Maddon's Rock (10 page)

Shortly after eleven there was a cry of “Up spirits.” The orderly brought us each our tot of rum. He was a pleasant, long faced, rather serious boy with carroty hair and ears that flaired out from either side of his head. “Looks as though ’e’s goin’ ter take off any minute,” Bert said in an effort at cheeriness.

I lay in bed all morning. Bert’s breathing became heavy and the cough more noticeable. I didn’t like the sound of it. I tried to read. But it wasn’t easy. The cabin swayed and tossed. The sea thundered against the closed ports, the noise of it drowning the rhythmic roar of the engines which vibrated through the whole ship. We were making good speed in a heavy sea and it sounded like it.

After lunch I got up, dressed and went on deck. When I say I went on deck, all I mean is that I slipped up a wet companionway and took a quick look round. It was a grey, dingy sight. The sea was just as it had been the previous morning. The corvette was awash from stem to stern. The mast, with a torn white ensign flying, swayed alarmingly. The ship was flinging herself through the waves.

I went below again. The orderly was in the sick bay. I asked him whether it would be all right for me to see Miss Sorrel. He took me for’ard along a narrow steel passageway that swayed and dipped wildly. He indicated the door of a cabin and left me. I knocked. I found myself strangely nervous as she called, “Come in!”

I found her propped up in a bunk wearing a man’s white sweater with the colours of some team knitted into it. Her face still looked tired, but it lit up with a smile when she saw who it was.

I sat with her for quite a while. I don’t know what we talked about. I only know that I enjoyed talking with her. She was natural, friendly—easy to talk to. We had the love of the sea in common.

Shortly after midday the corvette rejoined the convoy. The gale had blown itself out and the sea was falling. When I went on deck after lunch a watery gleam of sunshine picked out the white flecks of the wind-broken sea. We were passing along the southern fringe of the convoy. The merchant ships wallowed slowly in the remnants of the gale like a flotilla of ungainly ducks. Ahead of us the slim grey lines of the destroyer
Scorpion
patrolled in a smother of spray. I returned to the sickbay. Shortly afterwards came the faint sound of the loud-hailer. The skipper of the
Bravado
was reporting to the Commander of the
Scorpion.
I wondered how he felt, poor devil, losing the one ship in the convoy that carried a valuable cargo for the British Treasury.

Bert got steadily worse during the day. He didn’t cough much, but fever burned in his eyes and by the evening his temperature was up to 104. He still tried to crack an occasional joke, but his voice was weak and he lay in a semi-coma. The medical orderly suspected pneumonia.

I had tried to comfort him with the thought that in about thirty-six hours we would be in Leith and a doctor would come on board. But when I went up on deck the next morning for a blow before breakfast, there was no sign of the convoy and the corvette was hurrying north. I asked one of the crew why this was—were we making for Scapa? He said, “No, Iceland. The Old Man’s had orders to pick up a couple of Yankee freighters at Reykjavik and escort them down to meet a westbound Atlantic convoy.”

Back in the sick-bay Bert’s fever-bright eyes looked up at me over the bedclothes. “Are we nearly there, Corp?” he whispered.

“No, Bert,” I replied. “We’ve left the convoy. We’re bound for Iceland.”

He gave a little grunt and closed his eyes. I thought he
had gone off to sleep again. But in a moment he said, “Just the job, Iceland—get me silly temperature da’n.” And his face cracked into a tired grin.

Jennifer came to visit him in the afternoon. Her red jumper, freshly washed, was a gay splash of colour in the little sick-bay. Her face looked bright and cheerful. The dark rings under her eyes had gone and her skin had more colour in it. There was even a gleam of laughter in her grey eyes. It wasn’t until she had been in the room several minutes that it dawned on me why she looked so gay. “You’ve got hold of some lipstick,” I said. “Wherever did you find that on a warship?”

She laughed. “The skipper. He’s a dear. When he lent me that sweater of his he rather shyly produced some powder and lipstick. Last port he was in was Calais and he’d bought cosmetics for his girl friends and his sister. He said he was sure his sister wouldn’t mind.”

For some reason I felt sullen and angry. When the medical orderly came in, she took him on one side and questioned him. It seems she knew all about pneumonia. I suppose there was plenty of it in the concentration camps. Anyway, she was constantly in and out of the sick-bay after that in the capacity of self-appointed nurse. She confirmed that Bert had pneumonia, but she said he’d be all right. He hadn’t got it badly. The next night he was over the worst. By the time we reached Reykjavik he was sitting up in bed, cracking jokes and demanding his arrears of rum ration. “Pity the Army don’t cotton on ter this ’ere rum ’abit, ain’t it, mate?” was his comment.

