by John Harris
“Hold it!” Botterill suddenly bent over his message pad and his pencil began to move rapidly. “It’s us. Plain language,” he jerked out of the corner of his mouth.
Knox leaned over his shoulder and began to read what he wrote down. “Proceed – immediately – to – assistance – of damaged – Walrus. Chiefy’s going to be pleased when he sees that,” he said. He watched as Botterill wrote down the bearings and made a wry face. “That’s south of here,” he went on. “Away from the area of search. How sweetly thoughtful of ’em to do that. It leaves everything wide open for 7526 to make the pick-up.” His pursed expression of sarcastic affection changed to gloom again. “Hell, the balloon’s going to go up when Slingo sees that!”
The two of them stared at each other, both busy with the same thoughts on Slingsby’s fury, then Botterill shrugged, his expression martyred.
“Take over. I’ll let the Skipper have it if I can dodge Chiefy,” he said, picking up the message slip and taking off his headphones. “They must be leaving 7526 here or they’d send her on this job. She’s nearer and faster. Poor old 7525 – doing the dirty jobs again. That’s what comes of having a kid for a Skipper and a dud fitter. Loxton wouldn’t have this lark with 7526.” His shoulders humped with melodramatic woe. “This blasted boat’s got a jinx on it.”
He threw down his pencil and stumbled noisily down the swaying steps from the wireless cabin into the sick bay, throwing a momentary glance of compassion at the huddled figure of Milliken on the steps by the after-door, then he dived into the well behind the forecastle and shouted up the ladder into the wheelhouse.
“Skipper!” he said. “Change of course. Walrus in the drink by the sound of it.”
When Botterill shouted his message to Treherne, Slingsby, his square, stubby little fists gripping the wheel, was brooding on the value of all the mechanical aids to searching they possessed and just how little help they seemed to be in bad weather.
The first Air-Sea Rescue launch, he remembered, was nothing more than a converted naval boat manned by former Royal Navy personnel. Communication had been chiefly by shouting and rescue was largely a catch-as-catch-can affair without rubber dinghies or Mae Wests. The aircraft had been Bristol Fighters, seaplanes which looked like flying birdcages, or even dirigibles, and the knowledge and experience of the men engaged on the job was largely nil.
Through the years since the nineteen-twenties the service had developed until now there were even great ships able to establish a marine-craft section of the Air Force or an Air-Sea Rescue base anywhere in the world at any time. To Flight Sergeant Slingsby, who could still remember the days before Hubert Scott-Paine and Aircraftman Shaw, once Lawrence of Arabia, had produced the first RAF boat, way back before the Schneider Trophy races had developed Air-Sea Rescue, it still seemed incredible they had come so far and yet, paradoxically, had made so little headway.
Here they were, he thought bitterly, buffeting their way slowly north into the oncoming seas, with all the aids of radar, wireless, radio-direction-finding beams, wireless telephony, spotting aircraft, and launches with vast engines and patent logs which operated through the hull instead of on the end of a long line trailed like a mackerel spinner astern – and the result was exactly the same as it always had been, given the same conditions of bad weather and low cloud: nothing.
Visibility was rapidly falling to nil now, and with no visibility not even the radar, radio and spotting planes could help them to find one small round yellow dinghy on the wastes of grey water that flung HSL 7525 about like a cockleshell for all her sixty tons.
For three hours now they had been operating what was known as a square search. Arriving on the spot where the dinghy was believed to be bobbing, they had steamed north for half a mile, then turned west and steamed a similar distance. Then they had steamed south for a mile, west for a mile and north again for a mile and a half, and so on, the distances lengthening with every other leg of their course, so that their track, plotted on the chart, appeared like a square spiral as they covered an area several miles wide round the spot on the ocean where the Hudson was supposed to have ditched. Then they had moved south and repeated the procedure.
