Later he had seen Kidd watching a small formation of merchant ships being herded into line by some fussy armed trawlers in readiness for a northbound convoy. Most R.N.R. people were like that when they saw defenceless ships in convoy. The targets. The victims. Part of themselves.
He was glad of Kidd’s company. He was good at his job, and had that independent attitude which even the Royal Navy could not dampen.
They had passed the Cork light vessel, and some of her crew had appeared on deck to wave as they had ploughed past, although they must see hundreds of ships every day. It had moved him in some way, like the sight of the young woman in the apron, holding the telegram.
Theirs was a lonely job all the same; they were sitting ducks. He recalled the East Dudgeon light vessel being bombed and her boats machine-gunned by Stukas in the early days of the war. But such incidents were rare, German senior officers having soon realized that the light vessels and buoyage systems were as useful to their own Captains as to their enemy.
Martineau took his pipe from his duffle coat pocket and put it between his teeth. It had been a very expensive pipe, a Dunhill no less, and a present when he had left his first command to take over Firebrand. The stem was still discoloured by salt water. Like his watch, it was one of few survivors.
He thought of the other reminder. Their orders were to rendezvous with another destroyer off the Nore. The Falkland, which had been undergoing the indignities of a refit at Chatham after a clash with E-boats, was a typical pre-war ship of her class, with little variation in size or design. But as she had headed out from the grey mass of land, her light blinking diamond-bright in greeting, Martineau had felt it again like a cold hand. She could have been Firebrand.
He asked, “Satisfied with the allocation of new hands, Number One?”
“I think so, sir.” Again that hesitation. “A few are pretty green.”
Or was it the unexpected change in the orders? The patrol vessel Grebe, which had left Harwich earlier, had suffered delays on passage to Portsmouth. Martineau recalled seeing her going astern from her moorings on the day he had arrived to assume command of Hakka.
She was to join them for what Kidd called the diciest part of the passage, through the Dover Strait itself. Aircraft, E-boats, plus the awesome hazard of the big guns which the Germans had mounted on tracks near Cap Gris Nez. Mostly they fired blind, their high-trajectory shots intended for any fast-moving convoy, if there was such a thing, or the town of Dover itself, only twenty-two miles away.
It was already darker, with plenty of cloud about, although there would be a moon. He had heard Fairfax discussing Grebe with the pilot. Now listed as a corvette, although the navy quietly resented the change of classification, Grebe was typical of the small vessels which had been built in the Thirties and designed for escort and anti-submarine duties. Armed with only one four-inch gun and a few automatic weapons, and carrying a small company of sixty, they were considered perfect for a first command. Grebe ’s commanding officer was a lieutenant, and would be fuming over the delay.
Fairfax could have had her for himself. No fleet destroyer like Hakka, with her powerful armament of eight four-point-sevens in twin mounts, her torpedo tubes and sophisticated radar. But his own.
Kidd said, “North Foreland lighthouse abeam to starboard, eight miles, sir.”
Martineau looked at the radar repeater below his chair, and listened to the regular ping of the Asdic signals. Feeling her way. Like the men at their various stations around the ship, at the guns and depth charges, damage control and ammunition parties. And up here in the bridge, the nerve centre. The stammer of morse from the radio room, the occasional reports and requests from the ranks of voicepipes. All very aware of the land closing in, like the neck of a bag.
All those names from the past, Ramsgate, Hastings, Eastbourne, when the sun had always shone, or so it seemed now.
He straightened his back as a motor gunboat surged past, the throaty growl clearly audible above the whirr of fans and the noises of sea and metal. There were two M.G.B.s, for their size the most heavily armed vessels afloat, just in case there were E-boats about. The Glory Boys would be back to Harwich and the pub when this boring escort job was over.
