Not Thinking of Death

by Not Thinking of Death (retail) (epub)

  ‘He has – or had – a Jewish wife, and they sent her to one of their loathsome camps. Perhaps he was for the chop then too, I don’t know, but anyway he skedaddled – to Norway, for some reason or other, connections there I suppose – and since the bastards invaded he’s been underground, as they call it. They’d have been out to get him, obviously, and recently our people got word that he wanted to be brought out and had this priceless intelligence to offer, and – and that’s where we came in. Couldn’t delay it, obviously – wait for the dark nights, for instance.’

  ‘No… You say it’ll be a quick trip, sir?’

  ‘Quicker the better. Oh yes, I take your point – but hell, who’d want to hang around up there… Last thing I’d want… Now, let’s talk about you and Tumult. And that’s the first thing, of course – we’ll see you get Van Sommeren back before we let you loose again, don’t worry about that… Incidentally, isn’t he supposed to be getting married soon?’

  * * *

  Suzie brought her Spitfire into the Cosford circuit on a wide, curving approach that gave her a view of the airfield which she wouldn’t have had if she’d come in straight. She enjoyed flying Spits more than any other aircraft, but the one snag was the lack of forward visibility, especially during take-offs and landings, the flat-topped Merlin cowling completely shutting out your view ahead.

  But in the air a Spit was tremendously exciting, immensely powerful. And so damned easy – so responsive… As well as tolerant of minor examples of cack-handedness on a pilot’s part. This was a Mark V, powered by a Merlin 45 and a four-bladed propeller. Stupendous…

  Touching down – now. One little bounce…

  Taxi-ing, you were really blind. You saw the ground to your right and left but not a damn thing in front.

  There was a flap on, an urgent need to move a large number of Spitfires north to Prestwick in as short a time as possible. They were ‘P1W’ movements: abbreviation of ‘Priority One, Wait’, which meant that if the weather was unsuitable for flying the pilot had to wait beside his or her aircraft until conditions improved and take-off was possible. The last time there’d been this kind of operation with Spits it had been a consignment to be loaded on to an aircraft-carrier in the Clyde for transport to Malta. Only male ATA pilots had been involved – except for women flying the taxi ’planes shuttling them to and fro – because at that stage the women hadn’t been allowed to fly operational aircraft. Suzie had read and heard about the Gibraltar-Malta convoy a few weeks later: they’d flown them off the carrier somewhere short of the island, and according to the report they’d all made it. This could be a repetition of the same stunt; and her own part in it – of which the Maltese would never hear – was to move half a dozen or more Spits from Henley to Cosford in Staffordshire. A team of girls from Hatfield were on the job, moving about thirty in this batch, and the Cosford ATA ferry-pool pilots would take them on north from here, very likely in one hop to Prestwick, while a taxi Anson would return Suzie and the other Hatfield pilots to Henley, to bring another lot up. And so on all day until sunset, possibly the next day as well. The Henley airfield was a small one to the south of the town itself, one of the fields – along with Challis Hill and High Post – to which Spitfires were dispersed from factories to be assembled and test-flown.

  Parking her machine and climbing out of it, she was thinking again about Chris – who, she’d learnt this morning, was in a submarine called Tracker. She’d telephoned to Dundee to ask Rufus please to tell her the boat’s name, but he’d already left the building and another CO had told her without any hesitation at all. Captain of Threat, he’d said he was – the boat Rufus had been standing by at Barlows’ when she’d first met him.

  Him, and Toby Dymock. And started Guy on his way to Spain.

  If she’d had Rufus on the ’phone when she’d called this morning she’d have had to explain why she’d wanted that submarine’s name. To him she could have explained it: that she’d been writing to Chris – primarily through her own need to do so, next best thing to talking to him – and she’d wanted to know the boat’s name so she could mention it in her letter – be that much more with him – instead of shut out, forbidden to know this or that.

  She wouldn’t have told Rufus that she also wanted the name so she could mention it in her prayers. Prayers were private things, not for discussion over telephones. She prayed in the air sometimes, had done so this morning for both of them.

