Deep Water

by Tim Jeal

  Hurrying into the wheelhouse, he announced, ‘I’ll take her now, Martin.’ Through his glasses he could see the two specks approaching, this time from the port side, aiming to attack both ships on the same run.

  The bridge lookout shouted, ‘Aircraft bearing Red one hundred.’

  With studied calm, Mike spoke into the microphone, ‘Stand by on deck, stand by for manoeuvring.’ Then he snapped at Norbert, ‘Hard a’starb’d. Far as you dare.’ The noise of the swooping planes became an obliterating howl. ‘More helm, Pierre. Put on more,’ cried Mike, though the ship was already heeling steeply into the turn. ‘Port guns, let ’em have it,’ he roared into the microphone, as the gunners desperately tried to keep their feet on the sloping deck. He saw the Lewis gun’s tracer spitting into the sea, and was dimly aware that the sky was spotted with black and white woolly balls.

  The inner and outer casing of the wheelhouse had been filled with cement reinforcement, but this did not hinder the two cannon-shells that entered through the windows. One missed everyone; the second passed through Tom Bruce’s skull, splattering the navigator’s brain onto the walls and roof, before smashing its way out in a shower of steel splinters that blinded the bridge lookout and tore into Martin Cleeves’s shoulder, spinning him round in a balletic whirl of arms and legs. Mike found himself on his knees seeing through a film of redness. When his eyes cleared, he raised a hand to his head and felt warm stickiness – whether his own blood, or someone else’s, he couldn’t be sure. Pierre Norbert towered above him, hands still on the wheel, with his lucky guernsey pressed hard against the spokes.

  *

  Rose woke a few minutes before six, half an hour earlier than usual, but, being unable to get back to sleep again, she dressed and crept to the bathroom. She urinated, omitting to empty the cistern afterwards in case she woke her employer. After pulling up her heavily darned brown stockings, she went to the window. Outside, the day looked grey and misty with a hint of drizzle in the air. She carried her shoes as she tiptoed downstairs. In the hall, she paused and looked about.

  There was no sign of Leo’s bike. Funny. She could have sworn it’d been there the night before. She opened the hall door and looked out. The machine wasn’t leaning against the hedge either, and it wasn’t in the garden, so far as she could see. Out on the dew-wet lawn, she looked up at Leo’s window. The curtains had not been drawn the night before. Though the mist was as soft as on a mild summer morning, she was shivering.

  Alarmed, but curious, she crept into the house and climbed the stairs. Such a puzzling little chap. Quieter and better mannered than the one who’d left. Weirder, too. Nice to his mother one day, mean as Old Nick the next. Rose had thought him hoity-toity till she’d caught him with the whisky bottle; but, after that, he’d been nice as pie. It was odd with a young boy to feel he liked her almost as a man might.

  Leo’s door squeaked as she pushed it open. The bed had something in it. Even from the door, Rose was not fooled. She pulled back the blankets and saw a rolled-up counterpane and several sweaters in a pillowcase. She wasn’t exactly scared on his account, but it was strange him running off, specially since he’d seemed happy the night before.

  Outside, Rose looked closely at the path. If he’d left after dawn, his bike’s wheels ought to have left marks on the paving stones. There was still some drizzle on them from the night. But she couldn’t see a single tyre track.

  When she knocked on Andrea’s door, she felt suddenly unsure. The atmosphere in the house had been awful lately.

  ‘Mrs Pauling,’ she breathed softly; and, when Andrea didn’t move, she squeezed her arm and called her name loudly. Andrea covered her face with her hands and groaned as if she hadn’t slept for a week. That was how she looked, too, when she opened her eyes.

  ‘What’s time?’ she mumbled.

  ‘It’ll be half-six directly.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Rose.’

  ‘Can’t help that, Mrs Pauling. Leo’s not home. Been gone half the night.’

  Mrs Pauling rolled over and sat up with a great effort. ‘His bike?’

  ‘Gone with ’im.’

  Andrea gave a faint cry and her hands rose to her mouth, but she did not stay motionless for long. The next moment she was patting her cheeks to wake herself, and swinging her feet to the floor. Forgetting there was another person in the room, she stumbled to the chair where she had laid her clothes the night before, and in a single movement drew her nightdress over her head. Rose looked away as Andrea stood naked for a moment, before pulling on her clothes with feverish speed.

