Submariner (2008) Read online

  ‘Sir –’ Fraser’s head up suddenly – ‘HE starting up on’ – peering at his compass dial – ‘red one-oh-five, sir!’

  E-boat getting under way, fifteen degrees abaft the beam. Fraser muttering, ‘Sort of confused. No – different one, that’s two –’

  ‘Moving which way?’

  Concentrating – shifting the knob minutely across the bearing. Then: ‘Right to left, sir. Turbine HE, revs increasing.’

  ‘Stay on them.’

  Thinking, what one needed to counter this sort of gambit might be night-fighters. Mosquitoes, say – at least when E-boats were on the move, being fast movers with highly visible wakes and bow-waves, which one might guess would make for easy sightings from aircraft on low-flying sweeps.

  ‘Right to left, still. Opening fast, sir.’

  ‘Listen-out all round then get back on them.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Number One, we’ll surface in fifteen minutes.’

  Three twenty-five, that would be – having made sure of the E-boats putting a few miles behind them. They weren’t likely to turn back on their tracks; he guessed they’d try their luck in the approaches to Valetta and Marsamxett, as likely as not plant a mine or two, before coming round to – well … At the chart, checking this out: something like 340 degrees would be their course home to Licata. If Licata was where they’d come from – which wasn’t unlikely, it was an E-boat base, and the nearest. Sixty miles from here, roughly: they’d be reckoning on being home for breakfast. But holding that course at say twenty-five knots while Ursa chugged along on 315 at nine – well, let’s see. Because if one’s instincts were making sense now … They were, as likely as not they were. Laying the divergent tracks off on the chart confirmed that by the time Ursa had the unlit Gozo lighthouse ten miles abeam to port, the Wops on their way home could be overhauling at a range of no more than five or ten thousand yards to starboard.

  ‘Number One – here a minute. And you, pilot.’

  Because Danvers would have the watch when they surfaced, McLeod relieving him soon after four; and having lost thirty or forty minutes’ progress thanks to the E-boats, that was where she’d be when/if she dived at 0430 – ten miles northeast of Gozo.

  ‘Buggers could well be that close to us – or closer – uh?’

  They’d both nodded. McLeod said, ‘If they were steering nearer 335 than 340 – dawn coming up astern, at that.’

  ‘Right. Too close for comfort. Forget morning stars, pilot. We’ll surface now, dive at four.’

  Manoel Island eggs and bacon for breakfast, served up in the wardroom by AB Barnaby at 0740 for Danvers who’d be relieving Jarvis as officer of the watch at 0815. Two hours on watch, four hours off, round the clock and for as long as the patrol might last;Ursa at seventy-five feet, main motors driving her at three and a half knots, the Chernikeeff electric log showing this with its blue indicator light flashing steadily and ticking like a clock – actually recording distance run, on the basis of which Jarvis would put a dead-reckoning position on the chart at 0800.

  Warmth, low hum of the motors, the boat rock-steady, no motion on her at all. Breakfast would be stirring things up a bit now, but otherwise since the last change of watch sleep would have been the off-watch preoccupation.

  Danvers however, shaken by Barnaby, was at the table with his plate of eggs and bacon and enamel mug of tea.

  ‘All right, sir?’

  ‘You’re a genius, Barnaby.’

  ‘Nice of you to mention it, sir.’

  Mike grunted, sliding off his bunk. ‘Ready for mine whenever you like, genius.’ He looked briefly into the control room before visiting the heads. Would not be shaving today, however. Not tomorrow or Friday either or Saturday, Sunday, Monday, etc. – one of the pleasures of this way of life, not having to bother with it. Thinking of those E-boats being in Licata by this time – boats no doubt secured alongside, personnel ashore in whatever luxurious accommodation they might have there – seafront hotels maybe – guzzling up their breakfasts. He’d listened-out for them on asdics, for a few minutes around 0430 – or rather had had SD Sharp, AB Fraser’s winger, listen-out, reducing meanwhile to slow speed on only one shaft so as to have a better chance of hearing them at however many miles’ range they might have been. Sharp hadn’t been able to pick them up, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been out there somewhere, on course for Licata. Might have passed at a greater distance than he’d anticipated – if they’d been steering a dog-leg course, for instance. He’d have been a damn fool not to have taken the precautions he had, in any case; it annoyed him that he almost hadn’t seen that rather obvious danger: if he hadn’t woken up to it when he had, might have been caught on the hop.

