Another explosion: so far astern it didn’t raise an eyebrow. Then three more in quick succession, and a fifth all on its own. All distant, harmless, as the submarine crept away.
CHAPTER TWO
CPO Gaffney, the senior torpedo rating in the submarine, was cleaning oil off his hands on a wad of cotton waste. He was a tall, bony character, with a deeply cleft chin. He muttered, “Bit over the hour. Not bad, considerin’ the shower of cloth-’eads I got workin’ for me.”
The torpedomen, he meant. They were restowing the gear now, dragging it back in from the gangway. This was the TSC, the torpedo stowage compartment, and for the last hour Paul had been supervising the reloading of the tubes, here and in the tube space, the small compartment immediately for’ard of this one, right in the sharply narrowing bow. It was an intricate and quite arduous task. First the TSC, which was also the main living space for the seamen, had to be cleared of its mountain of hammocks, kitbags, oilskins, seaboots, crates of stores and other clutter. Then the four reload torpedoes had to be eased carefully out of their racks at the sides of the compartment. Heavy bars had to be rigged for them to rest on and slide on, two down near deck level and the other two roughly at shoulder height, and then blocks and tackle rigged to haul them for’ard through the latched-back watertight doors into the tube space and into the tubes themselves. There were a number of complications to it, and it was heavy work in a very confined space. If you made a mistake at the beginning—like having a steel-wire rope the wrong side of a stanchion, and no one noticing it in time—you’d find after half an hour’s hard labour that the whole process had to be reversed and then started again from scratch.
Ultra was paddling eastward at slow speed and a hundred feet below the surface, keeping quiet and level while the reloading was in progress. They’d begun it at about 0830, after breakfast, and now it was getting towards 0940. Paul was due to take over the watch again at 1015, so he’d missed the sleep he’d been looking forward to earlier.
A small price to pay for a 10,000-ton tanker.
“Your fish ran good and straight, TI.”
“They bloody better, sir.”
Torpedoes didn’t always run straight, though. Sometimes they circled, or dived and hit the bottom, or their depthkeeping mechanism went wrong and they porpoised, jumping like game-fish. Paul said, “Touch wood,” and looked around for some to touch … The space was rapidly filling up again with gear: the gangway would be unblocked soon and he’d be able to get aft. There’d be a little more space in here now, with the spare torpedoes shifted into the tubes and the racks empty.
Gaffney asked him quietly, “Bit of a close call, was it, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Destroyer close to running us down, was it?”
“Hell, no.” Paul told him, “Skipper reckoned he had room—just— so he stayed up and made sure of it.”
But it had been a close thing, he thought—half-listening to torpe-domen Booth and Furness arguing as to whether Booth owed Furness “sippers” of his rum tot today, as the settlement of some bet. He knew it had been close by the way Ruck had looked, by the time he’d squeezed that third fish away and then realized he couldn’t stay up for the fourth. McClure, who’d been watching him at that moment too, had murmured when they’d been falling out from diving stations, “We looking for a VC, d’you reckon?”
McClure was a stroppy little bastard at times … Paul went aft. The passageway ran down the submarine’s starboard side. On his right he passed first the petty officers’ and leading seamen’s mess, then the ERAs’, then the galley. Able Seaman Shaw, the wardroom flunkey, asked him if he’d like some coffee.
“Thanks, I would.” Even Shaw’s coffee, which tasted exactly like Shaw’s tea. You knew which was which by the shape of the pot he made it in.
Wykeham was at the wardroom table, with a mug of the same liquid as well as some paperwork, a battery log, in front of him. Paul said, “Tubes reloaded. They’re stowing the gear now.”
“Shake the skipper and tell him, will you?”
Ruck was asleep on his bunk, under a blanket and with his back to the rest of the wardroom. It was more an alcove than a room, a space about seven feet square with two settee berths and two bunks that hinged up above them. A narrow bench with lockers in it and a chair on the gangway side of the table completed the furnishings.
Paul touched Ruck’s shoulder. “Captain, sir.”
