“The people I landed at Plaka may have fought their way through. Would they know what’s wanted?”
“Well.” Wishart spread his large hands. “They were to secure the route. There’d been no order to evacuate, though, at that stage.”
“Retimo’s where you said the field hospital is. All those women?”
Wishart took a long drag at his cigarette.
“Nick, it’s a bugger.” He shook his head. “Yesterday General Freyberg reported that the Suda troops had reached the limit of endurance. It’s the air thing again, you see … Only hope, he said, was withdrawal to the south coast. He also reported Retimo cut off, Heraklion surrounded. Same day, Churchill signals Wavell: ‘Victory in Crete essential, keep hurling in all you can.’”
“Are they mad, in London?”
Wishart shrugged. “They don’t know their arses from their elbows. Wavell explained it to them yesterday, though, in words of one syllable, and they do seem finally to have glimpsed the realities of the situation. Better late than never.” He slapped his hands down on his knees, and stood up: a bulky, towering man. “I’m off now. Late already. Nick, don’t worry about that girl. She’s much too pretty to come to grief.”
On deck, ammunition boxes were being slung up out of the lighter on the torpedo davit, and seamen working at high speed under the direction of Petty Officer Roddick were uncasing the shells and cordite charges and sending them on down to the shellrooms and magazines. Pompom and point-five ammunition went straight down in its boxes, except that on the gun platforms gunners squatted, loading belts. Mr Walsh was darting to and fro, ticking off items on his clipboard, and on the other side of the ship CPO Habgood and assistants were doing the same with sacks and crates of stores. Up ahead of the stores lighter, the water-boat was just casting off. Dalgleish had a stranger with him, an RNVR lieutenant with a beaky nose and deepset eyes: a cadaverous, gloomy-looking man. After Wishart had left, Dalgleish introduced him to Nick.
“Lieutenant Drisdale, sir, formerly of Masai.”
Most of Tuareg’s officers would already know Drisdale, of course, and it would make things easy. Nick asked him, “Are you an experienced navigator?”
“One year in Masai, sir, and before that I was in a minesweeper.”
“Glad to have you, anyway.” He looked at Dalgleish. “Ashcourt could show him where everything is …You’ll find all the corrections are up to date, I expect, Drisdale. Pratt was a very conscientious fellow.”
“Yes, sir.” Drisdale nodded. “A very nice one too.”
There was a letter to be written, to Pratt’s family.
Redmayne, the engineer, was waiting to have a word with him. And PO Whiffen, the yeoman, was hovering with a log of signals. A lot of the routine stuff wasn’t transmitted but came by hand, on paper. Too much paper by half: and there wasn’t time now to bother with anything but essentials: there was a fresh and mounting sense of urgency as the new task loomed.
Jack Everard had gone ashore, to collect new charts, replacements for worn-out ones and also some inshore charts that weren’t in the folio and might be needed in the course of the evacuation. His most pressing need, in fact, was to get to a shore telephone.
While they were looking out the charts he’d asked for he borrowed an empty office with a phone in it, lit a cigarette to calm his nerves, and then asked the dockyard exchange to get him Gabrielle’s number.
Her telephone was ringing, ringing …
“Oui?”
“Gabrielle?”
“Who is it who asks for her?” French, and female, but not Gabrielle. Some visitor to the apartment … He spoke in his own halting, Dartmouth-accented French, “This is Jack Everard. May I speak to Gabrielle, please?”
She laughed, as if he’d said something funny. Then she said, “Oh, Lisa … It’s Martine here, my dear.”
“I don’t understand, I’m sorry. Martine—”
Martine was Overton’s girl. She broke in, in that rapid French gabble, “Lisa dear, how sweet of you to ask us. Gabrielle and I would adore to, but I’m so terribly sorry, you’ll have to do without us. Her beloved is returned, you see, and my own, and—”
“Beloved? Who—”
“Oh, you’re right, these husbands do get in the way.” She’d laughed again, and called out to someone else in the room: a string of French, with more hilarity mixed up in it. There was a man’s voice then, from some distance, and then—his nerves jumped—Gabrielle’s, unmistakable
… She’d laughed too, and answered—incomprehensibly. Martine said into the phone, “I’m truly sorry, Lisa, joking apart. Both our wretched husbands are insisting we must dash away with them to Ismailia. So Lisa, pet—”
“Look, my name is not Lisa—”
Shriek of laughter: “But we know this so well, my dear!” He could see that lovely, laughing face: and somewhere in the room behind it he could imagine Gabrielle’s too, Gabrielle asking her cousin with the enquiry in those wide, dark eyes of hers, who this really was … “Lisa, do you hear me? Are you still there?”
