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rhiannon_sI don't know if anyone is reading these, but my eyes started going funny towards the end and I got struck with cottonwool thought procsses. I'd be grateful if anyone is reading thise could read the concluding scene and see if the explanation I've written for the characters actually makes sense because I honestly cannot tell now. Just so close to having been able to follow my own writing, yet so far.
The fog rolled in, chill, thick and heavy, smothering all sounds around the docks. Traffic noise seemed muted, and conversations had all faded to nothing. If you peered into it, and you would have to peer very intensely indeed, you might have been able to see two figures labouring over a barrow of some sort or perhaps a trailer shorn of its tractor unit. One figure, the taller one seemed to be doing rather less labouring than a shorter and stouter one. Listen hard enough through the fog and you might just have been able to pick out their conversation…
“Here, Cheify, how much did this smoke machine set you back then?” The shorter, rounder, one asked.
“Not a blooming penny Johnson me old son, not a bleeding penny”, the one now identified as Chiefy said back. “Now keep on pushing, we got to get this loaded up on the barge and down river before the Apollo Theatre starts its fourth act. So put your back into it, Johnson!”
Johnson pushed harder, but still felt compelled to ask, “why the Apollo and why the fourth act?”
“Well, if you must know Johnson...”
“I must.”
“It is because that is when they’ll probably notice that someone has nicked their industrial smoke machine out the back.” The Chief said with a chuckle.
There was a bump as the barrow’s wheels rocked against the edge of the dock pier. The two figures made short work of hitching it up to a crane and moving it out over a waiting low barge.
“I might have known,” Johnson said once he’d got his breath back a bit. “You’ve pinched it, and made me an ‘complice.”
“Well, if you want to get technical Johnson, since it was you wot done the unbolting and shoving driving to the dock gates, technically Johnson, it was you wot pinched it and I’ve got five witness that will say they saw one CPO Pertwee three pubs over during the time of the crime”.
“I might have known.” Johnson pulled a face and started clambering down the ladder into the waiting barge. “I always end up getting diddled.”
“Oh, don’t look at it like getting diddled Johnson”, Chief Petty officer Pertwee said, “look at it as being part of an exciting training experience in emergency machinery relocation and enforcement…er…forces evasion. Just the very thing in Her Majesty’s Navy”. Pertwee stuck out his chin and puffed up his chest, as if he had made some great patriotic statement.
“Still sounds like nicking a lump of machinery and hiding from the peelers to me, Chief”.
Pertwee deflated a little. “Yeah, well. Don’t stop running yet, cause we got to get this lot downstream and out of sight before the water police catch us. And we won’t have fog cover for that.” On cue there was a horrible high pitched grinding noise from the top of the fog bank, which now could be seen to be only covering a couple of narrow streets running towards the Thames. The ill-gotten fog machine had finally given up the ghost.
Pertwee clambered onto the barge’s wheel house while Johnson got the engine started. Smoothly the barge slipped downstream and away from anything that anyone might be able to call “the scene of the crime”. The tide was just on the turn out, so the barge was able to travel far faster than it would on its own meagre engine. Johnson clambered up onto the wheelhouse from the engine compartment, his hands and face covered in soot.
“Blimey, Johnson, what happened to you? I thought blackface was a thing of the past!” The Chief said with a chuckle, porting the barge around some unseen debris in the stream and threading through the Thames barrier.
“Yeah, very funny Chief, it backfired when I tried to pull the cord,” Johnson said grimly. Then he gave a chuckle. “’Ere, Chiefy.”
“What, Johnson? Can’t you see I’m concentrating on my driving?” Pertwee said.
Johnson chuckled again. “Just, nah.”
“Just, nah, what? Johnson?” Pertwee said again, with the river flowing swiftly past.
“Left hand down a bit, Chief”.
“Left hand down a bit it is, sah…” Pertwee snapped off in sheer pavlovian response. Johnson broke down laughing. “Now don’t mess about Johnson. You scared me half to death there!”
“You should have seen your face, Chief”. Johnson said, quite obviously still enormously pleased with himself.
“Yeah, well,” the Chief grumbled, “enjoy it. That was the only time you’ll be giving me orders.”
