Convoy Homeward (John Mason Kemp Thriller Book 6)

by McCutchan,Philip

  Purkiss remained where he was. He was seeing two if not three Pumphrey-Hattons now. ‘Look, mate —’

  ‘Don’t call me mate!’ Pumphrey-Hatton said in a voice that was becoming frenzied. ‘I shall charge you with lack of respect in addressing an officer and I warn you —’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Leading Seaman Purkiss said loudly, and as another person loomed up behind the brigadier he shoved a fist forward into Pumphrey-Hatton’s face. Pumphrey-Hatton stepped sharply back, at the same time flinging out an arm. Losing his balance, he not only cannoned into the person behind but managed to strike this person a blow in the face with his outflung hand. The newcomer happened to be Petty Officer Biggar of the Aurelian Star’s DEMS contingent. Biggar lost his footing and fell flat, with Pumphrey-Hatton coming down on top of him. As the two struggled to their feet, Biggar became aware of the identity of the rating who had caused the fracas.

  ‘You, eh. Just bloody look at what you done now, you Weedin’ object. Striking an officer. Thus causing the officer to strike a rating. Me. Court Martial charges both. What a fuckin’ awful potmess, begging your pardon, sir.’

  He saluted. Pumphrey-Hatton stared, his face working with a number of emotions. Then tears began streaming down his face and suddenly he pushed past Biggar and vanished along the passage. Petty Officer Biggar pulled out a handkerchief and wiped at his face. ‘What I’d call embarrassing,’ he said. ‘Poor sod’s likely had a hard war. You didn’t ought to ’ave done what you did, Leading Seaman Purkiss, putting me in a bloody pickle an’ all. I reckon we keep mum, hope ’e don’t recognize either of us. An’ don’t you do any more drinking, Leading Seaman Purkiss, an’ that’s an order, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Purkiss said in a slurred voice. ‘Got other things to do now anyway.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Such as?’

  Purkiss gave a leering laugh. ‘One guess, PO.’

  ‘Bollocks. In your state? You’ll never make it, boyo.’

  *

  Early the following morning, the Commodore of the convoy along with the masters and chief officers of the merchant ships and the Commanding Officers and navigators of the escorts attended the briefing by the Naval Control Service Officer. There was no fresh information so far as Kemp was concerned: what the rear-admiral had already told him was still virtually the extent of current intelligence. The whereabouts, in any precise sense, of the Stuttgart was still not known. The raider apart, there would be the usual hazards of any ocean convoy: the hunting packs of U-boats as the ships came towards the latitude of Freetown, where the Vindictive would detach into the Rokel River. The one fresh piece of information available was that the Home Fleet battleship would make a rendezvous three hundred miles to the north of where the Vindictive would detach. Also it was confirmed that the battleship would be HMS Duke of York, wearing the flag of the Vice-Admiral Commanding, 1st Battle Squadron, together with her own destroyer screen and two light cruisers, Caradoc and Cardiff. As Kemp returned from the conference with Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan and Captain Maconochie, there was movement in the port: HMS Resolution was moving out with her escort, the Admiral’s flag fluttering from the masthead in a strong southerly breeze. With her went her escort: as Maconochie remarked, it left them fairly naked.

  ‘Like the mistress of the Alsatian,’ Finnegan said with a straight face.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Finnegan?’

  ‘A filthy story, sir. Told me by a guy in a bar —’

  ‘I don’t think we want to hear it, Finnegan.’

  Finnegan waved a hand. ‘Just as you like, sir.’

  The taxi deposited them at the gangway of the Aurelian Star; as they climbed Kemp saw the Vindictive moving across the harbour towards the fuelling berth. Her boiler-cleaning completed, the cruiser was entering the final stages of her preparation for sea. Big and well-armoured, one of the last of the heavy cruisers, she was a reassuring sight. But she was no battleship.

  The returning officers were saluted aboard by the Chief Officer and the quartermaster at the upper platform of the accommodation ladder. Captain Maconochie took his Chief Officer aside.

