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He sighed and moved uneasily. ‘I think I’d better go and make my number with the admiral.’

She gave him a quick look. ‘You always made sure you made your number with the admiral, didn’t you, Kelly?’

He stared at her, disappointed with her reactions, angry at her attitude, and frustrated by the perplexed gropings of his mind.

‘I’m still in the navy, Charley,’ he said.

She looked at him steadily, accusing him for all the years of ambition, all the years of conforming when she’d felt he should have put her first. ‘You always were, Kelly,’ she said.

His brows came down. ‘Dammit, Charley, there’s a war on!’

Her eyes flashed and she went pink with rage. He’d always been brisk with her but now it acted like an electric shock. Reaching across him, she snatched up the photograph of the man in the wing commander’s uniform and slammed it down in front of him, so that the dead man’s face stared up at him, her sole souvenir.

‘Do you think I don’t know?’ she snapped.

By a miracle the country had come through. There was no army worth mentioning and survival depended on elderly gentlemen with Great War medals standing guard on cross roads armed with shotguns, pitchforks and – for God’s sake! – pikes. Ageing generals were serving in the Local Defence Volunteers – the Look, Duck and Vanish Brigade, as it was known – under men who’d been their subalterns but had the advantage of being younger and more active, and Kelly heard that Admiral Tyrwhitt, his former chief, had enlisted as a private.

They had rescued over 300,000 men from France, when the expected total had been in the region of 20,000, and, though they had no weapons and there seemed to be not a single gun or tank in the whole country, they still had the nucleus of an armed force; moreover, an armed force with the skill and knowledge obtained from crossing swords with the Nazis.

It was clear they’d been lucky. Thanks to Gort and the Navy, the country had survived. If Dunkirk had failed, it was doubtful if Britain could have withstood the Nazis because Churchill still wasn’t securely in the saddle and in the ranks of his ministers he’d been obliged to accept men who’d once been appeasers. But at least, now, for the first time, there was the feel of a strong hand on the wheel. Dunkirk had burned with self-sacrifice and high endeavour like an incandescent flame and had awakened something spontaneously all over the country, and the cricket, the half-days and the long weekends had stopped overnight. Self-indulgence became something to be ashamed of, and men and women at last found the direction and the encouragement they needed.

Virtually unemployed, without a ship, Kelly found himself once more under Corbett. He had a room at the Castle and Dover had suddenly become the front line. Yet there was a curious calm about the country so that he somehow couldn’t imagine it panicking, perhaps even a feeling of relief that there were no longer any doubtful allies to worry about and they could go it alone.

With six British and three French destroyers lost and twenty-three others badly damaged in nine days, the Navy was stretched to its limit. To redress the balance a little and despite the horror it produced among those who could foresee a whole decade of bitterness and distrust, the French Fleet at Oran was destroyed by gunfire by Admiral Somerville’s ships from Gibraltar to prevent it falling into the hands of the Germans. As a French expert, Kelly was flown to the Rock to act as interpreter, but the affair had been concluded before he arrived and he was promptly flown back, wondering if Archie Bumf had escaped and what he made of it all. Meanwhile, the government was negotiating with West Indian bases for fifty old American first-war vessels to take the place of the lost destroyers, because the U-boats had already begun to step up their assault on the convoys in the Atlantic.

In their efforts to subdue British resistance, the Germans had also started bombing Channel convoys, an operation that had soon changed to an all-out assault on RAF stations in the south, and everybody guessed it was the prelude to an invasion.

Slipping back to Thakeham to collect kit to replace that which he’d lost at Dunkirk, Kelly found only Paddy at home.

‘Mother’s gone to see Brother Kelly,’ she announced. ‘They fished him out of the sea with nothing worse than a broken toe and a bad cut on his head.’

They hugged each other, thankful not to be in mourning, and sat down to a meal of bacon and eggs cooked by Paddy in Biddy’s kitchen.

‘How’s Hugh?’ Kelly asked.

‘Doing his daredevil pilot thing,’ Paddy said, suddenly becoming serious. ‘He’s converting to Hurricanes. The RAF’s asked for volunteers from the Navy to help out.’

