Landfall (7 page)

He lifted the telephone, but the wing-commander’s line was engaged.

Hooper said: “I vote we go and break open the bar.”

The surged over to the mess in a body, gathering other officers to them as they went. The news spread through the camp like a running flame. It was dark by this time, and work was over for the day. In the anteroom Chambers stood flushed, and embarrassed, in the middle of a crowd of officers, a pint pot of beer in his hand, besieged by questions.

In the babel of talk and congratulations the mess waiter pushed into the crowd. “Wing-Commander Dickens on the telephone,” he said. “He wants
Squadron-Leader Peterson and Mr. Chambers over in his office.”

Chambers drained his can, and followed the squadron-leader out of the room. They put on overcoats. Outside the night was very dark, with a thin drizzle of rain.

The groped their way over to the wing-commander’s office with some difficulty; neither had thought to bring a torch. In the corridor they paused for a minute and tapped on the door. Dickens said: “Come in.”

He was alone, seated at his desk. He got up slowly as they entered. He said gravely: “Good evening.”

He turned to Chambers. “I understand you sank a submarine this afternoon?”

The young man was a little daunted by the heavy manner of the wing-commander. Surely there could be nothing wrong? He said: “I attacked one, sir. I think she sank all right.”

The wing-commander took a paper from his desk and handed it to him. “This signal has just come in.”

Puzzled, the squadron-leader looked over his shoulder and they read it together. It was despatched from trawler T.383. It read:

There was dead silence in the office.

Dickens said heavily: “I’m afraid one of our own submarines is overdue. H.M.S.
Caranx
isn’t answering any signals.”

The telephone bell rang. The wing-commander crossed to his desk and picked up the receiver.

The operator said: “Captain Burnaby upon the line, sir.”

C
APTAIN BURNABY
, as usual, was direct and to the point. He said: “I have spoken to Fort Blockhouse, Wing-Commander. They are sending Commander Rutherford over to my office at once. Will you please come in immediately, and bring the pilot with you? You’d better come to my office, in Admiralty House.”

Dickens said: “Very good. I have the pilot with me now.”

“Then I shall expect you at about a quarter to six.” The wing-commander glanced at the watch upon his wrist; it gave a bare half-hour with fifteen miles to go, mostly in traffic, in the darkness of the black-out. The naval officer went on: “What has he to say?”

“He’s only just come in, Captain. I haven’t heard his story yet.”

“Well, we won’t waste time with it on the telephone. Get a car and bring him in with you. In the meantime, I have warned a salvage vessel to be ready for sea at midnight, and I have a drifter standing by the buoy. It’s possible that some of them may still get out with the Davis escape gear. T.383 should dock in an hour’s time, and we shall see then what they’ve got.”

“Is there still no answer from the
Caranx?”

“The last signal was received at two o’clock. She should have passed the Gate an hour ago.”

There was a pregnant silence. The wing-commander said quietly: “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Captain Burnaby said shortly: “Quite so. I am sure that we are all very sorry, Wing-Commander. Now will you please get straight into a car and come to my office, with the pilot of the aeroplane.”

Dickens hung up the receiver, and turned to Chambers. “What letters did the thing have on its conning-tower?”

The pilot hesitated. Then he said: “I never saw them, sir.”

Beside him the squadron-leader said gently: “Why not, old boy? Didn’t you look?”

The pilot turned to him, flushed and anxious. “I never got a chance. When I got out of the cloud he was over on the left, and going down quick. I had to take him from the bow in the first attack. You can’t see the letters when you’re on the bow.”

Dickens said: “But after the first dive—you made several, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn’t you see his conning-tower when you came round?”

“No, sir. There was smoke all round it. I got a direct hit with the first stick.”

“But how did you know it wasn’t a British submarine, then?”

“It had nothing on the hydrovanes, sir. No identification marks at all.”

The wing-commander stared at him. “But you said it was going down. Could you see the hydrovanes?”

The boy hesitated miserably, irresolute. After a time he said: “Yes, sir. I saw them clearly.”

