Strike from the Sea (1978)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He said quietly, ‘My first lieutenant will drive you and Frances to the port office now.’ He looked at the nurse. ‘Pack some things.’

  Natalie stood up and tried to pull the torn dress across her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry I got you into this.’ She looked up at him, and once again they were their own island, as if the danger and fury were somewhere else.

  Ainslie replied, ‘I want it this way.’ He guided her towards the door. ‘You can come back later if you forget something.’

  There was a thin, abbreviated whistle, and then Ainslie felt himself smashed down by an explosion. As his mind struggled to grasp what had happened, he imagined for a few seconds that Torrance had shot him.

  Then, coughing and gasping he levered himself to his feet, jarring his wounded shoulder on what he suddenly realized was part of the roof.

  There was swirling smoke and dust everywhere, and as he staggered through it he heard whistles blowing and somebody screaming shrilly like a tortured animal.

  He found her sprawling in the passageway, her hair covered in dust, her clothes almost blasted from her body.

  He knelt down, lifting her against him, gasping her name. When he brushed the hair from her face she opened her eyes and stared at him. He waited, hardly daring to breathe or hope, seeing the understanding and fear returning as he held her even closer.

  Her mouth formed the name. ‘Frances!’

  Ainslie turned his head, seeing the fallen beams and stonework, the smoke, sensing the danger, the stench of burning.

  He could see the evening sky above the dust-haze, and realized the hotel had taken a direct hit.

  If only that thing would stop screaming. It was probing his eardrums, making the girl shake in his arms as he pressed her against him.

  Feet stumbled and kicked through the debris, and he heard Quinton say huskily, ‘Thank God! I thought they’d done for you!’

  He was carrying the child, who in turn had somehow managed to keep hold of her yellow elephant.

  Like survivors on a raft they huddled together as Quinton ran his fingers through his tangled hair.

  He said, ‘The bloody roof caved in, and I think half the building has gone, too.’ He glanced meaningly at Ainslie. ‘Better get them out of it. The nurse is cut to ribbons back there. Her body took most of the blast.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Quinton shrugged. ‘Alive, but pinned under the main beam.’ He looked down at the child and added, ‘Not long, I’d say.’

  Ainslie helped the girl to her feet, watching for the first hint of injury or collapse.

  They looked at the shattered door as Guy Torrance groaned loudly.

  Then she said, ‘I’ll go to him.’

  Shouts came from outside the building, the sounds of men running. But the screaming continued, as if it would never end.

  Ainslie said, ‘I’ll come with you.’ To Quinton he added, ‘Stay with the child, John.’

  Torrance was pinioned by the beam. He must be in agony, his back smashed under the great weight.

  He saw them and whispered, ‘Come to gloat?’

  She looked away. ‘Don’t, Guy. Please.’

  He closed his eyes and gasped. ‘For Christ’s sake stop Frances screaming!’

  Ainslie glanced back at the door and saw the child standing as before, silent and unmoving, one hand in Quinton’s.

  ‘It’s not Frances. She’s safe.’

  But Torrance did not seem to hear. He said vaguely, ‘Just like that day. She was screaming then. All her bloody fault. But for her, Dicky would be alive, and I . . .’ His voice faded slightly, then he muttered, ‘Poor old Dicky. Said he should drive, so that I could sit with the kid an’ keep her quiet.’ He shook his head, smiling as he relived the moment. ‘To hell with that, I said!’ Plaster fell on his mouth but he did not notice it. ‘I turned to slap her, and the damn car went off the road.’

  Ainslie turned and looked at the girl beside him. All this time she had believed her husband to be innocent. Instead he must have been thrown clear, but had returned to the wrecked car to put his dead friend behind the wheel.

  The great beam moved very slightly, bringing down more rubble into the room. As a faint breeze pushed through the wreckage and cleared some of the dust, Ainslie saw the hideous bloodstains on the opposite wall where the nurse had been cut down.

  He said, ‘Help is coming.’

