Strike from the Sea (1978) (21 page)

Ainslie could almost hear him speaking.
Back to dear old London. Bless it
.

The MO asked, ‘Shall I have my chaps put him under?’

Put him under.
Like so much rubbish.

‘No. I’ll take him back.’ He looked at the sky, searching for the persistent drone.
If we catch it, he’ll still be with us.

He turned on his heel and walked back towards the pier, looking neither right nor left.

Quinton saw his face as he climbed aboard, and even though he had guessed what had happened he was shocked by what he saw.

Ainslie said, ‘Keep the hands at it, Number One. I want every last ounce ashore before we get under way.’

Quinton said quietly, ‘Leave it to me.’

Ainslie swung on him, his blue eyes blazing with hurt and bitter anger. But he steadied himself and said, ‘No. We’ll do it together.’ He tried to smile. ‘Like you said. The old firm. Remember?’ Then he lowered himself through the hatch.

Quinton raised his glasses and peered up through the netting and fronds towards the persistent drone.

To Ridgway he said, ‘Tell Sawle to take some food and drink to the skipper’s quarters. He won’t touch it, but if he sits still long enough he might fall asleep.’

He swung his glasses, but the shadow had only been a solitary sea bird.

Ainslie had been about to go for him. And why not, after Forster’s mistake, and his own failure to notice it.

But instead, he had made another effort to hold them all together, as he always had in the past.

A heavy shell exploded in the jungle, shaking the hull like a piledriver hitting a roadway.

He saw a covered stretcher approaching the pier, the bare-backed troops and sailors parting to let it through.

Poor old Critch, Quinton thought. Then with a sigh he said, ‘Man the side. Commander Critchley coming aboard.’

10

Nobody Lives Forever

AINSLIE AWOKE WITH
a violent shudder, his mind reluctant to accept he had been asleep, or that he had given in to his exhaustion. As he gripped the sides of his bunk he saw Quinton peering down at him, with another figure, Sub-Lieutenant Southby, hovering in the rectangle of light from the passageway.

‘What is it?’ Ainslie fumbled with his watch, seeing his untouched food by the bunk, realizing he must have fallen asleep even as he had rejected it.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’ Quinton stepped back as Ainslie lurched from the bunk. ‘Just had a shout from the Army. The Japs are attacking in depth. It doesn’t sound too bright.’

Ainslie stared at himself in the bulkhead mirror, seeing the wildness in his eyes, remembering with startling clarity that he had been dreaming when Quinton had touched his shoulder. Of a beach, of the girl, dressed in that same long dress, her bare feet on the hard, wet sand. There had been danger. Terrible but unseen. He had tried to reach her, to warn her, but the words had been choked, his mouth filled with sand.

He steadied his racing thoughts and asked, ‘Are our people on board?’ How could he have fallen asleep? Tiredness, despair made suddenly sharper by the memory of Critchley’s death put an edge to his voice. ‘For God’s sake, you should have called me!’

Quinton stood his ground. ‘We need you to be rested, sir. Any fool can run cargo.’ He watched Ainslie’s mixed emotions. ‘I’ve finished unloading. The Army are bringing their wounded aboard now. It’s about all we can do.’

Quinton’s quiet resignation helped more than anything. Ainslie was suddenly aware of the sounds, muffled by the hull, but still filled with menace. The unbroken rumble of gunfire, the decks quivering occasionally as a shell fell close to the inlet.

It was noon. Incredibly, Ainslie had slept for four hours. He
said, ‘We should stick it out until dusk. After that . . .’ He did not finish.

He tucked his shirt into his trousers again and pushed the hair from his forehead. For a few moments he looked at his cap, lying on the desk. He thought of the little girl’s face in Singapore. The nurse, wary and hostile, ready to rush in and protect her charge from comment.

‘I’ll go ashore. Tell the Chief to be prepared to get under way. He knows already, but tell him anyway.’

Ainslie looked at Southby. In the dim lighting he was a boy, determined but unable to conceal his anxiety.

‘Come with me, Sub. We’ll see the colonel.’

After the false shade on the conning tower with its camouflage netting and layers of palm fronds, the heat on the steel casing was almost unbearable.

The humid air was heavy with other smells, too. Burning, charred wood and cordite.

