Gone to Sea in a Bucket

by David Black

  ‘Target two,’ says Devaney, ‘closing again from directly astern . . . commencing attack now!’

  ‘Port twenty,’ says the Skipper, wedged now between the chart table and the bevel of the port hull. ‘Can you risk another fifty feet, Mr Carey? Have you got a grip of The Bucket again?’

  ‘Five hundred and fifty feet it is, sir,’ says Mr Carey, sounding miffed the Skipper could have thought he’d ever lost the trim of The Bucket for a moment, even though he had; even though it had been touch and go. For a moment. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage,’ he says.

  And still they press on, pursued by the malevolent whirring of those demented, amplified sewing machines, pulling turns, trying to stay out of the killing radius of the German charges; and again and again, the monotonous thunder of them . . . and Grainger’s incantation . . . ‘. . . twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine . . .’

  The boat begins to creak now. Groaning, tearing sounds, as if screaming at the pressure.

  ‘It’s wooden fittings. The cupboards and panels and stuff,’ says the Skipper, not looking at Harry, but obviously speaking to him. ‘It doesn’t flex as well as the steel, the steel gives a little under the pressure, compresses, which is handy. The wood likes to complain before it cracks.’

  Harry smiles, then looks around: everyone pressed up close in the control room, faces so close to his you wouldn’t get a twelve-inch ruler between them; the sour smell of fear-heavy breath. No one talking, just the crunch of glass shattered from gauges and dials under foot, the breathing and Devaney’s commentary on the men upstairs trying to kill them. And the concussions: ‘. . . thirty-one, thirty-two . . .’

  Then a gun goes off: a pistol shot. Here in the boat. For’ard somewhere. Harry jerks rigid. Two more in quick succession. Someone firing. A scream, followed by low moaning. Harry’s eyes search everyone’s face, looking for some sign he is not hallucinating. But there is no alarm beyond the tightness of fear they are all etched in. The faces remain the same, until a rating comes aft.

  ‘One of the Torpedomen,’ he says, breathless. ‘Copped one high on ’is back like. Looks bad, sir.’

  The Skipper nods. ‘Make him comfortable.’ Then he sees Harry’s slack jaw. ‘Rivets,’ he says. ‘Hold the section frames together . . . this deep . . . the hull pressure squeezes the looser ones out . . . bullets really. Doesn’t do to get in the way.’

  Click!

  Ra-bumm-rumm-rum-rum!

  Ra-bumm-rumm-rum-rum!

  And on it goes.

  Every now and then the monotonous fear is punctuated by fear of a different flavour; another handful of pebbles hits their hull, or another shouted damage report, followed by the scurrying of feet as crewmen run to fix it.

  Another rivet cracks like a bullet. Harry has stopped listening to them now.

  He thinks only about the unbridgeable distance between people, even between those within arms’ reach. How everyone is so close and yet so utterly alone in their fear.

  And again, rabummm-babumm-bumm! And again, rabummm-babumm-bumm!

  ‘Thirty-seven, thirty-eight.’

  They are at 600 feet now. The charges are not as close as before, and detonating a bit further above them now. Being at 600 feet is making a difference, but the boat creaks worse than before, and they still rattle as if being pounded by some giant hammer; and the sound of stuff breaking and the damage control reports follow every explosion.

  But Harry isn’t paying attention at all; he just stands gripping the bulkhead door combing, wedging himself into the space between the door and its central locking wheel, not even wishing for it to stop anymore; not feeling, thinking. There is only the noise and the blows. Rabummm-babumm-bumm!

  ‘Mr Gilmour.’

  Harry doesn’t hear the Skipper at first. He has to repeat himself.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nip back and see how Mr Partridge is getting on with our errant escape hatch and report back to me, there’s a good fellow.’

  From somewhere out of his stifling fear, Harry can’t help but notice, when matters are getting really sticky, how scrupulously polite the Skipper has become.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ he says, actually managing to smirk to himself, thinking that if they survive, how he’ll make sure to tell the crew.