“What?”
“I said Gabrielle would like a little word now.”
“Hello?”
“Gabrielle, what on earth is—”
“I’m so sorry, my darling. We’ll be away at least a few—well, I suppose as much as a week, or—”
“Husband?”
“Oh, never mind that. What’s a little week matter? In about seven or eight days I shall be here again and this wretch will have deserted me again, and—oh, just one moment …” He heard the man’s voice, closer now: then Gabrielle’s quick, high note of protest: “You certainly may not speak with her! All you wish to do is flirt, and I won’t have it! Lisa, goodbye, darling.”
Click. She’d hung up.
Gabrielle had a husband?
She’d gone to a lot of trouble to keep it quiet … In the boat again, on his way back to the ship, he tried to remember details: how, for instance, there’d been no signs of a man’s clothes or shaving gear, anything masculine at all. In fact the apartment and its decor and atmosphere had been so entirely, positively feminine that no such possibility had occurred to him. Of course, he hadn’t looked inside any cupboards … Had she worn rings? Yes, he remembered a small clicking shower of them on the glass top of her dressing-table as she’d shed them.
Another man’s wife?
Overton wasn’t in the wardroom, and Jock McCowan said he’d gone to turn in early—most people had. So tonight he couldn’t question him about Gabrielle. Couldn’t do a damn thing—not for eight days. Or seven … But—he put the question to himself, and shirked answering it—would he go to see her then? Ring her, in a week’s time?
He’d been privately censorious of Overton’s affair with a married woman; he’d been careful to ignore it. That had been the first step—looking the other way because if he hadn’t it might have upset his own apple-cart. Now, the second step?
He was in the chartroom, stowing away the new ones. Then he went on to the dark and empty bridge to change the one on that table, the chart for the Alex-Kaso run tomorrow. He’d put the light on, pulled the old chart out, and begun to roll it, glancing at its clean replacement: he was looking at the Kaso Strait, with Scarpanto like a lizard flanking it to the north-east. Tomorrow—by this time tomorrow night, he thought—we’ll have fought our way through that gap. Touch wood … The mental shiver told him that he was tired and that it would be sensible to turn in. He put his hand to the light-switch, and his eyes went back to the charted shape that was Scarpanto: it was truly lizard-like, reptilian, and you could think of its Stukas as reptiles too, the spawn of that large, sprawling parent—poisonous, yellow-faced, massed and waiting for the victims …Crossing the bridge with the rolled chart under his arm he paused, leant there for a moment, looking over towards the destroyer moorings and all around the big, quiet expanse of harbour. Lights burned on ships still ammunitioning or storing. Others besides the Heraklion force would be sailing in the morning: there was to b
e a lift at the same time from Sphakia on the south coast, a small one presumably, only destroyers. Reflections of those lights grew out like spears across the dark water: a snatch of music in the breeze was from one of the French ships, lying demilitarized with only skeleton crews on board. A sentry’s hail of “Boat aho-o-oy!” was answered by a shout of “Guard!” Guard-boat doing its rounds: the officer of the guard from the duty battleship toured the harbour several times during the night to check there was a sentry awake and alert on each ship’s upper deck.
Turn in now, he thought. He pushed himself off the side of the bridge, headed for the ladder. He’d have to be up by 5:30; and for some time after that there might not be many opportunities for sleep.
Gabrielle, married? Just—amusing herself, then?
