Heart of War (58 page)

‘Wish we could capture some German depth charges, and see how they do it,' Tom said. ‘They've been specializing in war under the sea for a long time, it appears.'

‘It should have been obvious, years ago, that that is what they were up to,' Leach said, ‘but it wasn't. We are a very stupid people, in some ways, Tom. We think the enemy must do what we want him to do, and then we are shocked and hurt when he does something different …'

‘And the one time he did come out in line of battle – he got away.'

Leach nodded – ‘The rest of this war is going to be fought down there –' he indicated the sea and its depths – ‘dirty work … It will be won by new inventions, Tom … new ways to trace submarines, perhaps even when their engines are stopped … new ways to attack them … depth charges dropped from aircraft, perhaps? Homing torpedoes?'

Tom said, ‘The last letter I had from my nephew, Guy the R.F.C. ace – he said we should be bombing the submarine building yards. It makes sense – destroying the submarines is just as important as building more merchant ships, and if we can destroy them before they ever take to sea, so much the better.'

‘And building more merchant ships depends on our bloody dockyard workers,' Leach said. ‘Always striking! I'd like to see them put in some of the ships they build – or refuse to – and sent out on the Atlantic without escort or convoy.'

Tom said nothing, but thought – a good proportion of the Navy's own men came from just such backgrounds as the striking dock workers; they certainly had fathers and brothers among the strikers; those in the Navy did their jobs silently, efficiently, without fuss or trouble; those ashore moaned and struck and complained …

Leach took a turn along the bridge. When he came back he said, ‘Prepare to enter harbour!' His tone had sharpened; the conversation was over. Tom said, ‘Aye, aye sir … Bennett, tell the Chief Bo'sun's Mate to pipe “Hands prepare for entering harbour.”'

Captain Leach stayed on the bridge, silent, watching. Tom set off round the ship, Ordinary Seaman Bennett in his wake, observing the preparations being made on the upper deck. The First Lieutenant headed for the fo'c'sle to take charge of the cable party.

The cruiser glided between the narrow rock walls of the harbour entrance toward the little wooden city on the slope beyond. Blackbacked gulls wheeled and swerved round her stern where the Surgeon, having nothing to do in the harbouring process, strolled back and forth on the quarterdeck. On the fo'c'sle one anchor was ready for letting go – in case of emergency – though the ship was berthing alongside. Salutes had been paid to an armoured cruiser, and received from two Canadian destroyers; berthing wires and springs were ready … the minutes passed … she got her cable … the main engines were rung off … the hands piped to ‘Secure.' Captain Leach had long gone below, but now his messenger came to Tom, saluting – ‘Captain's compliments, sir, and he wishes to see you.'

Tom straightened his tie, made sure his gold-leafed cap was on straight, and headed below to the captain's day cabin, which occupied the stern of the ship directly under the ensign. Captain Leach sat at the desk, his cap resting on it. He looked up and said quietly, ‘This is going to be unpleasant, Tom, for me just as much as for you. More, perhaps.' His thin face was set, the blue eyes boring relentlessly into Tom's. Tom felt himself freezing, piece by piece, from the inside out, first the marrow in his bones, then the bones, then the flesh.

‘Three days ago an anonymous letter was slipped into my greatcoat pocket, somehow, without my knowing it.
I don't like anonymous letters – no honest man does – but in a disciplined service they do sometimes represent the only outlet for a man's frustrations … or for a truth to come out which the writer feels ought to be known, but never will be in any other way. I read the letter. It said that you were a – the word used was “pansy” – and that you were doing indecent things with Ordinary Seaman Bennett – who is, I think, your seaman-servant.'

His voice softened slightly as he continued, Tom rigid and cold in front of him – ‘What could I do? Appoint seamen to spy on you? Browbeat or bribe Bennett until he confessed? Not in my ship.'

He got up suddenly and walked across the cabin, back, forward, not looking at Tom. Tom stayed rigid.

‘I thought of asking you point blank. But what could you say? If you denied it, the doubt would remain. If you confessed it, I would have to send you both up for court martial.'

