The Cruel Sea (1951) (14 page)

With Bennett dozing inside, Lockhart was clinging to the rail in one corner of the bridge, staring through misted binoculars at the single merchant ship on which he was keeping station. He was wet through, and cold to the bone: his feet inside the sodden seaboots squelched icily whenever he moved: from the pinched skin of his face the water ran down, riming his eyes and lips with salt. He felt little resentment against Bennett, who should really be doing this job: he had a general disgust that someone nominally his senior should be content to evade responsibility at a moment like this, but he was really feeling too remote from personalities to care. For him, the world had resolved itself into a storm, and a small blur to leeward of
Compass Rose:
the blur was a ship which he must not lose, and so, for hour after hour, he nursed
Compass Rose
in her station, altering the engine revolutions, edging over when the blur faded, and away again when it loomed too large.

He was roused at one point from this tremendous concentration by someone nudging him, and he turned round to see a figure in the darkness beside him.

‘Who is it?’ he asked. It could hardly be Bennett.

‘Coxswain, sir,’ said a voice.

‘Hallo, coxswain! Come to see the fun?’

‘Just for a bit of air, sir.’

They both had to shout: the wind caught the words on their very lips and whipped them away into the night.

‘I brought a mug of tea up, sir,’ Tallow went on. And as Lockhart took it gratefully, he added: ‘It’s got a tot in it.’

Tea and rum . . . When Lockhart bent down to shelter behind the rail, and took a sip, it ran through him like fire: it was the finest drink he had ever tasted. He was oddly moved that Tallow should have taken the trouble to make tea at two o’clock in the morning, add a tot of his own rum, and negotiate the difficult climb up to the bridge with it. He could not see Tallow’s face, but he divined a sympathy in his manner which was nearly as warming as the drink.

‘Thanks, coxswain,’ he said when he had finished it. ‘I needed that.’ He raised his binoculars again, confirmed that
Compass Rose
was still in station, and relaxed slightly. ‘What’s it like below?’

‘Terrible, sir. Couldn’t be worse. It’ll take us a week to get straight after this lot.’

‘Not much longer,’ said Lockhart, though he did not feel that very acutely. ‘Two or three days, and we’ll be in shelter.’

‘Can’t be soon enough for me, sir. Proper uproar, this is. A lot of the lads wish they’d joined the Army instead.’

They talked till the end of the watch, shouting at each other against the storm. Lockhart was glad of the company: it was a tiny spark of warmth and feeling in a furious and inhuman onslaught. They would need a lot of that, if the Atlantic were going to serve them like this in the future.

Physically, Ferraby was in a worse way than any of them. He had been acutely seasick during most of the voyage, but he never gave in to it: always, when it was time for him to go on watch, he would drag himself up the ladder, his face the colour of a dirty handkerchief, and somehow last out the four hours on the bridge. Then he would stumble below again, and force himself to eat, and be sick once more, and lie down on his bunk, waiting for sleep to blot out the clamour of the storm, and his misery with it. Often sleep would not come, and he lay awake throughout his time off watch. Those were the worst moments of all, when doubt as to whether he could go on with this job pressed on his consciousness like a living weight of guilt.

Towards the end, the strain nearly proved too much for him. This was particularly so when he had to go on watch at night, after an hour or so of sleep snatched in the stuffy heaving cabin. He would get into his seaboots and duffle coat, listening to the sounds of the storm outside, and the thud of water hitting the side of the ship and the deck overhead. Then he climbed slowly up the ladder, tired beyond belief, fearing the wind and the misery waiting for him up on the bridge: watching the square of dark sky at the entrance above him, to see if the gale were passing. He was very weak, and without any will except to last out this watch, and the next one, and a few more until they made harbour. Once, he stopped halfway up the ladder, and found himself crying. ‘Mavis,’ he said – and went on, as if his wife had answered him from somewhere up above.