Johnson leant against the side of the wheelhouse, entirely unconcerned, and stared at the passing city. The city lights had thinned out a bit now and an entirely natural fogbank was rolling in. “Oh, I don’t know Chief; way you carry on I might end up in charge of your convict squad.”
“Don’t you believe it Johnson, don’t you believe it old son.”
“So what are we smuggling anyway Chief?”
The older, taller, thinner, man just shrugged. “Dunno, Ingeborg just said we were to pick this trailer load up and float it down to the Gateway. There is boat anchored in midstream, when we see it, we drop our own hook, take the tender to the shore and not to look back. Use the river and don’t let the peelers catch us. I never asked beyond that, I still owe her a favour, so this gets her off my back. Anyway, who said we was smuggling?”
“Well, since it involved thieving, not letting the coppers see us, hiding in a load of old smoke, moving by night, and you. It seemed a natural inference.” Johnson replied.
The night rolled on as the barge made it downstream at a fair old clip. The fog didn’t lift much, but eventually the lights of the gateway port started to brighten it up. The yellow spotlights threw odd shadows in the fog, and threw the sounds of people doing honest work echoed around the barge and dimly they perceived the hulk of a boat moored in midstream. Pertwee throttled back the cargo hauler, and hit is anchor release as Johnson got busy with releasing the tender.
“Here, Chief,” Johnson asked as they cast off, “that other boat looks a bit familiar to you? Swear I’ve seen it before.”
Pertwee shrugged his shoulders theatrically as he piloted the tender off towards the shore, “when you’ve seen as many boats as I have Johnson they all start looking familiar. Now you mention it though, it does seem a bit what you might call similar, don’t it?” Any further wondering was cut short by a splash of fire from the new boat’s bow. There was a whistling noise overhead and then the barge they’d carefully shepherded downstream vanished in an explosion.
“Sorry about that,” a new, but very familiar to both men, Welsh voice rang out, “our officer of the watch must have got his horn and his popgun mixed up again.
“Blimey, Johnson, it is old Troutbridge. That was Goldstein sure as eggs were omelettes! Keep you head down and make it to the bank as quick as you can or you’ll be joining my convict platoon.”
“It’s no use hiding you know,” the Welshman’s voice rang out again, “the banks are crawling with policemen!” A spotlight slid over their boat, off to one side and then back again as it locked on. “Here, Chief, that you donw there?” Goldstein asked in surprised tones. “Wait til I tell Commander Murray!”
“What do we do Chief, what do we do?” Johnson asked in a terrified tone of voice.
The Chief had a dejected look on his face. “What we do is steer back to Troutbridge and surrender to the Navy where we can sit in a civilised forces nick instead of a regular copper’s cells. The game, Johnson, is up.”
“Oh no, Chief, please.” Johnson wailed.
“Sorry me old son, I promise you I’ll tell them you thought you were acting under legitimate orders and you’ll be okay lad. Maybe on civvy street, but you won’t do bird like me or your uncle Norman”. Pertwee steered the tiny tender alongside the elderly frigate, HMS Troutbridge. “We surrender, Goldstein, drop us a ladder and take us on board.” Once they hauled themselves on deck the dubious duo were able to look the Welshman in the eye, for some reason he didn’t look quite as cheerfully insolent as he usually did. You two are wanted on the bridge. Commander Murray started doing his nut when I told him it was you. So they duly trooped off up the stairwells and onto the bridge to face the wrath of the Royal Navy’s most put upon Commander.
“My word,” a figure wearing Sub-lieutenant stripes and known to Pertwee and Johnson as Sub-Lt. Phillips and undoubtedly the only Sub-Lt. who could confuse “sound the horn” with “fire bow gun”. “It really is you Chief. That means you can go now Seaman Riddle, Chief is here.”
“Aye-sir” Riddle, who had been manning the wheel, said and trotted off.
“Weeeeeeell,” the other figure on the bridge, Commander Murray, captain of the Troutbridge said, “caught you smuggling did we Chief. And Johnson too, I see. Anyone else? Or was the barge empty? It better have been empty!”
“Yessir, just me and Johnson,” Pertwee said dejectedly, then he snapped to attention and in a more spiritedly defiant tone, “and I would just like to say that Johnson was…”
“SHUT UP!” Murray roared, in a way that Pertwee would not have thought the usually weary Commander had in him. Even Sub-Lt. jumped back at the sudden shout.
