Landfall (22 page)

Behind the counter the barmaid stood motionless, staring at them. It was the clothes that came up in the fuel oil that had decided the Court of Enquiry upon
Caranx;
Jerry had told her so. But for that they would have given weight to what he said about there being no identification marks. The officer had said that they had only recently come to realise the floating clothes to be a German trick. What if it had been going on some
time? What if the submarine that Jerry had sunk had really been a German one, as he had thought?

She must see Jerry and tell him.

The officers went to their meal, and she went on with her work, absently, in a dream. She served one gin and French to a subaltern who had asked for three beers, and she served two bottles of Guinness instead of two small whiskies to a couple of marines. Then she broke a sherry glass.

Miriam said: “That’s the third glass gone this evening. Mr. Harries, he won’t half be cross.”

“Sorry,” said Mona. “I was thinking of something else.”

There was more in it than just the clothes. There were other funny things that she had heard. What was it she had heard about the slick, with oil all coming up? Porky something. Porky … Porky … Porky Thomas. That was the name. Porky Thomas had sailed through the slick with the oil coming up, but she couldn’t remember that he had said anything about clothes. But Porky Thomas had said it was just off Departure Point, and it wasn’t off Departure Point at all. She had asked Jerry that, and he had said it was much more towards the Island.

But someone else had said something about a submarine that had been sunk off Departure Point, surely? In a newspaper—a newspaper cutting about contraceptives. The one that that young officer had had—Jimmie, Joe … James—Mouldy James. That said a submarine had been sunk just off Departure Point, and on the same day, too. But Jerry was quite sure it hadn’t been anywhere near Departure Point. It seemed all nonsense, any way you looked at it.

Somebody asked for two beers and a gin and Italian. She served them correctly, and began to rinse some glasses. That newspaper cutting must have been all
wrong. After all, it was only an American paper, and they weren’t half so good as English papers. Everybody knew that. It was obviously wrong, because it was wrong in another place as well. It said that
Caranx
broke into two bits when she was sunk, so that the bow and stern came up separately, both at the same time. That was all wrong in the paper; Jerry had told her just what happened.
Caranx
had sunk by going right up on one end, and going down straight, like that. The two ends never showed at the same time.

You couldn’t believe anything you saw in foreign papers, anyway. What with the different way of sinking and the different place, it might have been a different submarine, the way they wrote about it.

It might have been a different submarine.

She stook stock-still for a moment. That was possibly the truth of it. They were sinking them the whole time. But then Porky Thomas should have known, and all the officers that were talking about Porky Thomas, that same evening. Or was it the next evening? She had forgotten. Funny they hadn’t said about another submarine that had been sunk, the day that Jerry had sunk
Caranx
. And Mouldy James, he hadn’t seemed to know about it, either.

But that was quite silly. If nobody had known about a second submarine being sunk that day, who was it sunk it? Jerry hadn’t sunk two. Whoever sunk the second one must have known.

Well then, there couldn’t have been a second one at all. But then, that seemed to be all wrong, too.

A rush of orders came upon her then, and drove the matter from her mind. It was something terribly important that she must talk over with Jerry when she met him; she felt sure he would be able to resolve the puzzle for her, and explain what it all meant. In the meantime there was a crowd of thirsty officers to serve, and she must get on with her job.

She left the “Royal Clarence” at about a quarter-past ten and went home. Her father and her mother were still up when she got home, sitting in the little kitchen, one each side of the fire.

Her mother said: “We just had a cup of tea, dearie. Make yourself a cup; it’s still hot in the pot.”

She shook her head. “I don’t mind a cup of cocoa.” But there was no cocoa, and she prepared to go upstairs to bed. She paused at the foot of the stairs. “Dad,” she said. “You couldn’t sink a submarine without you knew it, could you?”

He took off his spectacles and stared at her. “Who couldn’t sink a submarine?”

“I mean, if a submarine got sunk, somebody would know who done it?”

“Should do, girl. Who’s been talking to you?”

She said: “Nobody special. It’s just what I heard in the bar. There was one sunk, and no one seems to know who sunk it.”

“Sunk in the Channel? In these parts?”

“Off Departure Point, they were saying.”

“Off Departure Point.” He ruminated for a while over this conundrum. “The only thing would be, if it had been sunk by another German submarine, by mistake, like. Nobody would know then who done it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think that makes sense. It doesn’t matter. I was only wondering, because they was all talking about it.”

He said: “That’s the only way I knows as it could happen without anybody knowing.”

She went up to her room and got into bed, the problem still in the background of her mind. Jerry would put it right for her. It was five more days before she met him, unless the weather were to turn bad suddenly. But there was not much chance of that; in fact, it was unusually fine for the time of year.

Still, five days would soon go.

She slept.

Psychiatrists say that when you go to sleep with something on your mind, some difficult problem, your subconscious mind continues working at it all night through. Mona woke up at about three in the morning and sat bolt upright in bed.

It wasn’t
Caranx
that Jerry had sunk. It was a German, a German with British sailors’ clothes in her torpedo-tubes.
Caranx
had been the other one, sunk off Departure Point.

The pieces of the puzzle fitted then, each one of them in its own place. Jerry had been absolutely right when he had said he had seen no identification marks upon the hydrovanes. Of course he hadn’t; it was a German submarine, as he had thought. It was steering the same course as
Caranx
from Departure Point, perhaps to try and make its way into Portsmouth. But it was late; it couldn’t have known
Caranx’s
time schedule.

In the little, shabby bedroom over the furniture shop the truth of a naval tragedy came to the light. The German had sunk
Caranx
off Departure Point. The Dutch skipper in the newspaper had said the British sunk a German submarine, but that was wrong. He had seen
Caranx
sunk, perhaps torpedoed by the German, as she moved upon the surface.

