The Italians had betrayed their German comrades and had thrown in their lot with the British and American forces. Their fleet, too, was in Allied hands, all their fine, beautifully designed cruisers were a menace no longer. At least so everyone had believed.
But the three approaching vessels were Italian cruisers, racing at full speed towards the west to force the Gibraltar Straits and make for Biscay.
Andromeda
had faced Italian warships many times, but the same vessels in German hands were something else entirely.
At the time Blake had had no idea of the enemy’s intention. All he knew was that the slow-moving lines of landing-craft were helpless, their hastily gathered escort no match at all for the powerful cruisers.
Plenty of other captains had made the same decision as Blake, most of them had not lived to recall it.
With her four six-inch turrets crooked to maximum elevation, a battle-ensign flying from each mast,
Andromeda
had increased speed and had curved away to place herself between the enemy and her vulnerable charges.
What had occurred next was a part of history. It could not have happened, but it did. No single ship, outgunned in strength and size, could take on three cruisers and survive. But she had. At the close of the day, one enemy vessel was on the bottom, the second stopped and unable to move. The third made off streaming smoke, to be sunk the following day by a submarine.
When the
Andromeda
had finally managed to reach Gibraltar there had not been a single cheer raised nor a siren
blared to greet her. Down by the bows, riddled with holes from bow to stern, she was barely afloat. At her guns, cooks and stewards, writers and supply ratings had replaced the dead crews who had fallen during the fight. It was a sight too terrible for applause.
In 1936, when the ship’s keel had first tasted salt water, they had built well. In a month the sights and horrors of battle were cleaned away, the hull patched, the blackened paintwork redone. In two months she was out of dock, and soon on her way to Australia.
There was a tap at the door and Moon, the captain’s steward, peered in at him warily. Chief Petty Officer Moon was an odd-looking man. Gaunt and bony like a scarecrow, untidy ashore, but like a guardsman when he was tending to his duties.
In spite of his mournful face he had a well-hidden humour, and was a good judge of when to do things. Like the time he had sewn on that extra stripe which he had scrounged from somewhere, because he had known they were all at the limit of despair and exhaustion. And the time he had held a young signalman in his arms, had spoken about his early life as a steward in a clapped-out tramp steamer before the war. The youth had watched him entranced while he had slowly bled to death.
‘Will you be goin’ ashore today, sir?’
Blake shook his head. ‘Doubt it. Into Melbourne tomorrow. Get things started.’
Moon nodded gloomily. ‘It’ll not be the same, sir.’
Blake looked away.
Not be the same.
Nor would it.
Two years in the same ship was a lifetime during a war. He glanced at a painting which hung on one bulkhead. It depicted Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, chained to a rock as a sacrifice to the sea monster. With her rescuer, Perseus, on his winged horse charging down to the attack.
Underneath was the ship’s motto.
Auxilium ab Alto.
Help from on High.
A young hostilities-only sub-lieutenant, in peacetime a commercial artist, had given it to him as a present. The officer had been killed two days later off Benghazi. When you
thought about it, the picture was all that he had had time to leave on earth.
Moon added, ‘I’d like to stay with you, sir, when you gets another ship.’
Blake looked at him gravely. ‘I don’t think I could manage without you any more.’
The chief steward seemed satisfied. ‘I’ve got your best whites ready for tomorrow, sir.’ He held up a freshly ironed tunic. ‘Can’t ’ave them Aussies thinkin’ we don’t know how to do things!’
Blake barely heard him. He was staring at the crimson ribbon which Moon had pinned on the white tunic. The ribbon with the tiny cross in the centre of it.
He still could not believe it. The Victoria Cross.
He saw himself in the mirror above Moon’s special sideboard. The one where he hoarded his best glasses. He had even features, with brown hair bleached fair by many months of sea-going in the Med. A youthful face.
The boy captain
, one stupid journalist had labelled him.
But it was not the sort of face he would have expected to see on the holder of a VC. He did not know if it had changed him in any way, or might in the future.
Moon watched him and said quietly, ‘You
earned
it, sir.’ He looked round the cabin and added almost bitterly, ‘So did
she
!’
