Not Thinking of Death

by Not Thinking of Death (retail) (epub)

  The food on offer, after soup had been served in mugs, was cold chicken, tongue and roast beef with salads and potato mayonnaise, followed by a choice of puddings. Reaching that stage, Chalk selected chocolate eclairs and took them back to the chart table, of which he and a few others including Eason and Harry Calshot – the old friend who was the junior member of the Blockhouse party – had claimed temporary possession. Also with them was John Hervey, the boat’s navigating officer – tall, fair-headed, trying not to show concern at having his pristine, beautifully polished chart table used as a food-bar. You could only eat standing, jammed against the outside bulkhead of the wardroom for support against the boat’s movement, but at least the eclairs could be handled without tools.

  Dymock had the watch when luncheon started, and Searle went up to relieve him when he’d finished his. Dymock came down then, filled a plate for himself in the galley and came to join the group at the chart table. Calshot was a friend and contemporary of his too, of course.

  ‘Beefs overcooked.’

  ‘Ours wasn’t.’ Chalk told him, ‘You’ve got the scrag end, there.’

  ‘Thought there’d be plenty. With this much movement on her.’ He’d begun to eat. ‘No signs of mal de mer that I’ve seen, though.’

  ‘You haven’t been for’ard.’ Eason pointed that way with his jaw. ‘Fellers with their heads in buckets up there, all right. And a Barlows’ bigwig spewed all over the bloody motor-room. Christ, you wouldn’t believe—’

  ‘Spare us the grisly details, Chief?’

  Eason sucked his teeth, glancing at Chalk. ‘Don’t know why I came, tell you the truth. Be happy as a fucking lark, when we get back alongside…’

  Dymock was asking Calshot about recent comings and goings of submarines and individuals at Fort Blockhouse. Chalk, having had enough to eat and finished his bottle of Worthington E, wandered forward, looking at this and that – mainly for any detail in which the finished job differed from the plans and might be worth emulating in Threat.

  The general layout was of course identical. Forward of the wardroom he was passing the ERAs’ – engineroom artificers’ – mess, then the Chief and Petty Officers’, and forward of that was the seamen’s mess. Less crowded than the wardroom, but still nowhere you’d have swung that mythical cat round. Passing the forward escape chamber, then – its door was shut and clamped, as it should have been, but it struck him that there’d have been room for one man to eat his lunch in there – and another in the escape chamber aft, come to that… Now, passing through the open circular door in number 2 watertight bulkhead, he was in the Fore Ends, where the deck-space was taken up by men sitting with plates of food in their laps. Submariners, and Barlows’ men too. One of the former – a leading torpedoman, the insignia on his right arm comprising crossed torpedoes surmounted by a star – asked him as he pulled his legs in, making way – ‘Jimmy of Threat, sir, aren’t you?’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘From when our Jimmy was showing you the tubes, sir. Bowcap indicators – the way these fellers cocked it up?’

  He nodded, remembering him too: and that the name had to be somewhere in his memory… ‘Get used to it, will you?’

  ‘Don’t know about that, sir.’ He sniffed. ‘Five an’ six being arsy-tarsy’s one thing, but the pointers going every which way, that’s another.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. So you’ll have to check each one instead of just seeing ’em all parallel with each other.’

  ‘That’s the real bugger, sir.’

  He’d remembered the torpedoman’s name now – Eddington. He nodded to him, and moved on, into the Tube Space. Which was even more dazzlingly smart, at close quarters, than it had been from a distance. The brass test-cocks in the rear doors, for instance, shone like gold: so did the rimers which hung on short chains beside them. Test cocks were for checking that a tube was empty: when the lever was pushed over, it aligned two holes so that if there was water in the tube it would jet out. While the rimers’ use was to ensure that the test-cock holes weren’t blocked by silt, dirt or seaweed. Having opened the cock it was standard procedure to poke the rimer through: if no water squirted out after that, you could be certain the tube was empty.

  Back into the Fore Ends…

  There were several greenish faces. Several buckets, too, and they’d been used. The odour of vomit – stronger here than that of shale – wouldn’t be helping the poor bastards much. It was bad luck: yesterday there’d been a flat calm under the summer heat, and not a breath of wind, but this swell rolling in from the Atlantic today could only be the result of recent heavy weather out there. He’d seen no forecast. Being shorebound, still a job number rather than a ship, Threat wasn’t getting any.

