Submariner (2008) (32 page)

‘The name’s familiar, somehow.’

‘Mid.’ Shrimp addressing the young paymaster: ‘Tell Janet we’d like coffee, will you?’

That evening there was a telegram from his father congratulating him on the promotion –
Blooming marvellous, Michael lad, and so say all of us!

By now, Mike thought, he might have had the second instalment, news of an early homecoming. Might get another few lines away
to him before ‘Backlash’ – at least let him know I’ve had this wire.

For ‘Dog-day’ now read Saturday. You could forget the ‘Dog’ stuff, which was really only useful in the planning stages, like
an
x
,
y
or
z
in an algebraic equation, and start calling days by their proper names. This now was Thursday. Shrimp had received the news
last night, Wednesday, the duty officer at Lascaris getting it from the Naval Cipher Office in a sealed envelope marked Top
Secret and stamped ‘By Hand of Officer’, sending it on here to Lazaretto by hand of Eleanor Kingsley, 3rd Officer WRNS; Shrimp
receiving it and her in his office, inviting her to sit down and smoke a cigarette while he perused the signal and then sent
for Mike. Eleanor in fact knew Shrimp and Lazaretto well, working as she did in the Joint Services HQ and often visiting for
one purpose or another, not to mention Jamie McLeod being one of her boyfriends – possibly even her main one, at any rate
when
Ursa
was between patrols. She was a redhead with an elegantly long, slim neck and slanty eyes. Mike, anyway, having studied the
signal and conferred briefly with Shrimp, had suggested that McLeod – with whom he’d been talking in the wardroom on the subject
of things to be done in the next day
or two – would be the man to escort her back to wherever she’d be heading now – the Lascaris fortress or the Wrennery – and
when they’d gone he and Shrimp had discussed Operation Backlash as it looked now with dates on it.

Ursa
’s domestic plans were reasonably well in hand – McLeod’s, as discussed earlier in the evening and amended slightly just minutes
ago, the list headed now with getting the port watch back from Mellieha right away. This in fact had been initiated, by telephone.
Then, arrange to store ship, and top up fresh-water tanks. Bunkers were OK – had fuelled on Monday and not used any since.
Battery-charge – again, McLeod’s job, all day Friday, standing charge both sides, in order to sail with the box right up.
And check with Ormrod whether he’d like to embark his gear – especially canoes – tonight, Thursday. He probably would, Mike
thought – and in that case he’d better leave a couple of his own men on board to keep an eye on it all, especially weaponry
and bombs. It would make things easier on Friday to have that done. The commandos were taking two varieties of bomb with them,
Ormrod had told him, ‘little buggers’ for attaching to aircraft propellers, quicker and easier to fix as well as more effectively
destructive than the charges they’d used to set on wings or fuselages, and small enough to carry in fair quantity; and heavier,
much more powerful jobs they called ‘thermos’ that were for use against airfield targets such as fuel storage, bomb dumps
and the generators that powered floodlights illuminating perimeters and runways. Ideally you’d get these planted with their
time-fuses already fizzing before starting on the lines of parked 88s and 87s, very large explosions and sheets of flame not
only wrecking the whole place shortly afterwards but also throwing Wop guards on the field into some degree of panic, with
luck distracting them from whatever
you
were doing by that time.

‘Guards among the aircraft?’

‘As often as not two to each ’plane. And
we
work in pairs, usually. One clipping time-fused tiddlers on to props and the other using a Sten and/or whatever else to discourage
interference. Number One of each pair has that job as his speciality – to shoot or stab any Wop they’re faced with. Grenades
for groups of them of course – although that can have its problems. Speed and a fair degree of athleticism’s the guts of it,
really. And confidence – knowing you
can
do it and get away with it.’

‘Because you have done.’

‘Well, yes. Not always with the desired smoothness and celerity, but –’

‘Got away with it.’

‘By hook or by crook, you know?’

‘Fascinating. Not quite as fascinating as your last revelation, mind you –’

A laugh, shake of the head … ‘That,
really
…’

He’d asked him to forget it. Having enquired – a day or two ago – rubber-necking in Valetta, Mike having time to kill before
Abigail could rendezvous with him at her flat, Ormrod also at a loose end – Tuesday afternoon, it must have been – ‘Is your
man Melhuish married, by any chance?’

‘Melhuish?’ He’d been thinking about Abbie, naturally enough; came abruptly down to this much less attractive subject. ‘Yes,
he is. Why?’

‘I may have known his wife. You ever meet her?’

