Sixty Minutes for St George

by Sixty Minutes for St George (retail) (epub)

  How to set about what, for God’s sake… He nodded.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Reaper said, ‘Better get moving, then.’

  Chapter 9

  He eased down on the throttle. CMB 11’s engine-noise dropped from its aeroplane-like roar to a quieter but deep-throated grumble, her bow dropped abruptly as the speed fell off and she levelled in the water, and her own wash came up from astern in a series of humps that lifted, rocked her, carried her bodily along. Then all that was over, and she was motoring quietly but powerfully across the swell.

  Off to starboard, inshore, Nick saw Harry Underhill’s boat curve hard to port, coming out this way to join him. He said to Selby, ‘We’ll go in, now.’

  ‘Right!’

  Selby laughed. He laughed at nothing: or rather, at everything. Nick found it irritating, and he wondered how Weatherhead could stand having him around on a permanent basis and at such close quarters. In a cockpit ten feet by six, which was roughly this one’s dimensions, you couldn’t get far from your companions. Midshipman Selby had yellow hair and a bright-red face pitted and scarred by acne; he was about nineteen. Nick had noticed how ERA Ross, the boat’s mechanic and the third and last member of her crew, went deadpan at the sound of Selby’s laugh: as if he’d have liked to have matched up a spanner and hit him with it, and feared that one day he might.

  Nick said, ‘Flash Let’s go home to him.’

  ‘What?’ Selby cackled. ‘What—’

  ‘Oh, Christ…’ Nick pointed. ‘Give me the lamp.’

  Selby managed to hear that; he snatched it up and passed it over. Nick said, shouting in his ear, ‘Now stand still!’ He kept his left hand on the wheel and used the other one, balancing the lamp on Selby’s shoulder, to call CMB 14, Underhill, and tell him it was time to pack up. Harry acknowledged it. Nick pushed the lamp into Selby’s hands; he bent down, peered in at Ross through the small door-less hatchway in the centre of the cockpit’s for’ard bulkhead.

  ‘All right?’

  Ross, squatting on his wooden seat on the engine’s starboard side, grinned and raised a thumb. He was a long-boned man, and the seat was built against the inside curve of the boat’s hull: it curved him, in conformity with her shape, and in that squatting position his knees stuck up like posts. Nick shouted to him, ‘We’re going in, now!’ Then he straightened, opened the throttle to about one third, and pointed the boat’s long, tapering bow at the eastern entrance.

  They hadn’t been over three-quarters speed this afternoon, on account of this swell that was still running. CMBs were fine-weather boats; in any sort of sea, at speed, they tended to leap from crest to crest, not only trying to knock their bottoms out but also tending to plunge into oncoming waves instead of over them. The larger boats – fifty-five-footers – managed a little better, but even they were too lightly built to stand up to the pounding a sea would give them at speed.

  Underhill had swung his boat in astern of Nick’s, and was following him towards the harbour. The light was going now, and it had been only a short outing, but Nick felt it had been worthwhile. He was happy with her; he could do anything with her, he thought, that anyone else could do. Leaving the jetty he’d been a bit clumsy – he’d forgotten how a boat’s stern kicked off to starboard when a large single screw was put ahead and the deeper blade or blades of it, revolving in a greater density of water, had more effect than the upper ones – but he’d got it all under control now, he understood her and knew within reasonable limits what you could do and what you couldn’t. At high speed, for instance, you couldn’t safely slam on too much wheel; not unless you wanted to turn her right over. And she had no reversing gear: you couldn’t go astern, so to come alongside you had to stop in time to get the way off her before she bumped.

  The gap in the eastern breakwater wasn’t far ahead, and he eased the throttle down. Keeping well to starboard, and being careful not to come in fast with an accompanying wash that would certainly infuriate and possibly damage ships alongside jetties or other ships, who’d be rocked and ground against each… Inside he turned her to starboard, turning just short of three squat monitors at buoys. A Trinity House tender lay at anchor ahead; he turned the CMB close under her stern, then swung the other way to clear an anchored dredger. Now it would be a straight course and about five hundred yards to the camber, the inner basin. To starboard the sea heaved and boomed, lopping against the harbour wall; to port, the destroyer lines were almost empty. Zubian was still there, and beyond her lay a tribal, and near the centre of the harbour were two ‘oily wads’ and one of the big flotilla leaders; but all the rest were at sea – protecting the fishing-craft on the mine barrage, guarding Folkestone and the shipping in the Downs, watching the Dunkirk and Boulogne approaches, or patrolling in other set areas. Destroyers’ daytime duties were more varied: escorting transports and leave ships between Folkestone and Boulogne, and hospital and store-ships between Dunkirk and Calais and Dover; escorting allied and neutral shipping through the swept channel that hugged the coast from Dungeness to North Foreland; protecting the sweepers who every single day swept all those routes clear of mines. Under Bacon, the Patrol had certainly earned its living.

