The first punch Tims seemed to expect and ducked away. The second was blocked by the stoker's own blinding upper cut. It caught Nicol unawares, exploding under his chin so that he crashed backwards into the wall.
'Think your little whore will still find you pretty now, Marine?' The words came at him like another blow, cutting through the sound of the engines, the distant hum of the band, the disconsolate clank of the lashings swinging against the side. The blood in his ears. 'Perhaps she just didn't think you were man enough for her, with your prissy uniforms, always following orders.'
He felt the stoker's breath on his skin, could smell the oil on him. 'Did she tell you how she likes it, did she? Did she tell you she liked to feel my hands on them titties, liked to--'
With a roar, Nicol threw himself at Tims and brought them both crashing down. He pummelled blindly at the flesh before him, not even sure what his fists were connecting with. He felt the man wrench his body underneath him, saw the great fist come round as it caught him again. But he could not stop now, even if he felt himself in danger. He hardly felt the blows that rained down upon him. A blood mist had descended, and all the anger of the past six weeks, of the past six years, forced their way out of him through his fists and his strength, and curses flew through his clenched teeth. Something similar - perhaps his humiliation in front of a woman, perhaps the inequities of twenty years' service - seemed to provide the motor for Tims's own assault, so that in their welter of blood and blows and punches neither man registered the siren, despite the proximity of the Tannoy above their heads.
'Fire! Fire! Fire!' came the urgent, piped instruction. 'Standing Sea Emergency Party, close up at Section Base Two. All marines to the boat deck.'
The Queen of the Victoria contestants were being led from the stage, their polished smiles vanished from their faces, Irene Carter clutching her winner's sash round her like a lifejacket. Margaret glimpsed them briefly as, wedged in the sea of bodies, she found herself moving towards the door. Behind them, the tables stood abandoned, apple charlotte and fruit salad on the plates, glasses half empty. Around her, the women's voices had risen in nervous excitement, swelling to a little crescendo of fear with every new piped instruction. She held one hand protectively across her belly and made her way towards the starboard side exit. It was like fighting against a particularly strong current.
A voice shouted from somewhere ahead, 'Quickly, ladies, please. Those with surnames N to Z gather at Muster Station B, all others to Muster Station A. Just keep moving now.'
Margaret had made her way to the edge of the crowd when the women's service officer caught her arm.
'This way, madam.' She held out her arms, pointing forward, a physical barrier to the starboard exit.
'I have to pop downstairs.' Margaret cursed under her breath as someone elbowed her in the back.
'Nobody is allowed downstairs. Muster stations only.'
Margaret felt the crush of bodies pushing past her, smelt the mingling of several hundred brands of scent and setting lotion. 'Look, it's very important. I have to fetch something.'
The woman looked at her as if she was a fool. 'There is a fire on board,' she said. 'There is absolutely no going downstairs. Captain's orders.'
Margaret's voice rose, a mixture of anxiety and frustration. 'You don't understand! I have to go there! I have to make sure - I have to look after my - my--'
Perhaps the WSO was more anxious than she wanted to let on. Her temper flared right back. She blew her whistle, trying to steer someone to the right, then pulled it from her pursed lips and hissed, 'Don't you think everyone has something they want to keep by them? Can you imagine the chaos if we let everyone start digging around for photograph albums or pieces of jewellery? It's a fire. For all we know it could have started in the women's cabins. Now, please move on or I'll have to get someone to move you.'
Two marines were already locking the exit hatch. Margaret gazed around her, trying to locate another way down, and then, her chest tight, moved forwards in the crush.
'Avice.' Frances stood in the doorway of the silent dormitory, staring at the motionless form on the bunk in front of her. 'Avice? Can you hear me?'
There was no response. For a minute, Frances had thought this was because Avice, like most of the brides, now declined to speak to her. She would not normally have persisted. But something, perhaps in the pale set of the other woman's face, the dazed look in her eyes, made her ask again.
'Just go away,' came the reply. It sounded reduced, at odds with the aggression of the words.
