Floating Madhouse Read online

  ‘No.’ Folding it; he was going to read the other two letters in his cabin. He pushed himself up. ‘This one was written at just about that time. But I’ve others to read, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Study those in peace and quiet, eh?’

  Baranov, the doctor, squinting – a letter in his hands and a cigarette wagging between his lips, its smoke in his eyes. Michael agreed: ‘Exactly.’

  ‘These are the ones that will really tell you does she love you, therefore. Amateur psychologist at work, you see. But good luck…’

  * * *

  Jane’s second letter, dated October 26th and written in a hurry, was all in one scrawled paragraph.

  Michael – honestly, what do you people think you’re doing, savaging our poor fishermen? There’s a rumour now, to crown all that, that a lot of great ugly-looking leviathans are parading off our own south coast! There’s talk of going to WAR, Michael! If it happens, what will they do with you – make you walk the plank? George has been over to Billy Selkirk’s place to use his telephone but he’d already heard a great deal about it last night at the Armitage’s, whose other guests had just arrived from London. Trafalgar Square has been jammed solid with protesters – a mob of them in Downing Street too – and we hear the fleet’s being mobilized. I daren’t cut this out of The Times because it would drive George mad, but they’re saying things like ‘The mind of the Government, like the mind of the nation, is made up’, and describing your Admiral Rogersvosky – who must be a homicidal maniac? – as ‘the ham in a strategic sandwich’ – whatever that means. I suppose that he’ll be eaten up – by Lord Fisher perhaps. Really, Michael, what have you done? I must rush now anyway – the trap is as you might say ‘alongside’ and I have duty calls to make, will drop this off at the P.O. on my way through the village. I suppose – seriously – if there is a war they’ll put you ashore somewhere or other, so we might have you back with us much sooner than we’d expected – but then might it not be difficult getting You Know Who out of Russia?

  The letter that mattered, now: from Yalta, addressed to Leitnant Genderson on board the Knyaz Suvarov, care of the Gunsburg agency in Odessa.

  Mikhail my darling

  I’ve had your sweet letter that you posted somewhere in Denmark, telling me that you are (or were) in the flagship, not in Z’s ship, and in view of this I’m taking a chance and writing to you through Gunsburg’s instead of that long way round. You’ll say I’m naughty to take such a chance, but anyway, here’s the good news – I am very well. Aren’t you relieved to hear it? (He was. Had closed his eyes and thanked God. It meant she wasn’t pregnant.) But Michael, you’ve been in the thick of it now – fighting off Japanese torpedo-boats in the English Channel! There are some asserting that it was a mistake, that the English are right and there were no torpedo-boats, only fishing smacks – you wrote only a day or so before that there were ‘silly rumours’ going around which could not possibly be true, so perhaps that’s it. Now we hear that His Majesty has apologized and that our government will be paying thousands of roubles in compensation, despite which England is still threatening to go to war! Well, I’ll hear from you again soon, and you’ll tell me how it looks from wherever you are now; if it did come to war, you’d be landed, wouldn’t you? In such a case, will you telegraph us? Mama feels that in the event of war, leaving Russia might be difficult, since frontiers would be closed: all I can say is that nothing on earth – war, closed frontiers, anything –- could change my love for you or my need to be back in your arms, my precious darling, at the earliest moment – in fact now, this minute! God, if it were only possible! Telegraph, my darling, and I’ll come to you – no matter where you are or how many frontiers are closed against me! Now I live for your next letter. We know your squadron did not stop in Brest, so heaven knows where you may have posted it or whether you’d have sent it to me here or via England. I say ‘it’, but perhaps you’ve written several times! War wouldn’t halt the postal services, would it? What a ghastly prospect that would be! My darling, I love you and I long for you. How many more times will we say this to each other? I suppose continually, until we are back where we belong, in each other’s arms. For me my love for you is in the air I breathe, in every thought that passes through my head, it possesses me absolutely. What I could have thought I was alive for – whether I was alive even – before that night at Injhavino, I can’t imagine. Except that – yes, I can – it started here in Yalta, didn’t it – truly, didn’t it? Unless it might have been the year before. Well, I could say I’ve been mad about you since I was quite a little girl; but for you, my lover, wasn’t this really the time and place?

