The Glory Boys (9 page)

“Now!”
Mere seconds, then the bridge shook to the sudden burst of power beneath them. “Full ahead!” He groped for the binoculars and steadied them across the screen.

“Starboard fifteen!
Steady!
”

He saw the tiny feathers of spray taking shape in the powerful lenses, like leaping fish: the bow waves of the other vessels. Caught unaware, but not entirely. Some flashes, a machine-gun, but all sound drowned by the Packards as they worked up to full speed.

“Open fire!”

The enemy must still have believed Jethro’s schooner was making a last stand. Seconds later a star-shell exploded between the converging craft, and in the searing light all pretence was gone.

“Hard a-port!” Kearton felt the deck lean over, watching the two-pounder shells ripping across the leading craft like hammers of hell. The twin Oerlikons had been brought to bear with their sudden, sweeping turn, and flames were ripping from the low bridge. There was a single, muffled explosion.

He saw the tracer rising and cutting through the smoke, now plunging down and tearing across the water, glaring bright in the last of the drifting flare.

“Shift target!” He felt his fists, clenched like steel as some of the shots thudded against the hull. Another explosion, deep down, then part of the other vessel’s bows like a black arrowhead against the glare, and more flames, falling astern as they swung toward the second. The machine-guns on the bridge wing opened fire again, and stopped, and Kearton could hear
the
gunner yelling like a madman, his fury drowned as the guns responded. Must have jammed … Nothing mattered but the flashes on the remaining craft. Hit badly, she was turning away, one gun still firing through the smoke.

“Cease firing!”

One of the men had to be punched in the shoulder to make him understand.

“Half ahead!”

Like a curtain falling, they were suddenly in darkness again. Pieces of wreckage bumped alongside and then vanished astern. No fire, no explosions. Only the stench remained.

Kearton licked his dry lips.

“Course and speed, Pilot.” He did not wait for a response. “Report damage and casualties.”

“Engineroom, no damage, sir.” A pause, recovering. “Chief says it was bloody noisy!”

Someone even laughed.

He stood at Turnbull’s shoulder and felt the hull respond to helm and thrust, heard voices calling out to Spiers as he made his way aft, spent ammunition rattling underfoot. But all he could grasp was the nearness of disaster. Instinct, experience, luck? Some things never left you. Like the sound of a particular engine at sea.

His first boat in Coastal Forces had been a small Vosper M.T.B., lively and fast, and like some of the early boats powered by fault-free Isotta-Franschini petrol engines, before Italy had allied itself with Hitler. He had never forgotten the excitement of those sorties, on exercise and then in deadly earnest. Or that same pitch of the engines, heard less than an hour ago.

Ainslie said, “Course to steer, South-seventy-East. Fourteen knots.” He faltered and had to clear his throat; his first taste of close action had just hit him.

Turnbull eased the spokes and glanced at the compass.

“Steady she goes, sir.” Half to himself. “That made ’em jump!”

Kearton listened to the engines, level and unhurried. No emergency pumps, or even the sound of gear being moved to uncover serious damage. A few bullet scars. Jethro and his men would have heard the gunfire and probably seen the flashes, and known how close it had been. Coincidence or part of a plan, but their old schooner would have stood no chance at all.

Ainslie said, “Here’s Number One. He was quick.”

Spiers brushed by him and said, “One casualty, I’m afraid. Ordinary Seamen Irwin.” He was shaking his head, and the white scarf had come undone across his coat. “Couldn’t have felt much. Probably a ricochet.”

Kearton said, “Take over. I’ll go down.”

“There’s no need, sir.” The movement might have been a shrug. “He’s by the Oerlikons.” He stood aside for Kearton and added, “No damage we can’t handle.”

Kearton jumped down to the deck, the words still in his ears.
Not worth a man’s life
was nearer the truth.

There were a few shapes by the Oerlikons, others, peering from their stations, melting away as he approached.

Leading Seaman Dawson’s voice was gruff and unusually patient.

“You’ve made yer point, Larry—now stow it, eh? It ’appens and you accepts it in this job, or you goes under yerself.”

