Barrie rubbed his jaw. ‘What’s breakfast, then?’
* * *
Odd cove… Nick went past the foot of the ladder and the door of Wyatt’s cabin, and into the wardroom. Charlie Pym glanced up from his kippers, and nodded affably; Mr Watson, the commissioned engineer, raised a butter-knife in salute and muttered a ‘good morning’; Percy Gladwish, the torpedo gunner, winked over a tilted coffee-cup.
Cockcroft was on the bridge. The system of bridge watch-keeping in the straits was that Wyatt and Pym took turns at sharing the navigational responsibility, while Nick and Cockcroft did the same for gunnery control. That was the general principle, when Mackerel wasn’t closed-up for action.
Pym murmured smoothly, with a slight lift of the eyebrows, ‘Hardly the most successful night in living memory, h’m?’ He touched his lips delicately, fastidiously with his napkin. Nick called the steward as he sat down; then he glanced across the wardroom at the prone figure of McAllister, who was dozing in an upper bunk. The oval table was set centrally; there were bunks like shelves – with curtains that could be drawn across them – against the ship’s sides.
‘Doc!’
An eye opened, shut again. A hand came out of the blankets to ward off the light.
‘God’s teeth. What time is it?’
‘Time you were up… Are the drifter’s crew all fit, bar their skipper?’
‘Fit as horses. Swan found ’em hammocks or somesuch.’ The surgeon-probationer rolled over the other way, and yawned. ‘The old man’s wound’s clean as a whistle too. Marvellous stuff, salt water.’
Gladwish was pouring himself more coffee. He asked Nick, ‘Huns havin’ it all their own way, weren’t they?’ A dark, quick-eyed man. He added, ‘Made us look silly, I rec on.’
Nick told Hatcher, ‘Kippers, please, and I’m in a hurry. Then take breakfast on a tray to Skipper Barrie in my cabin. No short rations, or he might bite you.’
He didn’t want to spend too long down here, with Wyatt in his present mood. And he’d have to shave before he went up again. Gladwish seemed to read his mind: ‘Skipper suckin’ his teeth a bit, is he?’
Nick shrugged. ‘He’s not happy.’ He looked at Watson, the engineer. ‘All well in your department, Chief?’
Watson was three-quarters bald, and his skin had an engine-room pallor that would have taken years of sunshine to dispel. He mumbled with his mouth full, ‘Couple o’ weeks in dockyard ’ands, then we’d be all right.’
‘We’ll get our three days, if we’re lucky.’
‘But not right away, let’s hope.’ Pym wiped his lips again. ‘I want to be on terra firma, this Christmas.’
Plump, always clean-looking, with carefully manicured fingernails and hair always smoothed down, Pym was more like some shore-based admiral’s flag-lieutenant than a Dover destroyer officer. Nick had no idea how he found time to groom himself so well – or why he bothered, for that matter. The fact that Wyatt always seemed well-disposed towards his navigator and surly with him, Nick Everard, who was his second in command, didn’t exactly encourage friendship. He tried to ignore it and treat him equably, but the simple fact was that Pym was not Nick’s sort of man. He didn’t think much of him as a destroyer officer, either.
Wyatt… Nick remembered an interview in the captain’s cabin a few days after he’d taken over as first lieutenant. Wyatt had told him, glowering, ‘I’ll be watching you, Everard. You won’t let me down twice, I promise you!’
Incredible… He’d been asked down for a chat and a glass of gin!
‘I’ll do my best not to let you down at all, sir.’
Wyatt had pursed his lips, set down his empty glass and stared at the faintly-pink liquor still in Nick’s as if suggesting it was time he drank up and left. He hadn’t said another word. That was the whole interview: one drink, one threat.
Had he felt insulted, perhaps, at having so young an officer appointed as his first lieutenant? Possibly tried to have the appointment cancelled, and been obliged to take him?
Nick pushed his kipper plate aside, and buttered a triangle of toast. He’d been down here too long already.
* * *
If Mackerel was to have her stand-off and boiler-clean now, she’d be ordered to a buoy or to a jetty. Otherwise, she’d be sent alongside the duty oiler to replenish with fuel, and as likely as not straight out again as soon as her tanks were full.
Nick stood by the bridge rail to starboard and watched Dover’s cliffs and castle loom up ahead. It was a grey, cold morning, but there was very little wind now. What there was of it was still in the south-west, raking the crests of low, close-ranked waves.
