by John Harris
For the first time, as his mind abruptly dropped the worry of the case, he became conscious of the sudden silence after the roar of the engines and the buffeting of the wind. Now there was only the hard – almost solid – slap and smack of water outside the fuselage and the slosh and hurry of it inside. And everything else was silence – dim, stricken silence that brought home to him more vividly than anything that had happened the fact that the living bird which had carried them was now carrion floating on the water.
The sea was up to his neck now and a small wave chasing along the cylindrical interior of the aircraft smacked him viciously under the chin and blinded him for a second as it filled his eyes and mouth. Panic caught him as he saw the water outside the Perspex window, green and ugly looking, then someone was shouting in his ear in a voice that was high-pitched with urgency.
“Through the hatch! Up above you!”
He reached up, and with the assistance of a violent shove from behind he shot upwards, banging his head viciously on the open hatchway before he emerged into fresh air that struck cold and frighteningly damp against his face after the warm, petrol-smelling interior of the aeroplane.
In the first shock of freedom it amazed him to see the height of the waves outside. He had noticed while they were flying that the sea appeared to be choppy, even rough, its peaks tipped with white, but down here, down on the level of the water, it seemed mountainous, towering high above the wallowing wreck of the aircraft, the waves bearing down on them with a terrifying inevitability, seemingly as big as houses and just as solid.
Conscious of someone behind him also heaving his soaking frame through the hatchway, he shuffled in an ungainly fashion along the curved body of the plane. Its smooth surface was slippery with water and he found it difficult to keep his grip and his balance on it, especially with the bulky briefcase between his legs all the time, impeding his movements. His hat with its gold braid had disappeared – he had no idea when or where – and the wind whipped through his thinning grey hair.
Only half aware of thought, he began to wish he’d paid more attention to his dinghy drill when he’d had it explained to him in the hangar. As a research expert he’d never had much cause to need dinghies until the last month or two when his increasingly frequent trips to the German rockets sites or jet aircraft fields had made someone high up decide he was valuable enough to be instructed how to use them.
The other members of the crew – and he felt with a slight start of surprise that he had never thought of the others as people until now – were all out of the aircraft by this time. One of them, Mackay, the wireless operator, was standing on the wing, his hard, angular face pinched and pale with strain, like a stone idol’s. The water was over his feet but Waltby saw with relief that one hand held the rope of the rubber dinghy which bobbed glaringly yellow against the grey sea away from the side of the plane, its frantic heaves in the chop – like the struggles of a young colt on a rein – jerking at Mackay so that he held with his other hand on to the side of the fuselage and scowled bitterly at the sky. Waltby then noticed that the hand holding the dinghy had an ugly gash in it that saturated the white rope with the startling redness of blood, which ran, shining and dark, across his fingers and dripped into the water in hurrying droplets.
While he was wondering which was the best way to get into the dinghy without falling into the sea a wave hit him in the back and he slithered on the seat of his trousers in an undignified fashion into the water. As it closed over him he experienced another of those dreadful moments of panic that numbed his thoughts to everything but the desire for life. He let out a yell of pure fear and choked immediately with salt water that tasted sharp and raw on his tongue, gagging him with its bitter strength. He came up, kicking frantically, spitting, unable to see, then as his panic dispersed once more he realised that his Mae West was supporting him. Alongside him was Ponsettia, the Canadian navigator, his great yellow moustache drooping and wet like a walrus’.
“OK, sir?”
Gasping, trying to nod, trying to kick his way to the dinghy that reared bouncing and buoyant above him, Waltby was fishing instinctively below the surface of the sea with his hands as the heavy briefcase, now full of water, dragged at his body. It seemed to be slipping down, so he got his hand on the handle and jerked it fiercely up and held on to it, aware in the same instant that his watch would never go again.
“The bag,” he spluttered. “Got to get it in the dinghy soon or I’ll drown.”
Ponsettia grinned and he tried to grin back and for his trouble got a mouthful of water that wiped away the gesture like a slap in the face.
“Hold on to the bag. I’ll try to help you to the dinghy.”
