The boy put in, “I’d like to be like Nick. Get medals like he has. If I could be like Nick—”
“Arrant nonsense, Jack! Nick was lucky, that’s all—in the right places at the right time! That’s nothing to do with staying power—which was what David had in such abundance. Determination—grit! And something else—it’s called integrity. He’d have lived like an Everard, not a creature sliding in and out of marriages and law courts, muck-raking and—”
“I beg your pardon.” Nick stood in the doorway. The door next along from this one he’d seen smashed down—by his father, in a drunken fury, when he, Nick, had been a child and woken in the night to Sarah’s screams and come rushing down to help her … Today there’d been the earlier row—accusations, threats, and Sarah’s tight-faced, mute hostility: and he was looking at a man now who’d never in his life lifted a finger except to please himself. Even in the war he’d found himself a comfortable, safe niche … One’s own father: a life-long sham! Nick told him, “David was a coward and a weakling. At Jutland his nerve broke completely—it was the first time he’d been shot at and he couldn’t face it. What that padre told Hugh was a lot of bunkum. I heard the truth from a man who was in Bantry and took charge towards the end. He had to detail a brother officer to look after David, save him from disgracing himself too obviously in front of the sailors.”
The truth, he’d given him. Like a bullet between the eyes. It was something he’d sworn to himself he’d never tell a soul.
Sir John had his first heart attack that evening. He lived for a few months after it, but that had been the start. Nick had suffered ever since from the knowledge of what he’d done. There’d been no point in it, nothing achieved; he’d let go for a moment, surrendered to a fit of temper. He’d done a dreadful thing. Worst of all was that he’d said it in front of Jack, his own son. All right, half-brother. But Jack who—although one tried hard not to see it—was in so many ways like David.
Nothing seemed to be on the move except the sea and the clouds and Intent bashing doggedly in towards the land. And a variety of screeching gulls. Namsenfjord lay open now on the starboard bow and Pete Chandler had just taken some bearings for a fix. He came back from putting it on the chart.
“We could come round to south 38 east, sir. Then 55 east after two miles.”
“All right. Take over, and bring her round.”
He had to work it out now—times, distances, and the dark period. He went to the chart and leant over it, resting on his elbows. From about midnight to 4 am were the hours when fjord navigation without either a pilot or local knowledge would be too dangerous; so he had two hours—say ten miles—before the ship had to be tucked up in some safe anchorage.
Chandler had laid off courses all the way through to Namsos. Checking on where a two-hour run on that track would take them, Nick found a small, almost circular dead-end of a fjordlet off the main one and on the starboard hand. Hidden and well sheltered. Hoddoy, the island which shut it in was called. But—checking—he found that the run of it would be just over the ten miles.
Nearer, then. This place … He looked up the reference in the Pilot, the book of Sailing Directions. Quay with mooring rings: and inside the distance, certainly. But he didn’t want to tie up to the shore: and anyway it was too open to the main channel of the fjord. One had to think of a German invasion force arriving with the dawn, and Intent caught there without a hope in hell. She wasn’t in a condition to win battles anyway, but if he had her hidden when the enemy arrived there was at least the chance he’d be able to sneak her away later when the repairs were done.
The messenger of the watch brought him a cup of kye. Then Trench joined him.
“Problems, sir?”
“Picking an anchorage.” Glad to share his thoughts with him, he ran a pencil-tip down the length of the fjord. “If we tried to get right through, the dark period would catch us about here. No good. I’m reckoning on two hours’ steaming and then dropping the hook for four to five and pressing on again. Which means this is about as far as we can manage.”
“How about here?”
Vikaleira: a bay on the northern shore. Nick dismissed it. “No anchorage, according to the pilot. And it’s visually exposed.”
“I take that point.” Trench added, “But—thinking on much the same lines—if we’re at Namsos and the Huns arrive, won’t we be in a trap?”
