Convoy Homeward (John Mason Kemp Thriller Book 6)

by McCutchan,Philip

  Kemp climbed the ladder to the bridge. There were other matters that he had learned about, sketchily, from the galley wireless: trouble ashore at the Cape, involving Pumphrey-Hatton and two of the Aurelian Star’s naval party. Pumphrey-Hatton had never said anything about that and although Kemp was very curious to know he didn’t intend to get involved with any galley wireless or tales told out of school.

  Reaching the bridge, he saw signalling from the senior officer’s flag deck, an Aldis lamp trained on the Aurelian Star’s bridge.

  Yeoman Lambert reported, ‘Commodore from CS23, sir. Enemy drawn off, am resuming cruising stations.’

  ‘Thank you, Yeoman. Captain, I suggest we follow suit.’

  Captain Maconochie passed the word by Tannoy throughout the ship. On the starting platform below in the engine-room, Chief Engineer French eased his cap on his head, wiped his forehead with the inevitable ball of cotton-waste, and gave silent thanks to God that he’d survived another U-boat attack and would live to face the next, and the next, and the next … there was never any enduring let-up in this war, only when you were on leave at home in UK and even then the buggers got at you with their perishing Luftwaffe, night after night of air raids that got a weary man and his wife out of conjugal bliss and sent them down into the shelters to listen to the crump of bombs, the ringing of bells from the fire appliances as the incendiaries rained down along with the high explosive, police whistles, the crying of young children, and then, when you emerged, the terrible sights of the smashed and gutted buildings, all the rubble and the bodies, and more cries, this time the pathetic cries of people buried beneath the fallen masonry, the results of Adolf Hitler’s night’s work.

  In the B deck lounge, Steward Maclnnes re-opened his bar.

  *

  ‘So what about it, Greg?’ Gloria North way asked.

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘What d’you mean, yes?’

  ‘I mean yes.’ Hench shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘But.’

  ‘But?’ Hench stared, rather glassy-eyed.

  ‘Yes, but. There’s always a “but” in your voice. You don’t really want to, do you?’ She looked at him accusingly. ‘Well, go on, do you?’

  ‘Of course I want to, Gloria. Only … well, the way I see it … to take advantage of — of the sea surroundings and all that, if you follow, the build-up of tropical seas, and the moon …’ He waved a hand around, vaguely. ‘Phoney romance,’ he said. ‘You’d come to regret it. When we reach UK, you see.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  Hench was a little startled. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. You’re just being stupid, Greg, really stupid. Taking advantage my bottom, I’ve been taken advantage of too many times to bother and I don’t mind admitting it. I like being taken advantage of. I thrive on it, as a matter of fact. So don’t worry about me, I’ll not follow you crying my eyes out all the way from the Clyde to wherever it is you’re going. Worthing, isn’t it, your dear old mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She sighed impatiently. ‘Look, Gregory Hench, if you don’t come up to scratch there’s others aboard who will, get me?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m not that bad looking.’

  ‘No, no —’

  ‘So watch it.’

  He didn’t answer right away. When he spoke it was to say, ‘How about a drink, Gloria?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Past master at evading the issue you are. Get me a long gin-and-grapefruit if you must, but lay off the booze yourself.’

  *

  As ever on a long convoy, there was a necessity for the escort and merchant ships to take on fuel. Bunkers taken at the Cape would power them as far as the Azores, but the Azores under the Portuguese flag were strictly neutral. Fuel would therefore be taken at Ascension Island, where two deep-laden naval tankers of the Royal Fleet Auxiliaries would be in readiness to discharge into the tanks of the convoy as they lay off the port.

  Ascension Island was now two days ahead, and the re-fuelling would take place before Vindictive and the damaged Okehampton with her single destroyer escort detached for the Rokel River and Freetown.

  Maconochie discussed the operation with Kemp and his own Chief Officer and Chief Engineer.

  ‘Not as easy as going alongside for fuel,’ he said. ‘We’ll need all the fenders we can muster when the RFA ship comes alongside. They’re big ships to handle, very deep draught of course. Do you see any problems from your point of view, Chief?’

