Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  “How many more days?” asked Andrews. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, his face haggard, dirty, and unshaven. He had not shaved for six days; for three days he had not washed. Nor had any of them; in the wash-place the temperature was away below freezing-point; soap froze to the wash-bowls; flannels became stiff as boards; ice formed on the water; and always, always the alarm-bells would start to ring. At any moment, day or night, they had to be ready to rush on deck, into the gale, into the blizzard, into the blown, freezing spray. They were weary as they had never been in all their lives, and they could sleep only in brief, nightmare snatches, waking with a start and a cry of “What was that? Did you hear that?” Sometimes they wondered how much a man can endure.

  “How many more days?” asked Andrews. “Two? Three?”

  “Two,” said Payne. “Two at the most.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have information,” said Payne. “Good authority.”

  “The galley,” said Padgett derisively.

  The strain of the last few days had had its effect even on Payne; his bulk seemed to have shrunk, like a balloon that has been half deflated. Yet his cheeks were puffed up more than ever, swelling up like ramparts in front of his eyes. He seemed too tired even to challenge the bombardier’s gibe. He swayed, pulled himself up with a jerk, yawned, and stood up.

  “Think I’ll turn in for a spell,” he said. “Haven’t been any depth-charges for half an hour. Perhaps things are quietening down.”

  He had one leg over the edge of his bunk when the alarm-bells began to ring, loudly, imperiously, insistently.

  “Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “What, again?”

  Pulling on his Balaclavas and his duffel-coat as he went, he joined the mad rush to the iron ladder that led to the deck.

  Nine days had passed since the convoy had left Loch Ewe; nine days of steadily increasing cold, of blizzard and biting wind; days with the enemy at their heels and below and around them the icy, pitiless sea; days of weariness and fear and impotent anger. They had seen ships sunk, ships fiercely burning, ships broken in two; they had seen men struggling in the grip of the Arctic Ocean; they had seen men dragged out of that ocean, dead men, slain by the cold in a few short minutes. The smell of burnt cordite was perpetually in their nostrils; they could taste its acrid flavour in their food and in their drink; it was with them always.

  Nine days had passed, and the sea was covered with ice—soft, mushy ice which lay upon the surface of the water in broken irregular shapes, like the tops of immensely overgrown mushrooms. There was no wind, and it was as though a strange hush had fallen on the world; the shrieking had died away; the churning of water was muffled by the covering of ice, and even the thump of the ship’s engines seemed to have become less in sympathy. The sky was covered with a vast sheet of thick, grey cloud joining the sea all round the horizon; there was no sun; there were no birds; only a great, uncanny silence. It was a dead world, and the ships, stretching in long lines across the ice, might have been dead also, for in them was no apparent movement. Only an occasional plume of smoke drifting back from a grey funnel showed that their hearts still beat.

  Vernon, stamping his feet in the Bofors gun-enclosure, heard the crunch of cinders under his leather soles, and the noise was like sacrilege. Willis had ordered the cinders to be brought up from the cabin stove and scattered round the gun so that the gunners should be able to obtain a foothold on the frozen iron; without that aid they would have slipped helplessly. Vernon stamped his feet and beat his right hand against his leg, trying to whip up some degree of circulation. In his left thumb there was no feeling; his left thumb, since he had crushed it, always succumbed first to the cold.

  In the middle of the convoy he could see one of the corvettes refuelling from the auxiliary tanker. A long, flexible pipe lying over the stern of the tanker joined the two ships together, and out of the one flowed the oil that was essential to the animation of the other. He wondered what would happen if the tanker were to be sunk; would the escorts run out of fuel and become helpless? He supposed there must be some alternative. Charlie Blenkinship would know. Funny that Charlie should have come into his mind; but that was how it was; when you had nothing to do but think, one thing drifted into the brain and then another; there was no controlling them.

