Convoy of War (A John Mason Kemp Thriller)

by Philip McCutchan

  There was brief news of Kemp’s grandmother: she’d worried about him but was happier now. From that Kemp understood that Sir Edward had been in touch and Mary knew he’d made it one way in safety.

  And now they were back in it again. The Ardara was a different ship now, she had come alive again as compared with the emptiness of the outward voyage, alive with a huge complement of passengers as compared with pre-war days, far too many for comfort. The smell of sweaty serge had pervaded the accommodation from the moment the Canadians had embarked with their rifles and heavy packs, so had the language as the close confines of an overcrowded ship brought friction and temper — and seasickness. The Ardara had only just put her nose out into deep water when the seasickness had hit, and hit hard. Bodies were everywhere, so was vomit.

  Four hours out and Kemp was still on the bridge. So was Brigadier O’Halloran, keeping his promise so far. He walked up and down the bridge with the Commodore, talking about his lads and what they were going to achieve, which was total victory. Fair enough; Kemp wouldn’t dream of denigrating anyone’s enthusiasm. But the Canadians aboard were fresh, no experience yet of war. Few even of the officers, O’Halloran said, had seen action in the last lot, certainly no one below the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

  ‘A lot to learn,’ he said, ‘but they’ll be okay. I guess Hitler’s not going to like it.’

  Kemp asked, ‘Where d’you think your troops’ll be used?’

  ‘Wherever they’re needed.’

  ‘Yes. But have you any views? A new attack, a second front?’

  O’Halloran shrugged. ‘Can’t say. Wouldn’t say if I did, you know that. But I can make guesses, Commodore, and my guess would be raids, forays along the occupied French coast, keep the bastards busy and not knowing where they’re going to be hit next.’

  Kemp nodded. He had heard rumours that the Canadians were to be based in Brighton, or many of them were, and Brighton on the south coast was a good place from which to carry out raids across the Channel. The brigadier talked on and on and Kemp lifted his binoculars to scan the convoy, which by now had sorted itself out into its proper formation, with the cruisers disposed ahead and to either beam, and the destroyers acting as the extended screen, the old battleship ploughing along behind, a massive seagoing fortress to provide the heavy gun-power if any surface raiders should turn up.

  Kemp caught Hampton’s eye. ‘I’m going below, Captain. Usual orders.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Brigadier.’

  O’Halloran looked surprised: Kemp grinned inwardly, thinking that perhaps brigadiers were superhuman. He went below; paper-work awaited him. He left Williams on the bridge: Williams was officiously instructing the new leading signalman, by name Mathias, in the duties of a convoy signalman. Mathias was being polite but clearly knew it all better than Williams did. After a while O’Halloran called out to Williams.

  ‘Hey there, sonny.’

  It was Williams’ turn to look surprised and a shade offended when he realized it was he who was being addressed. He went across and saluted smartly. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘At ease,’ the brigadier said automatically. ‘What’s your job aboard here?’

  ‘Assistant Commodore, sir.’

  O’Halloran gave a whistle and said, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ***

  Jackie Ord had started something: Mr Portway was almost, she believed, paying court. The excuse was his marital problems but he was growing matey little by little, having started the morning after their chance meeting ashore and the cup of tea with the Salvation Army. Mr Portway, whenever the senior nursing sister was off duty, seemed to appear at her cabin door. If Purser Pemmel was there, which he was on two occasions, Portway made an excuse and vanished.

  The second time, Pemmel asked irritably what Portway wanted and Jackie told him about the wife and Mabel.

  Pemmel grunted. ‘Nothing unusual,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps not, as an abstract thing. When it happens to yourself, it looms large.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She disregarded that. ‘I’m sorry for him. It’s all got too big for him.’

  ‘Let him stew, Jackie. No one’s fault but his own.’

  ‘And Hitler’s, for bombing the laundry in Thurrock. Or was it Grays?’ She giggled.

  ‘Well, never mind Portway. What about us?’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Oh, come off it. You know what I mean. Look, I’m sober — ’

  ‘Yes. You’re busy again now. How long will it last?’

  Pemmel shrugged: he was a man of few self-illusions. ‘As long as I’m kept busy, I suppose. I don’t get all that pissed anyway.’

