The Cruel Sea (1951) (18 page)

They were tied up alongside
Viperous,
which was also boiler cleaning: it was the first time he had been able to examine a destroyer in close detail, and he took advantage of their neighbouring position to go aboard several times. His opposite number, also left on board for the leave period, was a young R.N. sub-lieutenant who, though aware of his inferiority of rank, could hardly take an R.N.V.R. lieutenant seriously: Lockhart was amused to watch the struggle between his natural respect for a two-ringer and his natural contempt for an amateur. There was nothing amateur about
Viperous,
certainly: the rigid R.N. atmosphere, allied to the almost professional glamour of a destroyer, was a potent combination.
Viperous
and
Compass Rose
might be doing the same job, and they might share the same hardships; but there was no doubt which of them was the elder brother, with an elder brother’s unchallenged status. Their relative positions in the hierarchy, however, now seemed to matter less than they had done at the beginning. Lockhart was coming to believe in corvettes, as were many other people; they were the smallest ships regularly employed on Atlantic convoys – the trawlers and tugs had been withdrawn as unsuitable – and seagoing in corvettes was already appropriating a toughness and a glamour of its own.

He had one or two visitors during the leave period. Among them was Lieut.-Commander Ramsay, the Captain of
Sorrel,
who came aboard one morning and put his head round the wardroom door.

‘Anyone in?’ he asked loudly. He was a cheerful individual, red-faced and stocky, with a rolling West Country accent: reputed to be a disciplinary terror in his own ship, he appeared to shed it as soon as he crossed the gangway.

‘Hallo, sir!’ Lockhart put aside his newspaper. ‘Come in.’

‘Is your Captain on board?’

‘No, he’s on leave still. Will you have a drink?’

‘Aye. Gin, please . . . I see you got that second stripe. How’s that First Lieutenant of yours?’

Lockhart grinned. ‘Bearing up.’

‘Makes you hop about a bit, doesn’t he?’

‘—er—maintains a stiff discipline, yes.’

Ramsay smiled in his turn. ‘One way of putting it . . . Here’s luck.’

They gossiped for some little time, mostly about their own escort group and the job that corvettes were doing: they both betrayed the half-humorous resignation which seemed inevitable when those who sailed in corvettes were talking shop together. Ramsay related in detail a mishap to
Sorrel
which had occurred on the last convoy – a huge wave had broken right
over
her bridge, smashed two windows in the charthouse, and bent the rail nearly a foot out of the true.
Compass Rose
could not quite match that experience, Lockhart decided after rummaging in his memory, though there was a morbid interest in trying to do so on her behalf . . . Ramsay, when he rose to leave, said, out of the blue: ‘Maybe you’ll get a First Lieutenant’s job yourself, one of these days.’

The remark made Lockhart both pleased and thoughtful for some time afterwards. It was an idea which had never even occurred to him; now that he examined it, it did not seem so fantastic as it might have, at the beginning of the year.

His principal other visitor was Ericson himself, who slipped aboard one day towards the end of their leave, and walked round the ship with an air so suspicious and so proprietary that Lockhart found himself imagining half a dozen things he had either done wrong, or failed to do at all. But the Captain seemed to be satisfied that
Compass Rose
was coming to no harm: he stayed to have lunch on board and, as if to mark the difference between this occasion and the normal times when the ship was working, he dropped all formality and proved himself very good company on a new and level plane. He was especially interesting when he talked about his own apprenticeship in the Navy, and the quick learning which the war had now made necessary, compared with the wearisome year-to-year grind of peacetime seagoing and the desperately slow promotion which rewarded it. Lockhart had the impression that Ericson was now becoming convinced of something – perhaps the capability of amateurs like himself – which before he had rejected out of hand . . . Altogether, it was one of the most pleasant meals he had ever had in
Compass Rose:
it left him with a feeling of respect, almost of hero-worship, for Ericson, which a little earlier he would have dismissed as a surrender of individuality. Some of his peacetime convictions, it seemed, were being rubbed off: if the ones that took their place were as natural and as unforced as this new regard, it did not matter at all.

