Directed this far by the mysterious tapping?
“HE closing from astern, sir, fast diesel!”
E-boat, presumably. Or something like it.
“Exactly astern?”
“Yes, sir.” Newton swallowed. “Bearing steady, closing fast, sir.” Across the control room Paul met Quinn’s eyes: both men looked away. At times like this you tried not to show your thoughts, or study others’. Quinn had looked puzzled, Paul had noticed in that very brief exchange of glances. And he was, too. It wasn’t that there was necessarily anything particularly dangerous about this present situation; but it was unusual. The tapping, and the different types of craft up there seemingly acting as a team … The tapping, he guessed, might have come from some shore installation, some new adjunct to the Mysterious Measures.
Ruck had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder that slanted up to the lower conning-tower hatch, and one arm up, ape-like, gripping the ladder above his head. The other hand was in a pocket. Listening, and thinking … Paul was trying to make his own brain work too, make sense of it, see some pattern to the surface forces’ tactics. A trawler on the beam; tapping which had now faded and might have been from some coastal installation from which they’d now removed themselves; and an E-boat chasing up from dead astern …
“Trawler to starboard is in contact, sir!”
“Sure?”
Newton nodded. “Turning towards, sir.”
Ruck pushed himself clear of the ladder. “Group up, full ahead together. Starboard twenty.”
From silent running, Paul thought, to making about as much racket as you could make … But with the trawler already fingering them with its asdics, it wouldn’t make all that much difference.
“Both motors grouped up, full ahead, sir!”
“Twenty of starboard wheel on, sir!”
Ruck nodded. Waiting … Then: “Stop together. Group down.” The submarine was spinning round to starboard, driven by rudder and that thrust of power. Ruck told the helmsman, “Steer two-three-oh.”
“Both motors grouped down, sir.”
“Slow ahead together.”
The one in contact had been on green eighty. And Ruck was turning her eighty degrees to starboard, therefore directly at it. In turning, with that burst of speed he’d have stirred up a whirlpool, churned up a disturbance which might—just might—hold the trawler’s attention for a while.
“Where’s the E-boat?”
Newton began to train his receiver round to find it. Ruck asked Wykeham, “Can you hold her on one motor, Number One?” Wykeham said yes, he could. Ruck ordered, “Stop starboard.”
“Course two-three-oh, sir.”
Southwest. Not the way they really wanted to go. But if the trick worked, Ultra would shortly be passing right under the trawler, and with any luck the Italian asdic operator would be concentrating on that centre of disturbance.
“The diesel HE has passed astern, sir.”
“Where’s the other?”
“Green one-oh. Transmitting.”
“In contact?”
Newton’s long head shook. “No, sir.”
“Starboard motor—”
A depthcharge exploded on the port quarter. The boat shuddered a little, but not badly. Two more explosions—three—four …
“Starboard motor stopped, sir.”
“Very good.” Ruck added, “Bloody mile out!”
Wykeham raised his right hand, crossed his first and middle fingers, then lowered it again. ERA Quinn grinned, scratching at his beard. McClure muttered, behind Paul, “What did we do to deserve this?”
“You tell me.” Paul’s whisper couldn’t have been heard a yard away. “You had the bloody watch.”
“HE astern, sir—that’s the trawler—astern, drawing right. Diesel HE slowing, on red one-four-oh. Slowing and opening, sir!”
“Opening” meant opening the range, going away. Ruck murmured, with a glance upwards towards the surface, “Keep at it, boys.” He told Wykeham, “They’re looking for us inshore. Bloody fools think we turned to port.”
Minutes ticking by …
Ruck had been silent, listening and watching Newton. Everybody listening. The enemy might discover their mistake, return, regain contact …
Might. Might not.
Newton confirmed, after ten minutes, that both lots of HE were a long way astern and fading. Ruck waited, making sure of it for a while longer; then he nodded.
“Open watertight doors. Pass the word—quietly—that we’ll continue silent routine and I don’t want to hear a bloody hiccup. What’s our course now?”
