‘Cut in towards the coast, do you think, Sir?’ I said.
The Old Man looked dubious. ‘That would take us near to the regular shipping lane, John. We’ve already altered to avoid two U-boats suspected to the east and, with the Kent Star U-boat, which could even have been one of them, already fine on our port bow, I can only see Braid going farther west.’
Farther west! Which meant an even greater deviation from our refuelling berth at Cape Town. The Chief was going to have ulcers on his slide rule before this trip was over and I sympathised with him. The South Atlantic suddenly seemed a very large ocean. Behind me I heard the Aldis rattle a smart acknowledgement, then Brannigan appeared at the Old Man’s elbow and handed him the scrawled message. Obviously the corvette’s operators had caught the ‘S’ call too. Evans held out the signal for me to read.
COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS: REPEAT TO MASTER ATHENIAN ... DISTRESS CALL RECEIVED MV KENT STAR SUGGESTS FURTHER ENEMY ACTIVITY AHEAD ... COURSE ALTERATION STARBOARD FIVE DEG TO 153 DEG TRUE REPEAT 153 DEG ON MY EXECUTE SIGNED BRAID END.
‘Execute from Mallard, Sir,’ the Fourth Mate called. Obviously our Comescort wasn’t wasting any time. I wondered if it had occurred to the dashing Commander Braid that there might be men coughing their lives out in the water less than two hours away, but it was unfair of me. Compassion doesn’t have any place in wartime, not when it conflicts with ‘Duty.’ It provided bloody good ammunition for unreasoning cynics like me, though.
I turned wearily into the wheelhouse. ‘Starboard five degrees. Steady on 153.’
As our head swung even further into the wastes of the burning South Atlantic I looked at the distress signal still clutched in my hand. Something about it worried me. Something indefinable, but nevertheless there. I read it again more carefully: SSSS: MV KENT STAR TO ALL SHIPS: TORPEDOED IN ENGINE SPACE WE ARE GOING POSIT ... Then the final break as her H.T. aerials shorted out into the rushy greedy sea. M.V. Kent Star. I chewed my lip nervously and tried to think. Kent Star? Maybe it was just word association. Chief Officer John Kent? Motor vessel Kent? I tried to shrug the suspicious feeling off. We had a small problem of our own to worry about—like just staying alive.
But Kent? The Kent Star?
*
Poor Alf Foley disappeared less than two hours later.
It was about ten p.m. and I was relaxing under a large gin in the Chief’s cabin when it happened. Well, when I say relaxing I really mean I was getting on the outside of a welcome tot of Gilbey’s best in between spells of watching an angry Scots ship’s engineer pounding the hell out of the already battered, leather-bound Company Fuel Log lying cowering on his jumbled desk.
‘Jesus CHRIST!’ the Chief yelled, thumping the long-suffering book again with an oil-grimed fist. ‘Does yon fancy Grey Funnel Line man Braid think I can run mah wee engines on sea watter? Does he?’
I grinned placatingly and reached for the bottle again. If it hadn’t been the Royal Navy sabotaging his oil it would have been the perfidious Company Agents somewhere—and if it hadn’t been them it would have been the fault of the Old Man, the Second Engineer or the ship’s cat. For forty years the Chief had been fighting a running battle with the Phantom of the Fuel Bunkers, and the only time he’d ever won was when, as Second on the old China Steamship Company’s Fuktien, they had brought her through the great typhoon of ’21 by burning every stick of wood aboard, including the masts, saloon and cabin furniture and the Old Man’s rosewood sextant box, before the Mate had suddenly remembered they carried five hundred tons of coal as cargo in their number three hold.
‘Henry,’ I said, ‘you know bloody well that if you’d been apprenticed in sail you’d have grudged the cook the oil he used to fry chow in the galley.’
He stood there in his red carpet slippers with the Chinese dragons embroidered on them and fumed impotently, ‘And don’t call me “Henry”, Mister Mate! Ah’ll remind you that ma name’s McKenzie ... Chief Engineer McKenzie tae you.’
‘Aye, aye, Henry!’ I said as the knock sounded at the cabin door. The Chief slap-flopped across the cabin and opened it suspiciously. Young Conway stood outside in the alleyway.
‘WHIT?’ interrogated the Chief ferociously.