  French shrugged. ‘So long as it’s oil fuel, the intake’s all the same to me. The rigging of gantries to take the pipelines, that’s the deck, but my lads’ll be there to see to the connecting up. No, I don’t expect any problems.’

  Maconochie nodded, and turned to Kemp. ‘The A/S screen’ll lie off to act as guardships, I understand?’

  Kemp said, ‘That’s the ticket. They’ll fuel singly after the rest of us have bunkered.’ He added, ‘It’ll be a long job, of course, and the sooner it’s done and we’re away again the better I’ll like it. We’re going to be pretty well exposed, never mind the destroyers. And pretty damn immobile, not to say helpless — sitting ducks in fact.’

  Kemp had fought the issue back at the Cape, wishing to enter Freetown for bunkers, but the brass had brushed his protests aside. U-boats, they had said — and this was true — tended to lurk outside the Rokel River. But plenty of convoys, Kemp had pointed out, had put into Freetown before now. The response to that, also true, had been that Kemp’s was a big convoy to fuel from barges, which was all Freetown had to offer by way of facilities. That would take time, and because of the urgency of the troops’ arrival in UK speed was of the essence. No notice was taken of Kemp’s strong representations against what would amount to fuelling at sea, a technique that was bound to be developed in the future but which was currently in its infancy. Kemp knew that the Masters of the RFA were experienced in manoeuvring their heavy ships in confined waters, such as when going alongside the battleships and cruisers and aircraft-carriers of the Mediterranean Fleet, in the Grand Harbour of Malta. It was not easy to handle a 12,000-tonner in such constriction. But in carrying out the operation outside a port, with the ships to be fuelled lying, perhaps, in an ocean swell and heaving about on open waters … Kemp’s imagination told him very many things, adverse things, that could happen. Using that imagination, as he had done on and off ever since leaving Simonstown, he saw a time when the Admiralty might devise a system of extended gantries that would carry the fuel-oil pipelines across, say, a cable’s-length of sea, joining the tanker and the receiving ship at a fairly safe distance apart so that the risk of sides being scraped and damaged would be minimal. It might even be possible, given that safe distance, to carry out bunkering whilst under way. And Kemp wished fervently that he was not faced with the prospect, as he was, of heaving-to outside Ascension Island.

  Sighing, he said, ‘I suppose they know what they’re doing. I refer to those who control our destinies. One of the senior bods at Simonstown gave me the impression of having just disembarked from the Ark. I’d not be surprised if the last time he took bunkers it was coal. And I’m not to be quoted on that, gentlemen.’

  With unease in the Commodore’s heart, the troop convoy steamed on.

  Chapter Ten

  There had been discussion about the body of the German POW: following the medical examination, the corpse had been placed in the ship’s cold store. The discussion, between OC Troops, the two doctors, Captain Maconochie and Kemp, had been to decide what to do with the body finally. Carry it on for disembarkation at the Tail o’ the Bank, or have a sea committal?

  Maconochie was all for a sea committal. Seamen, he said and Kemp was in full agreement, didn’t like corpses aboard ships. Not even in peacetime. They were largely a superstitious bunch and corpses brought bad luck, OC Troops disagreed.

  ‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘Can’t destroy evidence, right? I’m answerable to Canberra, maybe to your War Office. Because of
the Geneva Convention, treatment of POWs. How do I come out of it, reporting a dead Nazi already disposed of?’

  ‘I don’t believe it’s any skin off your nose, Colonel,’ Kemp said. ‘The facts are known, no one’s attempted a cover-up, and the doctors have established the cause of death. The Geneva Convention’s all very well, but we’re here, at sea, with a body that could cause a lot of bad feeling among the seamen. Further, I think that from the POW viewpoint it would be better disposed of. I’m sure the incident is rankling along the German accommodation and it could fester. We certainly don’t want that. What we want is a clean ending. Agree, Captain?’

  Maconochie nodded. ‘Very much so. I see absolutely no point in keeping that body aboard and I think the disposal should be done soonest possible.’ He added, ‘The weather’s fair for burial now. As we make our northing later on, it very likely won’t be.’

  ‘That’s your view,’ Colonel Harrison said.

  ‘It’s the sensible one,’ Kemp said sharply. ‘With all due respect, Colonel, you don’t know seamen. Maconochie and I do. We know their feelings, what makes them tick. And I’m for a sea committal.’

