Authors: Julian Mitchell
“I don’t see what we can do,” said Bray at last. “And if we do do anything, we’ll only make him worse.”
Burgess put his spectacles back on and said, “Unless we get a doctor.”
“We can’t force him to see a doctor. And if he refuses to see the doctor we produce, what’ll happen to us?”
“For God’s sake keep your voice down,” said Burgess nervously.
“Look,” said Bray, “if this office is wired, then we’re already under such suspicion that it doesn’t matter what we say anyway.”
“It’s all very well for you,” said Burgess, fretting at the blotter with a paper-knife, “you don’t have to sit here night after night, not knowing what may not get into him next. It’s spooky, I can tell you.”
“It must be,” said Bray. “But what can we do? What on earth can we do?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
“If we last that long,” said Bray.
They looked at each other in silence again. Then Bray got up and took his umbrella from behind the door.
“Best of luck,” he said. He gave Burgess a commiserating look, then straightened his face and said in a loud voice, “Good night, then, Mr Burgess.”
“Good night, Mr Bray,” said Burgess.
*
The reunion took place in a pink-lit Italian restaurant, small but quite good, and, as Jumbo jovially remarked, not too hard on the middle-aged pocket. Some of the old comrades
considered
that it was eccentrically far from the centre of London. The Finchley Road, they thought, was not the place one usually chose for a slap-up dinner, and one of them suggested to his neighbour that no doubt the idea was to save Jumbo the expense of a tube-fare, since he lived somewhere near Belsize Park. Yet though they found its location strange, no one remarked on the irony of eating in a restaurant run by their old enemy. Their exploits had been, it was true, more against the Germans than the Italians, but they hadn’t, underwater, bothered to distinguish between them. The enemy had simply been the enemy, and the object was to blow him up as quickly as possible and then get the hell out of the way.
The atmosphere was strained at first, and Jumbo’s boisterous use of nicknames did nothing to make the party go. “Skipper” Trevelyan had long ago hung up his jacket with the two and a half stripes and put away his cap. No one had called Frank Laughton “Jimmy” since 1946—no one, that is, except Jumbo—and Frank Laughton didn’t like it. Stanley White simply refused to answer to “Blanco”. Shrieve was grateful that no one had ever succeeded in getting “Guns” to stick to him: it was, he reflected, typical of him that no nickname had ever lasted. He was Hugh; very occasionally and only to Jumbo, Hughie; but basically and mercifully he was plain, straightforward Hugh. How Felix Perkins had come to be known as “Ludo” no one could now remember, but he alone answered to his nickname: perhaps he had never cared for Felix.
Looking round the table, Shrieve tried to remember what it was they had shared which brought them together again. None of them met, presumably, to remind himself of the weeks of tedium, of the months spent playing cards and dominoes, drinking, smoking, talking till the talk became as repetitive and irritating as their few scratched records. And none of them, surely, wished to recall the hours of rehearsal, the endless practice of their mission, till they could have gone round the harbour blindfolded. Was it, then, the operation itself which had brought them together? Did they still wake sweating at night from nightmares of being detected, being sunk, being
trapped in the little steel coffins as the water poured in? Did they wish to honour the memory of George Hardcastle and Henry Burton and Bill Symonds and Merlin Lewis, those four unrecovered corpses, those four posthumous heroes who might, might so easily, have been Jumbo Maxwell, Hugh Shrieve, Stanley White and Frank Laughton? Perhaps it was that, the shared experience of danger and the nearness of death, the permanent knowledge that death could have taken any of them as it chose. To have felt nuzzled by extinction and to have been spared, to have stood in the ward-room with a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other and dread in one’s heart for those who had not yet returned—perhaps that was what bound them still. Had it been worse to survive and know that others hadn’t than to perform the mission itself? Certainly, much worse. In action one was absorbed, fully occupied with manœuvring the craft and leaving it to fix the limpet mines, with re-entering and escaping before the mines went off. There was no time to feel afraid then, indeed no time to feel. Only behind one, as one slid through the harbour entrance, the muffled booms which might mean success—the enemy ship blown up—or disaster—a comrade detected and
depth-charged
; only with these was feeling restored.