  ‘No?’ Jackie lit a cigarette and drew a deep lungful.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll agree to disagree on that, Andy.’

  ‘How about the doc? If I’m — ’

  ‘I’m not going to talk about my boss.’

  ‘Loyal girl,’ he said with a grin. He put a hand around her shoulder and was about to pull her towards him on the settee when there was tap at the door and an assistant purser came in. Pemmel said, ‘Well, young Bates? Looking for a cough cure — or something more personal?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s you that’s wanted. The troops — the orderly officer with a complaint about the troop decks. If you’d come to the office, sir — ’

  ‘God! Can’t anyone else cope?’

  ‘The orderly officer’s creating hell, sir.’

  ‘Damn.’ Pemmel got to his feet; Bates held the door open for him and he flicked a hand at Jackie and left the cabin, with the AP following. Jackie gave a sigh, stubbed out the less than half smoked cigarette. Time to turn in; she was thinking she would do just that when another tap came at the door. It was Mr Portway, back again and smelling a little of whisky.

  Jackie frowned. ‘Yes, Mr Portway?’

  Portway came in and shut the door behind him. He said, ‘It’s my problems, Sister.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m sorry. But I don’t see — ’

  ‘I just don’t know what to do, I don’t really. Soon we’ll be home and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You’ll have to face up to it then, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know. That’s what worries me.’ Suddenly Mr Portway was slumped on the settee; he seemed almost to have collapsed on to it, a sack of potatoes that was coming apart at the seams. Jackie moved away a little. ‘I’m all twisted up inside,’ Mr Portway said piteously. ‘People don’t seem to understand. My wife, she never did.’

  ‘Never did what, Mr Portway?’

  ‘Understand me. And then there was the — other. What she never did either.’

  He seemed, she thought, to be approaching some point and she didn’t find it hard to guess what. Portway had not previously revealed what he was now evidently revealing — a lack of zeal for sex on the part of his wife. Before Jackie could utter the second steward spoke again. ‘Frigid, she is. Frigid. Like a blooming codfish. Stood to reason I ’ad to find someone else.’

  ‘Did you not tell her?’

  Portway blinked. ‘Tell her? Tell her what? About Mabel?’

  ‘No. That you found her frigid. It’s better to come out with these things ... and avoid the other complications, surely?’

  Portway said, ‘Try telling the wife she’s frigid. Just try! She wouldn’t know what it meant.’ He paused and there was some heavy breathing. ‘Not like you, Sister. Not at all like you.’ He shifted closer, hefting a lard-like bottom along the settee. ‘You and I — ’

  ‘I can be far more frigid than your wife, Mr Portway,’ she said calmly though her heart was going like a steam-hammer. ‘When I try. And right now I don’t even need to try.’

  ‘That’s a change of tune.’

  ‘It isn’t! I’ve never ... all I’ve done is listen and try to help. I think it’s time you left, Mr Portway.’

  ‘Come off it, Sister.’ He moved closer, a lecherous whale with whisky
breath and a pawing fin.

  ***

  Ex-Colour-Sergeant Crump was in his pantry and had the purser’s sandwiches nearly ready, just in case. Now the ship was full the purser could be busy even at this hour and the sandwiches might have to go to the office and not to Mr Pemmel’s cabin and if he was too busy to bother with them at all, then Crump would finally eat them if none of the office staff wanted them.

  There was quite a roll on the Ardara by this time; she was well out into the North Atlantic and the weather was restless. Things shifted about in Crump’s pantry and from beyond its confines there came sounds of distress as troops made for the lavatories or the upper decks. Crump grinned to himself. Pongoes at sea were a bit of a joke; they didn’t appreciate a moving, rolling barrack-room at all. Not like the Royal Marines — His Majesty’s Jollies as they used to be known — who, though it was true they were half soldiers, looked upon themselves as sailors first and reacted as such. Crump looked out from his pantry and saw an infantry sergeant staggering along the alleyway, bouncing off the sides, a handkerchief crammed into his mouth. The sergeant just made it into one of the wash-rooms, going in with a rush as the Ardara rolled heavily to starboard and the door clanged shut behind him. As Crump withdrew back into the pantry a bell rang: not the purser, but the senior nursing sister. No ordinary ring, not the sort that meant sandwiches. A long, long ring as though Miss Ord had collapsed against it.

