Night Sky

by Clare Francis

  The Frenchman nodded. ‘I see.’ And walked on in silence.

  When they were sitting with the plans spread out in front of them, the Frenchman asked, ‘What happens if you cannot solve the problems? What if this Metox does not work very well?’

  ‘Ah!’ David snorted. He indicated with his head. ‘Back there, I suppose, to where I came from. But don’t worry. It won’t happen. We will make the thing work …’

  They began with the problem of the aerial connection, then went on to the placing of the valves, and the suitability of the proposed amplifier.

  To David’s surprise they managed to cover the three main problems within an hour, in each case arriving at agreement as to the necessary action to be taken. Strangely, David’s French seemed to have improved dramatically. He was elated.

  David folded the large-scale drawing and beamed at the Frenchman. ‘A simple device, with simple problems. I knew we could sort it out!’

  Gallois nodded slowly. ‘Yes, one can always sort these things out …’ He smiled ruefully.

  David regarded him for a moment, then said impulsively, ‘Tell me, was my French so awful – when I arrived?’

  The Frenchman looked down. ‘Awful?’

  ‘Yes, you know … No-one seemed to understand me.’

  ‘Oh, we never understand Germans very well.’

  ‘Ah.’ David frowned. Some confusing, unsettling thoughts drifted through his mind. ‘The matters we’ve been discussing …’ He paused and looked sideways at the Frenchman. ‘The problems with the Metox … why was it you were unable to solve them before …?’

  Gallois made a face. ‘Ah! The Germans, they never provide the information and equipment we need … We’ve asked and asked …’ He trailed off and shrugged.

  David nodded slowly. ‘Yes … quite …’ He thought of asking why the Germans had not responded to these demands, but something about Gallois’s manner did not invite any more questions.

  ‘Well,’ said David brightly. ‘I am sure the project will be a great success!’

  ‘Without doubt,’ the Frenchman replied coolly.

  David walked quickly back to his office, his mind already going through the letters he would have to write and telephone calls he would have to make, and realised with mild surprise that his stomach hadn’t been hurting at all today. In fact he hadn’t felt so well in months.

  It was the challenge of the work. As he thought, it was just what he needed.

  Chapter 17

  MOTOR GUNBOAT 309 had two outstanding characteristics: she was wet and she was as explosive as a bomb.

  The south-westerly Force 6 was revealing the first of her attributes: her speed was reduced to thirteen knots and she was twisting and bucking like a wild horse. Every few seconds she dug her nose deep into a wave and chucked a wall of cold, very solid, water back along her 110-foot length, up and over the open bridge, drenching the four men who stood there peering into the impenetrable darkness.

  There was a loud thud and a particularly large wave flew up over the bows. Ashley ducked instinctively behind the reinforced glass screen. The water hit the bridge with a dull slap, showering spray in all directions. Ashley felt a rivulet of freezing water running down his back and reflected that things might be worse: an E-boat could at this minute be firing at them and igniting the perfect mixture of air and high-octane petrol in their fuel tanks. And what a lovely bang they would make, he thought. A nice big orange whooomph! And the Jerries wouldn’t have to worry about looking for survivors: there wouldn’t be any. Instant cremation.

  All things considered, he’d rather be wet.

  As if reading his mind, Jones, the coxswain, shouted, ‘When are we getting these new boats then, sir?’

  ‘Ah, cox, when indeed? According to the Master Plan we already have them!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But according to the grapevine, it’ll be some time at the end of the year.’

  Jones blew the saltwater off his lips and exclaimed, ‘About bleedin’ time too, sir. This old girl’s as wet as Glasgow on a Saturday night! If I’d wanted to be a submariner, I would have bleedin’ well volunteered.’

  Ashley smiled. ‘On the other hand, Jones, a diesel-powered boat could be a real bore! A dry bridge, reliable engines, non-explosive fuel – there’d be no feeling of adventure. That first pint back in Dartmouth wouldn’t taste the same at all!’

  ‘Ha!’ the coxswain retorted. ‘After a ride on the Hamoaze ferry, lemonade tastes like bloody champagne to me, sir! But, you know, sir, I wouldn’t mind about the weather, ’cept we’ve been having it all bleedin’ winter. Not a break ’ave we ’ad, not a single one.’

