Killing Ground (30 page)

Lieutenant Finlay was OOW, standing with his booted feet apart, his cap set at a perfect angle. Treherne smiled to himself. The parade ground. Sub-Lieutenant Rooke's buttocks were protruding from the chart table, and the yeoman was giving instruction to a pair of young signalmen. Like the captain, Treherne half-expected to see the taciturn Tucker in his place.

He crossed to the gyro-repeater as Finlay said, “Steady on two-nine-zero, Number One.” He was still very hang-dog after the interview he had had with the captain.

Treherne nodded. Bizley would be relieving the watch. It was interesting to see the way he and Finlay managed to perform their duties correctly without seeming to notice one another.

Treherne polished his binoculars with a scrap of tissue. “Are you getting spliced soon, or waiting until after the war, Guns?”

Finlay took it as a fish will snap at bait. “It'll be soon, Number One, I hope. The war might last forever.”

Treherne grinned. “Or you might go for a Burton beforehand!”

Finlay grimaced. “That's a mite cheerless!” He darted a quick glance at the other watchkeepers. “The Old Man …”

“What about him?” Treherne knew exactly what was coming.

“Has he said any more about me leaving the ship?”

Treherne regarded him calmly. “Not to me.”

“God, he gave me such a bollocking, Number One. After that party in
Blackwall
I
did
apologise. I don't know if it made any difference.”

Treherne said in a fierce whisper, “What did you expect, you idiot, a fucking medal?”

“I don't see there's any cause to …”

“Oh, don't you. Well, even a thick-headed gunnery type should be able to remember what this ship was once like. Nobody could stand a watch without bleating either to the Old Man or Marrack. He carried the lot of us—you seem to have a very convenient memory! Most of the new gun crews couldn't hit a bloody cliff at forty paces! Well that's over now. The skipper's got enough
work on his plate, and the pace isn't getting any slower. You had it in for Bizley when he came aboard—now, with an extra bit of gold, he's trying to even the score. I'll be frank with you, Neil—I don't like him either, never have. But if all the people I've disliked since I went to sea as an apprentice were put in Trafalgar Square, there'd be no damn room for the pigeons!”

“Point taken, Number One. I suppose we've all been a bit on edge.”

The navigating officer ducked out of the screened chart table. “We should rendezvous with the group the day after tomorrow, sir.”

His chin was as blue as ever, Treherne thought. He should cover it with a beard.

The day after tomorrow they would find Vickers, unless new orders had sent him off somewhere. Ready for another crack at any submarines that were making for some invisible point on this ocean, to meet and await the next convoy. The Jerries might get more than they bargained for this time. The new escort carrier he had seen in Liverpool had already sailed even before the group, and there was said to be another one already on station. He thought of Joyce in her little flat in Birkenhead, the passion and pleasure they had shared until they could offer and receive no more. He had given her a ring as he had promised. She hadn't had an easy life, especially with her lout of a husband, but it had been the first time he had seen her really cry.

When he had tried to calm her she had sobbed, “You care, Gordon! You
really do care!”
She had been stark naked on the bed at the time and he had gently smacked her buttocks and replied, “Just want to make an honest woman of you!”

Now as he stared out at the dark-sided troughs of the Atlantic he was glad he had done it. Legally it meant nothing. But to her, and anyone else who tried to interfere, it meant everything in the world.

A boatswain's mate in a watch-coat turned aside from a voice-pipe and looked at him. “W/T office, sir.”

Treherne bent over the voicepipe. “First lieutenant?”

“Ship in distress, sir. Signal from Admiralty.”

Treherne said, “Send it up.” To Finlay he added, “Ship in distress? That's not exactly rare around here, surely?”

Finlay grinned. Treherne's rough attitude to discipline and most things naval had driven some of his anxieties away. For the moment.

As he spoke on the telephone Treherne could picture the captain in his “hutch,” as he called it. Thinking of his girl, probably. Good luck to them both, whoever she was. He was pretty certain he knew her now. At the noisy party aboard
Blackwall
before the rest of the group had departed, he had seen a young third officer, one of her wrists in a bandage, who had been in the building next to where the other girls had been killed and injured.

