The Gatecrashers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 6

by Alexander Fullerton

  A fly in the ointment was the non-arrival of those reconnaissance photos. They were needed for a final check on the positions of the targets and of the nets enclosing them. Without those pictures the final attack plan— choice of certain alternatives, but including the allocation of the various X-craft to this or that target—couldn’t be decided. Barry had ordained they’d sail without them, with final details to be settled later by signal to the towing ships.

  Crawshaw, Setter’s first lieutenant, called a warning from the forepart of the bridge: “Here’s FOSM—port side, chaps …”

  Flag Officer Submarines, Claude himself, waving his brass hat and shouting goodbye, good luck … MacGregor saluting, and the X-craft men on the Oerlikon platform responding too. The motorboat was nosing in close to the tow, to within hailing distance of Louis Gimber—who in this fading light could have been a scarecrow perched on a half-tide rock. The admiral would be well aware that the passage-crew assignment was going to be at least as hazardous as the attack itself.

  Voices carried across the water, over the rumble of diesel exhaust; motorboat and X-craft were practically alongside each other, with a lot of talk in progress. Brazier asked Paul, “Louis somewhat pissed last night, was he?”

  “He wasn’t the only one.”

  Eaton smiled. “Say that again. Old Dan, for one.”

  Lanchberry said, “You’re a bunch of alcoholics. Opened my eyes, this lark has, to wardroom antics.”

  “Never saw you exactly abstaining, Jazz.”

  “Well. When in Rome …”

  After dinner last night Paul had gone to his cabin in the depot ship to finish a batch of letters he’d started earlier—one to his mother in Connecticut, one to his father, and the longest to Jane—when Louis Gimber had sloped in, distinctly under the weather.

  “Writing letters, eh.”

  He’d thought of answering no, feeling trees. But he had an inclination to be kind to Gimber. Because of Jane—which was at least partly a sense of guilt—and for the bad luck of drawing the passage-crew job. It certainly wouldn’t have been a good idea to have Louis know he was at this moment writing to his girl—or the girl he thought of as his. When Jane wrote to Paul she used a typewriter and plain white paper instead of the violetcoloured stationery she used to Gimber. She was so good at this kind of thing, seemed to take it so naturally, that Paul sometimes wondered how much practice she’d had in the arts of two-timing. She’d certainly had some: for instance, talking about her dead fighter-pilot husband, she’d mentioned quite freely that the squadron’s CO had “had a thing” for her, that he’d more than once taken advantage of Tom’s absence from the station to take her out dining and dancing. There’d been some bits of the narrative missing, non-cohesive, suggesting more to it than she’d cared to divulge: and whether her volunteering that much, so unashamedly, was an indication of amorality or innocence was hard to say. But she could tell that story, and still weep for Tom … One aspect Paul saw and understood was that since he had no thoughts of any permanent relationship with her, while Louis Gimber did at times propose marriage, she felt she could afford to share her secrets—or some of them—with him, but not with Louis; which might suggest she was taking a raincheck on the marriage idea?

  “I’ve done all my letters.” Gimber leant against the bulkhead—white-enamelled steel, and exposed piping, angle-irons; this was just a steel hutch for a man to sleep in and stow his gear. He added, slurring slightly, “Left hers open so’s to add a few famous last words. Give her your love, shall I?”

  Paul turned the envelope which he’d already addressed to Jane over on its face, and left his hand on it.

  “Jane?” He nodded. “Please do.”

  “Smoke?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “D’you have a few popsies to write to Paul?”

  “A dozen or so regulars. Plus a few reserves.” He folded the letter to his father and slid it into its envelope, addressed to HMS Calliope, c/o GPO London. “But that’s to my old man.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  Paul shrugged. “Not the faintest.”

  “Sent him your Last Will and Testicles?”

  He shook his head. “That’s silly, Louis. We’re going to pull this job off, and survive.” He saw cynicism in Gimber’s dark-skinned face. “I’m sure of it. And the others all feel the same. We know what we’re up against, we’ve sorted out the problems—what the hell.”

  “You’re still writing letters.”

