Convoy (23 page)

‘What about the parachute-and-cable thing? How does that work?’

‘The PAC? Well, sir, no one knows really. We’ve got four fitted, two each side of the monkey island and fired by wires coming through tubes to the wheelhouse with toggles on the end. I could show you the manual if you’re interested,’ he added without enthusiasm.

‘Just give me a rough idea.’

‘Well, sir, same as before: a Ju 88 galloping down out of the clouds and you pull the toggle and a rocket goes rushing up from the monkey island trailing an ’undred feet or so of thin flexible wire with a small canister on the end. Once it reaches a certain height the rocket bursts and out pops a parachute. The canister at the other end goes pop, too, and out comes another parachute. Now you have – so says the manual – one ’undred feet of very strong wire suspended ’orizontuallily between the two parachutes. If the German pilot is
very
clever, he can hit it all and wrap his plane up in silk and wire and float down into the sea on the parachutes, surrender to one of the escort, and spend the rest of the war in England as a POW eating dried egg and drinking weak tea and listenin’ to Vera Lynn singin’
We’ll meet again
… Sorry if I sound a bit ’pertinent, sir, but all these toys are just a waste o’ materials and factory time. But…’ his voice dropped even lower, so that he sounded like an over-enthusiastic conspirator in a touring Shakespearean company, ‘I think this ship’s captain wants to play with ’em, which might get some of us killed, so if…’

‘You don’t fancy doing a high wire act between two parachutes, eh?’

‘Well, sir,’ Jenkins said with a grin, ‘I wouldn’t want to take advantage of the fack I’m senior rating if anyone else wants to try it first.’

‘I hope the 4-inch is all right,’ Yorke said.

‘When it was last inspected in Freetown they told us we should use it only in an emergency, sir, except for firing a couple of practice rounds every six months…’

‘Apart from the Oerlikons, what have we got that works without the need for prayer?’

Jenkins’ face lit up. ‘A couple of stripped Lewis guns, sir. They’re on single mountings on each side of the poop. They’re in good nick. Best guns ever designed, I reckon. Oh yus, sir,’ he added contemptuously, ‘the brown jobs have got rifles and bayonets in case the Germans drop paratroopers on us,
and
topees what look like coppers’ ’ats.’

Watkins nodded his head in confirmation, and Yorke said: ‘If the worst comes to the worst, we can always frighten the Germans by putting on the topees back to front. Still, I know the sort you mean; very reminiscent of a policeman’s helmet for some people.’

‘Me for one,’ Watkins said with a grin. ‘Still, I never did time.’

The mention of the word reminded Yorke of the reason for Watkins’ visit. ‘Right, you two, carry on; I must call on the captain.’

Captain Edward Hobson was a Yorkshireman, born in Bingley and very proud of it. He was within a few days of his fiftieth birthday, though most people would guess at forty because his face was just plump enough to keep away wrinkles and his wavy black hair had only a few random grey strands. He was a quiet man without being dour, and had the same contempt for the engineers that they had for the
Marynal
’s deck officers. It was a tradition going back to the earliest days of steam and as much a part of the Merchant Navy as the fact that most ships’ engineers came from Newcastle. With his homely North-country accent and smart appearance, Hobson would have commanded one of the company’s smaller passenger ships in peacetime: he had enough of the social graces and the physical presence to reassure old ladies in a storm and on quiet days have them giggling over an endless stock of mildly funny stories.

He glanced up as Yorke came into the cabin, his eyes catching the single medal ribbon. He stood up and held out his hand: ‘You’ll be the Mr Yorke they’ve been telling me about.’

It took Yorke only a couple of minutes to realize that the directors of the Western Ocean Shipping Company had made a good choice of captain in their effort to help the Royal Navy. Yorke sat down, shaking his head at Hobson’s offer of a drink and a cigar.

‘You’re regular, then,’ Hobson commented.

Yorke nodded. ‘Like you, though not as much sea time!’

‘That’s a DSO, isn’t it? I’m not up on ribbons, but they don’t give ’em away. What did you get it for, eh?’ he asked with disconcerting directness.

‘I was left in command of a destroyer.’

‘And then?’

Yorke realized that Hobson’s questioning was not idle curiosity but simply part of weighing up the newcomer; he wanted to know more about the young man – half his age – who might want him to risk the safety of the
Marynal
. With the question not prompted by curiosity, the answer could hardly be boasting.

