The Skipper's Dog's Called Stalin

by David Black

  ‘We don’t get many experienced submariners,’ said Syvret. ‘Linguists, yes, but they tend to be a rag-bag. Your detritus? Is that the word? Your experienced officers, they tend to go into your own boats.’

  Harry affected a look of distraction, as if thinking hard, then smiled the smile: ‘Radegonde,’ he said, ‘as in Radegonde of Poitiers, the sixth century Frankish Queen and later nun. St Radegonde even. Did you know she has a connection to England?’

  Syvret quietly admired the way the youth had dodged the subject. ‘Really,’ he said with all the insouciance he could muster – which was considerable.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Harry, smiling, ‘she is a patron saint of Jesus College, Cambridge. Cambridge University, you’ll have heard of it?’

  ‘Oui. One of your arriviste seats of learning,’ said Syvret, squinting at Harry. ‘Why do you carry an Eskimo’s boots?’

  ‘They’re flying boots, Sir. RAF. To keep my feet warm on watch.’

  Syvret’s eyes arched involuntarily. No mere Liaison Officer is ever going to stand a watch on my boat, Syvret said to himself. But to Harry he said, ‘You look very tired, Mr Gilmour. Have you travelled far today?’

  ‘No, not far,’ said Harry.

  Only from Inverness, where he had spent the last few weeks at the new Raigmore Hospital, recovering from wounds. But Harry didn’t say that. Nor did he say that he had arrived in Dundee into mayhem.

  When he had first reported to the HMS Ambrose staff office that morning, he had been assigned shore accommodation at an evacuated orphanage in the town called Carolina House, but when he’d turned up at the rambling Victorian pile, he wasn’t allowed to ‘take possession’ of his cabin – which was the navy way of saying room, because in the navy everything is on a ship, even if the ship is bricks and mortar. The floor is the deck; the toilet, the heads; and the rooms, cabins. It wasn’t that his cabin wasn’t ready; it was free all right, but in his rush to the station, Harry’s predecessor hadn’t signed out, so the room was still technically occupied. When Harry had tried again, after his interview with Lieutenant Commander Purkiss, they still wouldn’t let him in. He was truculently informed by a Regulating Petty Officer, with a pinched nose, razor rash and a cap skip bent to all but cover his eyes, that his predecessor ‘. . . hesn’t ach-elly, offish-ly, left . . . Suh!’

  Harry had reached in the Petty Officer’s little cubby for the cabin’s numbered key, which had been very obviously left hanging on the Petty Officer’s very regular numbered key rack, and snatched it up before the Petty Officer could stop him. Harry then stamped up the stairs with the Petty Officer, who looked twice Harry’s age, stumbling after him, yelling in as respectful a fashion as possible while still managing to include swear words and threats.

  When Harry reached the cabin door, he paused and turned to look directly into the Petty Officer’s now puce face, which was insubordinately close to his own and said softly, ‘Petty Officer, you have no idea how much I hope you are actually going to lay a hand on me . . .’ Because as they both knew, actually striking an officer would take this little farce to a new level.

  The Petty Officer had leapt back as if he had been struck and Harry had opened the door and let himself in. Before he’d unpacked, he’d searched the room. There was not even a hint of a Confidential Book to be found. Bugger!

  So he had returned to the HMS Ambrose offices, managed to buttonhole one of Purkiss’s Wrens and got her to point out any nook or cranny where that last bloody Liaison Officer might have dallied, frequented or skulked in, and he searched some more. Still nothing.

  When he had returned to Carolina House, the Petty Officer had summoned the Shore Patrol. By then, Harry was too tired to fight his eviction. And so now he was aboard Radegonde, with all he possessed and nowhere else to go and time on his hands to contemplate his impending reprimand – or even Court Martial – over the loss of the Confidential Papers. Papers, according to Purkiss, that were so secret that even the fact they were secret was a secret; and so vital to the war effort, that if they were not accounted for, the war would be lost. The residue of civilian logic still left to Harry, led him to wonder why such critical documentation should have been allowed to become the responsibility of a mere LO, especially an LO who’d never even clapped eyes on them in the first place, let alone had them in his possession. But then that was life in a blue suit, wasn’t it?