Waltby again tried to smile but worry over his precious bag seemed to be seeping across his mind like the cold across his body, and he found himself panting, fighting, it seemed, against all the vast acres of the sea, against these slow inexorable waves that lifted him about as if he were a feather.
“Keep going,” Ponsettia gasped beside him. “I’ll help shove.” Then a wave swept them apart and Waltby was on the point of crying out again when he once more felt the Canadian’s hand reassuringly on his shoulder.
“When you’ve finished arsing about,” Mackay said unemotionally from the wing, “it’d be nice if you’d get in the dinghy. The kite’s going down any minute.”
The water was now creeping up the wireless operator’s flying boots as the aircraft settled lower in the water, grey-green like the sea, silent and still, like a great dead whale. His voice was harsh and impatient, and the blood still fell in dark drops from his hand into the moving water.
“OK, Mac.” Ponsettia’s words came in gasps. “Keep your hair on, brother. The Air Commodore’s got another little life to think of.”
At the apt description of himself clutching with both hands at his stomach while the navigator pushed him towards the dinghy, Waltby felt better in spite of his fear and the sickness he felt at the water he’d swallowed.
“Well, look slippy, man.” Mackay’s face was taut and angry – to Waltby it had seemed to be taut and angry from the first moment he had been introduced to the crew. “The skipper’s stopped one or something.”
Harding, the pilot, crouched lopsidedly on the cabin top by the hatchway, his face twisted and wrenched out of shape with pain.
“I’m all right, Mac,” he said. “Get the Air Commodore in. I only got a bit of a whack across the bread-basket when we ditched. I’ll be all right.”
As he splashed towards the dinghy Waltby heard the wireless operator muttering to himself in that angry, hostile fashion of his which he had already started to associate with all Mackay’s conversation, indifferent to Waltby’s struggles or the strength of the sea.
“Bloody chairborne wonders,” he was saying, as though he were deliberately trying to throw defiance at Waltby’s rank. “More trouble than they’re worth.” Then his voice rose anxiously and suddenly there was concern in it. “You sure you’re all right, skipper?”
“Get the Air Commodore into the dinghy and stop binding about me.”
The aircraft was deeper in the water now. Only the trapped air in the fuselage seemed to be keeping it afloat and as this was gradually forced out the machine was slowly sinking.
“Hang on to the rope,” Ponsettia said to Waltby as he grabbed for the yellow side of the dinghy. “Then sling your bag in.”
Waltby shook his head, his teeth chattering too much for him to speak. At last he managed to control himself.
“Probably lose it. Can’t risk it. Get in yourself first. I’ll hang on to the bag.”
Ponsettia glanced curiously at him, then, splashing and kicking, he heaved himself up and flopped panting over the side of the rubber boat which tilted up on its edge as he did so, water dripping from the canvas sea anchors underneath that held it steady. Splashing like a great stranded fish, his legs stiff and black in silhouette above Waltby as he struggled, he heaved his body into the dinghy at last a
nd it slapped back again on to an even keel in the lifting sea, and he lay there for a moment, panting with the effort until he recovered his breath.
After a moment or two he sat up. “OK,” he said, scrambling to his knees. “Pass us your bag.”
Waltby shook his head again stubbornly. “Rope,” he gasped. “Pass a rope – one of the dinghy ropes.”
“Rope?” Mackay said harshly from the main plane of the Hudson “Rope? Jesus, this is supposed to be an emergency.”
Ponsettia stared hard at Waltby for a moment, then without a word he passed one of the white ropes attached to the life raft and the Air Commodore grabbed at it.
“Hang on to me,” he said.
With Ponsettia clutching his collar in a grip that threatened to choke him, and with the sea slapping him with relentless insistence in the face, Waltby released his grip on the dinghy, passed the rope through the handle of the briefcase and pushed the end up to the navigator again.
“Tie it,” he said. “Let go of me. Tie the bag.”
“Say…” Ponsettia paused, then he tied the rope quickly to another of the dinghy lines.
