Ramm gave it five minutes, then blew his whistle down the hatch leading to the naval mess deck. He held a pocket-watch in his hand. The men tumbled out, were sent down again. And again and again until Ramm believed he had shaved off the last second. After that, he exercised gun drill, imaginary firing at an imaginary target. That, too, went on and on.
III
First Officer Jean Forrest sat in an easy chair in her cabin, face tight, her hands shaking. She had now come face to face with war, with the sheer horror of an armaments carrier blowing up as the result of a touch on the firing lever aboard a submerged U-boat. An almost casual act once the sights were on. And then the terrible deaths, the shattered bodies, the burned flesh, none the easier to take for being at a distance, and the convoy steaming on regardless, steaming almost certainly to more such explosions.
Jean Forrest had seen little of the real war so far. It had been back in the phoney war period that she had joined the WRNS, back in the days of leaflet-dropping over Germany, of Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, and Run Rabbit Run. The days when, after the initial reaction that had closed the theatres and cinemas was over, life had been little different from peacetime except for the constant digging of air raid shelters and the new self-importance of little Hitlers metamorphosed into air-raid wardens with their hectoring shouts of ‘Put that light out, don’t you know there’s a war on?’
Days when the socialite thing to do had been to apply for a commission in the WRNS. Miss Forrest had had to do a more or less token period as an ordinary Wren rating, but that had been no great hardship and a combination of her greater age than the rest of the girls and the help of highly placed relatives had quickly got her a commission; subsequently some string-pulling and again her age got her promotion to First Officer. Her service to date had kept her out of the areas subject to the bombings by the Luftwaffe: latterly she had found herself doing naval liaison duties in that section of the War Office that had been evacuated to Woodstock in Oxfordshire and she had spent her days in the splendour, a little muted by the exigencies of the war, of Blenheim Palace, home of the Dukes of Marlborough, and her nights in Keble College, Oxford, being bussed in daily.
She wished fervently that she was there still. She had applied for a posting after an abortive affair with a brigadier whose wife had turned up unexpectedly, whereupon the brigadier had lost interest in her. She had been used and she knew it; a move had been a matter of urgency, or anyway of hurt pride, and she hadn’t thought too much about consequences. Now she was stuck with them: out at sea in a convoy subject to heavy attack.
No way out now.
Her nerves were playing her up: she almost reached screaming point as the repeated, hectoring tones of Petty Officer Ramm ripped into the cabin despite the closed glass of the port and its protective deadlight of heavy metal. Shouts, ship noises, the increasing turbulence of the sea, the heavy swell as the Wolf Rock moved out from home waters into the North Atlantic.
A knock came at her door.
‘Come in,’ she said. Third Officer Pawle appeared. ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘PO Wren Hardisty, ma’am.’
‘What about her?’
‘She’d like a word with you. A complaint, about the seamen.’
‘Oh, God! Molestation already?’
‘Language rather than molestation,’ Susan Pawle said. ‘Shall I send her in, ma’am?’
‘Yes, all right.’ First Officer Forrest remained seated as the petty officer wren entered. Dorothy Hardisty was squat, virtually square, with a big bosom and firm jaw and once inside the cabin she stood at attention like a sergeant-major, very formal, eyes gazing over Jean Forrest’s head in the regulation manner, ready to state her complaint.
Bidden to do so, she stated it unequivocally. ‘My girls, ma’am, have heard such things they never ought to. Filthy words, such as I couldn’t repeat —’
‘The ship’s crew, or the naval ratings?’
‘Both, ma’am. And it goes on and on —’
‘But the girls aren’t...they’ve not been cotton-wool wrapped, have they?’
‘That’s different, ma’am. Quite different. The odd swear word heard in barracks. Not continual filth, muck. On deck, outside the wrens’ mess...’
Jean Forrest sighed. ‘We all know what sailors are like. Is it really that bad?’
‘Yes, ma’am, it is. Words like — well, I dessay you’ll not have heard them, ever. So I —’
‘I probably have,’ Jean Forrest said.