  Charlie Blenkinship! How different from Harry Vernon! And yet they had been good pals at school and at Cambridge. The difference was that Charlie wooed success and won it; there was no hint of failure in Charlie’s life, no taking the second best. You could not imagine Charlie as a gunner in the Golden Ray, grimed with soot, unshaven, smelling of cordite. Yet between himself in the Golden Ray and Charlie Blenkinship there was still a link, tenuous though it might be; for Charlie was now an officer in the Navy, though he had never been at sea, nor was ever likely to be. Nevertheless he knew where every convoy was, for he saw them moving on a great chart of the world. But to him they were simply numbered dots; and this convoy pushing its silent way through the ice, this convoy in which Harry Vernon was no more than an insignificant unit of man-power, would in his mind be K 12 or X 40, or whatever number it was. He would know if a ship were sunk; he might regret the fact; but it would not mean the same to him as it did to Vernon, who saw the column of black smoke billowing from the wreck, who saw the hull sinking lower and lower, and who felt the dull sickness of fear in his own stomach.

  Vernon stamped his feet and forgot Charlie as easily as he had remembered him. He had drawn his Balaclava up over his nose, and, as always, his breath, passing through the wool, had frozen on the outside to form tiny icicles. Inside, the Balaclava was wet and clammy against his face.

  Away to starboard the crew of a corvette were busy with picks and axes and shovels trying to clear the caked ice that was weighing down her bows. Vernon could see them clearly through the binoculars, but he could hear no sound of their labours, and this fact added to the eeriness of the whole unnatural scene. He looked down at the ice, and it seemed ridiculous to suppose that one could not walk across its surface from one ship to another; it was like a vast expanse of crazy paving. But, peering forward, he could see where the bows of the Golden Ray pushed the ice aside, and he knew that its appearance of solidity was no more than a snare, that beneath it was the Barents Sea, stretching downward in fathom after fathom of bitterly cold water. He began beating his hand again, and somewhere, beneath many layers of clothing, felt a tingle of irritation in the skin of his chest.

  Half-way through the watch Ben Cowdrey appeared with three enamel mugs full of hot cocoa—that is, mugs as full and as hot as could be expected after the long and hazardous journey from the mess-room.

  “Quiet, ain’t it?” said Ben, hanging on to the gun-enclosure with one hand and passing across the mugs with the other, the index finger of which was curled through their handles. “No visitors today.”

  “Touch wood!” said Warby hastily. “You go an’ talk like that, an’ they’ll be here in swarms.”

  “No, not today,” grinned Ben. “They’re giving us a rest.” He glanced round the convoy. “Thinning out a bit. Oh, well! Soon be there now.”

  “You hope,” said Warby.

  Ben grinned and went below.

  Vernon often wondered just what ship’s cocoa was made of; it was not like any he had ever tasted in civilian life. It was thick and dark, and when you had mixed it there was always a kind of oily surface on the liquid. All the same, it was good stuff to drink when you were half frozen; it warmed you.

  Suddenly the silence of the convoy was broken. The commodore’s ship gave one long blast on its siren, and in turn each of the other ships followed suit. The hoarse, blaring sounds seemed to be shouting defiance at the ice.

  “One to starboard, two to port,” muttered Vernon. “Here we go again.”

  It was the signal to alter course, a manœuvre the apparent simplicity of which masked the need for accurate judgment. The leading ship in each column was the first to change direction, swinging ov
er to starboard until it was moving away at an angle from those which followed it. The next ship continued on its old course until it came to the exact spot where the leading ship had turned; then it too swung away to starboard, following in the wake of the first. So each ship in turn altered its course, until, when all had done so, the convoy was lying spaced out just as before, but now it was moving on a new course.

  So they moved on; so they moved on under a leaden sky. And the brief day faded into the long Arctic night, and there were no stars; only a small flame of hope that flickered stubbornly, refusing to die.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Promised Land

  WHEN the Golden Ray sailed up the Kola inlet and the iron hills closed in upon her on either side Miller felt that he was nearing home. He felt that at last he was to touch the jewel that had attracted him for so many years, that had, indeed, constituted the sole object and purpose of his existence.