“Two-three-oh, sir.”
“Port ten. Steer one-one-oh.”
“Stand by to surface.”
Wykeham said, “Check main vents.”
Ultra was at twenty-eight feet, at diving stations, and Ruck was at the big periscope. It was dark now, up top, and the control room was dimly lit for the sake of night vision. If you went straight into the dark bridge after bright lights you’d be blind for some possibly crucial minutes.
The clock’s hands pointed at seven-thirty.
“Main vents checked shut, sir.”
“Ready to surface, sir.”
Ruck was dressed for the bridge, in an Ursula suit and seaboots. An Ursula was a waterproof jacket and trousers; first used in a submarine of the same name, it was now standard submarine issue.
“Listen carefully all round, Newton.”
To make as sure of the situation as was possible … In the moments of surfacing in enemy waters a submarine was at its most vulnerable— wallowing with only half buoyancy, and blind, until men were functioning in her bridge …
Paul had come off watch at six-fifteen; he’d had only the last hour of the watch, in fact, after they’d fallen out from diving stations. Ruck had held to the easterly course, so as to get out to where he could surface as soon as it was dark. The night would be spent—as usual—charging batteries, and his plan for tomorrow was to close in to the approaches to the straits again and spend the forenoon in hopes of a target coming through. If none did, he’d carry out a bombardment of some suitable railway bridge during the afternoon, selecting one on either the Italian or the Sicilian coast according to the disposition of A/S craft. Then tomorrow night he was thinking of retiring down-coast to Catania, giving the hue-and-cry up here a day or two to tire itself out. Shrimp Simpson’s orders for the patrol, scrawled on a sheet of signal-pad in Shrimp’s own hand, did allow him that line of withdrawal.
Newton reported, “Clear all round, sir.”
Ruck completed his own visual check. You could imagine the darkening night, the empty sea with the white feather of the periscope’s top cutting through it … “Down periscope. Surface!”
Wykeham ordered, “Half ahead together. Blow one and six main ballast.”
ERA Quinn wrenched open those two valvewheels on his panel. High-pressure air was noisy as it pounded into the bow and stern main ballast tanks, forcing seawater out of them. The signalman, Janaway, had unclipped and pushed up the lower conning-tower hatch; he got off the ladder now so that Ruck could climb up into the tower. He’d get up close under the top hatch, ease the pins out of the clips and take one clip off; he’d be up there in wet-metal-smelling dark, listening to reports from the control room below him as the boat rose towards the surface. When he took the second clip off, the hatch would fairly fly open, its heavy weight flung back by the air pressure that had built up in the boat during the day, mostly from the torpedo firing. Janaway had disappeared into the tower now. Wykeham called, “Twenty-two feet …Twenty …”
Air still roaring, as the tanks fore and aft were emptied.
“Fifteen … Twelve … Ten … Eight feet!”
The top hatch clanged open. Air whooshed up and out: pressure dropped sharply, and a sprinkling of sea splashed on the control room deck. Shaw, the wardroom flunkey, held a bucket under the helmsman’s voicepipe: as the cocks on the pipe—one in the bridge and one down here—were
opened, about a gallon of water sloshed out.
“Stop blowing. Open one and six LP master blows.” Wykeham had had to yell to make himself heard. “Start the blower.” The captain’s voice boomed in the voicepipe: “In both engine clutches, half ahead together, running charge starboard!”
It was already cooler and fresher: stale air had rushed out with the release of pressure. Now as the diesel engines exploded into sudden, noisy life, sucking air down through the conning-tower, there was a powerful, cold wind blowing through.
Wykeham said into the Tannoy microphone, “Carry on smoking.” All through the compartments, matches and lighters flared. Cigarettes had been ready in men’s lips and lights in their hands for the first smoke of the day. Wykeham added, “Patrol routine. Red watch. Red watch to patrol routine.”
“Only a running charge, sir, one side?”
Roffey, leading LTO, the senior electrical rating, looked indignant. Wykeham assured him, “Don’t worry. Only for an hour or—”
He was dealing with some other questioner at the same time.
