A Ship Must Die (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Villar called, ‘Nearest islet has a landing place, sir. Protected from the breakers for the last fifty yards or so.’

  Blake could hear him tapping his teeth with his pencil as he always did.

  ‘Good. Pass the word to Number One, will you? Then close the shore for another half mile. We will stand off but retain contact with the landing party. Make certain there’s a good signalman with the boat, Yeoman.’

  The Toby Jug’s red nostrils flared. ‘Already done, sir.’

  Villar grinned. ‘Never doubted it, Yeo.’

  The seaplane’s crane was already swinging above the boat tier, and small oilskinned figures scrambled amongst the tangle of blocks and wires like marooned seals.

  ‘Slow ahead together.’ A pause. ‘Steer two-seven-one.’

  Blake watched the horizon, a blurred mess of green and blue. A water-colour left out in the rain, the shapes and distances smeared into nothing.

  When he got back to Williamstown there would be more mail for the ship. A letter from his aunt, most likely.

  ‘Course two-seven-one, sir. Both engines slow ahead.’

  Behind and below Blake’s chair the ship and her people moved like an oiled machine.

  A speaker crackled into life. ‘Sick-berth attendant to the boat tier on the double. Able Seaman Robbins has broken his leg.’

  A lookout chuckled. ‘Poor old Terry. Pity he didn’t fall on his head. He’d not even notice that!’

  Blake thought about the house. What should he do? Sell it or give it to his aunt? Share the sale price? Though it was unlikely to raise much interest with the invasion of Europe still only a dream to most people.

  ‘Standing by, sir.’

  Blake slid off his chair, his chest and thighs were running with sweat under the oilskin, and he had a mad desire to rip everything off and stand naked in the pattering spray. That would really give Stagg something to moan about.

  He watched the motor boat swinging outboard while the cruiser’s side made a lee against the heavy swell.

  ‘Stop engines. Lower away.’

  He saw Scovell standing by the motor boat’s canopy, a webbing belt and revolver round his waist. His men were huddled together, some gripping Lanchester sub-machine-guns, the rest clinging to the gunwales as the boat’s keel dug into the water and the screw frothed into action.

  Blake watched the boat’s progress as Villar ordered the wheelhouse to alter course and increase speed again. Bumping and lurching, like a speed-boat at the seaside. Beach balls, ice cream, all the fun of the fair.

  What had she said? That it would not be the same again.

  He looked at the endless stretch of empty sea, the desolate islands which appeared to be attached to the starboard anchor as they probed across the water as if they and not the ship were moving.

  Then he thought of how she had felt in his arms, how much he wanted her. Needed her. Maybe Scovell had the right idea and he was the only odd man out. Let’s get it over with and get on with living.

  Lieutenant-Commander Francis Scovell leaned against a high rock which had somehow been split in halves like a giant egg. He was tired, dirty and knew his temper was worsening with each dragging hour.

  It was past noon and his stomach felt raw with hunger. He looked around the litter of fallen rocks, dead bushes and weed with distaste. The fourth island so far. His men, equally tired and irritable, were wandering about, their first interest having gone two hours back.

  There had been some jokes to begin with, mostly because Andromeda’s chief boatswain’s mate was the senior rating in the party. His name was Flint, and more than one wag had suggested they were only here to find his lost treasure.

  But even Chief Petty Officer Flint’s usual rough humour had gone. Like the rest, he was filthy from clambering over rocks and man-handling the motor boat safely past the rocks. He looked across at Sub-Lieutenant Walker and asked, ‘Can’t we shove off, sir? I’m missing me tot badly an’ so are the lads.’

  The young New Zealander peered at his watch. ‘What about it, sir?’

  Their combined fatigue gave Scovell strength. ‘Take half the men up to the ridge, Sub. I want a line right across the island. We’re not leaving here until we’re satisfied, I’m satisfied!’

  Under his breath Walker murmured, ‘That’s never, then.’ To the chief boatswain’s mate he called, ‘One more sweep, Buffer. Come on, chop, chop!’