Conway shuffled nervously at the confrontation and tried to see through the Chief’s cellular-vested torso to me, ‘Mister Kent, Sir. The Captain sends his compliments and asks if you would come to the bridge immediately ... Sir!’
‘The bloody man’s no’ going to change course further south again, is he?’ yelled the bristling McKenzie. ‘Over ma dead body, he’s no’.’
I groaned inwardly. ‘What’s up, Conway?’ I asked as I reached for my cap.
He looked very excited and flushed. ‘It’s Mister Foley, Sir—the Chief Sparks. He’s missing!’
I looked sideways at the Chief, who stopped snorting abruptly and frowned at the cadet. ‘He cannae be missing, lad. He’s bound tae be somewhere. Mister Foley’s no’ a wee laddie on his first trip, tae get himsel’ lost.’
‘No, Sir. But ... but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere aboard. We’ve already had a pretty good scout round on deck and in the officers’ cabins.’
I was already on my way through the door when McKenzie kicked the red slippers off and started struggling into his deck shoes. ‘Ah’ll have my gang search the engine spaces, Mate. Ye’ll no’ need to worry about those.’
*
On the way up to the bridge I asked Conway who had reported old Alf’s disappearance. ‘The Second Wireless Op, Larabee, Sir. He said Mister Foley should have been on watch but when he called into the radio shack to get a book the Chief Sparks had ... well, he’d gone. There was no one manning the set at all. Mister Larabee’s standing by just now.’
The velvety black air was still pleasantly warm on my face as I climbed to the darkened bridge. Only the dim green glow from the binnacle relieved the gloom, shining up on the underside of the helmsman’s features like some Frankenstein colourwash. In peace time it would have been a lovely night to relax out on the wing, sixty feet above the rushing phosphorescent sea below, and think how nice it was to be a sailorman.
Tonight, though, I couldn’t relax. I was too scared. The pleading message from the Kent Star had somehow unsettled me even more than the violent spectacle of the death of the Commandant Joffre. And Foley? Was poor, bumbling, whitehaired old Alf choking dementedly only a few miles astern?
I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that, if it had to be anybody fighting for an already forfeited life back there in our shimmering wake, if it had to be anybody ... then why couldn’t it have been the Second Sparks instead? The thin-faced, coldly sardonic Larabee.
*
It took over an hour for us to rouse the crowd and go over the ship from truck to keel—crew accommodation, galleys, paint and lamp lockers, empty passenger cabins. We sent men up the masts too, watching them as they went higher and higher until their blue-jeaned backsides were lost in the blanketing darkness of the night. We even searched the strong room, with its steel-bound cases of banknotes and its three critically vital, lead-weighted mail bags.
But Alf Foley was gone. We never saw him again.
Larabee was still in the radio room when I went in, pulling the blackout curtain quickly to behind me. He was perched right back in his chair with his feet up on the transmitting table and the headphones slipped casually round the scrawny neck, reading a paper-backed wartime edition of some detective story or other. He heaved his legs to the floor and looked up.
‘Find Alf, did you?’ he queried, still with that half-mocking twist to the thin mouth.
I lit up gratefully without offering him one. I didn’t like not being able to smoke on deck in the dark. ‘No,’ I said, briefly.
He shook his head critically, ‘Stupid bastard!’
I felt the angry flush burning into my race as always when he spoke like that. ‘Do you mean me, Larabee? Or your poor bloody oppo?’
The Second Operator still seemed to smile sl
ightly. ‘Oh, not you. Mate. Never you. No, I was thinkin’ about Alf. Stupid bastard!’
My cigarette glowed fiercely as I dragged hard to keep control. ‘Yeah? Well, he’s probably a stupid dead bastard now, Larabee. Or don’t you mind too much?’
He shrugged indifferently. ‘He was an old man, Mate. Old men like Alf shouldn’t be at sea if they can’t keep off the bottle before they get to the stage of going over the wall.’
I knew what he meant. Foley was too fond of the hard stuff, especially when we were alongside and, unlike the rest of the ship’s officers, the radio men didn’t have a great deal to do when in port. Alf never went ashore more than once a voyage, when he would climb into a baggy, pinstriped blue suit, irrespective of the climate, and sweat around the local bazaars in search of a present for his wife, that elderly flyblown woman who stared severely and almost reprimandingly from the cheap Woolworth’s frame over the Chief Operator’s bunk. The rest of the trip Alf—as soon as we were secured—would vanish into his cabin and drink steadily until ‘Stand by’ was rung for leaving harbour. I can’t say, even then, that I ever saw him really three sheets in the wind, but on the other hand I never saw him really sober either. It still didn’t fit together though.
