Read Chapter 34: The Return

The train smelled of coal smoke and stale uniforms, and the carriage was nearly empty save for three men who had no business travelling together. Arthur sat by the window, watching the grey Kentish fields roll past, his new captain's coat still stiff across the shoulders. George slumped opposite him, boots propped on the vacant seat, a newspaper over his face. Mac sat beside George, his arm in a sling that still bore the faint rust-coloured stain of Chatham's hurried surgery.

"Six in the morning," Arthur said without turning from the glass. "That's what they allowed us. One hour with you, Mac, and then we're back on this train before the nurses could change their minds."

Mac shifted, wincing as the movement pulled at his shoulder. "They patched me up well enough. The bullet went through clean. A inch lower and they'd be burying me in that hospital garden with the other unlucky bastards."

"You were lucky," George said from behind the newspaper. "We saw the way you went down. Thought you were gone."

"Thought so myself for a moment." Mac's voice was quiet. "But I kept thinking about that trawler of yours, Arthur. The way you came about in the Channel when the Stukas came down. I figured if you could dodge those, I could dodge one bullet."

Arthur said nothing. The train rattled over a junction, the wheels clacking in a rhythm that reminded him of the sea. He had not been back to Ramsgate in nine days. Nine days that had taken him from a fishing boat to a dead man's command, from a son presumed lost to a son found in a London basement, from a simple rescue to the centre of something far larger than he had ever wanted to touch.

"Did you see him?" Mac asked. "Michael?"

Arthur nodded. "Briefly. They had him working underground—wireless, codes, that sort of thing. He looked well. Tired, but well." He paused. "He told me about the boat."

The silence that followed was thick as fog. George lowered the newspaper, his face unreadable. Mac stared at his good hand.

"Perseverance," Arthur said. "Sunk at the mole. Ellis went down with her."

"Christ," Mac breathed.

"He was bringing men off the beach when the bombers came. Michael said he stayed at the wheel until the end. The whaler crews saw it happen." Arthur's jaw tightened. "He was a stubborn bastard, Ellis. Wouldn't leave a job half done."

George looked away, out the window at the passing telegraph poles. "He was the best of us, Arthur. You know that."

"I know he's gone. And I know I'm going back in the water with his name on the bow." Arthur turned from the window, meeting both their gazes. "The navy's giving me a motor gun boat. Fifty-two knots. Armed to the teeth. She's waiting at Dover for a crew."

"You're taking her out?" Mac asked.

"They didn't hand me a new boat to keep her in harbour. There's a war on, or haven't you heard."

The train began to slow, the outskirts of Ramsgate appearing through the window—terraced houses, a church spire, the distant glint of the sea beyond the rooftops. Arthur felt something loosen in his chest for the first time in days. Home. Not much of one left, perhaps, but home all the same.

They alighted at the station, Mac moving stiffly but refusing Arthur's offered arm. "I'm not an invalid," he grumbled. "I took a bullet for you, that's all."

"Take another one and I'll leave you in Chatham next time," Arthur said.

The streets were quiet in the late afternoon, the usual bustle of the fishing town muted by the war's grey hand. Shops were shuttered, sandbags piled outside the post office, and the harbour beyond the rooftops was a forest of masts and funnels—fewer trawlers than there should have been, Arthur noted, but a good many small craft gathered in clusters along the quays.

"Tom'll be at The Anchor," George said. "Where else would he be?"

The pub was dark inside, the windows painted black against the blackout, and the air was thick with pipe smoke and the sour smell of wartime beer. Old Tom sat in the corner, exactly where he always sat, a pint before him that he had been nursing since noon by the look of it. His eyes lit up when he saw them.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said, struggling to his feet. "The three of you—and Mac with his arm in a sling like a proper war hero. Sit down, sit down. Tell me everything."

They sat. The landlord brought three more pints without being asked—a small miracle in a town where beer was rationed—and Tom leaned forward, his weathered face hungry for news.

"We heard stories," he said. "About Dunkirk. About the little ships. But you three—you went further. The whole town's been talking. Said you were seen in London. Said there was some kind of trouble at the docks."

"Trouble is one word for it," George said, and took a long drink.