  12

  A thin cry from down for’ard of ‘Clear anchor!’ was repeated to Zakharov by Burmin; would have originated with Lieutenant Vetrov, foc’sl officer. Zakharov responded through rigid-seeming lips, ‘Slow ahead both engines,’ and a petty officer rang that order down on the engine-room telegraph. Zakharov stooping to the funnel-shaped copper top of a voicepipe to tell the helmsman in the steering position four decks lower, ‘Port ten. Steer northeast by north.’ Aiming to take them out clear of what looked like a rapidly worsening mess about a mile ahead of the Ryazan – trembling all through her iron frame as engines and screws began to churn. At higher revs you wouldn’t get that vibration effect, Michael guessed. He’d been here only about five minutes, Zakharov having sent him a message please to come on up – which had come as a surprise, especially as one hadn’t given the reassurance Z had been asking for last night on the subject of the gap between his age and Tasha’s; Z then dropping the subject, seemingly giving Michael up as useless. This in any case was how he recalled or reconstructed it – in one sleepless period during the night wondering whether he shouldn’t have been more diplomatic; having months to spend now in this man’s ship, no option but to get along with him: but rejecting that, finally, for the plain fact that in discussing Tasha there could be no compromise.

  Here on the bridge, Zakharov had greeted him with a nod: Michael then keeping out of the way, watching and listening, mentally translating and comparing the Russian orders and acknowledgements with their equivalents in English. He’d borrowed a Russian seamanship manual for reference and study, and there was very little difference in approach, once translated; if he’d been in Zakharov’s place at the binnacle his own orders in imperfect Russian would almost from scratch have produced the desired results. The port helm order now producing a slow swing of the ship’s head to starboard – slow because she was only moving very slowly, this far, and the quartermaster would in any case be easing the degree of wheel as she approached the ordered course. Which would take her reasonably well clear of the mêlée of transports and Enqvist’s three cruisers, who’d made the mistake of moving up astern of the old Oslyabya, who for some reason – aberration – had broken her anchor out before the Suvarov and begun forging ahead as if to lead them westward. Had now stopped, however: by the look of it she might have her engines running astern. Her captain fearful of Rojhestvensky’s wrath, no doubt – and more than likely receiving clear indications of it by semaphore or wireless. Lucky perhaps not to have been shot at – yet. The transports too were all over the place – wallowing hulks pointing in every direction and all of them on the move, making things worse minute by minute and pretty well surrounding the battleships, impeding their movements. Rojhestvensky, Michael thought – adjusting his binoculars’ focus on that slowly shifting area of confusion – Jane’s ‘homicidal maniac’ would not be at his sunniest, right at this moment.

  The telegraph clanged. Stopping again, he guessed. Time, seven-thirty. Weighing had been scheduled for seven, and the Ryazan’s capstan had begun dragging her up to her anchor precisely on the hour. Coaling of the battleships had been completed at two a.m. And Felkerzam’s Suez-bound division had sailed last evening at nine, in heavy rain which in the dying light had rendered even their lights invisible within minutes – and which would not have made the Suvarov division’s coaling opera
tion very pleasant: must in fact have resulted in vast quantities of wet coal pounding down the chutes, creating a risk – later on, especially, when the squadron would be getting into the tropics and those internal spaces became ovens – of bunker fires.

  The engines had stopped, and she was losing way. Zakharov swinging his glasses to the hospital-ship – also lying stopped, evidently following this ship’s movements, having been told, as her master would have been by Rojhestvensky or his chief of staff, that the Ryazan would be his ship’s individual escort. Burmin had explained over breakfast that while the Ryazan came under Rear-Admiral Enqvist for general administrative purposes, she was in fact at Rojhestvensky’s immediate beck and call, no reference to Enqvist being necessary even as a matter of courtesy: Rojhestvensky might, at a minute’s notice, send her ahead on a scouting mission, or to close-in off some port for purposes of communication, i.e. to send a telegram to St Petersburg through shoreside facilities – the German wireless system having proved to have a range of no more than thirty or forty miles at best. The rest of the time she’d be nursemaid – or chaperone – to the Orel.

