The White Empress

by Lyn Andrews

  Joe clung to the wheel against which he had been thrown. ‘Jesus Christ! Torpedo! We’ve been hit!’ he yelled. Every light had been extinguished and from the angle of the deck he knew they were beginning to settle by the stern. For a split second he thought of his mates in the engine room. Poor bastards! He fished in his pocket for the electric torch. Other small flickers of light could now be seen in the darkness. He knew the drill. They were sinking fast. Two more lights flickered close to him.

  ‘Calligan! Cleary! Get to your boat station, we’re going down!’ Drummond’s voice held no note of panic.

  Four boats had been lowered, the others had been smashed by the column of water. In pitch darkness they had somehow managed to unhook the huge blocks. He heard someone yell ‘Mind the blocks!’ and then they were plunging downwards, the dark shape of the sinking frigate frighteningly close. They hit the head of a breaker, then plunged down into the trough, taking in water. They all knew the danger they faced and strained to pull away, otherwise they would be dragged into the maelstrom as the Firefly went down.

  He saw glimpses of the other three boats, but the great combers roaring down from windward were too steep to enable them to stay together. And there was only one thought in all their minds. Their own survival.

  The only officer in the boat was Drummond and as the wind rose to gale force and the spray flew over them in sheets, he decided the only thing they could do was ride to a sea anchor and hope for a break in the weather. The heaving seas filled the boat to the thwarts and they had to bail continuously. Everyone was cold and saturated, many of them were seasick. There was no time to feel terror at the sight of the mountainous walls of water that bore down on them. Unless they continued to bail they would be swamped.

  The boat tossed wildly. ‘Mr Drummond, sir, the sea anchor’s gone! Been carried away!’

  Joe recognised Eamon’s voice. Relief flashed through him before he turned his attention once more to keeping the boat free of water before the next wave broke over them.

  ‘Lash three oars together, lad! They’ll have to do!’ The chief petty officer yelled back.

  There were hours and hours of bailing. His movements were mechanical, his brain sending one message only to his leaden limbs. Bail! Bail! Bail! And it was with a feeling of detached wonderment that he realised that the light he thought he had seen in the distance was the breaking of a wan dawn, struggling through the tattered clouds.

  The wind and the sea had abated a little and he slumped back against the side of the boat. They were up to their knees in water. The faces around him were grey and haggard. Eyes either dull and staring or darting wildly around as they estimated their chances of survival. Four of the crew were dead of their injuries and exposure and CPO Drummond recited what he could remember of the Burial Service, then committed their bodies to the sea. Eamon crawled over to Joe.

  ‘We’ve no chance, we’d better start praying!’

  ‘What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all night!’ He’d sailed these waters many times before and knew that daylight, even at this time of the year, was a subfusc twilight that lasted only a few hours. In these conditions, in an open boat . . .

  ‘No use trying to sail, we’ll ride to the sea anchor and hope! Better start praying, it’s the only thing left!’ Drummond instructed.

  Conversation ceased. Apathy and exhaustion claimed them all. In the dim light that passed for early afternoon CPO Drummond was again forced to recite the Burial Service. Morale had hit rock bottom.

  It was Eamon who saw it first and at his startled cry the others roused themselves from their semi-comatose state.

  ‘You’re havin’ hallucinations, lad! It’s a piece of wreckage!’ Drummond scanned the still heaving, grey surface.

  ‘No, sir, it’s not! The lads didn’t call me “Hawk-eye” for nothing! Look!’

  A few hundred yards to their port the grey conning tower broke through the waves. It had been a periscope Eamon had seen. With the last reserves of energy they all began to shout, arms flailing, then one by one they fell silent, seeing the black swastika on the side of the U-boat.

  ‘God ’ave mercy on us now!’ Eamon muttered.

  ‘So that’s what they look like, I’ve always wondered! Murdering bastards!’ Joe spat out a mouthful of salt spray.

  Figures were already appearing on the conning tower. CPO Drummond stood up, his hands raised above his head. ‘On your feet, all of you! There’s nothing else we can do now!’

  Epilogue

  1950

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  CAT REPLACED THE RECEIVER and smiled to herself. She wondered how Joe would take the news. She drew out a writing pad and envelopes from the drawer of the sideboard and searched for a pen. Then she took everything to the table that faced the French windows that overlooked the fields beyond the house. She started to write.

  Dear Miss Sabell,

  I was delighted to . . .

