There wasn’t anything to do now except wait, and it was a different kind of waiting. You were waiting for something you knew about, something you’d seen the shape of.
The Montgovern had become the leader of the port-side column,
with the Blackadder to starboard flying the pennant of the commodore and three cruisers ahead across the convoy’s front. One, a ship of the Mauritius class, was about four thousand yards on the port bow of the Montgovern, and the smaller ship in the centre of the trio—about the same distance on the freighter’s other bow—was one of the old C class who’d been converted as anti-aircraft ships. She would be just about identical to Carnarvon, in which Jack Everard had been navigator when she’d been sunk off Crete. And off the far (right-hand) corner of the convoy, out on the starboard beam of the C-class cruiser, was a contrastingly modern ship of the Newcastle class, nearly ten thousand tons of her.
Those three cruisers would be coming on with the convoy tonight when the battleships and carriers and their attendant cruisers turned back.
Paul walked for’ard, up into the narrowing stem again. With his back to the bridge and with the foremast and a cargo-derrick nicely in the way, he lit a cigarette. Mackeson might not approve of naval personnel smoking, he thought, at action stations, and he didn’t want to upset old Bongo … He wondered what might be happening astern, with the Warrenpoint and that other casualty. He hadn’t seen that torpedo hit. He’d heard it, and Beale had muttered, “Some poor sod’s ’ad it,” and McCall had told them about it when he’d come visiting. But with the convoy plugging on eastward and the gaps where those ships had been already filled, he realized with a touch of shame that casualties tended to drop out of mind about as soon as they dropped out of station. Perhaps because these fourteen now—he was trying to rationalize it to himself—holding on for Malta and waiting for the next stage of the whittling-down process to start, were the ones that mattered … But would one feel like that about it if—or when—it was the Montgovern falling back, sinking or burning? Might this feeling that what mattered was carrying on, pushing some part of the convoy through, be only a manifestation of the famous sailorlike response of Fuck you, Jack, I’m inboard?
Translated, it meant “I’m safe in the boat, so the hell with you …”
The odds were, he knew, that he’d get a chance to find out. So for the time being, damn the introspection too. He dropped the half-smoked cigarette, and trod on it, then made his way back to the others. Only three of them. Beale explained, “Ginger’s gone for char.”
Phyllis Gordon had broken up Jack’s play for Fiona Gascoyne (or Jack’s and Fiona’s play for each other: she could easily have brushed him off, made a joke of it and then ignored him) by virtually pushing her into the arms of the moustached airman, the bemedalled character called Harry who’d seemed, Paul thought, pretty ineffectual … Harry had found Fiona’s arm linked into his, because Phyllis had put it there, and they’d gone off to the dining room because she’d directed them to it. If they were hoping to get a meal tonight, she’d urged them, they’d better take up their reservation now.
But she hadn’t realized, as Paul had, that Jack had been doing anything more than mildly flirting. Paul had sensed it: and met Jack’s glance and then known it … Phyllis told Jack, after Fiona and the airman had moved off, “Don’t overdo the charm, my boy. Nick mightn’t go much on it.”
“Oh, come on!”
As if he couldn’t believe that anyone could even imagine he’d make a pass at his half-brother’s future wife … And Phil accepted it on that level: as a joke they’d shared, nothing to be taken seriously. She’d patted Jack’s hand, and told him, “Nick’s very much in love with her, you know.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
He’d glanced sideways at Paul. Wanting him to know, for some reason. A personal triumph over Nick Everard? Or—more simply—just because the girl attracted him?
Jack had picked up his glass and emptied it. He said, “We’d better go and eat too, Paul.”
In order to follow the Gascoyne girl into the dining room, Paul guessed. Phil Gordon stopped that one anyway: they hadn’t booked—couldn’t have, in fact, as they weren’t members—and the place was full. She advised them, “When you’re members, do make sure of booking. Lunches are easier, but—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Paul told her, “I hadn’t thought of eating here.”