  ‘Prepare for sea, Mr Dartnell. We leave at 2200 tonight.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘And a message to the Chief Engineer. My compliments — and I’d like him to come to my day cabin.’ With the Commodore, he climbed the ladders to his accommodation below the bridge. In the space allocated as seamen’s messdeck for the RN ratings, Leading Seaman Purkiss was nursing a head that still clanged like a bell at the slightest sound. He had little recollection of what he’d done in the later stages of the day before, no recollection at all of having been brought back aboard by the naval patrol and more or less poured into his bunk. He had been apprised of this by Petty Officer Biggar early in the ‘morning after’; charges, PO Biggar said, pended. Purkiss knew that he stood to lose his rate as leading seaman but Kemp might be lenient and merely put him under stoppage of leave for a while, which wouldn’t be any hardship once they’d gone to sea. His worry was Brigadier Pumphrey-Hatton. If he pressed charges, then this current voyage would end for Purkiss in the Naval Detention Quarters in RNB Pompey. Ninety days was the least you could expect for striking an officer. Another thing that bothered him was a very personal matter: he had not the remotest idea as to what kind of woman if any he had eventually landed up with. He might have got himself a dose, and what would his wife say to that? Edith was the jealous sort and weepy with it. Also, her old man, an ex-chief gunner’s mate, was still alive and active and had once been the heavyweight champion of the Navy.

  Purkiss had consulted PO Biggar, whose advice was to see the quack and set his mind at rest. Or not, as the case might be. But Biggar had also offered consolation. ‘Like I said back in that bar. A pound to a penny you ’ad the droops. Not that I know where you went after, but I reckon you’re safe enough. Anyway, you were so Weedin’ pissed not even a prozzie would have taken you on. Not beyond taking your cash off you.’

  *

  At 2130 special sea dutymen were piped throughout the warship escorts, the cable and side parties were closed up, and the ships that had been at anchor shortened-in and prepared to weigh, while those at the berths alongside cast off wires and ropes fore and aft, retaining the springs until the word came from the various navigating bridges to let go all.

  Kemp was at Maconochie’s side as the final order was passed. Below on the starting platform, Chief Engineer French stood by as on the bridge the handles of the telegraphs were pulled over, the repeaters below calling for slow ahead both engines. As the order came the great shafts began turning to bring the former liner off the wall for the long haul to the Firth of Clyde, the really dangerous part of the voyage beginning. On the troop-decks above the engine-room the Australians and New Zealanders, who had been embarked late that afternoon, were still settling in and sorting themselves out for the last long leg before they joined in whatever awaited them thousands of miles from home.

  In his cabin Chief Steward Chatfield grew maudlin on Van der Humm and thought about Roxanne and the hypothetical bloody salesman. At this stage there was really no point at all in writing, since he would be in touch by telephone from Greenock long before any letter could arrive. He began to rehearse that telephone call: he would be all nonchalance, simply asking in an innocent voice if Roxanne had gone and spent all the money that went by monthly allotment from his pay to her bank account in Southampton.

  ‘Whatever makes you think,’ she would reply, ‘that I gone and done that?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ he would go on to say. ‘But I s’pose you’ll be meeting me at the Central station … with that Morris Eight you just got with my spondulicks?’

  That would put the fox among the chickens, all right; especially if the bloody salesman happened to be there when he rang.

  Chatfield felt the sea movement as the Aurelian Star came out from the lee of the breakwater, felt the lurch as she met the ocean swell and more than a little of a seaway. Roll on the Clyde, he t
hought, the Tail o’ the Bank and a touch of vengeance. He drank more Van der Humm. Spanking, that was what was called for. Women liked the firm approach. Put her across his knee, and wham. After that, well, she’d come to heel, and the salesman, who was likely enough married and wouldn’t want his old woman to get to hear, would scarper into his bloody Morris Eight and vanish …

  *

  There was quite a weight of wind outside the port as the merchantmen and warships turned to starboard to come past the Cape, the actual Cape of Good Hope itself.

  ‘The Cape of Storms,’ Kemp said.

  ‘What was that, sir?’

  ‘History, Finnegan. Vasco da Gama called it the Cape of Storms when he discovered it. It’s pretty appropriate tonight — or it will be in an hour or so. The wind’s freshening fast from southerly.’

  ‘You can say that again, sir, Commodore.’

  Kemp sighed. ‘Two Americanisms in one sentence, Finnegan, is a bit much. I’ve no desire to say it again. However, I gather it’s registered, right?’

  ‘Right, sir —’

  ‘So gather your wits, young man, and check that Petty Officer Ramm has taken due precautions with the ship’s armament.’

