Floating Madhouse Read online

  The Ryazan had dwindled and vanished southeastward, while Suvarov, hugging the coast, altered by a few degrees to starboard. The swell had subsided, leaving the sea only slightly crumpled – just as well, since the intention was to anchor and have the colliers berth alongside. It was only a partial replenishment, a couple of hundred tons for each ship, and the work was completed well before sunset, all hands being then employed washing-down decks and gear. In a full-scale coaling every man on board including officers would have taken part – as was the custom also in the Royal Navy – and Michael, although a passenger, would have felt obliged to join in. He was glad there was no such obligation this time, since he wanted to have his gear more or less packed and ready prior to the possible call at Brest tomorrow – either to transfer to the Ryazan or to disembark for return to England – and it wouldn’t have helped to have it black with embedded coal dust. Narumov’s sailor-servant, Dombrovsky, was already sucking his teeth at having to wash and iron some shirts; Michael had told him at the outset that he’d give him a few roubles for the extra work, but it hadn’t seemed to cheer him up at all. He took on this surly look even when Narumov gave him dirty overalls to wash.

  ‘He’s a revolutionist, is what’s at the heart of it.’ Narumov winked at Michael. ‘Am I not right, Dombrovsky?’

  ‘It’s not for me to dispute with his worship the engineer-constructor.’ Sneering, gathering up shirts, socks and drawers. He had a thin, pale face and a narrow head, black hair which he plastered down with oil. Asking Michael – taking a chance on it, since this was a foreigner and the other only a technician, really, but his eyes and manner shifty: he was aware that from many officers the answer to such questioning might come as a punch in the face – ‘Will your English fleet be coming at us, then?’

  ‘Coming at you?’

  ‘On account of us sinking the trawlers, your honour.’

  Michael shrugged. It was the question they were all asking; even though most of them were still proud at having seen off the monkeys in the torpedo-boats. ‘It could happen, I suppose. But it’s up to the politicians, isn’t it?’

  ‘Might be ordered back, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Back?’ Narumov showed surprise. ‘You mean to the Baltic?’

  ‘Have a few ships left then, wouldn’t they, your worship? I mean, might have. Won’t if they leave us to the English.’

  Narumov nodded to Michael, ‘He’d love it if we were recalled. His Majesty and the government and the General Staff disgraced, riots all over the country, protest meetings – even mutinies.’

  Dombrovsky stock-still, arms full of dhobi, staring at Narumov across the cabin. Shrugging, then: ‘It’s you saying that, not me.’

  ‘But it’s the truth, you insolent swine! More to it than that too – this squadron’s the only hope we have of pulling our chestnuts out of the fire at Port Arthur and Liaotang. Recall it to Kronstadt, we’ve lost the war. Port Arthur and Vladivostok too, like as not. Greatest disaster ever for Russian arms. Match your wildest dreams – eh?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m of that mind, your worship?’

  ‘Go on with you.’ Narumov chuckling, winking again at Michael. ‘I don’t think it, I bloody know it. You’re one of hundreds in this ship, thousands in the squadron. We all know it, Dombrovsky. Cut along now – and cut out the dirty looks, eh – before someone takes you seriously…’

  * * *

  No letter. Those must have been despatches of some kind the Ryazan had brought. But Tasha would have written to him via Jane by this time, he felt sure she would have. The question was, if Jane had sent it on to the agent in Odessa – Gunsburg, the man Prince Ivan had told him about – how could Gunsburg know (or have known) where to forward it, when Rojhestvensky himself didn’t know where he’d be calling next?

  Michael attended the evening service, and after dinner played dominoes in the wardroom with Trafilin. Narumov was writing his letter and Sollogub was on the bridge. Officers and men were to sleep fully dressed at their action stations again, but most of the officers were in the wardroom until getting on for midnight. According to Padre Rasschakovsky, the captain of the Aurora had wirelessed for permission to put in to some convenient port – he’d suggested Plymouth – to put his wounded priest Afanasy into hospital, but Rojhestvensky had refused. Rasschakovsky, who’d heard of it from the torpedo lieutenant, had requested an interview to discuss the matter, but the admiral wouldn’t even see him, only sent a message by von Kursel that there were no ports they could put in at. Michael guessed at the reasoning behind what Rasschakovsky was condemning as callousness, and suggested it to him: that whether or not a war was on the cards, any Russian ship that had taken part in the Dogger Bank fracas and now entered a British port would almost certainly be arrested and held against settlement of future claims.

