On the quarterdeck, the side-party fell in quickly as the rear-admiral appeared. Half a minute later Nick lowered his arm from the salute as the last wail of PO Mercer’s bosun’s call faded into silence. He watched the green barge slide away, its powerful twin engines rumbling as it turned out from the destroyer’s side. What Aubrey Wishart had told him was distinctly encouraging: and it was also an honour to be invited for lunch aboard the flagship. On top of which, there was a dark blue envelope on the table in his cabin, and he could go back there alone now and—
Redmayne, Tuareg’s engineer lieutenant, saluted him.
“Tanks’ll be full in another thirty minutes, sir.”
“All right, Chief. After we get to the buoy, you can get cracking. You’ll make good use of this break, I imagine.”
Redmayne—thickset, a rugger player and a graduate of Keyham engineering college—held up two thick, crossed fingers. “I’ll have her running like a two-year-old. Twist of wire here, lump of chewing-gum there …” His grin faded. “But we’re lucky—whole day and night in—aren’t we, sir?”
“Most of the fleet’s on its way south. Besides, they have this job for us tomorrow.”
“Is it to Suda, sir?”
“You know better than to ask me that, Chief.” He went in quickly through the screen door: he’d seen the coxswain hovering, and whatever Habgood wanted, Dalgleish could deal with it.
Redmayne said, “No shore leave for my department. I need every man jack of ‘em.”
Dalgleish shrugged. “So long as I have at least a dozen stokers to help with ammunitioning, old cock.”
“Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“Sorry I can’t spare any stokers.” The engineer’s eyes were coldly belligerent. “Out of the question, I’m afraid.”
“Now listen to me, Chief, God damn it—”
Nick shut the cabin door behind him, went to the table and picked up the wad of letters and lettercards. He stood, shuffling them like playing cards and discarding the chaff—a Gieves bill, a letter from his bank, another with a Sheffield postmark that would be from the Mullbergh estate’s solicitors. And a couple more of even less interest … End of obvious chaff. Now, one from Paul, recognizable by the slanting, very even handwriting, and with its PASSED BY CENSOR stamp on the front. He hadn’t looked at the dark blue one yet: by sleight-of-hand he’d fiddled it to the bottom of the pack without seeing its face … There was an air lettercard from his uncle Hugh: that small, neat hand identified it immediately. For the time being, he dropped it on top of the others, and looked at the blue one.
He sat down slowly. He felt winded, knocked sideways by disappointment deepening into fright. Sure that it would be from Fiona, he’d been saving up the pleasure, the thrill of confirming it: but he’d never seen this handwriting before. London postmark: he thought, Mrs Stilwell … But it had been sent to him care of Mullbergh: she wouldn’t—
Turning it over, to look at the “sender’s name and address” space, he saw the name: Miss K.Torp.
Kari Torp, for heaven’s sake! Claus Torp’s daughter, and formerly of Namsos, Norway. It had been in Norway—in a fjord called—memory slipping …Folia? Off Vestfjord, the approach to Narvik. That was where he’d last seen Kari Torp.
She’d addressed the letter to him at Mullbergh, and Nick’s old butler, Barstow, had re-addressed it in his shaky copperplate to HMS Tuareg, c/o GPO, London. Barstow, well into his seventies now, was staying on at Mullbergh during the army’s occupation of the house, looking after the small wing that Nick had insisted on keeping for himself and Paul. At least that bit of the house wouldn’t be trampled by pongoes’ heavy boots: and Barstow, who was of the same vintage as Nick’s late father and had been in service at Mullbergh since the beginning of the century, had a roof over his head and a wage to live on.
Well. At least there’d been nothing from Mrs Stilwell.
By the time he’d read all the mail, oiling was finished and it was time to shift Tuareg to her buoy. Then he walked round the ship, looking into most compartments and chatting with everyone he met, in the course of it keeping an eye open for signs of stress. There were signs, all right, but none that were chronic, he thought. It was a relief to hear all the usual jokes, all the usual grouses disguised as jokes. He asked Leading Seaman Duggan, “Going ashore this evening, Duggan?”
“Might stretch me legs, sir.”