He stepped ashore, where Petty Officer Voysey and some seamen crouched or lay by the small brow, ready to cast off, to run, to to die if things went wrong.

Ainslie strode past them, Southby walking in his shadow. To Voysey he called, ‘You did a good job. The boat feels lighter without all that cargo!’

Voysey chuckled, his face grimy and tired. ‘Be glad to get out of ’ere, sir. Even Chatham is better than this lot!’

He jumped up as the first group of wounded soldiers appeared amongst the trees. ‘Ready, lads. Lend a ’and.’

The soldiers passed Ainslie without a glance, supported by their comrades, limping or being carried; they were like living dead, their faces moulded into a pattern of misery and defeat.

Southby said between his teeth, ‘They look done in, sir.’

A cloud of brightly coloured birds rose shrieking from the trees as a single whiplash crack echoed across the inlet.

Ainslie watched the way one of the soldiers cringed. The sniper was out there still. Probably marking down another kill. Like Critchley, and some of these dazed, stumbling survivors.

The attack was mounting and spreading. Even as a sailor Ainslie had heard its like before. The impartial chatter of machine-guns, further off, like woodpeckers on a sunny afternoon in England. The deeper thud and bang of mortar bombs, the crack of rifles.

He found the colonel in his command post, as if he had never moved. But he noticed that he had found time to shave and put on a clean, if patched, shirt.

‘I was about to send for you.’ The colonel waved to the deck-chair with its bloodstain. ‘Take a pew.’ He spoke rapidly into his field telephone. ‘Yes, yes, dammit, I know that, Simpson! Tell the sappers to put some mines down, and try to reopen the line to Brigade.’

He dropped the handset and said in a flat voice, ‘The Japs are coming down the road right now. They’ve got light tanks with ’em, and their artillery has made a real hole in our defences.’

Ainslie waited, hearing Southby’s rapid breathing beside him.

The colonel looked round the bunker. ‘I can’t contact Brigade at all, and the whole flank is on the turn.’

‘What will you do?’ Ainslie’s voice seemed louder than usual.

‘Do? What I’ve just been told. Hold on here until Brigade HQ says otherwise, or Division can re-group.’ He looked up from his litter of maps, his eyes ringed with fatigue. ‘I can’t give the Navy orders, but I suggest you get out, daylight or not. The Japs will probably try to land more troops to the south of here. That’s what their spotter plane was searching for. A good landing place.’ He sighed as the telephone buzzed again. ‘But thanks for the help. We’ll need all that ammo now, I’m thinking.’ He turned back to the telephone, Ainslie and the
Soufrière
no longer his concern.

Ainslie walked back to the smoky sunlight, his mind grappling with the sudden threat. To put to sea in broad daylight would seem like madness. To stay and be cut off was no better.

He saw a soldier with a red cross armband bending over a sprawled body beside the track. He was removing an identity disc and the dead soldier’s wallet. There was a sudden crack and a sharp, metallic clang. The medical orderly fell across the body without a sound, bright blood running down from beneath his steel helmet, in which the sniper’s bullet had punched a hole big enough for a man’s finger.

Southby made to run, but Ainslie said sharply, ‘Still! He’s not far away.’

Two soldiers charged round the corpses firing sub-machine-guns wildly into the trees. Something fell through the branches but did not reach the ground.

Ainslie walked slowly to where the two soldiers were standing and saw a body swinging slowly like a pendulum, back and forth from a kind of harness.

One of the soldiers said dully. ‘The bastards do that, so if they get hit they won’t fall and show their position.’ He had a round West Country voice like Petty Officer Vernon.

Southby said in a husky tone, ‘He’s moving!’

The rasping clatter of the tommy-gun made the birds scream once more. The soldier who had fired said, ‘Not now, he ain’t.’

Ainslie nodded to the soldiers and continued down the slope towards the water. He had seen the sniper. Dressed from head to foot in green rags to conceal his position, like a figure in a nightmare. Even his powerful rifle had been tied to his body.

It was quite likely the same sniper who had killed Critchley. What had he thought as he had seen his face through the telescopic sight? Ainslie released a deep sigh. Probably no more than he felt when he saw a target edging into the cross-wires of a periscope.

The same old reasons. It’s him or me. The war, survival. Everything and nothing.

‘When will they do something to stop them, sir?’