  ‘Mrs Pauling,’ Rose called out, as Andrea ran to the garage. ‘Should ’ee go drivin’ directly? Why don’ ’ee wait a bit?’

  But Andrea did not even glance at her. Instead she flung open the garage doors, as if something terrible would happen unless she could get there to stop it. She certainly drove that way, her little Standard screeching out into the lane like a crook’s car in a B film.

  *

  When a group of airmen had come clumping down the companion ladder into the after cabin, Leo had already hidden under the bunks. The boat was under fire at the time, and, though they’d been mainly silent, occasionally they’d laughed together, a bit like boys before a beating. He’d been glad when the engines had burst into a deafening roar. Lying flat on his face, as Mike had told him to, he tried to imagine he was hiding behind the changing room lockers at school. But the chinstrap of his tin hat cut into him too painfully to give his imagination much chance.

  At first when the aircraft attacked, Leo thought the tearing, wailing noise was coming from Luciole’s engines. Had her props been fouled, or was some vital piston seizing up? Only the brisk mutter of the ship’s guns, and a series of violent lurches, persuaded him otherwise. A splintering crash near the bows was followed by a terrifying row overhead, as if the whole deck was being ploughed up. Every bone in his head was vibrating and ringing before the terrible aerial noise faded away.

  Something had changed in the cabin. Leo was still in his old place, amongst the kitbags and spare life jackets, but now, because there was more light coming from somewhere, he could see into the cabin through the gaps. With one part of his mind, Leo knew what was happening – Mike had even warned him that they’d been seen by a spotter plane and could expect the worst – but he could not yet bring himself to imagine what an air attack might mean for so small a trawler. His heart began to pound so hard that his throat felt filled by its thumping. He remembered the burning cargo ship. Feeling the softness of his cheek and his slender fingers, he imagined them charred beyond recognition. Could it really happen? The freighter had been big, a sitting duck, but Luciole was small and weaving about at full speed.

  And then the howling came back again, this time from a new direction. Seconds stretched like elastic. God, don’t let me die, he begged again and again, thinking of his parents’ grief. The gun on the deck above him was firing. He could hear it stuttering, until the sharper rattle of aerial cannon fire began. From the cabin came confused sounds; then screams. Somewhere outside the ship, a deep explosion shook her. He began to cry as he realised that Luciole’s engines were spluttering. The planes would return when she was motionless and that would be the end. What chance could they have? The ghostly silence that followed the dying tonk-tonk-tonk of the engines lasted until he heard more screams. Leo turned his face towards the cabin. Some of the gear in his line of sight had been shifted by the boat’s gyrations.

  He gazed in stupefaction. Bodies were strewn about the cabin. A jagged hole in the roof admitted a bright shaft of sunlight. Someone was trying to help the men, but they lay very still, like members of a collapsed rugger scrum before the referee blew his whistle. A pool of red liquid was leaking from under them and trickling a little closer to Leo with every roll of the ship. His stomach tightened to a fist, squeezing vomit into his mouth.

  A sailor, bending over the tangle of limbs, managed to lift one of the men into a sitting position. This airman’s nearest ar
m was attached to his shoulder by a few string-like sinews. A dazzling white bone stuck out from his sleeve. His lower arm was a bloody pulp. Something resembling a length of laboratory tubing had escaped from the clothing of one of the other men.

  As Leo gazed uncomprehending at this man’s intestines, he heard Mike call his name despairingly.

  ‘I’m here,’ gasped Leo, finding his mouth and tongue too stiff to function properly.

  ‘Thank God you’re okay.’

  Mike knelt down beside the sailor who was trying to help the only surviving airman. Together they lifted him, and, after Mike had given him an injection, they knotted something round the top of his mangled limb. The wounded man went on crying out until Mike had used his syringe again. Then, having covered him with blankets, Mike beckoned to Leo.

  ‘Follow me.’

  As Leo obeyed he could not resist his desire to clutch Mike’s hand for comfort. He was shivering with shock and longed to run away from what he’d seen. Though Mike appeared to be unhurt, his neck and hair were streaked with dry blood.

