by John Winton
“Yes,” said the Mayor. “Yes, I see what you mean, Commander. But I’m still of the opinion that it’s a pity we have to make use of such things. I’ve never trusted all these new-fangled inventions. . . .”
“Oh, but the idea of a submarine is not new at all, Your Worship,” said Dagwood, manfully stepping into the breach (while The Bodger thankfully resumed his meal; he had noticed that everyone else had already finished). “It’s true that the first really practicable submarine in the modern sense, the Holland boat, only went to sea at the beginning of this century. But Robert Fulton built a perfectly workable one during the Napoleonic Wars. And even earlier than that, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, a Dutchman called Cornelius van Drebbel made one which was propelled by oars. He even took King James the First down for a dive in it!” Dagwood warmed to his subject; he had done a deal of research into the history of submarines. “Leonardo da Vinci had a design for a submarine. . . .”
“Ah!” cried the Undertaker triumphantly. “But he kept it a secret, didn’t he? He was afraid of the use evil men would put it to! “
“Yes, that’s true,” Dagwood admitted, wishing he had never mentioned Leonardo da Vinci.
“And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. Luke, eight, thirty-one.”
“When are the Oozemouth Festival playing again?” Wilfred enquired of the alderman sitting opposite him.
“Which league do they play in, lad?”
While his seniors wrangled, the most junior member of Seahorse’s wardroom was being very well entertained. Having dined very successfully en famille with Miss Elizabeth Warbeck and Sarah, the Midshipman had ventured to ask Sarah back to the submarine for a drink. To the surprise of them both, Miss Elizabeth Warbeck agreed.
Derek was very glad to see them. The public had gone, except for some odd pockets of sea cadets who were being mopped up by the duty watch. He was bored with his book (the hero’s submarine was plunging, out of control, towards the bottom of the Timor Sea, the hero being baffled) and he was bored with being by himself while the rest were ashore.
Recognizing the situation at a glance (Derek had been entertaining ladies in submarines while the Midshipman was still at his preparatory school), Derek knew exactly what was required of him. He opened a panel in the woodwork by his bunk and made a cunning two-way switch, installed by the builders at his personal request, which simultaneously extinguished the white lighting and replaced it with two dim red lights in opposite corners of the wardroom. He switched on Dagwood’s tape recorder which began to play soft dreamy music of the kind defined by Dagwood himself as “Eine Kleine Smooch Musik”. Lastly, he opened the wine cupboard, took out some bottles and clinked them invitingly.
“Chez Seahorse, we never closed,” he said to Sarah. He was vastly taken with her. He admired the Midshipman’s taste.
“What’ll you have?”
The Midshipman and Sarah were both a little taken aback by the speed and facility with which Derek had converted the wardroom into a very fair facsimile of a sordid night-club.
“Well, I don’t know what to have,” Sarah said. “What have you got?”
“Anything you like.”
“Except beer,” said the Midshipman.
“How about some Contreau, Sarah?”
“Yes, that would be nice. But only a small one.”
“We don’t have small ones here.”
Conversation came reluctantly at first, so reluctantly that Derek had to work hard to keep it going; he began to wonder indignantly why the Midshipman had bothered to invite Sarah down to the boat at all. But after a time the conversation started to flow freely, so freely that Derek began to feel superfluous. When the Midshipman took Sarah’s hand and the conversation lapsed altogether Derek wished that he could tactfully retire to bed. But there was nowhere for him to go. Sarah was sitting on his bunk.
Derek’s dilemma was solved by the arrival of Gavin and Rusty. They had succeeded in penetrating back-stage at the Intimate Theatre and had carried off two members of the cast, Gavin a brunette called Rita and Rusty a large blonde called Moira.
Rita was one of the occupants of the revolving pedestals. She was twenty-eight and had been occupying pedestals, wings and window ledges in the nude since she came to London from her native Birmingham at the age of twenty. She had never been very intelligent academically but she had already sized up Gavin. His technique, which had laid waste so many hearts, rebounded from her as though from bloom steel. She had already made the decision not to make any decision about the evening’s outcome but to wait and see.
Moira was a female xylophonist and a minor celebrity in the show, her name actually appearing on the bill, in the bottom right-hand corner. She might have been beautiful but for her size. She was like a good-looking girl seen through a magnifying glass. She was wearing a black satin skirt, a white nylon blouse through which a pink brassiere was just visible, gipsy-dangle ear-rings, a jewelled Juliet cap and chunky wedge-soled sandals. She carried a red plastic handbag and exuded a musky scent which reminded Derek of magnolias and a heavy head-cold. She made herself at home at once.
“Oooh, this is nice! This is cosy. Womb-like, ain’t it, Rita?”
“Yes,” said Rita shortly.
“Are you the captain?”
“No,” said Derek. “I’m the engineer officer.”
“Oooh, I bet you’re a clever chap. I’ll have a drop of the Pope’s telephone number, if you don’t mind. With splash.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Vat 69, dear. You mustn’t mind me, it’s listening to Jimmy and Harry every night, you start to talk like them. Two shows a night, six nights a week, it’s enough to send you screaming up the wall. It took my old man like that. He’s in a home now, you know. What’s the captain like?”
