Submariner (2008) (11 page)

ERA Coldwell asked him, ‘About through, sir, are we?’

‘Not far off. Give it another mile, in case of strays.’

Stray mines. If mines did stray. Well, loose from their moorings of course they did. But making as sure of it as possible,
was all.

Coldwell was about five-seven or eight, with a seamed face and irregular features, jaw already darkening with stubble. Mike
asked him, ‘Your father still in Heavy Rescue?’

‘He is that, sir. Eased off a lot though, compared to what it was. Last I heard, they got him supervising, sort of thing.’

‘That’s good news. Big relief, eh?’

‘’Cept it won’t keep him out of it – him being
him
like.’

Heavy Rescue squads in the London blitzkrieg – part of

ARP, Air Raid Precautions. Coldwell Senior and most of his buddies were ’14–’18 veterans, too old for service in this war and
not necessarily all that fit, but all volunteers. Coldwell had summed it up to Mike, a long time ago, as ‘Just strong. Get
in there, take the weight.’

Just Strong
. Two-word family motto, he’d thought, and it had stuck in his memory as not a bad one. At the chart again, plotting tomorrow’s
track and distances – Cape San Vito, Cape Gallo, Golfo di Palermo – remembering Coldwell telling him about his father when
they’d still been in the yard at Chatham,
Ursa
barely submarine-
shaped
even, at that stage. The blitz on London had been at about its worst in the autumn and winter of ’40. Battle of Britain having
peaked that summer, but London and other cities and the ports especially still getting it in the neck. Including the weekend
of Billy Gorst’s wedding – ‘Taranto Night’ as they’d referred to it on account of the news of that Fleet Air Arm triumph having
been released that morning, or ‘Coconut Grove Night’ coming closer to one’s own more private memories. Including the party’s
ending for himself and Chloe in a jam-packed Tube station in use as an air-raid shelter in the rumbling and flaring small
hours of the morning.

And the day after – Sunday. Drifts of smoke over London, even the West End redolent of the night before. Lunch at the Nineties,
by sheer luck not seeing anyone either of them knew, then the matinée as she called it, in a flat behind Harrods belonging
to friends of hers and Charles’s; supper and dancing then at the Wellington, which was geographically as convenient as it
could have been, but by no means a late night, partly for fear of finishing up in yet another air-raid shelter – a prospect
so dreadful it had actually seemed funny; they’d got back to the flat to all intents and purposes
running
. Coldwell’s father, though – where this jumble of reminiscence had begun – well, blitzkrieg more or less nightly all through
December, Chatham getting a fair share of it. They’d been going for the docks as much as anything, although the City and its
environs had had 10,000 incendiaries strewn across it in one single night, seven solid acres on fire at one stage; the bastards
had timed
it for low water in the Thames to hamper fire-fighting. Coldwell’s father in the middle of all that, Coldwell himself fairly
desperate about it, especially around the time of
Ursa
’s completion – initial dive in the dockyard basin to ensure she was watertight, brief acceptance trial and a week or so at
Blockhouse, then westabout to the Clyde and Holy Loch for work-up.

His ambition, oddly enough – Coldwell’s – was to become an
aircraft
engineer. So how he’d found himself in submarines or the Navy at all was a mystery. Mike had an idea that he’d explained
it at some stage – or McIver had – but when or in what circumstances –

‘Close on half-past, sir.’

Jarvis – cautiously, almost apologetically. Mike grunting acknowledgement, having just switched to the larger-scale chart
on which Danvers had marked Palermo’s defensive mine-belts in Indian ink. Plenty of time later for a closer study of their
extent: one wasn’t likely to get close enough to the port itself to bother much with them.

Much better not, in fact. In close proximity to a major port,
those
wouldn’t have been left to deteriorate.

He turned from the table and the ticking log with its winking blue light.

‘Hundred feet, Sub.’

‘Hundred feet, sir.’

PO Hec Bull acknowledging as the brass wheel slid through his hands, putting some dive on the after ’planes to angle her bow-up
by dragging the stern down:reversing the ’planes’ angle then as Sharp span his wheel to put rise on the for’ard ones. Needles
in the depth-gauges initially reluctant to comply, but with the bubble in the spirit-level sliding for’ard of the centre-line
–
there
, now – finally responding. Jarvis with his eyes on the gauges and the bubble, a hand rising slowly to the order instrument
above his head, ready to tell the stoker
on watch in the pump-space aft to flood ballast direct from the sea into ‘O’, the midships trim-tank.