‘How do you know he went over the side, Larabee?’ I asked suspiciously.
The almost hairless eyebrows went up in exaggerated surprise. ‘There’s an alternative? A bloke disappears off a ship in mid-ocean—which must be true ’cause the Mate says so—and you think there’s some other place he could be, other than over the wall?’
‘No,’ I muttered, trying to ignore the sarcasm and feeling a bit stupid. ‘But how, in God’s name, did he manage it? Alf wasn’t the kind of bloke to put himself over.’
Larabee shrugged again. ‘Like I said, Mate. He was stoned, stepped outside for a breath of air, and ... splish, splash!’
‘I’ve never seen him drunk as that when we were at sea. He could maybe absorb it pretty well off duty but I can’t ever remember Foley drinking much on passage. And it’s bloody hard to go over the rail on a dead calm night like this, too.’
The Second bent down and, retrieving an empty whisky bottle from a drawer, held it out. ‘I found this sculling about under the desk. It wasn’t there when I went off watch at eight bells, I’d swear.’ He waved it from side to side like a pendulum. ‘And when a bloke’s got outside this much stuff in a few hours, well ... the boat doesn’t need a wave to make it seem like it’s rolling.’
And that was that. Epitaph for an operator. Cause of death— drowning, with ninety per cent proof complications! I took the bottle and turned away. ‘I’ll tell the Captain, he’ll need to enter it in the Log. You may have to sign a statement, Larabee ... about your finding this bottle, I mean.’
He picked up the paperback again. ‘Anything you say, Mate. We ... er ... aren’t going back to search then?’
‘No,’ I answered, feeling helpless and very sad. ‘No, we won’t be going back for Alf.’ I put my hand out to the blackout curtain, then hesitated as a thought struck me. ‘We’ll signal the escort as soon as it gets light. Ask for a temporary replacement operator.’
Personally I didn’t give a monkey’s damn if Larabee had to sit there twenty-four hours a day ’til his hand mummified round the key, but I was the executive officer of Cyclops and, as such, had a responsibility to give him every assistance. He didn’t seem to appreciate my solicitude though, judging by the violent way in which he swung round, thin face working angrily. ‘You tryin’ to make out I can’t do my job without a bloody gaffer to watch over me, Mate?’
I stared at him in surprise. I knew we were all a bit on edge—my own nerves were beginning to strum like wire stays in a gale—but Larabee’s reaction seemed curiously out of keeping with his previous indifference to everything that went on around him.
‘No, I’m bloody not, Larabee!’ I answered sharply. ‘I’m saying that you can’t do your job twenty-four hours a day without even a W.T. rating from Mallard to stand by the set while you get some kip.’
The veins stood out in the scrawny neck as he stabbed a bony finger at me. ‘If you think I’m goin’ to let some fuckin’ poncy Bluejacket get within three cables of this set you can stuff it, Mate. Right up your hawse pipe!’
That did it! I’d had just about as much as I could take for one day. First, the sick horror of the Commandant Joffre’s agony, followed by the Old Man’s revelations about our cargo, then the far too close death rattle of the Kent Star. And pathetic old Foley with his lonely passing. And now ... Larabee! I threw the empty bottle on the bunk and leapt at the wireless operator, lifting him out of his chair and shaking him like a kiddy’s teddy bear so that the earphones rattled against the back of his skull.
‘You ever speak to me like that again, you little bugger, and I’ll break your goddamned BACK!’ I yelled, spraying flecks of spittle on to the staring white face close to mine. ‘I’ll break your bloody back, d’you understand? You talk to me like I’m the First Mate of this bucket and not some bloody Hong Kong steward in the galley. You’re a rotten, unpleasant little man for my money, Larabee, but by God, you’ll do as you’re bloody well told while you’re on this ship or so help me I’ll put you over the rail to keep that poor bastard company ...!’
