Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘– flying in from Cairo. I’ll make clear to him that in our view and our C-in-C’s a submarine and her crew is a lot more valuable than half a dozen soldiers, and that if they don’t turn up on time at the R/V your orders preclude any search inshore where it may be impossible to dive. This one does look quite unusually hazardous to me, Michael. I’d say your proposals go some way to make the object of the exercise achievable – just, as long as the pongos are bloody good at their jobs and very lucky … All right, the shoreside stuff’s not strictly our business, we’re advancing these ideas only for discussion, set out what we can and can’t do, see how that fits in with whatever plans they have. Otherwise we rethink, collectively.’ Consulting paperwork of his own … ‘Chief Pongo’s a major by name of Ormrod and his 2 i/c who’ll be with him is a Captain Haigh. Other parties are scheduled to arrive during the week – twenty-four commandos in all, including Ormrod and Haigh, three teams of eight.’

  ‘Eight …’

  It meant four folboats, and nowadays they didn’t dismantle them. You could get two into a reload torpedo rack, with other gear such as weaponry and explosives stowed inside them. So he’d need to leave two fish behind. Might have thought of this: but no problem, just two fewer for the port watch of torpedomen to load tomorrow – to the satisfaction of Wiggy Bennett and Sunny Warne, no doubt.

  Shrimp was saying, ‘We’ll be accommodating Ormrod and Haigh in Lazaretto, by the way, and the rest – oh, there’s another officer, hang on …’ Flipping through pink signal forms in a spring-back file: ‘Here we are – Captain Flood. One officer to each team, presumably. Flood will be arriving a day or two after Ormrod and Haigh, with a staff sergeant, four troopers and weaponry, and finally a Royal Marine colour sergeant with the rest of them plus folboats. That lot in a Sunderland, I’d guess.’ He shut the file. ‘Three officers in Lazaretto, all the others in Ghain Tuffieha rest-camp, which they’ll have to themselves. That’s a point I won this morning; another is they’ll have RAF transport laid on for them.’

  ‘Does this mean we can put a date on it, sir? On the convoy operation, even?’

  ‘No. And we aren’t talking about convoys, Michael. Not even between ourselves. We just had a convoy in, at huge cost, might be a long time before we can mount another. Forget convoys. But – where were we …’ Checking his own notes again, then shutting the file. ‘Anyway, you might join me in playing host to these chaps on Saturday – show ’em round, give ’em a drink or two, set up a planning conference for Monday. There’ll be no sea exercises, by the way, they’ve done enough of that with the 1st Flotilla, apparently, and we want as near total security as we can get. I’ll convey the gist of all this to your pal Melhuish when he gets in tonight, but I’ll only tell him about his own part in it, not yours or Gerahty’s. You’ll be at the Gravies’, will you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. If I might mention it – just a personal thing – Melhuish isn’t a particular friend of mine. I only happened to know him and his wife socially – some time ago, as it happens.’

  ‘I see. Had the impression you were old chums. Not that it makes a shred of difference.’ Shrimp was lighting a cigarette, Mike having declined the wordless offer of one. ‘So what else? Anything, while we’re at it?’

  ‘There is one thing, sir. My Number One – McLeod – is wondering about his Perisher. I don’t want to lose him, God knows, but in my view he’s overdue for it – and extremely sound. I couldn’t recommend him too highly.’

  ‘Well.’Surprised look:expelling smoke. ‘I think we discussed this not long ago. As I remember it, we agreed that as Ursa’s time here would very soon be up, the best thing might be to take him home with you.’

  ‘Dead right, sir. But as he’s raised the subject himself now, I feel bound to support him in it, we aren’t on our way yet –’

  ‘I think you might be.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Watching, guessing … Shrimp explaining, ‘I haven’t said anything about it until now, but as you know, Ruck was a patrol or two ahead of you, and he’d have been on his way by now. After all, the flotilla’s well up to strength, and much as I’d like to hang on to you, you have done your time. Our temporary evacuation – and the frightful losses prior to it – put such planning out of mind. But – there it is, Michael. Taking it head-on, how d’you feel about it?’

