Maybe I can do what’s left of the evacuation and then go back and come through and do the first three days, he thought, but Dunworthy would never let him. If something went wrong and he was still here when his deadline on the twenty-eighth arrived, he’d be the one who was dead. And on a second try there might be even more slippage.
Nine o’clock, and then nine-thirty and ten, came and went with no sign of Mr. Powney. I can’t afford to sit here all day, Mike thought and told Daphne he was going to go look around the village.
“Oh, but I’m certain Mr. Powney will be along soon,” Daphne said. “He must have got a late start.”
So did I, Mike thought. He told her he needed to interview some of the other locals on invasion preparations, made her promise to come find him if Powney arrived, and left the inn. Somebody had to have a vehicle in this place. It was 1940, for God’s sake, not 1740. Somebody had to have a car. Or a boat, though he didn’t like the idea of going out in the Channel, which was full of mines and U-boats. More than sixty of the seven hundred small craft that had participated in the evacuation had been sunk. He’d only go by boat as a last resort.
But even though he looked in every alley and back garden, he didn’t see anything, not even a bicycle. And Dover was too far to make it on a bicycle. He walked down to the quay, where three fishermen, including toothless Mr. Tompkins, were lounging and discussing-what else?-the weather.
“Looks bad,” one of them said without taking his pipe out of his mouth.
Mr. Tompkins mumbled something unintelligible, and the other one, who smelled strongly of fish, nodded agreement.
“I need to get to Dover,” Mike said. “Is there anyone here who’d be willing to take me there in his boat?”
“I doot yill fond onion heerbuts,” Mr. Tompkins said.
Since he shook his head as he spoke, Mike interpreted that as a no. “What about one of you? I could pay…” He hesitated. Three pounds was obviously too much. “Ten shillings,” he said.
That was obviously too little. Tompkins and the fishy one immediately shook their heads. “It’s blowin’ up a storm,” the pipe smoker said.
The Channel had been “as still as a millpond” the entire nine days of the evacuation, but Mike couldn’t very well say that. “I’ll pay you a pound.”
“Nay, lad,” the fishy one said. “Channel’s too dangerous.”
Clearly none of these three would be volunteering to go to Dunkirk. He’d have to find somebody else. He started down the quay. “Harold mot be able to run you up,” the pipe smoker called after him.
“Harold?” Mike said, coming back.
“Aye, Commander Harold,” he said and the fishy one nodded.
A naval officer. Good. He’d know how to steer clear of U-boats and mines. “Where can I find him?”
“Ye’ll fand’m ont’ Lassie June,” Mr. Tompkins said. “He’s bin work nonner sin smale vises skill litter coom furnit buck.”
Mike turned to the pipe smoker. “Where can I find the-what did you say the name of his boat was?” but before he could answer, Mr. Tompkins said, “Tletty Gin.” He pointed down the dock. “She’s doonthur at thind nix harbin ersees pride.”
Which meant God knew what, but there weren’t that many boats lined up along the dock, and their names should be painted on their bows. He thanked the trio for their help, such as it was, and walked down the pier, looking at the tied-up boats: the Marigold, the Princess Margaret, the Wren. The names didn’t sound very warlike, but then neither had the names of the yachts and barges and fishing smacks that were about to pull off the biggest military evacuation in history: the Fair Breeze, the Kitty, the Sunbeam, the Smiling Through.
But hopefully they’d been in better shape than this bunch. Most of them were ancient, none had been scraped or painted in recent memory, and one, the Sea Sprite, had its motor spread out in pieces on its deck. Obviously it wasn’t going to Dunkirk, but some of the others would. Boats from every coastal village had been involved. He wished he’d had time to memorize the list of small craft that had been part of the evacuation so he’d know which, if any, of these had participated.
And which of them had made it back. The list had had asterisks next to the names of the ones that had been sunk. If he hadn’t wasted a whole afternoon waiting to see Dunworthy, he’d know which was which.
He reached the end of the dock. No Tletty Gin. Or Lassie June. He started back along the row. “Ahoy!” a voice called, and Mike looked up to see an elderly man in a yachting cap at the railing of a forty-foot launch. “You there! Are you from the Small Vessels Pool?”
“No,” Mike said. “I’m looking for a Commander Harold.”
The old man broke into a broad-and, thankfully, toothy-smile. “I’m Commander Harold. You must be from the Admiralty. You’ve come about my commission. Thought I’d never hear from you. Come aboard.”
This was Commander Harold? He had to be seventy if he was a day, and no wonder he hadn’t heard from the Admiralty about being commissioned. Mike peered at the bow, looking for the boat’s name. There it was, so badly faded he could hardly make it out. The Lady Jane.
An unlucky name for a boat. Lady Jane Grey had only lasted as queen something like nine days before they’d chopped her head off, and the launch didn’t look like it would last long either. It was covered with barnacles and hadn’t been painted in years. “Come aboard, lad,” the Commander was saying, “and tell me about my commission-”
“I’m not from-”
“What are you standing there for? Come aboard.”
Mike did. Up close, the old man looked even older. His hair under the yachting cap was white and fine as thistledown, and his hand, snapping a salute, was gnarled with arthritis. “I’m not from the Admiralty either,” Mike said hastily. “I’m-”
“Suppose they’ve a new wartime department just for issuing commissions. In my day, His Majesty’s Navy didn’t have all these departments and regulations and forms to fill up. What would have happened to Lord Nelson at Trafalgar if he’d had to fill up all the forms they have nowadays?”
Nelson had been killed at Trafalgar, but it didn’t seem wise to say that, even if Mike could have gotten a word in edgewise, which he couldn’t.
“It’s a wonder they ever manage to get their ships out of dry dock these days,” Commander Harold said, “what with all the paperwork. Do you know how long it’s taken for this commission to come through?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Nine months. Put in for it the day after the war started, and it’s taken you all this time. In my day, I’d already have been at sea. Well? What sort of ship have they given me? Battleship? Cruiser?”
“I’m not from the government at all. I’m a reporter.”
The Commander’s face fell.
“For the Omaha Observer.”
“Omaha. That’s in Kansas, isn’t it?”
“Nebraska.”
“What are you doing in Saltram-on-Sea?”
“I’m writing a story on Britain’s invasion preparations.”
“Preparations!” the Commander snorted. “What preparations? Have you been out on the beach here, Kansas? It looks like a bloody holiday spot. No barricades, no tank traps, not even any barbed wire. And when I complained to the Admiralty, do you know what the young pup there said? ‘We’re waiting for authorization from headquarters.’ And do you know what I said? ‘If you wait much longer, you’ll be asking Himmler!’ Can you swim?”
“Swim?” Mike said, lost. “Yes, I-”