Bradshaw studied his glass. “Your ship, Graham.” He added for Tonkyn’s benefit, “Getting to be quite a long one.”
Tonkyn walked towards his little hatch, no doubt doing the accounts in his head. Fairfax stepped over the coaming, his cap beneath his arm. There were spots of rain on his uniform, but this was Liverpool.
“Sorry to barge in, sir, but there’s a shore telephone call for you. We’re connected again. Headquarters.” He did not look at Bradshaw. “Probably want us to shift our berth.”
Bradshaw called over his shoulder, “Tell ’em I said no!”
Outside the door Fairfax said quietly, “It’s a personal call, sir. I thought under the circumstances . . .”
Martineau followed him to the quartermaster’s lobby.
“You thought right, Jamie.”
Her voice was very clear and soft in spite of the various rattles and clicks over the line.
“I had to call. We might be cut off, so please listen.”
“I was going to ring you.”
“I know. I know. We saw you come into port.” The line went dead as if they had been disconnected, but he guessed she had covered the phone with her hand.
Then she said, “I’m going to be away for a few days. I didn’t want it, but I have to go. I did so want to see you, you must know that. But I have no choice.”
“I can come and see you as soon as I’m free, Anna. At least we could talk for a while.”
He thought he could hear other voices and imagined her in some office in that maze of corridors, where the lights burned all day and all night. When she spoke again he had to press the instrument hard against his ear to catch each word.
“You won’t be free.” She could barely continue. “I just had to hear you again. Promise me, promise me you’ll be careful. I love you, Graham.”
This time the line did go dead. Coincidence, a hint of “careless talk,” or maybe she had been unable to continue.
He put down the handset and stared at the quartermaster’s duty-board to give his mind time to adjust, but her words remained with him. You won’t be free. And she would know. It was like a cold hand closing tighter and tighter, until his heart seemed to stop beating.
He should have expected it, and been prepared; they all should. But it was different this time. Like a door being slammed in your face, when before there had been hope.
He heard Fairfax talking to someone outside the lobby and made another effort to control his despair.
And Lucky Bradshaw was waiting for him in the cabin. How can I face it?
Fairfax said, “Signal just in, sir.” His eyes moved to the cabin door. “Captain (D) doesn’t know about it yet.”
Martineau took the signal flimsy, surprised that his hand was so steady.
It was from the Commander-in-Chief, and addressed to the Commodore, Special Support Groups, repeated all commanding officers in Bradshaw’s flotilla. Leave was cancelled immediately. Ships would be at twenty-four hours’ notice to move. Top security and censorship to be enforced.
He said quietly, “A big one, Jamie.”
“Not altogether unexpected, sir.” He looked towards the ships moored nearby. “Ours not to reason why, as somebody once said.”
But all Martineau could hear was her voice.
You won’t be free.
16 | Victims
The corvette, the navy’s maid of all work, had been designed and built at the outbreak of war, and intended principally for coastal patrol work. In appearance it resembled the whale-catcher, and the minds which had begun a building programme of these tough, lively little ships had never contemplated the vast Western Ocean as their destiny. Now there were hundreds of them, the most hard-worked and best known escorts on the Atlantic convoy routes. With a company of less than sixty officers and men, they were nevertheless overcrowded, and any kind of sea made watchkeeping a strain on every one of them. Of the corvette it was said, she would roll on wet grass. Few would have contradicted this.
HMS Anthemis, a Flower Class corvette, was typical of her breed. She had weathered three years of war, spent mostly in the Atlantic, the killing ground, as sailors called it. Hardly a foot of her stubby hull was without a dent or a scar, to mark some encounter at sea, taking off exhausted sailors from sinking merchantmen, or passing through another convoy without the benefit of lights or, in those early days, the magic of radar.
Despite the discomforts and the nerve-dragging demands of convoy work there were few men who requested a transfer, no matter what they had proclaimed when they had received their draft chits.
Officers too had this sense of belonging, a navy within a navy. The four officers, including the Captain, shared the same wardroom, such as it was; there was nowhere to hide, to conceal fears and doubts, except when they were lucky enough to be in their bunks.
On this particular March day, the sea was a shifting pattern of grey, broken occasionally by the unending crest of an Arctic roller. Against this hostile and bleak panorama Anthemis looked shabby and untidy, her dazzle paint in need of several more coats, her hull pockmarked with rust. For her size she appeared to be high in the water, as well she might be after another long convoy haul, and now her fuel was low, her depth charge racks almost empty.
On her small bridge the commanding officer lifted his glasses yet again, his eyes sore from the hours, the days, and the endless strain. He was tired and, at this stage of the journey, very conscious of the clothes clinging to his body, unchanged and dirty, like another skin beneath his soiled duffle coat.
Around him, and forward of the bridge at the single four-inch gun, their only armament apart from a pom-pom, the men on watch were reminded of what they had all gone through. This trip, the ones before it, for ever.
In his mind he could see it on the chart, his ship somewhere to the east of Jan Mayen Island, steering south-west, making for Iceland. They would probably be ordered to Seydisfjord, now a naval anchorage, an inhospitable place but quite safe. And there, sleep, sleep, sleep.
