It seemed an eternity before the guests departed, some pausing to slap him on the shoulder, others too far gone even to speak. A few remained with his father in the front room, where more serious matters would be under discussion.
Eventually Lincoln made his way upstairs to bed. Once he stopped to adjust a blackout curtain, and saw the matching roofs of the houses on the opposite side of the street. A full moon: it was like daylight. He thought of the first mine; he had been told that if it exploded it could knock down six streets. Like this one.
He had had too much to drink after all.
If the sirens wailed tonight, somebody else could do all the running.
He saw the camp bed at the end of the passageway; Downie was already fast asleep, or pretending to be. Probably like me, he thought, regretting he had ever agreed to come here.
He stripped off his uniform and struggled to untangle his tie. Maybe he could think of some excuse tomorrow. Go somewhere, just to walk and talk. Find out things.
He almost fell onto the bed. The sheets were crisp and clean. They would be; his mother did everything. While he . . .
He did not know how long he had been asleep, or what had awakened him. A sound, a dream? He opened his eyes and saw a shaft of moonlight shining from the window, where it had not been before.
The house was completely still and silent. Until the next time.
He stared again at the moonlight, and realized that Downie was there, holding the curtain aside while he looked out at the night.
‘Gordon?’
He saw him turn and drop the curtain, plunging the room into darkness again. Not before he had seen the moonlight reflecting on his skin like silver.
It was a dream. In a moment he would wake up and . . .
He reached out and gripped his hand, then felt the sheet being pulled down, the pressure of his body beside his.
‘I’m here.’ As if he was trembling. ‘Mike?’
This time, it was not a dream.
Chris Foley stood on the waste-littered slipway and looked up at the raked, overhanging bows, and despite his borrowed duffle coat he could not contain a shiver. Excitement, disbelief, even doubt. It was certainly not the breeze from Falmouth Bay.
It was a fine, clear morning, after a stay overnight in a commandeered boarding house. Unable to sleep. Pacing the room. Waiting for today. Now.
The boat builder was watching him with interest. His name was Gilbert Tregear, and he was as Cornish as you could find anywhere; his family had been building boats for as long as anyone could remember. Tough, square and with skin like leather, Foley could imagine him without effort as a smuggler or a pirate, or one of Nelson’s men.
Tregear said, ‘Well, this is the moment. You can walk a deck, test every nut and bolt, test the joinery with your fingers, but down here you really gets the feel of a fine craft.’ His pride was something lasting, a legacy of all those years.
Foley shaded his eyes and studied the flared bows. Despite the dangling wires and hoses, power lines and streaks of grease and oil, he could see the grace of the hull which appeared to be leaning over him, preparing to kick free of the land. The feel of a fine craft.
It was all true, but something he found hard to accept. What he had not believed possible after 366.
Tregear must have taken his silence for doubt. ‘I’ll have her in the water day after tomorrow. Two more days after that, an’ she’ll be yours. Not your first command, I hear?’
Foley walked slowly down the slipway. Beyond the square, business-like stern he could see the stretch of Falmouth Harbour and Carrick Roads. A few more paces and the impressive silhouette of Pendennis Castle would be visible on the headland, and St. Mawes on the opposite one. He had been here once for a holiday with his parents, long ago, before Claire was born. He had never forgotten the place, the fishing boats, the yarn-telling sailors, local people much like Tregear. Enough to excite any eight-year-old boy.
When his father had been taken ill; it had seemed to happen more often in those days. The coughing, the breathlessness, the aftermath of gas attacks in Flanders in that other war.
How Falmouth had changed. Grey or camouflaged hulls of all shapes and classes, building, being repaired, or just pausing between convoys or patrols along this coastline where smugglers had once roamed. Still did, according to a customs officer he had met.
And in the River Fal itself he had seen newly finished landing craft lying in groups, waiting for the invasion which only the armchair strategists dared to predict.
