‘If she’s going for any walk – it’ll be with me she’ll go.’
A large man: trawlerman, by the look of him. In a heavy blue serge suit and a seaman’s roll-neck sweater. He stood in front of them, between them and the door, and stared at Annabel.
‘With me, Annie. Eh?’
Nick stepped towards him. The man put one enormous hand out, like a policeman stopping traffic, but he didn’t take his eyes off the girl.
‘Well, then?’
McKechnie hit him. Annabel screamed. Everyone was shouting, closing in. The big man raised both his fists together and crashed them down like a sledge-hammer on McKechnie’s head; at the same time another of the Mackerels smashed a bottle against the challenger’s ear. McKechnie had staggered from that blow, recovered as he swayed forward, stumbling; the trawlerman had clamped a hand on his throat and with the other he was belting him in the stomach. There was fighting all over the room now, trawlermen or driftermen against sailors. A Mackerel stoker, O’Leary, had climbed up on the bar; now he jumped, landing on the big man’s shoulders and bringing him crashing down; Mick saw a sailor’s boot connect against the trawlerman’s jaw, and he thought it was probably McKechnie’s. All Nick was trying to do was protect Annabel from flying fists: McKechnie yelled in his ear, ‘Ye’d best be awa’, sir, while the goin’s good!’
‘Come on!’ Annabel tugged at him. Nick agreed: there’d be redcaps here at any minute. Behind the Leading Seaman he saw a bottle raised – a big one, full of liquor – he shouted, and sprang forward: McKechnie swung round, the other man side-stepped and brought the bottle down; Nick saw it coming and he tried to dodge…
* * *
‘There, my pet!’
Something cool was swabbing his forehead. Sarah’s voice was gentle, loving, soothing in his ear and brain… Sarah?
Sarah was up at Mullbergh. He, Nick, was in Dover, wasn’t he? What was—
He opened his eyes. Annabel smiled at him, her full lips only inches above his face, a damp flannel in her hand. They were on a bed: there was a cracked ceiling overhead, brown-and-grey patterned wallpaper. Grey morning light filtered through a dirty dormer window.
Morning light!
He felt his insides convulse with the shock of it. Morning. And he was still ashore. Then he remembered: Wyatt was still in London. He thought, Thank God for small mercies. He made a slight effort to sit up: Annabel gently pushed him back.
‘Easy, easy now, my darling,’ She rested on him. Bare, soft arms moved round his neck. Her breasts – full, heavy – pressed their nipples against his chest. He moved a hand down: she was naked, and so was he.
It had to be a dream. He shut his eyes. He’d been dreaming of – Sarah, his stepmother? Annabel asked him, ‘Tell me something, as a favour?’ He opened his eyes and found her pale-blue ones smiling into his; she asked him, ‘Why d’you call me ‘Sarah’ all night long? Who’s this Sarah you’re in love with?’
‘Love?’ It hurt, to move his head: he winced. ‘No – no, I’m not, I…’
His own stepmother: his father’s wife: how could one – even in a dream… It seemed the most dreadful thing of all. He tried to shake his head again, and felt the same sharp stab of pain. He told himself, My skull’s cracked, I’m deranged!
‘Liar. You must be.’ She kissed him slowly, lingeringly. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whoever she is, she’s a lucky girl.’
Impossible to think about, let alone discuss… ‘How did I get here?’
‘Two of your sailors brought you. They wanted to take you to the ship, but I said no, not in that state, I’d look after you myself. So – ’
‘I must get back on board!’
‘Now?’
'Yes – my God, I—’
‘Pity.’ She smiled, stroking him. ‘I thought, when you woke up—’ She shook her head. ‘Never mind. Shall I see you again?’
He thought, Sarah… There were more immediate anxieties, but that was the deepest shock in his mind. Annabel was helping him to sit up. He told her, ‘Of course. Yes, of course we’ll – ’
‘Do you still like me?’
Standing beside the bed, looking down at him. She put her hands up, linking them behind her head. Then she bounced a little on her toes, and laughed at his eyes on her bouncing breasts. ‘Well?’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘Really think so?’