His head lolled and he made himself walk to the opposite side, his heavy seaboots cold and damp despite the thick stockings of oiled wool which his wife had sent to him.
He was a lieutenant-commander, Royal Naval Reserve, a peacetime professional sailor, once of the Union Castle Line. He could still smile about that. The Capetown run, the ladies in their low-cut gowns, the parties, the familiar haunts ashore. It was hard to believe it had ever existed.
Anthemis did not compare with such great ships. But she was his, and that was the difference.
He thought now of the ships which had been returning from Russia, survivors from the last big convoy, or one of them. They had to be moved, otherwise they might be iced in during the bitter winter up there beyond the Arctic Circle. Some of the merchantmen looked so decrepit it was a wonder they had made it. But as usual there was the curse of every convoy, the straggler, in this case a big freighter which had been carrying aircraft and spare parts when she joined a convoy on passage for Murmansk. There had been a lot of ice about, and the freighter had suffered engine trouble, the convoy’s Commodore doubtless despairing as every signal was either ignored or misunderstood. But the old ship had made it that time. Several did not.
Anthemis and her chummy ship Cranesbill were sent to escort the straggler for this final part of the return journey.
He heard the monotonous ping of the Asdic, another part of daily life, and tried not to think of sleep. His ship was on the seventieth parallel, and probably already out of range of German aircraft based in Norway. Tomorrow, with any luck, they would be within of their own airborne protection from the airstrips in Iceland. He dug his gloved hands deeper into his pockets. And even before that, they might think fit to send other ships to take over the last stretch. He felt his unshaven skin catch against the towel wrapped around his neck. Eight knots was their speed. A corvette was no racer, but she could do better than that.
He walked to the rear of the bridge and moved his glasses carefully
from quarter to quarter. A vast, empty sea with a thin strip of silver, like a taut wire to mark the division between sky and water. Nothing more. But Cranesbill was there somewhere, following astern of the hated straggler.
Anthemis had taken position in the lead, to sweep for any inquisitive U-boat, although there had been no reports of any.
He thought of the nearly empty racks. Enough for three salvoes of depth charges, no more. As the coxswain had wryly commented, “After that, we’ll go for the bugger with a cutlass!”
They had used all the other charges on the last leg of the convoy. There had been no wreckage, no obvious signs of a kill. But it must have given the U-boat’s crew a good headache.
He moved to the radar repeater and wiped the salt from it with his sleeve.
The two ships were still on station: the little blip was Cranesbill, the blurred one was the freighter.
There had been some trouble with the radar. On the blink, which was hardly surprising. They were due for a refit, had been for weeks.
“Radar—Bridge?”
“Captain.”
“I’m having break-up with the reception, sir. It’s just that—” He heard him gasp. “Another ship, sir, at zero-five-zero! I’m sure of it!”
The corvette’s Captain was not a young man; he had been at sea all his life, since he was a cadet. But he had the mind and the resilience of one.
“Action stations!” He ignored the clamour of the alarm, and the way men were jerking out of the chilled torpor of watch-keeping, staring at him. As if he had gone mad.
He wiped the repeater again. It was all blurred now.
“Ship at action stations, sir.” It was his first lieutenant. “Might be another escort, sir.”
“At that range? Too big, Number One.” He stared at the sea. “Too big.”
He wiped his binoculars again with some tissue. The radar must be at fault.
He called, “What range?”
“Five miles, maybe more, sir.”
He glanced at the sky. Still too bright. Another hour of daylight.
The air quivered, a heavy thunder, far away. He was just in time to see the reflection of a glare, as if above the clouds rather than beneath them.
“Signal, plain language, from Cranesbill. Under attack by cruiser, request . ..”
The yeoman said, “End of R/T message, sir.”
The Captain nodded. “Tell the Chief. Revolutions for full speed.” He tugged his cap over his eyes. “Hard a-starboard.” He stared at the swinging compass, his mind quite clear.
Cranesbill had no chance. They would die today. But they would not be left to die alone.
More explosions thundered against the ship, the glare of the bursting shells making the clouds writhe and change shape. It was the straggler’s turn now. In ballast, she would sink like a stone.
“Signal, sir?”
“No time for code, Number One. Make to Admiralty, Immediate. Am engaging enemy warship. They’ll have our approximate position, so get it off! ”
He heard the roar of shells, the explosion engulfing the whole ship, the columns of water bursting higher than the ragged ensign itself.
They were too slow to run, too weak to fight, and nobody would ever know what really happened.
The next salvo hit the corvette, blasting away the four-inch gun and its crew, severing one of the anchor cables like a knife through a carrot.
The Captain made to seize the compass for support but his boot had caught in something. It was all wrong. His face was pressing against ice-cold metal, and he knew he was lying on the bridge deck. He reached down to free his boot, but there was no boot, nor was there any leg.
Something slid past him, a seaman’s glove, but it still contained a hand, so why was it moving?
The ship began to turn turtle even as another salvo ripped into her bowels and changed her into a hell of fire and steam.
And then there was only darkness.
The other warship continued to fire, but there was nobody to care.
