Submariner (2008) (9 page)

E-boat getting under way, fifteen degrees abaft the beam. Fraser muttering, ‘Sort of confused. No –
different
one, that’s
two
–’

‘Moving which way?’

Concentrating – shifting the knob minutely across the bearing. Then: ‘Right to left, sir. Turbine HE, revs increasing.’

‘Stay on them.’

Thinking, what one needed to counter this sort of gambit might be night-fighters. Mosquitoes, say – at least when E-boats
were on the move, being fast movers with highly visible wakes and bow-waves, which one might guess would make for easy sightings
from aircraft on low-flying sweeps.

‘Right to left, still. Opening fast, sir.’

‘Listen-out all round then get back on them.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Number One, we’ll surface in fifteen minutes.’

Three twenty-five, that would be – having made sure of the E-boats putting a few miles behind them. They weren’t likely to
turn back on their tracks; he guessed they’d try their luck in the approaches to Valetta and Marsamxett, as likely as not
plant a mine or two, before coming round to – well … At the chart, checking this out: something like 340 degrees would be
their course home to Licata. If Licata was where they’d come from – which wasn’t unlikely, it
was
an E-boat base, and the nearest. Sixty miles from here, roughly: they’d be reckoning on being home for breakfast. But holding
that course at say twenty-five knots while
Ursa
chugged along on 315 at nine – well, let’s see. Because if one’s instincts were making sense now … They were, as likely as
not they
were
. Laying the divergent tracks off on the chart confirmed that by the time
Ursa
had the unlit Gozo lighthouse ten miles abeam to port, the Wops on their way home could be overhauling at a range of no more
than five or ten thousand yards to starboard.

‘Number One – here a minute. And you, pilot.’

Because Danvers would have the watch when they surfaced, McLeod relieving him soon after four; and having lost thirty or forty
minutes’ progress thanks to the E-boats, that was where she’d be when/if she dived at 0430 – ten miles northeast of Gozo.

‘Buggers could well be that close to us – or closer – uh?’

They’d both nodded. McLeod said, ‘If they were steering nearer 335 than 340 – dawn coming up astern, at that.’

‘Right. Too close for comfort. Forget morning stars, pilot. We’ll surface now, dive at four.’

Manoel Island eggs and bacon for breakfast, served up in the wardroom by AB Barnaby at 0740 for Danvers who’d be relieving
Jarvis as officer of the watch at 0815. Two hours on watch, four hours off, round the clock and for as long as the patrol
might last;
Ursa
at seventy-five feet, main motors driving her at three and a half knots, the Chernikeeff electric log showing this with its
blue indicator light flashing steadily and ticking like a clock – actually recording distance run, on the basis of which Jarvis
would put a dead-reckoning position on the chart at 0800.

Warmth, low hum of the motors, the boat rock-steady, no motion on her at all. Breakfast would be stirring things up a bit
now, but otherwise since the last change of watch sleep would have been
the
off-watch preoccupation.

Danvers however, shaken by Barnaby, was at the table with his plate of eggs and bacon and enamel mug of tea.

‘All right, sir?’

‘You’re a genius, Barnaby.’

‘Nice of you to mention it, sir.’

Mike grunted, sliding off his bunk. ‘Ready for mine whenever you like, genius.’ He looked briefly into the control room before
visiting the heads. Would
not
be shaving today, however. Not tomorrow or Friday either or Saturday, Sunday, Monday, etc. – one of the pleasures of this
way of life, not having to bother with it. Thinking of those E-boats being in Licata by this time – boats no doubt secured
alongside, personnel ashore in whatever luxurious accommodation they might have there – seafront hotels maybe – guzzling up
their
breakfasts. He’d listened-out for them on asdics, for a few minutes around 0430 – or rather had had SD Sharp, AB Fraser’s
winger, listen-out, reducing meanwhile to slow speed on only one shaft so as to have a better chance of hearing them at however
many miles’ range they might have been. Sharp hadn’t been able to pick them up, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been out
there somewhere, on course for Licata. Might have passed at a greater distance than he’d anticipated – if they’d been steering
a dog-leg course, for instance. He’d have been a damn fool not to have taken the precautions he had, in any case; it annoyed
him that he
almost
hadn’t seen that rather obvious danger: if he hadn’t woken up to it when he had, might have been caught on the hop.

