‘We call in there, Mr Paget.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Go and get on with it, then.’ Next came Buckle, the ship’s chief steward. The accommodation for the Commodore and his staff was ready, he said. He would show Commodore Kemp to the master’s spare cabin. Theakston grunted and waved a hand: Kemp gathered he was dismissed, and took his departure.
V
In addition to Cutler, Kemp’s staff consisted of a leading signalman and an ordinary signalman, a telegraphist and a number of gunnery rates — a petty officer with the non-substantive rate of seaman gunner in charge of a leading seaman and ten hands to man the ship’s armament, which wasn’t much: close-range AA weapons — Bofors, Lewis guns, Oerlikons, mounted in the bridge wings, on monkey’s island above the wheelhouse and chart room, and aft above the engineers’ accommodation. The other ships in convoy carried similar armament; the main defence would be the escort. Aboard the Commodore’s ship, Petty Officer Napper was the man in charge of the weaponry and his sour, horse-like face said he didn’t go much on it. No use complaining though; it was the best that could be allocated, no doubt of that. There were always shortages. In fact PO Napper was inclined to be sour about taking valuable war material to Russia when Britain herself stood in need of it.
‘Bloody bolshies,’ he said to Leading Signalman Corrigan in the compartment allocated as the naval messdeck. ‘Hitler’s allies, not long since. Probably change again before long.’
Corrigan didn’t waste breath answering. Hitler’s hordes advancing like Attila the Hun across the Russian land mass had put paid to any thoughts of another Nazi —Communist get-together, and now Russia had to be treated as a full member of the Allies against the Axis powers. Napper went on chuntering away to himself, a regular old woman Corrigan thought, though they’d met for the first time only in RNB Pompey when they’d been detailed by the drafting master-at-arms to form the party for the Hardraw Falls. Napper was an RFR man, a Fleet Reservist, and looked it, grey-faced and wrinkled, not far off fifty, too old to be still at sea. Napper’s bunk was piled high with home comforts extracted from his kit-bag: mufflers, balaclavas, seaboot stockings — fair enough, of course. But the rest! There was a tea-cosy, currently filled with an assortment of medicines. Corrigan had seen Enos, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, a packet of senna pods, aspirins, a tin of Germoline, corn plasters and a small corn knife, and a bottle of Dr J. Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, presumably in case the senna pods worked too well.
Napper saw Corrigan looking at it all.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing, Po. Just hope you won’t be needing it, that’s all.’
‘It’s the wife,’ Napper said defensively.
‘Looks after you, does she?’
‘That’s her job, isn’t it?’ Napper began to push things straight, looked round and found a drawer beneath the bunk. He opened it and began stowing away his medicine chest. He gave a sudden cough, and stopped to feel his chest. Buggeration — his weak point! And sod the war. He rooted about, found some camphorated oil. Better not rub it in now, the air up top was enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey and he couldn’t turn in yet, not until the convoy had weighed and the ships’ companies had been fallen out to take up cruising stations. After midnight, that would be. Napper stood there uncertainly, with the camphorated oil in his hand, and coughed again. His face looked hollow with anxiety.
Corrigan grinned. He said, ‘Big decision, eh, Po?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘To rub or not to rub.’
Napper glared. ‘What do you know about it?’
‘More than you think, Po.’
Napper shoved the bottle out of sight. That Corrigan...there was a posh accent. The wartime navy had brought in all manner of different people, not a bit like peacetime. Corrigan, a hostilities-only rating, was a convoy signalman, something a shade different from a proper naval bunting tosser, a shorter qualifying course, and some of them were posh, so he’d been told, aiming for commissions as sub-lieutenants RNVR. ‘You a college boy?’ he asked.
‘That depends on what you mean by college, Po.’
‘I don’t want any of your lip.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be lip, Po, just a statement of fact. It so happens I was a medical student...I wanted to get into the war so I chucked it, anyway till the war’s over.’
Napper’s lips framed a whistle. ‘Makee-learn doctor, was you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then you know all about camphorated oil.’
‘A little,’ Corrigan answered modestly. Petty Officer Napper rubbed reflectively at a blue-shaded jowl. This bunting tosser was a find and he’d never had such luck before. His own medical adviser, right on the spot! Worth keeping in with, worth buttering up in fact. Free advice...
