Submariner (2008) (29 page)

‘Good news, is what. Saturday, I’m off the hook.’

‘Well, hurrah! What’ll we do?’

‘Can I ring you in the morning at your office – early?’

‘If you like, but –’

‘By then I’ll have had a brainwave. Even now I can feel it coming on. My God, but you’re a wow …’

In the morning – Friday now – before breakfast he went to the Manoel Island farm, found the Maltese foreman in Pop Giddings’
farm office and asked him whether Vera would be available next day. ‘All day – with the trap, of course.’

‘I will check, Signo.’

Vera was a donkey, who throughout even the worst of the siege had somehow managed to avoid being eaten. The foreman checked
in Pop’s diary and told Mike that she had no engagements, wouldn’t be wanted for farm work, and as far as he knew wouldn’t
be working today either. ‘So – your name, sir? Lieutenant-Commander –?’

‘Nicholson. I’ll come for her about nine-thirty – harness her myself. I’ll have a look at her, while I’m here.’

She seemed to be on form – tried to bite him when he was examining her hooves – which of course benefited from the rocky terrain, but
a farrier had been at them quite recently in any case.

Back in the mess, before going in to breakfast he put a call through to Abigail, and she came on the line at once.

‘Abbie – Mike here.’

‘Heavens, I only got in this minute!’

‘Tomorrow ten a. m. at Pembroke House?’

‘All right – I mean yes, lovely. Dressed for what?’

‘Country-going – might swim – I’ll bring a picnic of sorts?’

‘You’re on …’

Melhuish, who sat down next to him at breakfast, informed him that he was taking
Unsung
up to the Msida torpedo
depot to offload two Mark VIIIs. Not having fired any on his recent patrol he’d brought back a full outfit and had to get
rid of two reloads to make room for folboats. ‘For this exercise and the ensuing operation. Not necessarily the same folboats,
for some reason, but four of them for the op – and two commandos per boat –
eight
passengers, therefore – is that normal?’

‘There’s very little you’d call
normal
on any of those larks.’

‘But eight passengers is a bit over the odds in a U-class, isn’t it?’

‘When we were pulling out, blitz-time at the end of April, some boats took as many as twenty passengers. Engineers, ERAs and
so forth, with all their gear. Pass the sugar, will you?’

‘I must say, that girl you were monopolising last night’s quite a dish. Abigail – right?
What
is it she does?’

‘Civilian, works for the Defence Security Officer – offshoot of the War Office. Cipher specialist and linguist. You say I was
“monopolising” her, but she happens to be a very good friend of mine. End of gossip, OK?’

‘Well, God’s sake – hardly
gossip
–’

‘One tends not to chatter much at breakfast, Charles – especially about girls.’

‘Well. Apologies. If that’s what I was doing. Only not having seen each other for rather a long time – and I’ll be writing
to Ann today –’

‘Give her my love.’ Gulping coffee. ‘Love to her and regards to Sunny.’

‘Sunny …’

‘Sunny Warne. Commissioned Gunner (T). Presiding genius at Msida.’

‘But the Flotilla Torpedo Officer –’

‘Wiggy Bennett. Lieutenant. Sunny runs the depot. First-class bloke, old chum of Shrimp’s. They were shipmates in
L.7 when she got herself stuck on the putty in the South China Sea, back in – oh, mid-twenties, would have been. Christ, now
I
’m chattering.’

Jarvis and Danvers seemed to be in good heart and at least as fit as he was himself. They met on board
Ursa
, crossed the creek by
dghaisa
, passed through Valetta and Floriana, thence by way of Pieta to Msida and Birkirkara, then Lia – on the edge of Ta’ Qali
airfield, from which a flight of Spitfires was climbing into the northern sky – and on to Mosta, where they paused for a look
at the church which the famous bomb had penetrated without exploding. Being Friday, there was a Mass in progress. This wasn’t
the first sight Mike had had of the place,
was
the first time he’d done anything of this kind with his officers; he’d decided that it was something he ought to do, and
they’d reacted well to the suggestion.

