The Last Wolf (20 page)

There was a letter from his father waiting for him, as well as the usual fan letters from people who had seen his photograph in the newspapers, usually returning from a successful patrol. They asked for signed photographs, for letters in reply – some of the women even wanted to marry him.

The Flotilla Commander sent for him and complimented him on his three kills. But the pack's performance, he said, had been very disappointing. A disaster, in fact. Only five enemy ships had been sunk against the loss of six U-boats. Could he offer any reason for such a lamentable result?

Reinhard endeavoured to describe the determination and ferocity of the enemy's attacks, which were becoming more determined and more ferocious by the month.

‘They had a hard job to find us at the beginning, but now they're getting surprisingly good at it. They turn up wherever we go – always one jump ahead. It's uncanny.'

‘Their ships and planes have all got radar now, as well as ASDIC. What else do you expect?'

He said slowly, ‘I think it's more than that, sir. I think they may have found a way to decode our signals.'

The Flotilla Commander stared at him. ‘Rubbish! The code is unbreakable. The Grossadmiral has complete confidence in it. If you're looking for excuses, that one won't wash.'

‘I'm not looking for excuses, sir. You asked me for a reason for the patrol's inferior performance and I'm suggesting one.'

‘Well, it's an absurd idea. I think the truth is that we've been resting on our laurels, enjoying our successes and all the admiration. That's got to stop. We have a war to fight and to win, and that means sinking as many British ships as possible.' The Commander laid an avuncular hand on his shoulder. ‘Come now, Reinhard. You need a good drink, a good dinner and some rest.'

He went to a bar in town and got drunk. It was what most U-boat men did at the end of a gruelling patrol. A natural reaction to surviving a fearsome ordeal and the most effective antidote to the stress and strain. He drank champagne – the best and most expensive available – to celebrate the fact that he was not fish food out in the Atlantic, like poor Nieman.

First one French girl, then another, sidled up to him but he waved them away. What he most craved was sleep and when the bottle was finished he left the bar and walked through the blacked-out town to the Hotel Beau Séjour in the market place where he was billeted. The air-raid siren was wailing shrilly, but he ignored it, as well as the distant drone of approaching enemy bombers and the thunder of the flak guns. He fell asleep instantly in his bed, deaf to the falling bombs, and dreamed vividly.

He was standing on the croquet lawn of the big house in Scotland, and Stroma was standing beside him. He was a grown man in his Kapitänleutnant's uniform, but she was still a child – a little shrimp dressed in a kilt and jumper. He was apologizing humbly for being such a bad sport.

‘Winning is important to me.'

‘That's silly. It's only a game,' she reproved him. ‘It doesn't matter if you win or lose.'

‘It matters to me.'

Later in the dream, they were standing on the deck of
Sturmwind
and he picked her up and carried her across to the stone jetty. Only this time she was no longer a child, but grown-up. He held her in his arms but her face was turned against his chest so that he could not see it.

He thought about the dream when he woke up. There was almost no chance that they would ever meet again, so he would never know what she looked like as an adult. And winning would matter to her now, just as much as it did to him. Only this was not a game of croquet, but of war.

Grandfather died in April. Ellen had found him in his chair beside the fire and had thought, at first, that he was simply asleep. He must have died instantly, Dr Mackenzie said, which was a good way to go. Comfort could be taken from it. The funeral took place the following week and Stroma was given compassionate leave to attend. Her parents travelled up from London but Hamish was away on active service at sea.

It was raining when Grandfather was buried beside Grandmother in the graveyard of the ruined kirk. The islanders had gathered to pay their respects and Angus played a heart-rending tune on the pipes. Stroma wept.

Mr Pirbright, Grandfather's elderly solicitor, had come over from Glasgow with a younger partner, Mr Ross, and afterwards they sat in the study while he read the will. As Grandfather had told her, the house and the entire Craigmore estate had been left in two equal shares to Hamish and herself and a trust fund had been set up to be administered by Mr Ross for the next ten years. Apparently, there was plenty of money to run the estate and although some of the younger men had gone off to war, the older ones had stayed and there was still Angus to oversee things.

