Strike from the Sea (1978) (19 page)

She pointed. ‘What was that?’

Ainslie saw a line of white foam passing slowly between the darker shadows of anchored ships.

‘The guardboat. Probably hoping to get a drink from us.’

She had turned towards him, and he could sense her watching him.

She said, ‘What about you? I’ve been unloading all my troubles, but you’ve told me nothing.’

He smiled. ‘There’s not much to tell, really. I’m the son of a sailor, and he was the son of another. I was born in Dundee, but have lived mostly in England.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

She hesitated. ‘I’m surprised.’

He said, ‘It was a near thing. But I was away from England too long. She married a nice, sensible farmer instead.’

She began to walk along the deck towards the bows. He took her arm to steer her away from the hazards of ring bolts and coils of mooring ropes.

‘I shall see your husband is taken ashore safely.’ Ainslie did not know why he had brought it up. ‘My first lieutenant is a good hand at this sort of thing.’ He felt her arm stiffen. ‘That was stupid of me. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’

She turned to face him, her arms at her sides. ‘I saw what you did. It’s terrible to watch him destroying himself.’

Ainslie said, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I want you to like me so much that I’ll do anything.’

He put his hands on her shoulders, his mind reeling. One wrong word and everything would disappear.
Smash.

He felt her skin under his palms. Very smooth. He moved closer until her head was against his shoulder.

‘I’m not going to spoil everything. I just want to be near you.’

She looked up, her eyes filling her face in the darkness. But still she said nothing.

Very, very gently he held her against him, feeling her supple body beneath the dress, the pressure of her breasts on his ribs.

Then she moved away. One second she was moulded to him, the next she was by the rail, as if he had imagined all of it.

He heard himself say, ‘I’m apologizing again, but I’m not just another man after your favours. Perhaps I’ve been a sailor too long, have hardened myself too much to know how to behave any more.’ He watched her despairingly. ‘But I meant what I said. Every last bit of it.’

She said, ‘I had better be leaving, if you could arrange it.’ She brushed past him and then just as swiftly turned her face upwards and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Don’t hold me. I’m not made of stone, any more than you are.’ Then she was gone.

Quinton appeared on deck and said, ‘Mr Torrance has passed out, sir. He won, by the way. Christie and Arthur Deacon are on their backs. Phew, what a drinker!’

‘Call away the boat, Number One. We’ll get them off to their hotel. She’ll be worried about her little girl. There might be an air raid.’

A door banged open and laughing shapes spilled over the deck, bathed in light from the deckhouse.

From across the water the guardboat’s loud-hailer roared, ‘Darken ship there! What the hell are you doing?’

Quinton said, ‘She’s got a child, then?’

‘Yes.’ He looked away. ‘Better get these characters over the side and away before something embarrassing happens.’

Halliday came out of the darkness as Ainslie walked aft to the accommodation ladder.

Quinton nodded. ‘Good party, Chief?’

Halliday sighed. ‘If you like that kind of thing. One or two folk will have sore heads in the morning, I’m thinking.’

Quinton watched Ainslie’s pale figure shaking hands here and there, helping Forster and some seamen prevent the guests from falling into the water.

Halliday asked, ‘Skipper okay?’

‘Not sure.’ Quinton looked at the engineer thoughtfully. He was one of the very few men he would confide in. ‘I think that last job had a crook effect on him. He’s been at it too long without a break.’ He thought of the girl in the long black dress who had walked past him. Just what Ainslie needed. But she was bloody well spliced already, and to that drunk.

A girl shrieked with laughter, and Quinton saw the flame-coloured dress moving amongst the people in the boat like a spirit. Forster had made his claim with that one. Quinton smiled bleakly. She would have him for breakfast.

Ainslie stood back from the rail, his hand in the air as the boat swerved away into the darkness. The party was over, and when he searched his mind for regrets he discovered only a kind of elation.

Forster lurched along the deck and groaned, ‘There’s one of them still aboard, sir. He was sitting flaked-out in the heads. We’ll have to recall the boat.’

But Ainslie walked past him without hearing a word.

9

Victim

‘SURFACE!’

