Decoy (24 page)

‘Only when I’m playing with your darts. You’ve clipped the feathers so only you know the aim off.’

‘My oath, are you saying I cheat?’

‘Oh no,’ Taylor said airily, ‘just that the bird those feathers came from spent its life flying in ever decreasing circles, with the inevitable result.’

‘Watch it’ Andrews warned darkly, ‘or else I’ll let on about your set of shove-ha’pennies.’

‘
What
about his ha’pennies?’ demanded Keeler, who reckoned himself of champion class when he could get the ball of his thumb to work at a well-chalked board.

‘He’s jealous,’ Taylor said quickly. ‘Nothing wrong with my set. I can win with ha’pennies taken out of the pub till.’

‘Let’s see ’em,’ said Keeler, holding out a hand.

‘You don’t think I’ve brought ’em with me, do you Sarge?’

‘Why not, if they’re just ordinary ha’pennies? Why didn’t you bring them? Where are they?’

‘My oppo’s got ’em back in Chatham,’ Taylor said. ‘And just think a minute, Sarge. That twerp plays darts. If you weight a dart or trim one of the flight feathers, you – and only you – know it’ll curve one way. You know how much and can allow for it. You give those darts to your opponent and he’ll be throwing googlies all over the shop –’

‘Hey,’ Andrews interrupted, ‘are you still saying my darts is nobbled?’

‘No, your darts are as untouched as a virgin’s top hat. But wiv ha’pennies,’ he continued explaining to Keeler, ‘you want them to go straight where you aim ’em. There’s no advantage in curving to the left or right. Running smooth, yes: that’s why we use worn coins. Use a new coin, with a side as rough as a quartermaster’s tongue, and it’ll stop dead on the board when it should still have some slide.’

‘So what’s so special about your set – the ones you’ve left in Chatham?’

‘Nothing special: they’re just my lucky ones. If you must know, my bird gave ’em to me. She works the cash register in a big shop in Canterbury, and she kept an eye open for smooth ones. Not just smooth: that’s not enough. Smooth but still enough metal so there’s weight enough to skyve another ha’penny over the line. And smooth enough to go a bit farther than expected when the other chap tries to skyve it.’

Ned found his respect for the humble shove-ha’penny board increasing. Obviously it was not just a question of thumping away and putting chalk marks to one side. The game probably had its own jargon. But he saw that, since a coin once played stayed on the board, using one’s own coins had little or no advantage. He waited to hear if Taylor had any more gems of information to reveal about the two great pub sports, but Keeler seemed satisfied, and Andrews obviously reckoned he had wrung an apology from Taylor, though Ned found himself considering a dart as something more than the object thrown at a dartboard and landing with a thud that brought cheers, groans or curses. Yes, perhaps taking the scissors and trimming an eighth of an inch or so off one of the three flight feathers would affect the dart’s accuracy. Yet a dart was thrown with such vigour that…oh well, it was time to shake up everyone’s liver.

‘Sergeant, time for PT.’ He called forward to Yon, telling him to come aft to join them.

There were groans from most of the men in the boat. Jemmy turned to the Croupier and offered to take the tiller, an offer which was politely refused, since the Croupier hated any form of physical exercise, claiming that having to do PT at school was the reason why he was so thin.

As Keeler barked orders, the men in the boat dived into two parties by sliding along the thwarts, so that half of them were on the port side and the rest to starboard, leaving the centre-line clear except for the oars.

Ned took his stopwatch from an inside pocket, rolled off the contraceptive that kept it waterproof, and handed it to Keeler, who wound it and set it at zero.

‘Right now,’ he glanced at Ned. ‘Start with you, sir?’

Ned took off his duffel and put it on one side of the thwart with his cap. He stood on the centre of the thwart, balancing himself against the roll of the boat. He spread his arms out to help his balance.

‘Ready sir? Right, one, two three, off!’

Ned jumped from one thwart to the other, cheered on by the seated men, reached the bow and touched the stem, turned and made his way aft, thinking yet again that he must look like a startled hen making for the hedge. He reached Jemmy, reached over the Croupier and touched the top of the rudder before turning forward again. He had to make four circuits, knowing that the stopwatch was ticking away and that all the Marine commandos could beat his time hopping on one leg.

Finally he leapt on to his thwart amid cheers, and Keeler announced the time in a lugubrious voice. ‘Eleven seconds faster than yesterday, sir – but the sea’s calmer.’

‘Wait till there’s a gale blowing, I’ll beat the lot of you,’ Ned gasped. ‘Come on, Jemmy, your turn.’