  ‘No, cox,’ Ashley admitted. ‘We can’t have been saying our prayers right.’

  In fact, there had been breaks in the weather, but they had come during the full moon, or when 309’s engines were out of action, or when there was no operation planned. Whenever an operation had been set up it had blown Force 5 or more. Nothing unusual for winter in the English Channel, but uncomfortable, wet and – for this kind of job – dangerously slow. A delay on the outward journey meant a late arrival, a nervous wait at the pick-up point, and a mad dash to get back across no-man’s-land to British coastal waters before dawn.

  Ashley peered at the luminous hands of his watch: it was already 2330 and, he guessed, another two to two-and-a-half-hours to the pinpoint. An 0200 arrival would give them only forty-five minutes – or an hour at the most – to make the pick-up. It would be horribly tight. In this wind it would take the beach party at least twenty minutes to reach the shore. Five minutes to sort out the passengers and get them loaded. On the way back they would have the wind behind them but it would still take, say, fifteen minutes. Horribly tight.

  Worse, he had the unpleasant feeling the wind was freshening.

  They’d had miserable luck all winter, one way and another. First they’d had an inexperienced navigator and, on one occasion, had waited at the wrong beach for over three hours. Then, a week or so later, the engines had started to play up. As the Chief, an inevitable Scot by the name of McFee, was always saying, ‘Seawater and petrol don’t mix.’ He did his best with the three supercharged Hall Scott engines but even he couldn’t make the damn things work when they weren’t in the mood. Bad weather made them especially temperamental; ‘Like a woman caught in the rain,’ the Chief said contemptuously. A week before, they’d packed up two miles off the Brittany coast, just as they were being opened up for the journey home. The Chief had managed to coax a couple of knots out of the starboard engine, just enough to get them out of sight of land before dawn. Eventually, water was found in the fuel system, was cleared, and they managed to get under way again, but not before getting a nasty fright from a patrolling E-boat.

  Ever since, the engines had been giving trouble of some kind or another and they needed constant nursing to keep them going.

  But at least they had got rid of the dodgy navigator: that was something. All they needed now was a break in the weather.

  Ashley poked his head outside the screen: yes, he could swear the wind was increasing. The barometer was probably dropping through the floor. He reached for the voice pipe and called down, ‘Macleod! How’s the barometer?’

  A voice came floating up, ‘The Jimmy’s in sick bay, sir! Elliott here.’

  ‘Sick bay!’ Ashley sighed and said ‘Bugger!’ under his breath. He put his mouth to the pipe again. ‘On my way!’

  As Ashley climbed down the exposed bridge ladder he felt the MGB’s bows dive into a wave and instinctively flattened himself against the side of the boat. The action avoided the worst of the water: instead of pouring down his neck the sheet of water slapped into his back. As he made his way aft he felt the wetness seeping through his oilskins into his clothes. So much for oilskins.

  He reached the door, yanked it open, and climbed down into the relative peace of the accommodation. The sick bay was not as grand as it sounded: it was an ordinary bunk which happened to be situa
ted next to the locker housing the medical stores. The First Lieutenant was lying on the bunk, his face white and his breathing irregular. Two seamen were taking off his boots and covering him with a blanket. There was an ominous black bucket on the floor beside him.

  Ashley looked at one of the seamen. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Sick, sir. Chucking up and – the other, sir.’

  Ashley went to the side of the bunk. ‘Christ, Number One, couldn’t you have thought of something more original? Been overdoing the champagne and smoked salmon, eh?’

  ‘Sorry, must have been something I ate.’ The voice was soft with a gentle Canadian accent. ‘I’ll be all right in a moment, I’m sure. Once I’ve …’ A look of disbelief came over the man’s face and he suddenly threw himself over the bucket. Ashley looked away; the sight of vomit always made him retch.

  When Macleod had sunk back onto the bunk Ashley turned back and said, ‘I don’t think you’ll be fit for anything, Macleod. You’d best stay here.’

  ‘No! I’ll be okay. Really!’

