Might Sarah have told the old man about what had happened at Mullbergh?
He’d been dropping off to sleep. The question burst like a fire-cracker in his brain, woke him with a start. He’d moved sharply, dislodged the blanket and practically dislocated his neck.
‘Why not lie down?’
A murmur from Jake Cameron – who’d swapped places with the young stoker, Nick saw. He must have dozed for longer than he’d thought. He rubbed his neck: he’d pulled a muscle in it. Nodding to Cameron, and feeling sick now from the oppressive atmosphere. He moved as quietly as he could, hearing a gentle snoring which he thought came from Hobday, and spreading the blanket with two folds in it so that it was long and narrow, bunk-shaped. Cameron was back in his own thoughts, gazing tiredly at the shadowed, moisture-running deckhead. The dripping from it was as frequent now as if one was on the fringe of a thundery rainstorm, and the corticene covering of the deck had big wet areas from it. Nick still had that question in his mind as he lay down on his blanket: Out of guilt, remorse?
No. She was a very moral, self-disciplined person, and she’d been shocked at her own behaviour; but however badly she’d come to feel about it she was also a sensible, very level-headed creature. As well as beautiful and sweet and – good. And it had happened: it was still incredible, marvellous as well as frightening—
Why on earth had she gone down to London, of her own volition, to join a husband whom she loathed?
Whatever the answer was, it was not that she could have told him. She knew only too well what sort of man she’d married. Sir John Everard would have shown no mercy: he’d have destroyed her. He’d have destroyed Nick too, if he could have found a way to do it. And Sarah would have realised that; for his sake alone she wouldn’t have dreamt of – of trying to ease her conscience by confessing. And yet she had gone down to London and spent ten days with her husband in the house in Curzon Street. She must have heard that he was back from France about a week after Nick had left Mullbergh to take up his job on Bayly’s staff at Queenstown; and rushed straight down as if she and her husband were lovebirds who couldn’t wait to be reunited!
In the middle of July, that had been. She’d told him about it quite matter-of-factly in the letter that she wrote soon after her return to Mullbergh. It had included the news that his father was likely to be sent home soon, for good. Brigadier Sir John Everard had been commanding an equestrian establishment – remount depot and riding-school for newly-commissioned officers; it wasn’t needed now, apparently, and the War Office had no other job for him. Well, the war was ending, anyway, and presumably they’d decided they had enough horses and enough officers to ride them. She’d written in that letter, Whatever the reason, he should be home well before the end of the year, on what is called ‘indefinite leave’. It was for discussions at the War Office that he had come back at such short notice. Have you written to him, in recent months? I think you should. There are matters that must now be forgotten, however we may feel about them … Then there was a passage to the effect that the ending of the war would be a time for families to re-unite, and how much happiness was in store; the suggestion seemed to be that she, Sarah, looked forward to some new kind of happiness with his father. Reading it through again he’d decided that she’d phrased it badly, that she’d really been talking about the country in general and not about herself at all. It was the only interpretation he could put on it, because if she’d intended it to be read exactly as she’d written it then it was a sham, a gross pretence. He couldn’t believe that she’d be capable of such dishonesty.
She’d always been open and straightforward with him. And he’d doubted her only once. It hadn’t been an honest or justifiable doubt, only his own jealousy sharpened by the knowledge that he’d be leaving Mullbergh next morning. His appointment to Admiral Bayly’s staff had arrived in that day’s post: he was to report in London forthwith for his routing instructions. He and Sarah were in the small morning-room at Mullbergh; it had a french window opening to a south-facing terrace and she’d turned it into a sort of office. She’d mentioned Alastair Kinloch-Stuart, an old, close friend of hers and of her family’s, who’d been killed in France in April. For a while Nick had suspected the relationship between Stuart and Sarah; he’d thought he had some reason to, although he knew now there’d been nothing in it. He was ashamed that he’d thought such a thing of her, now. When the news of his death had reached her she’d written to Nick — wanting his sympathy, and telling him everything there was to tell: and he’d accepted without question that she’d done nothing to encourage the man’s feelings for her. She’d been fond of him, and lonely, and that was all. There’d been no need, even, for her to tell him that much. He’d wished that he’d never doubted her, and thanked God that she was quite unaware he ever had. But now, suddenly, because she’d mentioned the man’s name and he, Nick, was having to leave her and hating it, he’d uttered some sneering, offensive comment almost before he’d known he was going to say it. Something about ‘replacing’ him quickly enough.
