Back to Battle (3 page)

He offered the case and they lit up, peering at the chart as they smoked, while the signals officer stood at the back of the chartroom, wide-eyed at the sight of an immaculate British commander with gold on his cap sharing cigarettes with a scruffy and mutinous Spanish petty officer. Knowing Kelly and having known him since 1911, Rumbelo still remained totally undisturbed.

The navigator found the Spaniard’s mistake and Kelly leaned over the chart. ‘You’ll have to let her go,’ he said. The Spaniard grinned and nodded.

‘Otherwise we’ll be forced to sink you.’

‘Think you could?’

‘Before your people could get your guns to bear. You haven’t even bothered to man them.’

The petty officer grinned again. ‘It’s harder than you think being part of a social revolution when everybody thinks they’re equal.’

He showed them round the ship. It was drab and uncared for, the decks dirty under the grime of hundreds of feet. Breech mechanisms, sighting instruments and range-finders looked rusty and unclean, and Kelly suspected even that magazines and shell rooms were only half full. In the wardroom they were shown the bullet holes in the panelling where the officers had been murdered. The signals officer winced slightly but the others remained totally blank-faced. In the captain’s cabin they were joined by several other men, all full of political catch phrases and all over-earnest and lacking the petty officer’s humour. But there was no hostility and one of them even produced a bottle of brandy and glasses.

The petty officer indicated the chair alongside the desk. ‘The captain was sitting there,’ he said, ‘when he was shot.’

They were pressed into accepting long Spanish cigars and when they’d finished their drinks, they were escorted back to the ship’s side. Kelly noticed at once that many of the sailors, if they hadn’t put on uniforms, at least had put on uniform caps, and as he turned to climb down the ladder, he stiffened and saluted the petty officer. The Spaniard looked a little disconcerted and he guessed that saluting had been done away with. Then he saw one of the sailors nudge him and he stiffened to attention and saluted back. Immediately, there were so many salutes they looked like waving corn, and someone shouted ‘Vivan los mariñeros ingleses.’

Kelly smiled, feeling the initiative was still his, as it had been throughout the interview. He had stamped his own presence on the opposition and that, surely, was the way to success. Master of your fate. Captain of your soul. Nobody pushed Kelly Maguire about. Not even the Spanish government.

As he began to climb down the jumping ladder back to the whaler, he was aware of dozens of heads hanging over the rails above him. As the boat began to draw away, there were even a few friendly waves but he kept his gaze firmly ahead and showed no signs of having seen them.

Back aboard Badger, he climbed to the bridge where he was met by Smart. As he nodded, Smart turned to the voice pipe. ‘Half ahead both.’

As they passed the old freighter, they could see a fat man wearing a peaked cap leaning on the bridge. The bridge messenger handed over a megaphone and Kelly shouted into it.

‘You may carry on,’ he said. ‘They’ve accepted that you’re outside territorial waters.’

The man in the cap waved and, a few moments later, they saw the water churning at her stern as she began to move off.

‘I’ll go and change,’ Kelly said.

As they watched him go to his cabin, Smart turned to the navigating officer.

‘How did he do it?’ he asked.

The navigator looked bewildered for a moment, then he grinned. ‘Talked to ‘em like a Dutch uncle,’ he said. ‘At one point, I thought he was even going to put his arm round that bloody Spaniard’s shoulder.’

Smart smiled. ‘I bet he had the other behind his back, though,’ he said. ‘Wearing a knuckle-duster.’

Gibraltar lay like a crouching lion across the sea, a vast lump of limestone on the southern tip of Spain, dominating the narrow stretch of water that was a cross-roads for ships hurrying east and west, to and from the Mediterranean, and north and south on the North African trade route.

It was never entirely foreign. The beer had a different label, sherry was a novelty and the brandy sometimes produced disastrous results, but the pubs and cafés were much the same as in Portsmouth, dispensing egg and chips for the sailors and providing pianos so they could thrash the keys in a sing-song when they felt like it.

