The Cruel Sea (1951) (60 page)

Aboard
Saltash
, when they weighed anchor at the start of a fresh convoy, and set off downriver, with the rest of the group tailing along behind them at the regulation five cables’ distance – aboard
Saltash,
the gramophone which was connected to the loudspeakers on the upper deck always played the same tune. The tune was that jaunty trifle:
We’re Off to See the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Lockhart had initiated its playing, as something between a joke and a tonic – but somehow the tune was serious, and the words were true. It was as if they were really going off to search a strange sea lair, to seek once more a passage of arms with a cunning enemy who sometimes used magic . . . But it was their own lair as well, and their own familiar wizard, no longer veiled, no longer fearful: now they knew him, and all about him, from the tip of his watery whiskers to the cold green gleam in his eye.

‘Starboard ten.’

‘Starboard ten, sir.’

‘Steer one-three-five.’

‘Steer one-three-five, sir.’

Saltash
came round slowly in the gloom, preparing for the long leg across the front of the convoy. Lockhart, watching the dim compass card edging away to the left, tried to work out the diameter of their turning circle, and then gave up the calculation. Must be about a thousand yards . . . A mile astern of them, he could just see the leading ship of the port column – or rather, he could see a vague smudge, darker than the grey night, and a thin white bow wave that occasionally caught the moon: in between them,
Saltash’s
phosphorescent wake boiled and spread and faded to nothing in the calm darkness.

Within a minute or so the leader of the next column came into view on their quarter, and then the next, and the next, a whole rank of shadows, admirably disciplined and stationed; as it ploughed towards the homeward horizon, escaping notice for the fifteenth night in succession, the whole convoy was on its best behaviour. The lookout called: ‘Ship fine on the starboard bow, sir!’ but he called softly, for the ship was
Harmer,
keeping her distance on a parallel zigzag, and the lookout knew it, and Lockhart knew it as well. Then the helmsman said: ‘Course – one-three-five, sir.’ Then there was silence again, and the crisp threshing of their bow wave, and the ghostly shadows of a score of ships slipping past under their lee, as they made their starboard leg across the van, their precise act of guardianship. Smoothly, steadily, like these shadows, the summer night with the convoy slid by.

Presently Lockhart became aware that Ericson had come up to the bridge and was standing some paces behind him, accustoming his eyes to the darkness. As usual, he waited a few moments, while the Captain glanced up at the sky, and bent to the compass bowl, and stared at the nearest ships, and raised his glasses and looked at
Harmer,
then Lockhart turned, and said: ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Morning, Number One.’ The gruff voice, the phrase a thousand times used, were as much a part of Lockhart’s watch as the sound of that bow wave breaking below them. Ericson moved up to his side, leaning over the front of the bridge, and stared down at the fo’c’sle, and the seven attendant shadows which were the figures of B gun’s crew.

‘Cocoa, sir? It’s just been made.’

‘Thanks.’ Ericson took the cup from the bridge messenger, and sipped it cautiously. ‘What’s the time?’

‘About half-past four, sir. Did you sleep?’

‘A little . . . Anything I haven’t seen in the signals?’

‘A routine one about a change of ciphers. And
Petal
came through on R/T. One of the ships was showing a stern light.’

Ericson lowered his cup, and Lockhart felt rather than saw that he had stiffened to attention.

‘When was this?’ he asked curtly.

‘Just after I came on watch, sir.
Petal
hailed them, and they switched it out.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The tone, infinitely cold, was no longer a novelty to anyone on board.

Lockhart frowned in the darkness. ‘It solved itself, sir. I didn’t want to wake you for nothing.’

‘You know my standing orders, Number One.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

With anyone else, Lockhart knew, Ericson would have already been in a rage: even now, the margin between control and anger was paper-thin. ‘Anything,’ said Ericson, with extraordinary force, ‘
anything
that happens at sea – to an escort, to a ship in convoy, to this ship – is to be reported to me straight away. You understand that perfectly well.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lockhart formally, and waited. He knew that there would be two more sentences, in the same raw tone of reproof, and that Ericson would then let it go. It was not that he was becoming set in any offensive mould; but he really did feel that he should be told of every conceivable development, no matter how trivial, and the idea that Lockhart might try to stand between him and petty interruptions – and was, indeed, perfectly capable of doing so on many occasions – was still unacceptable, and still provoked him.

