She’d have implied that change of attitude rather than made any clear statement of it, he realized, because to be more forthright about it would have been to admit how she’d been handling her life up to that point, and it would have been out of character for Fiona to have made any such admission. This would account for the element of vagueness, and it had allowed him to accept it as meaning what he thought she’d meant. By that time he’d known the Australian girl, Kate Farquharson, but not as well as he’d known her a few months later. He’d never told Kate that he was in love with her. He’d wanted to, but Fiona had got in the way of it, twisted his tongue and made him feel stupid to be in such a mess. Now—well … He thought, training his glasses slowly across the hazy line of the horizon on the bow, that in present circumstances it wasn’t likely to make a pennyworth of difference to anyone at all. Perhaps this very fact was what allowed one to look at it squarely and recognize one’s own blunder.
Blunders, plural. He couldn’t claim to have made any roaring success of his emotional life. He’d done a fairly good job for the Navy, off and on, but he’d done very little for Nick Everard. In the personal sense—facing it very squarely—very little for anyone.
And that kind of thinking didn’t help much, either.
At 9:20 they were ten miles offshore, north of a place on the Java coast called Tuban. The course was two hundred and ninety degrees. Chevening, just up from another visit to the plot, identified a dark shadow of land on the bow as Aur Aur Point, or rather high ground just inland of it. If they held to this course they’d be passing within four miles of the headland.
At 9:25 an explosion, ahead and to port, shattered the recent quiet. Greenleaf told Nick over the DCT telephone, “It’s Jupiter, sir. A mine, I think.” There was flashing ahead, the flagship signalling either to the stricken Jupiter or to the other destroyer, Encounter. But there were ships between Defiant and the flashing light, and the snatches of it that one saw weren’t readable. The squadron held on, at twenty-five knots. Bob Gant and Swanson were on the port side of the bridge. Chevening was taking over at the binnacle from Rowley, who was going down to his damage control headquarters. Swanson muttered, with glasses at his eyes, “She’s sinking …”
“Flagship’s altering course to starboard, sir.”
That dark patch—on the beam now as they passed—wasn’t a ship at all, it was smoke. Broken water gleamed there too: and—boats? He had time for no more than a quick look, because he had to know what was happening ahead. All he’d seen had been vague and smoke-wrapped, and they’d passed it now, swept past and left it on the quarter. He heard Swanson ask, “D’you reckon those are boats, sir, or floats?” He was asking Gant: but the cruisers and the one remaining destroyer were turning north, not even Encounter was being allowed to stop for survivors. If that had been a mine there’d as likely as not be a whole field of them, and Doorman was right not to risk another ship in it. Particularly if Jupiter’s people had got boats or floats away, and with the Java coast in easy distance. But another passing thought was that if there was a minefield here it would be a Dutch one and it would have been laid in the last forty-eight hours. Didn’t the Dutch tell their admirals where mines were being laid?
Doorman was steering north, with Houston already settled astern of the flagship and Perth turning now. Jupiter had been a fine, modern destroyer, with a complement of nearly two hundred men. Launched as recently as 1939. And now this “Striking Force” had just one destroyer. The enemy assault group had had fourteen, and had since been reinforced with more.
He thought of Jim Jordan’s musings a few days ago: however …
They lost Encounter half an hour later.
The moon had come up, and by chance Doorman had led his ships into an area of sea dotted with survivors from the Dutch destroyer which had been torpedoed during the action earlier. He ordered Encounter to pick them up and then take them down to Surabaya. The five cruisers continued northward, in line ahead and with no destroyers to scout for them now, across a moon-washed sea. Moon to starboard, still low but silvery-bright.
Pitching slightly: Perth’s quartermaster had let her swing off course, and as she turned back to regain station Defiant had the ridges of the Australian cruiser’s wash to plough through. Her bow slammed into them, one after another in quick succession, and after each impact spray swept back across the foc’sl and rattled on the gunshields. Then she was through it, settled again, and Perth was back in station dead ahead.
“Time now?”
“10:29, sir.”
