Deep Water (24 page)

The ragged figure stopped in its tracks, and almost overbalanced; then he saw the boats and started
running
again. Others stumbled after him, like faltering runners in a marathon, almost too exhausted to breast the tape. Next came a slower group with a woman in it. And, after an interval, two men half-lifting, half-dragging a third. One of these
supporting
figures resembled Tony in height and build, but Mike could not be sure it was him. No longer aware of his own problems, Mike wanted to cheer. He swung his glasses round to study the blockhouse
and was shocked to see a square of yellow light. A casemate had been opened and a man was outlined in the aperture.

Scarcely able to breathe, Mike waited. He was determined to do nothing until absolutely sure they had been seen. Almost a minute passed, and then, from the black headland, a dazzling white flare shot skywards followed by others. On the beach, the tiny figures clambering into the boats were lit as clearly as in sunlight.

‘Ring on both engines,’ Mike roared into the wheelhouse. ‘We’ll weigh anchor before the boats reach us, so get some way on by then. All right, Martin?’

‘Straight at ’em till we turn,’ confirmed Cleeves.

Cleeves pressed the buzzer for action stations, and men began snatching up steel helmets and running to their places. As Peters pulled off the oildrum lid concealing one of the twin stripped Lewis guns, the counterweighted barrels sprang up into the firing position. Mike watched sadly. Firing against 88-mm cannon behind concrete defences was a waste of time and ammunition.

‘Out scramble nets,’ he shouted, as he ran aft, with a helmet in one hand and a megaphone in the other.

CPO
Simms was craning over the stern, waiting for the boats. ‘Don’t even try to hoist them in,’ Mike told him, before going below.

‘Leo,’ he called softly. The boy came out slowly from under the bunks.

‘Will they get us?’

‘I hope not.’ The boy’s lips were stretched tight and his whole body shook. The portholes flickered as more flares went up. ‘Just stay here, okay?’ Mike held out the helmet. ‘Stick this on your nut and lie flat. If you smell smoke, or she starts to list, come up at once. I won’t forget you.’

On deck, Mike was relieved to see that all the boats had left the beach. Why was it taking the Germans so long to use their guns? They couldn’t have failed to see the men on the sands and grasp what was happening. As more starshells were flung up into the sky, the dying ones spiralled seawards, leaving long trails of smoke.

The blockhouse opened fire on
Volonté
first, with two pounder shells mostly, and lighter stuff, judging by the absence of large water spouts, and by the way the sea looked pitted, as if someone had shaken a sieve of gravel over it. It overjoyed him to think that the larger guns were probably fixed in a wide arc seawards, unable to swivel back to bear on the beach. The first shots aimed at
Luciole
burst astern of her and about six metres above the water.

‘Faster,’ Mike shouted to the rowers, who were already slowing. The thought of shells ripping through
Luciole
’s flimsy hull made his stomach plunge. The half-inch steel plates fitted inside her bulwarks at the bow and stern would offer some protection against cannon-shell splinters but none to anything larger. He thought of the Germans, safe behind their steel gun-shields, and felt sick with envy.

In the wheelhouse he opened the medical chest with his navigating officer, Tom Bruce. After handing him
a morphia syringe, he placed a couple in his own pockets, meaning to give one to Simms, who had served in the sick bay of a corvette. What a luxury it would be to have a proper
MO
. From the bridge, he hurried down to help the rowers and their passengers clamber up the scramble nets. The oarsmen’s faces shone with sweat. They and their companions were scared and very quiet. The enemy’s gunners were sending streams of red and white tracer down both sides of the boat, hitting and sinking the empty dory.

Luciole
was moving forwards slowly, heading straight for the battery to narrow the target she presented. From outside on the bridge, Mike heard Cleeves ring for full speed. Then Norbert spun the wheel. As the trawler settled on her new course away from the headland, her bows lifted to the thrust of her propellers. Never designed for powerful engines,
Luciole
’s timbers shook and juddered as broad curls of spray flew up from her forefoot. Behind her counter, a plume of phosphorescence gushed like a magic fountain.

The bellies of the clouds were already turning luminous when Mike was given a list of the names of all those who had been rescued. Tony Cassilis had not been picked up by
Volonté
either. Laughter and singing was coming up through all the hatches. Mike thought of Elspeth and her club, and the many times he and Tony had gone there. He remembered Tony’s fondness for one particular song from
Funny
Face.
‘He dances overhead / On the ceiling near my bed …’ ‘Overhead’ was the only place he would ever be able to imagine him in future.

