From a German intelligence appreciation dated 4 November 1942: The relatively small number of landing craft and the fact that only two passenger ships are in this assembly at Gibraltar, do not indicate any immediate landing in the Mediterranean area or on the northwest African coast.
‘Four hundred revolutions. Port fifteen…’
Nick Everard was at the binnacle with a sliver of moon beyond to silhouette his dark, duffel-coated shape as Harbinger’s rudder went over and revs increased; she was moving out to support Paeony, who’d put a U-boat down at close quarters and now had it in asdic contact. It was the first one tonight and as yet there was no pressure from elsewhere; the Germans had been holding off, keeping the defenders on edge in the knowledge that they were out there and might move in at any moment, had only two or three nights left in which to finish the butchery.
Unless they were intending simply to maintain contact, and wait for the rest of the pack to join?
It wasn’t likely.
‘Midships!’
‘Midships, sir…’
Paeony’s RDF was out of action – which was a good enough reason for Harbinger to move in that direction. Guyatt was busy with this U-boat, and his sector would be unguarded by RDF or even visually. Not that any sector could be covered as it should be, with escorts spread so widely: and the only remaining trawler having some trouble with her asdic set. Broad had made a signal about it this afternoon. Even Harbinger wasn’t totally without problems: the weather had been foul for days on end, and the rough handling had left a host of defects including one serious one, a leak on one condenser. Hawkey was in a state of agitation about it, but there wasn’t anything to be done, at sea. The prospect of Harbinger breaking down was one you didn’t have to entertain.
‘Steer oh-one-eight.’
‘Oh-one-eight, sir…’
The convoy’s mean course now was 030. They were back on the ordered route, and nearly two days astern of schedule. It would have been worse if they hadn’t cut the corner, by-passed the dog-leg of position B. But there could be no more diversions, not at any rate until all the ‘Torch’ assault convoys had passed astern.
SL 320 consisted of twenty ships, after losing the William Law and the Bonny Prince last night. The William Law had been hit by two torpedoes and had gone down quickly, but the Bonny Prince had straggled, dropped several miles astern, and she’d been hit while Stella had been struggling back to see what the trouble was and persuade her to rejoin. Then she’d been torpedoed twice, with an interval of about ten minutes between the attacks. Nick had known there were two U-boats ahead at that time, a dozen miles away, but not of any other until those two ships were hit, within about half an hour of each other.
So thirty-seven ships had been reduced to twenty. And the fewer ships were left in convoy, the shorter the odds became on any individual being the next to go. But those odds would also be affected by the number of U-boats involved, HF/DF contacts during the evening and early hours of the night had indicated that four were keeping pace with the convoy, and a Tracking Room signal received at dusk had stated,
In addition to those in your immediate vicinity, transmissions on 4995 KCS between 1500 and 1800/ A indicate 5 U-boats now ahead of you will have joined by noon tomorrow.
Bearcroft had read that message out from the W/T office voice-pipe, when they’d been at dusk action stations, and Chubb had broken an ensuing silence with an enthusiastic ‘Oh, good!’
Chubb’s ebullience was undiminished. Warrimer had settled down, become more intent on the job he was doing and less conscious of his own value to it. Mike Scarr was quieter than he had been. For all of them – except Chubb, apparently – it had been a telling, formative week.
The Omeo was being left astern as Harbinger surged forward and diverged from the left-hand column. Next ahead of the Omeo now was the Colombia: then the Sweetcastle, and the Tolworth Tide as column leader. The Chauncy Maples led the whole pack of them from the centre, the head of column three, with the Burbridge astern of her. The oiler, Redgulf Star, was abeam to starboard of the Burbridge. Harbinger driving her narrow hull across a sea that was definitely easier now, lower and longer and with moonglow highlighting the crests, spray glittering as it came whipping across the bridge. The moon was only a brightness behind cloud, most of the time, with occasional leaks of brilliance through gaps: the wind was distinctly colder, to make up for conditions having improved in other ways.
A call from the plot… Carlish took it. ‘Surface contact oh-four-one, seven miles, sir!’
‘Translate that into range and bearing from Astilbe, and pass it by TBS.’
Scarr would probably be doing it already: he’d have sent the initial report up to the bridge while he got on with it. Although Graves should have it on his own screen by now: he was closer to it than Harbinger was. But RDF as well as asdic performances were erratic in bad weather. Nick had his glasses up, looking for a sight of Paeony somewhere ahead: and TBS was calling, Gannet informing Eagle that she’d lost her contact. Then, Captain to captain, please?
‘Bring her to oh-three-oh, cox’n.’
Convoy course – until he’d drawn clear of the Tolworth Tide, to be able to cross ahead of her. He took the microphone from Bearcroft: ‘Everard here. What’s the problem?’
Just for the record, sir, the one I just lost would seem to be a deep-diver. Went straight down and out of my beam at a range when I should have held him. Over.
‘Could be so. We thought we had one a few days ago.’ Or more. Time ran into itself: two days, seven, ten… ‘I was coming to join you, but I’ve a contact now on oh-four-oh, seven miles. I’ll be passing between you and the convoy. Out.’
Whether it was one of the Germans’ new deep-diving boats or not, Guyatt would try to sit on top of it long enough for the convoy to pass clear. But with so few escorts that even this small group of attackers outnumbered them, no rational system of defence was really viable. All you could do was keep at them, attack wherever one showed up.
‘Course oh-three-oh, sir!’