“Yeah?”
The answer came immediately, as if he hadn’t been asleep. But it was habit: even in sleep he’d be half-awake.
“Tubes reloaded, sir. They’re putting the gear back now.”
Ruck rolled on to his back, and checked the time.
“Good. I’ve known it done faster, mind you.”
“We’ll improve with practice, sir.”
“Who’s on watch?”
“Navigator is, sir.”
“Tell him to come round to two-nine-zero and bring her up to sixty feet.”
Wykeham swallowed the last of his coffee. “I’ll see to it.” He capped his fountain pen and slid out.
Reversing course now, Paul thought. Heading back into the straits. It seemed rather soon to do that, when you’d just stirred things up in there. Ruck murmured—as if he’d read that thought, but staring at the deckhead’s mass of piping and probably just thinking aloud—”They won’t be expecting anything there now. They’d expect us to be miles away and legging it like hell.”
He was probably right, at that. Shaw brought the coffee … Sipping it, savouring its distinctive aroma of metal polish, Paul thought again of McClure’s critical Looking for a VC? There was one VC in the flotilla already: Wanklyn, captain of Upholder.
Ruck said, “Seems you’ve brought our luck back to us, Sub.”
Paul had gone sick in Scotland, just when Ultra had finished her work-up period on the Clyde and had been about to sail for the Mediterranean. He’d come out eventually as a passenger in a freighter which had been part of a Malta-bound convoy. Ruck had promised him, when his appendix problem had come up, that if he could get himself to the island quickly enough he could have his job back: he’d taken out a spare-crew officer as a temporary replacement. But Paul had been lucky to make it to Malta at all: the ship he’d taken passage in had been sunk, and he’d ended up in one of the escorting destroyers, finally arriving with nothing but the salt-stained clothes he’d swum in.
He’d missed Ultra’s first two patrols, on each of which she’d sunk one small ship. This morning’s tanker was therefore the first major success Ruck had scored out here. Perhaps he had been over-anxious not to miss? As a newcomer to the flotilla of seasoned veterans, he’d have wanted to prove himself worthy of that company, and it was an exceptionally high standard to live up to.
You could feel the movement and angle on the boat as she planed up to sixty feet and the rudder pulled her round through 180 degrees.
When he’d arrived at the Malta base, Paul had learnt that Ultra was at sea, due back in two or three days. He’d been sent for, and welcomed over a glass of gin and water, by “Shrimp” Simpson, the flotilla’s commanding officer—Captain S10. It was a considerable honour for a young RNVR sub-lieutenant, but Shrimp happened to be an old friend of Paul’s father, Nick. He was a short, sturdy, fiercely energetic man with a fine sense of humour and a friendly, easy-going manner. About forty, Paul guessed. He’d seen Paul’s father in Malta a couple of times, he said, when Nick had been there for short periods with his destroyer flotilla; more recently, of course, Captain Sir Nicholas Everard had been appointed in command of the cruiser Defiant, and taken her to join the Eastern Fleet.
Captain Simpson asked Paul, “Am I right in thinking you were at school in America when the war started? Came over and joined on the lower deck?”
“I was at college, sir.”
“I beg your pardon.” Shrimp smiled. “But your mother lives over there, is that it?”
“Yes. She married an American, after she and my father di
vorced.” “She was a White Russian, wasn’t she? And your father married her in the Black Sea in 1919, when we were fighting the Bolsheviks … Yes, and I met her here in Malta—oh, years ago … Where were you born?”
“In England, sir. Yorkshire.”
“But here in Malta, in the late twenties—your father was a three-striper, in a battleship, they had a house here and there was a child— son—was that you?”
“Must have been, sir.”
“I’ll be damned.”They both laughed. Shrimp asked him, “I don’t suppose you’d remember much about the place?”
“Not much, sir. I remember the house, and a children’s party on board that battleship, and my father teaching me to swim …”
“Just as well he did.” Shrimp frowned. “You chose a peculiar way to get out here, Everard. From Gib you could have cadged a lift in one of our supply submarines. You’d have saved yourself that wetting.”