  Zakharov glanced round, saw Michael and beckoned. Michael joined him and Burmin in the bridge’s forefront.

  ‘What you see going on there, Mikhail Ivan’ich, is not typical of Russian fleet manoeuvres. The battleships haven’t exercised together to anything like the extent they should have, and the Oslyabya, of course – well, words fail one. The transports I won’t even mention. My concern is that perhaps you will – you’ll be sending despatches from time to time, I imagine?’

  ‘No, sir. Only a full report of conclusions after – well, after we’ve relieved Port Arthur.’

  Another hard stare: as if wondering whether to believe him. Or to believe that he believed in the relief of Port Arthur being even on the cards. There were advantages in that complete lack of facial expression, Michael thought.

  Glasses up again now anyway, on the slow-moving circus under its pall of black smoke. Arkoleyev and Skalinin had been critical of the soft German coal last evening: even when it was embarked dry, for heaven’s sake. Zakharov nodding in the direction of the battleships: ‘There are some good men there, believe me. Ignatzius, for one, but also – well, all of them – Bukhvostov of the Alexander, Serebryanikov of the Borodino – and Jung who has the Oryol. Snag is, the older men were trained in sail and some of ’em still think in sail… Ah –’ muttering to himself now – ‘Oslyabya’s out of the way at last. So the transports now – yes, getting them sorted out – to some extent—’

  ‘Captain, sir.’ Galikovsky – torpedo lieutenant, therefore also wireless-telegraphy lieutenant – worried-looking, hovering…

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They’re using their wireless almost continually, sir, and it seems the Anadyr’s got her anchor snagged in a sea-bed cable. The sea-bed cable—’

  ‘This one linking Tangier and all the rest of Morocco to Gibraltar and points north, sir. It’s shown clearly on the chart.’ Radzianko had brought the chart with him from the table – there was a chart-table here on the bridge, with a sheltering canopy over it. Radzianko looking rather pleased about the Anadyr’s mishap. Winking at Michael: back to Zakharov then, who’d sighed, shaken his head: growling, ‘They’ll have to wait for divers. Either that or lose the anchor and a shackle or two of cable. In which case it’s likely we’ll be told to wait for the divers and bring it along – since we have the speed…’

  ‘Beg pardon, your honour.’ A petty officer telegraphist – although they were actually called torpedo-machinists. But he was a chief P.O. – chief yeoman of signals, in RN terminology – grey-headed, with a school-masterly look about him – except for tattooings of whales and mermaids on his forearms. He was offering a sheet of signal-pad to Galikovsky, who motioned to him to give it to Zakharov. The chief yeoman muttered, ‘Told ’em cut the cable, your honour. Order from the admiral to Anadyr.’

  ‘What cable?’

  ‘The sea-bed telegraph cable, sir. Anadyr’s to haul it up and cut it.’

  * * *

  ‘The reason I invited you up here –’ Zakharov, tired from half an hour spent watching the miserable performance up ahead, had lowered his binoculars and beckoned to Michael to join him – ‘is to have you accustom yourself to the running of the ship. Spend as much time as you like on this bridge. Assist with the navigation: well, play that softly of course, but – just use your head… As I was explaining yesterday, or began to, rather than spend your days as a passenger – foreigner at that – it would be in the interests of the ship – your own too, probably – for you to become part of the – community. Morale’s of the highest importance, and in this long haul there are going to be strains enough – although I’ve done my best to weed out potential trouble-makers it’s something we must all remain alert to… On the political front, are you aware of the state of affairs in Russia?’

  ‘To some extent, yes. Not a happy state of affairs at all.’

  Might have blurted, Oh yes, Tasha says… Thinking of that passage in her letter about revolutionary activity in the Tambov-Saratov districts: Injhavino lying about midway between the two – and the Volodnyakov estate actually a dozen versts outside Injhavino… Zakharov saying, ‘It’s a bad time that will pass, please God. Defeats tend to sap morale. We need a victory now – better still a whole string of ’em, the Japanese sent reeling… How would you feel about that, incidentally?’

