He joined a group of junior submarine officers. Someone offered him a drink, but he didn’t have time to hang around.
“Thanks, but I’ll be getting back to the boat. Our flunkey’s doing a fry-up.”
Hewson of Unslaked said he’d be getting along too. For a similar reason … “But I might offer you a swift tot on your way across. How’s that?” A drink in Unslaked, he meant. Paul nodded. “OK. Thanks. Just a quick one.” He felt sad, a sense of loneliness or loss; it had come to him, he thought, when he’d been reading the letter from his father. There was really no sound reason for it: only a feeling, a kind of sadness that had been growing since then in his mind.
Hewson said, pausing at the scoreboard, “Couple of items to be filled in here now, h’m?”
It was a large sheet of cardboard on the sandstone wall beside the door, and it showed the results of all the submarines’ patrols. The names of the boats were in the left-hand column, then vertical ruling provided rectangles in which the results of each patrol were recorded graphically from left to right. Little sketches of ships sinking, U-boats blowing up, trains wrecked, commandos landing in canoes. And some of the boats’ records ended with a rectangle blanked off by diagonals.
Those could haunt you, if you let them. You could only guess at what had caused each loss: a mine, depthcharge, ramming, U-boat’s torpedo, an E-boat at night … Mines, it was thought, were the biggest killers. There were so many of them around, and if you’d taken much notice of them you could hardly have operated at all.
Upholder—Wanklyn’s boat—had completed twenty-three patrols in fifteen months. His first four patrols had been blank, until he’d got his eye in. Since then, his score had been phenomenal.
Thumping drone of diesels: and it would be going on all night. The wind was down, the surface of the creek barely disturbed. Sentries on the submarines’ casings were jet-black silhouettes against the gleaming ripples. Paul thought about his father, and the letter he’d had from him. Dated early February: an air letter-card …
HMS Defiant
c/o GPO London
My dear Paul,
By the time this reaches you I expect you’ll be under the wing of an old friend of mine known to us all as “Shrimp.” Give him my regards, please. I can’t even guess where I’ll be when you’re reading it. In case we don’t see each other in anything like the reasonably foreseeable future I want to tell you, though, that I’ve been consistently delighted at news of your progress and achievements, and wish you continuance of it as well as personal happiness in all other spheres as well. I look forward immensely to seeing you at Mullbergh, God willing, when this wretched war is won and we can all become human beings again. We have a great deal to catch up on, you and I. I often think about it, and regret that we’ve been so far apart in recent years. My consolation is that it obviously hasn’t done you any harm; you’ve turned out splendidly.
I shan’t go on with this now. It’s said, in case I don’t have another chance to say it. Good luck. Write when you have time …
In Unslaked’s wardroom—which was a duplicate of Ultra’s—while Hewson uncorked a bottle Paul took the letter out and checked the date again. His father had written it only days before the fall of Singapore. You could understand that line: Can’t guess where I’ll be …
“Water in it?”
“A little, please.”
There’d be absolutely no point, he thought, in writing to him about Jack and Fiona. He was glad, now, that he hadn’t.
CHAPTER FIVE
On the Friday when they sailed from Cardiff it was blowing up for a gale, and Tubby Sharp—former ML skipper, now CO of the E-boat—was prophesying that Sauerkraut would founder a long way short of Falmouth. Jack told him, caustically, to make sure he had lifebelts for all hands, including the two ERAs. Jack and his team were taking passage in the minesweeper HMS Gourock, but he’d lent Pettifer and Wood to Sharp in case of any trouble with the E-boat’s engines. The artificers hadn’t been too pleased about this, but nobody had any way of knowing how an E-boat might behave in bad weather.
It was a northerly blow, and once they were out of the Bristol Channel they really felt it. They’d pushed off from Cardiff at 1630; even just outside the harbour it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but by the time the light was gone it was truly miserable. Gourock led the way, showing a blue stern light for the E-boat to follow, and Jack’s torpedomen stood watches at the after end of the sweeper’s bridge solely to keep track of the boat plunging along astern. Nobody had realized how near to impossible this would be, and after a while Gourock’s captain signalled Sharp to burn a masthead light. In the waste of rolling, driving sea it wasn’t easy even then; when the E-boat was in a trough, the crests were higher than the light.