  It was quite a big issue. Which of course he had thought about, had known he’d be faced with before much longer. Whether he actually had any option, if he tried to exercise one – or even for that matter wanted to … Ann was somewhere on the periphery of his private thinking – or had been. Maybe still was? Completely private and incidental though, nothing to do with the issue at stake that had to be decided on here and now – Ursa and her crew, the job they’d done and the run of luck he’d had, the satisfaction there’d be in bringing them all home intact, alive.

  More than just a successful outcome, one might say a small triumph, in its way.

  Actually not say it – but feel it, know it.

  ‘You’re saying make this airfield operation our last outing, sir?’

  ‘What it comes down to, yes. Unless you’ve any – serious reservations?’

  ‘Well. No, sir. I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Good. We’ll take it as read, then. Talk again, obviously, but I think you’re wise. In any case it couldn’t have been postponed by more than perhaps one patrol. So – coming back to the more immediate future – I should have mentioned that our landing operation now has the code-name “Backlash”. Saves frequent references to airfields?’

  ‘“Backlash”. Right … Will you hang on to those notes, sir?’

  ‘I’ll keep them on file for the Chief Pongo to peruse. Better not call him that, I suppose. He is, but in the contingent as a whole there are more Royal Marines than soldiers. I think you’ve done a good job there, Michael, as far as it goes. Can’t say I like it, but I don’t see any good alternatives either.’ He checked the time, added, ‘To be slightly more frank, I think it’s a bastard. Let’s hope they’ve some answers. Anyway … On your way back to Lazaretto now, are you? May see you at the Gravies’ tonight, may not – depends on Unsung. I might bring Melhuish along with me, if he’s up to it.’

  ‘One other thing I’d raise, sir.’ On his feet, and scooping up his cap. ‘You said no exercises, which is fine as far as I and Dan Gerahty are concerned, we’ve both launched and recovered folboats a few times – but Unsung quite likely hasn’t?’

  ‘That is a point.’ Thoughtful, rubbing his blunt jaw. ‘Yes, damn it, should have thought of that. Well – we’ll give him a dummy run with Taylor and a few of his chaps.’ Meaning Captain Taylor of the Liverpool Scottish, OC Shrimp’s private army, who occupied barracks adjoining the quarantine building and would no doubt be quietly seething at other commandos being brought in to do a job they’d reckon should be theirs. Once they heard about it. They’d have a point, too, Mike thought. Except if they heard the details of it they might be glad they weren’t being used. Shrimp was saying, ‘The decision to do without exercises was based on the security aspect. Similar to hiding most of them in Ghain Tuffieha. But – yes, good thinking, Michael.’

  ‘And about McLeod, sir – I’ll tell him we’re homebound after this next one, but in the interim will you recommend him for COQC?’

  ‘Yes. You can tell him I’m doing so.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. May I also let him in on the fact this one’s a commando operation, folboats and eight passengers? Some practical considerations, and he’ll be wondering in any case – leaving two racks empty, for instance.’

  ‘Yes again. But no mention of the operation as a whole.’

  Write Ann, tell her ‘See you very soon’?

  He hadn’t heard from her in what seemed like quite a while. Not really surprising – she wouldn’t have had his answer to her last one yet, could well be steeling herself against writing again until she did hear.

  Hold on anyway, let Charles te
ll her?

  Write again to the Old Man, though, tell him ‘Home soon, touch wood.’ If one sailed for this operation in about a week, spent say a week or so at sea and another week back here preparing Ursa for the trip home – then five days to Gib and a couple in Gib – embarking amongst other things a few cases of Tio Pepe – then twelve or fourteen days across Biscay and through the Channel into the Solent, swinging her into Haslar Creek at the top of the tide, the dead water known as the Ten Minute Stand, sliding into a berth on the concrete quay there with the Jolly Roger flying, doubtless some welcoming cheers drifting in the autumn rain or sleet and bitter wind – and no doubt three or four days there before one could get away. So tell the Old Man ‘See you in something like seven weeks, d. v.’, and to Ann when or if one did write, ‘Might be a ring on your bell in approx two shakes …’

  13

  Abigail cheered: ‘You made it!’