She gave him a quick look and, behind the smile, he saw the fear in her eyes. Young men were being killed every day along the south coast of England in an effort to prevent the Luftwaffe wrenching the command of the sky from the RAF, and he tried to anaesthetise her fear with distractions.

‘How about you? When are you going to lead him to the post?’

‘As soon as there’s time.’ She gave him a fleeting smile. ‘We’ve all been a bit busy lately, haven’t we?’

During the weekend Hugh telephoned to say he’d finished his conversion course and as Kelly, on his way back to Dover, kissed Paddy goodbye, he held her gently for a while.

‘Take it easy,’ he said quietly. ‘It might never happen.’

‘On the other hand,’ she replied in her forthright manner, ‘it jolly well might. I know what his chances are because we’ve had one or two pilots in the hospital and I’ve talked to them.’ She lifted her eyes to his, steady and fearless and willing to face what lay ahead. ‘But I’m ready for it. We’ve already been to bed together and I regret nothing, only the fact that the bloody war’s somehow got in the way at a time when we need to be so close you couldn’t shove a fig leaf between us.’ She lifted her face to gaze frankly at him. ‘I’ve applied to join the services.’

‘Which one?’

‘The Navy, of course.’ She managed a shaky grin. ‘Can you imagine what Hugh or Father, or Brother Kelly – or you, for that matter! – would say if I joined one of the less senior services?’

Back in Dover, Kelly found himself listening every evening to the news, wondering when he was going to hear that Hugh was no longer alive. The country’s future hung on a thread as fragile as a spider’s web. RAF pilot casualties were enormous and Hugh was already in action, he knew, because Rumbelo, informed from home via Biddy, had told him he was.

When work permitted, he saw Charley. But she’d changed from being an enthusiastic girl to a prickly woman. She seemed prepared to accept him in a matter-of-fact sort of way that he found difficult to accept, and they rarely talked about the life she’d lived in America and never about the past. She was friendly but never encouraging, and he found himself falling hopelessly in love with her again. When she’d always been available and he’d expected her to marry him, he’d taken her for granted, but now her very inaccessibility worked on his system like an aphrodisiac.

In September, he was sent to Harwich and from there to Felixstowe, to sort out problems at HMS Beehive and pick up information for the establishment of new motor torpedo boat bases at Portland and Fowey and the setting up of a new command to deal solely with coastal forces. The place was full of noisy young men, most of them Hostilities-Onlys, and his rank didn’t bother them in the slightest, though they were somewhat in awe of his medal ribbons and once they found what they represented were inclined to shove enthusiastically with their elbows to make room for him at the bar.

Because they’d not been moulded by the long education and apprenticeship of the regulars, they had far less respect for their elders than the products of Dartmouth, but they also had fewer inhibitions. They were astute enough to show respect for what was admirable in naval tradition, but brought a fresh breeze of ribald derision into a service where conservatism was a common characteristic. Those recalled elderly officers who grumbled about their indifference to the niceties of dress when entering or leaving port or the way they made mating sounds at the Wrens from the ship’s deck had been inclined at first to go red in the face with anger but by this time they were all growing used to each other, and as the newcomers tried to look like professionals and began to use King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions as if it were a Bible, the older men became more and more amateur in appearance and used it to prop up the broken leg of a table.

The war was now in its second stage as they drew breath after Dunkirk. Slowly the country rearmed itself. Tank, field gun and fighter deliveries mounted steadily. The embers had only glowed after Dunkirk but, with Churchill blowing on them, they blazed into a fire of enthusiasm. With the Germans in possession of the Atlantic seaboard from Norway to Spain, however, the main problem remained the convoys and supplies from America, and Kelly knew that his time ashore was growing short.

His first leave since the war had begun took him to London to attend to his father’s affairs. From there he went to Thakeham. Biddy greeted him warily and he guessed that Rumbelo had told her that Charley was around again. Rumbelo had never made any bones about his attitude. He’d never agreed with Kelly’s marriage to Christina and, given the chance, Kelly suspected he’d scheme to the limit to bring them together. Biddy was more circumspect and careful to show neither doubt nor pleasure, concentrating solely on the pride she felt at her son being given a DSM in the rash of medals that had resulted from Dunkirk.

