They went to the Lake District to see Mabel, the only relative in the world either of them possessed. Her husband had returned from India and was now running the local Home Guard. As she kissed him, Kelly saw there were tears in her eyes.
‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘why did it take you two bloody idiots so long?’
They were married a fortnight later at the Esher Registry Office. It was a quiet wedding because Kelly Rumbelo’s ship had gone to Trincomalee and Hugh said he couldn’t get leave. Since it was so soon after Paddy’s death, Kelly suspected he preferred it that way. Verschoyle was there with Maisie, Rumbelo and Biddy, whose face still wore a tremulous expression of her own grief.
In view of wartime restrictions and inability to get petrol, they spent their honeymoon at Thakeham, and almost immediately Kelly flew to Ramsay’s headquarters at Granville in Normandy. By September, with all the Channel ports captured, he was told it would be his job to make sure that all the demolished equipment was removed and the ports put in working order as quickly as possible.
‘Europe has to support itself as quickly as possible,’ Ramsay explained. ‘It’ll be your job to see that it has the port facilities to do so.’
It was Verschoyle, as usual, who put him in the picture.
‘They’re looking for an active, alert and determined senior naval officer for Germany after the surrender,’ he said. ‘Ramsay turned it down on the grounds that the man should be younger and fresher. I suggested you.’
By this time the army was moving swiftly northwards. Paris fell and, soon afterwards, Brussels and finally Antwerp. The perimeter of the German fortress was shrinking every day. By the end of the year they stood on the German frontier and Kelly was in Brussels with Archie Bumf and two Americans as part of the allied committee of recovery, and seemed to spend most of his time flying to and fro between there and London in an assortment of aircraft from old Dakotas to spanking new Liberators.
A Russian Order of Ushakov, first class, arrived, much to his astonishment.
‘Who’s Ushakov?’ he asked.
Latimer grinned. ‘Led the Black Sea fleet into the Adriatic in 1798,’ he said. ‘He must have been good. Even Nelson congratulated him.’
They’d set up headquarters in a large house just inside the French border, handy both for France and Belgium, and had just christened it HMS Darius, in accordance with naval orders that all headquarters must be ships, when Boyle discovered his parents-in-law at Ushant. For the next week he virtually disappeared as he arranged for them to travel to England. They were almost destitute, with all their possessions looted by the Germans, but they were in good health, even if hungry.
‘Perhaps they’re lucky,’ Kelly said dryly. ‘The hospitality since we landed’s been more than my stomach can stand.’
On Armistice Day, he stood behind Ramsay in Paris at a march past led by Moroccan troops with a large white goat, mounted bands, Scottish pipe bands, French horn bands, and an American band in which the big drum was mounted on wheels and pushed by the drummer. He was travelling long distances by air now, from the Bay of Biscay to the Scheldt, often in freighter Liberators which contained no mod cons and he had to lie in the bomb bays or on the floor. It was cold and congested and he was glad when the trips took him to London.
By this time, the blackout had been partially lifted and they seemed to be waiting only for the last dying kicks of the Nazi regime. Despised by his soldiers, hated by the Germans and succoured only by the sycophants of his court, Hitler clearly hadn’t much longer to reign.
Only an occasional German aircraft appeared, sneaking across in the dark to drop anti-personnel bombs, whose sole purpose seemed to be the killing of inquisitive children. There had been a certain amount of euphoric reaction after the race across France and Belgium and a certain slackening of effort, but it had soon been realised after Arnhem, that whatever Hitler’s position, the German army at least was far from finished. Short of men and short of fuel, it was still highly professional and still managed to produce resistance where there should have been none; incredibly, in the middle of December, it even managed to launch an offensive in the Ardennes.
Kelly had to spend Christmas in France, and by then the alarm about the Ardennes had dispersed, because the Germans were clearly going to be defeated and with defeat would come the final collapse. Boyle had managed to get his parents-in-law into a house near Amiens and they all went there for Christmas Day, eating and drinking what everybody openly admitted was black market food. For the New Year Kelly flew to London with Verschoyle and went to Thakeham feeling like a bridegroom. He’d seen remarkably little of Charley since his marriage and was pleased to see the house had become gracious once more under her touch.
The New Year went well but on January 2nd, when they were all a little euphoric at the news that the Germans were in retreat in the Ardennes, Verschoyle rang up.