  It was a little after four p.m. Greta had left a message with McLeod to the effect that she and Abigail would be swimming from the Lido rocks until about five and he was welcome to join them if he could get away that early. So after a quick late lunch he got the letter done to his father, telling him that with luck and good management he’d see him in about eight weeks. Putting it further ahead than he hoped it might be, so the Old Man wouldn’t lose too much sleep if for some reason it took longer. In making such an estimate even in one’s own head one tended to shut out awareness that things could go totally, wildly wrong, that there couldn’t possibly be any certainty – rather as this morning Shrimp had described Operation ‘Backlash’ as a bastard from the commandos’ point of view while seeing it as nothing other than straightforward, almost routine, as far as his submarines’ end of it was concerned. Commandos might not make it to the rendezvous, in which case one or more boats might come back without any; but the ‘coming back’ wasn’t in doubt – or if it was, you didn’t take it into account.

  You couldn’t. The scoreboard in the wardroom entrance told its tale of other men’s atrociously bad luck, a glance at it stirring a couple of years of memories – names, faces, assorted recollections including some of one’s own successes – but other men’s memorials, last patrols.

  Jimmy Ruck’s, for instance. Ruled off now, with a U-boat silhouette darkly pencilled in that last rectangle. And again, Shrimp this morning – this was probably what had given rise to the somewhat gloomy (or realistic) thinking – Shrimp not bothering to mention that at least part of the reason for sending one home after a fair stretch of intensive action was that if you were kept at it too long there was a danger of becoming stale, careless or over-confident.

  Or just the law of averages asserting itself. You didn’t have to be stale to hit a mine. You might even say it had been Jimmy’s turn to.

  ‘Actually did make it!’ Abigail, waving from a flat-topped rock and still wet, not having been out of the water long. Slight but very shapely figure in a flimsy blue costume he’d seen before – pale blue, going strikingly with her eyes and dark, gleamingly wet hair. The white-capped head thirty yards out could only be Greta’s; he waved to her and she waved back. He’d changed from shorts and shirt in the Gravies’ downstairs cloakroom – having come on foot from Lazaretto with Red Sea rig for the evening parcelled in a towel.

  ‘Isn’t this superb?’ Panorama of sea and rock, the coastline extending south to Sliema, northwest to Spinola, sky lightly patched with thin white cloud, white buildings or just hints of them along the shoreline. Turning back to her: ‘Abbie, you look absolutely fabulous!’

  ‘Not so bad yourself, Commander.’

  ‘Sickly white, in fact. Hideous, beside your lovely tan.’

  ‘But that’s nice – the contrast.’

  ‘In your case, heck of a lot more than nice –’

  ‘Although you should get into the sun while you can, Mike. How long’ll you be with us this time? Or did I ask you that the other day – when I finished gassing on about my own boring problems? Oh, my dear – frightful about Jimmy Ruck.’

  ‘Yes. More than frightful. Answering your question, though – I can’t be absolutely sure, but – few days, a week?’

  ‘Then away again for what – fortnight, month?’

  ‘Never that long, in this outfit. Ten days is about average.’

  Greta was on her way in, performing her fast, almost splash-less crawl. Long-limbed, dark-haired, but fair-skinned, with blue eyes very much like Abigail’s. He waved to her again, told Abigail, ‘I need to cool off. Coming?’ Giving her a hand up, he kissed her cheek and she turned her head, brushed his lips. He had to go in then.

  He asked her during supper how she’d managed to have an afternoon off when she’d only recently returned to work, and her answer had been that she’d put in a long morning and been at her desk yesterday until about eleven p.m.

  ‘Crikey. That’s close enough to midnight oil!’

  ‘I make my own hours, mostly, according to what’s going on.’

  ‘And something was, yesterday?’

  ‘Wasn’t half. We work very much in collusion with your Naval Cipher Office, you know. Or perhaps you didn’t. But I’d be at my desk all night seven days a week if necessary. Much better than clocking in from nine to five and sometimes damn-all to do except make coffee … At sea you sleep a lot, I’m told.’

  ‘As much as possible.’

  ‘And do you read much?’

  ‘When one’s slept enough, and things are quiet, yes.’

  ‘Read what? Novels?’