  But gossip had said that a change of admiral would be linked to a more aggressive policy: and gossip had connected Keyes, who was taking over now, with this rumoured attack or ‘special operation’.

  And Commander Reaper was from the Plans Division, which up till now Keyes had directed!

  Nick thought, Two and two makes nine, at that rate…

  He took the CMB in very gently, her engine barely mumbling to itself, and berthed her under the torpedo-loading derrick in the basin’s north-west corner. There were three little jetties here, the spaces between them forming small docks about the same length as the CMB, and the shore-based gunner (T) with his working party was there standing by.

  ‘Lieutenant Everard?’

  ‘Yes.’ The gunner looked at his pocket-watch as Nick joined him on the jetty. A small, grey-faced man. Nick said, ‘Sorry if l’ve kept you waiting.’ There was a torpedo ready on its trolley, and it had the distinctive orange-painted head that meant it was a practice one, a ‘blowing head’. When it came to the end of its run, compressed air would be released to blow water out of it and make it buoyant, so it would bob upright on the surface with its orange nose easy to spot from the recovery-vessel. The gunner asked Nick, 'Want us to load ’er now? Morning won’t do?’

  He’d have a wife ashore, Nick guessed, a home to go to. Well, hard luck!

  ‘Now, please. We’ll be making an early start, tomorrow.’

  CMB 11 had no torpedo on board at the moment. The trough that one would go in was a channel that extended, open-topped, from the after end of the cockpit to the boat’s fantail-shaped stern. The torpedo – an eighteen-inch side-lug RGF – Royal Gun Factory, the Woolwich arsenal – would be lowered now and slid in from astern, under the steel arches that bridged the channel. It would be slid in nose-first, so that the head would lie pointing into the cockpit. Firing was by means of a hydraulic ram: its shaft passed centrally through the cockpit, and the white-painted, cup-shaped ram-head fitted over the curved nose of the fish. So it would lie there pointing the same way as the boat, and when it was fired the ram would discharge it tail-first over the boat’s stern. The CMB would then be doing a few knots less than the torpedo’s standard running speed of forty, so as the torpedo’s own engine fired and its propellers drove it forward in the boat’s wake and on exactly the same course, the driver would swing the wheel over and turn her aside, allowing the missile to travel on. Until the moment of firing he’d have been aiming the boat as if she herself were a torpedo – holding her on what would have become a collision-course with the enemy.

  To anyone accustomed to more orthodox methods of firing torpedoes, it seemed an odd procedure. Nick thought it might take quite a bit of mastering. He told the gunner, ‘I’ll need you and your team standing-by tomorrow. We’ll be practising all day, I expe
ct. Can you muster three or four practice fish, so we don’t have to wait long between runs?’

  The motor launch that was to join him for this mysterious expedition could make itself useful recovering the torpedoes and carting them in. And Underhill in CMB 14 could act as target ship.

  Harry Underhill seemed a bit ‘reserved’… He was a very direct, down-to-earth sort of man, and he disliked the present lack of information. He obviously thought Nick knew more than he was telling him; and under his skin he’d naturally resent an outsider bursting in and taking charge – all the more so, probably, when it happened to be a personal friend who was doing it. He wasn’t unfriendly or uncooperative: just guarded, watching points.

  * * *

  It was still quite early, but already pitch dark, by the time he walked out over the floating brow and up Arrogant’s gangway. He’d seen the torpedo loaded, and discussed the firing procedure and the ram’s mechanism with the gunner from the shore base; then, by lamplight, he’d been over the boat’s engine with Ross the artificer, and young Selby. It was necessary to know its quirks and foibles, what could go wrong with it, and so on, in case the mechanic got knocked out in action and one had to cope without him. Nick was surprised to find that the midshipman was about as ignorant as he was himself; it seemed logical to him that with only a three-man crew each of them must know the others’ business. He mentioned to Selby a catch-phrase which had been familiar in training days: knowledge is the basis of initiative. Selby only sniggered, as if he thought Nick was a bit of a card.

