Non-Combatants

by Non-Combatants (retail) (epub)

  Chief Engineer Frank Verity had just entered the saloon, stood for a moment looking around, saw them and started in their direction. Andy told Brown quickly, ‘After we docked I was sent ashore on a job the chairman wanted done, and when I got back she’d gone. The old sod had given her a lift in his bloody Daimler. But she’d left me a note – which Fisher knew about, told me where to find – saying “Please come visit – please – ring and say you’re coming”. Best thing I ever read in all my life. That sound like I was horning in on anything, Harve?’

  Andy moved, making way for the engineer. ‘Evening, sir.’

  ‘Evening to you, Holt.’ To the mate then: ‘Wind’s up a bit, did you notice?’

  * * *

  It had freshened to about force five and also veered due west by sundown, soon after which they’d ceased zigzagging – no point in it during the dark hours, when any U-boat you encountered would be on the surface. With the wind up by this amount and three points on the bow she’d be losing a couple of knots in any case. Also, soon after sundown the Old Man had got a good set of stars through gaps in the low, fast-moving cloud, and from the resulting fix had altered course from 238 to 241. None of which was any different when Andy took over the watch at midnight: wind the same, sea-state, say, four, and visibility not bad, judging it by the distance at which one could clearly make out the oncoming streaming crests. Stars still visible here and there, moon wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours.

  Waller had gone down, having expressed the hope that he might get some bloody sleep tonight for a change. Elliot followed him below, and Dixon, with the glasses he’d taken from him – bridge binoculars, cadets weren’t expected to provide their own – took up his usual position in the starboard fore corner. Selby was on the wheel.

  Quilla wasn’t as good a sea-boat as the PollyAnna, Andy thought. Even allowing for her empty holds, she was making a bit much of it.

  Old Man had his pipe going, generating a stink that was a reminder of PollyAnna, of old Josh Thornhill and his foul old burners. Josh now sixty years of age and with an OBE after his name, letters for once not standing for Other Buggers’ Efforts.

  Captain Nat Beale was on the move now, though. Telling Andy, ‘I’ll be below, Second. Call me for anything at all.’

  ‘Aye, sir. But not likely they’ll bother us tonight?’

  ‘Such a thing as speaking too soon, lad.’

  A nod, and he’d gone. With luck, might get a whole night in. Andy sent Dixon to check that the lookouts were on their toes, then asked the helmsman, ‘You happy, Selby?’

  ‘Happy enough, sir. Subs don’t like it rough, do they?’

  ‘Well. Guess they might cope with this, at a pinch.’

  Putting his glasses up then, unsure whether they would or wouldn’t, but remembering those truly gigantic seas with which, thank God, they definitely had not been able to cope. Would have been about all you’d have needed, if they had. Recalling one night in particular, second or third day and night of fighting hurricane-force winds, waves that came at you like white-topped sheer black walls shutting out the sky then smashing down – deafening, stunning, drowning – and the ship driving on with that weight on top of her, dragging herself on out of it, time after time, and all of you knowing next time maybe not… And in the saloon, Julia, white-faced but keeping her voice more or less steady, telling him and Finney, ‘Think I’ll see if I can’t get some shut-eye.’

  Shut-eye. Might have laughed, if it hadn’t been so terrifying.

  Moving around below decks hadn’t been easy. You moved when you could from one solid object to the next, hung on to that through the next thundering impact, which each time could have been the one that would finish it, drive her under: truly could, and they’d all known it, that any minute could have been the old ship’s last – there was a snapshot memory of Finney asking him after Julia’s departure for her shut-eye, ‘Isn’t she really something?’

  After the Anna’d docked in Glasgow, Finney – who’d never see his eighteenth birthday – had gone on a week’s leave to his home in or near London. A week had been all he was getting since A. and J. Hills had offered him a berth in a ship due to leave Liverpool in ten days. Mid-February, that meant, and the ship had been the SS Scotswood. Not all the A. and J. Hills vessels had names ending with ‘Hills’. But talking with Julia and her cousin Dick in Newcastle at about that time, Julia having commented that it seemed a bit rough on young Mark after his recent experiences to be shipped out again quite this soon, Dick had compared it to a rider being thrown off a horse. ‘Getting right back up again’s the thing. Don’t want to sit and think about it.’ An arm round his cousin’s shoulders then: ‘Not as I’d wish that on you, girl. Bloody marvel, I’d say you’ve turned out.’ To Andy then: ‘Aren’t I right?’