The wing-commander got up from his chair. “We’ll have to get along,” he said. “Come on. We’ll walk down to the Transport.”

Chambers said: “May I go and get my coat, sir?”

“Yes—be quick.” The boy turned to leave the room. Dickens called after him: “Bring a torch, if you’ve got one—the battery’s run out in mine. Can’t get about the dockyard without a torch in the black-out.”

“I’ll bring mine, sir.”

He left the room, and managed to slink in unnoticed through the back door of the mess to fetch his coat. In the office that he had left the wing-commander put on his own coat. Then he turned to the squadron-leader.

“It doesn’t look so good,” he said.

Petersen shook his head. “It doesn’t.” He turned to the other. “Be careful you don’t get him rattled,” he said. “He’s a good lad, you know. I should be surprised if he’d made a mistake like this.”

The wing-commander bit his lip. “It’s the Navy I’m afraid of. They’re liable to tear him in pieces.”

The squadron-leader nodded ruefully. They left the office and walked down towards the transport yard; a car was waiting for them there. The squadron-leader said:

“I suppose that notice about not bombing submarines this afternoon was because
Caranx
was coming in?”

“Yes.” The wing-commander hesitated. “I suppose I should have made it clearer.”

“We usually do let the pilots know what’s going on,” the squadron-leader said deferentially.

The wing-commander bit his lip, and they walked on in silence. He had framed his notice in that way because he had been irritated with Hooper, because he thought that the junior officers were getting insubordinate and should be disciplined to concentrate solely upon the job that they were told to do. He reflected that his instructions had been carried out to the letter. Chambers was blameless, technically. The notice had said that no submarine was to be bombed in Area SM up till 1530; the action had taken place at 1541 according to the trawler’s signal.
Caranx
, if it were she who had been sunk, was late upon her schedule: she should have passed that spot an hour before.

Still, if the pilot had known
Caranx
was expected he might have taken special care….

That was absurd. You could fight a war if every order had to be explained, to everybody. In this thing the whole fault lay with the Navy. If
Caranx
was dangerously late upon her schedule she should have sent a signal: he could have changed his orders then.

His heart sank as he contemplated the future. If
Caranx
really had been sunk there were the makings of a blazing row that would go straight up to the Cabinet.

Chambers was waiting for him at the car; they got into the back seat together in the utter darkness and were driven into Portsmouth. They said very little on the drive. The flying-officer was frightened and confused. He was not certain of himself. He was sure in his own mind that the submarine he had sunk was not a British ship; he could not satisfy himself with proof. Once Dickens said:

“You’re quite sure that you saw the hydrovanes?”

The boy said: “I saw one of them, sir—the port one at the bow. It was painted grey—not coloured, like ours are.”

“But you saw it properly—clear of the water?”

“It had water on it, sir. But I saw the colour of the paint.”

“You’re quite sure of that, Chambers?”

“Yes, sir.”

They lapsed into silence again. The wing-commander sat brooding in his corner. Ten minutes later he said:

“How did you know which area you were in?”

The flying-officer explained the steps that he had taken. The wing-commander nodded in the darkness; it was reasonable. Still, it was very near the knuckle. The pilot reckoned he was two miles to the east of area TM, but two miles wasn’t much deviation in the thirty miles that he had flown from his last known position. The older officer was sick with apprehension. If this thing had occurred in Area TM their goose was cooked.
The trawler evidently had not known where she was, for she had signalled Area SM/TM.

The car drew up at the dockyard gate and put them down; no cars could move about the dockyard in the black-out. That rule had been made for safety, following on the discovery of a terribly battered car upon the concrete bottom of an empty dry dock, with two dead naval officers in it. They were stopped at the gate by the dockyard police, who telephoned to Captain Burnaby for authority to pass them through.

Inside the dockyard the darkness was intense. The wing-commander said: “Got that torch?”

