Convoy (22 page)

‘Queen’s Dock you said, guv?’ the driver said conversationally.

‘Yes, number two, Queen’s Dock.’

‘That’s the other end from the entrance we use. You’ll need some paper to show the coppers at the gate. Uniform ain’t enough these days. Some of these foreigners look like commissionaires so the coppers is tightening up. ‘Fraid someone’ll go in and drill an ’ole in one of the ships, I s’pose.’

Finally the taxi swung into the great gateway to the dock, an entrance that owed its size to the need to admit heavily-laden lorries rather than a desire to impress. Ships alongside the quays were sharply-angled examples of perspective, their harsh lines in the dull light making the whole scene look like an old print, the paper dulled and foxed, the illustration lacking only the square-sail yards and furled sails to slip back a century or two with ships about to sail in other wars, yet the crews facing the same threat, death. The taxi stopped by a small office at the gate and a policeman came out and saluted.

‘What ship was you wanting, sir?’

‘The
Marynal
.’

‘Ah, the
Mar-ie-nal
,’ the policeman said, as if correcting Yorke’s pronunciation and certain it rhymed with ‘urinal’. ‘You have papers, sir? You just visiting her – an inspection?’

‘No, I’m joining her.’ Yorke avoided speaking the name, which sounded like mariner, and handed over two papers which the policeman read quickly and handed back.

‘Thank you, sir: she’s the third ship, just abreast the burned-out warehouse. Have a good trip, sir.’

The taxi moved off. Quays in busy ports looked the same the world over, the only difference being the weather, the presence or lack of bomb damage, and the colour of the dockers’ skin. Piles of small crates alongside the first ship were being loaded on to large flat metal trays before being hoisted on board by the ship’s derricks and two lorries were obviously waiting to unload whatever they carried direct into cargo nets or trays.

Mooring warps curved from stem and stern, their great spliced eyes looped over stone bollards and holding the ship. Each rope had a circular disc of thin metal lodged halfway along it, like the spinning coloured disc of a child’s toy. Rat guards were compulsory and although ports insisted on them being used to prevent rats, perhaps infected in some tropical port, from immigrating into Britain, they also stopped rugged British rats from climbing on board a ship and stowing away for a warmer climate where there was no rationing or bombing. A stick of bombs or a few hundred incendiary bombs on a warehouse, Yorke reflected, must play havoc with a rat’s personality.

The wreckage of a small crate which had been dropped, with the black printed exhortations ‘Use No Hooks’ and ‘Stow Away From Boilers’ still visible on pieces of the deal boards, had been kicked out of the way. Again, on any quay there would be such wreckage, and if the contents had been edible or saleable, they would vanish like smoke in a high wind.

The second ship was loading tanks and lorries, the sandy-coloured camouflage paint betraying their destination, although many a ship, merchant or war, had ended up in the tropics just after all the crew had been fitted out with thick woollen Arctic underwear and heavy clothing. The ship was also beneath one of the few big cranes left standing, and Yorke saw several large crates close against the wall of the warehouse: aircraft in crates, probably fighters to be stowed on top of the hatches, so big that one on each hatch completely changed the silhouette of a merchant ship.

‘’Ere you are, then,’ the driver said, pulling up at the gangway of a modern-looking ship, turning the car round a pile of crates and a swinging cargo net. A group of dockers looked up incuriously, saw an officer in uniform getting out of the taxi and, noticing two gold bands on each sleeve, assumed he was the second officer or one of the engineers – they were too far off to distinguish any coloured stripes between the gold. And Yorke knew that apart from the basic uniform, the insignia of rank and cap badges in the Merchant Navy usually varied, depending on the company. Some favoured straight gold stripes with the regular diamond instead of the curl used in the Royal Navy. Every large company had its own cap badge; the smaller ones made do with the regular Merchant Navy cap badge.

As the taxi driver took Yorke’s case out of the boot, a Royal Navy seaman came hurrying down the gangway, hair untidy and wearing working clothes.

‘Mr Yorke, sir? I’m Watkins, been fitting the radio gear. Let me take your case.’ His eyes rested for a moment on the medal ribbon before he grabbed the luggage.

With the taxi paid off, Yorke followed Watkins up the gangway and paused for a moment at the top. The
Marynal
’s decks looked as though every available length of loose rope, empty cardboard carton and cigarette packet had been emptied over them; at least three welding torches spurted eerie blue tongues and showered sparks, twentieth-century dragons huffing and puffing to frighten the enemy.

