“But our men come on board in an hour.”
“Can’t help you, I’m afraid. These are my orders.”
He was not going to discuss the matter with a subaltern. Cedric fetched his C.O. Colonel to Colonel, they talked the thing out and decided to clear the after troop-decks. Cedric was sent to wake the Highland duty officer. He found the duty Sergeant. Together they went aft to the troop-decks.
There were dim lights along the ceiling electric bulbs recently daubed with blue paint, not yet scratched clear by the troops. Equipment and kit-bags lay about the deck in heaps; there were Bren gun boxes and ammunition and the huge coffin-shaped chests of the antitank rifles.
“Oughtn’t that to be stored in the armoury?” asked Cedric.
“Not unless you want to get it pinched.”
Amid the heaps of stores half a battalion lay huddled in blankets. Very few of them, on this first night, had slung hammocks. These lay with the other gear, adding to the piles.
“We’ll never get them moved tonight.”
“We’ve got to try,” said Cedric.
Very slowly the inert mass was got into movement. They began collecting their own gear and swearing monotonously. Working parties began man-handling the stores. They had to go up the ladders onto the main deck, forward through the darkness and down the forward hatches.
Presently a voice from the top of the ladder said, “Is Lyne down there?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been told to bring my company to this troop-deck.”
“They’ll have to wait.”
“They’re coming on board now.”
“Well for God’s sake stop them.”
“But isn’t this D deck?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is where we are to come to. Who the hell are all these men?”
Cedric went up the ladder and to the head of the gangway. A stream of heavily laden men of his regiment were toiling up. “Go back,” ordered Cedric.
“Who the hell’s that?” asked a voice from the darkness.
“Lyne. Take your men back to the quay. They can’t come on board yet.”
“Oh but they’ve got to. D’you realize half of them’ve had nothing to eat since midday?”
“There’s nothing to eat here till breakfast.”
“Oh, but, I say, what rot. The R.T.O. at Euston said he’d telegraph through and have a hot meal ready on arrival. Where’s the Colonel?”
The line of soldiers on the gangway turned about and began a slow descent. When the last of them was on the quay, invisible in the darkness, their officer came on board.
“You seem to have made a pretty good muck-up,” he said.
The deck was full of the other regiment carrying stores.
“There’s a man there smoking,” shouted a ship’s officer from above. “Put that cigarette out.”
Matches began to spurt up on the quay. “Put those cigarettes out, down there.”
“––-y well traveling all the ––-ing day. No ––-ing
supper. ––-ed about on the ––-ing quay. Now a ––-
won’t let me have a ––-ing smoke. I’m ––-ing––-ed
with being ––-ed about by these––-ers.”
A dark figure passed Cedric muttering desperately: “Nominal rolls in triplicate. Nominal rolls in triplicate. Why the devil can’t they tell us beforehand they want nominal rolls in triplicate?”
Another dark figure, whom Cedric recognized as the E.S.O
“I say, the men are supposed to strip down their equipment and pack it in green sea-bags before embarking.”
“Oh,” said Cedric.
“They don’t seem to have done it.”
“Oh.”
“It upsets all the storage arrangements if they don’t.”
“Oh.”
An orderly came up. “Mr. Lyne, sir, will you go and see the C.O.?”
Cedric went.
“Look here Lyne, aren’t those infernal Scotsmen out of our troop-deck yet? I ordered that deck to be clear two hours ago. I thought you were looking after that.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. They’re getting a move on now.”
“I should bloody well hope so. And look here, half our men have had nothing to eat all day. Go up to the purser and see what you can rout out for them. And find out on the bridge exactly what the sailing orders are. When the troops come on board see that everyone knows where everything is. We don’t want anything lost. We may be in action before the end of the week. I hear these Highlanders lost a lot of kit on the way up. We don’t want them making up deficiencies at our expense.”
“Very good, sir.”
As he went out on deck the ghostly figure brushed past him in the darkness muttering in tones that seemed to echo from another and even worse world, “Nominal rolls in triplicate. Nominal rolls in triplicate…”
At seven o’clock the Colonel said, “For God’s sake someone take over from Lyne. He seems to have lain down on the job.”
Cedric went to his cabin; he was unspeakably tired; all the events and emotions of the last forty-eight hours were lost in the single longing for sleep; he took off his belt and his shoes and lay on his bunk. Within a quarter of a minute he was unconscious; within five minutes he was awakened by a steward placing a tray by his side; it contained tea, an apple, a thin slice of brown bread and butter. That was how the day always began on this ship, whether she was cruising to the midnight sun or the West Indies. An hour later another steward passed by, striking a musical gong with a little hammer. That was the second stage of the day in this ship. He passed, tinkling prettily, through the first-class quarters, threading his path delicately between valises and kit-bags. Unshaven, ill-tempered officers, who had not been asleep all night, scowled at him as he passed. Nine months ago the ship had been in the Mediterranean and a hundred cultured spinsters had welcomed his music. It was all one to him.
After breakfast the Colonel saw all his officers in the smoking-room. “We’ve got to get everything out of the ship,” he said. “It’s got to be loaded tactically. We shan’t be sailing until tonight anyway. I’ve just seen the Captain and he says he isn’t fuelled yet. Also we’re overloaded and he insists on our putting two hundred men ashore. Also, there’s a field hospital coming on board this morning, that we’ve got to find room for. There is also Field Security Police, Field Force Institute, N.A.A.F.I., two Pay Corps officers, four chaplains, a veterinary surgeon, a press photographer, a naval beach party, some Marine anti-aircraft gunners, an air support liaison unit whatever that is and a detachment of Sappers to be accommodated. All ranks are confined to the ship. There will be no communication of any kind with the shore. Duty company will find sentries for the post and telephone boxes on the quay. That’s all, gentlemen.”
Everyone said, “Lyne made a nonsense of the embarkation.”
When Mr. Bentley, in the first flush of patriotic zeal, left publishing and took service with the Ministry of Information, it was agreed between him and the senior partner that his room should be kept for his use and that he should come in whenever he could to keep an eye on his interests. Mr. Rampole, the senior partner, would see to the routine of the office.
Rampole and Bentley was not a large or a very prosperous firm; it owed its continued existence largely to the fact that both partners had a reasonable income derived from other sources. Mr. Bentley was a publisher because ever since he was a boy, he had had a liking for books; he thought them a Good Thing; the more of them the merrier. Wider acquaintance had not increased his liking for authors, whom he found as a class avaricious, egotistical, jealous and ungrateful, but he had always the hope that one day one of these disagreeable people would turn out to be a messiah of genius. And he liked the books themselves; he liked to see in the window of the office the dozen bright covers which were that season’s new titles; he liked the sense of vicarious authorship which this spectacle gave him. Not so old Rampole. Mr. Bentley often wondered why his senior partner had ever taken to publishing and why, once disillusioned, he persisted in it. Old Rampole deplored the propagation of books. “It won’t do,” he always said whenever Mr. Bentley produced a new author, “no one ever reads first novels.”