Hargrave nodded. ‘I went to see him.’
Ransome looked at his pipe and decided to change it for another. I’ll bet you did, he thought. Hargrave was much as he had expected, although he had been surprised that a regular officer should have been sent to replace David. Unless – Hargrave had been found unsuitable for submarines. That was hardly surprising, in that elite service within a service. Did someone high up, his father for instance, see the minesweeper as a chance of a quick promotion?
‘I suppose you wanted a destroyer?’
The shot made Hargrave flush but Ransome grinned. ‘I know I did. The last thing I wanted was the chance of getting my arse blown off minesweeping.’ He gestured vaguely. ‘But it’s important. I expect you’ve had that rammed down your throat at the training base until you’re sick of it. But it’s true. Without us, nobody sails. If we fail, the country will be squeezed into defeat. It’s that simple. The swept channel runs right around these islands, an unbroken track, into which the enemy throws every device he can dream up. Tyne, Humber, Thames, from Liverpool Bay to the Dover Straits, we sweep each and every day, no matter what. There’s no death-or-glory here, no line-of-battle with flags and bands playing.’ His eyes fell on his brother’s picture and he felt his muscles contract. In his last letter Tony had been full of it. Appointed to the Light Coastal Forces. A motor torpedo boat. God, his mother would love that.
He added, ‘We sweep mines. It’s a battle which started after Dunkirk and will never stop until—’ he shrugged. ‘God alone knows.’ He made up his mind and wrenched open the little cupboard, and placed the whisky bottle and two glasses on the desk.
Hargrave watched as lie broke the seal. His stomach was empty, he had been on a train for hours, but something made him understand that the drink was more than a gesture. It was important to Ransome.
Ransome tilted the whisky around the glass. ‘Well, Number One?’
Hargrave smiled. ‘I’ll try and be a good one.’
‘You’ll do better than that.’ He frowned as the phone rang and he snatched it up even as voices and slamming doors vibrated through the hull.
He said quietly, ‘Signal from the tower. The bastards have just opened fire.’
Hargrave found that he was on his feet, his hands clenched at his sides. It was like being naked, or left as a helpless decoy.
Ransome said, ‘They spot the flashes from Cap Gris Nez. It takes just over forty seconds for the shells to arrive.’
Hargrave looked down at him and saw that the glass in Ransome’s hand was empty.
The roar when it came was like a shockwave, as if someone had beaten the side of the hull with a battering ram.
Ransome waited; there were four explosions somewhere on the far side of the town.
He said, ‘The flashes are the only warning. At sea you can sometimes hear the fall of each shell, but after it’s gone off.’ He poured another glass of neat Scotch. ‘Bastards.’
There were no more explosions but when Hargrave looked through the scuttle he saw a far-off column of smoke rising across the clear sky. Like a filthy stain. There would be more grief now. Like the young sailor called Tinker.
He picked up his glass. The whisky was like a blessed relief.
‘May I ask where you will be tomorrow, sir?’
Ransome was staring at the photograph of his brother.
‘Your predecessor’s funeral.’
Hargrave looked at the door but sat down as Ransome said, ‘Please stay. I’m celebrating. I’ve had this ship for a year today.’
He held out his glass and waited for Hargrave to clink it with his.
Ransome said quietly, ‘I wish—’
Hargrave saw the brief blur of despair in the grey eyes. Like something too private to share. He waited but Ransome said, ‘Here’s to David.’ Hargrave guessed it was his predecessor.
Ransome felt the neat whisky burning his throat but did not care. He never drank at sea, and only rarely in harbour. After tomorrow, David, like all those other faces which had been wiped away, would fade in memory.
He thought of the youth called Tinker, his wretched tear-stained face as he had listened to him, needing him. A travel warrant, a ration card for his journey home. Except that there was no home any more. Like a beautiful ship as she hits a mine and starts to roll over. An end to everything.
He looked hard at his glass. ‘I—I don’t want to go. But I must. He was my friend, you see.’
Later, as Hargrave unpacked his belongings in his new cabin, he thought about the interview.
No, it was not what he had expected. Nor was Ransome like anyone he had ever met before.
As darkness fell over Dover Castle the air-raid sirens wailed, and people everywhere went to the shelters or huddled beneath stairs with their loved ones and their pets.
Aboard the fleet minesweeper Rob Roy, Ian Ransome sat at his desk with his face on his arms and slept for the first time in weeks.
…and Men
Lieutenant Hargrave was not the only replacement to be joining the fleet minesweeper Rob Roy before she was once again ordered to sea.
On the following Monday afternoon with a fine drizzle making the moored ships gleam like glass, Ordinary Seaman Gerald Boyes stood on the wall and stared across at the ship he was about to board.
The leading patrolman who had escorted him from the gate pointed with his stick and said importantly, ‘Good record. Swept more mines than you’ve ’ad ’ot dinners, my lad.’
Boyes nodded, but was too polite to suggest that the harbour wall was probably the closest the leading patrolman had been to the sea.
Boyes was a slim, pale youth of eighteen. He had a kind of frailty which now, as he stared at his new home, was at odds with his set expression of determination.
At school he had been something of a dreamer, and usually his thoughts had been on the sea and the mystique of the Royal Navy. His parents had smiled indulgently while his mother had set her hopes firmly on a local bank where Boyes’s father had worked for most of his life. While many of the people he knew in the unassuming town of Surbiton on the outskirts of South London had been stunned by the swiftness of events, Boyes had seen the declaration of war as something like a salvation.
Throughout his boyhood, at a respectable grammar school which his father occasionally mentioned had ‘been worth all the money it cost’ him, Boyes had found his escape in magazines, the Hotspur, the Rover or the Adventure. There was rarely a time when they were without a story or two about the navy, the officers of the dashing destroyers in particular.
Boyes had volunteered for the navy as soon as he was seventeen. His mother, having seen his determination, had been tearfully proud. ‘You’ll soon be an officer, you see, Gerry.’ He hated being called Gerry. ‘With your background and education, they’ll be crying out for your sort.’
The training to begin with had been hard, but always Boyes had seen his guiding light beyond the discipline and the foul language which at first made him blush to the roots of his hair. Until he realised that it was his innocence which was really the target. He watched the occasional appearance of the officers. Some seemed positively elderly, brought back from retirement, and others with the single wavy stripe on their sleeves seemed like young lords of creation.
His mother had been right about one thing. He had been officially listed as a C.W. Candidate, a potential officer, and sent to sea for three months in a sleek, brand-new destroyer. Another world again, working alongside tough, experienced seamen who for the most part had left him in peace with his so-called posh accent, even tolerated his efforts to fit in. At the end of three months, spent mostly in and around Scapa Flow in readiness to escort and protect the huge battleships there, he had been sent to Hove in Sussex, where he would begin his officer’s training after a brief series of interviews. He had been wildly excited, and had even met some of the boys who had joined up with him, several from his own district at home. It had all ended there. It was still almost impossible to grasp. It was so brutal, so unfair.