Another voice, younger. “But we’d done what we came to do—we were clear and out of it! It was the Skipper’s idea …”

Dawson, alone now, loomed out of the darkness.

“Sorry about that, sir. ’E’ll shape up.”

Kearton steadied himself against the gunshield. He could feel the heat from the barrels, smell the concentrated firing.

He looked down at the body, flat on its back, face toward the sky. Except that there was no face.

Dawson was dragging some canvas to cover him. “They was mates, y’ see, sir—wingers. It don’t do to get too close, not in my book.”

Kearton walked to the guardrail and stared at the water alongside. Black, like molten glass. Their first death.

He recalled his own first commanding officer. The first time they had been in action together, and its aftermath.

Never try to explain. It’s out of your hands
. But had he really believed that? He had been killed three weeks later. The question remained.

A hatch clicked open and the heat from the engineroom was like an embrace. Without seeing him, he knew it was Laidlaw.

“Tell your little team, Chief, many thanks. It must have been warm work down there.”

“Up top too, I’d say, sir.” He stretched his arms and sighed. “I’ll pass the word. It goes both ways, ye know.”

The hatch closed.

Kearton tugged off his cap and felt the spray on his face and lips. In another hour he would have to make a brief, coded signal. Someone would rouse Garrick from his bed to read it, if he ever slept.

Mission completed
.

He heard voices; somebody was bringing a fanny of something hot. Tea, soup, coffee, it didn’t matter.

Never try to explain
. The signal had to be enough.

After the open bridge the chartroom felt humid and stale, and even here the air tasted of gunsmoke.

Ainslie leaned both elbows on the chart table and tried to focus on the patch of light across his pencilled lines and calculations, although he knew them by heart. Whenever he moved his head to scribble a note or identify some new sound he could feel the stubble of his new beard rasp and catch against his sweater, and remembered Number One’s sarcasm. He
rubbed
his eyes. It seemed so long ago. Everything did, except the brutal intensity of action.

He felt the table press against him and had to shake himself to recover his balance. If he fell into bed, he thought, he could sleep for a week. He stifled a yawn. If only that were true …

He could smell the mug of soup where someone had wedged it behind a fire extinguisher.

“This’ll warm the cockles, sir!” and he had gone away, humming to himself. The soup would be cold by now.

He took another deep breath. It was over, and he had come through it unscathed. Until now, when he had time to relive it.

He stared at the chart, remembering Kearton’s hand on his shoulder as he had reported their estimated time of arrival at Malta. Had it been so easy? And the smile. Genuine. After the recognition of danger, the instant decision.
Could I ever be like that?

He flinched, the change of air a warning as the light dimmed and a door slid open and shut in a single movement. Just for a second he was reminded of their passenger, Jethro, his confidence and patience as they had discussed the specifics of the rendezvous. But it was a seaman named Glover, one of the two-pounder’s crew. His eye had been pressed to the sight, his hands on the firing trigger, when the enemy vessel had exploded.

He said, “Jimmy th—er, first lieutenant’s sent me to fetch a flag.” He was groping in the shadows. “This one.” He straightened up and looked at the chart. “What time we gettin’ in, sir?”

“Morning watch. We’ll have to take our turn.”

Was Spiers really so unmoved? The flag was to cover the dead man when they entered harbour.

Glover said, “Might get a run ashore, sir. Few jars an’ a bit of what you fancy’ll do wonders, eh?” He went out with the flag over his shoulder.

Ainslie leaned across the chart table again. Strangely, he
wanted
to laugh. But it had been a close thing.

On the deck below the chartroom, in the box-like W/T office, Telegraphist Philip Weston heard the clatter of crockery and somebody swearing. He had already felt the pressure of the hard swivel seat against his spine as the helm went over, and the engines’ vibration increased once more. Maybe on the final run into Malta.

