***
On the bridge Kemp saw the blue-shaded lamp from CS29, an urgent look about it. Leading Signalman Mathias was on the ball, acknowledging. ‘Number of contacts on the port bow, sir,’ he reported.
Thank you, Mathias.’ Kemp went at the double into the wheelhouse where the senior second officer was on watch. ‘Captain on the bridge,’ he said crisply. The lid of the voice-pipe to Hampton’s day-cabin was wrenched up: the Captain wouldn’t be sleeping, he’d gone down for a call of nature only. Unusually, as Kemp started to pass the order for the alarm to be sounded every one of the telephones and voice-pipes demanded attention at once: radio room, gun positions, engine-room ... and something else. Kemp himself happened to take up the phone on that one.
‘Bridge, Commodore here.’
‘I want the ... the Ashishtant Commodore.’
Kemp’s face was grim. ‘Who the devil’s that?’
‘Ship ... ship’s shurgeon. I want — ’
The telephone slammed in the doctor’s ear. He had a hurt look, a surprised look. Some people ... so damn rude! A fraction of a second later he became aware that the alarm rattlers were sounding, an appalling din, and then the ship seemed to come alive with pounding feet.
FOURTEEN
Hampton reached the bridge as the alarm rattlers started. Kemp was in the port wing, with Williams. He put Hampton in the picture. ‘This is it, Captain. Sounds like a whole hunting pack. I’d like your engines to stand by for maximum power — it’ll be needed within the next minute.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Hampton nodded at his messenger, who went at once to the wheelhouse. The word went down to the engine-room, to Chief Engineer Burrows already on the starting-platform. On the bridge Kemp gripped the rail ahead of him: so many U-boats, so many torpedoes to be loosed among the ships, too big a target — they couldn’t possibly miss if they simply fired blind into the mass. In Kemp’s view the time had come for the extreme order: with misgivings he gave it in a firm voice.
‘Scatter the convoy, Williams. Inform CS29 and Captain(D).’
Williams passed the order to Mathias, who got busy with his shaded masthead lamp, remote controlled from the bridge. Now the ships would begin to move into independent sailing, diffusing the target while the warships went into the attack. In a few minutes would come the testing time, the time when collisions might well be almost inevitable as the ships altered course and speed, some this way, some that, a great disintegrated monster flailing about the North Atlantic.
‘Rendezvous, Williams. Work out a position on the chart, south-east from Cape Farewell. Thirty-six hours’ steaming.’ Kemp searched the surface through his binoculars, eyes straining through the moonlit night. Nothing to be seen, but signals were coming again from the flagship. There were some twenty contacts, all of them on the port bow but some of them now moving across. The convoy, course having been altered eastwards after the four hours stipulated by the Rear-Admiral, was steaming virtually slap into the packs. As Kemp watched out, a message from the radio room was reported to him: the Rear-Admiral had broken wireless silence to the Admiralty, reporting the HX about to come under potentially heavy attack. Still nothing showed, no feather on the surface, not in the Ardara’s vicinity.
‘Buggers are taking their time,’ Kemp said.
Hampton asked, ‘What about that battleship?’
‘Sitting duck. Useless! But I’d hate to see her go. Part of Britain’s history.’
‘Psychological effect?’
‘Precisely. At home as well as here. Household names, all those battlewagons. Remember the sense of doom when the Hood went?’
Hampton said, ‘Yes, very well indeed. My wife ... she had a nephew aboard, an RNR snotty. Went down with the ship.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kemp said.
‘Not to worry, sir. It’s in the past now.’
They were talking for the sake of talking, a human reaction as they waited, since all they could do was wait now. The relevant orders had been passed, the formation of the convoy was breaking up, the cruisers of the escort were moving across with the destroyers, the protective greyhounds of the seas, steaming fast into the attack, following their Asdics, the depth-charges ready in the racks and throwers aft, their main armament manned to finish off anything that was forced to the surface, to shatter the U-boats with gunfire. No survivors on either side would be picked up: the remnant of the convoy, if it came to that, would steam at its best speed, independently, for the rendezvous. Then would come the count.
