When Padgett and Agnew arrived at the International Club there was in progress what Agnew described later as a small “frackus.” It was taking place in the passageway near the cloakroom, and the trouble was being caused by two merchant seamen—an American and an Englishman—both drunk and quarrelsome. What the argument was about Padgett and Agnew were never able to discover; but a Russian policeman had been called in, and the seamen were threatening him with word and gesture. Meanwhile the interpreter—a tall, thin, worried man—was trying to pacify both sides. It was obvious that the policeman was rapidly losing patience; he began to pull his revolver from its holster.
The American swayed forward. “Pull that gun,” he said, “and you’re a dead guy. Jest pull it—that’s all!”
The interpreter was almost dancing with nervousness. “Now, now,” he pleaded, “don’t be foolish; please don’t be foolish. Nobody is going to shoot. This isn’t Chicago; this is Russia; this is a civilized country.”
If there was one kind of person that Padgett despised it was the man who drank and could not hold his drink. Padgett himself was an abstainer, but he did not object to other people drinking if they wished to do so. What he did object to was their making beasts of themselves and becoming public nuisances.
The policeman was still tugging at his revolver; he had it half out of the holster, and the two seamen appeared about to jump on him. The interpreter was still fussing round as ineffectually as a broody hen. Then Padgett intervened. It was necessary, he explained afterwards, for the good of international relations and for the Anglo-American good name. He grasped the American with one hand and the Englishman with the other and marched them to the door. Then, one after the other, he flung them out into the snow.
“You can come back,” said Padgett, “when you’ve cooled off.”
The two Russians had come to the doorway. Seeing the drunken seamen sprawling in the snow, they burst suddenly into laughter, and the tension was broken. The interpreter shook Padgett’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. “You are very strong. The way you carry those two out, it is funny; I have to laugh.”
The seamen had got to their feet; the cold air appeared to have sobered them. For a moment they seemed to have thoughts of continuing the argument; but the sight of Padgett obviously willing to oblige made them change their minds. They brushed the snow off their clothes and walked a little unsteadily away.
The interpreter said, “Silly boys. Too much vodka. Very silly.” He felt Padgett’s arm. “Big muscles, no? Very big muscles; very useful. Now we will go inside.”
Padgett and Agnew gave their coats to the girl in the cloakroom and received metal tags in exchange. Then they wandered into a large room, on the walls of which hung massive pictures of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, together with the national flags of the three allies and maps of the battle-fronts. In big lettering were extracts from some of the speeches of each of the three leaders. It was all very much the entente cordiale in the International Club at least. There was no hint in there of differences between the allies—those peevish demands from Stalin for a second front, those tart replies of Churchill, and Roosevelt’s conciliatory efforts. There were the pictures smiling down from distempered walls: Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt—three big, friendly brothers.
The film was as bad as Agnew had predicted. It was a Russian film, and a woman interpreter, seated on a high stool, made valiant efforts to keep pace with the incomprehensible noises that came from the screen. The audience of seamen was patently bored, and only once was it roused from that boredom to spontaneous laughter. That was when two men kissed one another on the screen; at this there was laughter and whistling.
The interpreter rounded on them at once, crying scornfully. “Don’t be so narrow-minded; it is an old Russian custom.” Then she added, “You are nothing but a lot of wolfs in sheepskins.”
At this the laughter broke out afresh so loudly that the film sounds were swamped. In Agnew’s opinion it was no loss.
Randall did not go ashore. Sometimes he tried to read; but his brain, always wandering back to the one absorbing subject, refused to assimilate what his eyes reported, and at length he gave up in despair. He would not play cards or ludo with the other gunners; would not join with them in any games or discussion. He felt he was not as they were, and he kept himself apart. He did what duties were required of him thoroughly and willingly; but beyond that he did not go.
The others thought him strange, a man who did not fit in—perhaps a little wrong in the head. But after a time they accepted him as he was and did not seek to pry into his private affairs. Randall, behind the tall fence of his aloofness, was grateful to them.
