The Quick Boat Men, page 25
‘I’ve wondered about him for some time. But now I’m pretty sure. I think he works for the Germans.’
The Mission headquarters in Kissy Street was a shabby little place, crammed with black men with holier-than-thou faces and stacked with Bibles, prayer books and pamphlets.
‘Alexander came here from the east,’ the old clergyman in charge explained. ‘He said he’d been caught in German territory by the outbreak of the war – in the Cameroons – and eventually arrived in Sierra Leone via Nigeria. We were glad to have him, of course. We’d just lost our man in King Jim to the navy as a chaplain.’
‘Did he make many converts?’
The old man smiled. ‘One can’t ask too much in wartime. But he’s been a great help with the troop-ships.’
‘Doing what?’
‘He goes on board and holds services. That sort of thing. The chaplains are always pleased to see him. After several weeks on a troop-ship, the men like a change of face. He’s always happy to talk to them.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
The following day, Edward headed back up-river to King Jim. Taking Jennings with him, he searched the Mission House with the black girl, Ili Komorrah, twittering after them like a frightened sparrow, trying to prevent them opening drawers and looking in cupboards. They found several of letters which appeared to have come quite recently from the Cameroons, which until late the previous year had still been German territory.
A fortnight later Edward went down with malaria.
Thirty-six
The war seemed to have ground to a halt again. The Allies were floundering in the slime of Passchendaele. The Italians had been routed at Caporetto, but there was one small item of news that pleased Edward a lot. Italian high-speed launches built by Motoscafo Armato Svan had torpedoed the Austrian light cruiser, Wien, in the harbour at Trieste.
His own personal fortunes changed overnight.
‘The Governor’s heard about Golightly,’ the Commodore informed him cheerfully. ‘He’s after your head for usurping his job. I’d buzz off quick, if I were you.’
The malaria struck just as Edward’s ship reached Suez. His temperature peaked at 105 degrees at Cairo. But he was oblivious. When he woke up in hospital, the first person he saw was Ginny Gogarty.
‘Spy,’ she breathed, a wisp of fair hair drifting down over her eyes.
She vanished at once and he could hear her outside the door of the ward talking to someone on the telephone. ‘You must come at once, Flo. Hurry.’
The nurse who appeared with her he recognised as Florence Mitchell, one of those he’d met on the border of Thrace.
‘Oh, Spy,’ Ginny said softly. ‘Fancy finding you here.’
‘I think I’m going to die,’ Edward whispered.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Ginny said.
Two weeks later, he was riding round Cairo with both Ginny and Florence in a gharry, seeing the sights and beginning to feel human again.
Ginny was a delightful companion and a joy to be near, quite unaware of her own attractiveness. She behaved the same with everybody whatever their rank, and was adored equally by the ordinary soldiers from the desert and by the senior medical officers.
She was a woman who could somehow shrug off the horrors she had experienced first hand. Edward and she dined together and danced at the affairs organised for officers and nurses. The evenings were warm, and Cairo, old, raddled, but exotic, could still work her charm.
To celebrate Edward’s discharge back to duty, they took a carriage to the Pyramids. He was uncomfortably aware of her lustrous hair, her lovely figure, her wide grey eyes and soft, smiling mouth. She was absolutely enchanting.
Afterwards they went back to the flat she shared with Florence. It was on the top floor of a building whose bottom floor contained a garage and the office of a middle-aged YMCA worker. The moon was enormous, the night balmy and, riding home, aware of a growing warmth and trust between them, Edward kissed her.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be married, Spy?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Then should you be kissing me?’
‘Probably not. But you’re very special, Ginny.’
‘Am I really, Spy?’
He kissed her again.
‘You can’t come back with me tonight,’ she said. ‘But tomorrow Flo’s on duty and the flat’ll be empty. She won’t mind.’
He stared at her. ‘Ginny, have you ever done this before?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ll find me a bit of an amateur. But there’s got to be a first time and I can’t think of anyone more wonderful than you, Spy, dear.’
