Villar gave his wolfish grin. ‘Well done, Shiner. I’ll make a navigator of you yet.’
The stern was already moving slightly from the jetty, the dripping rope fenders being hauled inboard and rushed further forward as the well-bruised piles edged dangerously near to the paintwork.
‘Slow ahead port.’
Blake waved his arm to Scovell and saw his men slack off the spring which, as the ship nudged forward, lifted until it was bar taut. Slowly but surely, using the pull of the tug and the springing action of the wire, the cruiser angled away from the jetty, the oily water bobbing alongside, waiting to be filled by another hull.
‘Stop port. Let go forrard.’
Blake raised his binoculars and looked towards the town. Some of his men leapt into view as the lenses passed across them. A serious-faced signalman folding up the Union Jack which had been hauled down at the instant Andromeda had got under way. Scovell, watching his men, one foot tapping with impatience. And the captain of the forecastle, the bearded Musgrave, ‘Hydraulic Jack,’ pushing an inexperienced seaman aside as the head-rope came snaking dangerously past his ankles.
Blake wondered if Musgrave still remembered the dead men on the island, or if his face would be appearing across the table again as a defaulter, full of all the old excuses. It was like this, y’see, sir. Me an’ my oppo was set on by a bunch of squaddies, etc., etc. Set on? Blake had known him lay out three military policemen single-handed in Alexandria.
‘All clear forrard, sir.’
Blake turned and looked at the anchorage. A few ships in the distance, nothing dangerously close.
‘Slow astern together. Tell the other tug to stay in company.’
The tannoy bleated, ‘Fall in for leaving harbour!’
Wires were finally being vanquished by gloved seamen and were slowly vanishing into lockers and stores until the next time. On forecastle and quarterdeck the men were falling into line, their caps like white flowers, moving slightly to the ship’s stern-first thrust.
‘Stop engines.’ Blake looked at Walker’s youthful eagerness. ‘Here we go, Sub.’
The land was swinging past as the cruiser continued to drift with her way and current, until the long jetty, seemingly filled with warships, lay across the bows, with a tiny gap between a destroyer and a partly repaired minesweeper. It did not seem possible that Andromeda had fitted into so small a space.
Apart from the men required on deck, everyone else was out of sight until the ship was clear of the harbour. There was a smell of new bread coming up from the galley funnels, and Blake guessed that the paymaster commander had made allowances for a few extra delicacies during the brief stay in port.
Villar said, ‘Ready, sir.’
Blake looked at him. It had been a good team. The best. Now it was almost over.
‘Starboard twenty. Slow ahead port. Starboard engines slow astern.’
Froth surged along the side, and a young Australian seaman, very new, paused in his cleaning of the bridge screen to exclaim, ‘Gee, isn’t this something?’
Villar groaned, and the Toby Jug muttered, ‘Gawd ’elp us!’
The land was swinging more swiftly now, the tugs turning on their tails to keep pace with the lean cruiser.
‘Stop starboard.’ Blake ran his eye over a harbour launch, but it was staying well clear. ‘Wheel amidships. Slow ahead together. Tell the tugs, thank you.’
The Bouncer turned away, her seamen hauling in the towline while her skipper gave a shrill toot on his siren.
‘Take over the con, Pilot.’
Blake climbed on to his chair, her words in the night coming at him without warning. If only I could be with you and your ship.
‘All secure forrard and aft, sir.’
Walker was watching him with obvious interest. Even without turning his head Blake could feel it in his tone. Was I that bad? Has she changed me so soon?
‘Good. In fifteen minutes you can tell the hands to fall out from harbour stations –’
He broke off as a man yelled, ‘Hell, sir, look at that!’
Even as Lieutenant Trevett began to blast the rating who had made such a startled report, Blake saw what ‘that’ was.
A Walrus flying boat was hurtling past a slow-moving freighter and was in danger of colliding with two corvettes which were about to leave the harbour.
The flying boat hit the water, bounced off again with its pusher engine spluttering madly, before landing once more within feet of the freighter’s side.
