He assembled the crew on the deck below the bridge. Only the chief engineer was left below. The steward appeared at the door of the mess, his white coat splashed with egg and with an empty HP sauce bottle in his hand.
Instow believed in telling his crew what was happening – or what he thought was happening. There were twenty on deck. ‘There’s a convoy, a big one, coming through the Strait on a westerly course,’ he said. ‘They think there’s a chance it will be heavily attacked by the enemy, by aircraft and surface vessels, probably E-boats – and you already know E-boats can do forty knots.’
He saw some of his men look towards the pom-pom, almost as toy-like as its name, and the pair of ex-army Lewis guns. They just provided sound effects. ‘Any questions?’ he asked.
A cockney gunner, who always had something to say, asked: ‘When will we be getting shore leave, sir?’
A few of them laughed.
The two destroyers had cut their speed and were now lolling in the sea. Instow’s vessel caught up and lolled alongside them. An upper-crust voice blared through a megaphone. ‘Petrel, keep to our leeside,’ it ordered. ‘You’ll be safer there.’
‘If they wanted us to be safe why bring us out?’ said Instow to Mancroft standing on the other side of the bridge. The young sub-lieutenant was tense. He never looked like someone in whom you could confide. The man at the wheel smirked. ‘Looks like our convoy is coming up astern,’ said Mancroft as if glad to say something. ‘There’s enough of them. Dozens. You wouldn’t think they’d risk bringing them through all at once would you, sir, all bunched together like that.’
‘Destination USA, I expect,’ said Instow instead of answering. ‘From London. Short of going around Scotland and risking it off Norway it’s the only way out.’
Through his binoculars Instow could see the ships now spread like a forest over the English side of the Channel. He said: ‘Maybe we want to encourage Jerry to come out and fight.’
‘What will they think of next?’ muttered Mancroft.
Hendry just made it to the gate of the aerodrome with steam rising from the bonnet of his little car. The corporal of the guard sniffed. ‘That’s cooking nicely, sir.’
‘Thought I’d never get it here,’ Hendry said. ‘Bloody thing.’ He kicked the car, but without venom, and regarded the corporal pleadingly. ‘Deal with it for me, will you, corp?’ he said. ‘I’m going to be flying this morning and I can’t worry about it now.’ He leaned in and switched off the engine but the car continued to sizzle quietly. ‘Bloody thing,’ he repeated.
‘I’ll see to it, sir,’ said the corporal amiably. He was fifteen years older. ‘When the workshops have done with yesterday’s mess, I’ll get somebody to look at it.’
Hendry thanked him. ‘I hope they’ve put my prop back,’ he said. Quickly he started across the grass and then the tarmac to the workshop hangar. His plane was in there with three others, a Spitfire, a Hurricane full of holes and an Autogiro, yellow as a canary, the first helicopter. ‘Where’s my prop?’ he demanded pointing at the bare nose of his plane.
The mechanics looked up almost guiltily from their oil. A sergeant came over. ‘Not come in yet, sir.’
‘Christ,’ said Hendry dismal as a child. ‘They said today. They damned well promised.’
‘Jerry’s bombed the factory in Southampton, sir. They’re trying their best.’
‘They said today,’ repeated Hendry sulkily. ‘And I bet there’s not a spare crate anywhere.’
‘Not one, sir. If they’re in one piece they’re flying.’ He glanced at the bright Autogiro. ‘Unless you’d like to fly that little novelty.’
‘Thanks, I’m not that keen.’
He went to his billet, threw his overnight bag on to his bed, then turned and strode over to the operations hut. The pilots of the squadron were sprawled outside, on the grass in the sun, as if at a picnic. Their fighter planes were waiting. An armourer wearing no tunic, his trousers held up by braces, was feeding belts of ammunition into a magazine. As Hendry neared the others laughed and cheered. ‘Have a good night, Toby?’
‘Wonderful,’ he grunted. ‘Like the films. My crate isn’t ready.’
‘Should look where you’re going, son,’ called one of the pilots. ‘That tree looks a bit sick.’
Greville, the wing commander, came out of the operations hut. ‘Right, chaps,’ he said briskly. ‘Something’s brewing.’
Like eager boys they got up from the grass and jostled into the operations hut, tugging their Mae West life jackets with them. They sprawled randomly on the chairs of the wooden room. Hendry stood at the back. He knew Greville was ignoring him. He ground his teeth.
