Convoy South

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir —’

  ‘That’s all right, Cutler. What is it?’

  Cutler said, ‘Well, probably none of our business, sir. Captain Dempsey’s. But I thought I’d have a word with you.’

  ‘Go on, Cutler.’

  ‘Sinker’s been moaning, sir.’

  ‘Sinker? Oh, yes. Well?’

  ‘Crew’s been getting at him. They say he’s a Nazi lover, sir.’ Cutler paused. ‘He seems touchy about it. To that extent I reckon it is our business.’

  ‘You’re suggesting I have a word with Captain Dempsey, I suppose. You’ll have to tell me more first. I can’t go to Dempsey and just say his men are teasing Leading Seaman Sinker.’ Kemp sounded edgy. His fingers tapped the top of the desk. ‘Sinker’s not a babe in arms, is he?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m sorry, sir —’

  ‘Oh, all right, forget it!’ Kemp smiled. ‘I’m bloody tired, that’s all. It’s not your fault, Sub. Only I don’t like any suggestion of interfering with the ship’s master. It’s not an easy situation.’ Once again Kemp brought himself up with a jerk: he was excusing himself to a subordinate and that would never do. ‘Let’s have it.’

  Cutler elaborated. It hadn’t been just name calling: Sinker had said there was a nasty atmosphere, a feeling of being under threat. The night before he had found a dead rat in his bunk; he was certain none of his own messmates had been responsible. He’d been given a number of vicious looks, too, and there was a silence when he passed by small groups of crew members, and loud comments when he’d moved on. He seemed even to.be in fear of physical attack.

  ‘Tripe,’ Kemp said. ‘They would never risk it aboard Simonstown might be different, I agree, but I’m sure he’s exaggerating, Cutler.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, sir. Quite a lot came out, sort of jumbled and I don’t know if I’ve got it right. Something about a woman in Sydney.’ Cutler gave a cough. ‘Also he’s got a dose, sir. Clap. That’s got around the ship too. He believes it came from Porter. The information, not the clap.’

  ‘I can’t be responsible for the natural instincts of seamen, Cutler, though I agree they’re a bloody nuisance at times. Is he being treated?’

  ‘Chief steward’s had a go, sir. But now we know, I guess Sinker should be isolated.’

  Kemp agreed; aboard a warship there was normally a CDA mess — so named from the Contagious Diseases Act — where cases of VD were kept apart, their mess utensils separately washed and so on, the mess traps kept clear of the healthy men’s stowages.

  Aboard the Coverdale isolation wouldn’t be so easy, since all the spare accommodation was occupied by the Commodore’s staff and the gunnery rates. There was something else, and Kemp voiced it.

  ‘The chief steward should have reported. It seems he hasn’t or I would have been told — I hope!’

  ‘I’ve had no report, sir. I guess the chief steward takes the medic’s point of view maybe — professional discretion and not revealing secrets.’

  Kemp snorted. ‘I assume you’re joking, Cutler. Any medical officer, the proper sort, knows he has to report to his CO.’ Suddenly he yawned: he couldn’t restrain it. He was almost out on his feet, or in his chair currently. ‘Look, Cutler, have another word with Sinker and try to sort it out. If necessary I’ll see him myself, but not just yet. It can rest for a while, like me.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. I guess you need it.’

  Cutler left the cabin. Kemp wondered wryly if the sub’s last remark had held a sardonic touch, a reflection on the fact that Kemp wasn’t reacting fully, wasn’t thinking fast enough or something. Not on the ball. Well, if that was so, so be it. At any time there might be another emergency and the Commodore had to be fresh to meet it. The convoy’s safety was of vastly more importance than a leading seaman’s feelings of persecution or his shoreside peccadilloes. As he pulled his outer clothing off, Kemp reflected that if he had to practise abstinence there was no reason why Sinker shouldn’t.

  Three minutes later he was asleep.

  III

  Chief Steward Lugg had been busy: wounded men, and never mind that they were Nazis, had to be seen to and he had done his best while Dempsey had eased his engines for the acting chief engineer to transfer oil fuel to HMAS Bass, herself wounded. When Evans’ first ordeal in his new rank was over, Lugg’s work went on, bandaging, applying ointment, sterilizing, administering aspirin, just filling in as best he could pending the removal of the Germans to hospital at the Cape.