  He’d have gone on aft through the Control Room, continuing this look-see and also to have a chat with the boat’s engineer, Lieutenant (E) Wally Bristol – whom he hadn’t had a chance of talking to yet and who’d surely be with his beloved engines – but Pargeter, with Buchanan in tow, was pushing his way out of the wardroom, the group at the chart table moving into the Control Room to let them pass. Chalk put a hand on Buchanan’s shoulder: ‘Thanks for the lunch.’

  ‘Huh?’ Turning… ‘Oh, it’s you. Wasn’t such a feast, though, was it.’ Dymock was a couple of feet away, still eating, and Pargeter was looking back to see who Buchanan was talking to. ‘Come up with us if you like, Chalk.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ He followed Buchanan – to the first ladder, which led up to the conning-tower’s lower hatch, through that and up the next, longer one which led vertically through the tubular steel tower to the upper hatch and the bridge. Above his head, Pargeter was giving Buchanan a hand out: Buchanan being on the tubby side, not all that agile.

  The scene up here, he found, was as it had been an hour earlier. Sea brilliant green under bright sunshine, the swells heaving in from the west, wind carrying the spray away to port as Trumpeter broke through ridge after ridge with drumbeat regularity, tossing the shreds away, salt crystals glittering in the sun… She was steering east, he realized. That was Lady Isle on the bow – and a crescent of the Ayrshire coast beyond, white-edged all the way from Saltcoats down to Troon.

  Closer – less than a mile away, about four thousand yards northwest of the island – the tug Clansman was rolling hard. Pargeter, putting his glasses on her, murmured, ‘Poor old Ozzie. He’ll be wishing he’d lumbered you with that job, Chalk!’

  ‘Surprised he didn’t, sir.’

  Pargeter was in the bridge’s forefront, starboard side. Searle, as officer of the watch, was up front to port. Pargeter bawled, ‘Signalman!’

  ‘Sir.’ He came forward, squeezing between Chalk and the periscope standards. Pargeter told him, ‘Make to Clansman, Stuart: While you prepare your boat for lowering I will close and provide a lee.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ He already had the Aldis lamp out of its stowage and was sighting on the tug: beginning to call it, flashing the letter ‘A’ until a light answered with a single flash from the tug’s bridge. It could be Ozzard himself handling that lamp, Chalk guessed. It was a Clydeside Lighterage Company tug, chartered by the Admiralty for this job with its own skipper and crew, and he didn’t think Ozzard could have had a signalman with him.

  This signalman – leading signalman, in fact – was clicking out the message and getting an answering flash at the completion of each word. Finishing now, with the end-of-message group ‘AR’; there was an acknowledging ‘K’ from the tug.

  ‘Message passed, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ Pargeter stooped to the voicepipe’s copper rim. ‘First lieutenant to speak on this pipe, please.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir!’

  Hollow tube, hollow voice… Dymock’s, then: ‘First lieutenant here, sir.’

  ‘Men transferring to the tug – have them stand by, and I want to know how many.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir…’

  Clansman flashing. Stuart, who’d been watching for it, sent an answering flash, which pro
duced a stream of rapid Morse. Ozzie showing off his signalling skills, Chalk thought. Probably enjoying himself, at that. He – Chalk – had read the message before the signalman reported it to Pargeter: ‘From Clansman, sir – Boat is ready for lowering. Passenger capacity 8. How many to be brought over?’

  ‘Tell him Wait.’ Pargeter added, ‘Please.’ Then to Searle, ‘Bring her round to 040.’

  ‘040, sir.’ Into the pipe: ‘Port ten.’

  Dymock then, from below. ‘Captain, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Number One?’

  ‘No transferees at all, sir. They all want to stay on board.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Ten o’ port wheel on, sir!’

  ‘Steer 040.’

  ‘Number One: you said all. Even the caterers?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And the pilot. Can’t get one volunteer to leave us. The Barlows’ chaps aren’t keen on the idea of transferring by small boat in this swell, I think.’

  Pargeter muttered – to himself – ‘Don’t blame ’em, really…’ Then, to Dymock, ‘All right. Say twenty men heavier than the trim allowed for. Discuss it with Mr Hughes, have them lighten her by that much.’ He straightened from the pipe: spaniel’s eyes blinking thoughtfully at Searle: ‘Bloody hell…’

  ‘Course 040, sir!’

