Alex made his way quietly back down the corridor, doing his best not to draw attention to himself. Pete was still in the gunroom. His heart grew despite itself.

“Get him installed, did you?” asked Pete.

Alex nodded, smiling. “Taking him up to the captain after he’s had a chance to settle down a bit. Get used to it all.”

“I’ll do that Alex, you sit yourself down for fuck’s sake. You’re not doing anyone any good running yourself ragged.”

“I’m fine, Pete, I - like to keep myself busy.”

“There’s a line between ‘busy’ and overwork”

“Yes, I am most reliably informed  there is.”

“Don’t you start that flippancy shit with me.”

Alex tried to smile at him. “Who says I’m starting anything with you?”

Pete, not to be taken in, fixed him with a stony glare, before giving in and running a hand through Alex’s hair.

“I want it noted than I’m not happy with this.”

“Taken on board, sub-lieutenant. Pending review.”

“Christ, Alex, you’re a nightmare.”

“I try my best to be, Pete. Now are you going to get me a cup of tea or am I going to have to run the risk of overtaxing myself by getting up to make one?”

“I’ll make you one, but I’ll spit in it.”

“I’m willing to take that risk, Pete.”

Pete manoeuvred himself around the tiny kitchenette, with his jaw visibly but good-naturedly clamped. “Of course, there are no biscuits.”

“Yes, I did notice that.”

“Do you think we should say anything? To Darling?”

“About what, Pete?”

Alex’s frank, open face almost broke Pete’s heart. “You know what, Alex,” he said gently.

“Why? What good would it do? The man is half petrified already. I’m not going to add to that.”

“And you think that’s the best thing to do?”

Alex stretched up and put his feet on the overlarge table. “No, I don’t. I think it’s the only viable course of action. Especially at the moment.”

“Are you about to tell me there’s a war on?”

“I might be,” Alex smiled again. Pete pushed his mug towards him, and nodded towards Victor’s. “He coming back, is he?”

Alex nodded, his nose buried in his mug. He seemed to be able to drink it at whatever temperature it arrived. Pete supposed it was a skill. “Coming back after he’s finished unpacking. Not that I suppose there’s much to do.”

“Do you think he’s-”

“Sitting on his bed moping? Of course he is. It’s a rite of passage, is it not?”

Pete smiled wanly. “You’re so hard on yourself.”

“No more than anyone else. Do you think I should look in on him?”

“Leave him be. It’s the last chance he’ll get to be alone his whole professional life.

A muscle twitched in Alex’s jaw. Pete read it, with the attention of a man who knew his way home in the dark.

“He won’t, Alex.”

“I know.”

There was a knock at the door. Alex reached over to open it, stretching as far from his chair as he could. A smile slid back over his face like someone was painting it on with a roller.

“Victor! You don’t always have to knock you know. I tend to use it as a precaution in case someone is standing behind the door. Pete never bothers.”

Victor, looking paler and more clammy than he had before, smiled with his lips pressed tightly together and sat back down on his original chair. Seasick, Alex noticed, with a small inward grin. Who’d have thought.

“You don’t have to finish that, you know,” he said, as Victor toyed half heartedly with his mug of lukewarm tea. “It’ll take you a while to get used to, at any rate. Let me take you up to the Captain before dinner. Help you feel more at home.”

Victor nodded again, and unfolded himself. He was taller than optimum for naval service, Alex noted. His rather proud five foot eight allowed him to skitter around in the underbelly of the ship with only minimum concern for what happened to the top of his head. Darling must be over six feet. Thank God he wasn’t on a submarine. They seemed to be dropping standards like a thief through a floorboard the further into the war they got. If dragging of Captain Keene out of retirement hadn’t signalled it, the turn to neo-press ganging which Victor seemed to have stemmed hinted at it more plainly than ever. Alex wondered how he’d managed to get here in the first place. However, he seemed to be picking his way back through the body of the ship relatively easily. Maybe there were hidden depths to him, after all.

“You seem to have a natural sense of direction blessed onto you, Mr Darling!”

Darling turned around and seemed to give him a real smile, albeit small. “It’s as you say, Mr Coleridge. There is a limit to the places one can get lost.”

“That is a very true adage, Victor. May I call you Victor?”

“Please do.”

“Only if you call me Alex.”

“It would be my pleasure. Alex.”

Alex paused, one hand on the ladder to the first deck. “I’m beginning to think my initial impression of you was wrong, Mr Darling. You seem a stander on ceremony.”

Darling, as he seemed to wont to do, responded with a half cock of the head and what may be read as a smile. “It would not be the first time I had given that impression by accident, Mr Coleridge.”

