On the Edge of Darkness Read online

  “Yeah, well Jimmy the One didn’t think so. He says ‘Quick Goddard, but not quick enough.’ He thought I was being clever, he failed me!”

  * * *

  Barr sat in his favourite armchair smoking and watching his son playing.

  “This is your ship, Dad,” said the boy pointing to the largest, it’s my best one, the one you bought for me for last Christmas, remember.”

  “I remember, that’s a battleship though, son, the ‘Nishga’s’ a destroyer.”

  “I know that, Dad, but my only destroyer’s in refit.”

  Barr smiled at his son, only eight years old and already he wanted to go to sea. But then, he’d been that age, perhaps a little older, when he’d first shown an interest. His son was attacking his tiny fleet with an aeroplane in each hand imitating the bombers they watched at the cinema the night before. He pushed the ships round on the lino-covered floor with one foot.

  “See this, Dad; they’re all turning out of the way.”

  “They’d have to turn the same way though otherwise they be colliding with each other and they’d have to turn together and to port so as to bring all their guns...” his voice tailed off. He knelt down beside his son and started to rearrange the toy ships on the floor, “Can I borrow one of your aircraft a minute, son.”

  The boy handed it over and watched for a few minutes while his father, squinting from the smoke spiralling from his cigarette, moved toys enthusiastically around the living room floor. The boy soon lost interest and wandered off, flying his other aeroplane, peering into the tiny cockpit. He heard his father call to his mother for a note pad and a pencil.

  * * *

  On Saturday, port watch returned from leave and the starboard watch clattered down the gangway to begin theirs.

  Grant left the ship just after eleven, delayed by a meeting with Barr concerning the progress of the refit.

  After a long train journey south punctuated by long and frequent mid-station stops, Grant found himself with forty minutes to spare before catching his connection for the coast.

  He wandered over to a tired looking cafeteria and, putting his half empty hold-all under a window table, bought a cup of steaming tea from the chain smoking be-turbaned woman behind the counter. He sat drinking and smoking, watching people hurrying pass the grimy window.

  He had a good view of Platform Number One, from which his train was due to leave. He watched as a train arrived, small clouds billowing across the platform, shouts of steam spouting noisily from beneath the engine. Doors banged and soon people began to move in and out of the steam, appearing and disappearing like ghosts in a cemetery mist. An initial trickle of passengers soon turned into a continuous stream, flooding through the gates past the portly ticket collector.

  Leaning on the oilcloth covered table, chin in hand, he stared numbly through the window seeing the bustle, but not really registering it in his thought-filled mind. He had been kept busy over the last few days despite the fact that boiler cleaning had more to do with the Chief than him. He had worked on the complicated watch bills for all three vessels. The extra men had arrived on the Monday after they had docked; most of them were raw recruits. ‘Hostilities Only’ as the Navy called them, straight from the training ships.

  Abruptly he was yanked back to the present where a figure had appeared at his side. He leant back in the bentwood chair and looked up. A woman in her twenties looked back down at him,

  “Is this chair taken,” she asked. Completely unnoticed by Grant the place had filled with people from the train, all desperate for a cup of tea after the long journey north.”

  The woman was very pretty, her brown hair curling down from a jaunty black hat worn at a fetching angle. Her smiling face moved abruptly to one side to be replaced by another that Grant recognised instantly.

  He jumped to his feet “Benjamin, old chap! What a lovely surprise! How are things on the,” he whispered, “‘Belfast’ and who’s this!”

  “The girl laughed, “This… is Ben’s sister Charlotte.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude, it was such a complete surprise.”

  “Don’t mind her, Robert; she’s used to bad-manners with me for a brother.”

  “That’s the truth,” added Charlotte, “Look you sit here, Ben, then you two can swap salty sea-lies while I get the teas.”

  Sub Lieutenant Benjamin Crosswall-Brown slumped down into the chair opposite his friend, with the air of a man used to taking orders from the opposite sex.

  “So how are you, old man, still on destroyers?”

