Not Thinking of Death Read online

  ‘Too major, I’d say, to even consider accepting it.’

  He wished immediately that he hadn’t said that. It was the truth, but (a) not strictly any of his business, (b) only a reiteration of the point he’d already made to Dymock. Although in reality it more than surprised him – shocked him, that such an experienced submarine CO as Jacko Pargeter should be willing to put up with it. Even if Trumpeter’s torpedomen did get used to it: in an emergency, needing to check those dials quickly, to know for sure and instantly…

  He wasn’t given to flights of fancy. This wasn’t one, anyway. It was a compound of knowledge, professional experience and common sense. You were taught, in training – and passed it on to junior men when training them – to think ahead and imagine the worst combinations of mishap, bad luck, equipment failure – and all those things happening at once – so as to be ready to react quickly and effectively to just about anything that might go wrong.

  But – he’d made his point. So – best thing was to make sure they didn’t do anything like this to Threat, but otherwise, leave it. The decision was reinforced by seeing the half-smile on Dymock’s face, and being well aware of how some of his brother officers saw him – ‘Old Rufus’, who always does things by the book, etcetera. And one adjective which more than once he’d heard applied to this alleged propensity of his – and which stung – was ‘pompous’.

  The hell with them. He told them both, ‘Your business, anyway. Or rather your skipper’s. I wouldn’t live with it – but that’s neither here nor there.’

  ‘I agree, though.’ Dymock nodded. ‘Just the special circumstances I mentioned… But have a dekko at the operating levers, now. This is the new-fangled system he’s beefing about. Just look, you’ll see it – and there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it, it’s the system we’re now stuck with.’

  ‘What’s the neutral position for?’

  ‘Right question, Rufus.’ Dymock explained, ‘The theory is you put the operating lever to “shut”, and that’s fine – bowcap shuts. As one might expect. But then shove it into “neutral”, you’ve locked it shut. Even if telemotor pressure fails – say an oil pipe’s cracked by depthcharging – you’re safe, it’ll stay shut.’

  ‘Or open, if—’

  ‘Yes. Whichever was the last position before the pointer was put to “neutral”, that’s how it locks.’

  ‘Objection being that at a glance you can’t tell which.’ He understood how they felt about this, anyway, and agreed with them. ‘Shut’ meant shut and ‘open’ meant open: neutral meant damn-all. He said slowly, thinking about it as he spoke, ‘The hand who’s put it to “shut” and then to “neutral” knows all right – unless someone else has been at it in the interim. But otherwise?’

  ‘Double check – on the bowcap indicator – or indicators, plural.’

  ‘First ensuring which indicator’s relevant to which tube – and which way each individual pointer—’

  ‘Well – as we were saying – that’ll be second nature. Once we’ve exercised tubes a few times.’

  Back to that earlier disagreement. Chalk let it lie. Dymock asked him as he turned away, ‘What’s this weekend invitation, Rufus?’

  * * *

  On the casing, where it was cooler and on the whole quieter – most of the noise of hammering and drilling was coming from Job No. 1793 on the far side of the basin – Dymock listened to what Chalk had to tell him about the Cameron-Greens and Glendarragh.

  ‘So what does one do all day?’

  Chalk shrugged. ‘Usual sort of country-house routine. Marvellous country, incidentally – dramatic scenery and so forth. Climb mountains, if you want to. Eagles’ nests, on the tops. And they have horses – and a tennis court – oh, and very good fishing. I gather that’s how Sir Innes spends most of his time in the summer months. You fish, don’t you?’

  ‘Have done, but—’

  ‘Also they have an anniversary coming up, and they’re planning various festivities – “hoolies”, as Suzie calls them.’

  ‘I can imagine. Reels and so on. Sporrans flying in all directions.’

  ‘If you’re not interested, Toby, forget it. Bugger off down to London. I agree, much more your natural habitat. And come to think of it, young Searle might fit in quite well at Glendarragh. He’s more of an age for Suzie and young Guy, too. Yes, that’s a thought, I’ll ask him instead.’