  ‘Mostly. Books one’s been lent.’

  ‘Well, I’ve the beginnings of a small library in my flat. Come and help yourself if you’d like to – before your next disappearance?’

  ‘Abbie, I’d very much like to!’

  ‘I’m not using it – the flat – at the moment. I’d come here, as I mentioned, by the extreme kindness of the Gravies, and some friends who’re having their hovel done up asked could they borrow it. I’d have moved back by now but the plumbing in theirs is still only a hole in the rock, apparently, another couple of days, they wanted. Mind you, that was yesterday, so just possibly this weekend … What are you doing between now and Monday?’

  ‘Tomorrow I’m taking my third and fourth hands on a hike across the island – pursuit of fresh air and exercise, which none of us get enough of.’

  ‘Third and fourth hands being your junior officers.’

  ‘Yes. Sub-lieutenants. Respectively torpedo officer and navigator.’

  ‘And you have a second-in-command by name of McLeod.’

  ‘D’you know him?’

  ‘I know a Wren by name of Eleanor who sees him when she can – when he’s not on the blooming briny. She’s great fun, actually.’

  ‘I’ve met her. Pretty. And Jamie McLeod’s a good man … But I was saying – on Saturday there’s something – oh, Shrimp wants me to help him entertain some transients – military visitors of some kind.’

  ‘All of Saturday?’

  ‘Not sure. I’ll find out. Might you be available, if I got off the hook?’

  ‘As of now I would.’ She frowned. ‘I mean yes, of course I would. Think you might swing it?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  The embarkation of torpedoes had been put off to Saturday forenoon, and Mike with this other obligation to Shrimp had told McLeod he could see to it – drive the boat up to Msida, embark five Mark VIIIs instead of seven, and bring her back. McLeod had looked pleased about it – especially coming on top of Shrimp’s recommending him for the first Perisher course after their return to the UK.

  Abigail enquired, ‘What’ll we do, if you can, I mean? Come here and swim?’

  ‘Well – if the Gravies wouldn’t mind. But they might like to have the place to themselves for a change. Anyway –’

  ‘Let me know.’

  ‘You bet I will. Oh, Lord …’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Captain of HM Submarine Unsung. Name of Charles Melhuish. He was coming in from patrol thi
s evening, Shrimp said he might bring him. New boy, this was his first patrol, but I knew him slightly before he took the command course.’

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘Oh, we’re all nice, Abbie … Must say hello to him anyway. Want to come along?’

  Shrimp was introducing Melhuish to the Gravies:Melhuish beaming, telling them what a nice house they had and how kind they were to let him into it, et cetera. Mike was accosted on his way across the room by Guy Mottram, who’d been playing Liar dice with Gravy and some others including Jack Brodie. Game temporarily suspended, Mottram bellowing at Mike, ‘You kidnapping her, or vice versa?’

  ‘Not sure, Guy. Could be a bit of both.’

  ‘See what happens when you promote a man before his time …’

  ‘Mike, hello!’

  Melhuish with his hand out. ‘Have to congratulate you, I hear.’ A smirk at the epaulettes. ‘Congratulations, sir.’

  ‘Same to you, Charles – for knocking down my cruiser.’

  ‘Yes, I’m told I owe that to you. If I’d known it was yours, might have let the bloody thing go by.’ A laugh, and a look around inviting applause … ‘Ann sends her love, by the way. Three letters from her, and in all three of them she sent it. Can you beat that?’

  ‘Not easily. But you’d better give her mine. Abbie – Charles Melhuish. Abigail French, Charles.’

  ‘Lovely name, as well!’

  She shook his hand. ‘You’ve just arrived back, Mike says. How long before you’re off again?’

  Greta laughed. ‘What a welcome for the poor man!’

  ‘Fortunately, I’m not all that much concerned about it.’ Shake of the narrow head. He still had the slightly supercilious look that Mike remembered. Adding now, ‘Well, that’s not entirely truthful, it’s been hinted I might be off again in only a few days, for some reason.’

  ‘So Mike’s not the only one they push out again as soon as he shows his face. I used to think it was his darned fault, Charles, that he volunteered for it or something.’