He smiled. It was strange to think that the first destroyers, the old turtlebacks, were not much bigger. Working with the Grand Fleet or taking part in daring raids and attacks on enemy shipping, they were a nightmare in bad weather. His father had commanded one, and had often told him about the appalling conditions in what he had called “those little terrors.” So foul that their lordships used to pay him two shillings a day hardlying money. But always he had spoken with a kind of affection, as well as pride. Martineau glanced at the radar repeater again, seeing the gleaming blips of the other destroyer astern and the two M.G.B.s. What would his father have made of all this?
His mother had stayed on in the same house on the edge of the New Forest after the Commander, as he was known locally, had died there between the wars. He had never fully recovered from losing an arm in an explosion at Odessa, possibly sabotage, when he had been evacuating White Russians fleeing the Revolution. That, and his rejection by the one life he had known and loved, had finished him.
Now his mother was alone, but she remained very active with her work in the Women’s Voluntary Service, her first aid classes, and looking after evacuee children who had been moved away from inner London and the bombing.
Nothing had ever been said, but she had not got along with Alison, or maybe it had been the other way around. And I was never there. There was always the ship.
“Radar—Bridge!”
Fairfax moved like a cat. “Bridge.”
“Ship at one-nine-zero, sir!”
“That will be Grebe, sir.”
Somebody said, “We hope!”
Another murmured, “And about bloody time.”
Martineau glanced at the sky. Not much longer. Through the Strait and into more open water.
“Inform Falkland— they probably know anyway.” He raised his voice. “Make a signal to the leading M.G.B., Yeoman. Bearing and distance. Investigate.”
He heard the clatter of the signal lamp, and what seemed, almost immediately, the mounting roar of engines from the nearest motor gunboat.
A boatswain’s mate said, “Bloody show-off!”
“No more signals until we’re in company, Number One. You know the drill. The last thing we need right now is a Brock’s Benefit!”
He felt his teeth grate on the empty pipe as the words came back at him; it was exactly what Mike Loring had said when they had jumped two German destroyers off the Norwegian coast. And even then he and Alison must have been lovers.
Somebody handed him a mug of tea and he realized how cold his fingers had become.
“Grebe can take station astern of Falkland. It’ll be as black as a boot soon.” He raised his glasses and watched the other ship’s silhouette lengthening against the murky backdrop.
A green light appeared across the starboard bow, blink, blink, blink. On the chart it stated that there was a bell too, but he could not hear it above the noise. A wreck buoy; there were dozens in this area, maybe hundreds. Sometimes you could even see the dead ship in the shallows when the sun was out. Perhaps one you had known.
He put the mug on a tray as someone else brushed past the chair.
Fairfax said, “I’d better go aft, sir. It’s just that I thought . . .”
Martineau was watching him when suddenly he saw his eyes light up as if someone had shone a torch in his face. He did not feel himself move. “Full ahead both engines! Starboard ten! Midships! Steady!” Seconds. It felt an eternity. Then came the explosion, hard and solid, more like a blow than a sound, as if the ship had rammed the submerged wreck.
“Both engines full ahead, sir! Steady on one-nine-eight!” The coxswain sounded very alert.
Grebe had hit a mine. A drifter; it could be nothing else out here.
They were reaching her now, and Martineau
could hear the gunnery control rattling off instructions to Hakka ’s four mountings. But the radar remained silent. A mine. One chance in ten thousand. But all he could hear was his own voice. It would have been us.
The bridge was suddenly swept with light as the stricken ship exploded in a ball of flame just forward of her bridge. Ammunition, fuel, it was impossible to know, but you could taste it from here.
Martineau put the pipe in his pocket and gripped it hard.
“Signal the senior gunboat to stand by and assist.” He imagined he could feel the heat as more flames and sparks burst into the air. “If the German gunners don’t see that they must be blind!”
Fairfax was staring at him. “We could stand off and lower a boat, sir.”
“Is that how it happened the last time?”
He saw Fairfax recoil as if he had struck him.
To Kidd he said, “Resume course and speed. Yeoman, make to Falkland, remain on station.”