‘You’ve lost your boss,’ he said. ‘Ramsay’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ Kelly said. ‘How?’
‘He was flying from Toussus-le-Noble to see Monty. They crashed on take-off. Nobody seems to know why. The sky was cloudless and they got up to about three hundred feet then side slipped in and burst into flames. Perhaps the cold had something to do with it.’
Flying back to France for the funeral, Kelly walked behind Cunningham and Eisenhower. The accident threw more work on his shoulders and he found he had little opportunity to go to England again. Nothing seemed to have come of Corbett’s suggestion about the Far East and he’d heard that Philip Vian had got the job.
He felt no resentment. He’d had a good innings. Most boys entering Dartmouth dropped out before they’d reached commander and the number who achieved their broad stripe was very small. He’d been extraordinarily lucky. From being in danger of vanishing into limbo as a passed-over commander in 1936 he was now a rear-admiral. With the war drawing to its end, however, he could expect little more.
Latimer didn’t seem to agree. “‘Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting,”’ he said. ‘“Henry V.” It’s as bad to be over-modest, sir, as it is to be over-bold. You need have no fear. They won’t let you go yet.’
Kelly grinned. ‘When I retire, William, I think you’d better join me as resident minstrel.’
Latimer grinned back. ‘I expect to see you admiral of the fleet before I die, sir.’
As it happened, what Latimer had said came home within days. Verschoyle arrived in a SHAPE car driven by an American WAAC driver who looked as though she’d left a good job as a Hollywood starlet to join the war.
‘Where did you pick her?’ Kelly asked.
‘With the Americans,’ Verschoyle said, ‘they come in bunches of a dozen. I think they breed ’em in litters, because they always seem to find enough to decorate headquarters.’
He was fishing in his brief case, deliberately brisk and, pulling out a signal flimsy, he looked up.
‘Kelly, old son,’ he said. ‘You’re for home.’
‘What have I done?’
‘Not what you’ve done. What you’re about to do. We still have to sort out those little yellow bastards in Japan. The Yanks have finally agreed to help us organise a task force for the Pacific and Winston’s determined to get into the act on political grounds, so that when it’s over he’ll have some say in what happens to the peace.’
‘And–?’
‘You’ll be ordered to strike your flag and go home to help set it up. With a step up in rank. I’ve come to warn you not to get too much involved in this job.’
The promotion came as Verschoyle predicted and with it the news that he was to get a KCB. It brought an immediate signal from Verschoyle. ‘Twice knightly. You always were one to overdo it.’
In the same gazette, Kelly was pleased to see that Verschoyle had finally made rear admiral. With his skill, knowledge and technical ability, it was something he deserved.
He flew home on leave, half-expecting to be called to the Admiralty, but there was no sign that anyone had even noticed him and he spent his leave in a curious frame of mind, tense because he was expecting his new post, and frustrated because it didn’t arrive.
‘There’s something in the wind, isn’t there, Kelly?’ Charley said.
He nodded, wondering how she’d take the news he brought. She was still not quite the old Charley as if she’d been too much hurt and was wary of giving too freely.
The pain of Paddy’s death was dying at last and it was Charley who was helping it to go. When he felt most stricken and shivering at the thought, she was there to take his mind off her, almost as if she were Paddy.
But while the old undemanding warmth had returned, there was something else too. Sometimes she drew a vast breath that seemed to hurt as it filled her lungs, and he never knew whether it was relief or anguish. Women never seemed to have full control over their hearts and even the most intelligent seemed to have a small exposed spot, which was never secure. It was a draining, weakening thought that he could still not be sure of her and he knew he was not very patient at studying areas which he knew nothing about.
‘You’re going back to sea,’ she said slowly.
He looked up, unsure of her. ‘Do you mind, Charley?’
She stared at him, her eyes frank. ‘No woman likes to see her man disappear into the blue,’ she said. ‘I never did. But it is different now, Kelly.’
‘It might be the Pacific,’ he said.
‘That’s a long way away.’
‘I can turn it down if it’s important to you.’
She gave a sudden smile that reminded him with a jab at his heart of the way she’d grinned at him as a young girl, when she’d been the only member of her family able to see any promise in him.
‘It would be nice to be the wife of an admiral of the fleet,’ she said quietly.
He smiled and she went on. ‘The war’s almost over, Kelly, and according to what Seamus Boyle tells me, the Japanese won’t last long. So go and enjoy it. When the war’s over, there’ll only be me.’
