The Last Wolf (10 page)

Reinhard went back to his cabin and to bed. He had drunk too much, which he would certainly regret in the morning.

There was a bitter wind blowing across the harbour. The U-boat was a type VIIC, like the ones at Kiel, and she lay in the oily water, hatches open. Streaks of rust showed beneath her grey paint and there was green algae along the flat wooden planking on the steel hull and some more rust round the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun on the foredeck. It gave her a seasoned look, an air of being on familiar terms with the ocean and its depths, which was reassuring.

He went aboard and presented his transfer orders.

‘Herr Kapitänleutnant, I beg to report aboard.'

The old sea dog bared his teeth in a snarl.

‘God in heaven! How many more of you are they going to dump on me to wet-nurse? Nancy-boys in smart new uniforms who think they know it all. You're a damned nuisance, the lot of you; useless wasters of air and good for nothing but ballast.'

This was the boat's commander, addressed by his crew as Herr Kaleun and known by them as the Old Man, whatever his age. He was a broad, short man – a good deal shorter than Reinhard – and it was hard to tell exactly how old he was, but he looked close to forty. His clothes had the same worn look as his boat. There was verdigris on the brass ornaments on his captain's white cap and the white was well-spotted with dirt. His knee-length grey leather jacket and leather trousers were oil-smeared, his sea boots scuffed and salt-encrusted. Reinhard was uncomfortably aware of his own immaculate dress uniform and shiny buttons.

Friedrich Merten was summoned to give him a tour of the boat. As Reinhard followed the lieutenant through the dimly-lit pressure hull, he had to stoop, step up, step down or squeeze sideways past obstacles and men in order to progress along its long and narrow length. He hit his head painfully against pipes and ducts and on the low hatchways separating one watertight compartment from the next – so low that he had to bend almost double to crawl through them. He negotiated them clumsily, in contrast to the lieutenant who swung himself through like a monkey. Even in port and with the hatches open to the fresh air, the U-boat stank of diesel oil and bilge and men.

The diesel engines, electrical equipment, air compressor and one torpedo tube lay in the aft section. Between the diesel compartment and amidships there was a very small galley, the petty officers' quarters – merely a corridor between eight bunks with a fold-away table – and one head, which was also used as a food store. The control room, nerve centre of the U-boat, was crammed with gauges, wires, ducts, switches, meters, hand-wheels, pumps, compasses, rudder and hydroplanes gear and the chart closet. The radio room lay forward with four more torpedoes, then the officers' quarters which doubled as a wardroom, so cramped there was barely room to sit, another head and the captain's cubby-hole of a cabin behind a thick green curtain. The lower ranks slept in tiers of narrow cots and slung hammocks in the bow compartment and ate at a makeshift table, with spare torpedoes chained above their heads or stowed below the deck plates. Since there were not enough cots for every man, they had to sleep in rotation as they came off watch: three men to each one. Nobody, from the commander down to the lowest crew member, ever undressed except to change out of soaking wet clothes into still-damp ones, ever ready to jump to action stations. In the humid atmosphere, with moisture running down the bulkheads, nothing dried properly; everything went mouldy. Leather coats and sea boots turned green and white with a salt covering like hoar frost. The fresh water taps in the heads were strictly for brushing teeth and a quick flannel wipe, otherwise it was salt water which produced no lather. On patrols nobody shaved.

The conning tower above the control room housed the attack periscope, the torpedo computer, and the helm. Buoyancy tanks, trim cells, oil and freshwater tanks were located throughout the boat and in the outboard tanks.

Reinhard had studied the layout of a Type VII very carefully, but now he found himself completely confused by the boat's complexity. This was not going to be anything like as simple as he had expected. It could take months, if not years, to acquire enough knowledge and skill to command a boat of his own – his ambition, just as much as it was his father's.

