Quinton rubbed his chin. ‘Even so, we’ll never make it on time.’
Ainslie leaned on the screen and watched the men bustling along two makeshift brows. One ingoing, one already loaded with staggering figures making their way ashore, bowed almost double with the first packs of supplies.
‘I know. We’ll just have to stay here for the day and sweat it out.’
He twisted round as a soldier ran along the pier and shouted, ‘See, Jim? I told you th’ bloody Navy wouldn’t let us down!’
Ainslie said quietly, ‘And nor will I.’
Ainslie made his way through the control room and saw Halliday speaking with his assistant, Sub-Lieutenant Deacon, and the Chief ERA.
He automatically straightened his back as he approached, but even that effort was like an extra pain.
‘All well, Chief?’
God, how weary they all looked. It was morning, and they had been hard at it all through the night. Only the control room retained an appearance of watchfulness and order. Throughout the rest of the boat every area, large and small, was littered with cases and abandoned crates, torn wrapping paper and smaller items waiting to be carried bodily ashore. They were like ants. Up ladders, down ladders, pausing only to snatch another load and be sent away again by a petty officer at one end or a sergeant at the other.
Halliday watched him warily. ‘Aye, sir. Nothing we can’t manage.’
Ainslie walked on. ‘Fine. There’ll be some tea and sandwiches coming round shortly.’
‘Look, sir, don’t you think you should take a rest a while?’
Lucas took out a cigarette and shook his head. ‘He does not hear you.’
Halliday sighed. ‘I should know him by now. But he still amazes me.’
Ainslie climbed up the gleaming ladder, seeing the oval of blue sky broken at the edges by green fronds which Sub-Lieutenant Southby’s landing party had gathered ashore and fashioned into a crude camouflage.
On the bridge it was searing hot, and after the cooler darkness the sights were also brutally obvious. Great black patches where fires had raged after an air attack. Crude graves along the top of the beach, marked by steel helmets or plain wooden crosses. Like something from the Somme or Passchendaele.
Of the strongpoint there was little sign, and Ainslie guessed it was dug deeply into the jungle by the remaining coast road. He could hear the rumble of mortar and artillery fire, rising and receding, like a great beast dragging itself, complaining, through the jungle.
How thick the trees looked. In there it must be barely possbile to see the sky, he thought, even more difficult to hear an enemy’s stealthy approach.
Ridgway was standing on the gratings watching the unloading, his stubbled face streaming in the heat. He saw Ainslie and saluted.
Ainslie joined him and said, ‘I’m going ashore for a moment. Tell Number One to take over.’ He watched the sluggish wavelets lapping along the saddle tanks. Soufrière was considerably higher in the water after losing so much of her deadly cargo.
He climbed down to the dock and waited until he could join the shuffling line of figures going ashore.
On the pier a weary-looking corporal held out his fist. ‘’Ere mate, where’re we off to then? Bleedin’ Southend?’
Petty Officer Voysey shouted, ‘That’s our captain, you twit!’
Ainslie nodded to the corporal. He had come ashore without his cap and was in the same stained shirt he had worn since Singapore.
‘At ease, Corporal. And you were right. I should have carried something, too.’
He left the astonished corporal behind and strode gratefully beneath the nearest line of trees. After men and steel, diesel oil and sweat, the heavier scents of jungle and rotting undergrowth made him feel slightly unsteady.
A sentry guided him towards a sandbagged door which appeared to be cut straight through a mound of earth and rock, and seconds later he was confronting the commanding officer.
The young captain said, ‘This is the submarine’s commander, Colonel.’
The colonel shook Ainslie’s hand and gestured to a brightly coloured deck-chair. Before he sat down Ainslie noticed there was a dark stain on the back of it. Dried blood.
‘Bit early, old chap.’ The colonel waited for the other soldier to leave and then poured some whisky into two enamel mugs. He was a small man, very neat despite his torn uniform and stained boots. ‘But I reckon we both need one. Cheers.’ He sat down slowly and grimaced. ‘Getting old for this sort of caper.’