‘Well, ma’am that’s as maybe.’ PO Wren Hardisty’s bosom heaved upwards. ‘I think the men need to be reminded that there are young ladies on board, with ears. The ship’s Captain and the Commodore —’
‘Very well, PO, you’ve made your point. I’ll see what I can do. I agree with you really, I don’t like coarse language, but men are men, you know.’
‘Yes, ma’am, I do know. More’s the pity.’
‘Yes.’ Jean Forrest sighed again. Miss Hardisty was standing her ground still. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Yes, ma’am, there is. Wren Smith.’
Ena Smith, the tarty one, more suited in Jean Forrest’s view to the WAAF. What language had she overheard that she hadn’t heard before? ‘What’s it about?’
‘Wren Smith reports having missed her second period, ma’am.’
‘Oh God, no! Second? Why in heaven’s name didn’t she report having missed her first?’
PO Wren Hardisty shrugged: her face was doomful and in a way accusing, as though First Officer Forrest was responsible. Miss Forrest asked, ‘How on earth did the MO at the embarkation inspection miss that?’
Again the PO shrugged. ‘Naval doctors, ma’am, are not used to pregnancies. Not the RN ones. The RNVR, they may be. What should we do about it now, ma’am?’
‘In the middle of an outward bound convoy?’
‘We’re not that far out, ma’am —’
‘That won’t wash.’ Jean Forrest had no intention of suggesting to Commodore Kemp that the convoy might turn back on account of a possibly pregnant Wren: missed periods didn’t always mean a pregnancy. She said, ‘If necessary she could be landed at Gibraltar, or Malta I suppose. But it’s early days...there’s no real reason why she shouldn’t have her next period before we get to Trincomalee...is there?’
PO Wren Hardisty looked ominous. ‘Regulations, ma’am. Wrens that are pregnant —’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Pregnant Wrens were normally discharged back to civilian life; it had not been unknown for disillusioned Wrens to get themselves in the family way as a means of getting out, but usually these had been the married ones. Ena Smith was not married.
‘If I might make a suggestion, ma’am?’
‘Yes, of course, do.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. The ship’s doctor.’
‘An examination? Well, yes, I suppose that’s the obvious answer. But before making any decisions, I’ll see the girl myself and then I’ll put it to the Commodore.’ Miss Forrest, PO Wren Hardisty thought, was looking very agitated and no wonder: it was not nice to be faced with a likely pregnant, unmarried Wren. The world had become like a cesspit, thanks to Hitler, not at all what it had been when Miss Hardisty had been young. She stood in the cabin like an affronted fortress and was about to speak again when the First Officer said, ‘The girl herself. What’s her attitude?’
‘Cocky, ma’am. Defiant, you might say.’
Jean Forrest said, ‘What I can’t understand is why she didn’t come out with this before embarking — the missed first period would have been a reasonable excuse. No chances would have been taken — she’d have been off the draft immediately. I take it she wants her discharge?’
‘No, ma’am, she doesn’t.’
‘Doesn’t? Then why, for God’s sake, make an issue of her condition now?’
PO Wren Hardisty said, ‘It came out by accident, ma’am. Wren Smith was boasting to her friends on the mess deck. I happened to overhear and I instituted question
ing.’
‘Boasting?’
‘Boasting, ma’am, yes. That she’d been — er. That she thought she might...have a bun in the oven, ma’am, those were the words used.’
Jean Forrest kept her face straight: Miss Hardisty’s tone, like her expression, had been outraged. Miss Hardisty, asked about her questioning of the girl, reported further. Wren Smith had committed the act behind a bush in Victoria Park not far from the Naval barracks in Queen Street, Portsmouth. The man involved had been a sailor: Ena Smith had refused to reveal his identity.
‘Thoroughly sordid, ma’am. I don’t like having to speak to you about it, that I don’t.’
