The Torch Bearers: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 5

by Alexander Fullerton

  Daylight, poking over from the direction of Spain, found seven merchantmen in convoy, steering northeastward at three knots. They were in three columns, the columns only six hundred yards apart to give a tighter and more easily defensible block of ships. In the centre the Dongola led the Burbridge and the St Eliza between two shorter outer columns—the Sweetcastle and the Mount Trembling to port, the Sukow Trader and the Lossiemouth to starboard. Seven plodding hulls, not all of them whole; half an hour ago they’d looked grey but they were jetblack now as the sea around them turned silver with the dawn.

  The Burbridge was listing heavily to starboard, and the Lossiemouth was so much down by the bows that she had only about eighteen inches of freeboard at her for’ard welldeck. Waves broke right over her at that point, foamed around the cargo hatches. The Burbridge’s damage had been well below the waterline, flooding a refrigerated store and some other compartments on that side; she’d had no casualties among passengers or crew.

  The Mount Trembling’s more sheltered upper deck spaces were crowded with survivors for whom she’d had no room below. Stella’s load—from the Cimba—had already been transferred to the Sukow Trader. The Sweetcastle had most of the men who’d come alive out of the Redgulf Star, and Mackenzie, Harbinger’s surgeon-lieutenant, had transferred to her by seaboat to look after them. In that last assault the Burbridge and the oiler had each been hit by one torpedo, and the Cressida by two—which had sent her straight to the bottom. Then a minute later a single hit from another salvo had sunk the Baltimore Cross. The torpedoes that caused so much havoc must have passed closely ahead and astern of the Sukow Trader: all the casualties had been in that corner of the formation, only with the Burbridge deeper inside than the others; and as the convoy had been turning, her beam had been exposed just at that moment.

  The Redgulf Star had blown herself apart. She’d left a couple of acres of sea on fire, and many of her crew must have been in it.

  Not long after that sudden flood of casualties the Colombia, who’d shifted earlier to take the place of the Coriolanus at the head of column two, had been hit by two torpedoes, dropped astern and sunk in about twenty minutes. It was fairly certain those torpedoes had come from one or other of the two U-boats that Harbinger had attacked, out on that bow as the convoy made its turn. Harbinger’s collision with the second one had torn away some plating and guardrails on the port side amidships, and left deep score-marks down her side, the full length of the iron-deck section. Some curved railing that had never belonged to her had been found wrapped round the port-side depth-charge thrower: it hadn’t done the thrower any harm, but it had very much annoyed Mr Timberlake, for some reason. There was no way of telling whether the U-boat had survived or not.

  Nick had signalled to the destroyers who were supposed to be joining him, giving them an amended position, course and speed, also giving Scarr’s estimated positions of some of the sinkings where boatloads of survivors might be found. The Orangeman was a case in point, but there’d been other stages when it hadn’t been possible to hang around for more than a perfunctory search. So now Wesley and Vicious would cover swiftly the route over which the convoy had dragged itself so painfully during the night, and join the escort force by dusk at the latest.

  In another signal he’d reported—amongst other things—the loss of the Redgulf Star, requesting a rendezvous with some other oiler within the next forty-eight hours. Presumably there’d be follow-up “Torch” convoys from which one could be borrowed.

  Harbinger pitched regularly to a long, westerly swell. This was a gentler, softer dawn. Wind force not much more than two, sea still white-streaked but tamer, lazier.

  Well fed? Even gorged?

  “Sir—”

  Wragge—bridge messenger—pointing, gulping, too excited to get words out … Chubb, at the binnacle, beat him to it, whooping “Aircraft, sir!”

  He swung his glasses, focused them on the Sunderland as it came droning out of the rising dawn. What was this—Christmas, suddenly? Two destroyers, and air patrols?

  What am I supposed to do? Be grateful? Give thanks?