Altogether we were nearly three weeks on board the
Bravado
. I’ll always remember that as one of the happiest times I spent in the Army. The weather turned fine. We were given very little to do. And as nobody fell sick, the skipper left us quartered in the sick-bay, which was a good deal more comfortable than the after-deck. And every day I saw Jennifer. Mostly we talked of sailing. I’d done a month’s sailing among some of the islands off the west coast of Scotland. I knew Oban and Mull and the Kyle of Lochalsh. She told me the story of the Lady’s
Rock and about the race that runs between the rock and the lighthouse on Eilean Musdile, of the seals on the islands off Lismore, of lobster breeding, of the story of Duart Castle. She told me of the trips she had done with her brother on her 25-ton ketch, the
Eilean Mor
, and I in my turn told her of voyages made from my home town of Falmouth. I was with a firm of architects and the junior partner, a fairly wealthy young man, had owned a gaff-rigged cutter. With another fellow and myself as crew we’d done trips to France and even Spain. We’d taken her into most of the ports of Britain’s west coast at one time or another.

So the time passed in a timeless haze of chatting, reading and lazing. We were a week at Reykjavik and left in glorious sunshine with two American Liberty boats. We tacked them on to their convoy some twelve hundred miles from New York and then turned homeward. The rumour got around the ship that we would dock at Falmouth. I stopped the skipper one day and asked him whether it was true. “You see, it’s my home town,” I said, “and it’s nearly a year now since I saw my family.”

He smiled and nodded. “Quite true,” he said. “We’ll dock at Falmouth on the 30th, all being well.”

At ten o’clock on the 30th we steamed past Zose Point and slid into the anchorage beyond the Ferry. A line of Naval patrol boats—ML’s and MTB’s—were moored close to the foreshore and there was a destroyer and two corvettes at anchor. All about me were old familiar things that I had not seen for a long time. The little pier where I’d fallen into the water as a kid was still there just as it had always been in my lifetime. It was as though I’d never been away. Bert and I stood against the rail looking out on to the town. I was so busy pointing out places to him that I didn’t hear Jenny come up—I’d been calling her that for several days now. “Well, Jim,” she said, “I’m afraid it’s goodbye now.”

She was wearing the khaki greatcoat and little black beret that I had seen her in that first time when she struggled up the gangway of the
Trikkala.
I hadn’t given
this moment a thought and I felt a sudden emptiness.

“Are you going ashore now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “They’re just lowering a boat for me.

I stared at her. She was going ashore. She was walking right out of my life when I’d come to take her presence almost for granted. I suddenly felt I was losing hold of something precious to me. “I’ll—I’ll see you ashore, won’t I?”

But she shook her head. “I’m leaving right away for Scotland,” she said. “I haven’t seen Daddy for over three years. I expect he thinks I’m dead—you see, we couldn’t write. I’m not going to ’phone him. I’m just going to walk right in on him and give him the surprise of his life.”

A rating came up. “Boat’s alongside, Miss Sorrel.”

“Goodbye then, Jim.”

She held out her hand. I took it. I thought her face looked sad. I hoped the parting meant as much to her as it did to me. Then she removed her hand and shook Bert’s. “Goodbye, Bert. Don’t do too much. You’ll feel a bit depressed if you do.”

“Goodbye, Miss Sorrel,” he said. “You must come for annuvver trip wiv us sometime. The Corp an’ I is thinking of startin’ a little company to run trips ter Davy Jones an’ back fer people like you wot ’asn’t ’ad enought hexcitement in their lives.”

She laughed. And then with a little wave she was gone. She never looked back. I leaned over the side watching the boat pull away for the shore. She sat staring straight in front of her. She never once turned her head. It was as though she had turned her back on all that section of her life. She was going home.

The coxswain touched me on the arm. “Captain’s orders, Corporal, and you an’ Cook is to report to the sick-bay and remain there until you’re sent for.”

That brought me back to earth with a jolt. The trip was over. Jenny had gone. We were back in the Army again.

