Brannon shifted on his chair. “I want to say something, sir, but I don’t want it to come out the wrong way. If you ever command another wolf pack I’d be honored to serve under you, sir.”
“You would?” Mealey said. “You know what Bob Rudd called me, the S.O.B.?”
“Oh, sure,” Brannon said. “Everyone knows you’re the S.O.B. I heard a fireman in the engine room one day before we started this patrol run say to an engineman that the old S.O.B. was sailing with us. He was proud you were aboard. We all feel that way, sir. If a man can sail with you he could sail with the devil himself.” He flushed. “I didn’t mean it to come out that way, sir.”
Mealey stared at Brannon. “You’re a little bit too sentimental, Captain. That could be a weakness unless you keep it under control.” He picked up a suitcase and moved toward the door of the stateroom.
“You’re a damned good seaman, Mike, and one damned good fighting man. Don’t change.”
Brannon watched as Pete Mahaffey picked the bag Mealey had been carrying out of his hand and went into the Forward Torpedo Room. John Olsen stuck his head in the stateroom.
“We have to come back to the tender tomorrow to get paid, sir.”
“Oh, hell,” Brannon said. “I was going to invite you to a good dinner downtown, on me, to celebrate your Navy Cross. Not every day that the Executive Officer gets a Navy Cross. But I’m broke.”
“I’m a single dude,” Olsen said. “I’ve got some money.”
“Good,” Brannon said. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“You can pay me back tomorrow,” Olsen said.
CHAPTER 19
The two weeks of R & R passed swiftly for the Eelfish sailors. Paul Blake left the hotel on the second day, took his seabag to the house where Constance Maybury lived, and spent his leave time with her family. Bob Lee disappeared on the third day from the house where he was quartered with Jerry Gold and Perry Arbuckle. He was seen several times in the company of a tall, lissome brunette who towered over him by several inches. Jerry Gold, curious to know what was going on, sought out Chief Flanagan.
“The word I get,” Flanagan said, “is that Mr. Lee is going with a lady he met two rest periods ago. She’s a widow, husband was killed while serving with the Ninth Division, that’s the famous Aussie fighting division. I heard that her husband was a captain in the Aussie Army. From everything I hear Mr. Lee is pretty serious about her.”
“Know anything about what sort of a lady she is?” Gold asked.
“Solid, from what I’ve been told,” Flanagan said. “She works in some bank in town. No children. You got to be careful with those quiet ones like Mr. Lee is.” He grinned at Lieutenant Gold. “Chief Yeoman on the tender told me that Mr. Lee has put in for a permit to marry the lady. Chief on the tender says he’s made out all the papers and has been talking with the Squadron legal officer.”
“Mr. Lee is a lawyer,” Gold said.
“I know,” the Chief answered. “He’s not the only one. Paul Blake is going through the same routine. Mr. Lee helped him file his papers.”
“Does the skipper know about this?”
“I doubt it,” Flanagan said. “Might be a good idea if he did.”
“He wouldn’t try to stop either man, you know,” Gold said. “The Old Man’s got a real good marriage, and he thinks everyone should be married.”
“I could tell him different,” Flanagan growled. Jerry Gold shrugged.
“Look, Chief,” he said, “I know that the Australian people are about the nicest people in the world, but what’s the big attraction, why do Mr. Lee and Paul Blake want to get married?”
“Mr. Gold, it ain’t only Mr. Lee and Paul Blake. From what I hear half of the single dudes on the tender and in the relief crews, they’re lining up to get marriage forms. Lots of the people on other submarines want to get married.
“You see, if you’ve done duty in Pearl Harbor you’d know that you haven’t got a chance to meet a broad there. There’s about a thousand men for every woman in Pearl. And if you do score and make a date with some broad the odds are that in a half-hour your stomach will be turned because she’s so damned spoiled that you can’t stand it. Hell, some of the worst-lookin’ broads you ever saw act like beauty queens in Pearl, and they get away with it because a woman, any kind of woman, is in damned short supply there.
“In Australia it’s the other way around. How many men you seen on the streets lately who are young, say between twenty and forty, how many civilians you seen who have all their arms and legs?”
“Come to think about it, I can’t say many,” Gold said. “I’ve even seen some Australian soldiers in uniform with an eye patch.”
“That’s right,” Flanagan said. “The Chief Storekeeper who runs the CPO Club in Perth told me the British use the Aussies as shock troops, throw them in with rifles and bayonets against General Rommel and his tanks in Africa, do the same thing up in the Islands. Australia has lost most of its young men in this war.
“So the country is full of women, good-lookin’ women who got to figure they don’t have much chance of ever gettin’ married to an Aussie near their own age. And they look around and there’s all our guys. Young guys. Healthy guys with all their arms and legs. If you’ve been out with any Aussie girls you got to know that they treat you like some kind of a king. Nothing’s too good for you, that right?”
“I’ve noticed that,” Gold said, “but I thought it was just my irresistible charm. Go on, Chief.”
“Not much more to say. I was told Mr. Lee walked into a bank downtown to try and get the name of a reliable guy to appraise some opals he wanted to buy for his mother. Opals are mined here, and they’re cheap if you don’t get cheated.
“The manager of the bank is a tall, good lookin’ woman. That’s the lady he wants to marry. Her husband was killed about a year ago. I heard he was an Aussie Army officer. Anyway, she’s a four-oh lady. She’s maybe four, five inches taller than Mr. Lee, but if she can manage a bank then she’s got to have a lot of smarts. And if she is around Mr. Lee for an hour or two she’s got to know that he’s got all the smarts there is. Besides, he’s a hell of a nice dude. He ain’t your big sturdy type, but he’s wiry and he’s got all his arms and legs and eyes. So I guess the lady liked what she saw and sure as hell Mr. Lee likes what he saw and that’s it.”
“You disapprove, Chief?”
“Hell, no, Mr. Gold. Mr. Lee’s a grown man. He’s got a good head on him. No disrespect, sir, but a guy who ain’t as tall as some has got to feel pretty chesty with someone as good lookin’ as his girl hanging on his arm. Make a lot of tall dudes a little jealous, I’d think.” He rubbed his chin with his hand.
“Way I figure it, Mr. Gold, it doesn’t make one whole lot of difference where you find a wife or what she looks like or even what color she is as long as you hit it off and she treats you right and you can read the signs that she’ll keep on treating you right.”
“How about young Paul Blake?” Gold said.
“Ah! That’s young love, sir,” Flanagan said with a grin. “He met her when she came to the hotel with some Red Cross people, and she took him home to meet her family. She’s a hell of a nice young girl and her folks are good people, very solid. If they think they love each other, the hell with it, it’s their business, not mine. All’s I hope for is that the damned red tape and all the paperwork they got to do takes a long time. If either of them gets married and wants off the ship to work in the relief crew they’d get an okay on their request because they’ve made enough war patrols to rate tender duty.