She said: “We aren’t using them—on our side—are we?”
Again he did not answer her directly. He said: “The more we do with things like that the sooner the war will end. It’s a good weapon, that. Put a dozen of those up at the head of a beach and hold your fire till you can get the first detachment landing. Then turn up the wick on them and frizzle them up. The others will think twice about coming ashore.”
She said no more. The memory of the violent spouts and gusts of burning oil that she had seen, the intense red flame, the clouds of billowing black smoke, sickened and disgusted her. People who worked out weapons of that sort, she thought, were pagans, far remote from mental contact with all ordinary people.
Presently they went out to the car, and got going again.
A quarter of an hour later one of the little tragedies common on the road occurred to them. A flight of sparrows rose up from the hedge in front of them and flew forward and across the path of the van. The quick flight of the birds made it impossible to help them, and three of them disappeared squarely between the front wheels below the line of the radiator. The Wren was startled to feel the officer beside her flinch and turn to look back through the canvas body of the van. She turned with him and looked back at the road behind. A little heap of feathers was fluttering and leaping in the middle of the road.
They both drew in their breath together; instinctively the girl had slowed down as she turned. Rhodes said: “I say—I hate leaving it like that.”
She was amazed. “Would you like to stop, sir?” she enquired.
He said eagerly: “Would you mind? I won’t be half a minute.” The officer got out and went back down the road, stooped and deftly tweaked the sparrow’s neck. It collapsed and lay still. When he looked up, the Wren was at his side.
He said apologetically: “I hate leaving them kicking. You can’t help hitting them, but I always feel you ought to stop and do your best for them. If you aren’t in too much of a hurry.”
She said: “I feel like that, too. I hate leaving them.”
He picked up the limp body and laid it on the grass verge by the roadside; together they walked back up the road to the van in silence. The girl was bewildered and a little confused. She felt that this young officer was behaving very oddly; she knew him to be a callous and insensitive man, full of enthusiasm for the most devilish things. It simply was not in the picture that he should have any feelings for the gentle things in life.
Through the hot afternoon they trundled back through Devonshire towards the coast. They were talking more freely now, telling each other the story of their lives. Rhodes told her all about his work on soya oil and Titania foot tablets, but he said nothing about Ernest; that lay too deep. The girl listened with interest and satisfaction; her first judgment had been quite correct. This, she thought, was a young man of no account. The things that he was interested in were either rather nasty, like soap and foot tablets, or they were loathsome, nightmare matters that she would not think about. He was a pleasant, well-set-up young man, she thought, but not one that one would care for as a friend. There was no depth of feeling in him.
She told him, as they drove, about her life in the old Tudor house in Norwich. She told him about the famous authors and artists that came to her aunts’ shop, and how nice it was when Queen Mary came shopping in Norwich, from Sandringham, and how her aunts had put up Dr. Cronin for a night when he was on a lecture tour. Rhodes listened, politely making the appropriate comments, wondering how anyone could put up with a girl for company when they could get a dog—or even a buck rabbit. He thought it was a pity that such an attractive young woman should be interested in such footling things. He was slightly resentful because he had thought that she looked intelligent, and she was patently not so.
By the time they reached Totnes they were on terms of amused tolerance, each feeling very much superior to the other, which was satisfactory for both of them. And then Rhodes gave the girl another jolt.
They were creeping on low gear up a fairly steep hill between high banks fringed with foliage. As they neared the top he turned to her and said:
“Would you mind stopping for a minute at the top?”
Men were horrible, she thought; as if he couldn’t wait. She said: “Very good, sir.”
He explained: “I just want to get a bit of that cow parsley. I won’t be a moment.”
She turned and stared at him, and noted a faint colour in his face. “Cow parsley?” she repeated.
He said awkwardly: “It’s for my rabbit. It’s a chance to get him something different, coming out like this. I’m only just going to get a little. I won’t be long.”