  And so it went on, made no easier by the occasional glimpses of their floating home as she moved slowly and protectively past the island.

  Leading Seaman Jack Musgrave, the bearded captain of Andromeda’s forecastle party, plodded away from Flint’s group with his own smaller squad. Musgrave was two different people. In his responsible position in charge of the forecastle, with all its attendant clutter of anchor cables, mooring wires and capstans, he was a tower of strength. Ashore, he was a menace, and had dipped the leading seaman’s anchor from his arm at the defaulters table more times than he could remember. He would steal almost anything, a skill which had earned him the nickname of Hydraulic Jack, because there was nothing too big for him to lift.

  Now, neither afloat nor in truth ashore, he was prepared to amble along, wait for the snotty-nosed Jimmy the One to give up and then get back to the ship. A tot of neaters, and another from his secret bottle, and then head down in his mess for the seven days back to Aussie.

  He saw the ordinary seaman called Digby sitting dejectedly on a stone. He looked as if he would burst into tears.

  Poor little Digby. A CW candidate, as they called them. In the Service just for the war, ear-marked for a temporary commission after a few weeks’ sea-time, and then able to yell and rant, make any poor jack’s life a misery.

  Except that Digby’s expected return to the officers’ selection and training depot had been violently interrupted. By the battle with the three bloody great cruisers.

  Musgrave eyed him sadly. Poor little sod. He was frightened of his own shadow. If he got a bit of gold on his sleeve after his performance in Andromeda, Leading Seaman Musgrave would definitely sign the pledge.

  He passed his water bottle to the pinched faced seaman. ‘’Ere, ’ave a wet, Diggers.’ Strange that he felt sorry for a CW candidate, really. Musgrave had been fifteen years in the Andrew and now had to take orders from fresh-faced kids just out of school.

  The youth peered at him timidly. ‘Water, is it?’

  ‘Well, it bloody would be with old high an’ mighty Scovell runnin’ things, wouldn’t it?’

  He glanced round. They were out of sight of the others, the ship, everything. Musgrave sank down and stretched his legs on the wet sand.

  ‘What the ’ell did you do before the war, Diggers?’

  Digby searched his face, expecting sarcasm or an insult. He had never accepted the lower deck’s brutal kindness, nor had it accepted him.

  ‘I – I worked for a museum. I was hoping to get a degree.’ He waved his hands vaguely. ‘Old buildings, Roman fortifications, and that kind of thing.’

  Musgrave, whose home had originally been in an East London slum, studied him with amazement.

  ‘What, you?’

  The other two seamen in the party grinned and moved nearer.

  ‘Well, yes.’ Aware for the first time that the big, bearded leading hand who ruled his mess with an iron fist and language which could sear the paintwork was genuinely interested, Digby launched into his brief career before he had joined the Navy.

  He stood up, ignoring the grins from his companions, and pointed at the barren island.

  ‘I – I could tell you about the layers, the styles and substances of this place. How it has been changed, the pattern influenced over the years.’

  Musgrave scowled. ‘That’s a load of balls. Nobody’s been ’ere.’ He wondered why he had even bothered with him.

  Seeing his slender life-line already slipping from his grasp, Digby plunged past the seamen and seized a spade. ‘Here! I’ll show you!’ He was gasping, almost sobbing,
as he dug frantically at a fallen bank of sand and small stones. ‘Perhaps . . . gasp . . . once upon a time . . . gasp . . . some fishermen came here and –’ He reeled back against Musgrave who had been about to thump him into sanity.

  Musgrave snapped, ‘You, Adams! Take ’old of Diggers! ’Old ’im, you poxy-faced bastard!’ With surprising tenderness he took him by the arm and turned him away from his small, pathetic hole. ‘Easy, lad, easy now.’

  Then, as the other man gripped the youth, still unaware what was happening, Musgrave knelt down, his stomach muscles in hard knots as he reached into the hole and wiped the wet sand from what Digby had seen. Two clenched hands, bound together with cord, and below them the naked spine of a corpse.

