There had been ten dead in all, caught along the line where the stick of bombs had come down. He had seen a few uniforms amongst the mourners, but mostly older faces, people he had known all his life. Uncles and mates, aunts and friends from work.
The vicar had been new though. Nice young chap with a posh voice like Niven. He had said something about an ‘oration for the dead’. Jenkyn had told his friend Bill Turbett, who was the E.R.A. in XE 19, about it. Turbett was a cynical bastard. He had said that an oration for the dead was just a hypocritical defence of the living. Poor old Bill, his missus had gone off with a bloke in the Black Watch.
Still, it was no use moping about it. He would have to plan things. Maybe he would even meet a nice little party and get settled. Feet under the table somewhere.
Just as the funeral had ended a train had rattled down the main line towards the Junction. Ma would have liked that. A sort of familiar fanfare.
The submarine’s torpedo gunner’s mate thrust the curtain aside and looked down at him.
‘All right, chum?’
Jenkyn sighed. ‘Yeh. It’s like what they say. If you can’t take a joke –’
They both grinned like conspirators.
‘After this little lot I’m goin’ to grow roses for a livin’!’
A few yards away, wedged against the chart table, Niven stood beside the navigating officer and watched the youthful captain at work.
Niven knew he ought to be resting, if not actually sleeping. But he could still feel the same sense of thrill and elation, like a drug which would not release him even for a minute.
He could not get over it. How she had greeted his arrival from the hospital, the way she had given herself to him. As if she had wanted to offer him anything his whim might desire.
Drake must have told her something about him when he had called there. Never before had she shown such passion, such hunger for him.
The submarine commander said, ‘Thirty feet. Check with the tow that all’s well, Pilot.’
Gauges quivered, and the tense figures in their oil-stained jerseys moved over the controls like minions around their god.
‘Up periscope.’
Niven watched him, fascinated. He was always interested in the technicalities of his profession. Recently, some of that confidence had been badly jolted, and he had discovered something like shame at being so proud of ‘your silly old Navy’, as Decia had called it. She had certainly changed since then. Niven had felt slightly mean at accepting all her regrets and apologies, and when she had said she would make it up to him from now on, he had realised just what his experiences had given him.
If only he could go on the same way and perhaps end up like the young lieutenant commander who was peering through the periscope. Then perhaps even his father would find room to offer a little encouragement and praise.
‘Down periscope. Ninety feet.’
The submarine commander crossed to the chart table and then glanced at Niven.
‘Raring to go, Sub?’
‘You get used to it, sir.’
It had come out wrongly. Stiff and pompous. He made to try again but saw that the other man was already thinking about something else.
‘I – I think I’ll turn in, sir.’
The first lieutenant said softly, ‘Little prig!’
His captain looked up from the chart. ‘Take it off your back Number One! We were all little prigs once.’ He grinned. ‘At least we don’t have to get out and walk when we reach a target, so be thankful for that.’
On his way to the wardroom Niven heard their quick laughter and clenched his hands into tight fists. Well, he would show them. As he had Decia. And as he would his arrogant, bloody-minded father! He calmed himself very deliberately, piece at a time, like parts of an intricate weapon.
He thought again of Decia, the way she had knelt at his feet, looking up at him like some tantalising slave girl. If he had beaten her, he doubted if she would have lifted a finger to stop him.
Perhaps he held too much power? And that would explain her earlier attitudes. She had always had her own way, and was ever ready for an argument. Just as if she was taking charge of a new mount. It might also put a name to his father’s aloofness. Jealousy.
A curtain moved slightly and Drake peered at him through the gap.
‘You say something, Richard?’
Niven flushed. ‘Sorry. Got carried away. Was thinking about that last leave, what there was of it.’
‘Okay, was it?’ He watched, almost afraid to breathe.
‘I think you must have been filling her with stuff about me, Geoff.’ He looked at him and smiled. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of it!’
