by David Black
Or the days when it rained, and he left the bicycle propped up by the pigsty, and took a dghaisa over to Valletta to the little bookshop, for long chats with its owner, the little man in the brown overall coat. Louis, his name turned out to be: half-Italian, half-Maltese, and island aristocracy before his fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. How that had occurred was never discussed. Books, music, philosophy, history, yes; even politics and how Louis for years had been pro-Italian, until he was repaid for his loyalty to the maternal side of his family by that bastard Mussolini dropping bombs on him.
It was only after that conversation that Harry decided he’d got to know Louis well enough to risk asking the question he’d longed to ask every islander.
‘You must hate us British,’ he’d said one afternoon when they were trying a very nice brandy that Louis had been saving.
‘Why?’ said Louis, puzzled.
‘For dragging our war into your lives.’
Louis paused to make sure Harry knew he was taking the idea seriously, before saying, ‘Don’t be stupid.’
It hadn’t been the answer Harry had expected. He was stunned into silence, so that Louis felt obliged to expand. ‘Centuries come and centuries go, and so do powers who want to control the Mediterranean. We can’t fight geography. We know we live on its pivot, at the centre of the world. Last century it was you British who came. This century you’re still here. D’you think we’d rather have the Germans? No! So shut up and start savouring the taste of that brandy before I fall out with you.’
At the end of November, they threw a wardroom ‘at home’ for Peter Dumaresq. He brought along several of his officers from Pelleas at Shrimp’s invitation. The evening had been a tearing success, everyone who could still speak agreed. When a dull-looking Shrimp had turned up for work the day after, and his Chief Petty Officer Writer had inquired how it had all gone, the only words he got out of the Captain (S) were, ‘Heavy casualties.’
But it was the trips to the RAF HQ and Katty, and the cosy banalities of their inconsequential chit-chat that Harry really enjoyed. He just liked to be with her, to marvel at the many different ways she managed to pin up her hair, the little thrill he’d get every time he made her laugh or even just smile, and the way her skirt would trace the shape of her leg, and how her fair skin took a tan. And then there were the nights listening to her perform at the Union Club. At those moments, he forgot how strange that little world was, stranger still the fact that he had stepped into it. He always sat with Chally and his set. Chally insisted. To any outsider, looking in, it was as if Harry had been adopted as some sort of ‘mascot’. And while Miss Kadzow performed, he would lean on the table, chin on palms, and watch enchanted, never noticing how Chally from behind that detached expression of his, would study him.
It was another life, one he’d never expected to live or dreamed might exist, but it stopped him from having to think about Shirley and her letter. All that stuff she had written;, it was far too grown up. He wanted to write back, of course he did. And he wanted what he would write to be mature and honest, but he didn’t know how to do it. Every time he tried, emotions crowded in on him – many he wasn’t proud of.
November came and went, and all the while that Harry caroused in Malta, five hundred miles to the south-east, the armour and infantry of the Eighth Army were racing across Cyrenaica, relieving Tobruk and its mostly Australian garrison, under siege for over 240 days now; driving back Rommel and his Afrika Korps, and the entire Italian army, then back again. At the RAF HQ in Malta, the chaps in the photoreconnaissance room had their own map on the wall, showing the huge bump of the North African coast, all the way from the Egyptian border, to El Agheila with other place names on it like Sidi Rezegh and Gazala. Little ribbons pinned to it marked each day’s advance, always moving in the same direction. West. People were even muttering the word ‘victory’.
And each day, while Harry translated, and flirted with Katty, he could hear the RAF Blenheims and Wellingtons taking off from the airfields at Takali and Luqa, and then returning to rearm and go again; pressing home attack after attack against the convoys sailing from the Italian mainland, laden with food and bullets and petrol, trying to keep Rommel’s army in the fight. The Fleet Air Arm Swordfish would take the night shift, flying after dusk from Hal Far on the south of the island. And also, each night, while Harry sat listening to Katty sing, Force F now joined by Force K, would head to sea to fall on those same convoy routes under cover of darkness; night actions, fought among the star shells, the piercing searchlights, and the flashes of heavy guns, picking off the Axis merchant ships that had survived Shrimp’s U- and N-class submarines, strung out on their patrol lines off the enemy’s main ports to the north, where the fighting Tenth were wreaking their own toll with gun and torpedo.