  “Sort of, I’ve been on detached duty for a while; on five days leave at the moment.”

  “So am I! Only I’ve only got four days, Charlotte just met me off the train, she intends to shepherd me quickly onto the next, south bound. I think she fancies herself as my chaperone; protecting me from the flesh pots of London.”

  “She’ll have her work cut out if she does. I remember you on the ‘Belfast’,” he dropped his voice, leaning forward over the table. “Are you still…?”

  “No, old chap.” whispered Crosswall-Brown inches from Grant's ear, “Not from today, drafted to Harwich… M.T.B.s.”

  “You have always been a lucky sod, just the job… How was everyone on the 'Belfast'?”

  “Most of them have been drafted off;” he dropped his voice even lower, “The rumour is it’s going to take two years to get her sea-worthy.”

  “As long as that! That’s one hell of a refit; I didn’t think things were that bad.”

  Crosswall-Brown lifted an eyebrow, “It doesn’t look that bad, I agree but, we were right at the time, you remember we thought she might have broken her back.”

  Grant pulled a face, “Hence your draft, I suppose.”

  “That’s right old man…It’s an ill wind…The buzz is they’re going to keep some of the gunnery department on board. No need for the old eight- inch or the bods who manned them, so here I am. Can’t say I sorry I was getting a bit…”

  Charlotte arrived with three piping hot cups of railway tea.

  “Here, let me pay for those,” said Grant.

  “Wouldn’t hear of it, old boy!” said Crosswall-Brown, “this one’s on the old girl. She’s no one else to spend it on.”

  “Not so much of the old. Just remember you’re still my little brother. Keep your place. Little boys should be seen and not heard.”

  “Yes miss!” grinned Crosswall-Brown, “See how she bullies me, Robert, she only follows me around so that she can cramp my style.”

  “What style?” laughed his sister.

  “You two musical-hall turns catching the train for Pompey?” asked Grant.

  “Yes, are you going on to Yarmouth?” asked Crosswall-Brown.

  “Only to visit, I’m be spending my leave near Pompey.”

  “Where abouts?”

  “Southsea…a boarding house I’ve used before.”

  “Did you say boarding or bawdy?” teased Charlotte.

  “Leave him alone, you pest…We wouldn’t hear of it, old chap, you must stay with us… right old girl? Stacks of room, you know, in the old pile.”

  “Well, that’s awfully good of you, but…”

  “I hate to admit to my brother having a good idea… but he’s right, he’s not much company, as you must know, so I for one would enjoy having a house guest with some conversational skills.”

  * * *

  Nuneaton Station

  Goddard’s right eye was streaming he’d been looking out of the train window waiting for his first sighting of Nuneaton Station when he got the piece of grit in his eye. He’d tried blowing his nose, tried pulling his eyelid down over the, by now, bloodshot eye, nothing seemed to budge it. He peered through the good eye into the speckled mirror of the empty carriage. He sighed. He looked a right state one red eye, tears running down his cheek and his face all screwed up. Just his luck, here he was the returning hero, and he looked like a sprog with the screaming hab-dabs.

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nbsp; The train slowed, he hastily grabbed his case and the bunch of flowers. For a second he thought of stuffing the flowers into the case. It had seemed a good idea to buy the flowers when he was having a few pints with the lads, but now he’d sobered up a bit…

  He jumped down from the slowing train and slammed the carriage door behind him. There was no one at the station to meet him; the fact that he hadn’t really expected anyone did little to ease the disappointment. He had thought that perhaps they would surprise him, a banner or two, even a small cheering crowd. The station was empty, apart from the old ticket collector who stared at his sore eye as he stood blinking, waiting for the man to punch his ticket.

  * * *

  Central London

  O’Neill punched the copper on the nose while he was still fumbling for his whistle, the policeman fell back and his tin helmet rolled noisily across the cobbles.