‘Air attacks for hours. We didn’t dodge enough bombs, and we were leaking so badly the sheer weight of water was slowing us down. Finally we sank.’

‘A lot of men lost?’

‘Most of them.’

‘That’s where you got your hand messed up?’

Yorke nodded. Hobson’s blue eyes did not miss much.

‘That DSO – was it for something special, or the whole operation?’

Yorke shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know how vague citations are… I think it was for the time after the captain was killed and I was left in command.’

Hobson had obviously made up his mind about the young naval officer sitting opposite him. There was a silence for a minute or two as Yorke looked round the cabin – this was obviously the captain’s day cabin, large enough to hold twenty gossiping people should he care to have a party, with plenty of light from six portholes and two square windows facing aft, a floral pattern cloth sewn on to the inside of the heavy blackout curtains.

No admiral in his flagship, even a battleship, had so much room and light. Nor were there the yards of steam pipes, electrical conduits and the like masquerading as thick macaroni that always ran along at least two of every four bulkheads in a warship cabin. Hobson’s day cabin was as tastefully furnished as a country-house sitting room; instead of the derricks of ships astern, one might have expected to see trees through the two windows. There was even a fake fireplace, complete with a mantelpiece around the edge of which ran low fiddles to prevent things sliding off when the ship rolled. In one corner Yorke was intrigued by a small deal table – a work bench, in fact – over which a blanket had been thrown, obscuring several bulky items. Wires ran from the table to an electric socket in the bulkhead.

Hobson saw him looking and said, ‘That’s my hobby corner. Come and see.’ He pulled back the blanket and revealed a small jeweller’s lathe, tray of small tools, vice on a turntable, drill press removed from its stand and, clamped down in the middle of one side of the table, a beautifully made brass model of a locomotive, the famous
Flying Scot
, perhaps a foot long. Most of the wheels had been fitted; four more, small and presumably for the bogie in front, were in another tray.

‘I should have been a train driver,’ Hobson said wryly, ‘but making a model like this is a good way of passing the time on some of these convoys. Six weeks at sea…a man can brood, or turn to drink. I prefer modelling.’ He replaced the blanket carefully and motioned Yorke to sit down again.

‘A merchant ship isn’t like a warship – that sounds obvious, I know. What I mean is, the main job is to keep your position in the convoy. I like to be on the bridge just before dawn, but I’ve no need to be there again until I take my noon sight. I do that only for practice; the second mate’s the navigator, of course, and I like a couple of the cadets to take sights and work them out. And I’m up there at dusk too, just in case. So apart from being there for a turn if we’re zigzagging, I’m the spare man at the wedding; the chap who gets the blame if anything happens.

‘It’s a good job – I work for a fine firm, have comfortable quarters, and can look forward to a good pension. The job’s a sight more interesting in peacetime, of course; now the worst crisis – apart from being bombed or torpedoed – is to have the chief steward reporting a week out that half the crew have the clap, or everyone’s got crabs. Or the potatoes are going rotten – last trip we had to buy yams in Freetown, and that’s where I discovered the lads don’t like sweet potatoes. Anyway, I’m prattlin’ on. What do you want me to do?’

‘Well, I hope you’ll be able to forget I’m on board: I’ll try and keep out of your way. Once or twice a day one of my signalmen might need to send a message by lamp to the commodore or the senior officer of the escort, but he can use the monkey island to keep off the bridge.’

Hobson held up his hand. ‘Use the bridge as much as you need. Don’t forget that merchant ships aren’t like warships. There’ll be a quartermaster in the wheelhouse, a mate on the port side of the bridge and a cadet on the starboard, and that’s it. In foggy weather there’ll be a lookout up in the bow, and at action stations the DEMS gunners are all over the place. So the mate on watch and the cadet will be glad to see you. Four hours is a long watch, and we don’t use dog watches; a straight four on and eight off…and too bad if there’s a five-hour action stations during your eight off. The third mate has the eight to twelve, the second the twelve to four, and the chief officer – the Mate – the four to eight.’

‘The wireless operators…?’ Yorke prompted.