He looked up at the hull again and saw a sailor’s head and shoulders vanish instantly. That had happened a lot. Quick, curious, even nervous glances. Some of the newly drafted hands, faces he would come to know like those he had left behind. The wags and the characters, the skivers and the skates. Those you could rely on, come what may. Those you might have to watch. But all volunteers for Special Service. Jack always moaned about everything. That was his strength.
He thought of the man who was to be his first lieutenant. Not some eager, partly trained subbie but a full two-ringer, a professional sailor of the Royal Naval Reserve. What the regulars had once termed Really Not Required. That joke had misfired a long time ago.
Lieutenant Peter Kidd was a tall, strongly built sailor who had lived by the sea until it had claimed him for its own. He had served his time in small freighters and a collier, and was five or six years older than his new commanding officer. A man who would be hard to know, Foley thought, but well worth knowing. Blunt, almost brutal in his descriptions of the work in progress, or the service of some particular rating. He had been blown up twice, and had joked about it. The sea can’t stomach a proper sailor, so it spat me out again! And there was another officer, a ‘third hand’, in their small company, Sub-Lieutenant John Venables, twenty years old and very determined, and straight from a course on tactical minelaying. He looked as if butter would not melt in his mouth. He seemed in awe of his first lieutenant, but inclined to be a little sharp with the men working under him. Kidd had said casually, ‘I’ll soon hone him into shape!’
It was still hard to remember everything. The boat was a few feet longer than 366, and broader in the beam, the bows impressively flared to allow for the extra speed, and to retain stability in all but the worst seas.
Foley had met the senior motor mechanic for a few minutes, but his name had slipped his mind. A calm, intelligent-faced man with a faint accent, Welsh or somewhere close. His excitement over his new appointment was infectious. He had spoken of the four-shaft Bristol motors as if they were almost human. ‘Seven thousand B.H.P., sir! Thirty-six knots, see? Like a bird, she’ll be!’
He had found himself thinking of Shannon, 366’s chief; would he still be brooding over his unfaithful wife? How would he react to Dick Claridge’s command?
It was behind him now. It had to be.
Designed originally as a motor gunboat, his new command was well armed with machine-guns and Oerlikons. But nothing heavier: she would need to fly like a bird if things proved difficult.
And the mines, all twenty of them. They would still take some getting used to. 366 had laid mines several times, and swept them, too, under special and difficult circumstances. There had not been much she had not done or attempted.
He pushed the memories away and said, ‘She’ll do me, Mr. Tregear. I’m lucky to get her!’
He was still not sure if he meant it.
He would miss young Allison, Tobias, just as he had missed the bright and abrasive Harry Bryant when he had been promoted and gone off to a command of his own. And those who had trusted him even when all hell had broken loose. And those who had died.
Like the old R.N.R. skipper who had lost his little ship, but had somehow survived. When Foley had gone back to the sick quarters to collect his personal belongings he had found the other bed empty and stripped. The old skipper had apparently died of a heart attack.
Sister Titmuss had put it differently. ‘Broken heart, if you ask me. He had noth
ing else.’
He shut it from his mind. The past was the past, and better kept that way.
‘Lieutenant-Commander Foley here?’
Foley turned, off guard. It had happened before and he had been caught unprepared, as if it was someone else. He had caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window on his way here, the new rank on the sleeves, two and a half stripes. Like an awakening.
‘That’s me!’ He saw the boat builder hide a grin.
The workman who was clinging to one of the slipway’s trestles called, ‘Phone for you, sir! Mister Tregear’s office!’
Tregear said, ‘No peace for you, not even here!’ He turned away to shout something at one of his men who was trailing a length of wire through a puddle of oil.
Foley smiled. ‘Or for you, either!’
He climbed up from the slipway and felt the noise and confusion from the rest of the yard closing in on him. To think that when he had found adventure on that holiday here in Falmouth, all those years ago, his sister Claire had not even been born. Now she was in love with her Polish pilot; an affair, as his mother had dismissed it. Perhaps she did not remember her own war, the separation and the fear.