A lookout shouted, ‘Aircraft bearing Green-five-oh.’

Two planes were sweeping in low over the sea. The sound of
Luciole
’s engines had masked their approach. Running to the bridge, Mike collided with a sailor carrying a tray of hot tea. He arrived at the bridge ladder as Cleeves announced over the loudspeakers, ‘Aircraft bearing Green-six-oh. Take cover. Take cover.’

The alarm bell started to ring though most of the crew were already at their stations. The aircraft were Me 109s, their distinctive fuselages spotted with brown and green camouflage paint.

Again Cleeves’s breathless voice, ‘Starboard Lewis gun and Colts – aircraft bearing Green-eight-oh, angle of sight oh-five, coming left to right.’ The roar as they screamed down at mast height obliterated every other sound, so that Cleeves’s shout of ‘Open fire!’ scarcely registered as a whisper, though
amplified
by the speakers. But the men at the .5 Colts in the forward deck ponds, and Able Seaman Peters at the Lewis gun, had not needed to be told. They were firing wildly, swivelling their guns after the planes.

Mike’s eyes followed the aircraft as they strafed
Volonté,
starting a fire near her galley that snaked across her stern. If the same thing happened to
Luciole,
Leo’s quarters would be a deathtrap. Immediately beneath him, Mike saw Able Seaman Peters lying by his Lewis gun. A lump of flesh had been torn out of the seaman’s neck, exposing his windpipe. Incredibly he was still conscious and seemingly in little pain. As Mike reached him, Peters tipped forward and died.
In the deck ponds one of the two gunners had been hit by the storm of cannon-shell splinters that had scorched the foredeck.

The fire on
Volonté
had forced her to reduce speed to a few knots. Mike expected the German pilots to concentrate on her before dealing with
Luciole.
He didn’t like to admit it, but he was relieved to have no choice. His clear duty was to leave
Volont
é
to her fate, having signalled her position to the Admiralty. The worst thing to do would be to stay and lose both ships.

Hurrying into the wheelhouse, he announced, ‘I’ll take her now, Martin.’ Through his glasses he could see the two specks approaching, this time from the port side, aiming to attack both ships on the same run.

The bridge lookout shouted, ‘Aircraft bearing Red one hundred.’

With studied calm, Mike spoke into the microphone, ‘Stand by on deck, stand by for manoeuvring.’ Then he snapped at Norbert, ‘Hard a’starb’d. Far as you dare.’ The noise of the swooping planes became an obliterating howl. ‘More helm, Pierre. Put on more,’ cried Mike, though the ship was already heeling steeply into the turn. ‘Port guns, let ’em have it,’ he roared into the microphone, as the gunners desperately tried to keep their feet on the sloping deck. He saw the Lewis gun’s tracer spitting into the sea, and was dimly aware that the sky was spotted with black and white woolly balls.

The inner and outer casing of the wheelhouse had been filled with cement reinforcement, but this
did not hinder the two cannon-shells that entered through the windows. One missed everyone; the
second
passed through Tom Bruce’s skull, splattering the navigator’s brain onto the walls and roof, before smashing its way out in a shower of steel splinters that blinded the bridge lookout and tore into Martin Cleeves’s shoulder, spinning him round in a balletic whirl of arms and legs. Mike found himself on his knees seeing through a film of redness. When his eyes cleared, he raised a hand to his head and felt warm stickiness – whether his own blood, or someone else’s, he couldn’t be sure. Pierre Norbert towered above him, hands still on the wheel, with his lucky guernsey pressed hard against the spokes.

*

Rose woke a few minutes before six, half an hour earlier than usual, but, being unable to get back to sleep again, she dressed and crept to the bathroom. She urinated, omitting to empty the cistern
afterwards
in case she woke her employer. After pulling up her heavily darned brown stockings, she went to the window. Outside, the day looked grey and misty with a hint of drizzle in the air. She carried her shoes as she tiptoed downstairs. In the hall, she paused and looked about.

There was no sign of Leo’s bike. Funny. She could have sworn it’d been there the night before. She opened the hall door and looked out. The machine wasn’t leaning against the hedge either, and it wasn’t in the garden, so far as she could see. Out on the dew-wet lawn, she looked up at Leo’s window. The curtains had not been drawn the night before.
Though the mist was as soft as on a mild summer morning, she was shivering.