  ‘You mean you’ve decided, have you?’

  Kemp nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It wouldn’t occur to you to ask the senior officer of the escort, eh?’

  Kemp said formally. ‘Colonel Harrison, I am the Convoy Commodore. I make my own decisions within the convoy itself and I do not propose to bother the senior officer of the escort with matters that don’t concern him. In short, I’m not passing any bucks.’

  ‘So you’re going right ahead?’

  ‘With the permission of the ship’s Master, yes.’

  ‘Righto, then, so long as you take the can. Meantime there’s the question that I reckon all of you people want to know the answer to. And that is, what’s to be done about my RSM, Treddle. Now, a little bird’s been telling me something, something that got overheard. That bloke Pumphrey-Hatton. He’s been opening his kisser over matters that are nothing to bloody well do with him. Now, I don’t take anything from that dried-up old has-been nor do I take anything from seamen who know bugger all about the bloody army. So I want you to know that what is done about my RSM is my affair and no one else’s, right? I make that decision for myself and I reckon I’ve made it. Pumphrey-Hatton needn’t have bothered his arse, because I’d made it already.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Nothing’s going to be done. We have a dead Nazi, and good on RSM Treddle’s what I say.’ He got to his feet, staring around truculently. ‘That having been said, I’ll say g’day to you all, gentlemen.’

  He left the cabin. Kemp caught Maconochie’s eye and gave a grimace. ‘Honours even, I suppose. Got his own back … because we didn’t go along with him from the word go.’ He went on, ‘They do have ’em in Australia! But so, I admit, have we.’

  The departure of Colonel Harrison broke up the conference. Kemp, going back to the bridge with Maconochie, reflected that it was perhaps not so very surprising that Pumphrey-Hatton didn’t appreciate the ‘temporary gentlemen’. Kemp had learned that in civilian life, Harrison had been a car salesman. Probably a very successful one, if his pushing manner had originated in peacetime. And as for the RSM, Kemp was only too relieved not to have to interfere.

  *

  ‘A funeral, my dear. You remember — that German prisoner. It’s necessary, you know.’

  ‘It’s upsetting,’ Mildred Holmes said. ‘Oh, I know he was a Nazi and may have helped to sink some of our ships, and that he was most dreadfully foolish to do what he did —’

  ‘Well, then.’

  She stuck to her point. ‘No, Stephen, it’s not a case of well, then. One can’t help thinking of his family. Parents, possibly a wife and children … they’ll all probably have heard he had been taken prisoner and will be thinking that at least he’s safe from being killed. And now this. I call it very sad, even if you don’t. I suppose soldiers see things differently.’

  ‘You know they do, Mildred. Good God, you were a soldier’s wife for long enough. A soldier’s daughter too, as I said to that Northway woman, or was it Hench?’

  ‘It wasn’t either. You didn’t say that.’

  Holmes clicked his tongue. ‘I think I said you came of a military family. Same thing.’

  ‘It isn’t the same thing,’ she said in a rather high voice.

  Her husband rustled irritably. ‘Oh, don’t be so …’ He didn’t go on; there had been a sound like a sob. ‘Steady on, old girl, there’s really no need to get so upset. Damn it, we’re fighting the blasted Nazis, aren’t we?’

  ‘It’s not just this — this funeral. It’s everything about this voyage. The awful feeling that we might be sunk at any moment … and what’s in store for us if we arrive —’

  ‘When we arrive, Mildred. I’ve said so often, we’re in good hands and we’re going to be all right.’ He added in what was intended to be a reassuring tone, ‘You’ll feel quite differently as soon as we pick up Ailsa Craig at the entrance to the Firth. Bring back happy memories. Remember the Turnberry Hotel? Golf, with good old Bill, first-rate course — Open standard, of course, same league as St Andrews, or Carnoustie, or Royal St George’s, or Lytham St Annes —’

  ‘Or Troon,’ she put in, tongue in cheek.

