Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  The girl had glanced at the card, and a trace of colour had crept into her pale face. She seemed uncertain of herself, a shade nervous.

  “What was it you had? I’ve knitted so many things.”

  “A Balaclava. It was real good. I’ve worn it a lot, and it’s been right handy.”

  “I’m glad. Knitting isn’t much; but I’m glad it helps.”

  “It does that—helps a lot.”

  A customer came into the shop, and Andrews stood on one side while Miss Cooper served her. He felt awkward, in the way; and again he doubted whether he had been wise in coming. When the customer had gone he said, “Well, I just wanted to thank you. Now I’d better be going.”

  The girl asked, “Do you have to go at once? I’m sure Mum would like to see you.”

  “Well, there’s no real hurry,” he admitted.

  The girl lifted the flap in the counter and came through into the front of the shop. She locked the shop door and drew a blind down over the glass.

  “This is early-closing day,” she explained. “We’ve finished for today. Won’t you come into the back? Mum would love to see you.”

  Andrews followed her past the flap in the counter and through into a small, rather dark room, filled to overflowing with furniture. Another door led from this room to what was obviously the kitchen, for a smell of cooking came from that region. “Mum!” the girl called. “Mum, we’ve got a visitor.”

  In answer to her call a dumpy woman with untidy hair and a bewildered expression came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the apron she wore over a dress of some stiff black material. She looked from Andrews to her daughter questioningly, and with a hint of alarm in her eyes, as though she were in the habit of fearing anything that was not usual.

  The girl reassured her. “He had one of the Balaclavas I knitted and came to thank me.” She turned to Andrews. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Andrews—George Andrews.”

  Mrs Cooper gave her right hand an extra-hard rub with the apron and held it out in timid greeting. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. You live hereabouts, I expect.”

  “Not exactly. About fifty miles from here.”

  “As far as that! You didn’t come special.”

  Andrews hesitated; then he grinned sheepishly. “Oh, well, I was on leave, and there wasn’t much to do.”

  The girl broke in: “So you did come all that way specially. Oh, you shouldn’t have. Did you come by train?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was nice of you. There’s not everybody would do that. Most of them don’t even write.”

  “I didn’t,” said Andrews.

  “No, but you’ve come yourself; that’s better. You’ll stay to dinner, of course. He must stay, mustn’t he, Mum?”

  Mrs Cooper looked doubtful. “If Mr Andrews doesn’t mind stew? It’s all we’ve got. But I’m sure he’s welcome if he doesn’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Andrews said. “But I don’t want to eat your rations. I can get a meal somewhere.”

  “Not in Benford,” said the girl. “No, I don’t think so—not in Benford.”

  “There’s plenty,” said Mrs Cooper. “You needn’t worry about that. There’s plenty if you don’t mind stew.”

  “I love it,” Andrews said.

  After that events had just taken their course, as though it were all inevitable. In the afternoon he and Jacqueline had gone for a walk, wandering along twisting woodland paths, and feeling that the War was very far away. He had missed his train back, and then, of course, he had allowed himself to be persuaded to stay the night.

  Somehow then he had just stayed on—helping in the shop —walking out with Jacqueline in the evenings. Soon they had persuaded themselves that they were in love. It had been easy enough, for both were at the age when love comes easily, and both were a little lonely.

  It was amazing how love had awakened the placid girl, lending a sparkle to her eyes and animation to her smile. Andrews wondered how it was that at first he had thought her plain. She was beautiful.

  When Andrews left Benford there was only one day of his leave remaining. He had felt guilty; but his mother had understood.

  “It was only to be expected,” she had said. “I do hope she’s the right girl for you.”

  “She is, Mother. Wait till you see her.”

  Andrews’s pen scratched and spluttered over the cheap, ruled notepaper. He sat with his head bent down close to the pad, and as he wrote his tongue thrust itself out between his lips. The Golden Ray was steaming smoothly over a calm sea, and the cabin swayed hardly at all.