No one talked about the war, and none of them, Shrieve thought, had the look of a naval or military man. Ludo Perkins had been the very image of a brand-new sub-lieutenant in those days, red-cheeked, razor-nicked, his cap rakishly askew. Now he was getting fat, still red-cheeked, but the redness that of heavy lunches and double whiskies, not of salt winds and youth. Stanley White was nearly bald, an angular man with spectacles, rather clerkly, not the slim athlete Shrieve
remembered
. Trevelyan had always been older than the others, with a trace of handsome greyness at the temples. Now he was completely grey and the skin over his cheekbones, once taut and almost transparent, was relaxed and fleshy. Frank Laughton had been heavily built with short black hair and large red hands which seemed to swallow thick ropes. Now the hands were plump and soft, the short hair was long and brushed
straight back, the heaviness had settled in his paunch. They all looked like ordinary businessmen having a night out. They might have come from Bradford or Burnley to visit a trade exhibition, they might have been looking forward to a spot of strip-tease, eh, after dinner, and what the wife doesn’t know the kids won’t suffer for.
They weren’t from the north, and they didn’t intend to go on to a Soho strip club and they weren’t, tonight, going to be unfaithful to their wives. But they were businessmen, and no one could have doubted it. The talk was of automation and union troubles and the cost of materials, of inefficient foremen and sales managers and the issue of stocks. They came from Ruislip and Pinner, Richmond and Blackheath. None of the old comrades who lived outside London had come. Jumbo was sad, his head shook ponderously and he said he was ashamed for them, but they all knew that if they had lived out of town they wouldn’t have come themselves. They had little enough in common. They had their niches, their wives and children, their cars, they weren’t genuinely interested in what the others were doing. Only professional talk kept them going through the meal, and Jumbo’s rumbling laugh.
“Jumbo,” said Trevelyan to Shrieve, “is my idea of a walking and talking public warning system. He warns you to get out of the way, and he reminds you how wrong you might have gone.”
Shrieve considered, then he said, “I suppose there must be a lot like him around.”
“There are a few,” said Trevelyan. “You hear he’s got himself a job at last?”
“No. What as?”
“God knows. Ask him.”
Jumbo was a place away from Shrieve, and he leaned heartily across Laughton to hear what he was being asked.
“Yes, yes,” he said, leaning back again. “It’s a most
important
piece of work. Economic research, you know. Not time and motion study, exactly, but that sort of thing. For the Brachs chain of restaurants. Just the sort of thing for a man
like me. A job that really requires intelligence, you know, old boy. It’s a question of cutting down on waste. Really most important work. I dare say the study we produce will be the model for every restaurant in the country in time.”
“But what do you do exactly?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, old chap, as I’m sure you
understand
. But between ourselves, it’s to check where everything goes. It doesn’t all go on to the customer’s plate, you know. Oh, no. By no means. And then there’s the question of what happens to the empties. It’s a most elaborate business, I can tell you.”
“So it sounds,” said Laughton. “But why is it all so secret?”
“Ah,” said Jumbo. “One doesn’t like to give away one’s little advantages, does one? Sorry, old chap, I’m just not at liberty to say. But I can assure you it’s going to revolutionise the catering industry.”
“Since when have you been an economic researcher, Jumbo?” said Perkins. “I never thought that economics would turn out to be your line of business.”
The others laughed, but Jumbo put on a serious face and said, “I’ve always been particularly interested in business efficiency. People laughed, as you’ve all just laughed, when the first efficiency experts started work. Now there simply aren’t enough of them to go round, the demand’s so strong. It’s a profession I’ve had my eye on for some time.”
“What about your business with the plates, Jumbo?” said Shrieve.
“I’d rather you didn’t ask me about that, old chap,” said Jumbo easily. “Don’t want everyone knowing about it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shrieve, smiling.
“That Brachs,” said Laughton, “he seems to shove his nose in everywhere, doesn’t he?”
“He’s a bloody nuisance,” said White. “Christ, I’m all for people taking a profit, but the sort of speculation he’s been going in for, you won’t be able to afford an office anywhere in London in a few years’ time. Rents are rocketing up.”
“It’s shocking,” said Laughton. “I don’t know how people can afford to live in London these days.”