The Tolworth Tide was abeam: a long, low shape wreathed in white, kingposts like topped tree trunks black against the moon. Half a mile beyond her, moonlight permitted a glimpse of the Coriolanus leading column two… Bearcroft in contact with Astilbe, tipping Graves off about that 271 report: but Graves’s telegraphist came back smartly with a report of their own – they had that one on their screen and were chasing after it, but another as well, broader to starboard.
Making three in all. You had to keep the picture in mind and constantly updated, the whole moving scene as the convoy ploughed steadily onward and the enemy’s position shifted in relation to it. It was a picture that so far was incomplete, although it did look as if they were moving in now. They might have held off tonight, waited until there were nine of them instead of four, but SL 320 was emerging from the Azores air gap and the Germans would have this very much in mind. They weren’t to know that with the ‘Torch’ convoys to protect and then invasion beachheads to cover the RAF and Fleet Air Arm were going to be stretched to their limits, so that air patrols out here weren’t necessarily to be counted on… Harbinger crashed explosively into a trough, whitened sea leaping to enfold her, swamping her before she recovered, got her snout up and began to climb the oncoming slope, its crest an uneven, toppling horizon with moon-washed cloud behind it. Survival was the objective now: the ‘Torch’ commitment would soon have been completed. He’d kept the U-boats either close to him or ahead – spreading, scouting to pick him up again – and only the last of the assault convoys had yet to slip by astern. The first would have been passing through the Straits of Gibraltar just after sunset this evening: tonight and tomorrow night there’d be a stream of them sliding past the Rock, with darkness hiding them from Spanish and other eyes.
‘Starboard ten. Steer oh-four-oh.’ To cut across, now. He straightened from the voice-pipe. ‘Range and bearing of that contact?’
Depth charges rumbled. From Paeony’s direction, and not far off. Perhaps the alleged deep-diver had been less deep than Guyatt’s A/S man had thought.
‘Oh-four-seven, five point two miles, sir!’
‘Steer oh-five-oh.’
Starshell: on about that same bearing. And TBS calling: Fox – Astilbe – was reporting U-boat on surface, engaging…
‘Starboard ten. Steer oh-eight-oh.’ Because Graves had said he had another contact, out somewhere in that direction. Graves was attacking the one in the centre because it happened to be the one in his sights… ‘Tell RDF to sweep from about oh-five-oh to oh-nine-oh.’ Guyatt was still in contact with his German – a fresh outbreak of depthcharging had just confirmed it – and Astilbe had this other one while Harbinger headed eastward to hunt a third. It left one card still wild. The fourth might be slinking in at this moment, unmarked, nothing between it and the slow-moving merchantmen, nothing to prevent it slipping in between the columns and getting at the Burbridge or the oiler, or both… Nothing down there except Stella: and Broad could only be in one place at a time, didn’t have the speed to transfer quickly to meet a new threat developing elsewhere, didn’t have RDF or even an asdic set he could rely on.
There wasn’t anything you could do: except make do with what you had, and hope for some lucky breaks. This wasn’t a real defence, it was a token one.
Timberlake asked Chubb, over the depth charge telephone, ‘Tell us what’s ’appening, Chubby lad?’
Chubb hesitated: he loathed that form of address, which was why the gunner used it. Then he decided to ignore it: he said quietly, with one hand cupping the ’phone against his mouth, ‘Chasing a two-seven-one contact. Paeony’s bollocking one, and Astilbe’s got another on the surface, and – there, gunfire… See it? See that starshell?’
‘Well, I’m not bloody well blind, boy!’
‘Pete’s sake, you asked me, you quarrelsome old turd!’
He’d told Timberlake earlier this evening, ‘I got myself a Sheila. Would you believe it?’
‘Not in a thousand years!’
‘Gospel truth. In the Burbridge. In the first dog we were up close – doing the old social round, you know – and what d’you think? Well, I’ll tell you – she blew me a kiss! Tall number, very sexy-looking…’
‘Carrying a white stick, was she?’
‘What’s that?’
‘She’d ’ave to be blind, wouldn’t she?’
‘You’re jealous. Because you’re past it, eh?’
‘And you can kiss me arse.’
‘Ah, well now, I don’t like to offend old men, Guns, but I have to admit I’d as soon not even look at it.’
He asked Timberlake now – still smarting from being called ‘Chubby lad’ – over the depth charge link as Harbinger plunged eastward across the convoy’s van, ‘Cold, is it?’
‘Bloody cold.’
‘You want to wrap it in a sock, then. Or keep it in your hand.’
He chuckled as he put the ’phone back on its hook. Definitely one up… Carlish yelling, ‘Surface contact oh-seven-one, three point seven miles, sir!’
Another version – range and bearing from a different position – was coming in from Astilbe. There’d been more gunfire on the beam, and more depth charges on the quarter. A starshell from Astilbe broke high to port.
‘Starshell stand by!’
Warrimer reported, ‘All guns ready, sir, B with starshell, A and X with SAP.’
‘Contact lost, sir!’
Meaning it had dived. Hopes nose-diving with it. The German had most likely been alarmed by that starshell from Astilbe, which had been intended to illuminate the other one.
‘Steer oh-seven-three.’ The skipper called, ‘One full pattern Sub, hundred-foot settings, stand by!’
Chubb busy now: Timberlake too, back aft, preparing for another blind attack, a frightener more than much chance of doing any damage. All you could do was blast a section of ocean and pray the German might be in it. But there was still a fourth U-boat – somewhere…
U 702 had been forced to dive, by the corvette on this bow of the convoy. Looff had taken his boat down to 175 metres, and started his stopwatch in order to time a slow paddle under the convoy, allowing those juicy targets to chug over the top of him while he pottered gently southward. He didn’t object to having been put down: if anything he was pleased to have pinpointed the position of one corvette. You could guess the other would be at the same distance out to starboard, and the destroyer fussing around between them: it gave him the pattern, the escort commander’s best answer to the insoluble problems he was facing. You could be almost sorry for him: whatever happened tonight, tomorrow would see an end to it.
