The Glory Boys Read Online Free

stairs!” Then he relented slightly. “I’ll carry the bag— you might lose it.” He looked at Kearton and grimaced. “What’s the Andrew comin’ to these days, sir?”
    Kearton stood by the solitary window and imagined he could feel warmth in the sunlight through the glass. But it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and would be dark in a couple of hours. He shivered, trying to recall what it had been like. The first ship …
    He stared across the harbour. Portsmouth: always crowded, always busy. Speeding motor-boats and scruffy working craft, a backdrop of moored ships in dull grey or dazzle-paint. Some preparing for sea, others enduring the indignities of repair or overhaul. The waiting was almost over. He wanted to yawn, and restrained it.
    Captain Morgan’s three days had become five. And he was feeling everyone of them.
    Going over his orders until he knew them almost by heart, not that they ever gave much away. Go there. Do that . An unfamiliar bed, and never free to meet and discuss things with men he knew. He had spoken to his mother twice on the telephone; the first attempt had been cut off. Something one of them must have said. A click on the line, then it had gone dead. Careless talk costs lives .
    They should have been prepared, after all this time. He had also written to her, not saying much. But she would know. She would tell his father then, in her own way.
    There was sudden movement abeam of a moored escort vessel, and, subconsciously, his bruised body responded. An Air-Sea Rescue launch, the colours vivid against the sloop’s hard-worked and dented plates. He thought of the Fisherman, the weathered features, the handshake. He would be back at sea again, a fisher of men. If only people knew.
    “ ’Tenant-Commander Kearton, sir?”
    He was still not used to it, and he was not the only one. The questioning glances, and even when he had seen his own reflection in a shop window it had been like glimpsing a stranger. Could that little piece of gold make such a difference?
    It was a tough-looking seaman, cap chin-stay pulled down, face reddened by the cold air. A leading-hand’s killick on one sleeve: probably the boat’s coxswain.
    “I’m from Kinsale , sir.” He indicated the case. “Ready if you are, sir.”
    His collar was pale, dhobied and scrubbed until it was almost colourless: a proper Jack, unlike the young rookie with his bag and hammock.
    Another seaman had appeared and was already picking up the case. He, too, had glanced at Kearton’s sleeve and the new gold lace. All right for some . But he said cheerfully, “My brother’s in Coastal Forces, sir.”
    The leading hand grinned. “Then God help us!”
    The same petty officer was waiting at the pier, where an assortment of boats was jockeying for position, offloading personnel, or waiting for others to arrive.
    “Can you take another one, sir?” He gestured to the young sailor. “’E’ll be adrift otherwise.”
    Kearton nodded. “He’s joining Kinsale . I’m only a passenger!”
    He climbed down into the boat and felt the engine quiver into life. He was back.

2
Of One Company
    HE WAS SUDDENLY wide awake, but for a few moments he could not recall having been asleep. His body reacted more instinctively, identifying the pressure against one arm and then the other, the vibration beneath and around him, even as his mind was still grappling with it.
    There was a tiny deckhead light, just enough to see the opposite side of the cabin, and the other bunk, obviously empty. And the outline of the door, the one thing that really mattered if the alarm bells or worse should shatter the silence.
    He lay listening to the sounds as the hull leaned over: the clatter of loose gear, boots thudding along the deck overhead. Familiar, yet so different from the thrust and plunge of an M.T.B. in any kind of sea.
    His first ship on active service, before he had been accepted for Coastal Forces, had also been a destroyer, one of the old V & W class,