Outside it was early morning, with a lively chop in the confined waters of the harbour. He felt the deck tremble gently and knew the Chief was already going over everything with his assistant engineer.
The tannoy again. ‘D’you hear there! Special sea dutymen to your stations! Close all watertight doors and scuttles, down all deadlights!’
Another departure.
The cabin even felt different. It always seemed as if you were leaving it behind like part of the harbour. Until Rob Roy berthed or anchored again, the minute sea-cabin abaft the wheelhouse would be his refuge. He wore his favourite roll-necked sweater, his trousers tucked in his old leather seaboots. Fresh socks, some of the thick ones his mother had made. It might keep her mind off the other side of the war which had taken her two sons to sea.
Ransome patted his pockets although he barely noticed his usual precaution. Pipe and tobacco pouch, plenty of matches. He glanced at the cabin door behind which hung his duffle-coat and cap, binoculars, and a newly laundered towel to wrap around his neck.
His glance fell on the drawing of himself which Hargrave had remarked upon. It all came crowding back as it had yesterday at poor David’s funeral. The weather had been bright and fresh at the Hampshire village where the family lived. Ransome had not met any of them before. It was strange, he thought. War was like that. Someone who become a true friend, a bond as close as love; yet when he had been smashed down by cannon-fire it made Ransome realise he knew so very little about him.
The tannoy squawked, ‘D’you hear there! All the port watch, first part forward, second part aft! Stand by for leaving harbour!’ A brief pause; Ransome could hear the boatswain’s mate’s breathing on the tannoy. He sounded cold. ‘Starboard watch to defence stations!’ More noise this time, thudding feet, the dull bang of another watertight door or hatch. Men hurrying to familiar metal boxes. Not looking at each other just yet. Probably thinking of their last letters home. Like his own which had gone with the naval postman an hour ago.
He tried not to think about the funeral any more and imagined Hargrave as he coped with his new ship getting under way, or the curious stares from the men who were still remembering David in his place. So many things. But it did not work.
There had been several women of varying ages, most of them in black. David’s father had been there, but had not looked a scrap like him. Another surprise: David’s mother had apparently remarried. That explained it. The clergyman had spoken of David’s sacrifice; several people had been quietly weeping. There were two others in uniform, both aircrew from the RAF who had apparently been at school with David. They had looked uncomfortable – embarrassed perhaps? They had most likely been to too many funerals in their trade. The next time…
He unhooked the drawing of himself and held it to the lamp. The rest of the cabin was in darkness, the deadlights screwed shut when he had been roused with a cup of tea by Kellett, the P.O. steward.
It had been after the funeral, the coffin hidden by freshly dug earth, a man rolling up a borrowed Union flag. Handshakes, David’s mother murmuring something to him. ‘So glad you were here, Commander.’ It had sounded so formal, but he had said nothing. Was she really glad, or would she be thinking of her dead son, wishing he and not David had been the unlucky one this time?
The girl had been with her family. A slight figure with her long hair in a pigtail which hung down her school blazer.
Ransome’s heart had given a leap. It was impossible, and yet – He studied the drawing again, remembering exactly how the girl had walked into his father’s boatyard in Fowey, her sketch-pad under her bare arm, pausing to ruffle the head of Jellicoe the cat, who had been drowsing in the summer sunshine on an upturned dinghy. Like the girl at the funeral, she must have been about thirteen then. He slipped the picture into the oilskin bag and laid it beside his gloves.
But the schoolgirl had turned to stare at him when David’s mother had been speaking. She had not been at all like Eve. He almost heard her name again in his thoughts.
How could she be? That had been in that other world before the war, when every summer had been full of sunshine and promise. The last time he had seen her had been in the summer of ’39. He bit his lip. Four years back. In war it was a bloody lifetime.
The telephone above his bunk gave a sharp buzz. The one on the desk had gone, in a drawer too probably. Symbolic. The link with the land was cut. Almost.
He picked it from its cradle. ‘Captain…?’
It was Sub-Lieutenant Morgan, his Welsh accent very strong over the wire. He had entered the navy by a roundabout route, and had first been in the merchant service where he had obtained his ticket. He had transferred to the navy and had started all over again. He was a junior sub-lieutenant, and yet was qualified in navigation and watchkeeping, and could in time have a command of his own. He would be hard to replace.
‘Signal, sir. Proceed when ready.’
Ransome asked, ‘What’s the forecast?’
‘Freshening wind from the south-east, sir. Not too bad, isn’t it?’
Ransome smiled and put down the handset. He said that about every sort of weather.
The desk was throbbing more insistently now and he could picture the other minesweeper alongside, the complicated mass of wires and fenders which still held them both netted to the shore.
Hargrave would be down soon. What did he really think about bis new job?
He thought of that last meeting with the girl called Eve. She and her parents had come to Cornwall to a cottage over the water in Polruan. They apparently borrowed it every year from a friend. He knew it was ridiculous of course, he still did, but he had always looked forward to the school holidays when people filled the villages and seaports, or hiked across the cliffs and moorland. Always she had brought her sketch-pad with her. Shy at first, they had become close while she had told him of her ambition to become a proper artist. He could see her clearly in her fade4 shorts and shirt, her long dark hair tied back from her ears, her eyes watching him while he had explained about building boats. The yard was owned and run by Ransome’s father, who had moved there in the twenties from a smaller Thameside yard. Fowey with the village of Polruan on the opposite side of the little estuary had been exactly what he had wanted for his craft, for his two sons to follow in his footsteps, although Tony had still been at school then himself. Ransome felt the old twinge of jealousy he had known when he had seen his brother walking and chatting with the bare-legged girl. The same age; it had seemed natural and yet…
He stood up, angry with himself for allowing the memory to unsettle him. He was ridiculous. God, he was ten years older than she was.
He thought of the girl at the funeral; she had been standing as Eve did when she was trying to fix a subject in her mind’s eye for her sketching.
Ransome always remembered that last meeting. He had been driving a potential buyer for one of his father’s fishing boats to the station in the yard’s pickup van, and had met Eve with her parents waiting with their luggage. The holiday had been cut short. Ransome had not been sure which had surprised him more.
Her parents had not been unfriendly but had kept their distance. He had been surprised that Eve had not told him her father was a clergyman; or that she was leaving on that day.
She had been in her school uniform, something he had not seen before, and he knew she was hating him seeing her like that, embarrassed, when they had always shared each other’s company like equals.