Submariner (2008) (44 page)

‘Congratulations, Nicholson!’

‘Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot, Johnno. Abbie –
bless
you!’

Fore spring gone, and the after breast. Fore breast cast off and being hauled in ashore. Enormous amount of cheering and clapping
from the gallery. Nice of them: and
brilliant
of her. Life-lastingly brilliant, what she’d done. Must have called Johnno earlier in the day; his manner at lunch
had
been a little furtive. Mike had called down, ‘Slow ahead port’; he asked CPO Gladwich, ‘Ready to pipe, Cox’n?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Showing it in his palm – strangely-shaped tin whistle of a kind that had been in use in English fleets since
the Middle Ages. Mike had stopped that motor and ordered both of them slow astern – nodding to Showell to have the casing
party take that spring off her. She was beginning to slide away from the building stern-first now. He told Gladwich, ‘Pipe.’

All of them at attention, he and Swann at the salute, for the ‘Still’ – a thin, high note that was supposed to last eight
seconds, then the ‘Carry On’, a similarly high but then steeply falling call cutting out abruptly after five. Formalities
observed, and
Unsung
backing away quite fast now, dark water swirling; he’d ordered ‘Stop both motors’, and Showell was passing that down, while
for a last sight of his fiancée he focused his glasses on her, saw her still waving frantically, and under that yellowish
overhead light a glistening on her cheeks that couldn’t be anything but tears. Explicitly forbidden, on more than one occasion
– but surely not to be held against her.
Nothing
to be held against her,
ever
.