Abruptly he sat down again behind his desk. He said, ‘I have signalled the C-in-C requesting a transfer for you. He has agreed, without asking questions. You are to return on the first ship sailing from here to England – Navy or Merchant. In a confidential letter I am explaining why I want you taken out of this ship. From there on, what happens to you will be up to you … and to the 2nd Sea Lord, to whom this matter has been referred … Sit down, Tom.'

Tom collapsed into an easy chair off the front corner of the desk. He knew that his face was white, his jowls pale green, as though he were about to be sick, or faint, or both. Leach held out a cigarette case – ‘Have one, Tom.'

Tom shook his head wordlessly, staring at the middle buttons of the captain's pea jacket.

Leach said, ‘When you get to London, see someone, Tom. Try to get help … I've heard there are doctors who specialize in our minds rather than in our bodies … find out why people do certain things. If you can't find that sort of doctor, see a parson, a priest … But for God's sake see
someone!
You're such a good fellow … and a good sailor … and officer … This has been the happiest commission of my service, thanks to you. I couldn't bear to see you destroy yourself … I have a pile of documents to go through. Just sit there till you're ready to go. I shan't need you for anything the rest of the day.'

He picked up a pile of papers and shuffled them, and read, or pretended to. Tom sat staring at the floor, the gold-leafed cap and the great crest of the Royal Navy, wreathed in gold laurel, resting between his pale, cold hands.

Saturday, March 31, 1917

The Second Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel, Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., R.N., stood by the fireplace in his spacious office, facing Tom across the table. The Admiral's Naval Assistant, Captain Buller, R.N., stood a little to one side. Tom stood to attention, cap under his arm.

The Admiral said, ‘I am posting you to the Anti-Submarine Division. Report there immediately you leave this room.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘I do not have the manpower to have you watched at all times, and if I thought that really necessary, I would have you dismissed the Service as not worth the trouble. But you will be watched – from time to time. And if the allegation made in the anonymous letter to Captain Leach turns out to be well founded, I shall act at once, and without mercy, for the good of the Service. You understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You are to wear uniform at all times outside your house or flat.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘That's all.'

Tom wheeled about and left the room.

The half moon hung yellow and serene over London … a bomber's night, Tom thought, standing in the window of his flat, a night for the Gothas or the Zeppelins … calm, quiet, subdued movement in the street below, a humming murmur from the great city. He had eaten, but felt hungry and uneasy, the coldness that had knifed into him in
Penrith
's stern cabin still there, under all other emotions and feelings. Three days after that interview he had sailed in a Canadian minesweeper recently built in Halifax and going to join the Harwich force … a hard trip in the usual foul early-spring weather, two days
skirting the ice pack and watching majestic icebergs drifting southward into the shipping lanes … the skipper several years younger and junior to himself, but of course still the captain, as Tom was sailing as a passenger. He hadn't gone near Bennett since the interview. Without a word being said, somehow another sailor had appeared as his servant, a grizzled old fellow really too experienced for such a job – he would be wanted in a turret … but of course that was where he would return, as soon as Tom left.

He pulled the curtains to and switched on the light, for he had been standing in the dark. There, by the fireplace, his nephew, Guy's school friend, Dick Yeoman, had made a sexual advance to him, and, if the telephone call from the Admiralty had not broken the tension, he would have responded to the boy's invitation and, then and there, acknowledged that he was … what he was. It had come soon enough: he remembered Charlie Bennett's eyelashes, the black eye, the first touching of hands, the tears in his eyes, the sense that they two were alone amongst a host of hostile, indifferent strangers, that only they understood each other, or could comfort.

He opened the drawer of his little roll-top desk in the corner and took out the service revolver, a heavy blued Webley .455. Six cartridges, lead-balled, lay in a little box beside the revolver in the drawer. He knew where to aim for, his hand was firm … firm as an iceberg, since that day. The light glittered for a moment on the gold of his cufflinks as he turned the revolver over in his hand … gold links with the naval crown embossed on them in enamel, a gift from his mother when he became a midshipman … there was the Hoppner Nelson, a gift from his father when he got his first ship, a destroyer, ten years ago … The revolver was heavy, serviceable, of the Service …
The
Service: proud, implacable, unforgiving as the seas it ruled: uncompromising master and mistress … This, or that, the Service said – the revolver, or me, and all that I demand, of your life, your love, your heart.