Meanwhile, Umbrage was still in dockyard hands, being put back together again. And then, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the start of December, the phone rang in the photo-recon office: it was one of Shrimp’s Leading Writers, telling Harry that Hubert, the XO, was looking for him and that if Mr Gilmour knew what was good for him, he’d be presenting himself back at the Lazaretto, quick-time. Or words to that effect.
Chapter Thirteen
The chaos below wasn’t as bad as it might have been, given the short, pounding seas that buffeted them. Umbrage’s crew hadn’t had time to load all their clutter back aboard again before they’d been ordered to sea. There were some toolkits and spares bins and even most of her crockery still ashore in the Lazaretto’s stores; all hauled off before she’d been handed over to the dockyard workers. They’d never have seen their crockery again otherwise. So on board, there was little to fly about as the boat plunged and rose through the stormy dark night.
On the bridge, it was only the whipped and flying spume off the wave tops blown flat that told Harry he wasn’t just staring into nothingness. Umbrage was five hours out of Marsamxett Harbour, and halfway to her designated patrol line off Linosa Island. Harry had the watch, while the CO and Grainger sat, or more accurately clung on below, pinning a chart of the Sicilian Channel to the bucking wardroom table, and discussing their tactics for the next forty-eight hours.
There was a gregale blowing – a full north-easterly gale, driving a furious sea that hit Umbrage just abaft her beam, lifting, twisting and rolling her 196-foot-long hull off each short, steep, punching wave. The two lookouts, tethered and hunched below the rim of the bridge so only their binoculars showed, scoured the sea ahead, each knowing neither had any chance of seeing anything on a night like this. Harry, braced against the periscope stands – now repaired, and upright again – made no pretence at navigating or trying to con the boat in any way. Like the lookouts, he could see nothing beyond the raging tempest in his face. He concentrated on the only thing he could usefully do, and that was trying to stop the worst of the water going down the conning tower hatch. So he stood staring straight into the seas rolling towards them, watching for the next goffer – Jackspeak for a big one – in the hope that his body would part the wave before it all went down the open conning tower hatch; and maybe be in time to yell, ‘Elephant’s trunk’ to the boys below, so they could quickly swing the canvas trap rigged by the lower lid, to catch whatever deluge would swirl past him. Letting a full column of seawater down the tower and into the boat might short out their electrics or get into their battery acid and fill the boat with chlorine gas.
Anyway, it would be getting light soon and they’d be diving.
Shivering in the cold, and his face numb from the wind and rain blowing straight at it for hours on end, Harry was trying to remember when he had been called to the phone. Had it only been that afternoon? One minute Harry had been teasing Katty about her ‘artistic difference’ with the Whizz-Bangs, the island’s own little cabaret troupe, and why she ‘would never work with them’, and the next he was back aboard Umbrage, with orders to ‘get her ready for sea, yesterday’.
Their submarine had been lying around the corner on a pon
toon on Lazaretto Creek, with a lot of shore staff on her, finishing up the repairs, doing snagging work. Harry was told nothing, except to round up all the crew billeted in the little private apartments the base had rented in Sliema, and to get aboard. All the dockyard gash had to be bagged and ready to be dumped ashore, and lists made of just the necessaries to get to sea and stay there for two to three days maximum. While Harry went below to do that, Grainger was ordering, ‘Cast off, fore and aft’, and moving her out into the harbour. ‘The torpedo store on Msida Creek,’ he’d yelled back, when Harry had yelled up in horror, ‘We’re not going to sea right now? Are we?’
