And yet it could have so easily gone the other way. Marriott sipped the hot coffee and allowed his gaze to wander around the harbour. Even here it was evident. The Battle of the Atlantic had turned in the navy's favour after years of hitting back and losing thousands of tons of shipping every week. But despite the devastation to German dockyards as in Kiel, the U-Boats had kept on appearing in the Atlantic. They had achieved this by spreading all their ship construction and using prefabricated parts which had been made in remotely situated factories and then transported and assembled far away from the danger zones. There was a large team of submarine experts here right now, they said, and discoveries of an even newer class of U-Boat had caused a few awed glances.

  Somewhere a bugle blared, and from a nearby minesweeper Marriott heard the trill of a boatswain's call over the tannoy.

  Then the quartermaster's voice, pitiless and uncaring for those he was rousing from bunk and hammock.

  'Wakey, wakey, rise an' shine! All hands, all hands, rise an' shine! Hands off cocks an' on socks!'

  He smiled despite his tense nerves. What did the Germans make of that, he wondered?

  He yawned and decided to have a bath before the watch-keeping officers formed a queue.

  Inside the cabin again he stripped off his night clothes and stared at himself in a mirror. Then he saw a newspaper lying on the other officer's neatly made-up bunk and glanced at it casually.

  He felt the hard pressure of a chair under his naked buttocks and found that his hands were shaking. It was yesterday's paper. That meant that today's date ...

  The cabin seemed to swim round in a wild dance, objects merging together, so that when the steward clattered the coffeepot and tray together beyond the door he felt like calling out, even as a last spark of sanity told him it was useless.

  Today was the day. Exactly one year ago.

  In his mind's eye he could see it all so clearly. A dawn like this one, the sunlight misty with smoke, not from underground fires and the sappers' clearance of rubble, but from guns. Guns from the sea, from over the horizon and beyond it. Barges spitting out thousands of rockets, hurling tons of high-explosives on to the Normandy coastline. The houses nearest to the coast were all ablaze, the shallows full of beached landing-craft, or those wrecked in the first attack. The troops were somewhere inland, the tanks swallowed up beyond the fires, leaving only the knocked-out ones as evidence of their contested advance. Others lay half-submerged where they had fallen from shelled landing-craft, their crews trapped inside.

  And yet despite the din and the casualties, the sight of ships being straddled and apparently destroyed, then emerging through the spray and smoke, their guns high-angled and shooting inland to cover the advancing armies, there was an unspoken feeling that given time and luck they would eventually win a total victory.

  The waiting and the foul-ups were behind them. The impossible reality that they had succeeded in taking all their beach-heads at the first attempt had got home to them. Thousands of vessels great and tiny, millions of men with all the weapons and transport to support them had been got ashore. The rest was up to the generals and the air marshals. Marriott's boat had been working offshore near Arromanches, liaising between the British on Gold Beach and the Canadian Third Division at Juno.

  To this day Marriott was unsure what exactly had happened after the collision. The tide had been on the ebb, and the first bombardment of the day had made all thought almost impossible. Or perhaps I won't let myself think about it. The bridge of the MGB had been packed, for apart from the usual team they had been carrying five Canadian officers, who had been planning where they would build fresh supports for the tank reinforcements which were expected the next day. A very early breakfast before things hotted up, as the coxswain had put it. The usual passing round of cigarettes and tobacco pouches, nervous grins, waves to some of their consorts as they rode above their sleek silhouettes on the oily water, thoroughbreds amongst the flotsam of war.

  Beri-Beri's had been the nearest boat when Tim had yelled that there was an obstruction in the water. A huge anti-tank device, missed or ignored by the frogmen who had worked even before the landings to destroy them.

  'Wouldn't get me doing that job!' someone had said. 'Posthumous VC if all goes well – Jerry firing-squad if it doesn't!'

  Marriott had felt it immediately and had used the contesting power of his screws to fight clear of the hidden iron girders.

  He was on his feet now, oblivious to his shivering nakedness. 'We must get her off!' He spoke aloud, as he had on that day a year ago. 'Number One, prepare an anchor and the boat lowering-party. We'll kedge her free before it's too late!'

  But it was too late already.

  An abbreviated whistle, then a violent bang, salt water cascading all around, soaking, ice-cold, tasting of cordite.

  Beri-Beri's boat had come about and was standing bows-on, increasing speed, while an armed trawler was also steering towards them.

  Tim had called, 'She's hard and fast, sir!'

  Marriott remembered running along the after deck so that he could see the jagged tank-trap shimmering just below the surface, like a creature from a horror film.

