“Probably.”
Drummond peered at his watch. A couple of hours’ sleep in the hutch behind the wheelhouse. He needed it badly. The two days at Harwich had everybody dashing about like a maniac. Drills and exercises to settle the new men into one company before they sailed for Falmouth. The other destroyers were spaced ahead and astern of Warlock, each independent of the rest. He thought of the half-leader and smiled. Except Warden, of course. She had Beaumont to contend with.
Yet sharing these small confidences with Sheridan had helped him in some way. He knew little or nothing of him, but already felt that he had known him for months. Perhaps Frank had not spoken of such personal things. Looking back, he wondered if he had really known Frank as much as he imagined.
Sheridan asked quietly, “What about your father, sir? Is he still alive?”
“No.”
Drummond thought of his home at Arbroath outside Dundee. The battalion on parade each Sunday and other special occasions. Maybe it had been the Army which had made him insist on being given a chance for Dartmouth. His father had also been in France in the same war which had crippled Sheridan’s. And God alone knew how many others. Nobody had ever discovered what had happened. He had gone out with a night wiring party. Into that stark moonscape of drifting flares, shell-holes and barbed wire. Neither he nor any of his men were seen again. Drummond, of course, had never known him, and his mother rarely seemed ready to talk about him. He could not really blame her. She had remarried after the war. Another officer in the same regiment. Drummond had never been able to get on with him, although his stepfather had tried hard enough. A big, jolly man in khaki tunic and impeccable kilt. Perhaps he had been trying to see his real father behind all the laughter and offers of friendship.
He added slowly, “He was killed in France.”
He fell silent, and heard Sheridan move away to the other side of the bridge to consult with Hillier.
Drummond often brooded about it. Maybe that was why he had told Helen he would never get married in wartime. Because of his own father. A grave-faced lieutenant in a browning photograph which he had discovered in his mother’s desk drawer.
Across the water he heard the dismal clang of a bell-buoy. There was a wreck nearby. A destroyer which had hit a mine some months back. He hoped Hillier was taking full advantage of a quiet passage to learn all he could. He seemed very pleasant.
He heard Sheridan say, “I’m just going to the Asdic compartment, Sub. Take over.”
Hillier muttered something and then strode to the forepart of the bridge. Drummond turned slightly to watch him. The quick way he moved his head from bow to bow, as if expecting a sudden disaster.
“How does it feel, Sub?”
Hillier tried to relax. “Fine, sir.” He looked aft towards the little steel shack at the rear of the bridge. Above it the radar lantern swayed gently to the ship’s easy roll, and below it Sheridan had already been swallowed up by a steel door which led directly to the cramped Asdic compartment. He added, “Feels a bit dodgy, sir. ” He grinned. “But I guess I can ask you for help if I need it, sir?”
Drummond smiled.. This New Zealander was quite unlike the other sub-lieutenant, Tyson. Originally he had thought Tyson’s manner was part of some inner grief over his missing brother. Now he was equally certain it was not. He was arrogant and unyielding to his subordinates, argumentative with his equals, and sullenly silent whenever he was choked off by the lieutenants.
“I expect so. You’re from Dunedin, I’m told?”
“That’s right, sir. My father’s a doctor there. I think he hoped I’d be one, too, given the time. But I like the sea, always have. When this lot’s over I think I’ll try and stay in the Navy. If not, I’ll go for the merchant service.” His voice broke in a quiet chuckle. “You know, sir, some big liner, with all the girls chasing the officers!”
Sheridan came back and snapped, “Tell the quartermaster to watch his head, Sub! He’s wandering a degree or so all thetime!”
Hillier hurried to the voice-pipe and almost fell on some unseen grating or bracket.
Drummond said quietly, “My fault, Number One. Sorry about that.”
Sheridan lifted his night glasses to study a large flurry of spray on the port beam. A leaping fish? Sea birds taking off? It was nothing.
He said, “My old captain used to catch me out, sir. ” He lowered the glasses. “If I didn’t bottle my assistant, the captain’d say, ‘It’s your watch, Number One. Don’t mind me.’ ” He sighed. “I got on well with him.”
Drummond bit hard on the unlit pipe. There it was again. He was still worrying about the captain who had killed himself after the enquiry into Conqueror’s loss.
“Maybe he just didn’t know how to overcome the real challenge when it came, Number One. I think your father would have understood him. Probably more than most. It takes a man who has lived through hell to help another who is suffering one of his own.”
A bosun’s mate was murmuring into a voice-pipe. Then he said, “From W/T office, sir. ‘All Clear’ over London now. No enemy aircraft being engaged.”
“Thank you.”
Drummond pictured the bombers heading out across the Channel and North Sea to bases in France, Holland or Germany. A lot of Warlock’s company came from the south-east. It was to be hoped that no signals would be waiting in Falmouth. Come home. Your family was bombed last night.
Sheridan said suddenly, “This new role, sir. Do you think it’s anything to do with an invasion?”
“Indirectly. I imagine so. We’ll probably invade through the Med first and then into northern Europe. ” He smiled wearily. “That’s what it said in the newspaper the other day. But where we, as opposed to the whole Allied invasion force, fit in, is beyond me as yet.”
He slid from the chair and stretched his arms.
“Call me if in any sort of doubt. I’m going to turn in.”
He walked stiffly towards the hatchway, seeing Hillier’s pale face watching him as he passed. He groped his way beside a dim police light to the door of his sea cabin. From the wheelhouse he could hear the clatter of loose gear, someone humming quietly and the occasional stammer of morse from the W/T office on the deck below. The bridge was like a tight little steel hive, he thought. Connected up to the rest of the vessel by wires and pipes, which in return relayed information and observations to him. His brain.
He closed the door and threw his cap on to the bookshelf. There was barely room to move, and with the deadlight screwed shut, the air which came through the deckhead vent tasted dirty and over-used. He laid down and closed his eyes. Thinking of Beaumont. Of Frank. Of the ship which trembled through the mattress on his bunk.
The telephone above the reading light buzzed and he snatched it from its hook in one quick movement.
“Captain?”
“Number One speaking, sir. Time to alter course in two minutes.” He sounded surprised.
Drummond peered at his watch and grimaced. He must have fallen asleep after all. And he felt like death.
“I’ll come up.”
“I can manage, sir, if-“
“I’ll come up.”
He dropped the telephone on its hook and rubbed his eyes violently. This was the part which wore you down. Really wore you down.
He stared at the phone and stood up, adjusting automatically to the ship’s uneven motion. Sharper swell. That would be a throwback from Selsey Bill, his mind told him.
But the telephone in the night. That, you never got used to. You woke up with your guts in knots. Your mind cringing. He remembered another captain from the past. He, too, had awakened in his cabin to the call of the bridge telephone. As he had seized it, the door had burst open and the sea had flooded the cabin. The ship had already been plunging to the bottom, yet he had heard nothing of the explosion. Only the telephone. It had taken minutes, but the whole nightmare had been compressed into one tiny fraction of time. He had survived. For six months anyway.