On the Edge of Darkness

by Anthony Molloy

  * * *

  Silvertown

  Wilson tucked the blanket back in behind the curtain wire and got down off the chair. “That’s better, won’t do to break the blackout a second night, old Bill Gatsby’ll blow his top proper.”

  “Arh! You don’t want to worry about him…don’t know what he frets about, we ain’t seen ‘ide nor ‘air of a German round here since the war broke out. His wife pointed at a bucket by the grate. “Stick some more coal on, while yer up, Luv there’s a dear.”

  “What’s you last servant die off?” asked Wilson, bending to the coal scuttle.

  His wife smiled, but didn’t look up from her mending, “You want these socks darned or not?…How long you been walking round like this?”

  “Since birth or a little after.” he said, resuming his seat by the range.

  “I’m talking about these,” she held up his navy blue socks. “There’s more spud than sock.”

  “Give over… no one bothers with that sort of thing now…’sides I always wear two pairs at sea; as long as the holes is in different places it don’t show.”

  She shook her head slowly, “Men!”

  Wilson leant forward and switched on the wireless, it sparked into life like an angry cricket. The static suddenly cleared giving way to a brass band playing a march, the station drifted in and out.

  “Nice bit of music; bit faint though ain’t it?”

  “It’s the accumulator, needs changing.”

  “I’ll pop over to the newsagents tomorrow. Ted Ray’s on tomorrow night, don’t want to miss him, do we?”

  She smiled, “I’ve been putting it off, they’re so heavy.” Her tussled head bent once more to her work. Nice to have a man about the place again, she thought, even if it’s only for a little while.

  * * *

  Nuneaton

  “No, it’s no good, it’s gotta go, son,” Goddard’s dad was looking up the garden. “The bloody thing’s a menace, it nearly had your mum that time… she’s livid, spoilt her best pinny.”

  “How about Christmas, you’ll be one short… when it comes to the share out, I mean.”

  “Bugger the share out, I ain’t having no more of it, he’s for the chop, could’ve had yer mum’s eye out.” Mr Goddard senior turned and headed down towards the netted enclosure. He disappeared through the gate and seconds later all hell broke loose for a second time. He emerged from the compound with the cockerel suspended upside down from one fist. Ignoring the bird’s screeching and attempts at pecking, its triumphant captor carried it straight to the back wall and the two nails over the drain.

  The condemned bird was trussed feet first to the rusty iron nails. His Dad’s hand disappeared into his pocket and pulled out the knife that was always there. Goddard remembered from a boy.

  But the cockerel wasn’t finished yet, as if sensing his impending doom he burst into life. It was all his Dad could do to hold the thrashing bird still with both hands, “Give’s a hand 'ere son.”

  Goddard bent down and retrieved the dropped knife. There was a flash of silver in the dying sunlight, a spurt of red, and mum’s torment was over.

  His dad looked him in the eyes, “You couldn’t have done that a few months ago, son,” he said.

  He stared back at his Dad as they crouched together, the cockerel’s blood running river-red between them. There was no need for a reply, Dad had been in the Great War, he knew what war did.

  * * *

  Central London.

  His wife was getting into full swing, O’Neill snatched a glance over her shoulder… the copper behind her was loving it, the sadistic bastard.

  “It’s taken me all this time to find you,” she was yelling, “and if it wasn’t for the placard outside the newsagent…And the disgrace of it!”

  That word again…

  “I’ve never been so embarrassed, I’ve been after asking everyone if they’ve seen you and then I find out like that. Not just headlines in the newspaper, oh no! I had to have the newspaper man yelling it out for all to hear, ‘Local Irishman jailed for assault on policeman!’… I knew it was you, I just knew. Be Jaysus! Last leave I never saw you… you were on another of yer drunken binges and now this.”

  O’Neill sighed.

  “And don’t you sigh at me! I’ll put your bloody eye in a sling, so help me I will!”

  The copper had company now; it seemed as if the whole station had turned out to watch his chastisement.

  * * *

  Nuneaton

  When he came into the room Goddard’s mum was sitting down in her favourite chair. She was painstakingly wrapping the wool, salvaged from one of his Dad’s old pullovers, around a cardboard milk bottle top.

