For Valour (33 page)

Wishart wondered if he would ever be able to wear that uniform, and be the part. It was all so different. He could smell the rum now. That was enough to go to your head. Someone might offer him sippers, but he hoped not; he knew his own limits. Like the time Bob Forward had brought him down here and had plied him with some of his own hoarded supply. When he had apologized, or as near as he ever could, for not being interested in his studies.

He looked at him now, a man alone, despite the bodies crammed around the table, and the other messes nearby. He was using a needle and palm to put the finishing touches to a belt he had made to carry his knife and marline spike, the mark of a real seaman.

It was hard to imagine anything which would hang on his mind, but something was. If only he could do something, to make up for all the other times when the withdrawn Forward had helped him.

Forward was well aware of his scrutiny but concentrated on the needle, the careful stitching on the leather.

Under orders. In many ways he was glad. Although that would stop or prevent nothing if it was true about the cops. But how could it be? Nobody knew, and his travel warrant had been wrongly dated. He was covered. For one day at least.

What made a girl like her into a bloody tom? Sleeping with anybody and everybody, letting them do what they liked with her, to her. It was wrong, although he knew that many were not so squeamish. In Alexandria he had seen the soldiers shuffling along in queues outside a brothel, some reading magazines while they waited, the whole thing supervised by hard-faced redcaps.

Next, please?
Sick, dangerous too, as the snotty, Seton, had found out the hard way. And his father was an admiral. He frowned. Serve him right.

But suppose . . . It had to be faced, like any danger.
You think it out.
When splinters had ripped through the wheelhouse and men had fallen dead or twisting in agony, blood everywhere, and the coxswain bellowing like a bloody bull in heat, he had stayed calm. It was the only way.

If the cops had really wanted to make trouble he would have heard by now. He had been at enough parades to watch some sailor weighed off for punishment, his Skipper reading the Articles of War as if he was Nelson or somebody. There had been no delays when he had laid into the coward, and had dipped his hook because of it. No delays at all.

This was a top-secret job. Even if every man-jack in the Andrew seemed to know about it. Outside inquiries would be unwelcome. He looked down at the new medal ribbon on his jumper. A hero as well.

But if . . .
He could run, desert. Plenty did. He paused, the needle poised like a dart down at the local his dad had used.

They knew nothing.

A pair of legs appeared on the ladder and the odour of rum filled the messdeck.

“About bloody time, Hookey!”

“When you pour, no thumbs in the measure, right?”

Forward relaxed and looked over at his young friend, for that he was. And for some strange reason, it mattered.

Outside a tug pounded abeam, the wash making the destroyer's graceful hull rise and dip to the moorings.

As if
Hakka,
too, needed to leave.

Lieutenant Roger Kidd shrugged his shoulders deeper into his heavy bridge coat and stared at the craggy, timeless panorama of the Orkney Islands. The group had left at first light, south through the boom-gate at Hoxa Sound and then west and north along the coast of Hoy. It was strange to be in one company again, he thought, with the cruiser
Durham
showing off her lines as she turned slightly in the watery sunlight.

Directly abeam was the oldest landmark, the tall pinnacle of rock called the Old Man of Hoy. Why was it there? How had it survived when the rest of the island had been eroded by wind and sea?

He looked round and saw the new subbie, Leslie Tyler, lowering his eye to the gyro compass to take a fix on the lonely pinnacle, as thousands of other sea officers had done before him.

Seemed pleasant enough, keen and well versed in radar. That was as far as it went. Kidd knew he was being unfair, just as he knew the reason why. On the bridge this morning, with all the bustle of getting under way again, lights blinking, orders and counter-orders from the shore and the cruiser, and Bradshaw's intention to do much as he pleased in his own group apparent, Kidd had gone to the chart table and had been surprised when he had bumped into Tyler. He had been expecting to see Seton. He shook himself.
Getting past it.
Seton was dead, kaput.

That was the real trouble. He had spoken impatiently, unfairly, to Seton the day he had killed himself. God alone knew, he must have been at the end of his tether, desperate, but he had not bothered to ask or listen. And he had sent Wishart after him. That, too, had been nagging him.

He stared at the passing landscape until his eyes watered. Once clear of the land, Marwick Head, where Lord Kitchener had met his death when the cruiser
Hampshire
had hit a mine in the Great War, the group would reform, with
Durham
in the centre, the leader and
Hakka
positioned on either bow, the others following in line astern. It might put some heart into the poor merchant seamen who would be relying on them in this big convoy. Kidd had sailed in larger convoys, but had had an ocean to move in. There was always a chance in the Western Ocean that you might get through undetected, unseen by the periscope's eye. Not much, but a chance.

On this run there was only one route, one destination, all within reach of enemy ships and submarines for much of the way. Aircraft, too.