The taut shadow at Lockhart’s side spoke again. ‘If anything goes wrong, it is my responsibility.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I expect you, as First Lieutenant, to set an example to the other officers.’

‘Yes, sir.’

There will be a pause now, thought Lockhart, and then he will relax; and after a bit he will remember that he often does trust me to an extraordinary degree, and he will want to bring all this back to normal again, and he will do so – though perhaps obliquely. The Captain would never apologise, Lockhart knew, because there was no warrant for it. He
was
allowed to make any rules he liked, in the interests of the ship or the group; the order that he was always to be called, if they sighted as much as a single smudge of smoke thirty miles away, was a perfectly legitimate one, and he was entitled to give it, and to see that it was obeyed. But behind all this there were other things, threads of a different weaving that were just as strong – the past years, the imponderables of their friendship,
Compass Rose,
the two rafts . . . Ericson set down his cup, and straightened up again, and looking ahead towards the horizon said: ‘It’s getting to be a different kind of war, now.’

Lockhart smiled to himself, sensing the first proffering of the olive branch, though he could not yet accurately divine the form that it would take. But all that it was proper for him to say was: ‘In what way do you mean, sir?’

Ericson gestured vaguely, as a man groping towards an idea whose outline was still blurred.

‘It’s so much less personal than it was at the beginning,’ he said slowly. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any room for – for individual people any more.’

‘I suppose not, sir.’

‘At the beginning, there was time for all sort of things – making allowances for people, and joking, and treating people like sensitive human beings, and wondering whether they were happy, and whether they – they liked you or not.’ Ericson drew in his breath, as if his ideas, cloaked by darkness, were running away with him. ‘But now, now the war doesn’t seem to be a matter of men any more, it’s just weapons and toughness. There’s no margin for humanity left – humanity takes up too much room, it gets in the way of things.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It used to be a family sort of job, this. Christian names, lots of parties, weekends off if your wife could get up to see you—’ he gestured – ‘all that sort of thing. People could still afford to be people – in fact, they felt offended if you didn’t allow them to be. That was specially true of a small ship, like
Compass Rose.
It was a very cheerful sort of wardroom we had there, wasn’t it? From time to time it was serious, but mostly it wasn’t, it was just a lot of friends doing the best they could with the job, and shrugging their shoulders if it went wrong, and laughing it off altogether. It was friendly – human – but it’s certainly finished now. It finished with
Compass Rose,
in fact.’

‘Port ten,’ said Lockhart.

‘Port ten, sir.’

‘Steer oh-six-five.’

‘Steer oh-six-five, sir.’

Ericson waited, while
Saltash
came round in a wide circle, and settled down on her new course. Then: ‘I don’t mean that
Compass Rose
was a bad sort of ship, or that that was a bad way to fight the war, at that stage. Far from it. I just meant that it’s out of date now. The war has squeezed out everything except the essentials. You can’t make any allowances now, you can’t forgive a mistake. The price may be too high.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lockhart.