  She stopped and chewed the end of the pen. She would write but she wouldn’t post it, not today. Tomorrow morning, when she took Hilary to school, would do. After she had seen Joe. It was fortunate he was home, she mused, otherwise she would have had to turn it down flat.

  The sun bathed the neat little garden and the fields beyond in a fresh, clean light. May. A month she could never recall without thinking of the May of 1941. Was it really nine long years ago? Was it already three years since Joe had come home and they had finally been married? Idly she twisted the gold band on the third finger of her left hand.

  She had thought her world had ended that May nine years ago when they heard of the loss of the Firefly. The world had been such a black place then. No hope. No end in sight. No Joe. She hadn’t cried much. Although now, looking back, she realised that she couldn’t remember very much about that awful summer. Then word had come that they were both alive and prisoners of war somewhere in Germany. But after the first rush of relief, there had followed the desperate hopelessness.

  She wrote hundreds of letters, not knowing if any would reach him and she had heard nothing from him or Eamon and her fear and desperation had risen again. Looking back she didn’t know just what had kept her going, kept hope alive in the five years that had followed. And then it had all been over.

  She had joined the ecstatic crowds that had spilled out into the streets. Singing, dancing, hugging and kissing each other on VE Day. She had been able to bring Hilary and Sean back to live with her and they had both hated it, at first. They were used to the wide, open countryside, knowing everyone in the village by name. The devastated city, full of strangers, had terrified them but gradually, they had adjusted, as children do.

  And then he had come home. Older, thinner and with streaks of premature grey in his dark hair, but still her Joe. They had been married in the Church of the Blessed Sacrament which was still in some disrepair, due to the May Blitz, and they had spent a whole blissful week in Southport.

  He hadn’t wasted those years spent in captivity. CPO Drummond had taught him a great deal and with the dire shortage of experienced manpower, he had gone back to sea, sailing as chief engineer on the Aorangi, one of the six Canadian Pacific ships left from a fleet of twenty-two.

  She ran the end of the pen along her lower lip, her eyes not seeing the thrush perched on the branch of the sapling elm they had just planted. It had been then that they had decided to find a home of their own. It hadn’t been easy for houses were in very short supply. But they had at last found this house in Moorhey Road, Maghull, beyond the city limits, and she had fallen in love with it at first sight. It was a struggle, as they were buying it. But the shortages of the war years had meant she had been able to save and with Joe’s greatly increased salary they were just managing.

  She wrote a few more words and then paused. She would have to ask Marie to come and look after the children. She laughed aloud. Children! Sean was fifteen and an apprentice in an engineering factory. Her gaze wandered to the photograph of her daughter on top of the sideboard.
The small oval face with the serious blue eyes and neatly plaited, chestnut hair made her smile. She looked so demure, but she could be a handful at times. She reminded her of herself at eleven. But Marie had a way with them both. She had always been very close to Sean. Marie had married Richard Hocking and was desperately hoping for a child of her own. They lived quietly with Mr and Mrs Gorry in Yew Tree Road.

  Maisey had a ‘prefab’ as they were called, on the East Lancashire Road – a single-storeyed house of prefabricated blocks which were being used to ease the desperate housing situation. Gradually the bombsites were being cleared and new houses built. Maisey was ecstatic with her hot and cold running water, bathroom and inside toilet. She kept it like a palace and no speck of dust was allowed to linger on any surface of her utility furniture for more than a few hours. The O’Dwyers had dwindled somewhat in number, for Dora had married the driver of the canteen lorry and gone off as a GI bride to live in Charlotteville. Ethel had married a Norwegian sailor she had met and had gone to live in ‘that god-forsaken country with names yer can’t pronounce,’ as Maisey called it.

  Her gaze rested on the photo of a young man in naval uniform. Eamon hadn’t wasted his time either. He had also been a pupil of Drummond’s. He had stayed in the Royal Navy and was carving out a career for himself, having reached petty officer. Her thoughts returned to the letter and Joe. She still hated the time he was away at sea and only lived for his arrival home, so why on earth had she told Miss Sabell she would accept, pending his approval? She had almost forgotten what it felt like to have the deck beneath her feet. Almost, but not quite.

  ‘Salt water in your veins, nostalgia or maybe latent ambition?’ she said aloud to the black and white cat, lying on the floor by the windows, luxuriating in the sun’s warmth but with one eye fixed on the thrush still perched on the tree outside. She pushed the letter aside and went to the sideboard cupboard and drew out a large, brown envelope and emptied the contents on the table. She spread the photographs out, then picked one up. It was of the Empress of Britain.