Sharp glance: subject gaining interest. ‘Several times.’

‘And?’

‘Startlingly attractive.’

A nod: ‘Getting warm. For “startlingly” might one substitute “compulsively”?’

‘As a matter of fact, one could envisage –’

‘Not by any chance called Ann without an “e” on it?’

‘I’ll be damned.’ They’d both stopped: on Palace Square,
where what had been the Grand Master’s Palace faced another ancient and impresssive pile known as the Main Guard. Mike asking,
‘Are you honestly saying you – well, obviously you
know
her –’

‘Knew. Unless there’s another one of that name – absolute dish, and – well, in and around Edinburgh mostly, several years
ago, when her name was Ann Morton.’

‘“Irresistible” being your word for her, you didn’t just
know
her, you –’

‘I’d have married her like a shot. Parents wouldn’t have stood for it, though. Hers, I mean. Money was the main problem –
my lack of it, nothing except my pay. But – we had a training base on the west coast and another on the Clyde, one got moved
around a bit, buzzed off to Norway at one stage, things like that – but several leaves in Edinburgh, and there was a pub up
near Fort William – well, crikey –’

He’d stopped. ‘Forget I mentioned her?’

‘Off her own bat, would she have married you?’

‘I thought I had a chance, if I stuck to my guns. But there you are, parents felt otherwise. Dreary people, I can tell you;
frankly, pompous arseholes. And then out of the blue, damn it, doesn’t she write to me saying more or less look here, piss
off – in a nice, regretful way, you know, and a week or two later some people I knew in Edinburgh sent me this cutting, “Engagement
announced and marriage shortly to take place between Ann Penelope, daughter of these Morton turds, to some submariner name
of Melhuish”.’

‘Who happened – happens – to be rich.’

‘Well, I heard that!’

‘His father owns hotels.’

‘In fact I dare say I’m well out of it. The money angle for one thing, but worse still – well, imagine being stuck out here,
and a wife back home who looks like she does – and
to be perfectly frank
acts
like she does … I mean, out of this bloody
world
, but –’

‘She’s in London.’

‘Yeah, well, there you are –
London
…’

‘Jim, hang on a minute. Changing the subject rather more than slightly – that marble plaque there? Commemorates Malta voluntarily
joining the British Empire – 1815, thereabouts. Napoleon had installed a garrison, Malts didn’t like them, asked for our help
and got it – actually from Nelson, just after the Nile.’

‘Fascinating. And you’re right, I shouldn’t have brought it up, let alone gone on about her. Please –’

‘That isn’t
at all
why I rather boorishly changed the subject, only that while we’re here –’

‘I know. And I shouldn’t have
raised
the subject. Such an extraordinary coincidence, that’s all. In fact it’s not even that – have a run-in with a girl then happen
to come across the guy she married? Anyway, please, forget it?’

Food for thought, all right. Not the slightly oblique coincidence – such things did occur, you didn’t have to marvel at them
– but the light it threw on Ann … At which one might have guessed, but conceivably hadn’t wanted to? Food for further thought
anyway when time allowed – and this Thursday morning it did not. What he’d
intended
doing was calling in on Abigail to break the Dog-day news to her before the eleven a. m. meeting, but in the event didn’t
have time, having had quite a lot to see to in and around the boat. See her instead when Shrimp’s palaver finished, meanwhile
hope it started on time and didn’t go on for ever. Thing was – or things were – that he’d spent last night in the base just
for the look of things – having spent Monday and Tuesday nights with her, on both those mornings clocking in at Lazaretto
slightly late for breakfast, and from yesterday, remembering Abbie warm as toast hugging him
down to her on the rickety single bed and murmuring, ‘I’ll find myself branded a scarlet woman’, to which he’d replied – spur
of the moment, not having given it more than a fleeting thought until that moment when it was simply
there
, the obvious solution – ‘Easy to fix
that
, my darling, just damn well get spliced!’

‘Oh – that settled, is it?’

‘Well – if I were to go down on bended knee?’ Kissing her again. ‘And look, now I’m a lieutenant-commander, with at least ten
bob a month more than I had before –’

‘If we ever thought for a moment of doing anything so barmy – which I’m
not
thinking of and you aren’t either – I’d want to do it at home, wouldn’t you? In the presence for instance of the Old Man
as you call him, brother Alan bless him, and little Chloe?’

‘And perhaps a clutch of yours?’