Then the siren had started. Outside, in the gangway, a fire alarm rang, shrill and insistent, followed by the sound of rapid footfalls outside the door.
'Attack party close up at fire in centre engine. Location centre engine. All passengers to the muster stations.'
Frances glanced behind her, all else forgotten. 'Avice, that's the alarm. We've got to go.' At first she thought perhaps Avice had not understood what the siren meant. 'Avice,' she said irritably, 'that means there's a fire on board. We've got to go.'
'No.'
'What?'
'I'm not going.'
'You can't stay here. I don't think it's a drill this time.' The sound of the alarm sent adrenaline coursing through Frances. She realised she was waiting for the sound of an explosion. The war's over, she told herself, and forced herself to breathe deeply. It's over. But that didn't explain the panicked sounds outside. What was it? A stray mine? There had been no thump of ammunition, no jarring vibration in the air that told of a direct hit. 'Avice, we've got to--'
'No.'
Frances stood in the middle of the dormitory, unable to make sense of the girl's behaviour. Avice had never been in battle: her body would not thrill with fear at the mere sound of a siren. But she must understand. 'Will you go with Margaret, for Pete's sake?' Perhaps it was because it was Frances asking her to leave.
Avice lifted her head. It was as if she hadn't heard a thing. 'You're okay,' she said, her voice hard. 'You've got your husband, in spite of everything. Once you get off this ship you're free, you're respectable. I've got nothing but disgrace and humiliation ahead of me.'
The alarm had been joined by a distant Tannoy. 'Fire! Fire! Fire!' Frances was having trouble keeping her thoughts straight.
'Avice, I--'
'Look!' Avice was holding out a letter. It was as if she were deaf to the anxious voices, feet running outside. 'Look at it!'
Fear meant that initially Frances could not make sense of the words on the paper in front of her. It had sucked the moisture from her mouth, sent her thoughts tumbling against each other. Every cell was screaming at her to move towards the door, to safety. With Avice's eyes on her, she ran her gaze distractedly over the letter again, this time picking out 'sorry' and grasped that she might be in the presence of some personal catastrophe. 'Sort it out later,' she said, gesturing towards the door. 'Come on, Avice, let's get to the muster station. Think of the baby.'
'Baby? The baby?' Avice stared at Frances as if she were an imbecile, then sank down on her pillow in weary resignation.
'Oh, just go,' she said. She buried her face in her pillow, leaving Frances to stand dumbly by the door.
It took Nicol several seconds to realise that the arms hauling at him were not Tims's. He had been flailing around, fists flying, head moving dully backwards and forwards with each impact, but he was dimly conscious that the last time they had landed on flesh the wail of protest had not been the stoker's. He reeled back, eyes stinging as he tried to focus, and gradually, became aware of Tims several feet away, two seamen bent over him.
Emmett was pulling at his jacket with one hand, while the other rubbed his temple. 'What the hell are you doing, Nicol? You've got to get upstairs,' he was saying. 'To the muster stations. Got to get the brides into the boats. Jesus Christ, man! Look at the state of you.'
It was then that he became aware of the alarm, and was surprised he had not noticed it before. Perhaps the ringing in his ears had d
rowned it.
'It's centre engine, Tims,' the young stoker was shouting. 'Shit, we're in trouble.'
The fight was forgotten.
'What happened?' Tims was on his feet now, leaning over the younger man. A long cut ran down his cheek. Nicol, struggling to his feet, wondered whether he had bestowed it.
'I don't know.'
'What have you done?' Tims's huge, bloodied hand shot out and gripped the boy's shoulder.
'I - I don't know. I took five minutes to go and see the girls. Then I went back down and the whole bloody passage was filled with smoke.'
'Did you shut it off? Did you close the hatch?'
'I don't know - there was too much smoke. I couldn't even get past the bomb room.'
'Shit!' Tims looked at Nicol. 'I'll head down there.'
'Anyone else in centre engine?'
Tims shook his head, wincing. 'No. The Artificer had gone off. It was just the damn fool boy.' The first wisp of smoke found its way into the men's nostrils, prompting a short, loaded silence.
