Non-Combatants

by Non-Combatants (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  Nine o’clock. He was in the wheelhouse, in dry clothes, the Old Man telling him, ‘Get yourself a job at Bertram Mills, you could, Second.’

  Bertram Mills’ circus.

  ‘Well, sir.’ Grinning, appreciating the tone of voice. ‘Might be better paid. And lady trapeze artists to practise with.’

  Chief Verity – up here for a look-see, evidently – chipped in with, ‘No job for a married man, then. What’s it like in, Holt?’

  ‘Cool enough to be worth staying out of, sir.’ He told Waller, ‘You can do the next one, Gus.’

  Samways chuckling to himself. Ship’s head 260 again, Andy saw, and revs for twelve knots, by the look of things. He went to the chart but there was really no change to the situation; she’d been stopped for about ten minutes, but that didn’t change anything, the deadline was still 0930.

  If the Old Man was hell-bent on continuing west until there wasn’t another boat or raft in sight, though – which by and large did seem to be the case – then deadlines were irrelevant. Once you did turn back – well, you’d be a straggler, nothing else. The rest of the day, and tonight, and at least the first half of tomorrow.

  As the man had said – saying your prayers and getting on with it.

  The Aurelia, he guessed, would have turned back a couple of hours ago.

  ‘Bridge!’

  Monkey island voice-pipe: Elliot. Waller had jumped to it. ‘Bridge?’

  ‘Ship’s boat five points to starboard, about three miles!’

  ‘Starboard fifteen.’

  Old Man not bothering to think twice. Well, he’d found them, at last, was finally in the right place, where the lives were that he’d been sent to save.

  Samways acknowledging, ‘Starboard fifteen, sir.’

  ‘Steer 310 degrees.’

  Andy asked Waller, ‘You want this one?’

  He didn’t look all that keen. Anyway – nine-five now. Andy noted the time of altering course and the log reading against a new diary note: Sighted ship’s boat.

  Banal as that looked – and was, when you thought of lives being saved or at least extended, and the risks involved. But what else – when they were there, staring you in the face?

  Dixon went down again to alert Harve, and at 0922 they had the boat alongside: seven men in it, all suffering from severe burns and one with a strip of shirt round his head, covering his eyes. Blinded, according to the others. McGrath and his team helped them as much as was possible, but it wasn’t easy, the state some of them were in. It took at least ten minutes before they were all on board and the boat was filling, its plug removed. Andy noticed about then that the gunwale and rubbing-strake on the outboard side had charred away. The rescued men were Norwegians from the tanker Norsk Bensin, and were emphatic that they were the only survivors. None of them was in anything like good shape, but remembering how that ship had looked when she’d been dropping astern – a floating fireball – you could only think what a miracle it was that they’d come out of it at all. No officers had survived. The Norsk Bensin’s navigation bridge structure had been amidships, and these men had mostly been gun’s crew, right aft, abaft the funnel and aftercastle. There’d been four boats on that structure, and this had been the aftermost on the windward side.

  It was 0935 by the time the Norwegians were inboard and Quilla under way again. Old Man conning her back on to 260 degrees at revs for twelve knots, telling Andy when she was settled on that course, ‘We’ll start back around ten, Second.’

  * * *

  In the owners’ suite, out of which Harve’s and Chief Verity’s gear was being moved, Harve had told the Norwegians that Quilla would be rejoining the convoy at 1900, and that by then they’d have an escort of a sloop and some corvettes. The sloop would almost certainly have a doctor, and with any luck they’d be able to arrange for him to transfer by boat soon after daylight and give them his skilled attention. Measures being taken now would, he hoped, provide temporary alleviation of pain and general discomfort. He had morphine, and ointment for smearing on burns, but nothing for that poor fellow’s eyes except boracic in which to bathe them – if that would help, and he was scared it might be the wrong thing entirely.

  Andy had gone along to see if he could help, but wasn’t needed. Harve had Merriman with him, and the steward, Hastings, had been there at the time, having brought up a couple of gallons of hot soup, and bread and cheese. RO/3 Ted Shaw had also, surprisingly, offered his services: his mother was Norwegian, apparently, and he could get along in it.