He glanced at his logbook and the signal pad that were always within easy reach, no matter what was happening above or around this little refuge, even during the brief, recent action. The hull quivering and thudding to the crack and rattle of machine-guns, then the heavier bark of the two-pounder overhead. Bullets hitting the side; above the din of engines it had seemed insignificant. He stared up at a tightly sealed scuttle. But enough to kill a man. A face at the mess table. A voice you could always put a name to. They would get a replacement. They should all be used to it by now.

He ran his fingers through his hair, which was fair like Ainslie’s. Some of the sailors were making ribald jokes about his beard; even Number One had been heard saying something disparaging. He would.

He lifted the cover of the log and saw the carefully printed signals. Important, possibly vital. There was one other telegraphist, and they worked watch-and-watch, four hours on, four off, hardly meeting except when they changed over. They did not carry visual signalmen, bunting-tossers, among their small com plement, so they were always busy either here or up on the bridge.

He frowned, thinking of Ainslie. Easy to converse with, always ready to offer an opinion or ask a question, unlike a lot of officers he could have named. Ainslie was about his own age, and probably came from a similar background. Safe and predictable, until the war.

Weston had volunteered for the navy without waiting to be conscripted. It had been like a door opening, and he had taken to the new life with surprising ease: the drills and the discipline, the camaraderie as well as the hard knocks, even the occasional jibes about his ‘posh’ accent. He was accepted.

He had served aboard a small sloop on convoy escort duty, as his first ship. When he had been told he had been listed as a candidate for a commission in the R.N.V.R., there had been a lot of handshakes and slaps on the back.
We’ll have to salute you next time we meet!
Or,
he’s off to join the pigs down aft!

Ainslie, even Spiers, must have gone through all that.

But for him it had gone no further. Instead, he had been recommended for a telegraphist’s course ashore.

His home was in Southampton and he had been given leave to go there following an air raid, in which his father had been injured and the house partially demolished. And his friendly, jovial uncle had been killed.

Uncle Frank. A big, outspoken man who always seemed to put everyone else in the shadows. Like those rare occasions when his nephew had seen him in his black shirt and shining boots, marching down to the docks to sell copies of
Action
, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Fascist newssheet.

His mother had sobbed, “Frank was
never
a Nazi! He loved this country! Proud of it!”

His father had had to answer some questions, too, but nothing had been said to his only son in the navy.

Weston had seen his parents become old in so short a time. He could still remember his father’s words after the funeral.

“Frank was always pro-British—he fought on the Somme in the last war!” He had added bitterly, “He was anti-Jewish! So what?”

His recommendation for a commission had not been repeated. Nor would it.
So what?

He felt the point of the lead break on the signal pad; he had been pressing it with the force of his anger. Again he thought of Ainslie, and reached for a fresh pencil.

In Coastal Forces, they said it was different. A chance came and you seized it.

A light began to blink across the bench, and he readjusted his headphones immediately.

Aloud he murmured, “Ready when you are, damn you!”

Uncle Frank would have approved of that.

Never give up
.

Kearton stood on a grating and shaded his eyes to watch the pilot cutter as she altered course slightly to starboard: it was the same cutter which had greeted them on their arrival here, such a short time ago. He felt as if he had been on his feet for days.

The final approach had been delayed. Orders: no explanation. There had been another air raid, a quick hit-and-run attack, met by heavy anti-aircraft fire. No massive explosions like before, but patches of scarlet against the dark sky, incendiaries scattered at random, keeping the defenders on the move. Not that there could be much left to burn.

They were ordered to take up different moorings this time. Again, no explanation. Hence the pilot boat.

It was a bright morning, the sun hard on the eye but free of smoke, like a welcome.

The new moorings were not at Grand Harbour, but in Marsumascetto Creek, just to the west of it. Fort St Elmo to port this time, imposing as ever, but the bomb scars very visible in the glare. It was early, but there seemed to be plenty of people about, some standing on the spit of land beneath the fort. Children, too, waving and probably cheering, their voices drowned by the throwback from the Chief’s engines.

The wheel moved easily in Turnbull’s hands, his eyes, like Kearton’s, on the pilot boat as she turned toward another creek,
a
jetty and some floating catwalks. Beyond them was a line of sandstone buildings, some bombed and windowless, but obviously occupied.