A Ship Must Die (1981) (19 page)

She asked, ‘Are you staying?’

He thought of Fairfax, the much-needed repairs which Weir intended to complete before leaving again.

She added slowly, ‘If you are, maybe you’d like to meet my family? Like you said.’ She looked away, withdrawing, like a stranger. ‘I’ll quite understand if you’ve better things to do.’

He reached out and took her elbow, turning her towards him.

‘I’ve not, and I’d like to very much.’

She nodded and said, ‘That’s settled. I’ll get a car.’

She removed the dark glasses and suddenly it was all there. The dinghy, the sea rising around them like a restless range of hills, his arm around her as the plane had come looking for them, the shark.

She said, ‘By the way, the name’s Claire, in case you’d forgotten.’ But she could not keep it up. ‘I’ll be ready as soon as you’ve telephoned the ship.’ She watched his expression and said simply, ‘You’ve been through it. Now I think I can understand what it’s like.’

Then she turned on her heel and walked swiftly through the door of her office.

Commander Victor Fairfax sat at his desk in the ship’s office, his feet up and his shirt unbuttoned while he drank a cup of black coffee and held the telephone to his ear at the same time.

Even being alongside again felt different, he thought. Feet clattered overhead, and through an open scuttle he saw the wooden piles of the pier, some dockyard workers dragging equipment towards the brow. In a few moments it would all be confusion once more. People came and went from the office, speaking to the writers or leaving forms for him to sign.

The telephone line buzzed and crackled in his ear. But he was lucky to have got one direct to the shore, he thought.

Suddenly he heard her voice, as if she was in the ship with him. Sharing her.

‘Hello, Sarah!’

‘Oh, Vic, it’s
you
!’ She was laughing and crying together. ‘Can I see you?’

Fairfax said, ‘Is the car okay? If not, borrow one and drive down here. I’ll fix a dockyard pass for you. I’ve missed you so much, Sarah!’

He knew that all the writers had stopped work and were listening intently but he did not care.

She said, ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’ She sniffed. ‘God, I do love you!’

The line clicked and a weary voice interrupted, ‘Call coming in from HQ, sir.’

Fairfax snapped, ‘Get off the line!’ In a calmer tone, ‘Soon as you can, Sarah.’ He replaced the telephone carefully, as if it were made of crystal.

Gross, the paymaster commander, peered through the door. ‘We should have a party. How about it?’

Fairfax grinned. ‘A great idea.’ He thought of Blake and added, ‘I wonder what the hell is going on in Melbourne?’

Gross shrugged his plump shoulders. ‘The skipper will come through. He always does.’

‘You like him a lot, don’t you?’

The paymaster commander thought about it. ‘He’ll do me.’

He turned as the chief telegraphist entered the office, a signal pad in his hand.

Fairfax frowned. It was not like the chief petty officer to bother himself running errands.

‘What is it, Pots?’

Lougher, from Fairfax’s home town, almost the same street, said bluntly, ‘From the Admiralty. For the cap’n.’ He glanced at the paymaster commander. ‘His father’s dead. Tough, ain’t it, sir?’

Fairfax stood up, pictures of an old man he had never seen crowding in on him.

The paymaster commander asked, ‘Will you tell him at once?’

Fairfax took the pad and glanced at the brief signal. One bloody thing after another.

‘We’d better forget the party.’

Gross lifted one foot over the coaming. ‘Don’t do that. He’d not wish it. You asked me just now if I liked him. Don’t you see? We’ve all got him up there on the bridge, somebody to rely on. Now
he’s
got nobody. That’s why I say don’t duck the party. It wouldn’t help.’

Fairfax nodded very slowly. ‘I’ll see to it.’

He picked up his cap and walked out into the passageway where Macallan, the master-at-arms, and therefore the most unpopular man aboard, was waiting.

‘You takin’ defaulters in lieu of this mornin’, so to speak, sir?’ His eyes flickered over Fairfax’s unbuttoned shirt as he added coldly, ‘I can ’old ’em back for a while if you like, sir.’

Fairfax shook his head. At times like these he was heartily grateful for the humourless Macallan. He would expect his officers to be perfectly turned out if they were walking the plank.

