Turn Left for Gibraltar

by David Black

  ‘Bottoms up, young Gilmour!’ said Marsham, and he slammed the bottle on the desk and began to pour bumpers.

  Harry was sitting on a burst armchair in the corner of one of the photoreconnaissance bods’ offices, while Katty typed up his latest inshore pilot translations. They were chatting, drinking fresh coffee from the stash he had purloined out of the Lazaretto stores, when Chally came in and threw a set of photographic prints in Harry’s lap, before stepping over to the other burst chair and flopping into it, without saying a word.

  It was an overcast, blustery day outside, and cold; and with no glass left in the windows to keep out the wind, the shutters were closed. So it was dark, even though it was lunchtime.

  ‘I thought you were flying today,’ said Katty, now concentrating on her typing.

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Chally. ‘Been flying, flew back. Aren’t you going to look at your snaps?’ This latter to Harry. ‘I risked life and limb to get you those. They’re candid studies of the port area of Palermo, as of’ – and he archly looked at his watch – ‘two hours ago. And I think they’re quite dramatic.’

  Harry picked them off his lap and began to leaf; there were five of them. Sharp, as if they were shot in a studio – perfect black-and-white studies, but taken at angles far too low for a normal photoreconnaissance shoot, for a non-suicidal one at any rate. Three were of the Zara-class cruiser, the Fabrizio del Dondo, as Shrimp had later confirmed to him, and she was beached near the entrance, with a huge oil slick around her, and a huge boom, being attended to by a couple of tugs and several more tenders. The others showed the light cruiser, the Gradisca de Isonzo. She was in the port, alongside a jetty in the naval base with scaffolding being thrown up over and around her bow, or rather where her bow used to be, because she had lost at least forty feet of it.

  Harry stared at the images. Shrimp had given him all the intelligence just this morning. After Umbrage had radioed in the action, Shrimp had sent Unleashed in pursuit to try and catch up with the retreating Italian force, and Norseman racing in the direction of Marittimo Island to try and cut them off. But the U-class boats were notoriously slow, and Unleashed hadn’t made contact. Norseman had, but not until after sunup. And submerged, she couldn’t get into an attacking position before the whole sorry caravan had pulled away. The RAF had thrown in several attacks and reckoned they’d got a couple of hits on the del Dondo, but it was the damage already done that Shrimp had wanted to tell Harry about.

  Umbrage’s first torpedo must have hit the del Dondo right aft on the port side, in among all her propeller shafts and rudders. The RAF reported she had developed a serious list and had one of the destroyers lashed to her port side, as if to keep her afloat. She was being towed by another destroyer, stern first. The Gradisca de Isonzo had been managing under her own steam, but it was precious slow progress with most of her bow blown off.

  ‘They’re out of the war,’ a cheerful Shrimp had told Harry, ‘for the foreseeable future at least.’

  And here was the photographic evidence. Harry could hardly believe the state that both ships were in – or that he had done it. Chally, scrutinising him, saw the slack jaw and mistook it for something else.

  ‘Pleased with our handiwork then?’ said Chally, winking at Katty and nodding in Harry’s direction. ‘Gong assured, I’d’ve thought. Be able to take Mater and Pater to the Palace to see the King stick you with it.’

  Harry took a moment to let those comments fully sink in. He knew Chally was mocking him, but he wanted just to soak up that image: of his father arriving at Buckingham Palace to see the King, any King, pin a medal on his son.

  ‘. . . Pater to the Palace . . .’

  Harry played with the image in his mind’s eye, imagined the noise in his inner ear, the screaming and kicking that would be involved, if it were ever to be made to happen, which it wouldn’t. Harry started laughing then, the whole notion of his father at the Palace so hugely, bizarrely, genuinely funny – and then the laughter became a release for all that had happened, and it all poured out of him until he was rolling around on the chair.

  Chally hadn’t liked that. ‘They can treat epileptic fits these days, you know,’ he said absently to no one in particular, certainly not to Harry because he was still laughing. While Katty was looking between the two men, having a quiet giggle to herself.

  ‘Get out!’ she said at length, but she wasn’t angry. ‘Both of you! Out! I’ve got vital war work to do here!’