There was a long silence because he’d been desperately afraid that she wouldn’t see eye to eye with him. The relief almost took his breath away.
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought I’d have heard by now. Perhaps somebody’s shoved a spanner in the works.’
But they hadn’t. He had no sooner arrived back in Antwerp when a signal came instructing him to report to the Admiralty. With it came another signal informing him he was to leave for Trincomalee where the Far East fleet was gathering. It was personal and it came from Corbett who added his congratulations.
A farewell party was held in Antwerp. The brass was dazzling and a great many people said enough nice things about him to raise a lump in his throat.
They headed for Orly the next morning and as they stopped at the airport, Rumbelo began to pass out the baggage from the boot of the car.
‘Am I coming, too, sir?’ he demanded.
‘No, Albert, old son,’ Kelly said gently. ‘You’re going home to Biddy.’
‘I would come.’
‘I know you would. But I think Biddy needs you more than I do.’
There was an awkward pause because they were both thinking of Paddy, and Kelly hurried on.
‘The garden needs your attention,’ he said. ‘And they’ll be starting the demob scheme as soon as the war ends here in Europe. You’ll be one of the first out. When I join you, we’ll grow roses.’
The aircraft landed at Brize Norton in a downpour and Charley was waiting at Thakeham, smiling in a way that told him the doubts and fears had finally gone.
‘You got it, Kelly?’
‘I’ve come home for briefing.’
She stared at him, then suddenly she threw her arms round him.
‘I’m so pleased for you and so proud!’
It was the first impulsive show of love she’d shown. It was spontaneous and full of warmth and he swept her into his arms and began to carry her to the stairs.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You could say I’m carrying you over the threshold,’ he said. ‘Something I omitted to do when I married you.’ He stopped at the curve of the stairs and looked at her with a serious face. ‘It’s all right now between us, isn’t it, Charley?’
She stared back at him, equally straight-faced, but her eyes were shining. His head was swimming a little as he saw the tears in them, and he was swept away in a torrent of memories, which he’d thought had gone forever. She tilted her head to kiss him. ‘Yes, Kelly,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’
He grinned and began to stamp up the remaining stairs.
‘For God’s sake be careful,’ she warned. ‘You’ll have a heart attack.’
‘Not yet, please God,’ he said. ‘Afterwards.’
When he went to the Admiralty the following day, for once Corbett was not there to greet him. In his place was Admiral Orrmont, who’d been his commanding officer in Russia in the destroyer, Mordant.
‘Cuthbert Corbett’s dead,’ he said. ‘A week ago. I think he wore himself out.’ Orrmont smiled. ‘Now you’ve got me and I’m to fill you in with everything you’re to do. You’ll fly to Washington from Bourne and then to Trincomalee where you’ll pick up your ships. We’re assembling them now.’
Bourne was full of aircraft – Liberators, Lancasters, Dakotas, even a few fighters. They ate a meal at the restaurant which had been set up for transients.
‘Better eat plenty, sir,’ Boyle warned. ‘It’s a long trip.’
‘I hope you’ve got us a few comfortable seats for a change, Seamus.’
As they finished eating, they heard the metallic roar of engines and saw a big square-bodied Liberator moving towards them. An American WAAC officer appeared with a list and began to call names. She looked as beautiful as Verschoyle’s driver.
There seemed to be hundreds of aircraft on the tarmac and more in the air, landing and taking off in both directions in what seemed a precarious proximity to each other. In the distance they could see the wrecked shell of a Dakota, without engines, the wings charred and black as though it had been on fire.
Latimer was waiting by the aircraft as they climbed from the car. There were three other British naval officers, and three Americans, as well as twenty American air force officers going home after completing their tours of duty. The camera cases over their shoulders made them look as if they’d been on a tourist visit to England.
One of them kicked at the huge tyres of the aircraft. ‘I sure hope they put all the rivets in,’ he said.
The pilot was already on board, shouting instructions out of his window to a fitter on the ground. Beneath him, painted in white on the aircraft’s side, was the name – ‘Raidin’ Maiden.’
As they climbed in, the WAAC officer gave them all a smile and shook hands.
‘Anyone would think we weren’t coming back,’ Boyle said.
