Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  Mike nodded. ‘Right.’

  ‘Palermo, now.’ He’d swung a lamp over the chart, and switched it on: the overhead light wasn’t all that brilliant. Continuing: ‘I’d say it’s not unlikely the Wops’ll be expecting a convoy operation now. One’s very much overdue, last attempt failed miserably, and they aren’t stupid, must know we’re not far off starvation – so we might reasonably expect fleet movements, deployments in advance. I’d guess particularly of cruisers, and in this bailiwick as likely as anywhere to Palermo – Cagliari, for that matter, but –’

  Glancing round – Mike too – as a door was opened and Hugo Short, Spare CO – he’d been on the arcade steps earlier to see Ursa slide in and tie up – told Shrimp, ‘Those orders are ready for your signature, sir. Want them now, or –’

  ‘On my desk, I’ll sign ’em when we finish here.’

  ‘Sir.’ Gone, door shut. Spare COs were there to stand in for other COs when they needed a break, were sick or otherwise indisposed; and between such outings worked as staff, Shrimp’s back-up. Shrimp back to Mike’s briefing, however: ‘So – might find a cruiser or two coming your way. And of course their convoys to the desert are still running – Tripoli, Homs, Misurata, as well as Benghazi, I’m deploying boats accordingly. Here, see for yourself.’

  Off Crotone, he saw, and Cape dell’Armi. Those were to be Mottram’s and Ruck’s billets: Ruck watching the Messina Strait, Mottram with a longer haul in front of him, to Crotone and the route south from Taranto. Other boats already on patrol were disposed between Pantellaria, Lampedusa and Tripoli – from where they’d be readily enough redeployable to other convoy-covering positions south of Pantellaria and west of Marettimo. Distances – well, with the U-class boat’s regrettably low surface speed of ten knots flat out a good night’s progress – if uninterrupted – was something like seventy nautical miles.

  Feeble enough. But Shrimp would have adequate notice of the need to redeploy. And might leave those two where they were, he guessed. Especially if he had as many as ten boats at his disposal by that time.

  Touching the Menorca to Malta chart with his dividers. ‘I’m putting you twenty miles northeast of Cape San Vito, Michael. Prime position for anything coming down from Naples either for Palermo or to pass west of Marettimo. You could move in closer to Palermo if you had reason to; alternatively, withdraw north or northeastward, vicinity of Ustica. But stay to the west of Alicudi – otherwise you could fall foul of Swordsman – Dan Gerahty, d’you know him?’

  ‘Lord, yes.’

  ‘He’s between Lipari and Cape Vaticano – northern approaches to Messina, of course.’

  Swordsman, S-class – on loan from the 8th Flotilla in Gibraltar, Mike guessed. Gib flotilla temporarily expanding eastward during the 10th’s absence, no doubt: and when she left her billet, might well be passing through or close to his. A point to check on, before departure. Nodding, mentally crossing fingers. Shrimp hadn’t of course needed to mention that to get round to Sicily’s north coast in the first place Ursa’s track would be through – or rather under – the QBB 255 minefield. There was no great problem about that, nothing in the least unusual; the established routine was that you dived to 150 feet off Cape San Marco and paddled northwestward on course 300 for fifty-five miles under the bloody mines before turning up around the island of Marettimo. Alternatively – shortcut to where he was going – inside it, through the channel between those islands.

  Do that, he thought. Get on the billet sooner. He nodded again. ‘Clear enough, sir.’

  ‘We’ll give it to you on paper in the morning. And – fuel, stores, water-barge and Msida, all of that by noon – right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Msida Creek had the torpedo depot at its head. Ursa would be embarking three, to replace the three she’d fired. Mark VIIIs, he hoped – but that would be up to ‘Wiggy’ Bennett, the base torpedo officer, and his right-hand man, Commissioned Gunner ‘Sunny’ Warne. Lick their boots, if that would help. Well, it wouldn’t … Anyway, getting it all done by midday would be aimed at giving most of the lads the rest of the day to themselves, preferably for fresh air and exercise.

  ‘See you for a gin later, sir?’

  ‘My dear fellow, that’s a novel idea …’

  Visit the boat first, see McLeod had it all in hand and that Danvers had Sicily north-coast charts corrected up to date. Have a word with Chief McIver too. Then see to one’s own gear, have a bath – first for twelve days – and read those letters.

