“A glass, please, and some iced water.” He lit a cigarette, and relaxed. A couple of gins in a comfortable chair, and the lorry stiffness was wearing off. He crossed over to the telephone box, and rang Sheila’s number. She was out: Missy had gone into town with her mother. He went back to his table, poured out a little more gin and lit another cigarette. The place was almost empty. At one table two majors stared glassily at each other, trying perhaps to match the vacancy on each others’ faces, while at another a young captain and a plump, motherly Wren were engaged in small-talk. The Sub finished his drink, stubbed out his cigarette and headed for the doors.
The music and the wine were finished: Kandy, moonlit, was a place of beauty. Hoping that Sheila would say no, the Sub asked her, “Shall I try to find a taxi?”
“I’d rather walk. It’s so lovely at this time, so cool.”
They walked slowly up the deserted road and along beside the low wall that encircled the lake.
“Did you know that the lake is supposed to claim three lives a year?”
“No. Does it run true to form?” He tossed a glowing cigarette end into the water.
“It does. Children, drunks, or people just found dead and nobody knows how. It’s not very deep.”
Their footsteps were the only sounds in the warm scented night. This place has always been here, he thought. When I was in Sussex, or at school, every night the Sacred Lake was shining and the priests in their yellow robes were hurrying past to the Temple of the Tooth. When dogs were barking in the quiet English night, those drums were throbbing, here in Kandy. Years will pass, and perhaps one day I’ll be here again, fighting another war, and although I’ll be much older and quite different, this lake will be exactly the same and I’ll look at it and think, I was here before, once, and the things that seem important now will be dead and forgotten. Sheila will be old and changed, married to a planter, playing bridge four times a week, and people will say, “Sheila Watson was quite lovely when she was young. You’d never think it now, would you?”
“What the hell’s it all for?” He spoke as much to himself as to her, and she had no answer; only the lake told him, Nothing, it just goes on, and on, because that’s the way God made it. And we, he thought, Sheila and I, are about as important and necessary as a couple of ants.
They came to the house, turned in through the gates between the flanking trees. A little way up on the right was a small secluded lawn, palms surrounding it with the tips of their graceful branches almost meeting overhead.
“Let’s sit.” She sat down beside him and he took her in his arms, her body warm and supple, her breathing sweetly close to his, the scent of her skin more lovely than that of the night.
“John: we…” The palms bowed low and the lawn rocked, the stars were singing and the world had burst into flames, white flames, when she said, urgently, “John – look!” All around the little lawn sat small, brown people. Sheila whispered, “The gardener and his family. That’s their hut, behind us.”
The brown people sat cross-legged with their hands folded in their laps. Motionless, silent, they watched the couple in the centre. The Sub stood up, helped Sheila to her feet.
“Is this some ancient form of Singhalese hospitality?”
She answered, quickly, not looking at him, “It’s late, John. I must go in. Good-night.” She moved away, then stopped to add, “It was a lovely evening.” This was a stranger to whom he said good-night, and it was anger and bewilderment that made him stumble as he hurried down the drive.
He had been silly, he thought. He had put all his trust in a human relationship. Quite properly, naturally, the thing had mis-fired. He wouldn’t let himself down like that again.
He had not only wanted Sheila as a mistress. He had wanted her to love him. He had wanted to have her sharing with him, intimately and secretly, something warm and personal.
I’ve been a fool, he thought: soft! For years I’ve needed no help, no sympathy. Now I’ve thrown myself open, and it hurts.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Seahound was the inside submarine in the “trot” of three that lay on the Depot Ship’s starboard side. A long gangway ran down from the Depot Ship’s well-deck, and narrow planks bridged from the casing of each submarine to the next.
Seahound was embarking ammunition, several hundred rounds, some three-inch High Explosive and some Semi-Armour-Piercing, the latter easily distinguished by their long pointed noses. Most of the crew were employed in this task, standing in a long snake of men down the gangway and over the plank, along the casing up to the for’ard hatch. On the well-deck of the Depot Ship the shells were taken out of their boxes and passed down the line, hand to hand, until they were stacked in the for’ard compartment of the submarine. The Gunlayer worked down in the tiny magazine, which was as hot and as big as an oven, stowing shells in their racks and fitting in the wooden battens between each layer. Occasionally he shouted, “O.K., ’Oppy!”, and Hopkins the Trainer began to pass down more shells until he was told to stop. As Hopkins called for them, a couple of seamen brought more shells aft from the hatch.
Up for’ard, clear of the stream of shells, Rawlinson and Shadwell were checking their torpedo stores. In the Petty Officers’ Mess, the Cox’n was filling in a form about rum. In the wardroom, the Captain was talking to the First Lieutenant, the Navigator was sorting out copies of Notices to Mariners, and the Sub-Lieutenant was going over a file of correspondence. In the Engine-room, the Engineer Officer lay flat on his back, oil-stained, staring up at a large slice of trouble in the port diesel.
It was as hot as hell.
A telegraphist eased himself down the ladder from the Depot Ship, getting in the way of the flow of ammunition.
“’Ere: ’oo the ‘ell are you shovin’?”
“You’re not the only bastard with something to do. I got to get down to the flippin’ boat, see?”
“Stupid flippin’ son of an oar! Choose yer time, don’t er?”
“Come on, Sparky, out of the flippin’ way, or I’ll do yer!”
“Takes two to do that sort of thing,” remarked the telegraphist, as he narrowly avoided a serious accident.
“Why, I’d flippin’ well rape yer!”
“You and ’oo else? Out o’ me way, you beast o’ burden.”
A warrant officer, the belt of his khaki shorts supporting his stomach as well as the shorts, appeared on the top of the gangway.
“That’s the lot!” he bellowed.
“Thank Christ for that,” grunted a stoker who objected to having been drafted into a seaman’s work for the forenoon.
“Why, dear?” asked Bird, in a high, pansy voice. “Are you feelin’ faint?”
Next day, the line of men took their places again on the gangway, only this time it was provisions that they handled: meat, vegetables, bread, tins of sausages, butter, canned fruit, tinned soup, bacon, bags of sugar and flour, boxes of eggs, these and many other things passed down the line, to be checked and stowed away under the Cox’s careful supervision.
On the same day Seahound took in fresh water and fuel, and that night while the diesels growled steadily away, charging the batteries, most of the ship’s company were writing letters home, letters that would be in England in a fortnight’s time: where they themselves would be in a fortnight’s time, none of them had the slightest idea.
Chapter 3
Sub climbed up into the bridge and saluted the Captain.
“Casing secured, sir,” he reported.
“Very good. Number One?”
“Sir?” The First Lieutenant stepped up from the back of the bridge.