Submariner (2008)

by Fullerton, Alexander

  ‘No such thing. But hang on –’ he patted her arm – ‘Quick word with the man who does the pushing out …’

  Shrimp, sipping black coffee, offered him a cigarette. ‘Enjoying yourself, Michael?’

  ‘Very much, sir. We were swimming and sunning ourselves, earlier. Life of Reilly – thanks to Gravy and Greta, who’s –’

  ‘Marvellous, isn’t she. Admiral Submarines told me to treat my COs like Derby winners, but these two do it all for me.’ A glance at Melhuish, who was still drooling over Abigail. ‘He won’t steal her from you, will he?’

  ‘You know, sir, I rather doubt it.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I can claim ownership exactly. Would like to, but –’

  ‘Really is a looker, isn’t she?’

  ‘Bright, too.’

  ‘Does she know your days here are numbered?’

  ‘Not yet. Well, only just getting acquainted, really. I’ll have to tell her, obviously.’

  ‘Right. Cards on the table. One thing, for you, though – I invited you to assist in the reception of Major Ormrod and the other one, day after tomorrow – but it’s occurred to me that as a Derby winner you might have better things to do, on what might be your last weekend?’

  ‘Well – since you mention it, sir –’

  ‘I can take care of them, all right. Incidentally, Melhuish has been told he has a Special Op ahead of him, and I’ve recalled Swordfish. ETA Monday p.m. And Monday forenoon, let’s say ten-thirty, conference with the pongos, my office in Lascaris. We don’t need Melhuish at this one. All right?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir. About Saturday, though –’

  ‘Don’t worry, I need to be on the base –’ a nod towards Mottram – ‘for Unbowed sailing – no, that’s tomorrow – but three others returning from patrol. Pongos can watch it all if they like, and in the intervals I’ll – you know, mug it over with them … Here and now, you and I’d better mingle – uh?’

  Abigail had moved on, left Melhuish talking to Greta and was herself chatting with Mottram and Brodie. She’d thrown him a questioning glance as if wondering whether he was rejoining her – which he wasn’t, the thought having occurred that they might have been making their interest in each other a bit obvious, so he just winked at her instead – Melhuish rejoining him at that moment, telling him, ‘I got bashed up by an armed trawler, Mike. Vicinity of Taormina, this was. Quite a nasty few minutes, actually. Mind you, the Wop was in a considerably worse state than I was by that time –’

  ‘What damage to your boat?’

  ‘Port hydroplane guard, and the casing port side for’ard of the bridge. The walkway around that side too. Gunshield took some of it. Heck of a noise while it was happening, and made a mess of us, but –’

  ‘Sounds like you were under helm while he was hitting you. Turning away?’

  ‘Well, yes. I’d got into rather close range. Good thing I did turn away. He was on fire, I might add, we’d hit his bridge a few times then shifted target to the waterline – he actually was done for, just this one gun still at it, something like a Bofors –’

  ‘Gun actions are better not fought bow-on, Charles. Sooner or later you have to turn away, then you’re exposing your beam to him. Whereas if you’d engaged him over your quarter –’

  ‘You have only a twelve-pounder?’

  In other words, what do you know about gun actions … Mike nodded: ‘Yes, like all the older boats. Wretched thing, 1914–18 vintage, no proper sights … Still use it though, on occasion. Ann keeping well, is she?’

  ‘Well – yes. Lonely, of course. Wouldn’t be so bad if she had friends among her Mechanised Transport Corps colleagues, but she doesn’t. She’s not easy to please, you know.’

  ‘Couldn’t she switch to something else? Or stick with MTC but ask for a transfer to Edinburgh – where she’d have lots of friends, not to mention her parents?’

  ‘Could, perhaps. Not that proximity to the parents would exactly thrill her. Otherwise – well, now I’m here, really no reason not to get out of London. I might suggest it. But listen, Mike – Shrimp has me down for a Special Op, landing commandos somewhere. In just a matter of days, apparently – less than a week anyway. That and apparently not knowing exactly where – seems a bit special, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Security around that kind of thing’s extremely tight. Has to be. If you were a commando paddling in to an enemy beach and not knowing whether machine-gunners were watching you come, you’d hope they hadn’t been tipped-off to expect you – huh?’