Nick straightened, to drink some kye. “My hope is to get what we need and then away again before the bastards come.” He shrugged. “We won’t get any oil anywhere short of Namsos, Tommy.” He put his mug down. “But for this temporary stop—here, this is the hole I’d like to sneak into, other things permitting.” He was pointing at that gap to the west of Hoddoy, and the anchorage it led to—Totdalbotn. “In there we’d be tucked away nicely out of sight, and what’s more we’d have an alternative exit—this channel, out around the island. But unfortunately it’s just outside our range, and that bit’s so very narrow that I couldn’t risk just not quite making it in daylight.”
Trench thought about it. He suggested, “Might we persuade Beamish to give us another knot or so?”
It was one answer, perhaps. But Nick didn’t want to pressure his chief stoker into going beyond what his own judgement told him was safe. With Mr Waddicor or Chief ERA Foster it would have been different, but Beamish was less sure of his ground and might agree to something out of ignorance.
But Totdalbotn would certainly be the place to hole up.
“I’ll see how he reacts to the suggestion.” He went to the engine-room voicepipe, and got the chief stoker on the other end of it.
“How’s it going, Chief?”
“Holding up, sir. All parts bearing an equal strain.”
“D’you think all parts might bear just a little more?”
“More revs, d’you mean, sir?”
“If you could give me one more knot for slightly less than two hours, Chief, I could then give you five hours at anchor. What d’you say?”
“I’d say it’s a deal, sir!”
“Good. Up 25 revs, then.”
“Well—I’d thought twenty, sir, really—”
“If 25 felt like too much you could always come down a bit.”
“I’ll see how she takes it, sir.”
There wasn’t much shelter yet, because Namsenfjord opened right into the direction of the gale. But as soon as Intent rounded the point which the chart called Finsneset she’d begin to get some respite, and it was coming up now on the starboard hand. It was half an hour since Beamish had cautiously increased the revolutions, and so far all seemed well.
To port, eastward, the fjord opened into a V-shaped inlet called Altfjord. It had an island in the middle and the depth of the V was about two and a half miles. What you couldn’t see from here but was clear on the chart was that the V’s apex was also the narrow entrance to an inner fjord, an almost totally enclosed piece of water that went off at right-angles for about a mile and a half. It would be like a lake, a lagoon in there. He thought, looking at it and wishing he could make use of it, that if only he had some artificers a hideaway like that would be perfect. Nicely hidden, completely sheltered, and just a stone’s throw from the open sea.
Lacking artificers, he had to get to Namsos, where there’d be at least some kind of engineering help.
Chandler was watching the bearings of the left-hand edge of Altoy Island. When it was abeam he brought the ship round a few degrees to starboard.
“Four miles on this course, sir. Just under eight altogether.”
It was just past ten. Intent had been making better than 5 knots, and as she’d be in calmer water now one might reckon on as much as seven. So they’d be dropping an anchor in that little bay west of Hoddoy no later than 11:30, and sitting down to a hot meal about midnight.
If there was enough power to heat the galley stoves.
“Number One.” He beckoned, and Trench came over to him. “When we’ve anchored I want small-arms put out where
they can be got at quickly. Revolvers in the chartroom. Rifles and bayonets—well, let’s have three or four dumps in convenient places.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Trench was looking at him trying to read his mind. He was like that: he’d work it out, avoid asking a question if he could.
Chandler was quite different: he asked immediately, “Expecting unfriendly natives, sir?”
The engine-room voicepipe squawked: and simultaneously the note of the turbines began to drop away … Nick was already at the pipe.
“Permission to stop engines, sir?”
“No!”
“It’s bad trouble, sir—”
“Chief, for the moment you must keep her going.”
Back into Altfjord, anchor behind the island? He was studying the coastline, remembering the alternatives he’d studied and checked on in the Sailing Directions. Chandler pointed to starboard, where the coastline fell away, opening the fjord to a width of about two miles. “There’s an anchorage in there, sir. Fairly sheltered.”
“Bring her round. And let’s have the book.”
Expecting the engines to stop at any second. He bent to the pipe again. “One mile, Chief, to where we can anchor. We can’t stop sooner, d’you understand?”
