Sunset (9 page)

The bridge messenger bent over a voicepipe and then said, ‘From W/T, sir.
Mayday
from one of the ships in that eastbound convoy.'

Calvert flung himself across the chart table, seizing his brass dividers and parallel rulers, a pad already to hand.

Kerr peered over his arm. ‘The convoy must have scattered. We might be able to help if we crack on speed.'

They both turned as Brooke said, ‘Disregard. Carry on with the sweep. You know our orders. It is not my intention to disobey them.'

He saw Kerr's eyes spark with something like anger. He added quietly, ‘A gesture, Number One? That's not what it's all about, you know.'

Then he was gone, and they heard the stammer of Morse as he paused by the W/T office on his way to the sea-cabin, the hutch, as he called it.

Kerr said harshly, ‘There may be men out there, waiting for their ship to go down under them, or already treading water without hope of rescue. Is that of no importance?'

Calvert watched him.
So that was why he fell out with the previous captain
.

He said, ‘U-boats hang about near stragglers, don't they? Just in case some ship comes looking for survivors.'

Kerr did not seem to hear him. He exclaimed, ‘Anyway, what's wrong with making a gesture?
You
bloody well did!'

Calvert gave a brief smile. ‘I have the watch, Number One.'

Kerr opened his mouth but closed it again.
What would I have done?
He saw Pike the coxswain waiting by the forward funnel with a clipboard in his hand, waiting to waylay him, but all he could think about was the finality in Brooke's voice and Calvert's
incisive little comments.
The untimely interruption of war
. . . He reached the iron-deck and asked crisply, ‘Something for me, Swain?'

He was the first lieutenant again.

Number Seven mess was situated on the starboard side of the lower deck. There were three other messes in this cramped space, each consisting of a scrubbed table with bench seats on the inboard side. Other members of a mess would sit on the lockers that lined the forecastle's curving side. Shelves were crammed with ditty boxes in which the older men kept their treasures, metal hat-boxes, and inflatable life-jackets, which were either worn or kept very close to hand. In the centre forepart of the mess were the nettings where sailors stored their hammocks. These were not supposed to be slung at sea in case they jammed a door or an escape-hatch if the worst happened, and unless one watch was ashore as libertymen there was never enough space to sling all the hammocks anyway. But although the men moaned about the discomfort and overcrowding it was unlikely that any true destroyer-hand would exchange it for a battleship or cruiser, where the bugle and spit-and-polish ruled as in a barracks.

Seven Mess was no different. The rolled oilcloth was unfolded on the table, and mess-traps were handed around while the cook of the mess clambered down from the galley with trays of greasy bangers and pans of steaming baked beans. A fanny of tea, some last remaining stocks of stale bread which had survived all the way from Scapa Flow, and maybe a biscuit or two: it was not much of a banquet, but it lined the stomach and drove the ache of watchkeeping away until the next time.

The leading hand of the mess was the captain of the forecastle, Bill Doggett. He was a great block of a man, with wrists as thick as most men's arms. A true seaman, his waist was hung about with handmade leather holsters in which he carried the tools of his trade, a wicked-looking knife as well as the regulation one or ‘pusser's dirk', a marlin-spike for splicing wire, even a pouch of lead pellets for the buoy-jumper to hammer into the big mooring shackle so that it did not unscrew itself as the ship tugged on the cable.

Doggett was a formidable character who could be foul-mouthed, even violent when required, and he ruled his mess with a rod of iron. Ashore he was often fighting mad and appeared regularly as a defaulter for some misdemeanour or other. That was why he had never moved up to the petty officers' mess: not that Bill Doggett cared, but he ran the forecastle deck with all its complications of anchors and cables, slips and stoppers, wires and fenders like a magician.

As he had been heard to remark, ‘Even Mister toffee-nose Barrington-Purvis can't find nothin' to drip about!'

He was rolling a cigarette now, his thick fingers like sausages but the movements deft and supple. His features were set in concentration.

One seaman, called ‘Ticky' Singleton because of a nervous twitch in one eye, said, ‘After Gib, Hookey? What d'you think?'

‘Far East. Obvious, innit?' Doggett gave him a pitying glance. ‘I done a commission out there once. Hong Kong – now there's a place. Suit me, it would. All them little girls at Wanchai . . . make yer ‘air curl, they do!'