The sound of screws in that easterly direction was confused, and covered further by rough conditions, but the general picture was clear enough. He wasn’t sure where the trawler was, but he guessed somewhere astern. The whole thing was a gift, now: he’d assured FO U-boats, in reply to a terse signal from Kernéval, that annihilation or near-annihilation of this convoy was guaranteed.
The deep-dive capability was a blessing – in terms of tactics, but also to Max Looff personally. It had virtually solved his personal problem, all by itself. He could thank his stars – thank Admiral Dönitz and Flotilla, anyway – for having deprived him of that Berlin leave in order to shift him to this boat. All right, so the effects lingered, he could still wake shaking and sweating, close to screaming, but then he’d remember this – like reaching to some magic touchstone – and his nerves would steady.
Steady as rock now. And he’d planned this dip under the convoy. He’d have run through on the surface if he’d met no opposition, but this was the alternative he’d had in mind: to duck down, swim under, then surface and attack from astern. He grinned at Franz Walther, his scruffy-looking engineer, and promised him, ‘We’ll have that liner now. And/or the tanker. Tonight, I’ll settle for either or both.’
‘Tanker would be the most useful, tactically?’
‘Escort’s lost contact, sir!’
He nodded complacently. It was no surprise to him that Drachen One had dived through and out of the scope of the corvette’s asdic beam. It was the beauty of the deep-dive trick. Seen as a diagram in profile, an asdic beam was more or less elliptical; as an escort approached its target, the submarine even at shallow depths was lost to it as it passed out through the sloping near-edge of the beam. This was why an escort making an attack always lost contact shortly before it was in a position to drop charges, and the short interval gave the submarine time to take evasive action in that last minute; it was also why A/S vessels tended to hunt in pairs, so that one ship could hold the contact while the other attacked. But at this depth, to maintain contact the hunting ship would have to stay back at a considerable distance – where it didn’t have a hope of doing you any damage: and on top of this, you were actually below the effective range of their depth charges!
Looff checked the stopwatch time. It was going to take a while…
Depth charges thundered. The explosions were above them, and out to port. The boat had quivered: the charges had been close enough for her to feel their shock-waves, but not nearly close enough to hurt.
‘Chancing his arm.’ Looff shrugged. ‘And wasting his depth bombs.’ He looked up, and called, ‘Come on, my little dears, waste some more!’
Smiles, here and there around the control room. This was the Max Looff they admired, the ace they boasted about to their girls!
The hydrophone operator jerked his head up. Staring at Looff, from his little cabinet. Opening his mouth…
More depth charges: eight – nine – ten… The operator looked down, frowning. Having said nothing at all, just shut his mouth again. Reverberations dwindling… Heusinger murmured, ‘Only about a mile off-target. Silly bastard!’
A nod or two: a chuckle from the coxswain. Looff was puzzled, though, at the continuing waste of depth charges. He knew they’d be getting short of them by this time. He noticed that the hydrophone operator had finally decided he did have something to say…
‘Escort’s in contact, sir!’
Looff continued staring at him. Other faces, too, registered surprise and doubt. ‘How in hell can—’
‘Not with us, sir. One of the others, it’s got on to.’
Walther, busy with the trim, muttered ‘Well, well…’ Heusinger sucked in a noisy breath. Looff said, ‘Must be Pöhl. Ernst Pöhl, for God’s sake, taking the heat off me!’
Not that there’d been any heat. With this darling of a boat, the real heat might be a thing of the past. But there might be some coming to Pöhl, he guessed. Heat like – that… Another pattern of charges blasting off. Knowing what it was like to be in the middle of a battering of that kind, nobody here envied Pöhl or his crew. Looff was checking his watch again, thinking the convoy should be audible pretty soon. The operator exclaimed sharply, ‘Sir – would you – listen?’
He went over, grabbed the spare headset. Puzzled: then grimacing, and eyebrows lifting in surprise… ‘What the hell is it?’
‘Well – one of our’s, sir. Whichever’s getting clobbered.’
Drachen Six?
Pulling the headphones off, he remembered that Drachen Six had been hit by a shell from a trawler about a week ago, and how lucky Pöhl had been to have survived it with only exterior damage of a completely unimportant kind. It might be that the damaged after casing had been further loosened by depth charges, those first ones; but whatever the cause of it was, Pöhl’s boat was making a noise like a brass band now. You’d hear it a mile off!
It wasn’t a bit funny, either. That corvette could hardly lose him, now.
Go to his assistance? Attack the corvette while it was concentrating on him?
Looff held on. More depth charges booming: and Pöhl was in for a pasting, obviously. But when you’d made a plan and embarked on it, it was best to stick to it. The hydrophone operator confirmed him in this decision – pointing upwards, announcing, ‘Convoy, sir…’
Guyatt had reported over TBS, I think I’ve hurt him, sir. Could be a propeller blade.
That wasn’t likely. If it had been a blade he’d have stopped using that screw. Of course, it could be that both had been damaged – screws, or the shafts bent. It was that kind of racket, and it had to be something the German couldn’t stop, or something external he couldn’t get at. It would be an agonising experience, to know about it, just have to grin and bear it…
But these characters deserved a few agonising experiences.
Nick told Guyatt to stay with his target, finish him. The U-boat was running westward on a dead-straight course, and the only uncertain factor was its depth.
‘Chief – call Gannet again, say, “I suggest you try three hundred foot settings”.’
