The Death of the Fronsac_A Novel

by Neal Ascherson

  He was contemptible. But I was tired of dodging that question. ‘I am thinking about it...’ The truth was that my own decision to stay in Britain was fast dissolving, and I had to admit it. Many reasons: those warnings from the Colonel and the Commandant, this sudden hostility in Scotland, that hope of Wisia’s that Polish ground under my feet would bring me to myself. And Helen.

  In these weeks with her, in the old stone house, we had become close again. Well, close? I helped with Hughie; she came several times to my bed when she thought the other folk in the house were asleep; we could still make each other laugh. I mustn’t lose her again. But the only way I could think of to keep her was ungainly, conventional: to marry her. And then take her back to Poland.

  Lose her? Helen had never belonged to me. ‘Another marriage, are you daft?’ She pulled the sheet back over me, as she stood up. ‘And in Poland would I not just be your Scottish souvenir?’ But I saw that she was listening, reflecting.

  *

  I read that in Paisley there was to be a public meeting on ‘Rebuilding Europe: Progress, Peace and Socialism’. The speakers came from the National Union of Mineworkers, the Labour Party, the Transport & General Workers... Then I came to the last name on the list. ‘Councillor Isabella Fowler, Cowdenbeath, Communist Party of Great Britain’.

  It seemed wiser to go in civilian clothes. A light snow was falling on the town; there had been a power cut, and oil lamps stood on brackets round the school hall. But more than a hundred men and women, huddled in overcoats, had turned up on this winter night to sit on the narrow school chairs.

  I saw Tibbie at once. Looking down from the platform into the smoky gloom, it took her some time to see me. But just as a speaker was asking: ‘Comrades, rise for a moment’s silence in honour of the Red Army men and women who died for our freedom!’, she noticed me and went quite scarlet with delight. While the audience hauled themselves to their feet with a great scrape of chairs, trod out their Woodbines on the floor and stood, Tibbie kept smiling at me.

  Her speech was about the new National Coal Board, about the end of the cruel dynasties of colliery owners, about the way workers were taking over production from the bosses in France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and the new People’s Democracies. At the end, the convener asked ‘Comrade Isabella, as a noted voice in the revival of working-class music’, to give us a song.

  She stood up and, unaccompanied, began ‘A Man’s a Man for a’that’. I heard again that sweet, tangy voice, which seemed to give Burns’ words a flavour of remembered joy rather than of future struggle. The hall loved her and joined in, more loudly than in singing ‘The Red Flag’ which followed.

  As the hall began to empty, she came down and hugged me. ‘Ach, Major Mike, for God’s sake! I was feared for you. And is the foot sore yet? Ach, it’s so great to see ye.’

  The pubs had closed, and a coach was coming to take her and some of the comrades back to Kirkcaldy. But we talked in the corner of the hall until the janitor threw us out. I told her about Normandy and Germany.

  ‘Are you really in the Communist Party, Tibbie?’

  ‘Sure I am. Where else? I mind a talking to I gave ye, about the new world coming after the war, power to the people and that. But ye widnae listen. Ye’d no be tellt.’

  She told me about how she and a group of comrades were trying to spread Scotland’s treasure of popular song and bothie ballads. ‘The folk need them back. They’re songs of protest forbye. I’m learning the guitar, Mike, and setting the old songs to it, and we go round the pubs with them. No round the halls yet. But that’ll come.’

  Later, the inevitable question arrived. ‘How come ye’re still here? When are ye away back to Poland?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it. Maybe soon.’

  ‘Thinking? They’re needing ye there for the reconstruction. Rebuilding Warsaw. I saw such a grand film, about the Polish railways getting moving again, getting steam up after the Nazis tried to wreck all the locomotives. And the music to it: Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance as the pistons get thumping again. What are ye waiting on, with Poland liberated a year and more?’

  ‘Liberation? It looks more like a new Russian occupation.’

  Tibbie stepped back and stared at me. ‘What are ye saying? It’s Polish working folk that’s in charge now, with the Red Army to guard them from the old landowners and the foreign spies. I never thought to hear you talk that way, of all people.’

