by Alan Silltoe
And yet where we were going was on all maps and charts, and perhaps even shown on those small globes used as pencil sharpeners. Its natural harbours had been known for two hundred years by whalers and seal hunters. Explorers had laid up in them to fair-copy their surveys, piratical merchants had hidden to count the score of their plunder, and the Germans had used the area as a base from which to prey on shipping. But without a wireless station the region lacked a soul. No sound meant no life. No aerial system on high ground conveyed intelligence to other places. We were heading for white space because my earphones could not bring in the necessary signals to convince me it was solid property.
Rose’s table took most of the sun as we ascended from the gloom, but a narrow shaft illuminated my log book. Cloud below was flat like the sea, fixed ribs crossing our track. The plane was steady, and Rose got into the ’dome with an Astro-Compass to check the course, while I stood below with his watch and wondered whether, should it become necessary, I could navigate our boat on its trans-ocean flight. Apart from radio bearings, it was not beyond my competence to lay out a course if provided with the wind vector. There was no mystery in sextant and timepiece as long as sun or stars were visible, and a book of Sight Reduction Tables available to work out a position line. You always learned something of the next man’s job, occasionally without him knowing, and hardly aware of it yourself.
But the proper exercise of navigation demands arcane knowledge during a long flight over water, as well as subtle judgement when putting together the factors of dead-reckoning, astro navigation and wireless bearings. Therefore I couldn’t do it, no more than anyone on board could do my work, though they tended to regard the wireless operator as having the easiest task on the flight deck. His technical knowledge was thought to go little beyond rectifying a few obvious faults, and using Morse Code could not be compared to the arduous work of flying or navigation – both of which are as much an art as a craft.
With senses of a more primitive order, the wireless operator needs experience and patience when pulling in any data for the well-being of the aircraft. He interprets symbols coming into the earphones, and uses the international ‘Q’ code as an operator’s Esperanto. To take morse at speed calls for the sense of rhythm possessed by a poet – or an African in the bush manipulating his tom-toms, as Rose scathingly said. The wireless operator’s brain receives a series of beats which galvanize him into writing words originating from someone else. Others will in turn take down words or initials tapped out by him, both senders and receivers being mediums to transcribe electrical patterns from the sky.
At either end of the contact there is a human touch. If you miss a letter, you either let it go, thereby losing all trace, or you make the correction and then try to catch up with the speeding text, with the risk of missing some which is still to come. If the message isn’t intended for you, yet is essential for your wellbeing, and you can’t get in touch with the other operator to ask for a repeat, you are in trouble.
Each operator is distinguishable by idiosyncratic sending. Those whose rhythm is of a pleasing regularity are artists at the job, possessing stamina and an infallible sense of style, their evenly spaced strings of dots and dashes being a delight to transcribe. But most operators have mannerisms which make their sound patterns as unique as fingerprints. One can detect a change in operator, can tell when an inexperienced sender is tired, or lazy, or permanently irascible, or inwardly disturbed.
If half a dozen stations are hammering for attention you note their call signs and then, in an orderly manner, bring them in one by one to transact business. When a dead-keen coast station thumps out automatic five-kilowatt morse on eight megacycles, symbols come into each ear like needles intent on pricking your brain in the middle. Your vital interest may be to listen instead to the mewings of an underpowered pip-squeak tramp steamer. His feeble transmitter, so far away, may not realize the strength of the opposition that besets you while trying to read him, for the interference is in your area, and not his. What is preventing you from listening may sound no louder to him than the strength at which you hear him. In any case, the ship’s transmitter, being right next to him, drowns all but his own morse.
The onus is on you to assist the weak. Moral considerations overcome any difficulty in the execution of your task. Human feeling encourages you to hear that small voice behind the great bellow, and struggle to bring forth meaning in case the lives of the sender’s crew depend on it. The most important article of faith, hidden yet not hidden, without which you would only do your job and not your duty, is that which elevates your purpose and takes your craft close to art.
