After Julius (27 page)

There’d been planes over from time to time, and Mr Grace he thought maybe we could attract one of them. I found a small sail in a locker, and with his pen I drew out a big SOS on it.
Then I had to find something dark to do the writing with. It’s funny, what beats you. I tried everything. The pen was no good – the canvas was too rough and the area had to be too
big if we had a hope of anyone seeing it. I burned a slat of wood that Mr Grace said went in a sail to make a kind of charcoal, but it came out pale grey. Not a blind bit of use. I even tried
some of poor old Godden’s blood, but it only showed up rusty. Mr Grace lit the lamp but it was a sunny evening for making a signal with not much power. In the end I tore my shirt in
strips and pinned it on the sail with pins out of the First Aid Box. We’d just got it hoisted on to the top of the mizzen mast when the wind, which had been dropping, died right away and
it hung down, as much use to us as a sick cat.

Mr Grace said he’d plotted what he hoped would be the shortest course back home, but I began to wonder why we’d seen no other ships. He showed me how he’d done the
plotting, and he said he was sorry not to know more about navigation – he had no side about him at all, your brother. We thought we’d ask Godden if he had any bright ideas, but he
was having a bit of a kip, and Watson said not to disturb him. Then we started having trouble with the mainsail boom – Mr Grace was very keen on the right words for everything –
he’d read a book about it, he said. He seemed to spend his life reading,
I
don’t know. We had some corn beef and some tea, but Watson said Godden wouldn’t fancy corn
beef, so we heated up some soup for him. They was talking quite a bit; Watson was asking Charley all about his peacetime job. He worked for a timber firm in Southampton, lumbering logs on the
river. He tried to get into the Navy, he said, he’d always liked the sea, but he hadn’t passed the medical for it, so he’d ended up in the RA. He had a wife and kids; he was
old: he must have been about forty. After the food, I couldn’t hardly keep my eyes open, and Mr Grace he was yawning too, so we agreed to have an hour’s kip in turn. When I came to,
Godden was raving: telling Watson his wife wouldn’t pay the HP on the three-piece if he wasn’t there to make her, and Watson was telling him not to worry, he’d soon be back;
and Godden didn’t notice if Watson loosened the tourniquet or not – just kept harping on what the Hire Purchase companies did to people like his wife who couldn’t see that
just because she’d got the things in the bedroom she didn’t own them without she paid the six bob a week. He went on and on about it, and it didn’t make a blind bit of
difference what Watson said to him.

It must have been about seven when we saw the plane: we knew at once that it had seen us, because it made a circuit high up and started to come down in on us. Black against the sunset it
was, coming in fast and looking as though it would be low enough for it to be worth waving. I was going to use the torch, but Mr Grace said he’d do it, and he went and stood right out at
the back of the ship – the counter, sir – he stood with one arm round the mizzen mast and he started waving the torch and shouting, but the noise of the plane was so loud they
couldn’t have heard him. I thought, Christ, it’s so low it’s going to hit us – like those bloody dive bombers, I thought, and then all at the same moment, I saw its
markings and heard the machine gun. I threw myself flat on the floor of the cockpit, and it roared away climbing again and heading due east. Bloody Heinkel, I shouted to Mr Grace, and he
didn’t answer at once, but I could see him standing there clutching the mast so I thought he was all right: the torch was smashed though. He didn’t make to move, so I went to him
and asked if he was all right. ‘I think they must have hit me,’ he said, and I saw the bullet marks all over the sail. I took his arm, and as he moved, he said: ‘Can’t
be serious: I feel all right. Sorry, I didn’t realize it wasn’t one of ours.’ ‘We’d better have a look,’ I said. I could see his jacket had a kind of ragged
hole in it. I sat him down in the cockpit and told Watson to come and steer. As soon as I undid his jacket, I could see he’d been hit. I got him down to the cabin – so I get his
clothes off and have a proper look. He’d gone rather white, but he could walk OK. He was wearing a lot of clothes: a thick jersey and a shirt, but the blood was through that. The bullet
had gone in the right side of his chest, but I couldn’t see it had come out. The blood was very light red, but there didn’t seem to be all that much of it. I got a dressing and a
bandage and put them on, and he said he’d like a spot of brandy. When he drank it, he tried to cough, and I could see that hurt him. ‘I’ll put some water in it,’ I said.
He had some brandy and water and he said it done him a power of good. I got his shirt and jacket on him again, but I didn’t like to try getting him into that jersey.