  Musgrave said quietly, ‘Fetch Jimmy th’ One. Tell ’im to get up ’ere fast.’ He turned his face from the stench. ‘There’s more than one buried ’ere, if you ask me.’

  He walked across to the retching, sobbing Digby and said, ‘You get to the boat an’ tell Mr Walker I said so.’ He raised Digby’s chin with his great fist, the one with the flying swallow tattooed on it. ‘You done all right, see? But for you, an’ me listenin’, of course, we’d still be at square one.’

  Scovell came stamping up the slope. Normally he was in charge of the forecastle for entering or leaving harbour. He knew all about Musgrave and his funny ways.

  ‘If this is some bloody joke!’ He looked at the hole and said tonelessly, ‘I shall inform the ship at once.’ He made himself stoop over it. ‘I’ve heard about this sort of thing.’ He broke off, perhaps because he had momentarily forgotten himself enough to confide in a mere rating.

  Musgrave said firmly, ‘It was Diggers what found it, sir. All by ’isself.’

  Scovell nodded, needing to throw up, but afraid of doing so in front of his men.

  ‘I see. Good. I’ll tell the captain.’

  He beckoned to the signalman, bent almost double with his equipment and swaying aerial.

  ‘Call up Andromeda. Make, have discovered a dead body, maybe more. Request instructions.’

  Musgrave nudged the white-faced Digby and whispered, ‘An’ don’t forget the rum!’

  Digby did not know why he had not gone back to the boat and Sub-Lieutenant Walker, whom he liked. Nor did he know how he had stopped himself from running away until he had fallen into the sea.

  What he did understand was that something hideous had changed everything for him, and life would never be quite as bad again.

  Blake stood apart from the rest of his men, his shoes covered by wet sand and tiny stones which had been churned up by heavy overnight rain.

  It was unreal, a scene from some macabre painting. The shallow trench, one side of which had already collapsed under the rainfall, the double line of canvas bundles. Thirty-three bodies. They had once been men like the stiff-faced marine bugler, or the surgeon who with his assistants had worked all through the previous afternoon on an improvised examination of the corpses.

  Beyond a low hillock he saw Andromeda shining in the morning light which filtered through the cloud to play on her pale dazzle-paint. In the distance she looked clean and remote from all this horror.

  It was still raining, but the heavy drops tasted of salt spray. Like tears.

  Thirty-three bodies. It was impossible to tell exactly who they had once been, except for their common bond as sailors. Every identity disc or scrap of clothing, which might have left a clue for the sake of humanity, had been torn from them.

  The other thing which was common to them all, as Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander Bruce had explained, was that they had all been injured or wounded much earlier, probably in one of the actions against the raider.

  But why this? Surely the Germans had a doctor, or some means of getting their wounded captives to safety? Instead they had been dragged or carried ashore to this miserable scrap of land in the middle of an ocean, stripped naked with their hands pinioned behind them, then shot, one by one, in the back of the skull, to fall into a hastily dug grave.

  Blake felt the hatred coursing through him, the revulsion he had felt with each terrible discovery. And but for a frightened ordinary seaman named Digby the secret might have remained.

  Most of the murdered men were from the Australian cruiser Devonport. Their youth, their uniform haircuts and the occasional tattoos marked them apart from the others. Which, he wondered, was the man who had managed to drive a boatswain’s call into some rocks so that one day someone might discover it and he with his companions might be avenged?

  He could almost hear the limping procession to the edge of the pit. The bark of orders, the slamming crack of a machine-pistol. It happens, they said. Why then did you always expect it to happen to others and not to your own kind?

  Captain Farleigh, his helmet dripping with water, saluted smartly. ‘Ready, sir.’

  Blake nodded and walked slowly through his men, aware of the sadness and the hate, the way they gripped their spades like foot soldiers at Agincourt.

  The chaplain stood very upright by the grave, his surplice blowing in the wet breeze, his wispy hair plastered across his forehead while he waited to begin.

  What was he thinking? Blake wondered. Sickened by all of it, like Hugh Grenfell had been after the Dardanelles disaster, or still holding on, believing and hoping? They had been through a lot together. Death came in all shapes and guises. But this was different. This was part of hell.