‘A clutch …’ Flat tone. He guessed having in mind the one she would
not
have at any such ceremony, the brother she’d adored and whose death had lit the fuse to all this, and whom now she barely
mentioned. She’d begun again, ‘If we ever did contemplate any such thing –’

‘How come we’re talking about it, if
not
contemplating it?’

‘Talking’s just
talk
, Mike, not contemplation. Hadn’t you better run?’

And now, Thursday, with only one night left to them he wished he
hadn’t
given up this last one ‘for the look of things’ – having come to believe for some reason that they’d have until the weekend
at least. Whereas – well, sailing tomorrow at dusk, the weekend proper starting with Dog minus 2, Saturday, when he’d be diving
Ursa
at about 0500. Please God, in calm or near-calm weather: you couldn’t count on that – yet – although the wind was down a
bit and cooler, the overhead less heavy. Checking the time as he went down into the stone depths of Lascaris – it was one
minute past
eleven – and in the outer office finding Melhuish, Gerahty, Haigh and Flood, and Shrimp’s paymaster-midshipman greeting him
with ‘Ah – sir – Vice-Admiral Malta wanted to see Major Ormrod, so –’

‘So we’re starting late. All right.’ A nod to the soldiers – Haigh’s easy grin, and the Fusilier’s wide, white face and light-coloured
eyes, slightly mad look under the dark, curly thatch. Then, ‘Hello, Dan, Charles …’

‘What
is
this, Mike?’

Gerahty’s thick eyebrows hooping: ‘Three of us? These commando chaps more or less confirm it, but –’

‘They should know, Dan. How’s it going, Fergus?’

‘Something to have a date set, isn’t it. And the lads all here. Met Bill Flood, have you?’

‘Certainly have. Ah, starter’s orders …’

Shrimp, and Ormrod with him. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen. We’ll try to make up for lost time now. Finding your
way about all right, Flood?’ The midshipman was telling him as he led them through to the inner office, ‘There was a call
from Squadron Leader Ferrand, sir –’

‘So he can’t make it. Doesn’t matter, I know what he was going to tell us. Now – Lieutenants Gerahty of
Swordsman
and Melhuish of
Unsung
– Major Ormrod, Captains Haigh and Flood. Charles, you’ll have Flood and his team with you, targeting the Gela airfield;
Captain Haigh and company are your passengers to Catania, Dan, and Major Ormrod and his team will be taking passage in
Ursa
– to Comiso, that is.’

All sitting – Ormrod next to Shrimp again, Mike putting himself near the bottom of the table and relieved that Shrimp
was
pushing it along a bit, so he’d have a chance of catching Abigail still at her office, not gone for lunch. Checking the time
again: already ten past the hour. The midshipman was handing out sheafs of typed foolscap to the three COs –
patrol orders as devised by Shrimp and Broadbent, based on some of one’s own ideas, no doubt.

‘Smoke if you like. I’ll just run over the salient points.
Swordsman
first, since the other two are identical except in navigational detail. As I say, Dan, your destination is Catania, floating
off eight commandos in four folboats at 2200 Saturday – in the position given in those orders, two and a half thousand yards
offshore.’

‘Quick shufti at this stuff before going further, may I?’

‘Good idea. Push that chart along to him, Mid. Melhuish, now. Your soldiers’ target is Gela airfield, but you’ll be landing
them a dozen miles to the east of it, between the port and Cape Scalambri. Saturday, you’ll dive about 0500, carry out coastal
reconnaissance during the day – forenoon anyway – as required by your commando team leader but naturally at your own discretion,
basically to spot any potential hazard – including troop movements or new defences around the beachhead area, but of course
being damn careful with periscopes. This is the purpose of giving you what looks like a spare day. Anyway – Saturday evening,
move inshore to float off canoes at about 2200. Lat. and long. and coastal bearings as in that screed, and you’ll pick your
chaps up off the same beach on Tuesday between 0300 and 0400. Check all this and the navigational detail in the Ops Room at
Lazaretto – I’m briefing you together like this as far as the general outline’s concerned so you all have the same overall
view of it. An important point for
Ursa
and
Unsung
, though –’ Melhuish’s head jerked round, from an attempt to read the chart upside-down and from a certain distance – looking
for Gela and hadn’t yet found it, Mike guessed – ‘your team, Melhuish, will be landing seven and a half miles west of Cape
Scalambri,
Ursa
’s the same distance east of it, and between the two approaches there’s a great gulf fixed, a triangular middle-ground with
its apex on Cape Scalambri that’s
forbidden water to both of you. Broadbent will clarify this when you get down to it. All right?’