Submariner (2008) (15 page)

‘Be – bloody –
damned
…’

Hadn’t meant to express his surprise aloud. Mightn’t have been audible, in fact: Lazenby was blinking at him as if he hadn’t
caught it. ‘The one would’ve been
our
bird, sir?’

‘I’d say might have been.’ Putting that position on the chart. Melhuish had made his kill twenty miles south of Cape Carbonara,
Sardinia’s southeast corner. The Italian would have been only an hour, hour and a half short of docking in Cagliari – and
practically on
Unsung
’s eastward track. Which she’d have resumed, of course, would have got this signal out shortly after surfacing.

Bloody
lucky. And hell, give the bugger his due, bloody marvellous … A glance at Lazenby: ‘Our bird if I’d called heads instead
of tails. Lucky we had a longstop.’

And now forget Palermo, head for wider-open spaces. At this five knots, at least be out of the way of the Mas-boats if they
came back – obliging one to dive, interrupting the battery-charge. Bring her round to something like north by east. On course
for Naples, conceivably meeting traffic coming south
from
Naples.

Littorio-class battleship, for instance. That’d do nicely. Or a big, fat tanker. But warships of any kind, threats to the
Gib convoy which must surely by now be imminent, or store-ships and especially fuel-carriers supplying Rommel’s army in the
desert. He put
Unsung
’s signal on the clip, glanced at the clock – just past eleven – and moved towards the ladder.

‘Tell the officer of the watch I’m coming up.’

‘Aye, sir. Bridge! Cap’n on his way up, sir!’

Climbing – thinking about Melhuish and his triumph – flying start to his first operational command and joining the 10th Flotilla.
The luck of being in exactly the right place at
precisely the right time, of course. Mike telling himself then:
Wiped my bloody eye, is the long and short of it, leave it at that
… Out of the hatch now, in his ship’s swaying, salt-glistening bridge. Moon – a scrap of it – very low, shrouded in sea-mist
but well below the skirting of cloud; would be disappearing into that mist in the course of the next half-hour but meanwhile
was creating a danger sector astern where any U-boat discovering
Ursa
against its spread of radiance would have the drop on her.

Of which these three would be aware, of course. Jamming himself into the bridge’s starboard for’ard corner, putting his glasses
up, searching that threatening stern sector past the squat oilskinned hump of Leading Stoker Simms: clearing his throat before
telling McLeod, ‘The signal was to S.10 from
Unsung
– on passage Gib to Malta, if you remember. Sank our cruiser – early this afternoon, in spitting distance of Cagliari.’

‘Oh, damn it …’

Mike laughed. ‘Nonsense. Thing’s sunk, is what matters. Bring her round oh-two-oh, Jamie.’

‘Oh-two-oh, sir.’ Into the voice-pipe: ‘Control room …’

An alteration of a hundred and ten degrees, to take her out of the gulf and clear of Cape Gallo, to start Saturday’s dived
patrol far enough offshore to intercept passing traffic as well as any to or from Palermo. Something like ten after eleven
now, sunrise at about 0500; at this five knots, be about thirty miles offshore when one dived. Which would be a bit too far
out, he thought: so alter back to a westerly course after say two hours. Cape San Vito attracted him, rather, looked good
for chances of traffic from Naples or points north – Spezia for instance – heading to round Marettimo en route to Tripoli,
Homs, Masurata and so forth.

‘Course oh-two-oh, sir.’

McLeod acknowledging: Mike sweeping slowly up the starboard side, his binocular line of sight passing over Simms’ head. Night
vision barely up to scratch yet, after those minutes at the chart table. He told McLeod, lowering his glasses, ‘Two hours like
this, we’ll alter to due west at 0100. I’ll put it in the night-order book.’

Below, he heard them ditching gash, the watch changing at midnight, Jarvis taking over at a quarter-past and McLeod smoking
a last cigarette over a mug of kye in the darkened wardroom. Saturday now. While at the chart table to amend his night orders
he’d also roughly plotted
Unsung
’s track to Malta, noting that she’d be passing under the QBB 255 mines tomorrow, Sunday. And berthing at Lazaretto in due
course with a red bar on her otherwise virgin Jolly Roger. Which of course
Ursa
’s had too, on account of that workup patrol U-boat. Quite something – both of those – the breaking of the duck as one might
call it. Compared for instance to the lousy start made by the highly respected David Wanklyn VC, who’d done his first few
patrols in
Upholder
without hitting a damn thing. Shrimp, as whose first lieutenant he’d served pre-war in
Porpoise
, had been seriously worried as to whether he could justify his old friend’s continuance as a CO – considerable expenditure
of torpedoes and nothing to show for it, miss after miss. Then Wanklyn had suddenly got his eye in, got the
knack
as Shrimp described it, never missed another trick.