“Couldn’t get to Gib, sir. Nothing that was calling there had room for me.”
“In a hurry, were you?”
“Lieutenant Ruck might not have been able to keep the job open for me, sir. If my replacement had had too long to settle in.”
Shrimp had nodded. “In those circumstances, if you’re anything like your father you’d probably have cut his throat.”
He’d had two days with nothing much to do except familiarize himself with the base and get to know some of the other junior submarine officers. Some were his friends already, from meetings in home waters. There were ten submarines in the flotilla at this juncture, including one Polish boat, and at any one time about six out of the ten would be on patrol.
The base itself, Lazaretto, was on Manoel Island in Marsamxett Harbour, which was to the northwest of Valletta;Valletta in fact stood on a promontory dividing Marsamxett from Grand Harbour. Lazaretto was an old sandstone complex which in years gone by had been the island’s quarantine establishment, and among names of detainees carved into the stone on one high, sheltered balcony was that of the poet Byron, who’d languished here and complained about it later in his verse. But the Luftwaffe were out to demolish the place now, and in February they’d made a start by hitting the seamen’s messdecks, leaving them roofless and gutted. Raids were so frequent that they were almost continuous on some days—the Sicilian airfields were only fifty miles away, and the RAF were always short of fighters.
There was alternative accommodation for officers and crews in flats in the nearby suburb of Sliema, and there were also rest camps in which ships’ companies could spend some harbour periods, right away from the base. And Shrimp Simpson had had burrowers at work ever since he’d been here, tunnelling into the sandstone cliff which was right up against the back of the Lazaretto building. He’d told Paul, in that interview, that in 1934 there’d been a proposal to excavate submarine shelters that would have made a Malta flotilla safe from bombing and would have been easy to accomplish in that soft stone, but the Treasury had vetoed it. The total outlay would have been the same as the cost of building one U-class submarine now, in 1942.
The flotilla had its own farm, right in the Lazaretto base. The important part of it was a piggery, but there were also chickens, rabbits, goats and a turkey that had a foul temper as a result of sailors feeding it dried peas soaked in rum. Pork from the piggery provided most of the submariners’ meat, and the pigs ate all the flotilla’s garbage. It had been Shrimp’s idea, and the project had been set up with private money of his own. He was a hell of a guy, Paul thought—the sort of man who would be a good friend of his father’s.
“Your watch now, is it?”
He looked up at Ruck, and nodded. “Will be shortly, sir.”The Tannoy hummed, at that moment, as McClure switched it on in the control room: the Scots voice rasped, “White watch, watch diving!”
Shrimp had said, finally, “When you next write, give him my regards and tell him I’m delighted to have an Everard here.”
He hadn’t written yet. Because he knew that when he did he ought to tell his father about recent happenings in London: about the girl—Fiona Gascoyne—whom it was rumoured Nick intended to marry, and Jack Everard, Nick’s half-brother. Paul had been with Jack in London when he’d first set eyes on her—knowing damn well she was Nick’s girl …
There was no doubt that if his father did marry Mrs Gascoyne, Paul thought, he’d be landing himself in a hellish situation. Jack wouldn’t let her go: he’d said as much. He’d also proved how little he was worth: he’d set out to do it. He was a hard case, he didn’t give a damn, and he had his own strange, family-background reasons for hating Nick. Also, although he was Nick’s half-brother, he was of a different generation: only two years older than Paul, in fact. Fiona was young too—much younger than Nick—and sensationally attractive; and a thoroughgoing bitch.
How did you put that down on paper—to your own father, about a woman he was in love with and planned to marry?
The relieving watchkeepers had all passed through to the control room, and the men they’d taken over from were filtering back for’ard. Wykeham returned, and confirmed to Ruck that the boat was at sixty feet, course 290.
“Good.” Ruck sat up, and tied the laces on his canvas shoes. He murmured, “We’ll come up and take a squint around. Perhaps Everard can find us another tanker.” He edged out, and into the control room. They heard him order “Thirty feet.”
