Non-Combatants

by Non-Combatants (retail) (epub)

  But what about timber and grain in some holds and a mix of explosives and highly flammable liquid in the others?

  With any luck, he told himself, we won’t find out. Gazing up at the Martello Tower that Harve Brown had pointed out to him, on high ground named on the chart as Lancaster Heights, and built, according to Harve, during the war of 1812. Actually, Harve had been less airing his general knowledge than recommending the tower as a useful navigational mark visible from a long way out. Quilla inside now, anyway, forging dead-slow past moored ships and stone quays stacked predominantly with timber: Andy rehearing in memory, in the context of what one might or might not find out, Samantha’s fierce assurance: You’ll come through, Andy.

  Wishful thinking, of course. Which as it happened was more or less what one lived on anyway, but still kind of her to have expressed it, and so fervently.

  Crossed fingers, Sam…

  There was a vacant berth beyond this next ship, and what looked like grain elevators at the back of the quay. Where Quilla’s grain would be coming from, no doubt. And on the other bow a small, battered-looking tug puffing smoke rings out of its tall funnel, standing-off at the moment but ready to nudge one in when so requested. To starboard meanwhile this cargo carrier similar to Quilla but maybe slightly larger, probably more like 8,000 tons gross than Quilla’s 7,500. Very little difference in their profiles. He had his glasses with him, and focusing them on her waterline saw she wasn’t far off her North Atlantic summer marks; would probably be finishing today. Another convoy mate, he guessed. Red ensign aft, and house flag at the mainmast-head. Yellow and black – yellow background and two linked black cones – or hills, representationally: he woke up to the fact that this was one of A. and J. Hills’ ships, Hills being the Tyneside owners Julia’s cousins worked for.

  In just a moment would have a view of the name painted on her bow, angle of sight broadening as Quilla came up abeam.

  Blackheddon Hills.

  Dick Carr’s ship – extraordinarily enough: and the thought immediately that he might have news of Julia.

  * * *

  An hour later, the man himself: average height, square-built, bullet-headed, middle twenties, either growing a beard or just hadn’t shaved for a day or two. Questioning stare – Andy having hailed him as he came over the gangway, Dick obviously wondering who the hell this was. They’d only met once, at the memorial service for Dick’s father earlier in the year, when he’d expressed gratitude for the saving of Julia’s life.

  Reaching him, he put out his hand. ‘Holt. Andy Holt.’ Shouting over the racket of cranes and sawn timber crashing around: this was deck cargo, planks of varying lengths being slung over in huge bundles and deposited where they’d then be stacked neatly and the stacks lashed down. Andy pointing – ‘Come from next-door, SS Barranquilla. Remember me? Visiting with your cousin Julia when—’

  ‘Andy Holt.’ You’d hardly call it a smile – more a grimace, but might have been an attempt at one. ‘Be damned.’ More surprise than pleasure – even startled for the moment. Well – busy: that was plain enough. Looking around distractedly, then summoning a cadaverous-looking crewman wearing a marlin-spike as well as a knife on his belt, indicative of his being the ship’s bosun, which was confirmed by Carr’s yell of, ‘Five minutes, Bo – in the saloon if you need me!’ Then to Andy, ‘Come on down.’

  In at the weather door, down a short companionway, noise from above and outside fading slightly, a shout over his shoulder of ‘Just got in, did you?’

  ‘Hour ago. Looks like you’re off soon?’

  ‘Midday, finish. And the mate’s ashore, so’ – thrusting into the saloon – ‘not a lot of time.’ Andy had noticed up there that the foremost holds had already been covered and battened down, with battening currently in progress on number three, while at the same time timber was being craned over both for’ard and aft – all this activity well inside the radius of Quilla’s dust.

  Grain-dust – rising from her numbers two and four holds, which were being fed with wheat from those elevators.

  ‘Tea do you?’

  ‘Thanks. If you’ve time. But listen – have you heard from Julia lately?’