  ‘Oh, dearie me,’ Crump said aloud, and moved fast for Sister Ord’s cabin, his face crumpled in concern. Reaching the cabin he knocked hard and went in, to be confronted, if such was the word, with the second steward’s bottom. Mr Portway was on the bunk, so was Sister Ord. The bottom was clad certainly, but the attitude was eloquent. Sister Ord was weeping, as Crump saw when Mr Portway did a fast shift and thumped off the bunk on to the deck, his eyes wild and hair all over the place.

  ‘Now what’s all this, Mr Portway?’ Crump asked, using his colour-sergeant’s voice. ‘Are you all right, miss?’

  Jackie Ord had sat up. ‘Just about, Crump. You were just in time. And thank God for it.’

  ‘Yes, miss. That’s all right, miss. Now, Mr Portway, sir, if you’ll kindly leave the cabin I’d be obliged. We don’t want trouble. But it’s my duty to enter this in my night report and inform the purser.’

  ‘You bloody do,’ Mr Portway said threateningly. ‘Bloody do, that’s all!’

  ‘Leave it, Crump, please,’ Jackie said in distress. ‘I can cope. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘No, miss.’ Crump’s heart went out to her. Nursing sisters ... angels of mercy they called them. She wouldn’t want the talk, all the nastiness. Maybe he could forget about his report — maybe.

  But it wasn’t to be that way. There was a step in the alleyway and the purser came in. He took in the scene at a glance: the bunk was ruffled, so was Jackie Ord, and Mr Portway’s flies were still undone.

  ***

  It was all left until the morning. Jackie was in a state of distress still. Mr Portway spent the rest of the night shaking like a jelly. He knew he was done for; Pemmel had called it rape, or anyway attempted rape. When the Ardara reached UK Mr Portway would be given a bad discharge, such as would preclude any future employment at sea, and projected like a spent cartridge towards Thurrock and his ruined love life. Very likely he would find himself subject to the call-up and forced to become a pongo. Pemmel had been adamant: the affair could not be glossed over, for the sake of discipline it had to be reported and dealt with. Jackie had pleaded as much as Portway, but to no avail. Purser Pemmel knew his duty.

  On the other hand, Mr Portway knew his onions.

  ‘Led me on, sir.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for one moment, Portway.’

  ‘She did, sir. Honest to God she did! Took off her — ’

  ‘All right, Portway. You know that’s a lie.’

  ‘No one else does.’ Portway’s eyes, red-rimmed, gleamed with spite and fear. ‘I can always say she did. If there’s to be charges. No proof either way, and you know that. There’s something else too.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I reckon you know, sir.’ Pemmel’s eyes flickered at that; he knew he had his Achilles heel. Portway confirmed it. ‘Always half pissed, you are. All the stewards know it. Maybe the Captain knows it too. If he doesn’t, I can tell him. I can quote times and places. You’ll only have yourself to blame. Sir.’

  That was when Pemmel peremptorily ordered the second steward to his cabin and told him the matter was far from ended. Pemmel thereafter spent a night as sleepless as Portway himself, wondering whether or not the thing should go any further. He wasn’t too worried about the threat re drink, that was just stupid, just fear talking, and Portway could never make it stick — Captain Hampton wouldn’t take any action because he couldn’t. It was in basis just hearsay. At the same time it was nasty and wouldn’t do Pemmel any good in the long run. Hampton would remember. Pemmel would need to be superhumanly careful ever after, for he would be watched closely. No good saying captains didn’t pass things on to their fellow captains — they did. And any scandal was a scandal, unwelcome to the Line: which brought him back to the main point of Portway’s crime. Report it or not? Rake up dirt, or deal with the matter himself? So far as he knew, it was currently between himself and Portway, Jackie Ord and nightwatchman Crump, the latter being the soul of discretion. It would not necessarily have come to the ears of Master-at-Arms Rockett: in fact it couldn’t have, since Rockett would have exploded into action by this time with the charge already framed.

  It was a dilemma.