  ‘What’s the older sister like?’ Dymock broke off, as a Chief PO approached. Barrel-chested, and black-bearded… ‘Mind signing this, sir?’

  ‘What is it, Cox’n?’

  ‘Stores requisition, sir.’

  Dymock scribbled a signature on it. Then enquired, ‘What have I now indented for – the Crown Jewels?’

  ‘Only some of ’em, sir. Don’t want to be greedy, do we?’

  ‘How’s the battle generally?’

  ‘I’d say we’re holding our own, sir. Rest of the ship’s company coming next week – as you know, of course—’

  ‘Finding digs for ’em should be easy enough?’

  Chalk moved away – to the plank and over it to the quayside – with Dymock’s question about Suzie’s sister in his mind, and remembering a studio portrait of her, silver-framed amongst a number of others including one of Alastair looking pleased with himself in his Seaforths uniform. The portraits were displayed on top of a grand piano which both Suzie and her mother played – as Suzie had told him, ‘When the spirit moves us.’ She’d added, ‘Quickest way to get the place to oneself. When I have my bash, even the mice troop out.’ But in that portrait, Chalk remembered, Patricia had long, fair hair brushed down so that a curtain of it screened half her face, and Suzie had commented, ‘She had a touch of the Veronica Lakes, at that stage.’ Turning to her mother: ‘About a year ago, was this taken?’

  ‘About then. But you’re being unfair. It was the photographer’s idea, not Pat’s.’

  He remembered Suzie’s snort of derision: ‘I bet it was!’

  ‘I was there with her at the time, Suzie. I am telling you.’

  ‘All right. But fact remains, it was her Veronica Lake period. Since then she’s been doing a Marlene D. Was when she was last here, anyway…’

  Chalk told Dymock as he came over the plank to join him on the quayside, ‘Going by a photograph I saw, she has a look of Marlene Dietrich.’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Patricia Cameron-Green. You asked me what she’s like. But it doesn’t matter, does it – since (a) she won’t be there, not this next weekend anyway – and (b) you won’t be either, as you’ve better things to do.’

  ‘As it happens, I’ve been having second thoughts about the weekend in London.’

  He explained, rather vaguely, that there was some person he’d be meeting in London if he did go down there at the weekend, but that it might be better – wiser – to give it a miss… ‘And a pressing engagement elsewhere, such as the Cameron-Greens’ invitation—’

  ‘It’s not pressing, in the least. As yet they don’t even know of your existence. Only I’d like a firm decision – say by this evening, one way or the other?’

  ‘I’ll come. Definitely. Please, accept for me. And – thanks… Look, we’ll go up there in my motor, shall we, give your old rattle-trap a rest?’

  Chapter 4

  It was a Riley 12, bottle-green with black mudguards, and Dymock had bought it new only a few months earlier. Before that, he’d had a Morris. Toby Dymock, Chalk reminded himself as the Riley purred its way up the eastern shore of Loch Lubnaig, certainly did not have to live on his pay.

  Which one might have thought would make him even more acceptable to the Cameron-Greens. Exceptionally good looks, charm, a respectable occupation and private money: what more could people want, who had an unmarried 23-year-old daughter on their hands?

  In point of fact, though, this had little or no relevance, in the present circumstances. From Eve Cameron-Green’s point of view, Toby Dymock would be simply another presentable young male to make u
p numbers for the summer’s jollities. Help fill the house, and make life amusing for the girls. While Dymock’s reasons for accepting the invitation were somewhat questionable: or at least – Chalk thought, glancing at his friend’s profile as he shifted gear to cope with the steepening incline – contrary enough to arouse a degree of curiosity. His first reaction, after all, had been to decline on the grounds of having some sort of appointment in London; then within a minute or two he’d had his second thoughts and jumped at it as an excuse – apparently – for backing out of that previous engagement.

