Submariner (2008) Page 6

  ‘Thank you, Bull. All well with your lot?’

  ‘All hunky-dory, sir, thank you.’

  Home-town Cardiff, a fiancée who was a WAAF, two brothers at sea in the Merchant Navy – which by all one heard was not having anything like a hunky-dory time of it.

  McLeod was at the wardroom table reading an Edgar Wallace thriller;Mike having removed his Ursula jacket joined him with his mug of kye. ‘Thought you’d have crashed it, James.’

  Meaning got his head down. McLeod nodded. ‘Will do in a jiffy, sir. Thought I’d just read one chapter.’ A shrug. ‘Plenty of zizz-time between here and Marettimo, touch wood.’

  If they were left to themselves, there would be. In fact any interruptions were most likely to be encountered tonight or tomorrow night. When you went deep for the QBB minefield, its borders extending from Marettimo to Cape Bon, thence down the Tunisian coastline to Hammamet and from there via Pantellaria to Cape San Marco, you were to all intents and purposes going into oblivion for as much as fourteen or fifteen hours – neither expecting interference nor thinking about mines. They were there, allegedly several thousand of them, but you’d be simply minding your own business, passing under them in the course of getting from A to B. Thinking about the bloody things didn’t help. As McLeod had observed, it was ‘zizz-time’ when off-watch, dreamland while the hours crawled by.

  He’d smoked most of a cigarette and about finished his kye when McLeod shut his book. ‘Pretty good cock, but somehow holds one.’

  ‘Courtesy of Eleanor again?’

  ‘Well, yes. Small private library she uses.’

  ‘In all that schemozzle you found time to see her.’

  ‘Spoke briefly on the blower, was all. She’d left this for me – knew we were coming in, so –’

  ‘Well.’A smile, more or less congratulatory. Eleanor Kingsley was a 3rd Officer WRNS, a redhead with a lot going for her. She worked in the Combined Services HQ in Valetta and was a frequent visitor to Lazaretto. Mike sent smoke pluming at the lamp that swung gently above the table: ‘Lucky man, Jamie.’

  ‘Competition’s fierce enough, I may say.’

  ‘That’s what I meant.’

  ‘Ah. Well.’ A shrug. ‘Turn in now, anyway.’

  ‘Give me a shake, will you, before you go up at four?’

  ‘Aye, sir. Incidentally, did I hear right, you mentioning a new boat joining us shortly, named Unsung?’

  He nodded. ‘CO’s Charles Melhuish – know him?’

  ‘Actually, I have met him – I think. Odd name though,

  Unsung?’

  ‘Scraping the barrel for new U-names. Yes. Pleasant enough, in its way though – slightly poetic even?’

  ‘Meaning uncelebrated. Unheard-of. How about that, though – Unheard?’

  ‘Not bad at all. Might suggest it. After all, we’ve got Unseen. But Unsung – silent service, all that?’

  He’d talked about U-class names with Ann, he remembered. The second night – the Sunday, when they’d been on the tiles on their own, and of course should not have been. November of 1940, when he’d been standing by Ursa’s building at Chatham, and Charles Melhuish on the point of starting his Perisher – Commanding Officers’ course – at Blockhouse. Ann, though – it had been her suggestion, murmured into his ear in the Coconut Grove night-club, and he’d been rash enough to respond with something like ‘Ann – Ann … You don’t mean it – do you?’Whereas he should have said, ‘Smashing idea, but of course we can’t. You know darn well we can’t!’ Giving reasons then, if necessary – as indeed it would have been, since she certainly had meant it, was meaning it like nobody’s business quite suddenly on that crowded, half-dark dance floor – smoochy saxophone, her bare arms tight around his neck, lips actually in contact with that ear and in general close contact suddenly, whereas until then everything had been quite proper. At any rate reasonably, normally so – with Charles most likely only a few feet away, dancing with Chloe, Mike’s little sister, as it happened. He’d had her with him because some other girl hadn’t been able to make it, and in any case having her along had fitted in with other plans. That was one reason he could have given her – given Ann – if he’d had his wits about him; the fact it was arranged that he’d be taking Chloe up to Buckinghamshire in the morning to stay a few days with their father, who’d be bitterly disappointed if they let him down. In the event he had been, too. In fact he had mentioned it to Ann, come to think of it: and might have thought better of himself if he’d told her more forthrightly, ‘Because you’re Charles’s wife, and he’s a brother officer. We’d be insane!’

