There is a little bar in the wardroom where a
Wren serves the flat beer that no one likes. The beer isn’t good, but everyone
has a glass of it, and it is hard to swallow, because so much of you is taken
up with the big bubble.
On the wall there is a clock and the hands
creep slowly, much too slowly, toward the operation time. The waiting is the
terrible part. The weather reports come in, There is wind, but perhaps not
enough to cancel the Thing. Dozens of the little ships are going out. It is an
Allied operation. There are Dutch boats, and Polish boats, and English. The
Poles are great fighters. This is their kind of work. When the little ships
attacked the Scharnhorst, slipping through the Channel, it is said that
a Polish sailor was down on the prow of his torpedo boat, calmly firing at the
great steel battleship with a rifle. The Dutch have a calm, cold courage, and
the British pretend, as usual, it is some kind of a garden party they are going
to.
At ten minutes to the time the men start to get
into their suits, complicated coats and trousers of oilskin that tie closely
around the ankles. A towel is wrapped around the neck and the coat buttoned in
tight about it. The little ships are wet. The green water comes over the bow
constantly and there isn’t much cover. In action the men will presumably wear
helmets on their heads, but this is only a presumption. Now they stand about,
padded and wadded, their arms a little out from their sides, held out by the
thick clothing. The leader of this group is a young man of great age. He is
twenty-two and he came from a destroyer to the little MTBs. The big hand of the
clock creeps on to the time of departure. The commander says, almost casually,
and just as it is on the minute, “All ready?”
All the young men stride heavily out of the
door, down the steps to the hidden pens where the little stinging fish lie.
There is a roar as engine after engine starts. Now the bubble bursts in your
stomach and you can breathe again. Everything is all right. It’s a good night,
misty and with little visibility. The boats back, one by one, from their berths
and fall into line. A tiny blinker signals from the leader, the great motors
thunder, the boats leap forward, and the white wake Vs out. The green water
comes in over the bow. The crew huddles down, braced against the wind and the
sea—no one has mentioned the war.
THE COTTAGE THAT WASN’T THERE