‘Hey there, Commodore.’
Kemp turned: Brigadier O’Halloran, conspicuous by his absence after the contretemps about orders, had come back to the bridge. Kemp said, ‘This is it.’
‘Sure, I know that. I’m reporting all my soldiers ready, Commodore.’
‘Thank you.’ Ready? Kemp wondered: what for? Ready to slide over the lifted side of a stricken transport, ready to gasp their lungs out in spilled oil fuel, to try to swim for the lifeboats, to die horribly in a series of explosions and escaping steam if they failed to make the boats before she went, or die more slowly, trapped, carried down into the depths until the water pressure crumpled all that was left? He gave himself a shake: those were defeatist thoughts. But it was the waiting that gave rise to them, the sense of helplessness, of being a sitting duck like that pathetic old battleship with her maximum speed of around twenty-one knots.
And the Ardara had little more. Perhaps, with luck, twenty-three with the holding-down bolts in danger of shearing under the stretched thunder of the shafts. Below in the engine-room, the chief engineer was bringing her up to that maximum, standing on the starting-platform, watching his dials and gauges, a mess of cotton-waste in his hands, his white overalls spotless in a hell of heat and din and spider’s-web ladders criss-crossing the space above his head, right up to the airlock into the engineers’ alleyway.
Burrows thought about what was going on up top, in the fresh air. He was thinking about some of the things that could happen — they didn’t often, but there had been a time in his experience when they did, and aboard a certain merchant ship, not the one he was in himself but he had imagination enough to see it all, the engineers and greasers and firemen had suddenly found steel bows knifing in, with ton after ton of seawater pouring in around them as the plates buckled. The engine spaces would have filled, lifting the engine-room complement to the deckhead far above, lifting them to impact and drown. The normal procedure when one ship hit another was for the hitting ship to remain in the hole to act as a kind of collision mat, something to plug the damage until, say, a cement box could be prepared as a running repair; but that hadn’t happened in the case Burrows had in mind. The hitting ship had been a neutral that had attached herself to the convoy without invitation — that had often happened in the earlier days of the war — and she’d hauled off to the accompaniment of panic-stricken shouts and wails, a load of native crewmen dancing about on her bridge and rushing up and down the deck getting in each other’s way and the Captain literally tearing at his hair.
Nasty!
There had been just a couple of survivors from that engine-room, two greasers who’d managed to find the air-lock and get through with seawater acting as a thrust ... and soon after that the ship had been torpedoed anyway, and had gone down.
Burrows turned over the starting-platform for a while to his senior second engineer and moved around, having a word here and there, eyes darting, looking at bearings and such, ears attuned to every sound, any small interruption to the sweetness of the running that might be a forewarning of trouble. A chief engineer needed all his senses alert, sight, sound, smell, touch. Machinery was Burrows’ life but he knew it had a life of its own and was very temperamental. To be a good chief engineer you had also to be a machine doctor, a diagnostician first class.
***
Hampton was conning the ship: that wasn’t the Commodore’s job. Hampton was having his work cut out: in the circumstances of convoy scatter, the precise letters of the regula
tions for preventing collision at sea didn’t always apply, simply because they couldn’t. No ship could alter three or four ways at once and still obey the regulations, and often three or four ships could come close and need to be stood clear of.
If possible.
It was when it became impossible that collisions happened; avoiding one ship, you stood foul of another.
Fortunately Captain Hampton had a cool mind and a clear brain with a capacity for instant decision. Just once during the early stages of that scattering operation did Commodore Kemp feel his blood run cold. A big freighter loaded to her marks with high explosive came suddenly across the Ardara’s bow, surging from port to starboard as she attempted to give clear passage to another ship that in its turn had come across her own bow.
Kemp had to bite back the order, but Hampton gave it in good time: ‘Engines emergency full astern, wheel hard-a-port!’
