Hargrave nodded to Kellett. At least that was the same everywhere. He rapped on the door. Perhaps when he had done a tour of the ship he might feel differently.
But try as he might he could not dispel the picture of the cruiser’s impressive wake as she ploughed beneath the stars of the Indian Ocean.
‘Enter!’
Now for the next step. He thrust open the door.
After his first meeting with Ransome on that sunny April afternoon, Hargrave often asked himself what he had expected. Perhaps all, or maybe none of the things he saw as he stepped into the small cabin with his cap jammed beneath one arm.
Hargrave did, of course, know something about his new captain and had told himself that he did not care about serving under an officer whom Sherwood might sarcastically describe as hostilities-only.
Ransome had spent most of his war sweeping mines and had won a D.S.C. somewhere along the way. The vessel he had commanded prior to Rob Roy, a veteran of the Great War, had hit a mine one night in the North Sea. She had lost most of her forecastle and should have gone to the bottom there and then. But with a last bulkhead shored up and weeping at every rivet, Ransome had somehow got her back to port. In six months that ship had been repaired and with a new company had carried on with her sweeping. Three months ago she had hit another mine and had blown up with a terrible loss of life. Bad luck? Or was it that Ransome no longer stood on her bridge?
As Ransome cleared some files from the spare chair Hargrave studied him guardedly, and took time to glance around the cabin to glean any extra information about the man upon whom he might depend for his next step to a better appointment.
Ransome was younger than he had expected – an alive, interesting face, tired perhaps, but it did not conceal the man’s alertness, a sudden warmth as he smiled and gestured to the chair.
‘Take a pew. Sorry about the mess. All a bit of a rush.’ He looked at the deckhead as feet thudded somewhere. The fire parties getting ready for another night in harbour with a good chance of an air-raid or two. There would be a moon tonight. The bombers’ favourite. Ransome continued, ‘You’ve been thrown in at the deep end, I’m afraid. I’ve seen your report from the minesweeping course – you did well, I think. Bit of a change after a cruiser, I suppose.’ He did not anticipate an answer. ‘You’ll soon settle down. I think you may have met some of the wardroom?’ His eyes came up, level and unmoving, like a marksman adjusting his sights. ‘Good bunch for the most part.’
‘The RNVR lieutenant, Sherwood—’ Hargrave tried not to blink as the eyes studied him without emotion. ‘I just wondered—?’
‘Not what you’ve been used to, I expect.’ The eyes dipped and Ransome began to refill the pipe he had been holding as Hargrave had entered. ‘Sherwood is extra to complement, but he’s an experiment of sorts. The Germans are using more delicate ways of making our job nasty. We need an expert who can strip down a mine or a fuse and perhaps save time as well as lives.’ He watched Hargrave through the smoke as he held a match over the bowl. ‘He’s a brave man, but there are limits to what anyone can stand. He needed to get back to sea, and for that I’m grateful.’
‘That medal, sir.’
‘George Cross.’ Ransome sat back and watched the smoke drift towards the open scuttle. ‘Sat on a bloody great magnetic mine and defused it.’
Hargrave remembered Sherwood’s hostility. ‘I suppose a lot of his sort—’
‘His sort?’ The grey eyes levelled again. ‘I should have mentioned. The mine was alongside some fuel tanks.’ He leaned forward suddenly. ‘And if you’re bothered about serving with temporary officers you’d better tell me right now. I need a first lieutenant badly.’ His eyes hardened, like the sea’s colour before a storm. ‘But not that badly. This is a crack flotilla, and 1 intend to keep it that way!’
Hargrave looked away. ‘I only meant—’
Ransome pushed his fingers through his unruly hair. ‘Forget it. It must be harder for you. Rank hath its privileges. Using it on you is not my style.’ He grinned, ‘Normally, that is—’
He turned sharply as someone tapped at the door. Hargrave could not see who it was but Ransome stood up and said, ‘Excuse me. One of the hands. I’m packing him off home.’ He stared at his pipe, which had gone out. ‘His family was killed last night in a raid on London. I had the job of telling the poor kid this morning.’ He walked past the chair and as he opened the door, Hargrave caught a glimpse of a very young seaman, dressed in his best uniform with a gunnery badge in gold wire on his arm. He was very pale, like a frightened child.
He heard Ransome say, ‘Well, off you go, Tinker, the coxswain’s fixed it up for you.’
Hargrave heard the youth give a sob, and then Ransome went out and closed the door behind him.
Hargrave looked around the cabin, and tried to picture the cruiser’s captain dealing with a situation like this. He could not. Instead he examined the cabin piece by piece, while his ears recorded sounds and directions beyond the steel plating which would soon be familiar to him.
There were several pipes on the desk, and a handwritten letter from somebody. His glance moved to the bulkhead where a smaller version of the ship’s crest was displayed. In a frame nearby was a pencilled drawing. An oilskin bag of the kind sailors used for money and documents in case their ship was sunk lay beneath it, and Hargrave somehow knew it was for the picture.
He studied it more closely. It portrayed a young man in sweater and slacks sitting with his back to a partly built hull. There was another craft in the background. A boatyard somewhere. The young man held a pipe in his hand. As he had just seen him do. It was little more than a sketch, but it told him a lot. A framed photograph of a young midshipman was on the opposite side. It looked exactly like Ransome as he must have been, but it was not him.
The door swung open and then slammed shut.
Ransome sat down heavily and stared at his pipe. ‘Jesus Christ, how much more can we take of this?’
He glanced at the photograph. ‘My kid brother. That was taken at King Alfred.’ He smiled suddenly; the mood changed again. ‘A million years ago. He’s a full-blown subbie now!’
For those few seconds Hargrave saw them both. The boy and the sketch, like one person.
He said, ‘I was looking at the drawing, sir.’
‘Oh, that.’ Ransome dragged some papers across the desk. ‘I’m going to be away all day tomorrow. Lieutenant Commander Gregory,’ he gestured with the unlit pipe, ‘he drives Ranger, will take over as senior officer in my absence. I’ve left all the notes on the rest of them, two smaller fleet minesweepers and the trawler.
They’re at sea with a group from Portsmouth. A joint exercise. But we shall remain here to complete a few repairs. Unless the country is invaded, or a new delivery of Scotch is announced, in which case we shall slip and proceed to search for it!’
He became serious. ‘I’d also like you to go over the charts. We don’t carry a navigator as such, it’s mostly up to you and me.’
Hargrave felt on safer ground. ‘I was assistant pilot before—’
Ransome eyed him for a few seconds. ‘Thousands of miles of ocean, right? If you were a mile out at the end of it, you’d soon correct it, I expect?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ransome nodded slowly. ‘On this job thirty yards is all you’ll get.’ He let his words sink in. ‘Further than that,’ he slapped out the loose tobacco into his palm, ‘you’re bloody dead.’
He changed tack again. ‘Your old man is a rear-admiral, I believe?’