He was sent back to the HQ to be kitted out from the supply room. Three sets of coveralls, a long grey leather jacket and trousers, oilskins, two blue sweaters, knitted underwear, rubber boots, leather boots, thick gloves and binoculars. Also, a lifejacket and a breathing tube and mask. He lugged them all back to the boat and to the narrow berth allotted to him in the officers' quarters. Almost immediately, the order came to prepare for sailing and less than two hours later the U-boat moved away silently from the pier, powered by the electric motors until she reached navigable waters where the diesel engines rumbled into life. From the railed winter garden enclosure behind the bridge Reinhard watched Koenigsberg fade into the distance. The boat took a westward course. Waves slapping hard on the starboard side showered the hull and their wake streamed out in a swirling path of white foam. He could taste the salt on his lips.

To his disappointment, he was ordered below – down the vertical steel ladder from the conning tower hatch and into the pressure hull where every man on watch was at his post and the only noise was the hammering of the diesels. He was to be the general dogsbody. To assist at the helm and hydroplanes, to help the navigator at his plotting table, to give a hand to the Second Officer decoding top-secret messages and to spend as much time with the Chief Engineer as possible, learning all he could from him about the boat's construction, machinery, equipment, tanks, valves, torpedoes and artillery armament, to find out the purpose of every pipe – where it came from and where it led. He was given filthy jobs to do, crawling round under the plating and cleaning out the bilges. His fine midshipman's uniform was soon abandoned. In such little time as he had off-duty, he was to study manuals lying in his cramped bunk in the petty officers' quarters. As a sop, he was allowed to eat in the officers' wardroom.

The boat had moved into rougher seas and began rocking wildly, making him stagger like a drunk and grab at handholds. Just as he was passing beneath the conning tower hatch in the control room, a heavy wave came crashing down and drenched him to the skin. He forced himself to join in the crowing laughter.

They practised diving. First an orderly, standard procedure meticulously carried out and, later, an emergency crash dive when the alarm shrieked throughout the boat and the bridge watch came tumbling down the ladder, the officer sealing the hatch after them within five seconds. Men hurled themselves through hatchways to wrench at levers, spin wheels, monitor gauges. Air roared out of the tanks, water rushed in. The U-boat pitched her nose steeply downwards and the seas closed over her, leaving only a trail of bubbles which would soon vanish. It took thirty seconds to reach a depth that might, with luck, evade depth charges and the deeper they went the more difficult it would be to locate them.

Underwater, all surface noise ceased. No wind or waves, no thundering diesels, no humming ventilators; even the radio fell silent, cut off from radio waves as the aerial sank beneath the water. They went down to sixty metres and then still deeper to a hundred metres, testing the pressure hull's strength, the boat creaking and groaning loudly in protest. Some of the crew's faces grew tense but the Old Man showed no emotion whatever. Not a flicker of concern. They might have been out on a pleasure cruise, not chancing their lives near the bottom of the sea in a fragile tin can.

This is how a U-boat captain must always be
, Reinhard thought.
Calm, confident, in complete control of himself and of the crew
.
Every man looked to him. To betray any fear, any doubt, any weakness could be fatal.
He, himself, had felt no fear or panic during the deep descent.

Finally, they surfaced. The control tower hatch was opened and fresh air poured into the boat, the ventilators began to hum again, the diesels resumed their thumping.

Later, lying off-duty in his bunk, he wrote a letter to Stroma. Of course, he told her nothing about the boat or where he was. Everything must be kept secret. Instead, he asked about her school and about the weather in England, and about when she would next be going to Craigmore.

Grandmother died at the end of December. The chill that she had caught in the summer had become something much worse. Hamish and Stroma travelled up to Craigmore with their parents before Christmas, as soon as the school terms were finished. The house was very quiet. There were no decorations, no dinners or parties or games or noisy bagpipes and reels, as there had been on other Christmases. Dr Mackenzie came and went, as well as a few visitors, and Grandfather spent most of his time sitting upstairs with Grandmother. Hamish and Stroma were allowed to visit her for short periods. She looked very small in the big bed, her arms thin as sticks and her voice weak. On one occasion, she asked to see Stroma alone.

‘Bring me my jewellery box, Stroma. I want us to go through it.'

