The Lion at Sea Read Free

would never get anywhere in the Navy or, that, if he did, he would do it only through influence and wealth. Unfortunately, this was not so andnever would be. Certain he’d dislike Verschoyle until day hedied, Kelly was equally certain that Verschoyle would neverbe a failure, and that one day he’d be an admiral while Kelly was still trailing behind among the passed-over captains.
    On his right was Albert Edward Kimister, the other midshipman who had joined with him. Kimister was a born victim. Small, slight, not as clever as Verschoyle nor as tough-minded as Kelly, he had suffered from bullying all through Dartmouth and still suffered in the gunroom of Huguenot ,and Kelly had had more than one good hiding from Verschoyle for standing up for him.
    ‘I wonder–’ Verschoyle’s low voice came over the drum of the signal halyards and the slap of water alongside ‘–how many senior officers there are still afloat to whom naval history is nothing but posturing heroics gleaming in an eternal empire ofbrass and new paint. Good at seamanship and having the whitest decks in the fleet, and entirely satisfied because they know how to blacklead their projectiles and paint a gun.’
    Certain to a T what to use, Kelly thought. ‘A foot of grey, an inch of black and the rest white makes a damn good colour,’ his father had often said.
    ‘Sad lack of imagination among ’em,’ Verschoyle murmured. ‘Outlook limited to The Sporting Times, Country Life and The Illustrated London News, shouldn’t wonder. I’m finding all this rather a bore, you know, young Ginger. I think I’ll get out of it.’
    ‘How?’ Kelly’s head half-turned as he spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
    ‘Fall in a fit.’
    ‘They’ll know you’re faking.’
    ‘Not they!’ Verschoyle looked smugly self-confident. ‘I took the precaution of reporting sick this morning. Of course, they suggested I stood down, but I heroically insisted on carrying on.’
    Kelly tried to ignore Verschoyle’s sly comments and kept his eyes ahead. Beyond the surface ships, he could see the low hulls of submarines. Despite his father’s attitude that they were a ‘damned un-English weapon,’ he had a feeling that when war came, like aeroplanes, they might prove highly important. He had argued it out many times – admittedly not with his father, who, brought up to believe the big gun was the only gentleman’s weapon, could never be persuaded to listen to such blasphemy. Not even with his mother who, being Irish and an ardent follower of hounds, was far more concerned with his unfortunate habit of falling off the horses she gave him to ride. But with Charlotte Upfold, who lived two miles away across the fields from Balmero House where Kelly lived, and was a good listener and always had been. Admittedly she was still only a schoolgirl, but she could ride – better than Kelly himself – knew how to shoot and could handle ferrets with the best of them. She wasforthright, intelligent and no-nonsense, and they had been friends all their lives. It had been to her that he had bewailed having to go to Dartmouth and poured out his woes about bullying. ‘The sub-lieutenant’s left-handed–’ he could clearly remember his conversation with her ‘–and Verschoyle’s right-handed so that when they go at you with a dirk scabbard, they make cross patterns on your bum. We had a look in the Midshipmen’s bathroom.’
    Charley Upfold never questioned his assertions, because she expected her whole life to lead towards marriage with him. She told him so when she was barely out of the nursery and had repeated the announcement regularly since.
    Bored, he shifted from one foot to the other. Somewhere to his left he could see a group of senior officers in heavy dress coats and glittering epaulettes.
    ‘Discussing the racing at Goodwood, shouldn’t wonder,’ Verschoyle murmured, and Kelly had to admit he was probably, right. With their intense concentration on gunnery and