Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  ‘At the last count – not even one.’

  ‘That’s astonishing.’ He’d wondered about Nico, but couldn’t have asked, and now she’d answered, more or less. Her business, anyway – certainly none of his. Absolutely none of his. There’d been a general assumption that they were lovers, but that was all it was; they were together a lot, in fact never seeing her out with anyone else one had treated them as if that was the situation – might well have tried one’s own luck otherwise, having always been attracted … He stooped, kissed her cheek. ‘Might play some chess, some time?’

  ‘Oh, let’s!’

  ‘Man’s a glutton for punishment, you’re thinking.’

  Laughing: ‘Thinking nothing of the sort, Mike!’

  ‘One other thing you might as well know while we’re at it. Change of subject, blowing my own trumpet – sorry … What I was seeing Carmella Cassar about this morning was gold lace.’ He touched one epaulette. ‘This stuff. Shrimp surprised me yesterday with the news that I’m now a lieutenant-commander. How d’you like that?’

  ‘Well, I’m – oh, I love it! But – you say he surprised you – you weren’t expecting promotion –’

  ‘Out of the blue, and completely undeserved. But listen –’

  ‘Am I the first to know?’

  ‘Well, as it happens. Except for Carmella, who’s now calling me “Commander” –’

  ‘I’m thrilled for you, Mike!’

  ‘Thanks. But listen …’

  He told her he wouldn’t go out to Hamrun with her, much as he’d like to; he had things to see to at Lazaretto, had only come ashore to meet Shrimp at the Joint Services HQ and would have gone straight back, but having dropped in at Carmella’s –

  ‘Awfully glad you did. You’ve done me good, Mike. I do hope –’

  ‘Me too. Chess at the Gravies’, to kick off with. I’ll let them know I’m hoping to be asked.’

  ‘Easier still, I’ll tell them. When, d’you think?’

  ‘Roughly speaking, whenever I’m asked.’

  She smiled. ‘Good.’

  ‘Possibly tonight. Not tomorrow, anyway, Shrimp’s going to announce this promotion, “wet the half-stripe” as the expression goes.’

  ‘Hangover on Thursday, then. So glad for you, Mike. I don’t mean the hangover. Why wait until tomorrow, though?’

  ‘Well, I mentioned just now that we lost one of the flotilla very recently. News only came in at the weekend, it was the first thing I heard when we tied up yesterday. Casts a pall, as you can imagine, and – well, a matter of giving it a couple of days to wear off a bit. A very little bit – the first shock, you might call it.’ He checked the time. ‘Where does your vehicle start from?’

  ‘Front of the building.’ Glancing at her watch. ‘God, I must run. Which boat was it, Mike?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not now. Run, or you’ll miss it. Go on – run!’

  Jimmy Ruck having been a friend of hers. She’d hear of it soon enough, a quick call to some other mutual friend would provide the answer. He didn’t much want to be around when she got it, was all. Ergo, better not visit Pembroke House this evening, whether or not invited. He thought, making tracks for Marsamxett and Lazaretto, Thursday at the earliest. Programme now (a) check whether there’d been a mail, (b) down to the boat, see Jamie McLeod – or might discuss his departmental agenda over a sandwich in the mess – but check with Chief McIver, and if there were any problems with the flotilla engineer Sam MacGregor, that everything on Ursa’s defect-list would be dealt with before the end of the week, and (c) see Bennett or Warne about torpedoes, arrange to land the one Mark IV he’d brought back from Palermo and embark a full set of eight Mark VIIIs, thus be on the top line and not fobbed off later with Mark IVs if there’d been a run on Msida’s stocks between now and then – as could easily be envisaged, with a dozen boats in the flotilla now. Could be more than a dozen, he suspected, running names through his memory as he trotted down Ferry Steps: Guy Mottram’s Unbowed, Gerahty’s Swordsman, the injured Brodie’s Unslaked; Usurper and Urbane back from patrol in say ten days, and surely by that time Unbroken, Unbending, Unrivalled, Utmost, Uproar, Una. Could be others – oh, Unsung, for one, nearly forgot bloody Melhuish –

  Might have been a mail?