One of the nicest, most modest COs afloat, with a ship’s company who worshipped him. Lost in mid-April of last year, somewhere
north of Tripoli. Actually, a shocking loss.

McLeod had begun to snore. Probably join that chorus oneself, any minute now. Melhuish, though – rather a high opinion of
himself, supercilious manner, in one’s recollection of him?

Hadn’t actually thought about him all that much. Hadn’t wanted to – easier not to, in all the circumstances. Hadn’t ever discussed
him much with Ann, either. Out of resuscitated memory though – at Bill Gorst’s wedding reception, Gorst introducing Melhuish
with ‘Charles is starting his Perisher this Monday as ever is. Doesn’t know what he’s in for, eh?’ And Mike shaking hands
with him while actually rather more aware of the man’s incredibly attractive wife who was talking with Chloe just yards away
– she’d noticed
him
, he remembered – noticed his interest in
her
– or Chloe might just have told her something earth-shaking like ‘That’s my brother Mike’ – anyway, he and Melhuish shaking
hands, and Mike naturally enough congratulating him on having been selected for the command course – for which he did look
somewhat young – Melhuish answering with ‘Thanks, but frankly it’s come none too soon – my own possibly biased view of course,
but I
have
been in the racket quite some while …’

Ann’s hand in Mike’s, eyes smiling into his: ‘You’re Mike Nicholson. Your sister was telling me …’

Telling her whatever … But that had been where it started – right there in the first moment of their meeting, damn-all to
do with Melhuish or his opinion of himself.

Milky first light hardening, the sea’s ruffled but currently unbroken surface reflecting it in morse-like flashes via the
big ’scope’s lenses into Mike’s eyes as he circled. McLeod having dived her on the watch – at the trim now, confirming ‘Twenty-eight
feet, sir.’

‘Stand by for some bearings.’ Eyes off the lenses for a second, a glance at Walburton who was on the wheel – reaching for
a stub of pencil.

‘Gallo Head lighthouse.’ Quick look up at the bearing-ring. ‘Red 114.’ Blaze of sunrise on its distant whiteness – brick,
stucco or whatever – and then ‘Right-hand edge Castellammare’ – same procedure – ‘Red 55.’ In both cases Walburton had murmured
‘Ship’s head 270’: true bearings were therefore 156 and 195. Periscope hissing down – Ellery’s right hand on the lever, left
hand up covering a yawn – Mike moving to the chart to put those bearings on for what would be only a rough fix, the right-hand
edge of that promontory being a long way from clear-cut or precise. All one needed, anyway: there being no navigational hazards
around, and no problems in fixing her more accurately during the course of the forenoon. Cape San Vito
for instance, by about midday. He noted in the log:
Dived 0450, Gallo Head light 156 degrees 7.5 miles
.

‘Stop one screw, sir?’

He nodded. ‘By all means.’ For minimal expenditure of amps, speed through the water no more than a knot and a half, enough
to hold her in trim and for the periscope to make very little feather cutting through the surface.
Ursa
simply on her billet, where she was supposed to be – waiting, hoping, two-thirds of her crew asleep.

Jarvis, for one. Mike in the darkened wardroom, settling at the table, hearing a familiar sawing of wood and recalling an
exchange between the two sub-lieutenants just recently – yesterday, might have been – Danvers asking Jarvis whether before
he dragged some unfortunate female up the aisle he’d have the decency to warn her about his snoring, Jarvis replying that he
wouldn’t have to, she’d know all about it long before things reached that stage.

‘But if she’s the kind that won’t?’

‘Won’t what?’

‘You know. Do it
before
.’

‘Be her lookout entirely, wouldn’t it. She’d have had every opportunity, I assure you – and if she was that pigheaded –’

Danvers grinning: ‘Determination to remain
intacta
until actually spliced isn’t normally seen in that light, old man. In fact it’s generally applauded.’

‘Not by me, it isn’t!’