Safety first. By the nature of the job one had often enough to take fairly hair-raising risks, simply to fulfil one’s
raison d’être
; all the more reason not to take avoidable or nonproductive ones. Might be worth explaining this in answering her letter
– a comment on Charles’s nonsense, which really did need to be refuted. Especially remembering Ann herself
remarking on one occasion – an age ago, in England – ‘Not in the safest of occupations, are you …’

His brother Alan wasn’t either. Millions weren’t.

McLeod had prised himself up off his bunk, was at the table looking hungry. Danvers had wolfed his fry-up and was on to bread
and jam. Mike pushed the curtain back and pulled out the chair –
the
chair, on this passageway side of the table.

‘Morning, sir.’

‘Morning, Jamie.’ And to Danvers with his clean-scraped plate, ‘Feel better for that?’

‘Heaps better, sir. We’re spoilt, when you come to think of it – I mean, when the Malts are on starvation rations?’

‘We’re favoured, certainly. Shrimp’s farm of course for one thing. And apart from that –’ McLeod pointed for’ard – ‘for instance,
there are a couple of sacks of spuds up there –
real
ones.’

‘To go with roast pork.
Naturally
.’ Danvers shrugged. ‘Hell – pork without roast spuds –’

Mike said, ‘All spuds are reserved for submarine crews, as it happens. That’s official. Guy Mottram was telling me – he’d
been out at Gravy’s – Shrimp’s chum Gravy Tench, happens to be the food supremo? He was saying it’s getting to the stage of
a governmental edict for the slaughter of all goats and horses – slight problem being that most owners have already killed
and eaten any they had. Gravy’s done a census, reckons there are only enough left to eke things out by about a week.’

‘Well, crikey –’

‘So a convoy operation – and damn soon, at that –’

McLeod had broached this. Mike agreeing but remaining silent while Barnaby delivered two more plates of eggs and bacon. ‘Snitched
these ’ere out of a batch Cookie was sending for’ard.’

‘Enough to go round, surely?’

‘Bloody
better
be!’

He’d gone. Thinking of his own breakfast perhaps. Or even Jarvis’s. McLeod asked Mike, ‘This patrol’s nothing to do with any
convoy operation, is it sir?’

Shake of the head, while scattering pepper. ‘Not as far as I know or Shrimp’s letting on.’ Adding then, quietly, ‘There
is
one in the offing. Has to be, you’re right. But not quite immediately, and Shrimp’s priority’s been to get us out on the
job double-quick – after longish absence and the Eighth Army’s – well, not predicament exactly, but it
was
being said Rommel could be in Alexandria in three days.’

‘Christ.’

‘If Malta folded, he probably would be. The Canal, the lot. Oh, it won’t happen,
can’t
, we can’t
let
it, that’s the size of it … Anyway, answering your question, if we were still on our billet when a convoy operation was launched
we might either be left there or shifted to a new one. Alternatively might be recalled, turned around and pushed straight
out again. One problem for Shrimp being if we’d had a lively time of it and used up all our fish.’

‘Hell, what
about
that?’

‘Pray to God they’d have some for us. Magic Carpet working flat out maybe.
Tango
was due in about now with half a dozen – but we’re talking of ten or twelve boats, so –’ shake of the head – ‘God knows …’

Had to stop talking then for a while, pay closer attention to his breakfast. Probably enough said, anyway. In his Tannoy speech
a day ago he hadn’t mentioned the imminence of any convoy operation. Or for that matter the island being pretty well at its
last gasp. One had to recognise, in the privacy of one’s own thoughts, the
possibility
of running into trouble one couldn’t handle, survivors if any being dragged out of the sea half-drowned and/or in shock,
whatever – and the
plain and simple fact that what a man didn’t know he couldn’t talk about.

No particular advantage in his knowing, either.

Scraping up the last of this delicious meal, while hearing the watch changing in the control room. ‘Relieve helmsman, sir?’
Jarvis’s standard reply of ‘Yes, please’ to that, and then to others one by one, men more or less lined up in the gangway
for’ard of this point, coming aft as those who’d been relieved came for’ard – ’planesmen, PO and ERA of the watch, telegraphman,
messenger. Even then with the swapping of differing weights there’d be trimming problems for Jarvis to put right before handing
over to Danvers in about ten minutes.