  12

  Unsung was due in on Thursday evening, the SOO told him on Wednesday. Melhuish had smashed up a train and sunk an armed trawler in a later gun action in the course of which Unsung had sustained what he’d called minor damage; not having as yet found use for any of his torpedoes he’d intended remaining on billet, but Shrimp had recalled him and warned Sam MacGregor to have welders standing by to work over the weekend if necessary. That was the kind of damage one might expect – shell damage to bridge and/or casing, which provided good reason for recalling him, flapping or vibrating steel tending to make a submarine noisy when dived, acutely vulnerable to enemy hydrophones. Shrimp had commented in the wardroom that Wednesday when they were celebrating Mike’s promotion, ‘But he’s certainly using that three-inch to good effect.’

  According to Intelligence-based estimates, wrecking a train and/or blowing up railway lines, ideally inside tunnels where Wop engineers couldn’t get at them all that easily, deprived the Afrika Korps of about 14,000 tons of supplies for every twenty-four hours the line was out of action, and the new three-inch guns with proper sights on them made it comparatively easy, given the right sort of location and conditions.

  ‘Pity we can’t all have proper guns.’Jack Brodie, still leaning on a stick but with expectations of resuming command of Unslaked on her return from patrol in a few days’time. ‘Bloody twelve-pounders, hardly frighten a seagull. Here’s to the half-stripe, Mike. You’re supping at Pembroke House tomorrow, I hear.’

  ‘I don’t know. Was, but with Melhuish due in –’

  ‘Oh, come on! You gave him a bloody cruiser, surely that’s –’

  ‘Gave him damn-all. Happened to see quite a bit of him and his wife in London at one time though, missed him the last time he was in, doesn’t seem to be anyone else knows him from a bar of soap – don’t want to seem stand-offish, that’s all.’

  ‘Rather seem stand-offish to Miss French?’

  He got a laugh, which encouraged him to add, ‘Bit shortsighted, I’d say, specially as that Nico character’s vanished into the wide blue yonder.’

  ‘Cornish has been transferred to Gib. And she must miss him. They had a lot in common – both noticeably intelligent, similar interests generally. What’s your concern with any of this anyway? I’d lay off the innuendo, Jack, if I were you.’

  He didn’t much like Brodie, and he had been thinking quite a lot about Abigail, and more or less convinced himself that that was probably as much as there’d been between her and Nico. But again, that if he was wrong, what the hell? He certainly found her extremely attractive, had enjoyed her company whenever he’d chanced to have it – the chess evening for instance, and once an afternoon’s swimming at St Julian’s. The Pembroke House Lido, they all called it, a gap in the barbed-wire coastal barrier through which one could get out on to the rocks. All right, at that time he’d seen her and Nico as lovers – everyone had – and if she was now finding herself at a bit of a loose end and making a play for him – what was wrong with that?

  In two words, damn-all. Actually, rather exciting. In fact not rather, very. Not to be thought of as anything more than a temporary or part-time diversion, probably – this week, and some of next – touch wood …

  ‘Brown study, Mike?’

  Guy Mottram, with a gin in each hand and the affable, Robert Morley-type smile, his eyes going to the second-hand epaulettes Mike was wearing for the first time this evening, in his Red Sea rig. Carmella was charging practically nothing for them and nothing at all for a second pair that were rather more battered and less shiny; actually he preferred them to these. Mottram handed him one of the gins and told him, ‘The shoulder-boards are most becoming, old horse. Well done. Seeing you tomorrow at the
Gravies’, I gather?’

  ‘You’ll be there, will you?’

  ‘Most of us old hands will, I imagine. In your honour, of course. Greta’s been ringing round. Anyway, here’s to it.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Blinking – there wasn’t much water in this one. ‘Beats me how the Gravies got to know about it. Shrimp only announcing it here, tonight.’

  ‘They’re his great buddies, aren’t they?’

  ‘Doubt he’d have said anything. He told me about it on Monday, it was his idea to give it a day or two – you know, for – oh, did you write to Jimmy’s wife yet?’

  ‘Yes. On the lines you suggested. Better than not writing, I admit.’

  ‘A lot better.’He’d taken another swallow of his gin, realised as it burnt its way down that Abigail of course was the leak.