Drake lay back and tried to relax. It was getting worse every moment. Like being sealed up with some destructive force or spirit.
‘And another thing –’
Mercifully, Niven was cut short by a sleepy voice from a curtained bunk.
‘For Christ’s sake shut up and remember the bloody watch-keepers!’
Oblivious or indifferent to all of them, XE 16 followed in the other submarine’s wake. Like the patient shark, she could afford to wait.
10
A Problem
SEATON SCRAMBLED ROUND IN a tight circle, his eyes throbbing with concentration as he peered through the periscope. It was close on midnight, and as black as a boot. Just as it had been when they had surfaced to slip the tow and transfer from the other submarine an hour and ten minutes earlier.
He saw vague, soaring shadows rising away to starboard, the only way of distinguishing land from water. The hull was moving well, pitching only slightly in an offshore swell. XE 16 had moved immediately towards the islands along the coast, and was now comfortably amongst them, following the mainland, and staying in the centre of the channel.
Seaton glanced at Drake, seeing his hands moving deftly as the boat dipped heavily and almost submerged the periscope.
Seaton said quietly, ‘You’ll get a lot of that. Freshwater pockets from various fjords and inlets. Be ready to blow some ballast if need be.’ He saw him nod, knowing he was thinking of Vanneck.
He made up his mind. ‘I’m going up. Get a better chance of seeing where we’re heading.’ He slung the binoculars around his neck and buttoned his waterproof jacket. ‘Continue battery charging. We’ll need all we can get later on.’ Another glance at the clock. ‘We should be through the outer minefield by now.’ He forced a smile. ‘All things considered.’
Jenkyn said between his teeth, ‘Watch out up top, sir. Don’t want to lose you just yet.’
Drake kept his eyes on the inclinometer. ‘Besides, you’re the only one who knows the way.’
Seaton unclipped the after hatch and opened it carefully, feeling the raw air scything across his face.
Once outside it did not seem quite so cold, and for several minutes he lay prone on the wet deck, balancing on his elbows as he trained the glasses from bow to bow.
After the sealed control room everything was larger and louder. The hiss of spray along the casing, the back-echo of waves from a nearby spit of land and XE 16’s diesel making enough din to wake the dead.
He moved the glasses carefully, seeing occasional darts of white foam, the glassy restlessness of the water beyond the stem.
They were moving very slowly, reducing from six-and-a-half knots to just above four as the battery charge continued without a break.
They were through the outer minefield, but it took great confidence to believe anything. They were following the coast, south-easterly, weaving through the islands as if they did it every week. But it was hard to accept that once through the next pincer-like gap of rocks and islets they would be entering the last great fjord, and then Bergen itself.
He rubbed the handset with his glove, feeling the ice-rime on it like powdered glass.
‘Ship’s head?’
‘One-four-zero.’ It was Niven. Crisp. On the ball.
‘Alter course ten degrees to starboard.’
‘Ship’s head now one-five-zero.’
‘Better.’
He wiped the glasses and steadied them on the nearest land. It was better to have sea-room for the final approach. Just in case some sneaky patrol boat might be working the fjord.
He blinked and looked again. A light had flared up and died just as suddenly. Like car headlights. Except that the glare seemed to be pointing out to sea.
Seaton peered at his luminous watch, feeling the edge of his cuff cutting his wrist like wire. Cold and salt water were cruel to skin.
He tried to lay out his plans and alternatives in his mind. Like the marine major’s display of weapons at Loch Striven.
He would stick it out on the surface for another hour at least. Right up to the gates. It was going well. Eighteen miles up the approach fjord without diving once. It would save time in the long run. Give them more scope for putting down on the bottom to await events.
It sounded easy when it was discussed ashore.
He froze as another tongue of light swung up, over and down across the water, making the fjord glitter like black silk. He counted, feeling his breath clinging to his woollen muffler. Ten seconds. But it seemed like an hour. He snapped on the handset. ‘I think jerry has got one, maybe two, searchlights playing across the entrance.’