  A horn tooted. Men and women were lining up to board a coach. Somebody was waving impatiently at Tibbie.

  ‘Ye should come and see what we’re doing in Fife, Mike. The coal mines, the railways, next the foundries, maybe then the lairds who fancy they own the land of Scotland. The Labour government’s awful timid, but the miners will no be held back. And it’s what we see in the Soviet Union that’s guiding us, Mike.’

  She turned to go. She didn’t kiss me. ‘You’re a dear man at heart, Major Mike, so ye are. But that’s you drifting into shocking bad company. The world’s on the move, so don’t you be left behind.’

  Tibbie went across the snow to her bus. She had grown more stately – broader round the shoulders. But her walk was as proud and graceful as before.

  *

  A few weeks later a man came to Glasgow from the new Polish Embassy in London, to talk to the ‘ex-combatants’. Most of us ignored the meeting. A dozen or so turned up and told him what they thought about Katyń, the loss of the eastern provinces, the lies of Communist leaders. He tried to answer above the uproar, but fell silent.

  When the others had gone, I went up to the platform and asked the speaker about repatriation to Poland. I thought he would be surprised, even gratified. But he merely glanced at me over steel spectacles and – unsmiling – handed me typed application forms from his briefcase.

  ‘Will it be possible?’

  ‘I cannot answer such questions. I have a train to catch.’

  25

  The war was long over, but the carcase of Fronsac still lay rusting across the tidal stream. Twice in a lunar day, the sea rose until only three black funnels could be seen across the estuary. Twice the tide washed slowly down to uncover the stub of the bridge and a gleaming length of deck. The gulls, slanting high above the wreck, disdained its broken steel.

  ‘High time to put her out of her misery,’ said the naval officer from the Salvage Service, leaning back against the tilted forecastle to keep his balance.

  ‘How d’ye mean, misery? It’s just metal that’s here.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ketling. Yes, I’m aware of that. A flight of fancy.’

  There was nowhere on board to sit or shelter. Rain was blowing in from the west as the officer lowered himself carefully down the ladder to his launch. Ketling followed him. They settled in the cramped cabin.

  ‘You’re in charge, Mr Ketling. I’ve read your contract with the Admiralty and the Ministry of Transport. But I gather you have been telling people that you anticipate no problems lifting this vessel. Even though she’s bedded in well over a fathom of mud? Even though a lift on this scale has never been attempted, let alone achieved? Forgive me, Mr Ketling, but your experience at marine salvage seems to me pretty limited. Do you really know what you’re taking on?’

  He flipped open a stapled set of papers: the latest survey from the Boom Defence and Marine Salvage authority. Fronsac displaced 3,600 tons, almost the weight of a light cruiser. She had settled herself nearly nine feet into the sludge and gravel of the seabed, and there was some six fathoms of water over her submerged section even at low water. She was lying at a steep seventeen-degree list to starboard. On top of that, the gaping rent in her side caused by the explosion had allowed hundreds of tons of sand and silt to slide into the hull. Below decks, in ammunition lockers and passageways, there remained an unknown quantity of shells, some probably rusted. Under the stern decking, covered chutes held the depth charges.

  ‘No way I’m starting work before you get those damned things removed.’

  ‘I can see why you
worry, Mr Ketling. Depth charges do look nasty. But these ones are probably not even primed for depth. You could chuck them over the side like dustbins and nothing much would happen.’

  ‘I want them away, nevertheless.’

  ‘I’ll talk to somebody. But I’m a salvage chap, not a bomb chap. And it’s your “lift her in one piece” plan I’m worried about. Look at the state of her hull! With that damage and that weight inside her, she’d simply break in two. And then, apart from everything else, the five hundred tons of fuel oil inside her would be all over the anchorage.’

  He stabbed a pencil at the plan of the ship, spread on the table in front of them. ‘No, forget your big lift. Just cut her up into sections, here and here and maybe up at the bows, too. It’ll take longer, but it’s the hell of a lot safer.’