Ursa
nosing upwards. Passing 140 feet. 135. Jarvis now using the telegraph, and whichever of the stokers was spending these two
hours cramped in that little machinery space would be cracking the trimline flood-valve, letting in some weight. Steady rise
meanwhile, all under control, no excessive angle on her. Mike said, ‘Make it fifty feet.’

‘Fifty, sir.’

A
thump
from somewhere for’ard. You felt it as well as heard it:by habit and training absorbed, contained, the element of slight shock.
Scraping, sawing sounds out there now though: in here,
nerve
-scraping.

‘Stop both.’

Jarvis echoed Mike’s order as Newcomb, messenger of the watch, jumped to the motor-room telegraphs and jerked them over. Scraping
noise continuing from the port side for’ard: but with her forward way diminishing as it would be now –

Mike checked that Jarvis had that trimline valve shut, and told Newcomb, ‘Slow astern together.’

‘Slow astern together, sir.’

Some kind of secondary impact – again, port side for’ard. He had a picture of it in his mind – his own concept of the likely
external state of affairs – even before Cottenham for some reason not immediately evident had begun putting on starboard wheel.
Well, to counter a swing off-course, an effort to keep her on the
ordered
course, obviously. Sharp on fore ’planes meanwhile complaining, ‘Can’t shift ’em, sir, they –’

More of the scraping, grating: Cottenham offering, ‘Gotter be snagged or –’

‘Wheel hard a-port, Cottenham.’ And to Newcomb after a moment’s thought, ‘Stop port, half astern starboard.’ He’d considered
going
full
astern on that starboard screw, but was
wary of any excessive expenditure of amps, having the present state of the battery in mind. There was a bow-up angle growing
on her now: Jarvis glancing at him, on the point of asking whether he should flood the for’ard trimming tank, Mike rejecting
this before it had actually been mooted – shake of the head and ‘No, wait –’ – point being that if she
was
snagged on the wire, pushing an angle into it and her stem sliding up it, for whatever reason – well, comprehensible enough,
wire anchored to the seabed 500 feet down from here and fairly rigid, but less so from here on up to wherever the mine might
be.
Could
be only a few feet above the casing, in which case a heavy downward tug –

Analysis interrupted then by a
clang
with a shivery deep-water echo to it. Loud, close-sounding, and a tremor that ran all through her. Disconcerting, in its
way, but –

Silence, except for the motor’s hum, vibration …

Jarvis’s quiet ‘Guess you’ve done the trick, sir.’ Enquiring expression as well as sweat on Hec Bull’s pudgy face as he glanced
to his right, at Sharp. Mike having envisaged the wire springing free of the port for’ard hydroplane, but aware this might
be wishful thinking. If the construction he’d put on it had been wrong from the start, for instance, and whether it hadn’t
been almost too easy …

‘Sharp?’

‘
Cleared
, sir. Seemed real solid, but –’

‘Midships the wheel, Cottenham.’

‘Midships, sir –’

‘Stop starboard. Ship’s head?’

‘Three-one-four, sir. Three-one-six –’

To Newcomb, ‘Slow ahead together.’ Because she’d still have stern-way on. And to Cottenham as the screws’ thrust checked that,
‘Port ten, steer three-one-oh.’ In order to pass at no great distance from that same mine-wire:passing reasonably close to
it, touch wood without hitting the bloody thing
again, you’d be less likely to hit another. Better the devil one knew, in fact. If one did, if that hadn’t been one of a fresh
batch, newly laid.

New-laid closer to each other than the originals had been?

Getting clear of it now, anyway. Assume one
was
clear. He nodded to Jarvis. ‘Fifty feet, Sub.’

