The Cruel Sea (1951) (53 page)

‘Lecturing?’ said Lockhart blankly.

‘Yes. He’s ashore now, you know. Didn’t he have a nervous breakdown after sinking those submarines?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lockhart. ‘You tell me.’

‘Oh, he’s famous, back home. Quite a character. It seems he was in this ship called
Compass Rose,
and the skipper got sick, and Bennett took her out on a convoy, and they got two submarines after a four-day battle. But he had to be on the bridge the whole time, and he cracked up after it.’ Allingham paused. ‘Between you and me, there was a bit of a stink in some of the papers because he didn’t get a medal out of it . . .
Is
it the same man?’

‘None other.’ Lockhart collected his wits. ‘And he goes round lecturing about all that?’

‘Sure. They had him on a recruiting drive. And talking in the factories – all that sort of bull. They say it stimulates production.’

‘It stimulates me,’ said Lockhart equably. ‘The last I saw of Bennett, he’d succumbed to a duodenal ulcer through eating tinned sausages too fast, and he left
Compass Rose
and went ashore to a hospital.’

‘No submarines?’ asked Allingham, surprised. ‘No nervous strain?’

Lockhart shook his head. ‘The submarine, like the nervous strain, was all ours.’

Allingham laughed. ‘Good old Jim Bennett. He certainly could tell the tale.’

‘He was a bastard,’ said Lockhart succinctly. ‘I loathed him and everything he stood for.’

Something in his tone caught Allingham’s attention. He hesitated, and then said with a certain emphasis: ‘They’re not all like that, where I come from.’

‘I’m beginning to appreciate that.’ Lockhart smiled, and the other man met his smile, and relaxed, turning his back on the dangerous ground. ‘They couldn’t be,’ Lockhart continued, ‘or Australia would have fallen to bits long ago . . .’ He stood up. ‘Let’s forget it. Come and look at the ship.’

Saltash’s
complement of officers was eight: besides Ericson, Lockhart, Johnson, and Allingham, they had been allocated a surgeon-lieutenant, two sub-lieutenants (one of them a navigating specialist), and a midshipman who was to act as the Captain’s secretary. It was their first formal meeting in the big wardroom which brought, to Ericson, the most vivid reminder of the past: there was, particularly among the younger men, the same reserve, the same wariness, as he remembered in the Lockhart and Ferraby of long ago, when he had watched them feeling their way in new surroundings, trying to guess what would be popular and what would not. But there, he realised as he looked at them sitting round the table, there the resemblance ended: for these were no green hands – with the exception of the midshipman, they had all been to sea before, and they knew the best and the worst of convoy work. Clearly, he wouldn’t be taking this ship to sea with a couple of brand-new subs who had never yet stood a watch, and a First Lieutenant of Bennett’s peculiar calibre . . . He waited until they were all settled in their places, and then he tapped on the table.

‘I’ve collected you all here,’ he began, ‘so that I can meet you properly, and also get an idea of what you’ve been doing before you joined
Saltash.’
He looked round the ring of watchful faces. ‘Some of it I know already: the First Lieutenant was with me in another ship, and’ – he smiled at Johnson – ‘the Chief I’ve talked to before. As far as the rest of you are concerned, all I’ve got are your names.’ He looked down at the list in front of him. ‘Let’s start with you, Guns – you seem to have made the longest journey to join us. What were you doing before this?’

‘Minesweeping, sir,’ said Allingham promptly, as if well used to being singled out on an occasion like this. ‘Round the north coast of Australia, based on Darwin mostly. Then I got a bit browned off with that, because nothing was happening and it didn’t look as if the Japs would get down our way after all, so I put in for a transfer up here.’

‘Was there any minelaying in that area?’

Allingham shook his head. ‘We put up two in three years.’

‘And you’ve taken a gunnery course here?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve just come from Whale Island.’

‘Did they make you run about much?’

Allingham grinned. ‘I don’t think we ever stopped, from the time we stepped inside the gates. I must have lost pounds, myself.’

