The White Empress (30 page)

He studied Joe’s tall form, outlined in the dim lights of the bridge. Tonight for the first time their watches had coincided.
Chief Petty Officer Drummond stood at the wheel, a silent and morose man, lost in his own world. He would go for hours without
speaking.

‘What’s the matter, missing your boilers and the warmth?’ he joked, sensing Joe’s tension.

‘I’ve got used to it now and all this,’ he threw out his arm in a wide sweep indicating the ocean, ‘makes me uneasy at times.
Especially at night.’

Few men voiced their fears. It was defeatist and bad for morale. Drummond said nothing. Eamon respected Joe for his frankness,
though, remembering he had been at sea for years when the sight of the ocean at night had held no hidden terrors.

‘What were you shouting to Cat when we left? Are you going to make an honest woman of her at last?’

‘Yes. I promised to buy her an engagement ring in the first port we reach.’

‘Don’t count your chickens, Calligan,’ Drummond muttered.

‘When I was a kid, she used to say work hard at school and you can grow up to be just like Joe. I thought you’d have married
her years ago.’

‘It’s a wonder you didn’t grow up hating my guts, having me held up as such a paragon!’

‘I never looked at it like that. I only ever saw you as grown up and usually in a fancy uniform and able to hand out a few
coppers for sweets.’

‘So that’s why you joined the bloody Navy?’ Drummond questioned flatly.

They exchanged glances. He was talkative tonight.

‘She’s got a lot to answer for has Cat.’ Joe’s voice was amused.

‘God, I used to hate her when she dragged me round to Our Lady’s school and Father Maguire used to put the terrors on me!
Funny how things like that stick in your mind. Funny how your outlook changes too, I look at him now and he’s just an old
man and a nice enough bloke, too.’

Joe shifted his position. The weather was foul. It was not a typical May night, but then the North Atlantic was never typical,
always unpredictable. A cold drizzle was falling. The sea was heavy, breaking over the bows, and the wind from the south south-west
was threatening to develop into a full gale. They were well into the danger zone, some sixty miles north of the coast of Ireland.
Ahead of them, strung out, was the convoy. A shiver ran through his body. Someone walking over his grave, he thought.

‘Must have been somewhere near here that the
Britain
went down. I hate the North-western approaches, I’ll
feel better when we’re further away from land – any land!’ Eamon muttered.

Or someone passing over the grave of others, entombed in another ship fathoms below, Joe thought, before pushing superstition
away.

‘How did she take it? I mean really take it, when they got news of the
Britain
?’

Eamon didn’t reply for a while. He had talked for hours with Mr Gorry about that terrible day. He had been away at the time.

‘She was upset for Marie, Brian and the others. She was upset about the ship itself. Everyone thought she was too big, too
fast, and Cat loved that ship.’

‘Everyone thought the same thing . . . then,’ Drummond interrupted.

Eamon lowered his voice. ‘But she wasn’t heart-broken about him, if that’s what you mean. I asked Mr Gorry. He said she had
cried, but it was more for . . . for everyone, collectively. She’d got over him. I wasn’t sorry about him, God forgive me.
I should have been – poor sod, we all know what he faced. But he’d hurt her and at the time I could have killed him for that.’
He paused again, sweeping the murky darkness with his binoculars. ‘He would have made her life hell. He was weak, basically.
You know the type, domineering mother, he had to try to prove he was strong when he was away from his mother’s influence.
Dinny Lacey was like that. Terrified of his Mam. She was always belting him and bawling him out. But away from her he acted
big, bullying everyone who wouldn’t stand up to him. Now I hear he belts the daylights out of his wife, whenever he’s
home. Barratt was like that, I don’t think he’d have physically harmed her, but . . . why the hell did you let her get involved
with him?’

‘There wasn’t much I could do about it. You know what she’s like.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But she won’t get away from me this
time.’

‘We’re in for a wild night,’ Drummond interrupted, as the sea broke over
Firefly
’s forecastle.

‘What’s our position?’ Joe yelled over the increasing howl of the wind.

‘About latitude 59 degrees, North. Speed about thirteen knots.’ Drummond yelled back. The ship was plunging and straining.

‘I can’t see the convoy!’ Eamon was peering through the binoculars.

‘No bloody wonder in this weather! We’ll be lucky if they’re not scattered by daylight.’ Drummond clung tenaciously to the
wheel.