  In no time at all it would be impossible to free her. The sea was dropping lower every minute.

  In his mind he could still hear a loud-hailer across the water. 'Bale out! The bastard's got you zeroed-in!'

  One more try. Spoken or thought, he did not know. There was just a chance at full power to rip her free. It would mean a dockyard job but –

  It had all stopped right there.

  He had jammed one foot on the bridge ladder when a shell had hit it on the opposite side. Shaking like a drunk he had dragged himself up the rest of the way and had felt his stomach collapse at the sight. The bridge was already ablaze, signal flares and belts of machine-gun ammunition joining in a shattering chorus over and amongst the corpses. Corpses? They had not been even that. Bloodied rags and gruel, burning clothing, blue and khaki, and something which still clung to life, which was screaming, and continued to scream for an eternity after the flames had engulfed him. No arms, his face gone, it could have been any one of them.

  The next shell had hit the hull directly abeam. Even now Marriott still believed he had seen it ripping across the water towards him. Witnesses had agreed it was a flat-trajectory shell, the sort mounted on or used against heavily armoured tanks.

  Marriott could not recall hearing anything. Or perhaps there had been no more to hear. The fire had burst up from the engineroom and he had seen vague figures running about the deck or vanishing over the side, burning like human torches.

  She had gone down quickly, her bows dipping and spurting out compressed steam from the fires between decks even as Marriott had found his first lieutenant pinned under the derrick used for hoisting ammunition and loading stores. The steel had been raw in the sunny haze, cut clean in two by the shell as it had exploded.

  They had lain with their faces pressed together while the flames had spurted along the deck towards them.

  Tim Elliott, his first lieutenant and friend since they had commissioned the boat together.

  Marriott had been unable to believe it. How could it be? He must have pleaded, shouted his name a hundred times, unable to accept that the eyes were without understanding. That there was barely anything left of him below the waist.

  Two seamen had dragged him to the side and together they had fallen into the sea. The rest were blurred incidents. A last, dull explosion, then groping hands, dragging at his burned skin and torn clothing, the feel of a boat backing and thrashing away from flaming fragments.

  Then Beri-Beri's face as close as his had been to Tim's.

  'Let it go! Don't fight it!' He had tried to cover him with somebody's duffel coat, as he had when the ML had brewed up just nights ago.

  Marriott gripped the side of the bunk and tried to control his shivering limbs.

  The door opened and the elderly two-and-a-half ringer stepped quietly over the coaming.

  He saw Marriott and gave a startled gasp. 'Sorry, chum, did I disturb you? I was at an all-night poker party in the Guards' mess.'

  Marriott stared at him. Ashamed and yet grateful to the ex-stockbroker who had saved his reason just as surely as Beri-Beri had once done.

  'It's all right, sir. Couldn't sleep.'

  The other man sat down. He did not seem to notice Marriott's nakedness. But he had already seen the livid scars of the phosphorus burns on his wrists and legs and shoulder. The rest he could guess.

  'It'll take time.'

  Marriott stared at the deck. 'I expect so.' He gripped his hands together as tightly as he could. Otherwise I shall break down. Like that time in Iceland when he was 'getting over it', as the MO had called it. He had burst into tears and hadn't stopped crying for a week. Just like that. Bomb-happy, round the bend, over the hill. The things he had often said about others.

  'Care for a quick snort?' The officer pulled a silver flask from his coat. 'Vodka, I'm afraid. Got it off the Russian liaison chap.'

  Marriott took it and let the raw spirit flow over his tongue. Getting like Cuff. 'Thanks, sir.' He could feel his stomach protesting and his eyes watering. 'Just the job!'

  They smiled at one another like conspirators, then the lieutenant commander handed him his old dressing-gown.

  'Have a bath. You'll feel more like it, eh?'

  The ex-stockbroker waited for the door to close. He had had one shore job after another. Too old for sea duty, they had insisted. But he had met others like this young lieutenant. Gone to the limit and past it just once too often. It takes time. He opened a drawer and took out the framed photograph of his wife. She had been killed in an air-raid four years ago.

  He thought of Marriott's sensitive, strained features.

  'And I'm not over it yet, my dear,' he whispered.

  Marriott's old seaboots scraped across rusty sheets of steel left by the sappers, and then thudded on some of the original cobbles. A bright and surprisingly cold morning. He glanced up at the now-familiar silhouettes of hanging girders and gutted buildings and wondered if it was just his imagination, or if it was really getting cleared away.

  Overalled figures moved amongst the dust, while across the water from the most obstructive wrecks he could see the diamond-bright gleam of acetylene cutters as the work continued without a break. They had been at it all night, every night and round the clock.

