‘Slow ahead together.’ Ransome slipped from the chair and stood on the gently vibrating gratings. ‘Send the sea-boat away, Number One.’ Their eyes met. ‘Tell the doctor to go too.’
‘What is it, sir?’
Ransome wiped his glasses with a piece of tissue. ‘Nothing. You go across with the boat, will you?’
Hargrave walked away and soon the tannoy barked, ‘Away seaboat’s crew!’ Then, ‘Slip the gripes, stand by for lowering!’
Ransome turned back to watch the little raft. Must have been quite a big ship to carry some naval personnel. He held the glasses fixed on the sprawled shape of the officer whose outthrust arm splashed in the sea alongside. Strained and sodden, but the single gold wavy stripe on the sleeve told its own story. The other two were seamen; one had lost a leg, and appeared to have been lashed to the raft by his companions.
’Out pins! Slip!’ The whaler dropped smartly on to Rob Roy’s falling bow wave and veered away from the side on the boatrope. As it was cast free, the oars dipped and sliced into the water, and Ransome saw Hargrave standing upright in the swaying sternsheets while Surgeon Lieutenant Cusack crouched beside the coxswain, the sunlight touching the scarlet cloth between his stripes like blood.
It would not be a pretty sight. Ransome glanced around at the others and saw the new sub, Tritton, fingering his own sleeve, as if he had seen himself lying there. Leading Signalman Mackay too, his expression a mixture of pity and hate. He had served in the Atlantic and knew the score well enough. Sherwood, eyes partly hidden by his pale lashes, his jaw very rigid as he watched the compass. And the youngster Boyes, who had been staring at the flotsam until he felt his eyes on him. Ransome nodded to him. It was all he could offer. And yet Boyes seemed to symbolise everything as clearly as a bursting starshell. They all expected him, their captain, no matter bow young and unprepared, to hold every answer.
Moncrieff said thickly, ‘Not a nice job at any time.’
Ransome watched the whaler’s oars still, the bowman reaching out warily with his boathook as the raft lifted sluggishly, then surged against the hull. They would hold their breath, pretend it wasn’t really happening, while someone reached over and cut away the identity discs from those poor, broken corpses who had once been like Mackay and Tritton. Like me.
Someone, somewhere would have received a telegram, Missing, presumed killed. The three discs would wipe away any last hope for those who still believed in such things.
He said angrily, ‘Signal the whaler to tow the raft alongside!’ He knew he was speaking harshly, but could not contain it. ‘At least we can remember them properly, for God’s sake!’
And so it was to be.
It was the first time Ransome had been off the bridge for days. It felt like an eternity as he climbed down the two ladders, past the new Oerlikon mounting and grim-faced look-outs, and then along the side-deck past the whaler, now hoisted snugly in the davits again, the wetness of its recent excursion already dried in the sunshine. How different it all looked from down here, he thought. The men off-watch, clinging to stanchions and life-rafts similar to the one they had cast adrift to remain with all the other flotsam of war. Faces watched him, some sad, some stony, all familiar to him like his own family.
It was the same as all the other times, and yet not the same at all. The three shapes by the break in the guardrails, no longer without privacy or dignity, but safe under the clean flags. He heard a snapping sound and saw Cusack pulling off some rubber gloves. Leading Seaman Hoggan was standing with the burial party, the snake tattoo very obvious around one thick wrist as he whistled silently to himself. Two faces by the engine-room hatch, Campbell the Chief, and Nobby Clarke, his petty officer, who knew all about losing a ship. Sub-Lieutenant Fallows, his mouth a thin line as he took charge of the party. He never wore his woolly rabbit any more, Ransome had observed. He was like a different person who was trying to find himself.
Ransome looked first to seaward where Dryaden, which oddly enough had the most modern Asdic in the group, ploughed around them protectively, the sunlight flashing on levelled glasses on her superstructure. Then he glanced up to Rob Roy’s bridge and saw Hargrave craning over the side to watch him, silhouetted against the sky.
Ransome removed his cap and opened the little book. It was so creased and worn he wondered why he had not obtained a new one. The three identity discs seemed to stare up at him.
That was why it was different. They were some of their own. Probably part of a naval gun-crew carried aboard a big merchantman. This was for all of them. For us. He made himself face it. For Tony. As he read the familiar prayer he glanced up occasionally as if to test his own strength, his own resolve.
He saw Able Seaman Nunn who had lost everyone in his family gripping the lines by the open guardrail, his face expressionless. Only his eyes told it all. Young Boyes sent down from the bridge with an extra flag, his face screwed up while he held on to the new knife which hung from his belt; beside him the tough seaman Jardine with an arm around the boy’s shoulder.
No, he could not let any one of them down. Especially not now.
He glanced up at the bridge and instantly the last tremble of power began to die away.
Ransome read the last part from memory.
‘We commend unto thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the souls of these our brothers departed, and we commit their bodies to the deep…’
The rest was blurred, wiped away. As he replaced his cap he saw that the deck was cleared, the flags being folded again. There was the clang of telegraphs, and as if emerging from a brief rest, Rob Roy’s screws beat the sea into an impatient froth once more.
While Ransome made his way forward to the bridge ladder he pictured the three little bundles sinking slowly into eternal darkness. The sea was two and a half thousand fathoms hereabouts. Undisturbed.
When he reached the upper bridge he walked to the chart-table and saw that Hargrave had marked the burial for future reference.
Moncrieff was slouched in his chair. He watched him thoughtfully.
‘Feel better now, Ian?’
Ransome faced him. ‘Much.’
He was the captain again.
Gateway
Ian Ransome gripped the rim of the motorboat’s canvas dodger as the little hull bucked wildly over another craft’s wash. The spray across his face was surprisingly cold despite the full, hazy sunshine, and it helped to drive away the strain of marshalling the minesweeping flotilla to their various buoys.
The whole anchorage appeared to be filled with ships, moored, anchored, or tied alongside one another at the mole, so that it gave the impression they might never be able to move again. Above it all, the towering bulk of Gibraltar made even the capital ships appear almost insignificant.
Ransome glanced at the ships as the boat tore between them. Famous names, battleships and cruisers he had read about as a boy, some he had even served aboard in the peacetime RNVR days during his annual training. He thought it unlikely that there had been such a gathering of naval force before. The troopships and ungainly landing-craft too, all bedecked with lines of khaki washing hung out to dry like drab bunting.