Because wounded and running, the German would be likely to have gone deep. And Guyatt had it in contact at normal asdic ranges, so this was not a deep-dive merchant. He decided he’d give Guyatt his head, for the time being: if there was a good change of reducing the U-boat force by one, it was a chance worth taking.
Astilbe and Harbinger had both lost their contacts. Nick had told Graves to cover the convoy’s whole front while he took Harbinger round to the starboard side. It was more hunch than science, but it fitted the pattern indicated by those three U-boats’ original dispositions – right, left and centre. And Germans were reputed to have orderly minds.
Number four, then – astern?
Harbinger’s course was 180 now, with 180 revs on as well, to give her fifteen knots. Asdics pinging, like a blind man’s stick poking into darkness. On the bow, in faint moonlight, he could just make out the Dongola, leader of column five, smashing black sea into white emulsion with her high, sheer stem. He knew all these ships pretty well, by this time.
‘Surface contact ahead, four-one-five-oh yards!’
He’d ducked to the pipe: ‘Four hundred revolutions!’ Then over his shoulder to Warrimer, ‘Starshell stand by!’
Asdics were out of it now, as speed increased. And this contact just might be Stella, swanning out on her own. Although Broad oughtn’t to be that far out… Nick decided, no, he wouldn’t.
‘Range four thousand, sir, bearing right ahead still!’
Harbinger was getting into her stride, and the motion was easier on this course. She was still making hard work of it and digging up a lot of ocean, but her lunges were longer and more regular; the guns’ crews would have an easier time of it, if they got to grips with this one.
‘Range three thousand, seven hundred, bearing one-seven-seven, sir!’
‘Steer one-seven-five!’
Every second counted: because if this was a U-boat and not the trawler, it would be in a position to fire – now – with the whole flank of the convoy open to it, unless Broad’s trawler was there as well, and she might be… But he couldn’t risk waiting any longer. ‘Starshell, fire!’
B gun crashed. In the echo of its noise Warrimer passed the order to reload with semi-armour-piercing… ‘Range oh-three-five, target right ahead…’ The starshell ignited, light spreading in concentric halos from the ragged underside of wind-driven cloud. Bearcroft howled, ‘U-boat dead ahead, sir!’
‘Target in sight! Open fire when you bear!’
Nick had it in his glasses: and it was turning away. It had been in profile, moving in towards the convoy’s side, but now it was turning away to port. Half-lost in foam: at moments, completely hidden… The light was drifting down this side of it: and he thought the German was diving. One gun down for’ard had fired – B, the greater height of eye from that raised gundeck giving it an advantage over A gun – but it was diving, it was already half under, only the upper part of its tower visible: the sea closed over, piling, just as from the side of the convoy they all heard the harsh explosion of a torpedo. Harbinger, bow-down, sea sheeting up all round – and a second torpedo-hit… In the nearer column, he thought, with a flood of that sickening sense of impotence that had become familiar lately… As she climbed again, her motion more violent now because of the higher speed, he tried to see which ship had been hit: guessing the U-boat would have been firing as it swung, spreading a salvo across the convoy’s flank when he’d actually had his glasses on it… Another thought was that it couldn’t have been the Burbridge, not from that angle.
Looff was dieseling up into the rear rank of the convoy, nosing U 702 in between the tail-ends of columns three and four. He’d surfaced her a few minutes ago, having turned her already on to the convoy’s course; then he’d searched for and spotted the trawler – roughly a mile away, close to the convoy’s port quarter, nicely removed and ignorable. So he’d accounted for all the escorts well enough, and he had his submarine trimmed right down, as near invisible as she could have been. His intention was to pass right up between these columns, and there was no reason why it shouldn’t come off. It was a tactic he’d employed successfully before – as indeed had other men before him. He wanted the oiler or the passenger ship. From the point of view of doing maximum damage to the convoy the oiler would take priority as a target, since you’d be depriving the escorts of their fuel supply; but the liner had a strong appeal for him, too. For one thing, it was the biggest ship in the whole assembly, and for another – well, there’d be value in destroying such a target.
‘Steady as you go…’
One freighter to port, one to starboard. U 702 making only a couple of knots more than they were. This lively sea was ideal cover, but he was still being careful to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
‘All right as you see it, Oelricher?’
‘Looks very good so far, sir…’
They’d both kept their voices low. As if thinking they might be heard in those dark, plunging hulks across a few hundred yards of wild sea. Feeling like wolves slinking into a sheep-run.
Then – torpedo-hit…
Ahead, and somewhere to starboard. And a second. Looff’s brain registered that it would be Otto Meusel’s work. Drachen Nine: one of the pair from the Brest flotilla. Also – although in the first seconds it wasn’t obvious that this was going to wreck his own plans completely – that it couldn’t have been worse timed, from his own point of view. White rockets scorched skyward, curving on the wind, away to starboard. Then Oelricher yelled, flinging an arm out to point that way, ‘This one’s turning!’
Snowflakes burst overhead, light-streams showering, another pair of rockets hissing up through the silver radiance. Night becoming day, and the freighter to starboard turning, its high, gaunt foc’sl looming against firework-bright cloud as it bore round. Looff had to act fast, or be trapped or run-down; certainly at any minute spotted. He shouted – whispering-time was over now – ‘Full ahead! Port fifteen!’ U 702 crashing and hammering through the waves, smothered in her own blanket of foam. The one that was bearing down from starboard was turning to stay clear of her next-ahead, he realised, that one being Meusel’s victim. U 702 clear for anyone to see now, as brightly illuminated as all the ships hemming her in. There was no room or time to dive: a glance was enough to tell him he’d be rammed in the attempt. He shouted, ‘Hard a-port!’