  Jackie darling, it’s all over bar the shouting. We’re pretty well out of danger while I write this. We’ve had some tough going, but I’ll tell you about that when I see you….

  At daybreak the coast of Scotland was visible on the port side, and in two columns the ships steamed southward, heading for Loch Ewe, where they would anchor for the night, before being directed to their different ports.

  The sea was still calm; the sun was pleasantly warm; and it did really seem, as Andrews had written in his letter, “all over bar the shouting.”

  Sergeant Willis was walking towards the forecastle when it happened. He wanted some paint to touch up the gun, and he was looking for the bosun. His errand brought him close to the explosion, for it was the bows which took the full force of the mine.

  The noise deafened Willis; it seemed to thrust his eardrums in. The deck leaped under his feet, and he felt a searing pain across the eyes, as though some one had lashed them with a barbed whip. Instinctively he put up his hand and felt the warm wetness of blood. He dropped his hand and looked down at it, but he could see nothing. There was nothing in front of his eyes but an immense black void.

  “God!” he muttered. “Oh, dear God Almighty! I’m blind!”

  The deck was dropping under him, sloping at an acute angle. He fell forward upon his knees, groping for a handhold and finding none. In another moment he was on all fours, and cold water was creeping up his arms and legs. He tried to stand, but his feet slipped from under him, and he could no longer feel anything solid beneath them.

  He wondered why he did not sink, why his head remained dry; and then he realized that he was wearing his life-jacket, and this was buoying him up. But the blackness pressed in around him, and he was alone. In all his life he had never felt so terribly alone.

  Randall was walking along the after deck when the explosion occurred. The shock flung him against one of the hatches, and he fell with his arms stretched out on the canvas and his legs dangling over the coaming.

  For a moment he lay there, dazed. Then, recovering his senses, he climbed on to the hatch and stood up, steadying himself with one hand upon a derrick-boom. The hatch was already sloping forward, and he could see that the ship was going down by the head. He felt immensely calm—even relieved. He felt like a man from whose shoulders a heavy burden of decision has been lifted.

  The engines had stopped. That would be the engineers’ immediate job—to stop the engines. Steam was spouting from the funnel in a great white cloud, and the whistle was sounding, its high-pitched wail going on and on like the last, despairing cry of some mortally stricken monster. Randall could see men running to, the lifeboats on the port side. It was useless going to the starboard ones, since they had been smashed by the storm. The task of launching was made difficult by the slope of the deck, and he could see that they were having trouble with number two boat. He watched them detachedly as they worked feverishly at the ropes, and it was like a dumb show, because the rushing voice of the steam-whistle drowned all other sound.

  As Randall stood there, hanging on the derrick-boom and watching the launching of the boats, three naval ratings who had been working on the four-inch gun ran past. Randall had leisure to notice the expressions of alarm on their faces as they padded by, and he thought suddenly of animals fleeing from a prairie fire. One of the sailors shouted to him.

  “Hi! Randi
e! Come along!”

  But Randall smiled and let them go. It gave him a feeling of superiority to be so calm and detached while all the others were rushing wildly about. It was a feeling almost of power.

  He saw that some of the men had got into number two lifeboat and that it was being lowered. It moved jerkily, dropping a little way, stopping, and then dropping again. Then something went wrong: one of the falls seemed to stick and the other suddenly ran out. In a moment the lifeboat was hanging in a vertical position, bows uppermost, spilling its human cargo into the sea.

  One man only did not fall out of the boat. Somehow his foot had become caught, so that he hung head downward—helpless. Then the boat swung slowly round like the pendulum of a 365-day clock, and the man’s head, swinging with it, was caught between the boat and the ship’s side. When the boat swung back again the man still hung by one leg, but he had ceased to be interested in saving his life: he no longer had a life to save.