“By accident?” Alex smiled. “And there was me thinking it was so deliberately cultivated.”

“As I said, you would not be the first.”

“Radical family, have you?”

“None such of the sort, Coleridge.”

“Alex, please.”

“Alex. None such of the sort.”

“Well. I suppose that speaks of your opinion on the matter more concisely than I could. Victor.”

Victor, again. That wan, frustrating smile. “For you to decide, Alex.”

Alex bit the inside of his cheek. “Out of line for me to ask. You’re right.”

Darling didn’t answer.

Alex pushed on through the uncomfortable silence he had started. “This floor. It’s probably best if you go first- Anyway, this floor. You’ll hear it called a lot of things. ‘The Captain’s Floor’. ‘The Old Man’s’. Et cetera et cetera. All it means is that the Captain lives up here. Which I’m sure you’ve gathered.” He just about stopped biting himself again. While Victor might be that clueless about the Navy, surely he was not so that he didn’t know what a captain was. Or perhaps he was, and didn’t want attention drawn. Surely, that wasn’t the case. As if he had anything proper to judge on how he saw those less fortunate. As if he had any authority on that.

Victor, meanwhile, was trying his best to keep steady on the ladder in front of Alex. He pulled himself to the top like a freezing man out of an ice hole.

“There we are!” said a cheery voice from behind. Alex. God damn him. “Move along- there we go. So!” Alex pulled himself up to his full, and somewhat diminutive height. “Now. The wardroom is just along here. More or less where we’ve just come from. The damn rooms are on top of each other. There we are, Victor, you lead the way. You seem to have nature’s gift here…”

Nature’s gift, thought Victor bitterly. As if there were many he possessed. That infernally cheery voice kept pushing him on. Victor pulled himself up to as full as his height would let him, under the roofing circumstances, and did his best to paint a sweet-looking smile on his face.

“I’m sure I don’t. Alex. I would feel far more at ease if you took the lead.”

Alex looked startled. Good, thought Victor. Let him be.

Alex overtook Victor quietly, and beckoned him to follow, losing none of his previous friendliness, Victor noted enviously. It came to the man like a duck to water. He hated the types. Irrationally, he supposed. As if that took away anything to do with how he felt. Were feelings not, by definition, irrational? Surely, the decades’, centuries’ worth of poetry and literature had something to say on the matter. Not one to have much to do with either, even he could say so. He was sure the likes of Alex with his undoubtedly Classical education, could set him right if that were not the case.

The door to the Captain’s chambers, or the wardroom, Victor supposed he must call it now he was on a ship, looked much the same as the gunroom had. With his sub-par knowledge of ships and shipbuilding, he had pieced together himself the fact that the gunroom hadn’t been used to store guns of any sort. With he and Alex and the like, it was somewhere to relegate junior officers. The subalterns. They on whom the war was to be pinned, apparently. So the war dispatches said. The papers, or those in Bromley. Why he were to trust that Bromley had anything to say that was unbiased or worth listening to was testament solely to his upbringing. That was, he supposed, why he was here. To find his voice and what it wanted to say. To keep his conscience what it was. Not that it was meant to be easy. Especially considering where he was from, and what it meant, and how it was represented. The stabbing pain in his back told him that he lacked the common sense and confidence to follow this through. He steeled himself against this. He was here. Surely, he got credit for being here. Here. Where he was needed. At the frontline, the forefront. Here, among those who had signed up for reasons which they would advertise or take pride in or hate. Dead family members, he assumed. It often came down to that. The dead.

But what would he say if he were asked?

He hoped that Alex would not stay for his meeting with Keene. Hopefully discretion between officers stretched that far.

Alex delivered him up to the wardroom door and knocked smartly. His grin was beginning to tighten How could he smile like that, all the time? Did his cheeks not get sore?

A lordly voice asked them to enter.

Alex swung the door open and introduced Darling to the familiar figure at the Captain’s table.

“Thank you, Coleridge.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

Alex gave a smart half bow and turned on his heel, closing the door behind him. That quick entrance had knocked Victor off guard, somewhat.

“Victor.”

Yes.

He turned around, back to the matter at hand. He did his best to copy Alex’s bow. “Sir.”

“You’re looking well, Darling.”

Victor unfolded and allowed himself to look at the man behind the table full in the face. Adam Keene did not look well. His face, always like an unmade bed, was deeper and craggier than Victor had ever recalled it being. His hair, which he had managed to retain, was a mousey grey. He wore a small amount of stubble, Victor noticed. Perhaps the geography of his face made it difficult to shave these days. Perhaps he had developed a palsy. He sat behind his customary retainer of heavy looking manuals; logs, charts. A novel was bound to be in there somewhere. A decanter of a thick amber liquid was to their side. The debris and detritus looked as if they had more life in them than their owner.