  One of his patients was Leading Seaman Sinker — had been for many days past. Sinker didn’t seem to be responding to Lugg’s limited knowledge, gleaned from The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide: the principle ingredient of the cure was rest, not possible unless Sinker was put off duty and Sinker was adamant that he didn’t want his condition known. Simple diet was indicated also, plus abstinence from all stimulants — that was easy enough. The Coverdale had some sulpha drugs in the medical kit but they didn’t seem to be helping Sinker much. Perhaps, Lugg thought, the Australian gonococcus was a hardier germ than the home variety. If there was no improvement by the time the convoy reached the Cape, Lugg was going to report to Dempsey and never mind what his patient wanted: if the thing was left it could become chronic and in the meantime there were all the other men aboard to be considered; Lugg had warned Sinker to keep himself to himself as much as possible and wash up his own cups, plates and cutlery.

  But those Jerries: they hadn’t much English between them although one of them, a man with only a flesh wound from a piece of jagged steel, had said something about one of the British naval ratings, the one with the birthmark — Sinker.

  ‘What about him, eh?’

  The German hadn’t seemed to understand and had just shaken his head and not pursued the matter. Later, Lugg mentioned it to Porter when the latter came down from taking cocoa to the bridge for the Captain and the others.

  ‘Seems to know Sinker.’

  ‘So I heard, from the deck mob. What did he say, Chief?’ Lugg shrugged. ‘Very little. Just said his name.’

  ‘Bit odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. We all get around, don’t we, meet other nationalities. I remember in the old Brambleleaf, Med fleet pre-war, we took aboard a load of refugees from the Spanish Civil War, off Barcelona…’ Lugg screwed up his eyes and with his next utterance came right to the truth. ‘Coronation review. I was there, again in the Brambleleaf. Met all sorts then, we did. Likely enough those two had a drink together.’

  ‘Still funny,’ Porter said, and went about his duties. Even back in 1937 you hadn’t wanted to get tarred with the Nazi brush, not to the extent of making a mate of a Nazi naval rating. Porter had memories of the Blackshirts, the riots in London’s East End and elsewhere, the vicious beatings-up from hard-fisted, club-bearing thugs, blood on the streets of peacetime Britain. Porter knew a young bloke who’d been almost killed by them and had never really recovered.

  After Porter had gone, Lugg had another visitor: the Commodore’s assistant. Cutler asked, ‘Got a moment, Chief?’

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Cutler?’

  ‘Leading Seaman Sinker. I guess you know what I mean.’ Cutler stood just inside the cabin door, leaning up against the doorpost. ‘I’ve heard things…things that should have been reported.’

  ‘Yes. Don’t worry, Mr Cutler, he’s been warned.’

  ‘Not good enough, Chief. He’ll have to be isolated. You should know that.’ Cutler paused. ‘Any suggestions as to where he can be berthed?’

  Lugg didn’t like being told off by the Navy. His tone was stiff when he said, ‘Engineers’ accommodation — cabin going spare now. The junior engineers can shift up one. We can disinfect after.’

  ‘After Simonstown?’

  ‘Not Simonstown. They won’t put him ashore, Mr Cutler, not for clap. They’ll put the proper drugs aboard us and we’ll carry on. At least, that’s what I reckon.’

  Cutler nodded. ‘Okay, then. I’ll suggest to Captain Dempsey we ha
ve him in that spare cabin aft. And in the meantime I’ll be having a word with Sinker. I guess I don’t have to involve you my information came from Sinker himself.’

  Cutler left the chief steward’s cabin and went in search of Leading Seaman Sinker, finding him off-watch and staring broodingly aft from the poop, at the Coverdale’s streaming wake. He told Sinker of his new accommodation and Sinker seemed grateful.

  ‘Safer I reckon, sir. From the ship’s crew.’

  ‘Safer for your messmates, that’s the point. Let’s have the other story, Sinker. In full this time.’

  ‘The other story, sir?’

  ‘Come off it, Sinker. That Nazi.’

