Convoy East (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  She said, ‘I know where you live, Perce.’

  ‘You do?’ He’d jumped a mile, metaphorically: he’d always been circumspect about giving anything away, on the principle that you didn’t foul your own doorstep. ‘How’s that, then?’

  She answered with another question. ‘Didn’t ever want me to know, did you?’

  ‘Just never got around to it, that’s all.’ He asked her again how she knew.

  ‘Followed you once,’ she said.

  ‘You bitch.’ That had come out hard and almost involuntary. She didn’t seem to mind too much and he hadn’t said any more because he had to keep on her right side. He just said he’d esteem it a favour if she kept her distance from his missus with him going back to sea. She’d said of course she would; but Ramm had been left with a nasty thought: possible blackmail. Now the worry was of a different, but allied, kind: if his number was on that bomb, if it went up, he didn’t want Greta ever to get an inkling of what he’d been up to all the past years. The barmaid from Commercial Road might do the dirty. She could think she had reason to get her own back. Ramm hadn’t been entirely straight with her: vaguely he’d spoken of leaving Greta, but had always hedged when pressed...

  ‘All right below?’ Harrison’s voice, sounding edgy as well it might.

  Ramm said, ‘All right, sir, yes.’

  ‘Coming down now.’

  The whip came within Ramm’s reach. He grabbed for it, took it across towards the embedded bomb. The strop was dangling from its end. As Ramm moved with it, Harrison ordered the winchman to pay out more slack. Ramm detached the strop and started passing it, embracing the body of the bomb. When the strop was in position, he hauled it taut, using all his strength, put the eyes over the hook of the whip, then called up to the chief officer.

  ‘Secured, sir. Ready to hoist.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Leading Seaman Nelson — you and six hands lay alongside the bugger and steady it as it comes clear. If it comes clear.’

  II

  Yeoman Lambert was searching the seas astern, sweeping with his binoculars across the convoy as the ships plunged and lifted. There had been no moderation in the wind and weather. Bloody unseasonable, Lambert thought moodily. As he swept around a lamp began winking from one of the escorts on the port beam of the convoy and Lambert, reading it off, reported to the Commodore.

  ‘Radar report, sir. Echo bearing dead astern, closing fast.’

  ‘Thank you, Lambert.’ Kemp levelled his glasses astern and almost on the heels of the radar report there was more flashing from the convoy’s rear. Again Lambert read and reported: a ship was overtaking; it looked like a British destroyer.

  Finnegan said, ‘Must be Burgoyne or Hindu, sir, standing by the Langstone Harbour.’

  ‘But dammit — they’re towing!’

  They waited, somewhat uneasily, Kemp debating whether or not to sound the alarm. But neither the destroyer that had picked the vessel up on its radar, nor the Flag, seemed worried. And within the next few minutes a ship appeared astern of the convoy and began signalling.

  Lambert said, ‘Identification signal of the day, sir.’

  ‘Make the acknowledgement,’ Kemp ordered.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ A moment later Lambert said, ‘All correct, sir. Hindu, sir. Signal following...Hindu to Flag, both towing pendants parted, starboard cable torn out of vessel under tow. Master reports casualties. Propose returning to stand by but weather too bad for me to put doctor aboard. Message ends, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Yeoman.’

  Lambert hesitated, signal clip-board in his hand. ‘Any signals, sir?’

  ‘No signals, Yeoman. Nothing we can do. Stand by for the Flag to repeat Hindu’s signal for information.’ He added, ‘The Admiral may have orders for us — but I doubt it.’

