HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (10 page)

They all hated it, but there was so much more to hate. The tiredness of overstrained men working four hours on and four hours off, for day after day and night after night, lay all over the ship, a tangible weight of weariness that affected every yard of their progress. The ship’s company, whether watching on the upper deck or tending the boilers and the engine room, moved in a tired dream barely distinguishable from sleep. A grotesque fatigue assailed them all: they stayed on watch till their eyes ran raw and their bodies seemed ready to crumple: they ate like men who could scarcely move their jaws against some dry and tasteless substance: they fell asleep where they dropped, wedged against ventilators, curled up like bundles of rags in odd corners of the deck. All of them were filthy, bearded, grimed with spray and smoke: there was no water to wash with, no change of clothes, nothing to hearten them but tea and hard biscuit and corned beef, for every meal of every day of the voyage. All over the ship one met them, or stumbled over them: wild-eyed, dirty, slightly mad. And all round them, and above and below, hung that smell of death, a thick enveloping curtain, the price of sea power translated into squalid and disgusting currency.

And the Captain … he summed up, in his person, all that tiredness, all that stress and dirt, all that wild fatigue. He had had the least sleep of anyone on board, throughout the thirteen days: at the end of it he still held the whole thing in his grip, but it was a grip that had another quality besides strength – it had something cracked and desperate about it. His was the worry, and the responsibility, his the appalling doubts as to whether they were really going anywhere at all: he held on because there was no choice, because they could not give up, above all because this was
Marlborough
, his own ship, and he would not surrender her to God or man or the sea. Like a lover, light-headed and despairing, he hoped and strove and would not be foresworn.

The bridge was now his prison … Wedged in his chair, chin on hand, a small thing was beginning to obsess him. On one of the instruments in front of him there was a splash of dried blood, overlooked when they cleaned up after the shell burst. It had an odd shape, like a boot, like Italy: but the silly thing was that when he looked to one side that shape seemed to change, spinning round and round like a windmill, expanding and contracting as if the blood still lived and still moved to a pulse. He tried to catch it moving, but when he stared at it directly it became Italy again, a dirty, brownish smear that no one wanted. He roared out suddenly: ‘Signalman!’ and then: ‘For the Lord’s sake clean that off – it’s filthy!’ and when the man, staring, set to work on the job, he watched him as if his sanity depended on it. Then he looked ahead again, scanning the horizon, the damned crystal clear horizon. No change there: no shadow, no smudge of smoke, nothing. Where were they going to? Was there anything ahead but deep water? Was he leading
Marlborough
, and the wretched remnant of her ship’s company, on a fantastic chase into the blue? And God Almighty! That smell from forrard … It was like a curse, clamped down hard on their necks. Perhaps they were all going to perish of it in the end: perhaps the whole ship and her dead and dying crew, welded together in a solid mass of corruption, would one night dip soundlessly beneath the sea and touch the bottom a thousand fathoms below.

At 4 a.m. on the morning of January 14, Petty Officer Adams came up on to the bridge, to see the Captain before taking over the wheel. He had a pair of binoculars slung beneath the hood of his duffle coat, and from force of habit he raised them and swept slowly round the horizon, a barely distinguishable line of shadow on that black moonless night. He did this twice: then, on the verge of lowering his glasses, he checked suddenly and stared for a long minute ahead, blinking at the rawness, the watery eyestrain, which even this slight effort induced. Then he said, in a compressed, almost croaking voice: ‘There’s a light dead ahead, sir.’

The words fell into the silence of the bridge like a rock in a pool. They all whipped up their glasses and stared in turn – the Captain, the signalman, Bridger, with his cocoa cup forgotten: all of them intent, tremendously alert, checking their breathing as if afraid of losing an instant’s concentration. Then Adams said again: ‘There it is, sir – only the loom of it, but you can see it sweeping across.’