Since the Ayala-Jeb el Aioun incident, the war had grown. In the early days it hadn’t been a real war at all, just a comic opera with an occasional death, run by the grandees of the Right against the dozens of parties of the Left, all known by a different set of initials – POUM, PSUC, FAI, CNT, UGT – who couldn’t even agree among themselves. The whole thing had been ruled by ‘mañana’ – tomorrow – that single word that seemed to regulate the whole of Spanish life, while the artillery shells that were fired were said to be so old and useless the belligerents just fired them back; there was even said to be one which had been going backwards and forwards for months.

It was different now. Russian support for the government had increased, and international brigades had been formed from volunteers from every country in Europe – many of them young men of wealthy families out to show their disgust at their parents’ indifference to the poverty and misery of the Depression by fighting for the wrong side. The reaction, of course, had been strong German and Italian support for the fascist revolutionaries which had brought their soldiers, aeroplanes and ships into the conflict. A policy of non-intervention was still being followed by the French and British Governments but with international meddling had come increased bitterness, and in a savage war of ideologies, it was now far from abnormal for women teachers to be stripped, marched about with shaven heads or even shot, and for priests to fight against priests and not hesitate to kill. To the Fascists the Republicans were ‘anti-Christ Marxist canaille,’ while to the Republicans, Franco’s men were ‘anti-Marxist priests’ bastards.’ It was hard to tell which were the most virulent in their hatred, with prisoners taken in arms shot out of hand and officers shot whatever the situation.

In February, the Nationalists had eliminated the Republican pocket round Malaga, with the Italians helping on land and the new German pocket battleship, Graf Spee, standing by in support. In April, the Kondor Legion of the German Luftwaffe had wiped out Guernica, the Basque market town. In May the destroyer, Hunter, had struck an Italian-made Nationalist mine off Almeria, with eight killed and nine wounded – and a fortnight later, Graf Spee’s sister ship, Deutschland, had been bombed by government aircraft off Ibiza, and after landing her wounded at Gib, had bombarded Almeria in revenge.

By this time, General Franco’s forces controlled the west and south coasts of Spain with part of the north, while the government held the east coast with the great ports of Barcelona and Valencia. Though a fascist blockade had been declared and considerable efforts had been made to enforce it, it had not been recognised by the British government and, attracted by enormous profits, British shipowners were now operating whole lines of small steamers to break it. Like Jeb el Aioun, they were constantly in trouble, and merchant ships of all nationalities continued to be sent to the bottom, while one British destroyer, narrowly missed by a torpedo, had not hesitated to call up her flotilla mates so that the Italian submarine which had fired the torpedo had only just escaped, damaged and unnerved. Nobody in the Navy was kidding themselves any more that the Spanish Civil War wasn’t the prelude to a major conflict. The gathering storm was just off the quarterdeck.

Walking home to his flat in Main Street under the Rock, Kelly stared round him at the towering fortress, wondering if it could be held. If war came would there be another great siege? Those whose job was the strategy of the British Empire had probably already abandoned it in their plans because a siege would be a useless piece of heroics.

It was clear the Germans were treating the Spanish war as a rehearsal for a more serious conflagration and, with the powers constantly trying to draw military lessons from it, Kelly himself had been involved in drawing up reports on the influence of the air on land and sea warfare. It had not been difficult to notice that, in air attacks on warships, though no ships had been sunk, many had been damaged and every endeavour was now being made to improve anti-aircraft armament.

Stopping by his door, he wasn’t looking forward to spending another evening alone. Yet he’d spent too many dining with people who had wives to feel he could impose any more. Even Rumbelo had gone now, his time in the Navy finished, and was back at Thakeham, near Esher, where his wife, Biddy, looked after the vast empty house Kelly owned. He’d gone with no regrets because, contrary to the romantic legends about the pull of the sea, there weren’t many long-serving sailors who didn’t happily give it up.

His hand in his pocket feeling for his key, Kelly wondered what he’d do when his own time came to retire. It couldn’t be far off because, unless something happened soon, he could see himself being passed over for captain’s rank in favour of the experts who’d built such a reputation in capital ships. Would he marry? He didn’t think so. Not again, though judging by the people who kept pushing their daughters at him, he supposed he must still be a good catch.

You, Kelly Maguire, he thought as he took out the key, are a bloody fool.