Incident-free day, all seventeen hours of it. Lunch of bread, cheese and chutney: up to periscope depth before that, for a
brief look-round and a check on the weather, also to receive any wireless messages there might be – but had not been, as it
happened, not at any rate addressed to
Ursa
– but ’planing up slowly and carefully, after asdics had found no lurking threat, and putting the ‘attack’ periscope up first
for minimal feathering of the smoothly rolling surface. That ’scope being monofocal without any magnification in it, not much
thicker at its top end than a Churchillian cigar. Swift check all round before sending it down and putting up the big one
for a slower, longer-range search of sea and sky: then back down to seventy-five feet and lunch, and a few pages of
The Moon is Down
.

And think about an answer to Ann’s letter.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

AB Johnson – LTO, electrician, on battery inspection, one access point for testing the electrolyte’s density in number two
section being right here, a hinged flap in the deck that was lifted with a special tool, electrolyte then siphoned out
of the cell right under it. Mike on his feet, pulling the chair out of Johnson’s way.

He’d measured it: was squirting electrolyte back into the cell.

‘How’s it look?’

He gave him the figure: recording it meanwhile on his clipboard. ‘Long enough dive is this, sir.’ Johnson, who wore glasses,
came from Edinburgh, where before joining up he’d been apprenticed to a company operating trams.

‘But we’re not caning it, exactly.’ Meaning, not treating it all that harshly. Checking the time – 1445, they’d lunched at
1400. ‘Seven hours to go, anyway.’

Twelve hours in fact was about long enough for any dive, from the point of view of air and its oxygen content, but today’s
seventeen hours would be just about matched tomorrow – getting under the minefield, then being so close to Marettimo, not
to mention Marsala and Trapani, having no option but to stay down until dark. The longest Mike or
Ursa
had done had been a stretch of more than thirty hours – vicinity of Taranto, being hunted after sinking a large freighter,
with depth-charging, some of which had been unpleasantly close, throughout a night which had happened to be moonlit, then
in daylight not able to surface anyway. There’d been aircraft in it too, Cant seaplanes – which the Italians were good at
using, in conjunction with anti-submarine craft. With the air in the boat getting very thin indeed they’d spread a chemical
called Protosorb in shallow trays between compartments – it absorbed carbon dioxide, or was supposed to – and he’d had some
guffs of bottled oxygen released at a later stage. McIver’s province, that: it had probably helped, although Mike didn’t think
anyone had noticed much difference. Except one
had
survived, and otherwise might not have.

The thing was, when you were being hunted and having
to take avoiding action, varying courses, depths and speed and necessarily adjusting trim, men taking active part in such
manoeuvrings were using a lot more oxygen than they would be if just lying doggo. Whereas a day-long submersion like this
one presented no real problems. You just had to take it easy, let the hours drift by.

Take an afternoon snooze now anyway; ration the Steinbeck, make it last.

In March, that Gulf of Taranto patrol had been;
Ursa
had come back from it with a new white bar on the Roger for the supply vessel and a red one for an Italian submarine Mike
had nailed the day before. Also one damaged screw, some cracked battery cells and the big search periscope jammed in its housing,
as unusable as the bent propeller; and lengthy repairs in the dockyard were no fun at all, under the weight of all-out Fliegerkorps
assault at that time.
Ursa
had in fact been darned lucky to get through that period and out of it intact. Just the word ‘Taranto’ though, in another
context altogether, rang a very different bell in memory, had been a secondary cause for celebration on the night of Bill
Gorst’s wedding – the night they’d danced at the Coconut Grove and he and Ann had made their assignation for the Sunday. News
having been released that on the 11th – Monday of that week, Armistice Day of 1940 – Swordfish dive-bombers flown-off from
the carrier
Illustrious
had sunk three Italian battleships at their moorings in the port where they’d been cowering since 10 June, the day Italy
had declared war on Britain. While incidentally, starting a few days
before
that declaration, Italian naval forces had sown this Marettimo–Cape Bon minefield – a very extensive anti-surface-ship field
with layers of anti-submarine mines at lower levels. The Italians had their own safe routes through it, of course.