They were into the trees before the pursuit achieved the hedge and any clear sight of them.
The First Sea Lord sat opposite the Prime Minister in the small office Churchill used habitually for his solitary moments of thought and decision. Few Cabinet colleagues were invited to join him here, but service chiefs had done, on certain dire occasions through the summer and autumn. The camp bed the Prime Minister rested on — when he could bring himself to rest— was unmade in one corner of the office. The room was thick with cigar smoke, and Churchill was in his shirt-sleeves, still unshaven and red-eyed with the consequences of a restless night. The First Sea Lord, having finished his briefing, was left fearing a reckless, even desperate decision from this tired old man whose pugnacious features seemed the solitary mask left to him, his country backed into the last corner.
Churchill paced the room, cigar clamped into his tight lips, heavy jowls bristling as if he were parading before an audience that must be impressed. The First Sea Lord wondered how Churchill would go to his death before an SS firing squad, and regretted the thought as sharply and immediately as treachery. Yet in this small office how could Churchill gain any perspective other than a hopeless one?
As he silently asked the question, he was cognizant of the gulf between himself and the Prime Minister. He did not understand Churchill, and that lack of understanding could not be quite despised or disregarded.
Churchill paused before the First Sea Lord's chair, his blue eyes alight. He said, round the cigar, 'Your opinion?'
'Of what, Prune Minister?' The First Sea Lord had to clear his throat before he spoke. The light immediately died in Churchill's eyes, and he moved away to look out of the single small window over the garden of No. 10. He seemed to dislike the sight of the ugly brick and concrete air-raid shelter for the staff, and turned back to confront the First Sea Lord.
'This counter-measure.' He indicated Walsingham's open file on his desk. Cigar smoke lifted to the ceiling.
'We — cannot replace the missing section of the minefield without diverting the convoy.'
Churchill's eyes flared again, as if he could see the cruiser and the three merchant ships.
'Fitzgerald—' he murmured softly.
'Prime Minister?'
'Nothing.' He turned away again, then back. 'We must have that convoy, at all costs, Admiral. If we can get it through, Congress will go on turning a blind eye to Lease-Lend and Roosevelt will send us more. It's our main artery.' He paused, then, as if weighing some obscurer alternative, muttered again, 'Fitzgerald—' He articulated carefully, loudly. 'Order two minelayers to Milford Haven— as a stand-by. This requires more thought. I can't see the convoy go down in the North Channel, neither can I allow the Nazis—' He cut himself off. 'Thank you, Admiral. Leave the
Patrick Terence Fitzgerald enjoyed the fierce wind much as he might have done had he been aboard a yacht or an old sailing ship. The westerly was sweeping spray across the quarter deck and gave the impression of driving the cruiser forward towards the Irish coast. That in itself might have made heavy, gloomy imagery, but the wind seemed to clean him, blow inside his head and remove the cluttered reflections which had afflicted him throughout the crossing. He wore no hat, let his grey hair be distressed, his ears and jaw go cold.
Churchill. His image persisted. Churchill would know why he was coming, know what was at stake, want to stop him. Churchill, like a schoolboy, would want to fudge his examination because he had not mastered the syllabus. He would be lost, abandoned.
Spray, whipped off the whitecaps, dashed in Fitzgerald's face and was saltily chilled by the wind at once, drying onto him. Churchill's image faded. The merchant ships astern were the first of their kind, and Fitzgerald knew they would be the last, after he made his report to Roosevelt. The wind and spray went on with their cleaning, numbing work, and a scattered, sudden sunlight splashed on the quarter deck like another good omen.
The bright afternoon spread itself easily as a cat over the sofa and the carpet and the other furniture of the old, slightly dilapidated house on the Hastings seafront that had been converted into a seamen's home. The worn carpet was more evidently exposed by the sun's intrusion, the loose covers rendered more tasteless and chintzy, but McBride felt the room took on the character of the man to whom he was talking. Browned and worn and honourable with age. To be kept, not thrown away.
The old man rolled himself another cigarette from dark tobacco, coughed his way through the first inhalations, and shook his head, his blue eyes folded into the contour marks of age around them. Abbott's face was a mass of wrinkles, and was easy to romanticize. He looked like an old explorer, an adventurer — embayed and dragged out of the water at some high tide and stranded here, hull stripped and re-caulked but never relaunched. McBride liked him, warmed to the man. And anticipated clarity of revelation.
'No,' Abbott said. 'German submarines — U-boats for certain.' Abbott had been Third Mate aboard
'You're certain of that, Mr Abbott?' McBride asked softly. The old man studied him as if the question insulted his memory. But he continued smiling with all the superiority of age and greater experience. An American historian could be forgiven a great deal, apparently.
The cassette-recorder wound on silently. Occasionally, cars passing along the seafront disturbed the room's autumnal calm. McBride felt himself afloat on a slow calm sea, close to his home port. Claire Drummond's passion in their Canterbury hotel room had seemed equivalent to his own as if she, too, sensed the proximity of their destination. He felt relaxed, and the memory of Hoskins' death remained below the surface of the gleaming water.
'Two torpedoes, Mr McBride. Ripped the old girl apart like a couple of tin-openers.' He shook his head, horror transmuted to something harmless by time and survival.
'What about the other ships?'
'They went for the cruiser first — terrible.' Something threatened to break through like a suddenly broken bone, but he went on in the same warm, mellowed voice: 'They picked us off in turn.'
'You were in a minefield, Mr Abbott,' McBride prompted.
'Ah — that'd been swept, especially for us,' the old man said knowingly, shaking his head slightly. 'One or two of the lads joked about it, but the job had been done. They told us that.'
'Where did you go down, Mr Abbott. You were on the bridge, you'd know?'
'Off the Old Head of Kinsale, southwest of Cork Harbour.' The old man prided himself on his memory, and held this nugget of it up to his inspection, gleaming and undimmed by time.
McBride exhaled slowly. He had it all now. Everything else would be merely corroborative. He said thickly, 'And where exactly were you picked up, Mr Abbott?'
'Ah. The boat was taking on water, and the rudder was useless. We drifted out into the channel, more or less southwest. We were a bit worried about the minefield, but our shallow draught must've kept us safe enough. The sea was kind to us. Spotted by an Anson out from one of the Cornish airfields, and picked up the same day. Weather worsened the very next day.'
'What was the name of the ship that picked you up?'
'Ah.' The old man dredged along the reef of memory. His eyes brightened again. 'HMS
'Thank you, Mr Abbott, thank you.'
The old man seemed content now just to sit, and McBride shared his silence for a little time longer. The explosions, the screams, the shattered or detached limbs, the drowning, oil searing the lungs, the frenzy to launch the boats and pull away from the stricken