After hours of altering course and depth on their tortuous approach towards the coast, the sudden activity of breaking surface seemed all the louder. Ainslie heaved open the upper hatch, shutting his eyes against the splatter of salt water while he groped for handholds and tried to keep his binoculars dry at the same time.

As usual after being submerged, the air seemed headier, the smells more pronounced. He ran to the fore part of the bridge, just in time to see an arrowhead of white foam as the bows surged above water.

Some fleecy clouds moving across the stars, a sliver of moon like a piece of shell, even less impressive than it had looked in the periscope. As his eyesight grew accustomed to the darkness he saw the water close alongside, molten glass, breaking occasionally along the saddle tanks, or leaving fiery tendrils of phosphorescence to mark their slow approach.

With practised ease the lookouts and machine-gunners took up their positions, with only an occasional grunt or clink of steel to show that anything was happening.

Ainslie moved his glasses slowly across the screen, breathing deeply to steady his nerves.

He heard the yeoman of signals checking that the voice-pipes were open, and that the bridge was again in contact with the control room.

Lieutenant Ridgway clambered on to the bridge and waited for Ainslie to notice him.

‘Asdic reports all quiet, sir. Nothing about.’ He concealed his feeling about losing his torpedoes very well.

‘Good. Tell the Chief to switch to main engines and begin charging batteries.’

He returned to the screen, the thick glass still dripping with salt water.

Halliday must have been waiting for the order. The diesels were connected now, drumming throatily through the water, shaking the conning tower in a regular vibration.

An hour should do it. The last run-in, the hard bit. It was best not to contemplate the hull below his feet, crammed with every sort of ammunition you could think of.

He wondered momentarily what his mixed company thought about it, of their rapidly changing role. Cottier, the French officer, was asking to come to the bridge, as he always did when surfaced, to check the communications systems. It was strange to think of him and Lucas and their handful of Free French sailors ending up in
Soufrière
like this. There were no longer any clear margins to the war. They were vague and obscure, like the invisible coastline they were heading for.

According to the best information available, the enemy were still advancing, but at a slower pace. Whether this was due to stiffening resistance or to lack of support, it was hard to say, but the Japanese advanced units were within three hundred miles of Singapore itself. It still sounded a lot when you thought of England and the Channel. But there were no white cliffs of Dover across the Johore Strait.

‘Steady on two-seven-zero, sir.’

‘Very well.’

Ainslie stared into the darkness, feeling the lazy rise and roll of the bows. He could just discern the two long guns pointing forward as they cut across the bow wave like tusks.

Farrant and his crews were in their turret. The gunnery officer would be even more full of himself now, knowing he was the submarine’s only defence.

‘Time to turn, sir.’

Ainslie peered at the luminous dial of his watch, feeling the drifting spray plastering his hair across his forehead.

‘Carry on.’

Quinton and Forster were in charge down there. They were more than capable.

The alteration was so slight it barely registered. But that was how it had to be, this way and that, a whole series of dog’s legs all the way to the inlet. If it were daylight the sea would appear placid and friendly, but the charts said otherwise. Sudden
shallows and spits of hard sand, little islets no bigger than rocks which ran off in either direction below the surface in long barriers of craggy teeth.

Forster, leaning over his gently vibrating table, a pencil gripped between his teeth, was thinking much on those lines as he rechecked his calculations and made another neat cross on the chart.

Stooping, or leaning forward in their steel seats, the other members of the control room team were apart from Forster’s domain, and his sense of isolation was made stronger by that other unwinding world on his chart and plot.

It was one of the reasons he liked his work. It gave him responsibility for the whole boat, probably even more than the first lieutenant, who was after all an extension of the skipper’s ultimate command.

‘Seven fathoms, sir.’

Forster glanced at Quinton who was in his customary place between the helmsman and the raised periscope. He shared the latter with Christie, the seaplane pilot, who had been told by the skipper to understudy just about everybody but the chief engineer.

He thought suddenly of the girl in his arms when he had visited her just prior to sailing. Another advantage of being the navigating officer, he could usually drum up an excuse for getting ashore when others could not.