  ‘Stay here! That’s an order. We’ll manage without you. Very well, in fact. You’d be surprised!’ He grinned.

  Macleod smiled faintly and closed his eyes. The smile vanished from Ashley’s face and he said quietly to one of the seamen, ‘Keep an eye on him – temperature, pulse, everything. He looks bloody awful to me.’

  He turned and made his way back to the deck, thinking: Damn!

  The Canadian was his best man; very keen and very able. He must be really ill to have agreed to lie down; if he was capable of getting to his feet, he would. Ashley gritted his teeth. He’d have to find a replacement – Macleod was leader of the beach party. Macleod was the only one who spoke decent French.

  Apart from himself there was only one other officer on the boat: the navigator, a man called Tusker. He was RN (Retired) and had bamboozled his way back into active service by nagging the Admiralty to death. Unlike the first navigator, Tusker was brilliant at his job. He’d got 309 through rocks and narrow channels into countless pick-up points, in filthy weather and without a decent navigation aid in sight.

  There was only one problem: he was forty-five and had a gammy leg.

  Ashley made his way forward again, gripping tightly on to the available handholds. The boat pitched sharply forwards and then, trembling and shivering, heaved herself up once more, ready for the next wave.

  Ashley climbed into the small space optimistically called the chart room. It was a wooden structure built on to the deck just in front of the bridge. Tusker was crouching over the collapsible chart table – a simple device which, when the boat pounded heavily, often lived up to its name. As usual, Tusker was making careful calculations. He never stopped, from the moment they left until the moment they got back, reworking the tides, the course, the speed, and the ETA.

  ‘How we doing, Tusker?’

  ‘Ah, should reach Les Vaches at 0135, and drop anchor at 0200.’ He always used Les Vaches, a large pair of odd-shaped rocks three miles off the beach, as a navigation point. He aimed the MGB straight for them and then, as he liked to point out, when they almost hit them they knew exactly where they were. He’d never failed to find them yet, despite a shortage of navigation aids. All there was to confirm the dead reckoning position was an echo sounder ticking away in the corner of the chart room.

  Tusker wiped some drips off the transparent plastic chart cover and pointed at the chart. ‘We crossed the Hurd Deep forty-five minutes ago. I hope to pick up the edge of the Plateau de Triagoz in just over an hour. That’ll give us a good lead in. Unless of course we have to reduce speed still further …?’

  ‘No, we must bash on, whatever the weather. Otherwise we’ll be too late. We’re cutting it a bit fine as it is.’

  The two men braced themselves as 309’s bows rose into the air and began to descend rapidly towards an approaching wave. There was a loud crash and the boat shuddered. Cascades of water thundered over the chart room, pouring down the windows and penetrating the cracks in the wood. Tusker methodically wiped the drips away and gazed down at the chart again. ‘Whatever the revs say, I’d be surprised if we were doing thirteen knots in this sea.’

  Ashley nodded. ‘I’ve allowed a bit for the sea conditions, but I dare say you’re right. I still want to press on, though. Once we reach the plateau we’ll start to get in the lee of the land. Things should improve then.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘By the way, Macleod’s sick, so I’ll be leading the beach party. That means you’ll be in charge until I get back.’

  Tusker’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I say, that’s a bit irregular, isn’t it? I mean, why not send Talbot or Eddington to the beach? They’d do the job all right.’

  ‘No, I’d rather go myself,’ Ashley said crisply. He didn’t want a discussion. He was perfectly well aware that a commander shouldn’t leave his ship, but this was a very small ship and the circumstances rather unusual. ‘No, I’d prefer Talbot and Eddington to stay here. You’ll want them if there’s a fight. It’s more important to leave the ship properly manned. Anyway …’ He smiled breezily at Tusker, ‘… after all this time I want to have a look at this beach and meet some of our Breton friends.’

  Tusker nodded reluctantly. ‘As you say.’

  ‘Now, this is the form. You are to wait until 0315, at the very latest, and then you are to leave, even if we haven’t returned. Is that understood?’

  The other man nodded.

  ‘And if there’s any sign of trouble, the usual rules apply – get out and as quickly as possible. Just because I’m ashore, don’t try to be clever and wait around. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Good!’