Then, suddenly, I felt sick. Terribly sick and tired of it all. My anger evaporated, leaving me swaying with fatigue and the fear of what I somehow knew was going to happen. The scrawny doll in my hands jerked convulsively and, almost absentmindedly, I let him flop back into the chair where he sat, tugging fretfully at the torn collar of the white tropical shirt. I noticed that the two thin, wavy gold bands on his epaulette had come adrift and he sobbed a bit as he picked ineffectively at the slender badges of rank. He reminded me a little of inadequate old Foley, the way he slumped there so helplessly.
I couldn’t bring myself to touch him again so I just waved my hand, vaguely apologetic. ‘I ... er ... I shouldn’t have done that, Larabee.’
He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘I jus’ want to be left to get on with my job, that’s all. Just to get on with my job.’
‘Sorry,’ I gritted, at the same time hating myself for having to say it.
The plaintive voice was almost tearful, ‘I don’t need no bloody sheepdog to help me out. Not with the amplifier on and me in the bunk next to the set.’
I understood what he was getting at. Not so many years ago very few ships had carried more than one operator, if they had any wireless at all. Internationally agreed radio watches allowed for normal message traffic during set periods and, while the Sparks slept, it was accepted practice to leave the receiver on and amplify all incoming calls. Operators were mentally tuned to react to the emergency and distress frequencies and, even while asleep, the twitter of an S O S or M A Y D A Y call would bring them to instant wakefulness. The same thing applied to their own ship’s signal letters.
I looked at him with a little more respect—at least he appeared to have some professional pride. ‘You think you could manage it yourself?’
He nodded morosely and sniffed. ‘It’s all incoming traffic with us bein’ under radio silence. The only outgoing stuff I’m likely to transmit is a distress call.’ He grinned slightly and the sardonic look flickered back into the white face. ‘The bloody bang’ll wake me if you don’t!’
I came to a decision, subject to the Old Man’s approval. I suppose it could have been construed as selfish in one way, because I didn’t fancy having to slow down or stop, even for long enough to transfer a rating from Mallard. Seventeen knots was a better insurance against torpedoes than a dead ship in the water at the wrong place. I nodded. ‘OK, Larabee. You’re on your own until Cape Town. Then we pick up a replacement for Alf whether you like it or not.’
As I slipped through the door, stepping over the coaming into the velvety blackness of the night, I caught a glimpse of him lifting his feet back up on to the desk and I wondered what it was that I didn’t like about him. I shrugged. At least he
was honest enough to let you know if he didn’t like you, not like some others I could think of who did everything right yet still managed to leave you with a feeling that they couldn’t care less whether you vanished on the spot. Curtis, for instance, the Third Mate; quiet, well mannered and thoroughly efficient, but indefinably aloof, almost mysterious. Like the Kent Star message that still nagged away at the back of my mind. I shook my head and climbed slowly down the ladder to the well deck. Mallard had picked her signal up too, so there couldn’t be any mistake .
Athenian slipped quietly along on our flank. Even without lights her great hull showed black against the faint line of the horizon. To a waiting Kapitan-Lieutnant she was as clear a target as a Celluloid rabbit in a shooting gallery—which meant we were as well!
The stars looked very bright above my head, but I didn’t think the night was still lovely—not anymore.
*
I got nearly a whole hour’s sleep before the thunder woke me. I stretched out an arm and, switching the light on, tried to focus on my watch through the white glare in my gummed eyelids. Two a.m., four bells in the middle watch. I rolled over with a lazy groan and buried my head in the pillow. Still two more hours of blessed sleep before the duty quartermaster called me with a cup of stewed tea and an ingratiating smile.
Thunder though? The ship felt steady as a rock. Surprising ... thunder, with no sea running ...?
Aw, Jesus!
My feet were already running as they hit the deck. One hand clutched at the cord on my pyjamas while the other grabbed my cap off the hook as I went through the door. I skidded to a stop in the alleyway, looked down at my bare feet and shot back into the cabin to slip into my deck shoes. Then back out again to collide with an equally fast-moving Third Mate Curtis, also in gaily striped pyjama bottoms but without even the dignity of a hat. As we tangled with each other I couldn’t figure for a moment in my sleep-dulled mind why he looked so like a pregnant woman, then I realised he had his bright blue and orange Board of Trade lifejacket on. But Curtis always was a pessimist—and maybe a lifejacket was more use than a hat for a swim in the South Atlantic.
A FLOCK OF SHIPS Page 5