Six

 

Leading-aircraftman Tebbitt, wedged into the starboard corner of the tiny bridge of HSL 7525, on look-out with Leading-aircraftman Westover, saw the Walrus coming towards them long before anyone else on board. It was on his side of the bridge and it appeared first as a dot low over the horizon, but in Tebbitt’s brain preoccupied as it was with his worries over his wife, it failed to register immediately.

Huddled inside his duffel coat, he was staring into the wind and covering the sea to his right as the launch corkscrewed her way stubbornly north-east. Ahead of him he could see the bow of the boat, sharp and grey, the anchor locked into position slightly forward of the winch, heaving up and round and down in labouring arcs, then up and round and down again, so that the broken sea and the grey sky went down and round and up in the opposite direction in sickening monotony.

One after another the dark waves came at them, rolling under and beyond the launch from one horizon to the other, their tips touched with feathers of white. They came from where the massing clouds curved down to sea-level, from the width of the North Sea, growing more vicious and broken as they ran into the confined spaces where England pressed close to France, down across the wrecks of hundreds of ships whose mastheads marked their graves on the sandbanks of the Channel, whose only tombstone was a green wreck buoy which warned vessels to give their sunken spars a wide berth, whose only requiem was the paragraph concerning their position in Advice to Pilots.

The spray rose in little spurts as the waves exploded under the chine and whipped in curving darts across the port side of the fore-deck to rattle on the splinter mats and the wheelhouse windows and so over the bridge. As it fell it coated everything with a layer of salt rime, stiffening the halliards and the heaving-lines that swung from the hand-rail, making the grey decks slippery as the wind-blown drops gathered in larger globules which became streams in the tearing breeze and hurried before it across the deck to congregate in jerking, sidling, quivering puddles by the gun-turrets and the bridge step.

Tebbitt’s eyes saw every one of those rolling waves just as they saw the aircraft in the distance, but only about one in ten registered on his brain, for his personal problems pursued him like the hounds of Hell down the dark avenues of his thoughts, never leaving him for a moment.

He was as certain as any man could be that his wife was on the point of leaving him, and had been for longer than he cared to think about.

You great soft oaf, he told himself bitterly, you’d have done better if you’d taken her at her word and let her go the first time she threatened. You’d have done better still if you hadn’t been fool enough to marry her – if you’d stuck to your own Westmorland kind…

Tebbitt let his thoughts run riot round the What-Might-Have-Been which for a moment or two cloaked the What-Really-Was in a cloud of pleasant fantasy, then the unrepentant devil in the What-Really-Was soured the What-Might-Have-Been and Tebbitt was back on the bridge of 7525, and the spray was coming over the port side like stinging needles and the sea was the colour of dirty pewter, and he could hear the Flight Sergeant in the wheelhouse talking to Robb.

His thoughts stumbled on in a silent argument with himself as the aircraft went forgotten – or, to be more exact, unmarked in his mind. It wasn’t even as though there were any passion in his wife to hold him, he remembered bitterly. Hilda always did seem as cold as a frog. To him, anyway, he thought with burning jealousy.

But Tebbitt was what Flight Sergeant Slingsby derisively called “Well-brought-up” and “All cup-of-tea” – Tebbitt could even then hear the harsh sarcasm as it came from the cheerful, vulgar little Flight Sergeant – and in Tebbitt’s well-brought-up circle the men-folk didn’t lose their wives except by death. They didn’t divorce or run away from each other. They lived dull, contented lives and went to chapel with each other and reared children who would do exactly the same thing. And it was this as much as anything which made Tebbitt hang on to the unrepentant Hilda in the vain belief that she would eventually settle down.

He knew what he ought to do. Wallop her, you great soft-hearted fool, you, he told himself. Wallop her. Hurt her – even if it would never solve the problem. At least show her she couldn’t get away with it. Sling her across the room till she ached, and give her what-for until she knew who was the boss.

“That’s it, clout her, Tebby,” Slingsby had offered as advice once when they’d been trying to discuss it in the forecastle over a mug of tea in a noisy give-and-take which no one but Tebbitt was inclined to take seriously. “Tell her to put her dukes up and give her a fat eye so she can’t go out for a fortnight.