The following morning Edward was called to naval headquarters in Alexandria and given his orders.
‘We have to protect the Suez Canal,’ he was told. ‘The only way we can do this is by advancing into the Sinai Desert and pushing up to Syria. But we’re not ready for that yet and have to move extremely carefully after they made such a mess of it at Kut. We’re going to use boats. Small, fast boats which can move up and down the Canal at speed. You’ll be in command. We can’t waste your experience, Bourdillon. You’ll be based at Ismailia half-way along the Canal. By the way, you’ve been upped a notch. As from today.’
It pleased Edward a great deal to meet Ginny that evening wearing the extra narrow stripes.
‘Oh, Spy,’ she said as she kissed him hello. ‘I’m not the only one who’s noticed how wonderful you are.’
They ate at Shepheards and took a leisurely gharry back to her flat. Inside, they stood looking at each other for a moment, both faintly embarrassed, then she moved into his arms. Her cheeks were cool from the night air.
‘I love you, Spy,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise it at first. But I do.’
‘I love you too, Ginny.’
‘No, you don’t. Perhaps, even, I don’t love you. But war’s a funny time to make your mind up about things like that.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Everybody’s living artificial lives, and when it’s all over you’ll go back to your wife and live happily ever after. Is she pretty?’
‘She looks a bit like you.’
‘How nice for you. You can consider me her understudy.’
‘What about you? Don’t you have a boyfriend?’
‘Dozens. But it doesn’t mean anything, really. It’s just having a pretty face and a cheerful disposition. They hang around in the corridors just to say good morning to me.’
‘Nobody special?’
She put her arms round his neck. ‘Oh, Spy,’ she said. ‘It’s a bloody complicated business, isn’t it?’
‘You’re awake.’
‘Yes, I’m awake.’
‘Thinking of England, home and beauty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does it hurt, Spy?’
‘Sadly, Ginny, no, it doesn’t. Something’s gone. Perhaps if I’d stayed at home and there’d been children, it wouldn’t have. But it has. We never had time to put down roots, I suppose. I try very hard to tell myself everything will be all right, but I have an uneasy feeling it won’t.’
‘Your poor wife.’
‘Yes. I feel that, too. Because she’s everything she ought to be. But…’
Ginny sighed. ‘I’ve been in love once or twice, Spy. Unfortunately, there was always something missing. The man was good-looking, clever, adoring. But what I wanted wasn’t there. Until now.’
He turned to look at her.
She smiled. ‘I mean, you’re what I’ve been looking for,’ she said. ‘I don’t make a habit of this kind of thing. All we can do is simply enjoy it while we can because it is wonderful when you’re with someone you love. Flo’s boyfriend works with the Foreign Office and he has a luxury flat. She’s self-indulgent enough to enjoy being in it so we can come here whenever it suits us.’
‘No, Ginny,’ Edward said slowly. ‘I’m afraid we can’t. I’m leaving Cairo tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no. Not already. Where are you going?’
‘Ismailia. I’ve been made Admiral of the Canal Fleet. That’s what the extra stripes are for.’
Their meetings were not so frequent but they still managed to see each other. Edward’s job was not an arduous one; most of the time it consisted of sailing up and down the canal, stopping at one of the canal harbours to check on his command. He had four boats available to him. Edward thought at first they were Egg’s hydroplanes but they turned out to be Thorneycrofts. Egg had not moved fast enough.
The Thorneycrofts had stepped hulls, and had been designed as torpedo boats from an idea developed by three young officers of the Harwich destroyer force. They were shallow enough to go over North Sea minefields to attack German ships at their base. They were slender little craft and the crews had to clamber about them because they had no real deck. The foredeck was rounded to give the boats a cigar-shape and right aft was a counter a yard long built to hold the torpedo.
A dry-voiced torpedo artificer described the method of launching.
