the coast of Lancashire. Technically, it juts out into the Irish Sea, unprotected from the westerly rain and gales except by its own enormous buildings. Across the sound lay the flat, eight-mile-long sand spit of Walney Island, which contributed approximately nothing in the way of a weather lee.
A small welcoming party of Naval officers greeted the admiral and his guest, and almost immediately they were driven down to the Buccleuch Dock, home of the unwanted Upholders. The single-shafted
Bill Baldridge could feel the resentment in the Royal Navy toward the government as he walked alongside the unused submarine. No one wanted her to be sold and by now all the senior officers knew that her potential savior was this visiting American lieutenant commander. Bill was being treated like a hero.
They boarded
He showed Bill the narrow dredged channel which curved out of the inner basin and then swung right through the otherwise shallow waters of the bay past the twin headlands of Roa and Foulney islands and out into the buffeting chop of the Irish Sea, beyond Hilpsford Point. “Literally hundreds of new submarines have followed that route out to the Atlantic,” he said. “And in World War II, a hell of a lot of them never came back. This shipyard, and the men who work in it, represent the soul of the Royal Navy’s submarine service. Generations of skills, often taken too much for granted by various British governments.”
“I sure liked
“So’m I,” replied the admiral. “She’s as quiet as any boat in the world, and she handles extremely well. We’ll be all right.”
At 1600 hours sharp they took off for Inveraray, clattering over the gray, melancholy streets of Barrow, where life for the engineers and ship wrights was so uncertain in these days of canceled orders and abandoned Navy building programs.
Down below, out of the starboard window, Bill Baldridge could see the docks, and he craned to see the submarine that would take him through the Bosporus. But the cloud cover was too low.
On the flight back, the dreary landscape soon slipped away behind them, but there remained a feeling of despondency between the two men as they reflected on the hard lives of people in a shipbuilding town like Barrow. Only the welcoming sight of the former Miss Laura MacLean waving from the lawn as they flew up the loch and turned in to land cast a near-depression from Bill’s shoulders.
“You been waiting long out there?” he asked her.
“No. Just a few minutes. That helicopter always leaves Barrow at four o’clock when Dad’s on board. That means you’ll be home just after five, and that’s what it is. Did you have a good day?”
“We had a great day, and the admiral’s home for tea. Can’t beat that.”
Laura gazed at Bill. She had never seen him in uniform, and he did, she thought, cut a commanding figure. So why had no one landed him?
“Laura?” he asked, “why are you staring like that?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen you in uniform before. I was just getting used to how official you look.”
“Oh, I’m official all right,” he chuckled. “Right here on the business of the U.S. Government. And dressed for the part — stiff collar and battle honors.”
“You have those, too?”
“Nothing won in the field of conflict,” he said. “But I’ve had a few private moments.”
“He’s a rascal,” thought Laura, “but he’s nice.”
They watched the chopper climb away over the loch for its short journey back to Faslane. Lady MacLean called out from the doorway that tea was ready in the drawing room, so would everyone come in. “And Iain…keep those bloody dogs outside, will you?”
The evening, it emerged, was already planned. They were going up to the village pub, the George, in Inveraray for supper. “Sweaters and no ties,” said Lady MacLean. “They’ll give you a good Aberdeen steak, Bill… good even by the standards of an American rancher.”
“But you don’t know what his standards are, Mum,” said Laura.
“Neither,” said Mum, “do you.”
There was something knowing in that remark. Bill picked it up, and so did Laura. They did not look at each other. But their thoughts were intertwined. And they both knew that, too, without looking anywhere.
The admiral sipped his tea, read his paper, grunted but once. “Damn U.S. stock market. Goes up fifty or sixty points one day, then falls back fifty or sixty points the next. Been doing it for two weeks. Needn’t have opened at all. Save everyone a lot of trouble.”
They left for the George at seven o’clock, Laura driving the Range Rover up to the village and past the church. Admiral MacLean ordered a minor detour, and pointed out the town jetty, showing Bill where his old submarine mooring had been. “We used to stop out there overnight, and then come into the pub for a few drinks when we were exercising in the loch,” he said. “This is a very strange little village for a submariner, because the first thing you see is a rowing boat containing His Grace the Duke of Argyll and his ghillie. He calls on visiting submarines in his capacity as Admiral of the Western Isles.
“It used to be quite a ceremony. We’d pipe the duke aboard and give him a dram of whisky, and he’d tell us what was happening locally. He once told me his wife was the constable of Scotland. I suppose that might apply to any wife of any duke of Argyll. It’d be rather amusing if one of ’em married a chorus girl, don’t you think?”
The George itself had a beamed low ceiling and was almost empty. The steaks were excellent, and a couple of bottles of red wine were perfectly good. Bill insisted on paying, and said the President of the United States would be furious if he encroached upon the MacLean hospitality for one more evening. His last evening. Tomorrow he must begin his journey to Russia.
Back at Inveraray Court, Lady MacLean took charge. “I’m taking my husband to bed immediately,” she said, laughing. “Barrow today, Edinburgh yesterday, eight here for dinner on Sunday night. Fishing all day on the Tay on Saturday. Golf at Turnberry last Friday. He’ll be too tired for the Bosporus. Night, you two. I expect you’ll find a way to amuse yourselves for another hour.”
“And don’t drink all of that expensive port,” muttered the admiral as he clumped up the stairs. “See you tomorrow. Early, Bill. I’m driving you over to the base. They’ve got a man to take you on to the airport.”
Bill and Laura retired to the study, where the American put a couple of logs on the remains of the fire, and Laura slipped
“They do. And it is still probably my favorite, although I know I’m supposed to grow out of it.”
Laura said, “Mine too,” as she poured two glasses of Taylor’s ’47, and handed one to her guest. With Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic in the background, they sat quietly in the big chairs on either side of the fireplace, and sipped the admiral’s vintage port. Pavarotti’s Rodolfo and Mirella Freni’s Mimi completed the musical spell, woven almost a hundred years ago in northern Italy by Giacomo Puccini.
The time slipped by very quickly. They talked of music, and of Kansas, and of Ben Adnam. Laura shook her head despondently. The Israeli officer she had once loved was now the most wanted man on earth.