Scovell appeared on the bridge, his usual calm gone as he shouted, ‘What is that bloody madman doing?’
The Toby Jug lowered his long telescope and sucked his teeth. Then he said, ‘I think it’s the commodore, sir.’ He coughed politely. ‘I gather ’e wants to come aboard.’
‘Away sea-boat’s crew!’ Blake’s voice brought the astonished bridge party to movement again. ‘Lively with it!’
‘Tell the Chief, Sub. Dead slow. We don’t want to hit anything now.’
There was chaos enough. The two corvettes were almost overlapping as they tried to recover their proper station, while from the freighter’s high bridge there came a stream of obscenity and abuse, magnified for all the harbour to hear by a loud hailer as the master’s first fear for his ship gave way to fury.
Blake watched the Andromeda’s bows in case she should lose way in the current. He had no need to use his glasses to recognize Stagg’s towering shape. Why was he here? Perhaps the mission had been aborted, or the Germans had attacked elsewhere.
He did not have long to wait.
Beaming to all and sundry, Stagg arrived on the bridge even as the dripping whaler was run up to her davits again. Nobody, it seemed, gave a damn about the luckless Walrus.
Stagg shook hands and boomed, ‘Fast as you like, Captain Blake. I’m sailing with you.’
As normality returned, and the watch below vanished from the upper deck, Stagg added, ‘As that fool Livesay would put it, the fact is, we had a bit of bother.’
Blake watched him, seeing the effort it was taking to make the man sound so untroubled and calm.
‘We had just cleared the bay and we met with an incoming destroyer. An American, naturally.’
‘Met with, sir?’
Stagg eyed him coldly. ‘Yeh, she ran into Fremantle. Right down the bloody side of the fo’c’sle. You’ll see the pair of ’em in a moment. I’ve sent for tugs. The destroyer got the worst of it, and I’ll see her skipper in bloody irons when we get to the court martial!’
Stagg looked at his hands. ‘All right if I use your quarters aft? Good. I wasn’t going to be left behind, not now, by God. I’d have crippled that Walrus pilot if he’d missed you.’ He grinned. ‘I had a feeling it would turn out this way. Just you and me against the bloody world.’ He went off, tossing casual salutes to all and sundry as if it was one great joke.
Blake sat for a long time in his tall chair. I had a feeling it would turn out this way, Stagg had said. But to Blake it meant something else. Ever since it had all begun he had had the strange, unnerving feeling that he had no choice, no control over what was happening. Fate had already decided. Claire had been his one moment of reward and true happiness. Now he was going to be made to pay.
‘Fremantle on starboard bow, sir.’
Another voice said, ‘Gawd, what a mess. A real dockyard job, that one!’
The American destroyer was so low by the bows she might even have to be beached. But none of it meant a thing any more to Stagg. Fremantle’s own captain would have to cope. He had more important things to do.
Villar said, ‘Alter course to two-three-zero.’
Blake slid off the chair and laid his cap below the screen. Was it only this morning? Another place, where the world had been the four walls of a small hotel room.
He looked at his watch. She would be at her desk now, neat and cool in her uniform. Her Wrens would have seen the ring on her finger, and they would probably be wondering.
Blake turn
ed and saw Villar watching him. As these men do about me, he thought.
Surprisingly, the thought helped to steady him, and he said to Scovell, ‘I’m going round the ship, Number One. We shall exercise action stations at dusk. Just to blow away the cobwebs.’
As he left the bridge Villar said quietly, ‘He seems as bright as a new button.’
Walker smiled. They don’t understand, any of them. But I do. Good luck to him. If anyone deserves it, he does.
Scovell’s voice scattered the sub-lieutenant’s thoughts like a shotgun.
‘Come along, Kiwi, we have work to do!’
When darkness fell the land was well astern, and Andromeda had the ocean to herself.
15
Dirty Weather
AFTER MAKING HER rendezvous west of Perth with the original decoy ship, Andromeda turned her stem towards the Indian Ocean once again. The five days it had taken to complete the passage to Perth had been an almost leisurely affair. Despite regular drills with main and secondary armament, damage control exercises and fire-fighting, the ship’s company seemed relaxed by their solitary cruise, and as Moon had gloomily predicted, it would be the calm before the storm.
