He swung himself up on to his bunk. His was on the forward bulkhead, the only bunk on its own, high enough to have all the drawers and cupboards under it. The other four were upper and lower bunks, settees with backs that hinged up to form the upper ones. He lay back, pulling a blanket over himself, hearing over the continuous racket of the diesels the helmsman calling up the voicepipe to the bridge: ‘Relieve second lookout, sir?’ The lookouts changed over at ten minutes past the hour; by that time the new officer of the watch’s eyes would have adjusted to the dark, so that not everyone up there would be half-blind in the same few minutes. And access to the bridge had to be limited: when you might have to dive in a hurry you couldn’t allow too many bodies up there at one time.
He shut his eyes. Thoughts going back to that night before the wedding – his last pre-Lucia night… Remembering that he’d felt strongly attracted to Simone, although it had soon become obvious that she was Currie’s girl. Not that even Currie could imagine that she’d be solely his… In fact they’d been joined after a while by an Australian R.N.V.R. lieutenant, a destroyer man, who’d clearly felt that he had proprietorial rights too. In any case it was Simone who called the shots. Soon after the Aussie had made it plain that he was staying, for instance, she’d inducted another girl to the party, a red-head whom Mitcheson had noticed earlier in company with a middle-aged Egyptian. She was Hungarian, and claimed to have been engaged to a British major who’d been killed in the desert; Currie had winked at Mitcheson when she’d mentioned it. By and large, anyway, it was a very enjoyable though rather expensive evening, with a lot of drinking and dancing, and supper at one stage. Mitcheson had been the first to leave – alone, well after midnight – feeling virtuous and, in the gharry as it clip-clopped through highly odorous streets towards the dockyard, mentally cataloguing some of the more amusing moments for inclusion in his next letter to Elizabeth.
2
By five or just after there was a noticeable lightening in the eastern sky. There was a sea-mist too; looking ahead over the long finger of the fore-casing – itself as visible as it was from the bridge only because the bulge of saddle-tanks was fringed with white as the submarine rolled and butted her way westward – even with binoculars, you’d be doing well to spot an enemy at more than say a thousand yards. Whereas if that same enemy were even half awake he’d have Spartan in his sights long before that, against the lighter background.
Time to get under, therefore.
‘We’ll dive on the watch, Number One.’ Meaning, without ordering the ship’s company to diving stations, or sounding the klaxon alarm; men off watch could remain asleep. He looked over his shoulder at the two oilskinned, wool-capped figures in the after part of the bridge, one each side and with glasses continually at their eyes. ‘Down you go, lookouts.’ Hearing them go as he stooped to the voicepipe: ‘Stop together. Out both engine-clutches.’ Straightening… ‘All right, Number One.’ As Forbes dropped into the hatch, the diesels’ thunder died away; you heard the sea, then, the surge of it along her sides, washing over the curve of ballast-tanks, explosive impacts inside the casing and under your feet. This platform he was standing on, the deck inside the bridge, perforated as it was with brass-bound holes so that presently when she dived the sea would flood up through it, was only sixteen feet above the surface in a flat calm. So in a rough sea, bridge watchkeepers were virtually in it.
He had his glasses up again, carefully searching the darkness across the bow. Only darkness, though, thickened by the mist.
Nothing. No broken water either to camouflage an enemy’s bow-wave. He stooped to the pipe again: ‘Half ahead together.’ On main motors now, having taken those clutches out. Then: ‘Open main vents.’ He reached down quickly to shut the cock on the voicepipe; then was in the hatch, on the ladder with his head and shoulders still in the bridge as the vents in the tops of the tanks dropped open in a succession of drumbeats all along her length. Spray plumed as the air rushed out: she was going down, then, the sea rising to engulf her, fill the casing and swell up around this tower, fill the bridge. Some of that spray was falling on his head like rain. He let himself down a few rungs, pulled the hatch shut over his head, found the heavy clips and forced them on. Calling down into the glow of artificial light below him: ‘Forty feet. Shut main vents.’
