by Dudley Pope
‘Local spies, most probably. Once ships began to collect it’s difficult to keep it secret that a convoy is about to sail. Someone watching in Liverpool or the Clyde, Halifax or Freetown… An agent familiar with ships and even half sober should, from his own observation, be able to estimate the time of sailing within twenty-four hours, probably less. All he needs is a decent pair of binoculars. Or even grandad’s old telescope.’
Just how much did one contradict Uncle? He would soon know. ‘Yes, sir, but would even forty-eight hours’ notice be enough for a U-boat? Supposing the agent could get the warning to Lorient, for example. It means that a U-boat with all its torpedoes would have to be within forty-eight hours’ steaming of the port, or the convoy’s track, which it would have to know. The later ones can make nineteen knots on the surface, but 450 miles in twenty-four hours isn’t…’
Uncle nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, a fully-equipped U-boat waiting off each of the major ports from here to the New World and to West Africa. Well, that rules out agents with binoculars and mathematical wizards breaking our ciphers. Which seems to leave us ouija boards, black magic, voodoo, telepathy or politicians’ promises.’
‘I’ve only gone through five of the eleven convoys so far, sir.’
Uncle shook his head gloomily. ‘Unless there are eleven coincidences, there must be a pattern, and that pattern must be in the first five as well as the last six.’
‘If there’s a pattern it must be like marriage, sir; if you take fifty couples who seem ideally suited to each other, you’ll be lucky if you find twenty-five of them are really happy after a year of marriage.’
‘You mean there was a pattern for the fifty but it broke down?’
‘Not exactly. There seemed to be a pattern for fifty but in fact it was valid for only twenty-five, so we have to be careful we don’t grab at some pattern just because it is a pattern.’
‘My dear Yorke, how right you are – about marriage anyway. I’ve been divorced twice and my third marriage goes through the divorce court mincer next month.’
‘I – er, I’m sorry, sir, I–’
‘Don’t be, my dear fellow; I only mentioned it as proof of your pattern theory. My first wife was quiet, very county, mad on horses; my second was half French, very chic, very animated and loathed the country and all but the most obvious form of sport; my third is a very shrewd businesswoman, runs the estate very well, was a very good rally driver until the war put a stop to all that…no pattern except that for me the path of marriage leads to the divorce court.’
Yorke thought to himself that there was indeed the beginning of a pattern – a county wife mad on horses sounded as though she might be frigid, as did the ‘very shrewd business woman’, and the pattern was broken by the half-French woman who loathed all but the most obvious form of sport but who didn’t stay the marriage course either…
Uncle looked at him from under bushy eyebrows, his eyes twinkling. ‘That’s the way, Yorke; I want you looking for patterns in everything. And by the way,’ he added casually, ‘I have to report on our work to the Boss this afternoon.’
‘The First Lord, sir?’
‘No, I have to go round to Number Ten.’
‘’Fraid my contribution doesn’t amount to anything.’
‘Can’t be helped, but it’s these inside-the-convoy attacks that are troubling him. He says – and he’s quite right – that we’ll beat the packs as soon as we get enough escorts because it’s simply a question of enough dogs to chase the foxes. But we could beat the packs and still lose an enormous number of ships unless we find out how these insiders operate.’
Yorke suddenly had a mental picture of that chubby pink face with the hooded but sharp eyes looking across at the Citadel from Downing Street as he listened to Uncle’s report. Surely he would expect half a dozen men working in watches trying to solve the problem.
‘Does the Prime Minister – er, know that…’
‘Know that Lt Edward Yorke, DSO, RN, is the only person working on the problem?’
‘Well, yes sir,’ Yorke said lamely.
‘An honest question which deserves an honest answer, but don’t let it scare you. Yes, he does; in fact it was his idea. You realize this isn’t a new problem: it began eleven convoys ago. It’s just that only recently did they spot the “insider” aspect. That’s when the Boss started getting angry.’
‘He must be raving by now, sir,’ Yorke said bitterly, wishing he was back at sea.