The wing commander unrolled a map on the central blackboard. It was like being in a schoolroom. ‘We’ve got a whacking great convoy, up to a hundred ships, plus escorts, about to go through the Strait of Dover, heading on a westerly course,’ he pointed. ‘The Germans will already have sniffed them out. They’re in a poor way if they haven’t. They’ll attack with aircraft and surface craft.’ Hendry turned and walked disconsolately out of the door. He stood smoking against the wall, again like a schoolboy. The door opened and the pilots clattered noisily out. ‘Flap your arms, Toby,’ one of them laughed. ‘Maybe you’ll take off.’
‘Bollocks,’ muttered Hendry. He watched them race towards the planes. The mechanics had already started the engines and the propellers were spinning. Greville came slowly from the operations room. ‘Bad luck, Hendry,’ he said watching the other pilots. ‘We haven’t got a kite for you.’
‘I know, sir,’ said Hendry. ‘You wouldn’t think it would take so long to get a spare prop.’
‘Delayed by enemy action,’ murmured Greville. ‘Perhaps it will turn up later. There are no spares. We can’t even cannibalise anything. There’s nothing to cannibalise.’ He patted the young man on the arm. ‘Why don’t you sit in a deckchair and enjoy the sunshine,’ he suggested. ‘It’s going to be a nice day.’
The lean fighter planes were revving, emitting puffs of oily smoke, and spinning in tight circles before they followed each other in an eager line to the tarmac runway. Hendry watched them miserably. As each of the eight took off he gave it a resigned wave and some of the pilots waved back. ‘Bollocks,’ he grumbled again.
It was a perfect day for being in the air, a perfect day for a flying battle, the sky blue and peerless. Where he stood the sun was warm, as warm as any peacetime sun he could remember. The grass waved with buttercups; when all the squadron had gone he moodily kicked at them. He watched the southern horizon hopefully but nobody was coming back.
He went into his wooden billet and then into the adjoining mess, vacant of airmen except for the stiffly white-coated steward who looked up from a cup-strewn table and said: ‘Coffee, sir?’
The telephone on the wall rang as he accepted the cup. The steward picked up the receiver and said: ‘Yes, he’s just here now.’ Hendry went towards the proffered earpiece eagerly. Perhaps they had found a plane for him after all. Maybe his propeller had arrived.
It was his mother. That morning she was using her impatient voice, up a notch or two: her deafness varied in degree, usually depending on what was being said to her.
‘Toby,’ she stated severely, ‘you must come home at once. Today. I insist. Your father is not at all well again. His usual trouble. He may have to go to hospital.’
Hendry let out a sigh that became a grunt. ‘Mother,’ he said, then carefully spaced the words: ‘This is not boarding school. It is the Royal Air Force. I can’t just come home.’
‘That is most tiresome,’ she returned. ‘Surely you can get leave? Lots of servicemen get it, some seem to be off most of the time. What do they call it, compassionate leave?’
‘I can’t get leave just like that. Remember we’re fighting a war . . .’
‘The war, the war, everyone seems to use the excuse of the war. There was not a farrier to be found yesterday.’
As she was calling to him down the telepho
ne he became abruptly conscious of two swift shadows across the mess window. ‘Duck, sir!’ bellowed the barman who was already doing so himself. There came a series of explosions: the wooden walls of the mess trembled and the coffee cups on the table shivered. A pane of glass dropped into the room. Hendry fell flat on the floor, engulfed by clouds of rising dust. The earpiece of the telephone swung close by. He could still hear his mother blathering. He caught it and called into it: ‘Wait! Wait a moment, Mother!’
Her pained protest came back: ‘There’s no need to shout!’ she shouted.
After two minutes with no further detonations the steward rose from behind the table. He shakily rearranged a single cup and then made cautiously towards the door. As he opened it one of the hinges collapsed and it sagged outwards. He pushed it aside and surveyed the scene. ‘They’ve hopped it, sir, I think,’ he called over his shoulder to Hendry who was sitting on the floor. ‘Dropped a stick of bombs on the runway by the look of it.’
Hendry caught hold of the earpiece and said: ‘Hello?’ He hoped she had gone but she was still there.
‘What was that hammering?’ she asked petulantly. ‘I heard hammering.’