  For Pat, too. Although she tried not to worry about her. There was enough, to be going on with. You had to take it for granted she’d just turn up, that some evening soon you’d hear her voice over the blower – ‘Oh, have you missed me, Suzie pet?’

  The taxi Anson wouldn’t keep them waiting long, she guessed. As soon as all the pilots from Hatfield had touched down and signed in, the word would go round and they’d drift out to it. There were several Henley Spits to come in yet, though. Pushing into No. 12 Ferry Pilots’ Pool’s cafeteria, on her way to the bar she was looking round for friends and/or colleagues generally but in particular for the two girls from Hatfield who’d taken off before she had, had to be around here somewhere.

  ‘Hi, Suzie!’

  There they were. She waved back, veered off towards them – and almost collided with Diana. Diana Chalk.

  Who’d been stuck out again last night. Suzie’s eyes went past her, half-expecting to see Jacques Vemet and desperately hoping not to: he wasn’t there, thank God.

  ‘Suzie!’

  ‘Hi. Where did you spring from?’

  ‘Oh – Filton… Come and join me, Suzie. I’m so sorry about – you know, the postponement—’

  ‘Damn bore, isn’t it?’ She grimaced. ‘Really is… But – only a couple of weeks’ delay, as Rufus said… Diana, actually I was on my way to join Harriet Shaw and Liz Cavendish – over there—’

  ‘They’ll keep, Suzie. Won’t they.’ Diana put an arm round her. To be sure she didn’t just skid off, perhaps. She did like to have her own way – as Suzie and others were well aware… She was explaining, ‘Haven’t got long, actually, I’ve a Beaufighter for Prestwick, and then – well, never mind little old me… Suzie, I think you’re marvellous, taking it so well. Want a coffee? Sandwich?’

  ‘Well – all right. Yes. Both, please.’

  ‘You and me too. I’m famished …’ Holding her hand up, to get the attention of the steward behind the bar. ‘It really is a bloody bore for you, Suzie.’

  ‘Not only for me. Everyone else – the parents most of all, of course. And people who’d arranged for leave, and so on… Were you coming, Di?’

  ‘If I’d found I could have – of course. Not sure, though – the way things are just at this moment—’

  ‘Will you be seeing Rufus soon?’

  ‘Oh – well. I hope so.’ She looked exasperated for a moment: and as if she was about to say something else but then decided not to… ‘Really, of all the times for him to send Chris off in some other damn submarine!’

  ‘Tracker.’ She’d turned away, was signalling to the two Hatfield pilots that she was stuck… Adding as she turned back, ‘Rufus didn’t send him off – wasn’t anything he could have done about it. He’s just as fed up as—’

  ‘Did you say Tracker?’

  Diana’s hand on her arm: she seemed to have forgotten the coffee. Suzie looked at her, frowning. ‘Just found out, this morning. Rufus wouldn’t tell me last night, but—’

  ‘I bet he wouldn’t!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That Tracker started life as Trumpeter?’

  * * *

  Tracker was bottomed again: in twenty-five fathoms, 128 feet on the gauges. Auxiliary machinery stopped, very few lights burning even here in the Control Room. The motor- room telegraphs had been disconnected: that had been done during the run northward – silent running, tiptoeing away…

  Mottram glanced at his asdic operator: ‘Same?’

 
A nod. Two destroyers were searching to the south of them, in the two-miles of open water between here and Skjingen; three others had continued westward on what had been Tracker’s course when she’d dived.

  All five should have gone on westward. Leaving two behind here wasn’t playing Mottram’s game at all. If they found her – with a flat battery and surrounded by shallows, little islets and half-tide rocks, she wouldn’t have a hope in hell. Mottram had picked this area in the belief that the destroyers would keep clear of its navigational hazards and that they’d assume he’d have done the same. Another hope was that when he did finally bring her to the surface she’d be less visible to observers on shore than she would have been in uncluttered sea.

  As in the fjord – where at least one seaplane had passed without spotting her.

