Читать книгу Storm Below - Hugh Garner - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

In the Riverford’s wardroom the stewards cleared away the breakfast things, except for those lying at the captain’s end of the table. At a small desk in a corner, Lieutenant Harris, who had finished his breakfast after being relieved on the bridge, was going over some new anti-submarine procedures before placing them between the covers of a weighted book.

As usual the captain had waited until the officers had eaten before taking his place at the table. This, like some of his other habits, he had brought with him from the Merchant Service. If he had been asked why he preferred to eat alone, he would have replied, “Well, it’s hard to say. It’s not snobbishness exactly — although I’d have a hard time proving it to the others — but it is something which I believe is necessary for the discipline of a ship. I may be wrong, but I believe it because I was brought up to believe it.”

If pressed further he might have continued, “You know, what people fail to realize is that I am the chief sufferer from my self-imposed anti-gregariousness. Suppose, now, that I were sitting here with the other officers, and they were skylarking and having a good time — which they certainly would not, were I here — and in order not be a boor I joined in the fun. Do you know what would happen? Well, I’ll tell you: there would be an immediate rise in their friendliness towards me, but a distinct slackening in their respect. In order to keep their respect — which I believe is vitally necessary out here — I will forego their deeper friendship. Hence I dine alone while aboard.”

He buttered his second slice of toast and rang for some marmalade. When the steward placed it before him he spread it on his bread with studied deliberation. “What is our bread ration these days, Roberts?” he asked.

“Th-th-th-two loaves, s-sir, n-n-n-ow that we’re b-baking our own.”

“Does it do us?”

“Not al-al-al-no, sir.”

“Where does the extra come from?”

“F-f-f-from the c-c-cooks, sir.”

“The next time we’re short, break out the biscuits; we’re on general messing the same as anybody else aboard.”

“Y-yes, sir. W-w-w-will you have some more c-coffee, sir?”

“Yes, please, Roberts. Not so much milk this trip.”

When the steward had gone for the coffee, he turned and looked over at Lieutenant Harris. “Did you hear about the seaman who was injured?” he asked.

Harris swung around quickly in his chair and faced him. “Yes, sir, I did. It’s hard lines.”

There was something a little distasteful about Harris using such Anglicisms, thought the captain. Hard lines! Still, the language was free. God knows there weren’t many things free to a Jew these days — in Europe, of course. “I think we should get the surgeon over from the St. Helens,” said the captain. “Would you go up to the bridge and have Mr. Bowers request that he come over. Tell them that we will leave our position if given permission, or to send instructions as to how they wish to make the transfer.”

“Yes, sir,” said Harris, reaching for his cap as he left the room. The steward brought a fresh cup of coffee, and the captain stirred some raw, brown sugar into it. He pondered upon Harris. Inscrutable like all Jews. Could not seem to get behind his facade somehow. Wonder what he was in private life? Lawyer perhaps, or in business. Hard to tell what sort of business a Jew was in these days. Used to be old clothes and pawn shops, but now it could be anything.

His thoughts soon skipped from Lieutenant Harris to the letter he had received in the last mail before leaving ’Derry. Ever since the trip had begun, his thoughts had not wandered very far from it. He had read it so often that it was imprinted on his memory, and he no longer had to take it from the locked drawer of his desk, as he had done many times during the first few days out.

Dear Joe: —

Ronald and I are both well. We received a letter from your mother last week. She is fine, and is expecting you to call on her as soon as you reach England again. Burford-on-Keys has been blitzed. Imagine! It seems that Jerry dropped two or three fire bombs in the market place, and of course the whole town has been in a turmoil ever since. You’ll probably have visited her before you get my mail anyhow. I don’t know where you have been running the past few months, but I can guess from your letters. Things seem to be going well in Africa. Do you know anything about it? That is just a subtle woman’s way to find out where you are. I’m sure that wherever you are, that you are enjoying yourself more than I am at this moment. You see, dear, I have a confession to make to you.

Do you remember when you were commissioning your ship in Quebec, and we took that walk along the promenade outside the Chateau? We spoke then of our personal lives, and how nothing we could do to each other would destroy the feelings we had, one for the other, then. Dear Joe, that was only two years ago. I don’t know what your life has been like when you have been away from me, and I don’t want to. We promised that if we kissed, we would not tell. But darling, what I have to tell is more than that. You see, I am in love with another man.

If that hurts you, dear, it hurts me just as much to have to tell you, believe me. This feeling I have for Reggie is so overpowering that I can’t fight it.

I met him at a party at the Burroughs’. He is an RAF Squadron Leader who is stationed in Montreal with the Ferry Command. It was a case of I met him, and I’d had it.

[Damn it all, she was using RAF lingo already!]

Dear Joe, will you give me a divorce? I know that things are far more complicated than that, what with Ronnie and everything, but please will you talk it over with me in your letters, and when you get back to this side, we’ll have the whole thing out?

I don’t deserve it, but please don’t think too bad of me.

Joyce

It was like a bloody sixpenny novel, even to the other fellow’s name. Reggie! Christ!

That was the way it was; a man and woman lived together for fifteen years as man and wife, with not even a flirtation coming between them. They grew dulled to each other by the knowledge that there could never be anything as juvenile as a love affair with somebody else, cropping up. Then a war came along and they were separated a little longer than usual, and this.

Even before the war, when he had been sailing to the West Indies and South America on the tankers, and she had lived alone with their son in Montreal, there had never been cause for the slightest breath of suspicion.

“Please give me a divorce!” Couldn’t she see that it was impossible? Did she think he was going to let her take his son to be raised by a bloody desk wallah called Reggie? It was fortunate that they were being refitted this trip. He would go home immediately and find out how much truth there was in what she had written. He felt sure that a marriage such as theirs could not be broken up by somebody else if he were only there to stop it. The thought that he was on his way home, sliding south to St. John’s, as it were, made things a little easier to bear.

Lieutenant Harris came down the companionway and entered the door. “The first lieutenant is having your signal sent, sir,” he said.

“Good. Where is the St. Helens?”

“She’s doing a search between the convoy ranks, sir.”

“Can she receive our flashing?”

“Yes, sir. She’s answering.”

“Thank you. Oh, by the way, have you read the stuff on the new German torpedo?”

“The sonic one, sir?” Harris asked, knowing that the captain only wanted to know by his mention of it whether he knew what he meant.

“Yes. Very clever, don’t you think? It’ll probably come shooting up our oscillator beam. Great thing for Allison to pick up on his asdic.”

“I thought that it was attracted by the noise of our screw, sir?” “It’s one or the other. We’ll find out before the war is much older, no doubt.”

“Yes, sir,” said Harris, taking his chair again at the small table. The captain picked up a sheaf of wireless signals from the top of the bookcase. He was reading through them when there was a knock against the door frame, and he looked up to see a seaman, cap in hand, standing there.

“Yes, Manders?” he asked.

“Sir, I was sent down here by Leading Seaman McCaffrey. Ordinary Seaman Clark is dead, sir,” he said.

“Dead!” cried Harris, swinging around.

The captain put down the signals and dismissed the seaman. “That puts a new light on things,” he said. He opened the bookcase and pulled out the heavy volume of King’s Regulations & Admiralty Instructions, and began thumbing through the close-packed pages.