“Box is bloody low, sir.” Roffey was a short, rotund man, pale-faced from the motor room’s constant warmth, and with bulging, heavily muscled forearms from years of slamming the big copper switches in and out. Wykeham turned back to him. “I know it is. About one hour, then we’ll have a standing charge. All right?”
The diesels could drive the boat along and at the same time put some of their effort into battery-charging. But a standing charge, using one engine for propulsion and the other for charging only, did the job a lot more quickly. You needed all the dark-hours time there was, because the night patrol was very often interrupted, by patrol-craft or other interference … Roffey had gone, and Wykeham was heading for the wardroom to get dressed for the bridge; this was still his watch and Ruck would be getting impatient up there. ERA Quinn stopped him: “Start the compressor, sir?”
“Yes, please.”
To replenish the air in the high-pressure bottles, the stuff you needed for blowing tanks with. It was as vital as battery power. He reached the wardroom, and got his bridge watchkeeping gear out from behind the watertight door. Paul was sitting at the table, smoking, fiddling with a set of poker dice. Wykeham suggested, “Game of liars later, Sub?”
“If the skipper’ll join us, why not?”
“Double cameroon perhaps, for a change?”
“Hardly be time.” You played double cameroon with two sets of dice and a scorecard to fill, and his next watch started at ten-fifteen. He said, “Feels like it’s getting a bit bumpy … Cochon Lazaretto for chow, I’m told.”
The pork would be in the oven by this time. Wykeham headed for the bridge. Bob McClure came from the heads, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of his first one. Paul said, “You’ll never grow to a normal size if you smoke that fast.”
The navigator sat down beside him. He nodded. “And fuck you, you half-Yankee prick.”
It was a happy time of day. The fresh air, the smokes, for the ship’s company a tot of rum and for everyone the prospect of a good meal. Forces’ Favourites from the BBC over the loudspeakers:Vera Lynn belting out “We’ll Meet Again” and the Inkspots keening “Don’t Get Around Much Any More” …Paul said, “Number One tells me you may have given those Gibraltarians water on the knee.”
“What’s this cock?”
“He told me you were, quote, valiantly belabouring their kneecaps, unquote. Eye to eye with the policeman’s shins, he said.”
“He’s an amusing shit, isn’t he?” McClure rolled two more kings, making five. He added bitterly, “To think I went tae the bastard’s help!”
“Other way round, according to him.”
“Och, well. Only because the dagoes picked on me to start with.”
There’d been a party in the submarine flat on Scudd Hill, and apparently there’d been a very pretty little Gibraltarian girl at it, as well as a bunch of Wrens. The local girl had suddenly realized how late it was— there was an 11 pm curfew in force in Gib—and was almost in tears with worry about going home alone. Nobody seemed to know who’d brought her or invited her, so Wykeham with Old Etonian gallantry had offered to escort her, and McClure, who’d been trying to chat her up all evening, insisted on going along too. Somewhere near where the girl lived they were intercepted by two of her male relations, both of whom had immediately attacked McClure, either because he looked easier meat than Wykeham or because he’d happened to have his arm round the girl when the meeting occurred.
“You were reaching up to embrace her hips, Number One says.”
“I’d ignore anything that long streak of piss dreams up.”
“How did the cop get into it?”
“The family were yelling for help, that’s how. Soon as they found they weren’t getting a walkover. By the time the rozzer arrived one of ‘em had scarpered and the other was on the deck. This clown comes running with a bloody great truncheon up over his head, shitface belts him and I join in, and that’s that.”
“Wouldn’t the girl have told them where you’d come from?”
“Might’ve.” McClure threw a full house in one. “But we were sailing in the morning. That’s what the party was for.”
Ruck said, pulling off his waterproof jacket as he arrived down from the bridge, “Bunch of bloody hooligans …”
They’d told him about it—Wykeham had—in case of repercussions, so he’d be prepared with a defence. Ruck had thought about it and agreed that they’d acted wisely; they’d committed an offence, but if they hadn’t taken decision action they’d have ended up in the slammer and Ultra’s sailing would have been delayed.