  In fact he’d decided, having attended to those and a few other priorities, to read his letters first. The Old Man’s to start with. You could bet he’d have had news of Alan, Mike’s younger brother who was flying Lancasters out of a field in Norfolk. When their father heard from either of them he invariably wrote to the other, passing on – well, effectively, implicitly, just reassurance. Vital reassurance. The Old Man having retired in 1938 was back in harness as a GP in the practice in Stony Stratford, Bucks, replacing two younger men now in the Army. He’d been an army doctor himself in 1914–18. Home was near Deanshanger, a village not far from Stony Stratford, and until quite recently he’d hunted with the Grafton. Which Mike had also done, when he’d had the chance.

  ‘Bloomin’ ’ell, the man hisself!’

  Jimmy Ruck – and Mottram – at their ease in armchairs on the gallery, smoke from their cigarettes hanging blueish in the soft lighting that would be instantly extinguished if / when the air-attack sirens started up. Elsewhere it was as good as dark now, moon no more than a sliver, vestige of the old one, and at that not far off setting; moonless nights in prospect therefore. Lights’ reflections danced on the water where brows – floating walkways – led from shore to the submarines secured between their buoys – shadows with a glitter at their waterlines, yellow radiance spilling from open fore-hatches from which the sound of radio music emerged and where sentries lounged. Here, Guy Mottram on his feet with a hand extended – a big man, burly and affable with a prematurely receding hairline and prominent, beaky nose – ‘Whopping great trooper you knocked down, Mike?’

  ‘Fair-sized. Eight seven-fifty, according to Shrimp.’ Shrimp had given him the ship’s name – which he’d forgotten now. Asking them, ‘Either of you get lucky?’

  ‘Not me. Blank one.’ Despondent tone and gesture from Jimmy Ruck. A blank patrol was one from which you came back without scoring. Mike asked him, ‘How long since your last blank?’

  ‘Well. A while, I suppose, but –’ Another shrug, shake of the head: meaning quite a while. He was slightly senior to Mike, had been out here longer, and currently the flotilla’s top scorer. He was said to have exceptionally fast reflexes, and tended not to miss. About half Mottram’s size: compact, quick on his feet, impressive on a squash court. Mottram put in, as Mike glanced at him queryingly, ‘Convoy of caiques in the Kithira Channel – gun action. No big deal, but they did have Germans in ’em. Bloody cheek, loosed off at us with Schmeissers. Next thing you know, they’ll be chucking spuds. How about a gin, Mike?’

  ‘Love one, but (a) priority’s a bath, and (b) I told Shrimp I’d have a gin with him later. So if you’re thirsty –’

  ‘Guess who was asking tenderly after you last night?’

  Ruck had asked him this. Mike asked him, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘Where were you, last night?’

  ‘Gravy’s.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sunday night, of course – this being Monday. He made his guess: ‘Greta, perhaps?’

  ‘She may have enquired as well, come to think of it – but come on now, who else springs to mind?’

  ‘Well, just off the cuff – and not having seen all that much soap and water for damn near a fortnight, prospect of a hot tub occluding probably most other things in one’s mind –’

  ‘How about Abigail French?’

  ‘Oh. She there, was she?’

  ‘Certainly was. Came with her friend Nico, as always, but also bringing the new man who’s taking over from him. Introducing him to the Gravies I suppose. Fat guy,
younger than Cornish. She looked her usual cheerful self, but it must be a bit of a blow to her, wouldn’t you suppose?’

  ‘She’ll miss him, obviously. Birds of a feather, those two, in a lot of ways. Yeah, poor Abbie.’

  ‘Hah.’ Ruck to Mottram: ‘Ever see a man struggling to contain excitement?’

  ‘Jimmy – I don’t know what’s given rise to this, but I can assure you I’m not deeply concerned, let alone excited … Why would I be? Mere fact of being acquainted with her – with them, if you like –’

  ‘Well, I’d had a bit of an impression – OK, mistaken, if you say so –’

  ‘So let’s drop it.’ Mottram the calming influence. ‘Heck of a nice girl anyway. And incidentally the fact she and that Nico character were frequently to be seen together – at the Tenches’, anyway …’

  The Tenches – Wingrave Tench, hence the nickname ‘Gravy’ – had a large house at St Julian’s a couple of miles up-coast from Sliema, were close friends of Shrimp’s and kept open house for 10th Flotilla COs as well as others of the British community. Gravy was a retired businessman whom the Governor had appointed as a civil administrator overseeing all civilian food distribution – rationing, food supply in general – including soup-kitchens in all the island’s villages, which had been his own brainchild and he still administered.