Your integrity can survive only by the proper rendering of the message onto paper, so you nurture those disjointed sounds, sweat at the finger ends, and tremble, and squint in order to cool yourself – and you may still, for all your effort, lose the thread. You hope for contact to be properly established, and do not give in to the evil of despair, which is too easy to accept and always to be turned from. A lost soul is revived with the belief that it is not finally lost and, rekindling your attempt to hear it again, you force your ears to conquer the bleak static of the ether and double the sharpness of your senses in order to encourage those in peril.
I listened for any such ship within the radius of my receiving aerials. A wireless operator in an aircraft is the lookout man in the crow’s nest, the first to hear any manned object in the circumference of sounds. There was self-interest in my endeavours, for whatever I heard proved that we ourselves were not lost, whether the signals were to be of assistance to us, or a threat. Unable to accept that we were totally alone was an imperfection of spirit which should have made me ashamed – but did not. The individual cannot be supreme in an empty world.
Two hours out, I heard a ship send a weather report to a South African coast station. His QTH was a couple of hundred miles north of our onward route, so I noted it as being of some use. The force five wind was westerly, weather mainly fair, visibility moderate or good. I got a bearing on ship and coast station and, allowing for half-convergency, handed the slip of paper to Rose.
When I showed the report to Bennett he jumped as if bitten by a tiger-ant and called Wilcox to sit at the controls. Was there anything about where the ship was coming from or going to? He was disappointed at my answers. ‘Glue yourself to those valves,’ he said, ‘and keep listening to that ship. But don’t for God’s sake send a single squeak on your key. Understand?’
I did. He went down to talk to Nash and his gunners. But if, on this enormous ocean where ships were scarce, aircraft rare, and a flying boat perhaps unique, I heard a vessel in distress, would I keep radio silence as commanded, even though such a policy was vital for our safety? Or would I inform them with alacrity that they were not alone, and relay a message to other ships which might be able to help them?
Bennett’s pressure to push on, come what may, in silence and as if invisible, need not clash with the distress of a cottonboat or sugar-carrier. I lived in hope of lesser moral choices, but knew which one I would make if the moment came.
6
Armatage flicked his moustache, and looked as if he had woken up into the Stone Age. He wanted only to get back to sleep, but said: ‘I heard scratching underfoot. From when I closed my eyes to opening them again.’
‘Scratching?’
‘Have you ever heard of rats in a flying boat?’
‘You must be dreaming.’
He got out of the bunk and stretched. ‘Claws were going, ten to the dozen.’
‘Can’t hear ’em now.’
‘You wouldn’t, would you?’
I laughed at his irony. ‘I would if they made a noise. I can usually hear things like that.’
He rubbed his face. ‘I suppose it was a dream, though I never dream, so it’s hard to believe. Why should I, on a flying boat? Makes no sense. Scratching, as plain as anything. I thought claws were going to come through that door.’
I jumped away.
‘Se
e? Gets you, don’t it?’
‘When they stop scratching,’ I teased, ‘let me know. It’ll mean they’ve left. We’ll be in trouble.’
His face was covered in sweat, as if he had been under a shower – and we were freezing at ten thousand feet. ‘Do you want a drink, Sparks?’
I thought he was joking. ‘I’m not thirsty.’
‘I never said you was. I mean a tot of old grouser to steam its way up and down the tripes.’
He winked.
‘There’s not supposed to be any on board,’ I said.
‘That’s all right for such as the skipper. For us it’s King’s Regulations and Station Routine Orders. He’ll have us on bloody square-bashing next. But he’s got something else to warm him up, though I’m not sure what it is. But it warms him, all right. You can see the hot spot burning his brain. If I had a tenth of it I wouldn’t need a secret bin of firewater to wash my throat in. And besides, he ain’t got toothache.’
‘You’ll get thrown overboard if he finds out.’ His sweat stank of alcohol, but I didn’t care how much booze he put into himself as long as it was after we had reached land and the job was finished.