  ‘Oh — yessir. No more in it than what I told you, sir, honest. I just don’t know how anyone can make anything of that, I really don’t.’

  ‘Juxtaposition,’ Cutler said.

  Sinker looked puzzled. Cutler went on, ‘Your woman in Sydney, and overhead remarks. Then this. People put two and two together and most times get it wrong.’

  ‘Yessir,’ Sinker agreed doubtfully. Cutler, like any other RNVR subby, hadn’t been at sea a dog watch yet and just didn’t understand. One thing he didn’t understand was the essential difference between some merchant seamen and naval ratings. The men who sailed before the mast in merchant ships, in which term Sinker included the RFA, were more independently minded than the dragooned bluejackets aboard the warships, and independence of mind could often lead to independence of action as well. Funny things could happen. Many of the older seamen — and in the merchant ships a lot of them were a sight older than naval ratings who mostly got chucked on the beach by forty if not sooner — many of those older men were inward-looking and filled with seafaring superstitions of many sorts, the Jonah business being but one. And that was bad enough.

  Stripey Sinker knew that to be rated a Jonah was more than just a misfortune.

  Cutler said, ‘See the chief steward, then get your gear together and be ready to shift as soon as I’ve had a word with the Captain. And I’d advise you to keep away from that Jerry, all right?’

  Sinker nodded; the prisoners wouldn’t be allowed much liberty in any case, just exercise periods probably for the fit ones and the rest of the time in somewhere like the forepeak or the bosun’s store maybe, all stench of paint and deck-cleaning gear, best place for the sods especially in anything of a sea.

  Cutler went back to the bridge: Kemp was still below in his cabin. Cutler wouldn’t disturb him; he did need that sleep. Cutler began to think ahead to Simonstown and a bit of shore leave, getting to grips with some nice cold beer or scotch-on-the-rocks, maybe find a girl. And then on for the States, real civilization again and with luck a few days back home in Texas with his folks. But he knew he mustn’t tempt fate. The worst, the most dangerous part of the voyage, was yet to come. They’d barely started yet and never mind the Kormoran. Once into the South Atlantic and steaming north, they would come into what could be called Hitler territory insofar as the U-boats were concerned. And Hitler wasn’t going to let a big troop convoy reach USA if he could do anything to stop it in its tracks.

  For no apparent reason Cutler, as he paced the bridge wing with the third officer, suddenly thought about that sealed canvas bag locked away in the chart room.

  NINE

  I

  Kemp hadn’t visited the Cape for very many years: not since his apprentice days with a company running small cargo liners. As he brought the convoy with its limping destroyer escort up towards Cape Agulhas, with something over a hundred miles yet to go for False Bay and the naval port of Simonstown, he felt a number of things: interest in seeing again a place that had been, from time to time, a part of his youth; nostalgia for days past linked with memories of the men who had been his shipmates then and of runs ashore when he had taken part to the full in the usual shore-side activities of seafaring men of the age he had then been, activities which in many cases were not left behind with the passing of youth. But over all the gnawing anxiety that had been with him ever since that night in Sydney’s Hotel Australia and which would soon be settled one way or the other. Youth again: perhaps, all said and done, it was better to go in the full flush of the early twenties rather than to live on and in the end look back to what could never come again, an old man of the sea reliving his memories to the boredom of those around him…

  Kemp stayed on the bridge for most of the way after the Coverdale had made her landfall, picking up the marks -Danger Point, Walker Bay, Cape Hangklip at the eastern arm of the land enclosing False Bay, the Cape of Good Hope itself being to the west. The landfall had been made in the early hours, before the dawn was up: it was in mid-morning of a splendid day that Kemp came up towards False Bay with Simonstown on its western shore and looked north-westerly towards the great eminence of Table Mountain surmounted by its thick, misty tablecloth of cloud.

  Dempsey was at his side as the convoy made inwards. He said, ‘The troops, Commodore. Will they be given shore leave?’

  ‘Not up to me,’ Kemp said. ‘When the convoy rests, so largely does the Commodore! OC Troops’ll have to make that decision, though he’ll be guided by what the shore authorities have to say. You know Australians, Captain.’