  While Nico Cornish was – or had been – the island’s Chief Information Officer. Pleasant fellow, and by all accounts extremely capable, not actually a soldier but carrying the rank of major, and according to local gossip Abigail French’s lover. Abigail being unquestionably a dish; also, in Mike’s view, based on no more than perhaps six or eight social encounters over the past eighteen months or so, extremely likeable.

  Mottram was saying, ‘I can confirm anyway, Mike, that she’d for some time been wanting to know when you’d be back – but also, getting what’s left of a memory to it, that the enquiry was not unconnected with some party she’d been thinking of giving. Not therefore – at least not directly – with the imminent departure of Major Cornish.’

  ‘So that threat’s removed, you can breathe again.’ Ruck chuckling at his own wit; and Mike on his way, excusing himself with ‘Tub now. Mail to read, moreover. May see you later, otherwise good luck.’ To Ruck then, on a second thought: ‘This one likely to be your last, Jimmy?’

  ‘Not quite. Last but one, in Shrimp’s intention. Incidentally, neither I nor Guy will be burning much midnight oil tonight, Mike.’

  ‘No. Very wise.’ Seeing that they were both off at first light, respectively for Cape dell’Armi and Crotone. And Ursa to Palermo only a day or so behind them: Shrimp with his beloved flotilla reassembled, wasting no time at all, getting them all out there where they could do most good.

  * * *

  Mike’s father had written that he was in good health: still getting around mostly by bicycle, which helped to keep him fit. Sure enough, he’d heard only the day before from Alan, who’d said he was about due for leave and promised to spend some of it at Deanshanger, and mentioned that he’d been busy lately – a euphemism for having been over Germany quite a lot. Poor old Mrs Hennings, who’d been cook/housekeeper since Mike’s mother had died a dozen years ago, and cook before that, was suffering acutely from her arthritis, and was going to have to pack it in altogether pretty soon. And so forth; with a smattering of second-hand news of old friends’ sons and daughters in their various locations and occupations – including one in the RAF who’d been reported missing, believed killed. That rather cocky youth, remember? Used to pursue Chloe, and she couldn’t stand him? Chloe being Mike’s and Alan’s sister – now in London, in training as an orthopaedic nurse. Over to page three of the Old Man’s letter now: news from the desert wasn’t encouraging, was it? Auchinleck was going to have to pull his socks up, or we’d be in serious trouble, by the sound of it. And finally, Look after yourself, old lad. May be a silly injunction to deliver, but you know what I mean …

  Ann’s now. Allegedly ‘Agnes Nicholson’s’. She’d started calling herself that a few months ago, and suggested that if anyone enquired he should tell them she was his Aunt Aggie.

  Hello, you!

  Yes, chancing my arm while I can still hope to get away with it. Just have this irresistible urge to communicate with you. A more desperate one than that too, but unfortunately at this distance, however many hundreds of miles it is, I can only shut my eyes and think about it, relive our loveliest episodes while driving General Bloggs from A to B – as often as not having to stave off his paltry advances.

  (She was in the MTC, Mechanised Transport Corps, spent most of her time driving brass hats around in khaki-painted Humbers.)

  Perhaps this should be my last letter, Mike darling? His nibs being on his way within just weeks now? Isn’t it an absolute sod? I suppose we have about a month or eight weeks before he can possibly be with you – wherever it is you are now, you rather implied some move being on the cards, in your last missive – although I may have got the wrong end of the stick and it’s more or less illegible by now, after approx a thousand readings – but anyway he has not yet set forth, and I’ve gathered from him that those strange contrivances of yours are not all that speedy – right? But if I’ve over-estimated the margin of safety, can only trust to your innate sagacity and initiative, that you’ll have moved like lightning to scoop this up and dash off to the lav with it. But Mike darling, listen – mightn’t there be a great blazing light at the end of the tunnel very soon now? D’you think? Hang on a mo’ with that, though – a minor point is that there’s no reason you shouldn’t write to me at least twice a week now, is there? I mean no one’s looking over my shoulder. Will you, my darling – please? – and not be too damn stingy in what you say? You always are a bit careful, aren’t you – which is a contradiction, considering that in other ways you’re something of a desperado. Oh, maybe you have a censor to get by? Hadn’t thought of that, until this moment: but I can see it might be tricky. And of course – seriously, I’m not an idiot – that at your end it would be difficult, in your circumstances and his – obviously could make for problems, if I did write – too often, anyway. But what I began to say about light at end of tunnel – ages ago you said you thought you’d be gone about a year, and Charles said maybe a year and a bit – 18 months max, could be? – so my dream now is of the doorbell ringing and it’s you, suddenly blown in! You in person, here, large as life! Isn’t it a dream that actually must come true? Only calling it a dream here because the actuality would be – will be? – so absolutely blissful one hardly dares believe in it – but write and tell me I can?