She fetched the black japanned box from the dressing table. The lid was decorated with oriental flowers and trees, a winding stream, a little wooden bridge and the figure of a Japanese woman in Japanese dress holding an open parasol over her shoulder. Inside, the box was lined with padded crimson silk and two brass-hinged trays opened up to reveal more space beneath. Stroma had played with it many times when she was small, trying on the rings and necklaces and bracelets, fascinated by the way they caught the light and glittered and shone.

Grandmother opened the lid. ‘Your mother is to have the amethyst set and Hamish will have the Mackay ring for his bride one day. I am giving Ellen the cameo brooch and Angus's wife, Grace, is to have the marquisites. My pearls are for you, Stroma, as well as all the other pieces. The rings, the bracelets, the necklace, the diamond watch . . . everything left.'

‘But I don't want them. They're yours.'

‘And mine to give as I wish. So don't look so upset about it. Put the pearls on.'

‘Must I?'

‘Yes, you must. I want to see how they look on you now that you're getting so very grown-up.'

She put the beautiful pearl choker round her neck and fastened its heavy clasp at the front. ‘Have I done it right?'

Her grandmother lay back against her pillows and smiled at her.

‘Perfectly.'

The funeral took place on the last day of the year and Grandmother was buried in the graveyard of the ruined kirk a mile or so from the house where an ancient cross, hewn and carved from a single stone, had stood for eleven hundred years. Angus played a farewell lament on the bagpipes at the graveside.

Before they left Craigmore to start the return journey to London, Stroma went and sat in Grandmother's garden on the wooden seat beside the waterfall. The evergreen shrubs gave shelter from the cold wind sweeping down the sound and snowdrops were flowering beneath a tree.

From her bedroom window, Stroma could see the silver barrage balloon rising majestically into the air above the park, dipping and bobbing at the end of its thick steel wires. The anti-aircraft balloons were tethered all over London, more and more trenches being dug, more and more air-raid shelters being built and more and more bags of sand being piled up against buildings.

Everyone talked about the prospect of war with Germany. Some people were in favour of fighting because they believed Adolf Hitler had to be stopped from becoming too powerful. Some were against it because the quarrel was about faraway countries and nothing to do with England. Hamish, of course, was all for it. He was going to join the Royal Navy and, in his words, give the Huns a good thrashing.

‘You're only seventeen,' Stroma had pointed out. ‘The Navy won't take you.'

‘By the time things get going I'll be eighteen.'

‘But you're supposed to be going up to Cambridge.'

‘Cambridge can wait,' he'd said.

She watched the barrage balloon doing a sort of stately dance – swinging slowly one way and then the other, graceful in spite of its huge size. Like an old dowager performing a gavotte.

There was a letter from Reinhard in her skirt pocket. He had said nothing at all about any war, only that he had been away at sea and had been given a few days' leave. He was spending it in the country, not at his home in Hamburg but with friends of his late mother's who bred horses and had taught him to ride as a small child. Now his leave was nearly finished and he would return to duty the next day. To a U-boat, presumably, although he didn't mention that.

It is a long time since I have received a letter from you. Please write to me with your news. You can address the letter to my home in Hamburg and it will be sent to me wherever I am. I would like very much to know how you are and what you are doing.

She had kept the photograph of him in his uniform, hidden away in her handkerchief sachet. Sometimes she brought it out to look at, but not very often because the other girls were so inquisitive. Rosanne, her best friend at school, had been rather shocked when Stroma had once secretly shown it to her.

‘I must say, he's awfully handsome, Stroma, but he's a German.'

‘It's not his fault. He can't help it.'

‘No . . . but all the same . . . I mean . . .
German
!'

The barrage balloon had stopped its stately gavotte and was floating quietly in the sky. Now it looked like a great whale, which made her think of the jawbone in the rocks at Glas Uig.

There had been some horrible talk of them not going up to Scotland this summer because a war might break out. But then their parents had decided that if it did, she and Hamish would be safer there than in London. Hamish didn't care in the least about being safe – and nor did she – but not to go to Craigmore would be unbearable.