Pointing at a switch with a large ‘D’ and a small ‘S’ on it, white capitals. Copper – a hinged bar about nine inches long, wooden handle. You’d push it over – Mr Showell would, his bony hand was ready to do so, close to it, right in front of her – to connect with a terminal that was also copper and shaped like a clip. There was a line of about a dozen similar switches over the full length of the workbench; but this was the one that mattered now, he’d said.
Behind them, Wroughton had passed the telephone to Derrymore, had a stopwatch in his hand. Beginning suddenly – shouting again – ‘Ten – nine – eight—’
Showell tilted his hand, inviting her, ‘Be my guest?’
‘What?’
Perfectly obvious, what. Pointing at it and nudging her with that elbow, whispering like a rasp of sandpaper, ‘When ’e says “fire” – shut it.’
Countdown continuing ‘—four – three – two – one—’
* * *
Hintenberger put a hand on the novel he’d been reading or trying to read, muttered through the motors’ steady thrum, ‘Load of codswallop. Trying to hide in it, sort of thing, but—’
‘Hide?’ Otto’s eyes on the small dark ones. ‘From what?’
‘Could’ve sworn I saw something like it in your noble visage, old friend. In fact right now—’
‘Well.’ Shake of the head. ‘Truth is, I keep thinking about my girl being scared for me. It really hurts to think it’s my fault she’s going through this. Powerful urge to – oh, to hug her, tell her don’t be—’
‘If you were in a position to do that—’
‘Of course – and the odds are she’s flat out, dreaming—’
‘Hear that?’
Bolt upright suddenly, eyes like gimlets, beard almost quivering, fists clenched on the table… Otto following the direction of his glance, then turning back. ‘Hear what?’
‘Something about searchlights?’
‘Oh.’ A shrug, and instant process of rationalisation – self-protective, but factual enough. Explaining to himself and to the engineer, ‘They do have some around these narrows. Like as not burn ’em all night – and since we won’t be surfacing – well, let ’em. What 1 was about to say – remember when we were on the bottom in 81, had the pump running and thought it wasn’t having any damned effect at all, then suddenly she did shift—’
* * *
Anne still hesitating. Behind her, Wroughton’s shout of ‘Fire the bloody thing!’ Shutting her eyes, pushing it over, opening them to a crackle of blueish fire as the thing closed. The shout had been directed at Showell, of course: only the three of them at this work-bench – herself, Showell and Sue – could have seen what had gone on.
No hydrophone effect now. Only a rolling burst of thunder – like a dam bursting, could have been – which Showell had reached to switch off.
‘Christ almighty…’
‘Ever see anything like it?’
Sam’s and Ray’s voices, from the other window. Anne on her feet, others around her grouped tightly, watching an acreage of sea in the southeast swelling in mounds of foam, dazzling white and silver where the searchlights fingered it, jet-black on the shifting slopes they didn’t reach. Wroughton had binoculars on it, as did Jack Ray, who’d muttered, ‘Like a submerged Vesuvius. Eh?’
‘Nothing’s coming up.’ Wroughton, half a minute later. Taking the glasses away from his eyes and addressing Showell then: ‘What took so damn long?’
Shake of the narrow head: ‘Sort o’ fumbled, near put me ’and across it. Sorry, sir.’
‘If there’s a next time, bloody don’t sort of fumble!’
Ray had slapped Wroughton on the back. ‘Unbelievable! And on behalf of the Sixth Battle Squadron—’
‘Any time.’ Wroughton laughed. ‘Any time!’
‘Couldn’t be any doubt you got him, I suppose?’
‘None at all. There’ll be divers sent down in the morning. No, don’t worry, he’s a goner.’ Ray was coming to shake Showell’s hand: pausing to clap Derrymore on the shoulder and thank him too. Anne asking Showed, ‘Tell me why?’ He shrugged. ‘Make up for the long wait you ’ad. Something you’ll remember us by, ain’t it?’ And Sue asked her in a whisper – five or ten minutes later, this was, after Wroughton had telephoned for the New York’s picket-boat to be sent back to the Vincent Pier – ‘Weren’t going to – were you?’
‘Couldn’t believe he meant me to!’
‘I saw your face, though.’ Still whispering – although there was no-one near them. ‘Never saw such a look… Tell you what my guess is – if you hadn’t known what’s his name was already done for, you couldn’t have – uh?’
‘Perhaps you know what you’re talking about. Sure I don’t.’ At least, didn’t think she did. Was still keeping her hands out of sight so their shaking wouldn’t attract notice. She’d felt she might faint, for a while. But Sam was drawing her aside. He’d been thanking Wroughton and the other two for having allowed him and the girls to clutter the place up – and congratulating them, and so on; asked her now, with a usefully steadying arm round her shoulders, ‘Wasn’t that right out of this world?’
‘I was saying earlier, you are an extraordinary man.’
‘What’d I do that’s extraordinary?’
‘How else did Sue and I get to be in this place, and seeing such a thing?’
‘Why, opportunity happened to present itself, and—’
‘Mrs McGregor and Mr McGillivray think you’re my fiancé.’
‘How come?’
‘Sue told her. She was asking a lot of questions, and that was the simplest answer, I suppose. Then Mr McGillivray seemed to be under an impression that Sue and I were here for immoral purposes somehow connected with the US fleet, so I told him the same.’
No smile, no reaction at all for a moment. Then: ‘They swallowed it, eh?’
‘Why shouldn’t they?’
‘Couldn’t get your mind around to the same concept, I suppose?’
‘Well…’
‘Well?’
She squeezed his arm. ‘London, Sam. Remember?’
Postscript
Sir Winston Churchill got it wrong, and so did C.S. Forester.
The attempt to enter Scapa Flow at the end of October 1918 was made by Kapitan-Leutnant Hans-Joachim Emsmann in UB116. His doing so was approved by the Wilhelmshaven U-boat Fuhrer Michelsen, and the boat was manned by its regular crew augmented only by one officer, name of Schutz, who’d sailed before with Emsmann.
In both World Crisis and The Gathering Storm, Churchill wrote that the U-boat was manned by a crew of officer volunteers, and Forester’s play, U.97, made the same mistake, albeit in (presumably) a fictional treatment. But although the German High Seas Fleet had mutinied, the U-boat arm had not; no officers-only crew would have been needed or probably even thought of. Former submarine officers would agree with me, I think, that the performance of any such scratch crew might not have been all that impressive, either.
As far as I know, Forester’s play was never staged in its original form; only after being re-written by a German, Karl Lerbs, and re-entitled Germany, was it put on in Bremen and Hamburg in the autumn of 1931. According to German reports it was well received. I have not read it or even seen it, but again, going by a German review of that time, it seems that the fictional crew meet their deaths through oxygen starvation, not by being blown up in a shore-controlled minefield, as was the case. I should add to this, however, that Kapitan-Leutnant Emsmann’s forlorn sortie only gave me the idea for Stark Realities, which is fiction from start to finish and only in the broadest sense a reconstruction of the historical event.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Time Warner Books
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © Alexander Fullerton,
2004
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788630832
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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