  He went into Arrogant’s wardroom for a drink before he changed. He asked Underhill, ‘Does your snotty know how your boat works?’

  ‘Soon be over the side if he didn’t.’

  ‘Mine – Weatherhead’s – doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.‘

  Underhill nodded. ‘Runt of the litter. Wethy’s been trying to shed him, I think.’

  ‘Is there one I could swap him for, temporarily?’

  ‘Yes. Lad called Brown’s kicking his heels, at the moment. If you’ve the wherewithal to swing it.’

  He hadn’t smiled at all. Beside him, Tim Rogerson looked just as serious. Nick thought, He can’t resent me, I’m not pinching his submarine… ‘What’s up, Tim?’

  ‘Johnny Vereker’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, no…’

  ‘Shot down. Witnessed – ’plane exploded when it hit the ground. Two other pilots saw it. I’ve been talking to one of ’em on the blower – he was on his way through, on leave.’

  Underhill sighed as he took two glasses from the steward’s salver. He asked Nick, ‘Gin?’

  ‘Thank you. Of all the rotten things. Damn sorry, Tim.’

  Rogerson nodded. He and Vereker had been in the same term at Dartmouth, and close friends all through. Nick sat down, and the steward brought him his drink. Tim Rogerson said, flaking his long frame into an armchair, ‘I’ll have to trundle his old motor over to his people’s place in Hampshire, I suppose. Fine night to pick for a party, isn’t it.’

  ‘Are you having a party?’

  'Oh, not really. Asked Bruce Elkington over, that’s all. But you’ll join us, won’t you? Apart from the pleasure of your company, I’d like to hear what all this CMB business is about.’

  ‘If I could tell you, I doubt if I’d be allowed to.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the big thing, is it?’

  Nick stared at him. ‘What big thing?’

  ‘For God’s sake, I don’t know.’ His glance went past Nick’s shoulder. ‘Here’s Wally. Now I’m afraid it is going to be a party.’

  Wally Bell had a stranger with him, an RNVR lieutenant like himself. Half his height, though, and rotund. They came over.

  ‘Thought you were at sea tonight, Wally. Shirking?’

  ‘Donkey’s giving trouble.’ He meant his engine, his ML’s. ‘Look here, this is Sam Treglown. One of the élite.’ By that he meant that Treglown was an ML man too. He pointed at Nick. ‘Sam, that’s the bird you’re looking for.’

  ‘Oh, are you Everard?’

  Nick admitted it. Treglown smiled as he shook his hand. 'I’ve been told to report to you. Something special on?’

  ‘Something. This time tomorrow we may find out what. Meanwhile you’d better have a drink.’ He called the steward. Wally Bell was complaining, ‘There’s too much sea-time in this racket. Of course the damn thing breaks down occasionally!’

  Treglown said, ‘Yours is one of the Yank boats, isn’t she. One of the Great Lakes products?’

  ‘So what if she is?’

  ‘Those engines are knocked together in some motorcycle factory!’

  ‘No bearing on the subject whatsoever. In fact with normal usage she’d chug along for ever… But you know, what we ought to have is the Channel tunnel they’ve always talked about and never started. Think of the sea-time it’d save us all! No transports, no hospital ships, no escorts, no mine-sweeping – Lord, think of it!’

  ‘And think also,’ Rogerson added drily, ‘of the Huns capturing the other end of it.’

  Rogerson looked ill, Nick thought. Being red-headed he had a pale skin anyway, but tonight he looked like a tall, thin ghost.

  ‘You’d have a damn great plug in it.’ Wally stroked his beard. ‘About halfway over. You’d have a cable attached to the plug and taken up to a buoy on permanent moorings. If the Huns got there, you’d just give the cable a jerk, and – whoosh!’

  Treglown nodded. Frog-faced, podgy. He said, ‘Glug glug.’ Underhill commented, ‘Be a hell of a job to pump the thing dry again.’