The table was cleared, the oilcloth rerolled. It would soon be time to muster for work.

Singleton persisted, ‘The new skipper don't say much, do he?'

‘To
you
? Got more mouse than that!' Doggett gave a huge grin. ‘The old
Serpent
's in good ‘ands. One officer short, a bomb-'appy navigator, a pisshead of a subbie, and now a Skipper who's probably a real death-or-glory bloke.
Our
death, ‘
is
sodding glory!'

‘There's always Jimmy the One.'

Another voice called, ‘Hookey only sees him across the table!'

Doggett was rolling another cigarette from his duty-free tin. It would be ready in time for stand-easy.

‘He an' I 'ave an understandin' . . .' The cigarette stayed motionless in his hand as the tannoy rasped, ‘
Away
sea-boat's crew! Lowering party to muster!'

Doggett punched a man who had fallen asleep at the table.

‘Shift yerself, Bobby! One ‘and for the King, remember?'

Only one narrow ladder to the deck above, and yet in seconds the lower messdeck was empty, leaving sea-boot stockings drying
on a deckhead pipe, a half-finished letter, somebody's local newspaper, sent perhaps to remind him of that which he could scarcely remember. For
this
was their home, and for all their banter it was what really mattered to them. That, and survival.

Up on the open bridge, the voicepipes and telephones muttered like hidden spectators while Brooke, his wash and shave forgotten, levelled his powerful glasses above the spray-dappled glass screen.

‘Cox'n on the wheel, sir!'

‘All short-range weapons closed up, sir!'

Brooke heard but ignored them. He was watching the vast span of unbroken ocean ahead of the bows, undulating in a regular, steady swell as if the sea were breathing. Glistening and endless, with the horizon too bright and blinding to look at.

Kerr was beside him, his eyes keen and questioning.

Brooke said, ‘Probably nothing, Number One, but I'm putting down the sea-boat. See to it, will you?'

Kerr hesitated and then raised his own binoculars before he slid down the ladder again.

Someone unused to the ocean and its ways would see nothing to begin with. And then . . . He turned back to the ladder and caught one of Onslow's young signalmen staring at him, biting his lip nervously. From bow to bow there were a million tiny fragments, lifting and falling on the swell, black in the blinding light.

Brooke crossed to the port side and leaned against the screen.

‘Tell the Chief. Dead slow.' Dead was right. He leaned over the side of the bridge and saw Kerr already down there by the whaler's davits, the boat's crew sitting on their thwarts in oilskins and life-jackets. The boat-handlers were loosening the falls around the gleaming staghorn bollards, crouching like athletes, waiting for the order. Kerr was speaking with Fox, the chief boatswain's mate, his right arm when it came to seamanship.

Brooke raised his glasses again. He said, ‘Who is the senior Asdic operator?'

Calvert would not know. Yet. But Onslow called, ‘Raingold, sir.'

‘Get him for me.'

A boatswain's mate handed him a handset and Brooke said shortly, ‘Captain. Sweep from bow to bow. We are approaching wreckage. More than one ship by the look of it.'

‘Aye, sir. I'll begin now.'

Calvert asked, ‘U-boat, sir?'

‘Unlikely, Pilot.' He sounded completely absorbed. ‘That bastard'll be off after the rest of the convoy. If there's any left.' He looked at Calvert's tense face. Of course, he would have little experience of this; his would have been the bird's-eye view.

‘When a ship goes down after being tin-fished she'll sometimes capsize, and if the bulkheads and hatches hold she can assume neutral buoyancy – like a submarine, right?'

He turned and waved down to Kerr and saw the flurry of hands around the boat's falls.

‘Even at this speed, a wreck like that could take out our keel like the string from an orange.'

Calvert watched him. So calmly said. Not to impress; there was no bravado.

‘Turns for lowering!' Kerr's voice was quite clear even up here. There was not a breath of wind, unusual out here on this empty ocean.

‘Lower away!'

Calvert dragged his eyes from the sea of drifting fragments and concentrated instead on the boat jerking down the ship's side towards the small, frothing bow-wave.

