Submariner (2008) (8 page)

Meaning that a night on the loose together would be insane. As he’d known for certain, even if she hadn’t. She
had
, of course: had really had nothing else in view – no more than he’d had, by that time. From his first sight of her, earlier
in the day, ‘knocked for a loop’ might have described it – long before any awareness of that total, instant reciprocity, lack
of any hesitance at all … Answering her letter, might remind her of that. Obliquely – if he could find a way to do it. She
was right, on paper one did tend to be cautious, not to stick one’s neck out pointlessly.
Must
be firm about her not writing now: and yes, he’d write to her, you bet he would – but could not discuss any future comings
or goings – not even if he knew of them, which of course he seldom did – beyond the fact that
Ursa
had just about done her time – and even that he couldn’t mention … Stubbing out the cigarette-end, thinking to get a couple
of hours’ shuteye between now and four. Immediately, clean teeth and have a pee. The wardroom heads, WC and washbasin, was
just across the companion-way, opposite the galley. Allowing his mind to drift back, though, to what had started him thinking
about Ann again – the conversation about U-class names, which on the face of it might have seemed an odd subject to interest
her much – in point of fact, that conversation must have taken place earlier in the evening of the Saturday, probably at the
United Hunts Club in Upper Grosvenor Street –
his
club, the Melhuishes therefore his guests at that stage. The background to it all being old Billy Gorst’s wedding that
afternoon with the reception at the Dorchester, in the course of which Mike and sister Chloe had somehow teamed-up with Charles
and Ann, and Charles had rather loftily invited them to dine with him at the Jardin des Gourmets in Greek Street; so there’d
been time to kill, and Upper Grosvenor Street being just strolling distance from the Dorchester the Hunts Club had been an
obvious port of call.

Billy Gorst was by this time a commander, aged about thirty-five, a submarine CO of considerable repute whom Mike had known
for donkey’s years, and under whom Charles Melhuish had served as fourth hand in one of the old R-class – Charles being then
a mere sub-lieutenant, presumably. Yes, must have been. And had only been invited to Billy’s wedding – Mike suspected – because
a couple of years earlier he’d somehow persuaded the older man to attend
his
nuptials – in Edinburgh, where Ann’s parents lived. It had been a fairly low-key affair, apparently – so Billy had intimated,
in a brief, semi-coded chat at the Dorchester reception. Mike hadn’t been asked to the Melhuish wedding, hadn’t even known
Charles, who at the time of his marriage had only recently become first lieutenant of an ‘S’, in fact was rather junior in
the service to have been getting married, had only been able to do so through being personally well-heeled. Unconventional
background, rather – mother an American who’d divorced his father and gone back to the States, father the owner of a chain
of hotels; he was based somewhere in the Midlands and obviously rich.

How had Melhuish managed to get Ann?

Billy Gorst had touched Mike’s arm, nodded in the direction of a group surrounding her. ‘Knockout, uh?’

‘Certainly is.’ Introductions had been made earlier, to her and to her husband, whom Mike hadn’t taken to enormously but envied,
somewhat. She was
vibrantly
attractive. Changing
the subject slightly, in this chat with Gorst, asking him, ‘Low key, you say – in Edinburgh?’

‘Surprisingly so. Her father’s a lawyer of some kind. Boss of some outfit, I don’t remember, but – decidedly pompous, despite
which definitely
not
splashing the stuff around – you know?’

‘The champagne, you mean.’

‘No, I meant the bawbees. There was a lot of very good champagne – which Charles had paid for, believe it or not.
And
told me he had! Extraordinary …’ Change of tone: ‘I take it
you
’re not thinking of getting spliced, old boy?’

‘No such intention as of this moment.’

‘Wise man, too.’The unblushing but radiant bride, returning from some solo mission and latching on to her brand-new husband’s
arm. Laughing: ‘Crazy to give it even a thought, at this moment.’ Sparkling, like the champagne; but now she’d come back there
was a crowd closing in around her and Billy, and Mike looking for Chloe saw her in conversation with Melhuish.