  “I often do. Particularly when I know I’m going to be away on patrol or something for a while. A letter doesn’t have to be a suicide note, you know.”

  “Qui’ a few of the others have made wills.”

  “They must be concerned for their worldly goods, more than I am.” He pointed. “Some dirty shirts in that drawer, and odds and ends, is all. They send that kind of stuff to your next-of-kin automatically … Anyway—I want to finish this letter, Louis, then get some sleep.”

  “I’ll give her your love, eh?”

  “Thank you. Fine.”

  “If you come back and I don’t, Paul—”

  “Oh, stuff that!”

  “—would you see she’s all right?”

  “Certainly.” He shrugged. “Although I imagine she’d survive pretty well without my help. But—sure, you can count on it.”

  He thought it was much more likely to be Gimber who got back, if it had to be one or the other of them, and that Jane would survive the loss of either or both of them very well, even stylishly. He had no idea at this time, of course, how absolutely right he was.

  “But,” Gimber pointed at him with a waving finger, “what I’m saying is—look after her. Really look after …”

  “Message received, Louis. Loud and clear. Wilco, out—because it’s getting bloody late and we need to be fit tomorrow, and you’re shall we say slightly—”

  “Paul.”

  He sighed. “Yes, Louis.”

  “You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?”

  He smiled at him. Not really wanting to go into anything like that too deeply, here and now. He said, “I suppose I could be. But you’re as pissed as a coot, old horse.”

  “So I am.” Nodding, as at a declaration of profound truth. “So I am. But you hear this. If I get back, I’m going to marry her. Hear me? Marry her!”

  “Delighted for you both. Marvellous. I’ll be your best man, if you like. But now for God’s sake, Louis, go to bed.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Louis—fuck off?”

  You wouldn’t have mistaken that object astern for a prospective bridegroom. In these last shreds of daylight it looked more like a palm-stump on a sand-spit. Setter and X-12 were emerging from the loch, pushing out into the loppy water of the bay. The light might last just about long enough for a sight of the midget when she slipped under, Paul thought.

  The “thing” between himself and Jane—“thing” being her word for an affair possibly deriving from the currently popular song Just One of Those Things—had started in the first instant they’d set eyes on each other. Right at the start of the party, to which he’d taken a girl he’d met the day before. Jane of course had been with Louis. Later—it was a dinner-dance at the Dorchester in aid of some “good cause”—he’d asked her to dance, and she’d moved into his arms as if she’d been wondering when he’d suggest it. Dancing together again much later, at the Bag o’ Nails, he’d dated her for the following weekend. She was a WAAF, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and was stationed at some secret establishment in Buckinghamshire where most of the personnel were Wrens; this in some indirect way was how she’d met Louis Gimber. Paul had proposed that she might come up to London next weekend: she’d told him with her head back, looking at him under those long brown eyelashes, “One condition. Not a word to Louis.”

  “You got it.”

  “Sometimes you sound quite American.”

  “My mother married one. After she and my father split up, when I was a kid. She live
s in Connecticut, with her millionaire, and—well, I was at college over there.”

  “What fun!”

  “My father’s more so. He’s terrific. He has a new wife too now, an Australian army nurse. She was in a hospital unit in Crete and he snatched her from some beach under the noses of the Germans. How’s that for romance?”

  “You’re an interesting bunch, you Everards.” She’d moved closer: not for long enough for Gimber to have seen it but long enough for Paul to know it and for the glow to brighten. “Tell me all about them next Saturday?”

  Then on the Tuesday of that week, at lunch-time, he was coming in through the hall of the wardroom block—at Fort Blockhouse, the submarine headquarters at Gosport—just as Gimber emerged from the glass-walled telephone kiosk. Gimber looked unhappy.

  “What’s up, Louis?”

  “You can buy me a beer, if you like.” They went into the mess. Gimber told him, “I just rang Jane. But she’s on duty this weekend, can’t get away. So—” he shook his head; he seemed surprised as well as disappointed. “Too bad. I won’t bother to go up, there’s no point. But she never had weekend duties before—she told me, the WAAFs don’t have to because the poor bloody Wrens do it all, for some reason.”