“I say, sir,” Sub-Lt. Phillips said, “do you know you sounded almost extactly like old Thunderguts there when you… When you… “Phillips saw Murray’s glare and decided that, for once, discretion was the better part of banter. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Yes, you be quiet Mister Phillips,” Murray snapped, “if that barge hadn’t been empty and it hadn’t been these two on it, you would be headed for the clink!”
Pertwee noticed the lack of a “too” at the end of Murray’s last sentence. Clearly something was up, and it was probably in his best interest to play along. Perhaps Phillips sudden desire to fire off the bow gun had saved his bacon. It certainly wouldn’t look good, he realised and tried not to let show on his face, for Commander Murray to have blown up a motor cargo-barge on the lower Thames.
“I expect you are surprised to see us here Chief, since you took your authorised leave while we were still at Ridham? Well, no don’t say anything don’t you dare, it may surprise you to learn,” Murray explained as he paced up and down in front of Johnson and Pertwee, “that as we made our wa from there to Tilbury, the police asked for our assistance in locating a barge carrying some class-A contraband destined for the middle east and would we stand in for a seized container ship.” At this statement, Johnson audibly gulped. Class-a to the middle east had to mean armaments of some sort. “Yes, Johnson, did you know the Chief was roping you in for a spot of treason?”
“Look sir, Johnson never…” Pertwee tried to intervene.
“Silence, Chief.” Murray ordered. “Johnson?”
“Er, no sir, he only said that we had orders to move a lot of stuff to the boat that isn’t here.” Johnson rather shamefacedly admitted.
“Hmm, well since we’ll never really know what was on it thanks to Mister Phillips spot of artillery practice and since the container crew do not appear to know who hired them or who was piloting the barge, then the ship’s log can say that it looked like it was going to ram us and I fired in self-defence.” Murray gave a sharp glance at Phillips with this news. “And you Chief owe Mister Philips a very large debt. And since Mister Phillips also contributed to this mess, you can both pay your debts with a contribution to the Ship’s Comfort Fund!”
“I say sir,” Phillips protested, then subsided at Murray’s glare.
“As far as I’m concerned, Chief, you were in that boat searching for survivors, and we’ll call it all leave stopped for a year.” Murray said. “Now, Johnson, get below and you Chief, take the wheel. Let’s get out of here.”
fin
The fog rolled in, chill, thick and heavy, smothering all sounds around the docks. Traffic noise seemed muted, and conversations had all faded to nothing. If you peered into it, and you would have to peer very intensely indeed, you might have been able to see two figures labouring over a barrow of some sort or perhaps a trailer shorn of its tractor unit. One figure, the taller one seemed to be doing rather less labouring than a shorter and stouter one. Listen hard enough through the fog and you might just have been able to pick out their conversation…
“Here, Cheify, how much did this smoke machine set you back then?” The shorter, rounder, one asked.
“Not a blooming penny Johnson me old son, not a bleeding penny”, the one now identified as Chiefy said back. “Now keep on pushing, we got to get this loaded up on the barge and down river before the Apollo Theatre starts its fourth act. So put your back into it, Johnson!”
Johnson pushed harder, but still felt compelled to ask, “why the Apollo and why the fourth act?”
“Well, if you must know Johnson...”
“I must.”
“It is because that is when they’ll probably notice that someone has nicked their industrial smoke machine out the back.” The Chief said with a chuckle.
There was a bump as the barrow’s wheels rocked against the edge of the dock pier. The two figures made short work of hitching it up to a crane and moving it out over a waiting low barge.
“I might have known,” Johnson said once he’d got his breath back a bit. “You’ve pinched it, and made me an ‘complice.”
“Well, if you want to get technical Johnson, since it was you wot done the unbolting and shoving driving to the dock gates, technically Johnson, it was you wot pinched it and I’ve got five witness that will say they saw one CPO Pertwee three pubs over during the time of the crime”.
“I might have known.” Johnson pulled a face and started clambering down the ladder into the waiting barge. “I always end up getting diddled.”
“Oh, don’t look at it like getting diddled Johnson”, Chief Petty officer Pertwee said, “look at it as being part of an exciting training experience in emergency machinery relocation and enforcement…er…forces evasion. Just the very thing in Her Majesty’s Navy”. Pertwee stuck out his chin and puffed up his chest, as if he had made some great patriotic statement.