And the Captain, answering him, said very softly: ‘Yes.’
It was
a light – the faintest lifting of the gloom in the sky, like a spectral fan opening and closing, like a whisper – but it
was
a light. For a moment, the Captain was childishly annoyed that he had not seen it first: and then a terrific and overpowering relief seemed to rise in his throat, choking him, pricking his eyes, flooding all over his body in a shaking spasm. The soreness which he had felt round his heart all through the last few days rose to an agonizing twinge and then fell again; and then he dropped his binoculars and leant against his chair. The wish to cry, at the end of the fourteen days’ tension, was almost insupportable.

Round him the others reacted in their own way, contributing to a moment of release so extraordinary that no extravagance of movement or word could have been out of place. The cup which Bridger had placed on a ledge fell and shattered. The signalman was whistling an imitation of a bosun’s pipe, a triumphant skirl of sound. Adams, unknowing, muttered: ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,’ over and over again, in a voice from which everything save a sober humility had disappeared. They were men in a moment of triumph and of weakness, as vulnerable as young children, as unstable, as near to ecstasy or to weeping in the same single breath. They were men in entrancement.

It
was
a light – and soon there were others: three altogether, winking and beckoning them towards the vast promise of the horizon. The Captain took a grip of himself, the tightest grip yet, and went into the charthouse to work them out: while all over the ship men, awakened by some extraordinary urgency which ran everywhere like a licking flame, leant over the rails, and stared and whispered and laughed at what they saw. Lights ahead – land – home – they’d made it after all. Some of them stared up at the bridge, seeing nothing but feeling that they were looking at the heart of the ship, the thing that had brought them home, the man who more than anyone had worked the miracle. And then they would go back to the lights again, and count the flashes, and start singing or cursing in ragged chorus. There was no one anywhere in the ship who did not share in this moment: the hands on the upper deck shouted the news down to the engine room, the signalman on the bridge gave a breathless running commentary to the wheelhouse. The release from ordeal moved them all to the same wild exultation.

Only the Captain, faced by the array of charts on the table, no longer shared the dull measure of their relief. For he was now concentrating on something else, something he could not make out at all. They were lights all right – but what lights? The one that Adams had first seen was not Butt of Lewis: the other two did not seem to fit any part of the chart, either Lewis or the mainland round Cape Wrath, or the scattered islands centred on Scapa Flow and the Orkneys. He checked them again, he laid off the bearings on a piece of tracing paper and then moved it here and there on the chart, hesitatingly, like a child with its first jigsaw puzzle. He even moved it up to Iceland, but the answer would not come – and it was an answer they
must
have before very long: they were running into something, closing an unknown coastline which might have any number of hazards – outlying rocks, dangerous overfalls, minefields barring any approach except by a single swept channel. Sucking his pencil, frowning at the harsh lamplight, he strove to find the answer: even at this last moment, delay might rob them of their triumph. But the answer would not come.

Presently he opened the charthouse door and came out again, ready to take fresh bearings and to make doubly certain of what the lights showed. Both the doctor and the Chief were now on the bridge, talking in low voices through which ran a strong note of satisfaction and assurance. The Chief turned as he heard the step, and then jerked his head at the lights.

‘Finest sight I’ve seen in my life, sir.’

The Captain smiled. ‘Same here, Chief.’

‘Is that Butt of Lewis, sir?’ asked the doctor.

‘No.’ He raised his glasses, checked the number of the flashes, and bent to the compass to take a fresh bearing. ‘No, Doc, I haven’t worked out what it is yet.’

‘It’s something solid, anyway.’

‘Enough for me,’ said the Chief. ‘All I want is the good old putty, anywhere between Cape Wrath and the Longships.’

To himself the Captain thought: I wish I could guarantee that.

‘Another light, sir!’ exclaimed the signalman suddenly. ‘Port bow – about four-oh.’

The Captain raised his glasses once more.

‘There it is, sir,’ said the signalman again, before the Captain had found it. ‘It’s a red one this time.’