God, widow she might be, and he had been unable to put it completely from his thoughts, but she had left him in little doubt of her willingness to –

Forster looked up, startled, his head cracking against a deckhead pipe.

‘What? Repeat that!’

He was not usually so abrupt, and it brought an edge of resentment to the rating’s voice as he repeated, ‘Seven fathoms, sir.’

Forster snatched his parallel rulers and ran them across the chart. It could not be. It showed ten fathoms on the chart. A drop of sweat splashed across his wrist as he worked to clear his racing thoughts.

The course to steer was two-eight-five exactly.

Quinton’s shadow moved over the chart space and he asked calmly, ‘Trouble, Pilot?’

‘No. Not really. The bottom round here must have changed since this chart was corrected, although . . .’

Quinton stared from the calculations to the gyro repeater above the coxswain’s head.

‘What the bloody hell!’ Quinton spoke in a fierce whisper. ‘Look, man! We’re five degrees off course!’

Forster looked from the chart to Quinton’s angry face and stammered, ‘He must have misunderstood, Number One.’

Quinton strode to the opposite side. ‘Misunderstood, my flaming arse! I heard the order myself. You said to steer two-eight-zero.’ He stood by the coxswain and added, ‘Alter course, Swain. Steer two-eight-five.’ He returned to the chart space, his dark features working dangerously. ‘Will that do it?’

Forster peered at the chart. ‘It should. But the bottom is so confused hereabouts.’ He broke off, his mind refusing to accept his mistake. He heard Quinton speaking to the bridge, his voice clipped.

‘Captain, sir. First lieutenant speaking. We were five degrees off course. I reckon about four minutes.’ There was a pause and he added, ‘Yes, It was my fault.’ He half turned to glance at Forster. ‘I should have watched.’

‘Slow ahead both engines.’ The repeated order broke some of the tension.

By his panel Halliday watched the flickering lights and dials, but he was thinking of Quinton’s words and of the words Ainslie must have left unsaid.

Dead slow. He could picture the beast. Like a great whale, a blind one now if Forster had made a cock-up of it. Halliday saw his petty officer tapping a gauge with an oily finger, sensed his satisfaction that all was well.

It must have been the party, he thought. Forster must have been thinking about that girl. Halliday felt his anger rising. The bloody young fool.

From his vantage point above the conning tower Ainslie shut Quinton’s voice from his thoughts as Menzies called, ‘Light flashing, sir! Starboard bow!’

Ainslie nodded, lowering his head again to check the time. Perfect, in spite of everything.

He asked, ‘Is it the correct signal, Yeo?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Menzies’ Scots accent became more pronounced when he was excited. ‘Just like the wee man said.’

Ainslie wiped his face. Spray or sweat he was not certain. ‘Acknowledge. Then ask Commander Critchley to come up, will you?’

Critchley’s ability to relax was almost unnerving. He could sleep, curtained off in one of the bunks, as if he were in a country inn. He had explained that he would only be in the way if he hung about the control room, and ‘if the boat sinks I don’t even know which way to run!’ He would be missed by almost everyone aboard when he returned to Britain.

The seaman at the voice-pipes reported, ‘Four fathoms, sir.’

Ainslie replied, ‘Just right.’

It was stupid, of course. In daylight the submarine would loom above her reflection, impossible to miss. But he had to watch every word as it left his mouth. The man at the voice-pipes, should he even sense doubt or anxiety, might be just the one to panic, to jam the hatch as the boat dived. Not that she could dive here. If they were bombed, they could stand on the tower and periscope standards and not even get their feet wet!

The messenger said, ‘Commander Critchley coming up, sir.’

Ainslie trained his glasses towards the shore. He thought he could see it. A black barrier beneath the stars. The inlet must be in direct line ahead.

He tried to imagine the sort of men who had been waiting and watching for
Soufrière
’s arrival. They would have been told by radio, but hardly anyone in the armed services ever took much notice of assurances from higher up.

He heard Critchley’s voice, echoing strangely in the conning tower.

Then, as his head appeared over the rim of the hatch he felt himself losing his balance, as if he was being sucked forward by some invisible force.