He got off the bed. She touched him: ‘Next time, you’ll be well.’
* * *
Memory came in spasms. Underneath glimpses of last night, the constant thought of Sarah, his father’s wife. Young enough to be his father’s daughter, certainly, but still – to think of her – or have thought of her – like that… He told himself, I don’t: it was a dream. That bang on the head: and obviously they put something in the beer… Sarah: distantly he heard her quiet, pleading tone between his father’s angry, drunken shouting echoing through Mullbergh’s cold stone corridors: waking, hearing that, feeling the racing of one’s own heart, the misery for her sake, the loathing… Then the night she’d screamed: he’d rushed down, found her bedroom door with its top half mashed in and his father in a rage which faded to a sort of baffled shame when he saw Nick: and Sarah’s tear-streaked face, her voice telling him ‘It’s all right now, Nick. Truly. Go on back to bed.’
Cockcroft said, ‘Lucky the captain’s up in London. But there’s bound to be the most frightful fuss, I’m afraid. The Military Police brought about a dozen of our chaps aboard, and they know the names of others who were in it, and that there was an officer involved!’
‘God…’ His head was spinning. ‘Look here, I’ve got to sleep, I’m no good like this. If I can get a couple of hours with my head down before—’
‘If you’d tell me what’s to be done? Or perhaps it’s Pym you ought to tell. But—’
‘Mr Gladwish wants a signal made about changing one of his torpedoes. If the ready-use lockers are dry – you know we scraped and painted them out – the GM can see to refilling them. But the important thing is stores. I made a list-or started one… But see the cox’n, he’ll know what – ’
‘All right.’
‘Stores is the important thing. In case we finish the boiler-clean tonight – ’
‘They say they’ll be done before that. They did a night shift – came crashing on board at midnight, and another lot took over about six—’
‘What! I mean – why?’
‘Heaven knows. What with one thing and another it’s been a fairly hellish twelve hours, I can tell you. You realize I’ve had to put the defaulters in your report?’ Cockcroft’s long arms flapped hopelessly. ‘Anyway, you sleep. I’ll see the cox’n.’
‘And fresh water. Ask the Chief Stoker—’
‘Right. You turn in now. If anyone asks I’ll say you’ve got a touch of flu. I’ll give you a shake at noon – that do?’
* * *
It wasn’t Cockcroft, though. It was Wyatt.
‘Everard!’
There was a constant hammering and clattering overhead. Wyatt’s small, furious eyes bored at him across the little cabin. ‘Cockcroft informs me that you have influenza. Is that the case?’
Bulky, aggressive, filling the cabin doorway… Nick, even before he was fully out of sleep, out of a nightmare in which he was frantically trying to find Sarah while Mullbergh closed in on him, stone walls squeezing in on either hand and the ends of passages turning into dead-ends so that you turned and tried to run the other way with the narrowing passages trapping your feet, holding your ankles and cold terror everywhere – terror for Sarah more than for one’s own predicament: the dream’s content faded into confusion and in its place he had the certainty that Wyatt knew at least something of last night’s riot.
‘Well, is it?’
‘All Cockcroft knows is I’ve been sick, sir. He may have assumed it was flu.’
‘In fact it was – what?’
Nick slid off his bunk.
‘I’ll be all right now, sir.’<
br />
‘Oh? Do you really think so? That you’ll be all right?’ Nick waited. He thought there was an element of satisfaction as well as anger in his captain’s attitude. ‘Listen to me, Everard. You remain in this ship and as my first lieutenant for the time being for one reason only – that I’m unable to replace you before we sail. I’ve tried to, and it’s impossible; they’ve larger matters to attend to, in present circumstances…’ A hand rose, pointing: ‘You were in some bar-room last night, brawling over a tart’s favours?’
‘No, sir!’
‘The Provost Marshal’s made it up?’
‘He’s been misinformed, sir, by the sound of it. I went to meet Skipper Barrie – the man we picked up from the Carley float – at his invitation. He had his daughter with him. I was in her company when a man – a trawlerman, I think – accosted her. Then—’
‘All right, Everard. That’ll do.’