  And the world comes back into focus. Now he has something to do: a task at last, after all the impotent waiting while living in the immediate shadow of death. He clambers aft, telling himself ‘give yourself a shake’, then realizing that if he would just wait a few moments, Jerry will give him all the shaking he needs. Laughing and grimacing as the pain in his arm and back stabs and dances, lurching and wincing as he goes between the huge diesels, muttering to himself, ‘Harry’s a real hoot!’ And the Stokers, seeing him pass, think he’s cracked. Then he catches sight of the water through the aft bulkhead door, spurting down the Stokers’ mess at an angle into the pump room; if it had jetted the other way, into the motor room and the boat’s electrics . . . well it hadn’t, so there’s no point in worrying about that.

  He slides into the Stokers’ mess, where Partridge, even greyer and gaunter, stands with his hands on his hips, scrutinising his handiwork. The centre of the escape hatch is packed with what looks like a hammock, with wooden wedges hammered into the heavy material to keep it tight against the hatch’s operating spindle, the device which opens or seals it against the sea. Two Stokers stand below the hatch with hammers, ready to bash the wedges home again should they threaten to loosen. Water still splutters off the gimcrack repair.

  Partridge turns to look at Harry: ‘One of the depth charges . . . the blast got under the rim . . . the hatch jumped and we took a whole packet of water. It would have blown the whole thing open if the mechanism hadn’t held. As it is, the spindle has a crack in it and the packing is all blown. We’ve bunged it up with a hammock and it seems to be holding. Can’t afford to try and stop the leak all together . . . if we keep hammering in the wedges we might end up finishing what the depth charge failed to do. We’re still taking water, but nothing we can’t cope with.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Partridge,’ says Harry. ‘Good work.’

  The EO gives him a sardonic look, the sort that a man who knows what he’s doing gives a boy who doesn’t.

  Three more detonations break the moment.

  Partridge looks up; the Stokers are about to advance, but Partridge raises his hand. They must have been banging home the wedges every time the detonations loosened them. But Partridge is saying, ‘Those were much further away’ and even Harry notices that he hasn’t been shaken off his feet this time.

  ‘No clicks,’ Partridge adds. Then, without taking his eyes off his packed hammock, he asks, ‘What’s happening in the control room, Mr Gilmour?’

  Engine room faces stare at Harry from all around the steering space and the hatch leading to the motor room. Behind him, he can hear the engine room telegraph ring, and before he can answer the motors stop and a crackly voice comes over the tannoy calling for silence in the boat.

  ‘No clicks?’ whispers Harry.

  Partridge focuses on him this time, and whispers too: ‘Jerry uses time switches as detonators. The time switch clicks when it closes. If the depth charge is close, you hear it. What’s happening, Mr Gilmour? How are we doing?’

  The faces haven’t stopped staring; serried ranks of stoicism, hanging on the words he’s about to utter. Of course, he realises. It was bad enough in the control room, waiting for the hull to be crushed under the endless patterns of explosions, powerless to do anything; but at least you were able to listen to Devaney’s commentaries; hear the Skipper’s orders; know he’s evading; form a picture of the battle raging around you. Back here, in the engine spaces, they’re blind and deaf to everything but the explosions and the concussions. It’s bad up forward; it must be hell here.

  ‘The Skipper’s heading in shore,’ explains Harry. ‘There are lots of islets and reefs, but it’s still deep water. So we’re going to hide.’

  He�
�s been frozen; in a blue funk, blocking out everything; too frightened to think. How much worse has it been for these men, in the dark, knowing nothing? Waiting for the next bang to blow the hatch clean open? Harry is learning an important lesson about what it means to be an officer: to be responsible for his crew. If they are prepared to bet their lives on their officers’ decisions, it’s only fair they know what those decisions are. This is the trade, after all. The deal really is all or nothing.

  ‘He’s going to use the clutter to mask their detection gear,’ he continues. ‘Lose us till the fuss dies down.’

  Two more explosions reach them and don’t even rock the boat. The engine room crew, all eyes on him, even manage a ragged round of smiles. Harry doesn’t know if that is for his news or the fact that the last two depth charges are a long way off. Even Harry knows they are a long way off. He smiles back and returns for’ard to where plans are being finalised.