  They emerged on deck in time to see a dory approaching very slowly, rowed by two bedraggled men. Several others were lying on her bottomboards. The top of the sun had risen above the horizon and Leo could see the people clearly.

  ‘Who are they?’ he whispered to Mike.

  ‘Survivors from Volonté. They’d have sunk us, too, if we hadn’t brought down one of the 109s.’

  From the engine-room hatch, an oil-smeared head emerged, followed by a pair of broad shoulders.

  ‘How goes it, Chief?’

  ‘We’ve plugged the oil tank and are working on the manifold exhaust.’

  ‘Is it still leaking over the distributor?’

  ‘Not any more, sir. We should be able to supply fuel to the port engine with a hand pump.’

  ‘Can we make fifteen knots?’

  ‘Ten if we’re lucky, sir.’

  ‘How long till we can start up, Chief?’

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  Mike raised his binoculars to the cloudless sky. The early morning light was a bluey-orange colour. To the west the sea was still dark.

  ‘Will we be attacked again?’ quavered Leo, wanting to cry. Memories of the attack and of the dead bodies increased his fear of seeing, at any moment, dark dots moving towards them. ‘Please tell me,’ he begged.

  Mike placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m quite hopeful.’

  When the dory was below the davits, Leo looked down and saw a youngish woman in the stern. Her bandaged head was lolling against the shoulder of an airman. Her skin looked pale and lifeless. The airman stood up and lifted her very gently. Mike and two sailors got down onto the scramble nets to bring her aboard.

  The airman maintained an unhappy silence as the woman was placed on the deck. Her underwear was visible through her soaking dress. All Leo noticed was her freckled face and the shallowness of her breathing. She looked slightly younger than his mother.

  Mike faced the airman. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Shrapnel in her head.’

  ‘Know who she is?’

  ‘Mary Colwell. She’s an agent, so it may be a cover name.’

  After the woman had been carried below, Mike took Leo to the bridge, where he heard the engines burst into life. His relief lasted until he saw a black speck closing fast. Too shocked to utter, he raised a finger. Mike ignored him, as he rested both elbows on the rail to steady his binoculars. At last he lowered them and rumpled Leo’s hair.

  ‘Panic over. It’s a Hurricane.’ He thrust the binoculars at Leo. ‘Our air escort. You’ll see the other one shortly.’

  ‘Friendly aircraft bearing Red three-oh!’ cried an officer with a heavily strapped arm, coming out of the wheelhouse.

  ‘Thanks, Number One.’

  Tears spilled down Leo’s cheeks and he sobbed aloud. Why did he feel worse now they were safe? Staring at the deck to avoid looking at Mike, his eye fell on a bloodstained tarpaulin covering a body. An icy tingle went down his spine. In the wheelhouse, only yards away from this dead man, Mike and the fat Frenchman were chatting to the man with the strapped arm about their likely arrival time in Falmouth. A sailor in fisherman’s clothing brought up cups of tea and handed them round.

  ‘Condensed milk, I’m afraid,’ Mike warned Leo. ‘Want a drop of this?’ He held up a rum bottle.

  ‘Yes, please.’ Mike splashed some into Leo’s mug. ‘A bit more, please.’

  Mike gave him a second tot and then told the Frenchman something before going below. Deep folds of water were creaming away from the ship’s bows as the engines throbbed reassuringly. The shadows of the circling aircraft moved across the waves, crossing and recrossing one another’s paths. Leo rested his head on the rail and said a prayer for the wounded girl. But he had little confidence in his plea being answered. She was probably dead by now. He himself would certainly have died with the airmen, if Mike hadn’t told him to get under the bunks.

  Remembering what he had hoped to achieve by stealing on board a dozen hours ago, Leo felt the biggest fool alive. He had thought that if Mike found him on the trawler on the way to France, he would be shocked enough to end his affair. But now, he saw no reason why Mike should give a damn about anything except pleasing himself. If I had to go to France as many times as him, and I saw people die around me like he did, I’d come back to England and swear in the street at anyone who annoyed me, and I’d certainly go with any woman I wanted.

  When the English coast appeared like a colourless smudge on the horizon, Leo felt as if every hope and feeling had drained out of him.