Duggan was a CS rating—Continuous Service, as opposed to HO for Hostilities Only—and bright, likely to make Acting PO after his year as a killick. Goodall, a three-badge Able Seaman and pompom gunner, explained that Duggan’s presence ashore that evening was essential, since the Afghans had challenged the Tuaregs to a darts match, and Duggan was the Tuareg star player.
“I’d have thought you’d all want to get your heads down.”
“Well.” Goodall shrugged. “Change is as good as a rest, sir, they say.”
At stand-easy, the break from work in mid-forenoon, he had a glass of squash in the wardroom. The ammunition lighter hadn’t turned up yet, and with the amount of sea-time they’d been putting in there’d been few opportunities recently of meeting his officers en famille. He asked Mr Walsh, the gunner (T), “Is Chief arranging for those cannons to be mounted?”
“We’re ‘oping so, sir.” Chief was at work, down in the engine-room. Mr Walsh, with his seamed, reddish complexion and balding head, looked at least as old as Nick, although he was still in his middle thirties. He’d glanced sideways at Dalgleish. “Not too mad keen on it, but—”
“It’ll be done this afternoon, sir,” confirmed Dalgleish. “The ERAs have got their hands full, but Chief reckons to get some help from Woolwich.”
The job was to mount two pairs of Vickers GO machine-guns, one each side of the searchlight pedestal, between the after pompoms and “X” gun. The four machine-guns had been removed from a badly damaged trawler, and the depot ship’s armourers had already mounted them in pairs by the time Mr Walsh—who had a nose for treasures lying in dark corners—had discovered them in some workshop and arranged a deal. A lot of destroyers had mounted extra close-range weapons—Brens, Lewis, Spandaus, Hotchkiss, and a dozen other varieties, all makes and nationalities and mostly scrounged in the desert ports of Mersa and Tobruk, which the Tribals had never visited long enough for anyone to get ashore and tour the arms dumps.
Mr Walsh asked Nick, “Who’ll man ‘em, sir?”
“I’d say your after tubes’ crew could look after one of them. Not getting much to do these days, are they?” It was a fact: when the enemy came in bombers, torpedoes weren’t in great demand. “Let ‘em take turns at it, if you like.” He looked past Dalgleish—at young Chalk, hovering diffidently in the background. “You need a change too, Sub. Been cooped up in the plot long enough, I think.” He asked Pratt, “Sinclair could work the ARL on his own now, couldn’t he? And help Doc with ciphers?”
Rocky Pratt agreed. Sinclair was a CW candidate, and the ARL was the inertial navigation system, a machine wired to the gyro and to the Chernikeeff log so as to trace a record of the ship’s track on a plotting diagram. Nick told Chalk, “Your action station is now with the first lieutenant at the after-control position. Under his direction you can use the other Vickers, or act as OOQ, as circumstances demand.” Chalk seemed pleased about it. Nick told Dalgleish, “Roddick had better clue him up—and the torpedomen, Mr Walsh—before we sail. How to use the guns and how to clear them when they jam. All right?”
He put down his empty squash glass. Dalgleish began to talk about machine-guns and other close-range weapons: Oerlikons, which everyone was crying for but weren’t in adequate supply yet, and Bofors, to which the same thing applied. Nick gave the impression of listening to the discussion, while he thought about Fiona. The relief at not hearing from Mrs Stilwell had faded into renewed worry at not hearing from Fiona herself. It was a whole month since he’d had a letter from her.
The newspapers and magazines that had arrived in that mail had come b
y surface transport round the Cape, and they were weeks old, so there was no mention of the big raid on London on the night of 10/11 May. There’d been a talk about it on the BBC, though, which Johnny Smeake had heard and told Nick about, in which the point had been made that more people had been killed in that one night in London than had died in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. But—again according to the BBC—there’d been no raids of any size since that night. The suspicion was that the enemy might be saving up for another huge one.
Kari Torp had written, I am in England, and I am being taught some things to make me useful, which my father has said is about time too … She’d given him the Norwegian embassy in London as a contact or forwarding address, and reminded him of his promise, made in a Norwegian fjord, to take her to the London theatres. Her father was at sea again and very well, she said. But as to her being made “useful,” she’d been extremely useful up in Namsenfjord, he remembered. She’d acted as local pilot for Intent all through those narrow, twisting fjordlets, in pitch darkness and under the noses of the Germans. She was a pretty astonishing female, when you thought about it: and an astonishingly pretty one too.
