Rendezvous-South Atlantic

by Douglas Reeman

  Ashore, sitting in her cramped billet and darning a stocking, Wren Collins cocked her head to listen to it. Aloud she said vehemently, `Bloody Scapa!'

  2

  The nightmare

  A ndrew Lindsay awoke from his nightmare, struggling and tearing at the sheet and blankets, gasping for air, and knowing from the soreness in his throat he had been shouting aloud. Shouting to break the torment.

  Hold it at bay.

  Stumbling and sobbing in the pitch darkness he groped his way across the cabin, crashing into unfamiliar furniture, almost falling, until he had found a scuttle. He could hear himself cursing, as he fought to raise the heavy deadlight and then to unscrew the clips around the glass scuttle.

  As he heaved it open he had the breath knocked from him as with savage eagerness the rain sluiced across his face and chest, soaking his hair and pyjamas until he was shivering both from chill and sheer panic. He thrust his head through the open scuttle, letting the rain drench over him, feeling the cold brass rim against his shoulders. The scuttle was large. Big enough to wriggle through if you tried hard enough.

  Breathing unsteadily he peered through the rain. The sky was lighter, and he thought he saw the outline of another ship anchored nearby. It was impossible to tell what time it was, or how long the dream had lasted, or when it had begun. He had never been able to tell. Just that it was always the same.

  Wearily he slammed down the deadlight and groped back to the bunk where he switched on the overhead reading lamp.

  The sheet was damp, but not only from his rain-soaked body. He, had been sweating as he had relived it. Sweating and fighting to free its grip on him.

  He felt his breath slowing down andd pulled his dressing gown from a hook. He was ice cold and shivering badly.

  Around him the ship was like a tomb, as if she were listening to him. Not a footfall or even a creak broke the stillness.

  Be logical. Face up to it. He went painstakingly through the motions, even filling his pipe unseeingly to steady himself. Suppose it would never loosen its grip? That the doctors had been wrong. After all, naval hospitals were overworked, too glutted with an unending stream of burned, scalded, savaged wrecks to care much about one more casualty.

  He lit the pipe carefully, tasting the raw whisky from the previous night's drinking; and knowing he had been close to vomiting.

  Across the cabin he saw his face in a mirror, picked out in the match flame as if floating. He shuddered. Drowning. The face was too young for the way he felt. Tousled hair, wide, staring eyes. Like a stranger's.

  The tobacco smoke swirled around him as he stood up and walked vaguely back and forth on the carpet.

  Perhaps if it had not happened right after the Vengeur's sinking he would have been able to cope. Or maybe unknowingly he had already seen and done too much.

  Used up his resistance.

  Feet clattered on a ladder overhead. The morning watchmen getting their cocoa carried to them while they tried to stay awake on the bridge.

  It was strange to realise that throughout his life in the Navy he had been content with almost everything, Perhaps because it was everything to him. His father he could hardly remember. He had been wounded in that other war at Jutland and had never really recovered. His mother, worn out with worry for her husband; nursing him, and hating the Service which had turned him into a remote, broken man, had remarried almost immediately after his death. Staying only long enough to carry out her dead husband's wish, that Andrew should be entered into the R.N.. College at Dartmouth. She had married a Canadian, a much older man with a thriving business in Alberta, and had never returned. In her own way she was getting as far as possible from the sea which had taken her husband and separated her from her only son.

  Denied a normal home life, Lindsay had given everything to the Navy. In his heart he wondered if that driving force, his inbuilt trust, had been the main cause of his breakdown. For war was not a matter of weapons and strategy alone. Above all it was endurance. To survive you had to endure, no matter what you saw or felt. The Atlantic had proved that well enough. Endurance, and the grim patience of one vast slaughterhouse.

  Could anyone thing break a man? How many times did he ask himself this same unanswerable question?

  He sat down and stared at the glowing bowl of his pipe.

  The Swedish ship had taken Vengeur's survivors into New York. Had it been a British port things might have been different. But to men starved of bright lights, kindness and a genuine desire to make up for their suffering, it was another, unreal world.. The cloak to hide, or at least delay the shock of war.