Increasing wheel to turn her between the ship that was now abaft his beam – he’d cross this one’s bow, in fact – and the one ahead of her. He didn’t know it, but they were the Cimba and the Archie Dukes. The torpedoed ship had swung to port as well, broaching to the wind as she slowed, slumping in the sea, others crowding on around her and this side of the convoy already well disrupted. U 702 boring through the waves: trimmed down like this she was in them, with only her bridge any higher than their flying tops. Speed now about fifteen knots and mounting. As she battered her way round through sea already churned by others Looff saw a flash from the stern of the freighter ahead, then heard the crack of it and the rush of a shell passing close: he saw what looked like dancing cut-out figures cavorting around that gun on the stern platform, under the snowflakes’ glare. U 702 was driving clear, thank God, of the Cimba’s threatening stem… He called, ‘Midships!’, and another shell scrunched over – the third, and close enough to hear it: but with his stern pointing that way he was presenting those Merchant Navy gunners with an exceptionally small target: if they hit him it would be sheer luck – sheer foul luck… And his stern pointing that way, into the centre of the crowd of ships, meant something else as well – he had a stern tube with a torpedo in it. He shouted, ‘Stand by number five tube!’
Steadying her on about 210 degrees. Flat-out, sea drenching over solidly. No time to bother about a point-of-aim, a browning shot into the middle would hit some damn thing, and with luck and the help of Providence might, just might, hit one of the marks he’d been after anyway… Checking points rapidly in his mind: such as the depth setting on that fish being for sixteen feet – adequate for any of these middling sized ships or the tanker or the passenger-ship – who’d both be in line for it, all right, would at least have a ticket in the sweepstake so to speak… Another snowflake burst, showering white brilliance outside the tent-like cocoon of foam; Heusinger screamed from inside the tower, ‘Number five tube ready!’
Glancing astern: seeing the orange-yellow flash of that gun taking another swipe at him. Ships widely scattered as they drew away, leaving two behind them, one still struggling to keep going but the other half over on her side, boats dangling and one up-ended, spotlighted, people falling out of it. A shell spout rose like a marble pillar in the snowflakes’ glare: it must have come from some new assailant, because the one who’d been shooting before had been blanked off by others. He ordered, ‘Fire five!’, then pushed Oelricher towards the hatch. ‘Dive, dive…’
As he got off the ladder in the control room she was already at forty metres and going on down steeply. Faces of men at their jobs around the compartment showed alarm and a lot of questions. Half a minute passed before at any rate one of the questions was answered – by the crash of that torpedo finding a target. Some target… Around Looff, his crewmen cheered. In his memory like a blurred photograph was a pile of foam out to starboard, a gun’s flash miniaturised by distance and flying spray, and a starshell bursting overhead. It was the last thing he’d seen as he’d thrown himself into the hatch, part of a blurr of movement, noise, the desperate importance of getting under fast: and it could only have been that trawler pounding back eastward at its flat-out speed of next-to-nothing… The torpedo-hit was a dying echo in his brain: it melted into the sound of his own voice telling Franz Walther, ‘One hundred metres.’
Willi Heusinger suggested, smirking at him, ‘Your liner, sir, perhaps?’
Grins all round, as they waited for his answer. A minute ago, they’d been scared enough to wet themselves. Looff, seeing clearly through the facades because he’d lived behind his own for a long time now, was contemptuous of them all, except for Walther. He and that evil-smelling, tramp-like object were the adults here, in a crowd of kids. He told the helmsman, ‘Port twenty. Come round to oh-three-oh.’ The night’s action didn’t have to be over yet.
In the middle of that mess of action Nick had been on the point of telling Paeony to discontinue her persecution of the noisy U-boat and rejoin, when Guyatt had piped up and reported, Target believed destroyed. Resuming station. So that at least was satisfactory: that alone, rather. He’d left Stella to organise rescue operations astern; he and Tony Graves had their hands full with the dual tasks of screening the convoy against further attacks while also bullying surviving ships back into columns and urging those in column to close up into newly-created gaps. Some had strayed outwards, and had to be shepherded back into the herd: and all the time, every minute, you were clenching your mind against the shock of the next explosion.
It felt very much like disaster. Four U-boats only – in fact three – creating this much havoc, with another five about to join the pack?
The last casualty had been the commodore’s ship, the Chauncy Maples. She’d been holed right aft, and had her rudder and screw blown off at the same time. Her number six hold was filling and her engine room was flooding through the shaft tunnel. She’d dropped a long way astern by this time, immobilised and doomed even though she might float for an hour or two yet. Her crew were abandoning her, and the Mount Trembling was standing by to receive them, having already embarked the Primrose Bank’s. She and the Asswan had been hit in that salvo fired from the convoy’s starboard side. The Asswan had been in column six, the Primrose Bank in number five; there’d been another U-boat inside the columns at that time, according to ships who’d seen it and particularly the Archie Dukes who’d loosed-off half a dozen rounds of four-inch at it, and the Cimba who’d been hit on the foc’sl by one of them when she’d been close to the line of fire.
Commodore Sandover was all right; he was on board the trawler. The vice-commodore, the master of the Dongola, had taken over the running of the convoy, and had moved over to the centre, ahead of the Burbridge. The Asswan, hit at the same time as the Primrose Bank, had kept going and tried to maintain her station, but she was falling back now and had just signalled that the bulkhead between numbers one and two holds was in danger of collapsing.