Well, there was an RFC captain in the recuperative wing with whom he’d thought Sarah had been spending too much time.
She’d spun round from the window, bright and hard with quick surprise and anger.
‘What did you say?’
Stupidly, he’d felt he had to stand by what he’d blurted out. She’d left him to dine alone, and he had plenty of time to realise what a mess he’d made. He’d gone up to bed about midnight, feeling absolutely miserable. Sarah meant everything to him; she had done ever since he’d been a child. Of all the people he could have hurt, she’d be the last he’d dream of hurting: and he’d done it on his last night. He couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of his departure in the morning, and Sarah taking care to be busy with her patients, shut away from him. He’d leave without seeing her, without a word … In the small hours, desperate now, he went to her room and knocked. After several minutes and more knockings, she called, ‘What is it?’ He told her, ‘Me – Nick. Sarah, please—’
‘Wait a minute.’
Her tone had been impatient, snappy. Well, he didn’t expect much else. But at least he’d see her and apologise. Better than to leave Mullbergh without even saying goodbye.
Her key turned in the lock, and he saw the door pull back. She was wearing a silk dressing-gown and her brown hair was a wild, loose mass; it made her look even younger and more beautiful than she did when it was tied up in its bun. She stared at him calmly, appraisingly: for a second he was remembering another occasion on which he’d come to her room in the night. He’d been woken by her scream: there’d been a door smashed in, and his father in a violent, drunken rage. Years ago …
‘Well, Nick?’
‘I want to say I’m sorry. Terribly, frightfully sorry, I—’
Smiling at him now. That gentle, vulnerable mouth … ‘You were a bit silly, I think. But—’
‘You’ll forgive me?’
‘What a silly question!’
‘Oh, thank God—’
He’d put his arms round her and kissed her cheek, and he felt her arms slide up round his neck. Relief was overwhelming: he was happy enough, suddenly, to weep for joy. And without knowing it was going to happen, he’d started doing exactly that. She felt the wetness on her face.
‘Nick, my darling, but you’re crying! Oh, my precious—’
He couldn’t remember which of them pushed the door shut.
Chapter 7
Jake clenched his teeth as the chain-sweep clanked, crashed its way across E.57’s stern. This was the second time the thing had found her: last time – ten minutes ago, but it felt like an hour – it had dragged over just like this, and gone on, leaving the silence to grow as the beat of screws faded across the straits. The trawler – a new one, not the one still anchored up there – had made another pass without the sweep locating her; now it was here again, and on the end of the chain there’d be grapnel hooks designed to claw and hang on to what it found.
The air was poisonous. Bulkheads running wet. The chain, moving in a succession of crashes linked by the steady, rasping slither, was an instrument of torture in itself. All you could do was wait – and stifle the imagination, not let your mind see what was happening outside. He began to use a soft eraser to tidy the chart, rubbing off old position lines. He thought the Turks might be under the impression they’d made a kill. If they believed otherwise they’d—
A jolt, and a heavy thud from aft: the grapnel had caught and held and now the strain was coming on the chain, taking the bight out of it while its weight acted as a spring. The submarine jerked and began to slew, pivot on her anchored forepart. Sweat-sheened faces stared upwards: then, as men took hold of their own reactions, glanced at each other and away again. Some frowns: a shrugging grin, a man’s eyebrows raised disdainfully; Jake saw Louis Lewis’s lips move, and it occurred to him that behind those stubbled, pallid faces there’d be a variety of prayers forming. Even if you weren’t exactly devout in normal times it was almost physically impossible in a moment like this not to surrender to the urge to ask for help. He began his own: Please God, let—
‘Time we moved, I think.’ Wishart spoke easily but he looked like something out of a grave. ‘Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m—’
The noise – scraping, straining – was suddenly much louder. It had a penetrating quality like metal being gouged: and it gouged the mind, it—
Stopped!