Off Ilfracombe at 11 pm course was altered to southwest, for the run of about a hundred miles inside Lundy to pass Hartland Point, Tintagel Head, Newquay … The alteration put wind and sea astern: there was less rolling but more savage pitching, and a danger of the screws racing through coming clear of the water when her snout went down. Gourock reduced to revs for eight knots. Jack had intended to turn in and leave the worrying to this ship’s captain, but he found he couldn’t. Most of the time he stayed with the look-out—one hand for binoculars and the other for holding on with, and jammed in against the end of the sweeper’s flag-locker—straining to keep that speck of light in view. Then searching for it again—anxiously, when its disappearances were prolonged—when they lost it. Seas burst regularly over Gourock’s quarter, drowning her afterpart in foam while spray sheeted like ice on the cutting wind. Gourock, ancient though she was—she’d been launched in 1919—displaced 700 tons to the E-boat’s sixty.
Departure from Cardiff could have been postponed; it would, Jack knew, have been sensible to have waited. Seamanlike, some might say. But the weather wasn’t expected to moderate for several days, and there was a worry that if they didn’t get to Falmouth in time to dovetail with whatever else was happening they might be cut out of the operation altogether, if the commanders of the main force—or the planners, whoever it was—already disliked having to include them.
Smith, the commander, had agreed that the risk did exist. And despite his gloom Tubby Sharp had opted to set out. He’d suggested to Smith, “If it’s all that bad, we could turn back, couldn’t we?”
He was paying for it now, Jack thought. In that tossing, gyrating little craft there could well be broken legs and ribs … And why not have waited for the weather, for Christ’s sake? When all he had to do to get Fiona was stay alive!
Incredible. Too marvellous to be real. It justified every damn thing that was happening or ever had happened. As if sea and sky had changed colour and the world assumed a different shape …
Trolley and his sergeants hadn’t been around to say goodbye to. Or to say anything else to. They’d pulled out on Friday evening. It hadn’t been easy to get the loan of their services in the first place, Smith told Jack, and they’d been in a hurry to get back to wherever they’d come from.
In the enclosed, central part of the minesweeper’s bridge her skipper, an RNR lieutenant-commander, seemed rooted, as much a fixture as the binnacle. And he made sure the air in here stayed foul from the shag tobacco he smoked incessantly. He was a strange, rough-looking individual, with one eye wild that didn’t look at you: he took a pipe out of his mouth now and shouted, “Kye?”
Jack shook his head. He wasn’t seasick and didn’t expect to be, but he wasn’t going to invite trouble either by staying in this atmosphere or by filling his stomach with liquid.
“What are you up to with a bloody E-boat, then?”
Bawling, over the noise of wind and sea and the old ship’s rattles, Jack yelled back, “Can’t tell you. Don’t know myself.”
It might be a raid on Brest, he thought. He didn’t know whether any part of the docks there bore any resemblance to the mock-up he’d been training on, or what the purpose of such a raid might be, but with Falmouth as starti
ng-point it seemed reasonable geographically. For the same reason he’d considered the Channel Islands as a possibility, but decided that neither Jersey nor Guernsey could possibly have dock installations of the kind they’d been training to deal with.
“Q-ship operation, is it?”
“I suppose it could be.”
“Some kind of cloak-and-dagger stunt, eh?”
Jack shrugged. The skipper roared with laughter. “Read about it in the papers, will I?”
Dawn came up silvery under a funeral sky somewhere off the coast between Newquay and St Ives. Growing light revealed that Sauerkraut hadn’t noticeably changed shape: she was plunging like a gamefish on a taut line, battling through seas that swept up from astern and rolled right over her, hiding her for minutes at a time. They were being set inshore, and Gourock’s skipper altered out to counter this. At the same time he discovered that despite having revs on for only eight knots they’d been making ten over the ground, thanks to having this wind astern.
Back at the rail, watching the E-boat’s erratic and violent motion, Jack thought about his promise to Fiona to try to make friends with Nick. Get on a brotherly footing with him, was how she’d put it. He’d told her, “Not too easy, considering he’s old enough to be my father.”
