Atlantic Fury (23 page)

‘It's Eight-six-one-o I want,' Braddock had almost screamed. ‘Get them, man. Keep on trying.'

He'd had far too little sleep that night and the interview he'd had with Standing at two-thirty in the morning cannot have been a pleasant one. Standing had been roused from his bed by a duty driver at twelve-forty, and Ferguson described him as literally shaking with rage when he realised what Braddock had done. The first thing he did was to speak to Stratton on the R/T and then he walked across to the quarters and saw Cliff Morgan. ‘White-faced he was, man,' was the way Cliff put it. ‘Calling me all sorts of names for interfering. But when I'd explained the situation, he calmed down a bit. He even thanked me. And then he went out, saying it was all Braddock's fault and if anything went wrong he'd get the bloody man slung out of the Service.'

Standing had gone straight to his office and sent for Braddock. There was nobody else present at that meeting so that there is no record of what passed between them. But immediately afterwards Braddock had teleprinted BGS direct, giving his reasons for ordering an immediate evacuation on his own responsibility. And after that he'd remained in the Movements Office waiting for news; and when our Mayday call went out, it was he, not Standing, who had alerted Scottish Command and set the whole emergency machinery in motion. At half past eight he'd walked over to the Met. Office. He was with Cliff Morgan for about ten minutes and it was during those ten minutes that I called Base. A relief operator had just taken over, which was why I was given the Glasgow call instead of being put straight through either to Braddock at the Met. Office or Standing, who was waiting alone in his office.

Probably if I'd got Standing his reaction would have been as slow as my brother's, for neither of them could have any idea of the appalling ferocity of that storm or the magnitude of the disaster. He didn't seem able to understand at first. ‘
You and one other chap … Is that all? Are you certain
?'

I wasn't certain of anything except the memory of the ship on her beam ends and the waves driving her against the rocks. ‘If you'd seen the seas.… It was Sgeir Mhor she hit.'

‘
Jesus Christ, Donald
?' It was the first time he'd used my name and it made a deep impression. ‘
Jesus Christ! There must be others. There've got to be others
.'

But I didn't think there could be then. ‘I've told you, the whole bridge deck was concertinaed in a matter of seconds. They can't possibly …'

‘
Well, have a look. Go and find out
.'

‘The wind,' I said wearily. ‘Don't you realise? You can't stand.'

‘
Then crawl, laddie – crawl. I must know. I must be certain. Surely to God it can't be as bad as you say
.' He was almost screaming at me. And then his voice dropped abruptly to a wheedling tone. ‘
For my sake, laddie – please. Find out whether there are any other survivors
.'

His voice. It was so strange – it was Iain's voice now, my own brother's, and the accent Scots. The years fell away … ‘All right, Iain. I'll try.' It was Mavis all over again – Mavis and all the other times. ‘I'll try,' I said again and switched the set off, going down the hut and out into a blast that whipped the door from my hand and knocked me to the ground.

I met the other fellow coming up from the beach, crawling on his hands and knees and crying with the pain of his broken arm. He called to me, but I heard no sound, only his mouth wide open and his good arm pointing seaward. But there was nothing there, nothing but the seething waters of the bay churned by the wind; all the rest was blotted out by rain and Sgeir Mhor a vague blur. ‘What is it?' I yelled in his ear and I almost fell on top of him as the wind came down, a solid, breath-taking wall of air.

‘The rocks, sir. Sgeir Mhor. I thought I saw …' I lost the rest. It was almost dark, a grey gloom with the clouds racing, and so low I could almost have reached up and touched them.

‘Saw what?' I shouted. ‘What did you think you saw?'

‘It was clear for a moment, and there were figures – men. I could have sworn …' But he wasn't certain. You couldn't be certain of anything in those conditions. And your eyes played tricks.

I lay there beside him till the rain squall passed. But even then I couldn't see what he still swore he'd seen. Cloud, forced low by the down-draughts, obscured all the upper half of Sgeir Mhor. There was only one thing to do. I told him to go to the hut, and then I started out along the beach road alone. But it was impossible. The weight of the wind was too great. It caught me as I was crossing the Bailey bridge that spanned the burn and it threw me against the girders as though I were a piece of paper. The sheer weight of it was fantastic. If it hadn't been for the girders I think I should have been whirled into the air and flung into the bay. I turned back then, and when I reached the hut I collapsed on Pinney's bed and immediately lost consciousness.