Ainslie felt the spirit in his empty stomach and all the sense of relaxation which went with it. He thought of her face as she had watched her husband drinking glass after glass at the party, and again when he had remarked so crudely about Forster looking down her dress.
The colonel said, ‘You’re a bloody godsend, I can tell you. We’re pretty strong here now that we’ve got supplies, but I’m not too happy about our left flank.’ He swallowed some more whisky. ‘Glad to see you,’ he added absently. ‘Used to go to Portsmouth as a lad to see the warships. But my father had me cut out for a soldier, so there it was.’ He became very serious. ‘I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but things are getting damn bad. The Japs control the air completely. We can’t move a thing on the roads without getting strafed and bombed. I’ve had fifty casualties in two days.’ He pushed the bottle across the table. ‘Help yourself. The bloody Japs will have it otherwise.’
‘Bad as that?’
‘Worse, if that’s possible. Refugees are pouring down through the lines with terrible stories of atrocities. The Japs are seemingly trying to break up the people into separate factions, the Chinese against the Indians, the Malays against the rest, and so forth. I’ll wager they’ve sent saboteurs through the lines, too.’ He rubbed his eyes fiercely. ‘I tell you, Commander, if the high command at Singapore don’t get their finger out they’ll have fighting on the island by Christmas!’
A telephone hanging in a webbing case buzzed impatiently and the colonel put it to his ear, his eyes drooping with exhaustion. He listened for a full minute and then replaced it carefully.
‘The left flank has collapsed, I’m afraid. Brigade are sending reinforcements, and I’m to hold the road and about a mile to the west of here. A miracle would come in handy, too.’
He looked up as a sergeant peered in at him. ‘Yes, Roach?’
‘Message from the submarine, sir.’ His eyes moved to Ainslie. ‘Recce aircraft sighted just to the south of us. It’s bin ’ere before, sir, but it may spot your ship. I’ve told the men to get some more camouflage nets spread, sir.’ The eyes were back on the colonel. ‘Any orders, sir?’
‘No, everything’s fine, Sergeant.’ The man withdrew and he added vehemently, ‘It makes me weep to keep up this stupid pretence! My men are pure gold, and I’m expected, no, commanded to hold them here at all costs.’
The telephone buzzed again and the colonel smiled apologetically. ‘I’ll rustle up some food in a minute.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Colonel.’
Ainslie leaned back in the stained deck-chair. Whose had it been? A planter up country perhaps? A poor, simple soul who still believed it could not happen?
The colonel replaced the telephone and said quietly, ‘That was my MO. There has been another casualty, I’m afraid.’ He was looking at Ainslie as he added, ‘Your naval officer from intelligence. A sniper got him.’
Ainslie lurched to his feet, seeing Critchley’s face in the first light this very morning. Hearing his chat with some of the seamen as he had gone ashore.
‘Is he dead?’
The colonel nodded. ‘That sniper’s done for several of my men already. Never misses, never loses a chance. My adjutant should have taken more care to warn him.’ He looked at his hands. ‘But he’s had no sleep for days. He probably thought your man would know.’ He stood up. ‘They’re bringing him in now.’
Later, as an invisible reconnaissance plane droned somewhere to the south of the little inlet, and gunfire crashed and echoed threateningly alo
ng a hundred miles of jungle, Ainslie turned back the blanket from the stretcher while the two helmeted bearers stood like work horses, their eyes glazed with fatigue.
Critchley looked very calm, with no sign of the shock of that quick, final agony.
Ainslie could almost hear him speaking. Back to dear old London. Bless it.
The MO asked, ‘Shall I have my chaps put him under?’
Put him under. Like so much rubbish.
‘No. I’ll take him back.’ He looked at the sky, searching for the persistent drone. If we catch it, he’ll still be with us.
He turned on his heel and walked back towards the pier, looking neither right nor left.
Quinton saw his face as he climbed aboard, and even though he had guessed what had happened he was shocked by what he saw.
Ainslie said, ‘Keep the hands at it, Number One. I want every last ounce ashore before we get under way.’
Quinton said quietly, ‘Leave it to me.’
Ainslie swung on him, his blue eyes blazing with hurt and bitter anger. But he steadied himself and said, ‘No. We’ll do it together.’ He tried to smile. ‘Like you said. The old firm. Remember?’ Then he lowered himself through the hatch.
