Free The Brides of Solomon by Geoffrey Household Page B

reasonably, too, thought Coulter.
    The sergeant-major took his time in the shelter—and why not, since the all-clear had never sounded?—and missed such excitement as there had been. He now appeared, unruffled, at
Coulter’s elbow.
    ‘Gone to fetch a tug, I expect, sir,’ he said, watching the launch scatter red foam from her bows as she slid away from the
City of Syracuse
into outer darkness.
    ‘Perhaps,’ answered Coulter, giving the Navy the benefit of the doubt. ‘But the nearest tug is in the naval basin. It’ll take her a quarter of an hour to get here, and I
think that’s just ten minutes too long.’
    ‘She does seem to be burning pretty fierce, sir,’ Wrist agreed coolly.
    Except for the occasional fountains of flame from the
City of Syracuse
, the docks were at peace under the moon. The tough central core of the northern sheds stood up sheer from a pile
of rubble on which the dust was already settling. There were no troops about, for at that hour of night all of them, except the A.A. gunners, were back at their billets in the town. The duty clerks
in the port offices were being marched away. The ambulances had cleared up the few wounded who could readily be found, and gone. The Greek fire brigades were presumably fully occupied in the town,
for a glow over distant streets showed where another string of bombs had fallen.
    As Coulter and Wrist turned to go, a staff car raced up the quay and stopped opposite to them. In it were the Area Commander and his Adjutant, perfectly cool, perfectly dressed. God knew what
they hoped to do there! If it came to that, thought Coulter, God knew why he was still there himself! Theirs presumably was a moral duty, but he hadn’t any duty whatever. Some of his barges
were adrift in the harbour, but he could only let them stay there until the Navy brought a tug.
    ‘Good evening, Coulter,’ said the Area Commander. ‘Barging in again, I see.’
    It was a steady joke, which pleased the Commander very much. Somehow it pleased Coulter, too. It meant, after all, that the Commander recognised him, liked him, knew what he did and appreciated
it. And that could stand repetition.
    ‘Anything we can do, sir?’ he asked.
    ‘If I were you,’ said the Area Commander, ‘I should get out of here pretty damn quick. There’s nothing any of us can do.’
    He left his car and passed a pleasant word with the sergeant-major, even exchanging a casual reminiscence as one old soldier to another. Then he walked off on a tour of the docks to assure
himself that there was no man in need of help.
    ‘Well, he isn’t taking his own advice, sergeant-major, but we will,’ said Coulter, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
    He started towards his waiting truck. Wrist pointed to the sliced cube of the northern building, outlined against the burning
City of Syracuse.
    ‘There was a gun up there, sir,’ he remarked. ‘I suppose they’re all right.’
    It seemed to Coulter exceedingly unlikely that the gun crew would have cleared out leaving any of their number alive on top of the building. Still, it was just possible that the whole lot had
been hit and forgotten, and that there might be a survivor in no state to climb down.
    ‘Shall we go and see, sir?’
    What particularly annoyed Coulter was that he knew just where and when his sergeant-major was likely to be a bit of a fraud. Indeed he doubted if you could become a sergeant-major at all without
a keen appreciation of the value of eyewash. He did not believe for a moment that Wrist would have made this intolerable and officious suggestion if it hadn’t been for the presence, somewhere
in the docks, of the Area Commander.
    But there it was. That was the way an army fought. That was the value of leadership. Even if Wrist did take good care that there was someone to commend his act of gallantry, it only reflected
tremendous credit on the Area Commander who had inspired him. Scamps, these old soldiers? Well, if you liked. But, by