The van drew into the side of the road. “I’m in no hurry,” she said. “Do you mean you keep a rabbit?”
He said: “He’s my landlady’s rabbit, really, but I look after him. He lives in the net defence store.”
He got out in the road and began pulling up handfuls of the weed from the grassy bank. The Wren got out in turn, watched to see what he was picking, and picked a little for him.
“Thanks awfully,” he said. “That’s enough. It makes a change for him, you see.”
They put the heap of foliage in the back of the van and drove on. Again Miss Wright suffered that feeling of bewilderment. “Do you feed him on what you pick up in the hedges?” she enquired.
Rhodes said: “Oh no. He only gets that as a treat. He lives on Brussels sprout stalks and potato peelings, and that sort of thing.” He turned to her. “It’s so difficult being in uniform,” he said. “You can’t go out and come back through the streets with an armful of cow parsley. That’s why I wanted to get some now.”
She comprehended that; an officer had to behave as one. She said without thinking: “I’m out in this van somewhere every day. I’ll get cow parsley for you, if you like.”
He took her up eagerly. “Oh, would you? It’d be terribly kind if you did that. A rabbit ought to have a lot of green stuff, much more than he’s been getting.”
She felt it was absurd; the juxtaposition of the flame-throwers and this rabbit simply did not make sense. “You think a lot of your rabbit,” she said curiously. “Has it got a name?”
He said: “Well, I call him Geoffrey.”
“Have you had it long?”
“Not very long,” he said shortly. He did not want to talk about his rabbit much. It was decent of the Wren to offer to get cow parsley for him, but he was not sure that she was not laughing up her sleeve at him, and this made him reticent. He felt that a girl whose interests lay with books and arty things would be scornful of the practical matters that pleased him, such as the care of a buck rabbit or the solubility of organic solids in soya oil.
They drove down into Dartmouth to the net defence store; he got out there and put his foliage just inside the gate. He dismissed the Wren, and she drove back to the Naval garage. It was time for tea. Rhodes walked back to his rooms and washed his face, had a quick cup of tea, and went out to report his visit to Lieutenant-Commander Marshall.
An hour later he was in the ward-room of H.M.T. Gracie Fields drinking a glass of gin with Boden. They were alone together; the captain was on shore. “I saw the devil of a thing to-day,” said Rhodes. “I believe it might be useful in our racket.”
“What sort of thing?”
“A flame-thrower.” He told the trawler officer briefly what he had seen.
Boden said thoughtfully: “A flame-thrower …” He stood staring out of the scuttle at the tide flowing past, bright in the evening sun. He was silent for so long that Rhodes looked curiously at him, noting the staring auburn of his hair, the white strained face, the rather sunken cheeks. Boden wasn’t looking quite so good to-night, he thought. Sometimes he looked about sixty.
Boden turned to him. “Is it a big flame?” he enquired. “Big in diameter, I mean—not just in length.”
Rhodes told him.
“I mean, if you turned it on anyone—a German—he wouldn’t be able to jump back and get
out of it?”
“Lord, no,” said Rhodes. “You ought to see the thing.”
“And is it all blazing oil inside the flame, in all that width?” He paused. “I mean, what would happen to anyone caught by it?”
“It wouldn’t do him a great deal of good,” said Rhodes decidedly. “It’s flame temperature, of course, the whole of it. But there is solid oil all through it, I think, in a sort of spray form, burning as it goes. Your German would get blazing oil all over him, and when he gasped he’d get it blazing down into his lungs. He wouldn’t come up for a second dose.”
Boden said: “Were you thinking we could have one in Geneviève?”
“That’s what I had in mind. I sounded out the chaps up there about the possibility of getting an equipment. They said they thought there’d be a chance.”