  He saw the delicate mastheads of the HQ ship above some temporary huts and quickened his pace.

  MGB 801 was in the water again, her small company, for better or worse, back in their proper surroundings.

  In so short a reprieve they had not been able to manage very much, and even the usually optimistic Adair had shaken his head a few times.

  'Too much underwater damage, sir. These damned diagonal-built hulls are no match for the work they're supposed to do.'

  Marriott shivered again. It was six in the morning. Why did the navy always begin things so early?

  He thought of his orders. Two oil-tankers were to be handed over to the Russians. The MGB would act as their escorts and then take off the German crews after the Russians had 'signed for them' as Meikle had dryly put it.

  He had already spoken with Fairfax. It would be his job to deal with the extra passengers. Back in the gunboat once again, and yet the sudden contact seemed to have made him withdraw into himself. He knew he was feeling the effects of drinking too much, brooding, waiting for the night to come with its fears and its brutal pictures. Perhaps once he was back at sea again . .. ?

  He returned the gangway sentry's salute and strode up the brow. Two seamen in white gaiters were gathering the mail into their bags. Letters home. The same everywhere, Marriott thought, now that the fighting was over. Maybe you got a wrong impression from the newspapers after the wild excitement of victory. The headlines blared the pros and cons of the fast-approaching general election, and much of the other news was preoccupied with the latest round of industrial strikes. It was amazing and sickening.

  The war in the Far East only found a place on page two usually. Bombardments of Japanese islands, air strikes on the mainland, but all so vague it was hard to tell how much longer it might take. The Japanese had resisted every seaborne attack on the Pacific Islands and the battles to retake them had been savage and relentless. The Japanese had never found any honour in surrender and would likely fight all the harder when their homeland was under attack. It might still be a long campaign.

  One of the 'postmen' looked up and saluted casually. 'Anythin' still to go, sir?'

  Marriott smiled. He had still not written to Penny. 'No. Not this time.'

  Inside the makeshift operations room it was unsually deserted. A young sub-lieutenant scrambled from his desk and said breathlessly, 'I'm Gilmour, sir.'

  Marriott shook his hand. God, he looked younger even than Lowes. Straight out of King Alfred, if he was any judge.

  Gilmour added, 'Lucky to be here, sir. Got in from Cuxhaven yesterday. They only let me come because I speak German.' He blushed and looked about fifteen. 'Some German.'

  Marriott smiled. 'That's the idea. Don't tell anyone in this regiment the whole truth!'

  He walked to the table and leafed through the Met reports. He had not been mistaken. It was cold for this time of the year. He smiled to himself. Not gin, the Wardroom Devil, after all.

  He glanced at the other long table where the girls had been sitting. They probably came aboard later on.

  The young subbie was watching him all the time. He could feel it with his back turned.

  'Where's Lieutenant Glazebrook, Sub? He's in charge of this escort.'

  'Oh–' Gilmour flushed again. 'I – I'm sorry, sir. I was to tell you. Lieutenant Glazebrook's boat has had some engine trouble.' He groped around for an envelope. 'You arc to take over, sir.'

  Marriott frowned and slit open the envelope. Brief, curt, no more than the bones of an explanation. The navy's way. So Cuff was staying in Kiel. One of the MLs was being sent instead as back-up.

  'Very well. He'll be sorry to miss it.' But in his mind he believed otherwise. You never really knew with Cuff.

  Gilmour said, 'I – I wish I was coming with you, sir.'

  Marriott looked at him. You're upset because you've missed the war.

  'Perhaps another time. I'll see if I can fix it.' He thought, sooner than you think if Lowes goes mooning around like a dying duck as he is at present.

  'Where is everyone?'

  The subbie brightened up. 'Commander Meikle has gone to Plön, sir. He'll be moving there once the Royal Marine Engineers have finished clearing up.'

  Somewhere a telephone rang, while on the nearby jetty a giant saw split the air apart as it began to bite through useless lengths of charred timber.

  The subbie said, 'I'll fetch the duty operations officer, sir. He said to call him before –'

  He broke off as three girls filed through the other door and seated themselves by their files and telephones.

  Marriott barely heard what Gilmour had said. The girl looked exactly as he had remembered her. But in the hard sunlight through the scuttle above the table he could see the shadows under her eyes, the tired way her hands moved to unfasten the waiting pile of files.

  'Do you always start as early as this?'

  She looked up at him as if she had not seen him before.

  'Yes, Herr Leutnant. There is much to do.' She watched him steadily. 'You are leaving today, sir?'