For Valour (6 page)

He looked over at the figure in the tall chair. To him the ship came first. And he was a man who knew danger and death at first hand. A hero.

It was his decision. And for that Kidd was thankful.

Directly below the destroyer's open bridge the wheelhouse seemed crowded and confined. With shutters locked into position and deadlights lowered, the motion felt more pronounced with no natural horizon to compensate for it. Small lights shone like markers on the essential machinery, the telegraphs on either side of the helm, a quartermaster standing loosely at each with the revolution counter in easy reach, voicepipes, manned by boatswain's mates and messengers, and in the forepart, like the hub of the whole place, was the wheel, a solitary bell-mouthed voicepipe, the old-type magnetic compass, and the ticking tape of the gyro repeater.

The coxswain was a big man anyway, but on his grating, his hands on the polished spokes, his eyes glinting slightly in the reflected glare, he was a giant.

To one side, partly separated by steel plating and a long blackout curtain, was a plot table. On it was the chart in use, and beneath it another small light moved in time with the ship's progress, so that by glancing through a magnified spy-hole in the deckhead the navigator or officer of the watch could check the position, and the presence of navigational hazards which might pass undetected by the radar's invisible eye and remain unseen by even the most vigilant lookout.

At the rear of the bridge structure was another, larger space, and a more sophisticated plot table as well as the Asdic hut and W/T office.

Hakka
's only midshipman, Alan Seton, stood at the plot, his eyes slitted with concentration while he readjusted the chart. This was his first active service appointment and he was very aware of it. To serve in one of the famous Tribals was not just a privilege, it offered a chance of advancement or promotion which might be denied to others less fortunate on routine convoy work.

Seton was also aware of the more obvious mistakes made by others, which could still endanger his own progress.

His promotion to sub-lieutenant was now in sight. He would leave this ship and probably go on to something entirely different. He would miss
Hakka,
but his father's words were ever-present in his mind. “You're in the service for a career, not an episode!” Seton smiled.
Never mind the war.

He glanced at the new rating by his side. Ordinary Seaman Wishart, straight out of training and looked it. Seemed pleasant enough, and did not ask too many pointless questions. They said he was a candidate for a temporary commission. He sighed. His father wouldn't approve of that, either.

Wishart was watching him as well, but was careful not to show it. It was stuffy in the sealed wheelhouse, but he was still ice-cold, and could scarcely stop himself from shivering. It had all happened so quickly. The quiet concentration of the men around him, the only movement the coxswain's big hands, this way and that, the only sound the gentle tick of the gyro repeater as he corrected the trim of the ship's head. The others lounging at the telegraphs, his new friend Forward giving him a nod, as if the midshipman was invisible.

Then the sudden clamour of engines, the wheel going over, a terrible convulsion as if they had been torpedoed, or how he imagined it would be. One messenger had shouted something about another ship blowing up, and he had seen Seton make some pencilled markings on the chart, eyes wide, no longer so self-possessed.

A boatswain's mate had said, “We're leavin' the poor sods to die! She's th'
Grebe—
I've got an oppo in her!”

Spicer's eyes had barely moved. “
Had
an oppo, more likely! Hold your noise!”

Wishart watched the plot indicator moving imperceptibly beneath the chart. The Dover Strait. Even on this chart it looked narrow. He twisted round and tried to see the gyro repeater. They had altered course again. He was terrified of being sick, of showing it in front of the others. He glanced at the midshipman, so like one of the heroes in the books he had in his room at home, even the white patches on his collar, the confidence.
How would I ever . . . ?

They all jumped as the tannoy squeaked into life. Here, and throughout the ship.

“This is the Captain speaking.”

Wishart could picture him, as he had seen him on the upper bridge, and on the Gaumont British News at a local cinema, receiving his V.C. from the King.

“We shall be entering the area for the Channel guns shortly. They may or may not open fire. We shall take avoiding action if they do.”

The speaker went dead.

Seton said casually, “Probably won't happen.”

Standing by the port engine room telegraph, Forward grimaced. How would he know? He tried to remember what he had heard about the guns. When you saw their flashes it took a full forty seconds for the shells to climb and come pitching down on you. Not like the Med, where even the bloody tanks would take a pot-shot if you moved too close inshore.

He thought of his return to the ship from leave. Compassionate leave, because of his father. It had been a long way from Newcastle to Battersea in London, with a strange, light-headed feeling after the confines and comradeship of a destroyer.

His father had worked on the railway, most of them did who lived around Clapham Junction, the huge shunting and marshalling yard, so vital now in wartime. Forward supposed there was a sort of camaraderie there, too. Long hours, taking cover every so often when the sirens wailed their warning, and never knowing if their houses would still be standing after every shift.

Coming back this last time had been bad. He saw the youngster Wishart watching the midshipman. Poor little sod, he'd soon learn. Unless he became one of them . . . The kindness had been the worst part. Tots of rum, sippers, gulpers, as much as he could carry. What would they have said? His father had died even as he had walked along that familiar street which led down to the Thames. They had never been close, and he had been sorry because of that. Angered too, that nobody had cared to tell him about it earlier.

So he had gone to see Grace. To share it, without telling anybody. He had grown up with her, and they had kept in touch even after he had joined the navy. Always good company, stunning to look at, but that was as far as it went. Or so he had believed.

He should have left after the funeral, gone straight back to the Tyne and the ship. He glanced at the coxswain by the wheel. Spicer had been good about it too, and had said that Jimmy-the-One was interested in seeing him rated leading hand again.