How long I was out I don't know. My whole body ached and there was a pain in my side. The cut in my head had opened again and the pillow was dark with blood. Lying there with my eyes open, slowly struggling back to life, I found myself staring at Pinney's locker. Either my eyes didn't focus immediately or else it took a long time for me to realise that a pair of binoculars might save me the long walk out to Keava and up its steep grass slopes. There they were, lying on a shelf, tucked in between some books and an old khaki jersey. It was much lighter in the hut; quite bright, in fact. And the noise of the wind was less.

I picked up the binoculars and staggered stiffly to the door. And when I opened it I was looking out on to a changed world. The clouds, torn to shreds by the wind, were ragged now. And they had lifted so that all the great spine of Keava was visible and I could see the sheer gap that separated it from Sgeir Mhor, could see all the rocks and caves and patches of grass on Sgeir Mhor itself. The air was clear, washed clean by the rain. Only Tarsaval and the very top of Creag Dubh remained shrouded in gloom, the clouds clinging to their drenched slopes, billowing and swirling among the crags. Seaward, shafts of brighter light showed white water tossed in frightful confusion. I slipped into the lee of the hut and with my back braced against its sodden wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.

Seen suddenly at close vision, isolated like that from the rest of the island, it looked like some massive medieval fortress. All it lacked was a drawbridge spanning the narrow gut that separated it from the Butt of Keava. With the change of wind, the seas no longer exploded against it in plumes of white, but the foam of the waves that had wrecked us lay in banks like snow over all the piled-up battlements of rock. In that clean air I could see every detail and nothing moved. The place was dead; just a great heap of rock and not a living thing. How could there be? Like the cliffs of Keava, it had taken the full brunt of the storm.

I lowered the glasses. Just the two of us. All the rest dead; gone, buried, drowned under masses of water, battered to pulp, their bodies for the fish, for the lobsters and crabs that scuttled in the holes and crevices of submarine rock terraces. Stratton, Wentworth, Pinney – all the faces I had known so briefly on board the ship.

Can you will people alive? Was I God-given that I could stand there and pray so desperately, and then on the instant conjure movement? It seemed like that, for I looked again, hoping against hope, and there in the twin circles of magnification something stirred, a man stood for a moment etched against the luminosity of clouds thinning. Or was it my imagination? Flesh and blood amongst that waste of rock. It seemed impossible, and yet one knows the extraordinary indestructibility of the human body. Countless instances leapt to my mind – things I had read about, things I had been told, things I had actually seen during the war; all things that had really happened, and not so much the indestructibility of the human body as the unwillingness, almost the inability of the human spirit to accept defeat. And here, now, I was gazing at the impossible, and it was no figment of the imagination. This, too, was real; there was a man, off the sky-line now and crawling down the rocks, trying to reach sea level, and another following close behind him.

How many were still alive I didn't know. I didn't care. It was enough that there were survivors on Sgeir Mhor, and I rushed back into the hut and switched on the radio. Base answered my call immediately. ‘
Hold on
.' And then a voice, not my brother's this time, asking urgently for news.

It was Colonel Standing, and when I told him I'd seen two figures moving on Sgeir Mhor, he said, ‘
Thank God!
' in a voice that was like a beaten man grasping at the faint hope of recovery. ‘
If there are two, there may be more
.' He wanted me to find out. But two or twenty – what difference did it make? The problem of rescuing them remained the same. Could I launch a boat? That was his first suggestion and I found myself laughing inanely. I was tired. God! I was tired. And he didn't understand. He'd no idea of the weight of wind that had hit the island. ‘There are no boats,' I told him. ‘And if there were, there's only myself and a chap with a broken arm.' It was like talking to a child. I found I had to explain in simple terms what the storm had been like – all the trailers gone and a heavy thing like the bulldozer sucked into the sea, the camp a wreck and everything movable shattered or whirled away, the slopes of Tarsaval littered with the Army's debris. I described it all to him the fight seaward, the engines packing up, the way she'd struck Sgeir Mhor and how the bows had stayed afloat and been driven ashore in Shelter Bay. I talked until my voice was hoarse, my mind too tired to think. Finally, I said. ‘What we need is men and equipment – a boat with an outboard motor or rocket rescue apparatus to bridge the gut between Keava and Sgeir Mhor. Where's the other LCT? She could come into the bay now the wind is northerly again.'