  ‘I’ll be doing this my way. And I’m telling you for why. First, because cutting through the bilges would release that oil anyhow. Second, because you maybe didnae notice the flared bows on her, French-style. Cut the bow off and it would never stay upright. There’s no way you could tow that to the breaker’s yard.’

  Back in Greenock, the officer said: ‘Typical Scotch, might as well have been talking to the backside of a Highland bullock. Takes everything personally. Well, he’s only got himself to blame for what happens.’

  ‘Who’s taking it personally, Peter? He’s probably right about the bow section, and he’s got a point about not cutting into the bilges.’

  ‘Funny thing, he reminds me vaguely of that Scotch “Wavy Navy” chap who was killed when Fronsac blew up. Never actually met him, but saw a photo in his house. Went to his funeral all those years ago. God, whatever was his name? Had a rather scrumptious wife.’

  *

  Ketling knew people who knew people. From now on, he avoided crossing the water to Greenock and took a room in a hotel at Dumbuck, on the other side of the Firth and only a few miles from the wreck. In the dark lounge, men from the shipyards, the Clyde Port Authority, the boom defence flotilla and the Admiralty salvage teams came to talk to him.

  Day after day he sat there, a humped, half-seen figure with a sharp red beard who kept his hat on while he drove question after question, scribbling notes with his indelible pencil. He never smiled. But on occasion, he would clap a man’s shoulder as he walked him to the door. ‘No bother, pal. The boss at your place will never hear you was through here and talking to me.’

  He learned fast. The day came when he confronted the masters of the two dredgers which lay alongside Fronsac, working to clear the banks of silt which had built up against her sides.

  ‘You’re wasting ma time. At this rate, ye’ll still be here when there’s a man on the moon. So the Admiralty said ye to carry on? I’m no interested. Away back and moan to the Port Authority. There’s a proper job needing done here.’

  ‘C’mon, Alex, dinna take the huff that way. If the silt’s no cleared, how will ye run the cables underneath her?’

  ‘Tunnels. Divers with pressure hoses. They’ll drive tunnels under the keel for the messenger wires.’

  ‘Are youse fuckin crazy? Tunnels? It’s black as the deil’s erse down there, and rocks and metal wreckage to howk oot the way. Ye’ll never get divers to look at that job, never.’

  A month later, in early summer, Ketling stood on a pontoon and listened to the rattle of the divers’ air pumps, the whine of the generator powering the undersea lights. Three support vessels lay along the ship’s sides.

  Two divers stood in front of him. The support team had lifted off their helmets, but they still wore muddy insulation suits and the monstrous, clogged boots of their trade. Blackish water was running off them to form pools by their feet.

  ‘What’s the progress?’

  ‘It’s the most bloody ’orrible job I ever let meself in for. I did clearing the inner basin at Devonport after the blitz, I thought Scotland would be a doddle after that. More fool me.’

  The other diver, a younger man with untidy black hair, said nothing. He shuffled to the edge of the pontoon, held on to a rail and began to vomit.

  ‘Aye, but how’s the tunnel?’

  ‘It’s inch by inch. Can’t see two foot in front of our noses, even with the lights. The tools are bloody useless; much of the time we’re using our hands. Big stones, jaggy bits of metal. Yeah, a new pair of these sodding gauntlets doesn’t last an hour, often as not. You should see the state of the lads’ hands – see mine!’

  ‘Aye, right, but how’s the tunnel?’

  ‘Given time, we’ll probably get there. That’s if loosening the muck down there doesn’t dislodge the whole bloody ship and bring it down on top of us. Frogface, that’s what we call ’er. Digging our own graves we are, in a manner of speaking.’

  When Ketling had gone, the diver said to his mate: ‘I really hate that bloke. He don’t give a fuck about us. Oh, why ain’t I back on Margate Sands with me little bucket and spade?’

  *

  The first tunnel to be finished reached under the ship to the port side. When a pair of four-inch messenger wires had been passed through, the support ships delicately harmonised their winches to ‘saw’ the wires forward towards the centre point of the hull. But an attempt to do the same with the wires in a second tunnel, near the bows, came to a standstill against massive sandstone boulders.