Fairfax was still there, staring at the other ship, now down by the bows. Martineau added quietly, “And I suggest you do the same, Number One.”
He watched Fairfax walk to the ladder, framed against the fires and drifting smoke. A ship dying, her people too. I know what he thought. What he thinks. He strode to the chart table and pulled the canvas cover over his head, his world confined to the small light and Kidd’s neat calculations.
He wrote slowly on a signal pad and then stood up again, grateful for the cold air.
“Tell W/T to code this up and send it off.” He did not turn as another explosion sighed against the hull, and the orange glow was extinguished. They could think what they liked. “ After we’re through the Strait, right?”
Kidd nodded, and watched him climb into the chair again.
It never left you. It was always there, you expected it and insisted that you were prepared. What to say and do, how you would appear to those who depended on you.
Not fear, it was more like anger. He had heard Fairfax’s suggestion and the Captain’s response. And he knew Fairfax well enough by now to understand how he was feeling about it.
He thrust his head beneath the chart table screen and peered at his notes. And the Captain was right. That was almost the worst part. You could not win a war with gestures, no matter what the reason. Humanity, saving people like yourself, was well down the list.
Their orders were to reach Plymouth without delay. Then on to Liverpool, unless some brasshat had now decided on something different. It was a long time since he had been to Liverpool, but he could probably tell his yeoman every chart he would need.
The Captain had been right about the other thing, too. They had been caught napping, despite the nearness of the enemy, and men had died on this very bridge because of it. Just below bridge level, an Oerlikon gunner had been trying to fit a new magazine to his weapon, simply because his loading number had run to the opposite side to watch the rescue attempt. The careless never lived for long.
He looked over at the figure in the tall chair. To him the ship came first. And he was a man who knew danger and death at first hand. A hero.
It was his decision. And for that Kidd was thankful.
• • •
Directly below the destroyer’s open bridge the wheelhouse seemed crowded and confined. With shutters locked into position and deadlights lowered, the motion felt more pronounced with no natural horizon to compensate for it. Small lights shone like markers on the essential machinery, the telegraphs on either side of the helm, a quartermaster standing loosely at each with the revolution counter in easy reach, voicepipes, manned by boatswain’s mates and messengers, and in the forepart, like the hub of the whole place, was the wheel, a solitary bell-mouthed voicepipe, the old-type magnetic compass, and the ticking tape of the gyro repeater.
The coxswain was a big man anyway, but on his grating, his hands on the polished spokes, his eyes glinting slightly in the reflected glare, he was a giant.
To one side, partly separated by steel plating and a long blackout curtain, was a plot table. On it was the chart in use, and beneath it another small light moved in time with the ship’s progress, so that by glancing through a magnified spy-hole in the deckhead the navigator or officer of the watch could check the position, and the presence of navigational hazards which might pass undetected by the radar’s invisible eye and remain unseen by even the most vigilant lookout.
At the rear of the bridge structure was another, larger space, and a more sophisticated plot table as well as the Asdic hut and W/T office.
Hakka ’s only midshipman, Alan Seton, stood at the plot, his eyes slitted with concentration while he readjusted the chart. This was his first active service appointment and he was very aware of it. To serve in one of the famous Tribals was not just a privilege, it offered a chance of advancement or promotion which might be denied to others less fortunate on routine convoy work.
Seton was also aware of the more obvious mistakes made by others, which could still endanger his own progress.
His promotion to sub-lieutenant was now in sight. He would leave this ship and probably go on to something entirely different. He would miss Hakka, but his father’s words were ever-present in his mind. “You’re in the service for a career, not an episode!” Seton smiled. Never mind the war.
He glanced at the new rating by his side. Ordinary Seaman Wishart, straight out of training and looked it. Seemed pleasant enough, and did not ask too many pointless questions. They said he was a candidate for a temporary commission. He sighed. His father wouldn’t approve of that, either.