Not in the way that Fiona was. Fiona wasn’t just pretty, she was exquisite. Why the hell she hadn’t written …
Paul was enjoying his submarine training course at Blyth. The trainees, a mixture of RN, RNR and RNVR sub-lieutenants and a handful of lieutenants, were accommodated in Nissen huts inside a wired perimeter; he felt a bit like a POW, he wrote, except that the mess was Duty Free and there was entertainment to be had “ashore,” in Whitley Bay just down the coast and farther down at Newcastle. The work intrigued him, and he thought he was doing reasonably well.
Uncle Hugh had written cheerfully too; but everyone knew what it was like now in the Atlantic, where in the month of March alone over half a million tons of British shipping had been lost to U-boats, raiders, and long-range aircraft. And when you thought of the Atlantic conditions—and the fact that it wasn’t just one trip now and then but one after another, on and on, in all weathers and all through the year—rereading his uncle’s letter and reaching with his free hand for a cigarette, Nick thought, What a job for a man of seventy … And arising from that, What have any of us got to grouse about?
A bugle-call floated across the water: some big ship ordering “Hands to dinner.” Noon. Time to change into Number Sixes, ready for his lunch aboard the flagship.
Andrew Cunningham said, “So you’re the fellow who ticks off Prime Ministers.”
“Quite inadvertently, sir.”
The blue eyes smiled, humour-lines deepening on each side of the straight, decisive mouth. Tanned skin, short grey hair. “Don’t spoil it. You’ve had my admiration ever since I heard about it.” He glanced at Aubrey Wishart. “Envy might be the word.” Now he’d turned to shake hands with Captain Lorrimer of the assault ship Glenshiel. “You’ll be lunching without me, I’m afraid. I’ve a stream of bloody nonsense pouring out of London—as well as some more essential business …” He’d checked, looking back at Nick. “Has Admiral Wishart told you what’s happened to the 5th Flotilla?”
“No, sir?”
“Kelly and Kashmir were both sunk by Stukas at about half past eight this morning. Kipling’s been picking up survivors all forenoon, with bombers on her all the time.”
Kelly was the 5th Flotilla leader, Lord Mountbatten’s ship.
“Would you like my job, Everard?”
He shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Well, I’d like yours.”
“I believe you, sir.”
“Yes.” Staring at him. The blue eyes had a penetrative quality. “We’ll see you in a better one before long, I dare say. For the time being, we’ve all got our work cut out, haven’t we? Your ship’s company in good heart?”
“They’re well up to scratch, sir.”
“Good.” He’d nodded, turned to Lorrimer. “Everard’ll get you there and back all right. Only doubtful point’s the weather—I’m told there’s a blow coming. Anyway, you’ll manage. Sorry I can’t stay now—Wishart here’ll play host for me.” Scanning them both again … “Good luck.”
“Sir—”
“Yes?”
Nick asked him, “Is Lord Louis—”
“Oh, yes. He’s in Kipling, drying out.”
Wishart murmured, when the door had shut behind their Commander-in-Chief, “He’s—well, he’s splendid, d’you know?”
Lorrimer said, “We’re damn lucky to have him, if you ask me.”
“What I was saying earlier, Nick—I’d give my right arm to be at sea, except for the fact that that’s the man I’m working for.” He smiled, lowered his voice so the stewards wouldn’t hear: “Did you know he was given an adverse report after his course on Whale Island, in days of yore?”
“He was?”
“Conduct generally unsatisfactory, it said. He’s got it framed.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuareg steadied, aiming her rakish bow up the line of the Great Pass out of Alexandria. Mine-sweepers moving out west-north-westward, a mile ahead of her and with the first light of a new day growing out that way with them, were trembling mirage-distorted objects floating in a shivery, bluish haze. Saturday, 24 May. Nick heard CPO Habgood’s report float from the voicepipe:“Course two-nine-three, sir,” and Rocky Pratt’s quiet acknowledgement. On Tuareg’s quarter and a cable’s length away, right in the glare of the sun that was scorching up out of Egypt, Afghan was nosing into the swept channel, under helm to turn in Tuareg’s wake; astern of her at the same two-hundred-yard intervals came Huntress and Highflier. Farther back still, half a mile astern of Highflier, the assault ship Glenshiel was just emerging from the harbour, wallowing out through the gap between the breakwaters, bulky and gaudy in her camouflage.