From here, the grass slopes around the castle looked like deep green velvet.
‘What’s the set, pilot?’
‘Very little, sir. Eastward about one knot or less.’
At some stages of the tide, the tidal streams could make for problems. In a real wind it wasn’t much of a harbour anyway; a night’s ‘rest’ at a buoy in the destroyer anchorage, for instance, could mean a night of rolling twenty degrees each way. About as restful as being out on patrol. And in a south-westerly gale – well, the distance from the outer edge of the Admiralty break-water to where the hospital ships berthed inside it was a hundred and fifty feet, but the ships still found solid sea, green sea, crashing down on their decks.
A light was flashing from .the end of the naval pier in the main harbour. Mackerel’s pendants, her identification signal, already fluttered from the starboard yardarm; now her search-light’s louvred shutter clashed in acknowledgement of each word as it was received. Nick read it for himself: Berth on west jetty, tidal harbour.
Wyatt glanced at Pym. ‘Boilers, then.’ Pym said sourly, ‘And back at sea for Christmas, no doubt.’ Mick asked Wyatt, ‘Close up sea-dutymen, sir?’
‘Yes, please.’
Nick glanced over his shoulder. ‘Pipe it, bosun’s mate!’
Wyatt bent to the voicepipe: ‘Three hundred revolutions.’ As Mackerel got inside she’d have to spin round hard to port, under the stern of the western blockship, to enter the commercial harbour between the Admiralty and Prince of Wales’ piers. At the top end, half a mile up from the harbour mouth, was the narrow entrance to the small – twelve-acre – tidal harbour. It was a basin for drifters and trawlers mostly, but destroyers in their stand-off periods also used it sometimes, and there was an old steel lighter there fitted as a workshop and with a dynamo that could provide power to ships whose fires were out.
Gladwish called up the voicepipe, ‘Permission to withdraw charges?
‘Yes, please.’ They were almost in harbour; no need to ask Wyatt’s agreement to removing the firing-charges from the torpedo tubes. Nick saw Cockcroft waiting for orders, and Wyatt studiously ignoring him; he beckoned him to come over to his side.
‘Probably port side to, Sub. But have springs ready both sides, just in case. And an anchor ready, of course.’
Cockcroft nodded, and went down. Chief Petty Officer Bellamy had the wheel now. Wyatt muttered to him, squinting across the compass-bowl, ‘Steer two degrees to port.’
‘Two degrees to port, aye aye, sir!’
Wind was over the port quarter on this course; Mackerel was hammering the small waves with the starboard side of her short, black stem, flinging up intermittent bursts of spray to infuriate Cockcroft’s cable party as they veered the anchor to its slip, a-cockbill from the hawse. If Wyatt got himself into any sort of trouble when he was manoeuvring inside there, one slam of the blacksmith’s hammer could knock the slip off and send the cable roaring out. Nick watched the entrance seeming to widen as the destroyer ploughed up into it; then, as she thrust in between the sunken blockships, it seemed to close in on her again. The blockships, at right-angles to the gap in the harbour wall, were two old Atlantic liners, both stripped, cut down to their main decks and fitted with iron supports for the torpedo netting to hang from. The one to starboard as Mackerel entered harbour was the former SS Montrose; aboard her a pas
senger by the name of Crippen had been arrested on a charge of murder. Wyatt straightened. ‘Two hundred revolutions!’
‘Two hundred—’
‘Starboard fifteen!’
‘Starboard fifteen, sir.’ The coxswain span his wheel. ‘Fifteen o’ starboard wheel on, sir!’
‘Stop port.’
‘Stop port, sir!’ Biddulph, bosun’s mate acting as telegraph-man, jerked the brass handle forward and back again. Mackerel began to fairly spin around, and Wyatt said, ‘Slow starboard, one hundred revolutions. Slow ahead port. Midships the wheel.’
Cockcroft had his men fallen-in on the foc’sl, properly at ease. At the back of the bridge the searchlight began to clash again, as a new message came stuttering from the naval pier. Signalman Hughes scrawled it on a pad, at Porter’s word-by-word dictation. Then he bawled it out:
‘Signal from Captain (D), sir! You may grant shore-leave this afternoon. Boiler-cleaning party will board you noon tomorrow.’
A cheer floated up from the waist, the iron deck, where Swan’s berthing party must either have picked up the dots and dashes for themselves or heard the signalman yell it. Shore-leave: it was a rare thing, and to be prized. Destroyers got three days like this between twenty-four days of sea duty, and ten days for docking and bottom-scraping once in four months. Between those periods there was no shore-leave at all.