“Give everybody what they ask for, I always say, whoever they are. I remember a Jerry we picked up in the Channel during the Battle of Britain – in the days when they were lording it over half Europe. He sat in his dinghy and heiled Hitler a bit and said he wouldn’t come on our stinking rotten British boat and insisted we tow the dinghy with him in it back to shore. So he wouldn’t taint himself, I suppose. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘we will.’ Big-hearted Arthur, that’s me. Give folks what they ask for. So we did. We gave him his bloody treat at forty knots. By the time he’d been airborne a bit he was glad to come aboard. That just shows you. Give ’em what they ask for, I say, and you can’t go wrong.” And he went off into a boisterous reminiscence of the early days of the war, before Tebbitt was in uniform, that amused the forecastle but didn’t help Tebbitt at all.

For clouting her wouldn’t do much good, he knew in his heart of hearts. She’d have slipped off as fast as she could carry her bag to the station – not to the arms of another man, which was the trouble with most unhappy husbands, but to the subtle charms of that damned city, to the sound of Bow Bells and the sight of the River Thames.

Tebbitt felt frustrated every time he thought about it. He would willingly have smashed in the face of any other man he found interested in Hilda but he was baffled when it came to dealing with a city. He couldn’t bash in eight million faces and wreck a million buildings. He couldn’t destroy a tradition. Even Goering’s whole air force couldn’t do that.

He glowered angrily at the thought as he stared sightlessly at the sea and the growing speck of the Walrus. He could imagine her already, sitting in a window seat of the train, in that plaid coat she’d bought with the coupons he’d cadged, the one she always kept for best. And on the rack above her head there’d be the bag he’d given her – the one he’d got from a naval signaller on the base, with her initials painted carefully on it, HT. He’d painted them himself one night on boat watch with black paint he’d found in the after locker. He’d been proud of the job until he caught a rocket from her in her next letter for not remembering her name had become Linda.

She’d be sitting in some corner – his eyes became sad and unhappy as he thought of it – with the light bright on her blonde hair, doubtless talking to some damn Yank about London, about Streatham High Road, or the Ice Rink or the Astoria where she’d liked to dance, or that place she always talked about which made him so insanely jealous, the Rookery – the place where she’d sat after dark on the seats with the boys she constantly remembered.

Tebbitt’s mind raced away into a fantasy of his own invention in which Hilda, on arrival at the station, was a different person, ready and willing to be co-operative and loving. It could be done, he tried hard to persuade himself. Money could do it. He’d managed to rouse unwilling affection in her occasionally with presents. Then as his mind ran on, covering the whole of his torment in a few hastening seconds, he wondered unhappily where the hell he was going to get the money from to give her the good time she would demand. His own money would never last out at the pace Hilda liked to spend it. All he had was a pound and a few shillings in his pocket, which might see them through the first day.

His mind writhed with its efforts to see beyond the immediate future and he had completely forgotten the Walrus, in spite of its increasing nearness, by the time Slingsby appeared on the bridge beside him.

 

“Comfortable, Tebby?” Tebbitt jumped as Slingsby’s voice grated in his ear, harsh and hard with twenty years of shouting orders at people like Tebbitt.

“That’s right, Flight,” Tebbitt said.

“Well, it ain’t right,” Slingsby bawled. “Get off your bloody knees. Get them great barges of yours down on the deck – both of ’em. You stand like a pregnant WAAF. Now look at that goddam sea till your eyes start looping the loop or I’ll put you in the rattle.”

He was quivering with his anger and Tebbitt straightened himself up hastily, still thinking, however, even as he did so, about his wife and that train he had to meet, that train he had arranged to meet and had confidently expected to meet – but for the awkward circumstance of an aircraft ditching in the sea in their area of search.

“In case you haven’t noticed it,” Slingsby went on harshly, “there’s an aircraft over there and it’s coming over here – fast! And it might be a Jerry coming to blow us to bloody bits like they blew my mate to bits in the Whaleback off Dungeness in ’41.”

“Er – yes, Flight. I had seen it, Flight.”

Slingsby exploded. “Well, report it, you fool!”

