61

The drawing room on Connaught Avenue had a touch of Noel Coward on that evening of the last month of 1942. Halifax was buried in snow, and some feeble Christmas lights were bravely twinkling in a few frozen and ice-patterned windows. Banks of snow were piled on the sidewalks, between which yellow tramcars defiantly clanged their way, emitting blue sparks from the trolley wires overhead and passing like lighted galleons in the night. The Haligonian scene could have been duplicated in Glasgow or Archangel or Oslo, like a dreary overexposed black-and-white photograph.

The wheels of the black staff car spun and the chains clanked, but the driver managed to get the car parked out front. Patrick then climbed over the snowbank and up the shovelled walk to his old house. A steward in a white jacket opened the door, and the captain’s wife offered her hand. Patrick surrendered his greatcoat carefully, adjusted the aiguillettes, and patted his hair before the hall mirror. A winding staircase led upstairs, and the dining room to his left was still candlelit, and indicated the inevitable ruins of a good dinner. Mrs. Bayard smiled bravely, like the survivor of a great ordeal.

“I am sure that you know your way around,” she said, glancing at the golden aiguillettes. “Our guests are in here.” She gestured and then twitched nervously as the steward dropped a cup in the kitchen.

Mrs. Bayard led the way through open double glass-paned doors into the drawing room. Patrick’s heart stopped for a moment when he saw the three gold-braided figures sitting under standing lamps and looking at him. It was worse than the Naval Board, and they had looked like a pricey firing squad.

“Sub-lieutenant MacQueen,” said Mrs. Bayard with a soft smile. She touched his sleeve reassuringly, and he felt an urge to kiss her. She wore a long, lilac-coloured dress.

“MacQueen, you remember Admiral Drax?” said the captain. The admiral extended his hand, and Patrick could feel the long bones and the fingertips pressing against the back of his hand for a moment.

“…And Admiral Manesty,” continued the captain. Patrick diverted his eyes from the bristling brows of Admiral Drax and shook the other hand. This gentleman was more rosy, with a slight glint of amusement at the awkward young aide. Then Patrick shook the captain’s hand as a formality. None of these officers had stirred from his seat, and this little scene was momentous only to the sub-lieutenant. The others had more important things on their minds.

“Your father and mother are well, I hear?” asked Admiral Drax. He drained a glass of port and struggled to rise out of the low stuffed chair. Patrick resisted the impulse to assist him.

“Thank you, sir,” he answered. “They are quite well.”

“We must be going,” said Admiral Drax, straightening his back with his right hand. His cuff bore the single broad stripe of a commodore now, topped by the star-shaped executive loop of the Royal Naval Reserve. The farewells were clipped and British as the steward and the captain assisted them into their greatcoats. MacQueen ushered them into the back of the car and then climbed in beside the driver. The veranda of the house was lighted, and the captain waved through the frosty night from the top of the steps. Patrick delivered the two admirals to the lobby of the Nova Scotian Hotel, where he was asked to report again at eight A.M. He saluted, and the two old men stepped into an elevator. He was still standing there when the doors closed. Admiral Manesty still seemed amused.

There was no possible way that Patrick MacQueen could immediately absorb what happened in the following few days, and even the most professional Gestapo agent could never have gotten him to tell the truth. He shadowed the two high-ranking friends everywhere, and they seemed to be tireless. They had different assignments, of course, which only complicated matters, but it all related to the one overriding concern: the Battle of the Atlantic. Admiral Drax’s convoy was assembling in Bedford Basin, but his years of experience in the North Atlantic and the West Indies was wisely being plumbed by the Canadians, who were planning a training base in Bermuda. Admiral Manesty’s intelligence operations extended down the eastern seaboard, across the ocean, and up to the Arctic. They were both in transit, and they were being squeezed for every drop before they vanished. It was all surprisingly unofficial, yet hectic, and with certain unavoidable formalities. Without his decorative aiguillette, Patrick MacQueen would have been impotent. But with that on his shoulder, he could commandeer virtually anything. At this hectic pace, he needed every ounce of help that he could muster—and even with that he frequently had to improvise. Everything seemed to conspire against him, including the weather. It snowed, and the streets were a congested mess. The admirals changed plans mid-stream, the drivers were short-tempered, and one doorman threatened to have him arrested. Even the first night’s experience was unique—the two admirals seemed to require no sleep, but dozed in the staff car or nodded during intervals. They had a level thirst for pink gins and ate at erratic hours.

The entire panorama of the battle was spilt out before MacQueen, but he couldn’t spare it a glance. He was constantly shuffling files, or making telephone calls, or searching for transport. He heard no voices in the forest here, and the couple with whom he stayed were in a state of perpetual alarm at his extraordinary hours.