Commodore Dudley Raikes stood by his window staring down into the main operations room. He held a telephone pressed to his ear, and reached out with his free hand to snatch a signal folder as Anna put it down.
“Where is it? Show me.”
She put her finger on the signal, but was looking beyond him at the constant activity below. Like a giant fish tank, she thought. All movement, but because of the special window and with the speakers switched off, completely silent. It had been like this since the brief, desperate signal from the corvette Anthemis. She saw Raikes’s secretary’s reflection behind her, with more information for his superior. In the adjoining room the teleprinters were going all out, Wrens and sailors hurrying from department to department. The chain of command. She was tired, her throat like dust, but nothing normal seemed to matter any more.
She looked at the big map, where two Wrens were moving another cluster of markers while a lieutenant called instructions from the floor.
Raikes had sent her on a mission to the Signals Distribution Office and she had not been here to see Hakka and the others head out from their moorings. Perhaps it had been deliberate on his part. Those same ships would be in Scapa Flow by now, or soon would be. She looked at the clock. About now, according to the last signals.
She was haunted by the two corvettes and the freighter which had been destroyed, wiped away, like the names of ships written in chalk on the casualty boards in the room below. Nothing left . . .
Raikes’s telephone came to life, and she heard him snap, “Well, get on to the R.A.F. yourself! What are you, a halfwit?” He slammed it down and looked at her for the first time.
“It’s on. The big convoy is going through, no matter what! Thirty-seven ships!”
Nobby said quietly, “Captain Bradshaw has just reported that his ships are in Scapa, sir, taking on more fuel.” He glanced at the girl and smiled thinly. “I’ll lay odds that Java ’s Skipper is none too happy about being in dock at a time like this.”
Raikes was scanning another signal but said sharply, “He’ll be a bloody sight less happy when I’ve finished with him!”
A telegraphist peered in from the adjoining room and said, “Chief of Staff coming, sir.”
“Good.” Raikes pushed his hand across his hair. “Now we shall see.”
Anna touched her inside pocket and felt the letter press against her shirt. It had been awaiting her return. She could not imagine how he had found time to write it with so much to do.
She had gone over it a million times. How she had clung to him at the house in the New Forest. Unable to stop herself. Not wanting to.
My dearest Anna. She had cried when she had read it the first time. But afterwards she had been able to read it with joy, and in a way it had given her strength. Perhaps it had done so for him too.
Captain Tennant strode into the room and looked through the window, as if he hated what he saw.
“We’re all set. Iceland Command are prepared, and our escorts will be ready to take over the convoy exactly on schedule.” He was ticking it off in his mind, searching for flaws. “There will be an escort carrier with the convoy, and a cruiser squadron is expected to cover both possibilities should the enemy have a go. The Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet is sending the cruiser Durham to join Bradshaw’s group. It’s about all we can do.”
Raikes regarded him calmly. “May I ask, what does the Admiral think about it?”
Tennant shrugged, but smiled his thanks as a small Wren handed him a cup of tea.
“You know his views. He was firmly against another big convoy. Firstly, large convoys are more likely to be split up by bad weather or damage, small groups scattered over a wide area, which present the enemy with a better chance of dividing our support vessels and using their surface forces to good effect. Quite apart from the fact that it makes smaller groups more liable to detection by U-boats. But he was overruled. The First Lord as well as the prime minister wants an all-out effort this time. If the
Russians are to follow up their recent successes on land, they need every damn thing we can give them.”
Raikes was unconvinced. “I agree with the Admiral.”
She watched them, and remembered what Crawfie had told her about Raikes’s admiration for the Admiral. Seeing his own future, perhaps?
Like the trips she had made with him to Plymouth and Southampton, and to a top-secret staff meeting in Manchester. She had caught the glances when they had seen her with him. His assistant. Raikes never explained, not in her presence in any case. He never shared his thoughts with anyone.
What was he thinking now, for instance? Did he see all those little counters and flags as real ships, flesh and blood? Or could he separate one from the other?
Raikes said suddenly, “I’m going down to the Met Office. Coming?” He saw Nobby and asked almost softly, “Is there something you wish to add?”
Nobby grinned. He was used to every mood.
“Full security in force, sir. We had some last-minute request from the Provost people, in connection with the civil police, I understand. Something about records of travel warrants issued in special cases, for one of Hakka ’s ratings.”
Raikes exploded. “In God’s name, Nobby! I hope you told the silly buggers to jump off! Security indeed!” He snatched up his cap.
It was then that she noticed that, for the first time she could recall, his hair was over his collar, and he needed a shave. It made him seem quite human.
He said sharply, “Come along, Anna, lot to do, you can powder your nose later!”
She saw Nobby smile. It was catching.
Another door opened and the noise flooded in, overwhelming, suffocating. Like her first day back from the hospital. She had wondered then if she would be able to go through with it. Like being buried alive.
But she could do it without flinching. Almost. She looked at boards and scribbled names but she saw only Hakka, and the scarred hand on hers.
Raikes was talking to the senior Met officer, and they were looking at a chart. Iceland, the Denmark Strait, the Norwegian coast, all the way up to North Cape. How could men stand it, day after day?
For Valour Page 27