  ‘Or Petty Officer Biggar, sir?’

  ‘I said Ramm, and I meant Ramm. He can sort out the niceties with Biggar.’ Kemp lifted his binoculars around the assembly of ships, no more than blacker bulks in the night’s darkness, showing only the usual shaded blue stern-lights. Dimly he could see the bow-waves of the vessels on either beam, could see the bones in the teeth — as the saying went — of the destroyers as they raced ahead to take up their stations to act as anti-submarine screen. Already the water was heaving over the bows of the Aurelian Star, and spray was flying over the fore cargo hatches to reach the bridge, where canvas dodgers had been rigged. It was going to be a dirty night, with the wind slap on the port beam, making the ship roll badly. Kemp spared a thought for the troops crammed in along the troop-decks: never mind that they’d already made the voyage from their Australian port of embarkation, they still wouldn’t really have their sea-legs, not in many cases.

  Below, Finnegan made contact with Petty Officer Ramm. Ramm, surly at being chased, went in search of PO Biggar. Well away to the north, and standing handily to the west of the northbound shipping lanes, the Stuttgart received word by wireless that Convoy SW03 had left the Simonstown base and was steaming for the Firth of Clyde with no escorting battleship.

  Chapter Six

  The German prisoners-of-war, under guard of sentries found by the King’s East African Rifles, were mainly a surly bunch, not liking their lot and not liking the fact of being under native control, an unseemly thing for pure-bred Aryans, members of the master race, sailors of their Führer. But, up to the present anyway, they were behaving themselves. Sergeant Jeremiah Muhoho of the Rifles, who with Sergeants Mgala and Tapapa took his watch as NCO of the guard, was a diligent man who took his duties very seriously and would stand no nonsense. None of the Germans would risk a tongue-lashing from a native. But beneath the surface there was a stir of hatred for the British, for the newly embarked Australians and New Zealanders, and for the natives themselves who had taken King George’s shilling against the might of Adolf Hitler and the German Empire that the Führer had stated would last a thousand years.

  OC Troops — Colonel Harrison of the Australian Army who had now replaced Colonel Carter — was aware of the feeling as he made rounds of the troop-decks and POW accommodation on the first day after leaving Simonstown. He remarked on it to his adjutant: Captain Mulvaney agreed, pushing his bush hat to the back of his ginger hair and wiping sweat from his face.

  ‘Right you are, Colonel. They want to hit back at the poms. Can’t say I blame ’em and that’s fair dinkum. You met that pommie brigadier?’

  ‘I have. Point taken, Mulvaney. But don’t forget this: pommie brigadiers are going to be a fact of life once we hit the Clyde —’

  ‘Take me back to bloody Wagga Wagga.’ Captain Mulvaney blew out a long-suffering breath. ‘Why did I ever join up?’

  ‘Because you had to,’ Harrison said with a grin. ‘Why did I, come to that? Anyway — those Krauts, they aren’t allowed to have hate feelings, not to let it show anyway. Same applies to you.’

  Mulvaney said, ‘And that’s an order. Right, Colonel?’

  ‘Dead right, Captain. So watch it. Meantime, I’m going to have a word with the Commodore.’ Harrison paused. ‘For a pom, he’s a good bloke.’ Leading the way out from the POW accommodation, low down in the ship, Colonel Harrison returned a smart salute from the native NCO. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  Standing rigid at attention, Sergeant Muhoho answered. ‘Muhoho, sah! Jeremiah Muhoho, sergeant, sah, the King’s East African Rifles.’

  ‘Uh-huh. At ease, Sergeant. Well now, son, I’m relying on you and your mates to keep that bloody bunch under full control. I note you speak English. Some English anyway. How much?’

  ‘Plenty good English, sah! Very good speaker, learning from British officers, sah, all white.’

  ‘Well, good on yer, bloke.’ Colonel Harrison fished in a capacious pocket of his khaki-drill tunic and produced a packet of cigarettes. ‘Take a fag, bloke. Go on, they won’t bloody bite.’

  ‘Sah! I do not smoke, sah.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s your loss. Not that some people don’t call ’em coffin nails.’ Colonel Harrison laid a hand on Sergeant Muhoho’s shoulder and grinned in his shining face. ‘Don’t look so bloody shit scared, bloke. Like the fags — I don’t bite.’

