by Annie Groves
THIRTEEN
‘I don’t care what you say, Jim. I’ve made up my mind. I want a divorce.’
Myra and her husband faced one another across the small shabby parlour, with its smell of disuse and past sadnesses.
‘That’s crazy talk, Myra, and you know it.’
‘You’re the one who’s crazy if you can’t see that the pair of us should never have got married in the first place and that the sooner we go our separate ways the better.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t have got married but we did. And even if I was willing for us to be divorced, which I’m not, you can’t get divorced without proper grounds, you know that.’
‘As to that, if it’s grounds you want, then I’m willing…’ Myra began recklessly, and then stopped when she saw the way he was looking at her. Why couldn’t fate be kind to her for once? Any number of soldiers got themselves killed and left their wives widowed with a pension – why couldn’t that happen to her?
‘There’s no point in saying you won’t divorce me,’ she announced fiercely, ‘because there’s no way I plan to go on being your wife. At least that way you would be free to find someone else.’
‘Like you are? Is that what this is all about, Myra? You finding someone else? Or have you already found him?’
Myra’s heart started to thump uncomfortably fast. Jim was getting far too close to the truth.
‘What if I have?’ she challenged him. ‘You can’t do anything about it. I’ve told you, Jim, it’s over for you and me. If you want the truth it was never that much of a marriage anyway,’
‘And whose fault is that? It’s not as though I haven’t tried to please you.’
Another woman hearing the misery and the frustration in his voice might have been moved to compassion but Myra wasn’t like that. She wasn’t prepared to be compassionate about anything or anyone who stood in the way of her own ambitions.
‘There you are, you see,’ she answered triumphantly. ‘You’re more or less saying yourself that we aren’t suited.’
‘Suited or not, we are married,’ Jim retaliated, ‘and married is what we are going to stay. Myra,’ he called, when Myra pulled open the parlour door, ignoring him. ‘Myra.’ But it was too late. She was already halfway through the front door.
Jim watched her hurrying down the street, without giving him so much as a backward glance, and then thumped his closed fist on the arm of the sofa. A cloud of dust rose up from the horsehair filling, making him sneeze. Myra was the very opposite of everything he longed for in a wife, but what could he do? He loved her so much. And he knew that he always would.
Diane could feel the tension the minute she walked into the Dungeon.
‘Any news?’ she asked Pauline quietly.
There was no need for her to specify what kind of news she meant. When she had gone off duty on Saturday the whole of the Dungeon had been seething with rumours and counter-rumours following the news that the long-awaited and dreaded German naval attack, codenamed ‘Rösselsprung’ or ‘Knight’s Move’, was finally about to take place, and that the Arctic Convoy PQ-17 was to be its target.
‘Plenty,’ Pauline confirmed grimly, ‘and none of it good.’ She nodded in the direction of the huge chart table surrounded by grim-faced naval personnel, whilst harassed Wrens were calling out positions and logging incoming information.
‘Just after twenty-one hundred hours thirty last night the First Sea Lord gave orders for the Arctic convoy to scatter following the discovery that the German support ships had moved into Altenfjord ready for Rösselsprung.’
‘And?’ Diane pressed her anxiously. Everyone working in the Dungeon knew about the threat from Operation Rösselsprung. It had been hanging over them ever since it had been discovered that the German Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Raeder, was planning to destroy one of the Arctic convoys using his largest battleship, the Tirpitz, which was based at Trondheim, supported by numerous other warships, though it was not known which convoy would be the target. For that reason, the movements of convoys were always times of extreme tension in the Dungeon.
By the time Diane had finished her shift on Saturday, the ops room had been humming with the long-awaited and dreaded news that the German support vessels had joined the Tirpitz in Altenfjord, ready for their ‘knight’s move’, though at that stage the intelligence sources had not been able to confirm whether or not Convoy PQ-17 was to be the target.
‘It seems the Tirpitz and the others are still in Altenfjord.’
