The Dangerous Years Read Online Free

the Thames no longer hooted at each other as they passed, and the roaring trade the pubs had been doing had subsided. There was no more dancing in the streets and, in the disillusionment that was setting in, bus conductors who had once refused to take money from wounded soldiers were now insisting on their fares. The free drinks and the free kisses were finished and even that most wonderful prize of all to come with the ending of the war – the awareness of simply being alive – was also fading now, because the grim facts of settling down again were being faced by men who for four years had known no such thing as security.
    The world was already a poorer place, and among the Australians, Americans and French who crowded London intent on a good time there were still plenty of haunted-eyed young men, veterans of bloody fighting even at nineteen and twenty, boys who’d known no other life but the war since leaving school. Most of them believed in nothing beyond the fact that they had months of living to catch up with, and it was already beginning to occur to some of them that somehow they’d been betrayed and that the ideals that had driven them to the trenches, to sea, and into the air, were being edged aside by hard-eyed politicians interested only in plum jobs and party affairs. Work was clearly going to be difficult to get because, with demobilisation, there was a flood of manpower on the labour market, and doubts about that ‘land fit for heroes to live in’ that they’d been promised were already beginning to take root; while the flu epidemic which had gripped the whole world was killing off with ease men who’d survived four years of slaughter.
    King’s Cross Station was full of uniforms, a few heading home to be demobilised, a few still unwillingly joining squadrons, ships or regiments, hump-backed under their kits and enviously eyeing the half-empty compartments reserved for the staff. The platform was full of women, but the crucified look of the war years had gone and they wore instead expressions of relief, though here and there resentful looks flashed from beneath mourning veils and black crêpe.
    As his train drew to a stop, Kelly stared from the window, aware of a faint sense of frustration. The German fleet was at Scapa now, sent up there in batches from the Forth, and Mordant had gone with them, part of the single unit of battle cruisers and destroyers which were considered sufficient to guard them. Disarmed and humiliated, there was no longer an expectation of defiance.
    As he climbed down to the platform, he found himself studying the faces around him. There was doubt, anxiety, even disbelief in them but, thank God, none of the despair he’d seen in the eyes of the Germans.
    ‘Porter, sir?’ The man who appeared alongside him was young – different from the old men who had worked the platforms during the war – perhaps some demobilised soldier or sailor happy to return to the humdrum life of peace because of his joy at being alive.
    Kelly nodded and indicated his luggage. But his thoughts were still in that curious limbo of bewilderment that had been with him ever since he’d caught the train south at Thurso, the same mixture of pity and contempt for the Germans he’d felt as they’d led them into the Firth of Forth. He’d gone aboard Grosser Kurfürst to make it clear that no boats were to be lowered and that wireless was not to be used, and to find out whether the ship might have imported infectious disease into Britain. But the giant vessel had nothing it shouldn’t have had beyond the sour smell of unwashed hammocks, blankets and clothing. Its flats were filled with litter which it seemed to be nobody’s duty to clear up, and pamphlets were everywhere, while every man seemed to wear a red ribbon on his blouse. The officer who came forward had worn no shoulder straps or imperialist badges.
    Before he could speak, a sailor had stepped forward. ‘I am chairman of the supreme sailors’