Silence – except for that throbbing, high above them. The boat hung motionless, free again, while the slow beat of screws moved on like a churning pulse. Wishart finished the sentence that had been interrupted: ‘I’m hungry.’
At noon, he’d had ‘up spirits’ piped – in a whisper – and as well as the issue of rum for all hands they’d had corned beef and pusser’s biscuits. The extra rum would be written off in the books as spillage. For the brief period of the meal men had crept about barefooted and spoken only in whispers, and after it they’d all turned in again. Now it was just on ten o’clock. They’d been dived for nearly thirty hours.
CPO Crabb muttered, “’Ear, ’ear, sir.’ His beginnings of a beard were jet-black, with none of the grey that patched his head. Wishart patted Hobday on his shoulder: ‘Let’s have her off the putty, Number One.’
‘Open “A” suction and inboard vent. Pump from for’ard.’
Andy Stone had the suction valve open on the pump, and McVeigh pushed the starter-switch on its motor. Lewis had opened the main-line connection to the tank.
‘Pumpin’, sir.’ Stone had gagged down the relief valve. Wishart murmured, ‘Watch her like a hawk now.’ He wiped his eyes; like everyone else’s they were having fits of watering. It was the battery, the acid reek rising from near-spent cells into oxygen-starved air. Hobday nodded, acknowledging Wishart’s caution. Nothing had turned up yet to account for the sudden heaviness, all the pumping they’d had to do after the mine had nearly finished them. These were hardly circumstances in which one would want to lose control and shoot up to the surface.
It all seemed to be happening in slow motion. And for the Turk with his sweep, third time might be lucky. Don’t worry for two seconds about me …
‘Bubble’s shiftin’, sir.’ Crabb’s voice was a rasp. Jake saw Burtenshaw watching from Wishart’s bunk. When the chain-sweep thing had started half an hour ago and the hands had been sent quietly to their diving stations, he’d got up there out of the way. Nick Everard was in Hobday’s, and Robins for once was bunk-less, chair-borne, and peevish-looking perhaps because of that. Or just being his usual self. Jake felt his own weight leaning more heavily than usual against the chart table, and he realised that as the boat had lifted herself clear of the seabed her list to port had increased. Just as he noticed it he heard Hobday say, ‘Stop pumping. She’s off, sir.’ Anyone could have told him that. For nearly half a minute the feel of her had been quite different. Jake thought, Come on, come on now …
‘Slow ahead starboard, full field. What’s causing this list?’
‘Slow ahead starboard full field, sir.’
‘One hundred feet.’
‘Hundred feet, sir.’ Hobday’s gingery stubble shone like pale gold around his sharp-edged jaw. The ’planes were tilting upward. Weatherspoon reported, ‘Enemy surface vessel is turning, sir.’ As she rose, the list was still increasing. Even two or three degrees could feel a lot, but this must be six or seven. Wishart said, ‘Give me a course up-straits, pilot.’
‘North forty-one east, sir, but—’
‘Port five. Steer north forty-one east.’
‘Port five, sir …’
Jake tried again: ‘Sir, that course depends on—’
‘I know, pilot, I know.’ What he knew was that they didn’t really know anything about their position, except so far as one might guess it.
‘There’s one shallow patch beyond the bulge – Kodjuk — and to starboard, sir. But if we clear the headland we should go wide of the shallows too.’
The gauge showed one-oh-seven feet. Hobday was adjusting her trim virtually by half-pints as she rose. Jake was trying to remember in fuller detail the confused minutes following the explosion of the mine, and in particular that noise – unless he’d dreamt it or imagined it when he was groggy-minded – of an inrush of water. Of rushing water. The recollection came to him because he was thinking about this list and whatever might have caused it: explosion, list, heaviness, all simultaneous and all therefore connected. There was a slant of about ten degrees on her now; you had to haul yourself up the incline or hold on to something so as not to slide down it. Wishart murmured to Hobday, ‘Can’t think why they didn’t give us transverse trimming tanks.’