  Where Aurora and Donskoi had got to now, nobody seemed to know. Except presumably the admiral and Clapier de Colongue.

  Narumov wrote in his letter that night a concluding paragraph which he insisted on reading aloud to Michael.

  ‘“Today we were close to England’s southern shores. Involuntarily I pondered over this clod of earth – so powerful, so rich, so proud and so ill-disposed towards us. I am depressed – fearfully depressed. Anxiety presses on my soul! What would I not give to be with you now! In so many ways, not simply in order not to be where I am. But how exhausting it all is! Lying on my bed last night I watched the rats making themselves at home in my cabin. I used to sleep with my feet towards the door, but have now put my pillow there because of the rats. They can jump from the writing-table on to the settee, and from there could easily have jumped on my head. The Englishman who is still occupying the spare bunk does not appear to notice them.”’

  * * *

  The division would not be calling in at Brest. This emerged at breakfast, Ignatzius explaining that there were reports of heavy coastal fog in that area and that the approaches in such conditions were especially hazardous. Where they were at that moment there was rain, no fog at all – somewhere off Ushant, Michael guessed, going by his own estimates of speed and distance; in which case there’d be an alteration to port very shortly, to head southwest across Biscay. Vigo, Ignatzius confirmed, was now their destination. Michael guessed, and Sollogub agreed with him, that the story of fog on the French northwest coast was a fabrication, that Rojhestvensky had probably decided not to take his chances with the French, might have had some advice or warning in the despatches Zakharov had brought. But whatever the reason, it meant a lost chance of landing and/or receiving mail. Brest, Sollogub told him, had been on their itinerary right from the start.

  From Vigo, send a letter straight to her at Yalta?

  There’d be no risk in it. As far as he knew, no one in this ship knew anything about Tasha. Prince Igor (or Ivan) might conceivably have arranged for his correspondence to be monitored on board the Ryazan – on a pretext of security, perhaps, of their English guest passing intelligence to the Japanese – but until departure-day from Libau nobody could have known he’d be joining the Suvarov. And Igor would have played it very carefully, wouldn’t have risked arousing Zakharov’s suspicions of the truth, Zakharov then backing out of their squalid deal. In fact, even from Ryazan the despatch of letters should be safe enough: and completely so in any port of call where landing was permitted and one could post them ashore. Except if there were suspicions of communicating with the enemy – or with the British Admiralty even, in which case one might be watched even on Zakharov’s initiative. Therefore, direct to Yalta now, but from the Ryazan play safe, use Jane.

  Selyeznov came to find him during the forenoon, ostensibly to confirm that they were by-passing Brest – the chief of staff wanted to make sure he knew it – but also to tell him in confidence that they’d been shadowed during the night by three of four ships, certainly warships and probably cruisers, which had overtaken the division from astern, showing lights when first sighted but then dousing them, passing darkened up the division’s
starboard side, later reappearing ahead and on the landward side, maintaining that position until shortly before dawn.

  ‘Assumption is they were British, I suppose. Could they have been French?’

  ‘The admiral is assuming British. Circumstances being as they are.’

  Whether it augured well or badly one could hardly guess. Well, on second thoughts, one could. Political cut and thrust in progress, threats and bargaining and so forth, and Jackie Fisher meanwhile ensuring that the hour by hour positions, courses and speeds of all the squadron’s separate divisions – two of batdeships, probably two of cruisers, plus transports and auxiliaries, some of which would be accompanying the destroyers – were precisely known, so there’d be minimal delay in implementing whatever orders might eventually be forthcoming.

  There were no ships trailing them now. In the whole grey lumpy circle of visibility there were only the four Suvarov class vessels, the Anadyr and Sibir and another transport, the Malay, which had joined them either last night or earlier this morning. Both she and the Anadyr laden with coal, Selyeznov informed him: although German colliers would be awaiting them at Vigo. The Sibir, bigger than the others, was carrying field-guns and ammunition to be landed at Port Arthur.

  ‘Any indications yet whether the Spaniards will let us in?’