  In time, perhaps, he would. Not yet, though. Not for a long time yet.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Telephone conversation between Marshals Goering and Kesselring, quoted in the diary of Marshal Cavallero, Chief of the Italian General Staff:

  Kesselring: “Herr Reichsmarschall—supposing a convoy attempts a landing in Africa—”

  Goering: “To my mind a landing will be attempted in Corsica, in Sardinia, or at Derna or Tripoli.”

  Kesselring: “It is more probable at a North African port.”

  Goering: “Yes, but not a French one.”

  Outside her bedroom window, the rain drummed down. It had started before dawn this morning and there’d been no break in it. It drove slanting across the front of the house, rattling noisily on the shutters which she’d hooked slightly open. It had got warmer, with the rain.

  Jack had always enjoyed matinées. With Fiona especially: weekend afternoons in her flat in Eaton Square. Destination—ultimate but also soonest possible—of Lieutenant Jack Everard, DSC, Royal Navy … He wondered—as he did quite often, when he had so much time on his hands—how much of his fascination with Fiona had been due to her being Nick’s girl.

  Probably quite a lot, initially. But only initially. Since then, he’d swallowed the hook.

  “Heidi?”

  She smiled in her half-sleep. Or it could be that she was really asleep and dreaming, reacting to the sound of her own name in his voice. Her dark-skinned face lost ten years, became small-girlish in this total relaxation. Nobody seeing her would have thought she could be the mother of a child of Otto’s age.

  Jack still knew nothing at all about her—except that her name was Heidi. But he did know this was Saturday 7 November, and also that the child wouldn’t be home before tomorrow evening. Otto was going straight from school to spend the night elsewhere—at some school-friend’s house, he guessed. This morning Heidi had seen him off as usual; the morning routine had been unchanged, up to that stage, but as soon as her son was out of sight she’d been in a tearing hurry with the hens, just about throwing the food at them, and she’d run back into the house, more than walked. Moments later he’d heard her rushing upstairs and she’d burst in, gabbling happily and incomprehensibly, still talking at him while they kissed and he tried to ease her down on the mattress with him: she’d resisted it, and brought him down here instead. To a proper bed, with sheets and blankets, pillows …

  She’d brought lunch to the bed on a tray. Scrambled eggs and sausage, black bread spread with mutton-fat dripping, and apple tart. A feast. Naked, and in this half-light, she’d seemed really rather beautiful. She’d taken the plates away afterwards and washed up, then returned to bed and it had been as if they hadn’t seen each other for a week.

  His guess was it had been a long time for her, man-less for some reason, and for some other (or the same) reason estranged from the locals. Not from all of them, because she went somewhere with that basket of eggs, on weekdays. But estranged or frightened or under threat, vulnerable in some way. She hadn’t referred to her man again, so far as he knew. The only questions you could get anywhere with were those that could be put in simple combinations of word and gesture—“You—Heidi? Me, Jack …” And the calendar was useful; for instance, she’d told him about the child’s weekend arrangements by indicating his height—holding a hand flat at that level and saying “Otto … Otto?”Then pointing the way he’d gone, down to the lane, and to the calendar again, pointing it out—today, Saturday 7 November, to Sunday 8, and towards the end of Sunday Otto walking back in again.

  In fact he didn’t want to question her, about her background. This was only a staging-post en route to the Swiss border, just as the border would be a stage on his way to Fiona. It was Fiona he thought about in bed, not Heidi.