He woke—shaken by the snotty of the watch at 0530—with the same thought in his mind, and a strong desire to talk to Overton about it. But he wasn’t able to until late in the afternoon, just after 1630, by which time the force was only a hundred miles from Scarpanto. They’d been zigzagging all day with revs for 23 knots on, making good 20 on the mean course, and there’d been no sign of the Luftwaffe. The four cruisers were in line ahead, the flagship Orion leading and Carnarvon bringing up the rear, and the eight destroyers were spread in a screening arc across the line of advance, wing ships tailing back far enough to be on the flagship’s beams; on the starboard side of the screen the wing ships were Tuareg and Afghan. It was an arrangement that made sense, since the Tribals were to be detached, with Carnarvon, after dark and after they’d all passed through the Strait. While the others raced westward to Heraklion, these three were to diverge north-westward and patrol a line 25 miles north of the evacuation port. Then they’d rendezvous with the main force north of Kaso at 0430, for the run south.
At 4:30 pm Tom Overton had come up to confer with Tyler, who was officer of the watch for the First Dog, about some change in the watchkeeping roster. Conference over, he’d drifted across to the side of the bridge and begun to fill a pipe. Jack went to join him: it was the first time he’d seen Overton today when there hadn’t been other people hanging around.
Overton looked up at him. “May this peace and quiet last, eh?”
“Fat chance … Tom, I … er … went ashore last evening, to get some charts. Happened to find myself near a telephone, with a few minutes to spare, so …”
“Tickled to hear from you, was she?”
“Her husband was there with her.”
“Crikey!” The pipe-stuffing stopped for a moment. “Who did you tell him you were? You should always have some yarn ready, you know.”
“You aren’t surprised, then.”
“How d’you mean?”
“You knew she had a husband, didn’t you?”
“My dear boy, most of them do have. I suppose if I’d thought about it …”
Bell-Reid shot a hard look at the pair of them as he stalked past, heading towards Napier in the front of the bridge. “Shall we close the hands up, sir?”
“I suppose we should.” Howard Napier lowered his glasses, and checked the time. Now he was looking round for his navigator …
“How far are we from the Kaso Strait, Pilot?”
“About … ninety miles, sir.”
“We had better, then.” He nodded to his second-in-command. “Close ‘em up, please, John.”
Bell-Reid swung round: “Bugler! Sound action stations!”
Just before 5:00 the red flag ran up to Orion’s yardarm, and within half a minute the cruisers were doing a controlled AA shoot at a flight of three Italian high-level bombers. Their pilots seemed more interested in survival than in getting their bombs anywhere near the ships: as the last bomb splashed into an area of unoccupied salt water, Drisdale spread his arms horizontally and intoned, “Wide …”
Despite his appearance of deep gloom, Drisdale had been Masai’s resident comedian. So Dalgleish said.
“Should we remain closed up, sir?”
“Until dark, yes,” Nick answered Dalgleish over the telephone to the ACP. “Better lay on action messing, for supper.”
To port, Orion was a handsome sight. Low, powerful-looking with that single wide-based funnel, four-inch AA batteries abreast it, main armament of six-inch turrets fore and aft. Ajax, famous for her part in cornering the Admiral Graf Spee at the battle of the Plate in December 1939, was Orion’s duplicate. Astern of her came Dido, elegant-looking with the two slightly raked funnels and the tier of three for’ard turrets, two more aft. By contrast Carnarvon, plugging along behind those three, had a decidedly old-fashioned look about her. But her engineers seemed to have done a thorough job in record time on those recently defective engines of hers. Nick saw tin hats in her bridge, in place of white capcovers: so she too was staying closed-up at action stations.
“Alarm starboard! Green four-oh—Stukas!”
“Red flag, Yeoman!”
But Tuareg hadn’t beaten the flagship to it: Orion’s red warning signal had shot up just at that moment. All the fleet’s guns swinging round and lifting …
“There, lad!”