He said he’d go back to the tiller – he could steer and he knew Watson wanted to go back to Godden who was very restless and nattering on about his three-piece and his wife. I
said I’d steer, and he could have his kip – he’d never got it due to the bloody Heinkel. But he said he wanted to watch the sunset, then he’d have seen the whole thing
for once in his life: he told me he’d watched it come up. That’s when he told me he’d kept a log of sorts coming over, and that’s when I realized he’d been up all
night, hadn’t slept now for nearly two days. We started to have engine trouble about then: she was missing and I stopped her to clean the plugs and then I had a right time starting her.
After that she kept going for a bit and then stalling, and each time it was worse starting her. It was flat calm now – the sea looked as though you could walk on it, and the sky was red
and a whole lot of other colours – like Fairy dyes I said, but Mr Grace didn’t seem to know about them. Mr Grace said it was very close – stuffy, he said, and how he would
love a breath of fresh air, but it seemed cool enough to me. That’s when I began worrying about him: he was very quiet. I asked him if he had a family: somehow I’d thought he was on
his own, but he told me he had a wife and two daughters. What did she think about his larking about the Channel at his age, I asked? She didn’t know, he said: he hadn’t told anyone.
I told him about my young lady, and he showed me pictures of his kids: one was quite old, but then
he
was old – too old for what he’d taken on with his ignorance and all, I
thought, but I didn’t like to say so. After a bit, he asked for a cigarette, and I didn’t feel he should be smoking, but he said he’d find it soothing. I lit it for him and he
had his first draw, and then he started to cough and there was blood all over the fag, and he looked at me and tried to smile and dropped the fag over the side. There was a teacloth by the
primus and I gave him that, but the blood was still coming up, and I called Watson, and
he
didn’t answer. I got some water out of a fancy bottle he had and wet the towel and helped
him mop up. I wanted to lay him down, but he shook his head, and when he could speak again, he said: ‘I can’t breathe – must sit up.’ So I propped him up and gave him a
cup of water to rinse out his mouth, and he kept still awhile. Then he said: ‘Is all the blood off?’ He’d nearly stopped bleeding, and although it wasn’t, I said pretty
good. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘she said I looked awful with blood on me.’ I suppose that was his wife, sir. The engine was playing up all the time, and what with trying to
start it, and then keep it going, I had my hands full. ‘Any coastline yet?’ he asked. He was speaking so quiet, I had to watch him and guess, but that was plain enough.
‘Won’t be long now,’ I said to keep his spirits up. He sat quiet again, mopping his mouth every now and then. Then he said: ‘How’s Godden?’ I said I’d
go and look. Watson was still sitting by him, but Godden wasn’t talking now, just moving his head from side to side, and Watson looked at me – like our dog again – and said:
‘He’s going: he doesn’t know me any more.’ He knew about the Heinkel, and Mr Grace, but he didn’t seem to take it in. The engine cut again, and I thought
I’ll never get this lot home, and I felt awful, angry – as though everything was against me. I was kneeling by the engine, having another look at the plugs, when Mr Grace made a
noise like choking and blood was bubbling out of his nose and mouth. I got the cloth and held his head up while I wiped him up, his forehead was all sweat with him trying to breathe: the
buggers got his lung, I thought – I was frightened now. I couldn’t stand the idea of them getting him somehow. He was a dreadful colour, sir – not grey or white –
somehow worse than either. It can’t have been such a bad haemorrhage as it looked, because it stopped again. I slung a can over the side and got some sea water to rinse the cloth out and
clean him up, and when he could speak he said: ‘I’m very grateful to you, Black. I seem to have made rather a mess of things.’ I said he’d done a wonderful job sailing
the boat by himself and all, and if he hadn’t collected us we’d all have had it. He started to say something about not having filled up the boat and then that poor silly sod Watson
come up out of the cabin and said: ‘He’s dead!’ and burst out crying like a kid. I couldn’t stand it: I yelled at him to shut his mouth: I said if I heard another sound
out of him I’d clip him over the ear-’ole. It stopped him cold. He kept on wiping his face with his sleeve, and I ordered him to have a go with the engine to keep his mind off
Godden. When it was clear he’d no idea what to do with the engine, I said to get below and make us all a cup of char. Mr Grace roused himself – he seemed drowsy – and said:
‘Sorry, Black, to leave you with all this.’ ‘Never say die, sir,’ I said without hardly thinking. He smiled and said: ‘Won’t the engine start?’ I said
I was giving it a rest to cool off: I’d started lying to him, so I must have known he was right out of it. ‘What about the lamp? Can you make that work? You might get picked up if
you carried a light. Get it as high as you can, so they’ll see you.’ I said I’d look at it in due course. The sun was nearly down, and it was cool, but he was perspiring all
the time now. ‘I think we’re nearly over the other side. Hang on sir: we’ll make it – you’ll see.’ Watson come up with the tea, and I offered him some, but
he shook his head. I knew I ought to look at the lamp, but I couldn’t leave him then. He asked, was Godden dead, I told him yes. ‘It’s still two of you,’ he said.
‘That’s more than one, isn’t it?’ ‘Don’t you worry,’ I said. He
was
worrying – I could see that. The last thing he said was: ‘Tell
them all I’m sorry.’ Then he had another haemorrhage and before it seemed to be over he was dead. Watson came up with the teapot and I told him Mr Grace was dead and to help me
carry him down to the cabin. Watson was shivering, and when we’d put him on the bed, he just looked at me and I knew I’d frightened him and he was only a kid.