  Harry calmed down, and Chally stood up, all decisive, and said with a thin smile, ‘Anyway, we should celebrate Malta’s new hero. Assuming you’ve got any celebrating left in you after your antics on that chair there. Katty has no shows on tonight, so we’ll go somewhere away from the in-crowd. Just the three of us. The ERA Club. That’s discreet these days. And Katty can lavish her feminine wiles on us. That’s settled then.’ And with that, he was gone.

  Long before the agreed hour for their meeting, Harry had decided he wasn’t going to the ERA Club, even though it was only just the other side of the Manoel Island causeway. He was sitting on the wardroom veranda on his own. It was already dark and his only light came from a little torch he had arranged to shine out of the inside pocket of his watch jacket, which he was wearing over his grubby white submariner’s pullover to keep out the chill. There was a Scotch and soda on the table beside him, and he was writing a letter to his mother.

  The veranda was empty. Although there were four boats in from patrol, all their officers were elsewhere, mainly like the Umbrage’s, up at the rest camp at Ghajn Tuffieha. Or they had already headed out to the fleshpots.

  He was taking his time between each sentence he wrote, to sip the whisky and gaze out into the night harbour. Thoughts of home; of what his father would have made of his recent deeds; of Shirley, and of Katty, all passing through his head. That was when John, the wardroom’s Maltese steward, came walking down the gallery, his soft footsteps hardly echoing in the long space. When he got to Harry, Harry was already looking up.

  ‘Mr Gilmour, Sir,’ said John, ‘you have a visitor asking for you at the front gate. A young woman, Sir.’

  And when Harry walked up the path, there was Katty. Even in the shadows he could make her out, standing there on the other side of the barbershop barrier in a wonderfully expensive-looking fur coat, chatting away to some local pongo all done up in khaki and a tin hat on guard duty.

  ‘You’re not at the ERA Club,’ said Harry.

  ‘Neither are you,’ said Katty.

  ‘Won’t Chally be upset, being left all on his own?’ he asked.

  And at that she gave a trill of laughter; he loved that laugh of hers.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘The idea of Chally ever being on his own,’ she said, and paused to regard him for a moment as if resolving something within herself. ‘I’m not feeling very well. Poor me, I had to leave,’ she said. ‘So I thought I’d come and see what was wrong with you. As friends do.’

  Katty, even in the dark, had never looked so well or so utterly beautiful.

  They walked up to the café on the Sliema seafront, the one that Hume plied with knocked-off coffee, and as they went, Katty slipped her arm into his.

  ‘I think you gentlemen are getting ahead of yourselves.’ It was Marsham talking, the wise old head trying to exert a bit of calm into the excited babble in the wardroom. ‘All Roosevelt said was, “since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire”. He didn’t mention Germany, let alone the Italians.’

  It was the ninth of December now, and everyone had gathered to meet Nicobar, due in off patrol. She’d been up to the Adriatic and apparently had kills to show on her Jolly Roger, as well as daggers. Special ops stuff, but no staff people were prepared to gossip. Now at least there was the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor to discuss instead, and all the other places the sneaky little bastards had hit at the same time.

 
‘Well it stands to reason the Yanks’ll come in . . .’ The voice that was arguing from somewhere in the middle of the mob of officers already lining the gallery was quickly drowned out. Harry couldn’t see who was doing all the shouting, because he was sitting in his favourite easy chair off to the side, drinking gin and lost in his own little reverie. Then the voice doing the shouting down was drowned out in turn, by another louder and closer fellow, determined to have his say too. ‘Who says the Yanks might not be coming in, in Europe? Gawd!’

  ‘Well, they still haven’t declared war on Jerry yet . . . or the Eyeties,’ said another.

  ‘Don’t tell that to the totty plotters in RAF ops! I heard they’re expecting the sky to go dark any minute with Flying Fortresses dropping us big Christmas hampers full of nylon stockings and hamburgers!’

  ‘And Coca Cola!’ added someone else. ‘You can’t have hamburgers without Coca Cola. Says so in their constitution!’

  Harry tuned out, and returned to thinking about Katty, but the vacant smile splitting his face was starting to arouse suspicion.