  Pemmel had his duty and if he didn’t do it Portway would think his threat had paid off and from then on Portway would have the whip hand. But do his duty and the chief sufferer would be Jackie Ord, and Pemmel didn’t like that. He was fond of Jackie, could even be in love, he believed. Just the proximity, the being thrown together in war? She had never given him any real encouragement. Perhaps he was being selfish in even thinking he might one day offer himself in marriage to a girl like Jackie — he didn’t see himself through rose-tinted spectacles these days — but he wasn’t in the first flush of youth and the sea life would come to an end one day; a bachelor in retirement was always a pathetic sight. Selfish was probably the word. Anyway, he didn’t want her to suffer on account of Portway.

  In the end he dropped the matter quite unconstitutionally and unfairly on the shoulders of Commodore Kemp.

  TWELVE

  It had been Pemmel’s own personal idea. He went to Kemp’s quarters after 0800 hours, at which time he knew the Commodore usually left the bridge to wash and shave and have his breakfast, brought from the Captain’s pantry by his steward. Pemmel knocked and was admitted.

  ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, sir?’

  ‘Pemmel, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, Mr Pemmel, what can I do for you?’

  Pemmel began to explain, intending to leave out only Portway’s threat about his drinking habits; but, not unexpectedly, Kemp cut him short. And Kemp was angry.

  ‘What the devil d’you mean by coming to me, Pemmel? This is nothing whatever to do with me — I don’t command the ship! This is Captain Hampton’s business and in no way can I become concerned. You should know that. Why go behind your Captain’s back?’

  Pemmel said, ‘For the sake of the Line, sir. I’m still a company’s man. So were you, sir — and basically still are. I’m certainly not asking you to take any action. I only want advice, that’s all. Without involving Captain Hampton, who might be forced to act.’

  ‘From what you’ve said, he would indeed — I should say.’

  ‘And there’s the girl to be considered, sir.’

  ‘H’m.’ Kemp got to his feet, leaving the set table to move across to a large square port that looked out beyond the Captain’s deck to the fo’c’sle and the heaving greyness of the North Atlantic: the bad weather was holding but Kemp had an idea that wasn’t going to last. After all, it was
high summer. In his mind he cursed Pemmel and the antics of an over-sexed second steward. In the middle of a troop convoy in wartime!

  Just then Pemmel struck the right note. He said, ‘An enquiry of that sort, sir, aboard a troopship bound for the war zone. It wouldn’t be a good thing.’

  ‘But that’s Captain Hampton’s business to decide!’

  ‘When it would become official — ’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know you made that point. Sit down, Pemmel. Fill me in properly.’

  Pemmel did so, appealing to a former senior master of the Line, a kind of father figure and a much-respected one, who by good fortune was aboard a ship where so many had served under him. Kemp ate while he listened: a good breakfast, grapefruit, kedgeree, fried bacon and eggs, toast and lashings of coffee: he ate fast and then lit a cigarette with the coffee. Pemmel was long-winded and was still talking. Kemp thought about Sister Ord, the one he’d bollocked for setting fire to her cabin. Women aboard ship were a blasted nuisance but he’d been quite struck by this one. And Portway was going to say she’d asked for it — that was far from nice.

  He cut in on the purser. ‘You said only the four of you know.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re sure of that, absolutely sure?’

  ‘Positive, sir.’

  ‘Right. Now, anything I say, any advice I give, is just that — off-the-record advice, which is what you came for. Understood, Pemmel?’

  Pemmel nodded. As yet he had no idea as to which way Kemp was leaning but whichever it was he would act accordingly. Kemp was a wise man and very experienced, and Pemmel knew that he himself needed bolstering. Kemp was about to speak again when the voice-pipe from the wheelhouse whined and Kemp moved for it, fast. Pemmel heard the chief officer’s voice.

  ‘Commodore on the bridge, sir, please.’

  ‘Coming up,’ Kemp said, and went out of the cabin at the rush. Pemmel was left in the air. A moment later the alarm went.

  ***

  Kemp lifted his binoculars: a bearing had been pointed out to him but so far nothing was visible. A signal had been made by lamp from a destroyer on the starboard beam of the convoy: the radar had picked up an echo, a surface echo so far unidentified. As a precaution all the ships of the escort and the convoy had gone to action stations. Lieutenant Williams went down to the guns to chivvy Petty Officer Frapp.