Storm Force to Narvik: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 1

by Alexander Fullerton

  This was a hell of a motion!

  Someone was coming up the ladder from below …

  It was Sub-Lieutenant Peters. Dressed for watchkeeping, by the look of him. Peters was short, round-faced; he paused between one ladderway and the next, and looked at Paul.

  “You’re Everard, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Peters was disconcerted. He knew about Intent—that fink Cringle had discussed it with him—and who Paul was, but he didn’t know that Paul knew. It was awkward for him. Paul said, to give him a hint and make it easier, “I’m hoping to see the captain, sir. Cox’n’s asking him if I can.”

  “Oh.” Peters nodded. “Right you are, then.” He started up the ladder to the bridge. Probably quite a pleasant guy, Paul thought. His own age, near enough. As, of course, was Lieutenant Jack Everard. And if he— Paul—encountered his “half-uncle” Jack at sea, he’d have to call him sir, too!

  On the evening before Paul had left home, Ilyana had gone off the deep end about lots of things, including Jack and Sarah. A surfeit of dry martinis had paved the way; then he’d happened to mention Jack, whom he’d last seen when they’d both been children—and come to think of it, hadn’t got on with too well … Ilyana had accused him, “You don’t believe me about your father’s darling little Sarah, huh? Don’t like to think it of your daddy? Well, you listen, Pavvy boy—if Baby Jack’s your father’s brother and not his son—sure, you heard me—if Jack’s not Nick’s son, so help me I’m the Pope’s aunt! When I first set eyes on that kid—and listen, I was bigger than a house with you, at that time—I just turned around to Nick and yelled ‘Snap!’ And guess what? Little Sarah turned the brightest shade of pink you ever saw!”

  But Jack Everard, at Mullbergh this Christmas, had turned out to be quite unlike Nick Everard. He was taller, slighter, and different in manner and personality too. He had a rather plummy way of talking, and his manner had been condescending, with a sort of shallow jocularity which Paul had found irritating. It was so obviously false. Paul knew that Jack resented him; resented his being here, and probably the fact that he was the heir to Mullbergh; this last he only guessed at, because there had to be some reason for that disguised but almost palpable hostility. And as for Sarah—well, what Ilyana had said about her could only be a product of that wild Slav imagination. Sarah was dry, thin-lipped, with a figure like a broomstick and not even a speck of powder on her pale, shiny face. Grey hair drawn back severely into a bun …

  Sarah was nobody’s “little darling.” She never could have been!

  She obviously doted on her son—in a stiff, school-marmy way—and was spinsterishly diffident with Paul. Small, frozen smiles, little bursts of talk for talk’s sake. About her late husband, Paul’s grandfather; what a fine judge of a horse he’d been, what a great master of hounds, how the whole county missed him. And about local charity committees and war work: she ran some bunch of women who were knitting seaboot stockings and sweaters and sending them off to ships at sea. And decorating the church for tomorrow’s service … The meal would have been a lot more enjoyable, Paul had thought, if there’d been any possibility of truth in Ilyana’s accusations—which all too plainly there could not be. In fact it seemed to him that there was a kind of wall between his father and Lady Sarah: and also as if Jack was a puzzle to Nick, a cuckoo in the nest whom he’d given up trying to fathom.

  Paul was certain it had been as much of a relief for his father as it was for himself when Sarah and Jack said goodnight and went back to Dower House. They were alone then: Nick had sent his butler, a very old man named Barstow, away to bed an hour ago. He’d explained, “I want the old chap to last as long as possible. Shan’t ever be able to replace him.”

  He suggested now, “Nightcap?”

  Paul had thought he was being offered something to keep his head warm. His father thought this was very funny.

  “A final drink before bed, old chap. I’d suggest—I’ve a rather splendid malt here. Know what that is?”

  “I can’t say I do.”

  “Your education’s been neglected, in some areas. We’ll have to fill in the gaps. Starting now. A malt is a real Scotch whisky, as opposed to the cheap blends, which are a comparatively modern innovation. This particular malt is called Laphroaigh—and I’ll lay you half a crown you can’t spell it …What d’you make of Jack?”