On the evening of their return from leave, Lockhart, Morell, and Ferraby were all in the wardroom when Bennett stumbled down the ladder and entered the room. He was undeniably drunk, and most of his trouser buttons were undone: the general effect was so unpleasant that it was difficult to include him in their company without exhibiting a strong reaction. For some moments he busied himself at the sideboard, while they watched him in silence; then he turned round, glass in hand, and focused his eyes on each of them in turn.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said with foolish emphasis. ‘Good little boys, all back from leave at the proper time . . . How did you tear yourself away?’

No one answered him.

The full glass slopped over his coat as he gestured drunkenly. ‘Matey lot of bastards, aren’t you?’ He eyed Lockhart with confused belligerence. ‘What’s been happening while I’ve been away?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘I suppose you were slipping ashore the whole time.’ He took an enormous gulp of whisky, coughed, and only just held on to it. His eyes moved unsteadily round to Morell and Ferraby. ‘And as for you married men – married—’ he lost the thread of what he was going to say, but unfortunately started again. ‘You had a wonderful time. Don’t tell me.’

‘It was very pleasant,’ said Morell after a pause.

‘I bet you left a bun in the oven, both of you,’ said Bennett thickly. Then suddenly he turned a grey-green colour, and lurched out of the room. They heard him stumbling up the ladder, and the clang of the lavatory door behind him.

‘Now what on earth does that peculiar phrase mean?’ asked Morell, when he had gone.

Lockhart, considerably embarrassed, said: ‘I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’

‘But what?’ Morell insisted.

Lockhart explained, as delicately as he could, the reference to pregnancy. It could not be made to sound in the least delicate, and the reaction was what he had expected. Ferraby flushed vividly and looked at the floor: Morell lost his normal air of indifference and for a moment his face had a startling expression of disgust and anger.

‘What a monstrous man he is!’ he said in the uncomfortable pause that followed. ‘How can we get rid of him?’

‘I’ve an idea he might get rid of himself,’ answered Lockhart, glad of the change of subject. ‘He didn’t like that last convoy at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave this job up.’

‘How could he do that?’ asked Ferraby, in a voice so subdued and spiritless that it was almost a whisper.

Lockhart gestured vaguely. ‘Oh, there are ways . . . If I were he, I think I should get a duodenal ulcer. For some reason the Navy takes them very seriously – if they suspect anything like that they put you ashore straight away, in case something blows up while you’re at sea.’

‘One of us had better tell him,’ said Morell after reflection. ‘I wouldn’t like him to be in any doubt as to how to go about it, just for want of a word of advice.’

‘I should say he knows,’ remarked Lockhart.

‘How wonderful if he did go,’ said Ferraby, in the same small voice. ‘It would make such a terrific difference.’

‘Funnier things have happened.’

‘But not nicer,’ said Morell. ‘Not in my experience, at least.’

By one of those coincidences that occasionally sweeten the crudest circumstances, Lockhart’s forecast came exactly true. The very next day, at lunch, Bennett, who had been eating with his accustomed fervour, suddenly clapped his hands to his stomach and gave a realistic groan.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said, in a voice suppressed by tension and mashed potato. ‘That hurt!’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Ericson, looking at him with non-committal interest.

‘Hell of a pain . . .’ Bennett gave another groan, yet more heartrending, and doubled up across the table. His hands were still clasped to his stomach, and his breath came heavily through clenched teeth. It was difficult, for a variety of reasons, not to applaud the occasion.

‘Better lie down,’ said Ericson. ‘Take it easy for a bit.’

‘Jesus, it’s agony!’

‘Perhaps you have a bun in the oven,’ said Morell suavely. He raised his eyebrows as he saw Lockhart struggling with laughter.

Bennett levered himself upright, and tottered towards the door. ‘Reckon I’ll lie down,’ he mumbled. ‘It may pass off.’ He went through the doorway towards his cabin, moaning with great clarity.

‘Bad luck,’ observed the Captain.

‘Most moving,’ said Morell. ‘I imagine there’s nothing we can do to help him.’ The remark was so clearly a statement of non-intention that Lockhart could hardly stop laughing out loud.