The telegraphs were hauled over on the bridge, from full ahead to full astern twice, two pulls being the emergency signal. Bells rang and were repeated from deep down in the ship as Burrows, back on the starting-platform, reacted. There was a momentary lull in the spinning of the huge steel shafts that ran through their tunnels to the screws, and then they went into reverse and a shudder ran through the ship, a shudder that became a violent vibration, and water boiled beneath the Ardara’s counter. Churned sea, milky white, rushed for’ard as the way began to come off. On the bridge the Captain ordered the wheel amidships. Below, Burrows wiped his cotton-waste across his sweaty forehead and waited for the trump. Throughout the ship the tension had mounted. The Ardara’s crew guessed the score: the soldiers didn’t. To them the sudden vibration that had taken their steel box in its grip brought another dimension of the unknown. Anything could be about to happen — like an explosion. They stood fast because they were soldiers and not boys or women, but a good many prayers were said and a good many stomachs got the runs until, as suddenly as it had started, the vibration ceased and a member of the transport’s crew came shouting along the alleyways and troop decks: Master-at-Arms Rockett.
‘It’s all right, no panic.’ The loud voice carried and brought comfort. ‘The ship’s all right, just a near miss, almost hit a silly bastard but didn’t.’
Rockett was brought to a halt by a sergeant-major, an infantry RSM resplendent with the Royal Arms on his right sleeve. ‘You, there!’
Rockett stopped. ‘Yes?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Ship’s master-at-arms, Sar-Major.’
‘What actually caused the vibration?’
‘Engines going astern.’
‘You’d think,’ the RSM said, ‘the Captain’d have given some bleeding warning,’ He looked shaken, grey in the face.
Rockett stared at him, face blank. ‘Waste time doing that and he’d have hit. Result — you might be bloody swimming now.’ It was an exaggeration but it seemed to put the RSM out of his misery. He wiped his face and marched off, left-right-left, and began shouting at his troops. Rockett moved on, no longer on the snoop for sin but helping to spread confidence. Moving through the troop decks and then down to the working alleyways he found Mr Portway and his fire parties, standing by the fire hydrants and their hose connections.
‘All well, Mr Portway?’
Portway nodded, seeming oddly startled to be confronted by the master-at-arms. Maybe not so odd; Rockett had heard funny rumours ... things always circulated aboard a ship, nothing could ever be kept entirely secret, and Rockett was aware that there was a secret though he couldn’t get at the truth. Nothing had been said officially so there had to be a cover-up in progress. God alone — or God and a handful of others perhaps knew what the facts were re Portway. But the buzzes! Portway had got rotten drunk and attacked the purser, Portway had attempted rape, Portway had attempted buggery against a young private of the army draft, Portway had seven wives like the man who’d been going to St Ives and he’d gone round the bend with the strain, gone berserk and tried to jump overboard ...
Never mind, Rockett thought. One day it would come out and since whatever it was had never been reported to him it would be no skin off his nose. What intrigued him was where the sod the buzzes had started. In his view it all added up to Crump’s section, and he’d interrogated Crump and Crump wouldn’t say a thing, not even when Rockett approached him on a man-to-man basis, an ex-RPO to ex-colour-sergeant basis. Crump was always like a clam. Obstinate old twit.
Rockett went back up the ladders, feeling the tension again as he moved for’ard along the troop deck. The soldiers were all ready, all fallen in with their kitbags and rifles as if about to go on parade — and they might just as well ditch their ruddy kitbags here and now, Rockett thought, because no deck officer was ever going to allow the lifeboats to be cluttered up with personal possessions if they had to abandon.
Through the troop deck, up three decks to the purser’s office in the for’ard square, along the port alleyway past the surgery and the purser’s accommodation and then, away ahead and dimly seen in the blue police lights, the unsteady lurch of a figure out of a cross-alleyway followed by its total collapse to the deck.
Bloody Norah, Rockett thought, it’s the quack! He put on speed and shone his torch down on the heap. It was the doctor, all right, out cold but breathing, breathing noisily. Poor old bugger, Rockett thought, all grey and rumpled, always with soup-stains down the front of his uniform ... but he should have known better considering he was a qualified quack. Rockett clicked his tongue, bent and grabbed the doctor’s shoulder.