He had not been able to see Evie when they had been in Liverpool. Officers' conference, intelligence reports to consider, hazards to navigation. There had simply been no time. Not even for the Skipper. He looked over at the empty, upright steel chair. Especially the Skipper.

But he had managed to speak to her on the telephone, conscious the whole time of others waiting to use it, their tempers and patience measured against their rank and status.

She had tried to console him. To reassure him, and to remind him of the one, special time they had shared.

In his mind he had seen the little hotel in Birkenhead. It was no Ritz, but it was always busy when the ships were in, and it was hers.

She was too pretty to pass unnoticed. There would be others who would soon be after her. Her, and the hotel.

They probably say that about me!

“I'll wait, Roger. I shall always wait for you.” He had heard the hesitation. “Do take care, dearest Roger, I want you back. In my arms.” She had been unable to go on. He knew he had not been much better.

He had told Fairfax about it, and he had listened, and had said, “You get that special licence, and I'll get my sword out of hock for the occasion!” But Liverpool was a long way astern now.

Evie would hear about the two corvettes; they always announced losses on the news eventually. Bloody ghouls. Kidd had known the Skipper of
Cranesbill,
an ex-first officer in a tanker. They must have taken on a bloody cruiser from the sound of it. Hopeless. Like trying to stop a charging bull elephant with a peashooter.

He moved across the bridge and raised his glasses to study
Durham.
Plenty of firepower, with raked funnels to give the impression of speed. Not that she needed it. She could manage thirty-two knots with no trouble at all.

But compared to a destroyer she was big. Big, and a liability if things went wrong.

He ground his teeth together.
Stop thinking of disaster. You know the score. Or should, by now.

Lights flashed in the hazy glare, and flags soared up the cruiser's yards.

Onslow said, “Preparative, sir.”

Kidd came out of it. “Stand by to alter course. Acknowledge, Yeo.”

He stared at the island. Back to sea again. No reminders.

Leading Signalman Findlay said quietly, “Captain's coming up, sir.”

Kidd nodded.
Get a grip on yourself.

“Warn the wheelhouse.” He saw Tyler looking at him, his face a picture of innocence.

“Can I take over, sir?”

Kidd felt the spray in his beard. Somehow it helped.

He said, “Stand by, Sub. Course to steer is . . .”

Martineau walked across the bridge and glanced at the cruiser as Onslow called,
“Execute!”

Martineau smiled. “Carry on, Mr Tyler. Take the con.”

He gripped the back of the chair and waited while Tyler gave his orders precisely and clearly to the voicepipe. Just a few degrees, and he heard the response from the wheelhouse even from here. A few degrees, but to Sub-Lieutenant Tyler it was doubtless like the breadth of an ocean.

He felt the pipe in his pocket and recalled what Fairfax had told him about the delay in Kidd's marriage arrangements. He would be thinking of it now, as the land dipped away. And young Barlow down aft with the depth charges, with no home to come back to. And Seton who had died because of his secret, and Arliss who had fallen just here, another stranger.

And all the others who had become a part of memory.

He climbed into the chair and heard somebody hammering shackles into place. The forecast was not bad, but that meant nothing up here.

He saw his reflection in the salt-smeared screen and thought of Anna. The girl with rain in her hair, walking with the dog named Ahab.

Like a dream.

“Port watch at defence stations, sir.”

“Very good.”

It was beyond their control now. They were all victims.

17 | “Flag 4!”

Five days after leaving Scapa Flow, Lucky Bradshaw's support group and the cruiser
Durham
were steering north-east, some two hundred miles west of the Lofoten Islands. A gale which had been forecast to follow them in from the North Atlantic changed direction, and left in its wake long, unbroken banks of glassy rollers, rank after rank which lifted the ships almost playfully before fading into the distance. At times a roller would create such a trough that even the cruiser appeared to be sinking, with only her bridge and upperworks visible.

The sky was clearer for longer periods, the air intensely cold, so that even the briefest contact between bare skin and metal fittings offered a real chance of frostbite.

Men stood on watch, taking the motion with straddled legs, or braced in gun mountings, their breath freezing into scarves and balaclava helmets, while others peered through their binoculars, faces completely hidden by the special fur-lined Arctic clothing.

Martineau sat in his bridge chair with a thick scarf wound around his throat and mouth, the ends wedged into his duffle coat. Like most sailors he disliked having his head covered when he was on watch, and contented himself with his cap, on which the oak leaves were already tarnished beyond recognition.

Signals were rare, brief and, of necessity, vague.

The convoy's sailing day had been delayed by that same gale, and so the group should rendezvous with the covering escort a day earlier than originally planned. Martineau shifted his buttocks on the chair. They felt numb. He heard Onslow, the chief yeoman, speaking with two of his signalmen. No slip-ups; be ready for anything.
Durham
had already made some witty signals when the veteran destroyer
Harlech
had lost station on her.