  Kemp’s doubt was proved correct: the convoy formation was to be preserved...and the Langstone Harbour left to wallow out of control, Kemp added to himself. With the starboard cable gone, there would be no possibility of again passing a double tow; if one of the destroyers succeeded in passing a fresh tow at all, it would be a single one and the Langstone Harbour would drop farther and farther astern of the convoy. And with her, Jake Horncape. Kemp wondered what had happened in Horncape’s life through the years, whether he had married, whether he had a family. Kemp remembered through the mists of time that Horn-cape had sworn that he would never marry, preferring the freedom to enjoy the sea and the world without encumbrances or backward thoughts of home; but so many youthful seafarers had said and still said the same kind of thing and mostly they ended up married...Kemp often thought that a woman was a fool to marry a seaman, his own wife included. It was no life at all, hanging around the ports waiting for a ship to come in, or waiting in the loneliness of an empty home for the sailor to come back from the sea. Until children came along, anyway; and then it was the father who suffered, growing away from his family as it came to maturity. Kemp himself had seen little of his sons in their formative years, he had been the stranger who turned up roughly every three months, stayed for a week, upset the routine, and then vanished again. The constant good-byes were a strain on both husband and wife, though husbands were so busy once they’d rejoined their ships that they had little time to brood. Mary, Kemp reflected, hadn’t had much time to brood either: when their sons had gone off to their preparatory schools, old Granny Marsden had replaced them with her complaints and her ubiquitous walking-stick, needing a good deal of looking after from the start.

  Now well astern of the convoy, Captain Horncape also spared a thought for the wife that unknown to Commodore Kemp he had acquired twenty-five years earlier when he had forsaken sail for steam and was on leave in London, London in the days of the last war. No Luftwaffe then, but the zeppelins had come over and dropped their bomb loads...great sausage-shaped monsters gliding across the skies, laying eggs. It had been during a zeppelin raid that Jake Horncape had proposed to his wife, then known as Nesta Norris the Darling of the Music Halls. She had not been very successful on the halls; and the night before rejoining his ship, Jake, besotted and feeling sorry for her, not wanting to go back to sea leaving her, as he’d put it to himself, adrift without an anchor, had popped the question. He’d been her anchor for a number of leaves past and she was starting to depend on him. They married in a register office the day before the news broke of the battle of Jutland, the first and last meeting of the Grand Fleet under Sir John Jellicoe and the German High Seas Fleet. A somewhat indecisive battle in which both sides claimed victory: and the same could have been said of Jake Horncape’s marriage.

  They had fought through the years and neither could be said to be the winner. Nesta Norris, who on becoming Nesta Horncape had retired young from the music hall scene, had not retired from being everyone’s darling. There had always been someone around when Jake came back on leave to the two rooms they rented in Whitechapel, someone who had to be thrown out, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes physically, while Nesta giggled coyly and then became the repentant, loving wife. Deeply in love, Jake couldn’t resist her and always forgave, even when men, often young enough to have been in uniform, called with their straw boaters and blazers and looked awkward when they were met by the husband; or older men, gallants who twirled in embarrassment at waxed moustaches resplendent beneath dyed hair well-oiled down.

  ‘Just friends,’ Nesta used to say. ‘Old pals from the halls, nothing more than that, darling. You forget I was a bloody star.’

  A star that had never really waned. Jake Horncape, wedging his heavy body against the lurch and roll and sag of his probably doomed command, thought about his last leave, just before the convoy had left UK. As so often in the past, he had arrived home unexpectedly, home being then on the outskirts of Southampton, and had found Nesta, now aged fifty-one, on the point of hopping into bed with a chief engineer from the P. & O. There had been a flurry of underwear and the chief engineer had departed with muttered apologies and a red face. He had been a portly man with a gut like a ball
oon; but he had at least been P. & O. as Nesta, pouting prettily, had said. Not for the first time, Jake had threatened divorce but Nesta had just said, ‘Oh no, darling, you wouldn’t,’ and of course he knew he wouldn’t. He was still besotted...

  Captain Horncape looked down through a vision of Nesta towards his fo’c’sle. By now it had been cleaned up: when the starboard cable had been torn out from the cable clench, that fo’c’sle had looked like a battlefield. Horncape’s chief officer had been standing in the eyes of the ship at one moment, the next his headless body had rolled aft past the broken slips to bounce down on top of the windlass below in the fore well-deck. The flying cable had also taken the bosun and ripped away his left leg which for a time had remained jammed beneath the port cable where it led down through the hawse-pipe. Another seaman, still alive but only just, had been crunched flat by the cable’s end as it whipped up from the navel pipe before vanishing into the seas ahead. The damage to the ship herself was only superficial: smashed bulwarks and guardrails, and the gaping holes where the starboard bitts, the Blake slips and the bottle-screws had been torn straight out of the deck plating.