Niven’s voice came back within seconds. ‘The gap is less than a half-mile across, sir. Between two little islands.’
It came pushing through all the other facts and figures even as Niven spoke. A narrow channel. The Germans would have something there. Strange nobody had thought about searchlights.
Drake had switched on his connection. ‘Plenty of depth hereabouts, Skipper.’ A pause. ‘We can run deep.’
Perhaps it was the intercom, or the surrounding darkness, or his own imagination, but Drake sounded different. Worried.
Seaton answered, ‘No. It may be what they want. I’ll lay odds they’ve got detection gear right along the bottom.’
He lost more precious seconds as the boat wallowed down and smothered him with freezing water.
‘Anyway.’ He tried to rake up something trivial. Casual. ‘We’ve not finished the battery charge yet.’
He thought he heard Jenkyn laugh. It was a start.
‘Alter course. One-four-zero as before.’ He eased his limbs painfully on the rough plating. ‘We’re about dead-centre.’ He watched the beam lick out across the water and hover momentarily on the surface like a giant spotlight.
As the boat moved steadily towards the islands it was very hard to stay level-headed and calm about it. Seaton had been told often enough that searchlights looked far more effective than they actually were. That the men who worked them only saw what they expected to see. He watched the opposite beam probing out from the darkness. All the same ...
The bitter air must be turning his brain into ice, he thought vaguely. He felt no actual fear. Just a kind of light-headed bravado. He reached out and readjusted the induction trunk, lowering it almost to its diving position.
Damn them to hell. He would continue charging batteries as they pushed through the gap.
He must have made more noise than usual, and when Drake called him on the intercom he said, ‘Getting stiff. I’ll be bloody glad to come inside.’
The next searchlight swept down and over the deck with alarming suddenness. It revealed every rivet and scrape, and glinted on his wrist-watch like a bright diamond before swinging away across the undulating water. Then it hesitated, and Seaton could feel his heart thumping against the deck-plates like a hammer.
Here it comes. The beam passed slowly over the hull, from port to starboard, touching the frothing bubbles around the screw and then cutting-out completely, making the night blacker than ever.
‘Gone.’ He strained his ears, imagining he could hear back-echoes from the islands. ‘Nearly through.’ His teeth were chattering uncontrollably. ‘Press on.’
He tried to think of his visit to London. Of Hampshire before the war. Of his father, greeting everyone in the pub like a brother.
A searchlight made its play from the opposite direction, but barely raised a shine on the deck and periscope guard.
Seaton thought of the girl with the blue-green eyes. She might be just a few miles away, sleeping, or dreading the dawn. He retched, feeling the cold exploring his insides, grinding his resistance.
He peered dazedly at his watch. They had done it. He unclipped his safety-line and groped his way to the hatch. Niven had to help him down into the control room, and he almost pitched headlong as the boat took another playful wallow.
Drake watched him anxiously. ‘God, you’re blue!’
Seaton took several shallow breaths and rubbed his hands violently together.
Still without trusting himself to speak, he scrambled to the chart table and pulled the overhead light above their pencilled course. Twenty-five miles all told on the surface. He felt the warmth creeping back to his blood like elation.
‘We’ll dive in ten minutes. But we shall stay at periscope depth.’ He made a small cross at the last narrow gap. ‘By the time we’ve slipped past the opening at Langholm we should be able to see what we’re at. Watch the trim, Geoff, more than ever now. Revolutions for two knots only.’ He turned to look at him. ‘Nice and easy.’
He hoped he looked and sounded convincing. But the strain was not letting go with the cold. Like steel claws, and it would be another six hours at least before they could snatch a small respite on the bottom.
Jenkyn said over his shoulder, ‘I put one of th’ thermos flasks under the table, sir. Drop of kye to warm you up.’