‘I’ll be up in three minutes, Master.’ He touched the man’s arm. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

Macallan watched him hurry aft to his cabin. Bloody Aussies, he thought savagely. No respect, that was their trouble.

On the upper deck a young American sailor paused beside the Catalina’s small yellow dinghy and looked at it for a long while.

The gangway sentry said, ‘A car’s come for you, Billy. So long, chum. Take care of yerself.’

The youth nodded and walked blindly down the brow.
Seeing the little dinghy had brought it all back. Now he could never forget.

The car with the naval markings swung off the main road and slowed to take a sharp bend. Blake kept a firm grip on the door, conscious of the girl beside him, the fierce way she drove, as if every minute counted.

Melbourne had fallen a long way behind, and the countryside into which the car was heading was empty, with sunburned scrub, timeless hills, with the sea showing itself every so often. Sometimes they passed near a deep cove, or saw the sea only far-away like the high water of a dam. It all helped to give a hint of the country’s size, that they were merely on a foothold of it.

She said, ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’ She glanced sideways at him, her hair, free of the tricorn hat, whipping in the hot breeze.

Blake thought of Fairfax’s voice on the ship’s telephone, shared his difficulties as he had told him of the signal from that other world.

He replied, ‘My father died last week. I just heard.’

The car slewed off the road, its wheels embedded in rubble, as she swung round in her seat to look at him.

‘I’m sorry. I really am.’

It was suddenly very quiet as she cut the engine, and the dust settled across the bonnet and the two occupants.

He said, ‘He’s been ill for years.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’ Her hands moved in her lap. ‘I – I’m sorry. I heard a lot about you at HQ.’

Blake looked past her, at a strange bird on the hillside. Another world, and in the twinkling of an eye it had all changed. He had been expecting it for a long time, but that did not help. He could see his father in the garden as if it were yesterday, or this morning. In his old panama hat, his pockets full of twine and oddments he used for his roses. He clenched his jaw, suddenly unable to bear it. For it was still bleak and cold in the old garden on the Surrey-Hampshire border. Maybe it was just as well. No roses to leave behind.

He said quietly, ‘I never really knew if he understood what was happening. But he was always
there
, somehow.’

He looked down as she put her hand on his.

She said, ‘What about your wife?’

He watched her hand, the tiny golden hairs on her wrist.

‘She never cared for him.’

Another quick picture. Diana on that first night of his leave. Tossing her head with anger as she had brushed her hair in front of the mirror, her eyes watching him in the bedroom.

‘I promised we’d go out! Life doesn’t just revolve round the Navy, you know!’

Blake said, ‘Sorry to let you in for all this. I knew he couldn’t last. My aunt will write about it when she can.’ He looked away. ‘The Admiralty doesn’t have much skill at sending this sort of signal. Usually they’re going the other way.’

‘Do you still want to meet my people?’ She watched him gravely. ‘Or do you just want to be quiet?’

He tried to smile. ‘You drive. I’ll talk about it, but stop me if you get fed up with it.’

And so, as the car bumped back on to the narrow road and headed south-east towards the coastline of the Bass Strait, Blake talked. About his father, and of the
Andromeda
. Sometimes he had to pause to collect his thoughts, as if, like a painter, he had to capture an exact moment. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was able to share that side of himself he had kept hidden. His fear, and his fear of showing it before others. The moments in harbour when he should have been resting, when the telephone by his bunk had shrilled in the night. The dreadful, ice-cold terror which never completely left. The following minutes while he got over it. Until the next time.

On a headland high above the blue water she stopped by the roadside and pulled a thermos of coffee from a canvas grip. They stood looking down at a tiny beach, listening to the boom of surf, the noisy argument of sea-birds.

She said, ‘Remember when you made us stay alive with your quiz games and damned questions about sea-birds? I
almost hated you. I think I wanted to die, even though I needed to live.’

He put his arm through hers and felt her tense momentarily.

‘I’m not likely to forget.’

She disengaged his arm and looked at her wrist-watch.

‘Time to move on.’

Blake sank down on his seat and watched the landscape pass. He must not be a fool, or be such a bastard as to use her for his passing relief. Escape.

He glanced at her, at her well-shaped legs as she jammed on the brakes while the car rattled round a bend. Her white uniform shirt left little to the imagination and he could see small freckles on her skin where she had bared it to the sun.