  Dempsey nodded. ‘High spirited!’

  ‘There are two sorts: the ones who don’t drink and get God Almighty puritanical about it, and the ones who do —’

  ‘And don’t do it by halves.’

  ‘Exactly. And one guess as to which sort those transports are likely to be mostly filled with.’

  Dempsey laughed. ‘What you’re saying is that they may not be too welcome ashore. But I wouldn’t care to be their officers if they’re to be confined aboard.’

  Kemp didn’t make any response; he was watching out ahead, still with all those thoughts running through his mind. A couple of minutes later a signal was made from the shore, indicating the Commodore’s berth along with all the others. Dempsey moved into the wheelhouse, ready to con the Coverdale through to the berth, which would be alongside the wall in the dockyard. As the oiler made her way inwards there was more signalling from the naval port and Leading Signalman Goodenough reported.

  ‘FOIC to Commodore, sir. “You are required to wait upon me soonest possible after berthing.” Message ends, sir.’

  Kemp, grinning, caught Cutler’s eye. ‘Somewhat peremptory, I fancy!’

  ‘Stuffed shirt,’ Cutler said in agreement. He looked sideways at the Commodore. That grin had been a shade tight, no humour in it. Kemp was on edge and no wonder, dreading the next hour or so. The Coverdale moved on under Dempsey’s orders, her engines now at half speed until Dempsey brought them down to slow once they had the tugs buttoned on for the final approach to the dockside.

  II

  Ambulances were alongside for the wounded soon after the ship had berthed, asked for by signal as the Coverdale had entered False Bay. All the Nazis were removed under a naval guard supplied by the Flag Officer in Charge ashore, belted and gaitered seamen, some of whom travelled in the ambulances as escorts to the wounded prisoners. With them went Leading Seaman Sinker, not in his official capacity as such but as an invalid.

  He had asked formal permission from Petty Officer Rattray. Rattray had looked him up and down. ‘Walking scran bag once again. Where’s your lanyard, eh?’

  Sinker felt in front of his seaman’s jumper, where the loop of the scrubbed lanyard should have showed around the knot of the black scarf worn in memory of and in mourning for Lord Nelson. ‘Forgot it, PO.’

  ‘Go and get it, then, if you want to go ashore…and what do you want to go ashore for, may I enquire, Leading Seaman Sinker?’

  ‘Things to do,’ Sinker muttered, not meeting the PO’s eye.

  Rattray snorted. ‘Get on with you! Think it hasn’t spread, do you? The word — not the clap, God forbid. Go ashore and get bloody well cured, all right?’

  Rattray had turned away and gone off muttering about dirty rotten matlows who weren’t particular where they dipped t
heir wicks. Stripey Sinker had caught that remark and muttered other sentiments about petty officers who thought they were immune to what bothered junior ratings whereas he, Sinker, knew Rattray wasn’t always as continent as he made himself out to be. An anonymous letter home to Rattray’s wife could cause the bugger bother and Sinker was half inclined…but knew he wouldn’t. They were all in it together and he wasn’t the sort to bring harm to anyone. He went ashore and climbed aboard one of the ambulances, heaving his gut up the rear step, and was driven off to naval sick quarters to see the quack. Or more likely just an SBA. Clap and the pox were not uncommon afflictions in the fleet and quacks had more important things to do.

  Soon after the ambulances had gone, the mail from home came aboard, some of it official for Dempsey and the Commodore, most of it personal to bring happiness and anxiety in more or less equal measure.

  Chief Steward Lugg had had a grand-daughter: that was cause for celebration, the more so as his daughter had come through well and there were no more worries on that score. Lugg brought out his whisky bottle and sent for his second steward to join him. A toast was drunk and Lugg revealed the chosen names of his new descendant, not particularly euphonious: Clementine Lugg Earwicker.

  ‘Ah,’ the second steward said non-committally. ‘Funny name, Earwicker.’ That, about a son-in-law, was safe enough.

  ‘Yes. Clementine after Mrs Churchill, Lugg after me of course.’

  ‘Decent of them, Chief.’

  Lugg made a sour sound. ‘Daughter’s idea. Earwicker wouldn’t have, you can bet your bottom dollar.’