He bore his ordeal alone, bravely: his set white face invited nothing save the kindness of ignoring it. He did not give in, because to fail to go on watch, to confess his defeat, would have been worse than any seasickness, any fatigue, any wind or rain or fury. There was no way out that was not shameful; and that was no way out.

The Captain carried them all.

For him, there was no fixed watch, no time set aside when he was free to relax and, if he could, to sleep. He had to control everything, to drive the whole ship himself: he had to act on signals, to fix their position, to keep his section of the convoy together, to use his seamanship so as to ease
Compass Rose’s
ordeal as much as possible. He was a tower of strength, holding everything together by sheer unrelenting guts. The sight of the tall tough figure hunched in one corner of the bridge now seemed essential to them all: they needed the tremendous reassurance of his presence, and so he gave it unstintingly, even though the hours without sleep mounted to a fantastic total.

He was tired – he could not remember ever having been so tired – but he knew that he was not too tired: there were always reserves . . . It was part of the job of being Captain, the reverse side of the prestige and the respect and the saluting: the tiny ship, the inexperienced officers, the unbelievable weather – he had taken these on as well, and they would not defeat him. So he dealt with everything that came, assuming all cares out of an overflowing strength: he was a professional – the only one among amateurs who might in the future become considerable assets to him but at the moment were not very much help – and the professional job, at sea, was not without its rewarding pride. It had to be done, anyway: he was the man to do it, and there was no choice and no two answers.

They grew, almost, to love him, towards the end of the voyage: he was strong, calm, uncomplaining, and wonderfully dependable. This was the sort of Captain to have:
Compass Rose
could have done with nothing less, and
Compass Rose,
butting her patient way homewards under the blows of the cruel sea, was lucky to have him.

No voyage can last for ever, save for ships that are sunk: this voyage ran its course, and presently released them. There came an afternoon – the afternoon of the sixteenth day – when the horizon ahead was not level, but uneven; not the pale grey of the sky, but the darker shadow that was the land. The foothills of Scotland came up suddenly, beckoning them onwards: their rolling lessened as they came under the lee of the northern coastline: presently, towards dusk, they were in shelter, and running down towards the home port that promised them rest and peace at last. It was difficult to realise that the worst was over, and that
Compass Rose,
on a steady keel, could become warm and dry again: it was difficult to believe in the relaxation that had been so relentlessly denied them. It must be an illusion, or a swindle: probably the Irish Sea would open up at the other end, and they would find themselves in deep water once more, fighting another round of the same exhausting battle. They had been on trial for so long that the acquittal did not seem to ring true.

So the first convoy ended. It had been a shock – the more so because of the doubt, in the background, as to how they would fare in action with U-boats, if action were added to so startling an ordeal. But they did not think of this straight away: that night, tied up alongside the oiler after seventeen days of strain, they were all so utterly exhausted that a dead and dreamless sleep was all they were fit for.

It seemed that they were to be stationed permanently at Liverpool, and there they settled down, as part of the Liverpool Escort Force which was gradually being built up. The centre of naval activity was Gladstone Dock, downriver and away from the town: it was already crowded with destroyers and sloops, and the corvettes which were now beginning to leave the shipyards in substantial numbers. The forest of masts, the naval parties moving on the dockside, and the huts and storerooms put up for their use, were all heartening symptoms of a growing escort strength; but they were matched by a steady increase in the number and size of convoys, which made demands on the naval potential almost impossible to meet. It was clear that many chances would have to be taken with the safety of merchant ships, for a long time to come.

Among the corvettes to arrive at Liverpool was
Sorrel,
who, delayed at Ardnacraish by some clash with the Admiral which she was not particularly ready to discuss, joined her sister ship soon after their second convoy.