He climbed on down into the control room, and as he stepped off the ladder the messenger shut the lower hatch. The after ’planesman – it was Lockwood, the second coxswain – murmuring: ‘Forty feet, sir’, and throwing his brass wheel round to put bow-down angle on her, while on the other side of the compartment the Engine Room Artificer of the watch slammed the steel vent-levers shut on his diving panel. Main vents were never left open: otherwise in any sudden emergency when you needed to surface fast and tried to blow main ballast you’d be wasting all that precious air into the open sea: and if in the meantime the emergency was such that telemotor pressure failed so that the vents could not be shut – well, there might be worse predicaments, but you wouldn’t go looking for them.
Approaching forty feet now. Lockwood was taking the angle off her, while close on his right the fore ’planesman made similar adjustments to his own identical controls. Light flashing on the spokes of both brass wheels as they centred. Hydroplanes were in effect horizontal rudders; the after ones were used to put angle on the boat – up-angle for instance by forcing the stern downwards – while the fore ’planes guided her to the ordered depth.
In front of both men now the needles in the two big depth-gauges crept to a halt at ‘40’. And the bubble in the spirit-level was settling about one degree aft of the centreline. Lockwood murmured, ‘Forty feet, sir.’
‘Group down, slow both.’
‘Group down, sir. Slow both…’ The telegraphs clinked as the messenger of the watch jerked the handles over, sending that order to the motor-room. ‘Grouping down’ put the battery sections in parallel instead of series, gave less power but also used less. There were two sections to the battery, each consisting of fifty-six cells – cells that stood about waist high and had a cross-section of about fifteen inches square: it took a crane to lift just one of them. All 112 cells were contained in a tank under this deck in the central part of the submarine, and there were access points over pilot cells here and there so that the L.T.O.s – electricians – could check the density of the electrolyte as a charge progressed.
Down to about two knots now, anyway. All you needed – just paddling along, waiting for the light up there. Checking round, meanwhile, Mitcheson glanced at the Asdic operator – a skeletal-looking individual by name of Piltmore – and raised an eyebrow interrogatively. Headphones clipped Piltmore’s ears closely to his head, and his eyes were vague, as if wandering out there in the depths. If you’d asked him a question he’d have had to pull the headset off one ear: except that usually he could guess, knowing what questions to expect. Squatting on his stool, gazing at Mitcheson now but living through his ears while the fingers of one thin, hairy-wristed hand twisted the knob on his Asdic set by about one degree at a time. The set was in the passive mode at this stage, not sending out any pings but acting as a hydrophone.
He cleared his throat, and told Mitcheson ‘Clear all round, sir.’
A nod… Glancing at the gauges again; and over the helmsman’s shoulder at the ribbon course-indicator. ‘All yours then, Number One. Give it an hour, then go up and take a look.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Up to periscope depth – thirty feet – Mitcheson had meant. Forbes had his hand up on the trimline telegraph, a metal box fixed to the deckhead by means of which one could tell watchkeepers at the internal trimming tanks fore and aft to open or shut the valves on those tanks, then order the stoker at the ballast pump to pump or flood in one direction or the other. There were trimming tanks amidships too, split into port and starboard sections so you could also correct any list that might develop. The trim needed frequent adjustment; one man coming aft from the torpedo stowage compartment to use the heads in the after e
nds, for instance, meant pumping a few gallons the other way to compensate for the shift of weight.
Mitcheson paused at the chart-table, made a note of the log reading and put a new dead-reckoning position on the chart. It was 0520 now. Mersa Matruh on the beam, distance eighteen miles. Surface after breakfast, he thought: if it’s clear up there, when there’s light enough to see. Meanwhile – he returned into the three-quarters dark wardroom – the prospect of an hour’s sleep had great appeal. He’d been called to the bridge at about one-thirty, in McKendrick’s watch, after the Sub had picked up a group of blueish lights which had seemed to be on a steady bearing – they’d faded and vanished after twenty minutes or so, must have been some kind of long-distance mirage effect from shore – and then again soon after four, when Teasdale had thought he’d run into a surface minefield. The mines had turned out to be crates, packing-cases, obviously cargo from some sunken ship. But he hadn’t slept since then.