To pass the time and to make himself less conspicuous while keeping himself apart he began to make slippers and sandals from old rope which he obtained from the bosun. This rope he would unravel, plait the strands, then shape and sew the plaited lengths with sail-maker’s twine. He became reasonably skilful in the use of palm and needle, and the products of his skill bore quite a professional appearance. Soon he had made quite a number of sandals and slippers. He did not know what he would do with them; he did not look beyond the journey home, because his future did not extend beyond that. But he went on sewing because it occupied his hands and there was nothing else to do.
Sergeant Willis did not go ashore for reasons which he might have found difficulty in defining. They had to do with his character as a soldier of the King. Russians were Communists; they had killed their own royal family; they denied God. All this seemed culpable to Willis.
He knew that Miller was also a Communist; it was a fact that had caused him no little worry. He had sometimes heard Miller preaching Communism, and that had appeared to him perilously close to sedition. Yet Russia was Communist, and Russia was an ally; so where were you? There was here some confusion. To a man like Willis, who liked all things to be clearly marked in black and white, without blur or haziness, this fact presented some difficulty.
He was glad to see that none of the other gunners took Miller’s lectures seriously; indeed, they ragged him without mercy. Yet it was wrong that the man should be allowed to speak as he did; though, how could you stop him? He never suggested straight out the overthrow of the monarchy; he was too wary for that, and Willis would have come down on him hard if he had done so. But was not that process inherent in the Communist programme?
And what of the soldier’s oath of allegiance? But did these conscripts like Miller take the oath? Willis believed not.
To Sergeant Willis the oath he had freely given was binding; it was something he would not think of breaking. He was a King’s man, and always would be. Damn Communism and damn Republicanism; damn every other kind of ‘ism’ if it came to that! ‘Isms’ were dangerous things, not to be trusted. Look at the state the world was in now, and it was all due to these confounded ‘isms’—Nazism, Fascism, totalitarianism—all a lot of foreign twaddle. Willis knew what was what: fear God and serve the King; that was what; stick to that creed, and you would never go far wrong.
Willis had a simple faith; it never occurred to him to doubt the existence of God, nor the essential rightness of God, nor the warlike character of this Almighty Being. God liked a smart parade; that was why church parades were part of the Army curriculum; He liked polished brasses and shining boots, blancoed webbing and the brisk word of command; He liked men who marched smartly with hobnailed boots striking out a rhythm—left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Willis was not in the habit of painting pictures in his mind; but if he had painted God it would probably have been as some very high-ranking Army officer. God was warlike, but He was just; He fought always upon the side of right—the British side.
Yet these damned Communists, these Russians, contended that there was no God, and had executed their king. And they were our allies. It was, of course, a question of expediency; one enemy at a time. They were our allies for the moment, but there was no need to fraternize. Sergeant Willis did not go ashore.
&n
bsp; And Petty Officer Donker also stayed on board ship, sometimes hovering about his guns and rockets, his paravanes and smoke-floats, his P.A.C.’s and his small-arms; sometimes spitting morosely into the icy waters of the Tuloma; sometimes sitting by the mess-room stove and slicing his corns with a cut-throat razor; sometimes rolling cigarettes; sometimes swearing at the carpenter, with whom he was at loggerheads; sometimes carving exquisite little models of fully rigged sailing-ships; and always, always, fingering the lump upon his neck.
For long hours Donker and Willis would sit playing draughts or double patience with cards that had become soft, almost fluffy, at the edges from constant use. Sometimes as much as a shilling would change hands in one of these gambling sessions.