  ‘Ah!’ Bell shook his head, wagged a forefinger. ‘The losing side – which means the Huns, naturally – would have the job of baling it out. In buckets. Small ones… Why, even Kaiser Willy’d think twice about going to war if he had that job in prospect!’ He turned to Nick. ‘What’s this you’re up to now? Left Mackerel, do I hear?’

  ‘Over here, Elkington!’

  Rogerson’s guest had arrived. He waved, beckoning to him. He asked the new man, Treglown, ‘You’ll join us for dinner, won’t you? We’re celebrating the death of an old friend.’

  * * *

  He said later, after dinner, quietly to Nick, ‘It’s about the worst thing that ever happened, d’you know that? I still can’t quite believe it. I tell you, Nick, I – ’ his hand fastened on Nick’s arm – ‘I could cry, I.’

  ‘I know. I know precisely.’

  Swan – Cockcroft – and so many of them… Like the ticking of a room full of clocks, and every tick a life. One should weep, perhaps, not for individuals and friends so much as for England, for England’s blood and strength that were draining out of her.

  Elkington had left early; his ship was sailing at daybreak for patrol duty in the Downs. Nick had said to Rogerson, ‘Pleasant fellow, that’, and Rogerson had nodded. ‘He’s engaged to marry a girl I know.’ He smiled now: it looked like a conscious effort to change his own mood. ‘What’s this I’ve heard whispered about some fracas at a local hostelry, involving a certain officer and a – er – young lady of the town?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  It had surprised him that there’d been no gossip, so far as he’d known. But there’d had to be, of course, eventually. Rogerson said, still smiling, ‘I might tell Eleanor, if you don’t come clean.’ He meant his sister, the pretty one who was a VAD. Nick said, ‘You’d tell her if I did come clean.’

  ‘Never!’

  He sighed… ‘Nick, would you say goodnight to the others for me? Being jolly’s rather difficult, tonight.’

  * * *

  Nick told Treglown, ‘We’ll rendezvous with you three miles south-east of South Foreland at 9 a.m. All right?’

  The ML captain nodded. ‘Right. But I wish it’d only take me ten minutes to get there!’

  He’d have to leave harbour a lot earlier than the CMBs would. Nick explained that they’d have to be in from sea fairly early in the evening, in order to attend the briefing. So to get a full day’s practice in, he need
ed an early start. He said goodnight to them.

  ‘I’m off now. Going round to my old ship to make a few farewells.’

  Mackerel was away at the other end of the port, in the tidal harbour where she’d boiler-cleaned, and the walk of about a mile and a half each way would do him good. He’d had no time for goodbyes this afternoon after the interview with Reaper. Wyatt had been waiting for him, though, and had accepted without much surprise or sorrow the information that Nick was being taken from him. Nick told him nothing except that he was being sent temporarily to Arrogant: which sounded, certainly, like an appointment for a man nobody had a job for. Wyatt had muttered, ‘Well, I did try… I’m sorry, Everard’, and on an afterthought he’d gone so far as to shake hands. Nick had arranged for his gear to be sent over, and left, intent on getting to grips with CMB 11 as soon as possible. Now he went down to his cabin on Arrogant’s main deck, to get his greatcoat. His stuff was all here, but he wasn’t unpacking anything except immediate essentials. Might that be tempting Fate? After this one ‘errand’ – Reaper had used that term to describe the CMB operation – he’d no idea what they’d have for him to do next. It was distinctly possible that Reaper didn’t know either. Reaper, for his purposes or the Plans Division’s, wanted a job done, and they’d given him a man to do it. Someone they had no better use for. When Reaper had got whatever it was he wanted, he wouldn’t give two farthings for Nicholas Everard’s next appointment!

  It wasn’t a happy thought. He worried about it as he made his way out through the big old ship and down her gangway. Then he told himself not to think about it any more: he was tired, and depressed by the news about Johnny Vereker.

  Get the CMB job done first. Then start worrying.

  He’d turned the top corner and he was walking westward in the direction of the Marine Parade, with the submarine basin and the rest of the harbour shining like silver on his left, when it struck him suddenly that what was making it shine was the moon. The new one, just an infant moon, and only visible now because there was a great rift in the clouds: but it was there – and it might just as easily, therefore, be there again in two nights’ time. Reaper had said something like Moon may turn out to be a nuisance, but with luck there’ll be cloud to cover it…