  “Jack. Well …” Paul stooped to do something unnecessary to the fire. “I hardly talked enough with him to have much of an opinion.”

  “Hmm.” Nick had some bottles on a side-table. He said, with his back to the room and to Paul, “He’s done extraordinarily well, in what you might call the early promotion stakes—courses, exams, and so on. Infinitely better than I ever did. Tell you the truth, I hated every minute of my time at Dartmouth. But he loved it, you see. Extraordinary.” He turned, with a glass of brownish liquor in each hand. Remembering the moment, Paul could see him as if he was looking at a snapshot: a man of medium height, wide-shouldered, a fighter’s build. Dark hair with no grey in it yet. A stern, even harsh expression; but it was a harshness that broke up and vanished when he smiled.

  “Now then. Try this.”

  Liquid gold, he remembered: golden fire. Nectar. Glorious. He’d said, “If this is how I get educated, I can stand a lot of it.” Thinking back to it, to the whole ambience and feel of that evening, made him long to be beside that great log fire again with his father lifting a glass and murmuring, “Here’s to us, Paul.”

  Oh, Christ …

  Like cold grey sea washing over your mind.

  And seaboots were clumping down the ladderway. He pushed himself off the bulkhead, pulled himself to attention as CPO Tukes snapped, “Ordinary Seaman Everard, sir!”

  Paul saluted. The skipper—he was a lieutenant-commander and his name was Rowan—said, “All right, cox’n. Thank you. Come in here, Everard.” He slid back the door of the chartroom and went inside, and Paul followed him. “Shut the door, so we’ll be left in peace.” He pulled back the hood of his duffel, then took his cap off and flung it on the settee which the navigating officer, at sea, used as a bunk. Rowan was swarthy, brown-haired and brown-eyed, in his late twenties or thirty, thirty-one. He told Paul, “For God’s sake, stand easy.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Stand easy, Everard, means relax.”

  “Yes. I’m—very grateful to you, sir, for—”

  “I know what it’s about. I only wish I was in a position to give you some kind of reassurance. But—well, all I can give you is as much information as I have myself.”

  Paul nodded. It couldn’t be as bad as he felt in his bones it was going to be. If it was, he didn’t want to know …

  Don’t be stupid. You have to know.

  “Here we are.” Rowan pulled one chart out of the way, clearing the one that had been lying under it. Paul saw its title: NORWAY: Lindesnes to Nordkapp. Rowan pointed with a pair of brass dividers. “Here’s Trondheim. Not so far off it—here—Intent and Gauntlet were in action between 0800 and 0900 this morning with what Gauntlet reported as a Hipper-class cruiser.” His pointers moved up the chart. “We’re here. Roughly a hundred and fifty miles farther north … Everard, I’d give my right arm to be able to say to you, ‘Don’t worry, your father will be all right.’ I can’t say that, though, because all I know is that the pair of them were about to make a torpedo attack on this enemy cruiser, and from then on we’ve heard nothing. You must realise—I’m sorry, but it’s best to face it—it could mean the worst. I’d be lying to you if I pretended anything else.”

  “Yes. I appreciate—”

  “But it’s possible they were damaged and can’t use W/T. There’ve been air searches for them during the day, but in this weather it’d be fifty to one against finding them. We do know Gauntlet was badly damaged in the early stages of the engagement—no such indication about Intent. There could easily be some good reason for her being off the air.”

  “If she’d been sunk—”
Paul heard the artificiality in his own voice, the result of trying to sound unworried—”would there be much chance of some of them surviving? The action first, and then being rescued?”

  “Yes. To both questions. But—it’s guesswork, obviously.”

  Paul met his captain’s eyes. “On what’s known, sir—it’s probable they were sunk?”

  Rowan grimaced: disliking the question. Then he shrugged.

  “That’s the guess one would make if one had to, Everard. But truly, you can’t be sure at all. And remember too—when ships get sunk, nine times out of ten there are some survivors.”