“Still sounds like nicking a lump of machinery and hiding from the peelers to me, Chief”.
Pertwee deflated a little. “Yeah, well. Don’t stop running yet, cause we got to get this lot downstream and out of sight before the water police catch us. And we won’t have fog cover for that.” On cue there was a horrible high pitched grinding noise from the top of the fog bank, which now could be seen to be only covering a couple of narrow streets running towards the Thames. The ill-gotten fog machine had finally given up the ghost.
Pertwee clambered onto the barge’s wheel house while Johnson got the engine started. Smoothly the barge slipped downstream and away from anything that anyone might be able to call “the scene of the crime”. The tide was just on the turn out, so the barge was able to travel far faster than it would on its own meagre engine. Johnson clambered up onto the wheelhouse from the engine compartment, his hands and face covered in soot.
“Blimey, Johnson, what happened to you? I thought blackface was a thing of the past!” The Chief said with a chuckle, porting the barge around some unseen debris in the stream and threading through the Thames barrier.
“Yeah, very funny Chief, it backfired when I tried to pull the cord,” Johnson said grimly. Then he gave a chuckle. “’Ere, Chiefy.”
“What, Johnson? Can’t you see I’m concentrating on my driving?” Pertwee said.
Johnson chuckled again. “Just, nah.”
“Just, nah, what? Johnson?” Pertwee said again, with the river flowing swiftly past.
“Left hand down a bit, Chief”.
“Left hand down a bit it is, sah…” Pertwee snapped off in sheer pavlovian response. Johnson broke down laughing. “Now don’t mess about Johnson. You scared me half to death there!”
“You should have seen your face, Chief”. Johnson said, quite obviously still enormously pleased with himself.
“Yeah, well,” the Chief grumbled, “enjoy it. That was the only time you’ll be giving me orders.”
Johnson leant against the side of the wheelhouse, entirely unconcerned, and stared at the passing city. The city lights had thinned out a bit now and an entirely natural fogbank was rolling in. “Oh, I don’t know Chief; way you carry on I might end up in charge of your convict squad.”
“Don’t you believe it Johnson, don’t you believe it old son.”
“So what are we smuggling anyway Chief?”
The older, taller, thinner, man just shrugged. “Dunno, Ingeborg just said we were to pick this trailer load up and float it down to the Gateway. There is boat anchored in midstream, when we see it, we drop our own hook, take the tender to the shore and not to look back. Use the river and don’t let the peelers catch us. I never asked beyond that, I still owe her a favour, so this gets her off my back. Anyway, who said we was smuggling?”
“Well, since it involved thieving, not letting the coppers see us, hiding in a load of old smoke, moving by night, and you. It seemed a natural inference.” Johnson replied.
The night rolled on as the barge made it downstream at a fair old clip. The fog didn’t lift much, but eventually the lights of the gateway port started to brighten it up. The yellow spotlights threw odd shadows in the fog, and threw the sounds of people doing honest work echoed around the barge and dimly they perceived the hulk of a boat moored in midstream. Pertwee throttled back the cargo hauler, and hit is anchor release as Johnson got busy with releasing the tender.
“Here, Chief,” Johnson asked as they cast off, “that other boat looks a bit familiar to you? Swear I’ve seen it before.”
Pertwee shrugged his shoulders theatrically as he piloted the tender off towards the shore, “when you’ve seen as many boats as I have Johnson they all start looking familiar. Now you mention it though, it does seem a bit what you might call similar, don’t it?” Any further wondering was cut short by a splash of fire from the new boat’s bow. There was a whistling noise overhead and then the barge they’d carefully shepherded downstream vanished in an explosion.
“Sorry about that,” a new, but very familiar to both men, Welsh voice rang out, “our officer of the watch must have got his horn and his popgun mixed up again.
“Blimey, Johnson, it is old Troutbridge. That was Goldstein sure as eggs were omelettes! Keep you head down and make it to the bank as quick as you can or you’ll be joining my convict platoon.”
“It’s no use hiding you know,” the Welshman’s voice rang out again, “the banks are crawling with policemen!” A spotlight slid over their boat, off to one side and then back again as it locked on. “Here, Chief, that you donw there?” Goldstein asked in surprised tones. “Wait til I tell Commander Murray!”