  * * *

  Mike told Jamie McLeod on board Ursa next morning, ‘I’ve a splitting headache, and I’m seeing double. So much for bloody celebrations.’ He looked at the man who’d stopped in the gangway opposite the wardroom. ‘Want me, Hart?’ PO Tubby Hart, Second Coxswain, blinking at him: ‘Wanted to say congratulations, sir. If that’s in order.’ Mike shook the large proffered hand: ‘Entirely in order. Thank you, I appreciate it.’ He’d been congratulated at least a dozen times since coming on board; and as half the ship’s company were at the Mellieha rest-camp, there had to be about twenty still to come. Actually he did appreciate it, liked them for it. Liked them, anyway. He asked McLeod, ‘Changeover at Mellieha’s on Sunday – right?’

  ‘Transport from Mellieha ten a. m., sir, brings the starboard watch and takes this lot.’

  ‘Good. Jamie, I’m on my way to see Shrimp at Lascaris about various things, and one of them is very much your business. Come up top a minute.’

  Up through the tower into the bridge. Ursa lying between buoys fifty yards off the Lazaretto shoreline, with the last of the engineers’ work going on in her after ends, where the HP air compressor lay around in pieces on the steel deck. Commander Sam MacGregor’s newly tunnelled-out workshop was in full swing although not yet completed, could cope with machinery defects which before and during the blitz could only have been handled in the dockyard – where there’d been no defences at all, beyond machine-guns in boats’ bridges and on the jetties.

  Blue sky cloudless at the moment, ruffled blueish water with the sprawl of the old quarantine building reflected palely in its surface; bonfire smoke drifting away from the direction of the farm, overalled sailors moving on the brows that linked submarines to shore. To those with eyes for it, rather a lovely panorama, he thought. He and McLeod both lit cigarettes, but in his own case the first drag on it was enough; he stubbed it out in the pig’s ear, a funnel-shaped receptacle into which bridge watchkeepers could pee when at sea and on the surface; a pipe led down to the waterline and was flushed out when you dived her.

  McLeod had said, breathing smoke, ‘Matter of fact, sir, I can guess what this is about.’

  ‘Can you, now. Something that’s overdue?’

  ‘Well – arguably. I haven’t bothered you with it because frankly I’ve been – still am – in two minds. Whether to stay with you and Ursa, or –’

  ‘Get sent home for your Perisher.’

  McLeod had nodded. ‘I’ve thought once or twice, maybe –’

  ‘No “maybe” about it. I’m not justified in holding you back, Jamie. You’re as suitable for command as anyone could be, it’s definitely overdue. I may say I had a word with Shrimp about it, a few weeks ago, had to admit I’d very much prefer not to lose you –’

  ‘Rather my own way of thinking, as it happens.’

  ‘Good. But talent shouldn’t be wasted, a lot of new boats are coming off the stocks and Admiral Submarines is desperate for COs. If he knew I’d been dragging my feet he’d be highly displeased. Anyway, when it came up with Shrimp I suggested that if we were going home reasonably soon that might be the best way to get you there, and he more or less agreed. But since then nothing’s been said about us packing up – although we must be in line for it. Anyway I’m going to propose you should be flown home – depending on when the next Perisher’s starting,and finding a replacement. Which’ll be my bugbear, of course. Go along with that, would you?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you, sir. I’m sorry –’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s the right thing to do.’ He moved to the hatch. ‘Getting our Mark VIIIs tomorrow forenoon, right?’

  * * *

  Shrimp had been tied up in a meeting with Vice-Admiral Malta, had kept Mike waiting nearly an hour. Bursting in at last, throwing his cap at a wall-hook and missing.

  ‘Blast. And that was almost a total waste of time. You look a bit pasty, Michael, serve you right.’

  ‘Have to admit it does, sir.’

  ‘I’ll admit it too, then.’Thumping down behind his desk, Mike less vigorously on this side of it. ‘Done your homework?’

  ‘In a rudimentary fashion, sir. Not having the maps they promised, for one thing.’

  ‘What do we have to show them?’

  ‘Only this, sir.’ A single sheet of paper: left-hand column headed URSA and UNSUNG, and opposite that, SWORDSMAN. He put it in front of Shrimp. ‘Just off the cuff, sir, allocating the Gela and Comiso teams to myself and Melhuish, Catania to Swordsman – largely because we’d have sixty miles to our targets and Gerahty’d have a hundred and twenty, and as he has twelve and a half knots –’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Simple fact being that there’s no way we could land them in one place and pick them up in another. I was talking nonsense the other day.’

