Submariner (2008) (35 page)

McLeod asked him, ‘Depths OK for us, sir, I take it? Where we float ’em off, I mean?’

Soundings weren’t as clear as they might have been, the chart having had heavy use on previous occasions, old rubbed-out position-lines
not helping much. Danvers should have replaced it – probably months ago – from the RN chart depot in Fort St Angelo. Might
have tried and failed, in which case he should have reported the situation to Mike – who perhaps should have been keeping
a closer eye on such matters. Nothing of the sort had occurred before, and he’d make damn sure it didn’t again. Well – it
wouldn’t, of course; after this one you’d be using charts from entirely different folios. Edging over to give McLeod a closer
view of this one, and pointing with a divider-tip: ‘Might turn her so we’re lying bow-to-sea. Other hand, might not. Either
way that’s in minimally sixty feet of water. OK for us, and gives them four thousand yards to paddle, which the Major describes
as a piece of cake – would you believe it?’

He’d studied the chart again before turning in for perhaps another hour’s repose, had it all in his mind by then, that stretch
of coastline and the varying depths, some reasonably good notion of where shore lookout stations were likely to be, and possibly
submerged detection apparatus such as had been encountered recently in other locations – in the vicinity of Cape Vaticano
for instance, and a different variety on promontories on the Wop mainland from Cape Spartivento
northward towards Taranto – lights in pairs that were horizontal while in a searching mode but swung to the vertical when
they caught you in some kind of direction-finding beam. If you held on as you were going it tended to be only a matter of
minutes before an E-boat came tearing out along that beam – so you didn’t, you dived, and before long heard the sods race
overhead. Having to watch the eccentric behaviour of shore lights was a nuisance, of course, a distraction you didn’t need.

As well to assume there were no such installations on this stretch, he thought. Be alert to the possibility but otherwise
not waste time on it. And in respect of
submerged
D/F, one answer might be to bottom her, when you could, when you’d done the beach recces the commandos wanted, bottom and
lie doggo, hoping the Wop hydrophone operators might decide you’d never been there in the first place.

That might be a good solution. If in daylight, bottoming in at least a hundred feet of water, deeper than a Cant can see.
And warning the commandos, who’d be preparing their canoes and weapons during the afternoon and/or early evening, not to drop
any tools or oil-cans, burst into song or even flush the heads, during that crucial time.

Time now, three-fifteen. Abbie fast asleep, he hoped. Tucked up in her iron-framed single bed which she’d said would feel like
a double and lonely as hell without him in it. ‘Thrashing around and wondering where you are and what you’re up to.’ He’d told
her something like ‘Chances are I’ll be asleep as well. As I think I said, one does a lot of it, on patrol. Rest of the time
I’ll be thinking of you – when I’m not
dreaming
of you.’

‘Mind on the job though, Mister? Ordinarily I’d hate it if you
didn’t
think of me more or less exclusively and continuously, but –’

‘Just don’t worry about anything like that, my darling.
I’m sure I
will
be thinking of you a lot of the time, but that’s for me to take care of, and I will. Seven days is really a very short period
of time, you know?
Try
not to worry. I tell you, I’m so sure it won’t be longer than a week that I’ve been thinking I should only have taken one
of those Robert Graves books, not two. They’re fairly substantial, aren’t they.’

‘They were Nico Cornish’s, as it happens.’

‘I know. His name’s in them.’

‘Oh.
Is
it. Well, when he was clearing his place out for the move to Gib he had stuff to get rid of and thought I’d like them. I
haven’t read either of them yet, but he said they’re terrific.’

‘I’ll give you
my
view when I bring them back.’

‘In a week or less.’

‘Definitely. Read or unread.’

‘He wasn’t my lover, you know.’

‘Well – I
didn’t
know, but –’

‘He wasn’t, that’s all.’

‘All right. It never occurred to me that he might have been.’

‘A lot of people thought he was. The Pembroke House set, as some of them call themselves. The fact of it is he was more like
an elder brother.’ She’d smiled.‘
Uncle
, even. Highly entertaining, companionable, and – you know,
fun
, but –’

‘I quite liked him too, the few times I met him.’

‘Mike.’ Clinging to him. Lips against his face. ‘I love you. People say things like “you’ll never know
how much
I love you”, but that’s balls, isn’t it? – when it’s
real
you either love someone or you don’t – you know?’