  *

  After the frenzy of the docks, with tugs hooting, engines shunting and men with bright welding torches working high on ships’ sides, Leo found it unreal to be passing through peaceful countryside again. Cows grazed or lay under trees. People stopped to chat in village streets and walked into shops as if nothing had happened in the night. Seated beside Mike, on the back seat of the car, Leo gazed out with a fixed frown. They were being driven by a rating whose white-topped hat dazzled Leo as the sun caught it. He closed his eyes and thought of the chaotic scenes he had witnessed at the dockside on Luciole’s arrival. Ambulances, nurses and sailors galore: a mass of people, some of them cheering. Not that he’d had time to see much of this. Mike had rushed him away and locked him in a hut for almost two hours before returning for him.

  What Mike would say to mum when they reached Trevean Barton, Leo didn’t try to guess. He still felt fuddled after the rum. Mike would have telephoned her, so she must be out of her suspense by now. Leo tried to see Mike as a stranger might. He’d changed his clothes, and, in a clean white polo neck sweater, he might almost be a school gym instructor or tennis pro. But inside he must be crumbling and falling apart.

  Mike’s breath smelled of brandy, but his hair was brushed, and he’d even found time to shave. A few hours ago he’d been telling sailors what to do, and sticking needles into dying people. Now he was probably reckoning up the number of men who’d be alive today if he’d never showed up in France. Imagine feeling a failure after a night like that! The unfairness of it hit Leo hard. What Gold Star holiday could possibly be nice enough to reward someone like Mike? There couldn’t be a treat that was half good enough. No strawberries and cream, no chocolate cake, no orchestra stalls for a favourite show, no cups or prizes – nothing would be any use at all. Leo thought of the happy, easy way Mike and mum had played tennis together, before he’d wrecked it for her by upsetting Justin. It came to him that mum had been Mike’s Gold Star holiday.

  CHAPTER 20

  Andrea had been expecting their arrival ever since Mike had called, and had decided not to show the full extent of her joy and thankfulness until she could be alone with her son and with her lover in turn. But when she saw Leo coming up the path, with Mike walking just behind, Andrea was overwhelmed by emotion and ran to her son to hug him. As if experiencing all over again her grief on hearing that Leo was not in the house,
tears filled her eyes and she could not speak. Almost immediately, Leo became tense in her arms, detaching himself as soon as he felt he could.

  ‘I’m fine, mother,’ he muttered, in a breathless undertone.

  ‘It’s so wonderful to see you, darling.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘When Rose told me you weren’t in your bed, I was out of my mind with worry.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Leo, standing stiff-faced and awkward.

  ‘Why on earth did you do it, sweetheart? You knew how dangerous it would be.’

  Leo did not answer. Conscious that Mike was standing just behind him, he moved away from his mother and went into the house.

  ‘He knows about us, Andrea,’ murmured Mike, as he followed her into the hall.

  ‘Since when?’ she gasped.

  ‘Probably before I lied to him.’ Andrea felt suddenly isolated, as if the two of them had long understood something she had only just grasped. She walked into the sitting room and saw Leo ahead of her, staring out of the window. Wanting to hug him and whisper reassuring words, she kept her distance, in case he rounded on her in front of her lover.

  Mike said matter of factly to Leo, ‘I’d like to talk to your mother for a few minutes. That all right with you?’

  The boy nodded and left the room without speaking. As soon as Andrea heard her son’s footsteps on the stairs, she flung herself into Mike’s arms.

  ‘Thank God you’re alive,’ she gasped, struggling with tears. ‘Poor Mike, how awful to find him like that. I’m so happy you’re both safe.’

  ‘We damned nearly bought it.’

  Mike’s unhappy expression shocked Andrea as he sank down beside her on the sofa. In his pristine white sweater he called to mind some chaste and suffering knight from Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. She put her face to his and murmured, ‘I’m so terribly sorry he did this to you, darling.’

  He took one of her hands in his and looked at her with disconcerting directness. ‘Leo didn’t stow away to get me in trouble, or hurt you, Andrea.’ He closed his eyes for a moment as if overwhelmed by tiredness. Then he stared right into her eyes. ‘He risked his life to stop us going on together. I really mean that.’