  ‘Leave you to it then, Harve.’

  A nod. ‘Get us back where we belong. Turned yet, have we?’

  ‘Starting back around ten.’

  Harve looked rotten, he thought. Greyer and older. Last night had done him no good at all.

  Returning to the wheelhouse, he found Quilla under helm, altering to 245, Elliot having spotted a boat on that bearing at about 5,000 yards – two and a half miles. It had a red sail on it, Waller mentioned. The wind was up a bit now, much more like force four than three, sea verging on rough; Quilla being deep-laden was paying only small attention to it, but there was a lot more surface turbulence than there had been earlier, and if the boat’s sail had been white it might well not have been visible.

  The Old Man was on to it now. ‘There. Come five degrees to starboard, Selby.’

  To 250 degrees. Rolling quite a bit, with the weather on her beam. Selby would have taken over from Samways at a quarter to the hour, when Andy had been visiting the owners’ suite; it was 0950 now. Two miles to that boat, say – ten minutes to get there, plus however long was necessary for the embarkation. Clearly you wouldn’t be on your way by ten. By a quarter-past, at best. But one thing at least, this did have to be the last.

  At 0953 there was another shout from the island, Elliot reporting a second boat also under a red sail a thousand yards beyond the one they were heading for, about a point on the bow to port. Andy, in the forefront, starboard side, had this one in his glasses too – a small splodge of red, was all, while the boat they were making for – well, you’d be there in five minutes. He told the Old Man, who was still searching for the new one, ‘Thousand yards between ’em’s about right, sir.’

  A grunt, as he settled on it. Shifting back to the first one, growling, ‘Bloody regatta, could be…’

  Snorts from Selby and Dixon. Andy recognising that they’d undoubtedly be going for that boat too. Old Man telling Dixon, ‘If Mr Brown’s got his hands full, find McGrath. Port side again. Let Mr Brown know, any road.’

  ‘Aye, sir!’

  He’d be quoted from Glasgow to Shanghai and back on that regatta comment, Andy thought. And no-one could blame him for going to pick up the second lot either. In fact he couldn’t possibly not do so. Even knowing it would result in missing the 1900 rendezvous with the convoy.

  But the hell: you’d make it, that was the thing. Samantha’s voice in memory, You’ll come through it, Andy.

  And thanks to Quilla, so would a good few others who otherwise might not have.

  * * *

  The first of the two boats had nineteen men in it, including some Lascars and two officers, mate and third mate of the SS Garthsnaid, which had been torpedoed in the light from a burning tanker and taken a few hours to sink. The other boat, the mate told Harve, had fewer in it, but one of them was the ship’s master. She’d been Birkenhead registered, 5,400 GRT, and he – this mate – was a Liverpudlian. The master’s name was Grogan. Injuries among these nineteen consisted of no more than a broken wrist and sundry cuts and bruises. The torpedo had hit right aft and nine men had been killed in its explosion, including the crew of the twelve-pounder.

  Time now, 1016. Andy had been down there in case Harve was too busy with the Norwegians to take charge of this, but Merriman and the RO/3 had been coping well apparently, and Harve had left them to get on with it. The embarkation had gone smoothly enough, although it had taken a little time – on account of the numbers involved and sc
rambling nets being only twelve feet wide. In the course of it he’d noticed that the cloud-cover was at last breaking up, at least to some extent, and decided that if he watched for a break and was quick in taking advantage of it when it came, now might be as good a time as he’d get. It was fast-moving cloud, and in half an hour’s time chances mightn’t be as good as they looked now.

  When he got back up to the wheelhouse, Quilla was on course at slow speed for the second boat, with a couple of hundred yards to go, Waller was standing by the engine room telegraph, and the Old Man was telling Selby to bring her three degrees to port. Andy told Dixon to be ready to note down the chronometer time of this sunsight, and took his sextant out into the starboard wing. Checking that Dixon was watching him, and seeing Elliot up on the island searching all round for yet more ships’ boats.