“Might as well have one for the road, then,” Jack added. “My round. We can’t possibly go on cadging—”
“Non-members can’t buy drinks, they have to cadge.” She beckoned the barman. “Terry?” He was coming over. Jack said, “How very kind you are. But—if you’d excuse me, a moment—where’s the heads or gents’, around here?”
She told him. Then she was alone with Paul. She said, “Bit of a card, your … half-uncle?”
“I barely know him. Since childhood—we haven’t met in years. Two days two years ago was the last time, and before that I honestly don’t remember when it was.”
“Mrs Gascoyne wasn’t encouraging him, you know.” Terry was waiting for the order: she twiddled her finger at the three glasses. “I wouldn’t blame her, Paul.”
“Blame her for what?”
“I had the impression you didn’t like her much.”
“I don’t know her. But if my father wants to marry her, she must be a very nice person.” He added, “As well as very pretty.”
“It’s quite natural that she and Nick’s own brother should be interested in meeting each other, anyway … Here’s your drink, son of Nick.”
“You’re very kind.” He glanced at Terry. “Thanks.”
“Here’s to all the Everards—past, present and future.”
“Hah.” Rejoining them, Jack picked up his glass. “I’ll drink to that. This is a very nice club, Mrs Gordon.”
“I’m glad you like it.” She asked Paul, “Do you really have to go now?”
“Go?” Jack seemed surprised. “Did we say we were going?”
“To eat. This was the one for the road, remember?”
“So it was.” Jack laughed, for some reason. “I’d quite forgotten. But—how about a meal at the Wellington?” “I don’t know it.”
“It’s not a bad dump. I’m a member.”
Phyllis Gordon said that if they wanted membership of the Gay Nineties, now they’d seen it, she’d make the arrangements. They both said yes, they’d very much like to join, and she suggested they might look in tomorrow or the day after. Jack told her, “I’m going to almost live here, from now on.”
“Don’t you have a war to fight?”
“Oh, there are plenty of people to keep that damn thing going.”
They were laughing as she walked away. Paul was beginning to wonder if he could have been wrong, if he’d over-reacted, earlier. He’d never liked Jack much, and perhaps his snap judgement had been influenced by this.
Jack settled himself on a stool, and lit a cigarette.
“The Wellington’s towards Knightsbridge.” He sipped his drink. “So we’ll go along and have a snack. Sign you in as a member if you like it. It’s open on Sunday nights, meals and dancing, which is useful sometimes.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“But afterwards—well, I don’t know what you plan to do with the rest of the evening, Paul, but personally I’m going nightclubbing. I’m joining Wing-Commander Thingummy and Mrs Gascoyne at the Embassy.”
Paul sat leaning on the bar, looking at him sideways. “You are what?”
“Did you really imagine I was in the heads?” Jack fingered a card out of the top pocket of his reefer jacket. “He invited me, believe it or not. They’re in a big party, so an odd number won’t really matter. She pointed that out. Tell you one thing, half-nephew—I won’t be the odd man out.” He was studying the card. “This is where she lives. Eaton Square, hum hum. Tell you another thing—I reckon she’s a push-over.”
Paul put his glass down. He asked him, “You don’t really ima
gine I’d eat with you, do you?”
Jack shrugged. “Please yourself.” He held up the visiting card. “Better than a hole in the ground in Crete, eh?”
“Want a wet? Sorry, sir, want—”
Withinshaw was offering him a tin mug of steaming, dark brown liquid. He had a cigarette sticking to his lip. Beale was smoking too.
“Thanks.”
Paul had been sitting on the ammunition bin. He stood up now, stretching, and glancing around at sea and sky. There’d been some aircraft around during the past twenty or thirty minutes, but each time they’d turned out to be Fleet Air Arm machines either leaving for or returning from patrol. Fulmars, Martlets and Sea Hurricanes.
The tea tasted as if someone had washed his socks in it, but he could feel its warmth trickling down inside. He asked Withinshaw, “Are you a family man?”