A huge wave broke over the plunging bows and there was a dull thud. The ship shuddered, then a huge column of water erupted
high into the air. The ship listed to port, sending them all sprawling on the deck.

Joe clung to the wheel against which he had been thrown. ‘Jesus Christ! Torpedo! We’ve been hit!’ he yelled. Every light had
been extinguished and from the angle of the deck he knew they were beginning to settle by the stern. For a split second he
thought of his mates in the engine room. Poor bastards! He fished in his pocket for the electric torch. Other small flickers
of light could now be seen in the darkness. He knew the drill.
They were sinking fast. Two more lights flickered close to him.

‘Calligan! Cleary! Get to your boat station, we’re going down!’ Drummond’s voice held no note of panic.

Four boats had been lowered, the others had been smashed by the column of water. In pitch darkness they had somehow managed
to unhook the huge blocks. He heard someone yell ‘Mind the blocks!’ and then they were plunging downwards, the dark shape
of the sinking frigate frighteningly close. They hit the head of a breaker, then plunged down into the trough, taking in water.
They all knew the danger they faced and strained to pull away, otherwise they would be dragged into the maelstrom as the
Firefly
went down.

He saw glimpses of the other three boats, but the great combers roaring down from windward were too steep to enable them to
stay together. And there was only one thought in all their minds. Their own survival.

The only officer in the boat was Drummond and as the wind rose to gale force and the spray flew over them in sheets, he decided
the only thing they could do was ride to a sea anchor and hope for a break in the weather. The heaving seas filled the boat
to the thwarts and they had to bail continuously. Everyone was cold and saturated, many of them were seasick. There was no
time to feel terror at the sight of the mountainous walls of water that bore down on them. Unless they continued to bail they
would be swamped.

The boat tossed wildly. ‘Mr Drummond, sir, the sea anchor’s gone! Been carried away!’

Joe recognised Eamon’s voice. Relief flashed through
him before he turned his attention once more to keeping the boat free of water before the next wave broke over them.

‘Lash three oars together, lad! They’ll have to do!’ The chief petty officer yelled back.

There were hours and hours of bailing. His movements were mechanical, his brain sending one message only to his leaden limbs.
Bail! Bail! Bail! And it was with a feeling of detached wonderment that he realised that the light he thought he had seen
in the distance was the breaking of a wan dawn, struggling through the tattered clouds.

The wind and the sea had abated a little and he slumped back against the side of the boat. They were up to their knees in
water. The faces around him were grey and haggard. Eyes either dull and staring or darting wildly around as they estimated
their chances of survival. Four of the crew were dead of their injuries and exposure and CPO Drummond recited what he could
remember of the Burial Service, then committed their bodies to the sea. Eamon crawled over to Joe.

‘We’ve no chance, we’d better start praying!’

‘What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all night!’ He’d sailed these waters many times before and knew that daylight,
even at this time of the year, was a subfusc twilight that lasted only a few hours. In these conditions, in an open boat .
. .

‘No use trying to sail, we’ll ride to the sea anchor and hope! Better start praying, it’s the only thing left!’ Drummond instructed.

Conversation ceased. Apathy and exhaustion claimed
them all. In the dim light that passed for early afternoon CPO Drummond was again forced to recite the Burial Service. Morale
had hit rock bottom.

It was Eamon who saw it first and at his startled cry the others roused themselves from their semi-comatose state.

‘You’re havin’ hallucinations, lad! It’s a piece of wreckage!’ Drummond scanned the still heaving, grey surface.

‘No, sir, it’s not! The lads didn’t call me “Hawk-eye” for nothing! Look!’

A few hundred yards to their port the grey conning tower broke through the waves. It had been a periscope Eamon had seen.
With the last reserves of energy they all began to shout, arms flailing, then one by one they fell silent, seeing the black
swastika on the side of the U-boat.

‘God ’ave mercy on us now!’ Eamon muttered.

‘So that’s what they look like, I’ve always wondered! Murdering bastards!’ Joe spat out a mouthful of salt spray.

Figures were already appearing on the conning tower. CPO Drummond stood up, his hands raised above his head. ‘On your feet,
all of you! There’s nothing else we can do now!’

C
AT REPLACED THE RECEIVER
and smiled to herself. She wondered how Joe would take the news. She drew out a writing pad and envelopes from the drawer
of the sideboard and searched for a pen. Then she took everything to the table that faced the French windows that overlooked
the fields beyond the house. She started to write.