‘No. From what I know of him and the little experience I have of his methods, he’s a queer bird. You know he writes books, histories. Well, it seems he does an enormous amount of research, and then does nothing for ages: he says after the research his mind is like a muddy pool, and he has to wait for the mud to settle. Once the water is clear the ideas come swimming to the surface.’
‘Where do I come in, sir?’
‘Well, the Boss’s idea is that when you have a problem you swot up all the facts without any previous prejudices or ideas – you start off with an open mind, in other words, which in this case the previous chaps who are supposed to study every convoy attack didn’t have because they were all anti-submarine specialists with their own prejudices. One of them used to beat a drum for Asdic, another had an idea for faster-sinking depth charges, another wanted faster escorts, and so on. So the Boss quite rightly set up ASIU to deal with the whole anti-U-boat question. Just after that, the “insider” was spotted. Finally the Boss told me to look around for one person whose brain he was proposing I should muddy up on the insider problem, with the proviso that when the water cleared some ideas surfaced.’
‘And I was that one person?’ Yorke asked incredulously.
‘Yep. I told you when you arrived that you’d been selected. Don’t think you were chosen from the whole Navy List, though. You were available and have seen service. “Smelled powder”, as the Boss calls it.’
‘So I ought to be living like a monk in a cell, just reading dockets and thinking hard.’
‘Not bloody likely. I want seven or eight hours of your time during the day. The rest you can spend as you wish, providing you’re creating the state of mind in which, once the water clears, the ideas pop up. The Boss seems to keep going on brandy, cigars and cat naps, late nights and a patient wife. Have you got a girlfriend?’
When Yorke nodded, Uncle asked: ‘Where is she? What does she do?’
‘Nurse at a hospital down in Kent.’
‘Met her while you were having that arm fixed?’
When Yorke nodded, Uncle said, ‘Does that mother of yours approve of her?’
‘Yes – apparently her family are old friends. I didn’t know them, though. I didn’t know you knew my mother, sir.’
‘I don’t really. Met her at various cocktail parties though. If she approves, you must have found yourself a fine girl. What’s her name?’
‘Clare Exton.’
‘Oh yes,’ Uncle said, picking up a pen and writing on a pad. ‘Must be old Bunko Exton’s daughter. And where’s the hospital?’
‘At Willesborough in Kent, beyond Ashford. An annexe of St Stephen’s. But why…?’
‘Don’t you wish she was up here at St Stephen’s, rather than the other side of Kent?’
‘Why, of course, sir, but perhaps she…’
‘As far as winning the war is concerned, my lad, it’s far better that she’s up here holding your hand, or whatever, than being in the Weald of Kent. However, you’ll register suitable surprise when she tells you of her transfer back to town. Now, anything more to report?’ When Yorke shook his head, Uncle stood up and said: ‘I estimate we have a month to six weeks left. By then we’ll have to see our way to getting enough escorts to break the packs, and we’ll have to know the secret of the insiders. Otherwise we’ll have lost the Battle of the Atlantic and we’ll face starvation and
maybe not surrender but – well, that’s when I switch off thinking.’
Chapter Eight
When Clare arrived back in her room at Willesborough annexe later on Monday afternoon she found that the village a couple of miles away where Ned had spent his childhood had taken on a new atmosphere or, rather, that she felt a part of it. Ned and his mother had told several stories of happenings there, of disasters at Yorke House when they had given fetes in aid of local charities, of the day an elephant from a passing circus lumbered through the gate and sat down on the lawn, sucking water from the ornamental pond and squirting it out of his trunk at his distraught trainer who rushed round picking up the goldfish.