They went around to the store on motors because there were a couple of big bits off one of the diesels that the Warrant Engineer still hadn’t managed to fit back on yet. Wykham had been left in the stores with another handful of ratings to do a smash and grab on anything he could lay his hands on, from twelve-pounder shells to tinned peaches.
It had been well after dark when they’d finally slipped out into this bloody gregale, the crew still trying to stow the last of the supplies they’d just flung down the hatches when the boat started bouncing.
Shrimp hadn’t told them what all the rush was about until the very last minute.
‘Last night, six large Italian merchant ships with a substantial destroyer escort made a dash from Palermo into the Gulf of Hammamet,’ he’d told the officers from Umbrage, Norseman and Uttoxeter, as they stood in a loose gaggle on the wardroom gallery, some of them, like Harry, still breathless from having run there. Outside, they could see Unleashed already heading to sea.
‘The ships, which are laden with supplies for the retreating German and Italian armies, are now anchored off Sousse, protected by shore batteries and a considerable fighter cap. I have since, however, received a signal from C-in-C informing me that they intend to make a dash for Tripoli tomorrow night or the night after, and that several major units of the Italian fleet are intending to sortie from Palermo to cover this operation. I intend for you gentlemen to set up a patrol line across those warships’ path to stop them from doing that. That will leave Force F free to intercept the merchant ships, and stop their supplies from reaching Rommel.’
So that was what all the rush was about. Good old-fashioned Royal Navy ’urry up! His whole time in the Andrew, up until that moment, Harry had never understood the point of it. Well, Jesus Christ! He did now. And why they had to be good at it. To be ready for moments just like this.
‘The SOO will give you your rail chits,’ said Shrimp, finishing off the briefing. ‘I’ve scribbled out your positions on billet on the backs. Good luck, and good hunting.’
As Harry tore out of the door, he saw Rais and the other two COs gather around Hume.
Hume, the SOO, tearing off chits from his book of railway warrants, stolen off some RTO’s desk back in Pompey probably: War Department-issue rail tickets entitling sailors going on leave to free train travel. It was Hume’s joke to get Shrimp to write his orders on them: ‘Patrol between such and such degrees north, that degrees east, etc., etc.’, and the departing CO would sign the stub to show he’d received them. Shrimp obviously wholeheartedly approved of the wheeze. No one ever accused him of not liking a laugh. ‘Oh, that Captain (S),’ Hume would gleefully confide to any new CO heading out on his first patrol, ‘he’s a devil for his paperwork.’
Harry had run back to his quarters to collect his charts and Lexie Scrimgeour’s precious sextant. And there was that other matter. He had probably just three minutes to do what he should have done ages ago, and then get aboard.
Writing paper, pen, an envelope. There was every chance this might be the last letter he would ever write.
My darling Shirley,
He hadn’t time to rehearse excuses why it had taken him so long.
Not a day passes when I don’t take out your letter and read your words. I know them by heart. That is where they are burned, anyway. So I ask you to please understand this. I have tried many times to write and tell you how I feel, to give you the comfort you deserve. But every time I sit down to do it, I know it is not in my power to promise you anything freely. As I write this, I am going on patrol again. You know what I do and where I serve. And you must read the newspapers and know what that means. I worry about you. Shirley v. the Luftwaffe isn’t a fair fight. Take care of yourself, and if there is anything left of me after this, you will get your answer in person.
Harry XX
And it went in the postbox as he went past at a run.
Standing on Umbrage’s bridge, getting beaten in the face by a full gale, seemed a good start for what he deserved for writing that mealy-mouthed scrap of self-pitying, self-serving, overblown, evasive, weaselly . . . and he couldn’t come up with any other words sufficiently damning to round off what he thought of himself right now, about what he had written to Shirley; the letter that was now winging its way to her.