She stopped and chewed the end of the pen. She would write but she wouldn’t post it, not today. Tomorrow morning, when she
took Hilary to school, would do. After she had seen Joe. It was fortunate he was home, she mused, otherwise she would have
had to turn it down flat.

The sun bathed the neat little garden and the fields beyond in a fresh, clean light. May. A month she could
never recall without thinking of the May of 1941. Was it really nine long years ago? Was it already three years since Joe
had come home and they had finally been married? Idly she twisted the gold band on the third finger of her left hand.

She had thought her world had ended that May nine years ago when they heard of the loss of the
Firefly
. The world had been such a black place then. No hope. No end in sight. No Joe. She hadn’t cried much. Although now, looking
back, she realised that she couldn’t remember very much about that awful summer. Then word had come that they were both alive
and prisoners of war somewhere in Germany. But after the first rush of relief, there had followed the desperate hopelessness.

She wrote hundreds of letters, not knowing if any would reach him and she had heard nothing from him or Eamon and her fear
and desperation had risen again. Looking back she didn’t know just what had kept her going, kept hope alive in the five years
that had followed. And then it had all been over.

She had joined the ecstatic crowds that had spilled out into the streets. Singing, dancing, hugging and kissing each other
on VE Day. She had been able to bring Hilary and Sean back to live with her and they had both hated it, at first. They were
used to the wide, open countryside, knowing everyone in the village by name. The devastated city, full of strangers, had terrified
them but gradually, they had adjusted, as children do.

And then he had come home. Older, thinner and with streaks of premature grey in his dark hair, but still her Joe. They had
been married in the Church of the
Blessed Sacrament which was still in some disrepair, due to the May Blitz, and they had spent a whole blissful week in Southport.

He hadn’t wasted those years spent in captivity. CPO Drummond had taught him a great deal and with the dire shortage of experienced
manpower, he had gone back to sea, sailing as chief engineer on the
Aorangi
, one of the six Canadian Pacific ships left from a fleet of twenty-two.

She ran the end of the pen along her lower lip, her eyes not seeing the thrush perched on the branch of the sapling elm they
had just planted. It had been then that they had decided to find a home of their own. It hadn’t been easy for houses were
in very short supply. But they had at last found this house in Moorhey Road, Maghull, beyond the city limits, and she had
fallen in love with it at first sight. It was a struggle, as they were buying it. But the shortages of the war years had meant
she had been able to save and with Joe’s greatly increased salary they were just managing.

She wrote a few more words and then paused. She would have to ask Marie to come and look after the children. She laughed aloud.
Children! Sean was fifteen and an apprentice in an engineering factory. Her gaze wandered to the photograph of her daughter
on top of the sideboard. The small oval face with the serious blue eyes and neatly plaited, chestnut hair made her smile.
She looked so demure, but she could be a handful at times. She reminded her of herself at eleven. But Marie had a way with
them both. She had always been very close to Sean. Marie had married Richard Hocking and
was desperately hoping for a child of her own. They lived quietly with Mr and Mrs Gorry in Yew Tree Road.

Maisey had a ‘prefab’ as they were called, on the East Lancashire Road – a single-storeyed house of prefabricated blocks which
were being used to ease the desperate housing situation. Gradually the bombsites were being cleared and new houses built.
Maisey was ecstatic with her hot and cold running water, bathroom and inside toilet. She kept it like a palace and no speck
of dust was allowed to linger on any surface of her utility furniture for more than a few hours. The O’Dwyers had dwindled
somewhat in number, for Dora had married the driver of the canteen lorry and gone off as a GI bride to live in Charlotteville.
Ethel had married a Norwegian sailor she had met and had gone to live in ‘that god-forsaken country with names yer can’t pronounce,’
as Maisey called it.

Her gaze rested on the photo of a young man in naval uniform. Eamon hadn’t wasted his time either. He had also been a pupil
of Drummond’s. He had stayed in the Royal Navy and was carving out a career for himself, having reached petty officer. Her
thoughts returned to the letter and Joe. She still hated the time he was away at sea and only lived for his arrival home,
so why on earth had she told Miss Sabell she would accept, pending his approval? She had almost forgotten what it felt like
to have the deck beneath her feet. Almost, but not quite.

‘Salt water in your veins, nostalgia or maybe latent ambition?’ she said aloud to the black and white cat, lying on the floor
by the windows, luxuriating in the sun’s warmth but with one eye fixed on the thrush still
perched on the tree outside. She pushed the letter aside and went to the sideboard cupboard and drew out a large, brown envelope
and emptied the contents on the table. She spread the photographs out, then picked one up. It was of the
Empress of Britain
.

