were and they were always back within forty-eight hours.

‘These bloody big ships are nothing but a drag,’ Talbot said bitterly, biting on the stem of his pipe. ‘There hasn’t been a major naval battle since Trafalgar and the way things are going there never will be. We scared the Germans so much at Heligoland and the Dogger Bank they’re afraid to shove their noses out beyond the Jade.’

Then Verschoyle turned up. A new Verschoyle noticeably less arrogant towards Kelly since their last meeting, but now wearing the aiguillette of a flag lieutenant.

He studied Kelly warily, even with a certain amount of uncertainty. He was not unaware of Kelly’s new medal or how he’d acquired it and he had a feeling that despite his own poise and cool cynicism, despite his cleverness, he was being left miles behind.

Kelly was staring at him with disconcerting, unyielding hostility.

‘I thought you might still be in
Inflexible
,’ he said bluntly. ‘In fact, I’d almost hoped you’d slipped out through the hole the Turks made in her at the Dardanelles.’

Verschoyle smiled to indicate that he accepted the comment as a joke. ‘Left her before then,’ he said. ‘When Sturdee transferred his flag to
Benbow
I went with him. Rather a good idea, I thought. Naval blue blood tends to congregate in the flagship. Kimister’s up here, too, did you know? In
Collingwood
, and wet-henning about in his usual vigorous manner. How are you, young Maguire, anyway? Up to snuff? Heard you’d been getting yourself into trouble in the Middle East.’

‘Nothing I couldn’t handle,’ Kelly said coolly. ‘And don’t call me “young Maguire.”’

‘What’ll happen if I do? Another bloody nose?’ Verschoyle’s eyes hardened. ‘You know, you
did
break my nose.’

‘I’m not very sorry.’

‘I had to have surgery.’

‘Afraid it might spoil your looks?’

Verschoyle smiled. ‘When a chap’s good with the girls, it’s a pity to have to put up with difficulties of that sort,’ he said. ‘How’s Mabel Upfold?’

‘Thinking of getting engaged.’

‘Household Cavalry again?’

‘No. Much more ordinary. Flying Corps.’

‘Not much future in that. I’m told their life span’s about three weeks in France. How about you and the Little ’Un? Misbehaved yourselves yet?’

Kelly’s eyes narrowed. The fact that they very nearly had had nothing to do with Verschoyle.

‘Funny, that,’ Verschoyle went on placidly. ‘Hard to understand. She’s been in love with you as long as I can remember. Sticks out like the proverbial chapel hat peg. God help her when she finally gets you. With the energy you’ve got, she’ll think she’s nesting with a railway accident. You’ll have her doubling round the bedroom like a Whale Island gunnery instructor, I’ll be bound.’

He smiled, wondering again what quirks of character were essential to produce such devotion and why, despite money, poise and position, there was so little of it in his own home and so little to cherish in his loveless affairs with girls.

‘Actually, Maguire,’ he said, ‘you ought to get moving. Kaiser Bill’s bound to grow tired eventually of watching the High Seas Fleet rusting in Kiel and give it a shove out into the North Sea. Then the big smash’ll come and, in a destroyer, your chances of survival will be pretty slender.’

Kelly was giving nothing away. ‘I’ll chance it,’ he growled.

‘Of course–’ Verschoyle waved a hand ‘–Silent Jack Jellicoe’s not really the man for the job. Too cautious. Too plodding. Too bloody small for that matter. He’s a bit of a ditherer underneath, I reckon, and he’ll probably miss his chance, anyway, unless David Beatty drags him into it. Haig told my father he thought he was a bit of an old woman and that he’d probably not know what to do with a battle if he had one tossed in his lap.’

Kelly had always assumed the Commander-in-Chief to be all-powerful and all-wise. He was one of Jacky Fisher’s choices and, though it was obvious he lacked Fisher’s drive, the idea that he was far from perfect had never occurred to him before.

‘Why shouldn’t he know what to do with it?’ he asked.

‘Lacking in the gift of insubordination.’ Verschoyle shrugged. ‘Something Nelson had in abundance. I know. I see a lot of him these days. Goes by the book. Has all the Nelsonic virtues but that one. Believes in blind obedience to orders and has an obsession about submarines.’

‘Aren’t you behind him?’

‘I’m behind
my
admiral and my admiral ain’t commander-in-chief. He doesn’t go along with Jellicoe’s belief that half his fleet might be disabled by torpedoes before action’s joined.’

‘He could lose the war in an afternoon.’

Verschoyle sneered. ‘He could also win it in an afternoon, too,’ he said. ‘But he won’t. He treats the Fleet as if it were the Crown Jewels and Grand Fleet Battle Orders all subordinate the offensive spirit to defensive precautions, especially against the torpedo. Besides which, there’s too much centralised command, and signalling every bloody movement from the flagship will only produce an acute form of tactical arthritis. Still–’ Verschoyle gestured ‘ – I doubt if some of our senior officers could act without them, anyway. They’re not exactly Nelson’s band of brothers. Burney’s a solid piece of wood, Arbuthnot’s an ass, Evan-Thomas is dull, Jerram lacks initiative, and Sturdee’s so bloody conceited you have to drop on one knee every time you see him. Pakenham’s a gentleman, of course, and Horace Hood’s probably the best brain in the service, but they’re only in subordinate commands so they can’t do much.’

Even to Kelly, who was far from enchanted by his superior officers, it sounded like blasphemy, but Verschoyle had the bit between his teeth now, and Kelly unwillingly offered him a pink gin to keep him talking.