  He was now officially at a loss as to what to do. He could always ask his new Skipper, but for all that Harry found him likable, the last thing he wanted to do was to inquire as to the whereabouts of the boat’s most top-secret documentation, especially as Harry was supposed to be the man in charge of it. It wasn’t the way you went about making a good impression on your new CO.

  Syvret was still looking at him. Then in a sudden movement, he poured Harry another glass and swept his own away.

  ‘We are at twelve hours’ notice to sail,’ said Syvret, ‘even though your dockyard Johnnies are still wiring up that new jukebox for our entertainment. There are things I have to attend to. So I will leave it until later to introduce you to the boat and her crew, and your two Royal Navy signallers who you will work with.’ Then gesturing to the wine, he added, ‘Drink that and then get your head down on the bunk.’ This time the gesture was to the banquette where Harry was sitting. ‘I’m afraid it will be where you will be sleeping anyway. It’s all the room we have for you. Don’t worry if it is too short. See that little panel at the end . . . take it out, that is where your feet will go.’

  Harry turned round. It looked bloody comfortable compared to the fold-down shelf he had on Trebuchet. The condemned man had a good night’s sleep, he thought, and reached to remove the panel. ‘What do you keep in here?’ he asked.

  ‘Your predecessor used it for his kit,’ said Syvret. ‘À bientôt. I’ll see you later, for dinner.’ And he was gone.

  Harry looked in the little cupboard. And there were the Confidential Books.

  Chapter Three

  Harry was leaning in the lee of Radegonde’s periscope stands, staring into a pitch black night, seeded with sleet. Beneath his feet, Harry could feel her punch and buffet into a sea running from the north-east. The periscope stands shielded him from the worst of the wind, and hid him from the hunched figures of Syvret and the two lookouts. One of the first things Harry had noticed about Radegonde was how big her conning tower arrangement was, and right now he was taking advantage of that size for a last intake of privacy.

  Somewhere out there to port in the black, wet murk was Montrose, or so Harry calculated from his last look at the chart, and the time they’d been running. It was almost 21:00 hours and Radegonde had sailed some two hours previously, on a patrol to Norwegian waters that would last three weeks. They would lay a new minefield on the approaches to Bergen, then engage in what Syvret referred to as a spot of vandalisme – and what his orders described as attacks on ‘targets of opportunity’ among Norwegian coastal traffic.

  The final loading of stores before they sailed had resembled a medieval fayre, despite the sleet and rain and wind. Sodden boxes spilling tins, bread panniers shielded by rubber macs, vegetables of all descriptions, and entire hams – a sight no longer seen in British butchers – and spares for the engineers and electricians to squirrel away. All of it being wrestled by scrums of sailors, both British and French, who had swapped caps: les matelots wearing flat black pill boxes, and Jacks (the name the British lower decks gave themselves) sporting red pom-poms – all done more in a spirit of anarchy than fraternity; to confuse the officers, rather than because they loved each other. And because wild anarchy seemed to follow the French sailors at times like this in a way their Royal Navy comrades seemed to envy.

  The air was blue with bilingual obscenities, as they had manhandled Radegonde’s stores down a single plank and into the bowels of the boat through the forward torpedo hatch. It had been like a scene from Hieronymus Bosch. In Harry’s experience, storing a British boat had always been a bit like organised cha
os, but this had been an affront. You weren’t meant to enjoy it! But they did things differently in la Marine Nationale, apparently.

  Less than three days ago, Harry had been sitting in a wicker chair in Raigmore Hospital, looking out through rain-streaked windows at the endless ranks of huts, listening to the wild tales of Hank the Yank – an American ferry pilot. Hank had flown a Lockheed Hudson destined for the RAF all the way from Gander, but his last leg from the Faroes to Dyce had ended up crumpled at the end of the runway.

  Hank the Yank, whose femur was healing nicely, as were the sundry gashes on his head, entertained the recovering wounded with his wild tales of ‘over there’. The United States of America; a place at peace, where you could still buy bananas and nylons and chocolate, and could walk home at night without fear of falling in a hole because the street lights were still on. Hank the Yank, hot-foot from the land of plenty, flying in the weapons the Brits needed to keep fighting the war. Nobody believed half of what Hank the Yank told them, of course. But he was larger than life, and nobody had ever met a Yank before, and his good fun was infectious. He stopped the men from dwelling on how they’d ended up in hospital, or on their mates who hadn’t.

