Although the signals were of a routine, unexciting kind, the translations still had to be checked minutely in case one of them might be something more than that. A word or two inaccurately translated had been known to lead to quite drastic misunderstanding of the message as a whole. Tedious work therefore, but essential. She was about halfway through when Sue came back to tell her there’d been a signal from U-boat HQ Wilhelmshaven addressed to three different U-boats demanding Report forthwith your ETA Wilhelmshaven, and UB81 had not been one of them.
‘So?’
Sue looked, surprised at having to explain the obvious. ‘They’re chasing up boats that haven’t responded to the general recall. Knowing they might have come to grief. Logically, shouldn’t that have applied to what’s his name, von Munchhausen? They can’t know he was sunk – can they?’
Anne shook her head. ‘You tell me.’
‘Two possible solutions. One is that his patrol area was so close to home he’d have made it back several days ago if he hadn’t been, and the alternative is that he did get back.’
‘You mean wasn’t sunk?’
‘That’s conceivable.’
‘But with the detail in that report you quoted to me – seemed to me fairly certain. Didn’t you think so?’
‘Seemed so.’
‘What about those that are mentioned?’
‘In the past week, two others have been sunk – both as it happens by British submarines. One in the Skaggerak approaches, the other off Cape Wrath. One might assume those are – were – two of the three. No way of telling which, though, they weren’t identifiable.’ She shrugged. ‘Question for Bertie perhaps, whether in his seaman’s-eye view the destroyers could have been mistaken. The big issue of the day, though – well, it connects peripherally with this, the fact they’re still trying to round up their strays – is they’re being turned around and sent back out. To God knows where. Unusual dearth of signals now, coinciding with it.’ She’d dropped her voice. ‘Distinctly fishy, lots of head-scratching in progress. Almost certainly what our lords and masters are conferring about – needing to tell Operations Division what’s happening, and not much more than guesswork to go on. Meanwhile, all telephone calls for either of them are being held – i.e. they’re in purdah.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t last too long, then.’
‘What it amounts to, in a nutshell – the guess is U-boats are being deployed to lie in ambush for Beatty’s ships. Reason to suspect this being that we know the Hochseeflotte have been ordered by von Scheer to “strike at the English fleet”, and that a new, very extensive minefield’s been laid during the past forty-eight hours. We know this for absolutely sure because our chaps have already swept it up. One way and another it does look very much as if they’re going to try to lure Beatty out – which means they’ll send out their battle squadrons: what Beatty’s been praying for ever since Jutland.’ A smile, and a hand on Anne’s shoulder: ‘At least as important as our jaunt to Orkney.’
7
He’d booked at the Snake Pit – Grueninger’s Restaurant and Weinstube, as it called itself and was listed in the directory – as soon as he and Helena had hung up. At the Pit one booked not a table but a room, and he’d told the woman, might have been Frau or Frl. Grueninger, that he and the young lady would be there at about eight-thirty. Mentioning the ‘young lady’ so they’d know the table should be laid for two and that it wasn’t a stag party, for which they’d usually offer to get waitresses in, instead of the old waiters who tended to be blind, or at least unseeing.
Monday now: 28 October, and the whole day to pass. On his back on the iron-framed bed, hands linked behind his head, listing what he did have to do, despite being on the sick-list. Down to the boat first, check that Claus Stahl had everything in hand. There’d be leave granted to those who had it due to them and wanted it now – wouldn’t get it until the boat had been taken into dockyard hands – but Stahl needed to have the paperwork ready for Otto to initial, then for FdU’s rubber stamp, and a copy for the paymaster’s office for the issue of railway warrants as well as pay. Ship’s stores, then – muster and accounting, always a pain in the bloody neck. Torpedo and ammunition expenditure was simple enough – about the only thing that was. Engine-room stores were for Hintenberger to deal with, of course; he’d gone on his weekend leave to Bremen but should be back by 0800.
Had better be, in fact – he’d gone in Graischer’s motor. Which was another thing – see Graischer and beg for the loan of it this evening. Also, as instructed by Schwaeble, call in at FdU’s office, sign typed copies of the patrol report.