“I can try, sir, but—”
“Just keep her going.”
He straightened, threw a glance at the rocky lee shore not half a mile away. If the engines stopped now, that was where she’d go, and it wouldn’t take long, either. She was under helm and coming slowly round to starboard, and Chandler was telling the helmsman to steer south 43 west. There’d be at least partial shelter in there, because they’d be in the lee of Finsneset, the last point they’d rounded. He remembered the name of the village near the anchorage—Lovika. He lowered his binoculars: Trench had fetched the Sailing Directions and found the place.
“Lovik?”
“That’s it.” Give or take a syllable.
“Twelve to seventeen fathoms, sand and clay bottom.”
That sounded all right, so far as it went. He told Trench, “Leadsman and cable party, then. I imagine you’ll have to work the capstan by hand. And I want Jarratt on the wheel.” He put his glasses up to examine that little bight of coast towards which his ship was creeping. Dying: as if blood instead of oil might be seeping out of her. Anchored there, she’d be in full view of anything passing up or down the fjord. There weren’t likely to be any marine engineers in those tiny houses either.
CHAPTER FIVE
This afternoon Hugh had tracked down one key man and worried at him for an hour like some importunate old terrier; and this evening he’d dined another at his club. Now it was pushing midnight and he was listening to the night-time London silence in an ante-room where one hundred and fifty years ago a young half-pay captain by the name of Horatio Nelson had waited in vain for an audience with the First Lord. Nelson had been after a sea appointment too.
Hugh Everard had made better progress than Nelson had achieved that day. But the commodore’s job wasn’t what he was here for now. It was still important, and if the worst came to the worst in the matter of Nick and Intent it would be vital, would become absolutely imperative to get away to sea. Bad enough to be stuck ashore with things as they were now: but if Nick had gone—he shifted jerkily on his stuffed chair, the thought provoking a sort of stitch—he wouldn’t be able to stand it another day.
Cling to hope. There’d always been such hope. Getting afloat again would be a kind of escape: he could see that but he saw no reason to be ashamed of wanting it. He could handle it all so much better there than he’d be able to cooped up like an old dog in a kennel.
There was still hope, damn it!
He glanced at his watch again, and sighed. Either young Wishart had forgotten he was here or there must be the devil of a lot going on in the remoter depths of this labyrinthine building. People forgot that the Admiralty was an operational headquarters as well as an administrative one. The public probably still thought of it as a place where ancient sea-dogs sat behind vast tables and signed parchments with quill pens: whereas actually there was an Operations Room upstairs, probably going full-blast at this very moment.
Wishart had said on the telephone, “I’ll be here all night, sir. If you’d tell the porter to let me know when you’re free, I’ll get down to you in my first spare moment.”
Hugh had booked himself a room at Boodle’s. One had to keep busy, and in touch. He hadn’t liked the idea of the train journey down to Hampshire and then a night at home without news—without a hope of news, because nothing could be said over an ordinary telephone these days. He’d have had to come up again in the morning; there’d have been no point in it.
Strange to think of Nelson kicking his heels in this gloomy hole. He’d failed in his attempt to see Lord Chatham, and hurried over to Wimpole Street to call on Lord Hood instead. Hood had seen him, but told him no, he would not intervene with the First Lord. Might one ask why not? Certainly. The admiral had never been a man to shirk an issue. It was because His Majesty had formed an unfavourable opinion of Captain Nelson.
The King, Hugh thought, wouldn’t give a damn whether Admiral Sir Hugh Everard succeeded or did not succeed in transforming himself into Commodore Sir Hugh Everard RNR. He’d probably never heard of him … But then, he might have. As Prince Albert—or rather, in the alias of “Johnson”—His Majesty had served as a junior turret officer in Collingwood at Jutland: and Hugh had made a bit of a name for himself in that battle. Yes, he probably would have heard of him—and forgotten him again long since … Anyway, string-pulling, arm-twisting, and general brow-beating had worked wonders this afternoon and evening, and it would be surprising if in a day or so he wasn’t summoned to a medical check-up. He’d pass that as A1, he knew.