Ruck kicked off his seaboots. “What’s for supper, anyone know?” Shaw stuck his head round the corner from the galley, and made his “oink-oink” noise. The captain nodded, reaching for one of Paul’s cigarettes. “Good-oh.” He pulled the only chair back, and sat down. “All right, boys. Ace up, king towards.”
“Captain, sir …”
It was the petty officer telegraphist, Parker. He handed Ruck a sheet of pink signal-pad. “To us from S10, sir.”
Ruck took it from him, and scanned it rapidly.
“Well, well . . .” He read it aloud. “To Ultra from S10. Two large troopships now loading in Taranto, destination probably Benghazi. Establish patrol forthwith vicinity 39 degrees 05 north, 17 degrees 45 east.”
He passed the signal to McClure. “Time to earn your keep, pilot. Course to steer, and what speed do we need to get there by first light?”
CHAPTER THREE
“My sister and I remember still …” The dance band moaned softly in a pinkish glow, and the girl singer was tiny, bare-shouldered, blonde. The lyrics were slop, Jack thought, but the melody was all right, adequate as a background against which to smooch around the little patch of floor. Not now, this minute, because Fiona had gone to the girls’ room; he’d made her cry, and she’d gone to repair her face.
What the singer and her sister remembered still was a tulip garden and an old Dutch mill. Then certain glossed-over events connected—one gathered—with the Nazi invasion of Holland, and the last line of each verse was, “But we don’t talk about that.”
Jesus. He thought, mesmerized by the yellow glow of his whisky glass, that you couldn’t safely talk about any bloody thing at all. You wanted to shout it, howl it at the moon, and you couldn’t even whisper it without—he reached for a cigarette, opening the case and fingering it out one-handed—tears …
To start with they’d been sparring, about the same old things. Because these were the last minutes—twenty-four hours yet, roughly, but that short space of time was easily broken down into minutes and seconds—you wanted things clear, understood, explained. Some people might have been noble about it and tried to shield her from the truth, but he didn’t see what kindness there’d be in that, in the long term. Facts emerged and became events: you had to face them then, so why not be prepared for them … He needed—not wanted, needed—to be inside
her skin, have her inside his, so he could leave knowing that what he felt, she’d be feeling too. And to know what she’d do, what he’d be leaving. If he could be certain she’d be throwing herself back at Nick it would almost make the whole thing easier—in the sense of a door slamming and nothing else mattering all that much …
Confusing. Maudlin, perhaps. Drink didn’t help. He tipped some Scotch into his glass, replaced the stopper in the bottle, and gave himself a squirt from the soda syphon. Like most other members of this club he had his own locker and kept gin and whisky in it—duty-free, at that. If you bought bottles here, from the head waiter, you had to pay a small fortune for them and you were inviting a hangover that could last for days; the only genuine thing about those bottles was the label. Fiona was drinking Scotch tonight: she liked it with ginger ale, though, which you had to buy from the waiter and cost about as much as the liquor had.
Thinking back—with the drummer’s wire brush rhythmic in his ears, and a girl who was with an RAF man at the next table smiling faintly when she caught his eye—to how that last conversation had started … Fiona had said—he remembered—”Oh Christ, how I hate this war—and this year specially, this bloody year—”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t be silly—”
“Well, Nick’s away, I’m here—barging in and upsetting your life, splitting you from him—”
“But I’m not split from him!”
He’d told her, “You see—I love you …”
It was muddled now in his mind, and he’d forgotten some bits of the conversation just before that. But he’d said it, just as he’d decided earlier in the day that he had to tell her—except he’d intended saving it for later, for when they’d be back in her flat some time around dawn. It had been a pressure in his mind, and he’d just let it out; then he’d explained, “I didn’t expect to. You know that, of course, it wasn’t—serious, to start with. But I’ve got to tell you this—I never felt it or said it to anyone in my life before. It’s all yours—sort of a parting gift.”
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 6