'It's the captain,' said Tims. 'He's jinxed, that Highfield. He'll do for us all.'
21
A is for ARMY of which we are fond,
B is for BRIDES both brunette and blonde,
C is for COURAGE they had lots,
D is for DISTANCE we covered by knots,
E is for ENDEAVOUR to give of our best,
F is for FORTITUDE put to the test . . .
Ida Faulkner, war bride, quoted in Forces Sweethearts,
Wartime Romance from the First World War
to the Gulf, Joanna Lumley
The stoker firefighter emerged from the black smoke with the faltering steps of a blind man, one hand still clutching his hose, the other outstretched, waiting for the grasp that would pull him to safety. His smoke helmet was blackened, and the hands that reached forward to pull it off his head discovered, with burned fingers, how hot it was.
Green coughed and wiped soot from his eyes, then straightened and faced his captain. 'Beaten back, sir. We've closed all the hatches we can, but it's spread to the starboard engine room. Drenching system hasn't worked.' He coughed black phlegm on to the floor, then looked up again, eyes white in his sooty face. 'I don't think it's reached the main feed tank, because it would have blown out the machine control room.'
'Foamite?' said the captain.
'Too late for that, sir. It's no longer just a fuel fire.'
Around him the team of marines and stokers, the naval firefighters, stood ready, clutching hoses and fire extinguishers, waiting for the orders that would send them in.
It had often been said of Highfield, on Indomitable, that he knew the location of every room, every compartment, every hold in his floating city without ever having to examine a map. Now he mentally traced the possible route of the fire through her sister ship. 'Do we know which way it's headed?'
'We can only hope it spreads to starboard. That way we might lose the starboard engine, sir, but it will hit the air space. Above it we've got the lub oil tank and turbo-generator.'
'So the worst that could happen is we're immobilised.' Around him, the fire siren continued to wail in the cramped passageway. In the distance, he could hear the women being mustered.
'Sir.'
'But?'
'But I can't guarantee it's spreading in that direction, sir.'
Caught early enough, an engine-room fire could have been put out with extinguishers and, at worst, a hose. Even caught late, it could usually be contained with boundary hosing - spraying water on the outside walls to keep the temperature of the room down. But this fire - God only knew how - had already gone too far. Where were the men? he wanted to shout. Where were the extinguishers? The bloody drenchers? But it was too late for any of that. 'You think it might be heading towards the machine control room?'
The man nodded.
'If it blows out the machine control room, it will reach the warhead and bomb rooms.'
'Sir.'
That plane. That face. Highfield forced himself to push away the image.
'Get the women off the ship.'
'What?'
'Lower the lifeboats.'
Dobson glanced out of the bridge at the rough seas. 'Sir, I--'
'I'm not taking any chances. Lower the lifeboats. Take a bloody order, man. Green, grab your men and equipment. Dobson, I need at least ten men. We're going to empty the bomb rooms as far as possible, then flood the bloody thing. Tennant, I want you and a couple of others to see if you can get to the passage below the mast pump room. Get the hatches open on the lub oil store and flood it. Flood as many of the compartments around both engine rooms as you can.'
'But it's above water level, sir.'
'Look at the waves, man. We'll make the bloody seas work for us for a change.'
On the boat deck, Nicol was trying to persuade a weeping girl, her arms wrapped round her lifejacket, to climb into the lifeboat. 'I can't,' she shrieked, pointing at the churning black seas below. 'Look at it! Just look at it!'
Around them, the marines struggled to keep order and calm, despite the sirens and piped instructions emanating from other parts of the ship. Occasionally a woman would cry out that she could see or smell smoke, and a ripple of fear would travel through the others. Despite this, the weeping girl was not the only one unwilling to climb into the boats, which, after the solidity of Victoria, bobbed precariously like corks in the foaming waters below.
'You've got to get in,' he yelled, his tone becoming firmer.
'But all my things! What will happen to them?'
'They'll be fine. Fire will be out in no time and then you can re-embark. Come on, now. There's a queue building up behind you.'
