The ship, his worries, everything seemed to fade as he read it, very slowly and carefully. He should have known, although he had never seen her handwriting before; ought to have guessed, even though he had never trusted too much in fate.
Sentences stood out from each page as if lit from beneath. / have thought about you since we last met. Worried about you more than I could tell anyone. I went to see your funny boat. Imagined us sitting there in the sun, and you answering all my daft questions. 1 saw your brother Tony —
Ransome raised his glass to his lips but it was empty.
I wanted to know what you were doing, how you wereRansome reread it a third time. He could see her smile, her sadness too. Hear her voice in the writing.
Once or twice he glanced up at the drawing on the bulkhead. She was in Plymouth where her father was now a canon. He stared at the date. It had taken several days to reach here.
He sat bolt upright in the chair, recalled how the train had been held up by another raid on Plymouth.
They were used to them down there. Like Coventry and London, Portsmouth and Liverpool.
But he could not push the anxiety from his thoughts. Now he knew what it felt like to worry about someone who was as much under fire as any serviceman.
He examined his feelings, and was surprised but grateful that he no longer felt foolish because of his – he hesitated over the word. Love – how could that be?
Eventually, the question still unanswered and the letter lying open in the lamplight, Ransome took time to fill a pipe of tobacco.
It had been a full day after all.
Victims
The three weeks which followed the minesweepers’ departure from Chatham were the busiest and probably the most maddening Ransome could remember.
The ships steamed west through the Channel, dodging a sudden and concentrated bombardment from the Cap Gris Nez guns and arriving eventually in Falmouth. There they joined up with the rest of the flotilla, the first time they had all been together for months.
Apart from the newcomers, the Dutch minesweeper Willem-stad and the very useful additional heavy trawler Senja from the Free Norwegian navy, the other ships were quite familiar. But in the time they had been apart, transfers, promotion, even death in a few cases, meant different faces and minds to contend with.
Commander Hugh Moncrieff, true to his fearsome reputation, kept his brood hard at it during every hour of daylight, and quite often during the night watches. They steamed around Land’s End and into the Bristol Channel where Moncrieff threw every exercise and manoeuvre in the book at them, and many which he had apparently dreamed up on the spot. He was in his element. He even cajoled the C-in-C Western Approaches to lend him a submarine on one occasion to break through the flotilla’s defences in the role of a U-boat.
With half of their number still sweeping, the rest of them had carried out repeated attacks on the submarine until she eventually surfaced to make the signal, ‘You’ve given me a headache. I’m not playing with you any more!’
Each ship’s company must have cursed Moncrieff until his ears had burned, but Ransome had felt the old pride coming back, the feeling perhaps that the minesweepers were no longer the drudges of the fleet.
It must have been even more difficult for the two foreign captains, he thought. Both the Norwegian and the Dutchman were skilled and experienced, but had been used more for local escort work than chalking up kills in the minefields.
Moncrieff had remarked on one occasion, ‘No matter, Ian, they’ve got the edge on the rest of us.’
Ransome knew what he meant. Like all the servicemen who had left their countries in the face of German invasion, they wanted only to fight, to free their homelands, and rejoin those they loved.
It was hard to imagine how it must feel, to know that a wife or family was in occupied Europe or Scandinavia. If news of their work alongside the Allies reached the Gestapo there was little doubt of what might happen. The bang on the door before dawn. Humiliation, agony, oblivion.
The flotilla even found time to work with the army, covering landing craffcin a mock invasion along the Welsh coast, repeating signals for a mythical bombarding squadron.
As Beckett had complained, ‘Gets more like a bleedin’ circus every day!’
Then, when even Moncrieff was apparently satisfied, the flotilla returned to Falmouth.
Ransome had written a letter to Eve Warwick, but either there had been no time for her to reply or she had had second thoughts. In Falmouth, he decided to telephone her at the number shown on her letter. He presumed it was a vicarage, and waited, rehearsing like a teenage midshipman, planning his exact words should Eve’s mother or father pick up the telephone.
In fact, he was unable to make any contact. He thought again of the air-raids, and called the switchboard supervisor.
She had said wearily, ‘The telephone at that number is out of action.’ When he had persisted she had snapped, ‘There is a war on, you know, sir!’
Curiously, it had been Moncrieff who had unknowingly presented a solution.
‘I’ve been summoned to the C-in-C’s office at Plymouth, Ian.’ He had attempted to conceal his rising excitement. ‘Bit of a flap on apparently. I was asked today about our readiness to sail. 1 told them, God help any of my skippers who isn’t!’
So the rumour was gaining even more substance. Moncrieff added, ‘The real thing this time. I want you to come with me. As my half-leader you might find the trip useful. You’re used to the blood-and-guts of war; down in the command bunkers they see all that as mere statistics.’
Ransome had left Hargrave in charge. He had not warned him about responsibility again. If he had not learned his lesson, he never would now.
Hargrave had asked politely, ‘Is something on, sir?’
‘Yes, Number One. I can’t tell you yet, but if you’ve any mail outstanding I suggest you take some time to deal with it.’
Perhaps Hargrave already knew; maybe his father had told him?
Moncrieff had been provided with a staff car and Wren driver for the trip, and as they roared through narrow lanes then on to the main road to St Austell, Ransome was conscious of the closeness of the home where he had spent just six days of his leave.
Moncrieff must have read his thoughts. ‘I shall be a couple of days at least with Staff Officer Intelligence, Ian. You could take some time off. It might be a long while before you can again.’
Ransome had experienced something like guilt. I might never come back at all. He knew that he could not leave this time without at least trying to see the girl. But he said, ‘I might take you up on that, sir.’ It only made him feel more guilty.
Moncrieff slept for most of the journey, waking suddenly as the car pulled into a roadside inn where he had arranged for them to take lunch. The Wren driver declined the invitation to join them and Moncrieff said, ‘Pretty little thing.’
Ransome thought he had never looked so wistful.
They reached Plymouth in time for tea, and while Moncrieff went off to make his number with the staff officer on duty, Ransome took advantage of his freedom to begin his search.
As he made his way through the city he was appalled by the extent of the damage. Great areas of buildings wiped out, streets marked only by their chipped kerbstones and pavements, the rest a blackened desert where people had once been born, gone to school and learned to fend for themsleves.
An air-raid warden directed him to Codrington House, the address she had given, and had assured him that it had missed the bombing. So far. Ransome had asked him why he should be so certain that one particular building amongst so many had survived.