Which putting things in their chronological order was where it had started, he supposed. Charles had taken a bit of a shine
to Chloe, was the truth of it. Ridiculous, when one thought of Ann, visualised those two side by side. Chloe was quite easy
on the eye, vivacious and very young – but in comparison with Ann, to whom the bugger was
married
, heaven’s sake …

He’d finished in the heads. Didn’t need to blow them, after no more than a pee. To blow them, the equivalent in ordinary life
of pulling a chain, you operated certain valves and a lever like a gear-change, built up a head of air pressure that registered
on a gauge, then let it go, blasting everything out to sea. OK as long as you kept your mind on the job, and did it right;
if you put the pressure-charge on the wrong side of it, for instance, you got it all back, violently.

Undine
was the boat whose name had triggered that conversation in the club. She’d been lost earlier in the year, and a friend of
Charles Melhuish had been her third or fourth hand.
He
’d attended their wedding, and Ann had liked him; he and Billy Gorst had been the only submariners she’d met until now, other
than Charles. She’d asked Mike whether he’d known this man – which he hadn’t – and Chloe had asked what on earth did the name
Undine
mean. Mike had been able to tell her, Charles having admitted ignorance: ‘Means a water-sprite who doesn’t have a soul, only
way she can acquire one is to mate with a human.’

‘That true, or did you just make it up?’

‘What’s a sprite, when it’s at home?’

Chloe suggested, ‘A spirit, presumably. Same word, almost?’ Ann thought it was a pretty name, dreadfully sad that she’d been
lost. Did anyone know what had happened to her? No one did: Mike had said, ‘One often doesn’t’, and Charles began to count
off on his fingers the names of boats that had been lost, up to that time. Not ‘U’s,
Undine
had been the first of this class to go, but more than a dozen others – and Mike had cut in, putting a stop to the unnecessary
recital by explaining that a lot of the U-class didn’t have names, only numbers.

‘The originals were given names in the usual way, but with the speed-up of war construction they did without them. Now they’re
having to find names for them all because Churchill’s insisted no British submarine should go on patrol with just a bloody
number. He said if the Admiralty couldn’t think up names,
he
would.’

‘Bet your life he would.’ Ann asked Mike, ‘What’s yours called?’

‘
Ursa
. Not a bad name – d’you think?’

‘She-bear.’ That smile of hers almost crippling, when she turned it on you at close range.‘
Sweet
name. Don’t you dare let
her
get lost.’

Mike had assured her, ‘I won’t, I promise.’

Certain of his ground. Believing in it. Had been then, and still was. At that time, though, he’d been irritated by Charles
Melhuish having almost proudly reeled off the names of submarines that had been lost in the previous twelve, fifteen months.
Boastfully, as if acceptance of such odds-against redounded to
his
credit, somehow. And feeding that stuff to his wife, for God’s sake, when the normal and obvious thing was to provide reassurance.

Bunk now, anyway. Having turned the overhead lamp off, heaving himself up backwards and then swinging his legs up. Glow of
light from the control room, but three-quarters dark in here with the curtain drawn; familiar rumbling of the engines, regular,
gentle pitching – all cumulatively soporific, except there were men milling around out there: and now the helmsman’s call
of ‘Bridge!’

Jarvis’s answer, through the tube: ‘Bridge.’

‘Relieve lookouts, sir?’

‘Yes, please.’

One of them at a time. When the first came down, the relief for the second would go up.

‘Navigator, sir?’

At close range, this – Nat Sharp, SD, in the role of control-room messenger, stooping at Danvers’ bunk. ‘Sub-lieutenant, sir
– two o’clock –’

‘Right. Right …’

Sharp would wait until he saw the man he was shaking actually turning out, though. All too easy to say ‘Right, thanks’ and while
mustering the necessary resolve slip back into dreamland.

Cessation of engine noise, replaced instantly and startlingly by the much closer sound of sea rushing over half-inch plating
within a few feet of one’s head, punctuated by the thuds of her butting through it, audible on its own now and triggering
instant, auto-physical more than cerebral or truly
conscious
reaction of nerves and muscles – Pavlovian reflex to alarm, emergency. Brain waking to it maybe a second later, by which
time one’s in the control room, in the ringing echo of Danvers’ ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ and standing back from the bruising descent
from up top of lookouts Farquhar and Llewellyn. One of several queries in mind being why no klaxon, the usual eardrum-blasting
signal to dive, emergency. All the rest pretty well as standard and simultaneous – CERA McIver having flipped back the six
steel levers opening main vents, the sound of numbers one and six’s high-pressure air escaping into the night,
Ursa
tipping bow-down, a yell from the tower – Danvers again – ‘One clip on!’ Second Cox’n Tubby Hart, PO of Blue watch – which
succeeded White watch at 0200 and is now dispersed in the rush to diving stations. Hart temporarily on the controls of the
after ’planes,
and messenger of the watch Barnaby briefly on the for’ard ones: depth-gauges showing ten feet – twelve – fifteen – down-angle
steepening. Cox’n Swathely now on after ’planes, Hart’s bulk displacing Barnaby and the latter transferring to the motor-room
telegraphs, Danvers landing on his feet, slamming against the ladder – slim, broad-shouldered, head and face running wet from
a small influx of sea – panting at Mike: ‘E-boats, sir – two of ’em, port beam half a mile – lying stopped, so –’