In a rare show of anger Onslow had snapped, “It's all right for them big ship wallahs—dry decks and a place to swing a hammock! I'll bet they bake fresh bread every day, too!”

“Aircraft! Green four-five, angle of sight three-five!”

The nearest gun muzzles swung on to the bearing, as if the movement was automatic and not controlled by stiff, freezing fingers.

Someone managed a cheer. “Stringbag!”

A bright green flare drifted lazily towards the dull, heaving water, but all eyes were on the Swordfish torpedo bomber, the familiar “Stringbag.” Not unlike the biplanes of the Great War, and with a personality all their own: pilots who flew them swore they would never change. Slow, with open, windswept cockpits, it was impossible to imagine how the crew felt in this weather. Even now, as the aircraft dipped and tilted its wings,
Hakka
plunged her nose into another roller, the spray bursting up through the hawsepipes, more like steam than water. The deck up there would be like glass.

It was Fairfax's watch, and he said, “Bang on time, sir.”

Martineau nodded, and winced as the scarf scraped his neck like broken wire. The escort carrier
Dancer
was with the convoy escort. In this kind of sea those little makeshift carriers could rise and fall thirty feet or more; he had seen aircraft trying to land in those conditions, the deck rising like a wall, or falling like a giant slide at the very moment of approach. Usually they made it. Some did not.

He stared abeam and watched the Swordfish turn away and skim over the cruiser's mastheads.

He had pictured the giant operation in his mind. The convoy, thirty-seven ships packed to the deck beams with weapons and supplies, with more stowed and lashed outside in the weather, the escorts, small and large, ranging from sloops and corvettes to fleet destroyers like
Hakka
and her consorts.

They had seen and been seen by the bigger aircraft based in Iceland, Liberators, Catalinas, all drawn together like Kidd's pencilled lines on a chart. There was a cruiser squadron at sea also, just in case
Scharnhorst
took this opportunity to leave the security of Altenfjord, the last lap of the convoy's route before North Cape and the Kola Inlet.

But now, at this moment, here on the edge of nowhere, they had the sea to themselves. They had broken formation twice to investigate possible U-boat contacts, but they had proved worthless. They all had to be investigated, exactly as if it was a genuine threat of attack, phase by phase, by men so drained by the sea and the cold that the possibility of failure was always a lurking fear.

Lookouts shifted around, a quick grin here, a thump on the back with a fur-lined glove there, a new voice up the pipe from the wheelhouse as the helmsman stepped down for a break. Hot, sweet tea, or gut-clinging pusser's kye, a touch of rum in it if you could pull some strings. Sandwiches as thick as boards, corned beef or spam, tinned sausages, “snorkers,” and layers of mustard; you could even forget that the bread was already five days old. No wonder Onslow hated the
big ship wallahs.

Martineau rarely left the bridge, and despite the constant movement, the routine which carried all of them with the ship, he had found himself able to doze in this chair, his body pressing this way and that, until some sudden, unexpected sound intruded to drag him back to reality.

Once he dreamed of Anna, walking with her, perhaps reliving that one moment of freedom in the New Forest.

He had thought of the letter he had written to her. So many things he had wanted to say, to share. What would she think about it now that they were separated again? He stared at the spray as it drifted so slowly aft from the raked stem, to spatter across the glass screen and there transform itself into diamonds of ice.
This hated ocean.
He shook himself, and saw Slade, the baby-faced signalman, turn to look at him. Two red-rimmed eyes peering out of a shapeless hood. What would his family think if they could see him right now?

Or Tyler, the new subbie, who was helping Kidd with the charts. If he lived through this he would not need to act like a true veteran. He would be one.

“Time to alter course, sir.”

“Very good.” He stifled a yawn. “Watch
Durham,
Number One. We don't want to annoy Father!”

Fairfax grinned and bent over the voicepipe, poised as Onslow and his team watched the cruiser's yards.

The signal flags made the only touches of colour against the grey and the black-sided troughs, he thought.

“Starboard ten. Midships. Steady. Steer zero-six-zero.”

Martineau shifted in the chair. It was so damned uncomfortable. He acknowledged it.
It was not the chair.
He wondered if the doctor had spoken with his friend at Haslar Hospital.

Someone said, “Wow, where'd you get that fancy pencil from, Bunts?”

The baby-faced Slade replied, “Mister Seton gave it to me. It's a good one, too.”

Martineau turned away. So even Seton was here, in this sea of ghosts; he had not left the ship after all.

That evening they made contact with the convoy, although only the radar and the blink of signal lamps gave any hint of its size, and the enormous area of water such an armada required.

Could a convoy like this one change the course of the war? The Russians thought it would; the Admiralty did not question it.

He imagined Lucky Bradshaw on the opposite wing of the group in
Zouave,
waiting for a chance to prove or distinguish himself, or was it a need to even some old score, with Commodore Raikes, for instance?