‘Avast lowering!
Out pins!
'

The whaler's coxswain and bowman held up the retaining pins to prove they were removed from the falls. In times of terrible emergency it was not unknown for one man to overlook this, so that when the boat was dropped into the water only one end would be freed. The crew and passengers, if there were any, would be flung into the water and probably sucked into the screws.

‘Slip!'

Kerr had timed it perfectly. The boat made barely a splash as it dropped on to the small bow-wave and then veered away on its rope, the oarsmen already thrusting out their blades. Brooke found time to wonder how many times he had lowered the sea-boat like this.

Calvert asked, ‘How long since it happened, sir?'

‘A few days, no more. No leaking fuel about, but the flotsam is still too close together for it to have been much longer.'

Calvert stood and watched as
Serpent
's straight stem pushed slowly through the scattered remains. A mile or so of tightly lashed bales, cotton or wool, perhaps for uniforms in England. Broken life-rafts which had never been lowered, an upturned boat towards which the whaler was pulling strongly. To get the vessel's name and registry: to ignore the rest. Several corpses rolling over in their life-jackets, faces destroyed, blackened and bruised by the explosion, and by the sea birds if any other flesh remained. Splintered hatch-covers, a couple of life-buoys: it stretched in either direction. More human remains bobbed along the side, trailing their scarlet weed. Perhaps the ship had been carrying explosives too.

‘Boat's calling us up, sir!' Onslow's face was like stone. The whaler's coxswain was standing in the sternsheets using only his hands to semaphore across the water. How good
Serpent
must look to him at this moment, Brooke thought. ‘She was the
Mary Livingstone,
registered in Sydney.'

Brooke felt for his pipe, but it was down in the hatch.

‘Log it, Pilot.'
Why can I never get used to it?

The whaler was right amongst the bigger fragments but was still clinging to the useless life-boat.

The hands were waving again and Onslow exclaimed, ‘There's a woman and kid under the boat, sir.'

Their eyes met across the crowded bridge. Like a cry for help, or an unspoken bond.

A bridge messenger asked, ‘Are they dead, Yeo?'

Onslow swung on him, his eyes blazing with fury.

‘Of course they're fucking dead, you stupid little bugger!' The rage faded as quickly as it had arisen, and Onslow said, ‘They want to know what to do, sir.'

Calvert stood very still, deeply aware of the importance of this moment. Two men looking at each other, held together by circumstances.

The captain said in the same level voice, ‘Tell them to fetch them aboard, Yeo. It's the least we can do.'

Calvert said, ‘That was a fine thing to do, sir.' He waited, half expecting Brooke to turn on him.

Brooke was watching the whaler returning slowly towards the ship, the oars rising and falling like tired wings.

‘It's important to him, Pilot. They're not just victims. To him they're what he's lost.'

‘Clear lower deck! Up whaler!'

Routine was taking over again.

When Calvert looked again the whaler was snug against the davits, the seamen going about their business.

Brooke said, ‘Bring her back on course, Pilot, one-one-zero revolutions. Tell Number One we shall exercise damage-control before
Up spirits
.'

That night, with Lisbon somewhere far abeam, the destroyer
Serpent
stopped her engines once more.

In one canvas bundle the unknown woman and her child were buried at sea, as they had died, together.

The Staff Operations Officer, roundly built and wearing an open-necked white shirt which was far too tight, was reaching up with a walking-stick to jab at one of the old-fashioned revolving fans. Except that it was not revolving.

In between pokes he gasped, ‘Like a bloody oven in here when the generators pack up!'

Brooke sat without speaking, still tired from the final approach and entry into Gibraltar's broad anchorage. Every kind of ship, he thought, from cruisers to landing-craft, hospital ships to troopers, the latter with every inch of rigging spread with khaki washing.

He was always impressed by Gibraltar: the Rock. Towering and somehow reassuring, the fortress at the Mediterranean's gateway. From one window he could see the sunshine glittering on ten thousand windows: Algeciras. No doubt eyes had watched
Serpent
's arrival, Spanish and German. What Churchill would denounce as one-sided neutrality in a country from which the enemy could and did spy on their comings and goings. Brooke half-smiled. The Germans were hardly likely to be interested in one small survivor from the Kaiser's war. Their reports would focus more on the hospital ships and empty supply vessels,
evidence, if any was still needed, of the closing stages of the campaign in Crete.