  ‘Captain, sir?’

  Horncape turned. His second officer reported, ‘Holes plugged, sir, but seeping. Crew accommodation being pumped out —’

  ‘Pumps coping?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The hands are going to be a bit wet, though.’

  A bit wet. Horncape remembered the days in sail. He said shortly, ‘They’ll get used to it, lad. How about the cable locker?’

  ‘Not too bad, sir. Under control.’

  ‘That’s good. You’ll be aware you’re acting chief officer now, Phillips. You’ll make sure the cargo’s all right. I don’t want any seepage into the holds while we’re lying broached-to.’ He added grimly, ‘Just keep in mind those poor, starving buggers waiting for us in Malta!’

  ‘If we ever get there,’ Phillips said.

  Horncape glared. ‘We’re going to get there, Mr Phillips, make no mistake about that. What are those hands doing down for’ard, loafing under the break of the fo’c’sle?’

  ‘Waiting to take up the new tow, sir —’

  ‘Waiting my backside, Mr Phillips! Get ‘em up there ready! I’m not having the bloody RN making signals about unreadiness aboard my ship. Get down there and take charge.’

  Phillips turned about and went down the ladder. Captain Horncape stood with his hands behind his back, body braced against the fore screen of his bridge. The ship was behaving like a pregnant bitch, without power, broadside to the wind and sea, beginning to develop a list as the water poured continually over her exposed port side and found its way below. If they found themselves unable to button-on again to the destroyer, then they’d had it. The ship wouldn’t live for ever under the pounding she was getting.

  III

  ‘She’s coming!’

  Ramm, sweating profusely beneath his oilskin, had felt the bomb give a small movement together with a grating sound as the metal scraped against the smashed girder. Stripey Nelson was alongside him, staring with a fixed expression at the bomb’s awful closeness and muttering away about something or other. Ramm snapped at him to shut up: Ramm’s ear was once more against the bomb, listening. He didn’t know exactly what for: probably a tick. The bomb could have a clock mechanism that had gone temporarily wrong and if it had then it might start up again. Ramm knew his own shortcomings: he was a gunner’s mate and thus an expert, or supposed to be, on the mechanics and firing of the guns themselves. That didn’t make him an expert on bombs but he was all the Wolf Rock had.

  Very, very gradually the derrick went on hoisting under Harrison’s direction. Slowly the bomb lifted. Things moved around it: the girder sagged as the bomb began to come clear and there was a shout of pain from one of the seamen.

  ‘What’s up, Barton?’

  ‘Me foot, PO —’

  ‘Fuck your foot, keep quiet. Take it to the quack when you’ve finished here.’

  Leading Seaman Nelson said, ‘Fat lot o’ good —’

  ‘Shut up, Nelson. Just bloody shut up!’ Ramm was shaking badly now. So far, so good. So near and yet so far. He looked upwards, past the bomb’s tail fins: the deck was one hell of a long way up and even suppose the whip could lift the thing clear, the strop might slip and down the bugger would come again, crushingly.

  The derrick’s clatter stopped suddenly. Ramm almost had a heart attack. ‘What’s up, up top?’ he called.

  ‘Fault in the steam winch. Hang on.’

  Ramm said despairingly, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  IV

  ‘I’m going down,’ Captain Champney said when the report reached him. Kemp went with him, leaving Finnegan on the bridge to deal with any signals that might come from the Flag. Going aft they found a couple of the Wren ratings with PO Wren Hardisty, walking up and down. Miss Hardisty saluted smartly.

  Returning the salute Kemp asked, ‘Exercise?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Keep the girls occupied.’

  ‘Very commendable,’ Kemp said. Miss Hardisty seemed pleased. Kemp moved on aft, thinking unwelcome thoughts: he already had the other WRNS officer dead below decks. In the prevailing weather conditions there could be no question of a sea burial; she must be carried on and perhaps the body could be landed at Gibraltar if the Admiral approved the transfer to hospital of Susan Pawle.