Guyatt had amplified his report on the destruction of that U-boat. It had been damaged by his first few patterns, which had slowed it and also produced sounds of pumping and blowing tanks. He’d had no difficulty maintaining contact with it, because of its high level of underwater noise, but after his final attack all sounds had increased abruptly. His asdic operator was certain the last pattern had put paid to it.
So you could reckon there’d be eight of them, by this evening.
At down, as the remnants of SL 320 forged northeastward with an orange glow flushing the sky on the bow, Harbinger was out on the port wing, Astilbe three miles to starboard of her, both zigzagging and searching with asdics and 271s, while astern Paeony and Stella escorted the Mount Trembling and her load of survivors up the convoy’s wake, overhauling at a rate of about three knots. The Chauncy Maples had sunk and the Asswan, who’d been taking her time about it, had been sent on her way with a few shots into the waterline from Paeony’s four-inch. It would be mid-forenoon before the group astern could rejoin and then distribute survivors into ships that had room for them. The sea had gone down quite a lot during the night: wind was now about force four, stars were visible through patchy cloud and Mike Scarr was standing ready with his sextant, gazing up while he decided which stars he’d use and waiting for the horizon to harden.
Nick had sent Paeony to do the job astern because with her defective RDF she was less use than either Harbinger or Astilbe in the van.
Warrimer said, ‘Be out of the air gap by this time, I’d guess.’ He yawned, and asked Scarr, ‘Aren’t we?’
Scarr was still sorting out heavenly bodies. ‘Just about.’ He corrected: ‘Yes – well out.’
Chubb observed, with surprising percipience and without lowering his binoculars, ‘An air gap is where there are no patrolling aircraft. If we get some air cover today, we’re out of it; if we don’t, I’d say we bloody aren’t.’
‘We have a sage among us.’ Scarr lifted his sextant. ‘Rough-hewn though he may be.’
Nick thinking that Chubb had hit the nail right on the head, despite his ignorance of the circumstances. He was hunched on his high seat, with his glasses up – as always – part-hearing some of the sporadic mutters of conversation behind him. Another half-dozen pairs of glasses were searching the white-streaked seascape just as intently, and the 271 was circling, asdics singing their dismally monotonous note into the depths of green ocean. Harbinger zigzagging irregularly – at action stations, her guns manned and loaded while the light of a new day, Friday 6 November, spread its streaks of brilliance from the east.
All the assault convoys would have crossed astern by now. The Casablanca force, direct from US ports, would have swung eastwards around Madeira during the night just passed. Other sections of the great armada would have been progressing in silence and darkness into the Mediterranean: the last of them would be filing through the Straits tonight.
Scarr, behind him in the bridge, called down to his timekeeper in the plot to stand by. Carlish ordered starboard wheel, keeping her under almost constant helm, which was about the best way to be safe. Carlish had grown up a lot during this trip: you could consider him a watchkeeper now. Nick decided that when it was daylight and they fell out from dawn action stations he’d take Harbinger back for a chat with the vice-commodore, in the Dongola. The seventeen surviving ships would have to be re-formed now, with the Burbridge and the Redgulf Star enfolded in a reduced rectangle. When that had been accomplished, Harbinger and Astilbe could top up their fuel tanks: and Paeony later, when she rejoined. Also, Harbinger’s RDF mechanic, who was still on board Astilbe, might usefully be transferred to Paeony.
He jerked forward on his seat, jarring the binoculars against his eyes. Torpedo hit – astern…
‘It’s the Tolworth Tide, sir!’
Chubb’s raucous yell…
Leader of column one. Chubb must have had his glasses on her at that moment and seen it. Unless you’d had glasses on her, in this half-light you couldn’t have. But he took Chubb’s word for it: ‘Hard a-port, full ahead together!’ Displacing Carlish at the binnacle, getting close-up impressions as he moved there of shocked expressions in tired, stubbled faces in the greying light. Distress rockets soaring now – from the Tolworth Tide as she swung outwards from her column. The shock was worse for the fact they’d begun to ease off, believe the hours of respite were coming now as they routinely did with daylight… Warrimer was passing orders to the sightsetters at the guns, waking them all up in case they needed it, and Chubb was talking to Mr Timberlake back aft. Scarr, forgetting stars, had disappeared down to his plot. Harbinger heeling to her rudder, engine-room telegraphs clanging through the voice-pipe and CPO Elphick droning in that flat tone of his, ‘Twenty-five of port wheel on, sir…’
Sixteen ships left, now.
She’d left him one half-slice of bread.
Jack stood in the kitchen, staring down at it. She was out, as was usual at this time of day, and the child had gone off to school earlier. Jack had just hobbled downstairs, deciding on his way that an idea he’d had of moving on today wasn’t so hot, that the ankle hadn’t yet recovered to the extent he’d hoped. He’d wanted to get away, though, because of yesterday’s strange events – the food she’d left, and her peal of laughter when she’d come back and seen how much – or how little – he’d taken. The next thing might be the arrival of that Wehrmacht circus, or police. But he couldn’t leave, not yet. There was some reassurance, also, in the fact that last evening at her egg-collecting time he’d seen her checking the outside of the house, each window in turn. He’d only seen her at two of the front ones, but she’d obviously been going all round, window to window, checking on whether or not they’d been opened and also examining the ground below them – for spoor, of course. She must have thought an intruder had been getting in that way to steal her food: so if she did report it to the authorities they’d be looking for someone hiding in the woods, not up here.
The half-slice of bread was the same size as the piece he’d taken yesterday. As if she was teasing him, saying, If this is as much as you can manage – here…
Damn her!
She had a dirty face, anyway. Either dirty or sunburnt – which seemed hardly likely in Germany at this time of year. He’d noticed it yesterday when she’d been at the window right below him.