Stay at fifty for – oh, twenty minutes, say. At three knots, two thousand yards. But come round to north before that. This
would be keeping to the route as planned, whereas to hold on westward would lengthen it – for no good purpose, there surely
being no reason to assume one was still in the minefield, either that the Wops
had
extended it or that one’s DR position could be out by that much. Depth-gauge needles circling past 100 feet, Jarvis attending
to the trim, and a particular alertness in faces of which one had a view. Newcomb’s, for one – small eyes sharp – frankly,
rat-like – nice enough lad, the shape of his face not
his
fault, and natural enough that not having previously rubbed up against mine-moorings the possibility of doing it again –
well, especially if there might be a greater density even of the old ones at these intermediate depths … Amongst the things
one didn’t know, of course, was the depth of the mine itself below the surface, i.e. above
Ursa
’s casing. And he’d have given a lot to have had a sight of the wire, which if it had been there even a year would be slimy
black and streamered with marine growth, or if of more recent origin, clean and shiny bright.

Seventy feet. Sixty-five. Rate of ascent noticeably slowing: although Jarvis would by now have passed the order to stop flooding
and shut ‘O’. Passing the sixty-foot mark more slowly still: ’planesmen getting the angle off her without having been told
to – which Mike would have expected, naturally, of Petty Officer Bull, but not necessarily of Ordinary Seaman Sharp.

Hadn’t had time to get to know much about him, this
far. He’d joined in Alexandria, out of the poor old
Medway
’s spare crew,
Ursa
having sailed from Malta short-handed after landing a VD case for treatment.

Fifty-five feet. Fifty-three.

‘Fifty feet, sir.’

‘Very good.’He told Cottenham, ‘Starboard ten, steer north.’

‘Steer north, sir.’Winding-on helm. ‘Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.’

And Sharp was putting a few degrees of dive on the fore ’planes. Alive to the fact that putting on rudder tended to push the
boat’s bow upward. For some reason. Well – the turning moment imparting a beam-on, upward pressure of water under the cutaway
shape of her forepart, hull-shape for’ard of the keel, was what caused it. ‘U’s were sensitive beasts, took a bit of understanding.

Three hours after clearing the minefield he surfaced her into darkness six and a half miles northwest of Marettimo, and altered
course to 070 – turning the corner into what the Italians might almost legitimately regard as their own home waters. Which
of course was where any self-respecting British submarine belonged. Doctrine according to old Jackie Fisher, incidentally
– Britain’s frontiers being the coastlines of the enemy. Thinking about that, telling the bastards telepathetically
And we haven’t come all this way just to admire their beauty, signor
… Fingers crossed, for targets – preferably whatever the Afrika Korps might be needing badly and going short of. Glasses
at his eyes, sweeping slowly across his boat’s low, semi-submerged forepart and down her starboard side. Slight chop on the
sea,
Ursa
trimmed well down, thrusting through it, rolling a bit at these low, battery-charging revs and such wind as there was on
her beam to port.

‘All right, Pilot?’

‘Fine, sir.’

‘All yours, then.’ Lowering his glasses. Danvers
not
lowering his, nor the lookouts intently scouring the darkness in their own sectors of white-flecked sea. It was good to see
some broken water, after the last two days’ glassy calm; on dived patrol the last thing you wanted was a millpond surface,
and he’d been hoping it wouldn’t last. He stepped into the hatch, climbed down through the tower; in the control room Chief
McIver asked him, ‘All serene up top, sir?’

‘Serene enough, Chief. Little breeze from the northwest – what we need. Donks serene, are they?’

Donks as short for donkeys, slang for engines. McIver shrugging: ‘No problems I’m aware of, sir.’ The diesels
had
given problems, on occasion. Jerk of the head towards the galley: ‘Rabbit stew, he’s giving us.’

‘Well – sooner the better …’

‘Canna
abide
fucking rabbit!’

Cottenham would offer him corned beef as an alternative, no doubt.

‘Captain, sir?’

Lazenby, PO telegraphist, with a page of signal-pad in his hand. ‘Cipher to us, sir.’

Mike took it from him. The former schoolmaster would have decoded it himself in his little caboosh there. This was an innovation
of Mike’s own: ciphering and deciphering was supposed to be done by officers, but there were advantages in getting the stuff
ready for use – as well as satisfying for Lazenby, who was well up to the job and totally reliable. Code and cipher books
were kept in a safe, which in
Ursa
was in a corner of the W/T office, not as was customary in the control room. This had the secondary advantage of giving the
helmsman more room for his legs than he’d have had otherwise.

Mike asked Lazenby – heading for the chart table and its light – ‘From S.10?’

‘No, sir.
Swordsman
. On patrol somewhere near?’