George Washington's Ghost

The fact that in the aftermath of the Empire Day atrocities Roger Lee and other luminaries of his Planters’ Party clique had labelled Abe as a quote ‘half-breed traitor who deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered,’ and repeatedly referred to Kate as a ‘fellow conspirator and an untrustworthy harlot squaw,’ seemed wholly forgotten in the excitement. All that was conveniently forgotten now that they were here to welcome home the Empire’s latest favourite son.

Politics was ever thus in the South…

Ted Forest, perched on his crutches was smiling a laughing smile, just out of reach of the reunited couple; but only until Kate focused on him and then he was self-consciously swept into his friends’ mutual embrace.

Presently, Melanie stepped forward so that Abe and baby Tom could be reunited, before she retreated out of frame as Kate, Tom, Abe and Ted posed for photographs in front of the aircraft – which until now had been something of an unacknowledged secret, the subject of ‘S’ notices which occasionally got unwary editors and TV producers hauled up in front of magistrates, or even High Court judges – which had whisked them north from Florida that morning.

At that moment there must have been hundreds of snappers, and at least three bulky outside broadcast cameras trained on the group.

Lord Collingwood watched it all with a broad, paternally indulgent smile on his face, waving away attempts by his staffers and impatient dignitaries to cut the initial scenes of the homecoming short. Then, when eventually, he stepped forward, he motioned Melanie Cowdrey-Singh and her children to join him, and a trim, wiry man in the uniform of a Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service, finally stepped out of the anonymity of the great crowd.

Alex Fielding stood, eyes twinkling with mischief and pleasure as he looked at the two prodigals returned. He had deliberately kept out of the way since he got back to Norfolk that morning. This was Abe’s day; Abe and Kate and Melanie Cowdrey-Singh’s day. A real day of hope for the families of the men still listed missing after the Battle of the Windward Passage.

A day to Remember Brave Achilles!

And he, for one, was not about to rain on his little brother’s parade, whatever those clowns at the Fleet Public Relations Department thought about it.

He planned to catch up with Albert Stanton later, he had a few hours to kill before he had to report back aboard the Perseus.

There had been a great deal of misinformation circulated about the state of, and the current deployment of the Atlantic Fleet’s big ships: rumours of operations deep into the Caribbean, and of ships and crews worn out by recent operations.

It was all a veil of lies to mislead the enemy’s spies in New England. Security, such a little considered thing even in the run up to the war, had suddenly acquired a bear trap-like grip on everything that happened at Norfolk. Up until now it had been as if the Spaniards knew every move the fleet planned to take, the disposition and fighting efficiency of every ship, and even the now obvious flaws in the Royal Navy’s hastily learned manner of large-scale air operations at sea.

Well, mistakes had certainly been made.

Plenty of them!

But that was then and this was now. Inevitably, the Navy would get a lot of things wrong in the future but it was not about to repeat the blunders and miscalculations of the first weeks of the war. Secrecy and misdirection were henceforth to be treated with the same obsessive attention to detail as war-fighting operations.

Word had been put around that the Perseus would not be fit for sea for another eight to ten days but in fact, the carrier was due to cast off a few minutes before midnight. The task force’s screening destroyers would depart soon after dusk, then the cruisers, and the big ships would be the last to idle out to sea with the ebb tide, with the battleship Princess Royal and the old battlecruiser Indefatigable – the formerly partly de-activated fleet gunnery school ship – now fully crewed with all four of her main battery turrets restored to battle order, preceding the Perseus, her flight deck and hangar deck crammed with every available aircraft.

The Triple Alliance had had it all their own way thus far.

That was a situation which was about to be rectified.

Ten-year-old Peter Cowdrey-Singh junior stood to attention and saluted the two aviators, a moment recorded forever by the nearly deafening clatter of firing camera shutters.

Both Abe and Ted Forest returned the salute and shook the kid’s hand.

Lord Collingwood oversaw the tableau like a proud uncle.

That was when Kate spied Alex stepping forward.

“They said you were still on Long Island!” She shrieked in happy complaint, flinging her arms around her brother-in-law. Abe, likewise embraced Alex. Only Ted Forest – who had never met Alex – like any true Englishman, contented himself with an uncomfortable handshake.

Alex was astonished at how well the two aviators looked.