  “What’s that you making , mum,”

  “Handbag dear, you string ‘em all together, like this,” she pointed to a pile on the chair next to her.

  “Oh nice… Look mum, I’m all packed… I’ll be off in a bit.”

  “I’ll make you a last cuppa shall I?”

  He looked down at her, something in her voice, her eyes were full to the brim.

  His eyes were stinging now, “You stay there, I’ll make the tea.”

  * * *

  Silvertown

  “Ear it comes, Luv,” said Maude, as the Number Ten rounded the corner. He kissed her quick and picked up his bag. The bus slowed, stopped and started to empty.

  “One last kiss,” she offered him her lips. He kissed her again, she held him very tight.

  He took her shoulders and held her away at arm's length. Jumping up onto the platform he turned. “Bye, Luv!” he yelled above the revving of the bus’s engine. “ ‘Ere afore I go, what’s it like to be an 'onest woman?” A few heads turned in their direction.

  Maud ignored them, “It’s daft, after all we’ve been together all these years, but I do feel different.”

  “What’d yer mean different?”

  “Oh, I don’t know how to say it, I ain’t got the words…I feel like I belong to someone.”

  “Who?” he called as the bus pulled away.

  Chapter 9

  Birth of the Killer Whale

  Admiralty, 0930 hrs, Monday, 6th May, 1940.

  Vice Admiral Sir Walter Mackenzie, KCB, DSO, Head of Special Operations, put the folder he was reading down and came around from behind his desk. “Arh! Barr just been rereading that report of yours, inspiring stuff.”

  Barr shook hands, “Thank you sir.” he stood to attention while the old Admiral resumed his seat with a grateful sigh. The yellow Labrador in the corner of the room rose to his feet and wandered over to the desk. The old sailor pulled absent minded at the dog’s ear, “Have a seat…The Minister was particularly pleased with your work. He’s ex-army of course…horses and all that… had the gall to say that all this charging in knocking them for six and charging out again was in the best traditions of the bloody Army! Anyway it looks as if you may have given him a few ideas, for a start there’s this,” he threw a piece of foolscap paper across to Barr’s side of the desk and raised one bushy eyebrow. The expression of inquiry slowly changed to a smile as he watched Barr’s face.

  “Well, I don’t know what to say…”

  “Thank you could be in order… Commander, but I’d think, in your recently promoted shoes I’d wait to hear the rest before I ventured any thanks. That’s what I should have done when they took me off half pay and gave me this bloody job. I realised, too late, that they only gave me the post because no one else wanted to sail this dammed desk…Mind you, there are some that say I got it on merit, cloak and danger stuff coming naturally to a scheming old bastard like me!”

  Barr smiled, “I am grateful for my promotion, thank you, sir.”

  “Arh well, there’s always a price to pay for promotion, my boy, especially when it’s out of turn like yours, and in your case it’s a practically heavy one…here it is.” He lifted a thick folder and passed it to Barr.

  The newly promoted Commander only
had time to glance at the cover, before the Admiral continued. Stamped on it, in large red letters, were the words ‘Top Secret’. Under that, in black, was the title ‘Special Operations Group’.

  “In a nut shell, what that ‘desk-banger’ says is that, as of now, you are the leader of an independent group, code name ‘Orca’. It will comprise the ‘Nishga’, the two E-boats that you captured, in addition you will have two of our own motor torpedo boats. You will, under my command, carry out special operations against the enemy held coast of Norway.” He paused to pull furiously at his pipe, from the midst of a cloud of acrid smoke, that would have done a First World War coal-burner proud, he continued. “Now, as you know the land war is not going… at all well, is probably the most diplomatic way of putting it. Between you and me it won’t be long before the army has its back to the sea. Doubtless it will be the Andrew that has to get them out of the soup they’ve managed to get themselves in. Now, you are probably thinking, what’s new, we’ve done that so many times it’s a wonder the British Army hasn’t evolved webbed feet. And you’d be bloody right. What is new, however, is the First Sea Lord, Churchill. It’s refreshing to have ministerial backing, for a change.

