The Dangerous Years Read Online Free Page A

soviet aboard this ship,’ he had announced. ‘I am in command here.’
    Kelly had stared at him with distaste and turned to the officer. ‘Tell the captain I wish to speak to him.’
    ‘The captain has no power.’ The sailor had bristled with indignation. ‘He is merely a technical adviser. Everything has been changed by the revolution.’
    The German officer swallowed, dumb with shame. Kelly stared at him, still ignoring the sailor. ‘Well?’ he said.
    The officer’s eyes had flickered to the sailor then he had jerked to life. ‘I’ll have you escorted below,’ he said.
    The completeness of their humiliation had been depressing. Inscrutably, Kelly had set about inspecting the ship. The German crew had been ordered on deck, while, with his party of men, he had moved through the deserted lower mazes, searching painstakingly for gun parts, poison gas, bombs, powder and shell. There had been a few brief attempts by the German sailors to make contact with their British counterparts but they had been treated with contempt, the British bluejacket refusing to acknowledge them with a cold aloofness that was shattering.
    Even the chilly Orkney landscape must have seemed a smack in the face for the Germans. To men who’d spent most of the war within reach of Kiel’s lights, bars and women, Scapa must have seemed desolation itself. The winter had been a bitter one and the Germans, carrying the burden of defeat and the knowledge that their families were hungry and the Fatherland was in chaos, were not even allowed ashore or on board other ships in case the subversive tendencies they had brought with them should inflame the growing discontent that existed in the Royal Navy over pay.
    Leading Seaman Rumbelo had expressed it succinctly to Kelly, with the frankness of an old friend who had survived the Dardanelles and Jutland with him, and was married to Kelly’s mother’s housekeeper.
    ‘There are leading hands in the Fleet, sir,’ he had said patiently, ‘whose seventeen-year-old daughters working in factories earn more than they do.’
    The odd sense of disillusion and frustration was still with Kelly as he took a taxi to Bessborough Terrace, but the thought of seeing Charley again cheered him considerably. It had been Charlotte Upfold’s intention to marry him from the day she’d first met him. They’d grown up together and when, at various times, he’d tried to grab her, he’d never known whether she’d be as lissome as willow and soft as silk, waiting for his kiss with her eyes closed, or whether she’d suddenly develop needle-pointed elbows and knees and burst into breathless laughter. As a schoolboy, he’d regarded it all as a great joke. As an adolescent he’d regarded it as a good friendship, and for a period as a young man even as a nuisance. Finally, however, he had wisely accepted it as something that he wished as much as she did. There was now nothing they didn’t know about each other beyond the final consummation of their regard, and their mutual affection was as comfortable as an old coat.
    She was in his arms almost before he’d closed the door behind him, her cheek against his in a delirium of delight.
    ‘Oh, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!’ She seemed unable to stop uttering his name.
    ‘Steady on, old thing,’ he said. ‘You’re throttling me.’
    ‘But it’s so wonderful! It’s all over at last!’ She stared at him, noting the slightly hunched way his back wound made him hold his left shoulder, and the pink line of the scar running into the red hair that fell over his eye. He looked so lean, so fit, so capable, and yet somehow so remote with the remoteness that all seafaring men have and never lose, it almost broke her heart. She seemed to have been waiting all her life for him – certainly ever since she’d known the meaning of the word ‘love’ – and she’d barely seen him since he’d returned to duty almost two years before.
    ‘Oh, Kelly,’ she said again in a tremulous breathy