When PO Wren Hardisty had left the cabin, Jean Forrest wondered about sordidness. It hadn’t got to be. Her own experiences with the Blenheim brigadier had been a little sordid, perhaps; but often there could be love. And such persons as Wren Smith and her sailor, probably from the barracks, hadn’t the advantages open to brigadiers. Behind a bush in Victoria Park had very likely been the only available place. She had to keep an open mind, at any rate until she herself had spoken to the girl.
It was all a bloody nuisance; but at least it took one’s mind off the dangers of submarine-infested waters for a while.
IV
Yeoman of Signals Lambert, an oilskin covering his number three uniform with the red badges of his rank and his non-substantive status of Visual Signalman First Class, checked round his little kingdom in rear of the chart room, fluffing at the flags of the International Code in the flag locker, checking his signal halyards and glancing now and again down at the boat deck where some of the WRNS ratings were draped over the lee guardrail and looking a nasty shade of green. Lambert sucked at his teeth and thought; poor little lasses, far from home and getting farther with each turn of the screw, feeling as if they’d rather die than carry on being seasick. He wondered what their daily shipboard routine would be: so far, they didn’t appear to have anything to do other than keep their quarters cleaned and swept, maybe washing their smalls as his own wife and daughters called their knickers and bras and so on. No doubt, before long their officers would organize something. Maybe they’d be put on to darning the matlows’ socks or something useful like that. Or, when the better weather came, PT on the boat deck, a sight for the sore eyes of seamen, tits lifting and falling while they cavorted and jumped in the air. A year or so back, Lambert had been in an aircraft-carrier that had brought a bunch of Wrens back to the Clyde from Gibraltar. A deck hockey match on the flight deck had been organized, WRNS against the ship’s company. The seamen had behaved as proper gents but the girls had been murder, real savages once they had hockey sticks in their hands, and the seamen hadn’t had a chance.
Checking and wren-watching done, Lambert lifted his binoculars and looked around at the ships now once again altering to their set zigzag pattern, coming round on the port leg. He looked at the immensity of the battleship Nelson, her great camouflage-painted sides heaving to the increasing ocean swell, seas coming over her bows to wash aft past the three massive 16-inch turrets, each carrying three guns with their tampions in position to keep the seas out of the barrels.
Those guns were a welcome sight, solid and heavy, with a nice long range. Something to make any Jerry surface raiders think twice before attacking the convoy as it made its westing towards the position where the ships would alter to the south.
Lambert rolled a fag from a tin of Ticklers’, using a Rizla cigarette machine. Shielding his face behind his flag locker, he lit the fag. Some captains didn’t allow smoking on the bridge, but so long as the ship’s master had no objection Commodore Kemp permitted it in daylight hours — not at night because even just the glow of a fag-end, let alone the striking of a match or lighter, could be seen by the perishing Jerries who might be lurking beneath their periscopes — and so long as you didn’t approach him with a fag dangling from your lips...
Lambert’s thoughts drifted homewards.
Pompey. Pompey at war, Pompey under the spasmodic hammer of Goering’s Luftwaffe. Palmerston Road in Southsea, and King’s Road, all flat. Likewise parts of the barracks and the dockyard, and a good deal of Commercial Road going north from the Guildhall, and more south and east of the Guildhall, little streets that had never expected to be blown sky-high by German bombs, helpless civilians dying by the dozen despite the heroic efforts of the rescue squads and firemen. Lambert’s home was off Arundel Street, which itself led off Commercial Road, and he worried about it continually, right there in the firing line as he saw it. He worried the more now because he and Doris had had words the night before he’d left to rejoin Kemp and report aboard for the new convoy.
There had still been a cloud next morning, and all over what Lambert saw as nothing. Or anyway, not much. Women were funny. When he’d pulled his pen out from the top pocket of his jacket, a french letter had come out with it. He’d forgotten it was there; he’d had it a long time. Doris had pounced.
‘Well I never!’
‘It’s nothing to worry about, dear.’
‘Nothing to worry about! What you been up to, eh?’
‘Nothing. Else it wouldn’t have been there, would it?’
