Sunset (8 page)

In his mind, he could see it all and guess the rest. The cable had been unshackled from the buoy and replaced by a powerful slipwire, the only thing that was holding the ship captive. He had heard the thud of feet as the lower deck had been cleared to man the falls and run the dripping motor-boat up to her davits; the
rating who had been the luckless buoy-jumper was probably soaked through by lively wavecrests.

‘
All the Port watch! First part forrard, second part aft! Hands to stations for leaving harbour!
' The tannoy had not stopped since breakfast had been cleared away.

Brooke felt in his pockets although he knew the drill by heart. Pipe and tobacco, two or three handkerchiefs and a dry towel to wrap round his neck if it got wet in the open bridge. He slung the heavy binoculars across his chest, tossed his stained duffle coat over one arm and took a last look around, then he walked out into the passageway where he saw the petty officer steward fastening up a cabinet with a padlock. He was wearing a deflated lifebelt over his uniform. The old hand, he thought. It was not unknown for a ship to be torpedoed or to hit a mine immediately on leaving harbour. Then up the ladder to the lobby and out into the open. It was surprisingly cold, but he walked slowly and deliberately along the deck and saw the bridge framed against a grey sky. The Flow looked bleak, the islands and heavier warships almost hidden in what appeared to be mist. Brooke knew it was drizzle, which had been coming and going since dawn. The three funnels with their low tails of smoke, like the oilskinned seamen and the narrow decks, were shining with it.

He could almost guess what the leading hands were saying as he walked by.

‘There's the Old Man. What d'you reckon to him?'

He glanced in passing at the two pairs of torpedo tubes, a small broadside when compared with the new fleet destroyers.

The Gunner (T) saluted, and Brooke said, ‘It'll be lively outside!'

Podger Barlow grinned. ‘She can ‘andle it, sir.'

There it was.
Pride,
the one quality that was never shown on any list.

Past the funnels, feeling their steady warmth, and then up the first ladder to the Oerlikon gun mountings. Some seamen glanced at him uncertainly – the usual collection, he thought. The hard men and the youngsters, new recruits and old stripeys who knew it all.

The open bridge was crowded. The team. The ones he would get to know. Or else.

Sub-Lieutenant Barrington-Purvis saluted, his face totally blank. He had been keeping a very low profile since the incident with Calvert in the wardroom. The latter was bending over the ready-use chart table, the hood of which hid everything but his buttocks and a pair of lambswool-lined flying boots. A glimpse of his past.

Onslow, the yeoman of signals, was at the rear of the bridge, his powerful binoculars trained towards the land. Brooke had made a signal about his promotion, which should be granted without any more delay. It was the least he could do. A boatswain's mate, two look-outs and another signalman completed the visible part of the team. Below in the wheelhouse Pike the coxswain would be at the wheel, the quartermasters on either side of him manning the telegraphs for engine and revolution orders. The plot table and the navigator's yeoman completed the complement.

‘From
Flag,
sir.' Onslow was speaking to Barrington-Purvis, but was looking at his captain.
‘The boom will be opened in twenty minutes. Proceed in company with Mohican.'

Brooke stood on the scrubbed gratings beside the tall chair; he would spend much of his time here. He had seen the other ship already, one of the big Tribal class destroyers, like Vian's famous
Cossack
which had swept alongside a German supply ship, the notorious
Altmark,
to rescue the many merchant seamen imprisoned in her after their ships had been sunk by the raider
Graf Spee
. A rousing moment in a war plagued by defeats and failures.
‘The Navy's here!'
had been the cry of the
Cossack
's boarding officer. It could have been intended for the whole country.

Brooke stood in the forepart of the bridge and looked down at the glistening forecastle deck. The slipwire was running through one fairlead, down to the buoy and back to the opposite side where Kerr's party stood in their oilskins, with their chin-stays down to keep their caps in place and so avoid any criticism from some watching senior officer, and wearing their stout leather gloves. There were often broken strands which slipped the attention of the handling party, and without gloves a wire could
lay open a man's palm like a carving-knife. A shivering signalman stood right in the eyes of the ship, ready to lower the Jack once the wire was slipped.