Darling realised he should reply. “Thank you, sir.”

“No need to repay the compliment, I know that I am far from that mark. And likely to remain that way.” He got, totteringly, to his feet. In any other circumstance Victor would help him, or at least make his offer known. As he had in the past. Bound by protocol, he had no idea how he was to respond now he was on duty. Keene leant hard on the corner of his table and offered his hand to Darling.

“It’s good to see you again, Victor.”

Victor took it. “And you, Captain.”

“Wish it could be under more relaxed circumstances. You’re to join my bushel of Subs, I hear?”

“You hear correctly, sir.”

“Good. We need men like you, Darling. Men with a bit of spirit. A bit of initiative in their heads.”

Victor wondered if he’d got him confused with someone else.

“I see that you’ve met Mr Coleridge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s a good lad. You’ll do well with him. I’m afraid we can’t offer you the most exciting of times, Darling.” The Captain was making his way, tremulously, back to his chair. He did not offer a seat to Darling. Instead, he uncorked the decanter and poured a healthy measure into a glass before him. It didn’t look as if it had been cleaned since the last time.

“Brandy?” he offered.

“No, thank you sir.”

“Keeps the cold off. I daresay you’ll find that out. What was I saying?”

“You cannot offer me the most exciting time. Sir.”

“Oh, of course. Not in Spithead, at any rate. I cross my fingers we may get our marching orders soon.”

Victor bit the inside of his cheek. “Where are we likely to be posted, sir?”

“That, Victor, I wouldn’t be able to tell you if I knew. And the word is ‘deployed’, for future reference.”

“Apologies, sir.”

Keene waved him off. “No need to apologise, I-” A rumble started at the back of his throat. He coughed it out. “I expect you have a lot to pick up. Didn’t fancy following your father into medicine, then?”

“No, sir.” He left out that he had disliked the idea of going into combat medicine in particular. As if it might somehow mitigate the fact that he might have to see bodily carnage.

Keene coughed again, stifled it. “I see. And the Navy, because?”

Victor swallowed. “Call it a calling, sir.”

“That I shall. Have you met any other officers, Darling? Aside from Coleridge?”

“I’ve met a man called Pete, sir, but I didn’t catch a second name.”

“Clayton. Yes, I should have guessed, if Coleridge had anything to do with it. I daresay you’ll become acquainted with the rest in due time. I’d like to see you up here after supper to meet my first, second and third.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you feel confident about finding your way down, or shall I ask Coleridge to fetch you?”

“I see no reason why he should be so inconvenienced again, sir.”

“Thoughtful of you, Darling. Send my regards to your father.”

“I shall, sir. And he sends his to you.”

“Yes, very good. I’ll see you after supper, Darling.”

“Yes, sir,” Victor agreed, hoping he’d be able to get the dinner timings out of Alex.

He didn’t have too long to mull it over, because as soon as the words had left his mouth a siren sounded.

*

Trying not to look startled, Victor backed into the closest thing to him and gripped the door handle. Keene, to his amazement, did not seem half as alarmed. He was looking up at the ceiling, almost inconvenienced.

“What the bloody hell do you suppose that could be?”

Something rammed into Victor’s back, hard. He exclaimed, pushed forward by some sudden compelling force and spared a panicked glance at Keene. Something started hammering.

“Get away from the bloody door!”

He had been standing right in front of it. Now it wanted to open.

He extricated himself as quickly as he could, doing his best not to draw attention from Keene or the man who he’d unwittingly locked out of the wardroom. The door burst open and a lieutenant spilled in, all wet wool and dripping rain.

“Sir, it’s Lowe. He’s back.”

Keene’s demeanour changed in a heartbeat. He leant, both hands on his desk. Low and powerful.

“What do you mean he’s back?”

“He’s… back, sir. On the ship.”

“What in hell’s name is he doing?”

A beat of silence passed through the cabin. The lieutenant seemed to be doing his best to measure his voice. “I think you should come and have a look, sir.”

Keene collected himself together. “Very well. And get that bloody alarm turned off.”

The man nodded, and took off back down the corridor, doing everything in his power to run without actually running. Keene followed. Victor supposed he should, as well.

The alarm was still sounding, low honking pulses of sound that chased each over the beginning and the end of each other. It was bone-jarringly unpleasant. He wondered if it would sound the same outside of all this metal.