“Good!” Waltby felt relief for the first time and, unfastening his belt, passed the bag, now fastened securely to the dinghy, up to Ponsettia. “Just had to be sure,” he panted. “It’s valuable.”
“Bloody bag,” Mackay was muttering on the wing. “Lot of bloody fuss for a bag. Haul the bastard in, Canada. The skipper’s waiting.”
Waltby turned to grasp the dinghy lines and as he did so a wave, slapping its underside, blinded him as it broke outwards into his face. He almost lost his grip and swung away, one hand grasping with desperate hurry for a hold. Then Ponsettia leaned over and, grabbing him by the collar again, heaved him upwards. For a moment they struggled, with Waltby half in and half out of the water, his belt caught somehow on the underside of the dinghy.
“I’m stuck,” he panted. “Let me down and try again.”
“Get the old bastard in,” Mackay was snarling just above them as Ponsettia jerked and heaved.
“What’n hell’s catching?” the Canadian panted. “Christ, are you covered in grappling irons or something?”
Waltby’s breath, as he tried to force his tired arms to pull him up, was beginning to come in searing gasps that tore at his chest, then unexpectedly the obstruction freed itself and he slid over the rounded yellow side and lay sprawling in the well of the dinghy on his face in several inches of water, his feet helplessly in the air, his hands, trembling with exertion, thankfully on the precious bag again. His mind was stunned to blankness by the confusion and the urgency and by the throb in his head where he’d hit it on the escape hatch.
“OK, Mac.” He heard Ponsettia’s voice through the daze of exhaustion. “We’re in.”
“About time,” Mackay commented briefly. Then he turned to the pilot who still sat on the fuselage. “Right, skipper. Come on. Let’s have you.”
Harding slithered down the side of the plane and landed on top of Waltby, smashing all the breath from his body, and half smothering him. “Pardon me,” he said with over-elaborate politeness as the dinghy settled again.
Half underneath the other two, his head ringing, his eyes full of whirling lights, his breath an agony in his chest, Waltby felt their frail craft rock violently again as Mackay climbed in from the wing, then it settled back to its lifting, sliding motion on the slow, indifferent heave of the waves.
“Any more for the Skylark?” Ponsettia said, his nasal voice – Waltby realised in a shock of shame at his own panic – undisturbed and steady despite the excitement. “OK, bud, shove her off. Let’s get goin’. We’ve a long way to go. There’s a hell of a lot of sea, I guess.”
Three
Aircraftman (second class) Herbert Milliken had never seen quite so much sea in his young life before. Mile on mile of it, acre on acre of it, it stretched away on all sides in a rolling prairie of broken grey- and green-veined marble, the steely waves sweeping headlong from the north, rolling on like the advancing battalions of some attacking army, while the scraps of dark cloud sped past overhead beneath the slaty unforgiving heavens.
It lifted the launch in which Milliken crouched – first the port side, then the starboard side – in a hideous, sickening roll that sent his stomach quivering up to his throat, and set the masthead with its fluttering scrap of bunting clawing mightily across the sky so that Milliken’s anxious eyes, watching it, rolled in unhappy arcs with it.
With his experience of seagoing no more than a trip or two to Flamborough lighthouse on his holidays at Bridlington, he had felt himself thoroughly a sailor following in the island tradition of Great Britain. But now, after eight hours – his first eight hours – on a high-speed launch and forty miles out where the tides coming from the Dogger Bank met the tides coming up through the Channel in a welter of broken water, he wasn’t so sure.
He was cold and miserable and not at all certain that he was ever going to see land again. His face was green-grey and he was chilled to the marrow, in a way that unmanned him, by the unseen mist that filled the air and made everything sticky to the touch with salt rime.
He had chosen his position near the open door of the sick bay because – in spite of being in the way of everyone who came stumbling past – there he was out of the raw bite of the wind, yet not completely out of the fresh air, without which he felt he would die. Inside the sick bay, from the doorway of the wireless cabin, he could hear the occasional thin cheep of the wireless set or the confused murmur of voices. On the starboard bunk a deckhand lay smoking, his feet rolling port and starboard with the swing of the boat. A second deckhand, rolled in a duffel coat and silent, lay hidden half underneath the bunk among the rippling belts of ammunition for the point-five guns, the spare Mae Wests, and the pigeons which had been dumped aboard by an apologetic corporal three minutes before the boat had left the shore.