  Dick Carr was twenty-four or twenty-five, not especially tall, but solid, dark-haired and grey-eyed, with a strong jaw that turned blue-black by mid-afternoon. There’d been a memorial service for his father Harry, late master of the Cheviot Hills, in the small church at South Shields where he’d lived, during the few days that Andy had spent with them on that first visit. The family group had comprised Dick and his mother Alice, and Julia and her mother Jean; unfortunately not Dick’s brother Garry, who’d been away at sea. But maybe forty or fifty other

  Merchant Navy men, mostly in navy-blue serge suits and including half a dozen ships’ masters, had packed in, also A. and J. Hills people – directors, and their marine superintendent and office staff. Andy had been put at the end of the family pew, beside Dick, and afterwards, trooping out, had felt the man’s hand on his arm, heard him growl, ‘We’d ’a lost her too, hadn’t been for you. We’re beholden.’

  Her mother had said much the same thing the day before, only more emotionally, within minutes of his arrival by train from Glasgow. Little sparrow of a woman. Andy had told Dick Carr – or begun to – in the churchyard, ‘But it was Mark Finney who really—’

  ‘—helped her along, yeah. Hadn’t been for you though, they’d’ve gone together, more ’n likely. You saved the lot of ’em – and as she rates it – tell you this gratis an’ for nothing, in her little eyes—’

  ‘What you gassing on about, then?’ Dick’s mother – grey-headed, fifty-ish, rather noticeable moustache also greying – telling Andy, ‘Spitting image of his dad, is this one. Well, so’s Garry, mind…’

  * * *

  Dixon was back from his tour of the lookouts, had found them all awake and on the job. Not that one would have expected otherwise, but it was as well for them to know they weren’t forgotten, and that their job was important enough to be checked on.

  0045 now. Quilla still throwing herself about, no noticeable change in the weather, visibility still fairly good, but that wasn’t to say you’d spot a U-boat bow-on – which it would be within seconds if it spotted you. So although one wasn’t expecting trouble, with things as they were tonight, one still concentrated totally and full-time on the business of looking out.

  At about 0230, Dixon broke the silence from his corner – something about the CRO. Andy looked round – glasses removed from his eyes by an inch or two – saw Foster coming from the ladder, stopping and grabbing at the handrail as she made one of her more sudden and violent rolls. She really had no business making such a lot of it, he thought. Turning back to where he had been in his search – port bow and inching left, while waiting for whatever news the Marconi man might have brought; he had a clipboard with him, no doubt a signal the Old Man might want to see.

  News of U-boats?

  ‘Morning, Second. Captain turned in?’

  ‘Got any sense, he has. What’s up?’

  ‘Distress call – SS Princess Judy. Torpedoed, filling, abandoning ship, 57 25 north, 23 40 west.’

  ‘Put that on the chart, Dixon.’ He told Foster, ‘Better shake the Old Man anyway.’ Dixon had taken the clipboard to the chart, was jerking the canvas screen across before switching on the light. Andy added to Foster, glasses back a
t his eyes again and searching, ‘When we can give him a bearing and distance. Not that he’ll want to divert.’ Adding to that, ‘I imagine’, since he still didn’t know this captain all that well, as yet – not well enough to read his mind with any certainty – and the Princess Judy had been in their convoy – in column six, in fact, a near neighbour. Poor devils. This wasn’t much of a sea, but it wasn’t ideal for launching boats in either.

  Dixon’s shout then: ‘Near enough due north, seventy-five miles!’

  Foster recovered his clipboard and went down. Andy telling himself that the Old Man would certainly expect to be informed of it, but would not divert. Seventy-five miles would take them six hours – at least; with wind and sea on the beam she’d be really wallowing. And in six hours’ time – broad daylight by then, but odds heavily against finding any boats, whereas there’d surely be other ships nearer to her – others from the same convoy, some maybe close enough to see the distress rocket or rockets she’d have launched.