The seats were more comfortable than they’d been used to in the Dakotas but Kelly found he wasn’t looking forward to six hours of sitting in them, and the machine was still a bomber with the usual sharp angles and the usual spartan interior.
An American lieutenant appeared. ‘The skipper sends his compliments,’ he said. ‘And says not to worry. It’s a straightforward trip. We shall land in Northern Ireland to top up tanks, then go on to Gander and from there to Washington. We’re doing it in easy stages for safety. He’d also like you to know that this will be his last trip after fifty-three operational ones, because when he arrives, he’s grounded and he’s never going higher off the deck after that than his bedroom.’
They were sitting in the waist, each of them with a parachute beneath his feet, wondering how much use it would be if they had to bale out over the Atlantic. The machine had been stripped of everything possible for the trip, every ounce of superfluous weight removed to make the crossing safer.
‘Safe as Fort Knox,’ one of the American officers observed. ‘She’s got around a thousand miles safety margin.’
The engines howled as they began to taxi towards the runway. The way the aeroplane moved was far from reassuring and Kelly decided that the pilot was either keen to show off or he’d got used to moving into position fast for the big raids on Germany. As they waited for the tower, one of the American naval officers moved aft and squatted down in the alleyway alongside Kelly. ‘Admiral Maguire, sir?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Pleased to meet you, sir. Commander Kaysor. I was on the staff of Admiral Allington. He was with you in the North African landings. I never met you but I sure heard a lot about you. He put his parachute down and sat on it in the alleyway. ‘I’m going out to the Pacific, sir.’
‘So am I,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll probably be asking your advice.’
The aircraft jerked suddenly as the pilot turned on full power to swing on to the runway, then without a pause, the engines thundering at full throttle, it began to hurtle down the tarmacadam, the wheels rumbling beneath them, loose objects rattling and clattering.
The centrifugal force as they’d swung had caused Kaysor to slide off his parachute and roll on to his back. He began to get up, grinning, but an unexpected oscillation prevented him and he was still fighting to get to his feet when the aeroplane began an up-and-down motion as if it were bowing over its nose wheel.
They were moving at full speed down the runway when it began to swing to port and starboard. It seemed to be nothing because nobody showed any alarm, but Kaysor’s smile had changed to one of bewilderment and suddenly the motion increased and the aircraft began to tilt backwards and forwards in a violent seesaw. Wondering if the controls had jammed, Kelly glanced through the window but the rudder seemed to be moving freely.
‘Goddam fly-boys–!’
Kaysor was trying to yell something to Kelly over the din of the engines when there was a tremendous wrench and a bang and Kelly realised he could see pieces of metal flying through the air. There was a yell from up forward and he saw Latimer’s jaw drop in a sudden expression of horror as they felt the bulkhead twisting behind their backs. There was a vicious snap and the tail section lifted into the air and fell back again, and still dazed, Kelly realised that for some reason the pilot’s final trip was ending in disaster. They were crashing, and he was going to die as Ramsay had died.
There was a colossal bang and the sound of tearing metal, and they came to a stop with a jerk that flung him on top of Kaysor. Latimer was rolling in the space between the seats, his feet in the air. Of Boyle he could see no sign. He fought free of the tangle of arms and legs and, seeing an opening surrounded by torn metal, realised in an instant that it was his only chance of life.
He shoved Latimer out of the hole in front of him and fell out after him. He seemed to go on falling forever and landed on his shoulder. Something gave with a crack but he knew he had to get clear and scrambled away on hands and knees. Almost unconsciously he was aware of the tail section of the Liberator lying at an angle to the rest of the machine, the nose dipped to the ground, and a torn stretch of tarmacadam, then there was a violent ‘pouf’ sound and a blast of air lifted him several feet and threw him on to his injured shoulder again as the petrol caught fire.
Violent heat seared his face and he was conscious of a tremendous yellow glare and a new agony in his right leg that he hadn’t noticed before. Struggling away on his knees and one hand through petrol that was dripping to the tarmac and made it look as if it were shimmering, he saw that seven men in addition to himself were scrambling about in the flare of flame. One of them was Latimer, dragging himself along by his elbows, his clothes on fire. He was yelling and looked as though he were blind, and Kelly flung himself at him, beating at the flames with his good hand, crying out at the pain because the petrol caused the flames to stick to his flesh. As fast as he slapped at them they sprang up elsewhere and he realised that Latimer was soaked with petrol. Dragging him from the wreckage, he rolled across him, and as he fell back, gasping, wondering where Boyle was and if he ought to have made sure he’d got clear, too, he heard the sound of engines and the shriek of tyres and brakes. Men were running towards him and he felt someone grab him by the armpits and drag him clear then he was being rolled on the ground in a brutal fashion that caused the broken bones in his shoulder to scrape against each other in agonising fashion. Sand was thrown on him, and it was only then that he realised his own clothing had been on fire.