Of Ned as a little boy running out ‘to smell the traction engine’ – two breweries still used the coal-fired steam engines for delivering barrels of beer to local public houses. And how he was always excited by the red Trojan van which had solid rubber tyres and a chain drive and belonged to a tea company. And the ting-a-ling of the bells of the tricycles belonging to two rival ice-cream companies, and the tension for Ned as to whether he could get some money from his mother before the ice-cream man had pedalled past. A penny for an Eldorado vanilla, Ned had remembered, or twopence for a Walls choc ice. A jolly fat man had the Eldorado tricycle and always opened and closed the lid of the icebox between the two front wheels with a cheery bang, and occasionally let Ned climb up and peer in at the mysterious white block which smoked inside – solid carbon dioxide, the man had told a disbelieving Ned, who had never heard of ‘dry ice’. The red Post Office van still passed the house at half past seven in the evening, as it had years before, indicating the time by which Ned had to be home, and the trouble there was the night when Ned, having climbed a difficult tree a mile away to get at a magpie’s nest, had been too terrified to get down because a branch had split – too terrified, that is, until he saw his angry father approaching through the gathering darkness. That, and the knowledge that it must be ten o’clock, had made him brave the branch – which did not break. The trouble was, Ned had added ruefully, that the crack was on the upper side of the branch and could not be seen from the ground, and his father had not believed his story.
There was the village shop, Mr Wilkinson’s, that sold Barrett’s sherbet dabs for a halfpenny each, a thin tube of liquorice sticking up from the yellow cylinder, and on one wall was a big poster advertising a blend of tea and showing ‘Peter the Planter’, a handsome man heavily sun-tanned and wearing a rakish topee. ‘Not a drop of perspiration on his face,’ Ned had commented, ‘and in the tropics now no one wears a topee, except certain regiments, and Peter the Planter’s type of topee blows off in anything over a five-knot breeze.’
Mr Wilkinson’s shop was so tiny that three customers had to stand with their elbows tucked in and be careful their shopping baskets did not upset the advertising display cards the old man could not resist, lodging one behind the other on the shelves so they looked like thin gravestones in a crowded cemetery.
Rheumy-eyed, with flowing hair and an immense white walrus moustache stained brown on the left side from the Woodbine that perpetually smouldered, rather than was smoked, Mr Wilkinson treated small boys with the utmost gravity as they came in with their pennies, starting the bell fixed to the top of the door by a short piece of leaf-spring steel tinkling merrily. ‘What can I get you, young sir?’ he invariably said, looking over the top of tiny, rimless pince-nez, the Woodbine giving him the air of a raffish Mr Pickwick.
The whole shop always smelled of paraffin, which he stocked (few houses had electricity at that time) and sold from a leaky can, along with lamp wicks, complete Valor stoves and Aladdin mantles.
The shop was still there – Clare had visited it half a dozen times – but ‘T H Wilkinson, Prop., Licensed to sell Tobacco’, was long since dead and so was the angular woman he always referred to as ‘the wife’ and summoned with a stentorian ‘Bella’ when the shop became crowded and he needed help. Only Mrs Fox (who ran the little sub-post office) knew that when letters arrived for ‘the wife’ they were addressed to ‘Miss Bella Morrell’, and Mrs Fox made a point of never revealing the secret to anyone from another village; people, she had once said, did gossip so.
Sherbet dabs, Liquorice Allsorts, along with Sharp’s toffees, aniseed balls and gobstoppers still sold from tall glass jars which lined a high shelf – the memory had been vivid for Ned when he described it over dinner in Palace Street, and Clare had confirmed that they were still there.
Then there had been the local forge where a curious Ned, aged perhaps five or six, spent hours watching Mr Ludgate, the blacksmith. A farmer would bring in a great carthorse and Mr Ludgate, a tall and painfully thin man with arm muscles that stood out below rolled-up shirt sleeves like heavy rope wound round a stick, and wore a waistcoat but never a jacket, would tie the halter to an old worn post and then shove against the horse’s flank until its rump was near the fire. Then he would bend and lift up a hoof, one after the other, and inspect the old shoes. Clare could not remember the exact sequence, although Ned’s word picture had been vivid enough. The great pincers would remove old nails and shoe from a hoof, and the worn shoe would be inspected before Mr Ludgate, giving a non-committal sniff, would toss it with considerable skill halfway across the forge to a corner where it joined an imposing pile.