Ericson was not notably pleased that
Compass Rose
was based on Liverpool; in fact he was inclined to resent the fact, without being too sure why. The theory was admirable: they came in from a convoy, and there was Grace, knitting away in her little house across the river and waiting for him. But it was an undeniable distraction, at a time when he wanted to concentrate exclusively on the ship: and, in some indistinct way, it seemed to be cheating – he had embraced a hard life and an exacting job, and here now was another embrace, to make things pleasant after all . . . He could not have said why he found that wrong, and certainly he never hinted anything of the sort to her; but it was a fact that he preferred to live on board when they were in harbour, and was faintly irritated at having to find excuses for doing so.

The man it suited most was Tallow: his home also was in Birkenhead, just over the river from Gladstone Dock, and he had no false notions as to the relative comforts of
Compass Rose
and No. 29 Dock Road . . . It was a home he shared with his widowed sister Gladys, who had kept house for him ever since her husband died, four or five years previously: whenever he came back on leave, his room was waiting for him, and a cheerful welcome as well. Gladys Bell (Bell had been a postman) worked in a Liverpool office, supplementing a tiny pension: she was fortyish, plain, good-natured, and she and Tallow got on very well together, in an undemanding sort of way. He had hoped that she would marry again, even though he would lose thereby; but there had never been any sign of it, and by and by the idea ceased to worry him. If a decent widowhood suited her, it certainly suited him.

When he went round to the house on their second night in harbour, and walked into the tiny gaslit kitchen with a ‘Well, Glad!’ which had been his greeting ever since she could remember, her plain sallow face lighted up at the surprise. She had not seen him for six months.

‘Bob! Where’ve you sprung from, lad?’

‘We’re in for a bit,’ he said. ‘It’s our home port – couldn’t be better.’

‘Well, that’s nice.’ Her mind darted immediately to the larder, wondering what she could give him on his first night ashore. ‘Have you had your tea?’

‘Tea?’ He smiled mockingly. ‘Have you ever known me have my tea on board, when I can get your cooking just by crossing the river?’

There was a hesitant cough behind him in the doorway.

‘Oh,’ said Tallow awkwardly. ‘Brought a friend, Glad. Chief E.R.A. Watts. Same ship.’

‘Come into the front,’ she said, when they had shaken hands and mumbled to each other. ‘This kitchen’s not fit to be seen.’

In the front parlour, she lit the gas: the overcrowded room sprang to life, as if the hissing noise had been a stage direction. (It was the best part of the shabby old house, carefully cleaned and cherished: the creaking wing chairs were comfortable, the mahogany table sat four-square and solid in the middle, the ornaments were mostly souvenirs brought home by Tallow himself, from Gibraltar and Hong Kong and Alexandria. Lace curtains gave them a genteel privacy, at the cost of three-quarters of the available light: from the mantelpiece, Tom Bell the postman regarded them importantly, as if he carried registered letters for each one of them.)

Gladys turned from the flaring gaslight, and looked at the two men with pleasure. They were both very smart – spotless jackets, gold badges, knife-edge creases to their trousers: she found herself wondering, not for the first time, how they managed to keep their clothes so nice, in the cramped quarters on board.

‘How’s the new ship?’ she asked her brother.

The two men exchanged glances, before Tallow answered: ‘She’ll never live to be old, I’d say.’

Watts laughed, scratching his bald head. ‘That’s about the size of it, Mrs Bell. We’ve had a rare trip, I can tell you.’

‘Was it rough?’

‘Rough as I’ve ever known it,’ said Tallow. ‘We were chucked about like – like—’ He sought for a suitable simile, and failed. ‘Remember I wrote you how small she was? I didn’t tell you the half of it. We were standing on our heads most of the time.’

‘What about those submarines?’

‘
We
were the submarine, I should say.’ Watts, warming to the friendly atmosphere, chipped in with a readiness rare to him. ‘Never got our heads above water for days on end. Must be the new secret weapon – the corvette that swims underwater.’

Gladys clicked her lips. ‘Well, I never . . . You must be ready for a bit of a rest.’