  Miller should never have been born; that was an indisputable fact. His mother was a prostitute, and Miller was the result of a regrettable failure of technique. He was unwanted, neglected, ill-treated, ill-clothed, and underfed. His playground was the back-street of a filthy slum, and he grew up with a hatred of that society which, in his opinion, was responsible for all his sufferings. Occasionally he would travel up to the West End for the sole purpose of feeding his hatred. He would walk down Burlington Arcade, glancing into the windows of jewellers’ shops, seeing fur-clad women buying bracelets that would have taken him five years of his life to earn. He would pause at the entrances of luxury hotels and watch Rolls-Royces driving up with livery-clad chauffeurs at the wheel. He would wander along Regent Street, looking at the expensive clothes, the silver-backed toilet-sets, the cut glass, the china-ware, the costly leather goods. And on all this wealth that was denied to him his hatred fed.

  He was eighteen before this hatred became canalized, made to serve a purpose. Until then it had been simply an irrational, diffused emotion, a resentment that was incoherent and undirected, wasting itself and exhausting him. Then the Communist party found him.

  His mother had died a year earlier, hastened into an early grave by occupational disease. He did not regret her passing, for she had never given him anything but hard knocks and blasphemous words. It would have been strange if he had loved her, for love was not in their relationship. His father he had never known; the fellow might have been an aristocrat or a navvy; it was all one to Miller. Whoever he may have been, he had sired a poor physical specimen; though that was no proof that the stock was bad, for an unhealthy environment can ruin the best-bred stock in the world. Miller’s growth had been stunted from the first; rickets had warped his limbs as a child, and a combination of factors had warped his brain as a youth. To the Communists he was first-class material.

  The Communists brought to Miller what he had lacked—an aim in life. Now, instead of spending his anger in futile rages against the rich, he had a goal and a hope of reaching it; it was the eventual overthrow of the present régime and the substitution of Communism. Communism to Miller was a simple creed without complications; it meant in effect taking from the rich and giving to the poor, a grand share-out of all wealth so that all should be equal. That to Miller, who had nothing, seemed a highly desirable object, and if it entailed the killing off of large numbers of worthless capitalists, why, so much the better. Had they not ground the faces of the poor for centuries? Had they not ground his, Miller’s, face? Why should they be shown pity in the day of judgment that was surely to come?

  To hasten the arrival of the great day Miller distributed party leaflets, carrying them round the suburbs of London and stuffing them through householders’ letter-boxes, thrusting them into the unwilling hands of passers-by, and unobtrusively depositing them in waiting-rooms and cinema foyers. In addition, he subscribed to the party funds, attended meetings, and assisted with manual labour when it was required. He would have liked to help also by speaking from platform or soap-box, but after one or two attempts, which ended only in ignominious drying-up, he came to the conclusion that among the meagre gifts bestowed upon him at birth oratory had certainly not been one.

  So Communism became Miller’s life; and through the telescope of Communism he saw a star, and the star was Russia. The comrades spoke of Russia as the ancient Jews must have spoken of the Promised Land; it was to them the land flowing with the milk and honey of Marxism, ruled by a demi-god named Joseph Stalin, in whom all the finest qualities had united to produce a supreme being, a being so exalted that it was unthinkable that he could do any wrong.

  Miller, who had attended school as little as possible, and, when there, had resisted every attempt to instil knowledge into his brain, had only the vaguest of notions where this land of Russia might be situated; but that made no difference. There might be a hazy vagueness about it, but it was the source from which all goodness flowed, and the aim of all countries ought to be to model themselves on Russia.

  When Miller joined the Communist party the civil war in Spain was raging, and Miller, in the first flush of enthusiasm, thought seriously of volunteering for service in the International Brigade. It was big George Denver who stopped him. Denver was secretary of the party branch, a Goliath of a man, with thick hair and a jowl that showed black two hours after shaving. Denver put a hairy hand on Miller’s arm.