  A quick, hard look, either as if the question had surprised him, or he’d been expecting it and it told him something. He was at the pantry hatch by then, shouting for two teas, Andy waiting close to a porthole, looking out at the dust-haze emanating from Quilla, a fog of it darkening the air and powdering the harbour’s surface. Nothing you could do about it: grain poured in through the chutes and the dust rose like smoke: on deck around those holds you couldn’t breathe except through a filtering cloth of some kind.

  The hands of an unseen steward or cook were passing tea mugs through the hatch. Dick Carr asking him, ‘Come light-ship from Glasgow, then?’

  ‘Light-ship to Cuba for sugar was how it started, but we picked up a boatload of kids, evacuees – ship had been holed and set on fire by bombs from a Focke-Wulfe, poor little buggers. Ours were the only survivors. We diverted to land ’em in New York, took on cargo there instead of Cuba, getting the rest here now. How about you?’

  The Blackheddon had come in an OA convoy – outbound from UK east coast ports – with Tyne coal to Sydney, Cape Breton. Coal for ship’s bunkers, that would be: the ‘slow’ SC convoys were assembled at Sydney, just as the ‘fast’ HX ones were mustered at Halifax, around the corner. Andy nodded, not having had his question answered yet, and beginning to wonder whether Dick – well, the Carrs – might know of Julia’s condition. If she’d got round to telling her mother, Mama then confiding in Dick’s and Garry’s mother. Alternatively, if one of them had caught on – eagle eyes and female acuity, family whispers then?

  Whispers, or shrieks. Poor Julia. They weren’t exactly sensitive or subtle people, the cousins. In fact compared to Julia herself – well, and her mother – they were noticeably rough diamonds, Dick in particular having a distinctly bovine look about him. But if Dick had heard of Julia’s predicament – from his gaunt, somewhat forbidding mother was the only way he could have – he might well be at a loss as to how to deal with her seducer now.

  Wanting neither confrontation nor appearance of collusion, or, say, acceptance. You could understand that, seeing it from his angle, their angle.

  Especially knowing it couldn’t have been anyone but Andy Holt. Knowing Julia well enough for that, as surely he must, even if he wasn’t the brightest in the land.

  Saying now – stone-walling – ‘Filling you up with grain, then.’

  ‘Two lower holds grain. ’Tween-decks all through, pit-props. All we were told before this was timber. Dick – heard from Julia at all?’

  He’d been gulping tea, now put his mug down.

  ‘Can’t say I have. Good while since ever I wrote her.’ A shrug. ‘Year or more, may’ve been some Christmas time.’ A nod towards the pair of stripes on Andy’s sleeve. ‘You got your Mate’s, then.’

  ‘Julia, though—’

  ‘Keen on you, as I remember.’

  ‘It’s mutual. Reason I ask is we’ve had no mail, and I know she’ll have written. I sent letters from New York, but our mail will have gone to Cuba, they’ll forward it here and we’ll be gone again.’

  ‘Happens…’

  ‘Dick, listen. Julia and I are going to marry. I’ve asked her and she’s accepted. Don’t know whether she’s told her mother yet…’

  No comment. His eyes had shifted away. Definitely ill at ease. No smile, let alone congratulations: might have taken advantage of that opening, and hadn’t. Andy continuing, ‘Only had a couple of days between finishing at nautical college and signing on in Quilla. I’d had my nose down to it, hadn’t seen her in weeks, she’d insisted I didn’t take time off to see her. Then I managed a flying visit – proposed to her – and as I say—’

  Still no smile. You’d think, no interest. Or just plain bloody awkward, the guarded manner his way of signalling that he knew what he knew, including the fact this marriage talk was o
nly a smokescreen to the fact one had knocked her up.

  He put his mug down. ‘Dick, d’you have some objection to me and Julia marrying?’

  ‘Mr Carr, sir –’ The door had crashed open: a cadet with a serious acne problem skidding to a halt inside. ‘Sorry sir, but the Old Man—’

  ‘Yeah. On my way.’ A hand closed on Andy’s elbow: reassuring, apologetic? Shake of the head then: ‘No. Course not. Have to get along, though – mate’s ashore see, and—’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Was on his way. ‘All right, Carter…’

  * * *

  A few hours later, watching the Blackheddon Hills leave her berth, he was wondering whether there might be another, very different explanation of Dick Carr’s behaviour: whether he might have a yen for his cousin Julia.

