“Hardly haute cuisine, Chief,” said Spence. The cook had seen many a recruit come and go, but there was something more likable about Spence than most — perhaps it was his unabashed naïveté, an eagerness that assumed the best in everyone he met, and the cherubic face that was in stark contrast with the salt-leathered scowls he got at times in the mess. Not all of them, like Johnson, who was peeling spuds for the freezer, were volunteers like Spence.
“And that Yank bloke we have aboard,” said the cook. “NATO liaison fella. No Marmite for him. They don’t understand it.”
“Can’t say I’m mad about it myself,” smiled Spence.
“Ah,” said Johnson, “puts hair on your chest. Right, Chiefie? Iron in the old pecker,” said Johnson. “Cock stiffener.”
Spence blushed. The cook said nothing — they were sending him choirboys, they were, all keen and woefully inexperienced in the ways of the world — but unlike some of his ilk, the chief cook aboard HMS Peregrine took no delight in watching the transition from recruit to leading seaman.
“Never mind him,” said the cook, pushing the big thirty-two-once jar of black beef extract spread toward Spence. “Just don’t put it on till you’ve made all the other sandwiches. Most crew don’t like it when it’s been sitting around too—”
“Action stations!”
The cook’s voice was drowned out as the sound of the alarm and men running, grabbing life jackets, asbestos balaclavas, and gloves, thumped quickly through the guided missile destroyer. In an instant the high whine of abrupt start-stop electric motors could be heard bringing weapons into line with radar guidance. Peregrine heeled sharply to starboard at thirty knots, the flare of her bows lost in a gossamer of spray, phosphorescent with plankton. William Spence could hear the sudden dump! dump! dump! of the 155-millimeter — and then the hard-running-faucet sound of the IKARA torpedo-missile, Peregrine turning so violently to port that coffee spat out of the hot twin Silex pots that had been shoved hard against their metal guards.
“A sub,” said Johnson, either very brave or feigning indifference.
“Yes,” said the cook, “a sub, and you’d better get on with it. Soon as you’ve finished with that lot, you can put them in the freezer, give Spence here a hand with the sandwiches.” Johnson was getting mad as he was forced to hold hard on to the sink as the ship rose, bucked hard astarboard, and fell through a belly-wrenching slide into a deep trough. “Only the British bloody navy would have you peeling potatoes. On the Yank boats…”
“Ships,” corrected Spence good-naturedly, more in the way one might help a friend rather than criticize.
“Quite right, lad,” said the chef. “Ship.”
“Ship, shit, what’s the difference? We aren’t sailors. I didn’t join up to peel—”
The Peregrine now bashed its way through a wave, the heavy spray like fine rain above them, the second escort a lump against moon-tinted sea a quarter mile to port.
“ ‘S’-pattern,” said Spence.
But the chef was looking at Johnson, handing him back the scraper he’d dropped in the heavy, sharp roll. “That’s where you’re wrong, Johnson. We are sailors. Without food, lad, this ship can’t function.” He handed Johnson another potato. “All right then?”
Johnson grunted.
“Besides,” continued the cook, “if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined.”
“I didn’t,” said Johnson, his tone turning surly. “It was either this or a year in the nick.”
“What for?” asked the cook. Spence was amazed; he’d never actually seen a real live criminal before, let alone worked next to one.
“I found some silver,” said Johnson defiantly.
“Where?” asked the cook.
“In a house. Where else?”
“What’s done is done,” said the cook, unscrewing a peanut butter jar, face going red. “Just so long as we don’t have any silver missing around here. Because—” continued the cook, handing the jar to Spence, “if we find anything missing, we’ll cut your bloody twinkie off. Like one of them ayatollahs. Right, Spence?”
Spence didn’t know what to say.
“Well it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?” Johnson continued, unrepentant, swinging the french fry cutter toward him. “I mean we’re all for Davy Jones.” He saw Spence’s alarm and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, mate. Food for the fucking fishes, we are. What flamin’ chance ‘ave we got next to one of them Russian subs? You answer me that.” The ship was slowing down, the bell signaling end-of-action and standby stations.
“See?” said Johnson, waving his peeler in the general direction of the combat information center in the heart of the ship. “They don’t know what’s fucking going on.”
“Probably just a drill,” said the cook.
Johnson tossed another potato into the bucket. “You know how many miles we’ve got to go yet?” he asked them ominously.
“Next couple of days,” said William, “the Americans will take over. Midway point.”
“Oh,” said Johnson. “I see. Once the Yanks take over, we’ll be all right. Don’t you know we’ll be taking their convoy back?”
Spence didn’t reply — Johnson seemed so jaded about everything that no matter what you said, he’d pick fault with it.
“You married, Spence?” asked Johnson.
“No, I’m not actually.”
“Well, actually,” said Johnson, “it’s just as well. No widow.” The cook shifted off the safety sleeve on the automatic meat slicer, then swung it around, Johnson’s grooved face distorted in its shining surface.
“Stow it!” said the cook. He was the boss of the galley and preferred informal rules, despite the British navy’s long tradition of tar and feathers, but when yobbos like Johnson started upsetting people unnecessarily, then he was prepared to pull rank. For a second Johnson said nothing, and in the uneasy silence the cook thought of his wife and two children, teenagers, in Portsmouth — and ruminated on the fact of how things had changed. Oh, there’d always been the shipboard whiners like Johnson as long as he’d been in the navy, but he couldn’t have imagined a rating daring to speak with such a defeatist streak in him since the first day out. Fortunately, for every Johnson out there, he hoped — believed — there were two or three Spences, otherwise it was going to be a long, grumpy business in Peregrine’s crew’s mess.
It wasn’t only Johnson that he wondered about. With NATO there were foreigners you had to cater to — a Yank or two at the table — usually one would like his meat rare — and a sprinkling of Scandinavians, all blond and looking as if they had just been skiing. And there were Dutch hippies who smoked a lot—”not always tobacco, mate”—and had everybody wondering whether, when push came to shove, they’d be up to it. “Democratic disease, “ the chef had explained to young Spence. And the Krauts, of course, always liked the British ships best. More beer rations. Spence was too friendly, too young really, to be on a ship with all these other blokes — and always asking questions — what wine was best with this and that, and the cook telling him no wine was any bloody good on ship because everything ended up getting sloshed and corked anyway.
“Wait till the war’s over, laddie,” the cook had finally told him. “Get this lot down pat and next thing you’ll find yourself on some shore establishment doing the hors d’oeuvres for the admiral’s party.” But William Spence had a theory — that if he could learn to make dishes for everyone, for “all the sixteen nationalities in NATO” coming from all kinds of different backgrounds, then he’d have a head start when he was demobbed. He had told the cook that he’d started a list of what wines did travel best — now, that surely had to be of use if you were going into the cruise trade after the war.