Quinton raised his glasses and peered up through the netting and fronds towards the persistent drone.
To Ridgway he said, ‘Tell Sawle to take some food and drink to the skipper’s quarters. He won’t touch it, but if he sits still long enough he might fall asleep.’
He swung his glasses, but the shadow had only been a solitary sea bird.
Ainslie had been about to go for him. And why not, after Forster’s mistake, and his own failure to notice it.
But instead, he had made another effort to hold them all together, as he always had in the past.
A heavy shell exploded in the jungle, shaking the hull like a piledriver hitting a roadway.
He saw a covered stretcher approaching the pier, the bare-backed troops and sailors parting to let it through.
Poor old Critch, Quinton thought. Then with a sigh he said, ‘Man the side. Commander Critchley coming aboard.’
10
Nobody Lives Forever
AINSLIE AWOKE WITH a violent shudder, his mind reluctant to accept he had been asleep, or that he had given in to his exhaustion. As he gripped the sides of his bunk he saw Quinton peering down at him, with another figure, Sub-Lieutenant Southby, hovering in the rectangle of light from the passageway.
‘What is it?’ Ainslie fumbled with his watch, seeing his untouched food by the bunk, realizing he must have fallen asleep even as he had rejected it.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’ Quinton stepped back as Ainslie lurched from the bunk. ‘Just had a shout from the Army. The Japs are attacking in depth. It doesn’t sound too bright.’
Ainslie stared at himself in the bulkhead mirror, seeing the wildness in his eyes, remembering with startling clarity that he had been dreaming when Quinton had touched his shoulder. Of a beach, of the girl, dressed in that same long dress, her bare feet on the hard, wet sand. There had been danger. Terrible but unseen. He had tried to reach her, to warn her, but the words had been choked, his mouth filled with sand.
He steadied his racing thoughts and asked, ‘Are our people on board?’ How could he have fallen asleep? Tiredness, despair made suddenly sharper by the memory of Critchley’s death put an edge to his voice. ‘For God’s sake, you should have called me!’
Quinton stood his ground. ‘We need you to be rested, sir. Any fool can run cargo.’ He watched Ainslie’s mixed emotions. ‘I’ve finished unloading. The Army are bringing their wounded aboard now. It’s about all we can do.’
Quinton’s quiet resignation helped more than anything. Ainslie was suddenly aware of the sounds, muffled by the hull, but still filled with menace. The unbroken rumble of gunfire, the decks quivering occasionally as a shell fell close to the inlet.
It was noon. Incredibly, Ainslie had slept for four hours. He said, ‘We should stick it out until dusk. After that . . .’ He did not finish.
He tucked his shirt into his trousers again and pushed the hair from his forehead. For a few moments he looked at his cap, lying on the desk. He thought of the little girl’s face in Singapore. The nurse, wary and hostile, ready to rush in and protect her charge from comment.
‘I’ll go ashore. Tell the Chief to be prepared to get under way. He knows already, but tell him anyway.’
Ainslie looked at Southby. In the dim lighting he was a boy, determined but unable to conceal his anxiety.
‘Come with me, Sub. We’ll see the colonel.’
After the false shade on the conning tower with its camouflage netting and layers of palm fronds, the heat on the steel casing was almost unbearable.
The humid air was heavy with other smells, too. Burning, charred wood and cordite.
He stepped ashore, where Petty Officer Voysey and some seamen crouched or lay by the small brow, ready to cast off, to run, to to die if things went wrong.
Ainslie strode past them, Southby walking in his shadow. To Voysey he called, ‘You did a good job. The boat feels lighter without all that cargo!’
Voysey chuckled, his face grimy and tired. ‘Be glad to get out of ’ere, sir. Even Chatham is better than this lot!’
He jumped up as the first group of wounded soldiers appeared amongst the trees. ‘Ready, lads. Lend a ’and.’
The soldiers passed Ainslie without a glance, supported by their comrades, limping or being carried; they were like living dead, their faces moulded into a pattern of misery and defeat.