  He hadn’t mentioned it again, and Chalk hadn’t asked him about it. For one thing he’d been busy, hadn’t had time to think about it much until now. Having a firm date for his CO’s arrival, he’d had to get down to the one job he really disliked – official correspondence, clearing his desk – or rather Ozzie Ozzard’s – of a backlog of Admiralty departments’ demands for ‘returns’ of this and reports on that or the other. Mostly trifling, and some of it more or less incomprehensible, designed one guessed to occupy the civil servants’ daily working hours and thus justify their employment; but some of it involved a certain amount of research before the laborious two-fingered typing on a rattly portable typewriter which was itself a valuable item on one of HM Submarine Threat’s lists of permanent stores.

  He’d have that desk clear, anyway, before Ozzard took it over on the 12th. But he also had his own letters to write – to Guy and to Diana, to start with, putting them in touch with each other in the hope that she’d bring Guy up with her in the Fox Moth in a few weeks’ time. It would save Guy the train fare, provide Diana with some company on the long flight up, and give them an opportunity to get to know each other. They’d only met once before, over a rather hurried meal at a London railway hotel.

  The loch was narrowing now on their left, as they approached Strathyre itself. Forest crowding in on the right. He warned Dymock, ‘Look out for deer, around here. They tend to crash out on to the road right under your front wheels. Strathyre forest, this is, and it’s stiff with ’em.’

  Dymock eased his foot on the accelerator. ‘Right.’

  ‘Get an antler through the windscreen, you’d know all about it.’

  ‘You ever done that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He smiled. ‘I’m a careful driver.’

  ‘I believe you, Rufus.’

  That reputation again: old Rufus, who took no chances. He didn’t remember where or why it had started, taken root. He asked Dymock, ‘What was the – er – assignation in London that you’ve shied out of?’

  ‘Assignation?’ Glancing at him sharply. Chalk had wanted to needle him, and evidently succeeded. ‘Who said anything about an assignation?’

  ‘You did. You told me you’d arranged to meet someone. That’s what an assignation is, old lad.’

  ‘It’s come to have a certain connotation though, hasn’t it.’ Eyes back on the narrow road; Strathyre village was behind them now. ‘As you know damn well.’

  ‘I suppose if your mind works that way – indicative of an interesting degree of sensitivity—’

  ‘Rufus.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Go to hell?’

  * * *

  Nearing Lochearnhead, Dymock slowed the car, bumped on to the grass verge and stopped. Winding the window down, he stared eastward down the loch – which wasn’t much of a sight, on this late Friday afternoon. Since midday the sky had been clouding over, and the water was steel-grey, reflecting the drabness overhead.

  ‘Won’t be a minute.’ He got out. Chalk, assuming that he was going to relieve himself, stayed where he was and lit a cigarette. Then he saw that Dymock was only standing at the roadside, stooping forward to rest long-armed on the drystone wall. Motionless, staring across the water.

  He got out, went to join him. There was nothing else on the road; in the past hour they’d seen only two or three other vehicles.

  Dymock glanced round. ‘Not much to look at, is there?’

  ‘Changes with the sky. Blue sky, blue loch. Why, what were you expecting?’

  ‘Nothing.’ A shrug. ‘Anything. I was here once on a fishing trip with my father. Just the two of us. School holiday time, it must have been. I saw the name when we were looking at your map, and it rang a bell. In a snapshot album – a page or two labelled “Loch Earn, 1920”.’

  ‘You’d have been ten.’ The calculation was easy enough, since they were the same age. Chalk flipped his cigarette-case open. ‘Smoke? Now I know why you were so keen to come this way.’

  It was a longer route than he’d have taken if it had been his own choice. He’d have taken the same road as last weekend – up the side of Loch Lomond to Crianlarich.

  ‘Thanks.’ Dymock expelled smoke. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing here I recognize. Thought there might have been something to trigger recollection, you know?’

  ‘Did you catch any fish?’

  ‘One or two. With the old man’s help.’ Dymock shrugged. ‘Not that he’d have been exactly old, at that time. He was using a crutch, had his left leg blown off at Passchendaele.’

  ‘In’17.’