“Why are you like you are about him, Jack?”
It would have been very difficult, and taken a long time, to explain in any detail. Old history, the whole atmosphere in which he had been brought up; and other relations involved, including two dead ones … He’d tried to give her an idea of it, and to explain that in essence, going back to the start of it from his own point of view, it was Nick’s attitude to him more than his own towards Nick.
They’d left it at that. And even to himself now the past seemed unreal, irrelevant. Either it was through having tried to talk about it, describe it to her, or because the future was suddenly so full of promise.
They were off Cornwall’s southwestern bulge when he went down to breakfast. At 0900 course was altered to due south, to pass Cape Cornwall and leave the Longships lighthouse close to port. An hour later the wheel went over again, after which Gourock was leading the E-boat southeastward with Wolf Rock coming up to starboard and Lizard Point ahead, progress much easier as they moved into the shelter of the land. By the next change of course—off the Lizard at 1300, and fish pie for lunch in the sweeper’s smelly bridge—they were making twelve knots instead of ten, and the E-boat was having a comparatively easy time of it. Still rollercoastering, but she was in sight all the time and Sharp was having no difficulty keeping her in station.
Crossing Falmouth Bay at two-thirty, Gourock signalled to Sauerkraut to report any damage and/or injuries. Sharp replied, One broken wrist, one ERA concussed, minor breakages and leaking shaft gland.
So he’d be minus one ERA. But a shaft gland wouldn’t take much fixing.
Falmouth’s Port War Signal Station ordered them to a jetty where a whole fleet of MLs was berthed. They were in trots three and four deep, and some of them were still in the process of tying up, having shifted to make room for the minesweeper. Gourock squeezed herself into the vacated space, and after she’d secured the E-boat berthed alongside her. Jack didn’t wait for a gangway; he climbed over the rail, and jumped. He called to Sharp. “Which ERA’s concussed?”
Sharp walked slowly towards him down the boat’s port side, staring at him strangely. He began, making a performance of it, “How are you, Tubby? What sort of a bloody awful trip did you have, you poor fellow? Lucky to be alive, aren’t you? While some of us lie around in the lap of fucking luxury and then don’t even bloody well enquire—”
“Ah.” Jack was looking past at him as ERA Pettifer rose from a hatch. “What’s the score?”
“Woody got chucked clear across the engine space, sir, cracked his nut on the gear casing. Went out cold. I thought he’d had it.”
“We’ve asked for an ambulance. Where is he?”
“Below, sir. Still unconscious.” Pettifer glanced at Sharp. “Officers’ quarters.”
“In my bunk, to be exact. Had to lash him in, what’s more. It hasn’t been any bloody picnic, I assure you. And the smashed wrist, in case your interest should extend that far, is one of a pair attached to young Bellamy.”
Bellamy, an RNR sub-lieutenant, was Sharp’s first lieutenant. Jack went below to see ERA Wood, and the ambulance team arrived when he was down there. They strapped Wood in a Neil-Robertson stretcher and carried him ashore, and Bellamy went with him, his arm in a sling. He told Sharp, “I’ll be back when they’ve fixed this up, sir.” He was tall and very thin, a schoolboy who’d temporarily outgrown his strength. Sharp told him, “Just do what they tell you. If they want to keep you, you stay. I’ll get out there later on.”
“I’ll be back.” He looked aggrieved. “I’ll be perfectly all right.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll need two hands, and you’ve only got one. I’m sorry, Tim.”
Signals arrived, by hand of messenger. The minesweeper, it now transpired, was to boiler-clean here, and would serve as accommodation for the Naval Task Unit. There’d be plenty of room, since two-thirds of her ship’s company were being sent on leave, and it was a lot more convenient than having to move to some shore billet. Jack sent for PO Slattery and Sergeant Bowater to give them this news. There was a sheaf of other stuff addressed to him—Officer Commanding NTU—on domestic matters such as victualling, pay, leave—no leave—shore recreation facilities and censorship of mail, and the originator of all the signals was shown as Senior Officer 10th Anti-Submarine Striking Force.
He asked the signalman who’d brought the messages down to him, “Who’s this SO 10th A/S Force?”