The Glen-class assault ships were converted merchantmen, and in the Greek evacuation they’d proved invaluable. But they’d been sent out here on orders from Winston Churchill, bringing “Lay Force”—commandos under Brigadier Laycock—with the idea of capturing the Dodecanese Islands, Rhodes in particular. Among the officers of Lay Force were Geoffrey Keyes, Randolph Churchill, and Evelyn Waugh.
ETA Plaka Bay was 0200 Sunday morning. None of the destroyers was carrying troops: late yesterday it had been decided to send only about half the force that had originally been intended for this Plaka Bay landing, and that half could very comfortably be accommodated in the assault ship. What was more, her twelve landing-craft—LCAs—would be able to land the six hundred and fifty commandos in one single flight, if Lorrimer and the men’s colonel chose to do it that way. Nick thought it might have been to make up numbers in two other expeditions that their own force had been reduced; Abdiel, the 40-knot mine-layer, had sailed during the night with a detachment for Suda Bay, and three destroyers—Isis, with Hero and the Australian Nizam—would be leaving Alexandria during the forenoon with Special Service troops to be put down at Selinos Kastelli, at Crete’s western end.
Rawlings’s battle squadron and King’s force and the 14th Destroyer Flotilla were all in Alex harbour now. With the battle squadron had come Hero and Decoy, their passengers including the King of Greece.
One other force would be sailing from Egypt this morning. There’d been Intelligence reports of an Italian-manned invasion fleet from the Dodecanese Islands heading for Sitia Bay in north-east Crete, so Cunningham was sending Ajax and Dido with the destroyers Kimberley and Hotspur to search for it. They were due to sail at 0800, pass through the Kaso Strait and sweep the coastline in the Sitia area, and if they met no enemy they were to push on westward and bombard the Maleme airfield.
It was by no means certain, Nick guessed, that Glenshiel’s soldiers would get ashore. The rather similar force—Glenroy, escorted by the AA cruiser Coventry and two sloops—which had been on its way yesterday to Timbaki, some twenty miles from Plaka Bay, had been carrying nine hundred men of the Queen’s Royals, but after a conference with General Wavell about the intensity of the ai
r attacks and the chances of the assault ship being sunk with the troops in her, ABC had ordered the force to return to Alexandria. Then, during the afternoon, someone in London—it was tempting and not difficult to guess who—had stepped in over the C-in-C’s head and sent a signal direct to Glenroy that she was to reverse her course again and continue to Crete. Glenroy’s captain, Captain Sir James Paget, put his ship about again. But as this would have brought her to the Cretan coast at daybreak, which would have been suicidal, Cunningham reasserted his authority and ordered the force to withdraw.
Ashcourt arrived in the bridge and reported that the foc’sl was secured for sea. Hands had fallen out as soon as the ship had passed the breakwater. Nick glanced up over his shoulder, then round at PO Whiffen: he told him, “Down pendants.” In the dancing heatwaves astern, all the ships were now in the swept channel. Within a few minutes Tuareg would be out of it, passing the sweepers who were already waiting at the top end to let this force get by. They’d found no mines this morning.
Nick saw his ship’s pendants, her signal letter and numbers, tumble from the yardarm. There was no sign yet of the blow that had been forecast. He thought it might well be localized, a strictly Aegean wind, and according to the Sailing Directions the most likely wind in Cretan waters at this time of year would be from the north-west. This didn’t guarantee there’d be shelter in Plaka Bay on the south coast, because one also knew that squalls driving through the valleys could strike suddenly and savagely; there was no place on that coast that was really sheltered. Nor would flat-bottomed landing-craft be very handy, he imagined, in bad weather.
Well, it might not blow.
Dalgleish joined him. “Upper deck’s secured for sea, sir. May I fall out Special Sea Dutymen?”
“Yes, please. And let’s have a demonstration of the new guns. As soon as we’ve cleared the channel and before we form up, chuck something over for them to shoot at.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“We’ve lost a motorboat—is that what you told me?”
Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2 Page 14