What else…
Well – various things to discuss with Hintenberger, who surely would be back. Oh, and visit the naval tailor to get an extra gold stripe sewn on the sleeves of three uniform jackets, and epaulettes changed on his full dress uniform and greatcoat. One jacket to be attended to immediately, rest at the tailor’s early convenience.
Not a word to Helena about that. See how long it takes her to notice.
Turning his head to gaze out at steel-grey sky and fast-moving clouds, thinking, This very evening…
Might she be thinking of it at this moment? On the ’phone she’d sounded scared, sort of breathless. Right from the start therefore, calm her, reassure her, give her time to recognise her own need and warm to it, relax to it. She might even be a virgin. As the English girl had been: not that that had particularly surprised him, hadn’t really given it much thought, but she had had that schoolgirlish look and manner, as he’d recalled in later musings.
Manner, for sure: she and Gerda very much alike then in their giggly ways; the English friend she’d raved about being in fact prettier than her. Enormously attractive, with a stunning figure – he’d found it difficult to take his eyes off her, after a while hadn’t bothered to. And she hadn’t been scared of anything – not visibly, in any case, had sort of revelled in it. Schoolgirl playing tricks on teacher, out for all the fun she could get.
He had, he supposed, thought about her quite often over the years. In some ways, regretfully. Not that they’d have got together or even tried to, even if there’d been no war. Not even with Gerda as a go-between – which might not have been on the cards in any case; relations between those two had cooled considerably just at that time – he didn’t think they’d continued to share digs from then on.
Blamed Gerda for the way it had turned out, maybe?
Helena was a different proposition entirely: not in the least schoolgirlish, but seriously, consciously sexy. Might be a virgin – hence the nervousness, which that breathlessness had seemed to indicate – but despite that, knowing exactly what she was about, wanting it and intending it.
Could not be a virgin. And even if she was, might be utterly fantastic. If the breathlessness was for him, her word ‘unnerving’ applicable more to the venue than to the rendezvous itself?
Possible. The place did have a reputation, and when at their first meeting on board Franz Winter’s boat he’d proposed taking her there, her reaction had been sharply negative, dismissive even. In fact – recognising this for the first time, oddly enough – he’d have deserved a total brush-off, having been so brash as to have made such a proposal – blatantly, right off the cuff.
A measure of (a) his own condition, (b) her effect on him. The life one led as commander of a U-boat, the strain one was used to and lived with, took for granted but none the less was strain, considerable and in some ways constant. There’d been no such element in 1913, obviously; to match what one remembered as her girlishness, one’s own approach must have been fairly juvenile. Exceptionally attractive girl – no lack of physical development – and that glorious summer; a kiss or two – or 200, more like: she’d been extremely tactile.
Out of sheer innocence?
She and Gerda must have discussed such things, though; she must have known what she was getting into. When he’d grabbed her that day in the tack-room and she’d responded so keenly to his kiss and touch, an
d after a few minutes whispered, ‘Oh, if only you weren’t leaving and I didn’t have to either.’ He’d kissed her some more, then murmured close to her ear, ‘Why don’t we spend an evening together in Berlin?’
‘How? When? You’re off to Kiel, and—’
‘Kiel by way of Berlin. My aunt has an apartment there which she rarely uses and to which I have a key. You’re leaving the day after tomorrow – I could explain to you how to find it, and be there to greet you, then move into a hotel nearby so you’d have the apartment to yourself. How might that be?’
‘My mother’s expecting me, though, and she knows when I’m leaving, so—’
‘So send a telegram. Say you’re spending a day and a night in Berlin with Gerda in her aunt’s flat. We’d have a splendid evening on the town. Go on a Bummel – Berliners’ word for a promenade – window-shopping along the grander streets – the Linden, Ku’damm, Leipzigerstrasse – find some cabaret we like the look of, dine and dance. The tango, huh?’
‘I adore the tango!’