Every time they had steamed north, with the fore-deck streaming and the spray curving and slashing against the spinners on the wheelhouse windows, the boat had thudded and smashed in short, jolting dives into the crests of solid steel with the motion of a tank crossing rough country, the waves striking heavy blows under her bows that made her tremble. Slingsby, on the wheel, watched the sharp prow rise high above the level of the sea, so that ahead of him there was only grey cloud dropping swiftly away. Then, as the boat balanced on the foamy crest before its next plunge, the sky steadied itself and began to climb again with rapidly increasing speed, until it gave place to the stormy horizon again, and all the width of the sea whirled upwards in front of him until the sky and the clouds had disappeared, and the boat smashed into the next curling green wave which hissed across the deck and beat with heavy fists against the wheelhouse and the splinter mats. Slingsby could see the great black numbers of their wireless call-sign painted on the fore-deck quivering, like the foremast and the stays and the locked anchor and the cowls, with the whip of the boat as she hit the water.
Every time they turned east or west the motion changed, so that the diving stopped and the rolling became enormous, and Tebbitt and Westover wedged themselves more tightly into the corners of the bridge, their eyes screwed up against the wind. And Milliken, just inside the sick bay door, hung on for dear life and prayed – not now that he might die, but that in this awful world of crashing and heaving that strained his legs and arms with the effort of holding himself upright and his nerves and brain with the constant noise, he might be allowed to live to set his feet on solid earth just once more.
And then, turning south, the motion changed yet again to another one, a hideous sickening corkscrew as the boat, with the waves striking her on the quarter or the stern, tried to turn round in her own length so that Milliken’s heart lifted to his throat and he was certain she was out of control. Every time her racing screws were heaved clear of the water by the wave thrusting forward under her stern, the vibration started the mast rattling and the crockery forward clinking, and set Milliken’s teeth chattering together as the whole boat developed a ghastly shudder.
Across the splintered water as they worked, Slingsby could see the waving topmast of HSL 7526, performing her own square search a mile or so to the south-east. And every time the boats, by some trick of the sea, were hoisted simultaneously to the top of a wave, Slingsby caught an infuriating glimpse of the other boat, hazy with distance but there – most definitely there. Jealous of 7526’s faster engines – which were due not only to her more diligent fitter but, as he well realised in spite of his chivvying of Skinner, to that freakish fact which could make two of the same type of boat or engine as different in power and temperament as chalk and cheese – he cursed the luck which had posted him to this bitch of a boat with its boy of a Skipper and its indifferent crew of sea-lawyers, the heritage of that jaw-breaking old dodger, Flight Sergeant Rollo, whom he had known and disliked through all his years of service.
His angry thoughts grew, stirred by the tiring, depressing monotony of the wild weather that made the slashes of spray across the windscreen into a whip across his temper.
Then rain, grey rain, came and went in squalls, like dirty cotton wool moving towards them from the horizon, sweeping the sea, deadening the waves a little in a distinct whisper they could hear above the engines, smoothing out the sharp iron crests into curves with the weight of it. It came, iron-dark and ugly, blotting out the horizon and blurring the distance, like a view seen through sick eyes, so that below deck everything dripped with condensation and above deck they had to don oilskins. Duffel coats smelt musty and saturated, and Treherne or Robb, coming into the wheelhouse for a glance at the chart, dribbled water in streams to the slimy floor.
As it cleared again, Botteril
l’s shout brought Treherne from the bridge giving instructions to change course away from the search, and Slingsby’s quiff quivered with his rage and his knuckles grew white as he gripped the wheel.
His jealous anger didn’t last long, however. As he savagely swung the wheel and 7526 began to slide away astern to the north-east of them, his disappointment and rage dwindled with the consideration of the new job in front of them. Disappointment and dispensability were merely part of a day’s work. He had been putting up with them, or causing someone else to put up with them, with one boat or another for twenty years. Rescue work had never altered, not even when the war came – not even when he had seen the Whaleback containing his lifelong friend attacked by a Messerschmidt off Dungeness and blown up in a flare of orange flame and flying splinters of wood from which they rescued one dazed survivor who had dived overboard just in time. Not even through Dunkirk and Dieppe and D-Day, nor the hundred incidents like the nightmare of trying to hack a trapped air gunner from the turret of a Flying Fortress as it wallowed half under the surface of the sea and finally slid out of sight with the gunner shouting a farewell until the water sloshed up to his neck and gurgled in his throat.