‘Bombing, Mother,’ he corrected. ‘The Germans.’
‘They’re so fidgety,’ she said. He could hear her hurt, deep breath. ‘Now are you coming home? Your father looks quite terrible.’
‘I’m sorry about Dad.’ Then he lied: ‘I will ask, but it’s doubtful.’
‘Don’t be a chump, Toby. It’s the least you can do,’ she whined and the line went blank.
Hendry replaced the receiver on its hook. ‘Mothers,’ he groaned.
‘Mine keeps sending me socks,’ agreed the steward. He stopped rearranging the cups and listened. ‘Someone’s coming back,’ he said. ‘One of ours by the sound.’
Hendry followed him to the door. The steward attempted to push the broken hinge back into place. Above them a solitary Spitfire circled the airfield. ‘Taffy Lewis,’ said Hendry seeing the aircraft’s number.
Together they watched the plane lose height. ‘I hope he’s spotted those craters in the runway,’ said the steward.
The Spitfire came in over the trees at the distant end and made a bumpy landing on the grass. ‘They told him,’ said Hendry.
There was a bicycle leaning against the mess wall. Hendry caught hold of it and jumping over the crossbar pedalled towards the landed aircraft, its propeller still spinning. ‘Every sodding time, they pinch my bike,’ grumbled the steward.
The station fire engine and ambulance were already alongside the plane as Hendry bumped on the bicycle over the grass. The wing commander’s little car was busily dodging the craters in the runway, tooting its horn as though ordering them out of the way. Hendry braked the bike, dismounted and flung it on the grass. They were lifting Lewis with difficulty from the cockpit. He complained they were doing it the wrong way. They took off his flying helmet; his face was like paper. ‘I’m leaking bloody blood,’ he croaked. He saw Hendry. ‘You wanted a kite, you can have this one,’ he said. ‘The kite’s all right. It’s me that’s been pranged.’ There were bullet holes in the fuselage.
Dumbly Hendry watched as they carted Lewis, dribbling blood, to the ambulance. Wing Commander Greville spoke with the injured airman before they lifted him into the ambulance. He came towards Hendry. ‘Poor fellow,’ he said. ‘Full of holes.’
‘I know, sir,’ said Hendry flatly. ‘I saw.’ He looked directly at Greville. ‘But the crate is all right, more or less in one piece.’
The wing commander climbed on to the Spitfire’s wing and grimaced as he looked into the tight cockpit. ‘Take it if you want, once the mess has been cleared up,’ he called down. ‘They need as much help as they can get over the Channel.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hendry. Inside he felt the excitement rising. Swiftly he looked about him.
A sergeant said: ‘Fifteen minutes, sir. We’ll refuel and try and mop up this lot.’
The sergeant turned to get in a fifteen-hundredweight truck beside the driver. ‘Give me a lift, will you?’ said Hendry. ‘I’ll get my togs.’
Hendry jumped into the open back. He could feel his heart drumming. The small truck started across the airfield bouncing around the craters made by the bombs. They dropped him outside his billet and he rushed in and picked up his flying helmet and his uninflated yellow life jacket. Struggling into them he waited for the truck to return. It was on its way when the steward came to the still sagging door of the officers’ mess. ‘Your mother’s been on again, sir,’ he called. ‘She said will you ring her back urgently.’
The blue truck was approaching. ‘No!’ called Hendry as he jumped into the back. The vehicle bucked across the grass towards the plane now ringed by ground crew, armourers and men feeding hoses from the refuelling bowser. The sergeant and the driver jumped out. They had rolls of towelling and a pile of newspapers. ‘Quickest way, I reckon, sir,’ said the sergeant as he climbed on the wing to get into the cockpit. ‘We’ll soon wipe it up.’ He threw one of the newspapers aside. ‘That’s today’s Mirror.’
‘Do it quick,’ urged Hendry. ‘Blood doesn’t worry me. Not Taffy’s blood, anyway.’
He stood almost stamping his foot with impatience. Greville was approaching, on foot this time, at a lope. A map was flapping in his right hand. ‘Pretty straightforward,’ he said puffing a little. He spread the map on the grass and he and Hendry got on their hands and knees. ‘You’ll only have to get to fifteen hundred and you’d have to be blind to miss it. It looks like one hell of a scrap. Ships, planes, the full house.’
‘I’ll fly towards the smoke, sir,’ said Hendry.