She’d sneered. ‘I’m not green. That’s a daft answer.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, love. It — it’s just precautions, like. Just in case. I’d forgotten all about it. Sort of thing any man has on him,’ he’d added lamely.
‘A particular sort of man, yes, maybe.’
‘I swear I haven’t done anything,’ he said, and it was the truth. He had those snapshots, and they sufficed. He’d been loyal to them, if sometimes tempted. Women in the world’s ports went for sailors, men with saved-up cash to spend on a good time, men who had been deprived at sea, sometimes for long periods. Some of those women were bags, others were hard to resist. But he had resisted them nobly. He said this, and repeated his assurances, and she’d cried but in the end had calmed down about it and he’d taken her out for a drink in the Golden Fleece and then a bit of supper, and when they’d got back both their daughters turned up with their husbands to say goodbye to dad. Then bed, which hadn’t been very successful what with one thing and another, and come the morning Doris had nagged again. Cried again too. Not the best send-off back to war. Lambert was feeling remorseful now but could only hope and pray that Hitler wouldn’t get Doris before they’d patched up the bad feeling. When he’d written that letter before sailing from the Clyde, he’d wondered whether or not to mention it but had decided not to on the principle of least said, soonest mended.
A little later, when Lambert went below to the petty officers’ mess, he listened to the BBC news: there had been another raid on Pompey and two of the Jerries had been shot down in Spit-head. There was no mention of damage or casualties but Lambert’s anxieties became that much sharper.
V
The majority of those aboard the Wolf Rock and in all the other ships of the convoy had their home worries. That was part of war. The exceptions were those who had homes in the safe areas of Britain, the remoter country districts away from the ports and the factories and the armament depots and the airfields. The Wolf Rock’s chief engineer, Edgar Turnberry, came from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland, high up and on the northern fringe of the Yorkshire Dales. The Pennines were pretty safe in his view, Hitler wouldn’t be wasting his armadas on sheep and mountains, farm buildings and waterfalls. Edgar Turnberry was a widower; when his wife had died some years before the war he had sold up the little home in Liverpool and gone back to spend his leaves with his ageing parents and the elder brother who ran the farm for them.
So remote from the sea and the dockyard hustle, Kirkby Stephen was a good place to relax. Turnberry liked horse riding, an odd hobby perhaps for a ship’s engineer, and he’d covered the area from Kendal east to Richmond by way of the steep road leading down by the Birkdale Beck to Muker and on through Swaledale; or the right turn to Thwaite, past the Buttertubs along the track to Hawes; and the narrow road from Reeth through Arke
ngarthdale and back again to Thwaite. Long days in the good fresh air, so far removed from the clamour and oily smell of an engine-room.
Currently Mr Turnberry was making an inspection with his second engineer, Bob Guthrie, checking round, feeling bearings, probing now and again with a long-necked oilcan, wiping his hands on a ball of cotton-waste. When that armaments carrier had gone up, the reverberations of the huge explosion and of the depth charges from the destroyers of the escort had hit the Wolf Rock’s engine-room, making everything shudder and clang. It was doubtful if any actual damage had been done but prudence dictated a looksee.
‘Bloody buggers,’ Turnberry said with feeling. ‘All those blokes trapped below.’
‘They won’t have known much about it, Chief.’
‘No? I wouldn’t bet on it. Not unless the bottom was blown right out of her. Which I grant it probably was.’ Edgar Turnberry had himself been a survivor from a dry-cargo ship that had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic. No bottoms had been blown out on that occasion, but the ship had settled pretty fast and Turnberry, along with all the engine-room complement, had been trapped and helpless when the entry hatch had jammed, trapped at the top of the maze of steel ladders that criss-crossed the engine-room from the top of the double bottoms to the deckhead above. The deck gang had been working on it and those below had scrambled through with just a couple of minutes to spare before the ship had gone down. By the time he reached a lifeboat, Turnberry’s hair had taken the first step towards going grey. Thereafter he had lost a lot of his enthusiasm for the sea life, but he’d had to see the war through in the only way he knew how — as a ship’s engineer.
Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller) Page 4