Spy’s Honour

CLIMBING SPY HILL
2

The first thing he noticed when he came on deck was the smell, steam and coal smoke, that was both exciting and threatening because it was the smell of travel itself. Just as, to Ranklin, the smell of wood smoke had once meant the security and comfort of his family home.

In the four months since the gun lines at Salonika, he had got back his normal slight tubbiness and his face its clean roundness, with a wisp of fair moustache as ordered by paragraph 1696 of King’s Regulations but invisible at more than a few paces. But what most people remembered about him was the permanent small smile that kept his blue eyes crinkled half-shut and gave him a look of innocent optimism, as if he were looking to buy a solid gold watch off the next stranger.

He had developed that expression over most of his thirty-eight years because he knew a more serious one looked absurd on his boyish face. But it was an expensive smile, attracting beggars and unnecessary but tippable help, and a misleading one. Ranklin leant firmly towards pessimism rather than optimism, no matter what King’s Regulations implied about it being All Right On The Day.

A long shudder rippled through the ferry as its engines slowed and they came into Cork harbour, past the Army forts that guarded the entrance and then the vast steel side of a four-funnelled liner pausing briefly on its run to, or from, America. In New York it might belong; here it looked ludicrously wrong, towering above the islands and headlands that cluttered the bay and standing rock steady while the tenders and bumboats serving it pitched and rolled in the swell.

Closer in lay a row of armoured cruisers, looking less warlike than industrial: all drab, stiff complication like bits chopped off a factory and floated out to sea. And beyond them the port of Queenstown sat on terraces cut into the face of a long ridge that, low as it was, almost scratched the gloomy March sky. The western end, he knew from a map, was called Spy Hill – but so was the highest point in many ports, meaning just the place from which incoming ships were first espied.

He peered through the thin drizzle, searching for Admiralty House, and knew it the moment he saw it because he had seen exactly the same building in every port of the Empire he had visited. With its canopied balconies, tree-shaded garden and tall flagpole, it gazed out over the heads of whatever natives it happened to be guarding with that serene superiority that only the Royal Navy could achieve.

Ranklin smiled at it with renewed pessimism and felt resentfully in his pocket to make sure he had enough change for the porters and cabbies waiting for him ashore.

“Bad luck, your kit not catching up with you,” the Admiral’s Secretary said, politely assuming Ranklin wasn’t dressed as a civilian on purpose. “Happens to us all. Sherry or pink gin? I don’t suppose you know anybody; I’ll introduce you.”

The Secretary was a Staff-Paymaster, with a Commander’s stripes and well senior to Ranklin; fiftyish, bald on top, with a ginger-grey imperial beard. The Admiral himself was at a conference at Dublin Castle: “He sends you his apologies,” the Secretary invented kindly.

The rest of the dinner party was all male, all Naval, and more jovial than the first mouthful of the first drink could justify. Either there was good news around, or the Admiral’s absence was good news itself.

“How’s London?” the most senior – a real Commander – asked.

“Cold and wet and all the taxis on strike,” Ranklin reported.

“Yes, I read something about that,” a senior Lieutenant chipped in. “The cost of petrol, isn’t it? Eightpence a gallon. Damn it, we must pay more than that here, don’t we?”

“Since you’re the only one with cash to waste keeping a car on these roads, you should know,” the Commander said.

The Lieutenant shook his head. He had a face that was both lean and limp with a puzzled expression, as if the world were always moving too fast for him. “I notice you didn’t turn down the offer of a lift, but damned if I know what I pay for petrol.”

There was a general chuckle and a junior Lieutenant forgot himself and tried to be funny.

“Why don’t you get one of your clerks to embezzle David’s pay?” he suggested to the Secretary. “He’d never notice and you could divvy it up among the rest of us.”

This time there was a general silence and the Commander growled: “Not in the best of taste.”

The Secretary stepped in to save the bewildered Lieutenant. “You’ve been on leave, haven’t you, Ian? Well, I’m afraid one of the Paymaster’s clerks is up for misuse of funds – and Lord knows what else, when the investigation’s complete. Sorry to wash our dirty linen in public, Ranklin.”

“Oh, I think the Army’s washing line’s quite as busy.” And they smiled gratefully.

“The funny thing,” David said, “is that he got caught trying to pay it back.”

“Ah,” the Secretary said. “That’s the great mistake. There’s no column in an accounts ledger for repentance. If you’ve been clever sneaking money out, you have to undo all that cleverness to get it back – and at best you end up with two irregularities instead of one and double the chance of starting an investigation.”

“I wonder what’s the theological view on that?” the Commander mused. “Repent not lest ye be found out. How’s that entered in the Great Ledger Up Yonder?”

“If you meet any ledgers in the next life,” the Secretary said with feeling, “it’s proof you’ve been posted to the Other Place. Shall we go in?”

Leading the way as their guest, Ranklin heard behind him David saying plaintively: “But where did he get the money to pay back?”

“Lucky with the gee-gees – at last,” the Commander suggested.

“But what races – in the weather we’ve been having?”