The house itself, however, was another matter. Logan had fallen down the cellar steps and broken his leg and was in hospital on the mainland; Meg's rheumatics were getting too bad to deal with the daily cleaning; Mack could no longer cope with the gardens and Ellen's sister in Boughrood was ill and needed her to help take care of her five children.

Ellen was very sorry about it, she said, but blood was thicker than water and she'd have to go. Besides, with the Master gone, there was nobody to cook for or look after.

There was nothing to be done but shut the house up for the duration. Get out the dust sheets, close up the storm shutters, and leave it to the cold and the damp, the spiders and the mice until the war had ended and she and Hamish could open it up again. Angus's Grace would come and take a look round every so often and there was no need to worry about burglars – not on the island.

Stroma took her raincoat off the hall peg, pulled the scarf from its pocket to tie over her hair and went out for a walk. The island rain had never bothered her. Unlike in other places it was soft and gentle – more mist than rain. She went down to the inlet below the house where the tide was coming in across the seaweed and surging over the rocks. The water was greenish-gray, the sky almost exactly the same colour, so that the two merged as one, mingled with the misty rain.

To the north, beyond the narrow sound between the two islands lay the open waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. Mountainous waves, shrieking winds, savage storms. Convoys struggling through. U-boats preying on them.

‘We got one of the bastards at last,' Hamish said. ‘It's taken enough time, but we finally did it.'

He looked haggard; much worse than when she'd last seen him. Chalk-white face, dark shadows under red-rimmed eyes.

‘Yes, I know,' Stroma said. ‘Well done.'

‘I suppose you would know.'

He was aware of where she worked, but not exactly what she did.

‘Well, we were pretty pleased with ourselves, I can tell you. For once, we dished it out to them. Gave them a taste of their own bloody medicine. They're devious devils, too. They'll send up oil and stuff to fool you, to make it look like they've been hit, but this time there was a whole lot of wreckage and human remains. No doubt about it. We all cheered like anything.'

Hamish's ship had come into dock for urgent repairs and a message from him had reached her. It was the first of her two days off duty when, normally, she would have slept for hours to recover from her two days on shift. She had met him in the bar of a hotel – a gloomy place with a bomb-damaged ceiling, broken window panes and plaster dust.

He had been promoted to Lieutenant with two gold rings on his sleeve, and he was the First Officer on his ship. Not long, she thought, before he gets his own command.

He put down his gin. ‘Mind you, it wasn't easy. They're clever, I'll say that for them – slippery as eels. Only this one made mistakes. He didn't dive fast enough or deep enough and we got him pinned down. Gave him everything we'd got. He hadn't a chance, really – not that that worried us. They never give their victims any chances.' He picked up his glass again, drank some more. ‘It was a hell of a trip. Lousy weather with the bloody U-boats sticking like leeches to us all the way. Every time we stop to pick up survivors we're sitting ducks for them. So far we've been lucky, God knows how. Maybe the torpedoes have missed.'

‘You mean they'd attack you when you're rescuing survivors?'

‘Of course they bloody would. They're murdering bastards with no scruples whatsoever. For God's sake, Stroma, surely you've learned that by now. You've no idea what it's like out there. It's kill or be killed. We're finished if we don't finish them.'

She said quietly, ‘It must be terrible.'

‘You couldn't possibly know how terrible unless you'd been there yourself. Nobody could.' He signalled to the waiter. ‘I need another drink.'

Craigmore was a safer subject. She told him about Grandfather's funeral, about Angus playing the lament, about old Mr Pirbright and young Mr Ross, about Logan's broken leg and Ellen's sick sister and Meg's rheumatics and the gardens finally getting too much for Mack.

‘We had to shut up the house, you see. Let things go. There wasn't any choice.'

‘It doesn't matter,' he said. ‘Not at the moment. All that really matters is winning this war. Nothing else is important. How were the parents?'

‘Very upset about Grandfather.'