Well—near enough A1 …
The achievement was less exciting than it should have been. He’d have swapped all hope of it for a reassuring word about Nick.
“Sir Hugh, I am so dreadfully sorry—”
“What?”
He’d jerked upright in his chair: in a kind of shock …
“—to have kept you waiting all this time.”
“Oh.” Getting hold of himself again. “You do seem rather busy, Wishart—for a man with no job to do here?”
“Well, yes. Quite.” The rear-admiral had pushed the door shut behind him. He flipped open a silver case as he crossed the room. “Cigarette?” Hugh shook his head. Wishart told him, taking one for himself and lighting it, “I’m helping out on Max Horton’s staff.” His eyes held the older man’s as he flicked the match into what must once have been a cuspidor. “I’d better tell you right away that we’ve no news of any sort of Intent or Gauntlet.”
Hugh realised he’d known there wouldn’t be. He was aware also that it was a case of no news being bad news. Wishart knew that too, of course. He sat down in a chair facing Hugh’s.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on. The first thing is—we were right, they are invading. The first really solid confirmation of it came this afternoon—Orzel, a Polish submarine, stopped a Hun transport, Rio de Janeiro, and ordered her crew and passengers into the boats before she sank her; then some Norwegian craft came and picked them up. But the passengers were German soldiers in uniform, and they made no bones about it—on their way to ‘protect’ Bergen, they said.” Wishart added, “On top of a lot of other reports, it doesn’t leave any room for doubt. But nobody here—” he pointed upwards—”seemed to take much notice. And the Norwegian government won’t believe it. They won’t even mobilise!”
Hugh commented drily, “Must have some politicians of our kind over there too, by the sound of it.”
He saw it suddenly: this was going to be the start of the real war. We were about to be shown up—to ourselves—as unready and ill-led: it would be so obvious that even the War Cabinet would see it. Britain would get a bloody nose, lose men and ships and strategic advantage: and be woken up …
An old man’s musings … The pictur
e seemed real, though. He asked Wishart, “What are we doing? Anything?”
“Well.” Wishart leant forward. “Early this afternoon a flying-boat two hundred miles ahead of the Home Fleet sighted a German force steering west. One battlecruiser, two cruisers, two destroyers. So the C-in-C turned north-westward—to block any Atlantic breakout, of course. He sent off another aircraft—catapulted from Rodney—but it never reported back. Either went into the sea or landed in Norway.” He shook his head. “If only we had a carrier up there. If the Nazis grab the airfield at Stavanger—”
“Have we no carriers?”
“Furious is in the Clyde but she’s not fit for operations yet. Ark Royal and Glorious are in the Mediterranean. But—other happenings, now … Well, first, Renown and her destroyers—including Hoste, by the way—are heading out westward, for the same reason the C-in-C is. To cut off that force which the flying-boat reported. So Narvik is now left open to the enemy.” He saw Hugh Everard’s look of surprise, and nodded. “I know. I know. And now, anyway, Whitworth’s been ordered to turn back and concentrate on blocking the Narvik approaches. It’ll take him quite a while to get back, though, as it’s blowing a real rip-snorter and the destroyers can’t make much speed in it. Now—what’s next … Oh—at about three this afternoon our attaché in Copenhagen reported that two cruisers with either Gneisenau or Blucher had entered the Kattegat, northbound. Since then two submarines have sighted the same force and one of them made an unsuccessful attack on it, off the Skaw … Anyway, it’s prompted Sir Charles Forbes to turn south again with Rodney and Valiant, largely because Admiral Edward-Collins’s Second Cruiser Squadron is pretty well in the path of that northbound force, and unsupported. But Forbes has sent Repulse and Penelope with some destroyers to join Whitworth in the Narvik area.”
“So we’ve one German force in the north and another to the south’ard.”
Storm Force to Narvik: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 1 Page 9