‘Come along now, sir. Come along, get up. I’ll take you to your cabin, sir.’
There was an indistinct utterance that sounded like ‘splurge’ but couldn’t have been, but no other response. The doctor was physically inert.
Pemmel came along from aft. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘The doctor, sir.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Pemmel bent. ‘Out for the count.’
‘Yessir. Wonder what did it.’
‘Don’t try to be funny, Rockett.’
‘Sorry, sir. Just thought it might be tactful like.’
‘Oh — yes! I see what you mean. The sudden vibration, a fall and a bump on the head. Give me a hand, will you?’ They lifted and dragged, the heels slid along the polished corticene, and the doctor was sick. They got him into his cabin, lifted him to his bunk, removed his tie, loosened his collar and took off his shoes. He appeared lifeless though he still breathed.
‘Nasty colour, sir. His face.’
‘Yes. Get Sister Ord here, Rockett. Fast.’
Rockett lifted the telephone. ‘She’ll be in the surgery, sir.’ He called the surgery, passed his message and rang off. ‘On her way, sir.’
‘Right, thank you, Rockett.’
‘Want me any more sir?’
‘No. I’ll cope. Er ... ’
Rockett understood. ‘Soul of discretion, sir.’
Pemmel thought: I wonder! That remained to be seen. Rockett was inclined to be bolshie at times but he was basically an arse-crawler whose future lay in the hands of the ship’s officers. Soon after Rockett had left the cabin, Jackie Ord came in.
She looked at the bunk and said, ‘Lovely sight. I did warn him.’
‘He’s past heeding.’
‘He is at this moment.’
‘I mean all the time.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s right.’ Jackie examined the motionless body, pulling back the eyelids, feeling heart and pulse. Pemmel asked if they shouldn’t get Dr Barnes along, but she said that wasn’t necessary. ‘Just drunk, nothing else. He’ll live.’
‘And the less that know ... ’
‘We all know already,’ she said crisply. ‘It’s not that. It’s just ... well, I’ve got a lot of time for the old soak, Andy. I just don’t want to expose him to a junior who’s not long out of medical school, that’s all.’
Pemmel nodded. ‘Yes, I get you, Jackie.’ He paused. ‘Look, isn’t it about time you got out of all this? I
mean ... pissy-arsed doctors in charge, all the social boozing ... ’ His voice tailed off. ‘I know I’m not the one to throw stones.’
She looked at him, a quizzical expression showing. ‘Are you suggesting I ought to retire?’
‘In a way, yes, I am.’
‘Bit young, aren’t I?’
He said, ‘If you got married, Jackie ... ’
‘Is this a proposal?’
Pemmel sounded defensive. ‘Yes.’
‘Weird setting — quite original!’ Mid-Atlantic, convoy scattering, attack likely at any moment ... one drunk doctor and a lot of work potentially looming. But she laid a hand on his arm and her answer was gentle. ‘I’m a qualified woman, Andy, an SRN, and I’m needed. Even if I did get married, I’d want to carry on.’
‘But surely — ’
‘Andy, there’s a war on. Remember?’
There was a smell of vomit again. Already Jackie had turned the doctor’s face to one side so that the vomit wouldn’t remain in his throat and suffocate him. Pemmel left her to clean up.
***
Before the convoy had moved very far apart the officers on the Ardara’s bridge had heard the series of explosions from the port bow of the original line of advance, the explosions as the depth-charge patterns blasted the ocean aside in their search for the submerged attackers. They seemed to go on without cease and Kemp wondered how any U-boat could survive. Wondered, but knew they would. Submarines were not easy targets to find and not all that easy to sink when found. They could go deep, and silence could be ordered throughout the boat, not even a rattle against the hull that might be picked up. Always the settings on the depth-charges were a matter of guesswork: they could go off too near the surface or too deep, and submarines were capable of surviving quite a number of close explosions. Also they could fool their attackers into thinking they had been hit, fool them by disgorging quantities of oil and bits of wood and clothing to rise to the surface so that the attack would be broken off.
Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 17