With a sob of reluctance, the girl allowed herself to be handed into the boat and the queue shuffled forward a few inches. Behind him the crowd of several hundred women waited, having been marshalled out of the hangar deck towards the lifeboats, most still in their evening dresses. The wind whistled around them, goosepimpling the girls' arms; they clutched themselves and shivered. Some wept, others wore bright, nervous smiles as if trying to persuade themselves that this was all some jolly adventure. One in three refused point-blank to get in and had to be ordered or even manhandled. He didn't blame them - he didn't want to get into a lifeboat either.
In the floodlit dark, he could see men who remembered Indomitable; they eyed each other while trying not to reveal it in their expressions, kept their attention focused on getting the women down into the relative safety of the waters below.
The next female hand was in his. It was Margaret, her moon face pale. 'I can't leave Maudie,' she said.
It took him several seconds to understand what she was saying. 'Frances is down there,' he said. 'She'll bring her. Come on, you can't wait.'
'But how do you know?'
'Margaret, you have to get into the boat.' He could see the anxious faces of those swaying in the suspended cutter. 'C'mon, now. Don't make everyone else wait.'
Her grip was surprisingly strong. 'You've got to tell her to get Maudie.'
Nicol peered back through the smoke and chaos below the bridge. His own fears were not for the dog.
'You get into that one, Nicol.' His marine captain appeared behind him, pointing to the one alongside. 'Make sure they've all got their jackets on.'
'Sir, I'd rather wait on deck, if that's--'
'I want you in the boat.'
'Sir, if it's all the same I'll--'
'Nicol, in the boat. That's an order.' The marine captain nodded him towards the little vessel, as Margaret's lifeboat disappeared down the side of the ship, then did a double-take. 'What the bloody hell has happened to your face?'
Several minutes later, Nicol's boat hit the waters with a flat wet thud that made several girls shriek. Fumbling with safety straps and the problem of getting a lifejacket round a particularly hysterical bride, Nicol scanned the boats already on the water until he spotted Emmett. The young marine was gesturing at his single oar.
'There's no bloody ropes,' he was shouting, 'and half the oars are missing. Bloody ship's a floating scrapyard.'
'They were half-way through replacing them. Denholm ordered it after the last drill,' said another voice.
Nicol searched for and found his own oars - he was lucky. They were safe. They could float all night for all it mattered. Around them, the sea churned dark grey, the waves not high enough to induce real fear, but sizeable enough to keep the women's hold firm on the sides of the little boats. Above, through the whistling in his ears, he could hear the increasingly rapid piped instructions, now joined by the siren. He stared at the creaking ship; the faint but distinct plume of smoke that had emerged from the space below the women's cabins.
Get out, he told her silently. Get to somewhere I can see you.
'I can't keep close to you,' shouted Emmett. 'How are we going to keep the boats together?'
'Get out. Get out now,' he said aloud.
'Here,' said a woman behind him, 'I know what we can do. Come on, girls . . .'
'I'm not going.'
Frances had hold of Avice now, no longer caring what the girl thought of her, no longer caring how any physical contact would be received. She could hear the sound of the lifeboats hitting the water, the shouts of those leaving the ship, and was filled by the blind fear that they would not get out.
She tried to convey none of this to Avice who, she suspected, was beyond sensible thought. She hated the stupid girl, too shallow even to recognise the threat to their lives.
'I know it's hard but you've got to go now.' She had kept her voice sing-song light for the past ten minutes. Sweet, reassuring, detached, the way she used to talk to the worst-injured men.
'There's nothing for me now,' said Avice, and her voice rasped like sandpaper. 'You hear me? Everything's ruined. I'm ruined.'
'I'm sure it can be sorted out--'
'Sorted out? What do I do? Unmarry myself? Row myself back to Australia?'
'Avice, this is not the time--' She could smell smoke now. It made all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
'Oh, how could you possibly understand? You, with the morals of an alleycat.'
'We've got to get out.'
'I don't care. My life is over. I may as well stay here--' She broke off as, above them, something crashed on to the deck. The shudder it sent through the little room seemed to knock Avice out of her trance.