  ‘Got to come back either to or through wherever they’ve left their folboats, haven’t they. I agree, a fairly simple point. What else are we telling them?’

  Mike reached to the chart. ‘What I’m suggesting there, sir – Swordsman to Catania, sailing a day after the two of us – because (a) she has the extra knots, and (b) her team could be put ashore before midnight on D-day, nearer Acireale than Catania. Depth of water allows this, giving them only three thousand yards to paddle; then subject to the lie of the land – need a map to check this by – they’d circle inland of the airfield, attack from inland, and get back to their folboats by the reverse of the same route. ETA Lazaretto about dawn D plus one.’

  ‘So what’s different from Una’s effort is the landing-point up-coast and the attack from inland.’

  ‘If the terrain allows it, yes sir. And if they’ll wear it – I mean, in the light of their own military principles. Need to leg it a bit, of course.’

  ‘We can try it on them anyway. What about the others?’

  He leant to the chart, used a pencil as a pointer. ‘Cape Scalambri – Gela, and Comiso. No matter what, the Comiso team has a dozen miles to cover from whatever beach we land them on. And as we can’t launch them until dark, and they then have to paddle about a mile and hide the folboats, if the assaults are to take place twelve miles away at 0200 it’s less a matter of legging it than split-arsing it. That’s irrespective of terrain, obstacles, guard-posts or whatever. Whether they’d take that on – well, their business, and they must have maps and/or special knowledge of the area. Maybe I’m wrong, but Comiso – well, the only way I can see of managing it is to land them the night before – giving them the rest of that night to find a hide to lie-up in.’

  ‘And Gela?’

  Shrimp was glancing over the page of notes, while Mike explained them. Cutting in with ‘Sending that bunch across-country too?’

  ‘It might make more sense than having them land bang on target, sir, where defences might be on their toes and – anyway, unpredictable as far as we know. I’m suggesting we put them down here – ten miles west of Cape Scalambri, while the Comiso team’s landing ten miles east of it. Giving them – Gelas – about the same distance to their airfield – route up to them to work out.’

  ‘Soundings aren’t so convenient for you – or them – at either of those points.’

  ‘I know, si
r. Have to paddle a fair distance. But closer to Gela’d be worse – in fact much worse. And only fifteen miles the other side of Gela is Licata with its Mas-boats.’

  ‘All right. And after the airfield actions both teams get back to their hides, lie-up until dark and then have – what, four hours for withdrawal?’

  ‘About that, sir. More like five if you include a four- or five-mile paddle and R/V at say 0300.’

  Shrimp was checking Mike’s figures against distances on the charted coastline, measuring them with dividers. Mike guiding him, with ‘R/V positions are noted there, sir. Bearings and distances on Cape Scalambri – the lighthouse – for both of them. Obviously won’t be lit, but it’s prominent enough. Then for the Comiso team, this headland; Gela force, just a bearing on Scalambri and distance offshore. From mid-week on they’ll have a moon – so given a reasonably clear sky – well, may suit them or may not, but –’

  ‘Most likely not. But alternative rendezvous twenty-four hours later, same positions?’

  ‘Yes – I suppose –’

  ‘Gives them a second chance which they might well need. Overall, Michael, this is a very tricky operation – primarily for the pongos. I’d imagine that pretty soon after they launch their attacks the whole district’ll be swarming with patrols. Even if the attacks coming from inshore confuses the buggers initially. And from our angle we can reasonably expect Mas-boats and E-boats out of Licata for instance, or even Gela. That’s on the night of the assaults and the following day, by the second night A/S forces from – wherever … Tell me – these pick-ups, the Gela and Comiso teams – if either or both failed to show up, you wouldn’t be tempted to close the beach on the surface and hunt around for them?’

  ‘Might well be tempted, and they might expect it, but –’

  ‘It’ll be covered in your orders – minimal distance offshore to be maintained no matter what circumstances. And I’ll make clear to the Chief Pongo – who’ll be joining us on Saturday, by the way –’