  ‘Gilmour, what are you looking so chuffed with yourself about?’ Uttoxeter’s First Lieutenant barked at him. But someone else had already yelled, ‘Steamboat around the bend!’ and there through the open veranda could be seen Nicobar, coming around Fort Manoel, cutting through the sun-dappled blue of the harbour, looking all very grim and sombre with the bleached white stone of Valletta rising behind her, half a dozen ratings lining her casing, Malcolm Carey on her bridge, and her Jolly Roger fluttering from her periscope standard, sporting its two new white blocks denoting two merchantmen sunk, and two daggers for special ops.

  Harry got up to watch them too, knowing full well that only a smarmy shit could think what he was thinking now: that there were no crowds for Nicobar. But then two tramp steamers weren’t the same as two cruisers, were they? He smirked to himself, then gave a wave just to show how magnanimous he could be, all the while laughing at himself inside, unable to come down from the mood he’d been in since last night.

  Nicobar came alongside. Carey came up the gangway and went straight in to see Shrimp, while his officers came into the wardroom, and the party started. There was lots to chew over. War with Japan: the Japs had bombed Hong Kong and Singapore as well as Pearl Harbor, so we were in it with the Yanks, out East. But would the Yanks come in with us in Europe? Then there were Nicobar’s two sinkings to be dissected, and the two cloak-and-dagger ops that they weren’t supposed to talk about – suffice it to say their passengers had got off without a return ticket, and no, they weren’t saying whether they’d been landed in Yugoslavia. Their mission was not necessarily confirmation that Winston was cosying up to Tito. The Nicobars were saying no more, mum’s the word. And what about bloody Umbrage, eh? Blowing the arse and a nose off half the Eyetie navy! All down to her Vasco too, the Tenth’s very own Wavy Navy wonder boy. Damn shame about Rais though. Never liked him, but still. And Grainger? How’s he? Flown out to Gib, eh? Sounds serious. Who’s going to get Umbrage, then?

  Harry was half-listening to it all when Carey came out of Shrimp’s office and marched directly up to him, taking him by his non-drinking arm and leading him away down the gallery. ‘A word,’ he said. When they were out of the melee, Carey led him so they could lean out over Nicobar, where one of the base engineers was just disappearing down the conning tower.

  ‘Now tell me everything that happened on your patrol,’ said Carey, face all serious, ‘from when you sighted the enemy. What you did, the decisions you made, why, what you were thinking, what you messed up, and what went right. Everything. Go.’

  ‘But you haven’t got a drink, Malcolm,’ said Harry, still smiling like an idiot.

  ‘At the moment, it’s “Sir”. And I’ll get a drink when you’ve finished . . . So . . . hurry up . . .’ and his words trailed off, and his expression went from serious to curious. He looked Harry in the eye, and then up and down. ‘What are you grinning about?’ he asked. But before Harry could answer, he said, ‘You’ve been at the counterpane-hurdling, haven’t you? You randy little larrikin?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Don’t give me that. I’m a married man, I know about these things. She’s not a local, is she?’

  Harry decided it was too late to look shocked. ‘Certainly not, Sir. She’s a . . .’

  ‘Thank God!’ said Carey, interrupting, his face now trying to suppress a smile. ‘Local daddies can cut up rough if they catch you. End up cutting you up rough. And don’t tell me who she is, I don’t want to know. And don’t tell anybody else either. It upsets everyone else who isn’t. Now, about what I do want to know about . . .’

  So Harry took a belt of gin, wiped the smile off his face once and for all, and started.

  It’s early evening now, and the party’s starting to break up, but Carey doesn’t want to wait until it does before he gets to talk to Shrimp, so he’s shoved the Captain (S) back into his little monk’s cell to put his plan to him. Carey’s talked to Harry, and his mind is made up. Now all he has to do is get the CO’s approval.

  ‘He’s up to it,’ says Carey. ‘I know he is. I knew him on Trebuchet, and he was a good officer then. And from what he’s just told me about what happened out there, I’m not in any doubt now. I know he can do it. And be bloody good at it.’

  Shrimp sits back in his chair, knowing he’s already had the same thoughts himself, but not saying anything yet.