There was a ripple of laughter round the table. Whale Island, the Royal Naval gunnery school, had a reputation for tough, everything-at-the-double discipline which no one who had taken a course there ever troubled to deny.

‘Well, you’ve got plenty of guns to practise with . . .’ He looked for the next name on his list, and read: ‘Raikes, Sub-Lieutenant.’ He turned inquiringly to the young man at the bottom of the table. ‘Where have you come from, Sub?’

‘East coast, sir,’ answered Raikes, the sub-lieutenant who was to be navigating officer. He was a brisk young man with a precise, rather high-pressure manner: Ericson got the impression that his peacetime job had probably involved selling some slightly unpopular household gadget, and that he had carried the necessary tricks of speech and habit with him into the war.

‘Whereabouts? Harwich?’

‘Yes, sir. We did convoys from there up to the Humber.’

‘What sort of ship?’

‘Corvette, sir. The pre-war type. Twin screw.’

‘I remember them . . . You must have had plenty of practice in coastal navigation.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Raikes hesitated, not knowing how much Ericson knew about the east coast, or wanted to know. ‘There’s a swept channel for the convoys, with a buoy every five miles or so. If you miss one of them you probably run aground, or end up in a minefield.’

‘How many times did that happen to you?’

‘It didn’t, sir.’

Ericson smiled at the forthright answer. ‘Well, you’ll have to rub up on the other sort of navigation now. How long is it since you used a sextant?’

‘Not since the training course, sir – a couple of years. There was never any need on the east coast. But I’ve been practising a lot lately.’

‘Good. I did most of it myself in my last ship, but I’ll want you to take it over.’

The next officer of Ericson’s list was the doctor. ‘Surgeon-Lieutenant Scott-Brown,’ he read, and found no difficulty in identifying him, even without the bright red rings on his sleeve. Scott-Brown reminded him of Morell: he had the same assured, slightly
dégagé
air, as if, without in the least disparaging the present, he felt all the time that his real background, the structure of his competent life, was elsewhere. He was large and fair: he sat solidly in his chair, giving the impression that it was he who was conducting the interview, and that Ericson was the patient whose duty it was to reveal everything. But that doesn’t matter, thought Ericson: all we want is a good doctor.

He said: ‘Where do you come from, Scott-Brown?’

Scott-Brown said, somewhat surprisingly: ‘Harley Street, sir.’

‘Oh . . . This is your first ship?’

Scott-Brown nodded. ‘I was in practice, sir, and then I was doing research work for Guy’s Hospital, and then there were the big raids on London. They’ve only just released me.’ He said this with no apologetic air, as if it were beyond dispute that he had not been wasting his time, before his late arrival in the Navy.

‘You’re something of a luxury,’ said Ericson. ‘We’ve never had a doctor before.’

‘Who did the doctoring for you?’

‘I did,’ said Lockhart. He had been watching Scott-Brown, and he too had been reminded, like Ericson, of Morell. This man seemed patently sure of himself and of his skill, in just the same way, but the fact was a comfort, not an irritant. No more first aid for me, thought Lockhart thankfully: not unless things go very wrong . . .

Scott-Brown turned in his direction. ‘How did you learn the job?’

‘As I went along . . . I’m afraid I must have killed a lot more patients than you have.’

A brief smile showed itself on Scott-Brown’s face. ‘That’s a very large assumption,’ he answered slowly. ‘I’ve been in practice nearly eight years.’

Once more the ripple of laughter round the table linked them all together. This might be rather a good wardroom, thought Ericson: plenty of variety, plenty of common sense, something solid and confident about it.

‘We could have kept you pretty busy during the last two years,’ he said: ‘I don’t know what it’s going to be like now . . .’

There were two more names on the paper in front of him, those of the second sub-lieutenant and the midshipman. Out of the corner of his eye he had been watching the latter, a tall, slim, and wonderfully innocent-looking young man who was at present fidgeting with an ashtray in the nervousness of waiting for his turn. He’s almost a schoolboy, thought Ericson: in fact, that was probably exactly what he was, until a few weeks ago. Perhaps one so young could afford to wait a little longer . . . He looked at the other man, the sub-lieutenant, who sat at his side.