  You will form part of an operation that is set to grow in the weeks and, who knows, even the months to come. If we evacuate, or rather when we do, France will not be able to stand alone for long. It’s only a matter of time before Hitler’s little lot will own the whole bloody coast from Norway, south, to the Iberian Peninsula. That’s three thousand bloody miles. Jerry will be able to launch attacks on our shipping from any of a dozen ports. He will be able to launch attacks by U Boat, E-boat and surface raider. He will have full use of these port’s facilities to repair and replenish.

  Remember the Hun very nearly crippled us with just a few U Boats in the last do and from nowhere near the number of ports he’ll have available to him this time round.”

  “That’s a pretty grim picture you paint, sir. But, we’ve been there before with the Kaiser and with Napoleon and neither of them made it across the Channel. I believe Hitler will have his work cut out, remember what you were saying works both ways. Three thousand miles is a hell of a lot of coastline to defend it gives us a wide selection of targets.”

  “You are nothing if not confident, I’ll say that for you, personally I’ve no doubt we will prevail in the end. What I’m trying to get across to you is the magnitude of the task. It will not do to underestimate the enemy, the next few months will be crucial. If we can show him the Navy’s not beaten … even if our ‘Pongoes’ have had their arses well and truly kicked. There is still a good chance the Hun will think twice before launching an invasion of this country and unless he invades he cannot win and he cannot invade without first beating the Navy and nobody has ever managed that.

  If we can hit Jerry where it hurts, prevent or seriously disrupt his building an invasion force, sink his ships in their harbours, give him a bloody nose. Really, what you’ve been doing in Norway over the past few weeks, only on a much larger scale. Assemble a whole network of Olaf’s gathering information about Jerry’s plans, hit him not only with your group, but with others too…everything available. If we can make him realise that crossing the channel will be too risky… that the Royal Navy is still a force to be reckoned with, he’ll back off… and then he loses.”

  “He who hesitates is lost, is that it sir.”

  “Barr… you know…That’ll do nicely for ‘Orca’s’ motto.”

  Chapter 10

  Preparation

  The two M.T.B.s turned gracefully, entering the peaceful harbour in line ahead. It was a beautiful May evening, a star-buttressed sky reflected in the mirror-calm of the bay.

  The base had been chosen well, tucked away from the main shipping lanes that crossed and criss-crossed this part of the Irish Sea. The small bay lay between the Isle of Man’s eastern ports of Douglas and Ramsey to the north.

  Lieutenant Benjamin Crosswall-Brown’s M.T.B. led the way in towards the heavily camouflaged ‘Nishga’. His men lifted the netting with their boat hooks and feed it aft hand over hand as the three huge Isotta-Fraschini engines purred at slow ahead. A hooded torch moved about the destroyer’s sea boat’s davits pointing the way to where they were to berth.

  While his men tied up the second M.T.B. Crosswall-Brown studied with interest the two E-boats moored to the destroyer’s quarterdeck.

  He had met them several times before both on the east coast and in the Channel, but it had always been at night, fleeting glimpses by the flickering light of battle.

  He knew the German’s called them Schnellbootes, S Bootes for short, he had no idea why the British called them E-boats.

  Unlike the Royal Navy’s M.T.B.s and M.G.B.s they were fitted with diesel engines, they were a lot longer and at least half again wider in the beam. They were fast, capable of forty knots, as was his own M.T.B. The difference lay in their respective armament. He looked with special interest at the twenty-one inch torpedo tubes and the twenty millimetre cannons. He paid particular attention to the Flak 28 on their sterns. It was this gun that had been the telling factor in many an encounter in the Channel, easily outgunning the British M.T.B.s machine guns.

  The RAF were having the same trouble pitting the Spitfire’s Browning machine guns against the Messerschmitts cannons, with their exploding shells. He shook his head, it was like fighting with your bare hands when your opponent was wielding a bloody great sledge hammer.

  A shout from the ‘Nishga’s’ deck broke into his thoughts.

  “Fine evening Lieutenant Commander Crosswall-Brown.”

  He peered up into the dark.

  “Well I’ll be buggered. Robert, by all that’s Holy…what are you doing here?”

  Grant smiled, I might ask you the same thing, I work here. This is the detached duty I told you about.”