‘So the convoy is safe?’ Diane asked with relief.
‘No,’ Pauline told her shortly. ‘Like I said, the First Sea Lord gave the order for the convoy to scatter, and each ship to make for the nearest Russian port as best it could, thinking that Rösselsprung was underway, when it wasn’t. That left the whole convoy vulnerable to U-boat and air attack with no support vessels to protect it. So far we’ve lost nine ships, all sunk.’
‘And the men?’ Diane asked shakily, once she had absorbed this shocking news.
‘We don’t know, but the chances are…’ Pauline shook her head, unable to say the words.
‘Oh, no,’ Diane protested, well aware of how slim the chances were of anyone surviving in such cold seas.
‘Oh, yes,’ Pauline confirmed wearily.
‘How’s Susan taking it? Her husband’s ship was with the convoy, wasn’t it?’
Pauline nodded. ‘She’s doing her best, of course, and she says she’d rather be here where at least she can first-hand info on what’s happening.’
Diane turned to look round the room. No wonder people were only speaking in terse whispers, their faces set and expressions withdrawn. A list of the ships sailing in the convoy had even been written on a new board, and Diane could now see the nine names that had been struck through.
The Commander and the rest of the top brass were leaning over the chart tables and the telephones, whilst messengers rushed in and out carrying transcripts of Morse code messages. As Diane watched, a new order was given and a young Wren crossed through another name, her hand shaking. She had barely finished doing so when someone called out again. It was impossible not to be aware of the mute, shocked horror gripping everyone in the room as more losses were chalked up.
The long day wore on without any respite, as vessel after vessel was sunk. It was pitiful and cruel. The merchant ships were defenceless targets and the U-boats and German planes were picking them off as easily as though they were targets at a fairground shooting range.
Shock had now given way to a low murmur of angry bitterness that such an ill-judged order should have been given, and at one point the Commander himself bowed his head, and they could all see the trickle of tears as he wept for the loss of so many brave and unprotected men.
Through the short dark hours of the July night the losses mounted relentlessly until the air inside the Dungeon was thick with unshed tears and heavy with a grief too terrible to voice.
Susan, white-faced and as stiff as though she were a puppet, held them all to the line with a professionalism Diane suspected she could never have emulated when the news came in that her husband’s ship had been torpedoed. Only the merest tremble of her hand betrayed what she had to be feeling.
As though she sensed Diane’s thoughts she told her jerkily, ‘At least with the almost constant daylight they have up there at this time of the year there’ll be more chance of any survivors being picked up.’
Diane couldn’t bear to say anything. Her throat closed up with compassion for Susan, knowing, as they all did, that the chance of there being any survivors was pitifully small.
When the new shift came on at 4.00 a.m. on Monday morning, Diane was barely aware of having worked a double shift. Over twenty ships had now been lost, the Germans free to torpedo and bomb the helpless vessels whilst the RAF looked on helplessly, knowing that the ships lay beyond the range of their planes. Several of those working in the Dungeon had loved ones with the convoy – some on naval vessels and some on the me
rchant ships. One young Wren had fainted when the news had come in that the ship on which her new husband was sailing had been sunk, whilst one of the senior naval officers had had to bear the news that his only son had been on another of the lost vessels.
It was the worst kind of tragedy because it was one that those who had had to deal with it believed could have been avoided.
‘Not seeing Walter tonight then, Jess?’
‘No, I’m not. Not that it’s any of your business, Billy,’ Jess answered with a toss of her head.
‘I was telling your uncle this dinnertime that he seems like a decent sort – for a GI.’
‘You’ve no business talking about me and Walter to my uncle or anyone else.’
‘Going steady now, are you?’ Billy asked, ignoring her.
‘You mean like you and Doreen Green?’ Jess demanded stalwartly, determinedly ignoring the sharp pain that thinking about the two of them gave her.
Billy frowned. ‘Who says that I’m going steady with her?’