  Thing was, it might explain the almost tortured nature of his reactions – which was how it seemed now, in retrospect. If he’d really got it badly, might explain him? A simple man, with little if any sophistication, virtually tongue-tied in that really hopeless and obviously unmentionable situation?

  Although the other interpretation was more plausible. They’d have had mail from home either when they’d docked at Sydney NS, or on arrival here, and as likely as not he’d have heard from home. Then, out of the blue, faced with the man responsible and too embarrassed or confused to make an issue of it – and maybe seeing that as cowardly, therefore shaming?

  The Blackheddon had been lying bow-on to Quilla, and when she pushed off, Dick as second officer would have been right aft, so Andy didn’t see him. Didn’t look for him all that hard either: saw the same tug drag the ship’s stern out, so she could then manoeuvre herself out stern-first and continue the clockwise turn-around well out in the clear, with the tug’s aid as long as it was needed; but before that stage was reached he’d had to return his attention to matters closer at hand.

  Numbers two and four lower holds were filled by early afternoon, and within half an hour railway trucks of pit-props were clanking to a halt alongside, the two motorised cranes that had been working on the Blackheddon being already there, waiting to start work on one and five, then two and four. For’ard holds under Andy’s eye and after ones under Waller’s, all of it under Harve’s. The pit-props, each one a fairly substantial piece of timber, were slung aboard in bundles in wire slings, which inside the holds were released and the props manhandled with cargo-hooks to fill every cubic foot of space; working inside, you needed to be fast on your feet and watch out for the heavy loads swinging down. The stevedores knocked off at six p.m., Harve reckoning that (a) less than a full day’s work next day should finish it, (b) she’d then be down to her marks without taking on deck cargo, and (c) they certainly knew their business in this port.

  They didn’t want high-octane vapour drifting around ships, warehouses and even the town itself, however, so Quilla was required to shove off and anchor outside the port at about eight p.m. for her hour of steam-ejection, the STO arranging for a harbour launch to land and later bring off any of the crew who wanted a run ashore. This was also in the interests of local businesses, especially bars. There were a few drunks brought off, but no serious trouble. Steam-ejection was run again from 0600 to 0700, during some arrivals and departures of other vessels, and the Old Man bumped Quilla back alongside for the resumption of work on numbers two and four at 0800, completing on these in mid-forenoon and shifting to number three, which was finished by 1400; with only that one hatch then remaining to be covered, clearance was obtained to depart at 1530. ETA Halifax – at twelve knots, say, twenty-two hours’ steaming – early p.m. next day, Sunday 25th. In fact she was there after an uneventful passage shortly before two p.m., embarking a pilot outside the harbour, then passing in at slow speed through the boom gate – the anchorage being protected in the usual way by a floating boom and suspended anti-submarine net, with a gate in it which the trawler-sized boom-gate vessel dragged open and shut again when the newcomer and the pilot boat were in. Quilla had spent most of the dark hours at fourteen knots, then after the dawn steam-ejector exercise had reduced to eight in order to have the midday meal out of the way before arrival.

  Halifax, capital of Nova Scotia, stands on a peninsula which splits the harbour into two basins, inner and outer, Bedford being the inner and larger and the assembly point for HX convoys, the other containing the harbour and dockyard. There was a big crowd of deep-laden ships in here already: no question at all that a convoy had to be leaving soon. Not easy to guess how many, though, as Quilla threaded her way through them, tailed by the boat with its red and white flag. As many as seventy or eighty? It was a very extensive deepwater anchorage, and occupied to pretty near capacity; the pilot – grey-headed, sixty-ish – conning her through the thick of it mainly by means of hand gestures and grunts to Selby on the wheel. Even at low speed it was an impressive performance: at anything but low speed, might have been hair-raising. Old Man watching points but leaving it to them, Andy also in the bridge, since he’d have had nothing to do down aft. Harve Brown was on the foc’sl-head with McGrath and his anchor party, Waller standing by at the telegraph, Dixon and Elliot in the bridge-wings from where either of them might be required to pass orders to the foc’sl – or run errands, or use the Aldis – and Merriman at the halyards abaft the bridge, from which Quilla’s four-flag identification hoist was flying.

