Submariner (2008) (10 page)

Mines were reckoned to be responsible for just about all
unaccountable submarine losses. When a boat simply didn’t return from patrol, could only be reported as overdue, a mine was
what one guessed at.

At the wardroom table, head on his forearms on its edge; he’d been intending to transfer to his bunk-settee, then thought
about doing some chartwork first, working out when
Unsung
might make it to Marettimo and the minefield, if she’d sailed yesterday from Gib. Well, four days, near enough, if you gave
her two hundred miles a day – which would mean her making virtually the whole trip on the surface, so maybe was an overestimate.
Thoughts returning – redirected, say – to Ann then, to that Taranto–Coconut Grove night: her whisper in his ear, through the
saxophone’s sweetly subdued rendition of ‘Where, or When’, ‘Really
something
, Mike. I mean – heavens above …’

The way she’d come to be dancing by that time. Well – as
they
’d come to be doing it, in the crush and semi-darkness. Having only to turn his head slightly to meet her lips: murmuring
a few beats later, ‘Heaven on
earth
, Ann … Not that that’s the word exactly –’

‘How about tomorrow – twosome?’

‘You mean –’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘But – you
don’t
mean –’

‘Want to bet?’ Moving against him. Soft laugh. ‘Not a shadow of doubt
you
do, my darling –’

‘But it’s simply –’

‘Haven’t you been thinking of it all evening?’

‘Apart from other considerations – look, tomorrow’s Sunday, and –’

‘The Wellington’s open Sunday nights, and very handy for where I’m staying. Know the Wellington, in Knightsbridge?’

‘Couldn’t dance there
quite
like –’

‘Behave ourselves then, won’t we. Listen – Charles wants
to be back at Blockhouse by lunch-time. The course starts Monday but they’re supposed to foregather in advance of that – and
I’m to be on my way to Edinburgh – night sleeper reservation, I’m sure I could transfer it to Monday. While as Chloe was saying,
you were taking her to Stony Stratford, wherever the hell
that
—’

‘Train to Bletchley. Well, she wouldn’t much mind, but our father which art in a place called Deanshanger –’

‘Let her go ahead, join them on Monday, couldn’t you? Emergency in the dockyard affecting your
Ursa
? Urgent message when you get back to the club?’ She sang – low-toned, in sultry harmony with the sax – ‘“The smile you’re
smiling – smiling then …” Ring me mid-morning, Mike? I’ll give you the number. Not early, in case he oversleeps. Oh but –
better idea –
much
better – couldn’t we meet for lunch?’

‘Gay Nineties – Berkeley Street?’

‘At home in all the right places, aren’t you.’ Soft laugh, her breath in his face. ‘OK, then. Dangerous, but – oh, nuts …
One-ish?’

Releasing each other as the music died and voices rose. Hardly believing that what had been said
had
been said – or that she meant it, or if she had, still would in the morning.

Surfacing at 2130, after a periscope and asdic recce of the surroundings, gusting fouler air for longer than usual after the
seventeen-hour dive. Made you think – until you cracked the hatch and the muck escaped, foul enough to make a cat sick – that
that was what you’d had in your lungs these past few hours.

Danvers’ stars, anyway, put them twenty-six miles south of Cape Rossello. It was a good fix, Danvers like most Merchant Navy-trained
men being a dab hand with a sextant; Mike accepted it as spot-on, and altered three degrees to starboard, to 318.

Distance on this course to the OBB start-line ten miles off Cape San Marco, thirty-six miles. And with seven hours to go before
notional first light at 0430, five knots would do it nicely. Pretty well what he’d reckoned on when discussing the route with
Shrimp; main thing now being that while the motors pushed her along at this low speed, her diesel-generators with power to
spare would be bringing the box right up.

Touch wood, barring interruptions. In reference to which he wrote in his night-order book,
We are only 30 miles SW of Licata, which E-boats use, and the 2130 fix is on the direct route between Licata and Pantellaria.
E-boats may well be encountered, therefore
.

As they might anywhere, in fact. Keeping the lads on their toes, was all.

2150 now.
Ursa
trimmed down, with her low profile practically invisible at any range at all, diesels grumbling thickly into the dark, enclosing
night.

Supper would be in about an hour, McLeod told him. 2300, roughly.

‘So what’s
that
?’

Cold pork and baked beans was what it was. McLeod tucking into it while Jarvis who was also at the table rolled poker dice
against himself. Mike appreciating, obviously, that McLeod was getting his now because he’d be taking over the watch from
Danvers at a quarter past the hour; but cold food, after all, why did the rest of them have to wait an hour?

