For Valour (5 page)

He made to look at his watch, but instead readjusted the heavy binoculars around his neck. It was time.

Right forward by the bull ring a young signalman stood smartly at the jackstaff, ready to haul down the flag the instant the ship parted from the buoy. He could see the Wren's eyes in the driving mirror. Hear her voice.
My brother. He was killed that day.
That day . . .

He looked into the wind, and saw an Oerlikon gunner turn to watch. The quay, the lines of moored vessels, the run of the tide.

He lowered his head slightly to the bell-mouthed voicepipe.

“Bridge.”

“Wheelhouse, sir. Coxswain on the wheel.”

Martineau looked towards the bows again. The buoy had been hauled so tightly beneath the flared stem that it was barely visible. Fairfax was right there, beside the young signal-man.

The yeoman's voice now, the clatter of a lamp. “
Proceed when ready,
sir.”

Martineau nodded.
“Affirmative.”
To the voicepipe he said, “Stand by.”

The response was instant, as if the Chief had been crouching over his controls like an Olympic sprinter.

He felt the slow tremble moving through the bridge structure, heard the creak of steel, the rattle of a pencil falling from the ready-use chart table, saw an angry gesture from the bearded navigator.

Down, and through the Channel, “E-boat Alley” as the press had christened it. The sailors referred to it as Shit Street. Where you could often see the occupied coast, and they could see you. Dive-bombers, mines, and certainly E-boats. Lying in that unfamiliar bunk he had heard the M.T.B.s returning to base in Felixstowe across the estuary. Maybe they had been on a successful sweep along the enemy coast. The Glory Boys, they were called.

He rested one hand on the chair and felt it shivering. Alive.

“Let go aft.”

He heard the order repeated, the vague scrape from the quarterdeck, and saw a small cluster of houses beyond the water begin to swing as if they and not
Hakka
were moving.

“All clear aft, sir!”

She was swinging too fast. But he waited, measuring time and distance in his mind.

“Let go forrard! Slow ahead together!”

Then, “Slip!”

He saw the buoy lean away, the wire, snaking inboard, writhing into a tangle until seamen ran to control it.

He stooped over the compass and peered through the bearing prism.

Spicer's voice again. “Both engines slow ahead, sir. Wheel amidships.”

“All clear forrard, sir!”

Martineau watched the nearest buoy. “Starboard ten!” He waited, seeing a fast-moving launch tearing from bow to bow. “Midships.
Steady.
”

He made himself walk to the opposite side, and saw
Hakka
's starboard watch smartly fallen in for leaving harbour.
First part, forrard. Second part, aft,
as the tannoy directed. He wanted to lick his lips. They were like sand.
How long ago was that?

He returned to the chair, and rested his hand on its back again. As if he was sharing it.

He saluted the flotilla leader as they passed abeam, while calls shrilled in mutual respect.

Kidd said, “Coming on now, sir.”

He swung the compass repeater prism from one bearing to the next. Landguard Point, with one of the M.T.B.s returning to her base, her side splintered by gunfire. The Glory Boys did not have it all their own way.

He heard Spicer call, “Steady, sir. Course one-seven-zero.”

Then Kidd again. Angry. “Signal that bloody boat to stand off!”

Martineau raised his glasses and saw the cause of the navigator's wrath. One of the
Ganges
's cutters, the oars momentarily stilled, was drifting crabwise towards
Hakka
's port bow.

There was room enough. Some of the boys were waving, cheering, their voices lost in the whirr of fans and the murmur of machinery.

He heard himself say, “Give them a wave, eh? They'll know soon enough.”

He saw the yeoman staring at him and was glad he had said it.

Gratitude.

“Half ahead both engines.”

He saw the waves parting and rolling away from the raked stem as she gathered speed.

The yeoman glanced astern at the cutter, the oars rising and falling like wings once more.

Martineau turned away.
Letting go,
perhaps.

Fairfax was here now, his eyes everywhere.

“You can fall out the hands now, Number One. Port watch to defence stations.” He glanced abeam, but the land was already blurred. Or was it? “I never thought I'd say it, but it's good to be back at sea.”

Fairfax studied his profile. Strong, calm, and yet, just then, he sensed a flicker of something like pain.

He saw the new rating, Wishart, turn and give a small smile as the voicepipe reported, “Cox'n relieved, sir. Able Seaman Forward on the wheel. Course one-seven-zero, one-one-zero revolutions!”

Martineau climbed into the chair and half-listened to the various reports and acknowledgements around him.

She was his ship now. All else was left astern.

3 | Welcome Back

James Fairfax turned away from the voicepipes and reported, “Ship at action stations, sir.”

Martineau eased himself forward in the tall chair, glad that he had taken the time to go down to his sea cabin and put on a thick sweater and duffle coat. The North Sea in winter was no place for a rig-of-the-day mentality.

“Very well.” Fairfax had sounded terse, thinking, perhaps, that he might have been sitting in this chair, or expecting some criticism of the ship's company's performance when they had first exercised action stations on leaving Harwich. Or now, when it might be in earnest.

Fairfax had, after all, virtually trained and welded the
Hakka
's people into a working machine. And they reacted well.