  It was raining now, drumming against the window, mingling with the salt spray in a steady deluge of running water.

  Ashley murmured, ‘Christ! We’re not going to see very much at this rate.’

  ‘No, but it may not last. We’ve still got an hour before we need to start worrying about visibility.

  Ashley sighed. ‘I just wish that, for once, we’d have a bit of luck. It would make a pleasant bloody change!’

  It was 0140. There was no sign of Les Vaches. Although the seas were much lower here in the shadow of the land and the boat was riding the waves more easily, the weather was still foul. Every few minutes heavy showers came through, obliterating the few precious yards of visibility, turning the already dark night into a wall of black.

  Ashley stood at the side of the bridge, his teeth set, his eyes straining to penetrate the inky darkness. He tried to resist the temptation to call down to Tusker again, but failed. He reached for the voice pipe. ‘Tusker! Any ideas?’

  ‘Give it five minutes, then we can try turning east.’

  ‘Five minutes is a hell of a long time!’ Ashley knew he was sounding testy but, damn it, he was.

  ‘Yes, five minutes should get us right up to Les Vaches,’ came the calm response.

  ‘I thought we were meant to be there already!’

  ‘Well, allowing for losing some time in those seas …’

  ‘Okay! Five minutes!’

  He threw the pipe back into its socket and stared back into the darkness. He had four men on the bridge now, all of them looking – for anything: any sign, any indication of rocks, land, E-boats, anything. A hundred miles, they’d travelled, and now they were looking for two rocks in the middle of the sea. Ridiculous!

  Nothing. Not even the customary smell of the land. Ashley thought: Tusker’s finally blown it.

  The rain stopped. Strange new shadows flickered across the pattern of the night. Ashley screwed up his eyes. It was almost impossible to know what you were seeing … But the visibility had definitely improved, no doubt about that.

  ‘Sir! Port bow! I think I see something, sir!’

  They all turned and stared, no-one speaking, an electric silence filling the bridge.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ It was the coxswain’s voice, steady and firm. ‘Just fine on the port bow, sir. A rock, I would sa
y.’

  Ashley looked again, and saw it this time. It was a large rock. One of two. Les Vaches.

  Ashley breathed out slowly, his body sagging as the tension eased away. He called down the pipe, ‘Well done, Tusker. Your rock’s popped up on the port bow.’

  Thank goodness it had. He always had a vision of getting the boat lost and steaming on to a barely submerged rock and the boat tearing her guts out … He tried not to think of such things, but on bad nights one couldn’t help it …

  Tusker took some bearings and they pressed on towards the land. Because the wind was offshore and would carry the sound of their engines away from the ears of German sentries, Richard decided to risk a fast approach. Time was ticking away. It was 0150.

  At two miles they reduced speed to five knots, searching for the familiar landmarks, feeling their way in towards the anchorage. Finally they were on station, one mile offshore in the open arms of a wide, rocky bay, lying to their grass-rope anchor. It was 0215. Only one hour at the most.

  The beach lay in a cove in the western arc of the bay, its sides guarded by a myriad of small rocks. The surfboat was already in the water, the two crew waiting at their oars which were muffled with heavy sacking.

  Ashley jumped down and sat in the stern, a compass in his hand and the wireless on the seat beside him. At his feet was their new gadget, a hydrophone, which, when its sensor was dropped in the water, would pick up the sound of 309’s echo sounder and guide them back to her. They would need it tonight.

  The surfboat buffeted her way through the waves, the water hissing and slapping at her sides. Already the MGB was a shadow in the deeper darkness behind them.

  Ashley looked at his watch. It was 0222.

  He couldn’t help thinking that for once they really were cutting it a bit fine.

  The clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece, syncopating with the gentle snores of Tante Marie, asleep in the chair on the opposite side of the hearth.

  Julie stared at the book which lay open but unread on her lap and listened intently to the other sounds, the sounds of the night. A wind was blowing, quite a strong one, vibrating the windows and moaning softly around the buildings; and there was rain, coming in sudden squalls, drumming loudly on the outhouse roof, pit-patting against the glass.