‘Spuds, sir.’ Jarvis looked happy enough about it. ‘
Roast
spuds. Chef’s
tour de force
. Number One’s rotten luck, so Barnaby’s warmed his beans up for him instead. Care for a game, sir?’

Rattling the dice. Mike suggested, ‘Why don’t we wait for Danvers and make it three-handed Liars?’

Liar dice was
the
wardroom game. In fact poker dice of any kind: when one had the time for it, for instance, Double Cameroon, for which one
needed four players and two sets of dice. In other messes the games they played most were Uckers, a form of Ludo, and cribbage.
Current Uckers champions were the stokers, individual cribbage king as it happened the Stoker PO, Franklyn.

Intriguing sight, the champ at play. Large, invariably smiling face, huge hands, fingers like great sausages fiddling matchsticks
into the scoreboard’s little holes …

‘Barnaby?’

McLeod – he’d finished his pork and warmed-up beans – would have time for a mug of coffee, as long as it took Barnaby no longer
than two or three minutes to produce it.

‘Two an’ a ’alf, sir.’

‘Fair enough.’ He asked Mike, ‘If you’re getting this sumptuous repast at eleven, sir, might ditch gash at half-past?’

‘All things being equal, go ahead.’

‘Gash’ meant muck, galley rubbish, and ditching it meant hauling it up through the tower in buckets on a rope – two men up
top, two more below and one on the ladder to guide each bucketful up through the hatch. You wanted to avoid spillage, but
also to get the job done quickly; ropes and men in hatches, preventing them from being shut, weren’t tolerable for longer
than was necessary. On the other hand it did have to be done; on a long day’s dive the last thing you wanted in the boat was
garbage.

He heard the gash-ditching taking place at eleven-thirty, and White watch taking over from Red at midnight. They’d played
Liars while the spuds had been roasting, and he’d then flaked out but not slept; wasn’t tired, what was more had another long, quiet
day ahead. Wasn’t likely to sleep at all while traversing QBB 255. As skipper, one had an inclination – instinct – to
stay awake. No obvious or logical purpose in it: if you were submerged and hit a mine, you were dead, all of you – unquestionably,
instantly, nothing you could do or could
have
done, might just as well have been fast asleep.

Only to be around, was the thing. Present,
with
them – and one might hope, imparting confidence – which in fact one did have, was no bullshit. Steering a course of 300 degrees
at 150 feet, as recommended by Shrimp a year or more ago and used time after time since then by all his COs including Wanklyn,
Tommo and their brethren – Cayley, Woodward, Norman, Wraith – and a dozen others, faces and boats’ names flickering through
the stream of semi-consciousness, in one’s private, unspoken thoughts recalling Stephen Spender’s
I think continually of those who were truly great
.

To be emulated, what was more. As far as one was able. Because to excel in this particular function was as it happened the
pinnacle one aimed for. Nothing else came near it, or probably ever would. Not easy to explain, simply how it was.

The minefield business though –
Ursa
had no MDU, mine detection unit, in her asdic equipment; and some COs who did have it didn’t use it. The pinpointing of mines
or of what looked like mines when the set picked them up served little purpose other than giving one the willies. Much better
follow Shrimp’s advice – duck under, stay on that course at four knots for fourteen or fifteen hours, then ’plane up into
the clean, dark, hopefully empty night. Well – after some further interval. You’d reckon to be clear of the mined area after
fourteen hours, but you’d stay under until you had darkness to surface into.

‘Four o’clock, sir.’

‘Right.’Messenger from the control room, where Red watch was relieving Blue. This was Brooks, Leading Torpedoman,
shaking him. ‘Thanks, I’m awake.’ Up on an elbow to prove it, hearing from the control room ‘Relieve lookout, sir?’ and Danvers’
affirmative down the pipe. Brooks, one of
Ursa
’s three Glaswegians, had meanwhile shaken McLeod:Mike telling him as
he
more or less surfaced, ‘I’ll take over from Danvers at a quarter-past, Number One, dive shortly afterwards on the watch.’

Meaning on McLeod’s Red watch, as distinct from going to diving stations and disturbing the whole crew’s well-earned repose.

‘Right, sir.’ At the table, getting it together while fumbling the lid off a tin of Senior Service. First thing Jamie McLeod
always did on waking – when on the surface – was light up.

‘You, sir?’

