Gibraltar Road Read Free Page A

because he was busy he decided to get the customary formalities over without delay. So he began, “Well, Shaw. Usual pain in the guts, I suppose?” The heavy pink face loomed over the desk.
    Shaw’s eyebrows tilted and he grinned. “Yes, sir,” he admitted.
    Latymer waved a hand. “Take a tablet if you want to, my boy. Don’t mind me.” He rapped the desk. “Come on now—out with it. Let’s get the next stage over. You want to resign.”
    Shaw flushed a little, but his eyes remained steady, looking directly at Latymer. He said, “I didn’t realize it was quite so routine, sir.” He sounded diffident.
    “But, God dammit,” snapped Latymer—though there was a flicker of amusement in his mask-like face—“you hand in your resignation before every blasted assignment! Have done for the last ten years.”
    Shaw felt the gripping pain twisting his guts. Rubbing the side of his nose with his left forefinger, he said stubbornly, “This time I really do want to get out. I mean it. I’ve had enough, sir. More than enough.”
    Shrewdly Latymer studied Shaw’s set face. “Reason?” he demanded.
    Shaw hesitated.
    Latymer said briefly, “It’s your damned stomach. I’m not unsympathetic—don’t think that. But dammit to hell, man, you can’t let your ruddy guts—in the purely stomachic sense, I mean—stand between you and your duty.” He added wearily, “How many times have we had this out?”
    Shaw persisted. “This time it’s different. I’m fed up with this life, sir. I’m a sailor.” He leant forward, a deep frown of concentrated effort driving down between his eyes. “I know my health wasn’t too good during the War, but I want to go back to sea again.”
    Quietly Latymer said, “So do I. A ruddy admiral, Shaw, a ruddy admiral, and only once worn my flag at sea. Only once—and that was cover. And never will again—now I’m pushing up the daisies!”
    Shaw met his glance and smiled. “I know, sir. I’m sorry. But at least you have worn it that once, and between the wars you commanded ships—genuinely, and not just as cover. I’ve never had that chance.”
    “And wouldn’t even if you went back to General Service, the way the Navy’s going now,” said Latymer bitterly. “Won’t be any ships left before long. . . . No, Shaw, you’ve got to stick it. You’re far too valuable to lose back to the Fleet now anyway. And you can do a lot—a hell of a lot—to help keep some kind of Fleet in being. Far more than you could ever hope to do as commander of a ship at sea.”
    Latymer had been looking steadily into Shaw’s face all the time he’d been speaking. He knew all about Shaw, naturally. He knew, for instance, that though Shaw looked older he was only in his thirties, knew that worry and the almost overwhelming responsibility which the man had borne alone and for so long had put those deep lines where they had no right to be, stretching from nose to mouth, cutting ruts which showed up the determination in mouth and chin, driving the sharp cleft between the brows. It had made the eyes look tired and old, though Latymer knew that those eyes were capable of lighting up wonderfully, of taking away the years, when Shaw looked at something that pleased him—little things, such as a flower thrusting through earth bravely into the polluted air of a London square, or a child at play. Latymer knew, too, that Shaw’s stomach complaint was real enough—that it, like Shaw’s present employment, had been due originally to the War.
    He knew that Shaw had been pitchforked out of Dartmouth to join the Fleet as midshipman in an old destroyer, lurching wildly around the North Atlantic on convoy escort duty, running out from the ice and bitter winds of Scapa Flow to Forty West in the most diabolic weather and under revoltingly primitive conditions, the seas often so high that to venture along the open decks was unsafe and the watch on deck had to remain at their stations for maybe forty-eight hours