They spent some time together, talking it out in detail. To Boden the suggestion came like the opening of a door. It gave a form and substance to the whole proposal to use Geneviève; he ached to use a weapon of that sort against the Germans. Anti-submarine work was all very well, but it needed so much imagination. You could not actually see them smothering and perishing deep down in the black sea, trapped in a bubble of chlorine-polluted air in the split hull. Sometimes, if you were lucky as he had been, you could hear them tapping as you listened on the hydro-phones, but then you had to build up all the rest with your imagination. With this new thing, if you could bring it to the enemy, you would be able to see them curl up and burn and die before you as you watched.
“The difficulty will be to bring it to the enemy,” said Rhodes.
Boden said: “Well, that’s our same old tactical problem. But this puts a new angle on it altogether. I think we ought to have another talk with Simon soon as possible, and see what he thinks of it. I must say I’d be in it right up to the neck myself if there were any chance of using anything like this.”
“Simon’s in London,” said the Special officer. “He isn’t coming back until to-morrow night.”
There was nothing much more to be done that night. Rhodes stayed and had supper in the trawler, then went on shore again. He walked up to the net defence store to give his evening meal to Geoffrey; rather to his surprise he found a few stalks of the cow parsley already in the hutch. He wondered if it were the Wren who had been there to feed his rabbit.
He did not object to that. He had a little sixpenny book on rabbits which informed him that a rabbit liked a full stomach, and Geoffrey had given him no cause to disbelieve that statement. He stayed there for a quarter of an hour in the dusk, teasing the rabbit with the cow parsley, playing with it, and stroking the furry little coat. It was a playful, friendly little beast and he had grown very much attached to it, but it would never be to him what Ernest had been; it would never have the faithful devotion of a dog. He still missed Ernest terribly. If only this flame-thrower business could come off!
Two days later he met Captain Simon, alone, because Boden was at sea on a routine patrol. They met in the boom defence office; Rhodes showed the army officer the finished report of his visit to Honiton, and told him of their plan to put a flame-thrower in Geneviève.
In the hour that followed Rhodes and Simon got to know each other better than before. Hitherto Rhodes had regarded Simon as an odd, dilettante Frenchman, romantic, like most foreigners. Simon had regarded Rhodes as a dreamy, ineffective young officer. He now became aware that this young officer was very much alive to the technicalities of flame-throwers, that he was an industrial chemist with a good background of experience, and that he had considerable knowledge about what could and could not be done with oil. Once launched upon his own subject he showed an energetic and a penetrating mind. Simon very quickly revised his views about Rhodes. This was a young man who could be used in war.
In turn, Simon displayed himself as a keen manager, accustomed to quick decisions upon the basis of hard technical facts. He asked the right questions, he asked all of them, and he asked them in short time; when he had got his data he made the right decision without further ado. He was obviously a man who was accustomed to control an engineering business; the sort of man, Rhodes felt, that he would like to work under.
They talked over the report for an hour. In the end Charles Simon leaned back in his chair in the bare, whitewashed little office. He lit a cigarette, blew a long cloud of smoke, and stared out of the window at the sunlit street of the small Devon town.
“So …” he said, half to himself. “Here is the temporal weapon that crops up again, the sacred weapon of the Holy Church.”
Rhodes said: “What’s that?”
Simon turned to him, deadly serious. “Listen, my friend,” he said quietly. “This thing that you have now suggested—it is frightfully important. How much, you do not know. But now I shall tell you secret things which you must keep under your hat, that happened to me on the other side, not many months ago.”
He leaned forward to an ash-tray, and brushed the ash from the cigarette. “Listen to me,” he said. “You know, I was employed and worked all my life in France. I used to be chief engineer of a cement works, in a town called Corbeil.…”
Three days later Simon was back in London sitting in Brigadier McNeil’s office in Pall Mall, at the conclusion of a long discussion.
“There is the matter, sir,” he said at last. “This is the way to help the people of Douarnenez.” He paused for a moment. “Their minds are running upon fire,” he said. “Let me bring fire to them.”
The brigadier sat for a minute deep in thought. “We’ll have to get the Navy interested,” he said.