I said, ‘What’s your name then?’ and hardly above a whisper he said Fred. ‘We’re on our own now, Fred,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to make it. I
expect you’ve got a girl back home haven’t you?’ But he said he’d only got his mum, and he wished he was with her now. ‘We’ll both have a fag,’ I said,
‘and we’ll finish the brandy.’ That done him good and sitting in the cockpit while I was botching up the lamp, he said: ‘It’s worse than they tell you, ain’t
it?’ ‘They don’t tell you nothing,’ I said. ‘That’s right,’ he said.

Well sir, I rigged that light, and lashed it as high up the mast as I dared climb, like Mr Grace said, and he was right; it saved us. We was picked up by a gunboat two miles off Newhaven.
But I’m sorry your brother had to die sir, without knowing he got us back.

My dear Esme,

I don’t suppose you will need to get this at all, but I have to write it, just in case. I am taking a boat across to France to try and collect as many men as possible. I feel that this
is something that I
can
do, and one must do what one can. I hope you will understand. Keep the children in the country. I expect Cressy will want to do some war work when she is a little
older which of course would be right, but the child should stay away from possible/likely bombs. If the threat of invasion becomes serious, as I think it may, take them to Mervyn’s in
Somerset. It probably won’t be any safer, but it will feel it, and Mervyn will look after you all. In
any
trouble, apply to him.

One more thing – difficult to say, but against the possibility of it being my last chance, I must try. I am
not
trying this venture out of jealousy, pique, or any sort of
retaliation. I haven’t liked your situation, and curiously, what I have most disliked has been putting you to the necessity of lying to me. This is my fault as much as yours, I think. I
was afraid of what the next step might be if I made you tell me the truth: told myself it was for the children’s sake, but really
I
couldn’t face it. But any lie is never
about itself – it always seems to discolour everything near it. You will have to be very intelligent and careful with Cressy: in some ways she knows too much for her age; in others not
enough. I love them both. Thank you for them. Be happy.

Julius

Dear Mrs Grace,

I just want to take the liberty to offer my condolences for your loss. My boy Freddie was in the boat that your husband took, and he says he would have drowned if your husband hadn’t
picked him up – like a miracle. He is my only boy and I am a widow my husband being dead some years now so you can see how gratefull I am for what your husband did and I hope you are
manageing to bear up alright. We shall all be glad when this dreadful war is over and Hitler is where he belongs. My boy would write but he is not given to writeing but sends his best regards,
yours sincerely.

Mrs G Watson