Mr Walsh yelled it as he grabbed the killick torpedoman’s shoulder, pulling him round and at the same time pointing aft—at a single Me109 coming at them from astern at wavetop height, now rocketing upwards to sweep over Afghan with its guns flaming: Tuareg next in line on that same flight-path … Overhead, the rising note of a Stuka’s siren suggested that a co-ordinated attack might be developing. The torpedoman bent his knees, settled the stocks of the twin Vickers against his shoulders, took aim: the Messerschmitt was coming straight towards the ship, so there was no deflection. Walsh had shown the other Vickers gunner the target: he was a torpedoman too, and he was on it, whipping round and sighting and opening fire in one swift movement. Two double streams of tracer were flying at the fighter’s nose, and point-fives joining in now, too, from farther for’ard. The German didn’t like it, he was banking away, twisting his plane to starboard, dragging it up and round with flames visible inside it then gushing out, streaming right to the tail with the black cross on it: the Messerschmitt went over on its back before it hit the sea, sea leaping in a long, low, moving fountain as it skidded in upside-down. Cheering from the guns’ crews aft: and the pompoms were thundering at the Stuka—which was pulling out high, letting its bomb go wide. But the leading torpedoman was pointing, his mouth open as he shouted—inaudibly, the words drowned in noise. Mr Walsh saw what he was pointing at: a bomber going down nearly vertically at the destroyer Imperial, out ahead. She was under helm, and nearby ships were barraging to keep the attacker high: Imperial had no pompoms, only point-fives. The Stuka pilot seemed to know it and to be taking advantage of it, plummeting down through the canopy of shell-bursts—still diving …
They saw the bomb detach itself: and the Stuka levelling, not far above the sea’s brilliant blue. The bomb burst just about alongside its target: a mountain of sea shooting up right against Imperial’s stern. Almost for sure, she’d be stopped by that one … But she hadn’t even faltered. The waterspout had crashed down across her afterpart and she’d steamed on out of it. Mr Walsh shouted in Dalgleish’s ear, “‘Ighly adjacent, that was!” He was scanning the sky again, getting ready for the next attacker.
Nick checked the time: an hour had passed since Imperial had survived her near-miss, and the force was still intact, well inside the Kaso Strait and with land in clear sight to port. They were up to schedule, maintaining the ordered speed of advance under constant, concentrated attack. It was astonishing, he thought, that ships could be bombed so determinedly for so long and that none of them should be hit: should yet have been hit …
“Port fifteen.”
Attending to business: turning towards the direction of a Stuka’s dive, and looking all ways at once. It was rather like a game of squash, except that if you missed a squash-ball it didn’t kill you.
“Midships.”
The attack had been going on for three hours now. Another halfhour and
the sun would be sliding down behind the Cretan mountains. Thirty minutes, and several bombs per minute … The Stuka was hidden in shell-bursts: emerging now, yellow snout bright with the sun’s glint on it. He watched it closely and at the same time retained a peripheral awareness of the possibility of being jumped on simultaneously from another direction. The Stuka boys had evidently been putting their cropped heads together, planning synchronized attacks; he’d seen it half a dozen times in the last hour.
Bomb releasing now …
“Stop starboard. Starboard twenty-five.”
Spin her away from it: and with a quick glance round at sea-level for the positions of other ships, all of them dodging bombs. Tuareg’s thumped in thirty yards to port, close enough to feel the jar of its explosion through the wood grating under his feet.
“Midships. Half ahead both engines.”
“Midships, sir. Half ahead both, sir … Wheel’s amidships, sir …”
Lilting tone: a voicepipe litany. Nick told him, “Port fifteen. Steer three-two-five.”
The sky over the cruisers was filthy-grey with shell-bursts. High up and to the west, flying north, he saw the group of Ju88s which had attacked from astern a few minutes ago. Their bombs had gone down like rain on the other side of the cruisers, a long grove of splashes with the last ones rising only a short distance astern of the destroyers in the centre of the screen. Perhaps one small miscalculation—of wind or drift—had made the difference between that clear miss and having all four cruisers hit or near-missed. Pilots had problems, no doubt, but from down here it looked as if it ought to be so easy … “Starboard twenty.”
He was pleased with his ship’s gunnery performance. Separating the control of the guns was paying off, in terms of flexibility, and also he’d been impressed by the way they all united, as if all the gunners’ brains were connected telepathically—when one particular attack looked more threatening than others.
Last Lift from Crete: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 2 Page 20