Jardine winked. ‘Take it off yer back, Gerry. They don’t mean no ’arm.’
Boyes hurried along the side deck, watching out for more obstacles until he reached the first ladder to the bridge. He felt that he understood what Jardine meant. They might use the way he spoke or his lack of experience as a butt for their jokes. Sooner or later they would turn to another newcomer. Either way, they had accepted him.
‘Where are you going?’
Boyes gripped the ladder to prevent himself from falling as the hull heeled unexpectedly to a sharp turn. It was the midshipman, whom he had not seen before.
‘I’ve been sent to the bridge, sir.’
A shaft of frail sunlight broke through the clouds and brought out the colour of the dazzle paint on the bridge. But Boyes could only stare at the frowning midshipman.
He exclaimed, ‘Good heavens, it’s you, Davenport!’
It was amazing, he thought dazedly. Davenport was about his own age, and they had been at the same school in Surbiton, in the same class for most of the time.
Davenport looked as if he had been hit in the face. He seized Boyes’ arm and dragged him past the starboard Oerlikon mounting where a seaman gunner was already strapped in his harness and testing his sights against the land.
Davenport asked wildly, ‘What are you doing here?’
It was such a ridiculous question that Boyes wanted to laugh.
He replied, ‘I was drafted—’
Davenport did not let him finish. ‘You failed your C.W., did you?’ He hurried on like an actor who has only just been given his lines. ‘I can help you. But if they know we grew up together, I shall have to keep out of it.’
He straightened his back as a petty officer hurried down the ladder.
‘And call me sir, next time!’ Then he gripped his arm again, his voice almost pleading. ‘Really, it will be better for your chances.’
Then he lowered himself to the deck and Boyes stood there unmoving while he took it all in. A friend in the camp? He doubted it; in fact he had never really liked Davenport at school. All the same…
He reached the bridge and handed the paper to a boatswain’s mate. The latter said, ‘I’ll see Jimmy gets it. Things is a bit fraught up ’ere at the moment.’
Boyes took a lingering glance around the open bridge. The rank of repeaters and telephones, a leading signalman with his glasses trained on the tower ashore, a look-out on either side, some officers grouped around the compass platform, the occasional murmur of orders up and down the wheelhouse voicepipe.
An officer in a soiled duffle-coat, his binoculars dangling from his chest, brushed past him. Then he hesitated. ‘Who are you?’
Boyes recalled Mr Bone’s tirade and answered cautiously, ‘Ordinary Seaman Boyes, sir.’
The officer nodded and gave him a searching glance which Boyes could almost feel. ‘Oh yes, the replacement.’
He unexpectedly held out his hand. ‘Welcome to Rob Roy.’ Then he walked aft to peer down at the quarterdeck.
Boyes whispered to the boatswain’s mate, ‘Which one is that?’
The man laughed. ‘That’s the Guv’nor. The Old Man.’ he nudged him roughly. ‘’E won’t shake yer ’and again if you meet ’im across the defaulters’ table.’
Boyes barely heard him. The young officer was the captain.
Boyes’s day was made.
‘Cox’n on th’ wheel, sir!’ Beckett’s voice sounded harsh as it echoed up from the wheelhouse directly below the bridge.
Ransome nodded to the vague shapes of the watchkeepers, then made his way to the tall, wooden chair which was bolted to the deck behind the glass screens.
Around and beneath him he could feel the vessel moving restlessly against the other minesweeper alongside, caught the acrid downdraught of funnel-gas as the wind buffeted the bridge.
It was darker than he had expected, the sky still grey beyond the fast-moving clouds.
He settled himself in the chair and tightened the fresh towel around his neck. He recalled something his father had said on mornings like this. Spring in the air – ice on the wind.
Voicepipes muttered around the bridge and he watched as familiar figures and faces took on personality. Shapeless in duffle-coats, but he would know any one of them in pitch-darkness.
The leading signalman, Alex Mackay, his cap fixed firmly to his head by its lowered chinstay, binoculars to his eyes as he watched the harbour for unexpected signals. They would be unlikely to get any, Ransome thought. As soon as they quit harbour they faced death in every mile. But you had to accept that. Accordingly, the minesweepers’ comings and goings were taken for granted. Routine.
And if the air cringed to a sudden explosion and you saw one of your group blasted to fragments, you must accept that too. The navy’s prayer, ‘If you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined’, seemed to cover just about everything.
Standing by the wheelhouse voicepipe’s bell-shaped mouth, Lieutenant Philip Sherwood stood with his gloved hands resting on the rail below the screen, one seaboot tapping quietly on the scrubbed gratings. He gave the impression that he was bored, indifferent to anything which might be waiting outside the harbour.
Sub-Lieutenant Tudor Morgan, the assistant navigator, crouched on the compass platform, using the spare moments to examine the gyro repeater and take imaginary ‘fixes’ on dark shapes ashore.
Ransome glanced round towards the Ranger alongside, pale blobs of faces watching while the hands stood at the guardrails handling the mooring wire and fenders, ready to cast off.
Above Rob Roy’s bridge their most valuable addition, the radar lantern, like a giant jampot, glistened in overnight damp or drizzle. It was their ‘eye’, all-seeing but unseen. Not even a dream when Rob Roy had first slid down into salt water some six years back.
Ransome wanted to leave the chair and prowl around the bridge as he always did before getting under way, but knew Hargrave would take it as a lack of confidence. He saw the heavy machine-gun mounting abaft the funnel swivel round, the six muzzles moving in unison as its crew tested elevation and training. The two four-inch guns and a single Oerlikon on either side of the bridge completed their official armament. Ransome recalled Hargrave’s surprise when he had seen some of the sailors cleaning an impressive array of light machine-guns which ranged from Vickers .303’s to a couple of Bren guns. The previous skipper had taken Rob Roy to Dunkirk and had helped to rescue several hundred soldiers. When Ransome had assumed command and had asked the captain much the same question as Hargrave, he had replied, ‘The army seemed to forget their weapons when we landed them in England.’ He had given a wink, ‘It seemed a pity to waste them, eh?’
Feet clattered on a bridge ladder and Ransome heard Sherwood mutter, ‘God, I didn’t know it was a black tie affair! A bit formal, what?’
Ransome shot him a glance to silence him and saw Hargrave taking a last glance at the forecastle deck where he had been speaking with Bunny Fallows, who was standing in the eyes of the ship near the bull-ring while he waited for Hargrave’s order.
Ransome wondered what Hargrave thought of the sublieutenant. A temporary officer he might be, but he could not be faulted at his job. Beyond that he was a bloody menace, Ransome had decided. He was one of his small team he would not be sorry to lose.
Fallows would be waiting for just one seaman to make a mistake, and his clipped, aristocratic voice would be down on the man’s head like a hammer. Fallows was really two people. At sea he was the perfect officer, with both eyes firmly set on the next step up the ladder of promotion. In harbour he often drank too much, and had been warned several times for abusing the hands when he could barely stand. As Campbell, the Chief, had once wryly commented, ‘On the bridge he’s a real little gent. When he’s awash with booze I seem to hear the accent of a Glasgow keelie!’ It was unusual for Campbell to make personal remarks about anyone. He certainly had Fallows’ measure.