It was still hard to believe how smooth leaving harbour had been. It was a busy place in every way, with many local craft on the move, and moored warships swinging to their buoys as an extra hazard. And yet it had gone without a hitch, as if the ship herself had been responding to his intermittent flow of helm and speed orders. He had never visited Harwich before in command of his own ship, and he doubted if the burly coxswain had had much experience of the place either. Following the marks and the buoys, taking a quick fix every so often with the gyro repeater to check some obvious landmark, St Nicholas Church, with its distinctive stone buttresses, and Landguard Point itself where they had made a wide sweep into open water. He had been momentarily surprised at the way she had handled, and had said as much to the navigating officer without realizing he had spoken aloud.

The bearded lieutenant had grinned. “Like a London taxi, sir!”

Later he had seen Kidd watching a small formation of merchant ships being herded into line by some fussy armed trawlers in readiness for a northbound convoy. Most R.N.R. people were like that when they saw defenceless ships in convoy. The targets. The victims. Part of themselves.

He was glad of Kidd's company. He was good at his job, and had that independent attitude which even the Royal Navy could not dampen.

They had passed the Cork light vessel, and some of her crew had appeared on deck to wave as they had ploughed past, although they must see hundreds of ships every day. It had moved him in some way, like the sight of the young woman in the apron, holding the telegram.

Theirs was a lonely job all the same; they were sitting ducks. He recalled the East Dudgeon light vessel being bombed and her boats machine-gunned by Stukas in the early days of the war. But such incidents were rare, German senior officers having soon realized that the light vessels and buoyage systems were as useful to their own Captains as to their enemy.

Martineau took his pipe from his duffle coat pocket and put it between his teeth. It had been a very expensive pipe, a Dunhill no less, and a present when he had left his first command to take over
Firebrand.
The stem was still discoloured by salt water. Like his watch, it was one of few survivors.

He thought of the other reminder. Their orders were to rendezvous with another destroyer off the Nore. The
Falkland,
which had been undergoing the indignities of a refit at Chatham after a clash with E-boats, was a typical pre-war ship of her class, with little variation in size or design. But as she had headed out from the grey mass of land, her light blinking diamond-bright in greeting, Martineau had felt it again like a cold hand. She could have been
Firebrand.

He asked, “Satisfied with the allocation of new hands, Number One?”

“I think so, sir.” Again that hesitation. “A few are pretty green.”

Or was it the unexpected change in the orders? The patrol vessel
Grebe,
which had left Harwich earlier, had suffered delays on passage to Portsmouth. Martineau recalled seeing her going astern from her moorings on the day he had arrived to assume command of
Hakka.

She was to join them for what Kidd called the diciest part of the passage, through the Dover Strait itself. Aircraft, E-boats, plus the awesome hazard of the big guns which the Germans had mounted on tracks near Cap Gris Nez. Mostly they fired blind, their high-trajectory shots intended for any fast-moving convoy, if there was such a thing, or the town of Dover itself, only twenty-two miles away.

It was already darker, with plenty of cloud about, although there would be a moon. He had heard Fairfax discussing
Grebe
with the pilot. Now listed as a corvette, although the navy quietly resented the change of classification,
Grebe
was typical of the small vessels which had been built in the Thirties and designed for escort and anti-submarine duties. Armed with only one four-inch gun and a few automatic weapons, and carrying a small company of sixty, they were considered perfect for a first command.
Grebe
's commanding officer was a lieutenant, and would be fuming over the delay.

Fairfax could have had her for himself. No fleet destroyer like
Hakka,
with her powerful armament of eight four-point-sevens in twin mounts, her torpedo tubes and sophisticated radar. But his own.

Kidd said, “North Foreland lighthouse abeam to starboard, eight miles, sir.”

Martineau looked at the radar repeater below his chair, and listened to the regular ping of the Asdic signals. Feeling her way. Like the men at their various stations around the ship, at the guns and depth charges, damage control and ammunition parties. And up here in the bridge, the nerve centre. The stammer of morse from the radio room, the occasional reports and requests from the ranks of voicepipes. All very aware of the land closing in, like the neck of a bag.

All those names from the past, Ramsgate, Hastings, Eastbourne, when the sun had always shone, or so it seemed now.

He straightened his back as a motor gunboat surged past, the throaty growl clearly audible above the whirr of fans and the noises of sea and metal. There were two M.G.B.s, for their size the most heavily armed vessels afloat, just in case there were E-boats about. The Glory Boys would be back to Harwich and the pub when this boring escort job was over.

He smiled. It was strange to think that the first destroyers, the old turtlebacks, were not much bigger. Working with the Grand Fleet or taking part in daring raids and attacks on enemy shipping, they were a nightmare in bad weather. His father had commanded one, and had often told him about the appalling conditions in what he had called “those little terrors.” So foul that their lordships used to pay him two shillings a day hardlying money. But always he had spoken with a kind of affection, as well as pride. Martineau glanced at the radar repeater again, seeing the gleaming blips of the other destroyer astern and the two M.G.B.s. What would his father have made of all this?