Blake had been surprised at how Stagg had managed to vanish for long periods at a time, appearing only for important exercises or the traditional ceremonial of Sunday divisions.
Even the weather was strange. Long hours of bright sunlight, but already lacking the warmth which had welcomed them from the Mediterranean.
The sky was harsh and difficult for the lookouts to scan without using coloured glasses. Sometimes when he went on to the upper bridge Blake thought it was like sharing it with a crowd of blind men.
The secret signals arranged by Stagg and Quintin came at regular intervals. Fairfax’s Empire Prince had cleared Aden and was heading on a south-easterly course and, like Andromeda, would be paying heed to every signal whilst maintaining complete radio silence.
Blake had gone over it with Stagg several times in the chart room, where Villar’s plotting team kept an hourly record of ship movements.
It was almost unnerving to compare the vastness of the ocean with their own puny resources. The latter had been halved when Fremantle had been involved in the totally unexpected collision.
Eight days out of Williamstown and steering west along the thirtieth parallel, Villar entered the wardroom where most of the officers were still lingering over their breakfast.
The British amused Villar greatly, and the Australians were getting just like them, he thought. Their need to read a paper at breakfast, for instance. Each propped on a little stand in front of every munching officer. As if they were studying music. The fact that most of the papers were weeks old seemed to make no difference.
He sat down resignedly and waited for a steward to notice him. A typical breakfast, he decided. Powdered egg, strips of crinkly bacon and some toast. And, of course, tea.
‘Coffee,’ he snapped. It always gave him some pleasure to arouse a little disapproval.
Palliser looked over his paper and smiled. ‘All quiet up top, Pilot?’
Villar sipped the coffee, he was going to enjoy the next part.
‘Actually, Guns, we’re in for some dirty weather. Could be a cyclone.’
Cups and cutlery clattered down and faces turned towards the wiry lieutenant.
Surgeon Lieutenant Renyard, never a good sailor at the best of times, exclaimed, ‘But won’t that make a difference? Will we return to harbour –’ his voice trailed away as several of them chuckled ‘– or something?’
Villar munched his toast with relish. ‘Ask him.’ He jerked his head towards the after bulkhead. ‘The commodore will be delighted to tell you, eh?’
Captain Farleigh of the Royal Marines said quietly, ‘The difference could affect our rendezvous surely?’
Up until that moment Farleigh had not really been thinking much about the prospect of battle. He would be going home soon, and all this would be lost. Here he was his own master, but back at barracks again, ordered about by men who had held their soft billets throughout the war, everything would be different. Andromeda’s marines were still wearing their white sun-helmets, when orders clearly stated that caps or berets would be worn for the duration. It was Farleigh’s way of declaring independence.
Villar looked at him. ‘It could. Our job is to work into position about two hundred and fifty miles from the Empire Prince, never more at any given time. At full revs it would take us about eight hours to run down on her, to be in range anyway.’
He looked at the scuttle opposite him. The sea’s edge rose slowly, as if the scuttle was filling with water. Then it steadied, motionless, before falling back again. A nice easy roll, at an economical cruising speed. But Villar knew from hard experience how these seas could change. It was funny, he thought, that only the marine had seen the danger.
Beveridge, the gaunt chaplain, seemed to rise from his brooding.
‘I was in a storm once.’
Palliser murmured, ‘I can imagine.’
Lieutenant Steele, the second engineer, glanced at the wardroom clock. The engines’ steady throb felt just fine. But it was time for his rounds again, and it did not do to have Weir getting there first.
Beveridge said, ‘It was in the North Atlantic. A convoy. The U-boats attacked in groups even in those early days. It was a massacre.’ He stared emptily at his plate. ‘And the weather was getting worse all the time.’
Bruce, the surgeon, sighed. Here we go again. He had heard it before but had never had the heart to shut him up.