  ‘Look,’ says Carey, starting up again, ‘as of ten minutes ago, Bunny Warren was packing his kit for home and his Commanding Officers’ Qualifying. So as of ten minutes ago, Nicobar doesn’t have a Jimmy. I want Harry Gilmour to replace him. I want Harry Gilmour as my First Lieutenant. He’s as ready as he’s ever going to be. We both know he can do it, because he’s just done it. He’s got the eye. He can hit things.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ says Shrimp. ‘In fact, I’d go further. I intend to have him on a Perisher as soon as I can justify sending him. But . . . but.’

  This Malcolm Carey isn’t the one Harry remembers from Trebuchet: the young toff from Toorak, Melbourne’s toffiest suburb, just off the boat and full of himself. This man sitting deliberating with his commanding officer important command appointments within an operational flotilla in wartime, is a serious and respected submarine CO in his own right now. It is common knowledge that the Royal Australian Navy already have high expectations of him and that his half-ring to Lieutenant Commander will not be far off. And that is why Captain Simpson wants to hear what he has to say.

  ‘Ah,’ says Carey, cottoning on to Shrimp’s train of thought. ‘You’re thinking of leaving him on Umbrage. Making him up to Number One there. I would suggest you don’t do that, Sir. Very strongly.’

  ‘And why is that, Malcolm?’

  ‘You’re going to give Umbrage to Hume, I take it?’ Hume, the Flotilla SOO. Shrimp nods, yes.

  ‘He’s certainly hooligan enough. I’m sure he’ll be good. But it will be his first operational command. He could probably do with someone more experienced as his Jimmy, Sir.’

  ‘We could all do with people with more experience, Malcolm. Me included. Hume, like the rest of us, will have to do with what he’s given. But that’s not your reason, Malcolm, is it?’

  ‘No, Sir,’ says Carey, rubbing his chin, thinking how best to broach the subject on his mind, then deciding. ‘Did Harry tell you about how he dealt with the Leading Stoker?’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ says Shrimp.

  ‘I thought not. The boat’s problem: the boat deals with it. He told me though. Something happened. A rating did something he shouldn’t. Something serious. They almost lost the boat. They did lose the CO.’

  ‘A rating was responsible for Rais being lost? I rather think that is . . .’

  ‘Sir. Please,’ Carey, respectfully raising his hand, interrupts. ‘I wasn’t there so I don’t know, but it appears it wasn’t as simple as that. Please, let me finish.’

  And Carey tells Shrimp everything Harry has
described to him about how Rais had run the boat, how he rode the crew, and about how it had all led to those fateful events in Umbrage’s control room. Shrimp listens in silence.

  ‘On their way in, once all the crash, bang, wallop was over, Harry went aft to see the Stoker,’ continues Carey. ‘The lad was the colour of a sheet apparently, and had been sitting with his head in hands. Harry sat down and spelled out to the Stoker the consequences of what he’d done. That by diving the boat without a direct order to do so, he had killed his CO and critically injured his First Lieutenant. Then he spelled out the consequences that so nearly followed . . . that the boat should have foundered . . . that the Italian squadron would have then been able to slip by, untouched, and as a result, Force F would’ve been engaged and crippled by a superior Italian force, and a vital Axis convoy would’ve got through. And how it was only down to pure, dumb luck that it hadn’t happened. Then he told him that it wasn’t his fault. That he knew exactly what had happened. That instead of doing his duty, he’d been trying to second-guess a madman’s whims, because he’d been battered and bullied for too long, and nobody had done a damn thing about it. And if anyone were to blame, it was his officers, because they had let it happen. But, if he promised in future just to stick to obeying orders, and never to listen to a madman again, then he’d hear no more about it.’

  Shrimp says nothing.

  ‘It was around the boat in five seconds flat,’ says Carey. ‘My understanding is Umbrage thinks justice was served.’

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ says Shrimp, ‘what Umbrage thinks is neither here nor there.’

  ‘Yes, and no, Sir.’

  ‘It’s all right, Malcolm, I understand what you’re getting at. He’s too close to them now. And they’re too close to him. You win. You can have him. Oh, and it never happened.’