Tebbitt looked at Slingsby with sad round eyes, the fact that he could have crushed the little man with one swing of his great fist not entering his head.

“Aircraft on the starboard quarter, Flight,” he said sullenly, still a little surprised that he hadn’t already reported the machine. “It’s a Walrus.”

“Knox!” Slingsby gave him a final glare and bent to the wireless cabin hatch and shouted – in that rough file-on-an-anvil voice which was the driving force of the boat, the thing which turned the propellers and kept the boat moving through the water, the power to the wireless batteries, the rope’s end that stirred the war-weariness out of them all, the goad, the pin-prick and the whip.

They could hear the hum of the Walrus’ engine now, and as it approached it seemed to disappear in a flash of light, which stabbed across the sky towards them.

“Knox!” Slingsby bellowed. “On deck! And jump to it! There’s a Walrus flashing us.”

With Treherne just behind, Knox burst out of the wheelhouse, carrying the Aldis signalling-lamp with him and, shoving Westover to one side, he wedged his lanky frame into a corner of the bridge and took a glance at the aircraft through the telescopic sight. Westover heaved himself on the wireless cabin roof and clung there, his arms round the mast, as the Walrus dissolved again in a series of flashes that stood out sharply against the darkening sky.

“Body” – Knox intoned slowly – “in – water – due – north – of – you – stop – investigate – will – circle – and – mark – for – you.”

“Give him the OK,” Treherne said. “Due north, Robby,” he shouted into the wheelhouse. And he dived inside, as though chasing his own words, as he reached for the parallel rules at the chart table.

The boat heeled over on its side on top of a wave as Robb swung the wheel – over, over, over, in a sickening, hanging motion that sent them all sliding to the starboard side of the bridge. Down below there was a crash of crockery, then the boat’s motion changed abruptly from a heaving corkscrew to a solid, thumping crash as it butted head-on into the waves. Tebbitt dully rubbed his chin which he had banged on the searchlight stanchion and wondered if this meant they would soon turn round and head west for home.

“Suppose it’s the dinghy, Flight?” he asked Slingsby warily. “Suppose the Walrus goes down and picks ’em up before we get there?”

“Suppose they do!” Slingsby grunted. “Suppose we ram the bastards, that’s all. That’s what I say. I’m not having any Navy birdcage spoiling my pick-ups. Sink the swine and have done.”

The keel of the boat was making a steady crunching hiss as it plunged squarely into the rolling water, a solid thump that shook the spars and jarred the nerves. Every time the bow rose to a new wave Tebbitt braced himself forward, then with every sudden drop his heels left the deck and came down again in a jolt that rattled his spine.

Knox finished flashing his message to the aircraft and put down the Aldis lamp as the Walrus roared past overhead and turned towards the north again.

“Looks like we’re too late, Chiefy,” he said.

“We’re never too late,” Slingsby said, his eyes squinting against the wind. “Not until we know we’re too late. And that’ll be two days from now with a gale blowing and no fuel left”

Conscious of being in charge of something Slingsby had never mastered, the wireless operator was unperturbed and pretended not to notice the rebuke. “7526’s around here somewhere, Chiefy. They’ve called her into the search.”

“I thought they would.” Slingsby scowled. “You sure?”

“I can tell that wireless op. of theirs anywhere. I could tell him in a blast of atmospherics when he’s batting it out. He’s good and he likes to show off a bit.”

Slingsby was staring ahead again. “Where are they?”

“Almost due north of here, Chiefy. Botterill got a bearing on them. They’ll be heading south-east.”

“And we were heading north-east until that Walrus called us up. It’ll be the usual race, with Skinner’s engines as the handicap. Keep your ear on that boy in ’76 and let us know if you hear anything further. Three times we’ve been on the point of a pick-up and he’s pipped us. Next time I’ll sink him with the Oerlikon.”