  Hank would be home by now, and Harry was back in the war. Not that Harry was complaining. He’d volunteered after all.

  At night in the hospital, when the nurse closed the blackout curtains, and Harry looked into the dark, he could still see his nineteen-year-old self walking into that recruiting office in Glasgow, his head full of dreams of adventure. Just seventeen months ago.

  The navigating officer on his first boat had once told Harry, ‘A lot can happen in a submarine in six minutes.’ Lieutenant McVeigh had been his name and Harry wanted to ask him now, ‘If a lot can happen in six minutes, what can happen in seventeen months?’ But he couldn’t. No one would be asking Lieutenant McVeigh anything anymore.

  And now here was Harry on a French submarine, three months short of his twenty-first birthday, coming to terms with the fact that he might not live to see it. ‘A lot can happen . . .’ as Lieutenant McVeigh said. He wondered what life aboard Radegonde was going to be like.

  At the change of watch, Syvret called Harry down to dinner in Radegonde’s tiny wardroom. This was going to be Harry’s first meal aboard. He’d now met all the officers separately, but never en masse. He’d even met Stalin, a terrier of some indeterminate breed with a disturbingly taciturn nature, except when, as Harry had discovered, he came within scenting distance of the dockyard cat. Then he had displayed the most alarming turn of speed. Another unusual thing Harry noticed about the little black, brown and white beast was that so far he had not heard him bark. Harry was settling in on the banquette when he noticed that Stalin was joining them for dinner.

  Syvret sat at the aft end of the banquette, and Harry sat on what was his bed, to Syvret’s right, Stalin perched on the corner between them. Next to Harry was Enseigne de Vaisseau Claude Le Breuil, the gunnery and torpedo officer, the equivalent to an RN Sub-Lieutenant, the same rank as Harry. Next to him, facing back towards the Skipper, Enseigne de Vaisseau Henri Bassano, the navigator. Opposite Harry and Le Breuil was Philippe Faujanet, the Aspirant, or as the RN would’ve had it, the Midshipman, sitting on a tiny three-legged stool because there was no more room for him on the banquette. The First Lieutenant, Armand Poulenc, was on the bridge, on watch.

  If anything, the wardroom was even cosier than the one Harry remembered on his last boat. He was particularly taken by the deckhead lights with their little etched glass shades instead of the regulation cages. The other thing that struck Harry was that the lamps were ordinary and not red. This was a war patrol. On a Royal Navy boat, proceeding on the surface at night, they would have been sitting in red light to preserve their night vision in case they were needed on the bridge. Urgently. Instead, everything was as warm and intimate as a Paris bistro. But nobody, least of all the Skipper, seemed particularly worried.

  So Harry decided not to worry either. After all, he had a full glass of red wine, like everyone else, and a very nice wine too, Harry concluded. Not like the vinegar served by his university tutors at their obligatory bohemian at-homes, along with hacked lumps of crumbly cheddar just to round off the salon effect. But Harry didn’t comment, in case he revealed himself for the ingénue he was, at this worldly soirée.

  The food, when it arrived, was served by a matelot of indeterminate rank in an immaculate blue-and-white-striped singlet, with more grease on his slicked-back hair than was in the dish, and whose olive skin seemed to glisten.

  A seamless babble of French fired back and forth across the table. Bassano, who was of an age with the Captain, reminded Harry of that American actor in that fish-out-of-water Hollywood comedy from a couple of years ago; what had it been called? A Yank at Oxford. And Robert Taylor had been his name. Like him, Bassano was dark and Mediterranean, and his features all Vs and points: his pointy jet-black widow’s peak, the angular nose and the way his mouth came together. And his voice, which seemed to come from way down inside. Not that he said that much, but when he did, he was more considered. His words meant something, unlike the other two junior officers, who were but youths.

  Le Breuil, although he must have been about the same age as Harry, struck Harry as being much younger. He was a dapper, dandyish sort of boy, who had not as yet troubled a razor. And there was something else Harry couldn’t help but notice since setting foot aboard Radegonde: Le Breuil insisted every second day that the matelot who served as wardroom steward trim his rich golden locks, snip by tiny snip, on the banquette where Harry had to sleep. And he could be quite petulant when criticised, or wasn’t getting his way.