It was a thought that often came to him these days. Ten years before he would have believed that his life had been laid out for him: a steady climb up the ladder and a happy home provided by Charley Upfold, the one woman he’d loved all his life. But he’d been too involved with the Navy, and she’d escaped him to marry his term-mate, Kimister, and on Kimister’s death, had vanished to America – so he understood, to marry an American. He’d never heard from her since, while his own wife, Christina had left him for another naval officer, James Verschoyle.

He was just pushing the key into the lock when he was surprised to hear a voice calling inside the flat.

‘It’s open!’

Throwing the door back, he was confronted by a young man in grey flannels and tweed jacket.

‘Hugh! When did you arrive?’

‘This afternoon.’ The boy smiled. ‘The caretaker let me in.’

Kelly’s face was pink with pleasure. Out of the whole sorry business of his broken marriage, the only worthwhile thing that had come to him had been his stepson, Christina’s son by her first marriage. Twenty now, and on indifferent terms with his mother, he had spent all his time away from school or university with Kelly, visiting his ships with an enthusiasm that led Kelly to hope he might eventually join the Navy himself.

‘How long are you here for?’

‘I pick up a ship tomorrow for Naples. I’m doing some research at the university there.’

Kelly grinned and the boy mixed a pink gin for him. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘You’re old enough now. How’d you get here?’

‘James Verschoyle brought me. We came by car.’

Kelly made no comment. Though he and Verschoyle had spent all their youth at loggerheads, the dislike had disappeared in the muddled years of the thirties and had not returned even after Christina’s remarriage. It was curious, but Verschoyle was Verschoyle and nothing could change him.

‘What’s Verschoyle doing here?’ he asked.

‘Appointment to the admiral’s staff, I understand.’

‘Good for him. He might relieve me.’ Kelly finished his drink briskly. ‘Been to Thakeham lately?’

‘Yes,’ Hugh said. ‘Everybody sent their regards.’ He passed across a photograph. ‘That’s the house. I thought you’d like to have it.’

‘Who’s the sailor in the background?’

The boy laughed. ‘Your godson. Kelly Rumbelo.’

‘In uniform already? God that makes me feel old!’ Kelly paused. ‘How about you, Hugh? Have you ever thought what you’re going to do for a living?’

‘Not really. In fact, it seems funny to be thinking of work with a war coming.’

‘You think one is?’

‘Don’t you?’

Kelly paused. It was certainly rapidly becoming clear that, despite Russian help, the Nationalist superiority on land was growing decisive, and when it finally did, doubtless the Germans and the Italians would persuade Franco to raise the old cry of ‘Gibraltar for the Spanish!’ as a trigger to start another war in which they could legitimately take part.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I do. In which case you could always join the Navy.’

Hugh looked faintly guilty. ‘Isn’t the navy a bit out of date?’

Kelly’s face grew red. But then he hesitated. The politicians had always seemed more concerned with the expediency of party political ends than with long-term national interests and their subservience to the Treasury made them spoil every ship they touched for the necessary extra ha’p’orth of tar.

He took refuge in indignation. ‘Just let those buggers, Hitler and Mussolini, start something,’ he growled, ‘and you’ll soon see if we’re out of date.’

Hugh grinned at his expression. ‘I meant, hasn’t the Air Force become more important?’

The boy had a point, Kelly thought. If a war came, then certainly the Air Force would count for a great deal. Air power was going to be a decisive factor in the next bunfight, and that was something that had never been understood by the clots in Parliament or by the War Office and the Admiralty, probably not even by the bloody Air Ministry, come to that!

He pushed the thought aside.

‘Never mind the Navy for tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll find somewhere good to eat. How about your mother? Seen her lately?’

Hugh shrugged. ‘Yes. But I don’t think she’s desperately interested in me – even now.’

‘How is she?’

Hugh looked up, puzzled. ‘She seems content enough.’ He clearly couldn’t understand how any woman who’d married her first husband out of pure selfishness and been the cause of the break-up of her marriage to the second, could possibly be content with her third. He hadn’t yet learned that things didn’t fit into neat patterns.

‘How about James Verschoyle? How do you get on with him?’