‘She does, for one,’ Jess informed him pithily, ‘and so does that cousin of hers. The one that does all the boxing,’ she added meaningfully.
To her chagrin Billy laughed. ‘You don’t want to listen to everything that folk tell you, young Jess. That Doreen Green has had her eye on me since we was at school together,’ he told her smugly, ‘but that doesn’t mean she’s going to get me.’
‘No, I dare say it doesn’t,’ Jess agreed hardily. He took the biscuit for cheek, did Billy. ‘After all, she’s got to get all them other girls out of the way first, hasn’t she? But then, like I said, she has got their Malcolm to help her.’
‘I’m surprised at you, speaking like that,’ Billy told her sorrowfully. ‘I thought better of you than that you’d go round listening to silly gossip. There’s only one girl for me. Allus has been and allus will be.’
Did he really think she hadn’t heard that kind of line before?
‘Oh, yes,’ she challenged him, ‘and we all know who that is, don’t we? It’s the next girl you come across wot’s daft enough to believe you when you tell that line to her. Anyway, shouldn’t you be on duty, seeing as you’ve got such a responsible job an’ all, guarding them barrage balloons?’
‘It’s not them we’re guarding tonight, Jess. We’ve had reports of an unexploded bomb being found in one of them bombed-out houses down near Pickering Street. Seems some kids found it so we’ve been called in to take a butchers at it.’
‘Take a butchers at it? You? What do you mean? That’s a job for the bomb disposal lot and you aren’t one of them.’
‘You mean that I wasn’t,’ Billy agreed. ‘Seems like they’ve got short of men, so our sergeant asked for volunteers to mek up their numbers. You and you and you, he yelled out, and just my luck I happened to be one of them he picked.’
Jess struggled for something to say but all she could think about was the danger he was going to be in. She had heard tales from her uncle of the bomb disposal teams and the terrible death toll of the men who worked on them.
‘Well, that’s just typical of you, isn’t it?’ she burst out as she tried to calm her thudding heartbeat. ‘Going and getting yourself involved wi’ summat daft and dangerous like that. It will serve you right if you get blown up straight off, it will.’
‘Thanks for that. I can tell that you won’t be shedding any tears for me if I do.’
Jess could hear the harshness in his voice and immediately she felt ashamed of herself. There had been no call for her to say what she had. She couldn’t explain to herself how her fear for him had made her say it, and she certainly wasn’t going to try to explain it to him, and have him laugh at her and guess…Guess what, exactly? Guess nothing, she told herself sternly. She looked up at him silhouetted against the blue sky, and her heart seemed to turn over inside her chest.
‘Billy…’
‘Yes?’
She hadn’t really been going to reach out and grab hold of his hand and beg him not to put himself at risk, had she?
‘Nothing. Just don’t you go talking to my uncle about me and Walter, that’s all.’ She began to walk on and then stopped and turned back. ‘When are you going to be doing it?’ she asked him, unable to hold back the question. ‘When are you going to be looking for this unexploded bomb?’
‘I’m on me way now. What do you want to know for? Want to come along and watch me blow meself up, do you?’
Jess could feel the blood draining out of her face, and then storming back in again, the ferocity of it making her feel sick and dizzy.
‘That’s a wicked thing to say,’ she told him shakily, turning away from him again before he could see how close she was to tears, and hurrying down the street, ignoring him when he called out to her to wait.
FOURTEEN
The papers were full of the news of the loss of the convoy. Two-thirds of the ships had been sunk: twenty-three merchant ships and one rescue ship out of the thirty-six merchant ships and three rescue ships that had sailed.
Some of those ships had sailed originally from Liverpool, and many of the seamen on board them had been from the city. The weight of that loss was apparent in the grim faces of the people stopping to buy their newspapers and read the headlines.
‘Bloody First Sea Lord – what the ’ell does he know now about the life of them wot sails under the Red Duster?’ Diane heard one man saying bitterly as she paid for her paper. ‘Ruddy nowt, that’s wot.’