  Torrance stared at him. ‘Oh, it’s you. Never forget a face.’ The beam dropped again and Torrance gave one last, terrible gasp.

  Ainslie realized the screaming had stopped, too. He said, ‘Come now, Natalie. It’s over.’ He led her out into the passageway where some soldiers were groping their way into the various rooms with axes and ropes.

  Quinton said to a lance-corporal, ‘Two dead back there, chum.’

  Down the stairway, treacherous with rubble and broken glass. The whole place was a ruin.

  Outside the main doors the army vehicles were on their sides, one blazing fiercely. The soldiers Ainslie had seen chatting were lying nearby, or what was left of them.

  He made himself ask, ‘Your sister, where is she?’

  ‘In town. Not here.’ She was clutching his arm while he tried to shield her from the sights and sounds around them.

  Quinton said, ‘The car seems all right. Shielded by the wall.’ He opened the door. ‘Better get away now. In case they come back for another go.’

  Ainslie said quietly, ‘Just a moment.’

  He helped her into the car with the child and then retraced his steps to the hotel. It was on fire now, somewhere at the back, probably the kitchens. It was doubtful if anyone would try to put out the blaze. The old Royal was finished.

  Ainslie paused only to retrieve a piece of one of the striped sun-blinds. Then he stopped to look down at the old Indian hall porter. He was dead, killed outright by the blast as he had hurried to do his duty.

  Ainslie covered him with the sun-blind and said quietly, ‘Poor old devil. You’re best out of it.’

  Then he returned to the car and put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘All right, John.’

  They drove in silence for most of the way, too stunned by what had happened, too shocked to accept that they had survived.

  At the last check-point before the harbour Quinton stopped the car and said, ‘I’ll ask the army where we’ve got to sign in. I lost my list when the bomb went off.’

  Alone in the car, Ainslie said, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get out of all this mess, Natalie, but when we do, will you marry me?’

  When she did not answer he added desperately, ‘I’ve not much money, but we can manage, and in England we can take Frances to that expert, just as you wanted in the first place.’

  She looked at him then, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘You know the answer. I’d go anywhere with you, married or not.’

  They both stared at the child with disbelief as she stood against the driver’s seat and put her arms round her mother’s neck.

  ‘Oh, darling Robert!’ She could barely contain herself any more. ‘Frances spoke to me! She really did. She tried to say something!’ She hugged the three of them together. ‘Now I know we’re going to be all right!’

  Ainslie let his mind drift, wondering how any man on earth could feel happiness in the middle of hell.

  Quinton came back and took the wheel again. ‘Got it.’ He drove through the check-point and realized something tremendous had happened during his absence.

  But being Quinton he said dryly, ‘By the way, that policeman has reported me for dangerous driving!’

  Ainslie put his hand over the girl’s torn dress, as if by doing so he could eliminate the memory of that final hurt and Torrance’s terrible secret.

  It was terrifying when you thought about it. If they had obeyed the policeman’s order to stay off the road during the air raid, the bomb would have fallen anyway. But she would have been in the room with her husband. She had been sitting di
rectly beneath the beam which had killed him.

  Ainslie squeezed her shoulder and felt her move against him, lost in her own thoughts.

  She might even be thinking of this latest irony of war. That Japanese pilot would never know that the bomb which had killed the old hall porter, and God knows how many others, had provided some sort of shock which had given the child another chance. True or not, it was a first real hope, and that was more than they had dreamed of.

  The car halted outside a plain white building where some nurses and official-looking civilians were checking arrivals.

  They all stopped doing their work to turn and stare at the two dirty and dishevelled sailors, the black-haired girl with the dress torn from her shoulders, and the small child who was carrying a dusty but intact elephant.

  Quinton watched Ainslie as he guided them through the door and then very slowly lit a cigarette.

  ‘I’ll bet that made their day.’ He blew out a stream of smoke. ‘It did mine!’