  ‘Sah!’ To Sergeant Muhoho’s immense relief, the Colonel moved away, undoing the buttons of his tunic and giving a loud belch before sticking a cigarette in his mouth. The Australians were a very curious species, Sergeant Muhoho thought in perplexity, very different from the officers of the King’s East African Rifles and as if from a different form of life from the very old officer, Colonel Holmes. Never in all his life had an officer addressed Sergeant Muhoho as ‘bloke’. He wasn’t sure that he liked it, in front of the rank-and-file, the riflemen. He was, after all, entitled by long and faithful service to be addressed as Sergeant.

  *

  Colonel Harrison climbed to the bridge. As OC Troops, he was permitted so to do. He was greeted by both Maconochie and Kemp. Waving his right arm in a kind of salute to the Convoy Commodore he started right in, no small talk about Colonel Harrison when he was being official.

  ‘Those Germans, Commodore. Pretty rat-faced bunch if you ask me. And a shade too bloody quiet. If you get me.’

  ‘Still waters?’ Kemp suggested.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Still waters that run deep.’

  ‘Oh, right, I get you. Sums it up. They’re fermenting. Or that’s what I think. Waiting their chance. Thought I’d mention it.’

  Kemp said, ‘They’re well guarded, Colonel, and all the regulations regarding the conveyance of prisoners-of-war have been complied with and their officer — a kapitan-leutnant named Stoph — has been informed of them.’ Kemp, who had been given the bumph at Kilindini, ran through it even though Harrison probably knew it all. ‘No cutlery such as could be used as weapons allowed, no pepper that could be thrown into the eyes —’

  ‘Sure thing. Done me homework too.’

  ‘Good. Well, whatever chance they’re waiting for, they’ll not get it. I repeat, that guard’s strong.’

  ‘So let’s hope you’re right, Commodore. They’re a tough bunch … and what worries me is this bloody raider that’s loose around here. If the shooting starts, they c’d be well placed to make any God’s amount of trouble. With the ship’s crew at action stations. If you get me.’

  ‘Yes, I do. But the native battalion won’t be part of action stations —’

  ‘You mean they stay guarding the POW contingent?’

  Kemp nodded. ‘That’s the idea, yes. They’ll guard the Germans with their lives. The native troops … they’re among the loyalest of all the regiments. But don’t let me teach
my grandmother,’ Kemp added with a smile. ‘You know the army. I don’t.’

  ‘Just a simple sailorman?’ Harrison returned the grin.

  Kemp laughed. ‘You could say that, Colonel. But don’t you worry about the Germans. I don’t.’

  Colonel Harrison reached forward and dug Kemp in the chest with a thick, nicotine-stained forefinger. ‘Maybe you should.’ Kemp, who disliked being dug in the chest, moved back a fraction. Harrison went on, ‘On a point of protocol, Commodore. One thing wasn’t made too bloody clear back in Sydney. To be fair, they may not have known about the POW element, not then. But whose are they? Yours or mine? Eh?’

  Kemp said, ‘In the first instance, they’re Captain Maconochie’s as Master of the ship. In a sense they’re his passengers. I’m merely the Convoy Commodore. In no sense do I command the ship. But to the extent that I have a responsibility for the convoy as a whole, the POWs are mine.’

  ‘Because they’re seamen, not pongoes?’

  ‘Not exactly that. Because they’re part of the convoy.’

  ‘But in a sense, they’re part of the troop draft. Even if they’re seamen. Now, that’d make them mine. Eh?’

  ‘There’s another angle,’ Kemp said, and said it firmly. ‘In any passenger ship — currently, any troopship, the responsibility is the Master’s. That includes the troops, I have to say — except in regard to internal matters of military organization and discipline, of course.’ He was unable to resist adding, ‘If you get me.’

  There was a glint of something like anger in Harrison’s eye. He said, ‘Get you, eh? Does anyone outside Britain ever get a pommie? Answer: no, they bloody don’t. What you said … it sounds like a load of gobbledegook if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Kemp’s response was a laugh; he intended to keep the peace, not wishing for any repeats of the Pumphrey-Hatton situation. He said, ‘I know all about the shortcomings of pommies, Colonel. I spent the peace on the Australian run — Mediterranean-Australia Line. I’ve spent more time down under than I have at home.’