Nick stared at him. Wyatt said, ‘I don’t wish to hear about it.’ He turned, hands clasped behind his back, stared out through the starboard-side scuttle. ‘It’s possible you were too drunk to know what was – ’ He shrugged, without finishing the sentence. Nick saw light reflected from the harbour’s surface flashing in his narrowed eyes. ‘Possible. The matter will be dealt with – ashore – on our return. I should say a court-martial is the likely outcome. In my view it is an extremely squalid business, and I want no part in it… What I have to say to you is simply this: that we are coming to immediate notice for sea, and we are in the process – ’ he glanced upwards, at the upper deck where the noise was coming from – ‘of converting for a minelaying operation. We shall fuel, embark our mines and sail as soon as that work is finished. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Wyatt turned from the scuttle.
‘Very well. Get shaved and properly dressed, and resume your duties as first lieutenant.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Nick slid off his bunk. Wyatt paused in the doorway, filling its whole width, looking back him.
‘How could you have been such a damned fool, Everard?’
He looked as if he was really trying to understand: or as if he wished there could be some hope of understanding. Then he’d shaken his head, dismissing the effort as futile, and turned away, and the curtain had fallen back across the doorway.
Chapter 4
Mackerel drove slowly eastward, a mile and a half offshore, approaching Dunkirk Roads. Six forty-five p.m: seven o’clock was the ordered time for her rendezvous with the rest of the mine-laying flotilla. Able Seaman Dwyer hailed again from the foc’sl break, below the bridge to starboard: ‘By the mark, five!’
Pym said to Wyatt, ‘As it should be, sir.’
Pitch-dark, bitter cold. Last night there’d been a sliver of moon, enough for the Gothas to see Dover and the coastline by; there was none tonight. Very little wind or sea. Christmas Eve: but it didn’t feel like it, except for the biting cold, and even that wasn’t the snowy-Christmas sort of cold. It was damp and penetrating, utterly un-jolly, Nick thought. They were all muffled up against it: greatcoats or duffels or oilskins, sweaters over more sweaters over flannel shirts; scarves, gloves, Balaclava – and either Gieves inflatable waistcoats or the issue swimming-collars. Thin men looked fat, fat ones like dirigibles. It didn’t feel like Christmas or like anything else that anyone ashore could know about: only like the Dover straits and a black night and twenty tons of mines to plant in the enemy’s front garden. The mines were aft there on their rails, with Mr Gladwish nursing them like a tomtit sitting on forty great cuckoo’s eggs. Highly sensitive and destructive eggs: their presence and deadweight aft gave one the unpleasant feeling that one was piloting a floating bomb.
Dwyer had hove his lead again. It was far more of an expert job than anyone who’d never tried would have imagined, but he was an expert leadsman. He called now. ‘And a quarter, five!’ This was a narrow passage of comparatively deep water inside the shoals and minefields and with shallows and the land itself to starboard; one had used it so often in the past eighteen months that one could have told from the soundings as he sang them out if the ship had strayed so much as thirty yards to one side of the channel or the other. There was plenty of water here, for a destroyer drawing no more than sixteen feet — or a bit more than that now, with the extra weight of the mine-load on her – but depth enough, so long as she held her course well inside the channel, which narrowed, as it approached Dunkirk itself, to something like a cable’s width. The leadsman hailed again: ‘Less a quarter seven, sir!’ Wyatt muttered. ‘Very good’ – as if the man could possibly have heard him… Since Nick had reported to him back in Dover that the ship was ready for sea with all hands on board, and Wyatt had curtly acknowledged his salute and told Mr Watson ‘Stand by main engines’, he and Nick hadn’t exchanged a word. The night and the minelaying operation lay ahead of them, and that was all there was to think about now; soon after dawn they’d be back in Dover, and Mackerel would go alongside the oiler to top up her tanks, and he, Nick Everard, would presumably hand over to some new first lieutenant.
Where would he be sent – to a battleship, as a junior watch-keeping officer?
Much better not to think about it.
He’d been stupid. He could see that now. He’d played into Wyatt’s hands. If you had a captain who’d speak up for you and fight to hang on to you, you could weather a scrape or two. When you hadn’t – and your record hung on one single incident where you’d come out well instead of badly…
‘And a half eight, sir!’