He picked up the telephone. On the wall opposite him someone had written a few numbers, with an added warning. Not on Wednesdays. Her old man is off work then!
‘Lieutenant-Commander Foley?’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Speaking.’
She said, ‘I love you.’
He covered his ear with his hand, to exclude the noise, everybody else.
‘Margot! It’s you, darling! Have you been waiting long?’
‘Ssh. Listen, we might get cut off.’ He heard her quick intake of breath. ‘Again. I had to use a lot of flannel to get through to you as it was!’ She was either laughing or crying.
She said, ‘My friend Toni, you know, the one who met your Number One . . .’ and hesitated as if her confidence had suddenly left her.
‘Tell me, Margot. Don’t stop. I’ve missed you so much.’
She said, ‘I don’t know what you must think, Chris. But Toni has a friend in Cornwall. A place not far from you, a village called Philleigh. Her friend owns a cottage there.’ She was fainter now, the line or her breathing, he could only guess. ‘I’ve got a few days’ leave. I could see you, be with you, if you can get away . . .’
He said, ‘I’ll be there, no matter what. You don’t know what this means to me.’
‘I’ll call you, darling Chris. I think we’re going to be cut off. I wanted to tell you how much I need to be with you, and I thought . . .’
This time she was cut off.
Foley replaced the receiver very gently.
Nothing must spoil it. He opened the door, the noise crowding in again.
Not even the bloody war.
Tregear said, ‘I’ve got some more details to show you,’ and watched him curiously. A young man who had known a lot of danger. The kind you read about in the papers, or heard about on the news. One who had known suffering.
He opened his file with elaborate care. It was always the same, even after all these years. You build something, give it life, watch it sail away.
He looked at the young officer beside him. Going into heaven alone knew what. He seemed not to have a care in the whole world.
Foley grinned at him. ‘Fire away, then! I’m all attention!’
He could still hear her voice.
Paymaster Lieutenant-Commander Philip Brayshaw leaned back in his chair and regarded his friend with concern. He had removed his jacket and had opened a window behind the blackout shutters to admit some cold air. There was thin frost on the puddles outside his office but the heating had gone berserk again, and the radiator pipes hummed with heat, as if they were about to explode.
He said, ‘I’ll shoot that damned stoker if he can’t get his bloody boiler to behave!’
He watched Masters filling his pipe, saddened, but pleased that he had come to his office to share his thoughts.
Masters said, ‘I’ve heard they’re going to reduce the personnel and facilities here. Quite soon, that was the buzz.’
Brayshaw nodded. ‘Supposed to be confidential, but signals so intended are usually the easiest to intercept.’ He became serious again. ‘And I hear that you’re leaving us shortly. Not permanently, I hope?’ He held up his hand before Masters could speak. ‘I know, it’s all hush-hush. I should be used to it!’
Masters tamped down the tobacco in his pipe. He had been back to Weymouth again, to the old boarding school, and had gone right through the translated procedures for the German midget submarine until he thought he knew them by heart. The two engineers had been pleasantly surprised at his grasp of the details. They were, in fact, simple enough.
Bumper Fawcett had been onto him again, too. A temporary replacement would be coming direct from H.M.S. Vernon. All very secret, of course. Perhaps Fawcett had already written him off. Were a submariner. He should know.
He clicked his lighter and hesitated. It was still not too late. Things had moved even faster than he expected. It was still not too late. He turned the lighter over in his hand, and remembered her giving it to him in the restaurant. Suppose she had taken part in some secret operation? He clicked the lighter again and watched the flame. She may have been taken by the enemy. It was different for Wykes and his staff. They had the responsibility, but none of the terrible risks.
Tomorrow he would go to London. Like the last time, but with a difference.
He said, ‘If I screw things up, Philip.’ Their eyes met through the drifting smoke. ‘That package in your safe . . .’