  Safety first. By the nature of the job one had often enough to take fairly hair-raising risks, simply to fulfil one’s raison d’être; all the more reason not to take avoidable or nonproductive ones. Might be worth explaining this in answering her letter – a comment on Charles’s nonsense, which really did need to be refuted. Especially remembering Ann herself remarking on one occasion – an age ago, in England – ‘Not in the safest of occupations, are you …’

  His brother Alan wasn’t either. Millions weren’t.

  McLeod had prised himself up off his bunk, was at the table looking hungry. Danvers had wolfed his fry-up and was on to bread and jam. Mike pushed the curtain back and pulled out the chair – the chair, on this passageway side of the table.

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Morning, Jamie.’ And to Danvers with his clean-scraped plate, ‘Feel better for that?’

  ‘Heaps better, sir. We’re spoilt, when you come to think of it – I mean, when the Malts are on starvation rations?’

  ‘We’re favoured, certainly. Shrimp’s farm of course for one thing. And apart from that –’ McLeod pointed for’ard – ‘for instance, there are a couple of sacks of spuds up there – real ones.’

  ‘To go with roast pork. Naturally.’ Danvers shrugged. ‘Hell – pork without roast spuds –’

  Mike said, ‘All spuds are reserved for submarine crews, as it happens. That’s official. Guy Mottram was telling me – he’d been out at Gravy’s – Shrimp’s chum Gravy Tench, happens to be the food supremo? He was saying it’s getting to the stage of a governmental edict for the slaughter of all goats and horses – slight problem being that most owners have already killed and eaten any they had. Gravy’s done a census, reckons there are only enough left to eke things out by about a week.’

  ‘Well, crikey –’

  ‘So a convoy operation – and damn soon, at that –’

  McLeod had broached this. Mike agreeing but remaining silent while Barnaby delivered two more plates of eggs and bacon. ‘Snitched these ’ere out of a batch Cookie was sending for’ard.’

  ‘Enough to go round, surely?’

  ‘Bloody better be!’

  He’d gone. Thinking of his own breakfast perhaps. Or even Jarvis’s. McLeod asked Mike, ‘This patrol’s nothing to do with any convoy operation, is it sir?’

  Shake of the head, while scattering pepper. ‘Not as far as I know or Shrimp’s letting on.’ Adding then, quietly, ‘There is one in the offing. Has to be, you’re right. But not quite immediately, and Shrimp’s priority’s been to get us out on the job double-quick – after longish absence and the Eighth Army’s – well, not predicament exactly, but it was being said Rommel could be in Alexandria in three days.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘If Malta folded, he probably would be. The Canal, the lot. Oh, it won’t happen, can’t, we can’t let it, that’s the size of it … Anyway, answering your question, if we were still on our billet when a convoy operation was launched we might either be left there or shifted to a new one. Alternatively might be recalled, turned around and pushed straight out again. One problem for Shrimp being if we’d had a lively time of it and used up all our fish.’

  ‘Hell, what about that?’

  ‘Pray to God they’d have some for
us. Magic Carpet working flat out maybe. Tango was due in about now with half a dozen – but we’re talking of ten or twelve boats, so –’ shake of the head – ‘God knows …’

  Had to stop talking then for a while, pay closer attention to his breakfast. Probably enough said, anyway. In his Tannoy speech a day ago he hadn’t mentioned the imminence of any convoy operation. Or for that matter the island being pretty well at its last gasp. One had to recognise, in the privacy of one’s own thoughts, the possibility of running into trouble one couldn’t handle, survivors if any being dragged out of the sea half-drowned and/or in shock, whatever – and the plain and simple fact that what a man didn’t know he couldn’t talk about.

  No particular advantage in his knowing, either.