He wondered what Kate was doing: whether she was still at home, or working in some military hospital again by now. The hospitals would be busy, he guessed, with wounded who’d been lucky enough to be brought out of places the Japs had over-run. Kate’s home was a ranch in the west of Australia, not far inland from Freemantle. That was the address he’d been using for his letters. He was closer to her now than he’d been since she’d left Egypt. If she was at home now she’d be—he guessed—a mere fifteen hundred miles away. “Alarm port, cruisers, red—”
A crash of guns from ahead as de Ruyter and Houston opened fire drowned the lookout’s yell. Nick had the DCT telephone in his hand. He heard Greenleaf’s order “Shoot!” and then the firegongs, and Defiant’s six-inch thundered. Gun flashes puncturing the darkness to port were the enemy’s: a lot of them, and they had this force silhouetted against the moon.
“Flagship’s hit, sir!”
There was a glow of fire on de Ruyter and she was swinging away to starboard while Defiant’s guns blazed in a smooth and rapid rhythm. Houston belching out shells too as she followed the flagship round. Swanson, at the torpedo-control panel, was shouting over his telephone to Mr North, the gunner, who’d be down at the tubes. Perth turning now: Nick told Chevening, “Follow round!”
“Aye aye—”
Gunfire smothered the acknowledgement. One hit on an enemy ship—on the quarter, a blossoming glow in that blackness: then, astern of Defiant as she approached the turning-point in Perth’s wake, a heavy explosion. Java: and if that had been a torpedo, he thought, the sooner they got round and stern-on to any more that were coming, the better. Turn now, independently? Aft, in Defiant, a shell struck: he’d heard a salvo coming and he’d been thinking about Java and torpedoes from the Jap cruisers, and then his own ship shuddered to the hit which had sounded like a muffled thump below decks and somewhere amidships. Gant was roaring into the telephone to damage control HQ, wanting to know the position and extent of the damage. Astern, a shoot of flame reached skyward and the blast of an explosion was solid, buffeting: a shout from the after end of the bridge was CPO Howell, chief yeoman, reporting that Java had blown up.
Defiant was slowing: engine rhythm dying, and the way falling off her. Her guns were still firing, all of them, Nick thought, hearing Chevening in a moment’s comparative quiet shouting down: “Starboard fifteen!” But ahead—impossible to know immediately which ship it was, when from this angle the leaders were so bunched together—another eruption, a burst of flames and a roar of sound. Greenleaf told him over the telephone, “Flagship, sir. Looked like a magazine going up.” Gant chipped in, at Nick’s side and raising his voice high to beat the racket of the guns, “Shell burst in number two boiler room, sir.”
A large-calibre shell struck aft. You felt the blow of it, heard the whine of ricocheting fragments in the echo of the explosion. There was a major fire back aft. Gant yelled, “Permission to go aft, sir?” He’d gone without waiting for it. Chevening reported from the binnacle, “Losing steerage way, sir.” Nick told him, shouting through the noise of another salvo, “They’ll have her moving again in a minute.” In some minutes, he thought. He hoped Sandilands would get her moving. He hadn’t heard that bit of Gant’s report. He heard more Jap shells coming—for a second or two before gunfire drowned the unpleasant sound of them—and he knew, knew more than guessed, that this would be a straddle over the forepart of his ship. The salvo came from abaft the beam; one shell
was a near-miss, short; three went over; one burst on the foc’sl and wiped out “A” gun’s crew; the last one crashed in through the port side of the bridge superstructure and burst in the plot, most of its explosive power blasting laterally into the wheelhouse and upwards through the thin deck-plating of the bridge.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dusk came to the Mediterranean six hours later than it had darkened the Java Sea, and clouds low on the horizon in the west were turning pink as the sun sank down into them; against the spreading brightness Paul had watched the two carriers, astern of the convoy, turn into the wind and fly-off a stream of fighters which, when they’d gained height, had moved out northward. The two carriers were back on course now. There was a lot of activity still in the destroyer screen, though: the fleet destroyers had spread themselves into a wider and more distant arc, while the smaller Hunt class had moved in closer to the four columns of merchantmen—to provide close protection with their AA weapons against the bombers when they came.
He was in the open port wing of the Montgovern’s bridge. So was Gosling, the little paymaster sub-lieutenant. Mackeson, who was allocating action duties to all the passengers, had told them both to wait out here.