  Meaning that a night on the loose together would be insane. As he’d known for certain, even if she hadn’t. She had, of course: had really had nothing else in view – no more than he’d had, by that time. From his first sight of her, earlier in the day, ‘knocked for a loop’ might have described it – long before any awareness of that total, instant reciprocity, lack of any hesitance at all … Answering her letter, might remind her of that. Obliquely – if he could find a way to do it. She was right, on paper one did tend to be cautious, not to stick one’s neck out pointlessly. Must be firm about her not writing now: and yes, he’d write to her, you bet he would – but could not discuss any future comings or goings – not even if he knew of them, which of course he seldom did – beyond the fact that Ursa had just about done her time – and even that he couldn’t mention … Stubbing out the cigarette-end, thinking to get a couple of hours’ shuteye between now and four. Immediately, clean teeth and have a pee. The wardroom heads, WC and washbasin, was just across the companion-way, opposite the galley. Allowing his mind to drift back, though, to what had started him thinking about Ann again – the conversation about U-class names, which on the face of it might have seemed an odd subject to interest her much – in point of fact, that conversation must have taken place earlier in the evening of the Saturday, probably at the United Hunts Club in Upper Grosvenor Street – his club, the Melhuishes therefore his guests at that stage. The background to it all being old Billy Gorst’s wedding that afternoon with the reception at the Dorchester, in the course of which Mike and sister Chloe had somehow teamed-up with Charles and Ann, and Charles had rather loftily invited them to dine with him at the Jardin des Gourmets in Greek Street; so there’d been time to kill, and Upper Grosvenor Street being just strolling distance from the Dorchester the Hunts Club had been an obvious port of call.

  Billy Gorst was by this time a commander, aged about thirty-five, a submarine CO of considerable repute whom Mike had known for donkey’s years, and under whom Charles Melhuish had served as fourth hand in one of the old R-class – Charles being then a mere sub-lieutenant, presumably. Yes, must have been. And had only been invited to Billy’s wedding – Mike suspected – because a couple of years earlier he’d somehow persuaded the older man to attend his nuptials – in Edinburgh, where Ann’s parents lived. It had been a fairly low-key affair, apparently – so Billy had intimated, in a brief, semi-coded chat at the Dorchester reception. Mike hadn’t been asked to the Melhuish wedding, hadn’t even known Charles, who at the time of his marriage had only recently become first lieutenant of an ‘S’, in fact was rather junior in the service to have been getting married, had only been able to do so through being personally well-heeled. Unconventional background, rather – mother an American who’d divorced his father and gone back to the States, father the owner of a chain of hotels; he was based somewhere in the Midlands and obviously rich.

  How had Melhuish managed to get Ann?

  Billy Gorst had touched Mike’s arm, nodded in the direction of a group surrounding her. ‘Knockout, uh?’

  ‘Certainly is.’ Introductions had been made earlier, to her and to her husband, whom Mike hadn’t taken to enormously but envied, somewhat. She was vibrantly attractive. Changing the subject slightly, in this chat with Gorst, asking him, ‘Low key, you say – in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Surprisingly so. Her father’s a lawyer of some kind. Boss of some
outfit, I don’t remember, but – decidedly pompous, despite which definitely not splashing the stuff around – you know?’

  ‘The champagne, you mean.’

  ‘No, I meant the bawbees. There was a lot of very good champagne – which Charles had paid for, believe it or not. And told me he had! Extraordinary …’ Change of tone: ‘I take it you’re not thinking of getting spliced, old boy?’

  ‘No such intention as of this moment.’

  ‘Wise man, too.’The unblushing but radiant bride, returning from some solo mission and latching on to her brand-new husband’s arm. Laughing: ‘Crazy to give it even a thought, at this moment.’ Sparkling, like the champagne; but now she’d come back there was a crowd closing in around her and Billy, and Mike looking for Chloe saw her in conversation with Melhuish.