  EIGHT

  I

  The steam winch had started up again: a minor fault, soon rectified by Mr Turnberry’s second engineer brought up post-haste from the engine-room. The lift went ahead: the bomb came clear and was hoisted, swaying, through the hole in the deck-head, watched by Ramm and the gunnery rates, now standing clear of the drop after remaining to act as steadiers if the strop should slip while the bomb was still within reach. When it was clear above the poop, Kemp ordered Ramm’s party out on deck and followed up himself, having a word with Captain Champney on the way.

  ‘The derrick’ll take it clear enough, I think, Captain. Out over the water.’

  ‘Yes. But how are we cast off the strop? Might be better to lower to the deck, then roll it overboard. Or drop it from deck level. The strop could be reached and cast off by a man on deck.’

  Kemp turned to Petty Officer Ramm. ‘What do you think, Ramm?’

  The gunner’s mate pursed his lips. ‘Tricky, sir. I dunno...it just could go off on contact. Also there’s the scend o’ the sea, sir —’

  ‘Yes, quite. I appreciate the risk.’ Kemp turned again to Champney. ‘The farther off, the better — bearing in mind your cargo. The derrick can lift it a good deal farther out and not only that — it can be lowered gently, not dropped.’

  ‘And then let go?’

  Kemp nodded. Champney asked, ‘How, for God’s sake?’

  Kemp said, ‘A man on the end of the whip.’

  ‘Perched on the bomb itself?’

  ‘That’s about it. The only way.’

  Champney blew out his cheeks and shook his head slowly. ‘And the man? A volunteer?’

  ‘I’ll not ask for volunteers,’ Kemp said. ‘I’ll go myself.’ He gave a tight grin. ‘I’m still pretty agile. And don’t forget, I did my time in the old square-riggers. It’ll be child’s play.’ He added, ‘Do you mind if I give my own orders to your winchman, Captain?’

  ‘It’s your life,’ Champney said, shrugging.

  It was the lives of them all, Kemp thought but didn’t say so, if the bomb did happen to go up. He would be a little closer, that was all. Just a split second before the rest. As Kemp made his arrangements with Ramm and the handling party and the man on the steam winch, Captain Champney went back to the bridge. The ship would need careful tending while the bomb with the Commodore sitting on it was hoisted outboard. And Kemp would need to judge his own moment, the moment of cast-off, dead right. The right moment would be, Champney thought, when the Wolf Rock was in the trough of the sea rather than on the crest of a wave that could if luck was against them hurl the bomb back aboard again, a sec
ond drop that might well send it up. In the trough, the bomb should sink as the ship herself came up on the next crest, should sink beneath the bottom plating. In the meantime the engine should be so used as to carry the ship as clear as possible of any explosion below the water and at the same time to protect the screw. Champney called the engine-room on the voice-pipe and told Turnberry the position. Then, using his megaphone, he called down to Kemp aft.

  ‘I’m keeping the engine on full ahead, Commodore. But the moment you cut away, I’ll stop her. All right with you?’

  Kemp waved back. ‘All right, Captain.

  Champney went himself to the engine-room telegraph and pulled the handle over, for’ard then aft, twice repeated, before setting it on Full Ahead, the emergency signal for Turnberry to give her all he’d got. The extra power could be felt almost immediately, and the speed came up. Champney went into the bridge wing and looked aft. The bomb with the whip now slack had been laid gently on the deck, and Kemp was climbing on to it, getting a foothold on the metal surface, holding fast to the whip with both hands. As Champney watched, Kemp freed one hand to signal to the winchman, and very slowly the whip tautened as the winch took up the remaining slack. Ramm and his gunnery rates got round the bomb, steadying it as the lift came on. Champney felt his fingernails dig hard into his palms, and sweat ran down inside his collar. The ship was lurching and the seas were as high as ever: the Wolf Rock was heading into wind and sea which kept her as steady as was humanly possible, but in such conditions total steadiness was an unrealistic hope. Water was coming over the fo’c’sle head to stream aft, thundering past the island superstructure, swilling around the bomb on its passage to the washports.