‘Port ten.’
‘Port ten, sir…’
Rounding the end of the Prince of Wales pier. Transports lay on the other side of it. To port, coal hulks rocked at their buoys. Tomorrow would be the 22nd, and a boiler-clean took three whole days; so with luck, they would have Christmas Day in harbour.
Chapter 3
He heard Petty Officer Clover, the gunner’s mate, reporting to Cockcroft that libertymen were ready for inspection, and Cockcroft’s breezy ‘Ah, right-oh then, GM!’
Cockcroft should have said ‘Very good’ — in a clipped, impersonal tone. Nick had told him a dozen times about this sort of thing-for his own sake, because Wyatt and others of that stamp had deep reverence for the customs and habits of the Service; Wyatt would have just about thrown him over the side if he’d heard that chirpy ‘Right-oh’.
The sailors liked Cockcroft. They called him – amongst themselves – ‘Cocky-Ollie’.
* * *
Wyatt was in London. He’d gone up on the evening of the day they’d docked, two days ago, and he wasn’t due back until tomorrow afternoon, the 24th. In his absence, life had been quite enjoyable. Nick had had to forego the pleasure of going up himself, the idea of an evening’s dalliance with Lucy L'Ecstase; with Wyatt away, this was where he had to be. And in any case, the luscious Lucy didn’t lack admirers, and might not have been available at such short notice.
He’d passed the time pleasantly enough. That first night alongside he’d appointed himself duty officer, and invited his friends over from the submarine basin. Tim Rogerson, who was first lieutenant of an E-class submarine; Harry Underhill, a CMB – coastal motor boat – man; and Wally Bell, who commanded an ML, a motor launch. They’d come over to Mackerel for dinner, driving themselves round in Johnny Vereker’s constantly back-firing little Swift; and on the second night – last night – Nick had dined with them aboard their depot-ship, the old Arrogant.
Meanwhile, Mackerel’s boilers were being cleaned-by dockyard stokers, to allow the ship’s engine-room staff to enjoy their own rest-period – and Nick had been getting her smartened up and cleaned internally. The sailors had caught the Christmas spirit – which was an easier thing to do in Wyatt’s absence – and the work had progressed rapidly and cheerfully. The only defaulters had been minor cases of drunken behaviour ashore, which Nick had dealt with swiftly and as leniently as regulations allowed, getting them disposed-of before Wyatt should return to make mountains out of molehills.
When they’d docked on the 21st, Wyatt had gone ashore at once to see Captain (D), who commanded this Sixth Flotilla. But he’d come back without having seen him. There’d been meetings going on, strange persons down from London. Bacon himself had been up at the Admiralty, and nobody would see anyone or tell anyone anything. There was an impression that far-reaching decisions were being taken behind locked doors.
Wyatt had told Nick, ‘I’m not hanging about down here. I’ll be at my club in Town. You can hold the fort, I suppose, while the ship’s alongside?’
Nick strolled aft – wondering now, two days later, what was going on. Dover was alive with rumours. Rogerson and the others over in Arrogant thought Admiral Bacon was about to get the order of the boot. The destruction of several U-boats, followed by so positive an enemy reaction against the lit minefield that was catching them, proved how right it had been to light it up. Bacon had fought against it, stone-walled the Admiralty committee’s recommendations as long as he could – until, one story went, Sir John Jellicoe (Jellicoe was First Sea Lord now) had finally ordered him to implement the proposals. Bacon had argued that his nets were already barring the straits to U-boats, that none at all were getting through. Now it was plain he’d been wrong: on an issue so vital that the war could be won or lost on it.
Rogerson – long, lean, red-headed – had raised his glass. ‘Here’s to him, anyway. He’s done a thundering good job here, and with only half enough ships to do it.’ Nodding at Nick. ‘Your sort of ships, I mean.’
Wally Bell agreed. Burly, bearded, brown-eyed: until 1914 he’d been a law student at Cambridge. He put down his glass, leant back, stared up at the white-enamelled deckhead. Arrogant had been launched in 1896 as a third-class cruiser, and converted to a depot ship two years before the war. In 1914 they’d brought her round from Portsmouth under tow. Since there were now only two E-class submarines in Dover, she’d become mother-ship to the MLs and CMBs as well. Bell said, ‘I doubt if people realise what a complex job the old fellow’s got. What – four hundred ships? If you can call ’em ships… And airfields, dirigibles, shore guns—’
‘Isn’t it what admirals are for?’