  ‘But why Unsung – when we’ve only been back five minutes?’

  ‘Well, you’re back, haven’t put in all that much sea-time as yet, and he might think it’ll be good experience for you. We’ve all done quite a bit of it, one time and another.’

  ‘He’s setting up an exercise for us in launching and recovering folboats. Which as I told him I have done more than once – not as a CO, admittedly, but –’

  ‘Things change, don’t they. Folboats for instance used to be embarked unassembled – timber frame, and the fabric in a sort of parcel. Now we bring them on board intact and carry them in torpedo reload racks. Then usually now don’t actually launch them but float them off the casing with the occupants already in situ.’

  ‘Well. Given reasonably calm weather.’

  ‘That you do need. Charles – quite a few characters here you haven’t met. Guy Mottram there for instance – Unbowed, sails for patrol tomorrow. Come and meet him – very old chum of mine.’

  ‘Looks a bit like Robert Morley.’

  ‘Doesn’t he, just …’

  Abigail asked him, ‘What was the wink for?’

  He demonstrated it again – smooth lowering of an eyelid without any contortion of facial muscles. She tried to do it herself, and couldn’t; asked him whether he could do it with the other eye as well.

  He tried, and couldn’t. ‘Funny – never realised.’

  ‘What was it all about, anyway?’

  ‘Good news, is what. Saturday, I’m off the hook.’

  ‘Well, hurrah! What’ll we do?’

  ‘Can I ring you in the morning at your office – early?’

  ‘If you like, but –’

  ‘By then I’ll have had a brainwave. Even now I can feel it coming on. My God, but you’re a wow …’

  In the morning – Friday now – before breakfast he went to the Manoel Island farm, found the Maltese foreman in Pop Giddings’ farm office and asked him whether Vera would be available next day. ‘All day – with the trap, of course.’

  ‘I will check, Signo.’

  Vera was a donkey, who throughout even the worst of the siege had somehow managed to avoid being eaten. The foreman checked in Pop’s diary and told Mike that she had no engagements, wouldn’t be wanted for farm work, and as far as he knew wouldn’t be working today either. ‘So – your name, sir? Lieutenant-Commander –?’

  ‘Nicholson. I’ll come for her about nine-thirty – harness her myself. I’ll have a look at her, while I’m here.’

  She seemed to be on form – tried to bite him when he was examining her hooves – which of course benefited from the rocky terrain, but a farrier had been at them quite recently in any case.

  Back in the mess, before going in to breakfast he put a call through to Abigail, and she came on the line at once.

  ‘Abbie – Mike here.’

  ‘Heavens, I only got in this minute!’

  ‘Tomorrow ten a. m. at Pembroke House?’

  ‘All right – I mean yes, lovely. Dressed for what?’

  ‘Country-going – might swim – I’ll bring a picnic of sorts?’

  ‘You’re on …’

  Melhuish, who sat down next to him at breakfast, informed him that he was taking Unsung up to the Msida torpedo depot to offload two Mark VIIIs. Not having fired any on his recent patrol he’d brought back a full outfit and had to get rid of two reloads to make room for folboats. ‘For this exercise and the ensuing operation. Not necessarily the same folboats, for
some reason, but four of them for the op – and two commandos per boat – eight passengers, therefore – is that normal?’

  ‘There’s very little you’d call normal on any of those larks.’

  ‘But eight passengers is a bit over the odds in a U-class, isn’t it?’

  ‘When we were pulling out, blitz-time at the end of April, some boats took as many as twenty passengers. Engineers, ERAs and so forth, with all their gear. Pass the sugar, will you?’

  ‘I must say, that girl you were monopolising last night’s quite a dish. Abigail – right? What is it she does?’

  ‘Civilian, works for the Defence Security Officer – offshoot of the War Office. Cipher specialist and linguist. You say I was “monopolising” her, but she happens to be a very good friend of mine. End of gossip, OK?’

  ‘Well, God’s sake – hardly gossip –’

  ‘One tends not to chatter much at breakfast, Charles – especially about girls.’

  ‘Well. Apologies. If that’s what I was doing. Only not having seen each other for rather a long time – and I’ll be writing to Ann today –’

  ‘Give her my love.’ Gulping coffee. ‘Love to her and regards to Sunny.’

