See You at the Bar

by David Black

  All of this delivered through an ironic grin.

  Louis didn’t reply. Harry might look chipper, but the more he went on, the more Louis became suspicious. Until eventually, he knew all this chattiness was smoke and that Harry had something on his mind, and he also knew interrogating him as to what it was would get him nowhere. He was a wise old owl, Louis. Eventually, the real matter in question bubbled up to the surface.

  ‘I’ve been getting tired lately, you know,’ said Harry as if about to meander off on some other subject. But Louis knew he wasn’t. ‘I don’t mean sleepy tired. “A good night’s sleep’ll do you a power of good, old boy!” No. I mean bone tired. Soul tired. Bloody war, eh? I’ve been feeling I’ve been losing my edge. That maybe my luck is running out. That’s not a good thought to have in my line of work, Louis. As I’m sure you’ll understand.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Louis, sipping his coffee. ‘I also understand that none of that is likely to make you chipper.’

  Harry smiled again, ‘No, indeed.’ He had a sip of brandy-charged coffee too, ‘When we were out there, Sicily, we got clobbered. Something happened.’ Harry looked up, directly at Louis, who was gazing back, intently. Harry continued, ‘We got caught on the surface by aircraft. I ordered us down, but as we were diving, I could see I was too late. We got hit by cannon shells. Through the pressure hull and the conning tower. Holes in your pressure hull and you can’t dive. Because water is going to come in through those holes, and the deeper you go, the higher is going to be the pressure. Water is already filling your ballast tanks. So all that extra water is making you heavier, so you start going down faster. You lose the trim, and eventually you’re so heavy you can’t come up again, and you lose the boat. So I ordered the dive stopped. But we were already on our way down, and there wasn’t enough time for me to get down the conning tower hatch before the conning tower went under. Me and one of the lookouts. So I deliberately shut the hatch and left us both up there while the boat continued down.’

  Harry stopped talking, remembering those seconds. Him and the lookout, the hatch already shut on them and the bridge filling with sea and AB Archer on the other side of the hatch, his midriff already splattered all over the inside of the conning tower by one of those 20mm shells that had gone right through the tower’s skin.

  ‘The obvious thing to have done,’ Harry had started again, ‘would’ve been for me and the lookout to have kicked off out of the bridge and swum about on the surface, waiting, hoping the boat would come back up again soon. Or, if not it, then somebody else would come along and snatch us up. But I think you’d have had to have been in the sea, all alone, well, in this case, two of us, to really understand what a big bloody place it is and how wee and insignificant and so easily un-noticeable two bobbing heads are on it. To know there was a distinct possibility that Scourge wasn’t going to come up again, and it really was going to be left for that someone else to come along. Except, there was a bloody great battle going on all around us. And all those “someone elses” had other things on their mind… and if they did manage a moment to look for us, what was going to happen?… “oh, and where did we last see them? Where was that tiny little patch of huge ocean they were bobbing about on?”… You see what I mean? So I didn’t let go. I held onto the bridge as we went down and pinned the lookout there too. Even though we were both going to drown if Scourge had continued the dive. But she didn’t. She came up again. Almost right away. The lads in the control room brought her back up.’

  Harry turned to face Louis again with a big warm smile on his face. ‘And you know the best part? Clinging there with the whole Mediterranean gurgling around my ears, I didn’t once think: Will they come back up? Please make them come back up!’

  Another pause, for breath? To find the words?

  ‘I didn’t think anything, actually. I just concentrated on staying on that bridge. I didn’t hope or pray. It was as if I knew, without having to say it to myself. Of course they would’ve lost the boat if they hadn’t come back up, directly back up!’ A laugh here, to break the melodrama. ‘But they didn’t lose the boat. They obeyed my order and stopped the dive. And I didn’t have to stand over them to make sure they did it. They did everything right, by themselves. I wasn’t there, and they still did it right. My crew. Me. Daft wee Harry Gilmour from Argyll. My crew did it. And you know, I’ve never felt so proud… alive… real… and something else… it’s like a weight got lifted. Like I’d felt I’d been carrying them all that time, and now, I don’t have to.’

  Another pause, a furrow of the brow to collect his thoughts.