Some of the fleet destroyers were still hurrying back after visiting the oiling group astern. At full speed, racing to overtake the convoy and get back into station ahead before the Luftwaffe arrived, one of them passing now up the port side was throwing a high, curved bow-wave tinged pink from the reflection of the western sky. Too pretty, really, to be true … Convoy and escort—battleships, carriers, cruisers and destroyers—were at action stations, although no alert had been signalled yet. It was coming: it might have been expected anyway, this far into the Mediterranean, but in fact there’d been a warning signal during the afternoon: intercepted enemy radio messages had made it clear that an assault was being mounted.
Gosling said, blinking at Paul through the pebble glasses that made him look like a frog, “I wonder what jobs he’s going to give us.”
“I’d guess we’ll be extra lookouts.”
“What, out here?”
Mackeson had had the passengers assembled in the saloon at tea-time, told them about the probability of a dusk attack and added that he’d be expecting them to lend a hand in the ship’s defence. He’d co-opted Thornton, the cipher expert, first of all, and put him in the chartroom to decode signals. But looking out, Paul thought, was about all he and Gosling could be useful at: and the short-sighted little paymaster wasn’t likely to be very good at that, even. Might be better helping Thornton, he thought: not that one would wish that on someone who hadn’t done one any harm … He asked him, “What were you doing before you joined?”
“Accountancy. Actually I’d just qualified.”
“You’ve something to go back to, then.”
“Haven’t you?”
“I was at college. In the United States.”
“I thought you sounded a bit American.”
“Admiring the sunset, lads?”
Humphrey Straight, the Montgovern’s master, had come out of the enclosed bridge behind them. He was a blocky, grizzled man: he had a way of staring with his head lowered, glaring at you under his eyebrows like a bull trying to decide whether or not to charge. Paul told him, “We’re waiting for Commander Mackeson, sir.”
“Oh, aye.” Straight’s eyes looked bloodshot with that western light in them. “Grand sight, eh?”
“Beautiful.”
“Aye. Beautiful … If you could paint that, and get it just right, folks’d say you’d laid it on too thick.” He stared around at the destroyers; then ahead, past the column leaders to the cruisers. “Mack had best hurry up. The buggers’ll be at us directly.” His eyes moved to Paul. “Seen action, have you?”
“Some. Not air attack, though.”
“You?”
Gosling shook his head. “None at all, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid is what we all get, betimes.” Straight rubbed the side of his jaw reflectively. “It’s never so bad as you expect, though. Least, it’s as bad for them as it is for us. Helps to bear that in mind, see.”
Mackeson came out of the side-door from the bridge. Straight asked him, “Left all this a bit late, haven’t we?”
“Well, perhaps … Now—Gosling …” He asked him sharply, “Where’s your tin hat?”
“Here, sir.”
“Well put it on, boy. And take this.” A lanyard, with a whistle on end of it. “Round your neck. That’s it. All you have to do is stay right in the wing here, and keep a sharp lookout. If you see an attack coming that the guns haven’t got on to, point at it and blow that thing like hell. Understand?” Gosling nodded. Mackeson asked him, “Wearing your lifebelt, are you?”
“Under my coat, sir.”
“Right. That’s you settled, then. Now, Everard.” He pointed for’ard. “I want you up there on the foc’sl. You’ll find a bunch of bloody-minded DEMS characters lolling around the Oerlikons. I want you to keep ’em on their toes, generally act as OOQ and help to put ’em on to targets. Keep an ear open for this lad’s whistle, and the other one for our tame flying officer who’s in the other wing. All right?”
Paul nodded. “Except once it’s dark I won’t be able to see which way they point.”
With the guns in action, he doubted whether he was likely to hear whistles anyway. He didn’t want to aggravate Mackeson with too many objections to his arrangements, though. Mackeson told him, “By the time it’s dark, Everard, the show will be over. That’s the usual form, anyway.”
Humphrey Straight loomed closer. He said dourly, “My second mate looks after DEMS gunnery lads.”
“Oh, yes.” Mackeson glanced round at him. “But he can’t be in more than one place at a time, can he? Don’t we want all the help we can get?”
The master shrugged, and walked away. Mackeson murmured, “He’s very talkative this evening. Don’t know what’s got into him.”
