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Margaret laid her hands on her sto to tell on you, Jean,’ she said

There was a deafening silence from Avice’s bunk

Outside, an unknown distance away, they could hear a foghorn It sounded a single low, melancholy note

‘Frances?’ said Jean

‘She’s asleep,’ whispered Margaret

‘No, she’s not I saw her eyes when I lit ie You won’t tell on me, Frances, will you?’

‘No,’ said Frances, froot out of bed She patted Margaret’s leg, then climbed ni herself into comfort ‘So, co it, and what is it that ht deck, a thousand-pound bomb from a Stuka aircraft looks curiously like a beer barrel It rolls casually froy insouciance as if it were about to be rolled down the steps of a beer cellar Surrounded by its brothers, flanked by a bunched forhter planes, it seems to pause uided, as if by an invisible force, towards the deck

This is one of the things Captain Highfield thinks as he stares up at his i death This, and the fact that, when the wall of fla the island, the ship’s co upwards, and he is possessed of the i terror, as he had always known he would be, he has forgotten so he had to do And in his blind paralysis even he is di around for some unre heart of the fire, as the bo off the decks, as his nostrils sting with the s fuel and his ears refuse to close to the screams of his men, he looks up to see a plane, where there is no plane It, too, is engulfed, yellow flas blackened, but not enough to obscure, within, Hart’s face, which is untouched, his eyes questioning as he faces the captain

I’h the roar of the fire, the younger man can hear him I’m sorry

When he wakes, his pillow damp and the skies still dark above the quiet ocean, he is still speaking these words into the silence

7

I, like many others, had developed a love-hate relationship with the Vic We hated the life, but ere proud of her as a fighting unit We cursed her between ourselves, but would not hear anyone outside of the ship say anything derogatory about hershe was a lucky ship Sailors are so superstitious

L Troman, seaman, HMS Victorious,

in Wine, Wo, HMS Victoria had seen action in the north Atlantic, the Pacific and,Corsairs, she helped force back the Japanese and bore the scars to show it She, and many like her, had stopped repeatedly over the past few years at the dockyards at Woollooed hull repaired, bullet and torpedo holes plugged, the brutal scars of her ti men who had themselves been patched up and readied for battle

Captain George Highfield wasthe dry dock, staring up through the sea hbours, he often allowed himself to think about the vessels as his fellows Hard not to see the some kind of personality when they had allied theh seas and fierce fire In forty years’ service, he’d had his favourites: those that had felt undeniably his, the occasional alchemic conjunction of ship and crehich each ly for its protection He had bitten back private tears of grief when he left them, less privately when they had been sunk He often supposed this was how previous generations of fighting irl,’ heat the hole ripped in the aircraft-carrier’s side She looked so eon had said he should use a stick Highfield suspected that the man had told others he shouldn’t be allowed back to sea at all ‘These things take longer to heal at your age,’ he had observed, of the livid scar tissue where the ed skin of the burns around it ‘I’m not convinced you should be up and about on that just yet, Captain’

Highfield had discharged hi ‘I have a ship to take ho the conversation As if he would allow hie

Like everyone else, the surgeon had said nothing Sohfield that no one knehat to say to him now He hardly blamed them: in their shoes he would probably have felt the sahfield They told me you were out here’

‘Sir’ He stopped and saluted The ad away the uulls wheeled and dived, their criesall better?’

‘Absolutely fine, sir Good as new’

He watched the adlance down at it When you spotted an admiral out in the open air, his men used to say, you’d not knohether to polish your buttons for a cereood sort, who always knew so on Sooff only to go aboard ship the day before she was due back in, thus clailory But this ad on at the docks,the political waters, questioning everything, ht off his leg again He was conscious suddenly that McManus probably knew all about that too ‘Thought I’d go and take a look at Victoria,’ he said ‘Haven’t seen her in a few years Not since I went aboard during the Adriatic convoys’

‘You ed,’ said McManus ‘She’s taken a bit of a bashing’

‘I suppose you could say the sahfield would coed it in his quiet s the dock, unconsciously stepping in tiain, eh, Highfield?’

‘Sir’

‘Terrible business, what happened We all felt for you, you know’