“What do we do Chief, what do we do?” Johnson asked in a terrified tone of voice.
The Chief had a dejected look on his face. “What we do is steer back to Troutbridge and surrender to the Navy where we can sit in a civilised forces nick instead of a regular copper’s cells. The game, Johnson, is up.”
“Oh no, Chief, please.” Johnson wailed.
“Sorry me old son, I promise you I’ll tell them you thought you were acting under legitimate orders and you’ll be okay lad. Maybe on civvy street, but you won’t do bird like me or your uncle Norman”. Pertwee steered the tiny tender alongside the elderly frigate, HMS Troutbridge. “We surrender, Goldstein, drop us a ladder and take us on board.” Once they hauled themselves on deck the dubious duo were able to look the Welshman in the eye, for some reason he didn’t look quite as cheerfully insolent as he usually did. You two are wanted on the bridge. Commander Murray started doing his nut when I told him it was you. So they duly trooped off up the stairwells and onto the bridge to face the wrath of the Royal Navy’s most put upon Commander.
“My word,” a figure wearing Sub-lieutenant stripes and known to Pertwee and Johnson as Sub-Lt. Phillips and undoubtedly the only Sub-Lt. who could confuse “sound the horn” with “fire bow gun”. “It really is you Chief. That means you can go now Seaman Riddle, Chief is here.”
“Aye-sir” Riddle, who had been manning the wheel, said and trotted off.
“Weeeeeeell,” the other figure on the bridge, Commander Murray, captain of the Troutbridge said, “caught you smuggling did we Chief. And Johnson too, I see. Anyone else? Or was the barge empty? It better have been empty!”
“Yessir, just me and Johnson,” Pertwee said dejectedly, then he snapped to attention and in a more spiritedly defiant tone, “and I would just like to say that Johnson was…”
“SHUT UP!” Murray roared, in a way that Pertwee would not have thought the usually weary Commander had in him. Even Sub-Lt. jumped back at the sudden shout.
“I say, sir,” Sub-Lt. Phillips said, “do you know you sounded almost extactly like old Thunderguts there when you… When you… “Phillips saw Murray’s glare and decided that, for once, discretion was the better part of banter. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Yes, you be quiet Mister Phillips,” Murray snapped, “if that barge hadn’t been empty and it hadn’t been these two on it, you would be headed for the clink!”
Pertwee noticed the lack of a “too” at the end of Murray’s last sentence. Clearly something was up, and it was probably in his best interest to play along. Perhaps Phillips sudden desire to fire off the bow gun had saved his bacon. It certainly wouldn’t look good, he realised and tried not to let show on his face, for Commander Murray to have blown up a motor cargo-barge on the lower Thames.
“I expect you are surprised to see us here Chief, since you took your authorised leave while we were still at Ridham? Well, no don’t say anything don’t you dare, it may surprise you to learn,” Murray explained as he paced up and down in front of Johnson and Pertwee, “that as we made our wa from there to Tilbury, the police asked for our assistance in locating a barge carrying some class-A contraband destined for the middle east and would we stand in for a seized container ship.” At this statement, Johnson audibly gulped. Class-a to the middle east had to mean armaments of some sort. “Yes, Johnson, did you know the Chief was roping you in for a spot of treason?”
“Look sir, Johnson never…” Pertwee tried to intervene.
“Silence, Chief.” Murray ordered. “Johnson?”
“Er, no sir, he only said that we had orders to move a lot of stuff to the boat that isn’t here.” Johnson rather shamefacedly admitted.
“Hmm, well since we’ll never really know what was on it thanks to Mister Phillips spot of artillery practice and since the container crew do not appear to know who hired them or who was piloting the barge, then the ship’s log can say that it looked like it was going to ram us and I fired in self-defence.” Murray gave a sharp glance at Phillips with this news. “And you Chief owe Mister Philips a very large debt. And since Mister Phillips also contributed to this mess, you can both pay your debts with a contribution to the Ship’s Comfort Fund!”
“I say sir,” Phillips protested, then subsided at Murray’s glare.
“As far as I’m concerned, Chief, you were in that boat searching for survivors, and we’ll call it all leave stopped for a year.” Murray said. “Now, Johnson, get below and you Chief, take the wheel. Let’s get out of here.”
fin
