Maxwell nodded. ‘Yessir.’ To the seaman he barked, ‘Mr Kemp is up in control. Pass the word for him to lay aft, chop, chop. The buffer will lett him have a couple of hands.’ He added angrily, ‘Bloody well get a move on!’
Lindsay faced forward again, troubled by Maxwell’s sudden irritation. Perhaps it was his own example which had done it. Maybe his outward mask of self-control was not so strong as he believed.
He heard the bosun’s mate passing the order on the handset, his voice sullen.
Maxwell returned to his side and said vehemently, ‘Number Six gun, was it. Those marines are just trying to rile me.’ He seemed to realise he had spoken aloud and swung away, adding sharply, ‘Pipe the port watch to defence stations. And-I‘11 see that rating who was smoking on duty in five minutes, got it?’
The bosun’s mate faced him coldly. ‘Got it, sir.’
Lindsay thought about Goss and came to a decision. Maxwell’s attitude was dangerous and could not be tolerated. But it was the first lieutenant’s job to deal with internal grievances, and deal with them he would.
By the time Midshipman Kemp had made his way aft to the poop the daylight was almost. gone. As he groped along the guardrail he could feel the ice-rime under his glove and wished he had put something warmer than an oilskin over his other clothing. The sea looked very dark, with deep swells and troughs, through which the ship’s wake made a frothing white track, fading eventually into the gathering gloom.
Beside the covered twelve-pounder he found Leading Seaman Swan waiting for him, one foot on the lower guardrail while he stared astern with weary resignation.
Kemp asked, ‘Where are the others?’
Swan straightened his back and looked at him. He was a big man, his body made even larger by several layers of woollens beneath his duffel coat He had already done several repair jobs about the upper deck in the freezing weather and was just about ready to go below. His neck and chin felt sore, mainly because he had started to grow a beard, and the cold, damp air was playing havoc with his patience. Kemp’s arrival did nothing to help ease his irritation. Swan was a regular with seven years service to his credit and was normally quite tolerant of midshipmen in general. They were the in-betweens. Neither fish nor fowl, and were usually taken at face value by the lower deck. Hounded by their superiors, carried by petty officers and leading hands, midshipmen were more to be pitied than abused. But just this once Swan did not feel like carrying anyone, and Kemp’s obvious uncertainty filled him “with unreasoning resentment.
He replied offhandedly, ‘They’ll be here any second.’ He waited for Kemp to pull him up for omitting the sir.
Kemp shivered and said, ‘What’s the trouble anyway?’
The leading seaman gestured with a massive, leathergauntleted fist towards the nearest raft. It was poised almost vertically on two wooden skids, so that in a real emergency it could be released to drop straight down over the port quarter.
‘Trouble with some of these bloody O.D.‘s is that they paint everything. Some idiot has slopped paint all over the lines, and in this sort of climate it only makes ‘em fray more easily.’ He saw Kemp’s eyes peering doubtfully at the heavy raft and added harshly, ‘Not that it matters much. What with paint and the bloody ice, I doubt if the thing would move even if Chatham barracks fell on it!’
Two seamen loomed up the poop ladder and he barked, ‘Where the hell have you been? I’m just about two-blocks waiting in the sodding cold!’
The first seaman said, ‘The officer of the watch ‘ad me on the rattle for smokin’.’ He looked at Kemp. ‘That’s wot.’
Swan waited for Kemp to say something. Then he said angrily, ‘Well, just you wait here. I’m going to get some new lines. You can start by checking how many of the old ones are frayed, right?’
As he stamped away one of the seamen muttered, ‘What’s up with Hookey then? Miserable bastard.’
Kemp gripped the guardrail with both hands, willing himself to concentrate on the raft. He knew the two seamen, like Swan, were testing him, that almost any other midshipman from his class would have snapped back at them. Won their obedience, if not actual respect. It was always the same. He seemed unable to face the fact he was here, that no amount of self-deception would change it. He could almost hear his father’s resonant voice. ‘I can’t think where you get it. No moral fibre, that’s you. No guts!’
He heard one of the seamen duck behind the twelvepounder gunshield and the rasp of a match. If Kemp was unwilling or unable to act, they were quite happy to wait for Swan’s return.
One of them was saying, ‘Did you ‘ear about that stoker in Scapa?’ Ad a cushy shore job stokin’ some admiral’s boiler, an’ they found ‘im in ‘is bunk with a bloody sheep!’
The other voice said, ‘Never! You’re ‘avin me on!’
‘S’truth.’ He was enjoying the much-used yarn, especially as he knew the midshipman was listening: ‘When the jaunty slapped ‘im on a charge he told ‘im that he didn’t know it was a.sheep. But that ‘e’d been so long in Scapa ‘e thought it was a Wren in a duffel coat!’
Kemp thrust himself away from the rail. ‘That’s enough, you two!’
They both stared at him in mild surprise.
‘Start working on those lines!’
One of them said, ‘Which lines, sir?’
The other added, ‘Can’t see much in this light, sir.’
Kemp felt the despair rising like nausea. It had been the same when Dancy had been questioning him about his father. It was always like that.
He seized the nearest seaman’s sleeve and thrust him towards the raft. ‘Get up there and. feel them one at a time!’ He swung on the second man. ‘And you start freeing the ice from the metal slips. Swan will probably want to splice them on to the new lines.’
Behind his back the seaman on the raft made an obscene gesture and then looked away as Kemp returned to the rail.
Kemp was shivering uncontrollably beneath the oilskin. He knew it was partly because of, the cold, but also due to his inability to play out his part as he, knew he must if he was to keep his sanity. Kemp was an-only sonand in the beginning had been prepared to try and see his father’s point of view. From as far back as — he could remember it had been like that. The tradition, the house full of naval portraits and memories, even now he could understand his father’s desire to see him following the family’s heritage. Perhaps if he had known what he had wanted to be, had found-someone to help and advise him, then his father might have relented. But at eighteen Kemp was still unsure. All he did know for certain was he did. not want or need the Service, and that his father had become more than an adversary. He was the very symbol of all he had come to hate.
When he had been appointed to this ship he had, known his father’s hand was in it. To knock some sense into him. Smooth the rough edges. In some ways Kemp had almost believed it himself. The officers were so unusually mixed and totally different from those he had met before.
He was not so inexperienced that he could not recognise the antagonism and occasional enmity between the officers, but when it came down to it they all seemed to be the same. In the action, as he had crouched inside the chart room he had heard their voices. Flat, expressionless, moulded to discipline, no matter what the men really thought behind the words.
He looked up startled as Swan bounded up the ladder carrying a huge coil of line.
Swan shouted, ‘What the hell are you doing up there, Biggs? Come down immediately and fix a lifeline, you stupid bugger!’
Even as he spoke the other seaman inadvertently cut through a lashing with his knife. Perhaps because’ his fingers were cold, or maybe the icy planking beneath his boots took him off balance, but the result was the same, and immediate. The end of the severed lashing, complete with a metal shackle, slashed upwards like a frozen whip, cutting the seaman Biggs full in the face as he made to scramble back to the deck. Kemp. stared horrified as the man swayed drunkenly, his duffel coat pale against the black sea at his back. Then as Swan flung himself on to the raft Biggs fell outboard and down. One second he was there, the next nothing. He had not even had time to cry out.