  A plump hand to the newly trimmed moustache: ‘My impression is that the admiral intends to take us in in any case. There’s really no good reason we should not expect to be treated with normal courtesy.’

  On the 25th, it was rougher, and Narumov was seasick. He had been since the previous evening, and noisily so during the night. He had a bucket on the deck beside his bunk and frequently apologized. But after Michael had assured him they’d be out of the dreaded Biscay by evening and that having suffered this initiation he’d be all right thereafter, he began to recover, even to the extent of coming on deck for a look at Spain – Cape Torinana and the Spanish Finisterre – after which he felt well enough to resume work on his letter, Dombrovsky having peevishly taken the bucket away and this time not brought it back.

  Michael wrote to Tasha:

  My own darling. I think of you all the time I’m awake and dream of you when I sleep. That is not just a turn of phrase or said to advance my cause with you, it is simply a statement of the truth: I long for you, physically and mentally, day and night. This letter will be posted in Vigo in northwest Spain, where we should be tomorrow – our first port of call I may say since leaving Libau – if the Spaniards will allow us to lie at anchor there and replenish with coal and so forth. Long before you receive this you will have heard about the trouble we ran into in the North Sea, resulting in some fishing-boats being sunk: in the mind of the admiral (and others) there was an erroneous belief that there were Japanese amongst them. We have not heard yet what’s to come of it, but there’s bound to be a tremendous fuss and possibly – at the very worst – even war between Russia and Britain. If it comes to that I shall have no option but to disembark, at Vigo or wherever else we may happen to be, and in such event, Tasha darling girl, I will telegraph to your mother suggesting that the two of you should travel to England, to my mother’s house – where you stayed when you were eight years old and the cook referred to you as ‘a limb of Satan’ – remember? I have only to close my eyes and I have all that – in a sense I have, what I suppose I mean is that I long for it – long for you, my Tasha. But now burn this, please – at once, don’t risk keeping it no matter how secure you may think it is; as we both know, your father is not above employing spies. I’m endangering you by putting even that much on paper, I only have to because it’s the most important thing in the world for you to know that my heart and soul are exactly as they were when we were together – and will never change…

  I hope enormously that in the circumstances you and your mother will agree that in our personal situation the sooner you’re out of Russia the better: if there is a war I could understand your feeling that it might be your patriotic duty to remain, but the fact is that once your father heard I had left the squadron he would undoubtedly have you brought to Injhavino, or St Petersburg, even, if necessary, by force – well, you know it, and I can only beg you and your mother to anticipate any such move on his part by doing as I suggest. Naturally I would join you in England as soon as I was able, although I would have to report to our Admiralty first, making myself available for sea duty. So – I’d telegraph to your mother and also to mine, who at present knows nothing about you and me; once I tell her she’ll do all she can to help us. Of this I’ve no doubt at all, only it’s best that for the time being she shouldn’t know, simply because she and your father do from time to time exchange letters, and she might let something slip or even try to plead our case for us – which she might not realize would be like tapping a stone for blood, as well as dangerous. Tasha, my love, I believe I can safely address this to you at Yalta, but you must not send letters to me to any address except Jane’s in England. At this time of writing I am still not yet on board the Ryazan, still in the flagship, Suvarov. It’s conceivable that the Ryazan may join us in Vigo in the next day or two: but that’s why I can post this to you in Yalta quite safely, and may in fact be able to do so – posting them ashore that is, even after I move into Z’s ship – I must add if I do, if I don’t have to leave the squadron altogether – in the event of war. Forgive me, I realize this letter is becoming somewhat convoluted: when I sat down to write to you I did not have in mind all these practical details, I had – and have - only the most urgent desire to talk to you, my head teeming with thoughts of your sweetness, of your lips and eyes, the cloud of soft dark hair framing the loveliness of your face – oh, and your voice, my darling, your whispers in my ear, the whole slim beauty of you in my arms. I have only to close my eyes and I have all that – in a sense I have, what I suppose I mean is that I long for it – long for you, my Tasha. But now burn this, please – at once, don’t risk keeping it no matter how secure you may think it is; as we both know, your father is not above employing spies. I’m endangering you by putting even that much on paper, I only have to because it’s the most important thing in the world for you to know that my heart and soul are exactly as they were when we were together – and will never change …