Paul nodded. “Minute ago, he was talking about painting the sunset.”
“Good God!”
He went down the ladderways through the bridge superstructure, out into the ship’s-side gangway, down into the for’ard well deck and across it, and up the ladder to the foc’sl-head. One glance, as he reached the top of it, showed him that one of the two Oerlikon guns still had its canvas cover on.
Keep them on their toes, Mackeson had said. A covered gun—at action stations?
A red-headed sailor, about Paul’s own age, stared at him inhospitably. Beyond him a heavy-set, pale-faced man of about forty was fiddling with the Oerlikon that had been uncovered. There were several drums of the twenty-millimetre ammunition in a bin nearby.
Paul told the older man, “My name’s Everard. I’m taking passage to Malta, but I’ve been detailed to lend a hand up here. Spot targets for you, all that.”
DEMS personnel, he was remembering, were Merchant Navy men who signed on under a special system called the T. 124 agreement. They wore naval uniform—at least, they were supposed to, although the one at the gun was wearing a checked shirt under a donkey-jacket—but weren’t subject to ordinary naval discipline. They got better pay, for some reason.
The fat man had acknowledged Paul’s presence with a nod. The young, red-headed one was staring at the fat one as if he was waiting for a lead. The fat one said, “Leading ’and ’ere’s Ron Beale.” He nodded towards the covered gun. “That’s Ron’s. Be up in ’alf a mo’.” He stooped, and hefted a drum of ammunition; he gasped, “I’m Withinshaw. This lad—” the young one had gone to help him—“McNaught, this is.”
“Easy now, Art …”
Arthur Withinshaw, then. Possibly from Liverpool, Paul guessed. Art pushed the red-headed boy aside, or tried to, with an elbow. “Gerrout of it!”
“There … All right?”
Boots scraped on the ladder from the well deck: with them came a leading seaman cradling an ammo drum in his arms. A younger sailor behind him also carried one. Paul told him—B
eale—who he was. Beale looked round at the young one: “Get that fuckin’ cover off, Wally boy.” He looked back at Paul: “Where’s Mr McCall, then?”
“I expect he’ll be along.”
The wind across this unsheltered deck was bone-cutting, and it would get worse when the sun was down. He hoped Mackeson was right that the Luftwaffe went home when it got dark. It would be about fifteen minutes to sunset now, he guessed, and that would make it about zero-hour for an attack. Astern, the whole sky was crimson. He pushed his fists deeper into his greatcoat pockets, and asked Beale—who’d clamped an ammo drum to the other gun now—whether they’d been told about that signal, the warning that an attack was coming. Withinshaw said, “Stands to reason. Why we’re ’ere, like.” He stared at Paul: at his rank insignia first, the single wavy stripe on each shoulder of his greatcoat. Then at his face. He asked him, “Had a basinful before, ’ave ye?”
“Not in the Med. Up north. Narvik, that business … You?”
“We done a few trips, me an’ Ron, Malta an’ back once. Other pair’s green as grass. Bloody babes in arms, right, kiddoes?”
The red-headed one growled and spat. Beale, the killick, asked Paul, “Fuck-up, weren’t it, Norway?”
“In part, I guess it was.” The two older men were at their guns, getting their feet spaced right, then leaning into the shoulder-rests, weaving a little to test their stance, settling comfortably, the gun barrels traversing and arcing. Then they were resting, waiting, and the younger men were using spare ammunition drums as stools to sit on, McNaught chewing with his mouth open, like a dog. Paul added, “Can’t say I knew much about what was going on, though. I was an OD Gun’s crew.”
Withinshaw murmured, “Stone the crows.”
Beale asked him, “Did all right then, did you?” Beale was about thirty, Paul guessed. Rather mean-looking. Probably good at his job so long as he was left to do it on his own. It was undoubtedly an advantage, he thought, to have served on the lower deck in action conditions. He knew these people, understood them; to him they weren’t some different form of life, incomprehensible and sometimes a bit worrying, which was how he suspected some commissioned officers tended to view them. The secret—or part of it, he thought—was to accept them as they were, appreciate and make use of the qualities they had, instead of expecting to find ones they didn’t have.
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 6