  ‘Yes. As I may have told you. But imagine – only three years earlier. From that – to this…’ He’d gestured towards the loch. ‘I think he took me along because he wasn’t sure how he’d manage, first time he was doing it on one leg, and he wouldn’t have wanted a lot of people fussing him or seeing him make a fool of himself.’

  ‘Which he did not, obviously.’

  ‘No. Mostly we were in a boat, with a gillie, but otherwise he leant on the crutch and fished right-handed.’ Dymock flicked his quarter-smoked cigarette into the water, turned back towards his car. ‘Nothing here that I remember, anyway. But we could have been at the other end of the loch, for all I know. Is there a fishermen’s hotel there, d’you know?’

  ‘Bound to be. And the loch must be – oh, seven or eight miles long. You might well have arrived from that direction – from Comrie, that’d be.’ He opened the passenger door, and got in. ‘We might make a trip that way, some time.’

  ‘Oh. It’s not important.’ Dymock switched on, pressed the self-starter button, and the engine fired. Chalk, who more often than not had to start his Austin with the crank, felt envious. He asked, raising his voice over a shift of gear, ‘Your father still going strong, is he?’

  ‘Still going. Wouldn’t say exactly “strong”.’

  ‘D’you see much of him?’

  ‘Last saw him – oh, between Christmas and New Year. Spent a couple of nights down there.’

  ‘In Devon – is it?’

  ‘Remotest corner. He has some fishing on the Torridge.’

  ‘Long way to go – from most places.’

  ‘It is. And in any case—’

  He didn’t finish. Chalk remembered, though, that Dymock’s mother had run off with some other man, and his father had later married the widowed daughter of a peer, who’d been left a large estate and ran her own pack of hounds. He’d told Chalk that ‘the old man’ – as he called his father, speaking of him with obvious affection – had taken to the bottle to such an extent that he was rarely sober. He’d divulged all this – and more – at the end of a guest-night at Blockhouse, the submarine headquarters at Gosport, when neither of them had been particularly sober either. Whether he remembered having unburdened himself as he had was a point in doubt: Dymock had been drunker than he had himself, and it had never been mentioned since that night.

  He asked him now, ‘What about your mother? Is she more conveniently – er – located?’

  ‘Much more. They live in Suffolk, but have a rather grand flat in London. Haven’t I told you all this before?’

  ‘You may have. I’ve a rotten memory.’

  ‘The flat’s in a new – well, “complex”, they call it – called Dolphin Square. Very ritzy. That’s where I see them most often. But the place in Suffolk’s beautiful. Elizabethan, with oodles of land. He farms – keeping his hands clean, you know – I think I
must have told you?’

  ‘Possibly. Although you’ve always been somewhat reticent about your family.’

  ‘Well – divorced parents aren’t anything to crow about, are they?’

  ‘They’re facts of modem life, old man. And becoming a lot more so than they used to be.’

  ‘Not that I’ve anything to grouse about, personally. My father and I get along very well – when he’s compos mentis – and he makes me an allowance. Out of his own quite small income, I might say, not his wife’s considerably larger resources. And my mother and her husband are very hospitable. I can use the Dolphin Square flat whenever I like, and I do quite often – when they aren’t there, mostly.’

  ‘Any – er – issue of their own?’

  ‘None. Oddly enough. I mean you’d think, having done a bolt and so forth – eh?’

  ‘Yes. You would.’

  ‘Your father was killed, wasn’t he? At about the time mine lost his leg?’

  ‘Later. 1918.’

  ‘Leaving no money, I remember your saying.’

  ‘Three of us children, too. Mama brought us up on a shoestring – with help from the paternal grandfather, but she still did a marvellous job, considering.’

  ‘And is she still – “going strong”?’

  ‘Going, but far from strong. More or less bed-ridden.’

  ‘I remember now, you told me. Damned awful luck, on top of the rest of it.’ He added, after a short silence. ‘Are we about halfway to Glen Dochart, would you say?’

  ‘Roughly. Then about twelve miles west’ll bring us to Crianlarich.’