  Chris was sitting on the corticene-covered battery-boards, with his back against the fixed self-destruction charge. As good a back-rest as any. He was thinking that the two destroyers still hunting for them in this neck of the woods could be a result of Mottram having botched his own perfectly good scheme. He’d expected the Germans to take it for granted that he’d continue westward – then south-west, the course for Lerwick, and he’d encouraged them in what was anyway a perfectly logical assumption by keeping her on the surface, conveniently under observation by a German seaplane, and diving her on a course of due west when a Junkers 88 had appeared from over the land, the Namsos direction. There’d been no bombs dropped – it had still been a long way off when they’d dived – and having done so he’d turned north, paddled quietly up into this area of rocks and islets.

  Then, apparently having doubts about the boat’s exact position and worried about the shallows and other hazards – his plan being to get around the western end of the foul ground and then right into it, as it were through the back door – he’d put up the small periscope, taken a couple of bearings very quickly, put it down again and taken the boat to forty feet. He’d used the small ‘attack’ periscope and had it up for probably no more than thirty seconds, but it might have been spotted. If the seaplane had been overhead by then, for instance. Overhead, and lucky; and might then have wirelessed a report that the submarine was steering a northerly course, not due west as it had been at the time of diving.

  The senior destroyer captain would then have hedged his bet: held on with three of his ships to search in the obvious direction – westward – but detached these two just in case the airman had known what he was talking about.

  The air would last about thirty-six hours, Mottram had told his crew in a Tannoy broadcast an hour ago. So they could wait that long if they had to. He’d move when the destroyers had given up, surface here among the rocks and islands, and depart flat-out on the diesels. He’d ended his talk with ‘Watchkeeping arrangements same as last night. Meaning most of you can get your heads down. Use up less air that way. And I want absolute quiet – they have very efficient listening-gear, remember. The heads, of course, are not to be blown…’

  When they’d started out from the fjord Chris had no notion of Mottram’s intentions: he’d wondered what he could do, with the battery in the state it was. He’d known of the seaplane’s presence; also – soon after they’d started out – that from the bridge Bellamy had seen smoke over the land between themselves and Altfjorden, and this had been interpreted – correctly – as destroyers flashing-up their boilers in a hurry. When the order had come down the pipe for a ninety-degree turn to port – an indication that they were clear of the approaches to Mursteinfjord – he’d been ready for the klaxon or the verbal order to dive, and he’d been surprised when it hadn’t come.

  Trumpeter’s air, he recalled – from his own knowledge as well as Chalk’s occasional – but rare – answers to the questions fellow submariners tended to put to him – had lasted less than eighteen hours. But she’d had twice as many men on board, and two compartments flooded: and the circumstances had been quite different, the most obvious thing being that Tracker could move, surface any time she wanted to. Not while the destroyers were up there, of course – in that sense the advantage wasn’t all that obvious. But it did still give one certain options – other than drowning or suffocating, as had been the case in Trumpeter. For instance, that of surfacing, baling out, sending her down again with her main vents and the hatch open and the fuze running on this self-destruction charge.

  Depending on circumstances, you might make a fight of it. A salvo of torpedoes, if the destroyers were close together, might produce very satisfactory results. Even taking one of the sods with you… What Tracker would not be able to do was get away. Dived, the battery would only get her a few miles – running economically, at that, and if the Germans knew their business they’d see she didn’t get even that far. And surfaced, her flat-out speed on the diesels would be less than half that of her pursuers – five of them, armed as likely as not with five-inch guns.

  The asdic operator nodded to an unspoken question from Mottram. He muttered, ‘Still there, sir. Port quarter, both transmitting. Moving right to left, slow. Fifteen hundred yards, could be.’

  ‘Among the rocks, then.’

  A slight shrug. Knowing nothing of any bloody rocks… Mottram glanced at Chris. ‘I think they must be.’

  It wasn’t good news. If they were among the rocks a mile east of here, there was no reason to assume they wouldn’t be among this lot, in due course. Mottram had gone to the chart- table, switched on its overhead light; Chris glanced up at the dimly-lit bulkhead clock and saw that it was just after ten.