‘Tell him to apply for a commission, Biddy,’ Kelly advised. ‘I’ll push it with everything I’ve got.’

He spent the week going through his father’s papers. As he’d expected, the old man had left him nothing but the title. He’d never really known him, anyway, and in the confusion after Dunkirk had not even been to his funeral. He suspected, in fact, that he’d still been asleep when they’d put the old man away, and all he had left of him were his old uniforms with their tarnished braid and a few relics of his service under Victoria.

The place seemed curiously empty with Rumbelo’s family all away and he was wondering if he dared go back to Dover to see Charley when Biddy appeared with a telegram. This time he thought it was about Hugh but what it contained was totally unexpected.

‘1130. OHMS ADMIRALTY LONDON AS OF LAST NIGHT. CAPT. GK MAGUIRE THAKEHAM – YOU ARE APPOINTED 23RD DESTROYER FLOTILLA IN COMMAND AUGUST 17. JOIN MERSEY FORTHWITH – FROM ADMIRALTY.’

It could hardly be called a step up.

He arrived in London in the middle of an air raid and had to waste two hours in the Underground at Victoria. The first person he met at the Admiralty was Corbett.

‘Hello, Kelly,’ he said. ‘Hear they’ve given you the twenty-third Flotilla. They’re I-class ships and pretty up-to-date. You’re attached to C-in-C, Western Approaches, but, make no mistake about it, it’s only on a short-term loan because things are going to boil up in the Med now that Mussolini’s come in on Hitler’s side. Gibraltar’s having her civilians evacuated and, as you know, Malta was hardly in a state to look after herself up to a month or two ago. But, with the Mediterranean Fleet in foreign waters and surrounded by foreign land at Alexandria, someone suddenly woke up to the fact that the place has advantages as an air base. It’ll need supplying, though, and you’ll probably find yourself doing it.’

As Kelly left, he met Verschoyle, who was quick to congratulate him.

‘I think you and I had better go and have a drink,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the Nineteenth. Four Hunt-class ships – Chatsworth, Hallamshire, Ashby and Rushden, small and a bit older than yours, but a flotilla nevertheless.’

They took a taxi but, instead of getting out of it at their club, as Kelly had expected, Verschoyle stopped it at a Mayfair address.

‘It’s time you met Christina again,’ he said.

Kelly was wary because Christina had never been noted for her kindness, but though she was beautiful and as hard as a diamond, this time she was subdued and even friendly.

‘You grow more good-looking, Kelly,’ she observed. ‘Age becomes you.’

‘You, too, Christina.’

She smiled. ‘I no longer throw the crockery at James,’ she said. ‘And since the war started, I even try not to be too selfish. I don’t suppose it’ll last, though, especially as I can no longer go to the South of France for a change.’

‘At least you haven’t fled to America,’ Kelly said. ‘Quite a few have.’

Christina gave a snort of disgust. ‘Whatever our faults,’ she said, ‘my family never dodged danger. If the Germans do make it across the Channel, you’ll not find me Kowtowing to them, and I’ve dropped a lot of people who I know damn well would. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a neutral country while England’s fighting for her life.’ She smiled. ‘Hugh’s written to say he’s been given the DSC for killing Germans, by the way, and that ought to please him because he always thought you wore the most spectacular array of ribbons he’d ever seen’ – she paused and tapped his chest – ‘among which, incidentally, I noticed two new ones.’

There was no longer any feeling for his ex-wife and Kelly was not sorry to escape and catch the evening train to Dover. The first thing that had occurred to him when he’d read his orders had been that he had to see Charley, because he’d wondered more than once if he dared try to put their relationship on a more stable footing. When they were together, beneath the brittle shell of their conversation there were always strange underlying currents and he knew she was as aware of them as he was. But he knew also that she was no longer awed by the mystique of sailormen and had never forgiven him for disappearing on duty from Shanghai when she’d arrived there in 1927 to marry him.

But, because they’d been too close to each other for too much of their childhood and youth, she also could not entirely put him aside, and she greeted him warmly enough, though with just enough wariness to make him doubtful. As he waited for her to give him a drink, he noticed that the photograph of the RAF officer had vanished, and he guessed that its disappearance had been attended with some thought and a decision to start again.