Grace had moved from her old place, and had left her job at the Arding and Hobbs store at the Junction. But he had found her eventually.

He clenched his fist around the telegraph lever until his fingers throbbed.

It couldn't be. Not like that. A bloody tom, a common prostitute, doing it for anybody who could pay for it.
And she had laughed at him.

The coxswain leaned over the spokes and snapped, “Here we go!”

How could he know? Something over the voicepipe he was not meant to hear? Training? The old Jack's instinct?

They did not have to wait long.

“Full ahead both engines!
Port twenty!
”

The bells clanged and hands darted out for support as the helm went over and the high, raked bows began to swing.

“Midships! Steady! Steer two-two-zero!”

Wishart seized the table and tried to prevent the parallel rulers and the freshly sharpened pencils from skidding over the edge.

It seemed an age before the shells exploded. Near or far, it was impossible to tell. It was only afterwards that they heard the actual fall of each one, like tearing canvas, ripped apart by a giant.

Someone gasped, “Missed, you bastards!”

“Starboard twenty. Ease to ten.
Steady.
”

Another explosion, a different bearing, or so it felt.

There were two more shots, and another voice ordered a reduction of speed and a fresh course to steer. The navigating officer.

Wishart straightened his back and contained the vomit in his throat. He had been under fire. He repeated it in his mind.
Under fire.

He could feel it around him. These same men. His new companions.

A boatswain's mate was saying, “Should 'ave worn yer brown trousers, Swain!”

And the massive Spicer's retort, “Too late for
you,
by the smell of it!”

Midshipman Seton said, “There, that wasn't so bad, was it?” He picked up a pencil. “I'll show you how to lay off a course and allow for variations.” But the pencil did not move, and he said in a different voice, “I'll do it later.”

Wishart nodded and rearranged the instruments, his breathing slowly returning to normal, or so he hoped.

He saw Forward give him a casual thumbs-up and wanted to say something to the midshipman which might be of help.

But he had never seen naked terror before, and he decided against it. Instead, he looked at the others.
We did it. Together.

His old instructor at
St Vincent,
who had once made him blush, would have been proud of him.

Lieutenant Eric Driscoll,
Hakka
's gunnery officer, stood straight-backed on the newly scrubbed grating in the forepart of the bridge, one hand resting lightly on the binoculars slung around his neck. He did not even deign to hold on to anything as the ship swayed steeply in the offshore swell.

Everything moving on time. Just as he liked it. They had already slowed down to drop the motor boat in the water to dash ahead of the ship with the two buoy jumpers in their massive life jackets. An unenviable job, he thought, for anyone with imagination. He had heard of cases where a commanding officer had approached a mooring buoy too fast and had ridden right over it, the two seamen bobbing up gasping for breath, if they were lucky. And of a destroyer which had mistakenly gone astern with such force that the picking-up wire had snapped and had all but decapitated the first lieutenant.

He looked at the Captain as he bent over the gyro to check a bearing again. The coast of Devon had greeted them at first light. A far cry from Tobruk or Alexandria. He gave a tight smile. Or Harwich either, for that matter.

Driscoll was twenty-four years old, and prior to the war he had been training to be a surveyor and working in the business of selling houses to dull, suburban people. All his spare time he had spent sailing in small boats, eventually becoming a weekend volunteer in the R.N.V.R. He had a good singing voice and had belonged to a local Gilbert and Sullivan society. It had been like being someone else, a different person altogether.

He had soon discovered the doubts and the suspicions of the regular navy, especially when he had chosen the gunnery branch for his proper place in the war.

But even the hardened cynics amongst the training staff at the gunnery school at Whale Island had been made to eat their words.

On this cold day, with his cap tilted over his eyes against the harsh glare from the anchorage, he not only looked the perfect naval officer, he knew he was as good as any strait-laced regular.

“Hands fall in for entering harbour, Guns.” Even the Captain's casual acceptance made Driscoll very aware of how far he had come.

He had been in
Hakka
for eighteen months, and had witnessed some of worst of the fighting along the North African coast. Dazed and exhausted soldiers, demoralized by retreats and losses, but he had seen that same army draw breath and prepare to make a last-ditch stand under their new and little-known general. In the desert Rommel had been God, and even the Eighth Army, the Desert Rats, had admired him. They had picked up some music in the W/T office, a sultry-voiced singer, and “Lili Marlene” had become a part of every man's desert war. Monty intended to change all that. And if you could believe the newspapers he was doing it, all the way back from El Alamein.

He thought of the blind bombardment in the Dover Strait, the aftermath of shocked surprise in some of the men in his division. He glanced over at the Captain again. Another fifteen minutes with the unfortunate
Grebe
and those great guns might not have been so inaccurate.

He saw the navigating officer with his familiar notebook, his forehead set in a frown as he made some last calculation. Tide, current, wind, speed and distance. Driscoll was officer of the watch, but from now on it was the Captain's head on the block.

Martineau was well aware of the lieutenant's interest. He looked over the screen and saw the forecastle party fallen in as before, with Fairfax right in the bows by the bull ring, and perhaps the same signalman with the Jack folded and ready to hoist. A lot of ships around, some moving but mostly moored or farther out at anchor, destroyers and some weather-worn corvettes from Western Approaches, supply vessels and two lordly cruisers. He lifted his glasses. Plymouth had been badly bombed, like Portsmouth, and the scars were visible from here.