Ainslie could feel Southby watching him, his concern, his sinking faith.

‘It will have to be soon. Maybe reinforcements are already landing at Singapore. There was a troop convoy due by way of Ceylon.’

He looked up as an aircraft roared overhead, guns clattering before it zoomed low over the tree-tops and vanished. He thought of Critchley’s anger when they had first arrived, his insistence on air cover above all else. It had been too late even then.

The gunfire was continuous, although Ainslie could not tell one side from the other.

He saw Lieutenant Ridgway mopping his face as he spoke with some soldiers at the waterside, saw his relief as he looked up and called, ‘These men want to come with us, sir!’

The wounded seemed to have disappeared into the submarine, and as far as he could tell the handful of soldiers with the torpedo officer were unmarked.

One of them, a corporal, said gruffly, ‘It’s no use us stayin’ ’ere, sir.’ He looked at his companions and added desperately,
‘I know what you’re thinkin’, sir, but it’s not like that. What’s the point of it all?’ He waved his hands in the air. ‘We can’t get out of this, no chance! Bloody HQ’s on the run, and they expect us to stay an’ be killed!’

Southby exclaimed, ‘It’s desertion, it’s – .’ He closed his mouth as he saw Ainslie’s eyes.

Ainslie said quietly, ‘Back there, your colonel is doing his best for the rest of us.’ He watched his words go home, like nails in a coffin. ‘I know how you feel, but my officer is right. It would be desertion, and worse.’

Another of the soldiers slung his rifle across his shoulder and said, ‘Forget it, Corp. Anyway, nobody lives forever.’

In a slow, sad file the soldiers walked back towards the trees and the mounting crescendo of gunfire.

Ridgway said, ‘I almost let ’em aboard, sir.’

Ainslie was still staring after the little group of khaki figures.

‘
Almost
is the word which always gets in the way. But for it, the war would have ended at Dunkirk.’

A mortar bomb exploded amongst the trees with a violent bang. Before the dust settled again Ainslie heard a man cry out, imagined him lying there amongst the trees, dying, written off.

He said, ‘Take a party of men and see if there are any more wounded. If so, get them inboard double-quick.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’re getting out.’ He saw their quick exchange of glances. ‘If we can.’

Quinton was waiting below the conning tower, his holster unbuttoned as if to emphasize the closeness of danger.

Ainslie said, ‘Get the dinghy, and take the yeoman with you. I want you to paddle to the end of the inlet, but keep under cover. The Army don’t care much what the Jap Navy is doing, they’ve got problems enough.’ He saw Quinton’s quick understanding and added, ‘But we do care!’

He was amazed how clear his mind had become, the weariness gone from his body like the end of a drug.

For a brief moment he looked along his command, realizing with a start how short a time it had been since Poulain had killed himself in his cabin.

Now they were like one, and he knew that most of the company felt much as he did. No wonder Poulain had been determined to hold on to her, no matter whether his reasons were
right or wrong. He had seen his world crumble, just as the corporal had recognized the approach of a crushing defeat back there on the jungle track.

Farrant was in the control room, straight-backed and without any sign of strain on his narrow features.

He reported crisply, ‘Wounded are all inboard, sir. Hunt says that a couple may die if they can’t get to hospital soon.’

He followed Ainslie to the chart space where Forster was rubbing out pencilled calculations, his face tight with concentration.

‘By the way, sir. W/T decoded a signal just after you left the boat.’ Farrant flicked open his notebook, the one he used to write down comments and criticisms on his gun crews. ‘Petty Officer Vernon thought you would be interested, sir.’ His eyes fixed on the right page. ‘The submarine
Psyche
has been reported sunk in the Mediterranean. No survivors.’ His cold eyes rose and settled on Ainslie, seeking a reaction.

Ainslie nodded slowly. All that was going on here, and just a mile or so up the road, and yet there was still that other world far away, the one he had so recently left behind.

Petty Officer Telegraphist Vernon used his receiver like a lifeline perhaps. Shut in his steel box with his assistants he listened while the rest of them waited.

He replied slowly, ‘I did my first dive in the
Psyche
, when I was a subbie at
Dolphin
.’

Now she has gone, like
Seamist
and
Tigress
, and all the others which littered the bottom of the sea. Trust Vernon to remember. He had been a green telegraphist aboard her with him.