Chambers pulled out the rabbit-lamp and lit it. The white rabbit glowed luminous in the darkness; by its light they made their way over railway lines and between railway trucks, past docks lined with empty, deserted ships, past the caissons of dry docks sheltering the monstrous bulk of great vessels ablaze with welding torches and vibrant with the clatter of the riveters. Presently they turned down a quiet alleyway and came to the Georgian building where their meeting was to take place.

Captain Burnaby occupied an office of an antique style. It was a tall, white-painted room, with high windows between straight white columns with clean, vertical lines. It was a room that had heard the affairs of many frigate captains in its day. It was still redolent of them. The framed charts upon the wall themselves were anything up to a hundred years old; a coal fire burned brightly in the Georgian grate. A modern touch was given by the battery of telephones upon a wide, old-fashioned desk.

There were three naval officers in the room, who came forward from the fire as the two Air Force officers came in. Captain Burnaby said grimly:

“Good evening, gentlemen. We’ve been waiting for
you. Wing-Commander Dickens—this is Commander Rutherford, from Blockhouse. And Lieutenant-Commander Dale.”

Dickens bowed slightly. He said: “This is Flying-Officer Chambers.”

The captain moved toward a green baize-covered table, laid out with paper and pencils for a conference. “This is not a formal meeting,” he said succinctly. “But I think we shall get on more quickly if we take it as such.” He seated himself at the head of the table, in the position of a chairman, and motioned to the wing-commander to take the seat at his right. Chambers hurried to sit down beside the wing-commander, leaving his hat upon the captain’s desk with the lamp inside it. The other naval officers sat on the captain’s left.

For a moment Chambers studied the naval officers, and his heart sank. The massive, square-cut features of the captain were set in a grim mould: the iron-grey hair and the bushy eyebrows were those of a martinet, a hard, efficient man. In comparison, he thought he saw a gleam of kindliness and understanding, even of sympathy, in the appearance of Commander Rutherford from Fort Blockhouse, the submarine depot. The last of the three was a dour, scornful young man with raised eyebrows.

Burnaby said: “Well now, gentlemen, we’re here to get the facts of what occurred this afternoon. That’s the first thing, before we can decide what action we must take.” He turned to the commander from the submarine depot. “Rutherford, will you tell us first what orders
Caranx
had?”

The commander said: “She had orders to proceed here from Harwich, sir.”

“Quite so. On the surface, I suppose?”

“Oh yes. She wouldn’t dive unless there was a very
good reason for it. She was coming round to have__________” He checked himself.

The captain said: “I don’t think that’s material.” He turned to Dickens. “She was coming back for certain work to be done?”

The wing-commander nodded.

The captain turned again to Rutherford. “Now, tell us her scheduled route and times.”

The commander took a paper from his attaché case and laid it on the table. “This is the operation-order I made out,” he said. “It’s rather long.” He turned its pages over. “She was due to pass from Area SL to Area SM at 1430 and from Area SM to Area TM at 1500. In the order for closing the areas against attack I gave her half an hour margin each way on those times.” He paused, and then said: “She should have passed the Gate between 1600 and 1615. If she was later than that she’d have to anchor in the Roads.”

The captain said: “Exactly.” He picked up the sheets of buff typewritten paper, and glanced them over rapidly. “This is a copy of what you sent me? Yes.” He scrutinised the list of copies sent out at the head of one page. “I see. And this sheet went to Coastal Command of the Royal Air Force.”

He turned to Dickens, and put the paper before him. “This is the sheet that you received, Wing-Commander?”

Dickens nodded: “That’s right.”

The naval officer, pressing his point home, passed the paper to Chambers. “And you saw this before you went out on patrol?”

The pilot took the paper. It began with a short statement that a British submarine was to proceed upon the surface in a westerly direction. Then followed a string of areas and times restricting submarine attack.

The pilot said: “I’ve never seen this.”

Captain Burnaby’s mouth set into a thin, hard line; the bushy eyebrows drew together. He stared grimly at the young man. He said: “Can you explain that, please?”

The pilot blushed and hesitated. Dickens interposed. “You saw a shortened version of it on the notice board?”