  Which putting things in their chronological order was where it had started, he supposed. Charles had taken a bit of a shine to Chloe, was the truth of it. Ridiculous, when one thought of Ann, visualised those two side by side. Chloe was quite easy on the eye, vivacious and very young – but in comparison with Ann, to whom the bugger was married, heaven’s sake …

  He’d finished in the heads. Didn’t need to blow them, after no more than a pee. To blow them, the equivalent in ordinary life of pulling a chain, you operated certain valves and a lever like a gear-change, built up a head of air pressure that registered on a gauge, then let it go, blasting everything out to sea. OK as long as you kept your mind on the job, and did it right; if you put the pressure-charge on the wrong side of it, for instance, you got it all back, violently.

  Undine was the boat whose name had triggered that conversation in the club. She’d been lost earlier in the year, and a friend of Charles Melhuish had been her third or fourth hand. He’d attended their wedding, and Ann had liked him; he and Billy Gorst had been the only submariners she’d met until now, other than Charles. She’d asked Mike whether he’d known this man – which he hadn’t – and Chloe had asked what on earth did the name Undine mean. Mike had been able to tell her, Charles having admitted ignorance: ‘Means a water-sprite who doesn’t have a soul, only way she can acquire one is to mate with a human.’

  ‘That true, or did you just make it up?’

  ‘What’s a sprite, when it’s at home?’

  Chloe suggested, ‘A spirit, presumably. Same word, almost?’ Ann thought it was a pretty name, dreadfully sad that she’d been lost. Did anyone know what had happened to her? No one did: Mike had said, ‘One often doesn’t’, and Charles began to count off on his fingers the names of boats that had been lost, up to that time. Not ‘U’s, Undine had been the first of this class to go, but more than a dozen others – and Mike had cut in, putting a stop to the unnecessary recital by explaining that a lot of the U-class didn’t have names, only numbers.

  ‘The originals were given names in the usual way, but with the speed-up of war construction they did without them. Now they’re having to find names for them all because Churchill’s insisted no British submarine should go on patrol with just a bloody number. He said if the Admiralty couldn’t think up names, he would.’

  ‘Bet your life he would.’ Ann asked Mike, ‘What’s yours called?’

  ‘Ursa. Not a bad name – d’you think?’

  ‘She-bear.’ That smile of hers almost crippling, when she turned it on you at close range.‘Sweet name. Don’t you dare let her get lost.’

  Mike had assured her, ‘I won’t, I promise.’

  Certain of his ground. Believing in it. Had been then, and still was. At that time, though, he’d been irritated by Charles Melhuish having almost proudly reeled off the names of submarines that had been lost in the previous twelve, fifteen months. Boastfully, as if acceptance of such odds-against redounded to his credit, somehow. And feeding that stuff to his wife, for God’s sake, when the normal and obvious thing was to provide reassurance.

  Bunk now, anyway. Having turned the overhead lamp off, heaving himself up backwards and then swinging his legs up. Glow of light from the control room, but three-quarters dark in here with the curtain drawn; familiar rumbling of the engines, regular, gentle pitching – all cumulatively soporific, except there were men milling around out there: and now the helmsman’s call of ‘Bridge!’

  Jarvis’s answer, through the tube: ‘Bridge.’

  ‘Relieve lookouts, sir?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  One of them at a time. When the first came down, the relief for the second would go up.

  ‘Navigator, sir?’

  At close range, this – Nat Sharp, SD, in the role of control-room messenger, stooping at Danvers’ bunk. ‘Sub-lieutenant, sir – two o’clock –’

  ‘Right. Right …’

  Sharp would wait until he saw the man he was shaking actually turning out, though. All too easy to say ‘Right, thanks’ and while mustering the necessary resolve slip back into dreamland.