‘I’ve got my flask,’ he said, ‘and I can refill it any time. You’ve never known a gunner to be without his flask, have you? Even on ops I took one, though I’d have been on the carpet if I’d been caught. Being half-cut on the way back from Nuremberg sharpened my sight. Saved my life a few times, such as it was. This is the last op I’m doing, though, and it feels the longest already.’
‘We’ve only been out three hours. Still, if you kip down for another half hour maybe you’ll” wake up feeling better.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ he grumbled. ‘There’s rats in the hull, scores of the bleeders squeaking and scratching.’
I lost patience. ‘You’re round the bend, if you ask me, and halfway up the zig-zags.’
‘I wish I was.’ He pulled at my lapel, but I shoved him off. ‘And not only rats. I heard voices.’
‘Voices? You’re getting my bloody goat.’
He came close again. ‘In Bennett’s wardroom somebody laughed and it wasn’t Bennett. They were talking, all gruff and matey. Wilcox was at the controls, you was at your gear listening to Geraldo, Rose was at his table doing noughts and crosses, Appleyard was in the mid-upper, Nash was in the tail, and Bull was sleeping on the parachutes. That left me on my tod – hearing voices.’
It was the wind, the shaking, the drone of engines as we changed height. The effect was to make you hear things.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it was that, was it? Do you think I don’t know? I’ve logged more flying time than you’ve spent listening for the first cuckoo in spring.’
He took another swig from the flask and, wanting a drink as much as anyone, I thought him more funny than dangerous. But I was angry at knowing there was liquor on board, and wondered who else was getting at it. ‘Does Bennett know the mess is no longer dry?’
He ignored my question. ‘I’m bloody freezing.’
I envied him having no work, unlucky as he was in being crippled with either drink or toothache. His expression of malice diverted me from worrying overmuch at his boozing. The only fit response was to do the impossible, and laugh. I pulled a blanket from the rack and let it fall.
He belched his thanks. ‘You’re a babe unborn, Sparks.’
The floor of the plane dropped under our feet and, while I held on, Armatage crumpled into the bunk and was straightaway unconscious. I had no further weather reports to listen for, so had time to watch the others opening a packing case with crowbars. Bull fixed the claw under a batten, strained like a sailor at the capstan, shirt off, arms chevroned by elaborate tattoos, lips clamped as if knowing that the noise of the engines would drown any shanty. Nash and Appleyard held the crate from sliding.
‘Do you need help?’
‘We’ll manage.’
I stood by, but kept clear. The cases were labelled ‘Engine Spares’. An outboard motor for the dinghies? Tents and equipment? Shining nails gave without trouble. A smell of oil and paraffin floated up as side planks splintered away, leaving plywood and thick card to pull free. ‘We should get Armatage on this stunt,’ Bull said. ‘A bit of hard labour would do him good.’
Appleyard took the crowbar. ‘He’s as pissed as a falling flare.’
‘He’s down with the toothache.’ Nash steadied the crate. ‘Leave him for a while.’ They rested when the work was all but done. ‘We’ll give him an hour to spruce up.’ He turned to Appleyard, who was rolling down his sleeves. ‘Why don’t you boil some water for coffee? Make a start on cobbling a meal together. You’ll find tins of M and V, a bag of spuds, a wheel of rat-trap, and some fresh bread.’
Bull agreed. ‘Flying makes me ravenous. I once ate a whole packet of cream crackers over Berlin.’
‘Me,’ Nash said, ‘I smoked fifty Players.’
‘I said my prayers,’ Appleyard called before he went, ‘and bit my nails. Bull got drunk. He ought to pull his finger out and sweat like the rest of us.’
Beneath the cardboard, sacking was darkened by grease stains. Nash braced himself to pull one container free. ‘They’re our stingers. Or will be when they’re assembled. We’ll sweat like pigs to get ’em up in time.’ He cut into the coils of string with a black clasp knife. ‘Treat ’em nicely,’ he said to Bull. ‘When the job’s over we’ll pack ’em up and sell ’em back. They cost a few hundred each. We can unload them on China for a lot more if we fly our kite up the Yangtse. Might as well make all we can out of the trip.’