  The wireless was good for BBC programmes, if one could put up with a varying amount of static. He
’d tuned in to an overseas programme of news earlier on, and heard that the Eighth Army was well past Mersa in its westward pursuit of Rommel; also that the German Sixth Army under von Paulus was still bogged down in front of Stalingrad. Heidi had begun to look scared while he’d been listening to it, and the bulletin hadn’t finished when she’d reached over, throwing herself on top of him and switching it to German music. He hadn’t minded: he’d heard enough and he’d been cheered by it even to the extent of suffering Wagner. She’d been genuinely scared, though: she’d gone to the window and peered out into the rain-sodden yard, as if she really imagined someone out there might have heard the booming English voice. Jack had teased her, made jokes about chickens with long ears, and hers being German-speaking hens, so what the hell … She’d spat a lot of German at him urgently, angrily: she meant it, she genuinely did feel some danger threatening them. Or threatening her. He’d been up on his elbows on the pillows, enjoying the picture she made standing there naked in the gloom with the sound of the rain drumming behind the shutters and the awful music droning: he’d drawn a finger slowly across his throat and told her “Rommel kaput! Deutsche kaput!” Then thought immediately, as she still stared at him angrily out of those slanting eyes, a gleam of them in the dark face, that he might actually have hurt her. This could be an exclusively personal affair with her, and he had no evidence—other than her attitude to himself, which wasn’t proof of anything at all—to suggest she might not be a German patriot. A situation like this one could arise, he guessed, in England: a lonely, unhappy young woman, and a German on the run? Particularly a very good-looking, charming German? It wouldn’t need to relate to patriotism or politics; in this area a female could be as detached, self-sufficient and solitary as a cat. And as unreasoning … The way she’d been looking at him at that moment—more feline than anything other than a real cat could be. The eyes, and the walk as she’d moved back towards him, and—closer—the gleam of her small, white teeth: at risk of being clawed he’d opened the bedclothes to let her in.

  Wind force two, sky cloudy, visibility good. Seven merchantmen in convoy, and six escorts now to guard them.

  During the afternoon watch two friendly aircraft had been sighted, and in the first dog the destroyers had arrived from astern. The survivors they’d picked up, mostly from the Orangeman’s boats, were immediately transferred to the Burbridge and the Dongola, who made a lee for the ships’ boats to work in. With the sea as low as it was now you had to allow for the possibility of U-boats attacking in daylight, dived, periscope attacks, and he’d disposed his escorts to counter this. The two destroyers were four thousand yards ahead, with a corvette on each flank at half that distance, and Stella between the destroyers and the convoy’s van. Harbinger wandered as she pleased, constantly on the move. At dusk action stations he’d send the destroyers farther ahead, move the corvettes to the convoy’s bows, put Stella astern and retain his own roving commission. Up to now there’d been no reports of any transmitting, not since noon when Gritten had picked up a lot of chatter astern, fifteen to twenty miles south. It had lasted only a few minutes: the explanation he’d have liked to have believed in might have been a redeployment of the U-boats—that they’d been leaving, departing southward.

  It was possible, but unsafe to count on. The only course for SL 320’s escort to take was to continue to act as if the U-boats were still present in force. As they well might be. Or some might, if others had been withdrawn.

  This afternoon he’d been through the convoy, and close past the Burbridge, with the quarterdeck name-boards rigged. They were varnished boards with the ship’s name in large, highly-polished brass letters; they secured to permanent fittings on each side of the after super-structure, but they were for show, not for use at sea. He’d been giving her a chance to see the name Harbinger—because a passenger might not necessarily have known it. He’d been half expecting a signal, then, a light to start winking from the Burbridge. It hadn’t, and he’d thought, Well, that’s that, she can’t be …

  Now, three hours later and about to drive up through the columns again, it struck him that nothing had been proved for certain. She might have been resting in her cabin, or doing a stint of nursing duty. Even if she’d been embarked only as a passenger, a lot of injured survivors from other ships had been put into the Burbridge and they’d have been glad of extra hands, particularly skilled ones like Kate’s.

  He wanted to know now. The ostrich was ready to pull its head out of the sand. Ostrich feeling safe: anyway, less desperate, for those passengers.

  The St Eliza, third ship in the three-ship central column, was coming up to starboard. The Mount Trembling was farther ahead to port, and the Burbridge was next ahead of the Eliza.

  He looked round at Carlish.

  “Straight up the middle, Sub. Just watch out for the zigzag.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Carlish looked pleased. This was the first time he’d been allowed to take her through the convoy on his own.

  “Signalman.” Nick beckoned to McCurtin, signalman of the watch. “By light to the Burbridge … ‘Do you have any passenger on board by name of Everard?’”