Blake sat down again. Tomorrow he would take up the reins. See the admiral, meet his successor, explain about the ship, what she meant.
He raised his glass. ‘Another, please.’
Moon padded to his sideboard. Captain Blake was the best he had ever served, although he had been a bit sceptical at the beginning. So young, so confident. Now Moon understood differently. He of everyone else aboard knew what the captain was like when he was hidden from the eyes of his men.
Blake tilted the glass. A proper pink gin this time. On his own he often forgot or neglected to prepare the drink properly. Always too busy. No time. He watched the sunlight reflected on the deckhead. No wonder Bligh’s men mutinied at Tahiti, he thought drowsily. Melbourne must seem just as
much of a miracle to his own men after what they had been made to endure.
His head lolled and Moon deftly removed the glass from his fingers.
Then, with the tunic and its crimson ribbon over his arm, he silently left the cabin.
Commander Victor Fairfax of the Royal Australian Navy opened the bedroom curtains very carefully and looked out at the brilliant moonlight. The house was in a quiet, tree-lined road on the outskirts of Melbourne, much like those on either side of it, but to its occupants so very different.
The night was quiet, the house on the opposite side of the road shining in the strange light like the face of a glacier.
Fairfax was thirty-one, a professional to his fingertips. He was naked, and gave a sensuous shiver as the air, cool and clean after the day’s humidity, explored his body.
Tomorrow he would join his new ship, the British cruiser at Williamstown. It was always an exciting prospect, even the first times as a younger and less confident junior officer. But this would be different. He listened to his wife’s gentle breathing in the bed behind him and felt his heart warm towards her. She was the real difference. They had been married for eight months after meeting in Sydney at a party on Garden Island. A whirlwind and passionate courtship, then marriage with all the trimmings, raised swords, the admiral, the whole lot.
The war had seemed a long way off then, despite the news from Europe and the Pacific.
She stirred and he knew she was awake, watching him in the filtered moonlight.
‘What is it, Vic?’
He shrugged. ‘I was thinking, Sarah, about tomorrow.
Today
, actually.’
‘Come to bed. It’ll be all right. We’ll manage.’
Fairfax sat down on the bed and touched her bare shoulder, feeling his pain at leaving her, his need of her.
She rested her cheek on his hand. ‘Who knows, you might
be in Williamstown for months. New captain, new crew, it’ll all take time.’
She reached out and ran her fingers lightly up his thigh, touching him, then holding him.
‘You
need
the sea, Vic, as much as I need you.’
He climbed in beside her and without words they made love, slowly at first, and then with a mounting desperation which left them spent and breathless.
He lay with her yellow hair across his shoulder, his hand firmly against her spine.
She said huskily, ‘What do you know about Blake?’
Fairfax smiled at the darkness. ‘A VC, a hero to all accounts. God, his last action reads like something from a film.’
‘That all you know?’
‘He’s young for his appointment. Bit of a loner, someone told me. He’s married, but it’s on the rocks.’
She snuggled against him, her hand exploring his body again.
‘Well, watch your tongue, Vic. Don’t put up a blue by asking him about his love life!’
‘He’ll be off soon, I expect. Back to the real war.’
‘You said that as if you resented it.’
‘I do a bit. You’ve seen Sydney. Full of Yanks, all covered with medals, and they’ve not heard a gun fired yet. If we’re not careful we’ll be pushed into the side-lines. I joined the Navy for this day and the one to come. Not to end up in a barracks teaching a lot of damn recruits!’
She said softly, ‘This Blake. He’s not another death-or-glory boy, is he?’ She hugged him tightly. ‘I don’t want to lose you now!’
He grinned. ‘Down to earth as usual. You’re quite a girl, did anyone tell you that?’
Fairfax held her until she had fallen asleep again. He had almost blurted out his real worry to her. It was so easy with Sarah. They were like one person.
Captain Mark Sellars should have been taking over from Blake. He had seen it in orders. Sellars was a good skipper, probably the best man for the job when you considered that
half the cruiser’s new company would be as green as grass.
Now, Sellars had been appointed to another ship which was already serving in the Pacific. No new name had come out of the Navy Office’s hat as far as he had heard. So who was getting the command?