  Ainslie sat at his desk and stared at the piles of stapled signals. Despite the danger and threat of invasion, nothing seemed to slow down the tide of signals.

  Opposite him, in the other chair, Lieutenant (E) Halliday watched him gravely. Halliday seemed to symbolize all that was happening to their own special world. Waiting and worrying, wondering what the next day or hour might bring.

  Outside the hull it was halfway through the forenoon, the harbour bathed in smoky sunlight. Smoke from another air raid, although this time a fighter had managed to shoot down the enemy bomber. Some of the smoke was the Jap’s funeral pyre.

  But it could not go on. Sooner or later Soufrière was going to get hit, or be so damaged by a near miss she would have to be abandoned. The signals from London and the French admiral were nothing to do with it any more. Ainslie knew that most, if not all, of his company felt the same. They had got this far, and they needed the submarine now. Not just as a weapon, but as a kind of symbol.

  He leafed through Halliday’s list of repairs and wondered how the engineer officer had managed it.

  ‘Good, Chief. You and your chaps have done well.’

  Halliday watched him, seeing the quick, nervous movements of Ainslie’s hands. But if half he had heard was true, things would be far worse but for the Torrance girl. He thought of his own wife in their little house near Tower Bridge, and hoped fervently she was safe. Women could be a curse, or they could be stronger anchors than anything man-made.

  Ainslie said, ‘The enemy are keeping very quiet on the mainland, or so HQ informs me. The occasional artillery duel, but not much more.’ He looked up as someone tapped his door. ‘Come in.’

  He heard the door open, and as the curtain slid aside he saw the two French lieutenants. Very smart in their white uniforms, yet so different from one another in every way.

  Ainslie said, ‘I’ll discuss the fuel with you later, Chief.’ He and Halliday looked at each other. Just a glance, but it was enough.

  As the curtain swished across the door again Ainslie said, ‘You’ve probably guessed why I’ve sent for you.’ He picked up the top folder of signals. ‘As you are well aware, your part in this whole operation was to assist my company if some problem arose with the mechanical and electrical equipment. Something which the instructors in England might have forgotten. You did all that, and more. But things have changed. Your naval staff in London have requested through the Admiralty that I should put all Free French naval personnel in the next convoy out of Singapore. Number One is dealing with that now, and I will speak with the men myself before they leave.’

  The only Frenchmen still aboard were six petty officers and the two lieutenants.

  Ainslie looked at each in turn. Lucas, slight, even delicate. Cottier, tall and outwardly confident.

  Then he added quietly, ‘As officers you are entitled to go with the others, or remain on board. If you choose the latter, I can promise you nothing, for I know nothing. You must decide. When the convoy leaves it will be too late. After that, any available vessel will be for dependants and priority cases.’

  Lucas looked around the cabin, remembering when he had stepped aboard with Ainslie, the mad rush to get the submarine under way without a last-minute disaster. On the face of it, why should he stay? This was not part of his war, the one where he could hit at the Germans and use his skills against those who brutally occupied his country. To die out here, or to rot in some Japanese prison camp would keep him even further away from his family in Nantes, his parents and young sister.

  He felt the sweat running down his spine, the urgency made worse by the knowledge that the petty officers he had controlled were already preparing to leave.

  Lucas felt he would never really understand the British, but he had come to like them Very much. And he would have only the Channel between him and France, whereas here. . . .

  Cottier stared at a point above Ainslie’s shoulder. He was more surprised at his feelings than he had imagined possible. His beloved Paris was under the jackboot, but he had accepted that. Sooner or later it would re-emerge as the finest city on earth, and until that time he had his own life to consider.

  He thought, too, of the French command in London. They were the same in every way. Full of advice when the hard work was done by someone else.

  And Soufrière was French. No amount of tea and those terrible corned-beef sandwiches which the British seemed to thrive on would change that.

  Cottier made up his mind. ‘I will remain, Capitaine.’

  Lucas glanced at him, amazed. He disliked Cottier’s suave superiority, his perfect manners, his obvious charm. He had fully expected him to leave with the rest.