Very peaceful now. Quiet, and warm. As it always was when you dived after a night on the surface. More so in bad weather, of course, when the contrast was more dramatic, the boat so suddenly rock-steady and silent after hours of being flung around. And it still came as a surprise, a blessing: the marvellous sense of peace and comfort – plus of course the fact that one always felt safer under water. Here and now, in the wardroom, the only appreciable sounds were the engineer’s snores and the ticking of the log. Small sounds from the control room occasionally: the officer of the watch’s movements, a quiet order, a murmured comment that raised a laugh. Behind all that, the faint hum of the motors. And – matching the warmth and quiet – the familiar and not at all unpleasant aroma of shale oil. Shale was the fuel on which torpedoes ran, but it was also used for keeping a shine on the corticene-covered deck and it tended to pervade the atmosphere.
He lay back on his bunk, shut his eyes and began to think of Lucia. Picturing her in her sleep: the small crescents of dark lashes on her cheekbones, full lips curved in a suggestion of a smile. Smiling at her dreams? Dreams of what – of whom? Cat-like: that kind of secrecy that could be either innocence or cunning, kept you guessing. Kept you enthralled… Her face pillowed on this shoulder, breasts flattened against these ribs, her leg thrown across – here… His breath came in hard and he shifted over on the bunk, turning to face the bulkhead and putting a hand down to make room for the sudden, powerful swelling of his erection. Every time he thought of her: any time…
* * *
‘Captain, sir—’
‘Huh?’
‘Officer of the watch says it’s light up top, sir.’
‘Right…’
He felt he’d barely closed his eyes, but the clock on the bulkhead showed 0635. He hadn’t heard the watch change at six o’clock: must have dropped straight off. Feeling – now, as he turned out – like something recently disinterred: but he was in the control room by this time, on his feet and with his eyes open, even though the brain might still be a little sluggish. McKendrick, seeing him arrive, gestured to the E.R.A. – Engine Room Artificer, and in this watch it was Halliday, ginger-haired and lantern-jawed – who in fact hadn’t needed any prompting, had already eased up the control lever of the periscope, sending the brass tube slithering up shiny with its coating of oil, beaded with glistening drops of moisture from the deckhead gland. This was the bigger of the two periscopes; the other was unifocal, much slimmer, used during attacks when you’d got into close range and needed minimal disturbance of the sea’s surface. Mitcheson grabbed the big ’scope’s handles as they came up to about chest-level, jerked them down and put his eyes to the lenses; Halliday stopping the ascent at that same moment but keeping one eye on Mitcheson and other on the gauges. If the ’planesmen allowed her to dip at all he’d have the tube inching higher.
Mitcheson asked – his eyes glowing like a cat’s, with the light from the surface in them – ‘Asdics?’
‘Clear all round, sir.’ The voice was Rowntree’s, who’d have heard the query because he’d have been waiting to be asked. Rowntree looked only about seventeen but in fact was the senior Asdic man, a leading seaman and H.S.D., the letters standing for Higher Submarine Detector. His and several other men’s eyes on their skipper now, the brilliance flickering in his eyes as he began to train the periscope around, his body swivelling with it. He was looking into a milky light up there, and a low, unbroken sea heaving gently under surface mist. Circling fairly rapidly, finding nothing at close range, twisting the handle then to engage high power – a quadruple magnification factor – and then making a second circle – much more slowly, carefully, and using the periscope’s other handle to tilt the top lens to search sky as well as sea.
Nothing. Except one solitary black-backed gull taking a close interest. He snapped the handles up, and Halliday depressed the lever to send the tube hissing down into its well. Halliday was the ‘Outside’ E.R.A., responsible for the maintenance of all non-electrical machinery outside the engine-room. No sinecure: he had for instance the hydroplanes to look after, and the steering, the telemotor gear that operated the periscopes, ballast pumps, blowers, compressors – even the wardroom heads…
Mitcheson glanced at the clock. Six-fifty. He asked Chief Petty Officer Willis, who was on the after ’planes, ‘Which watch is this, cox’n?’
‘Red, sir.’
‘Right.’ He told McKendrick, ‘Send White and Blue watches to breakfast. We’ll go to diving stations at 0800.’
McKendrick reached for the Tannoy microphone. Mitcheson added, ‘Enemy aircraft permitting, of course’, and C.P.O. Willis – jutting sea-dog beard, eyes slitted like an Eskimo’s – growled ‘Sod ’em. Sod the fucking lot.’