‘Slow both motors. Fifty feet.’ Twelve or fifteen seconds maybe since being roused to this – and McLeod acknowledging, ‘Fifty
feet, sir,’ and ‘Slow both’ having taken over the trim, taking her in hand as she approached periscope depth and passed it,
for the moment carrying on down, and Walburton on the ladder shutting and clipping the lower lid. Mike telling Fraser the
asdic man – on his stool at the set, one hand adjusting the headphones over his noticeably small ears, fingers of the other
settling on the training-knob on a compass-dial at the top of the set – ‘Port beam or thereabouts.’

‘Fifty feet, sir.’

Hydroplanes having to work hard to hold her there. McLeod has the after ballast pump sucking on the midships trim-tank: at
fifty feet she’s heavier than she was at twenty-eight – periscope depth where she was when last submerged, before surfacing
at 0100. The deeper a submarine goes the heavier she gets, since in denser water the hull’s compressed, up-thrust thus reduced.
Archimedes worked it out in 200 BC or thereabouts, his famous ‘Principle’ highlighting the ever-present danger that when a
boat’s going deep if you don’t lighten her she’ll continue deeper at an increasing rate until sea-pressure crushes her. U-class
being tested only to 250 feet, it’s a point to bear in mind. One does in any case, it’s one of the things you live with. McLeod’s
lightened her
enough now, anyway – hydroplanes approximately horizontal, needles in depth-gauges more or less static on the fifty-feet marks.
Won’t be staying at this depth for ever anyway, don’t need to be
too
fussy: he’s switching the order-instrument to ‘Stop pumping’ and ‘Shut “O”’, the stoker at that after ballast pump responding
with ‘Pump stopped’ and ‘“O” shut’.

The clock on the for’ard bulkhead’s showing five past three. Mike asking Fraser, ‘Anything?’

Negative. Fingertips shifting the knob a degree or two this way and that. Narrow face damp-looking, taut with concentration.
‘Foxy’ Fraser, his mates call him. The E-boats must still be lying stopped, probably listening on hydrophones but presumably
not hearing
Ursa
’s HE. Not yet: they wouldn’t be just sitting there if they had. HE meaning Hydrophone Effect, propeller noise. All one can
do at this stage is wait, strain one’s own underwater ear while continuing to paddle quietly away. Certainly wouldn’t contemplate
doing battle with
two
E-boats, with the weaponry they carry.

Might be German-manned, might be Italian. The Germans have supplied their Wop allies with a number of E-boats recently. The
Italians’ own equivalent are called Mas-boats.

Anyway, the flurry’s over. Mike joining Danvers at the chart table.

‘No doubt of them being E-boats?’

‘None at all, sir. Silhouette of the nearer one was clear enough by the time I was on him. It was Llewellyn made the sighting.’

‘Good for him. Ambush ploy, presumably.’

‘Seemed the likely thing, sir.’

Two of them lying stopped and silent – no bow-waves, not much danger of being spotted by the victim before they saw and heard
him
, with his engine’s racket and flare of bow-wave to give him away. Submarines out of Malta
would
use this route – as well as others – and as Shrimp had surmised,
the enemy might very well be aware that the flotilla was reassembling and would be redeploying. Danvers’ reaction had been
exactly right, Mike thought:stopping engines immediately and ducking smartly out of it – not even risking the klaxon, which
in the normal way of things would have been second nature, no more than routine.

‘Sir –’ Fraser’s head up suddenly – ‘HE starting up on’ – peering at his compass dial – ‘red one-oh-five, sir!’