  The other youth, Faujanet, the Aspirant, should still have been in school. He reminded Harry of the Tigger, the junior torpedo and gunnery officer from Harry’s last boat; last heard of still in the hospital at Haslar recovering from the wounds he’d received in that Russian fjord, when their Skipper had decided to take on an entire Jerry invasion force. That lifetime ago. The French youth had the same unformed face, and a shock of hair Harry’s grandmother would have described as ‘straw hanging out a midden’, and the same untroubled countenance. He also had a barely tenuous grasp on what Harry would have described as naval discipline. If he ever needed to amuse himself, Harry only had to wonder what the battleship officers he’d served under, and who’d found him such an affront, would have made of M. Faujanet. But Harry wasn’t on a battleship anymore; nor even on a Royal Navy warship. He was here, on a French submarine.

  His appointment to Radegonde had been based on his claim to be able to converse in French, and right now that skill could just about allow him to discern the talk was nearly all shop, but he was buggered if he could keep up with the staccato barrage of words that ran together too fast for him to follow.

  The matelot in the striped jersey flourished an enamel basin that looked knocked off from a barbers’ shop, like he was a George Cinq maître d’.

  Syvret turned to Harry. ‘Our chef,’ he said in English. ‘You are in for a treat.’

  The basin was full of a dizzyingly aromatic lamb shank cooked à la Lyonnaise. Two army mess tins of potato dauphinoise followed. The officers barely stopped talking as they began shovelling the food on to their plates and then into their mouths. There was no ceremony or etiquette. This was like no wardroom table Harry had ever sat at. They only stopped talking to gulp the wine, which, admittedly, was very gulpable.

  Only Faujanet was ever interrupted – by sailors needing to squeeze past along the passageway. But if he minded repeatedly having to get up, grab his stool and go back into his own cabin space, he didn’t show it.

  Syvret fed Stalin the occasional morsel, and Stalin stared, almost without blinking at Harry. The food was sublime.

  When it was finished – and the plates and basin had been cleared with bistro deftness by the chef – the Captain and Bassano, in one practised movement, lifted their table up and Le Breuil leaned into a space in its plinth and
produced a wind-up gramophone. The table was replaced and the Skipper leaned behind him to produce a clutch of acetate 78s. More wine was poured and then everybody stared at Harry as if to say, Well, what are you doing here?

  ‘You won’t have much to do aboard Radegonde,’ a distracted Captain (S) had told Harry a few hours before they’d sailed. The (S) stood for ‘submarines’, indicating that the sprightly, well-laundered fifty-something was in command of the joint Allied Submarine Flotilla. He’d lost no time in guiding Harry back to the door of his office after he’d handed over his orders.

  ‘The job’s simple. Look after all the charts, monitor all the radio traffic, do all the encoding and decoding, and make sure their Skipper only goes where he’s supposed to . . . keep him out of the way of the RAF . . . and generally get on with our French allies and reassure them they’re doing a splendid job for the war effort.’ In other words, he was telling Harry, I’m busy, get on with it.

  Despite the sleet the Captain (S) had come down to the quayside to see Radegonde off. But then, as Harry already knew, that was what a Captain (S) was supposed to do. Harry wasn’t impressed, but he didn’t mention any of that to his new shipmates who were looking expectantly at him now.

  ‘I didn’t realise Radegonde was a minelaying submarine when I was appointed,’ Harry said, in French, to break the impasse. ‘A tricky job, is it? Laying mines?’

  The Skipper pouted noncommittally. Le Breuil nodded sagely, and said in English, ‘Of course.’ Faujanet’s face scrunched a little and his shoulders rocked. Stalin kept staring at Harry.

  ‘I’ll be staying out of your way when you’re doing it, of course,’ added Harry.

  Faujanet’s eyes positively glittered with something, so that he had to look away.

  Le Breuil said, ‘Of course’, again. In English. Sonorously.

  There was a pause while everyone considered this. Then the Skipper said, smiling warmly all the while at Harry: ‘We used to have a very efficient laying system and very good mines. But we ran out of French mines, and now we have to use Royal Navy mines, and for that we have to have a Royal Navy laying system. It was fitted at our last refit. Royal Navy mines are shit and so is the Royal Navy laying system. Can you take it back and get us French ones again, please?’