His mother had stayed on in the same house on the edge of the New Forest after the Commander, as he was known locally, had died there between the wars. He had never fully recovered from losing an arm in an explosion at Odessa, possibly sabotage, when he had been evacuating White Russians fleeing the Revolution. That, and his rejection by the one life he had known and loved, had finished him.

Now his mother was alone, but she remained very active with her work in the Women's Voluntary Service, her first aid classes, and looking after evacuee children who had been moved away from inner London and the bombing.

Nothing had ever been said, but she had not got along with Alison, or maybe it had been the other way around.
And I was never there. There was always the ship.

“Radar—Bridge!”

Fairfax moved like a cat. “Bridge.”

“Ship at one-nine-zero, sir!”

“That will be
Grebe,
sir.”

Somebody said, “We hope!”

Another murmured, “And about bloody time.”

Martineau glanced at the sky. Not much longer. Through the Strait and into more open water.

“Inform
Falkland—
they probably know anyway.” He raised his voice. “Make a signal to the leading M.G.B., Yeoman. Bearing and distance.
Investigate.
”

He heard the clatter of the signal lamp, and what seemed, almost immediately, the mounting roar of engines from the nearest motor gunboat.

A boatswain's mate said, “Bloody show-off!”

“No more signals until we're in company, Number One. You know the drill. The last thing we need right now is a Brock's Benefit!”

He felt his teeth grate on the empty pipe as the words came back at him; it was exactly what Mike Loring had said when they had jumped two German destroyers off the Norwegian coast. And even then he and Alison must have been lovers.

Somebody handed him a mug of tea and he realized how cold his fingers had become.

“
Grebe
can take station astern of
Falkland.
It'll be as black as a boot soon.” He raised his glasses and watched the other ship's silhouette lengthening against the murky backdrop.

A green light appeared across the starboard bow,
blink, blink, blink.
On the chart it stated that there was a bell too, but he could not hear it above the noise. A wreck buoy; there were dozens in this area, maybe hundreds. Sometimes you could even see the dead ship in the shallows when the sun was out. Perhaps one you had known.

He put the mug on a tray as someone else brushed past the chair.

Fairfax said, “I'd better go aft, sir. It's just that I thought . . .”

Martineau was watching him when suddenly he saw his eyes light up as if someone had shone a torch in his face. He did not feel himself move.
“Full ahead both engines! Starboard ten! Midships! Steady!”
Seconds. It felt an eternity. Then came the explosion, hard and solid, more like a blow than a sound, as if the ship had rammed the submerged wreck.

“Both engines full ahead, sir! Steady on one-nine-eight!” The coxswain sounded very alert.

Grebe
had hit a mine. A drifter; it could be nothing else out here.

They were reaching her now, and Martineau could hear the gunnery control rattling off instructions to
Hakka
's four mountings. But the radar remained silent. A mine. One chance in ten thousand. But all he could hear was his own voice.
It would have been us.

The bridge was suddenly swept with light as the stricken ship exploded in a ball of flame just forward of her bridge. Ammunition, fuel, it was impossible to know, but you could taste it from here.

Martineau put the pipe in his pocket and gripped it hard.

“Signal the senior gunboat to stand by and assist.” He imagined he could feel the heat as more flames and sparks burst into the air. “If the German gunners don't see that they must be blind!”

Fairfax was staring at him. “We could stand off and lower a boat, sir.”

“Is that how it happened the last time?”

He saw Fairfax recoil as if he had struck him.

To Kidd he said, “Resume course and speed. Yeoman, make to
Falkland, remain on station.
”

Fairfax was still there, staring at the other ship, now down by the bows. Martineau added quietly, “And I suggest you do the same, Number One.”

He watched Fairfax walk to the ladder, framed against the fires and drifting smoke. A ship dying, her people too.
I know what he thought. What he thinks.
He strode to the chart table and pulled the canvas cover over his head, his world confined to the small light and Kidd's neat calculations.

He wrote slowly on a signal pad and then stood up again, grateful for the cold air.

“Tell W/T to code this up and send it off.” He did not turn as another explosion sighed against the hull, and the orange glow was extinguished. They could think what they liked. “
After
we're through the Strait, right?”

Kidd nodded, and watched him climb into the chair again.

It never left you. It was always there, you expected it and insisted that you were prepared. What to say and do, how you would appear to those who depended on you.

Not fear, it was more like anger. He had heard Fairfax's suggestion and the Captain's response. And he knew Fairfax well enough by now to understand how he was feeling about it.

He thrust his head beneath the chart table screen and peered at his notes. And the Captain was right. That was almost the worst part. You could not win a war with gestures, no matter what the reason. Humanity, saving people like yourself, was well down the list.

Their orders were to reach Plymouth without delay. Then on to Liverpool, unless some brasshat had now decided on something different. It was a long time since he had been to Liverpool, but he could probably tell his yeoman every chart he would need.

The Captain had been right about the other thing, too. They had been caught napping, despite the nearness of the enemy, and men had died on this very bridge because of it. Just below bridge level, an Oerlikon gunner had been trying to fit a new magazine to his weapon, simply because his loading number had run to the opposite side to watch the rescue attempt. The careless never lived for long.