The convoy was due to sail the day after tomorrow and it seemed the
Marynal
could never be ready in time, but Yorke had seen enough warships in port for a few hours, hurriedly getting stores on board and welding repairs to action or heavy-weather damage, or putting in new equipment that needed extra fittings, to know how soon it could be cleared up.

‘This way, sir,’ Watkins said, holding the suitcase in front to clear a path through the seamen and dockers. ‘Your cabin’s all ready sir. One of the two passenger cabins, so you have a choice. If you don’t like the one I got the chief steward to prepare, you can change, but it’ll be the coolest in the tropics.’

A bed, not a bunk; a big, double-bladed fan fitted to the deckhead above, obviously the slow-turning type that moved a lot of air, plenty of polished mahogany – wardrobe, built-in chest of drawers, two easy chairs, a small writing desk.

Yorke sniffed. ‘O-Cedar, from the smell of it.’

Watkins grinned and looked round the cabin with pride. ‘That’s the stuff, sir; best there is to bring out a good shine. Me and a couple of the lads nipped in yesterday with a can and some rags and gave things a polish here and there.’

‘Thanks. Looks more like an admiral’s day cabin.’

‘Cor, you wait ’til you start on the grub, sir; I’m tellin’ you, they eat well, these Merchant Navy chaps. Regular Ritz, this ship is. She called in South America on the last trip and stocked up with plenty of meat. Steak fer dinner tonight, sir. Now, you’ll be wanting to see the Capting, but ’e’s gorn on shore until four o’clock. Convoy conference ten double oh tomorrow morning, and the ship has a shore phone and–’ he opened the top drawer in the desk and took out a slip of paper, ‘I’ve written the number down here. Will that be all for now, sir?’

‘Where are you berthed?’

‘Aft, with the DEMS gunners, sir. Nice and snug down there.’

‘Out of sight, out of mind, eh?’

‘Well, sort of, sir,’ Watkins admitted with a grin, ‘but I got all me radio gear rigged in the Marconi cabin. That’s one deck above you and just abaft the bridge.’

‘The DEMS gunners,’ Yorke said. ‘How many of them?’

‘Eight brown jobs, six HO ratings, and a hookie what’s Regular, sir.’

‘All quiet down there?’

‘Their third trip together, sir. They play a wicked game of uckers.’

‘Very well,’ Yorke said, ‘you can vanish until nine tomorrow: I may want you to come with me to the convoy conference.’

With that he hung up his heavy coat, put his hat on a hook and sank into one of the easy chairs. The DEMS gunners were not directly his responsibility, but if he needed them the
Marynal
’s captain had been told he had the authority to take them over as a unit. The eight soldiers, Watkins’ ‘brown jobs’, were of course volunteers from the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery, and the six ‘Hostilities Only’ ratings with a regular leading seaman in charge, should be useful – particularly because they had already done three trips together and still enjoyed playing ‘a wicked game’ of ludo. Clearly they were a happy crowd, and that usually meant efficient, too.

By now Watkins would be aft and reporting to his mates what he had been able to glean about the new officer who had unexpectedly entered their lives, along with Watkins himself, another operator and their radio sets. Fourteen DEMS gunners who had been going along quietly with a leading seaman in charge had probably ‘got organized’, with a good supply of duty-free cigarettes, pipe tobacco and liquor stowed away. Well, as long as they did not smoke on deck at sea after blackout time and did not go on watch ‘in liquor’, as the charge usually worded it, he was not going to interfere: the
Marynal
’s chief officer, the equivalent of a warship’s first lieutenant, would keep an eye on them. Lieutenant Yorke, as far as the
Marynal
’s captain was concerned, was ‘on special duty’ with Watkins and another operator, and although Yorke had not seen the letter from the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, the
Marynal
’s owners had been told under conditions of secrecy that the ‘special duty’ concerned the ‘insider’ attacks, and that the captain should be told as much as the owners thought necessary to avoid any difficulties. In other words, while not interfering with the Captain of the
Marynal
’s authority and responsibility, if Lieutenant Yorke asked him to steer the ship straight out of the convoy, turn three circles and then rejoin, the Admiralty backed him and the
Marynal
’s captain was expected to comply.