Wishart was watching him as well, but was careful not to show it. It was stuffy in the sealed wheelhouse, but he was still ice-cold, and could scarcely stop himself from shivering. It had all happened so quickly. The quiet concentration of the men around him, the only movement the coxswain’s big hands, this way and that, the only sound the gentle tick of the gyro repeater as he corrected the trim of the ship’s head. The others lounging at the telegraphs, his new friend Forward giving him a nod, as if the midshipman was invisible.
Then the sudden clamour of engines, the wheel going over, a terrible convulsion as if they had been torpedoed, or how he imagined it would be. One messenger had shouted something about another ship blowing up, and he had seen Seton make some pencilled markings on the chart, eyes wide, no longer so self-possessed.
A boatswain’s mate had said, “We’re leavin’ the poor sods to die! She’s th’ Grebe— I’ve got an oppo in her!”
Spicer’s eyes had barely moved. “ Had an oppo, more likely! Hold your noise!”
Wishart watched the plot indicator moving imperceptibly beneath the chart. The Dover Strait. Even on this chart it looked narrow. He twisted round and tried to see the gyro repeater. They had altered course again. He was terrified of being sick, of showing it in front of the others. He glanced at the midshipman, so like one of the heroes in the books he had in his room at home, even the white patches on his collar, the confidence. How would I ever . . . ?
They all jumped as the tannoy squeaked into life. Here, and throughout the ship.
“This is the Captain speaking.”
Wishart could picture him, as he had seen him on the upper bridge, and on the Gaumont British News at a local cinema, receiving his V.C. from the King.
“We shall be entering the area for the Channel guns shortly. They may or may not open fire. We shall take avoiding action if they do.”
The speaker went dead.
Seton said casually, “Probably won’t happen.”
Standing by the port engine room telegraph, Forward grimaced. How would he know? He tried to remember what he had heard about the guns. When you saw their flashes it took a full forty seconds for the shells to climb and come pitching down on you. Not like the Med, where even the bloody tanks would take a pot-shot if you moved too close inshore.
He thought of his return to the ship from leave. Compassionate leave, because of his father. It had been a long way from Newcastle to Batters
ea in London, with a strange, light-headed feeling after the confines and comradeship of a destroyer.
His father had worked on the railway, most of them did who lived around Clapham Junction, the huge shunting and marshalling yard, so vital now in wartime. Forward supposed there was a sort of camaraderie there, too. Long hours, taking cover every so often when the sirens wailed their warning, and never knowing if their houses would still be standing after every shift.
Coming back this last time had been bad. He saw the youngster Wishart watching the midshipman. Poor little sod, he’d soon learn. Unless he became one of them . . . The kindness had been the worst part. Tots of rum, sippers, gulpers, as much as he could carry. What would they have said? His father had died even as he had walked along that familiar street which led down to the Thames. They had never been close, and he had been sorry because of that. Angered too, that nobody had cared to tell him about it earlier.
So he had gone to see Grace. To share it, without telling anybody. He had grown up with her, and they had kept in touch even after he had joined the navy. Always good company, stunning to look at, but that was as far as it went. Or so he had believed.
He should have left after the funeral, gone straight back to the Tyne and the ship. He glanced at the coxswain by the wheel. Spicer had been good about it too, and had said that Jimmy-the-One was interested in seeing him rated leading hand again.
Grace had moved from her old place, and had left her job at the Arding and Hobbs store at the Junction. But he had found her eventually.
He clenched his fist around the telegraph lever until his fingers throbbed.
It couldn’t be. Not like that. A bloody tom, a common prostitute, doing it for anybody who could pay for it. And she had laughed at him.
The coxswain leaned over the spokes and snapped, “Here we go!”
How could he know? Something over the voicepipe he was not meant to hear? Training? The old Jack’s instinct?
They did not have to wait long.
“Full ahead both engines! Port twenty!”
The bells clanged and hands darted out for support as the helm went over and the high, raked bows began to swing.
For Valour Page 5