  “Well, you better find yourself another girl.”

  “There isn’t another girl!”

  “How about Betty?”

  Betty lived in Southsea, on the other side of the harbour, and at one time Gimber had been more or less shacked up with her. At one time or another, quite a few submariners had been—more or less … Gimber muttered, as if that once familiar name hadn’t been mentioned, “Now I know Jane, there never will be.”

  “Bad as that, Louis?”

  “Don’t you think she’s a smasher?”

  “Well.” He’d looked away. Feeling more like a heel than he’d have liked. But nodding: “Since you mention it. She’s really something.”

  That Saturday he took her to the Gay Nineties, then dinner at the United Hunts Club in Upper Grosvenor Street; much later, it was her idea that they should go to the Bag o’ Nails. For old times’ sake, she suggested— “old times” meaning the previous weekend. It was already foggy at midnight, but when they left the nightclub that Sunday morning London had been gripped in a really thick, traditional pea-souper, unnavigable without radar and a compass. It was also bitterly cold, and Jane was audibly whimpering, cat-like sounds emanating from the bundle of fur coat stumbling beside him, fur arms hugging one of his while they blundered in a mile-wide circle and twice asked directions from the same policeman who loomed up, at about one yard’s visibility and after a half-hour interval, on the same street corner. The policeman was an elderly reservist, a “special,” and his attitude on the second occasion was paternal as well as humorous. He advised them to give up trying to get to where Paul had had hopes of finding a taxi; he directed them instead to a hotel only about one block away. There was a night-clerk on duty, and a room available—which was providential, because there were never any rooms to be had in London at weekends. From there on memory was confused but interspersed with moments of graphic recollection: then he’d been waking up in grey morning light, Jane’s eyes slowly opening—those huge, thick eyelashes, eyes greenish in her pale, oval face with its surrounding heap of very soft, dark-brown hair. She’d been puzzled, trying to remember, the tip of her tongue testing sore lips. The green eyes wider then, fixed on his.

  “Paul?”

  He kissed her. “Well done. Clever girl!”

  Meaning she’d got his name right. She’d protested: “I must’ve been plastered. All that hooch! You shouldn’t’ve—”

  “If you were stinko, how d’you know we did?”

  “I—” she’d shut her eyes—“I do know.”

  “You were frozen. It was an act of charity.”

  The green eyes slid open: surprise gave way to laughter which had to be smothered in the bedclothes because of people in the rooms on both sides; then they’d begun to make love again, conscious of each other and their isolation, the silence of London all around them—London fogbound, gagged and blindfolded.

  Six weeks later, after the training programme had been transferred to Scotland, he’d been planning a weekend in London. In fact he’d had to spend the following week at Vickers Armstrong at Barrow, where X-12 was being completed, and the duty trip was giving him the chance of a few days off which he’d spend with Jane. Before he’d left Gosport they’d met whenever it had been possible; she’d come down to a pub in Petersfield one weekend, and for another they’d met in Midhurst. But there wasn’t much leave being granted from Port Bannatyne at this stage. Then Louis Gimber had astonished him by suggesting, “Care to give Jane a ring? Take her out for a meal, or something? I’d like to hear how she really is—and you could explain why I can’t get away for a month or so?”

  “Well—I’d really planned to spend most of the weekend with Sally, but I suppose …”

  Lying came easily, which it never had before. In fancy he wondered whether he could have been possessed by the spirit of the late Jack Everard, his half-uncle, to whom the ends—personal inclinations—had always justified the means … But another aspect was Gimber’s own embarrassment, and recognition that what he was after was a check on Jane, on what other involvements she might have now Louis himself was so far away.

  Paul had nodded. “OK. Where can I get hold of her?”

  Setter’s casing party were climbing up into the bridge and dropping down into the hatch. Last to come was Bob Henning, the ship’s gunnery and torpedo officer. He reported to MacGregor, “Casing secured, sir.”

  “Very good.” MacGregor raised his voice: “Everard, want to talk to your pal, ask him if he’s ready to dive?”