He could have wolfed up all that sausage, and the bread-slice with it, in about two gulps. He could feel his own thinness as well as hunger. In recent days the secret had been not to think about it, to turn the mind to other things – like the Swiss border, London, Fiona, poor old Frank Trolley. He’d have to see Trolley’s people, when he got back… Anyway – he was on his way to get eggs now, with a call as usual at the outside heads, and then he’d come back in here and boil them, same as yesterday. He had two hard-boiled ones left from yesterday, which he’d eat when he got back upstairs, and some of today’s would be kept for tomorrow. If one always provided for one day ahead, a Sunday when it came wouldn’t be quite as agonising.
He wasn’t going to touch that slice of bread. The hell with her little jokes… Some sausage, though – why not? She might not notice, if he only took a little… Thinking about it while he was outside made his mouth water; he found he was actually dribbling while he scrabbled around for eggs. He got four, and came back inside – through the window of her room and making sure of leaving no traces inside or out. He was also careful to bolt the shutters again on the inside. He’d put the saucepan on, like yesterday, so the water was already heating.
You fell into a routine, he thought. However bizarre the circumstances, you adapted to them and the days soon acquired a pattern. In this case, of course, it was a matter of fitting in with her routine… Waiting for the water to boil, he cut off some sausage and ate it, afterwards dipping the knife-blade in the hot water and wiping it dry before replacing it in exactly its former position. Feeling strangely and annoyingly like a trained ape, a creature imitating human ways… The water was steaming by this time, but not yet boiling. He looked at the sausage, wondering whether he could safely take another slice. And since it amused her and she thought the thief was outside there somewhere… why not eat the bread?
Because – anger stirred in him as he thought about it – it would feel like being made to jump through hoops.
He was staring into the saucepan, willing it to start bubbling, when he heard the clink of her keys on the other side of the back door.
He ran – limping, and dizzy with the shock of it – to the stairs and over the stack of junk, then up to the landing and to his room. As he shut its door – too noisily – he heard the downstairs one slam.
Then silence.
He’d left four eggs in her saucepan. By now the water would be starting to boil. He thought – panting, still shaken by the sudden fright and the rush upstairs, leaning back against the closed door and feeling the hard banging of his heart – that if he’d had any sense he’d have left those shutters unfastened. Then she could have imagined he’d dived out, got away… But he’d never considered the possibility of her creeping back early and trying to catch him. Which she must have done. If he hadn’t heard those keys…
She might be scared to follow up now, on her own. If she went for the police, it might give him time to scarper. Ankle or no ankle… He’d drawn a breath in so hard it had squeaked: he’d heard her coming, up the stairs. Clambering over that clutter now. He tiptoed to his mattress, lay down on it and pulled the strip of carpet right over him.
Not that there could be a hope in hell…
She’d gone the other way. But there were only two rooms on that side, and two on this, so the inspection couldn’t take very long. He heard doors being pulled open and pushed shut again.
Rush out while she’s on that side? Bolt for it down the stairs?
She was crossing the landing. Now, if he made any such move he’d come face to face with her. She might try to stop him, and then anything could happen. He didn’t want that: for a number of reasons, one of them being that he’d never used violence against any female, and the idea of having to do so was extremely unattractive to him. This was strange – he hadn’t thought about it before, but now he had to – it might have seemed peculiar to some people, in view of the fact that he was really quite a violent character, certainly had been at times…
He heard the door open.
She’d be standing there, staring at the mattress with its humped covering. He lay still, on his back, trying not to breathe hard or noisily. Although she could not, possibly, just look at it and not know—
She came over, in three quick steps, and jerked the carpet off him. He was staring up into a roundish, swarthy face. Not dirty: just dark-skinned. She had fair hair tied back in the German fashion, but with that dark skin she didn’t look German at all. Portuguese, possibly, or—
Dark, slightly slanted eyes.
She looked shocked. He remembered how startled he’d been, at first sight of himself in the mirror… She’d stepped back, still with her eyes fixed on him. He saw her take a deep breath. Then her hand rose, pointing at him, and she asked a question in German. The raised hand was shaking.
The question might have been something like Who are you? Or What are you? When he didn’t answer, just shook his head, it was followed by a quick, panicky stream of other questions. He guessed at What are you doing in my house? or How did you get in? and What do you want here? Then again, after a pause, the shorter one she’d started with.
He sat up. Moving slowly so as not to frighten her. He put his hands up, token of surrender.
‘English.’ He lowered his hands, and pointed at himself. ‘English prisoner of war. Escaped.’ He made a mime of running, with his fingers, then pointed south: ‘Switzerland. Suisse. Schweitzer, whatever you call it… But—’ he displayed his ankle, and indicated pain. Then he asked her, ‘Politzei?’ He put his wrists together as if in handcuffs, and pointed to her, suggesting her going off to get them. ‘Finish. Kaput.’ Pointing to himself again. Then ‘OK?’
She just stood there, staring at him. He thought she might have got the gist of it, more or less. She seemed less tense now, anyway. Probably getting used to his somewhat outlandish appearance, he thought. He’d be a terrifying thing to find, in one’s own house, but after that rather hysterical flood of questions she seemed to have been in good control of herself. He’d been at pains to talk gently, to make her realise he was no danger to her, but it would take a strong nerve, for a girl on her own. He guessed most would have screamed and run for it… If she did go now, for the police, he’d leave the house behind her, try to get to where he’d hidden the bike, and hide himself near it ready for a dash southward when it got dark. These ideas were forming in his brain while he waited to see what she was going to do: he was to remember those plans later, and realise he would never have made it. They’d have had road-blocks everywhere, thousands of men between him and the border.
