Cordeaux had dropped his eyes, his face scarlet.
Then de Chair had turned slowly and said, ‘He was speaking to me, Guns. As it happens, I do not believe that something concerning our job is a blight on the dinner table.’ He had eyed him calmly. ‘More useful than some of your topics, I’d have imagined. Your mind hardly ever seems to move beyond certain sexual activities, all of which put me off my dinner!’
Nobody spoke.
Then Maxwell had smiled. ‘We are edgy tonight! Are you a bit peeved because the captain hasn’t put you in for a medal because of your superb gunnery? Bloody luck is more like it!’
de Chair had stood up very slowly, his neat figure swaying easily with the deck. ‘Perhaps-. But at least I have so far confined my gunnery to killing Germans.’
Maxwell’s face had been suddenly drained of colour. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’
The marine had moved towards the door. ‘Just stay off my back, Guns, or by God you’ll regret it!’ The words had hung in the air long after de Chair had left.
Maxwell had said haltingly, ‘Can’t imagine what the bloody man is talking about.’
But nobody had looked at him.
Barker had not been present on that occasion, but had received news of the flare-up within the hour. One of the stewards had served in the ship in peacetime and had been well trained by Barker in such matters. In fact, when he had been the ship’s purser Barker had evolved an almost foolproof intelligence service. The ship’s hairdresser had hoarded vital information about the rich female passengers, the. senior stewards had hovered at tables and around the gaming room just long enough to catch a word here, a tip there. There were others too, and all the information went straight ‘ to Barker.
With the hopeless mixture of hostilities only ratings, regulars and ex-merchant seamen he had found it harder to rebuild his network, but he was starting. He disliked the regular, naval officers, mainly because they made him feel inferior, or so he believed. For that reason he was glad to obtain the news of a clash between de Chair and Maxwell. ‘Of Lindsay he knew nothing as yet. Very controlled, and from what he had heard, extremely competent. Nobody’s fool, and with a sharp edge to his voice when he needed it. Midshipman Kemp, at the bottom of the scale, was the son of a senior officer. Kemp, in Barker’s view, was worth watching. Any connection with a senior officer was always useful. The midshipman himself was not. Rather shy, not exactly effeminate, but you could never be sure. He had discarded Emerson, the warrant engineer. A pensioner, he was old, fat and dull. He.dropped his aitches, referred to his far off wife as ‘me old woman’, and was generally distasteful.
But Maxwell now, here was something. Goss had hinted that the lieutenant had been under a cloud before the war, but Barker had always imagined it to be connected with some minor breach. Slight discrepancy in mess funds, or found in bed with his C.O.‘s wife. Nothing too damning. But from what the steward had heard and seen it now appeared very likely that Maxwell had been involved in a serious accident.
He would, however, treat de Chair with- an even greater respect from now on, even if he was a regular. de Chair was exactly like some of the passengers whom Barker had served in the better days of cruising. Outwardly easy-going, deceptively relaxed, but with — all the toughness of arrogance and breeding just below the surface. Not a man to trifle with.
It was a pity about Jupp, he had thought on more than one occasion. As chief steward and a personal watchdog over the captain, Jupp should have been the mainspring of the whole network. Barker had served with him twice before, and knew better than to try and force the man to betray his trust. It could be dangerous to push him. You could never be entirely sure how much a senior steward knew about his purser. Barker owned a boarding house in Southampton and another in Liverpool. People might suggest it impossible to acquire such property on his pay alone. They would have been right, too.
The only officer in the ship with whom Barker shared some of his confidences was Goss. Not because he particularly liked him, in fact, he usually made him feel vaguely uneasy. Goss had somehow never bothered to rise with his rank, not, that is, in Barker’s view. Beneath warm, star-filled skies in the Pacific, with all the magic of a ship’s orchestra, the gay dresses and white dinner jackets, Barker had always felt in his element. But once or twice at the chief officer’s table in the dining room he had squirmed with embarrassment at Goss’s obvious lack of refinement. Big, self-made, meticulous in matters of duty, Goss seemed unable to put on a show for the passengers at his table. Barker had seen the quick smiles exchanged between them as Goss had told some ponderous story about raising an anchor in a gale, or the time he had fought four drunken stokers in a Sydney bar and knocked them senseless. He was a difficult man to know, harder still to befriend.
But he was the first lieutenant, and in Barker’s eyes still the senior chief officer in the company. Once the war was over, breeding or not, Goss would get a command. With his seniority plus war experience the company could hardly avoid it. When that happened, Barker would be ready for his own step up the ladder, if he had anything to say about it.
So without too much hesitation he had made a point of visiting Goss that same night. Goss, he knew, had the middle watch, and as was his normal practice stayed in his roomy cabin out of sight until a few minutes before the exact time due on the bridge.
It was not that Goss openly discouraged visitors to his private domain, it was just that his attitude was generally unwelcoming, like some trusted curator of a museum who resented visitors on principle.
If the rest of the ship had been altered and scarred’ by the Navy’s ownership, Goss had somehow retained his old surroundings more or less as they had always been, so that his cabin was, in its own way, a museum, a record of his life and career.
There were many framed photographs of the ship and other company vessels in which he had served over the years. Pictures of groups, large and small, officers and owners, self-conscious passengers and various happenings in several ports of call. A blue and white house-flag of the company adorned one complete bulkhead, and the shelves and well-polished furniture were littered with models and mementos and more framed pictures. One of them showed Goss shaking hands with old Mr Cairns, the head of the company, who had died just a few weeks before the war.
Whenever Barker visited the cabin he always looked at that particular picture. It was the only place where he had seen Goss smile.
Goss had listened to Barker’s casual excuse for the visit without emotion. Stores had to be raised from an after hold the following day and would the first lieutenant arrange some extra working parties for the task? It had all sounded innocent enough.
As he had gone through the motions Barker had studied Goss’s heavy features with methodical interest. He had been sitting in one of his fat leather chairs, his jacket hanging neatly on a hook behind the door, his cap. and binoculars within easy’ reach. But without a collar or tie, in his crumpled-shirt and a pairof old plimsolls, he had looked like one of his own relics. Had Barker possessed an ounce of sensitivity he might have felt either concern or even pity, but instead he was merely curious. Goss, the great unbreakable seaman, looked old, tired and utterly alone.
Goss had said eventually, ‘That all?’
‘Of course.’ Barker had walked round the chair, steadying himself against the table as the ship rolled wearily into one more trough. ‘Oh, by the way, I did hear something about Maxwell. Seems he was in an accident of some sort.’ A carefully measured pause. ‘de Chair was saying a — few words on. the matter at dinner. Pity you weren’t there yourself.’