So, on board and ashore, the hours drifted away. There had been a hundred and ten air-raids on Murmansk since the arrival of the convoy, and more than once incendiaries had fallen on the deck of the Golden Ray, to be thrown quickly overboard. At times high-explosive bombs had fallen uncomfortably close; at times the gunners had wondered whether this was to be the end—their ship sunk at the quayside. But at last the holds were empty; at last the Golden Ray loosed her grip on the bollards and slipped out into mid-stream. Then she moved down-river to a small timber jetty which thrust its wooden arm out into the current. Here a few hundred tons of fertilizer were loaded—powdery, dusty material that penetrated to the cabins and cast a film over everything. Then the hatches were battened down, and the ship, riding high in the water with her light cargo, moved to the convoy anchorage and dug her iron talon into the bed of the river.
“And now,” said Vernon, “now for England, home, and beauty.”
“If we get there,” said Payne.
Padgett slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that, boy. Jerry don’t trouble with the empties.”
“That’s what you think,” said Payne. “That’s what they tell you on the Atlantic run, but it don’t stop you from being bumped on the way to Yankee-land. You want to tell it to the U-boat captains; maybe they haven’t heard.”
“We’ll get through,” said Vernon. “I’ve got a date.”
“Wonder where the Tirpitz is,” said Warby; “and them two battle-wagons—the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau—they’re somewhere in Norway, an’t they? Nice people to meet, they’d be.”
Padgett said, “You’re just looking for ruddy trouble. Anyway, who’s afraid of the big bad Tirpitz so long as we’ve got old Donkey and his four-inch cannon?”
They were on the gun-platform, preparing everything for the voyage home; the Bofors was oiled and greased, the shells clean and clipped up ready for use. Vernon rested his gloved hand on the low steel wall that surrounded the platform and gazed up-river to the escort anchorage. There, swinging at their cables, were cruisers, destroyers, corvettes, and armed trawlers—escorts that had come up with outbound convoys, and now, after a brief respite, a brief refuelling, a brief replenishment with depth-charges and ammunition, they would be ready to take another convoy home.
Sometimes Vernon envied the men in the escort vessels. It must be so much easier to keep up morale in ships that had been built for fighting, ships that were made for attack, and not just passive, waiting for the enemy to strike. And again, looking at them from the freighter’s decks, it always appeared so much safer on board a corvette or a destroyer; one never considered the possibility of their being torpedoed or struck by bombs. It was always the slow, bulky merchant ships that sat up and asked to be hit.
Vernon realized that this was merely a point of view, and a biased one at that. Possibly the crews of the escort vessels were just as envious of the merchant seamen and the D.E.M.S. gunners, feeling that it was the latter who had the cushy jobs. Corvettes and destroyers, it might be pointed out, were just as liable to be torpedoed as freighters; it might be claimed that they were less comfortable to live in, rolling and pitching like nobody’s business; that their crews enjoyed less time in port, and that discipline was stricter. All these things might well be true, but to Vernon, standing on the deck of a crawling merchant ship, the corvette and the destroyer always looked like places of safety.
“Picking out the escort? “asked Padgett. “What’ll you have—two corvettes and a destroyer, or an armed trawler and a cruiser?”
“Fifty of them wouldn’t be too many.”
“You’re right!” agreed Payne. “You’re damn right! I wish it was a hundred; I wish it was two hundred; I wish to God we was sailing up the Clyde.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lame Duck Lagging
SPRING seemed suddenly to have come to the north. The sun shone, the hills glittered, and the Tuloma, flowing silently down towards the sea, was a moving mirror, reflecting the pale blue of a sky that held only one vagrant, feathery cloud. The air was fresh and cold; it was like air that had never yet been used; air that perhaps would flow down towards the regions of temperate climate, and on towards the tropics and the equator, gradually becoming staler and more enervating, gradually losing that fierce, exhilarating quality, just as a stream that starts in the mountains as fresh, limpid water, cold and transparent, becomes at last the turgid, commercial river, carrying seaward the filth of towns, and bearing upon its surface the scum and flotsam of civilization.
