be an extra tot for the lower decks, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He glanced down at his wrist. ‘Almost eleven o’clock. You’ll hear the pipe soon, over the Tannoy.’
‘Forgive me, but what’s so special about eleven hundred hours?’
‘What’s so special?’ His face registered disbelief, then his lips parted in a smile. ‘Eleven o’clock is tot time; time for spirit that oils wheels and greases palms and sometimes even settles debts. The rum ration, Jane. Oh, I can see I’ll have to teach you a thing or two about the Royal Navy.’
‘Oh, I know all about that,’ she returned airily, ‘but it’s only a drink of rum, after all …’
‘Lesson one, Wren Kendal. Rum is never drunk. It is sipped or it is gulped; sippers and gulpers, that is. And make no mistake, the rum ration is very important to a matelot; not only to be sipped or gulped, but something to be used for bargaining or the repayment of a favour, or even bottled and taken home on leave. It would be a sad and sorry day for the Navy if ever they stopped it. There’d be mutiny, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘But what about sailors who don’t like rum?’
‘Don’t like …?’ Tom Tavey’s face registered blank disbelief. ‘Well, there might be the odd one or two who’ve signed the pledge,’ he acknowledged, ‘and they get threepence a day on their pay if they don’t draw, as we call it. I’ve never met one, though,’ he added hastily. ‘There now!’ His face brightened as the bosun’s pipe shrilled over the Tannoy: ‘Up spirits! Up spirits!’
‘That’s it, Jane. Tot time. That’s the call for the leading hands to collect the rations from the rum bosun. Best pipe of the day,’ he grinned. ‘See what I mean? Soon cleared the well deck.’
And so it had. Taureg had done well and had received her just and sincere due, but this was tot time, and on board the depot ship Omega, first things came first.
‘Well, thanks for explaining it all to me, but I’ll have to be going too, I’m afraid.’ She turned to walk away, but he stopped her, a hand on her arm.
‘Come out with me tonight, Jane. There’s a good hop on, down in Craigiebur. Or would you rather see a flick?’
‘If it’s Love on the Dole, I’ve seen it, but thanks all the same.’ She’d been right, he was trying to pick her up, which was a pity, really, because she liked to dance. But dancing made her remember a cold Candlemas Eve, and every sentimentally crooned love song reminded her of something that was best not remembered, and she wasn’t ready, yet, to stick out her chin and smile.
‘The dance, then? The band is very good.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, over her shoulder. Tom Tavey was nice, but no, not just yet. And besides, he was altogether too attractive, too sure of his masculinity, and it unnerved her. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.
‘So am I, Jenny Wren.’
Eyes narrowed, he watched her walk away. Maybe she went in for officers, or maybe, he realized, she already had a boyfriend. A good-looker like her probably had half a dozen in tow. And she was good-looking, and intriguing too. Something to do with her eyes and the way they looked at you, yet saw nothing. And as for that red hair! Weren’t redheads all ice on the thatch but with a red-hot fire burning in the hearth? With luck, this one would run true to form. Then, remembering it was five minutes past tot time, he ran down the ladder to the well deck, and away to the spare-crew mess.
She was a little darling, though. Might be interesting to have another try. A girl who looked like Wren Jane Kendal would be worth it. Well worth it …
She turned to watch him disappear down the ladder. He did it nimbly, his feet scarcely touching the narrow steel treads. His shoulders, she tried not to remember, were broad, his skin attractively tanned. Ought she have said yes to his offer of a date, accepted the challenge in those probing blue eyes?
Shrugging, she walked slowly down the ladder. Accept? Of course not. How could she have? He’d called her Jenny, hadn’t he, and no one did that.
She blinked as she stepped back into the office, closing her eyes against the sudden change of light. Jock looked up briefly, then motioned for her to hurry.
‘Come on now, lassie. There’s a rush-immediate to be seen to. K-tables we’ll be needing. You call, I’ll subtract. Chop chop!’
The war had started again, but wouldn’t it be wonderful, Jane thought, if during those brief moments of stillness, no one had been wounded or blinded or burned. And no aircrews reported missing.
The launch headed for Ardneavie jetty and Lucinda sighed contentment. Another watch over, another day of getting it right. To be enjoying the war was very wrong, but her new-found feeling of achievement was akin to joy. She should, she supposed, feel thoroughly ashamed.
‘Got any money?’ she asked Jane, fishing deep into the pocket of her broad canvas belt and pulling out a shilling and three pennies.
‘Not a sausage. Flat broke till payday,’ Jane sighed. ‘Which means we’ll be staying in tonight. Or we could go to cabin 10.’
‘To Lilith’s? Why not? But what about Vi? Think she’ll come?’
‘I don’t know. She was a bit shaken up last night. She thinks Lilith is guessing, and maybe she’s right. But I want to go, Lucinda. There’s something I’ve got to know.’
‘About a man?’
‘Maybe. By the way, you should ask Chief Wetherby to let you watch next time a submarine comes back from patrol. D’you know they actually fly a Jolly Roger? It was fascinating.’
There now, she had admitted it. In spite of her affected disinterest, Taureg’s return had been well worth watching. Which was, she decided, the whole trouble with Ardneavie and Omega and the strangeness of life in the Royal Navy, pitched into it feet first as she had been. Part of her embraced it gratefully whilst the other, the sad, secret part, rejected and resented it, all the while clinging blindly to what had been. Yet this morning, a part of her had been guiltily glad that Taureg had sunk three enemy ships, not to mention the destroyer. Four up for S-Sugar, she had thought with bitter satisfaction.
‘And there was a sailor there – submariner, I think he was – and he asked me for a date, but I said no.’
‘Why?’ Lucinda demanded, eyebrows arched. ‘Bad breath and big ears, or something?’
‘No. He was nice; very nice and rather good-looking, I suppose.’ He would probably have been good to dance with, too. He had only one fault, in fact. He was not Rob MacDonald. ‘But he wasn’t my type, not really.’
The launch bumped gently against the jetty, and the Wren ratings of starboard watch hurried ashore.
‘Oooh. I can smell it from here.’ Lucinda closed her eyes and sniffed the air ecstatically. ‘Liver, with onion gravy. Do hurry, Kendal dear. I’m ravenous!’
They went to cabin 10 that night; Jane because nothing would have kept her away; Lucinda because she had nothing better to do; and Vi reluctantly, because someone had to keep an eye on Lilith and her peculiar