Ursa
was throwing herself around a bit but not enough he guessed to deter the commandos or make the launch anything like impossible.
He looked in at the stuffy, hot-metal-smelling W/T office and told Lazenby to get that signal off to S.10
right away – ‘Quick as you like, PO Tel, we’ll be diving shortly’ – and joined McLeod on the bridge a little before 0430.
He’d dreamt of Abbie again but she was out of his mind now, she’d have been pleased with him. Or
would
she? Dawn’s left hand was in the sky all right but there was cloud as well, a lot of the time hiding the moon at that, so
there was no great hurry to get under. His eyes seemed to have been adjusting themselves quite rapidly to the darkness: had
already made out a faint shine on the surface-lop to starboard, where a false dawn was threatening to become real but taking
its time about it. There was no visible right-hand edge of land yet where Cape Passero had to be – which was what he was mainly
looking for, expecting to get a sight of it at a range of as much as twenty miles, with dawn poking up not far behind it.
Whereas the Pozzallo coastline, which would be more or less right ahead but lower and flatter, might even be enshrouded in
dawn mist, mightn’t show up even at half that distance.

‘Bridge!’

McLeod had dipped to the pipe, and the helmsman told him, ‘PO Tel reports message passed to S.10, sir.’

‘Very good.’ Straightening. The binocs not having left his eyes during this interruption. ‘Your weather signal passed, sir.’

‘Yes. Good.’ His own glasses sweeping right to left across the bow, and starting down the port side. The weather really wasn’t
all that bad: and Shrimp might have been getting anxious, waiting to know whether or not his show was on the road. Quite a
number of authorities in fact would be relieved at having that signal repeated to them – recipients ranging from C-in-C Med
through Vice-Admiral Malta and the AOC –
and
the convoy’s commodore and escort commander, no doubt. Surprising, when you thought about it, on the face of it such a
small
thing.

A grunt from McLeod: ‘Scalambri, sir – red seven-oh!’

‘Stop engines, port ten, slow ahead together, lookouts
down
!’ Sudden and uncanny silence as the diesels cut out and she began to swing, responding to her helm, motors alone driving
her now. He was on it too, the Cape Scalambri light-tower – not lit, of course, but suddenly not at all difficult to make
out – and indicative of the fact
Ursa
was likely to have been approaching an area of shallow patches. Not in any danger surfaced, but as one was going to have
to dive within minutes, on account of increasing light –

‘Well sighted, Number One. Tell ’em steer two-four-oh.’

McLeod passed that down. The lookouts had gone like sacks of coal down a chute. Boat under helm: 240 degrees would steady
her on a seaward track, clear of those shallows –
any
shallows. He’d heard the order acknowledged from below, told McLeod, ‘Go on down, Jamie. Thirty feet, I’ll dive her now.’
Last quick look all round – moonless but lightening sea and McLeod as it were melting into the hatch; Mike called down ‘Dive,
dive, dive!’ and as he shut the cock on the voice-pipe heard numbers one and two main vents crash open and the powerful escape
of air. On the ladder then, pulling the lid down over his head, the boat by then submerging – submerged, by the time he’d
engaged the first clip. Second one then, and a shout of ‘Hatch shut and clipped!’ Clomping on down – not in any rush now, hearing
McLeod tell his Red watch ’planesmen, ‘Thirty feet’, and Danvers’ surprising comment, ‘Almost in bloody Sicily.’

By mid-forenoon they’d done all the reconnaissance that Ormrod had wanted, using the small-calibre ‘attack’ periscope from
about three miles out, switching to the big one with its fourfold magnification when a closer look was wanted. Mike hadn’t
refused any such request, but he’d been making sure that neither ’scope was overused. There was a breeze down-coast from the
northwest, frisking-up the surface, and he hadn’t been greatly worried about aircraft; in fact the first one they’d seen was
this Cant limping to and fro ahead of an armed trawler and two landing-craft which had come into sight from behind Cape Passero
and turned west, were steering to pass to seaward of them, making he guessed for Pantellaria. They’d spotted the Cant – Danvers
had – half an hour before the little convoy it was escorting.

‘Not exactly crowding us.’

‘Wouldn’t seem to be, sir.’