  “You mean we’re working together… how absolutely, bloody, splendid!”

  “Watch your head, sir!” called a seaman from the destroyer’s deck. The man kicked at a short rope ladder, unrolling it down the destroyer’s rust streaked side. Crosswall-Brown grabbed at it eagerly and scrambled up.

  Grant saluted formally and shook hands warmly, gripping his friend by the elbow as he did so. “Ben, I can’t tell you how nice it is to see you again. The ‘Old Man’… Commander Barr… you’ve met? No, not yet, well, he told me about your promotion and that you were to command the M.T.B. side of things.”

  “This is a turn up for the books, you wait ‘til Charlotte hears. What a bloody coincidence!…I say you’ve made an impression there, what? Every time I speak to her on the phone she manages to bring the conversation around to you.”

  “She made quite an impression on me, as well.”

  “So it seems! No accounting for tastes. Just what did you get up to after I left the two of you alone…I hope your intentions are honourable.”

  “As honourable as yours in your dealings with the fairer sex, old man.”

  “You bounder!” laughed Crosswall-Brown, “Never get to see the real thing much these days, these are my little girls now. What do you think?” He waved his hand the length of the two M.T.B.s. It was as if he was caressing them.

  “Very sexy, Italian engines I read somewhere?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Isotta-Fraschini. Forty knots official top speed, though, between you and me I’ve got forty-seven out of the beauties.”

  “I didn’t know they were that fast. She’s a Vosper boat, isn’t she?”

  “The new ones aren’t, retrograde step if ever I saw one. For some reason they put different engines in them, Hall-Scott’s I can literally run rings around them. Twenty-five knots on a good day! I ask you, haven’t we enough of a disadvantage against E-boats as it is? I can make twenty five knots using the old Ford V8 we are fitted with for silent bloody running!”

  “What is she sixty five or seventy?”

  “Seventy footer and strong as an ox, mahogany and birch. The frames are only a foot ap
art! Although in truth I’d have preferred a B.P.B. The ‘Old girl’s’ not too bad. She was built for the Chinese originally, but then along came the war and we nicked ‘em, before they could be delivered to the Chinks.”

  “Come and have a look at my little command,” said Grant. The two friends turned aft and walked side by side back towards the darkened and silent E-boats.

  “That’s new!” Crosswall-Brown said, catching sight of the blue and white ribbon on Grant’s chest.” Super, DSO, eh? I say, they’re not giving them away with packets of cigarettes now, are they?”

  Grant smiled as he climbed down the Jacob’s ladder, “How did you find out…but it’s still an honour, they don’t give them to just anybody. You have to be a twenty-a- day man…That’s new as well.” He was pointing at a ramp welded to the ‘Nishga’s’ quarter deck

  Crosswall-Brown looked with interest at the framework. “Bit like a depth charge ramp, bit bigger I suppose?”

  “It’s one of the ‘Old Man’s’ ideas, fitted recently, while we were having a boiler clean. You’ll find him full of ideas. It’s to hold the spare fuel for your M.T.B.s as a matter of fact. The idea is you can dump it overboard in a hurry, if needs be.”

  “Wise precaution, highly inflammable stuff. So it’s just ‘out pins’ and over she goes into the hog-wash? Good idea.”

  “And then there are these,” said Grant jumping deftly across onto the E-boat’s stern, he pulled off a canvas cover. “The first on any operational boat.”

  Crosswall-Brown was looking at another metal structure; this one was mounted on a turn table. “What on earth is it?”

  “This, old boy, is the new depth charge launcher, shortly to be fitted to the fleet, the swivel bit is the ‘Old Man’s idea… that makes it even more experimental. When the launchers are eventually fitted to escorts they won’t have the swivel. They have enough room on their arse ends for one each side so there’ll be no need for the ‘Old Man’s modification. Of course it’s a different story on our cramped quarter decks. To tell you the truth I don’t think the Admiralty even know about the turntable. I think the ‘Old Man’ bribed the welding foreman with a bottle or two. With this little beauty we can drop two-hundred and ninety pounds of Amatol right in Jerry’s jolly old lap and this bugger,” he patted a depth charge fondly, “will blow a hole in any hull as long as it lands within twenty feet.”