  With the swell driving up from Trumpeter’s, starboard quarter now she was rolling as well as pitching, and there was a reek of diesel in the wind from astern. Searle proposed, ‘Couldn’t they be told they’ve got to transfer, sir?’

  ‘Not really. They’re not subject to naval discipline, for one thing. And God knows what sort of boat the tug has, or how good they are at handling it. Suppose it turned over and we drowned some…’

  Chalk called, ‘I could transfer, sir. And Eason. And the two plumbers from the boats at Greenock?’

  ‘Me too.’ Buchanan offered, ‘If it’d help.’

  ‘It wouldn’t. Thanks all the same. Five or six bodies – not worth the trouble. The boatwork wouldn’t have been easy, anyway.’ He looked round: ‘Signalman – make to him, Sorry, no customers for you, all personnel remaining on board for the dive.’

  Chapter 10

  She was still on the surface.

  With all her tanks full. Or damn near all. Running through Chalk’s head was a well-known line from a gunnery drill-book: This should not be possible. The submarine was driving through the sea at half-ahead on her electric motors, with hydroplanes at hard a-dive: this alone applied a considerable force to drive her under, yet with all six main ballast tanks flooded, and by this time most of the auxiliary and compensating tanks as well, she was still ploughing along the surface with ten feet showing on the depthgauges. In other words, half awash. He could picture it – as Pargeter was seeing it through the periscope, and as she’d be looking to Ozzard on the tug: her casing submerged up to the guardrails that lined it fore and aft – they’d still be in sight – jumping-wire cutting through the water like an outsize cheese-wire, the gun awash, conning-tower still two thirds above wave-level. Ozzard, on the tug’s bridge half a mile away, would be wondering what the hell was going on.

  By no means the only one asking himself that question.

  Beside Chalk, Buchanan murmured, ‘Must be some logical explanation. If all you experts put your heads together…’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you.’

  Asking himself what logical explanation there could be… Buchanan adding, ‘At least it’s the surface we’re stuck on.’

  ‘Aye.’ The Clyde pilot, a man of about sixty with a blunt face and thick grey hair – he’d brought Trumpeter down the river into the Firth and then elected to remain on board – smiled agreement. He’d joined Chalk and Buchanan before the dive, introducing himself as James Ballantyne and asking, ‘Mind if I sit here wi’ ye? Never was on one o’ these craft before…’ Now he growled reassurance at Buchanan: ‘They’ll sort it oot, ye may be sure.’

  Chalk thought, returning the old fellow’s smile, Blind advising the blind… They were close to the door of the wireless office, which was immediately aft of the Control Room. From here by only leaning forward you had a view into the Control Room – of Pargeter at the raised for’ard periscope, Dymock at the flooding and pumping telegraph – it was above his head, on the deckhead close to the hatch – and a group of puzzled-looking men around them. Hughes, the Admiralty overseer, Barlows’ man Joe Fairley shorter and thicker-bodied beside him, and beyond them Captains McAllister from Portland and Gleeson from Blockhouse. In terms of weight, Chalk guessed, two Gleesons would make one McAllister. Other Barlows’ men, including Hamilton the Ship Manager, were hanging around in the background. The rest of the passengers were distributed throughout the boat, with the main contingent in the wardroom. They’d been asked to settle down and stay put. Even one man moving from forward to aft could make a difference to the trim.

  What trim, though?

  That, more or less, was the question – or worry – showing in every face. The ERA at the diving panel, Coxswain and Second Coxswain at the hydroplane controls, a leading hand at the wheel – with an AB keeping the log and manning the telephone beside him – and a very young-looking, pale-faced Ordinary Seaman at the motor-room telegraphs. The signalman was there too, standing by to open the lower hatch if the order to surface should be passed. It might come to that – abandonment of the diving trial – if no answer was forthcoming pretty soon.

  Buchanan reasoned again, in a near-whisper, ‘If the tanks are full and she won’t go down – despite our extra weight – well, there has to be something structurally wrong. Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘But the basin dives went perfectly, I’m told. The day of the party I came to at your house.’

  ‘Might have been changes made since then?’

  ‘Only whatever the basin tests showed up as necessary. Keel-weight may have been adjusted one way or the other. But to put it right – and it wouldn’t have been by much.’

  ‘What if they made a bloomer? Took weight out, for instance, instead of adding some?’ He lowered his voice still further. ‘Shouldn’t mention it, but they did join the bowcap indicators up wrongly – didn’t they?’