  O’Neill, grinned, his head nodding, as if in total agreement with his fist, he swayed drunkenly and took another swig at the bottle of black market rum. Hiccupping grandly, chin on his chest, he attempted to focus on the prostrate form before him, failed and said to the blurred image, “Get some sea-time in you bloody Englishman.”

  Seemly satisfied at this incoherent rendering he slid loose-limbed down the wall.

  * * *

  Lower Road, Rotherhithe.

  The rain stopped as the bus neared the corner of Maynard Road. Able Seaman Wyatt jumped off, tipped toeing to avoid the puddles on the cracked and pitted pavement.

  The bus continued, splashing its way up the main road, towards the underground station, spraying the pavement with muddy waves as it progressed.

  He hoisted his bag onto one shoulder and sprinted across the road and round the corner by the doctor’s; a dog-eared notice in the window proclaimed it was ‘Closed until we’ve beaten Hitler’.

  Their flat was at the far end of the road, only a few houses between it and the dockyard wall. A group of kids playing ‘stick and fuggel’, yelling as they splashed through the wet after the fuggel’, socks down around dirty ankles.

  He recognised, Terry Rawlings, from the flat next door, one bare knee grazed and bleeding. The youngster gave the piece of firewood a good whack with the stick and it flew into the air high above the heads of the fielders.

  Wyatt paused for a moment watching the game he had played himself so many times when he had been their age.

  Nothing much had changed, beneath his feet the pavement was marked with the kids chalk drawings and the dockyard wall had a lopsided goal chalked on it in the same place where there had been one for as many years as he could remember.

  He walked pass the screams and the laughter and in through the gate to the flats. Out the back, in the courtyard, a long line of washing flapped tiredly, stark and crisp-white against the mossy walls.

  He ran up the draughty stairwell, impatient now to get indoors, up he climbed, through the faint smell of urine to the top veranda and along to the end flat. It was bag-wash day and bulging pillowcases, full of dirty washing, lay piled up outside each of the front doors. He remembered how, on bag-wash days, he and Terry’s brother, Roy, had used the bags, just like them, as cover while they had shot at each other with their Winchester repeaters.

  Roy was dead now, killed over Norway early in the war, he’d been on Wellington bombers. He remembered how proud he’d been when he told him of the posting. Tail gunner….they’d both become gunners…all that practice on bag-wash days.

  The bottle-green door opened before he could use the knocker. His mum grabbed him in one of her bear-hugs crushing the breath from his body rendering him incapable of speech.

  His sister, Susan, black pigtailed, hung to his leg in a pale intimation of his mum’s death-hug.

  “Welcome home son.” she said, as she dragged him in through the front door. He kissed her on one fire-flushed cheek and patted his sister’s head as she clung to his leg. She held on while he hobbled stiff legged along the dark passage to the kitchen.

  A fire burned orange-red in the black cast iron range, a clothes stand of ‘airing’ stood beside it, his dad’s rack of stained clay pipes on the mantle-piece. He felt for a moment as if he hadn’t been away, as though the past few months had never been.

  “Where’s the old bastard? Working?”

  “ Spect so…he never came back this morning so I suppose he’s gone and got a day’s work in one or other of the docks… Hope so, it’s been ‘ard going lately, not much work about…and yer know what ‘e’s like when ‘e ain’t got nothing to do. Thank Gawd for the fire-watching… keeps him busy.”

  “And out from under your feet?” he added.

  His mum laughed, the years dropped away from her tired face, she was, in that short moment, a young girl again.

  “How’d you know that?… never mind I don’t wanna know, cheeky sod…The kettle’s on the boil, I’ll make us a nice cuppa and you can put your feet up, I expect you’re worn out after that journey.” She moved to the fire. “Where you’ve bin son, anywhere nice?”

  * * *

  Silvertown

  “It needs to be done proper, or not at all, you supposed to do it on one knee.”

  “Which one?” asked Able Seaman Wilson.

  “It don’t matter which…” began Maude, then she saw the twinkle in his eye. She pulled a face, “No! Don’t play the silly bugger you’ll spoil it.”