  The other boat had reached the water safely, and men were slipping down the escape ropes. In a few moments the boat was full and could take no more. Randall watched the men handling the oars, thrusting the boat away from the ship’s side. Then they began pulling away, striking raggedly, but opening a gap between ship and boat.

  The slope of the deck had become more pronounced now as the ship’s head sank lower. Half the midships upperworks was under water, and water was creeping up the after deck, creeping towards the poop. Randall steadied himself on wide-parted legs and began to take off his life-jacket. Having done that, he jumped down from the hatch, floundered across the deck, and climbed on to the bulwark. Standing there for a moment with one hand upon the rigging, he took a last look at what was still visible of the Golden Ray.

  She was going down fast. Even as he stood there she gave a shudder like the nervous twitch of a dying animal, and bubbles came rippling up from some interior region to burst one by one upon the surface. The propeller was high out of the water now, and the Bofors pedestal was sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees. The Bofors barrel had swung round until it had come up against the safety-stop and was pointing futilely at the rising tide of water. Some of the smoke-floats on the poop had broken adrift from their stands and had rolled forward until brought to a halt by the rail. Randall noticed that one of the rafts had gone from the after rigging, and there were at least two rafts in the sea with men clinging to them.

  Well, he thought, this is the end, Sid boy. This is it.

  He released his hold on the rigging and let himself drop.

  Bombardier Padgett was in the gunners’ cabin when the mine exploded. Cowdrey and Payne were there also, and three of the naval ratings. The first leap and shudder of the vessel seemed to petrify them all, so that for a moment they just stood or sat where they were, looking at one another with a sudden fearful question in their eyes.

  Then, as the cabin began to tilt, the idea swiftly came to each one of them that the ship was sinking, and they were spurred to action. Snatching up their life-jackets, they ran to the companion ladder and began climbing towards the deck. But when the first of them reached the top of the ladder he found that the iron door of the companion hatch—a door which was always kept open—had somehow been swung shut by the shock of the explosion, and now was jammed so tightly that they could not open it.

  Crowded on the iron platform at the top of the ladder—a platform that was already sloping so acutely it was difficult to keep their footing on it—they tried desperately to force open the door. But, though they managed to push it a few inches, as soon as they released their pressure it closed fast again.

  “Something’s fallen against it outside,” Padgett gasped; “a chest or something heavy like that. Give another heave, lads—altogether.”

  They heaved; the door opened an inch or two and then closed again. They tried again—again with the same result. And all the time they could feel the ship tilting farther as she settled by the head.

  “It’s no use,” said Padgett. “We’ll never make it. Is there any other way out?”

  “How about the porthole?” Cowdrey suggested.

  They grasped at this straw and clattered down the ladder and into the cabin. Padgett loosened the thumbscrews and swung the plate-glass cover inward. But they knew it was no use; they knew that no man could squeeze through a hole that size. They could see out, but they could not get out—and in a few minutes it would be too late.

  Then the electric light went out, and at the same moment water began to pour in through the porthole. Padgett slammed it shut and fastened the screws.

  “Get back to the ladder,” he ordered.

  His harsh voice of command killed the germ of panic that had started to grow in the others. They obeyed him in silence, groping through the darkness, splashing through the water that had flowed in, and feeling for the ladder. It was no easy task to climb it, for it leaned drunkenly to one Side; but they clambered up—Padgett last of all.

  “Try the door again, lads,” he ordered. “Give a good heave.”

  But even as he gave the order the door swung open, and they could see Vernon and Warby standing in the opening, and behind them the steel locker that had jammed the door.

  “Come on,” said Vernon. “Time to leave.”

  Like men reprieved from the gallows, they streamed out into the good air.

  Padgett was following when a thought halted him: Higgins!

  They had forgotten Higgins. Higgins was still lying on his bunk, encased in a strait-jacket, unable to move.

  For a moment Padgett hesitated—but only for a moment. Then he turned and raced down the ladder into the dark pit below.