Alarmed, but curious, she crept into the house and climbed the stairs. Such a puzzling little chap. Quieter and better mannered than the one who’d left. Weirder, too. Nice to his mother one day, mean as Old Nick the next. Rose had thought him hoity-toity till she’d caught him with the whisky bottle; but, after that, he’d been nice as pie. It was odd with a young boy to feel he liked her almost as a man might.

Leo’s door squeaked as she pushed it open. The bed had something in it. Even from the door, Rose was not fooled. She pulled back the blankets and saw a rolled-up counterpane and several sweaters in a pillowcase. She wasn’t exactly scared on his account, but it was strange him running off, specially since he’d seemed happy the night before.

Outside, Rose looked closely at the path. If he’d left after dawn, his bike’s wheels ought to have left marks on the paving stones. There was still some drizzle on them from the night. But she couldn’t see a single tyre track.

When she knocked on Andrea’s door, she felt suddenly unsure. The atmosphere in the house had been awful lately.

‘Mrs Pauling,’ she breathed softly; and, when Andrea didn’t move, she squeezed her arm and called her name loudly. Andrea covered her face with her hands and groaned as if she hadn’t slept for a week. That was how she looked, too, when she opened her eyes.

‘What’s time?’ she mumbled.

‘It’ll be half-six directly.’

‘Jesus Christ, Rose.’

‘Can’t help that, Mrs Pauling. Leo’s not home. Been gone half the night.’

Mrs Pauling rolled over and sat up with a great effort. ‘His bike?’

‘Gone with ’im.’

Andrea gave a faint cry and her hands rose to her mouth, but she did not stay motionless for long. The next moment she was patting her cheeks to wake herself, and swinging her feet to the floor. Forgetting there was another person in the room, she stumbled to the chair where she had laid her clothes the night before, and in a single movement drew her nightdress over her head. Rose looked away as Andrea stood naked for a moment, before pulling on her clothes with feverish speed.

‘Mrs Pauling,’ Rose called out, as Andrea ran to the garage. ‘Should ’ee go drivin’ directly? Why don’ ’ee wait a bit?’

But Andrea did not even glance at her. Instead she flung open the garage doors, as if something terrible would happen unless she could get there to stop it. She certainly drove that way, her little Standard screeching out into the lane like a crook’s car in a B film.

*

When a group of airmen had come clumping down the companion ladder into the after cabin, Leo had already hidden under the bunks. The boat was under fire at the time, and, though they’d been mainly
silent, occasionally they’d laughed together, a bit like boys before a beating. He’d been glad when the engines had burst into a deafening roar. Lying flat on his face, as Mike had told him to, he tried to imagine he was hiding behind the changing room lockers at school. But the chinstrap of his tin hat cut into him too painfully to give his imagination much chance.

At first when the aircraft attacked, Leo thought the tearing, wailing noise was coming from
Luciole
’s engines. Had her props been fouled, or was some vital piston seizing up? Only the brisk mutter of the ship’s guns, and a series of violent lurches, persuaded him otherwise. A splintering crash near the bows was followed by a terrifying row overhead, as if the whole deck was being ploughed up. Every bone in his head was vibrating and ringing before the terrible aerial noise faded away.

Something had changed in the cabin. Leo was still in his old place, amongst the kitbags and spare life jackets, but now, because there was more light coming from somewhere, he could see into the cabin through the gaps. With one part of his mind, Leo knew what was happening – Mike had even warned him that they’d been seen by a spotter plane and could expect the worst – but he could not yet bring himself to imagine what an air attack might mean for so small a trawler. His heart began to pound so hard that his throat felt filled by its thumping. He remembered the burning cargo ship. Feeling the softness of his cheek and his slender fingers, he imagined them charred beyond recognition. Could
it really happen? The freighter had been big, a sitting duck, but
Luciole
was small and weaving about at full speed.

And then the howling came back again, this time from a new direction. Seconds stretched like elastic. God, don’t let me die, he begged again and again, thinking of his parents’ grief. The gun on the deck above him was firing. He could hear it stuttering, until the sharper rattle of aerial cannon fire began. From the cabin came confused sounds; then screams. Somewhere outside the ship, a deep explosion shook her. He began to cry as he realised that
Luciole
’s engines were spluttering. The planes would return when she was motionless and that would be the end. What chance could they have? The ghostly silence that followed the dying tonk-tonk-tonk of the engines lasted until he heard more screams. Leo turned his face towards the cabin. Some of the gear in his line of sight had been shifted by the boat’s gyrations.