  The Skipper was halfway up the conning tower ladder, with the two lookouts immediately below him, holding on to his legs; his watch cap was stuffed in his Ursula suit pocket.

  ‘Last sweep round, Devaney . . . hear anything?’

  There was a pause as Devaney turned the hydrophone wheel: ‘No HE . . . clear up top.’

  ‘Take us up, Mr Carey!’

  ‘Surface!’

  There was a lot of pressure in the boat by this time; she’d taken on a lot of water. And that was why the ratings were holding on to the Skipper’s legs. It wasn’t completely unknown for the pressure to blow a careless Skipper or watchkeeper clean out of the boat when the lid came off.

  ‘One clip off!’ yelled the Skipper, and the two ratings tightened their grip. ‘Two clips off!’

  An almighty whumph of air and one of the rating’s caps shot off his head and out of the opening hatch into the night; and then the tang of fresh air came down into their lungs. The Skipper clambered up and the ratings followed. Harry, standing beneath the tower, could see a circle of stars in blackness yawing above his head as The Bucket was hit by the swell.

  ‘Right, Mr Gilmour, damage control party to the bridge,’ the Skipper called down the hatch, and up Harry went. There were three of them, manhandling their bullet-ridden and collapsed inflatable dinghy and a tool bag, and they went aft to the bent escape hatch. Harry was striding down the casing when The Bucket’s big diesels burbled, and the boat beneath his feet came to life, and the freezing water bubbled up into a serious wake, powering them towards Norway under a frigid starlit sky.

  They worked fast; the escape hatch was prised open and two Stokers emerged with a welding set and packing. Harry stood watch as his two men huddled the collapsed dinghy over the hatch to mask the blue glow of the welding arcs as they packed the blown spindle and began welding the crack shut. The noise of the diesel exhaust throbbed in Harry’s ears as he shivered and watched, the night sky clear and shrieking with stars. It was beautiful beyond words. Until the star shell burst way to the north-west and the tracer started. He turned to the bridge, and in the pale star glow he could make out the shapes of the Skipper and the lookouts training their glasses.

  It took some time for the chatter of gunfire to reach Harry’s ear, the sound fleeting against the diesel thump and distorted by the wind; and all the while the green and the red tracer danced back and forward on the horizon, hundreds of little Tinkerbells flitting across a backcloth, with the odd flashes which looked nothing like explosions and more like magic spells cast by dancing faeries.

  Jerry had blown Trumpeter to the surface.

  How do you punish yourself, Harry? For thinking the light show so beguiling when what it means is your mates are dying? Nonetheless, he kept watching. The Honourable Bertie hadn’t been so fleet of foot as the Skipper when it came to dodging, but he wasn’t dying without a fight.

  Later, sitting at the wardroom table, Harry had heard it called down: the loom of Norwegian peaks in the dark, just where Grainger said they would be. Almost there. He took another bite of his gammon and cheese sandwich, followed by more coffee. He wasn’t sure if it was right that he should be sitting opposite the prostrate and burst figure of the Tigger, stuffing his face; but he was starving and cold after his work on the casing.

  The aft escape hatch was now secured as much as they hope for this side of Holy Loch, and they’d evaded Jerry. All they had to do now was get to Norway. Twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the most, hiding in the maze of islands off the North Cape, until Jerry got fed up and went home; and then they could go home, too. The Tigger was conscious and grinning inanely, just like he always grinned. But he was still the colour of porridge and his breathing still came in hiccups.

  ‘I wish I had one of them,’ he hiccupped, eyeing Harry’s sandwich and smiling thinly with the effort.

  ‘The book says you’re not supposed to eat,’ said Harry, shamefully thinking again: Thank god it’s not me.

  The Tigger shook his head: ‘The coffee smells good, though.’

  ‘D’you want one?’ said Harry, leaning forward just as the Skipper came into the space and slumped down.

  ‘Mr Milner,’ he asked, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Topper, Skipper!’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  Harry got up and poured the Skipper a coffee and brought it back. Tigger and the Skipper were just sitting there, smiling benevolently at each other. The bland innocuousness of the moment made Harry start smiling, too. He put the coffee down in front of his boss and joined them, and the three of them sat together with absolutely nothing to say. And after a while the Tigger’s eyes began to droop and he fell asleep, as if he were still a little boy at prep school.