Some of the E-class had them, and some didn’t. There wasn’t normally much use for them; and even if they’d had them and been able to trim the list off her it wouldn’t have answered the vital question — why was she listing?
‘Course north forty-one east, sir.’
‘Depth one hundred feet, sir.’
‘Very good.’
‘Stop the pump.’ Apart from the list, he’d got her trimmed finely. Bubble a degree aft, ’planes amidships, needle static at the ordered depth and only one motor slow ahead. The lopsidedness spoilt the effect considerably. Hobday asked Wishart, ‘Spare hands to the high side, sir?’ He meant, use crew-weight to balance her. Wishart, instead of answering, pointed upwards. Jake heard it at once: it was the trawler coming back, the one towing its grapnel sweep.
He wondered if the Turks would have any way of knowing they’d hooked her once and that she’d spat out the hook.
‘Slow ahead port, full field.’
‘Slow ahead port, full field, sir … Both motors slow ahead, sir.’
‘Seventy feet.’
The ’planes swung over again. Enemy propeller noise was louder and closer, but it was likely to pass astern, Jake thought. And Wishart was taking advantage of the Turk’s own noise to speed up a little, hoping it would drown the sounds the submarine made and deafen the shore hydrophones. Jake thought, Perhaps now we’ll fool him, slip away … But he checked that quick spark of hope, reminded himself that there could very likely be more nets ahead, or mines, or both, and that at this end of the straits, coming up towards the town and harbour of Gallipoli, there would as likely as not be a shoaling of patrol craft. One had also to bear in mind that there were still a dozen miles to cover before they reached the Marmara, and that plenty could happen in twelve miles of Dardanelles.
Condensation dripped like slow rain. Everywhere it glistened, trickled over sweating steel. The leaky rivets added their quota of wetness: the broad streak of it had a different shine from the wet enamelling over which it ran en route downwards to the bilge. He wondered about the shaft gland: that port screw was being used now. And using both motors meant using twice as much battery juice as running on only one had done. Theoretically the box should be flat already … Twelve miles: with the deep tide, say four knots. Not less than three hours �
�� uninterrupted. He wiped his eyes: it would be wrong to rub them, rub the acid into them. McVeigh, who should have known better – he looked like some sort of hobgoblin over there, or a beast at bay crouching in its cave – had been rubbing his, and they were bright red, streaming. Breathing open-mouthed – one tended to, when the air was as poor as this, it made you feel as if you were jogging uphill all the time – McVeigh was displaying his narrow, ratty-looking teeth. He’d have looked at home gnawing the bark off trees, Jake thought; the image that came into his mind amused him and he must have smiled, because Wishart, glancing his way just then, looked surprised and asked him, ‘Happy in your work, pilot?’
‘It’s a grand life, sir.’
‘Ah. You’ll all think so presently, when we’re having our breakfast in the Marmara.’
CPO Crabb growled, ‘’Ell of a big breakfas’ it’ll need to be.’
Wishart looked just about played out. It must have come on suddenly; this afternoon, when Jake had been on watch and the skipper had sat chatting with him and the other watchkeeper for an hour or more, he hadn’t looked tired at all. He asked Crabb now, ‘Did they give us plenty of fresh eggs, cox’n, this trip?’
‘Not so dusty, sir… But there’s bacon an’ beef sausage and fried bread – bread’s ’ard, but fried it won’t—’
‘What’ll we eat the rest of the patrol, for heaven’s sake?’
‘We’re victualled for a month, sir. An’ there’s chickens in them Turk dhows, an’—’
Hobday reported, ‘Seventy feet, sir.’ He repeated his earlier suggestion: ‘Try sending spare hands to the high side, sir?’
‘If you like.’
‘Or a puff of air in number four?’
‘Not that.’
Weatherspoon said. ‘Enemy passin’ astern left to right, sir.’
Wishart nodded. ‘We’ve slipped our chain, I think.’
‘Not the one was sweepin’, sir – the one what anchored. She’s turnin’ towards, sir.’ Jake thought, Damn them… The leading tel said, ‘Revs decreasin’ – slowin’, sir.’
Patrol to the Golden Horn Page 16
