“Under advanced orders, Chief. Official.” He smiled grimly. “You’ll be busy again.”
Galbraith sighed. “Ah well. Nothing lasts forever.”
Right forward on Warlock’s forecastle Sub-lieutenant Victor Tyson was watching some seamen while they half-heartedly slapped paint on the anchor cables. It was quite warm in the frail sunlight, and across the busy jetty alongside he could see the town, the bright coats of some Icelandic girls who were strolling past the enclosing’wire fence.
It was true what they said about the Reykjavik girls. They really were beautiful. He had caught a friendly eye several times during his time ashore the previous evening, but that was all. The local male population obviously intended to keep them all to themselves. It was said that any Icelandic girl caught going round with a British serviceman would be labelled a prostitute. Even with an officer. But if they were staying a bit longer he would try his luck.
As if to mock him, the tannoy speaker below the bridge rattled into life.
“D’you hear there! D’you hear there!”
The paint brushes all hovered in mid-air as if to listen.
“There will be no, repeat no shore leave today. Hands will go to stations for leaving harbour at 1700. ” The speaker went dead.
Tyson gaped at the tannoy with amazement. Leaving harbour? What the hell was going on?
The tannoy intoned in a less despairing voice, “Up spirits!”
A seaman muttered, “And stand by, the Holy Ghost!”
Tyson swung on him angrily. “Hold your noise, damn you! I want all this cable painted before you fall out!”
As he turned away, one of the seamen flicked his brush so that two drops of fresh paint fell neatly down the back of Tyson’s trousers.
Midshipman Allan Keyes had just been passing the side of A gun and saw the action with the paint brush. The seaman in question also saw Keyes, and knew he had been seen.
Keyes opened his mouth, but remained silent as Tyson snapped, “And where the hellhave you been, for God’s sake?” He gestured vaguely around the forecastle. “I can’t carry the whole ship on my own!”
Keyes said, “Sorry.”
He was glad he had said nothing about the paint, and saw the seaman with the brush watching him with obvious relief.
But for once Keyes did not care about Tyson. Or anything else for that matter. For the first time in the whole of his eighteen years he was in love. Not some panting, breathless escapade with a schoolgirl at a carefully managed party, nor a demure and standoffish daughter of one of his parents’ friends, but with a real, vital woman.
He watched Tyson as he strode angrily this way and that, and found he could feel even a sort of warmth for him. Almost. Unwittingly, it had been through Tyson that he had met Georgina. Even her name had a magic all of its own, and when he thought about it, it was like speaking it aloud.
Tyson had been told to take a packet of despatches up to A.C.H.Q. It had been “something a bloody rating should be told to do,” according to Tyson. So making an excuse about another duty, he had arranged for Keyes to go instead. The midshipman had not minded at all. He had travelled very little, and just to sit in the back of a naval jeep amid a littler of sealed parcels and despatch boxes had been a small drama. At the H. Q. building he had been treated as something between human and animal by a bored staff officer, and then had been told to take a further envelope over to the Americans at Camp Knox. It seemed that it had arrived in the wrong hands by mistake.
His reception at the American camp had been somewhat different. He had been ushered into a comfortable hut, where coffee was produced, and a variety of rich cream cakes, while a lieutenant had gone off to obtain a signature for the envelope from somebody higher up.
And then, like a vision out of a great film, Georgina had stepped into his life.
Vivacious, very blonde, completely gorgeous in every way, she was, it appeared, an actress, one of a group which had arrived in Iceland to entertain the lonely servicemen. Although she had what seemed to be an American accent, she was, she had informed him in her low, husky voice, a Londoner. She was part of an ENSA show, which had been “exchanged” for an American USO group on the same sort of mission.
He had listened, spellbound, to her tales of the West End shows, the great names in entertainment, cinema and broadcasting. Another, fantastic world.
She was, he thought, a little older than himself. But not enough to matter. More to the point, she gave him a photograph, signed “To Allan from Georgina. ” She had looked at him and then with a secret smile had added, “Eternally.”
“That will keep your friends guessing,” she had said.
He looked up as Wingate appeared on the forebridge. The navigating officer had not repeated his rare display of anger against him. In fact, he got on very well with him, although he never got beyond Wingate’s outer, joking self. He went to the port ladder and hurried up to the bridge before Tyson could find him another job before lunch.
Wingate was sitting on the captain’s wooden chair, smoking a cigarette, and letting the offshore breeze ruffle his dark hair.
He looked at Keyes and nodded. “All right, Mid?”
“I heard the pipe. We’re off again then?”
“Seems that way.” Wingate eyed him curiously. “What’s on your mind?”
“I wanted to get a message to someone. I promised to see her-“
“Her?” Wingate swivelled round in the chair. “You’re joking, of course?”
“No.” He shifted under his dark stare. “I met her yesterday. She’s an actress.”
Wingate toyed with the idea of making a joke of it, and then saw Keyes’ pleading expression.
“Well, you know the drill, Mid. Security. Nobody ever gets told.”
“But I don’t know anything to tell her!” He was getting desperate.
Wingate nodded. “Right. I have to go ashore for last-minute met reports.” He grinned. “But I see from your face you’d already thought of that!”
Keyes smiled gratefully. “She’s at the women’s hotel in Borg Square.”
Wingate remembered seeing the captain going into the same hotel.
He said, “I’ll let her know. Tell her what a good bloke you are.”
“Please, Pilot. Don’t stir it up for me. It’s very important.”
He clapped Keyes on the shoulder. “Sure. Leave it to me. ” He chuckled. “She might have a friend. ” He frowned. “What’s her name?”
“Georgina.” Just saying it aloud was like a betrayal.
“Is that all?” He grinned again. “Never mind, Mid. I don’t suppose there are too many actresses called Georgina in that dump!”
Tyson climbed up on to the bridge.
“Come along, Mid! The upper deck is still in a filthy state!”
Wingate smiled gently. “What about you then, Sub? Got bloody paint all over your trousers. Fine one to talk about filth!”
He watched Tyson and the midshipman leave the bridge quiet and empty again. How he liked it. Tyson, all red-faced and fuming. As usual. The boy, glowing with a sort of aura in his new happiness. He glanced at the empty chart table. Poor little sod. He’d better make the most of it, he thought.
10
Touch and Go
IT was five more days before Lomond and her two accompanying destroyers entered Seydisfjord and reunited the flotilla. For Drummond, as for most of the others, it had been a time of tension and concentration. Even the least experienced member of the ship’s company was now aware of the growing prospect of action, although no announcement had yet been released.
From Admiral Brooks’s deep bunker in Whitehall to the monitoring stations in England and Iceland, a constant watch was being kept for any sign of undue excitement in the enemy’s arrangements in Norway. Whenever possible the R.A.F. maintained a careful patrol over harbours and coastal waters, seeking any sign that a familiar ship was missing, or that a new one had arrived. But as hours dragged into days, even the unexpected reports about the Moltke faded into the background. She had not been sighted again, and so the earlier references to her movements were now open to doubt.