‘What do you advise?’ he asked anxiously. ‘It’s me chest, you see. Got a cough.’ He lit a fag and coughed some more. ‘I had pleurisy, once. Don’t want to get it again. Then there’s the bowels, see. Not reg’lar...’
VI
‘Escort taking up station, sir.’
‘Thank you, Corrigan.’ Kemp turned to Captain Theakston, a thickset shadow in the dim light from the binnacle behind. ‘All ready, Captain?’
‘Aye, all ready. Mr Paget?’
‘Yes, sir —’
‘Pass to the fo’c’sle, shorten-in to three shackles.’
Paget passed the order down and the sound of the windlass, steam driven, came back to the men on the bridge, a rackety, clanking sound as the links of the cable came home up the hawse-pipe to drop down into the cable locker beneath the fo’c’sle accommodation. The senior officer of the escort, with his degaussing gear switched on, like all the other ships, against the possibility of magnetic mines, and paravanes ready to be streamed from either bow to deflect and cut the mooring cables that would attach any conventional mines to their sinkers, moved past to take up station ahead for moving out the convoy; when they were clear of the firth the cruisers would move out to the beam and leave the A/S group to sweep ahead of the merchant ships.
The windlass stopped and a shout came from Amory in the eyes of the ship: ‘Shortened-in, sir, third shackle on deck.’
‘Right.’
They waited. The darkness was thick but the fog was holding off, had not after all come down with the dark, thanks to a breeze that had come up to blow it away before it had properly formed. If that wind dropped, then the fog might come back. The water’s surface was slightly ruffled and the breeze was a cold one — but the sea was cold too, otherwise the wind would have brought its own fog. Kemp sent up a prayer that it would hold off: no joke, navigating blind or by radar in pilotage waters, those of western Scotland in particular.
‘Executive, sir.’ This was Corrigan, watching the flagship’s signal bridge.
‘Thank you. Executive to all ships.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Corrigan used his blue-shaded Aldis to flash the brief signal to the merchantmen in company, the signal that told the masters to proceed in execution of previous orders. Theakston gave the order to weigh anchor and once again the windlass started up, the wash-deck hoses in action to clean down the cable as it came slowly inboard under the eagle eye of Jock Tawney, the bosun, once again saying his farewells to Scotland...he’d long since forgotten how many times he’d done that, though in the past it had been mainly the Clyde he’d sailed from.
Amory’s voice came again from the fo’c’sle. ‘Anchor’s aweigh, sir.’
‘Heave to the waterline, Mr Amory. Hold it on the brake.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Until the ship was clear of the firth, the anchor would remain veered ready for letting go in an emergency: Theakston was a careful master.
Kemp said, ‘We’ll move to the head of the centre column, Captain.’
‘I know that. I know the orders and this isn’t my first convoy.’
‘My apologies,’ Kemp said. He cursed himself for a lack of tact. He would have to watch hi
s step with Captain Theakston. The master, after all, commanded the ship, the Commodore of the convoy was a mere passenger until it fell to him to order the movements and manoeuvres of the convoy as a whole. As the Hardraw Falls began to move in response to the engine-room telegraph the other ships fell in astern on a sou’-sou’-westerly course to take them down towards Colonsay and the turn to starboard for the Dubh Artach light which they would leave away to port when they turned up for the Minch on passage north to Iceland.
The PQ convoy was away.
TWO
I
Always at the start of a convoy, of any sailing across the seas, there were the thoughts of home, many and varied. John Mason Kemp, by long experience of the sea life, was able to switch off the moment his ship was under way. The job needed concentration and so he concentrated. Before sailing he was as bad, as nostalgic as anyone else. He always hated leaving the cottage in Meopham, way down in Kent. He always had, even in peacetime, but it was that much worse with Hitler sending his Luftwaffe over to blast London and its environs — Meopham was scarcely an environ but was in the flight path from the airfields in occupied France and not all that far from targets such as RAF Biggin Hill. Then there were the simple facts of wartime life: the shortages; the queues; the making do; the difficult lot of a wife left to cope on her own, not that Mary was unique in that respect, nor unique in having two sons as well as a husband involved in the war at sea. But she also had Kemp’s aged grandmother to look after. No joke that, Kemp knew. Just before sailing from the Firth of Lorne, Kemp had reflected, as he had done many times before, that it was a curious situation for a middle-aged convoy commodore still to have someone to call granny. A pernicketty one of well over ninety, not far off a hundred in fact, one of life’s trials but a very game old bird.