Hurriedly, the survivors were shoved aboard a truck, several of them with flesh hanging from them in charred strips. They were already heading for the hospital as the ambulances arrived, and dazedly, he noticed that the rest of the aerodrome seemed untouched by the disaster and that planes were still taking off and landing as if nothing had happened, flying unheedingly through the pillar of black smoke that was drifting across the runway.
Bouncing about in the lorry, he stared round, still in shock and only half aware of what had happened. To his surprise, he found that in addition to his broken shoulder there was an appalling gash in his thigh that was pouring blood down his trousers. But the other men in the truck looked like burned toast with here and there a patch of clothing or a jagged strip of khaki or navy with gold buttons clinging by a seam or a collar or a cuff to the blackened flesh.
‘Christ, what happened?’ one of them said, and Kelly was surprised that his voice seemed as normal and unaffected as if nothing had happened.
He began to recognise them at last. Keysor was babbling about the need to inform his wife, and Latimer’s blackened charred face was trying to smile at him.
‘Fire burn, cauldron bubble,’ he said. ‘Macbeth, sir.’
‘Shut up, William,’ Kelly said, struggling to tuck the blanket round him.
Latimer winced with pain, so shocked he didn’t feel the sear of the fire but recoiled from the slightest touch.
Someone gave Kelly an injection as the truck stopped and when he came round he found they’d stripped off his clothing and put his broken shoulder into a hideously uncomfortable splint like an aeroplane’s wing that supported his arm at an angle of ninety degrees from his body. The ward was full of white-garbed nurses, one of whom told him he’d had twenty-seven stitches in his leg. It was in plaster now and covered by a thing like a kitchen fireguard to keep the weight of the bedclothes off it. They seemed to have no doubt that he would survive because after six years of war they could judge exactly what the human frame could stand.
His burns had come chiefly from touching the others and were clearly far from fatal. Kaysor, they said, was likely to die that day. Latimer might survive but they had their doubts. In addition to his terrible burns, he had two broken legs, two broken wrists and several broken ribs, but they weren’t even thinking about those yet.
‘The problem,’ the doctor said, ‘is that when the burns are as bad as this the serum just seeps through the damaged tissue. We’ve tried a lot of things but I’m afraid none of them is really effective yet.’
They knew nothing of anybody called Boyle.
Despite the splintered arm and the cage over his leg, Kelly insisted on having his bed placed next to Latimer’s. Because he was a vice-admiral, they didn’t argue. Latimer was bandaged beyond recognition and was connected to glucose and plasma bottles and was in deep sedation. Later in the day, he came round and looked at Kelly through his only visible eye. His hand moved in a slow floppy movement that rattled the tubes attached to him.
‘What happened to your arm, sir?’ he asked.
‘It’s not my arm,’ Kelly said. ‘It’s my shoulder. I broke it.’
‘That’s buggered up the Pacific, hasn’t it?’
‘A bit.’
‘I’m glad you got out, sir.’
‘I’m glad we both did. We were lucky. It broke in two just about where we were sitting.’
‘How about Boyle?’
‘He doesn’t seem to have made it.’ Kelly sighed. ‘I think you ought to dry up now, William. The nurse’ll be after you.’
Kaysor died soon afterwards and then the others one after another. The doctor gave Kelly pills that eased the pain a little and made him doze, and when he woke up they told him Latimer wasn’t suffering.
He accepted that this meant that Latimer was going to die but not in pain, and he asked if all their wives had been told.
‘They’re on their way now.’
The nurses arrived soon afterwards and a bed was wheeled out.
‘Who’s that?’ Kelly asked.
‘Not Captain Latimer. Go to sleep.’
Soon afterwards he saw the nurse bending over the next bed, touching Latimer here and there gently with her fingers as if to make sure he was alive. There was only the slightest gasp as he died, and even that was almost lost as an aeroplane thundered overhead.