‘We’ve been forbidden to dance it. The Kaiser has decreed that it’s an immoral dance, unsuitable for officers to indulge in. I ask you – immoral! Nuts to the old clown anyway – I’ll be in civvies, we’ll tango till the cows come home!’
‘Sounds absolutely ripping, Otto!’
‘Shall we do it, then?’
Her answer had been to hug him. In her own language, he’d thought afterwards, in the excitement then possessing her, ‘glee’ would vie with ‘spree’, and kisses were a fun thing, naughty thing, they’d go along thrillingly with playing hooky. Her head back, greenish eyes glowing into his. A whisper then: ‘Draw me a little map?’
* * *
He suggested to Helena that Monday evening, ‘We might take a few days off together – if you’d like to and they’d grant you leave. Somewhere not too far, but far enough not to bump into acquaintances round every corner?’
‘I’d like to, certainly. Hanover, perhaps? If one could. Trouble is, with everything so unpredictable—’
‘Might moot it, though? Grounds of some relation sick or bereaved?’
What had led to this had been her querying whether he truly was all right to have been excused duty for ten days: she’d asked him this in the presence of the Muellers, in whose living-room he’d spent an awkward few minutes waiting for her to come down. When she’d appeared he’d kissed her hand, murmured to her that she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered, and how kind to spare him an evening so soon after his return. While every natural instinct was to take her in his arms, kiss her more deeply and for longer than she’d ever been kissed before. She was utterly sensational. Despite the hip-length fur jacket she’d already put on and had buttoned as high as her throat. He’d been on the point of dropping some reference to Kramer’s, the restaurant there in Oldenburg, had desisted because it was conceivable that it was shut on Mondays, which as locals they’d have known. Might have checked, he thought, telephoned the place, if he’d had his wits about him. He did at any rate have the nous to warn them that he might bring her home rather later than one would normally, since the people with whom they were dining tended to drag things out, rather, and the host being very much senior to him – well, one would simply have to sit it out.
She’d commented as he’d helped her into Graischer’s motor, ‘Nothing wrong with your imagination, Otto.’
‘It’s you I’ve been imagining.’ Kissing her while arranging a rug around her. Her dress, black and lacy, wouldn’t have kept her warm, exactly. Telling her, ‘You’d be amazed, the hours you’ve spent in my arms. And at some of the things we’ve said to each other. Said and done… But wasn’t I good in there, with your Muellers?’
‘So don’t spoil it now.’ Evading him, turning away. ‘They’ve eyes like buzzards. And when one’s on the telephone I’m sure they listen – whatever’s been happening, it all goes dead quiet!’
That was when he’d suggested going away together.
Since he had nothing to keep him in Wilhelmshaven, or wouldn’t as soon as his boat went into the shipyard for repairs.
‘Had that bad a time of it, did you?’
‘Well. Hang on a minute.’ He’d set the choke and the timer, now went to the front to use the crank. Back inside then, switching on weak headlights and squeaky wipers to clear the screen, telling her, ‘Your scent’s exciting. So are you. Everything about you. Honestly, I’ve thought about you so much you wouldn’t believe it. Sorry – repeating myself… But yes – answering your question – we did have quite a hard time. Sank one of them – two actually, there was one earlier on and we didn’t get off exactly Scot-free from that one. Then the second time, really got it in the neck.’ He had the car moving: tried doing without the noisy wipers, but one needed them to clear the glass of a fog that had thickened in the quarter-hour he’d been in the house. Into third gear, reaching to her then with that hand. ‘Tell you the truth, there was a stretch of hours when it looked as if we were done for. It was the thought of not getting back to you that really made one desperate. I’m not saying that made me sit it out, do the things that eventually did save us – that’s my job, I have a submarine and twenty-five men besides myself—’
‘As few as that?’
‘Perhaps you’re thinking of Franz Winter’s boat. Mine’s smaller, what’s called a Coastal. Franz’s is bigger and in some respects quite different in layout. He’s due in tomorrow, by the way.’