This was the deepest patch that they were passing over now. The sea hissed like a great cauldron of soda-water along Mackerel’s black sides as she slid up the channel at six or seven knots. About as dark as ever it could be. Dwyer wouldn’t be seeing the marks on his line where it cut the water’s surface; he’d be allowing for the two and a quarter fathoms between his hand and the waterline – the ‘drift’ was the technical term for it – and as the ship passed the lead’s position on the bottom and the line came vertical he’d subtract that distance from the amount of line he had out.
‘And a half, seven!’
Pym said, ‘One thousand yards to go, sir.’
Converting for mines had taken five and a half hours. It wasn’t a difficult evolution. Mackerel was one of a handful of destroyers fitted for it, with bolts and brackets all there in the right places, and her ship’s company had done it often enough before. First the stern gun and the after tubes mounting had to be unbolted, lifted on a crane and slung ashore. Then the crane picked up the mine rails and put them aboard, and they were bolted down like tram-lines to both sides of the quarterdeck and iron deck, with an extended chute from each set of rails over the stern, so that the mines would drop well clear of the propellers. A winch was fitted at the stern and another for’ard, respectively for hauling the mines aft and forward; the release gear at the chutes was operated by a single hand-lever.
It had taken another hour to load the forty mines, each weighing half a ton, and secure them properly. Each mine rested on its sinker, which was like a low trolley with wheels to run on the rails. These were the latest magnetically-fired mines, called M-Sinkers; they’d replaced the useless Elias.
Dwyer called out, ‘By the mark, five!’
Wyatt said, ‘Starboard ten.’
‘Starboard ten, sir.’ Mackerel heeled slightly to the turn. Such breeze as there was crept up from astern, grew for’ard, blew in over the port side as she swung seawards under starboard helm, port rudder.
The old moon – in fact its last quarter had hardly been glimpsed by human eye – was dead, and the new one as yet unborn. A perfect night, therefore, for laying mines. Or, for that matter, for another German destroyer raid; and the purpose of this new minefield would be to catch any raiders on their return to base. The rest of the Patrol’s destroyers – about two dozen, if you excluded the thirty-knotters and the ten or twelve M-class and Tribals on stand-off or under repair – would be at sea and hoping to catch them before
they made for home. Dover harbour had been emptying fast by the time Mackerel had sailed.
The mines were to be planted between Zeebrugge and Ostend. The field’s eastern end would be five thousands yards off Blankenberg, and the western end seven thousand – three and a half miles – off de Haan. The approach was to be made from the north after a wide detour up around the outside of Bacon’s summer netting area, his Belgian coast barrage from behind which he launched the monitor bombardments. The detour would take the flotilla clear of known minefields and shoals, avoid too close a proximity to the German coastal batteries, and take them clear, too, of Weary Willie, the trawler guardship off Middelkerke.
Wyatt said, ‘Midships.’
Slow speed, and a black, quiet sea. A sharp awareness of the need to keep it quiet. Burglars embarking on a night’s thievery might feel like this.
‘Meet her, and steer north.’
‘Steer north, sir…’ The coxswain’s small silhouette bobbed as he flung the wheel around. Wyatt must dislike this situation, Nick thought. His yearning to come to grips with Heinecke, who might well be at sea tonight with his ‘Argentinians', would make the need to avoid any kind of action highly frustrating. Destroyers carrying mines were forbidden to engage an enemy unless that enemy fired first: then they’d be permitted to defend themselves. But one bullet, let alone a shell, would be enough to explode that cargo aft.
You had to shut your mind to everything except the simple object of the operation: sneak, in, lay the mines, sneak away again.
‘Course north, sir.’
‘Should come up with ’em soon, pilot, shouldn’t we?’
‘We should, sir.’
Everyone was looking out, using binoculars, as Mackerel approached Hill’s Pocket, the anchorage between the shoals where she’d been ordered to rendezvous with Moloch, Musician and two French destroyers, all of them carrying mines.
Sixty Minutes for St George Page 6
