Convoy North (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)
Page 1
Convoy North
Philip McCutchan
© Philip McCutchan 1987
J. M. Gregson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1987 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd
This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
ONE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
TWO
I
II
III
IV
THREE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
FOUR
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
FIVE
I
II
III
IV
SIX
I
II
III
IV
SEVEN
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
EIGHT
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
NINE
I
II
IV
V
VI
TEN
I
II
III
IV
V
ELEVEN
I
II
III
IV
V
TWELVE
I
II
THIRTEEN
I
II
III
IV
FOURTEEN
I
II
III
IV
V
FIFTEEN
I
II
III
IV
V
SIXTEEN
I
II
III
IV
SEVENTEEN
I
II
III
IV
V
Extract from Convoy of War by Philip McCutchan
ONE
I
The cold was bitter; men’s breath crackled from their lips. As yet, no ice had formed on the fo’c’sles of the ships in convoy or on the decks and lifeboats; but that would come soon enough, even before they raised the North Cape at the tip of Norway and headed into the Barents Sea and the terrible conditions of the Arctic winter. Commodore John Mason Kemp paced the bridge of the SS Hardraw Falls, a heavy duffel coat covering the bridge coat with the thick gold stripe and the interlaced ‘curl’ of the Royal Naval Reserve on the shoulders, thinking ahead, planning in advance what his moves should be in any imaginable situation, prepared so that every vital second should be saved when trouble came. As Commodore of the convoy he was responsible for the conduct of the merchant ships, eighteen of them all told, shepherded along the route to Russia by an escort of two cruisers and four destroyers plus a group of anti-submarine trawlers and corvettes. Not a very strong escort; but the best that could be mustered by an overstretched British fleet against the might of the German Navy that would stand between them and the port of Archangel — or Murmansk if the big winter freeze, predicted by the Met men to be coming later this winter than was usual, should in the event confound the forecasts — and between Kemp’s duty to deliver vital war supplies to the embattled Russian armies that were trying to block the eastward thrust of Hitler’s Panzer divisions.
In the fading light, Kemp looked astern. Moving out from Hvalfiord in the early morning, they had steamed north about past Ondverdharnes and Bjargtangar to take their final departure from Norway from Straumnes. Now they were standing clear for the northern ocean wastes behind the A/S group, with the heavy cruisers Nottingham and Neath out on either beam, the destroyers moving astern to form the rearguard.
‘Commodore, sir?’
Kemp turned. ‘Yes, Cutler?’
‘All clear ahead, sir.’
‘In what respect?’
‘Situation report from the Admiralty,’ Cutler said.
‘Say so, then. An incomplete report’s worse than none at all, Cutler. All clear ahead — that could mean anything.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
Kemp nodded and grinned. ‘All right, Cutler.’ The Commodore’s assistant tore off a salute, a curious one that Kemp had not yet acclimatized himself to: it was a movement of a vertically-held hand across the face, the fingers almost touching the nose, a parody of an American style salute. Thomas B. Cutler was in fact an American, from Texas of all places, cow country, not a wave in sight. But Cutler had been dead keen to join the war in which his country was not yet involved, and he’d seen that the best way of doing so was to join the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. A thrustful young man, he had achieved this against many difficulties. Kemp admired his courage in joining in the war when he had no need to. Kemp believed he had got himself a very useful assistant, but Cutler had a thing or two to learn yet. However, it was good news that the Admiralty had nothing on the plot.
So far.
Kemp glanced across at the Hardraw Falls’ master. Captain Ezekiel Theakston was a Yorkshireman and looked it. A strong, square face, not truculent but determined and forming the window of a mind very much its own. Theakston had already told Kemp, back at the convoy conference some while before, that he came from Whitby, the birthplace of Captain Cook, who had been his boyhood hero. Kemp believed that Captain Theakston had told him this because the Commodore had been a peacetime master in the Mediterranean-Australia Line, which he wouldn’t have been, presumably, if Cook had never discovered Australia...Theakston had spoken of his hero in such a way that he had managed to sound as though he himself in some former existence had been jointly responsible for the voyage of exploration. Perhaps, Kemp thought, this was a manifestation of being a Yorkshireman.
II
The PQ convoy had assembled off the island of Mull at the northern end of the Firth of Lorne ten days earlier, and the convoy conference had been held in the port of Oban. Captain Theakston had come to this conference by train from Whitby, the Hardraw Falls having been sailed north from Liverpool by his chief officer, Ben Amory. Captain Theakston had obtained compassionate leave because his wife, Dora, had been seriously ill; he believed she had now turned the corner but in any case he had had to leave her to rejoin his ship before the convoy finally sailed from the United Kingdom. War was all-consuming and didn’t wait for mariners’ wives to recover. Dora Theakston didn’t carry much weight in the scales against the munitions requirements of Marshal Stalin, and Captain Theakston was a man who took his duty seriously. He looked down at his wife as she lay in bed, as he might into an open hold to ensure that his chief officer had been attentive to the stowing of the cargo; and he saw that indeed she carried very little weight and never mind Marshal Stalin. She was all skin and bone, but he didn’t mention this to her.