And yet it was not truly spring. February was not yet over, and there was much bitter weather to come. But here, into the heart of winter, had arrived a promise of the better days that must surely come at last. This day was a messenger bringing a golden vision of things to come; and on this day the convoy left the shelter of its anchorage and moved out towards the grey terror of the Barents Sea.
Eighteen merchant ships slipped down the Tuloma—some carrying timber, but most, like the Golden Ray, practically without cargo and riding high in the water, so that they appeared strangely top-heavy, their propellers almost breaking the surface as they turned over. With them went twenty warships, and two of these were armed trawlers. Again there was no aircraft carrier; again they would be helpless to reach out beyond the range of their guns; again there would be no ‘umbrella.’
And this time they were to travel slowly, for a lame duck was coming with them, and in convoy the lame duck lames every other ship. The speed of a convoy is no more than the speed of its slowest member, and though some of the ships might have been capable of twelve or even fourteen knots, all were to travel at five, for that was the speed of the lame duck, a tanker that had been bombed and half disabled as it lay at anchor in the Tuloma. It had been patched up as well as possible with the limited resources available, and now it was to limp home to a dry-dock in Liverpool or Glasgow. And limping with it would limp seventeen other ships, and seventeen other crews would look across at the lame duck and curse it for laming them all, holding them all upon the bitter sea for extra days of danger.
But the crew of the lame duck would think only about their own patched-up engines; going about their work with one ear always alert for a break in their rhythm—the break that might be the presage of disaster, of helpless drifting on a deadly ocean.
Vernon knew that feeling. He had sailed in a ship cursed with unreliable engines—a diesel ship that was continually breaking down and falling behind. Then she would lie drifting helplessly, while the convoy steamed on, moving nearer and nearer to the rim of the horizon, sliding over that rim; at length only a faint smoke-cloud to be seen above the edge of the sea; then nothing. The crippled ship would lie, heaving gently upon the swell, and there would be only the creak of timbers where before there had been the steady beat of the engines. There she would lie, waiting for a torpedo, and the engineers would work feverishly upon the sick engines, and the rest of the crew would wait, able to do nothing, sweating it out.
Then, at last, the engines would come to life again—a little uncertain at first, but gathering confidence. Then the ship would vibrate and they would be on their way, trying to catch up with the vanished convoy, hoping that they would not break down again, and listening, always listening, for that
cough, that sudden choking of the sick man labouring below decks.
No, thought Vernon, it was no fun being a lame duck.
Night came quickly, dropping its black curtain over the receding land; and with the night came the aurora borealis, glowing in green and purple upon the sea and ships. At the head of the port column steamed the Golden Ray; astern of her the s.s. Merryweather, with Panton-Smith on board.
“I’ll keep an eye on you, Harry,” Panton-Smith had said before they parted. “I’ll be looking across at you.”
And much help that’ll be, thought Vernon, gazing back at the dark shape of the Merryweather. Much help his watching will be to us.
All the same, he felt somehow the companionship of Panton-Smith across the gulf that lay between the two vessels. “Are you on watch now, Smithy? Are you asleep in your bunk? You are there somewhere in that shadow moving along behind us. You are facing the same dangers as we. Sweet dreams, Smithy—and may we meet in England.”
Cold it was on watch on the tall gun-platform, and there, exposed to the wind, four hours crept away on feet of lead. Vernon stamped his icy feet and thought of Jamaica basking in the lap of the Caribbean Sea. A year ago he had been there, disembarked from an east-bound ship, waiting for a west-bound one requiring gun and gunners.
For five weeks he and the rest of the gun-team had revelled in sunshine and the easy-going life of Port Royal. Three or four times a week they would travel across the bay to Kingston—Kingston with its open-air cinemas, its saloons, its shops, its squalid slums, and its light-hearted way of living. Then in the evening, with the soft breeze ruffling the water, with stars hanging overhead, and other stars shimmering below in the bay, they would return to Port Royal and sleep under the mosquito-nets of the barrack-room.
Soldier, Sail North (1987) Page 16