From time to time Milliken got a nauseating whiff of paraffin fumes from the alleyway to the forecastle which did duty as a galley and it defeated all his powers of imagination to think that a human being, on this lurching, swaying, rolling monstrosity they called a boat, could willingly labour in that stuffy alleyway over a hot stove, absorbing the fumes with every breath and still not be sick for the rest of his life. At the very thought of it Milliken’s stomach gave another nervous flicker.
From the open engine-room hatch he could hear Dray, the second engineer, on full throttle with “Lili Marlene”, as he pottered about between the two great 650-horsepower Thornycroft engines that drove the boat through the water. Milliken was already aware, even on the short acquaintance of one day, that Dray fancied himself as a crooner, but again, thinking of the petrol fumes and the heat in the engine-room, he wondered how he could live, let alone sing.
He watched the sweeping, white-capped waves washing the stern round, up and down and round again in sickening arcs that beat the time like the swing of some great pendulum, and tried to recall just what madness had persuaded him to volunteer for Air-Sea Rescue.
Dragged from his bed at first light by the blare of the Tannoy loud-speaker, eighteen-year-old Milliken, fresh from his training as a medical orderly, brand new on the station and still strange enough to Air Force life to treat a corporal with respect and a sergeant with wary caution, had hurried eagerly to the launch basin beyond the sea-plane hangars and climbed aboard High-Speed Launch 7525.
He had volunteered for the duty, he remembered unhappily, out of a desire to aid his country on active service rather than in the passive role of nursing the sick in the station hospital, and his anxiety not to be late had caused him to be tremendously early. The base had been deserted when he arrived and, although the black surface of the river was rippled by the wind, the basin where the launches lay was deceptively silent in the shelter of a group of buildings. The water lay still, oil-slicked and drab, and at the bottom of the slipway the scum and rubbish collected – the sticks, the bits of paper and the orange peel. Its scent was one
of brine and oil and rotting wood. The gulls were squatting hunchbacked on the end of the jetty, somnolent and still. And in the air was the sharp frosty freshness of a late autumn morning.
HSL 7525 lay on the outside of the flotilla, her narrow grey deck – to Milliken unbelievably cluttered up with ropes, water casks, guns, fenders, Carley float and crash nets – sloping gently upwards past the bridge and the wheelhouse to the foredeck. She was not as beautiful as Milliken had expected – with none of the low rakish line of some of the launches he had seen – for she was built for longer ranges, but still with the high speed for inshore rescue work under the guns of the Germans. Milliken had felt an odd thrill of excitement at the thought that her powerful engines were going to carry him into operational waters, perhaps even into a brush with the enemy – for he was still young enough to be romantic about war and not long enough in the Service to have been soured by the monotony of it.
He was still standing on the after-deck by the sick bay doors, rubbing his nose in awe, when he became aware of the smallest flight sergeant he had ever seen, waiting to pass him.
“Stop picking your nose and get out of the way,” the Flight Sergeant snapped. “Shove over and let the dog see the rabbit!”
Milliken turned quickly. In spite of his smallness the Flight Sergeant had something about him that made Milliken wary – bright eyes restless as fleas and a brick-red face that made him look incredibly alert and ebullient at that early hour. He was not young by any means but he had a youthfulness, an agelessness in fact, with his weathered face, his gingerish quiff and his bright young eyes, that made it difficult to guess his years.
“It’s all right,” he was saying with heavy sarcasm. “I’ll wait. Big-hearted Arthur, that’s me. Generous to a fault. I’m good at waiting. I’ve won prizes for waiting.”
Long before he had finished, Milliken had been goaded into life. He leapt smartly to his left, caught his foot against the closed hatch of the engine-room and found himself sprawling on his knees, his feet tangled in a coil of rope.