  4

  Cessation of engine noise, replaced instantly and startlingly by the much closer sound of sea rushing over half-inch plating within a few feet of one’s head, punctuated by the thuds of her butting through it, audible on its own now and triggering instant, auto-physical more than cerebral or truly conscious reaction of nerves and muscles – Pavlovian reflex to alarm, emergency. Brain waking to it maybe a second later, by which time one’s in the control room, in the ringing echo of Danvers’ ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ and standing back from the bruising descent from up top of lookouts Farquhar and Llewellyn. One of several queries in mind being why no klaxon, the usual eardrum-blasting signal to dive, emergency. All the rest pretty well as standard and simultaneous – CERA McIver having flipped back the six steel levers opening main vents, the sound of numbers one and six’s high-pressure air escaping into the night, Ursa tipping bow-down, a yell from the tower – Danvers again – ‘One clip on!’ Second Cox’n Tubby Hart, PO of Blue watch – which succeeded White watch at 0200 and is now dispersed in the rush to diving stations. Hart temporarily on the controls of the after ’planes, and messenger of the watch Barnaby briefly on the for’ard ones: depth-gauges showing ten feet – twelve – fifteen – down-angle steepening. Cox’n Swathely now on after ’planes, Hart’s bulk displacing Barnaby and the latter transferring to the motor-room telegraphs, Danvers landing on his feet, slamming against the ladder – slim, broad-shouldered, head and face running wet from a small influx of sea – panting at Mike: ‘E-boats, sir – two of ’em, port beam half a mile – lying stopped, so –’

  ‘Slow both motors. Fifty feet.’ Twelve or fifteen seconds maybe since being roused to this – and McLeod acknowledging, ‘Fifty feet, sir,’ and ‘Slow both’ having taken over the trim, taking her in hand as she approached periscope depth and passed it, for the moment carrying on down, and Walburton on the ladder shutting and clipping the lower lid. Mike telling Fraser the asdic man – on his stool at the set, one hand adjusting the headphones over his noticeably small ears, fingers of the other settling on the training-knob on a compass-dial at the top of the set – ‘Port beam or thereabouts.’

  ‘Fifty feet, sir.’

  Hydroplanes having to work hard to hold her there. McLeod has the after ballast pump sucking on the midships trim-tank: at fifty feet she’s heavier than she was at twenty-eight – periscope depth where she was when last submerged, before surfacing at 0100. The deeper a submarine goes the heavier she gets, since in denser water the hull’s compressed, up-thrust thus reduced. Archimedes worked it out in 200 BC or thereabouts, his famous ‘Principle’ highlighting the ever-present danger that when a boat’s going deep if you don’t lighten her she’ll continue deeper at an increasing rate until sea-pressure crushes her. U-class being tested only to 250 feet, it’s a point to bear in mind. One does in any case, it’s one of the things you live with. McLeod’s lightened her enough now, anyway – hydroplanes approximately horizontal, needles in depth-gauges more or less static on the fifty-feet marks. Won’t be staying at this depth for ever anyway, don’t need to be too fussy: he’s swi
tching the order-instrument to ‘Stop pumping’ and ‘Shut “O”’, the stoker at that after ballast pump responding with ‘Pump stopped’ and ‘“O” shut’.

  The clock on the for’ard bulkhead’s showing five past three. Mike asking Fraser, ‘Anything?’

  Negative. Fingertips shifting the knob a degree or two this way and that. Narrow face damp-looking, taut with concentration. ‘Foxy’ Fraser, his mates call him. The E-boats must still be lying stopped, probably listening on hydrophones but presumably not hearing Ursa’s HE. Not yet: they wouldn’t be just sitting there if they had. HE meaning Hydrophone Effect, propeller noise. All one can do at this stage is wait, strain one’s own underwater ear while continuing to paddle quietly away. Certainly wouldn’t contemplate doing battle with two E-boats, with the weaponry they carry.

  Might be German-manned, might be Italian. The Germans have supplied their Wop allies with a number of E-boats recently. The Italians’ own equivalent are called Mas-boats.

  Anyway, the flurry’s over. Mike joining Danvers at the chart table.

  ‘No doubt of them being E-boats?’

  ‘None at all, sir. Silhouette of the nearer one was clear enough by the time I was on him. It was Llewellyn made the sighting.’

  ‘Good for him. Ambush ploy, presumably.’

  ‘Seemed the likely thing, sir.’

  Two of them lying stopped and silent – no bow-waves, not much danger of being spotted by the victim before they saw and heard him, with his engine’s racket and flare of bow-wave to give him away. Submarines out of Malta would use this route – as well as others – and as Shrimp had surmised, the enemy might very well be aware that the flotilla was reassembling and would be redeploying. Danvers’ reaction had been exactly right, Mike thought:stopping engines immediately and ducking smartly out of it – not even risking the klaxon, which in the normal way of things would have been second nature, no more than routine.