  He thought again, poor buggers.

  Then: ‘Dixon.’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘Your report should have been seventy-five miles due north, sir.'

  ‘Oh – I—’

  ‘If you were a third mate and you had a report from a lookout, wouldn’t you expect that “sir”?’

  ‘Yessir. I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘If you have hopes of ever becoming a third mate, I’d advise you to keep it in mind.’

  ‘Sir…’

  He didn’t have too good an opinion of young Dixon, he realised. Didn’t feel that on his present showing he was suitable material for cadet, let alone third mate.

  Might not get that far anyway. One way or another…

  ‘Second?’

  Foster telling him, ‘Captain says maintain course and speed.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’

  * * *

  First hint of pre-dawn radiance back there in the eastern sky, and as if that wasn’t enough, a sliver of moon in the southwest. The Old Man, who’d come up a few minutes ago and had been out in the port wing getting some ozone into his lungs, came back inside now.

  ‘See, Holt? U-boats were at it.’

  He nodded. ‘Yessir.’

  ‘The Princess Judy was in column six, low funnel growing right out of her bridge structure, right?’

  He nodded. ‘Looked a bit like one of the Lamport and Holts, I thought.’

  ‘Come to think of it – she did, after a fashion… Name of Holt’s all over the damn place, eh?’

  ‘Do see it here and there, sir.’

  ‘You’re not related to Blue Funnel, though?’

  ‘Regrettably not. Nor to J. Holt of Liverpool.’

  ‘Well. Can’t have all the luck.’

  This concluded the social break. Which in itself was to be appreciated. A lot of masters – in years past, most – barely addressed their officers on any subject at all except ship’s business. Anyway, that was it: Old Man moving into his usual corner, putting his glasses up.

  Sky lightening all right, sea with a shine of polish on it. Not light enough to call for the resumption of the zigzag yet, he thought. It would be a decision for the Old Man, anyway, now he was up here.

  ‘Relieve helmsman, sir?’

  AB Freeman, up to take over from Samways: 0345. Quartermasters did two-hour tricks, and changed over at a quarter to the hour so the bridge wouldn’t be cluttered with too many change-overs taking place at one time. He nodded to him: ‘Go ahead.’ And to Dixon, ‘Better shake the mate and Merriman.’

  * * *

  Turning in, thinking sadly about the Princess Judy and the luck of the draw: to have been in her, or in Quilla – safe, at any rate for the moment, and warm, about to enjoy the luxury of sleep in this small but adequate so-called ‘double’ cabin, for the moment sitting rather than standing, the way she was still lurching and hammering around. Reaching to his boat bag for a quick look at the snapshot of Julia which he kept in it: snap of Julia wearing that quirky little smile of hers. He’d taken it with her mother’s box camera on the last day of that February visit to Newcastle, and had asked her to send him a copy if it came out all right, since he wasn’t then expecting to see her again until he’d completed his studies and won his first mate’s ticket. Julia had persuaded him that he shouldn’t interrupt his work or waste money on further visits – just get down to it and make sure of it. Then – OK, high jinks, when he could afford it, and why not? High jinks such as they’d enjoyed at the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle, for instance, where they’d attended the Saturday night dance and he’d taken her behind the heavy curtains screening the recesses of the first-floor ballroom’s tall bow windows. Not that he’d any doubt there’d eventually be other, higher jinks, so to speak: he’d begun to realise she did have propensities in such directions. Under tight control, but there all right.

  Anyway, he’d agreed with her about hard work and no weekends off, and stuck to it – really had put his back into it, treating himself to an occasional pint and even more occasional evening out with Susan Shea. And writing to Julia every weekend, right through to the beginning of June – Dunkirk time, and a couple of days after Belgium and Holland had surrendered to the Nazis – first week in June, when he’d had the telephone message from her: please call back, urgent, soon as possible. Which he had done, from Ma Shepherds that same evening, but was answered neither by Julia nor her mother, but by the woman – Hilda, surname Simpson or Simkins – who was Mrs Carr’s partner in the dress business in which Julia also worked. Hilda told him they’d gone to church – she’d have gone too only Julia had asked her to wait in case Andy telephoned.