  “Aye aye, sir.” He lowered himself on to the ladder and climbed down into the submarine’s control room. The helmsman looked round, then turned back to his gyro repeater ribbon, and the PO of the watch—it was the coxswain, CPO Bird—growled, “Evenin’, sir. All right, are they?”

  “Just about to check.”

  This end of the tow-line telephone was in the wireless office, a cupboard-sized box between the control room and the engine-room. Paul edged in, nodding to the two operators, one of whom was reading Picture Post.

  “I want a word with X-12.”

  “Be our guest, sir.”

  He pointed at a nude pin-up on a grey metal case of radio gear. “Rather be hers.”

  “Ah, well …”

  “Hello, X-12?” He wound the handle again. “X-12, d’you hear me?” Ozzie Steep’s voice came through thinly, under a lot of extraneous noise. “Steep here. Hello?”

  “Hello, Ozzie. Everard … All well there?”

  “All fine so far, sir. Want the skipper?”

  “Yes, please.” There was a loud thrumming, a fluctuating roar, and most of it would be the noise from the induction pipe, sea and wind. Gimber would be climbing down inside now; Steep could have passed the telephone up to him but over that racket at sea-level you wouldn’t have heard much.

  “You there, Paul?”

  “How goes it?”

  “No problems—yet. Time to dive now?”

  “We’re ready when you are.”

  “OK. As soon as she slows, I’ll pull the plug.”

  “Communications check at twenty-two hundred, then every two hours. And you’ll surface for a guff-through at oh-two-double-oh, right?”

  He went back up to the bridge. The telegraphist on watch would answer any emergency calls from the X-craft. Setter would reduce speed for the actual dive, then work up to ten knots again. X-12 would tow at about sixty or one hundred feet—Gimber’s option—depending on sea conditions, comfort and stability, and every six hours he’d surface for fifteen minutes to ventilate the boat.

  He told MacGregor, “They’re ready to dive, sir.”

  Setter’s captain ducked to the voicepipe: “One hundred revolutions!”

  Back there astern you could see the white flare th
at was the midget’s bow-wave, but not much else, even with binoculars. He wondered—as presently that white patch faded, disappeared, the sea mending itself over the tiny craft which would now be at the mercy of every tug and strain imparted via the heavy Manilla rope—wondered what Jane would think of it: her “earnest” boyfriend on the submerged end of 200 yards of rope and her “charitable” one—that adjective had stuck in her mind, since his “act of charity” in the hotel—here at this end of it, with a thousand miles to cover, and then God only knew what outcome …

  Gimber’s chances depended on that rope and on the weather holding up. Paul’s rested on a dozen or more factors, and the most important element might be luck.

  “Nip down to the telephone, Dick, and let us know when Louis’s ready for ten knots.”

  The towing submarines would stay on the surface until they were nearer the target area, because the rate of progress dived would have been too slow. Nearer the Norwegian coast they’d be dived for reasons of security—which was primarily why the midgets were to keep out of sight right from the start. One chance sighting by some recce aircraft or U-boat could abort the whole operation: the bases in Norway would be alerted, anti-submarine forces concentrated, quite likely the target ships moved elsewhere.

  On his way to the wardroom for supper, Paul stopped for a look at the chart. The first few days’ courses were already pencilled in. From Cape Wrath, course for all the towing submarines would take them through a point seventy-five miles west of the Shetlands, and from there they’d diverge, fanning out on to parallel tracks twenty miles apart for the long haul northeastward.

  Soames, Setter’s navigator, paused beside him.

  “Make sense?”

  “More or less.” Turning his back on the chart, he was in the gangway but to all intents and purposes also in the small space known as the wardroom. “What bothers me is how we’re all going to fit in here.”

  In fact there were five bunks; but one was always empty, its owner on watch, so one extra man could be accommodated by “working hot bunks”—i.e. when you came off watch you got into the bunk someone else had just left. There’d be space for another body under the wardroom table—his head and legs would stick out at each end, so he’d be trodden on sometimes—and a hammock was to be slung in the gangway for a third. Jazz Lanchberry was being accommodated in the ERAs’ mess, so that would do it.