But L4400 was twenty miles south-west of Laerg, running before a huge sea, her bridge deck stove in and her plates strained, a wreck of a boat that might or might not get back to port. Weather ship
India
had left her station and was steaming to intercept her. The nearest ship was the Naval tug, but still twenty-four hours away in these conditions. Something my grandfather had told us came sluggishly to the surface of my mind, something about landing on Sgeir Mhor, the sheerness of the rocks. ‘I don't think a boat would help,' I said. ‘The only landing place on Sgeir Mhor is on the seaward side. And that's not possible except in flat calm weather.'

It took time for that to sink in. He didn't want to believe it. How did I know? Was I absolutely certain? Surely there must be rock ledges up which a skilful climber … ‘Check with my … with Major Braddock,' I said. ‘Check with him.' This man arguing, questioning. I wished to God he'd get off the line and give me Iain again. Iain would understand. ‘I'd like to have a word with Major Braddock.'

‘
I'm handling this
.' The voice was curt. ‘
Major Braddock's caused enough trouble already
.'

‘I'd still like to speak to him.'

‘
Well, you can't
.'

‘Why not?'

A pause, And then: ‘
Major Braddock is under arrest
.'

God knows what I said then. I think I cursed – but whether I cursed Standing or the circumstances, I don't know. The futility of it! The one man who could help, who had a grasp of the problem, and this stupid fool had had him arrested. ‘For God's sake,' I pleaded. ‘Give me Braddock. He'll know what to do.' And sharp and high-pitched over the air came his reply – unbelievable in the circumstances. ‘
You seem to forget, Mr Ross, that I'm the commanding officer here, and I'm perfectly capable of handling the situation
.'

‘Then handle it,' I shouted at him, ‘and get those men off Sgeir Mhor.' And I switched off, realising that I was too tired now to control my temper. I just sat there then, thinking of Iain. Poor devil! It was bad enough – the loss of life, the shipwreck, but to be under arrest, sitting inactive with no part in the rescue, with nothing to do but mull over in his mind what had happened. Didn't Standing realise? Or was he a sadist? Whichever it was, the effect on Iain would be the same. The bloody, sodding swine, I thought. The cruel, stupid bastard.

‘Mr Ross! Mr Ross, sir – you're talking to yourself.'

I opened my eyes, conscious of a hand shaking my shoulder. The fellow with the broken arm was standing there, staring at me with a worried frown. He no longer looked frightened. He even had a certain stature standing there proffering me a steaming mug. ‘It's only Bovril,' he said. ‘But I fort some'ing 'ot after our bathe …' He was Cockney. False teeth smiled at me out of a funny little screwed-up face. ‘When you drunk it, you better change them clothes. Catch yer deaf if yer don't. Borrow off of Captain Pinney; 'e won't mind.' This little runt of a man trying to mother me and his broken arm still hanging limp. My heart warmed to him. The lights were on and a new sound – the hum of the generator audible between the gusts.

‘You've got the lights going.'

He nodded. ‘'Ad ter – all electric 'ere, yer see. Wiv'at the generator yer can't cook. I got some bangers on and there's bacon and eggs and fried bread. That do yer?' I asked him his name then and he said, ‘Alf Cooper. Come from Lunnon.' He grinned. ‘Flippin' long way from Bow Bells, ain't I? Fort I 'eard 'em once or twice when we was in the flaming water, an' they weren't playin' 'ymn toons neither.'

As soon as we'd had our meal I set his arm as best I could, and after that I showed him how to work the radio. I felt stronger now and perhaps because of that the wind seemed less appalling as I tried again to get a closer look at Sgeir Mhor. This time I was able to cross the bridge, but in the flat grassland below the old lazy beds the wind caught me and pinned me down. A bird went screaming close over my head. I crawled to the shelter of a cleit and with my back to the ruins of its dry-stone wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.