  ‘Church – on a Thursday?’

  ‘It’s the young lad, Mark. Him as was with her on the Cheviot Hills?’

  ‘Mark Finney?’

  ‘Aye, him. In the steamer Scotswood this time – as you may have heard? The poor sweetheart’s desperate – as she would be, that poor young feller—’

  ‘The Scotswood lost?’

  ‘Off Freetown, West Africa. Gentleman from Hills called round here, spoke to Mrs Carr, then—’

  ‘All right. Tell them I’ll come. Tomorrow evening, spend Saturday with them if they’d put me up Friday night—’

  ‘Oh, not a doubt they will!’

  Snapshot back into its envelope and the boat bag. Thinking back to that Friday night when he’d taken what must have been the last bus from the station to a stop within a few hundred yards of the Carr house, and covering that final stretch at a fair canter through the blacked-out suburban streets. There’d been air-raids on the docks and shipping in the river in recent weeks – as there had been on the Clyde, Mersey, Portsmouth, Plymouth – and of course London worst of all. But as Julia had assured him, not a single bomb in any residential area; certainly on this Friday night the only sound apart from his own heavy footfalls and hard breathing was the hiss and drip of rain in the whitebeams that lined the pavements. Then at the house he’d been hesitant about knocking or ringing the bell at such an hour, and had remembered that on the night they’d attended the Assembly Rooms thrash, back in February, Mrs Carr, who liked to get her head down early, had simply left the door unlocked for them.

  Turning its brass handle very carefully, therefore – and sure enough, door opening to light pressure on it. Slight squeak as it did so, and pretty well instantly Julia’s murmur from across the hall where a lamp glowed in the sitting-room: ‘Andy?’

  Looking more like sixteen than twenty-one. Pale-faced, big eyes amber in the half-light, soft brown hair loose on her shoulders, little navy-blue dressing-gown that could have been a schoolgirl’s. Except it wasn’t. In his arms: he’d clicked the door shut, turned back, and there she’d been.

  ‘You’re all wet. Bless you for coming.’

  ‘Wettish place, Newcastle.’ He disengaged enough to get his raincoat off, dropped it and re-engaged, hugging her now. Her voice in his ear, ‘Sweet to have come so quick, Andy pet. I feel so dreadful for him, so �
�� not lost, but – as if he should be here, suddenly just isn’t… Rambling – sorry. But on the happier side – you, how marvellous you were to us both—’

  ‘Don’t know how you’d have expected…’

  Calming her then, stemming the flow, nerves as well as sadness. Getting round to reminding her of things she knew as well as he did, facts of life such as that even in peacetime those who lived on the sea stood fair chances of ending their lives on it – which Mark had been clearly aware of, had seen with his own eyes, as indeed she had herself: one was in it, that was all, took the chances. Stating the obvious for sure, also broadening the subject: ‘Three of my own friends been sunk this far, training-ship friends I mean – two picked up, one not.’ That word ‘not’ being gentler, he thought, than ‘drowned’. ‘All three on the east coast, ships sunk by mines – U-boats laying ’em, sinking more that way than they are by torpedo, so one hears.’ Back to basics then: ‘The Scotswood was off Freetown, Hilda said.’

  ‘On her way home from Freetown. Independently routed, was to have called for bunkers at Las Palmas.’

  ‘No chance he’d have been in a boat, could still be picked up? Thousands of miles and coast and ocean—’

  ‘No.’ Jerk of the head. ‘Because—’

  ‘Survivors have been adrift for weeks, you know, before—’

  ‘There were survivors. How the folk at Hills know all about it. He was killed when she was torpedoed, they know it.’

  ‘Then he might not have known anything much about it.’

  ‘Pray God he didn’t. Andy, that’s sopping wet.’ The coat, she’d touched it with her bare foot. ‘I’ll put it on the rack over the stove. And anything else.’ That smile, then: ‘Same cabin trunk, I see.’

  The haversack which he’d dropped in the doorway, that also being wet. Explaining, ‘Even less in it than last time, what’s more. Have to go back Sunday, so – one clean shirt, razor, couple of pairs of socks?’