Beale burst into guffaws of laughter: he was staring out towards the horizon in the north, out past a nearby Hunt. The two younger DEMS men were laughing too. Withinshaw ignored it all: but he was looking at Paul in a cautious manner, as if he wasn’t going to be caught out by any trick questions. He nodded. “Aye.”
Beale said without turning round, “Ask ’im ’ow many families.”
“Huh?”
Withinshaw advised him, “Don’t want to take no fookin’ notice o’ silly fookin’ sods like Ronald bleedin’ Beale.”
“Great Yarmouth is where he keeps one lot.” Beale glanced round now, to wink at McNaught and Short. “But what do they know in Yarmouth about the little loved ones in Durban, Union of South
Africa? Eh, Art?”
“You can shut your fookin’—” “Hey, up!”
Beale had turned back, and he was pointing out on the port quarter. Aircraft: fighters like silver toys closing on two larger planes. A trail of smoke was like a thin tail from one of them. It was diving, the smoke blackening and painting a curve on the sky as it went down into the sea and the fighters lifted like swallows, banking away after the other enemy, who’d turned away. Paul couldn’t see that one now. But faintly, there was a second stammering of cannon-fire.
“One down, anyway. Fleet Air Arm are keeping it all away from us. No wonder we’re getting a quiet forenoon.”
Beale said, “Them’ll just be recce flights, most likely, keepin’ tabs on us. When they really come, they’ll not be stopped that easy.”
“You said you’d been in a convoy like this one before. Malta and back—in this ship?”
“Not in this bastard, no.” Beale cocked an ear; and Paul heard it too, depth charging, on the other bow.
“Did you get hit by anything on that convoy?”
“Not a scratch.”
“Fookin’ lucky we was an’ all.” Withinshaw stood up. “’Ere we go again …”
Another emergency turn—to port, this time. Turning away from that submarine while the destroyers’ depth charges kept it deep.
Withinshaw murmured reflectively, “We was fookin’ lucky, though, that trip. Eh, Ron?”
“You oughter get a sign painted, Art.”
“What you on about now, then?”
“A notice you could ’old up when Gerry’s comin’ over. Big letters sayin’: ‘Mercy—two families to support.’”
Gunfire, out in the destroyer screen, three miles ahead …
Paul went towards the bow, to get a clearer view. Behind him, the DEMS men went on teasing Withinshaw, Wally asking him how many papooses he’d got so far out of each squaw in his separate wigwams. Paul could see the smoke-haze of the destroyers’ barrage fire ahead, but not what they were shooting at. Then two Fulmars belted over from astern, flying in that direction: and the commodore’s siren bellowed like a moose at rutting-time, ordering a turn back to starboard. McCall came up the ladder from the well deck, and Paul went back to meet him. “What’s all that about?”
“Torpedo-bombers, apparently. Italians.” Beale and Withinshaw became more alert, less chatty, standing to their guns and looking out over the port bow as the ship swung to starboard. McCall added, “Fighters from the carriers back there have shot down two Eyetie recce aircraft in the last half-hour. Savoia Marchettis.”
“Fine.”
“Sods are just keeping an eye on us, for the moment. Getting set for something big.”
“D’you think so?”
“Well.” Staring out towards where that action was, shielding his eyes against the sun, McCall said, “That bit’s over, by the looks of it.” He answered Paul, “Very close to Sardinia, aren’t we? They aren’t going to just sit on their fat arses and watch us sail by, are they?”
“I guess not.”
“Right … Meanwhile the Agulhas Queen’ sunk, and the last we heard of the Warrenpoint was a signal telling the destroyer that was standing by her to take her blokes off and then sink her.”
Paul looked at him, and nodded. “Come to cheer us up, have you?”
“Why should you need cheering up, for Christ’s sake?” He offered Paul a cigarette, and they both lit up. Everyone did smoke at action stations, apparently. McCall was a medium-sized man with a hooked nose, deep-set blue eyes and wiry dark hair: about as Celtic-looking as you could get, Paul supposed. The second mate added, “We’ve got off very easy, so far. Aren’t I right, Beale?”