Wykeham told Paul, “I want some shut-eye now, Sub. If you see anything, keep your trap shut, eh?”
“Oh, sure …”
He’d keep the thing about Fiona Gascoyne and Jack to himself too. Because he didn’t have the guts to write that letter. It shamed him that he didn’t, but he’d been thinking about it for quite a while and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it. If he could have seen his father and talked to him—if he could have led up to it gradually, and had a chance to find out first whether he did really intend to marry her … Paul sighed, wishing to God his father was still in the Mediterranean.
“Something worrying you, Sub?”
Wykeham was looking at him curiously. With his eyebrows hooped up like that he really did have the look of a camel: haughty, rather supercilious … Paul shrugged. “Personal. A bloody awful letter I’m going to have to write and wish I didn’t.”
“What’s her name?”
He got up from the table. It was twelve minutes past the hour, time to go next door and take over from McClure. He told Wykeham, “Fiona.”
In London it was twelve minutes past nine, and still half dark behind the drawn curtains in Fiona Gascoyne’s flat in Eaton Square. She lay with her eyes open, studying the outline of Jack Everard—on his back beside her, his chest expanding and contracting with deep, even breaths. She thought, looking at him across a few inches of crumpled pillow, He looks like a thug. A real bastard.
Even in his sleep, relaxed …
There was a very slight resemblance to Nick, when you looked at him not in profile like this but full-face. Only a hint—and you wouldn’t have seen it if you hadn’t actually searched for it, and if you hadn’t known them both about as well as it was possible to know anyone … But why bother, why look for a resemblance anyway?
Because you need to find a common element so you can link them, merge two men into one so you could love just one?
She was as deeply involved as he was, now. It was a bloody mess, and she hadn’t asked for any of it. It had been just—fun, to start with: flirtation with an attractive man who also happened to be Nick’s young half-brother. And from his side of it—well, she’d attracted him, and he’d been intrigued very much as she’d been because of the relationship with Nick: she’d only come to understand later that half the attraction sprang from the fact that she did belong to Nick—or Jack thought she did …
He said, “You’re twitching.”
“I thought you were asleep. I haven’t moved.”
“You’re like an electric charge, sometimes. You—have a magnetic field around you … What are you worrying a
bout?”
She sighed. “Take your pick.”
He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. He said, “No point in worrying. On a weekend morning, when I’m with you. It’s the one time there isn’t anything to sweat your brains about.”
He thought he was going to get killed. He’d told her so, when he was drunk. Twice … In the sober light of day neither of them had referred to it, but she knew he did believe it, and it had become part of the jumble of thought she groped around in and became lost in so often. In that clutter it was like a joker in a pack of cards. If you let yourself accept it, it swept the board: and then, because it eliminated the confusion that enveloped her relationship with Nick now, it created a new and sickening problem of its own. The idea of losing Jack, of Jack being dead—dead, but still part of her as she couldn’t imagine him not being now, and trying to live as if he wasn’t there—especially in a relationship, marriage even, with Nick?
Even loving Nick, the thought of it loomed like nightmare.
“I have to go back tomorrow night.” Jack turned his head to see what time it was. Nine-thirty … “So we have thirty-six hours. Think we could spend it all in bed?”
“Of course not!”
“You want me to take you out?”
“Bet your ugly mug I do. I’ll make us a snack for lunch, but—”
“No, we’ll lunch at the Gay Nineties. I’ll ring and book a table. Don’t want to use up all your points.” He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “You’re still the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life. Let’s paint the town tonight!”
“I thought you wanted to stay in bed.”
He swung over, and his arms slid round her.
“We’ll come back here for the afternoon. And we don’t have to hurry now, do we?” His head moved forward and down; he muttered with his jaw abrasive against her neck and shoulder, “There aren’t many weekends left. If any. I want to make the most of the time we have.”
Now he’d said it sober.
Or perhaps she was jumping to a wrong conclusion … She asked him, “D’you mean you’re being sent away somewhere?”
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 4