Before going aboard the Hardraw Falls Kemp had rung his wife from the Station Hotel, a circumspect conversation with no places or ships mentioned since Hitler’s ears were said to be everywhere, though a German agent in wartime Oban would have stood out like a bishop entering a brothel. Mary had seemed somewhat down and he’d chivvied her a little.
‘It won’t last for ever, Mary. Chin up!’
‘It’s not that,’ she’d said.
‘Ah! Granny?’
‘Yes. She’s been complaining —’
‘She always does. What is it this time?’
‘Oh...the cold, for one thing.’ Kent could be cold and, like Scotland, often suffered snow problems, but not quite yet. ‘She seems to feel it more and more.’
‘Age,’ Kemp said. He knew Mary had fuel problems: every-one was supposed to save gas and coal and electricity. ‘Try not to worry...my shilling’s run out,’ he added as the pips went, ‘and I haven’t another. Sorry.’
‘All right. Take care of yourself, John.’
‘I’ll do that,’ he said, and the line went dead before he’d actually said goodbye. It was rather like an omen. He’d half a mind to ring back on a transferred charge call but it could take up to half an hour to be passed through all the exchanges that stood between Oban and Meopham and time was short. Leaving the telephone box, Kemp caught sight of his assistant, a new one whom he had met for the first time at the convoy conference. His assistant was doing two things: waiting for his lord and master and trying to disengage himself from a young woman with deep, dark rings under her eyes and an unsteady gait.
‘All set, Cutler?’ Kemp asked as he came up.
‘All set, sir, Commodore.’ He didn’t look it by any means. Given any encouragement at all the girl would embark with him. ‘Drifter’s at the quay, sir.’
‘Let’s go, then.’ Kemp felt he’d sounded like an American film: the rub-off already, just from knowing he had an American assistant? He fixed the young woman with his eye. ‘Make short work of it,’ he said, and headed for the hotel entrance that gave on to the quay, not far to go. He saw the drifter waiting and Captain Theakston, beneath a harbour lamp, holding an old-fashioned pocket-watch ostentatiously in front of his face. From behind he heard the girl’s voice, quite loud and very clear, something about an old fuddy-duddy who was jealous because he was past it. A moment later Cutler caught him up.
‘Cleared away?’ Kemp asked sardonically.
‘Cleared away?’
Kemp said, ‘The young woman.’
‘Oh — yes, sir, Commodore, I guess so. All aboard, I told her...and stand well clear of the bubble-gum chutes.’
‘What?’
‘US Navy pipe, sir. Boats’ crews keep out from under the chewed gobs coming down the chute —’
‘This isn’t the US Navy, Cutler. Do you chew gum?’
‘Why, yes, sir, Commodore, I guess I —’
‘Not any more you don’t.’
‘Sir?’
‘You heard.’ Kemp’s tone was harsher than he’d intended: he’d once sat on some gum in a railway carriage. He believed Cutler had taken umbrage; there was a hurt silence as they embarked aboard the drifter to be greeted by Captain Theakston’s upraised timepiece. That watch looked as though it might have belonged to Theakston’s grandfather; it had an uncompromising Yorkshire aspect.
II
Tex Cutler was one of the home-thinkers as the Hardraw Falls dropped south towards Colonsay, but not of the USA: Oban with the girl in residence was currently his idea of home, though he doubted if he would ever see either again. The return convoy, the QP out of Archangel — or if the freeze did in fact come sooner than expected, then out of Murmansk — wasn’t likely to sail for Oban. More likely Liverpool, possibly the Clyde. Not that the girl would be around anyway, of course. She was going back to Glasgow, true, but only for a few days. She was fed up with the Glasgow scene, the cold and the wet. The aunt would be back soon and she was fed up with the aunt as well. Once you’d been married, you didn’t settle easily to aunts and their ways, however well-intentioned. She was heading back to London for a while and after that God knew where. She might join the WAAF. One thing was certain in Cutler’s mind and that was that it wouldn’t be long before she found another serviceman passing through and then she’d hitch her wagon to his temporary star.