  * * *

  Lunch was corned-beef sandwiches and mugs of tea. The German, Heiden, declined food but accepted tea; and having got it, fell asleep again. Kjellegard had told Mottram he didn’t know what was wrong with him but thought it might be heart trouble.

  The engineer – Matt Caulfield – muttered, ‘Fine thing to have him peg out on us, wouldn’t it. Going through all this bloody effort—’

  ‘What efforts are you exerting, Chief?’

  Bellamy, with his quiet smile… Chief stared at him. ‘None. As per skipper’s orders, conserving oxygen. What do you do anyway – except toss yourself off several times a day?’

  Chuckling, almost choking on a sandwich… He told Chris, ‘At it all the bloody time. What’s making his hair fall out.’

  Mottram was conversing in whispers with their German guest, who apparently spoke some English. Chris had only come through to the wardroom to collect his rations: he took his two sandwiches and mug of tea into the Control Room, sat down on the boards on the starboard side where he had a clear view of the depthgauges. There wasn’t the slightest movement on her. He asked Talbot, who’d taken over on asdics from PO Wootton, ‘Anything new?’

  A shake of the head: ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Reckon we’ll be here long, do you, sir?’

  The second coxswain, a young PO named Chisholm: on the helmsman’s seat, mouth full, chewing… Chris evaded the question, rather: ‘Can’t sit up there for ever, can they?’

  Since the news that the destroyers had begun searching that end of the area of shallows and other hazards, he wasn’t feeling quite as confident as he had earlier. There’d been no good reason for that confidence, anyway: beyond the fact that they had to get away with it, and that with Rufus Chalk in Tumult they always had.

  ‘Sir—’ Talbot’s eyes had widened; showing more of their whites, so that in the half-dark it was as if he’d somehow switched on, suddenly… ‘Destroyers have stopped, sir. Transmittin’, still – like they had a contact, sir.’

  ‘Captain in the Control Room. Distance, roughly?’

  You’d only get an accurate range by pinging on them: which would have been plain lunacy. But an experienced asdic man could make a guess. Talbot muttered, ‘Thousand yards, maybe…’

  * * *

  Mid-afternoon: she put her fourth Spitfire of the day down at Cosford and taxied it over to the reception area. All the ’planes they’d brought up in earlier stages of this shuttle had al
ready been flown on.

  ‘Keeping you busy, are we?’

  The ground-crew flight-sergeant nodded, handing her back the signed delivery papers. ‘You are a bit, Miss.’

  ‘Give it a fortnight, it’ll be “You are a bit, Mrs.’”

  ‘That so?’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ll do me best to remember.’

  Not to remember, was the thing. Keep busy – frantically busy – and remember nothing. Beyond such mundane things as take-off drill – starting with H–T–T–M–P–P: Hydraulics, trimmers, throttle friction, mixture, pitch, petrol – and so forth. Lots more of them like that. Walking to the office, telling herself, Nothing else at all. Except he'll be back in a couple of weeks, I’ll get a message that he’s called, and ring him back, and—

  And he’d be there. Please God. Smiley brown eyes and all…

  Submarines went out on patrol every day of the week, after all. Came back again every day of the week too. All right, not always, but ninety-five times out of a hundred, say?

  She caught herself up again: Don’t think about it – idiot… Leave it to him – to them…

  ‘Hi, Suzie!’

  ‘Mary. How are you doing?’

  Mary Hastings was one of the Hatfield team. Before the first return flight to Henley she’d queried whether Suzie had been in a fit state to fly: Suzie being the senior pilot in the group, so that Jill Blessington who was the taxi pilot had offered her the Anson’s controls. It was a matter of courtesy and an established ATA custom to invite a more experienced passenger-pilot to take over, and the offer was usually accepted. As it had been today, each time, Suzie assuring the rest of them that she was perfectly all right: she knew she looked like something the cat had brought in, but – ‘I’m not worried, why should you be?’

  The one thing that would not have done her any good was to sit and bloody think.

  ‘One more each, is it?’