Yet Yorke knew that for all the Admiralty letter to the owners, conferences between the owners’ marine superintendent and captain, and discreet explanations, much of the success of this voyage might depend on the impressions that the
Marynal
’s captain and Yorke formed of each other in the first minute or two of their meeting. The job would be twice as difficult with a touchy master, although if it became too bad Yorke could always arrange with the commodore to transfer to another ship.

It was almost exactly an hour later that Watkins knocked on the door and Yorke was embarrassed to realize that he had dozed off in the armchair, uncomfortable as it was. An overnight rail journey these days made anything softer than a plank seem a sybaritic extravagance, and the distant hum of the
Marynal
’s generators was restful.

‘The Captain’s back on board, sir,’ Watkins reported. ‘Sorry I woke you but I guessed you’d want to see him. And the DEMS leading seaman is asking if you wanted to see him.’

Yorke stood up and walked over to the handbasin, then turned away when he realized he had not unpacked his washing gear. The DEMS hookie obviously wanted to have a look for himself. ‘Is he there now?’

‘Yes, sir, Leading Seaman Jenkins.’

‘Tell him to come in.’

The leading seaman was smartly dressed, freshly shaven, hair carefully combed, the anchor badge on his sleeve showing his rank and providing the Navy’s nickname, hookie, for a leading seaman. ‘Jenkins, sir. I was wondering when you wanted to inspect the DEMS gunners, and the guns, sir.’

‘Good evening, Jenkins,’ Yorke said sleepily. ‘If you think an inspection is necessary I’ll make one, but I’m nothing to do with the DEMS organization. As far as you’re concerned I’m a passenger on this trip, unless,’ he added cautiously, ‘there’s an emergency. So you carry on as before. To whom do you normally report?’

‘Well, the Chief Officer, sir. Then when we get into port usually an officer from the DEMS organization inspects us and we draw more ammunition if we’ve expended any. And–’ he gave a conspiratorial grin, obviously knowing that Yorke had just come from a destroyer, ‘occasionally they bring us a new secret weapon. We’re getting quite a collection.’

‘Secret weapons? What have you got in the way of ordinary weapons?’

‘Well, there’s the 4-inch aft, made by Vickers at Elswick in 1917, according to the plate on it. Then two 20-millimetre Oerlikon cannons. They’re in good nick, sir; well mounted and we’ve plenty of ammo. Then we got twelve machine-guns in twin mountings. They’re right bastards, sir, if you’ll excuse the expression; known in the trade as ’Orrible ’Otchkiss.’

Yorke frowned. They must be American and by now would be an old design, probably stored after the First World War, like the 4-inch. ‘We have to be thankful for what we’ve got,’ he said. ‘You’ve reported all this to – well, whoever you report to in the DEMS organization?’

‘Yus, sir,’ Jenkins said sourly, ‘but it’s the same answer: every ship that has ’em is complaining. “Try the projector”, they say; and “What about using the parachute-and-cable”. My bleedin’ life, sir, these things scare me but they won’t scare the bloody Germans!’

‘The projector? Parachute-and-cable?’ a puzzled Yorke asked.

Jenkins shook his head sadly, like a father despairing of delinquent sons. ‘New inventions they are, sir; leastways, that’s what they tell us. Some madman chained up in a cellar at the Ministry of War Transport, or one of those places, is inventing these things. The projector is a sort of – well, like a length of drainpipe poking up on a tripod. You feed in compressed air – there’s a pressure dial – drop an ordinary Mills hand grenade down the spout (you’re supposed to take the safety pin out, of course, tho’ I don’t advise it) and when the Ju 88 comes rushing past you open a valve and the compressed air hurls the grenade up in the air, the safety handle’s released, and if he’s quick enough the German pilot catches it and chucks it back…leastways, that’s how it seems to me.’

‘You haven’t tried it out, then?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ Jenkins said, adding darkly: ‘But I’ve ’eard tell of what’s ’appened in ships where they ’ave…’

‘What happened?’

‘Well sir, you can imagine a Mills grenade with the pin removed popping out of this diabolical weapon, landing about thirty feet away and just rolling down the deck like a black orange… There’s a five second fuse, and then it makes an ’orrible bang, and the welders repairing the ’ole always scorch the deck paint, and the captain gets ratty and – well, it’s best to leave ’em in the packing cases, sir. The captain of this ship,’ he added, lowering his voice so that he sounded like a black marketeer in Oxford Street offering silk stockings, ‘keeps showing an interest in it, but so far…’