They told him, in fragments and pieces, the way men tell war stories when the wound is still fresh. Arthur spoke of the beach, the smoke, the waiting soldiers. George told of the warehouse and the shots that sent them into the tunnels. Mac described the bullet in his shoulder with a grimace that made light of it and a tremor in his voice that did not.

Tom listened without interrupting, which for Tom was a miracle in itself. When they finished, he sat back, his pint untouched, and shook his head slowly.

"I was taken off the beach on the third day," he said. "A destroyer that ran her bow right up onto the sand. We climbed down her nets like rats leaving a sinking ship. I thought—I thought I'd never see you again, Arthur. You and that boat of yours."

"She's gone," Arthur said. "Ellis too."

Tom's face fell. "I heard. The fishermen talk, even in London." He reached across the table and gripped Arthur's wrist with a hand like a knot of oak roots. "He was a good man. The best first mate a skipper could ask for."

"He was."

Tom released him and looked at George. "And you, lad? Back to your regiment, then?"

George was quiet for a long moment, staring into his pint. When he looked up, there was something settled in his face that Arthur had not seen since they left Ramsgate. Not resignation, exactly. Peace.

"No," George said. "I'm not going back."

Tom blinked. "But you're a soldier, aren't you? The papers said—"

"The papers said a lot of things." George set down his glass. "I've done my fighting. I did it at Dunkirk, and I did it again in London, and I've got the burns and the bullet holes to prove it. But the army doesn't want me anymore. Medical discharge. They looked at my hands and shook their heads."

Arthur studied his son's face. It was true—the burns had healed poorly, the fingers stiff and clumsy in a way they had not been before. George had hidden it well on the journey, but now Arthur saw the way he gripped the glass, the slight difficulty he had lighting his cigarette.

"You're at peace with that?" Arthur asked.

George considered the question. "I've spent three weeks watching men die," he said. "I've watched my father sail into hell to find me. I've watched him take a bullet for a country that barely knows his name. And I've watched Mac here bleed onto a warehouse floor because of me." He shook his head. "I've done my part. The war will go on without my hands on a rifle. It might even go on better, if my father's flying a navy boat and Tom here is still briefing the dockyard crews on every inch of the Channel."

Tom grunted. "I've been doing a bit of that, actually. The navy's been after me for charts and currents. 'Know your waters,' they say. As if I don't know my own backyard."

"We'll see," Arthur said, but his voice was soft, and he looked at his son with something like gratitude. "We'll all see."

They drank in silence for a while, the old pub settling around them like a familiar coat. Outside, the light was fading, and somewhere down at the harbour, a siren began to wail—not the air-raid kind, but the low, mournful call of a vessel readying to depart.

Arthur set down his glass. "I should see her," he said. "The new boat. They said she was being fitted at the east quay."

"I'll come with you," George said, rising.

Mac remained seated, raising his good hand. "You go on. Tom and I will hold the fort. I've got a story to tell him about the time you two tried to get yourselves killed at a London train station."

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder—gently, mindful of the wound—and turned to the door. Outside, the air was salt and diesel and coal smoke, and the harbour stretched before them in the dying light, a fleet of small boats bobbing at their moorings. At the east quay, a sleek shape sat low in the water, all sharp angles and dark grey paint, her guns fresh from the factory and gleaming even in the gloom.

"Ellis's name on the bow," George said quietly. He looked at the vessel, then at his father. "And who else aboard her? Or is it just the two of us?"

Arthur did not answer at first. He stood at the quayside, looking at the boat that was meant to carry him back to war, and felt the weight of everything he still did not know. The spy ring in London—was it truly broken? Mac's missing codebook—would it surface again in enemy hands? And the intelligence he carried in his head, the German plan laid bare—what would the Admiralty do with it come morning?

"We'll find a crew," Arthur said at last. "Ramsgate's full of men who know how to handle a boat and a gun." He paused, looking out at the Channel, grey and endless under the gathering dark. "But before we sail anywhere, there's a visit to make. Mac's owed a debt, and I mean to pay it."

George looked at him, a question in his eyes, but Arthur said no more. He simply stood at the edge of the quay, watching the tide come in, feeling the familiar pull of the water that had carried him all his life—and would carry him again, into whatever the morning brought.