  ‘Oh, yes, Troon, of course. Remember the golfing week at Troon, back in ’22 wasn’t it — foursome with good old Bill and Arse-end Portlock and a feller called Bashy Longford? I often wonder what happened to Bashy Longford. Sherwood Foresters … said he’d once got a hole in one on the Old Course at St Andrews but I never quite believed him, he wasn’t quite up to it.’ Mildred would be all right now, he’d jollied her out of her mood, talking about old times. Nothing like old times and reminiscences. Mildred used to say that she might just as well have stayed at home when he went on his golfing weeks since she never set eyes on him all day, but of course that was a lot of tommy-rot. And she used to say she couldn’t stand any more of good old Bill’s laugh. It was certainly on the loud side, but still, it was jolly. He droned on now and never noticed that Mildred was crying.

  *

  The sea committal took place early next day, in the Morning Watch, the 0400 to 0800. Sharp on six bells Captain Maconochie went down from the bridge, with Kemp, to the after end of F Deck where Bosun Barnes had rigged a plank where a section of the guardrail had been temporarily removed. The body of the Nazi, sewn into canvas with fire-bars at the feet to ensure that the corpse would sink, was laid beneath a German naval ensign provided by Yeoman Lambert. Present were OC Troops, Kapitan-Leutnant Stoph, and an armed guard of the King’s East African Rifles under the command of Sergeant Tapapa. Maconochie briefly read the words of the committal service, referring to ‘our brother here departed’, for there was no nationality in death, the plank was tilted and, with the engines briefly stopped so that the revolving blades of the screws should not suck the body down to be shredded into fragments, the canvas-shrouded corpse took the South Atlantic with a splash as Kapitan-Leutnant Stoph gave the Nazi salute.

  After a decent interval, a matter of little more than a minute, Maconochie nodded to the bosun, who went to the sound-powered telephone and rang the bridge.

  He spoke to the Officer of the Watch. ‘From the Captain, sir. Engines to full ahead.’

  The ship’s halt had been very brief; she still had way on her and shortly after the telegraphs had rung on the bridge and had been repeated in the engine-room, the Aurelian Star was moving up to resume her station in the convoy. On the starting platform Chief Engineer French had just two thoughts: one more of the sods gone, and thank the Lord they were under engine power again. No one liked hanging about in enemy-infested waters.

  *

  Far to the north, a Morris Eight was parked in a road some distance away from Chief Steward Chatfield’s Southampton house, as was always the case when Cocky Bulstrode was making a night of it. A different street each time. No flies on Cocky Bulstrode, who as suspected by Chatfield was indeed a sal
esman, but not of furniture. Cocky Bulstrode was in the business of selling life insurance, being an agent of one of those insurance companies that sold door-to-door and made a weekly collection of premiums, mostly in small change. To accommodate this small change he carried a leather bag not unlike a schoolboy’s satchel. At the time the German was being slid over the side of the Aurelian Star, and some twenty-four hours before the convoy was to heave-to outside Ascension Island, thus putting Cocky’s hostess’ husband at some risk of his life, this satchel hung by its strap from a hook behind the door of Chatfield’s bedroom. In the double bed Cocky Bulstrode and Roxanne Chatfield lay, currently asleep but more or less still entwined. Both snored but were unable to hear each other. When one awoke, there would be a complaint.

  It was Roxanne who woke first, and she awoke with a start that brought Cocky awake at almost the same instant so there were in fact no complaints.

  Roxanne said, ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘What’s up, eh?’

  ‘Nothing, not now. It’s all gone. Nightmare,’ she added in explanation.

  Cocky always tried not to look at her first thing in the morning: her hair stuck up like the fuzz on a coconut and her breath smelled of too many fags, and she had no make-up on to hide the pallor. But he enquired about the nightmare nevertheless.

  ‘My hubby,’ she said.

  ‘What about him?’ He gave a light laugh. ‘Not a nightmare that he’d turned up suddenly, was it?’

  She shook her fuzz. ‘No, not that. That he wouldn’t ever turn up — not ever. He got sunk.’

  ‘In the nightmare, love?’

  ‘Yes. In that ship. The Germans had got him. Didn’t have a chance. Down in the meat store, the refrigeration chamber he was, when them so-and-sos fired a torpedo at him. The door banged to, in the explosion like, and the door got a bit buckled. He was shut in, couldn’t get out. He froze to death.’ Roxanne shuddered. ‘Ooh, it was that awful, it was reelly.’