They’d been enjoying their shore-time apparently, socialising mainly with Wrens who had flats in Sliema and elsewhere. There
were effectively no pubs on the island now, the only drink available anywhere being ‘Red Biddy’, a concotion that looked like
red wine and tasted like paint thinner laced with rum – the rum undoubtedly stolen from naval stores, there was no other way
it could have been acquired – and in one bar in Valetta an orange-tasting fizzy mixture allegedly gin-based. But the Chocolate
King in Sliema was still open for business, and the Union Club still held dances; one way and another they’d managed to fill
their off-duty hours. Danvers interrupting Jarvis’s account of Danvers’ pursuit of a fat Maltese girl by name of Sara who
was allegedly engaged to a policeman, to ask how far was St Paul’s Bay from here; the answer was about three miles – ‘here’
being a few thousand acres of scrub and rock a little northwest of Mosta, a barren-looking landscape where shoats – half-sheep,
half-goat – were the only visible inhabitants. Scrawny, scabby-looking animals
that gnawed each other’s tails. St Paul’s Bay was the destination though, and by the time they reached it they’d have covered
twelve or fifteen miles of the marathon he’d planned. His intention was to turn east along the bay’s southern shore and stop
for lunch – corned-beef sandwiches – when the widening distance to the other shore was about half a mile, have lunch before
swimming it, then take a southwesterly route passing a mile or two south of the Mallieha rest-camp to Ghain Tuffieha on the
west coast, the camp where next week the Ismailia commandos were to be installed. Then south to Mdina and Rabat, Ta’Qali again, and
back via Floriana and Valetta – by which time they’d have covered twenty-five or thirty miles.

Mike was feeling good about Abigail – looking forward to tomorrow and his day with her, glad he’d thought of Vera and the
trap. Not feeling exactly
bad
at having been promoted, either, or at the prospect of shortly taking
Ursa
home. Reminding himself to make sure Melhuish knew of this, so he’d tell Ann.

Fish pie for supper.
Unbowed
had sailed,
Unslaked
was due in at first light,
Unbending
and
Unseen
later in the day. It would be good to see Otto Stanley and Tubby Crawford again, after an interval of several weeks, comings
and goings that hadn’t coincided. He nodded, agreeing with Melhuish that it was
very
good fish pie. Since returning from the marathon, he’d written to Chloe and was intending to write to his brother Alan before
turning in. It was about three months since he’d done so, actually from Port Said where they’d docked for a bottom-scrape
before moving on up to Haifa. Hadn’t heard
from
the lazy bastard for even longer. Admittedly the Old Man always passed on any news he had from either of them – so that, for
instance, Alan would already know of the promotion and would hear shortly about his imminent return. Mike
recognised that the decision to write to him now was to tell him about Abigail. That she existed, had that name and he was
taking her for a ride in a donkey-cart, was about all it would come down to.

Actually, a little more than that: that she was worth writing home about. Especially to one’s brother, and
not
to the Old Man. Alan would catch on to that, all right.

Charles Melhuish being in the mess, Mike had contemplated giving him the news that
Ursa
’s next patrol was to be her last, but decided it would be better to postpone this for a day or two. There was no great rush
for Ann to be apprised of it, whereas Melhuish
might
feel inclined to mention it to Abigail, if he found himself within hailing distance of her before Mike himself had told her.

Tell her tomorrow. Choosing a good moment. Hoping to God it didn’t spoil the whole day. Soften it perhaps by asking whether
she knew when
her
tour of duty might end. Then in a day or two tell Melhuish. Not leaving it too long because he wanted to get a letter of
his own away to Ann before shoving off for ‘Backlash.’

After supper he found himself drinking coffee in company with Shrimp, and told him how he’d spent the day. Shrimp approved. ‘Nothing
better. I won’t ask you what you’re doing tomorrow.’

‘Borrowing Vera and the trap, sir.’

‘Now that’s a splendid idea.’

‘She doesn’t know about it yet.’

‘You mean Vera doesn’t?’

He smiled, shook his head. ‘She doesn’t either.’

‘Ah.’

‘Very good of you to take on the pongos single-handed, sir.’

‘They’ll be here about midday. Three boats due in meanwhile, and
Unsung
to sea for exercises. Melhuish still under the impression it’s a solo operation, I hope?’

‘Far as I know, sir. Although to be frank I don’t see
why
he has to be kept in the dark.’