Which was a pity. Cutler liked the girl a lot and wished he could have stayed near to help her through. And he hoped she wasn’t going to get pregnant...
‘Cutler?’
‘Yes, sir, Commodore?’
Kemp felt a twinge of irritation at being addressed as it were twice. ‘I’d like the close-range weapons exercised before the hands stand down.’ He paused. ‘That’s if it’s all right with you, Captain Theakston?’
There was a brief nod. ‘Aye. So long as there’s no interference with the ship-handling in the firth.’
‘There won’t be. All right, Cutler, carry on, please.’
Cutler executed one of his salutes. ‘Yes, sir, Commodore.’ Kemp said, ‘That’s not necessary, at night particularly — and not every time I open my mouth.’
‘What’s not —’
‘The salute. Everything in its time and place, Cutler. Meanwhile, exercise close-range weapons.’
There was no Tannoy system aboard the Hardraw Falls: Cutler went to the bridge wing and shouted aft.
‘Petty Officer of the close-range crews!’
The return shout came from the darkness. ‘Here, sir.’
‘What’s your name, bloke?’ Bloke was a term Cutler had picked up along the way, not realizing it was strictly an Australianism. Napper didn’t like being called bloke in full hearing of junior ratings and he shouted back with a touch of truculence that his name was Petty Officer Napper.
‘Okay. Report to the bridge, pronto.’
Pronto, was it? Petty Officer Napper moved for’ard at a fairly leisurely gait as befitted his rate and age. He climbed the starboard ladder and approached Cutler.
‘Wanted me, sir?’
‘Napper?’
‘Petty Officer Napper, sir, yes.’
‘Okay. Exercise action. All the way through from the word go. Get me? All guns
’ crews to fall out and go below and wait for the order, and I’ll be timing how long it takes for all guns to be manned and ready to open fire — all right?’
‘All right, sir, yes.’ Napper’s voice had a long-suffering backing to it. ‘No Tannoy, sir. Going to press the tit, sir, sound the action alarm, are you, sir?’
It was Theakston who answered. ‘No, he’s not. Do that when there’s no call for it, and what happens when an attack comes? I’ll have no crying wolf aboard my ship.’
‘But, sir, Captain Theakston —’
‘I’ve nowt more to say and that’s final.’
Kemp listened but didn’t interfere. He was intrigued to know how Cutler would handle this. He hadn’t long to wait. Cutler said, ‘Okay. Petty Officer Napper’ll be the alarm. All right, Napper?’
Napper’s mouth fell open. ‘Me, sir?’
‘Yes. Stand by somewhere near the guns’ crews’ quarters. When I’m ready I’ll pass the order down to you, exercise action, all right? When you get that, why, you just holler.’
There was an indeterminate sound from Petty Officer Napper. Kemp turned away, hiding a grin. Napper hadn’t liked it and Kemp could appreciate his feelings but it showed one thing, and that was that Cutler could think on his feet. An assistant who could come up with something fast was welcome enough to Kemp. Improvisation was an essential attribute in anyone who went to sea but it wasn’t often found among the inexperienced. Kemp paced the bridge, scanning the convoy and escorts through his binoculars, the dark, unlit shapes standing out in the loom from the water, and kept his ears cocked for Cutler’s orders and the ‘holler’ from Petty Officer Napper. The resulting exercise was good in patches: the gunnery rates hadn’t exercised together before and the turn-out wasn’t as fast as Kemp would have liked, but once again he didn’t interfere. He liked to trust his officers and there was something about Cutler that said he could take charge. He did, and in the process he made rings round Napper, who largely stood about with a look of bewilderment. It was plain to Kemp that Cutler knew his gun drill, at any rate so far as the close-range weapons side of it was concerned, and aboard the Hardraw Falls that was what counted.
Convoy North (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 2