‘Except the Cant might drift a bit close.’ He dipped the periscope, gave the situation a few moments’ thought. Then, ‘Forty
feet, Number One.’ McLeod had taken over the watch
from Danvers, and Mike had been discussing Ormrod’s suggestion that having some hours to spare they might give each of his
team a good sight of the landing beach – using the big periscope and from fairly close in. It would mean accepting the kind
of risk he’d sworn to avoid, but seemed only fair to the canoeists, before asking them to paddle 4,000 yards to that beach
in pitch darkness. Even if there was still a clear sky by then, there’d be no moon at ten p.m. As things stood otherwise,
they’d have a course to steer and their individual compasses with luminous dials – which didn’t amount to much, especially
in a sea-state that was a long way from flat calm and might worsen before float-off time. He rejoined Ormrod in the wardroom,
where they’d been talking about it over mugs of tea and he’d drunk only half of his own; ‘All right, let’s get on with it.
Sneak in there while we have the time
and
the inclination.’

‘Good thinking, skipper.’

‘Well – paddling two sea-miles in the dark to a beach you’ve never set eyes on – crikey …’

‘How we earn our living.’ He glanced around, added more quietly, ‘Tell you, though, I’m glad I drew this billet and not young
Flood’s.’ Mike stared at him, realising he was talking about
Unsung
– or rather Melhuish. Which was improper but in fact inconsequential, as he was the only one there to have heard it – Jarvis
being asleep, Danvers still fiddling at the chart table, and McLeod with the trim to watch, in the low hum of the motors …
Well, of
one
motor … He shook his head: ‘Not entirely with you there. But let’s say giving each man ten seconds? Have the ’scope ready
trained on your beach, he gets his shufti, then down periscope for two minutes while that chap goes back for’ard and the next
comes aft – trim’s not endangered, periscope’s not overexposed, and the whole process’ll take about – oh, fifteen minutes.
All right?’

‘Very much so. I’ll have a word with Gant.’

‘Approx one hour’s time. It’ll take that long getting in there.’

The commandos – Colour-Sergeant Gant, Corporals Thomas and Carlyle, and Marines Newton, Block, Denneker and Larkin – had had
their privileged scan of the beach before Cottenham served up lunch.
Ursa
then retiring seaward still at slow speed on one motor, depth thirty feet and course 175, almost but not quite the reciprocal
of the track on which she’d be nosing back on in about eleven hours’ time. The landing-craft convoy had gone on its way, and
the sky was empty. After lunching on sausages, tomatoes and packaged cheese Mike got on to his bunk with the intention of
reading
I Claudius
, but in fact thinking about Abbie – primarily that she and Nico Cornish had not been lovers.

Partly because he didn’t want them to have been. And/or his instincts told him they hadn’t. Not just instincts –
judgement
. Their own situation was entirely different, practically and emotionally unique: he
knew
it. There’d been no artifice or self-consciousness in her denial of the Pembroke House set’s beliefs; she’d raised the subject
calmly, matter-of-factly, a plain statement of fact which she’d had no reason to doubt he’d accept.

‘Captain in the control room!’

Mike’s well-practised bunk-to-control-room high-speed transition in response to OOW’s (McLeod’s) alarm call; time just gone
five, search periscope hissing down agleam with grease and salt water, thudding to a stop and Ellery bringing it purring up
again as McLeod reported, ‘Several Mas-boats green six-five course east, sir. Our course one-eight-oh – as they’re going now
they’ll pass astern, inshore of us. Doing about twenty knots.’

‘All right.’

Twenty knots indicating (a) they were in a hurry, for some reason, and (b) were not using asdics or other listening gear,
at that speed, therefore weren’t hunting. And judging by that course, might well be coming from Licata, which was one of their
favourite haunts, about ten miles west of Gela. Might even, exercising one’s imagination, en route have come slap over the
top of
Unsung
. Periscope’s top lens breaking out in a blue-green dazzle giving place to a blueish lop streaked with white and – training
left now –
four
of them – in rough quarterline, course easterly, and – yes, twenty knots was about right, they
would
pass astern. Light beginning to fade a little, incidentally, a pinkish tinge developing. He folded the handles up, stepping
back, Ellery sent the brass tube gliding down into its well and Mike told McLeod after a glance at the nearer depth-gauge,
‘Forty feet.’