  He heard the clang of Waller ringing down ‘Stop’. Time now 1027, and there it was: a sizeable clear patch shifting in the right direction. More or less right direction anyway, and at this moment clear, might not be by the time the sun was in it. Dummy-run first anyway, while waiting for it: bringing the centre of what at this moment was only a diffuse brightness down to the horizon – which was a good one, sharp and clear. Quickly back up to the approaching blue, thinking come on, come on…

  But Elliot was on his feet up there – one hand on the rail and the other pointing – a high-pitched shriek of ‘Torpedo –’ and the day exploded. Actually number three hold, the high-octane in it, a solid thump and standard-sized eruption before the truly colossal one: sound and flame, huge upshoot of flame, sky and surroundings black, fire-streaked, hatch-covers and pit-props in an upward avalanche, the other bridge-wing and forepart of the wheelhouse shattered and on fire. Andy – well, God knew what, he didn’t.

  15

  Finally: and thank God weeks ahead of the best he’d been able to promise her at the outset. He’d said – could hear it like an echo in his skull – ‘Back in ten weeks, maybe, I’ll call as soon as we get in.’ Over the phone, that had been, before she’d implored him to rush over there. But in the first days of August – when ten weeks would have taken you to the end of September, or even the start of October, for Pete’s sake: and here you were now, 8th September, not even six weeks later. Cutting out Cuba had been the big thing, of course. Actually, he thought he’d told her he might be away ten or twelve weeks; might have when he’d been in Newcastle. But at the beginning of August she’d been two months gone, she’d said. Would have been, the timing of it, the previous visit, and adding twelve weeks, three months, to that – well, crikey, wouldn’t have been much of a secret by that time. OK, she’d have known for some while now that she wasn’t going to have to sit it out quite that long – she’d have had his letters from New York – but to start with, hadn’t she been damn brave?

  And must have been worrying about it for at least a month before she’d mentioned it. As she’d explained it, not being absolutely certain at that stage and not wanting to distract him from his studies.

  Well, she was brave. Brave as a little brown-eyed lioness. One had known that from the start, from that bad time in the PollyAnna – on top of all she’d been through in the Glauchau and the sinking of her uncle’s Cheviot Hills. Which had been something else, of course, a more overt, semi-public kind of bravery. This kind now – alone, all of it locked up inside her, no-one she could even whisper to about it, relying totally on him, and at such a distance and isolation relying not only on the promise of ten weeks or twelve but on Quilla making it back at all, when so many hadn’t and still weren’t, as every Tynesider as well as Clydesider or Merseysider knew damn well. And OK, it would be bad enough for her in the future too, for as long as this business lasted, but it would never be as bad as these past weeks must have been. She’d never forget it, and you’d better not either.

  Cold…

  Having told Chief Verity, ‘It’s cold, all right.’ Or some such snappy answer. Bumpy as well as cold. Still wet through, despite having shifted into dry clothes. Soaked, and crashing around. Time to try again now, though – put another shilling in. All right, all right. Hands frozen, was the trouble now, more thumbs than fingers. But hearing it now as well as feeling it, the jolting around. Not unlike it had been earlier, on the raft with the dead trimmer, if that was what he’d been. Might not: a lot of trimmers were scrawny bastards, not man-mountains, despite the work they did. Could have been a greaser, or even AB, and whatever he was, he’d have gone down as soon as his lungs had filled, come back up when the gas expanded and forced the water out, sunk again for good a day or two later. It had certainly been better than leaving him in the raft to rot. Like that crowd in the boat they’d come across on the way from Cape Town to Monte Video in the old PollyAnna, vicinity of Tristan de Cunha, when the Old Man had sent him in the jolly-boat to see whether any of the people in it were alive, or if there were any clues to their origins – which there had not been, only men who’d been dead a long time, bled as long as there’d been blood still in them – in that heat, and having attracted the attentions of gulls, putrefying.

  One’s introduction to war, you might call it. Or as that bastard Halloran had put it afterwards, ‘Another memory to treasure.’

  ‘Seems he’s breathing proper now. Must ’a done it right, Stoney.’

  Distractions one didn’t want, or for that matter understand. All that mattered was getting through to Julia, whose line seemed permanently engaged. He had enough shilling pieces in his pocket for a good long talk, had made sure of that, told himself back in Halifax when daydreaming of this moment to be sure of having plenty.