  Scraping up the last of this delicious meal, while hearing the watch changing in the control room. ‘Relieve helmsman, sir?’ Jarvis’s standard reply of ‘Yes, please’ to that, and then to others one by one, men more or less lined up in the gangway for’ard of this point, coming aft as those who’d been relieved came for’ard – ’planesmen, PO and ERA of the watch, telegraphman, messenger. Even then with the swapping of differing weights there’d be trimming problems for Jarvis to put right before handing over to Danvers in about ten minutes.

  Incident-free day, all seventeen hours of it. Lunch of bread, cheese and chutney: up to periscope depth before that, for a brief look-round and a check on the weather, also to receive any wireless messages there might be – but had not been, as it happened, not at any rate addressed to Ursa – but ’planing up slowly and carefully, after asdics had found no lurking threat, and putting the ‘attack’ periscope up first for minimal feathering of the smoothly rolling surface. That ’scope being monofocal without any magnification in it, not much thicker at its top end than a Churchillian cigar. Swift check all round before sending it down and putting up the big one for a slower, longer-range search of sea and sky: then back down to seventy-five feet and lunch, and a few pages of The Moon is Down.

  And think about an answer to Ann’s letter.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  AB Johnson – LTO, electrician, on battery inspection, one access point for testing the electrolyte’s density in number two section being right here, a hinged flap in the deck that was lifted with a special tool, electrolyte then siphoned out of the cell right under it. Mike on his feet, pulling the chair out of Johnson’s way.

  He’d measured it: was squirting electrolyte back into the cell.

  ‘How’s it look?’

  He gave him the figure: recording it meanwhile on his clipboard. ‘Long enough dive is this, sir.’ Johnson, who wore glasses, came from Edinburgh, where before joining up he’d been apprenticed to a company operating trams.

  ‘But we’re not caning it, exactly.’ Meaning, not treating it all that harshly. Checking the time – 1445, they’d lunched at 1400. ‘Seven hours to go, anyway.’

  Twelve hours in fact was about long enough for any dive, from the point of view of air and its oxygen content, but today’s seventeen hours would be just about matched tomorrow – getting under the minefield, then being so close to Marettimo, not to mention Marsala and Trapani, having no option but to stay down until dark. The longest Mike or Ursa had done had been a stretch of more than thirty hours – vicinity of Taranto, being hunted after sinking a large freighter, with depth-charging, some of which had been unpleasantly close, throughout a night which had happened to be moonlit, then in daylight not able to surface anyway. There’d been aircraft in it too, Cant seaplanes – which the Italians were good at using, in conjunction with anti-submarine craft. With the air in the boat getting very thin indeed they’d spread a chemical called Protosorb in shallow trays between compartments – it absorbed carbon dioxide, or was supposed to – and he’d had some guffs of bottled oxygen released at a later stage. McIver’s province, that: it had probably helped, although Mike didn’t think anyone had noticed much difference. Except one had survived, and otherwise might not have.

  The thing was, when you were being hunted and having to take avoiding action, varying courses, depths and speed and necessarily adjusting trim, men taking active part in such manoeuvrings were using a lot more oxygen than they would be if just lying doggo. Whereas a day-long submersion like this one presented no real problems. You just had to take it easy, let the hours drift by.

  Take an afternoon snooze now anyway; ration the Steinbeck, make it last.

  In March, that Gulf of Taranto patrol had been; Ursa had come back from it with a new white bar on the Roger for the supply vessel and a red one for an Italian submarine Mike had nailed the day before. Also one damaged screw, some cracked battery cells and the big search periscope jammed in its housing, as unusable as the bent propeller; and lengthy repairs in the dockyard were no fun at all, under the weight of all-out Fliegerkorps assault at that time. Ursa had in fact been darned lucky to get through that period and out of it intact. Just the word ‘Taranto’ though, in another context altogether, rang a very different bell in memory, had been a secondary cause for celebration on the night of Bill Gorst’s wedding – the night they’d danced at the Coconut Grove and he and Ann had made their assignation for the Sunday. News having been released that on the 11th – Monday of that week, Armistice Day of 1940 – Swordfish dive-bombers flown-off from the carrier Illustrious had sunk three Italian battleships at their moorings in the port where they’d been cowering since 10 June, the day Italy had declared war on Britain. While incidentally, starting a few days before that declaration, Italian naval forces had sown this Marettimo–Cape Bon minefield – a very extensive anti-surface-ship field with layers of anti-submarine mines at lower levels. The Italians had their own safe routes through it, of course.