  Morning, October 26th, approaching Vigo; sea only a little choppy now, and a promise of warmth in the southerly breeze. They’d be anchoring at about ten-thirty, Sollugub told Michael, but an hour or more before that entering completely sheltered water – Ria Vigo – with the town about ten miles inland on the starboard hand. Breakfast in the wardroom was consumed hurriedly, everyone being keen to see this landfall and heartened by the prospect of fine weather ahead. Baylin took Flagmansky up on deck with him, insisting that there was no point in a dog being well-travelled if it had no visual memory of the places it had passed through.

  They’d been shadowed again last night, Selyeznov told Michael, joining him and Narumov briefly on the after compass-platform. As before, the shadowers had vanished before the light came, but by that time it would have been obvious to them that the division was shaping a course for Vigo.

  ‘So your compatriots know where we’ll be now – and no doubt the authorities in Madrid will have been advised.’

  ‘I suppose that’s not unlikely.’

  ‘And requested not to accommodate us beyond some minimal length of time.’

  ‘You sound as if you believe war really might be imminent.’

  ‘Well.’ The silly moustache receiving more attention. All three of them gazing out ahead and to port at the rocky coastline, the wide mouth of the inlet – and inland, distantly, snow on mountain peaks glittering in the early sun. Selyeznov said portentously, ‘We are at war, with those who are your allies. From that as the starting-point, and what one might call logical progression – and sorry as I am to say this…’

  What was really irking him, Michael realized – only half listening, and Selyeznov then departing for’ard – was how Tasha would react, if it did com
e to war now. It hadn’t really hit him until he’d finished his letter and then read through it: that she was in her heart and bones essentially Russian: and that if England went to war against her country…

  Face the truth, Mikhail Ivan’ich. You wouldn’t rat on it – if you’d been brought up in Russia, the Russian half then naturally predominating. Nor would Anna Feodorovna – or Tasha, for God’s sake: remembering her for instance on the subject of Russian-ness just a few years ago – 1900, when he’d been twenty-four. He had been promised the command of an old destroyer – a command, for God’s sake, at that age! – but had been obliged to apply for leave in order to escort his mother to Russia and the sickbed of her mother, who was then over eighty and had been given only weeks or months to live. In being granted the ‘compassionate’ leave, he’d lost the promised command: another man had got it, and Michael had been left where he was; he’d return from leave to the same job – a more modern, larger destroyer certainly, but only as second in command.

  So the start of that trip had not been exactly joyous; but after a few days in the huge and gloomy old Sevasyeyev place – palace, virtually – at his mother’s suggestion he’d left her there and travelled on alone to Injhavino, not having seen any of the Volodnyakovs in the five years since Anna had brought her little girl to stay in Wiltshire. Anna he’d found just as alluring, despite her forty years, which one would never have guessed at; but Tasha, now fourteen, had looked and behaved more like seventeen – which wasn’t all that much younger than twenty-four. In any case hadn’t seemed to be: and his visit got off to a flying start through his having brought with him the mounted mask of the fox-cub from the hunt at which she’d been blooded: a complete surprise to her, since he’d never told her he’d had a taxidermist in Salisbury fix it up, with her name and that date on its wooden shield. She’d been first astonished, then wild with joy: ‘wild’ indeed being a word that tended to enter one’s thoughts and memories in respect of Tasha. In any case, being bound to get back to the Sevasyeyev place by a certain date, he’d had only a few days with her and her mother and a few other assorted Volodnyakovs – old Princess Olga for instance, Igor’s spinster sister who was well into her seventies and ran the household, and Ivan’s sons Stepan and Pyotr who with half a dozen paid retainers did all the work of the estate on which several hundred ‘souls’ had at one time laboured – but neither Igor nor Ivan had been there. And how that visit had come to mind now was from the concept of Russian-ness not only in Tasha but also in him – as she, aged fourteen, had put it to him so challengingly, on their way home from a day-long excursion, leaning from her saddle to grasp his arm: ‘How long before I see you again, Mikhail? Why not more often? Why don’t you come to Yalta this very next summer? You’re Russian, you know: your brother got all the English blood, you got all the Russian, you belong here!’