The chaplain continued, ‘I was in a life-boat after the ship capsized. There was a party of civilians aboard. Refugees, I think. They all died eventually. There was just the one little boy. I kept talking to him and praying someone would find us.’
Steele lurched to his feet. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Padre! Do you have to swing the lamp at a time like this? I’ve just about had a bellyful of so-called religion.’
There was silence in the wardroom now, and even the stewards were staring at the second engineer. Steele was like most of his trade and rarely seemed to mess with his fellow officers at the usual times. His sudden outburst had put him in a different light.
Beveridge said, ‘There is no call for that! I was merely telling how –’
Steele stood opposite him, his eyes feverishly bright. ‘I know what you were saying! And I think it’s a load of rubbish! I’ll bet that Jerry raider said a prayer after he’d shot those prisoners, and I’d like a prayer said for all the other poor devils who’ve lost someone in this bloody war! Like my chief, for instance, have you seen the way he clams up when some thoughtless bastard starts going on about his wife or family?’
The surgeon, who was the senior officer present, said, ‘Easy now. The padre didn’t mean to make light of it. Quite the opposite.’
Steele swallowed hard. ‘I’m sorry, sir. But I lost a brother in Crete, and I think I can understand what I feel about that!’
The curtain across the door swished aside and Commander Weir, dressed as usual in his white boiler-suit, said calmly, ‘Time to get on with our rounds, I think.’ Nobody knew how long he had been standing there. ‘Are you coming, Trevor?’
Steele nodded blindly and followed him from the wardroom.
Villar reached for the last piece of toast and asked softly, ‘Well, Padre, did the little lad live?’
Old Horlicks sank back in his chair. ‘No. I’m afraid he did not.’
Villar stood up. ‘Then there’s not much point to it, is there?’
Commander Bruce glanced around the table. How could he ever go back to a passenger liner after this? He had seen this little drama often here and in other ships. You thought you were safe from the war as you moved across the sea, carrying your home with you like a turtle. Then, as now, it came out of hiding, the tension, the latent fear which had always been there.
He gave a great sigh. It was time to visit the sick-bay to see his handful of ‘cases’
, the genuine and the shammers.
Bruce glanced at the nearest scuttle and frowned. In the space of a few minutes the sea had altered its colour and the horizon seemed blurred. Villar was probably right about the weather. He usually was. Bruce hoped that before the ship paid off and was handed to her new owners he would find something to like about Villar.
On the upper bridge the sea-change was even more apparent, and when Andromeda shipped water over her forecastle the spray looked like yellow lace.
Blake stretched his legs around the bridge, a mug of coffee in his hand. Up, down, roll. He felt the ship sliding into a trough, sensed the urgent race of her screws as the stern lifted towards the surface.
Villar appeared on the central ladder, some crumbs on his shirt.
‘It’s worse already, sir.’
‘Are you all right, Pilot? You sound a bit down.’
Villar grimaced. ‘Bit of an argument aft. Nothing which won’t wash clean. The usual, sir. Too long at the same job. Nowhere to escape.’
Blake let it rest. Before he had met Claire he had been feeling it himself. Not wanting to leave his ship, not wanting to stay.
Stagg loomed up the ladder, his shirt soaked with spray, a doused cigar jutting from his jaw.
‘Morning.’ He nodded to the watch and then moved to Blake’s side. ‘Looks bad. What d’you think?’
Blake glanced abeam at the glass-sided rollers, their crests as yet unbroken.
‘I believe we’ll cross the edge of it, sir. Once we’re on station it won’t be so difficult. If we get a hint of the enemy we can close with him and use our speed to good advantage.’
Stagg rubbed his chin. ‘Fairfax might get cold feet.’
‘I think it’s unlikely, sir.’
So the old antagonism was still there, like a canker.
‘We’ll see.’ He squinted his eyes as the spindrift floated over the bridge and splashed against the fire-control tower. ‘Bloody weather. Without Fremantle’s two planes it’s bad enough. Your little kite could never get airborne in this mess!’
A Ship Must Die (1981) Page 24