  “What me knee?”

  “Look if you ain’t gonna behave your…”

  “All right; all right.” Wilson took up the classic pose, hand on heart.

  She pulled his hand away, “Don’t overdo it!”

  “Blimey, make yer mind up.”

  “What am I going to do with yer?”

  “Do yer want a list? I’m game for anything,” he started to giggle… Maude joined in.

  “Look, you sure you wanna do this, or not?”

  “‘Course I do.” he said.

  “I mean, what’s the difference, you know? We’ve been together all these years. It ain’t mattered before.”

  “Well…you know the blokes were talking onboard…”

  “Surely that don’t bother yer!”

  “Nar!… Not about us, let me finish. They were saying as ‘ow they… some of ‘em anyway, thought there could be problems with wills and that if you ain’t married proper… You know if something was to ‘appen to somebody.”

  Maude’s eyes glistened, “You can ‘alf be a morbid bugger when yer want,” she sniffed.

  “No! No!… It’s only right… So, anyway, I got permission off the skipper, and asked about a license and that.”

  “You were sure of yourself, weren’t yer!”

  “‘Course I was.”

  “Well…at least you can ask me proper.”

  “Maude, will you be my wife.”

  “No.”

  “What yer mean?”

  “Oh, all right then,” she said, laughing at his face, “you’ve talked me into it, but I want you in a proper suit when we get married.”

  “I thought I could get married in the rig.”

  “You know what thought done.”

  “No.”

  Neither did Maude, but she wasn’t going to let on. “Like I was saying, if we’re going to do it, I want it done proper. I want us to be able to forget about the war, just for a while…and we can’t do that with you’re in uniform.”

  “I ain’t got no suit, you know that.”

  “You got that money your uncle left yer. Every man should have a suit anyway.”

  “Well… I suppose I could use Uncle Tom’s money… Seems a bit of a waste though.”

  She laughed, “It could double as a laying-out suit, when the time comes.”

  “Yeah, you could get someone to row it out to me, afore they sew me up in me ‘ammock.”

  “Don’t!”

  “You started it!”

  “Yeah… well, now I’m ending it.”

  They fell silent.
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br />   * * *

  Central London

  The wooden pillow wasn’t meant to be comfortable; in fact O’Neill thought the whole cell left much to be desired in that particular area, but, looking on the bright side, at least he had more room to himself than he had on the mess deck. He put his hands behind his head as a cushion and wondered what the ‘beak’ would give him.

  He only had three days leave left and he hadn’t even reached home yet, odds were he wouldn’t make it back again this trip. The little woman would go daft. He shouldn’t have told her he was coming home. Could have surprised her, come to think of it, it would have been a surprise for him as well, if he had managed to get home for once. He reached for a cigarette…either he’d smoked his last one or them thieving coppers had nicked ‘em.

  * * *

  Silvertown

  “ ‘Course I wanna special price! Didn’t we go to school together for crying out loud.” said Wilson.

  “Business is business, me boy, I gotta make a living, and this is quality gear, feel the width.”

  “It’s thickness, Goldy; thickness.”

  “Yeah?” said the tailor, looking up. “Feel the thickness? Yeah? Don’t sound right somehow, still whatever, my son… it’s still ten bob.”

  “Ten bloody bob!”

  “It’s a good price.”

  “Yeah, for you maybe, not for me it ain’t.”

  “All right, all right, for you the special price, after all, as you say, we went to Silvertown Road together, no… Nine and six.”

  “All right,” said Wilson resignedly, “Nine and six it is.”

  “Done!” said Goldy, spitting on one hand.

  “You don’t ‘ave to tell me, I know I was,” said Wilson.

  Chapter 8

  Cider and Charlotte

  Hampshire

  They waved as the London train moved off. Benjamin Crosswall-Brown’s grinning face ducked back inside the window of the last carriage just in time as it disappeared into the tunnel. Charlotte gasped, “He’s always doing that, I wish he wouldn’t.”