Ericson looked round the table suddenly. ‘What are you all grinning at?’ he demanded.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Lockhart, who was the most uncontrolled offender. ‘I was thinking of something.’

Morell frowned, with a wonderful air of disapproval. ‘It hardly does you credit, at a time like this,’ he said stiffly. ‘If the First Lieutenant is in pain, I should not have thought you would be able to laugh at anything else.’

Ericson looked from one to the other, started to speak, and then let it go. They were behaving rather badly: but he himself was conscious of a certain lightening of the atmosphere, now that Bennett had taken himself off, and it was hardly honest to check the same feeling in other people . . . The only drawback to the slightly farcical occasion was the possibility of Bennett’s really being ill: for
Compass Rose
was at twelve hours’ notice for steam, and likely to sail the next day.

His foreboding was accurate enough. Bennett complained of pain all that afternoon: he went off to the Naval Hospital the same evening, and he did not return. When Ericson summoned Lockhart to his cabin next morning, he had on his desk two signals which did not go well together. One was their sailing orders, for four o’clock: the other was about Bennett.

‘The First Lieutenant won’t be back for some time, Lockhart,’ Ericson began. ‘He’s got a suspected duodenal ulcer.’

‘Oh,’ said Lockhart. He felt inclined to laugh at the way it had all fallen into place so neatly, and then he had a sudden thought which brought him up sharply. Something else was falling into place, something that concerned him intimately, something for the bright future. He waited for the Captain to speak, knowing what he was going to say, almost fearing to hear it in case it should be less than he hoped.

Ericson was frowning at the two signals. ‘We sail this afternoon, and we’ll have to go without him. There’s no chance of getting a relief by then, either.’ He looked up. ‘You’ll have to take over as Number One, and organise the watches on that basis.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lockhart. His heart, to his secret surprise, had raced for a moment, as if to mark a violent pleasure. First Lieutenant . . . It could be done, and it would have to be – he wouldn’t have another chance like this one for a very long time.

‘I’ll help you with it,’ Ericson went on. ‘You should be able to carry on until a relief arrives.’

‘I can carry on anyway.’

‘Can you?’ Ericson looked at him again. Lockhart had spoken with a kind of informal resolution which was a new thing in their relationship.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right,’ said Ericson after a pause. ‘I’ll see . . . Do your best this time, anyway.’

Lockhart walked out of the cabin with that precise determination.

The first convoy, with the new job to do, was a challenge, and Lockhart took it on happily. As far as watchkeeping was concerned, it gave him an easier run: he now had the morning watch, from four a.m. until eight, and in this early part of the summer that meant almost four hours of daylight watchkeeping, instead of the strain and difficulty of a totally dark middle watch. But there were many other things which went with his promotion, added responsibilities which must always be borne in mind: from the first afternoon, when after a final check-up with Tallow he reported
Compass Rose
‘ready to proceed’, he was never clear of the routine interruptions which the proper execution of his job entailed, and never free of worry lest he had forgotten something. He did not mind, because he was professionally and personally interested, as well as immensely eager to make a success of it; but on that convoy, as on many others still to come, he worked harder than he had ever done before.

In essence, he had to present the Captain with a going concern, a smoothly-run ship which would not fail him in any trial. In harbour it involved one range of responsibility, concerned mostly with discipline, topping up stores and ammunition, and the organisation of working parties so as to keep the ship clean and efficient: at sea it took on a more vital quality, closer to the war and with less margin for error. Weapons had to be tested daily: parties detailed to deal with the odd things that went wrong: watches had to be changed or strengthened, the mess decks visited twice a day to see that they were tidied up and as dry as possible – otherwise life on board became even more grossly uncomfortable than it need be: at nightfall,
Compass Rose
must fade into the twilight with no light showing, no weapon out of order, and no man on board in any doubt of what he must do, whatever the circumstances. It was a full programme; but he was strengthened by Ericson’s backing, which was strong and continuous, and pleased also by the reaction of Morell and Ferraby. They gave him a cheerful cooperation: freed from Bennett’s heavy-handed regime, and wanting above all to make a success of the substitution, they went out of their way to help him through the first uncertain period.