‘I wouldn’t care if we chucked ’em in the drink.’ Bull cut the string into small lengths, then peeled away the sacking till bits and pieces of a Browning .303 machine gun gleamed on the floor.
Nash stroked the barrel. ‘We’ve a few hours to work like grease-monkeys and put four of these beauties in the tail.’ After a rapid check on the various parts he laughed at my surprise. ‘You didn’t have a clue, eh? If anyone comes up the fjord and tries to stop us, we’ll rake ’em.’
In the guise of a mechanical skeleton, the gun looked ominous. ‘Maybe they’ll have a similar shock for us.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But listen, Adcock, the world’s full of bloody maybes. You can’t live on ’em, I’ll tell you that. And in my experience one maybe is as good as another. All you’ve got to do is get yourself ready to meet one maybe. And if any turn up that you don’t expect, you’ll just bloody well defeat it, if you’ve prepared properly for the first maybe. That’s the only system I know, and it hasn’t failed me yet. Now we’re out of territorial waters we’ll gun the old flying boat up like it was always meant to be, and once they’re mounted there’ll be no trouble we can’t get out of.’
The more the flying boat went on, the more I was disturbed, a condition strange and painful because I had been trained to create order from a multiplicity of signals. Confusion in myself was unfamiliar and therefore insoluble. The only way of staying calm was to close down the wireless, hold back from the one thing that might help me to bear it – which would be as impossible as pulling open a door and letting myself fall into the icy air. I envied Armatage his drunken sleep.
The headset back on, I immersed myself in an endless waterfall of static. Vital gen known to everyone in the plane would not be imparted to me. Latched to the outer atmosphere, I was certain to stay innocent. It was not a matter of knowing nothing, but of believing that what I did know was not worth knowing, and of assuming that what I didn’t know was the only thing worth knowing. The balance was crucial, yet as gentle as the motions of the flying boat following that invisible line of the Antarctic Convergence, where warm and cold water mixed to give high winds and thick cloud above the troubled surface.
7
A landslide of static was swept aside by a continuous signal. As my tuning needle went over it became an attenuating whistle, like a bomb falling into infinity and unable to explode. By the time I thought to take a bearing it had disappeared. It shoul
d not have been there. Someone had inadvertently leaned on his key, or was tuning his transmitter. If the latter, who did he expect to contact? To judge by the intensity of that accidental signal, if that’s what it was, and allowing for skip distance and freak reception, he could be up to a thousand miles away, in which case he was likely to be on or over the sea in the direction of Kerguelen. Perhaps he was interested in our whereabouts.
Such deductions might sound like so much magic. Intuition was not evidence. Assumptions were not facts. Feelings could not rate as intelligence by which to assess danger. In the imagined conversation, Bennett told me to pull my finger out and find clues he could work on. My job was to inform him, not worry him.
The green eye glowed. Atmospherics dominated. The universe of noise was like a house of many mansions latched on each ear, doors and windows firmly bolted against lunatics scratching inside. Maybe, like Armatage, I was hearing things. A long bomb-like whistle had no symbol for the logbook.
The knowledge of the Browning machine guns made every sound seem like a threat, and kept me extraordinarily alert. I had to do my job well, though sworn loyalty to Bennett hardly meant helping to find bullion which did not belong to him. Yet if I didn’t chip in to the best of my ability the sudden onset of peril from any direction would be as much a threat to myself as it was to the others. Having signed my way into the trap, I must learn to live in it.
The flying boat moved on. Rose passed a new course of 138 degrees when we reached, by astronomical computation, 45 north and 40 south. The local time was 11.52, three hours and forty-seven minutes after setting out. A rippling stream of high speed telegraphy tinkled between Singapore and Home Base. My crow’s nest could monitor half the world, but I only needed to beware of ships steaming in the area we were heading for. The first headland was over 1700 nautical miles away, though it wasn’t too far if I kept my fingers at the corrugated tuning wheel as pertinaciously as a safe-thief trying to unravel the combination of a lock.