‘From the stern, sir,’ he said. ‘Then the boat turns away. The discharge velocity’s the speed of the boat less the velocity of the impulse that launches the torpedo backwards. Very successful, sir, with eighteen-inch torpedoes. The depth-taking’s very good.’
The torpedo rested on its side on rails in the trough on the stern. ‘Discharged by firing a charge of a thousand grains of cordite into an explosion vessel,’ the torpedo artificer explained. ‘The gas forces a bell-shaped ram against the head of the torpedo and shoves it down the trough and over the stern.’
It was obvious they wouldn’t be putting the canal at risk by torpedoing anything there, so the torpedoes and the platforms that supported them were removed to improve the boats’ speed. They were now able to reach the astonishing speed of over forty knots, which was brought down to around thirty-five when guns were mounted.
It was soon obvious there was little to fear any longer from a serious attack from the desert because the Turks were being driven back. There was one desperate attempt by a boatful of fanatics with dynamite to destroy the canal, but they were spotted by an aeroplane. The message sent Edward and one of his skippers, an aggressive Scots boy called MacNab, roaring up the canal, creating confusion and alarm among the ships passing through. Cries of fury were hurled by the Arabs doing their ablutions and the women doing their dhobying on the banks, who were almost swept away by the wash. But they arrived before the Turks had set their charges. It was all over in a matter of minutes, leaving one man wounded and a row of dead Turks still clutching their explosives.
As the Allied troops crossed into Sinai, there was less and less for Edward to do. And he slipped away with increasing regularity. The train journey only took an hour or two, and there was Ginny waiting, dewy-eyed and desperate for love.
‘I’m beginning to feel like an old married woman with her husband away on business,’ she admitted. ‘Do you think we should be doing this, Spy?’
It was a question he couldn’t answer.
The odd letter from Augusta began to catch up with him. She was still in London and reported that she wasn’t the only one to pray for the war to end. The only hope was that now the Americans had joined the Allies, it surely couldn’t take much longer. Otherwise, she had been worked off her feet at the hospital, with some new strain of influenza, which was laying low both young and old.
Meanwhile, the Revolution in Russia toppled the Tsar and it was obvious that the Germans, free now to fight on a single front, would make a great effort before the full power of the United States could be brought to bear. The blow fell on the British Army near St Quentin in France. And, with the Germans rushing once more for the Channel ports, the old outcry came for a second front. The Mesopotamia and Gallipoli sideshows had come to nothing, but there was still Salonika in Greece.
There had been nearly half a million men there ever since the beginning of the war to keep an eye on the armies of Foxy Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who, Edward guessed, had never had any intention of getting himself too involved with his German allies. All he wanted was a large slice of Macedonia. But now, with the old plan revived to hit at Germany’s back door by going through Bulgaria, Ferdinand was due for his come-uppance.
When Edward received orders to report to Alexandria, he decided it was a marvellous excuse to take Ginny on a short holiday.
They celebrated their arrival by making love in their hotel bedroom. While Ginny slept, Edward got dressed. He was already late for an appointment with Admiral Covington.
‘Ah, Bourdillon,’ said the Admiral. ‘Met you before, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, sir. Cape Town. You whipped me into the navy when I wasn’t looking.’
Covington laughed. ‘Of course, of course. Just been looking at your file. Quite a career. North Africa with the Italians. That Huda-Tahaf business. Antwerp. Rufiji. Tanganyika. You spent some time in Bulgaria, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. Selling boats, sir.’
‘To King Ferdinand, I believe. Ever meet him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you think of him?’
‘Not much, sir.’
There was a pause. ‘Do you know the South-east of Bulgaria?’ Covington said eventually. ‘From Svilencic up to Varna?’
‘Very well.’
‘Then you’re the man I need. We have to draw off troops from the Western Front so we’re going to push north and east from Salonika. As you know, the men and guns have been there for most of the war. Bulgaria’s sick to death of the whole wretched business. One good shove will finish her off.’