‘So am I. He was a very decent bloke. We'll miss him.'

‘Yes, I know. They're very worried about you.'

He shrugged. ‘Can't help that.'

‘Do take care of yourself, Hamish.'

He took another swig of gin. ‘My job's not taking care of myself, it's taking care of the Huns.'

Tom Lewis took her out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant – a strange place in a small back street, walls painted with writhing dragons and lit by gaudy paper lanterns. It was the first time she had seen him since the wardroom party and he looked as tired as Hamish. On his last convoy from Newfoundland, a ravening pack of U-boats had managed to sink seven merchant ships, including an oil tanker. He didn't talk about that, of course, but she'd seen it all happen on the Ops Room map.

He picked up the menu. ‘Ever eaten Chinese food before?'

‘No, never.'

‘Then you're in for a treat. They do the real stuff here.'

The soft-footed little Chinese waiter who appeared like magic wore embroidered silk robes and a pigtail. Tom showed her how to use chopsticks and she tried all kinds of exotic dishes that she had never tasted in her life before.

She learned more about Tom. He came from a naval family and had been at Osborne and Dartmouth. The war had broken out soon after he had passed out of Dartmouth and he had joined the destroyer later. He had a brother also serving in the Navy in the Far East but his ship had been sunk in l942 by the Japanese and he had been taken prisoner.

‘As far as we know he's still alive, but the Japs don't tell you much. All we have is a six-month-old printed postcard that my brother signed, but which says virtually nothing. Still, I suppose it's better than hearing no news at all.'

She thought of Rosanne's brother and the no news that had turned out so badly.

‘I'm sorry. It must be awful for you.'

‘It's the same for thousands, isn't it? There's a war on. Nothing to be done except get on and win it.'

The war was the reason and the excuse for everything, she thought. For all the brutality, all the suffering and misery, the grimness and the greyness and sadness. ‘Don't you know there's a war on?' people asked all the time. As though it were possible not to know, possible to forget, even for a moment.

She said, ‘You must hate the U-boat crews, Tom.'

‘Hate's not exactly the word. I just concentrate on destroying as many of their boats as possible. It's not personal.'

‘My brother says they're murdering bastards.'

‘If killing in war counts as murder, then they're certainly very good at it. Actually, we're not too bad at it ourselves, when necessary.'

‘How can the Germans fight for someone as evil as Hitler? For the Nazis? That's what I don't understand.'

‘I suppose they believe they're fighting for the glory and honour of their Fatherland which got rather dented in the last war.
Deutschland über alles
and all that.' He smiled at her. ‘I honestly wouldn't let it worry you too much. We'll beat them – in the end.'

‘That's what my brother says, too.'

‘He's right.'

It was still light when they left the restaurant – a mild June evening with a light breeze blowing from the Mersey. He insisted on taking the bus with her as far as the Navy barracks outside the city, walked with her up to the gates.

‘Can I see you again, Stroma? Next time there's a chance.'

‘If you like.'

‘I would, very much.'

If it had been dark, he would probably have kissed her, but it was still light and the sentry on duty was watching them. She wasn't sure whether she had wanted it to happen or not.

‘Take care of yourself, Tom.'

She had said the same to Hamish and it was just as meaningless. How on earth could they?

He answered with a wry smile. ‘I'll do my best.'

The hydrophones had picked up propeller noises approaching. Through the periscope, Reinhard could see the outline of an enemy destroyer on the starboard bow. He watched as she came closer, travelling at twenty-five knots or more. For a moment, he had thought that they must have been spotted lying in calm water just below the surface, but the destroyer carried on, passing them within a few hundred metres. He waited until she was a safe distance away before he raised the periscope higher to make a slow sweep round the horizon. And then he stopped. A veritable forest of masts was approaching from the west, trailing giveaway smoke: the convoy that the destroyer had been guarding, bound for England. Thirty cargo ships at least, two cruisers, four more escort destroyers, and – a glittering prize and fortuitously at the tail-end of the procession – a large and once luxurious passenger liner pressed into war service.