“Naval HQ’s on the seafront, sir.” He pointed. “Over that way. Used to be an hotel. Can’t miss it—sentry on the door, an’ that.”
“And who’s this individual?”
“You mean Commander Ryder, sir?”
Sharp was on the jetty, staring at the trots of motor launches …
“Seen those?”
The numbers painted on their sides weren’t familiar; they weren’t from the base in Scotland. Jack frowned. “Of course I’ve seen them.”
“Observe the fuel tanks too, did you?”
He was right … Each of the Fairmiles had two auxiliary tanks on deck, just as Sharp’s ML had. Jack murmured, “God help us.” Sharp corrected him: “You mean God help them. At least after our little joyride I know old Sauerkraut’ll stand up to just about anything that comes.”
“I’m sorry you had a bad time, Tubby. Dare say we should have waited.”
“Except we wouldn’t have been here, would we? … What’ll you do about your ERA?”
“Nothing I can do. ERAs with commando training don’t exactly grow on trees. We’ll manage all right, as long as Pettifer doesn’t crack up. You’ll replace Bellamy easily enough, won’t you?”
“Might even be time to get a bloke down from Scotland.” Sharp nodded. “I know who I’d ask for, too.”
“You’d better come along with me now, and see if we can fix it. I’m off to call on the SO 10th A/S Striking Force.”
“The SO what?”
“This chap.” Jack showed him the signals. Sharp said he’d had a batch too, but he hadn’t looked at them yet; there was a direct connection, he explained, between peace of mind and the non-receipt of orders. Jack interrupted this philosophical dissertation: “It’s a seafront hotel that he hangs out in. He’s away, but there’ll be someone around. Coming?”
There was a gathering of ML personnel on the launches’ sterns, with binoculars trained on the unfamiliar shape of the E-boat. They’d need to keep souvenir-hunters from stripping her, probably; Sharp would need a harbour watchkeeper on his boat, as well as the minesweeper’s gangway watch. He was suggesting this when they heard a rumble of powerful engines: it was a motor torpedo boat, puttering up towards the ML berths. And something odd about it, even at this distance … It would be passing, in a minute.
Then he spotted the peculiarity, which at the first glance had told him this MTB wasn’t the same as others; instead of having a torpedo tube on each side of her, she had both tubes mounted for’ard, on her foc’sl. They’d fire over her bow, and it was a totally new arrangement.
Sharp said, shielding his eyes, “Peculiar-looking object.”
“Certainly is.” The number on its side was 74. “By the way—what about your shaft gland?”
“My blokes’ll have it fixed by tomorrow evening. With Pettifer’s help … What’s this fellow call himself—SO A/S Force?”
“A/S Striking Force.”
“Codswallop.”
“Camouflage, anyway.” It had to be. If these MLs belonged to it, at any rate. Not only did they have the fuel tanks on deck, but their dinghies had been removed and the space on their sterns taken up by an extra Oerlikon. You caught submarines with depthcharges, not Oerlikons …
They walked on. Seeing a lot that was of interest. Including, on their way out of the docks, a grey-painted passenger ship secured alongside. Men in khaki were visible along her rails, and there were groups of them lounging on her well-deck. Also, there was an armed soldier as well as a naval quartermaster on her gangway.
Sharp commented, “Looks like we’ve come to the right place. And it’s a bigger show than anyone has so far bothered to mention to yours truly.”
Jack pointed ahead. “Here come some more of them.”
This was where he got the biggest surprise. A platoon of soldiery was doubling towards them along the quayside. They looked as if they’d been worked hard: they were sweating under the weight of their packs and equipment. And the officer doubling alongside them was Trolley. Jack stopped, watching them approach. A strange element was the sound— how little there was of it; you heard the pounding feet but not the usual crash of service boots bashing the ground in unison. It was so quiet, in fact, that you could hear the runners’ hard, rasping breaths. Soldiers in soft-soled boots, for God’s sake; and of all people, Trolley. He’d stopped beside them. Shouting after his platoon, “Carry on aboard ship!” He grinned at Jack; he didn’t seem to be breathing very hard. He said, “Surprise, eh?”
A Share of Honour: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 4 Page 12