  After one week Lindsay and his men, some other survivors and a large number of civilian passengers had been put. aboard a Dutch ship for passage to England. It had an almost holiday atmosphere. The British seamen loaded with gifts and food parcels, the friendly Dutch crew, everything.

  Lindsay had felt the loss of his ship much more once the Dutch vessel had sailed to join an eastbound convoy. Perhaps because for the first time he had nothing to do. A passenger. A number in a lifeboat, or for a sitting in the dining room.

  He had shied away from the others, even his own officers, and had found himself mixing more and more with some of the civilian passengers. He had known it was to help him as well as them. He needed to do something, to occupy his mind, just as they required someone to explain and to ease the anxieties once the land had vanished astern.

  There had been one family in particular. Dutch Jews, they had been in Italy when war had begun, and unable to reach home had started, as best they could, to escape. They needed no telling as to what would happen if the Germans got to them first. A nondescript Dutch Jew. Plump, balding and bespectacled, with a chubby wife who laughed a good deal. A quick, nervous laugh. And two children, who were completely unaware of their parents' sacrifices and strange courage on their behalf.

  The family had got aboard a Greek freighter to Alexandria. Then in another ship via Suez to Durban, with the little man using his meagre resources and his wife's jewellery to oil the wheels, to bribe if necessary those who were too busy or indifferent to care about them.

  Finallyy they reached America, and after more delays, examination of papers, and with money almost gone, they got aboard the Dutch ship.

  Lindsay had asked why they had not remained in America. They would have been safe there. Well looked after. It made more sense. The little man had shaken his head. He was a Jew, but foremost he was Dutch. In England he would soon find work, he was after all a professional radio mechanic and .highly skilled. He would seek work to help those who had not given in. Who were fighting and would win against the Nazis.

  Almost shyly he had said, `And I will know Holland is nott so far away. My wife and children will know it, too.'

  The pipe had gone out, and Lindsay found he was staring fixedly at the closed scuttle. Holding his breath.

  It had been a fine bright morning and warmer than usual. He had been sitting in his cabin watching the horizon line mounting the glass scuttle, hanging motionless for a few seconds before retreating again as the ship rolled gently in the Atlantic swell. The, previous evening he had been on the bridge with the Dutch master, who had told him that six U-boats thought earlier to have been near-by had moved away towards another convoy further south. This convoy was fast, and with luck should reach Liverpool in two more days.

  The Dutch family had been getting visibly anxious with each long day, and Lindsay had called into their cabin before turning into his bunk to tell them the news. He could see them now. The two children grinning at him from a bunk, their parents sitting amidst a litter of shabby suitcases. They had thanked him, and the children had thrown him salutes as they had seen his men do.

  That following morning he had wondered how he would pass the day. He had known that the Dutch family would be awake in their cabin, which was directly below his own. They had often jokedd about it.

  At first he had thought it to be far off thunder, or a ship being torpedoed
many miles away.

  Even as he had walked to the scuttle there had been a tremendous explosion which had flung him on his back, deafening him with its intensity. When he had scrambled to his feet he had seen with shock that the sea beyond the scuttle was hidden in smoke, and as his hearing had returned he had heard screams and running feet, shrill whistles and the clamour of alarm bells.

  Another explosion and one more almost immediately shook the ship as if she had rammed full-tilt into a berg. When he had regained his feet again he had found he could hardly stand, that the deck was already tilting steeply towards the sea.

  When he had wrenched open the scuttle and peered into the smoke he had realised that the ship was already settling down, and when he had looked towards the water he had seen one of the sights uppermost in his nightmare.

  The sea had almost reached the next line of scuttles below him. And at most of them there were arms and hands waving and clutching, like souls in torment. It was then he had realised that his own scuttle was just too small to climb through.