That was why Porky Thomas said he saw a slick, with oil coming up, just off Departure Point. He
had
seen such a slick; he had steamed through the oil that came from the torn, shattered hull of a British submarine, and he had never dreamed of it.

This was the truth, naked and undeniable. The submarine that Jerry sunk had itself torpedoed
Caranx
an hour previously.

She lay reclining on her pillows for half an hour, turning this theory over in her mind. It must be true;
there was no other way of it. And with that conviction, there came to her deep happiness. She could help Jerry, really help him in his work, in his career. He had not said much to her of the setback he had suffered, after that first evening. Then he had said that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay on in the Air Force after the war. She knew what that would mean to him; the end of his career. No more doing the work that he had chosen, that he was good at.

But that was over now. He hadn’t sunk
Caranx
, and she’d prove it. Mouldy James and Porky Thomas and everyone should be brought in to help.

She lay back quietly, desperately happy. If she could help to rid him of the slur of having sunk a British submarine, it wouldn’t matter quite so much, perhaps, if he married a barmaid. With
Caranx
and a barmaid both upon his record, he’d never be able to stay in the service after the war. But if it were shown that he had really sunk a German submarine, then things were different. A German submarine would be an asset on his record, sufficient to outweigh even a barmaid, if she were very careful always to talk nicely, and to learn to do the right things with a visiting-card. And that should not be very difficult to learn.

It was not Mona’s way to lie awake. When she was happy, she usually went to sleep, and she was sleeping quietly before so very long.

She caught her father in the shop next morning, after breakfast. “Dad,” she said, “what would you do if you was me?”

“I dunno, girl.”

“You know Jerry—Flying-Officer Chambers, what takes me dancing sometimes.”

“I see him once,” he said cautiously.

“Did you know about his trouble, Dad?”

He shook his head.

“He sunk a British submarine, with bombs, when he was on patrol. That’s what the Court of Enquiry said, but it’s all wrong, Dad. Honest, it is.”

His brow darkened: he was first and foremost an old naval petty-officer. “Let’s get this right, girl,” he said quietly. “What is it that you say he done?”

“He sunk a submarine called
Caranx
, so they said. But he didn’t do it, really, and truly.”

It took him ten minutes to extract the story from her. It would have taken anybody else half an hour, but he spoke her language and could understand her processes of thought. In a quarter of an hour he had completely absorbed the whole story: he sat there rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

She said: “What ought I to do, Dad? I mean, someone ought to know about it.”

He said: “In a ship the officer of the watch would be the one to tell. But with this—I don’t know, I’m sure.”

She was silent.

“It’s not as if you know anything, really,” he said. “It’s just what you suppose.”

She said stubbornly: “I don’t see that, Dad. Seems to me that it’s the only way it could have happened.” There was a pause, and then she said: “That Court of Enquiry never saw Porky Thomas or Mouldy James, or anyone. They never even knew about the clothes in the torpedo-tube, because that’s only just been found out.”

“I dunno what to say,” he said weakly.

“Somebody ought to be told.”

“The only chap to tell would be the young chap himself. The one what takes you out.”

She stared out of the shop window to the street outside. “I’d rather tell someone different. He might not want to go raking it all up again. But it’s something that they ought to know.”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he said.

That morning the trawler went out again, with Burnaby and Legge on board, and a number of naval officers. As they went, Legge, tired and worried, lectured to them on the modifications that he proposed to put in hand for dealing with the battleship. They could not all follow his reasoning, though one or two were able to discourse with him intelligently. In half an hour he had satisfied them completely.

Burnaby said: “This seems to mean, then, that we’re practically home. When you get the new modulator installed, we’re ready for war.”

The civilian said hesitantly: “I think we shall be very near that stage. But only as regards the battleship, you know. There’ll be another set of conditions altogether for the cruiser.”

Burnaby said: “I quite appreciate that, Professor Legge. But as regards the battleship alone, we’re very nearly ready for service use?”

Legge said: “I think that is so.”

The naval captain said: “I do congratulate you, Professor, both on the thing itself and on the speed with which you’ve brought it along.”

The civilian flushed a little. “I wish we didn’t have to take such risks.”

“I know. But the solution for the battleship has justified the risks of accident.”

Legge said nothing. He could not bring himself to agree with that. In his private view, these officers were too impatient for results. Granted that the country was at war and that this device was needed more than most, he could not feel that this slapdash method of full-scale experiment so loved by the services was reasonable or scientifically right. He knew very well that an accident in the early stages would have turned them all against him, would have killed the weapon stone-dead in their minds. The possibility was now removed by the partial
success that he had had with the battleship, but that did not affect his view that basically the method of experiment was unsound. They would have done better to have spent more time upon research.

The trawler reached the area allotted for the trials and met the cruiser. For half an hour they lay rolling a few hundred yards apart. Then the bomber appeared flying from the land, the cinema photographers made the final adjustments to their cameras, and the Aldis lamp flashed for the trial to commence.

The machine approached the cruiser and flew over it. Nothing happened. It passed above the ship and began to turn away; on the trawler the officers relaxed the intensity of their observations.

Burnaby said: “That will be the modulation again, I suppose, Professor?”

Legge said: “I should think so, sir. We must expect it to be a matter of trial and error, just as with the battleship.”

The monoplane approached the ship again, flying steadily upon an even keel, but on a different course.

This time the device worked.

The monoplane swept down upon the trawler, circled round her very low, the pilot waving merrily as she turned, and made off towards the land. On board the trawler there was great satisfaction. True, it had not worked first time, but it was generally realised that that was just a matter for adjustment. Professor Legge was treated with considerable respect. They made way for him in the little cuddy of the trawler at lunch-time to give him the best seat at the little table; a second trial was to take place at two o’clock.