  ‘Sunny …’

  ‘Sunny Warne. Commissioned Gunner (T). Presiding genius at Msida.’

  ‘But the Flotilla Torpedo Officer –’

  ‘Wiggy Bennett. Lieutenant. Sunny runs the depot. First-class bloke, old chum of Shrimp’s. They were shipmates in L.7 when she got herself stuck on the putty in the South China Sea, back in – oh, mid-twenties, would have been. Christ, now I’m chattering.’

  Jarvis and Danvers seemed to be in good heart and at least as fit as he was himself. They met on board Ursa, crossed the creek by dghaisa, passed through Valetta and Floriana, thence by way of Pieta to Msida and Birkirkara, then Lia – on the edge of Ta’ Qali airfield, from which a flight of Spitfires was climbing into the northern sky – and on to Mosta, where they paused for a look at the church which the famous bomb had penetrated without exploding. Being Friday, there was a Mass in progress. This wasn’t the first sight Mike had had of the place, was the first time he’d done anything of this kind with his officers; he’d decided that it was something he ought to do, and they’d reacted well to the suggestion.

  They’d been enjoying their shore-time apparently, socialising mainly with Wrens who had flats in Sliema and elsewhere. There were effectively no pubs on the island now, the only drink available anywhere being ‘Red Biddy’, a concotion that looked like red wine and tasted like paint thinner laced with rum – the rum undoubtedly stolen from naval stores, there was no other way it could have been acquired – and in one bar in Valetta an orange-tasting fizzy mixture allegedly gin-based. But the Chocolate King in Sliema was still open for business, and the Union Club still held dances; one way and another they’d managed to fill their off-duty hours. Danvers interrupting Jarvis’s account of Danvers’ pursuit of a fat Maltese girl by name of Sara who was allegedly engaged to a policeman, to ask how far was St Paul’s Bay from here; the answer was about three miles – ‘here’ being a few thousand acres of scrub and rock a little northwest of Mosta, a barren-looking landscape where shoats – half-sheep, half-goat – were the only visible inhabitants. Scrawny, scabby-looking animals that gnawed each other’s tails. St Paul’s Bay was the destination though, and by the time they reached it they’d have covered twelve or fifteen miles of the marathon he’d planned. His intention was to turn east along the bay’s southern shore and stop for lunch – corned-beef sandwiches – when the widening distance to the other shore was about half a mile, have lunch before swimming it, then take a southwesterly route passing a mile or two south of the Mallieha rest-camp to Ghain Tuffieha on the west coast, the camp where next week the Ismailia commandos were to be installed. Then south to Mdina and Rabat, Ta’Qali again, and back via Floriana and Valetta – by which time they’d have covered twenty-five or thirty miles.

  Mike was feeling good about Abigail – looking forward to tomorrow and his day with her, glad he’d thought of Vera and the trap. Not feeling exactly bad at having been promoted, either, or at the prospect of shortly taking Ursa home. Reminding himself to make sure Melhuish knew of this, so he’d tell Ann.

  Fish pie for supper. Unbowed had sailed, Unslaked was due in at first light, Unbending and Unseen later in the day. It would be good to see Otto Stanley and Tubby Crawford again, after an interval of several weeks, comings and goings that hadn’t coincided. He nodded, agreeing with Melhuish that it was very good fish pie. Since returning from the marathon, he’d written to Chloe and was intending to write to his brother Alan before turning in. It was about three months since he’d done so, actually from Port Said where they’d docked for a bottom-scrape before moving on up to Haifa. Hadn’t heard from the lazy bastard for even longer. Admittedly the Old Man always passed on any news he had from either of them – so that, for instance, Alan would already know of the promotion and would hear shortly about his imminent return. Mike recognised that the decision to write to him now was to tell him about Abigail. That she existed, had that name and he was taking her for a ride in a donkey-cart, was about all it would come down to.

  Actually, a little more than that: that she was worth writing home about. Especially to one’s brother, and not to the Old Man. Alan would catch on to that, all right.