She beckoned to him.
‘Kom.’
He stayed where he was, watching her. She made gestures – miming the use of a knife and fork, eating. Then she pointed at him and began a different act – washing, he thought. Shaving? She was chattering in German too – in a low, persuasive tone, as if she was trying to convince him of something now.
He got to his feet. Leaning with one hand on the shutters, and keeping that foot off the floor. She turned away and walked out of the room, to the head of the stairs, where she stopped and turned to see if he was coming. Seeing that he was, she nodded approvingly and repeated, ‘Kommenzie.’ That was what it sounded like. He limped down the stairs behind her, and followed her into the kitchen. She pulled out one of the two chairs at the table, and made him sit down on it. It looked as if she really was about to give him a meal! He felt dizzy. Being kind, he thought, before she turns me in. He wondered if she’d have been this kind if she’d realised he was quite capable of breaking her neck one-handed. She’d put some large pots of water on the back of the stove. Glancing at him occasionally, bustling round… Now she was slicing sausage and also a new loaf of bread: she’d taken it out of the basket. Then she was mushing up the partly cooked eggs which he’d left in the saucepan – she’d have taken it off the boil when she first came in. But all four eggs, with bread and several slivers of the sausage… His hunger was so intense that the prospect of a full meal was making him feel weaker than he had before: also he was self-conscious about dribbling and had to keep licking his lips. He mumbled, while she bent over her work at the stove, ‘Zehr gut. Incredible. I mean, you’re – wundebar!’
It was a word he’d heard. It sounded like a cross between a Mars and a Milky Way, but she seemed to get the message – she glanced round with a half-smile on her face, showing embarrassment and also amusement combined with that secretly-pleased look they always got when you hit the right note with them. But she might still have been scared of him, he suspected: she’d looked round again, as if wondering whether she’d been right about him… Her back was to him now. She was widehipped, heavy-thighed: it was the first impression he’d had of her, he remembered, when he’d seen her from that shed. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed the dark complexion. A trick of the light, perhaps… She turned around, and dumped a loaded plate in front of him.
‘Bitte.’
A kind of triumph. Standing back, looking at him expectantly. He smiled, half bowed: she laughed, pointing at the food. He found the word he’d been struggling to think of: ‘Dankeschön!’
He ate ravenously, while she watched. She didn’t eat at all, but drank milk, and poured some for him. He toasted her: ‘Prosit!’ She giggled. He asked her with his mouth full, ‘Deutsch?’ Asking her, was she German? She shrugged – it wasn’t exactly a denial but it wasn’t affirmation either – and answered with a sentence which he construed as ‘My man is German’. But it might have been ‘was German’. He asked her, waving an arm around, ‘Man here?’
‘Nein.’ Her face became heavier, older. She was about twenty-eight, he guessed, but for that moment or two she could have been forty. He thought she was going to cry. He would have liked to have asked whether the man was away in the Army, or in prison, or dead, or what… That empty photograph frame?
When he’d finished eating she directed him into the room with the washbasin and tub in it, then went back and began bringing the hot water from the stove. He helped with it, although she pointed at his foot and tried to stop him. She emptied most of it into the tub: he was anticipating luxury now of a kind he hadn’t dared even to think about. She’d gone off again, in the direction of her bedroom, and eventually returned with a pair of scissors, a cut-throat razor and leather strop, a shaving brush and a bar of yellow kitchen soap. He guessed the implements might be her man’s… She’d disappeared again, and came back with a bundle of clothes. Trousers, shirt, sweater with holes in it, felt slippers. The trousers were black and shiny from age, and the grey shirt was long enough to be a night-shirt. In fact it could have been… She pointed at his own clothes and at the washtub, then made motions of washing and wringing-out, indicating that she meant she’d do it for him: she asked him, ‘OK?’
He nodded, staring into her eyes. She was close enough to touch, and if he hadn’t known he stank he’d have kissed her. How this was happening, who she was or rather what her story was, why she was doing this…
She left him, and shut the door.
He thought – stripping, bathing, then trimming his beard but not shaving – that she could only be acting out of sheer kindness, perhaps the heightened degree of kindness of one who has some great sadness, suffering or anxiety of her own. And one should not expect too much: he had to accept, he knew, that afterwards she’d have no option, she’d have to turn him in. He’d make no problems for her: he liked her, and saw courage as well as kindness in what she was doing for him. He was in a state, he also realised – making use of this time to assess his position and hers and the way to handle it – a state of physical and mental imbalance – vulnerability might be a better word for it – and all emotions had to be closer than usual to the surface. When she’d been close to tears, back there in the kitchen, he’d felt like putting his arms round her, weeping with her – for her, for himself, for the sheer helplessness of the entire human race. And then the sudden urge to kiss her…
Well. She could go and fetch the military, if she wanted. He’d wait, be here when she came back with them. At least, he thought he would… Except they could hardly blame her if he took off: and having come this far, had this much luck – in contrast to the lousy deal poor old Frank had had – wouldn’t it be mad to give up now, if there was still a chance?
He found her in the kitchen, at the table, slicing carrots into a casserole. She looked him up and down: said something in German with a laugh in it, something that might not have been far from, ‘That’s a hell of a lot better!’
He wasn’t smelly any more, and his beard was trimmed. He stooped, and kissed her cheek.
‘Danke schön. I don’t know how to thank you. You’re marvellous.’ She sat still, with her dark eyes on his, knife in one hand and carrot in the other. He asked her, ‘Now—’ pointing – ‘Polizei? Soldaten?’