‘Amen to that, Cox’n.’
* * *
From Spartan’s navigator’s notebook, 15 September…
0805 Surfaced in DR 31 45’ N,27 04’ E. Course 283, 380 revs.
1200 E.P. from noon sun 31 45’ N, 26 02’ E.
1350 Dived for aircraft.
The starboard lookout – Franklyn, a torpedoman – spotted the aircraft, which was unidentified but closing from the quarter, and McKendrick who was O.O.W., dived on the klaxon. No bombs were dropped, but when after a quarter of an hour Mitcheson brought her up to periscope depth he saw two Heinkels patrolling at low altitude, doubtless searching for them; so he took her back down to sixty feet and decided to stay there until dark. Or dusk, anyway: there was a clear sky and he was counting on getting star-sights. Navigational accuracy was important from here on.
From Teasedale’s notebook again:
Surfaced 1945. 300 revolutions, running charge, co. 285.
Fix by stars at 2000, 32 04’ N, 25 09’ E. ESE current estimated as ½ knot.
2040 Ras el-Mreisa abeam to port six miles.
If it hadn’t been three quarters dark when they’d surfaced that northeast corner of the high Libyan plateau would have been easily in sight. It was all enemy territory to port now, with Sollum and Bardia abaft the beam. Tobruk, the only friendly pocket of territory ahead, would be abeam at about 0300. Spartan was making-good eight knots, allowing for the slight south-easterly set; it would get her to where she needed to be well before first light, and the running charge would ensure that her battery was right up by then.
Over supper – sardines on toast followed by bread and jam and accompanied by mugs of tea – there was some chat about the two-man torpedo circus they’d be looking for in the gulf next day, and Barney Forbes remarked that in his view the Wops were an extremely rum lot.
‘Well, Christ’s sake – rare occasions their battleships do put to sea, they turn tail and run like bloody riggers if they get a whisper that a few of our cruisers or even destroyers may be out. And in the desert, for God’s sake – they’re like bloody girl guides! Look how O’Connor had ’em running – end of last year, was it?’
‘Beginning of this one.’ Mitcheson nodded. General O’Connor certainly had had them running. In ten weeks campaigning he’d smashed ten divisions and taken 130,000 pris
oners at the cost of fewer than 500 British, Australians and Indians, and driven the remnants back from Tobruk to Benghazi. If he’d been given his head from there on he might well have made it all the way to Tunis: then there’d have been no Afrika Korps – the Germans wouldn’t have had a look in.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t. Most of his troops had been shipped into Greece, instead. From where the Greeks had earlier kicked the Italians out ignominiously, but were then facing Germans who’d gone in to haul Mussolini’s coals out of the fire for him. Forbes shook his bullet head. ‘Useless buggers… But then you get these human torpedo characters – and boy, that takes guts, and then some!’
‘Durned tootin’.’ Teasdale was gulping his food down fast, in order to get up to the bridge to relieve McKendrick on time. Swallowing… ‘Wouldn’t catch me on one of those things.’
Chief smiled, shook his head. Signifying – if Mitcheson read him correctly – that to him the very notion of it was inconceivable. Bennett was married, of course – to a Wren at some hush-hush code-breaking establishment at Bletchley, Bucks – and one could understand the married man’s more cautious – or responsible? – attitude to risk. In fact to a certain extent Mitcheson had at times been conscious of it in his own thinking, in relation to Elizabeth – to whom he was neither married nor engaged only because she hadn’t wanted it, had insisted on waiting until the war was won or at least until he was safely back from this commission.
‘There’s no sense, Ned. You know there isn’t!’ She’d argued the point with such absolute conviction that there’d seemed to be an implication of stupidity on his part if he couldn’t accept the logic of it. But there was a question in his mind – now – as to whether in her heart of hearts she’d been thinking of the odds for or against physical survival – which had been his own reading of it at the time – or of what might be called the ‘Dear John’ syndrome. As things had been between them then – and since – this aspect hadn’t even occurred to him; he asked himself now whether if they had been married, or even formally engaged, Lucia would have happened.
Love For An Enemy Page 5