‘Oh. Well.’ It would be the last for quite a while. He’d have switched on the overhead lamp, refrained from doing so in the
interests of his night vision when he got up there presently. Jarvis meanwhile snoring like a dog, and some Blue watch men
heading for’ard displacing the curtain as they passed. One of them – Llewellyn, who came from Port Talbot, where he
could
have remained in what he said had been a ‘reserved occupation’, i.e. free from call-up, in a steel works – diminutive, wild-eyed,
laughed a lot, sometimes for no obvious reason – giving tongue then over the diesels’ racket, ‘Bleedin’ mines all fuckin’
day now, eh?’

‘May be, Taff, then again may not.’ Brooks, the torpedoman who’d just shaken them. ‘
Say
there is – never bumped one, did we?’

Llewellyn’s cackle fading as he went on for’ard. Scrape and flare of McLeod’s match. Mike sitting back from it, thinking again
about his answer to Ann’s letter. Be less cautious, she’d urged him: OK, so he would. Spell it out the way he felt it, no
holds barred – passion, memory, longing – if he could manage that, which he supposed he never yet had, on paper.
He stubbed out his cigarette, pushed himself up from the table, fetched binoculars and Ursula jacket – protective clothing
designed by the then CO of the U-class
Ursula
– from their stowage behind the bulkhead door. A glance at the clock, and a nod to McLeod: ‘Half-past, Jamie, I’ll pull the
plug.’

Coming up for fourteen hours under the mines – most of which time he’d managed to stay awake. 1810 now, by the clock on the
control room’s for’ard bulkhead, above the helmsman’s – Cottenham’s – narrow, bald-patched head. White watch on the job although
McLeod was still presiding – had spent the last few minutes adjusting the boat’s trim; Jarvis would be taking over from him
in a few minutes’ time, was currently imbibing a mug of tea in there. Mike meanwhile having drifted in to peruse the chart,
check
Ursa
’s day’s progress as recorded in his officers’ notations along her pencilled track and in the log. The dive at 0430, and 0600
dead-reckoning position and another at 0800 – breakfast-time, when she’d have been at her nearest point to the Sicilian coast,
five miles off Cape Granitola – and at 1230, lunch-time, starting across the southern approaches to the Egadi Channel – towards
which he’d then have been turning up if it hadn’t been for Shrimp’s warning. And now – well,
here
, near enough, ten or twelve miles southwest of Marettimo, just about clearing the minefield’s western boundary.

Give it until the half-hour anyway. Then up to periscope depth for a look-around before altering course to north.

Ten miles up that way should do it:You’d have periscope fixes on Marettimo island as you crept up in easy sight of the island’s
west coast during the last few hours of daylight. Turning his back on the chart, leaning back with his elbows on the table’s
edge. Needles in the depth-gauges steady on 150 feet again, McLeod behind the ’planesmen with his hand still on the order
instrument – switching off at that moment and meeting his CO’s eye. ‘Good enough for the time being, sir.’

‘For the time being’ because they’d be going up to twenty-eight feet pretty soon – different kettle of fish altogether then,
taking in ballast so she didn’t rise too fast. Meanwhile in trim at this depth, following the changeover of watches. With
the air a bit thin and the battery distinctly low: would be lower still by the time they surfaced. Time coming up to a quarter-past,
and Jarvis sloping in, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, ready to take over, pink-faced in his greenish-khaki shirt
with its torn collar. Nodding to Mike – ‘Sir’ – and then addressing McLeod: ‘On the dot, please note, as always?’

‘Bloody hope so. Point of fact, a few minutes early would be better.’

Telling him then – same course and depth, same revs, well enough in trim, DR as on the chart, captain would be taking her
up for a look-round shortly. Jarvis nodding: ‘Got her, then.’ And to the men on watch around them, ‘Evening, all!’ Impersonating
someone or other, Mike realised, some actor or comedian. Arthur Askey, of course – Big-Hearted Arthur, as he called himself.
But you’d never have guessed, he reflected, looking round at them, that these men had spent the past fourteen hours in or under
a minefield. A basic factor being of course that one tended not to think of it in such stark
terms – having been through it before more than once and come to no harm, and now simply repeated that exercise – accepting
assurances, incidentally, that minefields deteriorated with the passage of time. Touch wood, they did. Italian ones especially.
Shrimp had a theory that Italian moored mines ceased to be effective six months after they were laid – which in the case of
this QBB 255, which had been laid more than two years ago, was definitely encouraging – even allowing for the probability
that out of every thousand mines you might reckon on there being at least a few exceptions to that generality. Two boats
had
been lost, apparently to mines, in these Sicilian narrows, in the past eighteen months, one ‘U’ and a ‘T’; but there again,
since overall losses up to the time the flotilla had taken its recent holiday from Malta
had
been approaching 50 per cent, it was no reason to see this particular transit as more dangerous than any other.