‘Red?’

‘Yes, sir. I got it clearly then.’

Red … that rang a bell, by God! There was a red light at the end of Rathlin Island, off the north coast of Ireland: it was the only one he could remember, in fact. But Rathlin Island. He walked quickly into the charthouse, and moved the tracing paper southwards. The jigsaw suddenly resolved itself. It
was
Rathlin: the light they had first seen was Inistrahull, the others were Inishown and something else he could not check – probably an aircraft beacon. Rathlin Island – that meant that they had come all down the coast of Scotland, over two hundred miles farther than he had thought: it meant that they must have been steering at least fifteen degrees off their proper course. Those bloody compasses! But what did it matter now? Rathlin Island. They could put in at Londonderry and get patched up, and then go home. Northern Ireland instead of Butt of Lewis – that would look good in the Report. But what the hell
did
it matter? They had made their landfall.

He walked back to his chair, sat down, and said, in as level a voice as he had ever used: ‘That’s the north coast of Ireland. We’ll be going to Derry.’

It was a peerless morning: the clean, grey sky, flecked with pearly grey clouds, turned suddenly to gold as the sun climbed over the eastern horizon. There was now land ahead: a dark bluish coastline, with noble hills beyond. The Captain’s stiff stubbly face warmed slowly to the sunshine: the ache across his shoulders and around his heart seemed to melt away, taking with it his desperate fatigue. Not much longer and then sleep, and sleep, and sleep … Bridger handed him the morning cup of cocoa, his face one enormous grin. But all he said was: ‘Cocoa, sir.’

‘Thanks … We made it, Bridger.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Who won that sweepstake?’

‘The Buffer, sir – I mean, Petty Officer Adams.’

The Captain laughed aloud. ‘Bad luck!’ For the ship’s company that must be the one flaw in an otherwise perfect morning. There were a lot of the hands on the upper deck now, smiling and pointing. He felt bound to them as closely as one man can be to another. Later, he wanted to find some words that would give them an idea of that. And something about
Marlborough
, too, the ship he loved, the ship they had all striven for.

‘Trawlers ahead, sir,’ said the signalman, breaking in on his thoughts. ‘Three of them. I think they’re sweeping.’

Back to civilization: to lights, harbours, dawn mine-sweepers, patrolling aircraft, a guarded fairway.

‘Call them up, signalman.’

But one of the trawlers was already flashing to them. The signalman acknowledged the message, and said: ‘From the trawler, sir: “Can I help you?”’

‘Make “Thank you. Are you going into Londonderry?”’ A pause, while the lamps flickered. Then: ‘Reply “Yes”, sir!’

‘Right. Make: “Will you pass a message to the Port War Signal Station for me please?”’

Another pause. ‘Reply, “Certainly”, sir.’

The Captain drew a long breath, conscious deep within him of an enormous satisfaction. ‘Write this down, and then send it to them. “To Flag Officer in Charge, Londonderry, v
Marlborough
. HMS
Marlborough
will enter harbour at 1300 today. Ship is severely damaged above and below waterline. Request pilot, tugs, dockyard assistance, and burial arrangements for one officer and seventy-four ratings.” Got that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right. Send it off … Bridger!’

‘Sir?’

‘Ask the surgeon-lieutenant to relieve me for an hour. I’m going to have a shave. And wash. And change. And then eat.’

While I was waiting for you in the foyer of that superb hotel, I started talking with the head porter. Once, during the time when we were getting engaged, you said to me: ‘I think you talk to people – strangers – for a funny reason: not because you really want to, but as if you had to prove that you can make friends with anyone.’

This was one of your more acute comments, sweetheart; there
is
some kind of back-handed conceit which prompts this habit of mine. But it really sprang originally from my being rather undersized and shy when I was younger, and having never quite emerged from the continuous ordeal which that entailed. It’s a habit that pays dividends, at all events.