Harry Underhill, the coastal motorboat man, was a former merchant navy mate with a master’s ticket; no respecter of persons, he had a direct, incisive way of summing-up either individuals or problems. A craggy, rather savage-looking individual. He added, ‘In any case – the higher they fly, eh?’
He was right, Nick thought. But one could still say ‘Poor old devil…’ Rogerson added, ‘Even if he doesn’t know how to use submarines. Frankly, I wonder why they bother to keep us here.’
The CMB people had the same complaint: that they weren’t used enough. Whereas the destroyers were, beyond doubt, worked to the very limit. The lightly-built, high-speed motorboats were limited to fine-weather operations, that was the main restriction; they needed moonless nights, too, for their kind of work.
Nick, strolling aft, saw Cockcroft, followed by Petty Officer Clover, completing his inspection of the libertymen.
‘Carry on please, Gunner’s Mate.’
He’d got that right, anyway. He might as easily, if he’d been in true ‘Cocky-Ollie’ form, have said ‘Well, have a spiffing time, you chaps…’ No – not quite… Nick smiled to himself; he liked Cockcroft. Clover had saluted, a rigidly correct, Whale Island gunnery-school salute that practically broke his wrist : and now his heels crashed together as he whipped round to face the lines of smartly turned-out, wooden-faced sailors who were about to be turned loose on Dover.
‘Libertymen – right – turn! Rear rank, quick – march!’
The Mackerels began to file down the gangway to the jetty. Nick stopped beside the guardrail, and Cockcroft joined him. Cockcroft said, stumbling slightly as he stopped, ‘Fine body of men, what?’
He was grinning after them as the front rank tailed on behind the others. Nick said, ‘See ’em in three or four hours’ time, and then say that.’
‘Well, dash it, I would!’
‘Yes. As a matter of fact, so’d I.’
He might not have, though, when he’d been Cockcroft’s age.
Since then he’d seen, at Jutland, how sailors who were paid next to nothing, cooped up in miserably uncomfortable and overcrowded messdecks, subjected to a continuous, often petty and sometimes ruthless discipline and looked down on as riff-raff by quite a large section of the general public, how men like this could fight like lions, face quite terrifying danger and privation, remain disciplined, cheer themselves hoarse to keep their own spirits up, and die like heroes. He’d seen them doing all those things, at Jutland; and the knowledge, the recognition of the sort of men one led, was one of the things that made the Navy bearable.
He stood with his hands resting on the guardrail, and watched the crowd of destroyer men moving off towards the town. He murmured, ‘If anyone ever had a right to get drunk now and then – well, there they go.’ Cockcroft was delighted: ‘I say! D’you know that’s exactly what I was thinking when I was inspecting them just now?’
Nick glanced at him sideways. He advised him drily, ‘Just remember to keep it to yourself.’
* * *
He didn’t know what to do, this evening. Except for himself and Cockcroft, all the officers were ashore; and the Arrogant lot, his personal friends, were all otherwise engaged.
Rogerson had gone up to London, driving himself there in Vereker’s motor; he’d ‘found’ some petrol for it. He’d wanted Nick to go with him, to dine at his parents’ house in Mayfair, but it had been out of the question to leave the precincts of the port with Wyatt absent. He’d have liked to: Rogerson, who was probably his closest friend these days and perhaps the first real friend of his own age he’d ever had in the Navy, had an extremely pretty sister, Eleanor, who was a VAD at St Thomas’ Hospital; she would have been there, this evening.
Wally Bell was at sea, on patrol in the Downs, and Underhill had taken his CMB over to Dunkirk.
It had been a good evening, last night in Arrogant. There’d been a fifth member of the party later on, an amusing RNVR friend of Rogerson’s named Elkington, who was first lieutenant of Bravo, one of the old ‘thirty-knotters'. She was so decrepit, Elkington had told him, that they all yelled ‘Bravo!’ whenever she covered a sea-mile without something falling off… Nick remembered snatches of the conversation round that after-dinner table: about Evans of the Broke, for instance – how, when in some emergency last year no boat had come inshore to take him off to his ship, he’d sprung into the harbour and swum back – fully uniformed, and in a stiff December blow. Wally Bell had laughed… ‘A man of action, surely. But not – well, with all respect to him, not exactly brimming with the old grey-matter?’
Sixty Minutes for St George Page 4