  “Yes.” He thought, That’s it, then. And then, For God’s sake, what was I hoping he could tell me?

  Rowan tapped the chart. “We’re here now, as I said. Steering west— on this course. This pencilled track, d’you see?”

  They seemed to be heading a long way out from that indented and chewed-up-looking coastline.

  “We were supposed to stick around in the entrance to—here, this place, Vestfjord. At the top of it, you see, you come to Narvik. For various reasons Narvik’s of particular strategic value, and we don’t want the Hun getting any ships in or troops ashore. But now—” he pointed again at the pencilled line—”we’ve had an order direct from the Admiralty in London to come out and rendezvous with Renown again. She went off southwards, earlier in the day, in the hope of finding this cruiser we’ve been talking about—the one that was in action with Gauntlet and Intent. With this new order, though, she’s turned about in order to come back up and meet us.”

  “Nobody’s left to watch the entrance to the fjord now?”

  Rowan, staring down at the chart, sighed.

  “A good question, Everard. But ours is not to reason why.” He looked at him. “I’m extremely sorry about your father. About the uncertainty, that is …” Then he changed the subject: “I’m told you expressed no enthusiasm for being considered as a CW candidate. Is that right?”

  It was an effort to switch one’s mind …

  “Well, sir, I felt I’d sooner not put in for it right away, that’s all. I’d rather—well, if I could get there on my own showing, so to speak, I’d feel I’d earned it.”

  “A CW candidate does earn it, Everard. He has a probationary period at sea, and during that time he’s under observation. Only if he comes out of it with the right recommendation does he go through for his commission.”

  “But wouldn’t I have been selected in the first instance on account of—well, my father, and—”

  “No, you would not. You’d have been selected because you look like suitable material. We’ve a huge construction programme, an enormous expansion of the fleet—small ships particularly—sloops, corvettes, destroyers. So we’re going to have to train a lot of new officers, and the kind we want are those with the educational background to pick up knowledge quickly and the intelligence then to use it effectively. One or two other qualities as well—some of which, you may be surprised to hear, are very often passed from father to son … It’s not what would or would not be nice for you, Everard, it’s a question of what the Navy needs.”

  Quite a new angle. If you could keep your mind on it … Rowan said, “Think about it. Meanwhile, anything I hear about Intent I’ll—”

  “Bridge, chartroom!”

  Disembodied voice squawking from a voicepipe on the centreline bulkhead. Rowan had slid over to it.

  “Chartroom. Captain speaking.”

  “Renown bearing red three-oh-four miles steering north, sir!”

  It sounded like Peters’s voice. Rowan snapped, “I’m coming up.” Paul slid the door open and stood aside as the skipper snatched up his cap, shot out, and bounded up the ladder.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Intent was coming sluggishly round to the new course, rolling more violently as she turned her quarter instead of her stern into the northwesterly gale. She was a cripple, crawling to find shelter where she could lick her wounds.

  And Gauntlet was sunk, as likely as not with all hands. Should he have held her back, taken charge of the attack, risking loss of contact with the enemy?

  “Course south seventy-three east, sir!”

  “Very good.” Steering by magnetic because lack of generator power had put the gyro out of action. What would a court martial decide, he wondered: that the loss of Gauntlet was at least partly due to his, Nick Everard’s, negligence?

  Wind and sea astern had helped Intent to make good an average of just over 5 knots throughout the day. It was 1800 now, 6 pm. That tripod and beacon marking a shoal to port was Nylandskjaer light, and if CPO Beamish managed to keep the screws turning for a few more hours, in about a dozen miles they’d be at the entrance to Namsenfjord.

  Beamish was Intent’s Chief Stoker. He was in charge of her machinery now for the simple reason that all the other senior men were dead. Mr Waddicor, Chief Engine-Room Artificer Foster, and ERA Millinger had all been killed when that shell had struck and burst in the engine-room. Leading Stoker Brownrigg had also been killed outright, and the only other men who’d been in the compartment, Stoker Hewitt and ERA Dobbs, weren’t going to live. So the doctor, Bywater, said.