  ‘I certainly don’t feel so bloody tired anymore.’ And another big smile.

  Louis smiled back, but what he was thinking was, my God! Poor Harry, all that nonsense you’ve just been gibbering, it’s just your dull, bashed brain magicking up little epiphanies out of nothing. If that’s all you’re clinging onto to get yourself through, then you really do need a rest.

  *

  Sitting in the dghaisa, getting rowed back to Manoel Island, Harry wasn’t paying attention to the other two RN ratings cadging a ride or the battered old dghaisaman. He was composing himself for the task of writing out his full patrol report. He’d already delivered his verbal to a pained-looking Capt Philips, whose only verdict had been, ‘You were lucky.’

  He’d been right, of course. They had been lucky. They hadn’t been a target of opportunity for those P38s. Scourge had been on the wrong end of a USAAF mission, and more experienced pilots would have sunk them. But he wasn’t dwelling on that right now, he was thinking about Harding’s ‘unofficial’ account, delivered sotto voce out on the Lazaretto’s wardroom gallery the night they’d got back in. About what had happened after he, Harry, had kicked the lid shut, about how Farrar had gripped the whole show from the moment his feet had hit the control room deck plates. Fussy, punctilious Farrar.

  ‘It all happened so fast,’ Harding had said. ‘As I’m sure you know, even though you were still upstairs at the time.’ Harding had been taking belts out of a tumbler of gin and bitters, between regular, incredulous shakes of his head as he recounted those seconds and minutes.

  ‘I heard the klaxon go,’ he said, enumerating the points with his other hand, ‘…and the bodies started coming down the conning tower ladder. The wrecker already had all the vents open wide and I’d ordered the cox’n hard down on the planes. And then… I’m not sure… whether it was the clang! clang! clang! of the twenty millimetres hitting us or you yelling, “Shut main vents!” Because right after that, all this splatter of blood and shite came blasting down the tower hatch, followed by our very own Jimmy, covered in it himself. In fact, right away, I thought, fuck me! Poor Nick! He’s must have a fucking great hole in him somewhere, for all that to have come out of him! But it was that poor AB that had copped it. And by this time, there’s all sorts of screaming and yelling coming from the engine room about how some bastard’s turning the pressure hull into a colander. Well, exciting times! And yet there’s Number One in the middle of it all, issuing orders like he was just doing a trim dive. And the whole control room just stepped to it. Neither a wasted word nor a superfluous movement. And him just standing there covered in all that gore, like Windass had tripped and hit him with a pail of stew. Who’d have thunk it, eh, sir? Number One, cool as a cucumber. Man of the moment. And then we were on our way up again, and he had the yeoman, Bird, digging out the Verey pistol and the signal flares of the day, and another one of the bunts with an Aldis lamp, and Puttick out his chair on the after planes to grab the chemist shop and see what he could do for the AB in the tower. Although by then, he was probably drowned as well as eviscerated. And then Gooch was queuing up in the gangway with a couple of his mob, clutching all the smoke pots we had.’ Harding had laughed at that moment, although his story had seemed far from funny thus far.

  ‘And then, Number One, almost as if he’d planned it,’ Harding had said, ‘when he opens the conning tower hatch and all the water that’s left up
there, because bear in mind the tower’s got lots of shell holes in it too, and the water’s been pouring in, and then out again… what’s left comes down, drenches him, and cleans off all the gore. And it was, Tah-rah!’ And Harding had executed a mock flourish that made him spill his gin, ‘Lieutenant Farrar, ready to go on parade, suh!’

  Harry had known the rest, from Farrar’s own brief, all the flares Dickie Bird had fired off and all the smoke pots of every colour in the inventory that the TGMs boys had lobbed over the wall and that nice US Navy Gleaves class destroyer that had been on the western-most end of the gun line, peeling off and racing towards them, its main signalling lamp going like the clappers, and then the star shells she’d fired over Scourge. Even so, the P38s had made another pass, but with all the signal lamps flashing and all pyrotechnics going off, none of them had been able to concentrate enough to score any more hits on poor, crippled Scourge, and then they’d got the message and peeled away.

  But still, fussy, punctilious Farrar, he’d done all that and saved the boat. Bloody marvellous.