He had seen Howard's face as he had turned to listen to something she had said about another Wren's dead husband, an RAF pilot who had gone down in a Russian convoy. It didn't need detective work to calculate the rest.

The third officer had probably had too much to drink. At one point she had elaborated to say, “They were
madly
in love of course—”

Howard had said to him, “I have to get back to the ship, Number One.” He had gone without another word.

It had been just after that when Finlay had tried to apologise to him for his own behaviour in the wardroom. Treherne shook his head. Poor old Guns. It must have been like playing hopscotch in a minefield.

“Captain?”

“Number One here, sir. Signal from Admiralty. A ship in distress somewhere.” He was relieved to hear a wry chuckle. The magic was still working.

“I'll come up. What's it like?”

“Nor'easterly, but not too bad.” He replaced the receiver and nodded with satisfaction. He could not remember him ever asking that before. He had always known, been down there
listening, fretting. Not today, anyway. Howard appeared in a new, clean duffle coat. Probably one of Joyce's, Treherne thought.

The boatswain's mate pulled the little brass tube up the pipe from the W/T office and handed the enclosed signal to him.

Howard glanced at the blue-chinned navigator. “Work this out on the chart, Pilot. It's only an approximate position, I expect, but in this weather it might not make it too difficult.” He took Treherne to one side. “The ship was abandoned from the last eastbound convoy. After the other ships had left her astern a U-Boat surfaced and opened fire on the lifeboats.”

“Christ, what sort of people are they?”

Howard waited. He knew that Treherne was seeing himself out there, helpless in a lifeboat. A civilian at war. “It seems that one of the boats played dead and waited for the sub to make off after the convoy. Then the poor fellows boarded their old ship and managed to get off this signal. There's been nothing further.”

Treherne clenched his fists. “You should
never
leave your ship, not 'til there's no hope for her.”

Howard said quietly, “I'm not so certain of that. This one is an ammunition ship, loaded to the gills with every sort of explosive you can think of. She may have gone down, in which case …” He walked to the chart and studied it for a full minute. “Good work, Pilot, that was quick.”

Treherne saw a spark of pleasure in the navigator's eyes. A pretty rare sight, he thought. But the skipper always found time, no matter how steamed-up he might be.

“Look.” Howard probed the chart with some dividers. “The next big convoy is expected to pass through that very area at night. No stars, remember?” He thought of that other time, her hand on his arm as she had whispered to him, “A bomber's moon.”

Treherne rubbed his chin. “There'll be bother enough for the convoy without having a giant bomb passing amongst them.”

“We shall get there first. Tell the Chief he can forget fuel economy for a bit. I want eighteen knots. That should do it. It
will give the Gunner (T) something to do if we have to torpedo the wreck.”

Treherne strode to the other telephone, his mind clinging to those few men who had gone back to their ship despite the danger, rather than die like beasts under the U-Boat's machine-guns.

“Asdic–Bridge?”

Howard lowered his mouth. “Captain speaking. Is that

Whitelaw?”

“Aye, sir.”

Howard pictured his face, younger than he looked because he had gone almost bald very early. Before 1940 he had been an ice-cream salesman at Worthing in the summers, and in the Odeon cinema for the winters. Now he was in charge of one of
Gladiator's
most vital weapons.

“Well, have I got to guess?” If it was an echo it was both early and unexpected.

“The set's on the blink, sir.” He sounded despairing, angry. “It's worse than it was before they fixed it in dock!”

Howard covered the voicepipe with his hand. “Go and see, Number One. We're losing the Asdic.”

Treherne and the others stared at him. Then Finlay said flatly, “We'll have to make a signal, give our ETA for returning to Liverpool.”

Howard thought of the old Gunner (T), the unloved Arthur Pym, when he had once said so scathingly,
In my day we didn't 'ave no bloody Asdic nor radar neither.

Marrack had answered with his usual cool brevity, “Unfortunately, bows and arrows have now been banned by the Geneva Convention.”