Brooke controlled his breathing. He had taken the big flotilla leader
Murray
to sea many times. But this was different. It was like being someone else. He saw Kerr peering up at him, his face shining with rain. Perhaps he was seeing himself on the bridge as he might have been.
Stubborn. Impulsive
. What had really happened?

‘Stand by, sir!'

‘Warn the Chief.'

Calvert said, ‘Done, sir.'

Onslow called, ‘Carry on, sir.'

Brooke chopped the air with his hand and heard Kerr yell,
‘Slip!'

‘Slow ahead together!'

Brooke heard the glass screen begin to rattle and saw the big mooring buoy slide away as if under its own power.

‘Port ten! Steady! Midships!' He heard Pike's throaty voice echo up the brass voicepipe as he put the helm over. Men were dashing about below the bridge, tackling the treacherous slipwire and subduing it into one shining coil. Then, as Kerr shouted an order, the forecastle party fell into two swaying lines while the signalman scuttled from sight with the Jack in his arms.

Onslow said angrily, ‘From
Mohican
, sir.
Please proceed. Age before beauty!
'

One of the look-outs muttered, ‘Cheeky sod!'

Brooke picked up the red handset and waited for Cusack to answer.

‘Captain here, Chief. Our ability is being challenged. Can you give me full revs when I call for it?'

Cusack must have known what was happening, or maybe it often occurred. He sounded almost cheerful. ‘Too right, sir.'

‘Signal from boom-gate, sir!
Proceed when ready!
'

They did not have long to make their exit. Since
Royal Oak
had been torpedoed right here in the Flow it was always feared that another U-boat would slip through the boom when it opened for an outgoing vessel.

There was no point in using unnecessary helm orders. Brooke spoke directly into the wheelhouse voicepipe.

‘Steer straight for the boom-gate, Cox'n.' He could picture Pike down there with his beefy hands on the wheel, his head turned as if he had guessed there was more to come. Brooke said, ‘Now ring down for full speed!'

It was as if
Serpent
was sharing it. She seemed to pounce forward, a huge bow-wave slicing from the stem like an axe through ice.

‘Attention on the upper deck!'

Brooke raised his glasses and watched as his ship tore abeam and then past the other, more powerful destroyer. He could see the gold oak leaves on her captain's cap, even his astonishment as the
Serpent
overtook the big Tribal and swept on towards the open boom.

‘Half-speed ahead together.' He watched the wash boiling astern like a waterfall so that the other ship's bows were momentarily drenched with falling spray.

Onslow said quietly, ‘That showed him, sir.'

Brooke felt it again: pride, and he knew he was sharing it.

‘Not quite, Yeo. Make to
Mohican. Do you require a tow?
'

‘No reply, sir.'

And so
Serpent
and the ninety souls in her company went back to war.

Lieutenant Toby Calvert climbed the last few steps of the bridge ladder and hauled himself through the gate. For a few moments he leaned backwards, taking his weight on his arms while he let the early sunshine explore his skin. It was not very warm, but the air was fresh and alive, and the open bridge was no longer a place of mystery. He belonged.

The morning watchkeepers were still in their various attitudes of tired stiffness, waiting to be relieved, to snatch some rest before returning to their defence stations in another four hours. Watch on, watch off, for this was the Atlantic, and although the ocean stretched away on either beam in glistening emptiness it was never a time to relax.

Calvert saw the first lieutenant on the forward gratings, his binoculars training from bow to bow. Leading Signalman Railton was splicing a broken halliard, while the look-outs on either side swept their arcs of vigilance with slow care, probably very aware that their captain was on his tall chair on the port side, his head cradled on his arms below the screen, his tousled hair rippling in the breeze.

Kerr turned and said, ‘Nice and early, Pilot! That's how I like it. What's for breakfast?'

Calvert grimaced. ‘Bangers.'

Kerr watched some gulls swooping after the ship. Where did they nest, he wondered?

Throughout the ship gun-crews were exchanging places, and
down in the wheelhouse a new helmsman had just reported that he was taking over the helm.