He raised the revolver to his temple, placed the cold ring of the muzzle precisely in the correct place to blow out his brains, and pressed the trigger. It took a heavy pressure on the trigger, but the muzzle had not moved, nor the direction of the barrel. He could do it. He lowered the revolver from his
face and stared down the empty barrel, into blackness.

He returned the revolver to its drawer, put on his greatcoat and went out. At the corner he glanced round to see whether anyone was following him. There was no one. He walked on toward Piccadilly.

They sat in the same Italian restaurant in Soho where they had been with Charlie Bennett and Ivor Novello. There were a dozen other people in the small room, men and women; but nearly all the men were sitting together in pairs, as were most of the women. Tom and Russell Wharton were eating
spaghetti a la vongole
and drinking Chianti. Wharton had not fully removed his theatrical eye make-up – perhaps deliberately, Tom thought.

Tom said, ‘They found out about me and Charlie.'

‘The beautiful Geordie boy? That's a shame.'

‘And now I'm going to be observed, from time to time. I suppose they think I'm susceptible to blackmail.'

Russell Wharton said, ‘That's only true if you care, laddie. Look at me. Everyone in the theatre knows what I am and I don't pretend to be anything else. Of course, I'll never be knighted … can't have Sir Russell caught offering young soldiers a quid a night in the
pissoir
at Waterloo, can we? But on the other hand no one can blackmail me. I'd quote the Iron Duke at them – publish and be damned.'

Tom drank deeply of the wine, thinking. He said, ‘So I can really only be blackmailed as long as I try to be a naval officer?'

‘Or want to be,' Wharton said. ‘That's the heart of the matter.'

Tom said, ‘I thought of committing suicide, earlier this evening. Then I decided not to … and came to your theatre.'

‘Ghastly show, isn't it? … I guessed something of the sort, when you came to the dressing room. You looked pretty grim. So now you don't care what they say, or do?'

‘I'm trying not to care,' Tom said. ‘I tell myself I don't. But I do … What does your father think?'

Wharton laughed bitterly – ‘He doesn't speak to me … hasn't for twenty years. But what would we have to talk about if he did, eh? Listen, I'll help you, we'll all help. You have to step out of your skin and into another – ours. Meet people – people like us … Ivor, young Coward, Owen, dozens of
others in the theatre alone, many more who decorate the big houses and flats, antique dealers, designers, gallery owners … You'll find a different atmosphere … different, and in my opinion, much more Christian, than you've been used to. A bit catty at times, both sexes … bitchy, to tell the truth … but on the whole, everyone does his best to understand the other fellow, and not hurt him where it matters. I'm having a party next Sunday, six o'clock – it'll go on till all hours. Come along … 47 Dean Street.'

‘Thanks,' Tom said. ‘I'd love to.'

‘There's an entrance fee,' Wharton said nonchalantly. He put down the fork with which he had been expertly twirling spaghetti against his plate, and looked up at Tom – ‘More like an initiation. Pick up a soldier.'

‘What?' Tom gasped. ‘It was only Charlie I was …'

‘Are you sure?' Wharton said intently. ‘Think! Never been tempted by anyone else? I bet you have … You go and do it, tonight, and then we'll know you're really one of us. And,' he added, picking up his wine glass and looking at Tom over the rim, ‘it'll help you break the umbilical cord to your dearly beloved mother, the Service!'

‘But I'm in uniform!'

‘That's just what I mean.'

It was morning, the sun up. The soldier had gone, pushed out early by Tom. Tom felt ashamed and soiled. Why had he allowed Wharton to challenge him with a schoolboy dare? Surely
his
friends did not all go round picking up soldiers as one would a tart? Surely they had more permanent relationships with each other, full of affection and shared interests besides sexuality? He and Charlie had loved each other in a way modified and shaped by their profession and the naval ties – and barriers – between them. He hadn't loved that young soldier, didn't know his name, didn't want to …