  Eleven

  ‘What are you saying about the Bonny Boy?’ It was the new base senior petty officer asking and none too pleasant about it, either. The three ratings, sprawled about on the rocks by the torpedo shop’s jetty, had been jawing away over mugs of tea on their break from de-ammunitioning Scourge, or the Salt-cellar as she was now being known on account of all those holes in her.

  ‘Nuthin’, Chiefy,’ said the surliest-looking one, not even bothering to look like he was impressed by the impressive CPO Gault and all his impressive bulk looming over him. The three were all torpedomen, employed ashore in the workshop, a fact given away by their tanned arms and faces. Fighting submariners were never on the surface long enough to get tans. The three were all in their working overalls, so no rank badges on display and all oil-streaked from manhandling Scourge’s torpedoes out the forward loading hatch before she went over to the dockyards in Grand Harbour for repairs. The oldest of three, however, didn’t want any grief from Gault, who he’d heard could be a right hard horse if you gave him the excuse.

  ‘It was one of the lads off Tobermory,’ he said, all emollient. ‘About how Scourge probably copped it off those Yank fighter-bombers. Why she was there.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you about Tobermory,’ snapped Gault. ‘Or Scourge.’

  ‘Ah know, Chiefy,’ said the emollient one, trying to calm matters. ‘But Tobermory, she’s Twelfth Flotilla, and she’s just been in droppin’ off COPP teams and shot-down fly boys. They were chattin’ about their Captain S and how he’s always had it in for Scourge’s skipper, and…’

  ‘Really,’ said Gault, interrupting, whose recent conversation – extraordinary conversation – with Shrimp Simpson about Captain Bonalleck and Mr Gilmour had never been far from his mind. ‘And what exactly were these Twelfth Flotilla gentlemen saying about Captain Bonalleck? And Scourge?’

  ‘Well, Chiefy, they were reckoning that was why he’d probably stuck Scourge right out in the open up there off the Sicily beaches… so as some passing shoot-first-ask-questions-later flyin’ Wild Bill Hickock would blast her on his way past. Sounds like that was what happened. Warn’t it, Chiefy?’

  ‘You know something?’ said Gault. ‘For skilled men, you don’t half talk a lot of bollocks. And listen to it too… instead of furthering the bleedin’ war effort. So it was Captain Bonalleck just took it on himself to order Scourge right into the middle of the Sicily landings, eh? Just upped and said, “Bugger me! What a good idea!” Was it Admiral Cunningham told you that? Or Winston himself? When d’you ever hear of a lowly flotilla skipper being allowed to draw up a fleet’s order of battle? Eh?’

  ‘Oh, the old Bonny Boy ain’t no flotilla skipper anymore, Chiefy. He’d already got hauled off to be the SLO for the whole op ages before…’ said the surly one, this time, as if talking to a slow child, ‘…hadn’t you heard?’

  SLO – submarine liaison officer – for all of Operation Husky. There was nothing lowly about that berth.

  *

  ‘CPO Gault to see you now, sir,’ said the young writer in his smart whites as he held the curtain aside for the bulk of the man outside to enter. Yes, S10 could afford to have a writer on his staff now.

  Gault marched into the tiny office, his cap squarely on, and snapped to attention in front of Capt Philips’s desk. He didn’t salute, Philips wasn’t wearing a cap. ‘Sir! Chief Petty Officer Gault, sir. Requesting captain’s table, sir,’ he said.

  Philips stood up from behind his desk to pull out a chair for the chief; the two men had known each other professionally and as friends for over two decades. That was how long they’d been in the trade together, so it would’ve been astonishing if they hadn’t.

  ‘Hello, Jim,’ said Philips. ‘Take your cap off, man. Have a seat.’

  Gault, still in his working overalls, smiled at Philips, all neatly decked out in his whites. He grunted, ‘Sir!’ and sat down. Philips, back behind his desk again, said, ‘I’d heard you were here, haven’t had the chance to look you up yet to say hello. But now you’ve taken care of that, it appears. Captain’s table? Urgent? I can’t believe it’s because you’ve missed me so much, Chief, you couldn’t wait,’ a laugh, to puncture the seriousness filling the tiny room, ‘So tell me. What’s up, Jim?’

