Goss came on. to the bridge, his hands filthy, his uniform covered in oil and rust. He shaded his eyes to watch the little procession as it turned eastward and then said gruffly, ‘Well, that showed ‘em.’
Stannard and’ Dancy were beside Lindsay, while the new lieutenant, Paget, was hovering nervously some feet away. But they all saw it. Even Jolliffe, who had been on the wheel with hardly a break, feeling the strain, nursing his helm against the tremendous weight of the tow.
Goss turned to face Lindsay and said, ‘I don’t reckon you could have done better, even if you’d been. in the company.’ Then he held out his hand. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir.’
Lindsay took it. He ‘could see the faces around him, blurred and out of focus, just as he could feel the power of Goss’s big fist. But he could not speak. Try as he might, nothing would come.
Goss added slowly, ‘We’ve had differences, I’ll not deny it. She should have been my ship by rights.’ He stared up at the masthead pendant. ‘But that was in peace. Now I reckon the old girl needs both of us.’
Lindsay looked away. ‘Thank you for. that.’ He cleared
his throat. ‘Thank you very much.’ Then he strode into the wheelhouse and they heard his feet on the ladder to his cabin below.
Goss was looking at his grimy fist, and then saw Paget staring at him with something like awe.
‘What the bloody hell are you gaping at, Mr Paget?’ He bustled towards the ladder muttering, ‘Amateurs. No damn use the whole lot of ‘em!’
Stannard looked at Dancy and then said quietly, ‘They always said there was something about this ship, in the company.’ He glanced around him as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Well, now I believe it. By God, I believe it!’
Then he looked forward and added, ‘Now get those bloody Jerries below decks. I’d forgotten all about them!’
As Dancy hurried away he heard Stannard murmur, ‘A will of her own, they used to say. And by God, I’ve just seen her use it!’
15
The dinner party
Lindsay stood on the gratings of the starboard bridge’s wing and watched.the seething activity along the jetty below him. There seemed to be hundreds of coloured dockyard workers running in every direction at once, although from his high position Lindsay could see the purpose as well as the apparent chaos.
Heaving lines snaked ashore, seized by a dozen brown hands, all apparently indifferent to the hoarse cries from Benbecula’s petty officers, as very slowly the hull touched against the massive piles which protected it from the uneven stonework.
,The lines were followed by heavy mooring wires, the eyes of which were cheerfully dropped on to huge bollards along the jetty, with no small relief from the officers on the forecastle. and poop, as with tired dignity Benbecula nudged a few more feet before tautening springs halted her progress altogether.
A-messenger called, ‘Back spring secured, sir.’ He was staring at the shimmering white building beyond the jetty and harbour sheds, handset pressed against his ear. ‘Head spring secure, sir.’
Lindsay saw Goss waving from the forecastle, his bulk even more ungainly in white shirt and shorts.
‘All secure fore an’ aft, sir.’
‘Very Well.’
Lindsay leaned still further over the screen, feeling the sun across his neck as he watched the mooring wires slackening and tautening in the gentle swell.
‘Out breast ropes. Then tell the buffer to rig the brow.’ He could see other white uniforms on the jetty amidst the busy workers, faces raised to watch as. Benbecula handed over her safety to the land once again. ‘Ring off main engines.’
He heard the telegraphs clang, the dials below swinging to Finished with Engines, where no doubt Fraser and his men would give a combined sigh of relief.
It had been a slow passage to the jetty. The whole of Trincomalee seemed to be packed with shipping of every description, so that even the two tugs which had been sent to assist had not found the last few cables very easy. Warships and supply vessels. Troopers, their rigging adorned with soldiers’ washing like.uneven khaki bunting, harbour craft and lighters, as well’ as an overwhelming mass of local vessels of every kind. Dhows and sampans, schooners and ancient coasters. which looked as if they had been born in the first days of steam.
The gratings gave one last quiver and then lay still beneath him.
Ritchie said, ‘One of the troopers is the Cambrian, sir.’ ‘Yes.’
Lindsay did not turn. Perhaps, like himself, the yeoman wass thinking back to those first days out from Liverpool, with, the commodore’s ship leading the starboard line. Remembering the explosions and fires flickering across the dark water. The wasted effort, and the cost.
He heard Stannard speaking into a voicepipe and tried to imagine what he was thinking.
And at one time it had at last seemed that everything was going to be all right. A change of luck, if you could, call it that.
After leaving the ammunition ship they had continued into a kinder climate, with something like a holiday atmosphere pervading the ship for the first time. Eighteen days out of Liverpool they had crossed the Equator and all work had stopped for the usual boisterous ceremony of Crossing the Line. He could see it now. Jolliffe as Neptune in a cardboard crown and carrying a deadlylooking trident, his heavy jowls hidden in a realistic beard made of spunyarn. His queen had been one of Boase’s S.B.A.‘s, a girlish-looking youth whose sex, it had often been said, was very much in doubt anyway.
Sunshine and blue skies, bodies already showing a growing tan, and an extra tot of rum to complete the ceremony. It had seemed a sure sign for the better.
They had paused in Simonstown to replenish the fuel bunkers, and the ship’s company had swarmed ashore to see the sights and gather all the usual clutter of souvenirs which would eventually find their way to mantelpieces and shelves the length and breadth of Britain.
Barker had arranged for buses to take libertymen on to Cape Town in a manner born. For just that one day he had not been the supply officer to an armed merchant cruiser. He was a ship’s purser, and took as many pains to make the short trips and tours successful as if every man had been a first class passenger.
Then they were at sea again, and Lindsay could recall exactly the moment Stannard had come to his cabin. Benbecula had rounded the Cape and was steaming north-east into the Indian Ocean for the last long haul of her voyage.
All at once their own small world had been changed. The outside events, the war, all that went with it had come crowding in once more.
The Japanese had not been halted. That strip of water between Singapore Island and the mainland was not an English Channel as everyone had claimed it to be. The enemy had crossed it and were already advancing into the island itself. It was impossible but it was happening.
Stannard had stood in the sunlit cabin watching Lindsay as he had read the signal.
‘What d’you think, sir? Will they pull our lads out?’
Looking back to that moment it was hard to remember what he had really believed. Not another retreat, surely? For this time there could be no Dunkirk with friendly white cliffs within reach of those brave or foolhardy enough to try for them. No sane man would write off the whole garrison. Not an army. It was inconceivable, just as now, standing on the sunlit bridge he could see it had been inevitable.
There had been a security clampdown on signals and little more was heard of that other war. Benbecula had continued across the Indian Ocean, enjoying perhaps the waters which had once- been so familiar to her well-worn keel. They had passed several convoys heading in the opposite direction. Meat and grain from Australia and New Zealand-, oil from the Gulf. The very stuff of survival for the people who waited in England for those ships to arrive,