  Charles Melhuish being in the mess, Mike had contemplated giving him the news that Ursa’s next patrol was to be her last, but decided it would be better to postpone this for a day or two. There was no great rush for Ann to be apprised of it, whereas Melhuish might feel inclined to mention it to Abigail, if he found himself within hailing distance of her before Mike himself had told her.

  Tell her tomorrow. Choosing a good moment. Hoping to God it didn’t spoil the whole day. Soften it perhaps by asking whether she knew when her tour of duty might end. Then in a day or two tell Melhuish. Not leaving it too long because he wanted to get a letter of his own away to Ann before shoving off for ‘Backlash.’

  After supper he found himself drinking coffee in company with Shrimp, and told him how he’d spent the day. Shrimp approved. ‘Nothing better. I won’t ask you what you’re doing tomorrow.’

  ‘Borrowing Vera and the trap, sir.’

  ‘Now that’s a splendid idea.’

  ‘She doesn’t know about it yet.’

  ‘You mean Vera doesn’t?’

  He smiled, shook his head. ‘She doesn’t either.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Very good of you to take on the pongos single-handed, sir.’

  ‘They’ll be here about midday. Three boats due in meanwhile, and Unsung to sea for exercises. Melhuish still under the impression it’s a solo operation, I hope?’

  ‘Far as I know, sir. Although to be frank I don’t see why he has to be kept in the dark.’

  ‘Oh. Well – solo sabotage job, no big deal, but three linked, simultaneous ones – quite different. We’ve attacked airfields before with the aim of disrupting German Air Force attacks on convoys – with little success, if any, single attempts here or there – and it wouldn’t call for a genius to conclude that a triple effort has to be an expansion of the same endeavour, i.e. getting a convoy in. Nobody’s saying the island’s crawling with spies, but the orders for “Backlash” lay stress on a need for maximum security, which is actually quite difficult to guarantee – for instance, passenger in a dghaisa shooting his mouth off, dghaisa man’s ears flapping …’ He reached to put his cup down. ‘Makes it desirable to restrict the number who are in the know to a minimum, for as long as possible. Damn it, we hanged that Wop spy not so very long ago, didn’t we?’

  ‘Pisani. Carmelo Pisani.’

  ‘Well done. But how do we know there aren’t a dozen we haven’t hanged?’

  ‘You have a point, sir. Those Austrian cabaret artistes for instance.’

  ‘They’re behind bars, aren’t they. But to tidy it all up, Michael – you’ll attend our conference on Monday, th
en with plans more or less cut and dried we’ll have what may be a final one in which Gerahty and Melhuish will take part. None of you having known there was any other boat involved, until that stage – no reason to be upset at having been left in the dark – eh?’

  Saturday, then. MacGregor’s engineers had finished tinkering with Ursa’s compressor and other threatening or malfunctioning machinery, McLeod was shoving off shortly for the torpedo depot to embark five Mark VIIIs, and Jarvis was limping slightly. Mike signed a few Admiralty ‘returns’ that Danvers as Correspondence Officer had bashed out on the boat’s portable, and left them to it. He’d written the letter to his brother last night, and found it still legible in the first light of day; his next one would be to Ann. Plenty to tell her about without any mention of Abigail. He wondered what man or men she’d not find it necessary to mention when she got around to writing; and discussed this with Vera while hitching her into the trap.

  ‘Can just happen, old girl, can’t it. Especially looking like she does. I dare say in your youth you had similar problems every bloody day. None of that now, uh? Could be why you bite. Whoa-up now …’

  At Pembroke House, Abigail squawked, ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Better than foot-slogging, though? In my own case, two days running might be somewhat crippling. And on a fine day like this?’ Holding both her hands: had only kissed her cheek, suspecting that Gravy and/or Greta might put in an appearance at any moment. Not, he guessed, that they’d be all that disapproving. Telling her quietly, ‘Abbie, you are lovely.’ Hearing or sensing the approach of Gravy then, adding ‘I thought we might picnic and swim at Maddalena or thereabouts – you know, St George’s? Oh – Gravy! Thank you so much for Thursday night – great evening, and –’

  ‘We enjoyed it.’ He was in a brightly striped dressing-gown. ‘And good to have you with us again.’

  ‘Careful – the old girl bites, if you give her half a chance. But it was a great evening – you’re both so hospitable and generous. Greta OK?’