  ‘You mean as an Englishman, when my country is—’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a political thing, isn’t it – and Britain’s alliance with the Japanese is only defensive. And obviously, being with this squadron – and since I’d rather return alive than drown—’

  ‘That’s it, then. When you feel up to it you might even stand a watch. When you’ve got the hang of our systems.’

  ‘Only snags are – one, I’m at a loss over signals in Russian, either by light or semaphore, let alone flags. So if I was on the bridge alone—’

  ‘You won’t be, you’ll have the signalmen of the watch to rely on, and a junior officer of the watch to assist you. Never less than that. If you wanted to study the Tabulevich system – I’d guess you’d be the first non-Russian ever to do so.’

  ‘Intriguing. And pass the time.’

  ‘A second point?’

  ‘The political angle – I’d suggest that when or if it comes to action—’

  ‘You’ll be an observer, nothing more.’

  ‘I could help your doctor, of course – stretcher-bearing, first aid…’

  ‘Indeed, why not?’ He put his glasses up again, studied the black smoke-covered confusion of ships on the bow to port. ‘He is getting them sorted out – I think… But thank God there’s some way to go before we meet the enemy. No “if” about it, incidentally, you can be sure we will, Mikhail Ivan’ich – in the Yellow Sea if not before. Togo isn’t going to sit in port and watch us steam past him to Port Arthur, is he! Even if Port Arthur’s still holding out by that time… Anyway – about covers all we had to discuss, doesn’t it?’ He raised his voice: ‘Half ahead together.’ The telegraph clanged: Zakharov glanced round to check on the position of the hospital-ship – still lying there waiting – and Michael, accepting dismissal, moved away, making room up front for Burmin and/or Radzianko – or Michman Egorov, who was also now in attendance.

  Propping himself against the side of the bridge he put his glasses up, focused on the squadron which under its drifting canopy of black smoke was at last getting into the formation ordered by Rojhestvensky. Roughly so, anyway – the port column by no means straight as yet, but – getting there. The Anadyr’s adventure with the cable would have been the main cause of delay: but in fact she must have made short work of severing Morocco from communication with the outside world. Perhaps that had been the quickest way out of it. Rojhestvensky’s ruthlessness therefore, more than actual lunacy: but another heavy bill, no doubt, for St Petersburg to settle, this time with the French. In
any event, that lot was on the move at last: the starboard column led by the Suvarov, with her consorts in line-astern, and only the older battleship Oslyabya noticeably out of station, as well as emitting twice as much smoke as any other. The port column still snaking or zigzagging across each other’s wakes – led, peculiarly enough, by the Kamchatka. Radzianko had shown Michael the formation-diagram, over breakfast, and in that column the repair-ship was to lead the Anadyr, Sibir, Meteor, Korea, Malaya, Rus, and the refrigerated storeship Espérance – presumably on charter from French owners. The Rus was the tug, formerly Roland, in which Selyeznov had disported himself so spectacularly in the Great Belt; she’d been on charter then from civilian owners but had since been purchased and re-named.

  It was a pleasant morning. Getting on for nine-thirty now and the sun well up out of the coastal mists, climbing into a clear sky while a small breeze from the east no more than wrinkled the sea’s surface. And the transports had got themselves into a single column.

  Radzianko joined him, gesturing towards the now comparatively well-ordered squadron, ‘Progress, eh?’ That rather oily smile. ‘But look at this.’ Producing a sheet of signal-pad from his pocket. ‘Specimens of the flagship’s signals over the past hour. I’m keeping it for my scrap-book.’

  In an educated hand: doubtless copied from the signal-log by himself…

  Where do you think you’re going?

  Increase your speed!

  Stop engines immediately!

  Do not continue in that direction!

  Steer more to port!

  Get out of my way, you idiot!

  Are you intentionally forcing me to run aground?

  Michael handed it back. ‘Priceless.’ Zakharov had put on more revs: Ryazan was up to ten or twelve knots now, steering to close up on the other cruisers, which were in a double quarterline formation – Nakhimov in the lead flying Enqvist’s flag and with Aurora and Dmitry Donskoi more or less on her quarters, cutting across from the deep-held where they’d been playing safe, moving now to take station astern of the main body. Neither Ryazan nor the hospital-ship had been shown on that formation diagram: presumably they’d be tagging on astern.