  Beveridge’s thin voice cut through the swishing rain. ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters –’

  One of the firing party was swaying slightly against his rifle, his boots squeaking in the sand. Most of the original landing party were present, even young Digby, red-eyed but strangely determined as the chaplain’s voice droned on.

  Chief Petty Officer Flint looked across at his ship as she moved so very slowly past the island yet again. There was home. Mates. Something he understood. He sighed and glanced at the chaplain, poor old Horlicks, as he struggled on with the service. It would soon be over now.

  ‘We commend unto Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the souls of these our brothers –’

  Flint felt the rain running down his neck and chest. Did God really care? he wondered. Did anyone?

  Somewhere a man was sobbing quietly, as if he had known one of those graceless bundles.

  Farleigh snapped, ‘Royal Marines, ready! Present!’

  The rifles rose towards the bleak sky.

  Blake saw Flint’s expression across the grave and guessed what he was thinking. He had known him quite a long time. Had seen him promoted, had watched him enjoying himself as well as when he had been fighting mad. Now he was watching the marines’ rifles and probably wishing they were a firing squad for the men who had done this bloody murder.

  ‘Fire!’

  The volley crashed out and sent a cloud of screaming sea-birds wheeling from their hiding places.

  Blake saluted and turned his back as Flint’s burial party moved in with their spades.

  In the Mediterranean and the Atlantic he had always known exactly what he had been fighting, what to expect. Until he had stepped ashore here he had not found it easy to understand his involvement with the German raider. Now he knew.

  He saw the boats rising and falling on the swell while they idled near the tiny beach to lift off the burial party. They shone with blown spray like glass.

  Blake quickened his pace down the slippery sand and would have fallen but for the surgeon’s hand on his elbow.

  He looked at him. ‘Thanks, Doc. I almost broke the rules and showed my true feelings.’

  The surgeon nodded. ‘You’ll forget, sir.’

  Blake turned and looked up the beach. A small file of marines coming down to the boats, the slap of spades on sand as the seamen tamped down the grave. Old Horlicks standing above it all like a spectre. The last to leave.

  ‘Not this time, Doc. Not until I’ve put that bastard down.’

  He was shocked by the tone
of his own voice. More so that he meant each word.

  The motion of the dinghy was getting worse, and try as he might he could not rouse the girl or make her aware of the mounting danger, the insane clatter of machine-guns.

  Blake awoke gasping and fighting in the gloom of his sea cabin, his mind reeling from the fantasy while he grappled with reality. He gave a violent start as the telephone buzzed above his bunk, and as he struggled to drag it from its rack he realized it must have been ringing earlier and the sound had filtered into his nightmare.

  ‘Captain speaking!’ He made himself control his voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Officer of the watch, sir.’ It was Palliser. ‘Radar reports a ship, almost dead ahead. Range about eight miles.’ He sounded wary, as if astonished by the captain’s tone.

  ‘I’ll come up.’

  Blake rolled off the bunk and lost precious seconds while he adjusted to the steep roll and plunge of the deck. The islands lay two days astern, and after making a brief signal of their findings there, Blake had turned his ship towards Australia once more, the worsening weather doing much to keep his men too busy to brood on what they had discovered.

  He peered at the bulkhead clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon. It would be early dark in the foul visibility. What was a ship doing out here, miles from anywhere?

  He hurried to the bridge, feeling the wind sweeping over the glass screen as he crossed to the chart table. Warm and wet, a sickening motion and the pungent smell of funnel smoke as a quarter wind forced it down over the sodden watchkeepers.

  Palliser said, ‘Radar say that they are getting a poor reading, sir. The conditions are bad and –’

  Villar emerged dripping from beneath the chart table’s hood.

  ‘Ready to turn on to new course, sir.’ He saw Blake’s expression and added, ‘Unless you intend to chase after that ship.’

  ‘Who have you got on radar?’ Blake was thinking aloud, seeing the ocean, two ships moving on an invisible thread.