  Please? By return of post, my darling? I ache for you – literally, you know? There’s more to this, though, and I’ve got to say it – simply that I also want you home because the longer you’re out there the greater the chance you might not ever make it home. Horrible, unnerving truth, and you’d pooh-pooh it, but I most certainly don’t and never have, and Charles told me when he was on his course that they’d heard the losses where you are were averaging out at about 50%, in other words every time you go out it’s even-stevens whether you’ll return or won’t. And now we know he’s likely to end up in the same part of the world – or at least I think we do – so then for you and me, the very best of both worlds?

  Darling, please come home?

  Folding it up small, crumpling it in his fist. Wondering what kind of censor let that 50 per cent stuff through. Figure near enough correct, but wrong message to be putting out. Charles again? It had been a total and most unwelcome surprise that following his Perisher course, and as usual a spell commanding a training boat, they were giving him a new ‘U’ and almost certainly sending him to join this flotilla; there were plenty of other places he could have gone, and surely more S-class being built than ‘U’s. But there it was – fact, apparently – and on top of that the virtual certainty that he, Mike, would pretty soon be sent home with Ursa, he and his crew and the boat having done their time here in the heat of it. Almost done t
heir time: he hadn’t done quite as many patrols as Jimmy Ruck, a couple of months’ worth, maybe – but then – well, looking ahead, sharing that dream-scenario of hers, her answering his knock on her door etcetera – visualising her in close-up – fantastic eyes, irresistible mouth, cloud of marvellously soft, dark hair, enough of it virtually to cloak her lithe dancer’s body – catching his breath at the thought and memory – the obsession that had possessed both of them right from the start resurgent now, having been as it were in abeyance for a while, hiatus following those final months in England and Scotland when they’d taken it as read that the affair would end with his own and Ursa’s departure for the Med; mutually accepting this as inevitable – which it had been, of course, neither of them speaking of it much, even – in his own thinking, incredibly, an element of Happy Ending – no tears, no blame, ‘thanks for the memory’, all that.

  Shrimp announced, joining a crowd of them in the wardroom, ‘Good news, chaps. Afrika Korps knocked back on its heels. Despatch received only an hour ago – I’m just back from Lascaris. Seems Rommel was probing Eighth Army defences on the frontier and got more than he’d bargained for. And as we’re all well aware, his lines of communication are stretched very long and thin now.’ Shrimp glanced around the big stone cavern, now probably better populated than it could have been for the last couple of months, with the officers of the three submarines currently in harbour as well as this group of COs and flotilla staff. He added, ‘In our court now, therefore. Good a time as any to starve him – especially of petrol, immobilise his bloody Panzers …’

  ‘Here’s to it.’ Sam MacGregor, engineer commander, who since late 1940 when the flotilla had first moved in here had worked hand-in-glove with Shrimp, performing his own technical miracles in the most difficult of circumstances. Raising his glass as Shrimp took his own from a Maltese steward’s tray. Shrimp certainly didn’t spare himself: his visit to the Combined Services HQ in Valetta, since briefing Mike, would have meant crossing by dghaisa to Ferry Steps, climbing stone stairs to Palace Square, thence making his way virtually the length of the bomb-blasted Strada Reale with the stone wreckage of what had been the opera house at the end of it. Must have done it there and back at a trot if not a canter – and since then cleaned up and changed into Red Sea rig as he was now – despite, incidentally, there having been an air alert when Mike had still been in his bath – luxuriating in it, thinking mostly about Ann – all that – while knowing he should move, get down to the shelter.