  Eventually Harry found himself asking a question of the Skipper: ‘Why didn’t they just let Trumpeter surrender, sir?’

  Andy Trumble was still nursing his coffee, which must have been cold by now. He made no sign he’d heard.

  ‘They were blown to the surface,’ Harry added. ‘It wasn’t a fight any more. There was no shame in just throwing in the towel. So why didn’t they?’

  Still no reaction.

  So Harry tried again: ‘Why didn’t they just surrender?’

  Without looking up, the Skipper said: ‘Trumpeter? . . . why didn’t the Germans let them?’

  It slowly dawned on Harry what he meant. What he’d obviously seen, through his night glasses from the bridge.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Harry.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ said the Skipper, staring at nothing. ‘I should imagine they all know their fathers. All of them. Well brought up German lads from nice houses in nice towns, apple for the teacher, Gott, Kinder und Küche by the hearthside, und apple strudel from Auntie Trudl. Just like us really, but different lingo.’ Another long pause. ‘It’s just the war, young Gilmour.’

  The klaxon sounded.

  Harry bruised his hip, felt his stitches tearing and was already running when the clutches came out of the diesels, and the boat lurched; the Skipper was in the control room ahead of him, and The Bucket well on the way down by the time he got to his Diving Stations at the fruit machine.

  ‘Surface contact approaching from the north, with a bone in its teeth,’ said Grainger, sliding off the conning tower ladder.

  The Skipper said, ‘Flood Q! Two hundred feet.’

  They all braced themselves as the boat powered down, Carey calling off the depth . . . interrupted only by Devaney, announcing: ‘High-speed propeller sounds . . . coming in fast, bearing zero-seven-zero.’

  Down, down, then . . .

  ‘Two hundred feet!’ It was Carey on the trim board.

  ‘Port thirty!’ said the Skipper, above the demented sewing machine whine. Everyone in the control room looked up. Splash, splash, splash; and it started all over again. The dead hand closed on Harry’s innards, familiar now, but still impervious to his willing it to just go away. No matter how much he incanted to himself the majesty of his responsibilities, why he must remain calm, the noise and violence entombed him in fear.


  Grainger was counting ‘five, six, seven’ before Harry heard him, even though that twelve-inch ruler would still have found difficulty fitting between their faces. They made eye contact in the silence that followed the blasts.

  Grainger was grinning. ‘Is that why you joined?’ he asked.

  Harry gave a puzzled stare.

  ‘You were humming,’ said Grainger. ‘“All The Nice Girls Love A Sailor” . . . is that why you joined?’

  Harry grinned, too; not realising in his fear that he’d been humming. Why he’d joined . . . that was a laugh; and then suddenly through the mayhem he had a vision of Shirley standing on the jetty at Sandbank, hunkered down against the wind, hood up and hands stuffed in her duffel coat pocket; and he wasn’t listening to the sound of Jerry’s screws any more or the distant splashes; he was watching her spot him in the crew boat, and then her arm in the air and a big extravagant wave; and her smile.

  Click!

  Postscript

  Privilege, as far as Oliver Verney was concerned, was something he and his like should never have to consider. You assumed it as your birthright and lived in its benevolent embrace. It was a simple fact of life. If you had it, all things flowed effortlessly to you. Which was why, if you didn’t have it, you coveted it. The trouble with this damned war, however, was that it forced one to reconsider everything.

  Now take that scruffy youth, for example, standing out there on the deck of that bloody submarine they’d traipsed all this way to meet, and it looking as if it belonged in a scrapyard, even greyer than the grey, clinging mist that seemed to leach every shade of colour out of the world, and every therm of warmth. That youth, with his improbably scruffy officer’s watch cap pushed back on far-too-long hair, and sporting a thoroughly disreputable, tarpaulin-like jacket, all oily, with its left sleeve split halfway to his armpit and held together roughly by some kind of maritime twine, all just to make room for the grubby wound dressing which encased his forearm; and the wound dressing slapped half across his right cheek and neck, with its little stain that could only be caked blood.