The land lifted like a shoulder and the sea disappeared. The car began to descend, and Blake saw some houses in the distance, and on a far hillside some sheep clustered together like an untidy patch of scrub.

‘Home sweet home.’

The car slowed while she pointed out the individual houses, a store, a sturdy little church and a war memorial with some parched flowers at its base.

The car rolled to a halt and she switched off the engine.

‘This is it. Not exactly Melbourne or Sydney, but the people here like it.’

Blake got down and stretched his legs. He felt hot and sweaty and there was grit between his teeth. But in a strange way he felt unwound, able to accept what had happened.

He saw a tall, lean man in a flapping white jacket and a pipe jutting from his jaw striding down the path from the church.

He said, ‘You’d better move the car. This looks like the vicar!’

She picked up her hat and bag from the seat and pushed the hair from her eyes.

‘Yes, it’s the minister, so mind you language, please.’

Then, as Blake watched with astonishment, she ran across
the road and threw her arms round the minister’s neck and kissed him.

‘Hello, Claire! This really is a nice surprise!’ He looked past her at Blake. ‘And who have you brought with you?’

She turned, her hand in the minister’s arm, her eyes suddenly bright.

‘Dad, I want you to meet Captain Richard Blake. He’s a sort of friend.’

Blake took a firm handshake with a grin. ‘I’m glad to meet you, sir.’

The girl stood back to watch them, trying as before to hold up her aloof guard.

‘He’s quite nice. For a Pom.’

It was a beautiful evening for a party, everyone agreed who stepped aboard
Andromeda
’s quarterdeck with its awnings and colourful bunting, and with the perspiring stewards bustling to meet each arrival with a well-loaded tray of glasses.

From Y turret some of Captain Farleigh’s marines were playing a selection of what they considered to be popular music, and with the officers in their best ‘ice cream suits’ and the women guests with bared shoulders and bright dresses, it could almost have been a peactime affair.

Fairfax stood with his wife where he could watch the new arrivals, assess their rank or importance and ensure they were received accordingly.

Sarah, her long fair hair hanging across her shoulders, in a gown which she had warned him had taken a month’s housekeeping money, stared around at the bustle and excitement with disbelief.

‘After reading in the papers about that raider, I thought you’d all be in a state of shock.’ She looked at him warmly. ‘God, you’ve changed, Vic. In so short a time, you’ve got something new, I can’t explain it.’

He grinned. ‘Some of me is the same, as I think I showed you.’

She dug him in the ribs. ‘Is that all you think about?’

He said suddenly, ‘You know that Stagg’s coming?’

‘I heard. I think you’re mad. He’ll probably get fighting drunk. After what he’s said to your captain, I’d have thought you would keep him at the end of a barge-pole!’

Fairfax shook hands with a major of marines with a girl hanging to his arm. He said softly, ‘It’s not that easy, Sarah. There are several captains here, even two admirals. It’s impossible to leave out your own commodore!’

‘Where is your captain, by the way?’ She studied the jostling throng with new interest. ‘I only met him once. I liked the look of him. He seems too young to command this great pile of armour!’

‘He’ll be up in a minute. There were some signals for him to see.’

‘Pity he hasn’t got someone nice to be with. What with his wife on the loose and now his poor father dying suddenly, he could do with some cheering up.’

Fairfax replied, ‘You remember Second Officer Grenfell?’

His wife stared at him. ‘Claire Grenfell, the minister’s daughter? God, not her surely? Your captain’ll get frost-bite if he gets too close to that one!’

Fairfax shifted awkwardly. ‘Perhaps you’ve got the wrong idea. Maybe we all did. And she had a bad time after the plane was shot down. It was only luck we found her.’

‘You mean,
you
found her. I was so proud when I heard about it. You are a bit of a goer when you get the urge.’ She became serious. ‘Do you think it’s over, the raider, I mean? You’ve been back here for four days and nothing’s happened. Perhaps the Germans have left, gone home.’

Fairfax smiled. ‘Let’s hope so.’ He looked around the quarterdeck and up towards the guns. ‘I wonder what sort the next skipper will be. Not like Richard Blake, that’s for sure.’

He stiffened as Blake appeared on deck and moved towards them. He said, ‘Party’s getting going. Big mess bills in the wardroom after this.’