The killick nodded, watching the sky across the convoy’s van. McCall pinched his cigarette out, and flicked it over the side. It was only half smoked, but with duty-free at twenty for sixpence you didn’t have to bother much. He nodded: “See you later.”
Forenoon wearing on …
There’d been several more emergency turns, and more depth charging out in the deep field, and once the Mauritius-class cruiser on the port bow of the convoy had gone hard a-port to avoid torpedoes which had narrowly missed a Hunt outside her. The Hunt had turned too and dashed out along the torpedo-tracks, picked up a submarine contact and attacked with depth charges, but by the time another destroyer had joined her the contact had been lost.
McCall had told Paul he wasn’t bound to spend the entire day on the foc’sl-head, and he’d been aft to his cabin for a shave, then down to the saloon for coffee. He’d found Brill in the saloon, reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel. There was an oilcloth cover on the mess table, and Brill had a lot of medical gear laid out on it. He’d complained, “Trade’s slow. Thought you might’ve been a customer.”
From the boat deck you could see that the merchantmen had been rearranged following the loss of those two ships. There were only three freighters now in columns one and four, and four in each of the two centre columns. The Caracas Moon, the tanker, had shifted up to become second ship in column three, so she was now on the starboard beam of the Castleventry and protected by having other ships all around her.
Back on the foc’sl, Paul found the DEMS team lying around smoking, dozing, chewing gum. There was no alert, no red flag flying: and in the three cruisers ahead would be RDF sets that would pick up any enemy aircraft pretty well the minute it left the ground, with Sardinia no more than seventy-five miles away.
Getting towards noon, too. Noon, according to McCall, being danger-hour, or thereabouts. Paul shut the lid of the ammunition bin and sat down on it, facing out over the port bow, northeastward. Out to starboard, abaft the beam when the convoy was on this leg of its zigzag, two destroyers were following up an A/S contact, but it was too far away to see what was happening.
Warmer now. He took his cap off, and opened his greatcoat. Remembering how, two evenings after that first one in the Gay Nineties, he’d gone there alone, primarily to check up on the membership situation. He’d called in first at Hatchet’s on the north side of Piccadilly, to visit the bar—one flight of curving stairs down towards the restaurant—and check in the submariners’ book they kept there. If you were on leave in London and at a loose end you put your name in it, and where you were staying or where you’d be that evening. But none of Paul’s friends was in the capital, apparently, or had bothered to record the fact. He had a beer, then went up
the stairs into Piccadilly again and headed west towards Berkeley Street. The tarts were already competing for pavement space, and there were some very smart-looking girls among them. A lot of them worked in munition factories, he’d heard, in daylight hours, and now the massed bombing raids seemed to be over they flocked into the West End every evening. It was about half-seven when he got to the Gay Nineties. He called in to the office first, saw Phil Gordon and collected his membership card, then went to the bar, and he’d just got a drink when Jack arrived and joined him.
Paul wanted to ignore, forget what had happened the other evening. Jack had only been putting on a show, either to impress him or to pull his leg. If one could shut it out of mind, it might blow over, have never happened. And she—Mrs Gascoyne—with or without the help of her RAF friend might have put Jack in his place. That would be the best outcome of all.
Paul told him that his card was in the office, to be collected.
“Good.” Jack checked the time. “I won’t bother with it now, though. Fiona’ll be along at any minute. In fact I was late, and she’s later.”
There was a silence, while Paul thought about it. He cleared his throat. “Is—er—does she really intend to marry my father?”
“I gather he’s set on it. Don’t blame him, either.” Jack smiled. “In some ways, I mean.”
“And what’s your relationship with her?”
“Oh, grow up, Paul!” He shook his head. “What d’you imagine she’s been doing with the bloody Air Force?”
“She’s going to marry him, but she’s prepared to play around meanwhile?”
Jack shrugged. “Takes all sorts, doesn’t it?”
“Where do you fit in? I mean, if my father’s—”
“Now, or after?”
“After what? Their marriage? You don’t surely imagine he’d still—”
“I don’t care all that much.”
“Have you considered what happens when he hears about it?”
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 12