Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [115]
When he came above into the air, he found the deck itself was wood, but there was still the steel of gun turrets, and the mass of the bridge and signal house above, the only place from which almost everything could be seen.
He felt the thrum of engines and the surge of power. They were already under way; the safe, familiar outline of Portsmouth harbor was slipping astern. Soon there would be nothing around them but the gray water, and whoever else was on it, or under its concealing surface.
He thrust the thought from his mind and clambered up to the signal house to report for duty, not to Archie, but to the chief signals officer.
Ragland was a quiet man of about thirty-five, with a plain, intelligent face and sandy red hair. But when he spoke there was a sincerity in his voice and an authority of manner that earned almost instant respect. There was no dissembling in him and no bravado. He made it known he required the same of others.
He did not betray by any flicker of expression that he knew Matthew was any different from the ordinary replacement: raw, uncertain of himself, but adequately trained.
“Matthews? Settled in?”
Matthew stood to attention. He had no seniority here, he was a new recruit, given rank only because of his knowledge of signals. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. My name is Ragland. You’ll report to me. I don’t know what you did ashore, but here obedience is exact and immediate, or you’ll end up at best in the brig, at worst at the bottom of the sea. There is no room for hesitation, individual will, or taste, and certainly not for any man who doesn’t fit in. We rely on each other, and a man who can’t be trusted is worse than useless, he’s a danger to the rest of us. Understood, Matthews?”
“Yes, sir.” He thought bitterly of how companionable that sounded, that perfect fellowship, the sort of thing people described in the trenches, and it did not apply to him at all. He could trust no one, except Archie, and Archie was remote from him in the hierarchy. He was more alone than he had ever been in his life. He knew the rudiments of his job, little more. He did not know the sea. To none of the men he would see day by day could he tell anything of the truth, nor dare he trust them. Somewhere on this ship there was a German agent who would think nothing of killing him if he blocked his path to the prototype. It was Matthew’s job to find him, before he found Matthew.
He had to do his job in signals without relying on anyone else. He could confide in no one and at all times must guard his tongue, the way he responded to anything, even the silent betrayal by his ignorance of duties, perhaps most of all the physical fear he had never had to face before.
“Then you had better familiarize yourself with your station, and the ship in general, and get about it,” Ragland told him. “You can start now.”
Matthew spent the rest of the day doing exactly as he was told, and trying to look as if it were natural to him. By the end of the evening he was becoming more used to the smells of salt, oil, and smoke, the sound of ship’s bells, and on deck the constant hiss and whine of wind and water. He was glad that at least the movement of the sea was something he was acquainted with.
Below he had eaten in the officer’s mess, listening a great deal more than talking. The food was good enough, but they were newly provisioned and he expected it to get worse. At least there was enough of it, and they were not under fire. He was a lot better off than Joseph had been most of the time.
He wondered about Joseph, aware that his conscience had driven him to go to Flanders in the first place, and perhaps it was all that made him consider returning now. His physical injuries were healing, but the wound to his mind and his emotions appeared to be deeper. Something