‘You’ll do, lass,’ he said.
‘Yes, Ezekiel. You’re not to worry.’
‘You know I will.’ Dora was fifty-three and currently looked twenty years older. ‘I’ll be back the moment we dock. Amory’s a good man, and can be left in charge again.’ He bent and kissed her and left immediately. A backward glance from the door, a brief pause, showe
d him a grieving woman and a lonely one who would worry about him without cease, all the time he was gone. No children — a pity, now. Not that they hadn’t tried, but Dora wasn’t a childbearing woman it seemed, even though she came of a big family herself, one of eleven offspring of a dales farmer — oddly enough from Cotterdale near Hardraw Falls. A coincidence, that, and Theakston thought it could even have some significance; he wished he could read the mind of God.
Grim-faced, Captain Theakston embarked on the long journey north, taking the train from Whitby to York where he caught the express for Edinburgh and then travelled on to Perth and thence via Kinross to Oban, and the convoy conference where he and the other assembled masters were addressed by an officer of the Naval Control Service staff, a lieutenant-commander RNR who had given them their route and detailed convoy orders. Theakston had listened attentively, as he had done when Commodore Kemp had taken over and introduced himself, an informal talk and a welcome to the man he was to sail with. Captain Theakston, who knew already that his ship was to wear the broad pennant of the convoy Commodore, had been pleased to learn at the same time that the Commodore was genuine RNR: Theakston had no love for the RN, and with foul luck might have drawn a retired admiral serving in the rank of Commodore RNR for the duration. There were plenty such officers with much experience of bull but none of the ways of the merchant ships and the men who sailed them in peace and war.
After the conference, Theakston found himself alongside Kemp, a man built like a bear, a big bear with a kindly face. Theakston said, ‘I reckon we’ll get on.’
‘I hope so, Captain.’
‘Aye. I’m told you’re a liner man, Mediterranean-Australia.’
‘Yes.’ That was when Kemp heard about Whitby; and learned that Captain Theakston, whose uniform jacket, like that of Kemp himself, bore a row of medal ribbons from the previous war, had been with Bricker Dockett Steamships of Hull from third officer to master, a matter of twenty-nine years now.
‘A long time,’ Kemp said pleasantly.
‘Aye, it’s been that.’ Captain Theakston gave him a look that said he’d made a trite remark and might have saved his breath. Kemp grinned to himself: he’d always heard that Yorkshiremen were blunt in speech. Now he knew this one was blunt in facial expression as well.
III
Sub-Lieutenant Thomas B. Cutler, RCNVR - ‘Tex’ to a wide variety of friends — had spent the night before the conference ashore in Oban’s Station Hotel. He had spent it with a girl he’d met the previous day in the Central Hotel in Glasgow. He’d bumped into her, literally, soon after he’d got off the train from Euston. Right in the hotel entrance he’d almost knocked her over with his grip. He’d swept off his cap with a flourish and apologized handsomely.
‘My fault, ma’am. I’m an oaf.’
‘An American oaf by the sound. What’s that uniform?’
He sang it to her. ‘If you ask us who we are, We’re the RCNVR...’ The tune was ‘Roll Along, Covered Wagon’. ‘But don’t let it worry you. Just call me Tex.’
The girl giggled, a friendly sound. They looked at each other. She appeared to be at a loose end. Cutler spotted the bar. ‘How’s about a drink?’ he asked.
She nodded, and he put a hand on her elbow and guided her into the bar. They sat at a table for two, in a corner. He saw she was wearing a wedding ring and noted also that she already had a drink or two inside her.
He asked, ‘What’s it to be?’
‘Scotch, please.’
At the bar he ordered two doubles and carried them back to the table. He knew he was lucky to get whisky so easily in wartime Britain, but this after all was Scotland and probably the Scots saw to it that not too much of their life-blood crossed the border when it was scarce.
He said interrogatively, ‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’
‘I’ve told you I’m Tex. You?’
She shrugged. ‘Roz,’ she said, sounding indifferent.
‘Two nice single syllables. Roz anything else?’ Cutler lifted an eyebrow. She didn’t answer; he laid a finger on her left hand, on the wedding ring. ‘Ma’am,’ he said earnestly, very American now, ‘I don’t reckon to drink with women whose husbands might show at any moment. Not drink too long, that is. Some husbands might not like it.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. Her fingers shook a little, the voice became clipped. She drank the double Scotch quickly and then confided. Her husband had been in the RAF, a squadron leader, and two months earlier he’d been shot down in his Spitfire over the eastern counties. Roz had drifted since then. No children, not married long, no parents living...currently she was staying in Glasgow with an aunt who was something in the WVS and was often away, as she was now. They had more drinks and Roz became tearful. They had dinner but she had no appetite. That night she went up with him to his room and next day, since she had nowhere else to go other than her aunt’s flat, the empty flat, she went with him on the train to Oban and they booked into the Station Hotel.