She sighed to herself. ‘You’re part of the past now.’ There had been six Empresses in 1939 but only two had survived. One
of them had been the
Empress of Japan
, renamed
Empress of Scotland
in 1942 when the Japanese had entered the war. It was this Empress that now filled her thoughts. On 9 May the
Empress of Scotland
was due to sail on her first voyage after being refitted on the Clyde. Miss Sabell, now retired, wanted her to consider taking
charge of the stewardesses for this first peacetime voyage.

Joe waited outside the school gates. Any minute now the doors would open and they would burst out, laughing, pushing and shoving,
but he could always pick her out by her red-brown hair and vivid blue eyes. For years those blue eyes had caused him a great
deal of soul-searching. When he had come home she was nearly seven and at first she had resented him and he had resented her,
for whenever she looked at him he was reminded of David Barratt. Gradually all thoughts of her natural father had diminished,
until they had become irrelevant. She didn’t know about him and she never would. The name on her birth certificate was Hilary
Josephine Calligan and that was who she was: his child, for he had legally adopted her. She was his daughter and he loved
her.

‘Dad! Dad, can I go to Lucy’s for tea?’ She was tugging at his sleeve. She was tall for her age and, as usual, her hair had
escaped from its braids. He noticed the ribbons stuffed into her blazer pocket.

‘Well, that’s fine thanks I get for coming to meet you. How was your day, Pudding?’ he laughed. The nickname was one he had
conferred on her, for it was the exact opposite of her stature. She was as slender as a rail. Cat worried about her, saying
she was too thin, that if she got any thinner they could use her for a clothes prop! ‘Alright, except for Miss Concannon!
Can I go to Lucy’s, Dad? Her mum said I can.’

He laughed at the earnest, upturned face. ‘Oh, go on, then! But you mind your manners and I’ll be round to collect you at
seven.’

The two of them giggled.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Send Sean round for me. Lucy’s sister likes Sean.’ They collapsed into giggles again.

‘Ah, so that’s it! Well, I’ll spare him the suffering, I’ll come myself! Off you go, Miss, and behave yourself!’

When he arrived home Cat was sitting at the table scribbling away at a letter. He smiled. She’d obviously forgotten the time.
He tousled her short, curly hair.

‘Oh, Joe! Oh, Lord, is that the time and there’s no meal even started!’

He laughed. ‘A nice reception, I must say. My daughter can’t wait to rush off with her friend and my wife is so engrossed
writing letters . . .’

She ran her fingers through her hair. It was a gesture he loved.

He took her in his arms. She was more beautiful in his eyes now, as a woman of thirty-five, than she had been as a scrawny
sixteen year old. ‘What is so important, Mrs Calligan, that you have used up nearly a whole writing pad? You never take so
much trouble when you write to me – or do you?’

She looked up at him and for an instant he saw the little Irish slummy peering at him.

‘What are you up to, Cat? I know that look of old?’

‘I had a telephone call from Miss Sabell. The
Empress of Scotland
is sailing on the ninth and she wants me to sail with her, as chief stewardess.’ It all came out in a rush, but she surmised
it was better to tell him like this than beat about the bush.

‘Go back to sea?’

‘For one trip only. Until they appoint a new, permanent chief. Marie will look after the children, I know she will!’

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Cat, you never cease to delight me! Here I was thinking you were the epitome of the
domesticated wife and mother, and you still hanker after the sea! The great White Empress sails again! And I thought you’d
finally got over it!’

‘It’s all your fault, Joe! It was you who dragged me off the cattle boat to see her!’

‘And how I’ve regretted it!’

‘Do you remember when I once said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you got to be second officer and me chief
stewardess?’ And you said it would be a bloody miracle? Well, you can eat your words!’

‘Not quite! I’m only chief engineer and I’ve not said anything—’

She cut off his words with a kiss. ‘But you won’t say no, will you? Do you realise that this is the same ship, the very first
White Empress I ever saw and I can still remember the way I felt. It was like a St Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin. The crowds,
the band, the cheering, the streamers! We nearly made the miracle come true, Joe!’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘I think we have made it come true. “Mrs Calligan. Chief Stewardess”. It has a certain ring
to it, don’t you think?’

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘I made it, Joe! I finally made it, even if it’s only for one trip!’