  Mines were reckoned to be responsible for just about all unaccountable submarine losses. When a boat simply didn’t return from patrol, could only be reported as overdue, a mine was what one guessed at.

  At the wardroom table, head on his forearms on its edge; he’d been intending to transfer to his bunk-settee, then thought about doing some chartwork first, working out when Unsung might make it to Marettimo and the minefield, if she’d sailed yesterday from Gib. Well, four days, near enough, if you gave her two hundred miles a day – which would mean her making virtually the whole trip on the surface, so maybe was an overestimate. Thoughts returning – redirected, say – to Ann then, to that Taranto–Coconut Grove night: her whisper in his ear, through the saxophone’s sweetly subdued rendition of ‘Where, or When’, ‘Really something, Mike. I mean – heavens above …’

  The way she’d come to be dancing by that time. Well – as they’d come to be doing it, in the crush and semi-darkness. Having only to turn his head slightly to meet her lips: murmuring a few beats later, ‘Heaven on earth, Ann … Not that that’s the word exactly –’

  ‘How about tomorrow – twosome?’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘But – you don’t mean –’

  ‘Want to bet?’ Moving against him. Soft laugh. ‘Not a shadow of doubt you do, my darling –’

  ‘But it’s simply –’

  ‘Haven’t you been thinking of it all evening?’

  ‘Apart from other considerations – look, tomorrow’s Sunday, and –’

  ‘The Wellington’s open Sunday nights, and very handy for where I’m staying. Know the Wellington, in Knightsbridge?’

  ‘Couldn’t dance there quite like –’

  ‘Behave ourselves then, won’t we. Listen – Charles wants to be back at Blockhouse by lunch-time. The course starts Monday but they’re supposed to foregather in advance of that – and I’m to be on my way to Edinburgh – night sleeper reservation, I’m sure I could transfer it to Monday. While as Chloe was saying, you were taking her to Stony Stratford, wherever the hell that—’

  ‘Train to Bletchley. Well, she wouldn’t much mind, but our father which art in a place called Deanshanger –’

  ‘Let her go
ahead, join them on Monday, couldn’t you? Emergency in the dockyard affecting your Ursa? Urgent message when you get back to the club?’ She sang – low-toned, in sultry harmony with the sax – ‘“The smile you’re smiling – smiling then …” Ring me mid-morning, Mike? I’ll give you the number. Not early, in case he oversleeps. Oh but – better idea – much better – couldn’t we meet for lunch?’

  ‘Gay Nineties – Berkeley Street?’

  ‘At home in all the right places, aren’t you.’ Soft laugh, her breath in his face. ‘OK, then. Dangerous, but – oh, nuts … One-ish?’

  Releasing each other as the music died and voices rose. Hardly believing that what had been said had been said – or that she meant it, or if she had, still would in the morning.

  Surfacing at 2130, after a periscope and asdic recce of the surroundings, gusting fouler air for longer than usual after the seventeen-hour dive. Made you think – until you cracked the hatch and the muck escaped, foul enough to make a cat sick – that that was what you’d had in your lungs these past few hours.

  Danvers’ stars, anyway, put them twenty-six miles south of Cape Rossello. It was a good fix, Danvers like most Merchant Navy-trained men being a dab hand with a sextant; Mike accepted it as spot-on, and altered three degrees to starboard, to 318.

  Distance on this course to the OBB start-line ten miles off Cape San Marco, thirty-six miles. And with seven hours to go before notional first light at 0430, five knots would do it nicely. Pretty well what he’d reckoned on when discussing the route with Shrimp; main thing now being that while the motors pushed her along at this low speed, her diesel-generators with power to spare would be bringing the box right up.

  Touch wood, barring interruptions. In reference to which he wrote in his night-order book, We are only 30 miles SW of Licata, which E-boats use, and the 2130 fix is on the direct route between Licata and Pantellaria. E-boats may well be encountered, therefore.