Southby said between his teeth, ‘They look done in, sir.’
A cloud of brightly coloured birds rose shrieking from the trees as a single whiplash crack echoed across the inlet.
Ainslie watched the way one of the soldiers cringed. The sniper was out there still. Probably marking down another kill. Like Critchley, and some of these dazed, stumbling survivors.
The attack was mounting and spreading. Even as a sailor Ainslie had heard its like before. The impartial chatter of machine-guns, further off, like woodpeckers on a sunny afternoon in England. The deeper thud and bang of mortar bombs, the crack of rifles.
He found the colonel in his command post, as if he had never moved. But he noticed that he had found time to shave and put on a clean, if patched, shirt.
‘I was about to send for you.’ The colonel waved to the deck-chair with its bloodstain. ‘Take a pew.’ He spoke rapidly into his field telephone. ‘Yes, yes, dammit, I know that, Simpson! Tell the sappers to put some mines down, and try to reopen the line to Brigade.’
He dropped the handset and said in a flat voice, ‘The Japs are coming down the road right now. They’ve got light tanks with ’em, and their artillery has made a real hole in our defences.’
Ainslie waited, hearing Southby’s rapid breathing beside him.
The colonel looked round the bunker. ‘I can’t contact Brigade at all, and the whole flank is on the turn.’
‘What will you do?’ Ainslie’s voice seemed louder than usual.
‘Do? What I’ve just been told. Hold on here until Brigade HQ says otherwise, or Division can re-group.’ He looked up from his litter of maps, his eyes ringed with fatigue. ‘I can’t give the Navy orders, but I suggest you get out, daylight or not. The Japs will probably try to land more troops to the south of here. That’s what their spotter plane was searching for. A good landing place.’ He sighed as the telephone buzzed again. ‘But thanks for the help. We’ll need all that ammo now, I’m thinking.’ He turned back to the telephone, Ainslie and the Soufrière no longer his concern.
Ainslie walked back to the smoky sunlight, his mind grappling with the sudden threat. To put to sea in broad daylight would seem like madness. To stay and be cut off was no better.
He saw a soldier with a red cross armband bending over a sprawled body beside the track. He was removing an identity disc and the dead soldier’s wallet. There was a sudden crack and a sharp, metallic clan
g. The medical orderly fell across the body without a sound, bright blood running down from beneath his steel helmet, in which the sniper’s bullet had punched a hole big enough for a man’s finger.
Southby made to run, but Ainslie said sharply, ‘Still! He’s not far away.’
Two soldiers charged round the corpses firing sub-machine-guns wildly into the trees. Something fell through the branches but did not reach the ground.
Ainslie walked slowly to where the two soldiers were standing and saw a body swinging slowly like a pendulum, back and forth from a kind of harness.
One of the soldiers said dully. ‘The bastards do that, so if they get hit they won’t fall and show their position.’ He had a round West Country voice like Petty Officer Vernon.
Southby said in a husky tone, ‘He’s moving!’
The rasping clatter of the tommy-gun made the birds scream once more. The soldier who had fired said, ‘Not now, he ain’t.’
Ainslie nodded to the soldiers and continued down the slope towards the water. He had seen the sniper. Dressed from head to foot in green rags to conceal his position, like a figure in a nightmare. Even his powerful rifle had been tied to his body.
It was quite likely the same sniper who had killed Critchley. What had he thought as he had seen his face through the telescopic sight? Ainslie released a deep sigh. Probably no more than he felt when he saw a target edging into the cross-wires of a periscope.
The same old reasons. It’s him or me. The war, survival. Everything and nothing.
‘When will they do something to stop them, sir?’
Ainslie could feel Southby watching him, his concern, his sinking faith.
‘It will have to be soon. Maybe reinforcements are already landing at Singapore. There was a troop convoy due by way of Ceylon.’
He looked up as an aircraft roared overhead, guns clattering before it zoomed low over the tree-tops and vanished. He thought of Critchley’s anger when they had first arrived, his insistence on air cover above all else. It had been too late even then.
The gunfire was continuous, although Ainslie could not tell one side from the other.
Strike from the Sea (1978) Page 16