‘Leave it with me.’ No names, no promises. Why they had always got along so well. Always . . . it was only a matter of weeks, not even three months yet. The navy’s way.
He thought of Chris Foley, probably envied by those who scarcely knew him. Promotion and a new command. A veteran at twenty-five. Perhaps he could share his hopes and his fears with his girl, if she had decided to join him.
They heard the clanging sounds of a shovel from the cellar. The stoker was making another attempt to control his boiler.
Brayshaw said, ‘Soon, then?’
‘I’ll be seeing the intelligence people before Friday. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.’
Secrecy was everything, and yet how many people knew about the proposed operation? Starting with the ‘catch’ being towed into Portland, then transferred to a temporary hiding place in the old school swimming bath. More men would be needed to hoist it on a special crane through the roof of the building. Then the R.A.F. would take over, with one of their giant lorries known as ‘Queen Marys’, normally used for transporting large aircraft, bombers, when there was no other way to move them. People would talk. D’you know what we had to shift today, dear? He forced himself to relax. It happened all the time. The planners were used to it.
And it mattered. All the work, the sacrifice and unstinting courage of the countermeasures team would count for nothing if this new and easily operated weapon could be used to destroy all hope of invasion.
He did not need reminding of his own first beast, and those which had quickly followed, when every move and breath felt like the last one on earth. As it had been for so many of the people he had known.
How much worse for the overloaded infantryman, trying to wade and struggle ashore at a place of which he had never heard. The moment they had all been waiting for, dreading, but still a part of it. And then being killed, gutted by the unseen mines, with landing craft blown to pieces within sight of victory.
It mattered, all right.
‘And if it goes wrong . . .’ He did not finish; he did not need to. Brayshaw knew all about him. His father had been killed at sea during the Spanish Civil War; an accident, they said. His mother had died soon afterwards. She had never really come to terms with his death.
Apart from his uncle, an ex-commander who had transferred to the Royal Indian Navy and had chosen to remain out there when
the war had started, there was nobody else. He was reminded of the young torpedoman, Downie. Perhaps it was why he had felt so sorry for him. Responsible. They had something in common.
Brayshaw said, ‘Who knows, David, you may be offered a seagoing command after this job.’
Masters thought of the moment when he had climbed into the cockpit of the midget submarine. Wrongly named, in any case; it remained at the same depth all the time. A strange sensation, but how different from the real thing, out in the open sea. It was still not too late. A seagoing command. It would be the loneliest of all time. As first lieutenant of another T-Class submarine, before he had been given Tornado, he had taken part in several attacks on enemy shipping, mostly off the coast of France and down into Biscay. Moments of suspense, chilling tension when the enemy’s sonar had tapped along the hull like Blind Pew’s stick, and wild excitement at any successful attack, a blurred glimpse of a ship in the crosswires, going down, and the sounds of metal tearing apart under the waves. A ship dying. But they had all been together; it was their strength. It was not so long ago that he had been unable to think about it, remember it. There was always Tornado.
Brayshaw said, ‘The Old Man’s moving on too, did you know?’
Masters tapped out his pipe. He did not remember smoking it. ‘Another buzz.’
‘Getting a barracks appointment. Chatham, I think, God help him.’
‘What about you?’
He shrugged. ‘Another captain will come along. He’ll need someone who knows about misinterpreting signals, and where the paper clips are stowed. I’ll survive.’
It was time to go. Tomorrow, London. At least it would be a different hotel, otherwise he would always have been looking. Hoping. He stood up. He still would.
He thrust out his hand and smiled. ‘Like the song, Philip. I’ll be seeing you.’
Brayshaw stood staring at the closed door, for how long he did not recall. He did not know the extent of Masters’ orders; it was better that way. But Rear-Admiral Fawcett had been like a bear with a sore head since it had happened, and there had been Top Secret signals flying back and forth, until one from the First Sea Lord himself had killed the speculation stone dead.
Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) Page 29