“Now steady on, chaps,” said Jumbo. “You can’t blame the cost of living on a perfectly straightforward businessman like Mr Brachs. He’s a man I admire, and I don’t mind
admitting
it. He’s got initiative. Real flair for business, that man.”
“No one denies that,” said Laughton. “It’s just that you get fed up sometimes, seeing the big fellows raking in all the cash. What do they do with it all?”
“They make pop singers,” said Shrieve.
“He’s in the clothing business, too,” said White. “We’ve had to give up our line in men’s slacks, it just wasn’t profitable any more, with his cut-price stuff down the road. And it’s such poor quality stuff, too, not that the public seems to care.”
“People will buy anything cheap and gaudy,” said Laughton. “Try and get them to take a decent article at five per cent more than the trash, and they’ll laugh in your face. I get depressed sometimes, really I do. You just don’t get the same standard of workmanship these days in anything.”
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” said Trevelyan. “People have lots of money today, they throw it around. No one’s poor any more.”
“That’s all very well, Skipper,” said Jumbo, “but I don’t like the look of the way things are going, to tell you the truth. We’ll end up like the Americans if we’re not careful,
deliberately
producing things that won’t last. A little pinch of unemployment wouldn’t do this country any harm at all.”
“We’re producing things that won’t last already,” said Trevelyan.
“The American influence has been nothing but disastrous,” said Jumbo authoritatively. “Good, decent standards of British workmanship—and, I’m sorry to say, British honesty—seem to have gone right down the drain.”
Trevelyan avoided Shrieve’s eye. Then they both burst out laughing.
“You may think it funny,” said Jumbo, “you may think I’m just parroting what everyone else says, but I tell you, Skipper,
this country would be standing a lot higher in the world today if it wasn’t for America.”
“That’s absolutely true, Jumbo,” said Shrieve gravely. “No one can deny it.”
They moved on to brandy and cigars, and the atmosphere became soft and pink like the room as cheeks flushed and the conversation mellowed from business to family life.
“No,” Jumbo was saying, “I’ve never married. Funny you should say that, Jimmy, Hugh and I were talking about it only the other night. I think I’m probably just not the type for marriage.”
“Two kids, both girls,” said White to Perkins. “What about you? How long have you been married, anyway?”
“Five years, three children,” said Perkins.
“That’s going it a bit, isn’t it?”
“I’m a Catholic now. My wife converted me.”
“Ah, I see. More to come, then, I expect.”
“We hope so.”
“He’s an odd bird, Shrieve, isn’t he?” said White. “Living out there in the middle of Africa with no one for miles around.”
“He’s an old-fashioned type, he always was, I remember. A bit of an odd man out, don’t you think?”
“Nice bloke, though. But it’s not a life I’d care for myself.”
“Nor me.”
“Yes, I thought of staying on,” said Trevelyan. “I expect we all did once or twice. But I was never romantic about the sea, and though I suppose I might have done quite well if I’d gone on, my wife and I talked it over, and we decided against it. And I’m not sorry at all now, to be frank. They’d’ve probably retired me by this time, anyway.”
“You’re right there, Skipper,” said Jumbo. “It’s been pretty rough on the chaps who’ve been axed. But I wish I’d stayed on, you know. I’m not much of a man for office work. I was always happiest on the bridge.”
Laughton and Shrieve looked at him in amazement. There had been little life on the bridge of a midget submarine.
“Yes,” Jumbo went on, “the life on the ocean wave, that
was a good life. When I look back on it, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the war, you know. It broadened the old horizon a bit, eh?”
“I’m not sure,” said Laughton. “It was all right in some ways, I suppose, but I wouldn’t go through it again for all the tea in China.”
“Nor me,” said White. “But it wasn’t so bad, you know. We had quite a bit of fun in our way, didn’t we?”
“There was more to it than that,” said Trevelyan. “I always felt we were doing a really important job of work. After it was all over I really knew I’d done my bit for my country. I could start doing a bit for myself, then, with a clear conscience.”
“Looking out for number one, eh, Jimmy?” said Jumbo, nudging Laughton with his elbow. Laughton flinched.
“It was all right in some ways,” said Ludo Perkins, who was a little tight. “It was all right being a man in uniform. The girls didn’t mind letting their hair down when they thought you might not be coming back.”