‘Three, all employed by the Marconi Company, as I expect you know. Chief, second and third. Only the chief has any real sea time; the other two are pretty new. The third sparks was a monk this time last year. He thought he ought to do his bit but didn’t want to kill anyone, so he joined the Marconi Company. Plucky sort of thing to do – the lads tease him a bit.’

‘My two signalmen…’

‘Oh, they’re already fixed up. They arrived a couple of days ago and worked with the chief sparks to fit their sets. They’re berthed aft with the DEMS gunners, as you probably know. I gave ’em the opportunity of berthing near the wireless cabin, but they preferred to be aft. Probably like a game of uckers with the other lads.’

‘What radio watches do your operators normally stand, captain?’

‘Just listening watches. They could just as well be doing embroidery because every ship keeps a watch on the call and distress frequency and there’s usually nothing to listen to, but the convoy instructions say listen, so we listen. Four on and eight off, just reading thrillers in the warm…’

‘My two lads will have to keep a continuous listening watch,’ Yorke said, ‘so–’

‘What, you mean two on and two off, or four on and four off? Bit hard on them, isn’t it?’

‘We didn’t think you’d welcome too many extra men,’ Yorke said.

‘Well, unless it’s all very secret, I know what I’d do: put a mattress down in the radio room for one of your lads, and have a word with the chief sparks: there’s no reason why my chaps can’t listen to two receivers at once, and if your set starts playing music or whatever it is, he can rouse your man.’

‘You think the chief will–’

‘He’ll be only too glad; those poor buggers get bored stiff just listening to static. Why, their big day is when the BAMS receiver breaks down!’

‘BAMS? What’s that?’

‘Oh, that’s our own Merchant Navy radio station. “Broadcasts to Allied Merchant Ships”, a fixed frequency thing – apparently the Germans can detect someone twiddling a receiver through the frequencies. Anyway, these BAMS sets just receive the one station. The programmes aren’t much. The news,
Monday Night at Eight
, and Vera Lynn on
Forces Favourites
is about all I ever hear. That Tommy Handley, I like him.’

‘The convoy conference tomorrow,’ Yorke said. ‘I’ll be coming with you. Do you wear uniform?’

‘Not bloody likely! Leastways, one or two captains do, and some of the foreigners, but most of us wear civvies. Why?’

‘I should have thought of that, I don’t want to draw attention to myself, but…’

Hobson looked him up and down. ‘I’ve got just the thing for you. A lightweight, single-breasted I had run up in Rosario on this last trip: never worn it, except for a couple of fittings. Want to borrow it? And a mac. Not very formal, these convoy conferences – except for your chaps.’

The room was high-ceilinged like an old-fashioned church hall, with rows of cheap chairs (whose single coat of varnish was wearing off) facing a small table which had three more chairs behind it, as though waiting for the vicar and his wife and the guest speaker.

A naval rating at the main door carefully pointed out the chairs to the motley crowd of men now beginning to come into the room. They could have been prosperous farmers attending a branch meeting of the local National Farmers’ Union, Yorke realized: most had a suntan, the resulting colour depending on the type of skin. One auburn-haired master, plump and blue-eyed, had a face so red that he might have been verging on apoplexy, and the man he was talking to was a leathery brown, as though he had spent a lifetime following the plough, tanned by sun and wind. Few of them, with the exception of Hobson and one or two others, looked comfortable in civilian clothes. Obviously they were so used to the shape and relative tightness of uniform that the easy fit of civilian clothes made them seem like men wearing suits a size too large. All, he noticed, carried small attaché cases or leather dispatch cases and several had bowler hats. All looked shrewd men.

The Swedish captain was in every way an exception. He was one of the youngest of the masters; his blond hair, brilliantined and combed back flat on his head without a parting, looked like a skull cap made of omelette; his face just missed being thin and had high cheekbones; his nose seemed fleshless but too large to match the rest, and his ears stuck out. But his tailor was a craftsman and the material of his suit could not be bought in wartime Britain, despite the black marketeers: it was a loosely-woven blue, almost like linen, which kept its shape perfectly. The overcoat over his arm was a charcoal grey; the hat he carried in the other hand was a light tan with a wider brim than was fashionable in England. The briefcase under his arm had the rich mahogany brown of good leather; a young barrister starting out for his first day in chambers would have been glad if his wealthy Aunt Jessica had given it to him as a present. Despite the blue suit, Yorke noticed, the man’s shoes were brown.