‘I’ll break my bloody ankle, then I’ll be no use to anyone,’ he grumbled, but stood up and shrugged and twitched himself out of his duffel coat. ‘I should have brought my ballet shoes, but I didn’t know you girls would ask me to dance.’

A grinning Keeler held up the stopwatch. ‘Ready, sir?’

Jemmy was eight seconds slower than the previous day, and as Keeler announced it everyone groaned and several shouted: ‘Shame, sir, shame!’

Jemmy bowed ironically, and held up his hand for silence. ‘Commander, Lieutenants, Sergeant and you hairy lot swept out of the gutters by Marine sergeant majors and Whale Island GIs, you don’t recognize a thoroughbred when you see one. I’m a heavy-weather boat-runner; this semi-calm stuff is too easy!’

Jemmy sat down amid ironic boos and took the tiller from the Croupier, whose erratic progress along the boat reminded Ned of a crippled grasshopper, but who nevertheless was cheered because he had beaten Ned by three seconds.

Ned moved forward to sit beside Keeler, leaving his usual seat clear as the starting place for the rest of the men in the boat. Yon beat the Croupier by four seconds, but the officers’ times began to look absurd as the seamen started running. The nimbleness of three of the sailors made up for the generally heavier build of commandos. As the last of them finished his run, Ned held out his hand for the watch, Keeler reset it at zero and handed it over before climbing on to the thwart.

As Ned watched the burly sergeant leaping from thwart to thwart in what seemed to be a controlled forward dive, he was once more startled by the man’s agility. By the time Keeler was sitting down again it was clear he had won today’s round of what Jemmy dubbed the Western Atlantic Gold Cup.

Keeler then stood up in the boat and took everyone through the rest of the day’s exercises: lying on their backs on the thwarts with their legs in the air and ‘cycling’; press-ups on the thwarts; lifting each other by standing back to back and linking arms, each man alternately bending forward to raise the other.

At the end of it, Yon grumbled mournfully: ‘Although I know we aren’t eating any bulky food, I can’t get used to not having a regular bowel movement. I feel my injectors will get sooted up!’

‘My bowels are reconciled,’ Jemmy said. ‘It’s not shaving that’s killing me. My face itches as though it’s resting on an anthill.’

‘Submariners are supposed to be famous for their beards,’ Ned commented. ‘Especially submarine “aces”.’

‘This “ace” was trumped very early on in the beard stakes,’ Jemmy said. ‘I’m far too beautiful to hide my light under a beard. Anyway, it makes Joan giggle too much: she can’t stand being tickled.’

‘But you’ve only known her a few weeks,’ Ned said, recalling Captain Watts’ Wren secretary. ‘From after you came back from the Med.’

‘Oh no!’ the Croupier exclaimed. ‘You’ve got it the wrong way round. He’s known her for years –’

‘Two years,’ Jemmy interjected.

‘– for two years. For half of that time he was in the Med, and Joan was Wrenning up in Harwich, doing a fandango with the Coastal Forces chaps, I expect. Then when Captain Watts set up ASIU with Jemmy and me, and needed a Wren to help feather the nest, guess what?’

‘Jemmy just happened to know…’

‘Yes. That’s why we get such rotten tea. She knows Jemmy likes it weak so the rest of us must have our kidneys waterlogged just to keep him company. That weak stuff saps your sex drive,’ he warned Jemmy as an afterthought. ‘The tannin dissolves your libido.’

‘So now we can count ourselves lucky,’ Jemmy said smugly. ‘An overabundance of libido –’

He suddenly broke off, eyes staring over the port bow.

‘Ned, periscope red two-oh.’

‘Don’t look round anyone,’ Ned shouted. ‘Move slowly and casually, hand out the Stens and black bangers.’

‘See it?’ Jemmy hissed. ‘He’ll lower it as soon as he’s sure there are men in the boat. There! Five seconds from when I saw him. Don’t know how long he’d been there.’

‘Hundred yards?’

‘Hard to say. Perhaps more.’

Most of the men in the lifeboat kept in the same positions they were in when Ned gave his orders, but every third or fourth man was now crouched down between the thwarts, slashing at the lashings of oiled canvas bags that held the Sten guns, black bangers and knives.

The guns were cocked out of sight and the safety catches slid on before they were put on to the thwarts, alongside each man. The black bangers followed, each man putting a total of four in various pockets.

‘Bloody marvel we haven’t got our duffels on,’ the Croupier said. ‘Must have been telepathy, Ned, that made you time the PT!’