  But Christ almighty—

  ‘He’s comin’ round. Alleluia, fellers, he is, he’s bloody comin’ round!’

  ‘Mind my fuckin’ arm!’

  More a whine than a voice, that one, but something familiar about it. Andy got his tongue and lips to move, respond, react to something that couldn’t be real, must have been part of some other dream – asking, although in doubt there’d be anyone to hear him, ‘Who’s coming round?’

  A laugh – somewhat nasal, not familiar. But from the first one, ‘By the sound of it, you are, sir. We pumped you out – me an’ Stone ’ere—’

  ‘Who’s Stone?’

  Behind the question, a flash of memory – image of that giant flash, like a vision of lightning and thunder at its very source and a volcano spewing timber. But for real… Hearing now – echo of it, of what had been said – ‘Loader, sir – gun’s crew, Stone, OS? I’m Fellaby, sir – carpenter.’

  ‘Fellaby. Well…’ Then the sounds and motion, and a further leap of consciousness: ‘On some raft?’

  In sunshine, at that.

  No call to Julia, then. No reality in that. Would be, but not yet. Please, bloody have to be…

  ‘How’d this come about?’

  ‘Well – U-boat, likely—’

  ‘I meant how come we’re on this raft?’

  ‘See, when she split open—’

  U-boat might still be hanging round. Except no reason it should be, really. Even to have been there in the first place: but now – no, couldn’t be.

  Julia’d have to hold on a little longer. Thank God, had never told her 8th September or any other actual date: and not knowing anything about this, obviously – well, few days, or even a week, she’d be OK. Might have told her middle of the month, something of that sort, but—

  ‘Sorry, Fellaby, missed that.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Didn’t hear what you were telling me. How many of us on this?’

  ‘Ah. Five. You, me, Stone, RO/2 Newton and Bayliss ’ere. His arm’s broke – Bayliss’s that is, but—’

  ‘Goes on about it like he ’as been, I’ll break the other for ’im.’

  Stone had said that. Fellaby adding, ‘But Mr Newton’s worse off than what Bayliss is. That arm looks bad enough, but…’

  But Newton was – something or other…

  He hadn’t caught it. There was a lot of noise and r
ocking around. Getting himself up – or half up – telling himself to stop asking questions, look and bloody see. Sitting now, looking around at them all, hanging on as the thing bucked and tipped, throwing itself about. Fellaby and Stone both grasping paddles as if they might be weapons, not doing any paddling. Well, paddle where, except round in circles? Plenty of the wet, cold stuff coming over: he thought he remembered the wind had been rising. Mightn’t be all that much stronger now, though the difference was that you were in the bloody stuff, and rafts weren’t built for comfort. He knew Fellaby well enough – one of Quilla’s personalities, a Mancunian, thirty-ish, had a wife and child – but Stone less well, except as the gun loader, a smallish man, mid-twenties, with flat eyes and a set of jaw, slit of a mouth that gave him the look of a bull-terrier. Someone had said he had a temperament to match, a tendency to lash out when provoked. He’d nodded to both of them, was looking now at the Marconi man, Newton, with his pale eyes – shut now – and white face, ginger sideboards. In fact more than sideboards, he might have decided to grow a beard.

  ‘He asleep?’

  ‘Conscious a while back, gone off again. Got a knock on the head, he said, that and couldn’t move his neck.’

  ‘Got knocked on mine too, I think. Hurts, anyway. I was dreaming – until you spoke, thought we’d got back – Clyde… Bayliss, which arm is it?’

  Stirring enough to point at the left one, its elbow. ‘Here. It’s no joke, no matter what Stone reckons. Pit-prop, I reckon – when I went in, landed on it like, less broke than smashed I’d say, bloody agony and that’s the truth!’

  Fellaby said, ‘Pit-props did for them as was in the boat. Bloody wonder we come through, raining great lumps of timber!’

  ‘D’you mean the second boat from the Garthsnaid?’

  ‘One we was makin’ for when she went up, yeah.’