Gone to Sea in a Bucket by David Black

Author:David Black [Black, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503947498
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2015-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The day after the Crumleys’ party a letter arrived from Peter Dumaresq. He had replied to all Harry’s letters from training, and Harry had thanked him for the wise words that had put him there. From those letters Harry had learned Dumaresq was now promoted to Lieutenant Commander and executive officer of the light cruiser, HMS Wolverhampton. This letter congratulated Harry on the sinking of the Von Zeithen, and commiserated with him on his ‘little spot of bother’ – which meant he also knew Pelorus had been sunk but wasn’t saying, since like everyone else in the country he was keeping mum. It also explained why he knew where to send the letter – Harry would be on survivors’ leave, so he would likely be at home. And Dumaresq, it transpired, was close at hand; his ship in a yard on the Clyde, just completing a refit. The letter concluded: ‘. . . so why not pop over for some lunch in the wardroom? Bring a tin hat, Jerry’s been known to call too!’

Harry didn’t have a tin hat; they hadn’t issued him with one at Rosyth, so it was only an inherited watch cap and his gas mask bag that he grabbed before he headed for the steamer. This time the sailing was from Kirn Pier, a hundred yards down the hill from his front door, from where the little paddle steamer would go all the way up the Clyde to the Broomielaw in Glasgow’s city centre. It was a greyish day, with thin, high cloud blocking the sun and making the air close.

The pier was jammed with sailors, some burdened down with giant white slugs of kitbags, others just heading for the city on passes, to the pubs and the dance halls. Despite the early hour the lads were raucous, full of it. Many of them sported ‘HM Submarines’ cap bands, begging the question: was Harry still one of them? He shut his eyes and conjured up Pelorus’s bridge, the gaping ‘O’ of the hatchway that led down through the conning tower to the control room, and every time he closed his eyes he would see its black hole; tried to imagine going through another just like it on another submarine, and his stomach would churn. A settled and terrible conviction seemed to be forming in him, that somehow if he were ever to shut that steel hatch on the good, fresh air, he would never see the sky again. The little paddler chuffed and beat its way through the flock of anchored ships cluttering the Firth, and he leant on the rail and let the conviction fill him with despair.

As the Clyde’s banks narrowed towards the city the paddle steamer began passing docks, and then shipyards bristling with cranes disgorging cargo, or lifting plates and giant hull frames; serried ranks of freighters, the slab sides of a King George V-class battleship in the fitting-out basin at the John Brown yard, an aircraft carrier taking shape on the slips; other lesser warships, dwarfed by the giant structures, all seething with workers.

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