‘And me, sir?’ Edward said faintly.
‘We need someone to handle the shipping when we get there. You’ll take your flotillas. They’re no longer needed on the canal. You’ll have your officers to run the boats. You’ll be in command but, since you know Bulgaria and no one else has much of a clue, you’ll be attached to the staff for intelligence purposes. Full commander this time, of course. That suit you?’
Edward left in a daze. He had no wish to be a full commander nor to go to Salonika or Bulgaria.
He didn’t dare tell Ginny at once. Throughout dinner, she chattered brightly, although she could see there was something on his mind. He was poor company.
And it wasn’t long before she said, ‘You’re going away again, aren’t you?’
Edward nodded.
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t cry. ‘Where to this time?’
‘Back to bloody Bulgaria. I’m sorry, Ginny.’
She wiped her eyes and smiled. ‘Then we had better make the most of the little time we have left together,’ she said.
Thirty-seven
Salonika was a bedlam of men, guns and ships ready for the move northwards. Edward’s boats were ready for instant action but he couldn’t imagine them ever being used. They had brought all their gear, the launching platforms and the torpedo troughs, the fittings for depth charges, the 3-pounders and machine-guns, the tools, the mechanics, the torpedomen and marine fitters.
The sea in the Gulf of Salonika was an exotic green, and the town had a distinct Eastern style, with its minarets and mosques, relics of Turkish rule. The front line was forty miles to the north round Lake Doiran.
Built of lath and plaster, the town had been destroyed by fire the previous year and everywhere were the blackened scabs of its passage. The streets were still covered in sooty ash, and when the Vardar blew from the west the air was full of it, too.
Within a day or two, Ginny’s letters began to arrive. Though she seemed to have accepted that he would go home to England and his wife when the war finished, there was no hiding her feelings because they shone through every line on the paper.
Augusta’s letters, however, had stopped. Edward could only assume that they were being addressed to Egypt. One came from Egg, however, months out of date. Apparently the firm was enjoying an unparallelled run of prosperity. There was also one from Aunt Edith and, surprisingly, one from Maurice who didn’t see eye to eye with Egg about the future.
‘Nobody will want to buy boats when the war is over,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to pick them up for two a penny.’
Augusta’s letters finally arrived. They had been addressed to the hospital in Cairo and forwarded, he suspected, by Ginny. They gave him the news but not much else and it wasn’t hard to detect irritation with him.
The general in command of the Allies was a Frenchman called Franchet d’Esperey, and Edward constantly found himself dragged in to endless staff meetings where a naval captain called Bois d’Effre asked questions on the general’s behalf.
‘Will Ferdinand resist?’ he asked.
‘From what I know of him,’ Edward said, ‘he’ll be concerned only with preserving what he has – chiefly what he personally possesses.’
‘I think he will be luckier than he deserves if he keeps his throne,’ Bois d’Effre smiled.
‘Would you be prepared,’ he interpreted for d’Esprey, ‘to meet the King and explain our position, the numbers we have, the fact that he doesn’t stand a chance in hell?’
‘With great pleasure, sir.’ Edward smiled.
‘You realise,’ Bois d’Effre said later, ‘that you will be going into Bulgaria in civilian clothes. You could be shot as a spy.’
It wasn’t difficult to slip across the frontier. Edward had been supplied with plenty of money and was able to acquire an old Peugeot for the trip north. The car was pretty clapped-out and petrol was very scarce. Edward drove only as far as Burgas, where he contacted Enescu at the boat-yard where they had delivered the two Bourdillons. To his surprise, they were still there, completely forgotten in the confusion of the war. But Enescu’s fitters had taken good care of them.
Enescu also found him a place on one of the coastal steamers going to Varna. McClumpha was delighted to see him. There were tears in his eyes and squeals of delight from his daughters.
‘I want a meeting with the King,’ Edward explained. ‘If not the King, then one of his ministers.’