  “Don’t be a fool, boy,” he said. “Let the intellectuals do that sort of nonsense if they like; let them die like ruddy heroes if they want to; let them write their damn-silly poems if that pleases ’em. But this is where the work’s to be done—here in London; don’t forget that, boy. You stay here and work; you’ll find plenty to do—or we’ll find it for you. And if you want excitement you may find some of that here, too. There’s no need to go to Spain.”

  Secretly Miller was relieved. There had been reports of bitter fighting in Spain, and he had no real desire to go to that passionate country. So he settled down to work for the party at home. And George Denver was right about the excitement.

  There was one evening when the Blackshirts were having a rally in an East End meeting-hall. Many people were showing interest in Mosley’s Fascists at that time, and the hall was crowded. What the Blackshirts did not know was that among the audience were about forty Communists who had come with the idea of breaking up the meeting. Miller was one of them.

  At first the Communists did nothing; they had had their orders, and they knew when they were to act. Two speakers addressed the audience; they talked of the ideals of Fascism, citing Italy and Germany as two countries that had found salvation in a leader and a common purpose. That, they said, was what England needed; England lacked a driving force, lacked will-power; she was decadent and weak. But there was an answer: put Mosley in power; trust the Blackshirts.

  The audience appeared apathetic; there was a little clapping, but no real enthusiasm. Then Roger Steinart began to speak, and a new atmosphere came over the meeting. Steinart was a tall man, who looked even taller by reason of his remarkable thinness. He wore black trousers supported by a leather belt and a black shirt with sleeves buttoned at the wrists. His hair also was black, plastered down with grease so that it shone under the electric light; his cheeks were sunken, his lips thin.

  He made no gestures, but stood very straight, his arms at his sides, while the words flowed from him in a continuous stream. There was something magnetic about the man. Miller, against his will, found himself listening to Steinart, found himself moved, not so much by what the man said as by his manner of saying it. He had the audience with him; there was no doubt about that. There seemed to be a current flowing through them; they sat forward in their seats, watching Steinart, listening to the flow of words, held by mass hypnotism.

  It was then that Dick Walters gave the signal. Forty Communists stood up and shouted: “Down with the Blackshirts! Down with Mosley! Down with Fascism!”

  That was the start of the fighting; that was when Miller became afraid. He knew that the Reds were hopelessly outnumber
ed, and he wanted to get away. He began edging towards the door, pushing his way through the press of people, most of whom were neither Communists nor Fascists, but had simply come to listen.

  Miller had almost reached the door when two Blackshirts seized him. Pushing his arms up behind his back, they forced him out into the street. Then they threw him down in the gutter and kicked him. Miller felt their boots crashing into his ribs, making him gasp for breath; and they went on kicking him, calling him a filthy swine of a Communist, a rotten Bolshie, a lousy Red. And all the time other Communists were being thrown out into the street.

  After a time the two Blackshirts tired of kicking Miller and went back into the hall. Then the police arrived, and in the confusion Miller slipped away, bleeding from nose and mouth, with two teeth broken and with bitter hatred in his heart.

  But Miller had his revenge. He knew one of the Fascists who had kicked him, and one night Miller followed him in the dark, and Miller had a bottle in his hand. And when there was no one to see him he hit the Fascist with the bottle so hard that the glass broke. And as the man fell Miller thrust the jagged end of the bottle in his face and left him.

  Miller was twenty when he met Jessie Craddon. Jessie was a teacher, and was about five years older than Miller. Usually she wore a tweed skirt, a suede jacket, and stout, low-heeled shoes. Her hair was cut in a straight bob, she used no make-up, and she was an ardent Communist. Miller distrusted her at first, partly because she was clever and partly because she came from a class he had always looked upon as the enemy. Jessie went out of her way to win his regard. Within a month he believed he was in love with her.