The gritty blue tread of the corridor was worn thin where he followed it. Up ahead, he could see an open hatch and a ladder with Keene at the bottom of it. Victor’s heart skipped a beat thinking of the many ways which that could end. Keene, however, didn’t seem worried. He simply looked at Victor and said mildly, “Oh, you’re coming, are you? I suppose you might as well.”

Feeling stung, Victor made his way up the ladder behind Keene, at a far slower pace than he would have liked. How on earth did this man have command of a ship. A little intricacy only the Navy would know. A short and bloody war, wasn’t that the toast?

Light had fallen quickly out on deck. The first prickings of stars were about visible under the low, thick layer of cloud. The silhouette of the Isle of Wight was completely hidden against the sky. The deck was lit up with the same low-wattage strip lamps that he had seen down in the gunroom. They buzzed. They cast a light strong enough to see by, and one which picked up the misty rain and the water on deck like a city at night. They gave him more than enough light to see the little knot of men around the middle of the deck. It was almost where he had landed earlier that day – an hour ago, and hour and a half? – when Alex had pulled him aboard after scrambling up the side. No-one on the deck seemed to be moving.

Keene reached the edge of the crowd and stood very still. They all looked at him, expectant. Victor didn’t suppose he should go any further.

He hung back in the shadows, hoping not to be seen, or at least not to be seen yet. There didn’t seem to be a lot of action taking place around the group on deck. They were standing around a bundle on the deck. Victor supposed that it was Lowe.

He caught flashes on conversation, floating over the metal carapace.

“-idea what did for him?”

Someone, the other side of Lowe from Victor, knelt on deck. He could hear the wet wood protesting. They gestured to someone else to look at what they were looking at.

The someone else gave a long, low whistle.

“Get the doctor to declare it.”, said Keene. His voice sounded very low.

The person who was kneeling stood up, stepped over the body, came over to the door Victor was standing in. He almost fell over him. The two looked at each other in startled surprise. The other man didn’t even seem to register they hadn’t met before.

“Oh, it’s you is it? The new chap. You’ll be his replacement.”

“Sir?”

The man nodded over to the deck. “Lowe’s. Go and have a look, it’ll do you good. I’m off to fetch the MO.”

Victor nodded and watched him go. He wondered what the medical officer would be able to do for the man. He didn’t look to be moving.

In tracking the sullen man’s movements, a clutch of heads had turned to where Victor was standing. He supposed that meant he should introduce himself. Always such a stander on ceremony. Damn Alex.

He locked his knees and picked his way across the soaking deck.

Keene was the last to see him.

“Victor.”

“Sir,” he said, and nodded. Nobody else said anything. Victor looked down.

The man at his feet was obviously dead, and was soaking wet. Drowned. They must have pulled him from the water when they came to get Keene. Victor wondered how long he’d been missing.

The hatch opened again and a balding man came blustering forward. Victor stepped aside. The medical officer got to both knees and pulled up the man’s half closed eyelids. Against his greenish skin. Victor looked away discreetly.

The medical officer opened the man’s mouth. There were two tongues.

He sat back on his haunches. “Well, that’ll be what did it.”

“What do you think it was?”

“God knows.” He got to his feet and took his gloves off, putting them in his back pocket so that they stuck out like feathers. “Anyone else touched him?”

The man Victor had been conversing with earlier raised a hand, almost sheepishly. The MO eyed him.

“There’s a bottle of disinfectant in my cabin. I want you to wash with it and leave your uniform in the corner.”

The man nodded. “Sir.”

“Bloody fucking idiot,” said the medical officer after he’d departed. “Should have known it would be him. Right lads, get him wrapped up. I don’t want anyone else making that same mistake. Who in hell’s name set the alarm off?”

Nobody answered. The man who had come into Keene’s cabin the first time looked around either side of him. It didn’t seem to escape the MO’s notice.

“Whoever it was, I expect Captain Keene will have it dealt with in due process. Sod off, the lot of you.”

They dispersed, two retrieving what looked like a heavy waxed tarpaulin from a metal cache locked and bolted by the entrance Victor himself had scrambled up. He looked at them rather than at the dead man and his tongues. He hadn’t moved his head since he’d caught a glimpse of them. Accidentally.

He wondered how he had died. So wet. Had he simply drowned? Had he…. suffocated on his extra tongue? How had he made it back on deck? Had he climbed all that way only to die?

An avuncular hand landed on his shoulder. “Brandy,” said Keene’s voice. For once, he didn’t feel like refusing.

Next Chapter: Chapter Three