“He’s a very nice fellow,” said Derek.
“Where’s he now?”
“Having dinner with the Mayor.”
“Ooooh, posh”
Derek and Moira were left to carry on the conversation by themselves. The Midshipman and Sarah gazed at each other. Rusty said nothing. Gavin kept Rita under a steady predatory stare. Rita ignored everybody.
“I don’t know how you find your way about one of these things, really I don’t.”
“It’s all quite logical when you know what to look for.”
“You clever thing! “ Moira gave Derek a playful tap on the wrist which left him numb to the elbow.
“What do you do in the show, Rita?” said Sarah, suddenly.
“I pose in the nude,” said Rita, coldy.
“Oh.”
“Don’t you mind her, dear.” Moira bent to whisper confidentially to Sarah. “It’s the draughts'.”
When the taxi stopped outside her lodgings, Rita jumped out quickly.
“Thank you very much, Gavin,” she said. “I’ve had a lovely time.”
“Will I see you again?”
Rita shrugged. “Possibly,” she said distantly. “Good night.”
Gavin watched her run up the steps, open the front door, and disappear.
“What happened, sir?” said the taxi-driver. “Somebody bite her?”
When Moira’s taxi stopped outside her door, she leaned over and kissed Rusty on the cheek.
“You’re sweet. Are you married?”
“No.”
“Come up and have a cup of coffee.”
“Oh well, I don’t. . . .”
“Come on, I’m not going to bite you! “
Moira’s room was at the top of the house. As they crept up the stairs, Moira said: “Shush, don’t wake my landlady. I call her Exide. She keeps on after all the rest have stopped. Oh dear, there I go again.”
There was only one chair in the room and it was covered with clothes.
“You sit on the bed and I’ll go down and get some coffee.”
Rusty sat down on the bed. After a few minutes’ thought, he lay back and closed his eyes. It had been a lo
ng day. Rusty drew the counterpane up to his chin and fell asleep. When Moira came back, only the top of Rusty’s head was visible above the counterpane.
“Cor Blimey O’Reilly, wakey wakey!”
Rusty stirred.
“Come on, just because you’re a submariner you needn’t stay submerged all the time! “
The night before Seahorse sailed from Oozemouth the wardroom gave a cocktail party to return hospitality. The Steward marshalled rows of bottles and glasses on the chart-table and donned a white coat himself. The Chef resumed his tall hat and fried six pounds of chipolatas. The Petty Officer Electrician and his party rigged coloured lights along the casing. Miss Elizabeth Warbeck came during the afternoon and decorated the wardroom and the control room with flowers. The Mayor and Corporation attended with their wives and were followed after the last performance by the cast from the Intimate Theatre. The Midshipman and Sarah sat quietly in a corner of the wardroom. Jimmy and Harry pinned the Undertaker in a corner of the control room and told him jokes. Moira played “When the Saints Come Marching In” on a line of glasses. The Mayor was heard to remark that submarines were a fine invention.
“In fact I’ll go further, Commander,” he told The Bodger. “We’ll be damned sorry to see you go tomorrow.”
But when the morning came, it did not appear that Seahorse would go after all. A dense mist covered the harbour. Visibility was not more than a hundred yards. The mournful lowing of ships’ sirens sounded through the fog. The Bodger would not normally have considered going to sea but there was another consideration.
“When have we got to be in position for ‘Lucky Alphonse’, Pilot?”
“We’re supposed to be dived in our area by noon tomorrow, sir.”
“How far have we got to go?”
“Almost four hundred miles, sir.”
“Well, we’ll wait a little longer. When the sun gets up properly it may melt this lot away. I’ll have another look at nine o’clock.”
At nine o’clock it seemed that the mist was thinning. The sun could be seen as a bright spot in the grey fog. The Bodger could see almost as far as the other side of the river. He decided to go to sea.
With radar operating, siren blasting and extra look-outs posted, Seahorse crept down harbour. Opposite the main road, where the channel narrowed, the fog clamped down more thickly than ever. The Bodger was forced to stop. He could not see Seahorse’s casing from the bridge.
“What’s the sounding now?”
“Four fathoms, sir. . . . Three and a half fathoms. . . .”
“We must be getting damned close to that main road.”
“I think I can hear a car now, sir,” said Wilfred.
The Bodger listened intently. He was sure he could hear a car, too. His doubts were resolved a few moments later by the squealing of brakes, a tearing crash of metal and a loud splash.
The mist momentarily thinned and the men on Seahorse’s bridge looked down upon a small green van which was submerged in water up to the windscreen. The driver was climbing out when he noticed Seahorse materializing out of the fog. He shook his fist and bellowed at The Bodger.
“My dear chap,” said The Bodger mildly. “Hadn’t you better start sounding your horn?”
5
Exercise “Lucky Alphonse” was the biggest and most important fleet exercise of the year, being planned to last three weeks during which time one hundred and eighty ships of fourteen nations would steam over an area stretching from the Denmark Straits to the Canary Islands and four hundred and fifty aircraft would take off from airfields scattered between Dakar and Reykjavik. The villains, or attacking side, were Pink. The heroes, or defending side, were Blue.