IV
Aboard the Hardraw Falls lying at anchor in the Firth of Lorne Chief Officer Amory looked across the water at the hard outline of Mull to port, at the Argyll hills to starboard, hills that ran down easterly towards Loch Awe and a slice of Scottish history — Campbell country, and Amory’s mother had been a Campbell from Portsonachan. Amory had spent summer holidays there in his schooldays; he wished he was there now, looking across the summer blue of a loch that could grow grey and angry in winter, across towards the ancient stronghold of Kilchurn Castle. But wishing would get him nowhere. He smacked a horny palm against the teak rail of the bridge and went below to his cabin to go once again through his cargo manifests, wondering if the Old Man would ever wring a proper signature of receipt from the Russians. The manifest in Coto ran to many pages and each entry concerned materials of war — ammunition, explosives, guns and gun parts. The Hardraw Falls was loaded to her marks, ten thousand tons of mostly HE, a fine place, Amory thought, to put the Convoy Commodore. One unlucky hit by the Nazis and it would be a case of finito. But then almost all the rest of the convoy would be carrying similar cargoes. You didn’t take toys to Russia in wartime...some of the ships carried foodstuffs, grain and so on, but they weren’t fitted out to take the Commodore and his staff. There was a tanker, but she would be equally at risk, and in any case she was a Royal Fleet Auxiliary and thus officially part of the naval escort, no direct concern of the Commodore.
After a while Amory gathered up his papers and shoved them away in a drawer. He lit a cigarette and drew in a lungful of smoke, pushing himself back at arm’s length from his desk. His glance fell on three photographs in silver frames: his mother and father, taken some years before — his father was wearing the uniform of a police superintendent. Amory grinned to himself: his father had always been a copper, on and off duty, never let up, do this, do that, get your hair cut, don’t come home late, where have you been...no doubt it had been good training and had helped the young Ben Amory through a tough sea apprenticeship lasting four years plus. But it hadn’t made home life easy and it had worn his mother out, worn her literally to death.
The third photograph was of a young woman. She, too, was dead: a Nazi bomb on London, back in the days of the Battle of Britain, more than a year ago now. Ben Amory had considered himself a confirmed bachelor until he had met Felicity, who was some years younger than himself and had captivated him from his first sight of her. They hadn’t married: Hitler had beaten the banns. So bachelordom was back. Amory knew there would never be anybody else. He had picked up the silver frame when a knock came at his door.
He put the frame down as though caught out in some guilty act. ‘Yes?’
It was the watchman from the gangway. ‘Boat coming off from Oban, sir.’
‘Approaching us?’
‘Yes, sir. Could be the Captain.’
‘I’ll be down.’ Amory got to his feet and reached for his cap. He followed the watchman down to the starboard accommodation ladder, arriving at th
e upper platform just as the boat came alongside. A bulky figure stepped out first and climbed fast to the upper platform, followed by Captain Theakston. There was a naval cap badge and a row of brass oak leaves on the cap’s peak: the Commodore. Amory saluted awkwardly. Theakston made the introductions, including in them a young officer wearing wavy stripes who had come up behind him.
‘All ready, Mr Amory?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good.’ Captain Theakston looked briefly fore and aft along the embarkation deck. ‘The convoy leaves at 0100 hours. Be ready to shorten-in at half an hour after midnight, Mr Amory.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
The sky was darkening already, the early northern evening setting in. The last of the sun glinted from the snow-clad Scottish hillsides, shafted across dull grey water between the arms of the land. The water was still, no wind at all, and there was a hint of fog about to come down to make the outward passage tricky. The ships lay ghostlike, the naval escort taking on a sinister look, lean and grey and with their guns neatly trained to the fore-and-aft line. They wouldn’t stay that way for long. The Russian convoys had started quietly enough but the Nazis were known by now to have built up their destroyer and U-boat strength in the northern waters.
Theakston stumped up the ladders to his quarters below the bridge, accompanied by the Commodore and Sub-Lieutenant Cutler. Entering his cabin he pressed a bell for his steward.
‘My compliments to Mr Paget and I’d like to see him at once. And Mr Buckle.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The steward left the master’s cabin. Kemp looked around, feeling in need of a short drink. No offer was forthcoming, and no apology. Captain Theakston, Kemp reflected, had the look of a teetotaller. No bad thing, of course, and not to be faulted. But teetotallers tended to make prickly shipmates. Kemp caught Cutler’s eye and refrained from winking back at the grin he saw on his assistant’s face. Cutler evidently had the same thought. Until Paget and Buckle had reported, Theakston said little other than to indicate chairs for Kemp and Cutler. Paget, the second officer and thus responsible for navigation, was told to lay off a course through the Minch for Hvalfiord in Norway.