  From thinking how smoothly things had gone in both New York and St John, Andy was beginning to wonder whether this might be where the run of luck stalled, as far as getting home to Julia in something like record time was concerned. One convoy doubtless was on the point of departure, but Quilla might be too late for it, destined to wait and join the next one. There surely did have to be some limit on the size of any convoy. She’d been one of forty-one ships in the outbound ON from the Clyde and Mersey three weeks ago, and the PollyAnna’s HX last January had started out with nearer sixty. Seventy or eighty would be a hell of a great armada for its commodore to control or escorts to protect, as well as a mouth-watering target for the U-boats. While the nucleus of a follow-up convoy might be here already, ships alongside in the harbour still loading, for instance. If one did have to wait for the next one – how long, ten days or a fortnight?

  Might not be left in doubt for long, he thought: the Old Man most likely had the answer already in his pocket – in a brown envelope with a red seal on it which the pilot had handed to him when he’d boarded, about forty minutes ago, Old Man only glancing at it before stuffing it away inside his reefer jacket.

  Hadn’t spotted the Blackheddon Hills, as yet. Had just passed around the stern of a freighter that might have been her, but wasn’t. Name on her stern in fact had been Faraday James, port of registry London. Nine thousand GRT, he’d guessed. And now – wheel over the other way to pass the other side of her – Belle Isle, a rather smart little frog originally out of Cherbourg, no more than 4,000 tons. Of course, speed more than size was what counted most in acceptability or otherwise for this or that type of convoy: a ship that couldn’t make nine knots wouldn’t qualify for an HX, she’d be relegated to an SC with assembly-point Sydney, Cape Breton; whereas if she could make fifteen knots or more she’d be expected to take her chances solo.

  As the Sarawak had been doing.

  The pilot was pointing, calling to the Old Man, ‘There’s your billet, Captain. Let’s have her dead slow?’

  ‘Third—’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  Waller jerking the telegraph over: within seconds you felt the difference, and within a minute saw her new sluggishness through the water. Andy checking the charted depth: they were to anchor in fourteen fathoms, which meant just under three shackles of cable – fifteen fathoms to a shackle, and three times the depth of water being a safe norm, for the cable to have some ‘spring’ in it. Harve Brown had been apprised of this already – after initial consultation with the pilot, told in the vernacular ‘three on deck’: necessarily, since once he let go the anchor he couldn’t be told anyth
ing at all, he’d be deafened by the cable’s rush. Andy nearer the bridge’s forefront now, with his glasses up, Quilla about to pass between a tanker and a freighter both flying the Norwegian flag – freighter about 10,000 tons, name on her counter Nordaust Kapp. Tanker probably more like 15,000 tons. Beyond her then – name faded but just decipherable as Norsk Bensin – out on her bow to port was another tanker, British-flagged, and according to the pilot’s indication likely to become Quilla’s nearest neighbour when she dropped her hook. Any moment now – Elliot in the starboard wing getting the Old Man’s order and raising his megaphone to yell down at the foc’sl to stand by, and Harve lifting a hand in acknowledgement. His team would already have used the windlass to walk-back the anchor, have it hanging clear of the hawse – windlass declutched, cable held only on the screwed-down brake.

  She was clear of the Norwegians. Pilot narrow-eyed, judging distances, Quilla down to a snail’s pace and steady as a rock. That tanker’s name was British Destiny. To starboard at about the same distance, a steamer with two funnels and midships structure substantial enough to have passenger cabins in it. Name – no, couldn’t read it…

  ‘Let go, Captain?’

  ‘Let go!’

  Elliot had howled it almost simultaneously: on the foc’sl McGrath flung off the brake and the cable began roaring out. Old Man gesturing to Waller, who’d been waiting for it, to put her slow astern, stop her in her tracks.