‘Yes, but that Ted at the periscope must have wondered what was going on if he saw us running up and down! Could he see that much detail, Jemmy?’

‘Yes, if he flips the close-range lever. Narrows the field of vision but increases the magnification. If he saw the runners he’ll be entering it in the log. No sense of humour, these Teds!’

Ned felt a hand offering him black bangers, and Sergeant Keeler’s voice from below the thwart muttered: ‘Hot cross bun day, sir. Four be enough? Right?’ There was the slight grating of metal. ‘Sten’s beside you on the right. Ready for three spare magazines? One, two, three. Now the knife. That’s the lot, sir.’

Keeping his eyes on the patch of sea to port, and cursing that he had not spotted any feather of spray which would have indicated the direction the submarine was travelling, Ned bent his knees sideways to let Keeler pass to give weapons to Jemmy and the Croupier.

He began to see dozens of periscopes and closed his eyes for a few moments. Was this really it? Finally the moment when Mr Churchill’s ‘diabolical cunning’ was needed? Hydra, Triton, Watts, Clare, BP, black bangers, the pain in his left hand, Enigma…thoughts, pictures forming memories, raced through his mind as though a cine projector was running wild.

Jemmy said anxiously: ‘You did see it, didn’t you Ned?’

For a moment the unreality left Ned unsure. Sitting in a lifeboat was unreal. The thought of pockets full of black bangers was unreal. The Croupier had been rattling on about libido, which was an unreal sort of conversation to be going on in a lifeboat in the middle of the western Atlantic. The whole bloody thing was unreal – but so had been the dive-bombing attacks on the
Aztec
and the clatter of her guns hour after hour, until finally the
Aztec
had wallowed to a stop, and sunk.

‘Yes, I saw it for a moment.’

‘Good, I was afraid I’d imagined it.’

‘I can see dozens now,’ Ned admitted.

‘That’s normal. Shut your eyes tight. They’ll be gone when you open ’em again.’

Then Ned saw it. ‘Same place, couple of hundred yards,’ he hissed.

‘Got it. Ah, see the flash of the lens? He’s having a look round for aircraft. Just like they teach ’em at the Baltic training schools.’

‘I
didn’t
,’ the Croupier said emphatically. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just a floating piece of dunnage?’

Dunnage in the form of pieces of timber used to prevent cargo shifting in merchant ships was often left floating after a torpedoing. The wood went grey and became waterlogged. More dunnage had been fired at or bombed, Ned thought ironically, than real U-boats. Rarely did a baulk of six by four float vertically, yet the more he thought about that fleeting glimpse, the less sure he was.

Yon had no doubts and Jemmy was certain: ‘That was a periscope. I saw the reflection on the prism. Keep your eyes open; it’ll be the only time you can look at a Ted periscope without the risk of being torpedoed.’

‘No,’ the Croupier said bitterly, ‘the bastards will probably just ram us, like so many of them have already. Not us, but all the other lifeboats.’

The four men sat silently watching while pretending to be talking normally, gesticulating from time to time. The rest of the men in the boat resumed their conversations with phlegmatic acceptance.

‘Five minutes exactly, I make it,’ Jemmy said. ‘He’ll be–’

‘Abeam to port, two hundred yards,’ Ned said quickly, ‘Not so high this time.’

Jemmy, counting the seconds, was just saying: ‘…nineteen… and twenty…’ when the periscope disappeared again.

‘Tell us,’ Ned told Jemmy. ‘What’s he doing and what’s he going to do?’

‘Christ, Ned, have a heart. I’ll nip down and ask him! But I’d guess the first time we saw him he’d just put up his periscope for a routine look round and spotted us. Very sensibly he lowered it and sent his lads to action stations. Then he pops up his looking glass for another precautionary look to make sure it’s not a trap. He’ll take one more look and then deal with us, one way or another.’

‘That’s what you’d do?’ Ned asked.

‘No bloody fear. We don’t go in for ramming lifeboats or dropping grenades into ’em, and surfacing just out of curiosity would have been suicide in the Med because the Luftwaffe is so busy. Still, Coastal Command planes and the Americans aren’t exactly deafening us out here.’

Ned raised his voice so all the men could hear. ‘Well, lads, the chap we’ve been waiting for is having a look at us. The two men nearest the lashings on the oars should cast them off without making a meal of it. Keep the Stens out of sight. Up to now it’s all happening as we expected. One last thing – put your earplugs in as late as you can: I want you to hear orders right up to the last moment. Oh yes, and take the plugs out when it’s all over!’