The Restless Sea
‘The sure-footedness of a pro, an amazing debut’ Jeffrey ArcherAbsorbing and richly observed, THE RESTLESS SEA is a masterful story of the turbulent years of the Second World War.Three lives collide in a way that only the war makes possible…Jack, a child of the Blitz, has fled the law to become a seaman in the Merchant Navy. The frozen world of the Russian Arctic convoys may be harsh, but it opens his eyes to a new life.While on leave in the Navy’s secret Scottish harbour, Jack meets Olivia, the cossetted daughter of an officer family. Free to roam, Olivia relishes the new freedom granted by war. But her family – and especially the well-connected Charlie, now a fast-rising pilot – don’t welcome these changes. Least of all the arrival of Jack, the boy who casts doubt on each of their futures.The war inflicts danger and social upheaval like never before. But the most unlikely friendships are forged in times when people live like they don’t want tomorrow to come…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Vanessa de Haan 2018
Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (seascape); © Shutterstock.com (letter and plane)
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Vanessa de Haan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it
are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008245764
Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008229818
Version: 2018-01-23
To my weird, wonderful and extensive family
– you know who you are –
and to Amelia Grace Jessel, in memory.
Table of Contents
Eternal Father, strong to save
Whose arm does bound the restless wave
Who bidst the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea
O ruler of the earth and sky
Be with our airmen as they fly
And keep them in thy loving care
From all the perils of the air
O let our cry come up to thee
For those who fly o’er land and sea
O Trinity of love and might
Be with our airmen day and night
In peace or war
Midst friend or foe
Be with them wheresoe’er they go
Thus shall our prayers ascend to thee
For those who fly o’er land and sea
This famous hymn, written by William Whiting in 1860, is also known as the Navy Hymn and sung at naval occasions around the world. This is a version frequently used by the Fleet Air Arm.
The roof stretches across the railway station like the skin of a drum, magnifying the sounds: the tapping and pounding of feet, the trains clanking, the rumble of wheels, the shout of a guard, the whistle of a porter. At the ticket office, there is no sense of where the queue ends or where it begins. A man bashes on the glass, his voice raised in anger, frustration. Tickets are scarce. Everybody here wants to get away, to follow the children who have been evacuated to safer parts of this now unsafe country. The air is sticky and humid. In the haze, little things stand out: two sailors balancing on a stack of cases, one singing as the other accompanies him on a squeezebox. The drifting smoke from the newspaper seller’s pipe; the neat rows of black-and-white print on his stand. A cluster of soldiers, their uniforms smart, the leather of their boots supple and clean, their dark, heavy rifles pulling at their shoulders.
A policeman tails a group of suspicious-looking lads that trickle away from him like mercury, slipping through gaps that close as quickly as they open. He loses them again as they circle a girl dressed in a pale-green coat, a cerise ribbon tied around her matching hat, a bright splash of colour among the drab browns and greys of suits and caps. The policeman glimpses the lads once more as they sidestep the expensive leather cases at the girl’s feet. Then they are gone again, like the brief flash of the bracelet she is fiddling nervously with beneath the cuff of her jacket: now you see it, now you don’t.
The sounds swirl into one cacophony – the sobs of children, the wails of babies, the tinny squeezebox and the guard shouting into the loudspeaker, the scream of another train pulling free from the throng and towards the light. And then suddenly all noise is drowned out by a new sound, one that Londoners will soon grow accustomed to, but this is the first time they have heard its ear-splitting warning. For a moment, the station freezes, caught in a sliver of time. The babies stop wailing. The man stops banging the window. The squeezebox exhales with a breathless sigh. A thousand pairs of eyes widen, a thousand hearts stop beating.