  McCurtin repeated it: he looked interested as he reached for the Aldis. A few other heads turned too. The St Eliza was abeam to starboard now. McCurtin sighted the Aldis out over the bow, and began the calling-up procedure; the Burbridge’s bridge staff must have been watching the destroyer approach, because the answering flash came immediately. McCurtin rattled off the question: there was a pause, and then the signal Wait, please.

  Harbinger and the passenger ship were abeam when the convoy began turning to a port leg of the zigzag. Nick saw it coming, but said nothing, leaving it to Carlish. At that moment HF/DF called, and McCurtin was right beside that voice-pipe. He stooped with the Aldis lamp in one hand and answered, “Bridge?” Without hearing the operator’s words Nick could tell from the intonation it wasn’t Gritten on watch down there. Carlish was putting on ten degrees of port wheel … The signalman reported, “U-boat transmissions on oh-two-seven, nineteen miles, sir!”

  “Very good.”

  For the moment, it wasn’t U-boats he was primarily thinking of.

  The light from the Burbridge began to call. All ships halfway through their turn. Nick read the first word of the answer to his enquiry: Yes …

  He had to look away then—under the impression Carlish was holding the wheel on for longer than he should have. But in fact it was all right—or would be. He’d need to bring her back a few degrees to starboard in a minute, and in the process he’d have learnt something—in the best way there was to learn it … By this time the flashing light was on their quarter; looking back at it, he read the words, who wants to know.

  And that had been the end of the message—without an interrogative sign, they’d just signed-off. McCurtin flashed a K, acknowledging.

  “Reply from the Burbridge, sir—Yes. Lance Corporal Horace Everard, RAF Regiment. He asks who wants to know.”

  Behind him, Carlish called down, “Steady!”

  “Steady, sir—three-five-eight …”

  “Steer oh-oh-three degrees.”

  Nick told McCurtin, “Make to him, ‘Sorry, wrong Everard.’” The Dongola was on the starboard quarter now, and the Sweetcastle was abeam to port: and nineteen miles ahead those U-boat transmissions would have been just about right on the convoy’s mean course.

  Heidi had produced a supper of vegetable soup which they’d eaten with hunks of black bread, dipping the bread into the hot liquid to soak it up. She’d had soup all over her chin. Then she’d gone outside, to the garden privy, and when she’d come back into the kitchen, leaning against the door to shut it, shut out the rain and darkness, Jack had been waiting there, needing to make the same trip himself and wanting to borrow her coat. It was a man’s coat anyway, grey and heavy and with moth-holes in it, he guessed a private soldier’s originally and at that quite possibly from the previous war. Catching her against the back door,
unable to communicate his intention and therefore just starting to open it and pull it off her otherwise nude body, he realised she’d got the wrong idea of what he wanted; she was giggling and trying to keep the coat closed around her. He had to go along with this misunderstanding for a while, since otherwise he might have hurt her feelings … Then it wasn’t a difficult act at all because getting the heavy garment open and then easing it off her shoulders he found himself inclined the way she’d thought he was to start with. And thanks to the stove it was warm in the kitchen, much warmer than the bedroom. But finally he did have to go out—in the coat and holding a tin tray over his head as an umbrella—aware that Their Lordships of the Board of Admiralty might not have considered his bizarre appearance quite becoming to an officer and a gentleman. Except—wasn’t there a paragraph in King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions to the effect that an officer should dress in accordance with the sport in which he was engaged? It would be an interesting line of argument … He returned to find Heidi very nervous, scared by his having been outside the house: she’d bolted the door quickly, in a kind of panic again as if her garden was likely to be full of enemies. He wondered again about her obvious insecurity, the impression she gave of living precariously in a foreign and potentially hostile environment.

  The only time she seemed really to relax was in bed. And between the intervals of love-making she had an enormous capacity for sleep. Perhaps on her own she slept badly, lay awake in fear of whatever troubled her so much, and found security now in a stranger’s arms. He, of course, had had more than enough of sleeping in recent days. But it was easy to work up theories about her, and irritating that one would never know the truth. Not that he cared: it was curiosity, not any real sense of concern.