Disappointment was as natural to Slingsby as eating or sleeping, after dozens of fruitless searches and wasted nights, after the deadening depressions that had accompanied every one of all the floating empty dinghies they’d found or the scraps of torn charred wreckage which spoke of an agony of suffering by men who had not lived to see rescue. Where Milliken felt only fear, Slingsby consciously felt nothing – only the need to keep the boat going. Somewhere in their vicinity there were four men in a dinghy, swamped with water, cold and wet and wretched, and it was his life – not merely his duty – to rescue them if they were still alive.
Alongside him in the chilly, unheated wheelhouse Treherne was huddled over the chart, watching their position, his body wedged against the chart table so that he could retain his position and still have his arms free to use the parallel rules. On the other side, Corporal Robb watched the dial of the Chernikeeff log, which measured their speed, and the distance they travelled through the water…
It was growing dusk when Tebbitt first saw the Walrus on the horizon.
He had been listening to the conversation of the Flight Sergeant, the Skipper and Corporal Robb in the wheelhouse, trying to glean one item of information that might reassure him in this new turn of events.
Treherne, trying hard with frozen fingers to hold his parallel rules steady on the chart as the boat corkscrewed in the following sea, was speaking.
“I suppose 7526 got the job of staying on the search,” he said, “because she’s faster than we are.”
“Ought not to be,” Slingsby growled over his shoulder. “Sister ship. Built the same time. Better fitter, that’s all.”
“There are good fitters and bad fitters, eh?” Treherne said. “And we’ve got a bad one?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Slingsby replied. “Skinner can do the job all right. All his interest’s inside his trousers, that’s all.”
“Oh!”
On the bridge, Tebbitt could hear the note in the Skipper’s voice, the awareness that he had missed something he ought to have checked, then the boat smashed into another wave and Tebbitt ducked to avoid the spray that lashed over the bridge into his face. As he raised his head again unhappy resentment flooded over him.
He glanced to the other wing of the bridge where Westover huddled, diminutive, wizened, clad in the tremendous sheepskin coat he invariably wore at sea over his white submarine jersey – whatever the weather and even in summer when the others were walking about the decks without shirts. His face was green and miserable.
But the spray had missed Westover and Tebbitt gave him a sour look, as though even the weather were helping to make his life more miserable and uncomfortable. His resentment began to feel for a reason for its own existence, probing until it settled on Gus Westover’s affluence and normal state of wealth.
Gus had spent all his life as a stable boy or a jockey. He was reputed to have won and lost thousands on the Continent before the war and to have a small fortune tucked away in Australia, the result of accumulated winnings he had never collected. Only a malicious fate had sent Gus, who hated the sea, via the balloon barrage and an enforced transfer when women had been called up to balloon tending, into Air-Sea Rescue and the boats with the most spiteful motion of them all. His off-duty position always was and always had been, as long as Tebbitt had known him, as far towards the relative stability of the bilges as he could get – underneath one of the sick bay bunks and among the spare ammunition for the point-fives, the Mae Wests, the old oilskins and the pigeons.
Tebbitt thought of the bulge of the wallet in Westover’s back pocket with bitter annoyance, for Gus, the most thriftless of people, through the mysterious sources of racing men had information which enabled him whenever he was ashore to place bets that never left him short of money. What he called his sinking fund of twenty pounds was never allowed to leave his back pocket in case that one great tip which would make his fortune for all time should ever come his way.
Doubtless Gus, who was a generous soul, would be good for a loan, Tebbitt decided, his mind still on Hilda’s visit, unless he’d had a run of bad luck and there was nothing left beyond the sinking fund. Gus would never have let that go on anything but a bet, even if its addition to the coffers of the Allied Nations could have staved off an inevitable defeat and a lifetime of slavery.