‘Do you remember,’ said the Captain reflectively, ‘that kid Gregg – able-seaman – whose wife was playing him up, and who broke ship and went home to try to fix things up? That’s almost two years ago now, and two years ago I could afford to let him off with a hell of a lecture, and a caution.’ He shook his head in the darkness. ‘Not now, by God! If Gregg came up before me now, I wouldn’t listen to any of that damned rigmarole about his wife. I’d give him three months in prison for desertion, and take very good care that he stayed an able-seaman for the rest of the war. We can’t afford wives and domestic trouble and sympathetic understanding any more. That sort of thing is finished with.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s just the way the war has gone, that’s all. It’s too serious now for anything except a hundred per cent effort.’ He thought for a moment. ‘A hundred per cent toughness, too. I remember when we sank that U-boat, and I had the German captain in my cabin. He was rude to me – damned insolent, in fact – and I remember thinking that if I got just a little bit angrier, I’d probably pull a gun and shoot him.’ He drew a long breath again. ‘If that happened now, I wouldn’t wait, I wouldn’t count ten and think it over. This time I’d plug him and chuck him overboard afterwards – and everyone else who was inclined to argue the toss about it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I know that that isn’t the sort of thing we’re fighting for – but we’ve got to win before we can pick or choose about moral issues. Get this thing over, and I’ll be as sweet as you like to anyone, whether it’s a German captain, or Able-Seaman Gregg, or’ – Lockhart felt him smiling as he came at last to the point – ‘or you.’

‘I’ll remember that, sir.’

‘I suppose you think, Number One, that this is all wrong, and that you should never allow yourself to be deteriorated by war.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But you’ve become dedicated to it yourself, surely? You believe in that hundred per cent idea, don’t you? No room for mistakes, no room for mercy – no room for love or gentleness, either.’

‘Yes, I suppose so . . . Difficult, isn’t it?’

Saltash
ploughed on, and the convoy with her, creeping steadily across the dark sea. Ahead of them, on the far eastern horizon, it was already lighter, already a whole night and a quarter day nearer home. Home, thought Lockhart. The Clyde again, the anchorage, calm and rest. Julie Hallam.

‘Julie Hallam,’ said Lockhart distantly, ‘I thought you were high up in the Wrens, I thought you were the strictest Wren in the world.’

‘So I am,’ said Julie. ‘I terrorize all the others. Tell me more.’

‘Then what about the feet, the toes . . .’ He pointed. ‘What could be less official, less strict? How can you justify that sort of thing?’

Julie glanced over the side of the dinghy, where her bare toes trailed in the gently passing water. She raised one foot, and the shining drops, catching the sunlight, chased each other down her leg and fell inboard. She looked up at him again.

‘Do I have to justify?’ Her voice was slow, rather dreamy, as though, at this happy moment, she was hardly listening to what she was saying, and trusted him not to take advantage of it. ‘What regulation am I breaking?’

He waved his hand vaguely, releasing the tiller for a moment to do so. The small boat yawed, and he pulled it back on its course again. ‘Oh – good order and naval discipline generally. You’re a Wren – fully naval, subject to the Articles of War, and they lay it down clearly that you must
not
dabble your toes in the water, while in any ship under my command.’

The foot splashed over the side again, and the boat rocked momentarily. ‘You’re rather sweet,’ she said, ‘when you’re talking nonsense . . . On the contrary, I’ve suspended all the Articles of War for at least five hours. I’m on a picnic, far out of reach of the naval tentacles. I’m in very shabby slacks. My hair is down – literally. Dabbling my toes fits in perfectly with all that. Nelson would approve.’

He looked at her. ‘Nelson would not approve. But your hair is very pretty that way.’

It was true. As he looked at her, half-sitting and half-lying on the middle thwart of the dinghy, he was deeply conscious that she had foregone nothing by assuming a holiday air. Enjoying his leisurely scrutiny, he presently decided that it was the shape of her face which was the continuing focus of her loveliness: the dark hair down nearly to her shoulders could not detract from its distinction, any more than the slacks and the yellow shirt could alter the rest of her. Rather did they proclaim it louder, as if her beauty were free to say: ‘I am available in any version – take your choice!’ She was elegant still, without the groomed hair, and wearing washed-out blue denim slacks instead of a tailored skirt: if the elegance were now on a totally different plane, it did not make any difference. Nor could he decide whether, thus relaxed, she was nearer to the natural Julie Hallam, or further away. It was difficult to decide her true
métier
, and it was not in the least important, when she filled all of them so well. And, beyond all this, to have her exclusive company, at any level, in any circumstances, was still a rapturous surprise, disarming completely the subtleties of preference.