why they haven’t locked him up in that camp at Huyton with the other Krauts. Shoot the bastard.’ The old man gave a short gasp. There were tears on his face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. It was some time before he spoke again and then in little more than a whisper.
‘Sorry. Things get on top of you don’t they? You know, my wife…’ He left the sentence hanging there uncertainly and slumped back against the wall of the shelter, lost again in his coat and his misery.
Lindsay tried to think of Mary Henderson. He had seen her twice since the party, a few hours snatched from Naval Intelligence here and there. They had spoken with the same warm frankness, a frankness entirely natural to her but a little foreign to him. There had been other women before, drunken encounters of the sort familiar to most sailors, and two brittle affairs with ‘nice’ west-of-Scotland girls, but never a meeting of sympathetic minds. Mary was challenging, he loved her bright intelligence, her cool expectant eyes, her smile, her strange gasping laugh, and he loved the joy, the hope, he felt when he was with her. There was a sort of stillness, a grace, in Mary that was wholly captivating. Her world was built on sure foundations, faith its cornerstone, unshaken by war. He envied her a little and with her, his life seemed less empty.
The rude clatter of hobnailed boots on the steps dragged Lindsay back to the rumbling, shuddering world of the shelter. The door opened, the blackout curtain was brushed aside and a small boy in pyjamas and a coat was gently propelled across the threshold. He was followed by a burly fireman with a smoke-stained face: ‘Room for one more? Found this little bugger in the street on his own.’
There was a good deal of clucking and fussing as the boy was settled with a blanket and a biscuit. Someone handed the fireman a canteen of water and he emptied it without pausing for breath.
‘What’s it like out there?’ asked Lindsay’s rescuer, George Barnes.
The fireman wiped his chin with a dusty sleeve: ‘The city’s on fire. Hell, that’s what it’s like, hell.’ He seemed remarkably cheerful for one who had just escaped from the other side. ‘Lewis’s Store, Kelly’s and Blackler’s — a couple of the Navy’s ships are on fire, I was on my way there…’
On an impulse, Lindsay got to his feet: ‘I’ll come with you.’
The fireman turned to look him up and down. ‘Why? You’d best leave well alone.’
‘I don’t want to sit here. Let’s go.’ He pushed past the fireman to the door and stepped through it into a strange flickering half-light. The sky was the colour of a blood orange and smoke was rising thickly as far as the eye could see. He could feel the heat on his face and hands and small pieces of burnt paper swirled about him like leaves on an autumn day. A gas main had been hit and a jet of yellow flame was rising from the pavement like a geyser. At the end of the street, a four-storey building was burning fiercely and on the road in front, half buried by bricks and charred timber, a naked body, stiff and white. It was a sickening sight. Lindsay could not tear his eyes away. He took an uncertain step closer and relief began to wash through him: it was a dummy, just a shop’s dummy.
The fireman was tugging at his arm: ‘We’ll have to go this way.’ They set off down a side street at something close to a trot, their boots crunching across a carpet of broken glass and slate.
It was only a short distance to the river. Strand Street was a shambles. The front of a large warehouse had collapsed, spewing masonry across the road and exposing the blasted shell behind. A clanging ambulance was weaving uncertainly towards the quay where a thick pillar of acrid black smoke was rising from within the great brick walls of the outer dock. A short distance away, half a dozen exhausted firemen were standing round their engine waiting for instructions. Lindsay’s companion roused them with an angry stream of four-letter words. High- explosive detonations flashed and rumbled down the river; people and history were being wrenched from the streets of the city.
Lindsay jumped up alongside the fire crew and the engine began to bump across the quayside cobbles. The inner dock was dark and strangely still but for orange light shimmering across the water. Then they passed between two towering warehouses and a world of noise and smoke and fire opened before them. It was as if they were being painted into some grisly medieval Day of Judgement. Firemen and sailors in smoke hoods were scurrying about with stirrup pumps and cutting tools, and pulling at the coils of hose that snaked around the dock. An auxiliary ship was listing badly, straining at its mooring ropes, its deck shrouded in a filthy choking cloud. Through the smoke Lindsay caught a ghostly glimpse of a second ship, an old-looking destroyer, its bows blackened and twisted.
‘Get that fucking thing round the other side double quick.’
A Chief Petty Officer, his face and uniform black with oily smoke, was gesturing wildly across the dock. As the fire engine growled past, he jumped up beside Lindsay. ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t see you there. Brown, sir.’
‘Is that your ship, Chief?’ Lindsay pointed into the smoke.
‘The old destroyer, sir, she’s a mess, a fucking mess.’ Brown’s voice was trembling with emotion.
‘Explosion’s wrecked the whole for’ard part of the ship. The mess deck’s a fucking shambles. We can’t get on to it.’ He paused, struggling to compose himself. ‘There’re lads trapped. Can’t this fucking thing go any faster?’
‘Is the Captain there?’
‘No, sir, everyone was celebrating.’
There was no need to ask but Lindsay did: ‘Your ship, she’s the
‘Just back from Gibraltar. We sank one of their submarines. Funny, isn’t it? We won’t be sinking any more.’
The fire engine pulled up some thirty yards short of the
‘I’ve got a bomb in this bucket, Chief.’ A gangly-looking seaman, his face and uniform streaked with blood, was standing in front of them, his bucket at arm’s length. An incendiary was fizzing like a firework in the bottom of it, a small bottle of white-hot metal.
‘Bloody cover it in sand,’ said Brown with exasperation.
They forced their way through the press of sailors at the bottom of the ship’s gangway and up on to the deck. The swirling smoke tasted of fuel oil. Figures were drifting through it in ghostly motion, appearing and just as suddenly disappearing. Brown led Lindsay like a blind man across the ship to the starboard side where the smoke was a little thinner. A small party of sailors was gathered about a very young sub-lieutenant. He was clearly relieved to see Brown:
‘Thank God. We need a whaler over the side, Chief.’
And he explained that half a dozen men had managed to slip down a rope into the dock but there were still more trapped below.
‘The first lieutenant has given me this…’ He coughed hard in an effort to disguise the emotion in his voice. ‘Morphine. All right? You’re to pass it through the scuttles.’
He thrust the box at a puzzled-looking Brown.
‘Anything else, sir, you know, dressings and stuff?’
‘No, Chief, that’s not important now. Make sure they get the morphine. And get going, for God’s sake.’
Brown and his party set off along the deck and were soon busy swinging one of the ship’s boats over the side. Lindsay caught hold of the sub-lieutenant just as he was disappearing into the smoke. ‘Can I help, Sub…’
‘I don’t know, sir. God, it’s a mess. She was to have been fitted with a forward escape hatch — bit bloody late, isn’t it?’
He stalked off without waiting for a reply. Lindsay stood at the rail, unsure what he should do. Smoky rain from the hoses on the quayside was pattering in heavy drops on to his uniform. He could hear Brown issuing orders to the boat crew aft. Then there was a blinding white flash and the sharp smell of cordite. He felt a hot rush of air like a desert wind and was thrown sideways as the ship shuddered. There had been another explosion for’ard. Pulling himself to his feet, he turned and staggered along the deck towards the stern.
The whaler was in the water but still alongside. It took just a moment for Lindsay to slip down the falls into her bow. An arc of water from the ship’s hoses was cascading pink on to the burning deck and pouring smoky black down her side. The hull was hot to touch and the heat had shattered some of the starboard ports. They edged into the billowing smoke, the sailors resting at their oars, one hand for the boat, the other held firmly to nose and mouth. Lindsay’s eyes were streaming so badly he could barely see the length of the whaler. Then he heard