  ‘I want to discuss something with you in utmost confidence, sir,’ said Gault, with such gravity that Philips found himself swallowing hard. What was all this formality? This wasn’t the man he remembered from the China station. Two minutes ago, Philips had been looking forward to catching up with an old China hand again. Right now, he should’ve been going into his bottom drawer and getting his gin out. But it was becoming increasingly obvious that Gault wasn’t here to catch up, and Philips had gone from surprised curiosity – when he’d first received the official request for an ‘audience’ from HMS Talbot’s most senior rate, hand delivered not two hours ago – to this creeping premonition he was now experiencing, that what he was about to hear, he wasn’t going to like.

  ‘…Of course, Jim,’ said Philips, interrupting what had sounded like the beginning of a rehearsed speech. Definitely not the Jim Gault he remembered.

  ‘Hear me out first, sir,’ Gault continued, doggedly. ‘It concerns a conversation I had with your predecessor, Captain Simpson. I don’t know if he mentioned it to you before he left.’

  ‘Our paths didn’t cross Jim. He was gone before I got here.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gault. ‘This matter I wish to speak of, sir, it concerns another officer, of command rank. If I have your permission to speak, sir, I’d better start at the beginning…’

  *

  ‘Now take us to sea, Mr McCready,’ Harry said and leaned against the periscope stands with his hands in his pockets as the sub lieutenant bent to the binnacle to line up Scourge for her turn into Marsamxett Harbour proper and then out round Tigne Point.

  It was all you could expect of a late August Mediterranean day: hot, with a catspaw of breeze on the water and not a cloud to be seen. The harbour was choked with raft upon raft of trotted-up landing craft and victualling craft plying in between, just enough to keep young McCready on his toes.

  On Scourge’s fore-casing, her line of ratings stood smartly at ease, all buffed-up and chuffed with themselves and their boat and her new paint job. She was going on patrol again, free of dockyard squalor and ready to face the enemy. And as everyone had spotted, when he’d sprinted up the gangway or heard the buzz, the skipper appeared to be his old self again, or if he wasn’t, he was doing a bloody good impression.

  Scourge had been in dockyard hands having her holes patched for what had seemed like an age. But, after doing his rounds and filing all his reports, after Able Seaman Archer’s funeral, her skipper, Lt Harry Gilmour, had been nowhere to be seen. The jimmy, Lt Nick Farrar had overseen all the repair and refitting for sea work. Speculation had been rife: the skipper had been relieved, promoted, demoted, caught wearing women’s clothing, that
bastard, the Bonny Boy, had had him hauled back to Algiers and Twelfth Flotilla to give him thirty strokes with a railway sleeper for refusing to worship at his scrotum pole. Or Harding’s particular favourite, from among all the lower deck speculation; ‘…I reckon it’s that ancient bint that did all the singing wots got him… wots-her-name?… Calypso… in that cave o’ hers up on Gozo… wi’ her thighs wrapped round his ears havin’ her evil way with ’im three times a day, four on a Sunday!’ – ‘…’ave ya seen the tits on her?’ – ‘…’ave ya seen the smile on ’is face, ya mean?’ The Vasco had been often heard to ponder aloud, after hearing it for the first time, ‘Who would have thunk it? Jack. Knowing his Homer?’

  Needless to say, all the speculation had been wrong.

  Lt Gilmour, after his visit to see his old chum Louis, had returned to the Lazaretto to be greeted by an order from S10 to get himself checked out by the surgeon commander, who pronounced him knackered and sent him off to a beautiful, airy, fin de siècle apartment, currently being maintained by the minesweeper boys up north in the hill town of Mdina.

  He hadn’t the strength to argue, and when he had arrived there, after saying hello to his fellow guests – all junior RNVR officers – he had excused himself and retired to his ‘cabin’, where he had then proceeded to sleep for over thirty hours.

  ‘You had the odd pee break, of course,’ one of the fresh-faced youths had confirmed to him when he’d finally got up. ‘But you looked so far gone each time you emerged from your scratcher, nobody had the heart to detain you on your way back, old boy.’ All this on the tiny veranda, over a plate piled high with warmed pastries and scrambled eggs and coffee.