A pall of bleak disbelief filled the corridors and offices of Derby House. Susan had been given leave of absence because her husband had now been officially reported as missing in action and Jean had taken over the team temporarily.
‘Captain said to remind you that you’re to stay on after your shift finishes today for this welcome party she and the C-in-C are giving for the new lot of Americans. Not that anyone is going to feel like smiling nicely at a load of green-as-grass young Americans after what we’ve all just been through.’
‘No,’ Diane agreed sombrely. ‘Do we know yet how many…?’
‘We know that four ships have made it to Archangel harbour,’ Jean told her grimly. ‘I don’t envy you having to attend this do tonight, I really don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s already a lot of resentment at the fact that the last shift had to cope with a group of Americans down for tactical training who couldn’t stop talking about their Fourth of July celebrations and didn’t seem to understand why none of us feel like celebrating right now. I even heard one of them boasting that they’d been showing our RAF a thing or two by piloting British planes on a daylight raid on some Dutch German airfields.’
‘Yes, I saw that in the papers,’ Diane replied. ‘They lost two of the planes, and a third was damaged, so that hardly suggests they have a lot to boast about.’
Too late, Diane realised that her sharp words had been overheard, and by her personal bête noire, Major Saunders. She shrugged inwardly. What did it matter what the major thought of her?
‘I wonder if the Wrens’ favourite American pinup will be there tonight,’ Jean commented, giving Diane a nudge and looking pointedly at the major’s broad back.
‘The Wrens’ what?’ Diane queried in disbelief.
‘They’re all mad for him,’ Jean assured her, ‘and I have to admit I can see why.’
‘Well, I can’t.’
‘It wouldn’t do you any good if you could,’ Jean said. ‘Word is that he’s married and that he’s let it be known that’s the way he intends to stay. So it’s definitely hands off that particular piece of US property.’ Jean pulled a wry face. ‘I don’t suppose we should blame him for feeling he has to make the point. The way some girls are acting around the Americans, it’s no wonder they think that we’re all cheap and easy. My fiancé is in radio ops up at Burtonwood where they’re stationed, and he says you wouldn’t believe the things some of the local girls are getting up to: standing at the roadside waiting for the GIs to drive past, calling out to them…,’ Jean shook her head. �
�You think they’d have more respect for themselves. I wouldn’t mind so much, but thanks to them we’re all getting tarred with the same brush. It makes me glad that I’m hooked up to a decent British chap.’
‘Yes,’ Diane agreed heavily.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t got someone, Diane,’ Jean ventured. ‘Not that I’m wanting to pry, of course,’ she added hastily.
‘It’s all right. There was someone,’ she admitted. ‘We…we were engaged, but…but it didn’t work out. He…he changed his mind…’ She didn’t know now what on earth had made her speak so openly to Jean about something she would normally have kept a secret. Perhaps it had to do with the tragedy they had witnessed. What she did know, though, was that her grief for the men who had lost their lives weighed as heavily on her right now as her grief for her own loss. She gave Jean a bleak look, unaware that Jean wasn’t the only person who had heard what she had said.
‘I’d better go and get ready for the welcome party.’
‘Rather you than me.’ Jean shook her head.
Diane had brought a clean blouse with her, and she went to the ladies’ cloakroom to change into it and redo her hair, unpinning it from its chignon, then brushing it before pinning it up neatly again. She had no heart for the evening ahead, but it was not the fault of the young Americans. It was going to be her job to help make them feel at home, she reminded herself as she reapplied her lipstick and dabbed some of her precious Yardley’s toilet water on her wrists.
The welcome party was being held in the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Sir Percy Noble’s private quarters, and several other girls were already making their way there when Diane joined them.
‘What exactly are we supposed to do?’ Diane asked one of them.
‘The Group Captain just told me that she wants us to make the Americans feel more at home.’