Patrick MacQueen’s social life had always been a disaster, but now it was totally wrecked. He had some prosperous relatives in the city with whom he occasionally dined, but he now forgot his obligations, probably to their relief. His hardest struggle was to appear calm at the right moments, which might be when merely opening a door. He finally put Admiral Manesty and his small staff on a train and arranged for the best harbour craft to take Admiral Drax to his ship in Bedford Basin.

They boarded the harbour craft from the icy dockyard late in the evening. Snow drifted relentlessly down in large, careless flakes, and the admiral turned up the collar of his greatcoat. A rating in a duffle coat and sea boots reached across and steadied him as he stepped onto the slippery deck, followed by Patrick MacQueen. The lines were cast off and the helmsman revved the motor as the heavy wooden boat swung out from the jetty and disappeared into the curtain of snow. MacQueen opened the door, and the admiral stepped into the wheelhouse.

“It’s a rotten night, sir,” said the helmsman. He swung the wheel and they circled astern of a bank of bedraggled minesweepers with angled gear poking up into the storm like broken crosses. These helmsmen could have operated blindfolded, but the ferry chugged between Halifax and Dartmouth, and there were many other moving hazards in the harbour. The admiral sat slowly on a padded bench and MacQueen stood with his back to the door, looking out into the storm. The instrument lights in the wheelhouse were dim, and the searchlight useless on a night like this. They slowly proceeded through the Narrows. In Bedford Basin, there were one hundred ships preparing to hoist their anchors and follow one another to their fate. The admiral’s ship was not under his command; he was the commodore of the convoy. He was housed in the old captain’s cabin behind the bridge—and there he would stay for the voyage. Everyone obeyed his orders, the latest of which were sealed in an attaché case under MacQueen’s arm. In an emergency, such as an attack by a U-boat wolf pack, he would attempt to coordinate with the senior officer of the escorts, who was aboard a destroyer.

The cargo of this ship was lethal, but that did not bother the admiral. He had sailed with many lethal cargoes and he figured it was better than dying in bed. His head nodded in the warm wheelhouse, whose windows were a sheet of white.

They passed some freighters that loomed out of the storm. Another harbour craft narrowly avoided them, and MacQueen recognized the huddled figures of a boarding party. They passed and vanished like a shadow. The helmsman checked his squared chart, touched the wheel a bit to starboard, and threw the gear into neutral before slowly reversing the engines. As if by magic, the tall, riveted side of a ship appeared alongside them, broken by a rope ladder dangling to the surface of the water. A hooded rating grappled for this with a boathook from the bow as the helmsman eased the motor. MacQueen touched the admiral lightly on the shoulder. “It’s your ship, sir,” he said.

Sub-lieutenant MacQueen preceded the admiral up the ladder then reached back to help him. He was having a struggle, but with a moment’s rest, his head came over the rail and he was aboard. One of his signalmen greeted him with a salute then scrambled over the side to get his gear. It wasn’t much, and it was passed hand to hand up the ladder and onto the snow-covered deck. Sounds of sailors at a winch on the fo’c’sle penetrated the dark winter night, along with the rumble and call of the ship’s horns and the clanking of cables. Everything was being battened down and fired up to get this massive collection under way. Snow-covered Sherman tanks were chained to the decks; beneath their feet were supplies for a small army. Patrick accompanied the admiral to his quarters, with its snug berth and dimly lit chart table. A signalman brought two mugs of tea.

“Thank you, MacQueen,” said the admiral, “and give my respects to your parents, who I am sure my wife has joined.” Lady Drax had been a particular favourite of Patrick’s mother.

Patrick etched the profile of this craggy old warrior in his mind at that moment. He traced the hawk nose and the thin lips and the deep crevices in the cheeks and marked them in acid on his memory. The thought of leaving this man and going home to a comfortable bed was almost more than he could bear.

“I wish that I could go with you, sir,” said Patrick, like a boy being left behind by his parents at school.

The admiral smiled for a moment, glanced at this young colonial, and thought briefly that the empire might have a future after all. “I understand,” he said, “but we each have a job to do. I will say goodbye now, as there is much that I have to do.”

They shook hands and MacQueen left. He climbed down from the bridge on icy steps in the dark, found his way to the railing, and climbed down the ladder to the harbour craft.

“Cast off,” he said to the helmsman.

The line was cast off and they swept past the giant anchor slowly rising from the bottom of the basin. The air resounded with dull sounds of action as this fleet of merchantmen stirred and the great propellers started to thrash the black water. The wind had risen, and snow whipped in sheets around the wheelhouse. Patrick MacQueen had never felt more forlorn. How many more tricks would he have to perform before the captain released him? The admiral was sailing once more out of his life as though he didn’t exist, and he felt like a bride left waiting at the church.

“He seems like a good sort, for a commodore,” said the helmsman. He had seen them all.