We went below. For two hours we remained in that
little sick-bay. Nobody came. Twice I got up with the intention of trying to see the skipper. It was infuriating to be sitting there with my home just across the anchorage, held up by some wretched little bit of red tape. But each time I sat down again. The skipper was bound to be busy. He’d been very decent to us. He knew my home was in Falmouth. He’d send us ashore as soon as he could.

We were called for food. And finally at two-thirty a rating poked his head round the door. “Wanted on deck, Corporal,” he said. “You an” yer mate.”

“Shall we bring our kit?” I asked.

He said we’d better. He stood in the doorway watching us curiously as we gathered our things together.

My eyes blinked in the sunlight as we came out on deck. A launch was lying alongside. And standing by the rail, close under the bridge, was a military police sergeant.

“’Ullo, ’ullo—wot’s this?” Bert said. “Beastly Red Cap—an’ a sergeant too. Looks like trouble, mate.”

“You Corporal Vardy?” the sergeant asked as we came up. He looked down at a piece of paper he had in his hand. “Corporal J. L. Vardy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Gunner H. B. Cook?” he asked Bert.

“That’s me, Sarge.”

The sergeant folded the piece of paper up and put it in his pocket. “I have orders to place you both under close arrest,” he said.

For a moment I think I just gaped at him. I couldn’t believe I’d heard correctly. “Place us under arrest?” I said.

“Blimey!” muttered Bert. “Fine ’ome-coming this is.” Then he looked up belligerently. “’Ere, wot are we supposed to ’ave done?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “What’s the charge, Sergeant?”

“Mutiny,” he replied. “Come on now. Get into the boat and look sharp about it.”

I never saw my family. And Bert never got up to London to see his missis. We were driven straight from
the docks at Falmouth to a military camp near Plymouth, occupied by Number 345 Holding Company. There we were locked in a small room, at the rear of the guard post, which we shared with a frightened little medical fellow waiting to go before a civilian court for assault. This room acted as a temporary cell, the permanent cells being all occupied, and here we spent wretched weeks of waiting.

THE MORNING AFTER
our arrival at the camp we were taken before the Adjutant and remanded. The charge was confirmed as one of mutiny. I asked who had made the charge. The answer was, “A Warrant Officer of the Royal Navy—Rankin.” The Adjutant then informed us that a summary of evidence would be taken and the Camp Commandant would then decide whether he would send us for Court-Martial.

That the charge had been made by Rankin was the first indication we had that we were not the only survivors of the
Trikkala.
And if Rankin had survived, then Halsey and the others in the Captain’s boat had probably survived as well. I remember as I stood at attention in that drab wooden office, with the spring sunshine cutting a broad shaft through the curling tobacco smoke, I was troubled again by all the doubts and uneasiness that had been in my mind during those last few hours on board the
Trikkala.
The loose planks, the scraps of overheard conversation, the cook’s story of the
Penang
, Jukes’ clenched fist when I mentioned the ship’s name, Captain Halsey’s sharp, black eyes, his whispered
—it suits us
, the ship’s alteration of course, Jukes at the wheel when the explosion took place—it all flooded back into my mind as I stood there staring stiffly at the three polished brass pips on the Adjutant’s service dress. And I cursed myself for not having mentioned any of these things in my report to the skipper of the
Bravado.
The whole structure of my suspicions had collapsed like a pack of cards as soon as I had heard that we were the only survivors. There had been no point in voicing suspicions that I no longer believed to have any foundation. Now they were all revived.

Back in our quarters I talked it over with Bert. “You’d
think the silly fool would ’ave bin willin’ ter let bygones be bygones, wouldn’t yer?” Bert said. “Just you wait till I get me ’ands on that rotten warrant awficer?”

I went over the whole thing with Bert time and time again—the conversations, the feel of those planks shifting under our fingers, the events of that night which had ended with the three of us on the raft. We listed everything we’d heard about Halsey and Hendrik and Jukes and Evans. But we got no further. Vague suspicions, that was all. Nobody to corroborate our evidence, except Jenny. And she knew very little but what I had told her. We needed some supporting evidence of a member of the crew. Perhaps there had been other survivors? If Cousin’s boat had gone, Number One boat might still have been picked up. Even so, we were in a spot. There was no question of our guilt. We had refused to obey the orders of our superior officer, and I, at any rate, had threatened him and a ship’s officer with my rifle. What we had to prove was justification and my heart sank at the thought of trying to put across my frail suspicions as justification to a bench of hard-bitten Regulars sitting in judgment at a Court-Martial.