Smith halted by the table. There were several empty glasses and two half-full, one before the officer and the other in the hand of the lady who sipped at it with little finger genteelly crooked. Smith asked, “Is this officer unwell?”
Victoria regarded naval officers with suspicion. She considered half of them too old for their posts and the other half too young, and none of them would order her about. An order she treated as a request that she criticised but complied with. A new officer was suspect until he proved himself and that to Victoria’s satisfaction. This one was properly respectful but he had a cold eye and a stiff neck. She set her glass down and said tartly, “Don’t see that it’s any o’ your business — but no, he’s not unwell. An’ he’s not drunk either, if that’s what you mean.” Smith’s gaze drifted to the empty glasses and she saw it. “The empties are mine. That’s his first. Got halfway through it, the poor lamb, and then fell asleep. He was out on patrol for near thirty-six hours and he’s wore out.”
Victoria’s voice was pitched in her conversational tone but it carried. The young Sub stirred and lifted his head to peer blearily around him. His eyes stopped on Smith, blinked, screwed shut then opened again and now they were aware and he climbed to his feet. It was a long climb. He was a very tall young man with a thatch of black curly hair that needed cutting and sleepy dark eyes. He said, “Curtis, sir. CMB 19.”
Smith now recognised him as the commander of the boat that entered the Trystram lock and thought he also recognised the drawl. “Canadian?”
“No, sir. American.”
Smith’s eyebrows lifted. There were a number of Americans flying for the Allies before America had entered the war, and some in the Army — but in the Navy? “That’s — unusual.”
“Yes, sir. A little.”
“You come from a Naval family?”
Curtis grinned. “Hell, no, sir. We’re all farming stock. But I learned to handle a boat on the lake. Wisconsin, that is. Started in the creek near as soon as I could walk and moved out on the lake soon after.” He paused, then: “A farmer turned sailor. Now that’s unusual, sir.”
“Not altogether.” Smith was a country boy, brought up in a Norfolk village. But he did not elaborate. Instead he asked, “How long have you been in command?”
Victoria put in deeply, proud. “They promoted him into her. Should ha’ had a medal but for that damn’ red tape again.”
Curtis shifted awkwardly, embarrassed at the interruption. “Now Mrs Baines it wasn’t like that a-tall. Fact is, sir, I was on vacation over here when the war started an’ I just joined and got a temporary commission.”
Smith thought it would not have been that easy, that Curtis under his country boy, innocent exterior must hide a shrewd brain and an ability to wangle. He said nothing.
Curtis went on: “We had a forty-footer and I was midshipman in her till along about the fall of ’16 when we got shot up and the Sub-Lieutenant caught it so I sort of — inherited. Seems I ran her all right so they promoted me to command her permanent and later on they gave me 19. But anything I know about fighting a CMB I learned from Charlie…that was the Sub. He was a regular officer, a great guy.”
Smith was interested by the tall, sleepy-eyed young man but he had a duty to carry out aboard Sparrow, an unpleasant duty but one that had to be done. Still, he asked one last question. “You like the boats?”
“Wouldn’t change, sir.” That was definite, but then Curtis added, “Except —” He stopped.
Smith prompted, “Except?”
Curtis’s voice was still quiet but there was a hardness to it now. “Sometimes I think I’d like to catch up with that destroyer that shot us up, when I was in a ship with a real big gun. And I could shoot the hell out of ’em.” He saw Smith staring and explained, “Just to even up for Charlie, sir.”
Smith was silent, then: “I wouldn’t harbour thoughts of revenge. You’ll find there’s little satisfaction in it. Good night.” And to Victoria, “Good night, madam. My apologies for intruding.”
Victoria answered dryly, “I’ll see you tomorrow at sea — if you get that far.”
Smith hung on his heel, taken aback. “You’ll — at sea?”
Victoria said complacently, “My tug, Lively Lady is going with you.”
“Of course I knew Lively Lady was to be with us, but — you’ll be aboard?”
“She’s my tug.” That seemed sufficient answer for this old lady with her hat slightly askew despite the two pins. She touched it now, settled it askew on the other side.
Smith said, “I see.” He did not, but later he would. “Good night.”
He strode on, heading for where Sparrow was moored alongside the quay. Her commander had been absent from the Commodore’s briefing. Now Smith wanted an explanation from Dunbar — and a very good one.
Smoke trailed from Sparrow’s three funnels and wisped across the quay on the wind; she was ready to slip at a minute’s notice. The quay was dark, rain-swept, pools glinting from a tiny light at the head of the brow. He halted out in the darkness to look at her. Sparrow was armed with one twelve-pounder on her bridge, five six-pounders and two torpedo-tubes. She looked long but only because she was low and narrow. A man could have crossed her deck in half a dozen long steps except that it was so scattered with guns, boats, torpedo-tubes, ventilators and hatches that you couldn’t take two long strides in any direction, let alone six. She was a little ship and fifty-eight men were crammed into her.
Now she and her men were Smith’s.
He strode out of the dark and up the brow. A quartermaster stood on watch at the head of it and Smith demanded, “Where’s your captain?”
“He’s — I’ll call the coxswain, sir.” The man was rattled, caught off-guard by Smith’s sudden appearance. Guilty? Of what? Had he been dozing? Pulling at a cigarette? Or was there something else? Smith sensed the man was hiding something, or trying to. He was Scots with a thick Glaswegian brogue.
Smith snapped, “Never mind the coxswain — and stand still!” The quartermaster had taken a quick step aft towards the wardroom hatch. “Mister Dunbar is below?”
“Er — yes, sir.”
Smith stepped past him, stalked aft around the six-pounder and dropped down through the hatch that led to the wardroom below. At the foot of the ladder he almost stepped on Gow, the coxswain. He was a big man with long arms and a premature stoop that Smith supposed came from living aboard thirty-knotters. His hands seemed to hang by his knees. His head was bent under the deckhead now and he stood between Smith and the curtain that served as a door to the wardroom.
Gow whispered huskily, inevitably Scots, “Sir, if I could just say —”
“Later.” Smith tried to step forward but it only brought him chest to chest with the coxswain, their faces only inches apart because Gow held his ground. Smith sniffed, smelt whisky on Gow’s breath, and asked, “You’ve been drinking?”
“Just the one I couldn’t help.” Gow’s long face was drawn longer with misery. “Sir —” Beyond him glass shattered in the wardroom and his face twitched.
Smith said, “What the hell is going on here, cox’n?”
“Ah’m trying to explain —”
But Smith had had enough. He jammed a shoulder into the coxswain, rocked him off balance and aside and took a stride. Gow’s voice came behind him, still in that agonised whisper but higher. “He had some bad news about his wife and bairn. He was awfu’ fond o’ them, sir.”