If he was in the money – Tebbitt’s face still wore its melancholy stare but his brain was working hurriedly beyond it. Twenty pounds was more than enough to keep even Hilda satisfied for a week. Twenty pounds. He heaved his bulk to one side, uneasily conscious of the evil in his thoughts as he considered means of acquiring the money somehow – anyhow. Then as a wave lifted them high above the surface of the sea they saw the Walrus ahead of them, together with the boat which was towing her, sharp and black against the sky.
Hastily, aware of its closeness and Slingsby’s presence just below him, he put his head into the wheelhouse. “Walrus in sight, Skipper,” he reported. “On the starboard bow. She’s already in tow. Somebody’s beaten us to it.”
Robb and Treherne came out of the wheelhouse together, staring across the sea through binoculars.
“A Navy launch’s got her, Skipper,” Robb said. “Don’t suppose they’ll want us now. Navy plane and Navy boat. The Air Force won’t be able to get a look in.”
He turned to Tebbitt, still huddled in the corner of the bridge, as Treherne re-entered the wheelhouse. “Well, you’ve made it this time, Tebby,” he said softly. “But only just. Looks as though you’ll get your wish. If we take the survivors back you’ll be on the nest with your wife tomorrow and Gus will be putting his sinking fund on a winner.”
Westover interrupted gloomily. “Like hell I will,” he said. “I put it on Touralay last Wednesday and she fell at the first fence.” He peered ahead for a while as Robb disappeared again into the wheelhouse, then went on heavily to Tebbitt. “That’s what comes of betting on jumpers,” he said. “I shoulda stuck to the Flat like I usually do. Twenty quid down the drain just because a horse couldn’t pick its feet up. I shoulda known better. If horses were meant to jump they’d have legs like kangaroos.”
Tebbitt didn’t answer. He was still staring out over the starboard bow at the Walrus and the naval launch in front of it. There’d be no borrowing from Gus now, he realised in dumb misery, and there was no one else in the crew from whom he could hope to borrow enough to keep Hilda even for a day…
As 7525 drew alongside the naval launch, only a few yards of dark, white-flecked water between them, the other boat’s loud-hailer was switched on and they heard over the slap of the waves the naval skipper testing it by whistling into the microphone.
Milliken emerged unsteadily from the sick bay, one hand gripping a handrail, suspecting he might be needed at last and wondering what complicated manoeuvre was abou
t to be enacted before him. Ever since the boat had first put to sea he had been at a complete loss to understand half of what was going on around him, and it was of little comfort to him that everybody else on board didn’t suffer from the same lack of knowledge.
“Now what do they want?” Tebbitt was complaining noisily alongside him, conjuring up woes like a magic incantation to make more certain his return to base. “If they’re going to send us off somewhere on one of their errands I’m going to see the Skipper. We’ll never get home on time and I’ve got permission to meet that train.”
“Take over my tow, please.” The naval launch’s loud-hailer boomed unexpectedly. “I have an injured man on board. I must hurry him back to base.”
Tebbitt swore bitterly and Milliken heard Slingsby’s voice from the wheelhouse, sharp and furious as he uttered one solitary expletive, and Robb muttering in a rage he didn’t understand, then he heard their own loud-hailer answering in Treherne’s voice.
“Can’t I relieve you of the survivors? Save you changing the tow.”
“Sorry. Better not move the injured man. You take the tow. If you’ll come closer, we’ll pass a line to you.”
“Bastards!” Slingsby spoke feelingly. “The Navy doesn’t like us using their sea, that’s the trouble.”
“Always the same.” Milliken turned as he realised Knox, the wireless operator, stood alongside him, his long body swaying to the heave of the deck, his eyes angry as he studied the naval vessel across the narrow strip of water. “They resent us having faster boats. In the early days, they even used to pick up survivors and then take great pleasure in calling us out to look for them so they could swank they’d beaten us to it.”
7525 was edging closer to the naval launch now and the Walrus, bobbing astern of them both, seemed huge in the half-light of dusk. Tebbitt and Westover had left the bridge and stood on the after-deck holding the lifelines while Robb balanced miraculously as he waited on the fore-deck for a heaving line to be thrown.