He closed his eyes, but knew he would not relax until it was time to get up.
It would be interesting to meet a real hero, he thought. He was still smiling as he fell asleep.
It was a ten-mile drive from the dockyard to the Navy Office in Melbourne, and as he sat in a fast-moving staff car Blake tried to build up some enthusiasm for what he would have to do. Nobody stayed with any ship for ever. He had served in almost every sort of vessel in his service life, from being a humble and harassed midshipman in a battleship to a sloop, from her to a destroyer, and then on to a cruiser which had been commanded by an aristocrat who had spent more time with his polo ponies than with his responsibilities afloat.
Blake had learned something from each of them, what to remember and what to discard. The Navy was his world, and with Diana gone there would be nothing else.
The driver, an Australian seaman, said cheerfully, ‘Bit different from home, I expect, sir?’
Blake nodded. ‘A bit.’
The Australian Navy was built on the RN’s traditions and experience, but there it stopped. He could not imagine a British seaman chatting with a four-ringed captain at their first meeting. The man’s casual acceptance was both warming and worrying. The open-handed, outspoken Aussies would have to learn that war was not always that casual. If you knew and understood them it was fair enough. But in Malaya and Singapore the Japanese army had
not
understood and had won every battle.
The car jerked to a halt in a patch of dusty shadow and the seaman said, ‘Here we are. First right, second left.’ He grinned. ‘Sir.’
Blake walked into the shadowy interior and showed his
identity card automatically to a man at a small desk. The man stared at him. ‘Go right in. You’re expected.’
Blake nodded. There was not much security down-under, he thought. But perhaps he had become too used to it.
He was shown into a cool office where two Wrens were typing busily and their officer was leafing through a folder on the opposite side of the room.
She looked at him impassively. ‘Captain Blake.’ Her glance moved to his decoration. ‘This way, sir.’ She was tall when she stood up, her face and hands very tanned, as if she were more used to the open air than an office.
A stoutly built captain, as old for his rank as Blake was youthful, ambled round a large desk and shook his hand.
‘Sit down and take it easy.’ He glanced at the impassive Wren officer. ‘Okay, Claire, you can organize some tea when you get a moment.’ The door closed.
The captain said, ‘I’m Jack Quintin. I’m sorry to drag you here first, and I know you’ve an appointment with the First Naval Member of the Board in thirty minutes. However. . . .’ He perched himself on the edge of the desk. ‘My job is to liaise intelligence between the RAN and your people. I did most of my time with the RN, so I’m the obvious choice, I guess.’ He grinned. ‘I’d be on the beach with a pension otherwise!’ It seemed to amuse him.
Blake said, ‘I sent my report about the ship’s present strength. There is a list of requirements for the dockyard manager, too. They only did a temporary job after the –’ The words seemed to stick in his throat.
Captain Quintin eyed him gravely. ‘We all heard. It must have been a terrible fight.’ He pushed it from his mind and added, ‘Fact is, you will not be leaving
Andromeda
just yet.’
Blake looked up quickly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t really know. But a full refit will have to wait. Your ship is needed at sea. It’s as simple as that.’
Simple? Blake stared at him. Over half the ship’s company gone, much of the machinery in need of overhaul, even replacement.
He said, ‘I understood that
HMAS
Devonport
will be ready for any emergency while
Andromeda
is fitting out?’
Nothing he said seemed to make sense. He was staying in command, but why?
Quintin said, ‘It’s all top secret of course, but
Devonport
’s gone.’
Blake exclaimed, ‘How?’
Quintin spread his hands. ‘She was on the long patrol, the Cape Town to Melbourne convoy route. Pretty quiet these days, and anyway
Devonport
can, or could, take care of herself.’
Blake got a brief mental picture of the missing ship. A sizeable cruiser with the ability to patrol great areas of ocean without refuelling. Eight eight-inch guns, aircraft, a powerful force to be reckoned with.
The older man said, ‘We received the usual signal, then nothing. We’ve mounted a full search, escorts from an incoming convoy, aircraft, the Americans, everybody.’ He banged one hand into the other. ‘Damn all. Not even an empty raft.’