‘Oh. Well – solo sabotage job, no big deal, but three linked, simultaneous ones – quite different. We’ve attacked airfields
before with the aim of disrupting German Air Force attacks on convoys – with little success, if any, single attempts here
or there – and it wouldn’t call for a genius to conclude that a triple effort has to be an expansion of the same endeavour,
i.e. getting a convoy in. Nobody’s saying the island’s crawling with spies, but the orders for “Backlash” lay stress on a
need for maximum security, which is actually quite difficult to guarantee – for instance, passenger in a
dghaisa
shooting his mouth off,
dghaisa
man’s ears flapping …’ He reached to put his cup down. ‘Makes it desirable to restrict the number who are in the know to a
minimum, for as long as possible. Damn it, we hanged that Wop spy not so very long ago, didn’t we?’

‘Pisani. Carmelo Pisani.’

‘Well done. But how do we know there aren’t a dozen we
haven’t
hanged?’

‘You have a point, sir. Those Austrian cabaret artistes for instance.’

‘They’re behind bars, aren’t they. But to tidy it all up, Michael – you’ll attend our conference on Monday, then with plans
more or less cut and dried we’ll have what may be a final one in which Gerahty and Melhuish will take part. None of you having
known there was any other boat involved, until that stage – no reason to be upset at having been left in the dark – eh?’

Saturday, then. MacGregor’s engineers had finished tinkering with
Ursa
’s compressor and other threatening or malfunctioning machinery, McLeod was shoving off shortly for the torpedo depot to embark
five Mark VIIIs, and Jarvis was limping slightly. Mike signed a few Admiralty ‘returns’ that
Danvers as Correspondence Officer had bashed out on the boat’s portable, and left them to it. He’d written the letter to his
brother last night, and found it still legible in the first light of day; his next one would be to Ann. Plenty to tell her
about without any mention of Abigail. He wondered what man or men she’d not find it necessary to mention when
she
got around to writing; and discussed this with Vera while hitching her into the trap.

‘Can just happen, old girl, can’t it. Especially looking like she does. I dare say in your youth you had similar problems
every bloody day. None of that now, uh? Could be why you bite. Whoa-up now …’

At Pembroke House, Abigail squawked, ‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Better than foot-slogging, though? In my own case, two days running might be somewhat crippling. And on a fine day like this?’
Holding both her hands: had only kissed her cheek, suspecting that Gravy and/or Greta might put in an appearance at any moment.
Not, he guessed, that they’d be all that disapproving. Telling her quietly, ‘Abbie, you are
lovely.
’ Hearing or sensing the approach of Gravy then, adding ‘I thought we might picnic and swim at Maddalena or thereabouts –
you know, St George’s? Oh – Gravy! Thank you so much for Thursday night –
great
evening, and –’

‘We enjoyed it.’ He was in a brightly striped dressing-gown. ‘And good to have you with us again.’

‘Careful – the old girl bites, if you give her half a chance. But it was a great evening – you’re both so hospitable and generous.
Greta OK?’

‘Sleeping late. She’s fine, yes. Abbie’s looking terrific, don’t you think?’

‘I was just remarking on it, actually.’

‘
Actually
, I’m a bit sad. Joan Dewsbury rang – oh, damn, did it wake you, Gravy?’

‘I was in the bath.’

‘She rang about my flat. Theirs isn’t ready, but they’re clearing out, got some other place to go – buckshee presumably. So
I’ve no excuse for continuing to play cuckoo here. Much as I love you for all you’ve done for me –’

‘You don’t have to leave us just because you have a flat to go to, Abbie.’

‘I do. I’ve traded on your kindness long enough, I’m now restored to what passes for my right mind, and – look, might do church
with you tomorrow,
then
scoot off?’

‘Vera’d be glad to take you.’ Mike patted the grey rump. ‘As long as she isn’t spoken for, we might come for you early afternoon
–’

‘No need, Mike, we’ll do it in my old rattletrap. How about joining us at church, then back here for lunch?’

‘You realise, Mike, he’s a bulldog?’

‘Church here in St Julian’s?’

‘No – the Protestant one just off Savoy Hill. Abbie’ll show you, if you’re heading anywhere in that direction.’

‘Well – no, second thoughts. If you don’t mind, I’ll give church a miss and come straight here. That’s if you’re sure you
and Greta –’

‘Certain. Bring swimmers. But off you go now …’

‘Not a churchgoer, Mike?’

Vera had eased to a walk, on this pot-holed track leading to St Andrew’s. He told Abigail, ‘Have been known to attend, but
not really as a priority. You’re keen on it, are you?’