  Ainslie nodded and looked at Lucas, ‘What about you?’

  It was on the tip of his tongue to repeat what Halliday had told him about Lucas. Of his long hours, working like a demon to get the submarine’s machinery in perfect order again. Ainslie knew a lot about Lucas’s situation, of his family in France. How would he have felt? How would he still feel if Natalie was left behind, trapped by the enemy if Singapore fell without warning?

  Lucas said softly, ‘I, too.’ He looked at the deck. ‘It is better I stay.’

  When they had left, and after he had said good-bye to the French petty officers, Ainslie sat for a long time in his cabin, thinking about them, and all the others around the world who were trying to win a war. Boys for the most part, led by other boys. It took the steel of the Hallidays and the Quintons to give them a hope in hell.

  That night, as he lay on his bunk fully dressed, staring up into the humid darkness, he listened to the boat’s sounds all around him. The noises which gave every sort of vessel personality, life, if you wished to call it so. Landsmen laughed about it. But it was there all the same.

  He closed hs eyes, thinking of Natalie, how she had been when he had last seen her. To get her to safety, no matter where, was all that counted now.

  Ainslie awoke, breathless, as the telephone buzzed in his ear. He struggled with the light switch above the bunk, his ears probing beyond the hull, searching for bombs or gunfire.

  ‘Captain?’ There was an unnatural edge to his voice.

  ‘SDO here, sir. I’ll put you through.’

  Ainslie sat up, peering at his watch. Put you through. What was the man talking about, and why couldn’t it go by way of the switchboard?’

  ‘Hello? Granger speaking.’

  Ainslie relaxed his body piece by piece as he pictured the round little admiral and his pipe.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The enemy have landed on the island. They’re attacking in full strength, landing craft, pontoons, the lot.’ A pause. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  So it had happened. He had expected it, waited for it, but it was a shock all the same. And an incredible feat, too. Two months to the day since those first Japanese troops had smashed ashore in the north of Malaya, and now they were here. The sudden realization made him chill all over.

  Granger sou
nded very calm. ‘My next convoy will have to be brought forward.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘So I thought you might like to know at once.’

  The line went dead, and Ainslie sat back, wondering how the admiral had found the time to think of his problems.

  There was a rap on the door and Quinton came into the cabin. He was fully dressed and wearing a revolver.

  ‘Signal, sir. They’re invading. First-degree readiness for everyone. Be prepared for anything from riots to Acts of God!’ He seemed stunned by the news. ‘What do you reckon the bastards will try and do now?’

  Ainslie walked to the hand-basin and slopped some lukewarm water over his face. It tasted faintly of diesel.

  ‘Try and split the defences like they did in Malaya. Then they’ll go all out for the reservoirs. When they capture those, it’s all over.’

  Quinton smiled briefly. ‘Well, at least we know. I’ll go and rouse the hands, though most of them have been standing-to half the night.’

  Ainslie remained staring at the door. One thing was certain, he would be getting new orders now.

  Then he left the cabin and made his way through the boat, as he had done so many times. Silent figures stood near their stations, drinking tea, heads cocked as if to detect something alien.

  He nodded to Lucas and Halliday at their switchboard and then began to climb the long polished ladder to the bridge. There the heavy machine-guns were already manned and ready, the long barrels black against the stars.

  Forster and Ridgway were on the bridge, watching the darkened city, the pin-pricks of bright lights beyond, flak or artillery fire, it was too far off to determine.

  Forster said, ‘We heard rifle fire just now, sir. More looting, I expect.’

  He did not know if he cared or not. The dramatic news of Daphne’s husband being lost at sea, his own change of heart, all had moulded together in new uncertainty. No signals, no messages. Was she all right? Or had she carried out her threat to kill herself? She might have done it without even knowing she was a widow.

  Ridgway said, ‘If we have to move, sir, I’ll not be able to get any more torpedoes for us. We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got left.’