‘Is he…’
‘But they’ll send him out again pretty well immediately – unless like me he’s in need of repairs. Anyway, what I was saying – I’ll get this over, because I do want to tell you, and that’ll be the end of “shop” talk – in the worst of it we were lying on the sea-bed, waiting for it to be dark up top so I could try to surface – couldn’t before that, the enemy destroyers who’d smashed us up would surely have been waiting to finish us off. Several hours, therefore, nothing to be done except lie quiet. Well, I made it bearable by concentrating on you. Visualising you, daydreaming of getting back here to you – of this exact situation in fact, only as a fantasy, a dream!’
‘Are you saying you’re in love with me?’
‘Since the moment I first set eyes on you. I was with old Franz on the casing of his boat when you came along the jetty with those friends of yours – you in that orange dress which you also wore the night we went to Kramer’s. It’s in that dress I’ve seen you and loved you ever since.’
‘Would have been much too cold tonight. So you’ll be getting quite a different picture.’
‘Well, I already glimpsed – black, and—’
‘I was going to say – if I may, please – that speaking of love—’
‘Please do. Oh – damn it…’ Rounding a sharpish bend, and a heavy truck coming the other way, taking up more than half the road’s width, Hans Graischer’s weak lights washing at close range over regimental markings on its mudguards, and its lights which hadn’t been visible from around the corner, for a moment blinding… ‘Damn. Sorry, Helena.’ Then: ‘You were about to say?’
‘That I feel the same. It’s – I suppose – why I’m here.’
That hand to her again: ‘I can’t wait to kiss you.’
‘Might be safer if you did. Wait, I mean. Is it going to be all right, at this place?’
‘Going to be fine. Don’t worry about a thing. I stopped on my way out to you, saw our room and—’
‘Our room.’
‘Our dining-room – which we have to ourselves, yes. It’ll be cosy enough – they’d only just lit the fire but it’ll be going great guns by now. I took the liberty of ordering the meal and wine. A main course of roast venison – I hope you can stand that?’
‘Why surely.’
‘Soup to start with, later a cheese they smuggle in from France, and for our pudding, profiteroles au chocolat with cream. For the wine, a Gewurztraminer from Alsace and then a Burgundy. And if we call for it, cognac with the coffee.’
&nb
sp; ‘All of that, in this starving country?’
‘I think it’s the same all over – there are places where you can get what you want.’
‘At a certain price, no doubt.’
‘Of course. But at sea one spends nothing – and I’ve never felt more like celebrating. I don’t just mean the fact I’ve been promoted, am now, my darling, as you’ve failed to observe, a kapitan-leutnant.’
‘Otto, congratulations! I admit I didn’t see, but—’
‘No reason you should have. Anyway, what we’re celebrating is simply us!’
‘Even against a background of disaster or near-disaster—’
‘Not necessarily that disastrous. Turmoil, for sure, but I’m sure there are moves that can still be made. As for the revolutionary attitudes in the country generally – and closer to home, of course, the indiscipline in the Fleet – about which you may know more than I do, since it’s a part of your own unit’s particular interest?’
‘Nothing’s good, I can tell you that. In fact—’
‘Tell me when we’re upstairs. If you must. Here we are – Grueninger’s…’
Slowing and shifting gear, having to look hard to see the vehicle entrance. Fog still thicker than it had been. Telling her, ‘There’s a covered shelter at the back. But listen – having been here earlier, I know the way to our room, we don’t have to hang around downstairs, we just go straight through and up. Here we are now…’ Negotiating a narrow alley down the side of the old building and into a cobbled yard, crossing that and nosing into – well, a carriage-shed, might once have been a cowshed, two other motor cars already in it. He braked, switched off the lights, took her in his arms: ‘Oh, that perfume! Helena, darling—’ Her lips opening to his for one long minute. Then: ‘It wouldn’t do for you to be seen on our way up – at any rate to be recognised. Stay close beside me, turn this up’ – the collar of her fur jacket – ‘and this’ – silk scarf inside it – ‘to hide some of your lovely face – d’you think?’
Stark Realities Page 12