Why hadn’t he given her an answer? Why had he not just told her how he felt? Or, more to the point, why didn’t he know himself? He could have told her that; after all, it was the truth. But no, he had to go and write that letter. Just had to. Before he sailed. And that was the best he could come up with. Maybe the damned boat carrying the letter would get torpedoed. But he couldn’t wish for that; a whole load of other poor blokes ending up in the water; just so as he wouldn’t have to look like the utter shit he obviously was. And how come every time he thought of her, he managed to feel an ache in his chest, and ashamed of himself at the same time?
Another goffer came over, and he stepped in front of the hatch, and yelled, ‘Elephant’s trunk!’
At twenty-eight feet, periscope depth, Umbrage was rolling like a drunken sailor. From the bearing Rais had just sung out for Linosa Island, Harry calculated on the chart that they were as good as dammit, right on the billet scribbled out for them by Shrimp. To port, on a line extending to the Kerkennah Banks, would be Uttoxeter and then Unleashed, and to starboard, Norseman. Together they were throwing a cordon over forty miles long across the neck of the Sicilian Channel. If the Italians were coming this way, one of them would spot them.
‘Good enough for you, Navigator?’ The first words Rais had spoken to Harry since they’d dived at first light. He had been a right bastard since they had sailed, uncommunicative and snappy.
‘Yessir,’ said Harry, about to add ‘on billet now’, when Rais interrupted him.
‘Ah-ha! Shagbat on green-fifteen.’ He followed it for a few moments, walking the periscope round. ‘I think he’s lost,’ he added, standing up, and closing the handles. ‘Anyway, no point in staying up at this depth to get bounced around, I’m going to take her down. Down periscope!’
There was a hiss as it went down, leaving Rais standing in the middle of the control room, feet apart to balance himself against the boat’s rolling, arms folded, fingers rapping on elbows and looking very unhappy.
‘Why are we still at periscope depth, Clot?’ he asked, in a voice all ham weariness.
Harry, like everyone else in the control room, including Grainger, looked up. Here we go again. Cled, not Clot – his full title of address being ERA Cledwyn Parry-Jones – being old in the ways of the Andrew, immediately stood to attention.
‘I heard no order, Sir,’ he said. He did not point out that he had his most experienced Leading Stoker on the dive board again.
‘Really. I distinctly heard myself say “I’m going to take her down”, and yet nothing is happening.’
‘Sir? You didn’t order . . .’
‘How about we try pointing downwards first, for which you might find the use of Q tank would be beneficial.’ Rais’s voice was now dripping with sarcasm. ‘I don’t know where you trained, but when I say we are going down, I expect Q immediately to be flooded. How does that suit you . . . Clot?’
The Leading Stoker’s face had turned white, and his hands on the valves were white-knuckled.
‘Aye aye, Sir,’ said Mr Parry-Jones. ‘Open Q Kingston, flooding Q!’
Harry thought to himself, Did I really hear that? He’s expecting people to be opening valves and operating systems without orders? He’s going to get us killed at this rate.
Grainger, who must have thought the very same thing as he lounged against the chart table next to Harry, drew himself up to assume the job he should have been doing all along. ‘I have her, Wrecker. Planesmen, ten degrees down angle.’
. . . and down they went.
Rais left it a long moment before ordering, ‘Maintain eighty feet. Mr Grainger, you have her.’ And he stepped through the for’ard control room bulkhead and vanished into his bunk for a lie-down.
As they passed through fifty feet, Harry noticed the planesmen seemed to be wrestling with her, as if the boat were bucking under them – nothing a little deft valve-twiddling by Mr Parry-Jones couldn’t fix but it jogged something in Harry’s brain. Then he remembered the chart notes. Had they just dropped through a thermocline, into water of a different salinity? It would explain why Umbrage needed to get heavier to continue her dive, why she needed the extra ballast to overcome the greater buoyancy around her. The First Lieutenant needed to know.
‘We’re crossing into another current, Kit,’ he said in Grainger’s ear. The First Lieutenant turned to look at him, with a frown on his face.