Seaton groped beneath the chart table, and seconds later was swallowing the thick, glutinous cocoa, feeling his nerve-ends responding just as gratefully as his stomach. ‘Thanks.’
He peered at the chart again. Up and into the swept channel of West Byfjord and through the inner minefield. By that time it would be getting light. And busy, if the intelligence reports were accurate.
It looked so much worse on the chart than the last one. Weaving and probing deeper and deeper amongst islands and fjords, with no short-cut to get out again. Their return course would be over exactly the same ground.
Seaton touched his mouth with the back of his hand. One thing at a time.
He said, ‘Stand by to dive.’ He nodded at Niven. ‘Check our progress minute by minute. This is a precision job.’
He thought of Venables in his bunker. Trenoweth and his dog. And Niven’s father. Something was badly wrong between those two.
Drake said, ‘Ready.’
‘Dive ... dive ... dive. Thirty feet.’
Three hours after diving, XE 16 continued to make good progress through the swept channel of West Byfjord. But they were the longest three hours Seaton could remember in his life, and every minute made new demands on his nerve and concentration.
The water around the hull seemed to vibrate and throb to countless engines, as if the whole fjord was packed with haphazard shipping, all determined to cause a major collision. Once, when he took the submarine up to periscope depth, Seaton had to call for a crash dive as the tall stem of an outward-bound fishing boat loomed into his lens like an axe.
When he chanced another look he saw that the sky seemed paler, and he could almost feel the dawn’s chill approach. He sighted vessels large and small moving busily in the swept channel, trawlers and smaller fishing boats, a ferry, two landing-craft and a low-lying flak-ship, her deck crammed with vicious-looking cannon.
Niven said, ‘We’ll be entering the inner minefield in ten minutes.’
Drake muttered hoarsely, ‘Great.’
Seaton had too much on his mind even to contemplate hitting a stray mine. The shipping was far worse than he had imagined,
or the reports had suggested.
Wakes and bow waves intercrossed and sluiced around the small periscope whenever he thought it safe to raise it. But they kept going, diving every five minutes to twenty-five feet and then popping up again for a look around.
‘Entering minefield now.’ Niven sounded calm.
Seaton peered at his watch. It would soon be broad daylight up top. He felt the strain tugging at him, the ache around his eyes. Seven hours since they had left the other submarine. Was it really as little as that?
He tensed as a sharp, metallic ping struck the stern of the boat, like a tuning fork.
‘Start a twenty degree zigzag!’
He felt the sweat running between his shoulders as another ping echoed along the hull. A patrol boat was up there amongst the local shipping, and was using her Asdic, underwater detection gear.
Ping.
Seaton tried not to flinch, feeling Niven’s eyes on him from the chart table.
‘Bring her up to fifteen feet.’ He raised his hand. ‘Easy!’ The sound of compressed air seemed like a tidal wave. ‘Fifteen feet.’
They waited, listening, expecting the echo to find them. The patrol boat’s skipper probably imagined he had touched an old wreck or a shoal of fish. If he had noticed anything at all. Men were never at their best around dawn.
‘Periscope depth.’ His mouth felt dirty. As if covered with an extra skin.
He pictured Niven’s father, one hand laid on his medal ribbons. It was hard to imagine him ever being soiled. He looked like a man who bathed too often.
Seaton pressed the button and prepared himself with cold deliberation.
It was much lighter.
Plenty of shipping, but further abeam, being guided through another channel. He saw the mass of land too, the faint slopes of blue-grey where the hard snow marked the hills. When he moved the periscope he felt the unnerving sensation of being trapped, of driving deeper and deeper into a rocky vice.
A black hull throbbed parallel with the periscope, foam spewing up from twin screws. Another patrol, but no Asdic this time. He pressed the button.
‘Twenty-five feet.’ Seaton mopped his eyes and mouth, feeling sick, shaky.
Surface With Daring Page 15
