Read Online Back to Battle by Max Hennessy - Free Book Online Page B

Firebrand and Fortunate, the escort vessel, Wheeler, and the corvette, Dunlin, but these four had been snatched from him to oversee a convoy from Nova Scotia which was supposed to have joined them and never had. But, as everybody knew, when an escort group was named, the only thing that was certain was the leader, while the rest depended on what was available.
    There had been a brush with a U-boat during the night. It had come to nothing, but Kelly was in no doubt that other submarines would have been called into the assault, because the Germans were beginning to realise that, against the new devices being used against them, it was necessary to contribute numbers. As full daylight came, he began to relax. It might be possible now to go below, change, and perhaps even snatch a little sleep. He had got over Teresa’s death more quickly than he could have imagined possible, and had wondered uncomfortably more than once if his feelings for her sprang merely from the fact that she looked like his long-lost Charley. It had become still easier when it had dawned on him that she’d never intended to leave Santander with him. She’d gone back again and again into danger because she’d had to, afraid to live and because of her faith unafraid to die. He’d been angry at her sacrifice and bitter at what he felt were her muddled beliefs, but the anger and the bitterness had finally died, and in New York, lonely as he watched his officers and men stream ashore to enjoy themselves with the bright lights and the girls, his thoughts had turned again to Charley Upfold.
    Was it six years, or was it seven since she’d sailed in Mauritania for a job in New York? He’d looked her up in the telephone directory under her married name of Kimister and again under her maiden name of Upfold, but there had been nobody who could possibly have been her. The only person he knew who could still have been in contact with her to give her address was her sister, Mabel, but she was in England and married to a retired colonel of the Devons, who had somehow got himself back into the army and across the Channel to France.
    ‘I’m going below for a wash, Number One,’ he said to the first lieutenant. ‘But don’t for a minute imagine we’ve thrown him off because I dare bet our particulars have been passed to every U-boat in the area not wearing an ear trumpet.’
    As he reached his cabin, Rumbelo was waiting for him. The same old Rumbelo recalled to service and happy to be back with Kelly. With a son serving in the destroyer, Grafton, it was hard on Rumbelo to have to return to sea, because he’d just got used to being settled at Thakeham. But he hadn’t grumbled, accepting it as normal, and grateful to be back with Kelly instead of in some unrewarding job ashore. The gap that had appeared between them when, to Rumbelo’s disgust, Kelly had married the wrong woman in 1927, had happily disappeared when the marriage had broken up, and Rumbelo and Biddy and their children had taken the place, with Hugh Withinshawe, of the family that Kelly had never had.
    He was just reaching out to take Kelly’s cap when the buzzer went, and his hand changed its direction automatically to lift the instrument and pass it to Kelly.
    ‘Sir! Bridge! Wrestler has a contact!’
    Snatching his cap back, Kelly hurried for the ladder. Below him, as he reached the bridge screen, was the four-inch gun and the forecastle streaming with water, the chain cables rising and falling as the bow drove into the sea.
    ‘Where’s Wrestler now?’ he demanded at once of the officer of the watch.
    ‘She’s moved astern, sir.’
    ‘Very well, we’ll join her. Bring her round to starboard.’
    There was silence among the men alert at their action stations. Most of them were peacetime regulars with seven, twelve or twenty-two-year engagements, many of them enlisted in the years of the Depression to avoid unemployment. A lot of them had been awaiting their release when the war had broken