Then out would come the paring knife and with the horse’s hoof held securely against his knee, hard against the leather apron, the blacksmith would pare away some of the hoof, shaping it for the metal shoe. When he started on the last hoof, Ned would move forward a step or two, to make sure Mr Ludgate remembered he was there, and the smith would look up and nod, saying ‘Give ’er a blow then, lad.’ Ned would rush to the long handle of the bellows and work it up and down, watching the fire change from a dull red pile to a bright red glowing mass as the draught from the bellows roared through it. And then the banging started as Mr Ludgate heated the shoe, hammering and finally slapping it on to the hoof amid smoke and the smell of burning glue. And then the nails would be driven home and each time Ned found it hard to believe it did not hurt the horse, even though the animal stood there quietly enough.
Clare put a match to the fire which had been laid in her room and sat down in the single armchair with her coat on until she was sure the fire had caught. The single bed was Spartan, the blankets of the grey drabness that could only be produced to a Government specification, but the room was large with low ceilings and the uneven oak-planked floor usually found in old houses.
Would Ned ever see Yorke House again? Would she ever see Ned again, or would the Admiralty suddenly send him off to join a ship? She tried to shut off the racing thoughts with the memory that less than twelve hours ago she held him in her arms; she had circled his body with her arms and legs and felt him secure inside her. Secure – for two nights. One day, perhaps, Mrs Yorke would telephone her, or send her the official telegram, and they would be alone again, two women, one a childless widow, the other a mistress without a lover. Maudlin thoughts, but war widows were a commonplace these days and it was impossible to believe that having met Ned the war would leave them alone.
At that moment she saw a buff envelope on the small table, secured against random draughts by an ashtray. It was addressed in handwriting to ‘Nurse Exton’ and she opened it to find a brief note from Sister Scotland saying: ‘See me when convenient, JMS’. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was only five thirty so now was a ‘convenient’ time. She checked the blackout curtain, put the wire guard in front of the fire, picked up her torch and went along the corridor to Sister Scotland’s room.
The smile was neutral. ‘Ah, Nurse Exton – you had a pleasant weekend, I trust? And how is Lieutenant Yorke’s arm – he’s still doing the exercises, I hope?’
There was no point in telling Sister that the scars were now in his mind; that the pink and purple bands and white lines lacing his forearm and hand left him embarrassed; he had seen too many y
oung women look and suddenly glance away; he had heard too many young and old women gush and sympathize in stereotyped phrases. Embarrassed? She had the feeling that he was nauseated by it, with all the horror an otherwise completely healthy person had for a deformed limb. Not that there was any deformity; simply that Ned could not (or would not) understand that within a year the flesh would return to its normal colour; that by then scarcely anyone would notice it – and even if they did, what did it matter: had he not seen the terrible facial scars of aircrews?
‘Yes, Sister, he’s doing his exercises and there seem to be no adhesions. He wished to be remembered to you, by the way.’
Sister Scotland nodded in acknowledgement as she walked over to the table which served as a desk. ‘Matron telephoned from London late this afternoon. Did you meet anyone from St Stephen’s while you were in London?’
The question was casual – too casual, Clare realized. ‘No, I spent most of my time with a former patient and his mother!’
Sister Scotland smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter – it’s simply that Matron gave instructions for you to return to London tomorrow and be ready to start day duty at St Stephen’s on Wednesday. I was afraid that – well, that you had run into some kind of trouble, but she assured me all was well. She was suitably mysterious as to why Nurse Exton’s services were so urgently required, but she did mention that a request had come from outside the hospital.’ A request, Sister Scotland had guessed from the tone of Matron’s voice, though she did not mention it to the nurse standing in front of her, that had both impressed and puzzled Matron.
‘I shall be sorry to leave here.’
‘And I shall be sorry to lose you. I don’t envy you going back to the bombing, but you’ll be able to see more of Mr Yorke.’
‘I hope so, Sister, but his new job at the Admiralty takes up most of his energies.’
‘Is it a secret, or can one ask…?’
‘Secret – he’s never hinted to me what it is.’