A ground crew man was handing the blood-soaked towels and newspaper pages down to the sergeant who rolled them and threw them on the grass. The armourer shouted: ‘All ready, sir.’
The fuel hoses clattered out and the bowser moved away. The man in the cockpit, his face taut, handed over the last of the reddened towels, then leaned over the side of the plane and threw up his breakfast. ‘I’m glad he didn’t chuck that lot up inside,’ Hendry said climbing on the wing, fastening his flying helmet and strapping the life jacket.
‘I’ll just spread these on the seat, sir,’ said the sergeant holding more newspapers. ‘It’s still a bit sticky.’
‘Good luck,’ called Greville a little lamely. Hendry swung himself into the paper-draped cockpit. He could smell Lewis’s blood. He gave the thumbs-up sign. Two ground crew swung the propeller and it clattered, then flew into noisy life. He moved the plane in a half circle and, pointing it along the grass, urged it forward, faster then faster, easing away from the ground, up over the trees and into the warm morning and the empty sky. He felt a huge surge of excitement and exhilaration. At a thousand feet, he saw the distant smoke of the battle and, still climbing, headed that way.
By eleven o’clock the fight was spread over eighty square miles of the English Channel, the merchant ships pushing stoutly west, some with barrage balloons hanging above them like bemused onlookers.
On the bridge of his small minesweeper it seemed to Instow that the balloons were laboriously towing the ships. German planes came in formations, the speedy Messerschmitts, the fighter-bombers and the operatically screaming Stukas. They curled in the smoke-hung sky with the Spitfires and Hurricanes fighting them like dogs. Every few minutes an aircraft would turn away from the battle as though in disgust, leaving a bent feather of oily smoke as it fell.
The destroyers and smaller escort ships fired salvo upon salvo, almost convulsed in the water by the force of their own gunfire, lost in their own smoke. The speedy German E-boats had joined the action, wriggling joyfully among the ships loosing their torpedoes and their gunfire. Two merchant ships were hopelessly sinking and one of the destroyers blazed at the stern.
At the Marine Hotel, chambermaids were standing on tiptoe on the window sills to watch. Almost every vantage point in the town was crammed with spectators, men with rolled-up sleeves (some wit
h knotted handkerchiefs protecting their heads from the sun), women in bright print dresses, children jumping with excitement. It was a thrilling free show.
At the hospital, Sister Nancy Cotton was again trying to get patients away from the windows and back to their beds. She tried pulling down the blackout blinds but in a moment they were raised again. Women in labour dragged themselves from the maternity ward not wanting to miss a moment. The cliffs were thicker with people than on a peacetime July day; people pointing, lining the precarious paths, others standing on benches dedicated to the memory of citizens who had looked out from there on blameless afternoons. The town’s buses had stopped and spectators were crammed on their upper decks.
The battle, fought out to sea, was fleetingly visible through the smoke, and deeply audible. Sometimes a pall of smoke would entirely obscure the spread-out fleet and the crowds would set up a great groan until a breeze cleared the sky and the ships emerged once more, guns flaring.
On his bridge, Instow was beginning to wonder why they were there if it was not to make up the numbers. His gunners had small chance to identify enemy planes. Just sighting them was difficult enough. He was hoping the E-boats would not search them out under the lee of the destroyer. ‘Captain,’ called Sub-Lieutenant Mancroft from the edge of the bridge.
‘Yes, son?’
‘I’m scared.’
‘So am I,’ Instow shouted back.
As he said it a low, darting E-boat, triumphantly flying the streaming pennant of the German navy, rounded the stern of the destroyer – as close, it seemed, as a peeling knife on a potato. Instow yelled orders to the gunners and attempted to slew the minesweeper sideways. The pair of Lewis guns and the pom-poms made a shattering noise even above the din all around, but did not hit anything. He thought he saw the German captain laughing.
The E-boat turned almost in its own length, like a Brighton speedboat, and came back at the destroyer. It fired a single torpedo, aiming for the warship but brutally hitting Instow’s minesweeper on her wooden bow and almost lifting her clear of the sea. Alarms screeched, there were shouts and howls and curses. Instow picked himself up from the bridge and straightened his steel helmet. He saw Mancroft sitting oddly in the corner against a bulwark, his face bloody, his mouth screaming without making a sound.
Dover Beach Page 6