‘Vincent,’ he said. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’

Vincent was small, dark, and rather shy: before he spoke, he seemed to be gathering himself together, and making a tangible effort to arrange his words properly.

‘I was in the same group as you, sir,’ he brought out finally. ‘In
Trefoil.
’

Ericson nodded slowly. ‘I thought it was something like that.’ His voice was normal, but within himself he had been startled by the familiar name.
Trefoil
had been a sister ship of
Compass Rose,
for nearly two years: she had been the stern escort on the last convoy, and it was she who, blessedly wide awake, had noticed
Compass Rose
appear and then disappear on the radar screen, and had reported the fact to
Viperous.
It was probable that he and Lockhart owed their lives to
Trefoil,
it was even possible that this small shy sub-lieutenant had had a direct hand in it. But he did not want to raise the subject now: it would keep for a more private occasion.

‘Then we know all about each other,’ he said pleasantly, ‘and you know what the job entails . . . That leaves you, Holt,’ he said suddenly to the midshipman. ‘How have you been spending your time lately?’

The ashtray fell off the table with a clatter. Midshipman Holt blushed vividly: the colour rose to his clear face, producing an enviable air of youth and health. Heavens! thought Ericson: he must be about seventeen: I could be his father – in fact, I could damned nearly be his grandfather.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Holt. He collected himself manfully. ‘I’ve just finished the course at
King Alfred.
’

‘And before that?’

‘Er – Eton, sir.’

‘Oh.’ Ericson caught Johnson’s eye, and was amused to see in it a perceptible degree of deference. Certainly Eton gave the wardroom a touch of class, a leavening of distinction for the rough sailormen . . . He took another look at Holt, and saw that, in gaining confidence, his face had taken on a lively intelligence and humour. Perhaps it wasn’t simply the Eton label that they would come to remember him by.

‘Did they teach you anything about the sea there?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, sir,’ said Holt, in surprise. ‘It was a very
narrow
sort of education.’

For the third time a small laugh went round the table, and again Ericson welcomed it. As soon as this kid finds his feet, he thought, he’ll keep us all young – and God knows we need it . . . A pause intervened, while Ericson looked at them each in turn, and tried to sum up what he and they had learnt. Now we know where we all come from, anyway, he thought: we come from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the east coast of England, North Australia, Harley Street, and Eton. But the assorted backgrounds had given them a valuable range of experience:
Saltash,
providing them all with plenty to do and plenty to learn, would have a substantial fund of skill and energy to draw on.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, that will do for a start,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a lot of hard work, getting the ship ready for sea, but I know I can rely on all of you to do your best. The First Lieutenant will be allocating the various jobs to you, as far as divisional work is concerned, and of course you have your own departments already: that is’ – he looked down again – ‘Allingham – gunnery: Raikes – navigation: Vincent – depth-charges: and Holt – correspondence. I don’t expect we’ll be ready for trials for another three weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to get things in running order.’ He stood up, and signed to Lockhart to come with him. At the door he turned and said: ‘We can have a less formal meeting at six this evening, if the gin’s arrived.’

When the door shut behind them, a silence fell on the wardroom. Johnson was studying an engineering manual which had been open on the table in front of him: Scott-Brown, the doctor, and Raikes were lighting cigarettes: Holt was picking up, as unobtrusively as possible, the fallen ashtray. Finally, after a long pause, Allingham looked across at Vincent, the sub-lieutenant who had been in
Trefoil,
and said: ‘What happened to the skipper’s last ship? She was torpedoed, wasn’t she?’

Vincent nodded, searching for the right words again. ‘Yes. She was catching up the convoy after taking a couple of ships to Iceland: we got her on the radar, just after midnight, a long way astern of us, and then she faded out. We waited a bit, but nothing happened, so we reported it to
Viperous –
she was senior officer of the escort – and
Viperous
went back and found the rafts in the morning.’