He heard Kidd's heavy seaboots clumping across the deck, and the edge in his voice.

“Look at that bloody sight, Number One! Miles and miles of bugger-all, and all those ships out there somewhere! After this lot's over I'm going to swallow the anchor for good!”

One hour later the first torpedo exploded astern of the convoy.

There was no longer room for doubt. Or hope.

The convoy's first casualty was the fleet minesweeper
Sesame.
She had been acting as Tailend Charlie, some three miles astern of the main body of ships, to render assistance, round up stragglers, and as a last resort pick up survivors.

She had been zigzagging at the time when a single torpedo had exploded amidships, flooding both engine and boiler rooms and rendering her helpless: a lone U-boat trying to stalk the convoy, perhaps to determine the strength of its escort and the speed and course at that given time, so that a signal could be sent to Group North. Probably one of a full salvo fired at extreme range to avoid detection; they might never know.

Sesame
began to break up almost immediately, and although the forward half remained afloat for an hour, by the time an armed trawler arrived to take off her company it was already too late for most of them. Out of eighty officers and men only five were rescued, one being her commanding officer.

The next day was the last time they could rely on land-based aircraft. The little escort carrier
Dancer,
with her own guardians, four fleet destroyers, was their floating airfield for the long haul to the Kola Inlet.

Aboard
Hakka,
the size of the convoy became apparent with the coming of an indefinite daylight: four long columns of ships, with a big cargo-liner,
Genoa Star,
wearing the Commodore's flag.

Martineau took time to study the nearest ships as the group hastened past to take up station ahead and to the north-west of the convoy, between Jan Mayen and Bear Islands where several attacks had been launched in the past. Within range of German aircraft as well as the Norwegian naval bases, it seemed the likeliest choice for an all-out attack.

The sea was calmer now, with a hint of ice in the bitter air. On watch there was no time to brood. With the group zigzagging or fanning out to investigate an uncertain echo or blur on the radar, any lack of vigilance could leave the ship open for a collision. The cruiser
Durham
exercised her main armament of twelve six-inch guns, the four turrets moving smoothly as one, her Captain making quite sure that there was no possibility of something icing up, common enough up here despite the anti-freeze and the grease.

It was halfway through the forenoon watch, the sea stretching away to an invisible horizon, fragments of ice still adrift to jar against the ships as they surged amongst it.

Dancer
flew off two aircraft, the snarl of engines making the air cringe. There was a smell of some kind from the galley funnel, and the Buffer had chosen the moment to take a working party to check the boats in their davits, the Carley floats and scrambling nets, a twice-daily precaution. It was not unknown for rafts and life-saving gear to be frozen solid when they were needed.

Martineau was standing by the voicepipes, holding the rack and bending his legs to restore the circulation. It was on the far side of the convoy, out of sight in the haze and wet mists, that the torpedoes exploded. A big freighter directly astern of the Commodore's ship began to fall out of line, smoke bursting from a well deck as if it was under pressure.

The U-boat had either worked around the leaders during the night, or more likely was one of a line of patrols lying in wait.

Signals flew back and forth, and escort vessels on the starboard wing of the outer column speeded to intercept the target.

Depth charges hurled columns of water into the air, the explosions pounding against
Hakka
's flank as if she was in the thick of it.

Martineau walked to the side of the bridge and trained his glasses on the stricken freighter. She was showing a list, but not much, not enough to reveal the terrible damage torpedoes could inflict on an overloaded ship. He and many others here today, on this godforsaken ocean, had seen it before. It made it no easier.

The big ship was stopped now, and falling out of line, the other vessels altering course slightly to avoid collision, politely it seemed, as if it was the way to behave.
Keep going. Don't stop. Don't look back.
Yes, it was old enough.

Armed trawlers were hurrying through the columns, the undertaker's men, as they were known, but all attention was on the sudden flurry of activity on the far side: more depth charges, and then, unexpectedly, the crash and crackle of gunfire.

Kidd said flatly, “They've hit the bastard. He must be blowing his tanks.”

But his eyes were on the freighter, passing the last ships in the columns now, the list more pronounced, small fragments spilling through and over her side. Only through binoculars could you see that they were armoured cars and tanks, like toys at this distance, going down to litter another seabed.

“U-boat on the surface, sir!”

More gunfire, and now the staccato rattle of machine-guns. The real war: no quarter, no giving time to surrender.

There was a muffled rumble. Down amongst his racing machinery Trevor Morgan would feel it, even if he could hear nothing. He would know. A ship's boilers exploding, a ship dying.

“U-boat destroyed, sir!”

Once they would have cheered, Martineau thought. But not any more. He raised his glasses again, but the sea astern was empty, except for two armed trawlers and what looked like ash circling lazily around them.