  They were in his sickbay, two ladders down below the bridge. Dobbs wouldn’t have been in so bad a state if he hadn’t stayed below long enough to shut off steam in an attempt to save the others: he’d been wounded to start with and on top of that scalded almost to death before they’d got him out.

  Pete Chandler, Nick’s ex-yachtsman navigator, came back to him from the chart. “Twelve and a half miles, sir.”

  They’d have to turn down a bit before they entered the fjord, as there was a shoal right in the middle of the entrance. It wasn’t an obvious danger on the chart, but the Sailing Directions contained a note that in bad weather the shoal was often awash. And this was bad weather. The helmsman was finding steering difficult with the following sea—in which low revs didn’t help, either. The sea was overtaking them all the time, great humped rollers racing up astern and lifting her, tilting her this way and that, dropping her back again as they ranged on shorewards; the biggest ones were higher than the ship, so that between the troughs visibility was nil. Grey-green seas mounting, rolling on with spray streaming downwind from their crests, then toppling and spreading into a wilderness of white where, ahead and on both bows now, the ocean hurled itself against rocks and islands, leaping sometimes against obstructions to a hundred feet or more. Intent, with the force of the gale on her port quarter, was like some hard-driven animal with a limp, staggering harder each time to the right than to the left. Funnel-smoke, carried into the bridge by the stern wind, was acrid, eye-watering.

  Who’d receive them in Namsos, he wondered—Norwegians, or Germans?

  In the first seconds and minutes after the German shell struck and exploded inside his ship, Nick had been preoccupied with two questions. First, whether in her immobilised condition he might still get his torpedo tubes to bear on the enemy, and second, how long it might be before the next salvo smashed down on them.

  “A” and “B” guns, meanwhile, were still firing; but the answer to that first question—and obviously, seeing it in retrospect, to the second as well—had come in a blinding, smothering snowstorm which swept down like a blanket, cocooning the destroyer in her own agony, hissing into the fires leaping from her afterpart.

  The guns ceased fire. Brocklehurst reported by telephone from the director tower, “Target obscured.”

  It was no good thinking about getting any signals out. The foretopmast had collapsed half over the side, taking both the yards and the W/T aerials with it. MacKinnon, the PO Telegraphist, aided by PO Metcalf, the chief bosun’s mate, and his henchmen, had rigged a jury aerial since then, using the stump of the foremast and the diminutive mainmast aft, but there’d been no question of trying to transmit. For one thing there were at least one enemy cruiser and two destroyers in the vicinity, and with any luck the Germans were under the impression that Intent had been sunk. They must h
ave thought so, because otherwise they’d have arrived through that snowstorm to find her and finish her. So it would have been stupid to have risked alerting them to her continued existence. But in any case, with the ship’s main generating plant out of action MacKinnon doubted if they had enough power on the set for it to be heard even five miles away.

  The PO Tel was a tall man, black-bearded, with the soft lilt of the West Highlands in his voice. “It’s voltage we’re lacking more than aerial height, sir.”

  “Have you been listening out since you rigged the jury?”

  “Aye, sir, but all we’re gettin’ is a load o’ German.”

  There were no British ships anywhere near enough to have a chance of receiving them. And the signals that really mattered, the enemy reports, had been sent out before the action started.

  “All right, MacKinnon. Pick up whatever you can, so we hear what’s going on. We’ll be in shelter in a few hours’ time—we’ll fix the generator and step a new fore-topmast, and you’ll be in business again.”

  “We’ve no spare topmast, sir.”

  It was hard to concentrate on one issue for so long, when there were fifty other things to think about. Plugging slowly south-eastward: pitching like a see-saw and losing oil-fuel all the time. The stern tanks were leaking as a result of the main damage, and the port-side tanks for’ard were also leaking, presumably from near-miss damage slightly earlier. So now the only sound fuel tanks were the starboard pair for’ard and the smaller auxiliaries amidships. They were going to need oil as well as repairs.