  More violent crashes, the sounds of machinery tearing adrift and thundering through the hull. Escaping steam, and the banshee wail of the siren. It had taken all his strength to stagger up the deck to the door. The passageway had been full of reeling figures, forgotten lifebelts and scattered trays of tea which the stewards had been preparing at each cabin door.

  Lindsay was on his feet again, pacing up and down as. he relived each terrible minute. Fighting his way down companion ladders, looming faces and wild eyes, screams and desperate pleas for help, and with the ship dipping steadily on to her side.

  Their cabin door had been open just a few inches, and he had heard the woman sobbing, the children whimpering like sick animals. In a shaky voice the little Dutchman had explained that the whole cabin bulkhead had collapsed, had sealed the door. They were trapped, with the sea already just a few feet below the scuttle.

  Lindsay could hear himself saying, `You must put the children through the scuttle.' It had been like hearing someone else. So calm and detached, even though every fibre was screaming inside him to run before the ship took the last plunge.

  The other voice had asked quietly, `Will you look after them?'

  Lindsay could not remember much more. The next scene had been on the ravaged boat deck. Shattered lifeboats and dangling falls. Two dead seamen by a ventilator, and an officer falling like a puppet from the upper bridge.

  Down on the water, littered with rafts and charred wood, with bodies and yelling survivors, he had seen the children float clear of the hull. Very small in their bright orange lifebelts. He had jumped into the water after them, but when he had looked back he had seenn that the whole line of scuttles had dipped beneath the surface. But here and there he had seen pale arms waving like human weed until, with a jubilant roar the pressure had forced them back out of sight.

  Lindsay had swam with the children to a half-empty. lifeboat, deaf to their terrified cries, and still only half aware what had happened.

  The small convoy had scattered, and when he had stood up he had seen the nearest ship, a freighter, being bracketed by tall waterspouts, until she too reeled to explosions and was ablaze from bow to stern. Then and only then had he seen the enemy. Lying across the horizon like a low, grey islet, lit every so often by rippling orange flashes from her massive armament. The enemy never got nearer than about seven miles, and methodically, mercilessly' she had continued to drop her great shells on the sinking ships, on the boats and amongst the helpless victims in the water. To the men behind those powerful rangefinders and gunsights the targets would have seemed very near. Close enough to watch as they died in agony under that clear sky.

  Eventually, satisfied her work was done, the German raider had disappeared below the hard horizon line. Later it was said she was a pocket-battleship or perhaps a heavy cruiser: Nobody knew for sure. All Lindsay knew was that he hadd to stay five days in the boat with seven others who had somehow survived the bombardment.

  Five men and the two Dutch children.

  A corvette had found them eventually, and the children were buried at sea the next morning along with some victims from a previous attack. Lindsay had held them against himself for warmth and comfort long after they must have died from exposure, terror and exhaustion.

  War was not for little children, as some smug journalist had written later.

  Lindsay sat on the edge of the bunk and stared at the carpet. He had actually allowed himself to think about it. Just this once. What did he feel now? Despair, fear of what might happen next time? He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, hearing a bugle bleating out reveille across the Flow. Wakey, wakey! Lash up and stow!

  If he felt anything, anything at all, it was hatred.

  The door opened an inch and lamplight cut a path across the carpet to his bare feet.

  Jupp asked, `Are you ready for some tea, sir?' Lindsay shook.himself. `Thanks.'

  Jupp padded to the table. `I heard you about, sir, so I thought to meself, ah, the captain'll like a nice hot strong cup of char, that's what I thought.'

  `Heard me?' Caution again, like an animal at bay. `Thought you was on the telephone, sir.' Jupp's face was in shadow. `I was already in me pantry, an' the old Becky's a quiet ship, sir.'

  He peered at the disordered bunk and pursed his lips. `Dear me, sir, you've 'ad some bad dreams, and we can't lave that.' He grinned. `I'll fix you some coffee an' scrambled eggs.' Disdainfully, `Powdered eggs, I'm afraid, but there's a war on they tell me.'

  Lindsay stopped him by the door. `So I believe.' He saw the man turn. `And thanks.'