“Just as I thought,” said The Bodger when he saw the Exercise Orders. “Nuclear Cowboys and Indians.”
The Exercise Orders, when first issued, were thought to be a little too bulky, particularly for ships which had small operations rooms, but by brilliant cutting and inspired paraphrasing (at the risk of losing some of the nuances of the language) the Combined Staffs had succeeded in reducing the final edition to one more manageable volume equivalent in size, without Amendments, to the first two volumes of the London Telephone Directory. Amendments followed the Orders themselves at weekly intervals although many ships received the Amendments some weeks before the Orders. One destroyer from Rosyth received neither Orders nor Amendments but still acquitted herself with distinction in the Exercise; her Captain, a firm churchman, taking his part from the Second Book of Kings and Hymns Ancient & Modern.
When The Bodger received his copy he read the first page, where he noted the date the Exercise started, the last page, where he noted the date the Exercise finished, thumbed hopefully through the rest (once, as a young midshipman, The Bodger had come across a brand new ten shilling note in a copy of Orders for Disabling Fleeing Luggers, Smacks & Jolly-Boats published before the war), wrote “Action-- Navigating Officer” on the cover and then pitched the Orders on Gavin’s bunk and forgot about them.
The ship’s company, and the officers, had all done fleet exercises before. They knew the form: days of waiting, a few brief hours of excitement, and more days of waiting for the exercise to end, which it normally did twenty-four hours early because the planning staff had run out of incidents and wanted to catch the midnight train to London. But “Lucky Alphonse”, under The Bodger, was not just another exercise. The Bodger’s drive began before Seahorse left harbour. The polished fittings on the bridge and the casing were painted black and the wires, guardrails and ladders were landed. A full outfit of torpedoes was loaded and a false deck of stores laid out along the passageways. The periscopes were realigned, the torpedo tube firing mechanisms overhauled, and the radar sets recalibrated. When she finally left, Seahorse was stored for war.
When the ship was on patrol, The Bodger left nothing to chance. The submarine surfaced for nothing. The batteries were recharged by snorkelling and the rubbish which accumulated inside the submarine was fired into the sea through the gash ejector. The Bodger watched the smallest details, to the extent of personally supervising the weighting of the rubbish bags before they were ejected. “I once followed a Yank submarine three hundred miles across the Arctic, just by the ice cream cartons,” he said.
The Midshipman was given a special job of his own.
“I want you to make out a Recognition crib, Mid,” The Bodger said. “Get out Jane’s Fighting Ships and write down the tonnage, water-line length, funnel height and masthead heights of every Blue ship in the exercise. When you’ve done that, write down by each ship any special features she may have. Almost every ship has something. The arrangement of the gun turrets, prominent radar aerials, lattice masts, cutaway quarterdecks, side lifts on the flight deck--anything I’ll be able to recognize quickly through the periscope. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Midshipman sat down with Jane’s Fighting Ships and began work. It was only after The Bodger had left the wardroom that he ventured his question.
“Why am I doing this?”
“Recognition mostly,” said Gavin. “And ranging. The Boss ranges on the heights of things. That’s why he wants the height of funnels and radar aerials. He may be able to range on them when he can’t see the actual mast itself.”
“Oh.”
The Midshipman returned to Jane’s with a renewed feeling that he was indeed a tenderfoot on a strange range. Hard though he tried to gain experience he was again and again reminded that he was now in a private world, incomprehensible to outsiders, demanding techniques and knowledge of its own. When the Midshipman tried to trim the submarine, for instance, his first attempts were disastrous.
“Have a go at the trim, Mid,” The Bodger said with a cheerful smile one morning when Seahorse had been on patrol for two days.
“Aye aye, sir.”
The Bodger remained in the wardroom, mentally crouched in the slips, his eyes fixed on the depth gauge and his finger-nails drumming on the wardroom table.
&nbs
p; “There’s only one way for the chap to learn and that’s by doing it by himself,” said The Bodger to the rest of the wardroom, his face drawn in agony and his eyes straying again to the depth gauge. Almost at once he hit the control room deck at the double as the submarine, hitherto in perfect trim, responded to the Midshipman’s tentative experiments by heading purposefully towards the bottom, a thousand fathoms below.
The rest of the wardroom were unnerved by the spectacle of their captain torturing himself in the sacred name of training. Wilfred, who was Trimming Officer and the most experienced trimmer in the ship, took it upon himself to give the Midshipman a special lecture on trimming.
“First of all,” he said, “you’ve got certain things to help you trim. There’s the depth gauge. That tells you how deep you are. There’s the bubble on the inclinometer. That tells you whether you’re level or not. And then there’s the bathythermograph which tells you about the sea outside, but let’s not worry about that for the time being. You’ve got two planesmen, to keep the boat at the right depth, and level. The ballast pump, to shift water into and out of the boat, and the trim pump which shifts water round and about the boat. You use all these things when you’re trimming. There are people who can trim by the seat of their pants. They’ve been doing it so long they can tell what’s wrong just by looking. But there’s one sure-fire way anyone can use.”