  She sighed to herself. ‘You’re part of the past now.’ There had been six Empresses in 1939 but only two had survived. One of them had been the Empress of Japan, renamed Empress of Scotland in 1942 when the Japanese had entered the war. It was this Empress that now filled her thoughts. On 9 May the Empress of Scotland was due to sail on her first voyage after being refitted on the Clyde. Miss Sabell, now retired, wanted her to consider taking charge of the stewardesses for this first peacetime voyage.

  Joe waited outside the school gates. Any minute now the doors would open and they would burst out, laughing, pushing and shoving, but he could always pick her out by her red-brown hair and vivid blue eyes. For years those blue eyes had caused him a great deal of soul-searching. When he had come home she was nearly seven and at first she had resented him and he had resented her, for whenever she looked at him he was reminded of David Barratt. Gradually all thoughts of her natural father had diminished, until they had become irrelevant. She didn’t know about him and she never would. The name on her birth certificate was Hilary Josephine Calligan and that was who she was: his child, for he had legally adopted her. She was his daughter and he loved her.

  ‘Dad! Dad, can I go to Lucy’s for tea?’ She was tugging at his sleeve. She was tall for her age and, as usual, her hair had escaped from its braids. He noticed the ribbons stuffed into her blazer pocket.

  ‘Well, that’s fine thanks I get for coming to meet you. How was your day, Pudding?’ he laughed. The nickname was one he had conferred on her, for it was the exact opposite of her stature. She was as slender as a rail. Cat worried about her, saying she was too thin, that if she got any thinner they could use her for a clothes prop! ‘Alright, except for Miss Concannon! Can I go to Lucy’s, Dad? Her mum said I can.’

  He laughed at the earnest, upturned face. ‘Oh, go on, then! But you mind your manners and I’ll be round to collect you at seven.’

  The two of them giggled.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Send Sean round for me. Lucy’s sister likes Sean.’ They collapsed into giggles again.

  ‘Ah, so that’s it! Well, I’ll spare him the suffering, I’ll come myself! Off you go, Miss, and behave yourself!’

  When he arrived home Cat was sitting at the table scribbling away at a letter. He smiled. She’d obviously forgotten the time. He tousled her short, curly hair.

  ‘Oh, Joe! Oh, Lord, is that the time and there’s no meal even started!’

  He laughed. ‘A nice reception, I must say. My daughter can’t wait to rush off with her friend and my wife is so engrossed writing letters . . .’

  She ran her fingers through her hair. It was a gesture he loved.

  He took her in his arms. She was more beautiful in his eyes now, as a woman of thirty-five, than she had been as a scrawny sixteen year old. ‘What is so important, Mrs Calligan, that you have used up nearly a whole writing pad? You never take so much trouble when you write to me – or do you?’

  She looked up at him and for an instant he saw the little Irish slummy peering at him.

  ‘What are you up to, Cat? I know that look of old?’

  ‘I had a telephone call from Miss Sabell. The Empress of Scotland is sailing on the ninth and she wants me to sail with her, as chief stewardess.’ It all came out in a rush, but she surmised it was better to tell him like this than beat about the bush.

  ‘Go back to sea?’

  ‘For one trip only. Until they appoint a new, permanent chief. Marie will look after the children, I know she will!’

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Cat, you never cease to delight me! Here I was thinking you were the epitome of the domesticated wife and mother, and you still hanker after the sea! The great White Empress sails again! And I thought you’d finally got over it!’

  ‘It’s all your fault, Joe! It was you who dragged me off the cattle boat to see her!’

  ‘And how I’ve regretted it!’

  ‘Do you remember when I once said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you got to be second officer and me chief stewardess?’ And you said it would be a bloody miracle? Well, you can eat your words!’

  ‘Not quite! I’m only chief engineer and I’ve not said anything—’

  She cut off his words with a kiss. ‘But you won’t say no, will you? Do you realise that this is the same ship, the very first White Empress I ever saw and I can still remember the way I felt. It was like a St Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin. The crowds, the band, the cheering, the streamers! We nearly made the miracle come true, Joe!’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘I think we have made it come true. “Mrs Calligan. Chief Stewardess”. It has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?’

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘I made it, Joe! I finally made it, even if it’s only for one trip!’

  * Dock policeman