Together they opened the weatherproof screen over the chart table, and bent to examine the pencilled courses and positions of the previous watch.

Kerr said in his usual business-like fashion, ‘Course to steer is two-one-zero, one-one-oh revolutions.' He glanced over the screen and Calvert saw the dark stubble on his chin. When he next appeared the first lieutenant would be freshly shaved, smart as paint.

He said, ‘Cape Finisterre is about two hundred miles to port. Weather report good.' He frowned and Calvert saw the returning strain, but it was quickly past. ‘There were some signals around dawn. Convoy in trouble to the south of us. But nothing else yet.'

A boatswain's mate, a silver call dangling from a chain around his sweater, called, ‘Port watch closed up at defence stations, sir. Able Seaman Monk at the wheel.'

Kerr turned away from the voicepipes. ‘Better watch that one. Dozes off if you don't chase him.'

Calvert waited, knowing there was more. A criticism, perhaps? Instead, Kerr said, ‘What do you make of it, Pilot? Fifteen hundred miles, from Scapa to the sun. You've really settled in, right?'

Calvert climbed onto the compass platform and checked the magnetic compass. The casual inquiry was not the real reason why Kerr was hanging around.

He replied cautiously, ‘I'm still finding out where everything is.'

Kerr glanced towards the captain. One of Brooke's arms had slipped from its perch and was swinging slowly in time to the ship's easy roll.

‘When did you take up flying?'

Calvert made himself relax, muscle by muscle. It was not the question he had been expecting.

‘A long time ago. It was all I ever wanted to do.' He found himself measuring every word before he released it. ‘Eventually I became an instructor at a flying club and organised trips over the Channel during the summer holidays.' He sighed. ‘Hard to
believe now, isn't it?' He realised that Kerr was waiting and went on, ‘I joined the local R.N.V.R. unit and persuaded them to attach me to the Fleet Air Arm. I was a civvy instructor, so it was like learning from scratch, a part-time Richthofen!' Kerr saw the smile, the cost of talking so freely. ‘So when the balloon went up, I was one of the first to be called. Just as well – I couldn't
do
anything else.'

Kerr said, ‘We all think like that sometimes.'

‘Yes, I expect so. The regulars I meet . . .'

‘People like me, you mean?'

Calvert searched for sarcasm but there was none. ‘Yes, if you like. Everything mapped out, from the training college to a brass-hat if you're lucky. I've known several like that, bent on personal advancement and totally unprepared for the untimely interruption of war in their ordered world. I've often found that the hostilities-only chaps are better able to take it. They joined up to fight, not to make a career of it.'

‘You're not married?'

Calvert smiled. ‘Nearly. I was too young. Now I'm too bloody old, or feel like it!'

Kerr thought of what he had heard about the captain. How his girl had married his brother instead.

Calvert raised his face again to the sunshine and Kerr thought he could see a cluster of scars through his beard; then he slipped out of his duffle coat. Beneath it he wore a blue battledress blouse, what the navy called ‘working rig'. His pilot's wings were above the left pocket, but as it was working dress no decorations were ever worn with it. Was that why he clung to this old uniform? So that the V.C. would remain something private?

Since Calvert's arrival at Scapa, Kerr had made a point of checking up on the award and the act of valour for which he had received it in the records at naval H.Q., and when he considered his findings he understood the expression he had seen on Calvert's face when the solitary Swordfish had flown slowly across the swirling currents of the Flow. The two battle-cruisers
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
had already made a name for themselves throughout the Norwegian and North Atlantic campaigns. Fast and powerful, they had been the cream of the
Kriegs-Flotten
.

Kerr had wondered what it must have been like for Calvert and his two-man crew, first sighting the two great ships and then being able to communicate their discovery to their carrier only with an Aldis lamp. But it had already been too late, and the carrier along with the
Courageous
and the
Royal Oak
had become the first heavy casualties of the war.

‘If you two can't stop nattering I might as well go down to my hutch and grab a wash!' Brooke slid off the chair and stretched.