  `Sir?' Jupp's features were inscrutable. `Just thanks.'

  Somewhere above a man laughed, and the deck gave a small tremble as some piece of machinery came alive.

  Lindsay walked to the scuttle, the hot cup in his hand. A new day. For him and the ship. The old Becky. Perhaps it might be good to both of them.

  Lieutenant-Commander John Goss stepped over the coaming of Lindsay's cabin and removed his cap. `You wanted me, sir?' His heavy face was expressionless.

  `Take a seat.'

  Lindsay stood by a scuttle watching the rain sheeting across the forecastle where a party of oilskinned seamen were working half-heartedly between the anchor cables. It was the forenoon, but the sky was so dull it could have been dusk. In spite of his bad night he was feeling slightly better. A good bath and Jupp's breakfast had helped considerably.

  `I have sent round my standing orders, Number One, and I'd be obliged if youmade sure that all heads of departments have read them.' He paused, knowing what was coming.

  Goss said abruptly, `I've read them, sir. It's not that.'

  `Well?' In the salt-smeared glass he saw Goss shifting his heavy bulk from one foot to the other. `What's bothering you?'

  `The watch bill. Action stations and the rest. You've changed my original arrangements.' In a harder tone, `May I ask why?'

  Lindsay turned and studied him calmly. `Whether any of us likes it or not, Number One, this is a naval ship. As such she will have to. work and, if necessary, fight as a single unit.'

  Goss said stubbornly, `I still don't see why Lindsay interrupted, `I studied your arrangements. You had put all the reserve people into one watch. The other watch was comprised almost entirely of hostilities only, new intakes, many of whom have never been to sea before. Likewise the allocation of officers.' He added slowly, `Just what do you think might happen if the ship is caught napping and with two R.N.V.R. officers on the bridge, neither of whom has had the slightest experience?'

  Goss dropped his eyes. `They'll have to learn, sir. As I did.'

  `Given time they might. But they'll have to be taught, like the rest of us. So I've allowed for it in my planning. A sprinkling in each part of both watches.'

  `Yes, sir.' Goss looked up angrily. `There's this other order. About the accommodation.'

  Lindsay glanced at the ship's picture on the bulkhead. The Benbecula as she had once been. He could understa
nd Goss's feelings, but like the ship's role they had to be overcome.

  `Yes. Tell the chief bosun's mate to get his people to work right away. I want all the old titles removed or painted out, understood?' He saw Goss's eyes cloud over and added quietly, `To the ship's company as a whole, as a whole, do you understand, Benbecula must represent part of the Navy. It is a wardroom, not a restaurant as the sign says. A chief and petty officers'' mess, and no longer the cocktail lounge. Things like that can affect a man's attitude, especially a new, green recruit.'

  `I don't need to be told about war, sir.'

  Lindsay heard himselfretort angrily, `And neither do I, Number One, so do as I damn well say!'

  When Goss remained stockstill, his cap crushed under his arm, he added, `Whatever role we are given, wherever we are sent, things are going to be hard. If I am called to action I want a ship's company working as a team, one unit, do you understand? Not some collection of trained and untrained men, ex-merchant seamen and others brought back from retirement.'' He was hoarse, and could feel his heart pumping against his ribs. The earlier sensation of control was slipping away, yet he had to make Goss understand. `A ship of war is only as strong as her people, d'you see that? People!'

  `If you say so, sir.'

  `Good.'

  He walked to a chair and slumped into it. `You have been at sea long enough to know what can happen. The Atlantic is a killing-ground and no place for unwary idealists. I know how you feel about this ship, at least I think I do. You may believe that by keeping up the old appearances you'll make them survive. Believe me, you won't, quitethe opposite. Many of the.new hands come from training depots. Depots which up to a year or so back were holiday camps for factory workers and mill girls in the north of England. But after a while the trainees believed they were in naval establishments and progressed accordingly. Likewise this ship, so see that my orders are executed as of today.'

  `Aye, aye, sir.' Goss sounded hoarse.