  The water in the wash-place was deeper than it had been; it was up to his knees. Padgett fought down a sudden wave of claustrophobia and groped his way towards the door of the naval gunners’ quarters. His brain kept saying: “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” But it was difficult to hurry with water swilling round his legs, the deck sloping steeply, and everything in almost complete darkness.

  Strange noises came to his ears—the rattlings and groanings made by the vessel in its death-throes. From somewhere came the sullen clang of metal upon metal, and, joining in, the sinister whisper of the rising tide.

  He found the door at last, strangely tilted, and stepped down into the cabin beyond. Here the water was considerably deeper—waist-high—and it was more difficult to move. He paused for a moment, trying to find his bearings, and felt the deck shudder under his feet.

  He shouted, “Higgins! Higgins! Where are you?”

  His voice echoed hollowly in the half-submerged cabin, and he heard a cry that was half a sob. He floundered towards it. In a moment his questing hands fell upon the young sailor, and he could hear Higgins’s terrified whimpering.

  “All right,” he said. “You’re all right now, kid.”

  There was no hope of releasing the boy; there was no time to fumble with buckles that he could not see. Padgett put his arms around Higgins, lifted him from the bunk, and made for the faint glimmer of light that told him where the door was. The water was rising rapidly; it was almost up to his chest as he struggled through the doorway, and he realized that the ship could not last much longer.

  In the wash-place he was on a higher level again, and the water dropped to his waist, but, hurrying towards the companion ladder, he stumbled and fell. Higgins screamed as the water closed over him, but in a moment Padgett had struggled to his feet and had lifted his burden out of the water.

  But now they were not alone in the wash-place—not by any means alone. Everywhere he looked Padgett could see the glitter of eyes in the darkness, and he could hear fearful squeakings.

  The water was alive with rats.

  They had been flooded out from some nesting-place and were now trying madly to escape. Some of them climbed on to Padgett’s shoulders and up to his head. He tried to shake them off, but they clung persistently, their fear of drowning driving away their fear of man. Padgett held Higgins with one hand, and with the
other swept the rats from his head and shoulders. Then he began to climb the ladder—painfully—slow step by step—hauling himself upward to the light showing above.

  The rats came with him, clawing at his trousers and getting under his feet.

  He had almost reached the top of the ladder when water began to flow down from the companion hatch—at first a trickle, but rapidly increasing to a torrent. Padgett could scarcely breathe. His muscles were cracking under the strain of carrying Higgins and climbing up the sloping ladder. He could have dropped the boy and saved himself; that was the only sensible thing to do; if he did not it would simply mean two lives lost instead of one. Where was the sense in hanging on to a poor, crack-brained fellow who, if he lived, would probably spend half his time in an asylum? It would be much better to let him go; it would soon be over for him.

  But Padgett did not let go. There was a streak of obstinacy in his nature, and, having gone down into the cabin to pull Higgins back to life, he was damned if he would now let death have the victory. To Padgett’s mind the struggle became a personal one with death—and Higgins was the prize. Padgett summoned up all his great strength, cleared the last step, and burst through the deluge out on to the open deck.

  At the same moment the Golden Ray gave up the struggle and slid silently down into the sea.

  When Randall jumped into the sea he found that it was not so easy to commit suicide after all. He found that the instinct to preserve one’s life is strong, even though that life may appear to have been ruined. Randall was a powerful swimmer: he had played water-polo before the War, and was almost as much at home in the waves as a seal. He had thought before leaping from the bulwark that he would simply let himself go down, making no resistance; it had seemed an easy thing to do. When he came to it he found that, far from being easy, it was very hard. For him, in fact, it was impossible.

  His head broke surface, and he began to tread water. He knew that he could keep afloat for hours, that if he so wished he could swim ashore without difficulty; and he knew that he had left things too late; he ought to have gone overboard in the storm, when there would have been no possibility of survival. Now it was too late.