5
TWO days later I went down to Newhaven with Brigadier McNeil to see my admiral about the proposal. Admiral Thomson was a young man for a vice-admiral, not much over fifty; on the morning of our visit he was much engaged on a forthcoming operation, and had little time to spare for fishing-boats with flame-throwers. Yet he had found time to read the memorandum I had sent him; he discussed it with us for about ten minutes, and asked one or two questions.
In the end he said: “All right—I have no objection.” He turned to McNeil. “I wish you all good luck with it,” he said, “and on our side we shall do all we can to help. There are one or two restrictions that I have to make. It must not conflict with any major naval operation, and I must be the judge of that. And then, it must stand on its own feet. I can’t promise you any naval support. I can’t send destroyers up to the front door of Brest to help you out if you get into trouble. But you don’t want that.”
McNeil shook his head. “That isn’t the idea at all. The expedition is a minor one, and I don’t want to see it grow into a major operation. But it will serve a useful purpose, I assure you, sir.”
Vice-Admiral for Channel Operations was silent for a moment. “I think it will,” he said at last. “I hope it does. I think there is some danger that you’ll lose your vessel and her crew.”
McNeil shrugged his shoulders. “We have to take that risk each time we send a party over to the other side.”
“Of course.” Admiral Thomson turned to me. “I shall leave all the details in your hands, Martin. I shall inspect the ship before she sails in operations. See Captain Harrison about her routing when the time gets near. Keep me informed from time to time how it is getting on.”
I said: “She will require a navigator, sir. An R.N.R lieutenant would be suitable. Can I get her one?”
“See the Second Sea Lord’s office. That will make three of our officers in her—there are two R.N.V.R. already?”
“Yes, sir. A lieutenant in an A/S trawler, and a sub in Boom Defence. Both in Dartmouth.”
“And the ship is at Dartmouth, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is her name?”
“Geneviève.”
He turned away. “Very good, Martin. Do everything that you consider necessary, and keep me informed.”
McNeil said: “It’s very good of you to give us so much help, sir.”
“Not
at all. I wish your venture every success.”
We left him dealing with far more important matters, and we took the next train back to London. I parted from McNeil at Victoria; when I got back to my office I found a note upon my desk asking me to ring the Second Sea Lord’s office.
I rang up Lovell at once. He said: “That navigator you were asking for, who wanted to do fire. Do you still want him?”
I said: “I do indeed. I’ve just got permission from V.A.C.O. to take him on.”
He said: “Is it for a major war vessel?”
“No,” I said. “It’s for a very minor one. One of these harum-scarum shows.”
“I see,” he said. “I’ve got a very good navigator, but he’s not everybody’s kettle of fish, if you understand. He might be suitable for you. He’s ringing me again this afternoon; would you like to see him?”
“Certainly. Send him along. Is he R.N.R. or R.N.V.R.?”
“Oh, R.N.R. He holds a master’s ticket.”
“What’s his name?”
“Colvin. A lieutenant.”
Lieutenant John Colvin came to see me in my office next morning. He was a man of about forty-five, a fine-looking chap. He was over six feet tall, a lean, hard-looking man. He was deeply bronzed. He wore the ribbons of the last war on his shoulder. He had a fine head with short, curly, iron-grey hair, and he carried himself well. He had a firm chin, a humorous twist to his mouth, and grey eyes. When he spoke it was with a marked American accent.
I made him sit down. “Well,” I said. “What have you been doing so far in this war?”
He said: “I was in an ocean boarding vessel, sir.” He told me the name. “We paid off last week, on account of the repairs that had to be done,” and I knew about that, too.
“I asked: “Were you Number One in her?”
“No, sir. Lieutenant Johnson, he was Number One.” I glanced at the papers before me, wondering a little. On paper, Colvin’s record should have made him first lieutenant. It might, of course, be whisky—but a glance at him convinced me that it wasn’t.