Pointing at him: ‘You reckon any popsie worth her salt getting a close-up of that great red face –’

Barnaby shaking with mirth as he put plates around; Jarvis scowling at him. Mike, who’d been reading, had cut in with ‘Any
promising candidates in the offing, Sub?’

‘Oh …’ Surprised by the intervention. Shrugging, then. ‘Well – I mean, one or two, but –’

‘That one in the Bay Hotel at Gouroch, for instance?’ Danvers confidentially to Mike: ‘Crikey, sir, you should’ve seen her
…’

Cottenham interrupted Mike’s reconstruction of that dialogue: ‘Tea, sir?’

‘Why yes, thanks.’

‘Comin’ up …’

He didn’t feel like turning in again. It had been a quiet night – no return of the Mas-boats, no alarms. He’d dreamt of Abigail,
woken when McLeod had been altering from 020 to 270 and a White watch messenger had shaken Jarvis, who’d then spent some time
at the table hunched over a mug of kye. Mike struggling to make head or tail of what had been a confusing dream.

‘Char, sir.’

‘Thank you, Cottenham.’

‘Shame we lost that Eyetie, sir.’

‘Find a replacement, maybe.’

‘I’ll drink to that, sir.’

During the forenoon there were A/S schooners – three, white-painted, probably the ones they’d seen the day before – messing
around a few miles inshore of them, and several times seaplanes flying low along the coast. Natural inclination might have
been to use the small ‘attack’ periscope rather than the big one, but the advantage of its showing less feather in the millpond
surface was more than offset by its having (a) no air-search facility – i.e. lenses not vertically tiltable, which in fact
presented a considerable hazard, chances for instance of there being a Cant circling up there where it could see you and you
couldn’t see
it
, wouldn’t know it was whistling-up destroyers, Mas-boats or whatever – and (b) no magnification, such as the big search ’scope
had, which was extremely limiting. The best answer was ultra-cautious use
of the big one, each time with a rapid sky-search first and the ensuing all-round surface sweep interrupted by frequent ‘dipping’.
It made for very energetic watchkeeping – starting the procedure about every ten minutes, so it was virtually continuous –
and absolutely essential, as Mike explained to them, on account of the possibility of a target’s sudden appearance from the
west side of Cape San Vito. If one showed at all, it
would
be sudden, and asdics would give no warning – the land-mass blanking off one’s view of the San Vito – Trapani – Egadi islands
area would be no less of a barrier to sound-waves.

Around midday the wind had been coming up a little, McLeod had reported; and when they were having lunch – sardines, cheese,
biscuits, coffee – Jarvis put his head around the curtain: ‘Stand some
good
news, sir?’

‘Try me.’

‘White horses developing all over, sir.’

‘Ah. Three cheers.’

Thinking about it. Didn’t have to go and look at the chart to know that
Ursa
was currently equidistant from the Castellammare headland and Cape San Vito, eleven or twelve miles from each: so he could
alter say twenty degrees to port, shave the distance off-cape a little and open up their periscope view of that crucial area
a bit sooner.

‘Sub!’

Jarvis had stopped the periscope on its way up, Coldwell was sending it down again. Enquiring pink face there again beside
the curtain.

‘Sir?’

‘Bring her to two-five-oh, Sub.’

‘Two-five-oh. Aye aye, sir …’

One o’clock, that alteration. By four, Cape San Vito was due south and less than five miles away; OOWs could get good
fixes on the lighthouse and both left- and right-hand edges, and with a broken surface neither the ’scope nor
Ursa
herself would be all that visible to any overflying Cants. Seascape meanwhile open and empty from fine on the port bow to
the nearest of the Egadi islands: Marettimo actually forty miles ahead, beyond visibility range, Trapani down-coast southwestward
only half that far. Trapani being an E-boat and/or Mas-boat base and linked by a coastal railway that ran south to Marsala.

Off and on through Danvers’ afternoon watch and McLeod’s first dog there were sightings of patrolling Cants, and fishing-boats
working both sides of San Vito, but the A/S schooners from Golfo di Castellammare must either have gone home or turned back
eastward. Periscope watch was still a lot easier than it had been. No less intense: with the Egadi Channel to port and the
strategic Marettimo corner right ahead, west by south, a wide expanse of slightly choppy Tyrrhenian Sea open to surveillance
from those for’ard bearings clear around to the other quarter – you might have thought the chances of some worthwhile target
showing up between tea-time and sundown were as good as they’d have been anywhere.