  ‘You’re talking about your own firm, Andrew. D’you want to get lynched?’

  Ballantyne was staring at Buchanan, his round eyes blinking rather fast…

  ‘I wonder—’ Dymock’s voice, the tone sharp as if some bright idea had hit him: Chalk leaning forward, seeing him with his hand up to the electric telegraph which told men at various stations to open or shut the suctions on this internal tank or that, and to pump or flood via the main trim-line in one direction or the other – keeping his hand on it while turning to ask Fairley, ‘Are numbers five and six tubes full?’

  * * *

  About three-quarters of an hour ago Trumpeter’s telegraphists had tapped out a diving signal addressed to Admiralty and to the Flag Officer (Submarines), telling them

  Diving in position 55 degrees 33 North, 4 degrees 46 West, probable duration of dive 3 hours.

  Pargeter had then waited for the acknowledgement, which had come about a quarter of an hour later from the naval signal station at Rosyth. The fifteen-minute delay had been spent testing the hydroplanes – turning out the forward ones, which when diving wasn’t contemplated were kept folded upwards to save them from being damaged by the buffeting of heavy seas – then moving both sets of ’planes through their maximum travel from horizontal to hard a-dive, hard a-rise, back to horizontal. Having done this in the normal way – with telemotor power – he’d ordered ‘Planes in local control’ – which meant by-passing the telemotor system and fitting heavy iron bars to bosses inside the pressure-hull, two men sweating on each bar to turn the ’planes to angles of ‘dive’ or ‘rise’ as ordered by telephone from the Control Room.

  Then he’d ordered, ‘Open up for diving’. The boat’s own crew had carried out this procedure, with Barlows’ men breathing over their shoulders. ‘Opening up’ involved – primarily �
�� removing cotter-pins from main and auxiliary vents, opening the high-pressure inlet valves to the tanks – valves known as HP blows – and other valves on that airline, also opening the Kingston valves which were fitted to the bottoms of some tanks. There were some minor items too, such as depthgauges. When Dymock had received reports from all compartments, he’d told Pargeter by voicepipe, ‘Boat’s opened up for diving, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’ Pargeter had had his navigator, Hervey, in the bridge with him, constantly checking the boat’s position by shore bearings while she more or less stemmed wind and tide. Waiting, marking time, also with an eye on the tug, which was keeping station about a thousand yards on the port quarter. He’d passed one more signal to her, by light: My mean course dived will be 330.

  Chalk, down below, had by that time taken up his vantage point outside the W/T office, and was joined there for a few minutes by Wally Bristol, Trumpeter’s, engineer lieutenant. Bristol, whom Chalk had known for some years, always looked as if he was about to burst into laughter. It was only the way his features were arranged – with a reddish complexion, very bright blue eyes, and a mouth with its corners permanently upturned. Chalk had introduced him to Buchanan, and the engineer had remarked with a jerk of his head towards the wireless office, ‘Wireless telegraphy, they call it. Do better with bloody pigeons, don’t you think?’ He’d also talked about DSEA, for some reason, and when they were alone again – if it was possible to be alone, in a 270-foot steel tube with ninety-eight other men in it – Buchanan had reminded Chalk of the demonstration he’d promised to give him.

  ‘When we’re dived – that do? Bags of time, then, and damn-all happening. You’ll hardly need it before that…’

  The acknowledgement had come in at last from Rosyth, and on the bridge Pargeter had told Hervey, ‘All right – down you go’, and the signalman, ‘Make to the tug, Diving now.’ He was in a hurry, wanting to get on with it. Ducking to the voicepipe: ‘Stop both engines. Out engine clutches. Group down, half ahead together.’ The diesels’ thunder died away: you heard the weather then, wind and sea and its impact on her steel. She was moving ahead on main motors now, the helmsman reporting up the tube, ‘Main motors half ahead grouped down, sir!’ And that message had meanwhile been flashed to Clansman. Pargeter told the signalman, ‘All right.’ Nodding towards the hatch. He vanished into it, taking the Aldis with him. Pargeter shut both voicepipe cocks, and took a final, quick look all round before he dropped into the hatch and dragged it down over his head, the heavy lid thudding down on to its rubber seating. He groped for a clip, and jammed it on: then the other, before he clambered down through the tower into the Control Room’s artificial lighting.