Surprisingly, that one tiny incident among so many helped to steady him, when seconds earlier he had been stunned into disbelief.

The man in the bowler hat had said, “The union will have a moan about it.” More than a moan apparently.

The new midshipman, Ross, had appeared on the bridge and
was waiting to see if Rooke needed any new charts. He must have heard everything, and was staring out at the great, endless expanse of ocean as if he could see his own fate.

Howard watched him. In war, casualties came in all disguises.

He said, “We're not going back. It should be obvious why.”

It seemed an eternity before Treherne returned to the upper bridge; in fact it was seven minutes.

He said, “I've had a good look, and the Chief sent a couple of tiffies to give a hand.” He shook his head. “It's gone completely now. Not even a white walking stick.” Nobody laughed, and the midshipman was gripping a stanchion as if the ship was already heeling over.

Howard heard her voice again.
I'm all right now. Really!
Was anyone?

“Very well.” He glanced at his watch. “Eighteen knots, remember? Pilot, course to steer,
chop-chop!”
He looked at Treherne's grim features. “Go round the ship again. Damage control especially. Take the Buffer and the Gunner (T)—he's a good seaman, I'm told.”

Treherne nodded. Boats, bulkheads, watertight doors, the lot. He knew the drill.

Howard glanced away. “Have W/T code up a signal and pass them our estimated position every half-hour. So if the balloon goes up, we shall at least be able to tell the boss where we are.”

Treherne lowered his voice. “If anything happens to me …” He shook his head stubbornly. “No, let me finish, sir. There's somebody in Birkenhead. I've left a package for her at the base. But if you make it and I don't, I'd take it as a real favour …” He did not go on.

Howard thought of the woman's voice when he had telephoned about Marrack. He was moved. Was that still possible, after all they had seen and done?

He said, “You can do the same for me, except she'll likely know before anybody.” He shook himself. “We'll get through.”

Treherne hesitated. “I think you're doing the right thing
anyway, if that matters, sir.”

Howard stared after his broad departing form and said, partly to himself, “You'll never know how much.”

Then he turned to look for the midshipman. “Now let's have a look at the chart, shall we? I think we could manage a clean one. Help Pilot as much as you can, eh?”

He saw Rooke about to protest that he could manage on his own and added, “It's good experience.”

Rooke nodded, understanding. “Come on, Toby lad. Lesson one, sharpen all the pencils!”

A moment later, her bow-wave rising and tearing apart like a huge moustache, HM Destroyer
Gladiator
altered course and increased speed towards Rooke's little cross on the clean, new chart.

Howard could almost hear the music: “D'you Ken John Peel?”

He saw a small figure, covered in an oilskin with a woolly hat pulled down over his ears, dragging a large fanny of tea through the bridge gate. He thought of the silent house in Mayfair.
He was just a young boy.
So were we all. Once. When he looked again the figure had gone. Perhaps it was a ghost after all.

When Treherne returned, the watch had changed and Bizley stood on the opposite side of the bridge to Howard's chair.

Howard said, “We will stand-to at dusk. The hands will have to be fed at action stations. Speak to the PO chef about it.”

Treherne glanced at Bizley's profile. Still smouldering. At least Finlay had got over it. A bottle was a bottle. You took it and let it ride. Grudges were unwanted passengers in any warship.

He thought of what Howard had just said. It did not need spelling out. Howard wanted everyone possible on deck, with all watertight doors shut and secured in case the worst happened. They still had the radar but he thought of that last time, when a U-Boat had been stalking
them
instead of the other way round.

On his way to the galley Treherne met the chief boatswain's mate, Knocker White, who was supervising the laying-out of an extra scrambling net near the midships pom-pom mounting.

“We're not goin' back in then, sir?”

“Did you think we would, Buffer?”

The little petty officer showed his uneven teeth. “Nah, not really, sir.” He stared reflectively abeam. “When I was an AB in the old
Revenge,
a right pusser ship
she
was, we 'ad a Jimmy-th'-One in 'er 'oo could make yer 'air curl with 'is language—but a real toff of course, in them days.”