Thanking him with elaborate courtesy, Verschoyle went on. ‘Suspect the thinking’s all wrong,’ he said. ‘The battle plan surmises that the Germans’ll
wish
to stand and fight. But suppose they prefer to run away?’ He took a sip of his gin. ‘If they do, there won’t be any big gun duel and then all these plans – all these bloody great ships, too – will be useless, won’t they?’

Despite their wary dislike for each other, they were both experienced officers now and able to talk rationally of service matters without hatred, and Kelly became aware once more of something that had never escaped him – Verschoyle had a sharp, incisive brain. Right or wrong, he’d clearly been thinking deeply.

‘Is all this why you’ve turned up here?’ he asked. ‘To let us know what’s wrong with the Grand Fleet?’

Verschoyle finished his gin. He would never have admitted it but he was beginning to wonder if his attitude of looking after himself and leaving his advancement in rank to his influential relatives was a sound one. There seemed about Kelly a hard-headed assurance, an awareness of himself and his capabilities that came entirely from experience. The Falklands had been too much of a walk-over for anyone, however well he’d done, to feel that he’d gained much from it.

Despite his thoughts, Verschoyle’s face didn’t slip. He couldn’t ever have admitted his envy. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve brought orders.
Mordant
’s
to move down to Rosyth to join the Thirteenth Destroyer Force. They’re with Beatty so perhaps he’ll manage to get you killed.’

Rosyth was certainly an improvement on Scapa, and Edinburgh a vast change from the grey streets of Kirkwall, but the destroyers’ berth was not a great deal more comfortable than Gutter Sound and getting out was never a pleasure trip. The light cruisers were off Charlestown, with the battle cruisers between them and the bridge, while the destroyers lay higher up at Bo’ness in a welter of colliers, provision ships and other fleet auxiliaries; and the shape of the harbour made it necessary for everybody at the western end of the anchorage to thread their way through the lines of battleships and battle cruisers – the ‘Behemoths’ and ‘Sea Cows’, as they were contemptuously called by the destroyermen – every time they moved.

For the battle cruiser people, it was possible to spend every afternoon in Edinburgh, but for the destroyers Edinburgh was always too far away and, ashore, all they could do was walk or visit Dunfermline by the Charlestown express, which the driver let them drive for a shilling tip. Once they managed to get up a game of hockey with the young ladies of the physical training college there, every one of whom seemed to be frustrated by the lack of men and panting to get them in dark corners, but it all came to a stop just when it was beginning to look promising because the directors of the college took a jaundiced view of it, and they had to go to the cinema instead.

At Rosyth, also, the eagerness for battle was even worse. Admiral Beatty was a lot less patient than Admiral Jellicoe and it was obvious throughout the Battle Cruiser Squadron that it wouldn’t require much to send them all to sea. But there was doubt even about Beatty. Square-jawed and broad-shouldered, he seemed the epitome of a fighting admiral but there was still more than a suspicion that while Jellicoe could do with some of Beatty’s drive, Beatty could probably do with some of Jellicoe’s technical knowledge.

‘He’s more of a swashbuckler than an admiral,’ Lieutenant Shakespeare insisted in a wardroom argument. ‘Like Drake. He’s not the tactician Nelson was.’

‘He’s self-assured,’ Heap countered. ‘And he works hard. I hear that he and Jellicoe have concocted a scheme to bring the Germans out. Expose light units off the Danish, Dutch and German coasts as a bait.’

‘Suppose the Germans are scheming along the same lines,’ Kelly said dryly. ‘And this bombarding of British towns is an attempt to lure
us
out.’

It was almost as if a fleet battle in the North Sea were a psychological necessity because nobody was enjoying themselves and more than likely neither were the Germans. With the war still rolling bloodily across northern France, there was a great feeling of guilt that they were lying in comparative idleness, and every man who returned from leave came back with dark stories of people asking ‘But what the hell does the fleet do?’ And while it was easier to get ashore than at Scapa, there wasn’t very much joy in it. Complete strangers were in the habit of approaching officers in hotel lounges and sailors in pub bars demanding to know when they were going to fetch the Germans out, and an uneasy feeling was growing in Kelly that that affection with which the Navy had been regarded before the war was beginning to give way to something not far removed from contempt.

Occasionally they justified their existence by putting to sea with the aircraft carrier,
Engadine,
to exercise her aeroplanes,
Mordant
a few cables astern like a faithful spaniel ready to retrieve anyone who fell in the drink. Mostly the weather was too bad to achieve much but once there was a grisly crash when an aircraft landed in front of the carrier and emerged horrifyingly mutilated by the ship’s propellers and with the pilot mercifully stone dead. They fished him out quickly and a young sailor about to heave his heart up at the sight got a quick nudge from Rumbelo as Kelly appeared. He was always looked at somewhat askance for the medal ribbons that graced his chest and the knowledge of what he’d done to get them, and the young sailor managed with an effort to hang on to the contents of his stomach.

When they returned with the wreckage and the remains of the pilot, it was a pitch dark night and was raining persistently with a sullen quality only possible in Scotland. Four cruisers without lights were just aweigh when the destroyers arrived, under the impression they were a mile further down the anchorage, and they all had to go full astern and lie inert, in a galaxy of signalling, megaphoning, bad language and narrow shaves, with a picket boat caught in the middle hooting on its klaxon like a cock pheasant gone mad.