Wingate asked, “Can I ask where, sir?”
“First to Falmouth.” He saw the surprised glances. “After that, well, you’ll know soon enough.” He smiled gravely. “When I do.”
Wingate whistled softly. “It’ll make a gap in the old Harwich Force.”
Drummond looked away. “Replacements are already coming. Four new destroyers from Rosyth. Two American escorts, and some Free-French corvettes. I think they’ll manage.”
But he knew what Wingate meant. The old crowd. Familiar ships and faces. Pain at seeing one of them trying to get back, listing and pitted with splinter holes. The companies lining the rails to cheer like madmen when one returned after sinking a submarine. Remembering those who never came back at all.
But perhaps it was all to the good. Too long on the same job meant weakness when it was least expected. Familiarity brought disaster. He thought of Frank falling. Of Helen’s accusing eyes. Why him?
He suddenly felt tired without knowing why. He wanted to go to his cabin. To think. To try and see behind Beaumont’s words. It was obvious he had a lot of pull in high places. Nick Brooks, for instance. But what could a flotilla of veteran destroyers do that it was not already doing?
The flotilla would slip through the Channel in two separate units. Lomond was remaining here to complete certain repairs, but Beaumont intended to sail with the rest of his brood in Warden, the half-leader. Her captain, Hector Duvall, a bearded and fruity-voiced commander, would love that. To have his new Captain (D) as passenger, tutor and possible executioner all in one package.
Hillier said cheerfully, “Well, my folks will certainly hear about me now! With a man like Beaumont in command we should soon make a name for ourselves!”
Galbraith said dryly, “I hope it’s a name I like.” Drummond glanced at Sheridan. “I’ll leave you to it.” He nodded to the others. “We’ll all know each other better before long.”
He paused by the door. “Thanks for the drink, Number One.”
As the door closed behind him the conversation swelled out louder than before.
Wingate asked, “What d’you reckon Number One? The Med or Western Approaches?”
Sheridan shook his head. “Neither. That’s what I think. Beaumont’s got other ideas.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I don’t even know him.” Sheridan eyed him thoughtfully. “But they say he’s a hero, so I suppose that’ll have to do.”
Drummond stirred in his bridge chair and thrust both hands deeper into his duffel-coat pockets. It was almost midnight, and the breeze across the bridge screen contained a chill, despite the day’s sunlight.
Around and below his chair Warlock’s life went on, measured, routine. Figures eased themselves into gun-mountings and look-out positions, voices murmured through pipes and handsets. One more watch taking over.
It had been an uneventfull if tense run down the Channel, he thought. No moon, but the sky was very clear, so perhaps the E-boats had taken their business up the east coast instead. The W/T office had brought him all the latest news from that other war. Families who were now crouching beneath their stairs or in comfortless air-raid shelters, would be listening to the drone of bombers, the sporadic clatter of anti-aircraft guns. Tomorrow they would emerge, examine what was left in the battered streets, and then go off to their jobs. It was like some huge pretence, and yet if it were stripped of its pathetic bravery a whole nation would collapse. It was strange really. The women were probably so worried about their sons and husbands in uniform to care too much for their own real danger. Yet theirs was often the greater sacrifice. There was an air-raid on across the East End of London right now.
Drummond turned his head to starboard, as if he expected to see something. But it was dark and very peaceful. Just the steady throb of engines, the sluice along the hull from a regular offshore swell.
He heard Sheridan taking over from Rankin, the brief exchange of information. Course, speed, weather. Any cocoa left in the wardroom?
The figures thinned out and settled into their allotted positions for the next four hours.
The voice-pipe intoned, “Able Seaman Jevers on the wheel, sir. Course two-six-five. One-one-zero revolutions.”
Drummond thought about the quartermaster, Jevers. He had been in the ship for six months. His wife had left him for an American G.I. Mangin had told him about it, and how Jevers scanned the mail like a desperate beggar whenever it came aboard. He seemed unable to accept she had gone for good.
Sheridan crossed the bridge, his figure black against the grey paint.
“Starboard watch closed up at defence stations, sir.”
“Very good. ” He tugged out his pipe and jammed it between: his teeth. “Seems quiet enough now. Funny to think that. Brighton is abeam. Or should be if Pilot’s calculations are correct! In peacetime you’d have seen the lights on the piers and promenades from miles out to sea. Now, it could be the Black Hole of Calcutta. ” He watched as Sheridan checked the cornpass repeater. “And all the would-be Nelsons of the wartime Navy are over there, too, sleeping and worrying about getting their commissions.”
Sheridan’s teeth shone in the gloom. “Young Keyes was telling me about it. He only left King Alfred a month or so ago. Apparently all the lads are sweating with the fear that the war’ll be over before they get their bits of gold lace.”
“What do you think, Number One?”
In the stillness he could almost hear Sheridan considering the question. Feet grated on steel, and from the open hatch he heard the regular, comforting ping of the Asdic.
“Years yet, sir. I can’t really accept that peace will ever come. You, of course, will think that strange, I expect. Regular naval family. A better continuity for assessing this sort o thing.”
Drummond shook his head. “No. I’m the first in the family, as far as I know. My father was a soldier.”
Sheridan peered at him. “Really, sir? So was mine, although he was only in it for the Great War.” His voice hardened slightly. “He used to embarrass me sometimes. I was a bloody fool. Must have been, not to see what he was trying to show to others.”
Drummond watched him. “Go on.”
Sheridan rubbed his gloved hands along the screen.
“Sounds silly now. We’re up here, and the war could explode right beside us. Any minute of the day.” He hesitated. “Every Armistice Day it was. Dead on eleven. All the buses and cars stopped at the first stroke of the town hall clock. Everyone standing quite still, faces like stone, for the two minutes’ silence. It used to thrill me as a boy. Make shivers run up and down my spine.”
“Your father was. badly crippled, I believe?”
“That’s right, sir. At the Menin Gate. Shrapnel through both legs and spine. Had to live in a sort of wicker chair on wheels. Died just a year ago. I think of him quite a bit now.”
Sub-lieutenant Hillier, who was assistant O.O.W. under Sheridan, called anxiously, “B-7 buoy abeam to starboard one mile, sir.”
“Thank you, Sub.” Sheridan rubbed his chin. “Every Armistice Day my old father would wheel himself out of the house in his chair and, well, he just kept going until the silence was over. A bus conductor threatened to overturn his chair once, he was that angry. ” He chuckled sadly. “When my mother used to go on at him about it he used to shout, ‘What the hell do they know about it, woman? Standing po-faced like a lot of bloody heroes! They should have seen the mud, the lice, and the bloody corpses! At the Menin Gate we couldn’t even bury ‘em, they were that thick!’ Funny thing was, of course, many of the people he was slamming were in the war like him. It was as if he felt more akin to the dead than the survivors.”