  There was a meeting on board a support vessel. Peter, the naval officer from the Salvage Service, said: ‘Look at it this way. You could never have lifted her with just two sets of cables anyway. And she’s getting heavier every day with the sand drifting into her.’

  Ketling said: ‘I know that fine. Did I ever say two would be enough? I’m needing more wires, more tunnels.’

  ‘How many more? Look at the cost of them.’

  ‘Sixteen more. That’s on top of the two we have already.’

  ‘Good God, Ketling! For a start, you’d never find enough divers.’

  ‘I’ll find them.’

  ‘And you’ll have to reduce the weight. That means getting the silt out of the interior of the hull, where it’s submerged. So you’ll never be able to do that till you raise her. But you can’t raise her till you get the silt out. Sort of checkmate, wouldn’t you say?’

  There was a pause. Ketling carefully took off his hat and laid it on the table. ‘If ye think the only road to lighten a boat is to pump it clean, then you are ignorant. It needs said to your face, Lieutenant Commander. Ignorant! I’ll be getting near a thousand tons off her in the next three weeks, all according to my plan. See, I’ve a job to finish here. And I won’t be doing with obstruction, I’m telling you, no from the like of youse nor anyone.’

  Afterwards, the retired naval surgeon who looked after the divers came and stood by Ketling. They watched the visitors’ launch lift up its bow and foam off across the Firth.

  ‘You shouldn’t have been so hard on that little Peter fellow. Didn’t you know he was mixed up with Fronsac before, back at the time of the sinking? When that Lieutenant Melville was lost overboard, naval intelligence sent him to question the family for weeks. Pointlessly, in my view.’

  ‘Is that the case? Well, now.’

  *

  Back in Greenock, the Lieutenant Commander said: ‘Get me off this job, can you? That fat bugger insulted me to my face today – said I was ignorant. If it was still wartime, I could have had him charged.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I can see to it. But, Peter, why do you get on so many people’s wicks? That’s probably why you never made it to Commander.’

  *

  From Paris, two French officers arrived in Glasgow and were driven down to Dumbuck in an Admiralty staff car. One carried a briefcase with detailed design drawings of their ship. His English wasn’t up to much. But Ketling pushed his thick finger back and forth across the drawings as he explained to him that the ‘centre of buoyancy’ – the focus of the lift – would have to be well forward of the ship’s centre of gravity. This was because the wreck’s bows needed to leave the bottom first, to ease her
out of the trench she had dug for himself. ‘Are ye with me?’

  The Frenchman listened intently but made no reply. He looked again at the elevation plan of the hull. Then he went back to his briefcase and pulled out a tiny, exquisite model of a destroyer in white balsawood. He placed it on the bar. Very delicately, he raised the bow a quarter-inch and then slid the model forward and upwards until it was dangling free between his finger and thumb.

  ‘Aye, that’s right. Ye’ve got it! That’s just the very way we’ll lift her.’

  The other Frenchman was more difficult. He seemed to be a naval lawyer, not an engineer. In English, he explained that he had been a member of the Court of Enquiry into the Fronsac’s sinking in 1940, and he had some questions.

  Did Ketling know Commandant Luc le Gallois? Yes, he did, but only met him a year ago. Had two or three short conversations, about the salvage and the human remains. Did he know anything of a certain Kellerman, a French naval rating stationed on the Clyde during the war? Never heard of him.

  ‘Now I ask you about a Polish officer, a certain Major... ehm... Chouski, Shoosky? Who lived for a time in Greenock? Here is a photograph, an old passport from Polish wartime authorities.’

  ‘Well, I think... wee minute till I remember... I never knew his name but this looks awful like a Polish officer that came across to the wreck one day with your French Commandant. That was back in the war, before the Invasion – would have been early in 1944.’

  Who else did he see with le Gallois? Nobody he could recall. Meetings were in the Fort Matilda base or on board the wreck. Why was the Polish officer with le Gallois that day, and where is he now? No idea. Maybe he was away to the war in Normandy and never made it back. ‘Ye’ll be wanting to see the wreck now, Captain. I’ll fix a launch to take you out there so you can see how she lies.’