Tebbitt glowered sullenly out of the corner of his eye at the Flight Sergeant’s dapper little form as he spoke. To Tebbitt, like Milliken, Slingsby in the two or three weeks he’d been in charge of the launch had taken on the form of some devil incarnate conjured to life by the Air Force high-ups solely to plague Tebbitt. Each was as far removed from the other’s ideal as it was possible to be and Tebbitt, with his mind constantly elsewhere, knew he was already in the Flight Sergeant’s bad books. Nevertheless, his misery over his wife caused him to carry on the masochistic self-torture with Slingsby in which he’d been indulging with Milliken. Knowing perfectly well what sort of replies he’d get, he persisted in investigating the matter of the launch’s return.

“Flight,” he said, “think we’ll be back home tonight? Or do you think they’ll keep us out till morning?”

Slingsby’s reply was discouraging. “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep without a night light or something?”

Tebbitt ignored the insult and probed further, fully aware of the rage he might rouse. “But they usually do recall us after dark, don’t they? Not much good searching in the darkness, is it, Flight?” He was still trying to reassure himself that he’d be back at camp in time to meet that early morning train – almost as though by his persistence he could put agreement on to Slingsby’s tongue and so help to influence the authorities ashore. He was quite prepared to miss the boat on call-out if necessary the following morning. The only thing he knew he must not miss was that train which would stop at the local station in the early hours on its way to London.

Slingsby’s reply to his question was a grunt.

Tebbitt’s face was expressionless as he watched the sea, his eyes never still as he searched the valleys of the waves. His uncovered hair was whipped by a wind that blew it the wrong way and his great shoulders were hunched against the cold. He glanced again at Slingsby, who was still staring forward in inscrutable silence.

“If they keep us out all night, Flight,” he went on doggedly, in spite of Slingsby’s warning silence, “what time will they recall us tomorrow, do you think?”

“Holy suffering St Peter,” Slingsby burst out, his red face darkening. “For Christ’s sake, put a sock in it! They might keep us out all tomorrow night as well. And all the next day. And everlastingly till the flaming sea dries up, so long as there’s a chance. And a good thing, too. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? Not to go rushing home at the first opportunity to meet silly bloody wives.”

 

Tebbitt stood in his corner of the bridge in staggered silence for a moment, for the first time aware that Slingsby knew why he wanted to get home. He was not looking at the Flight Sergeant, but still stared out over the waves, his eyes watering a little at the teasing of the wind. Then Slingsby dodged into the wheelhouse and Tebbitt caught a glimpse of Westover looking curiously at him over his shoulder.

“I wish he’d forget the bitch and get on with his job,” he heard Slingsby saying furiously below. “The whole bloody crew puts years on me. You can easily tell who had this packet before they posted us to it, Robby. The Old Man was right when he said the Lad needed someone to look after him. Chiefy Rollo’s left his mark on this tub as clear as if it was tattooed all up and down the mast. All he ever did was use his jaw. It was the only part of him that ever worked. I once took over a boat from him before. That was just the same. Everybody trying to rat on you at once. The only time they move is when it’s knocking-off time. A good pick-up would do them all a bit of good.”

Tebbitt assumed that the skipper had disappeared into his cabin below for a moment, for in spite of his rage Slingsby’s voice had a warmth about it that showed only when be was talking to Robb. They had served overseas together and they had a confident intimacy of experiences and hardships shared, of mutual difficulties surmounted.

“Ashore, he can do as he pleases about his blasted wife,” Slingsby went on, “but at sea he’s got something else to do. He can forget her.”

“I don’t know that I could, with a wife like that,” Robb pointed out with the privilege of long acquaintance, and Tebbitt, unable to shut out the conversation, had to listen humiliated as they discussed him. “Could you?”

“I could lay an egg if I tried. I had a wife like that myself, didn’t I? Christ, you remember that, surely? When we went overseas in 1940, I spent my days, when we weren’t being chased all over the shop by Jerry, sending letters to her so fast they looked like confetti. Mooning over Vera Lynn’s songs and all that – you know the stuff – ‘Yours in the grey of December’ and all that cock – it made your heart bleed at that distance. And when I came back I found she’d been going around with a naval petty officer and I’d had me chips. Rat with a face like an old fender, he was. She said she couldn’t stand it on her own for three years. After thirteen years of married life. All me eye and Betty Martin. We arranged a divorce – big-hearted like, that’s me, one of God’s chosen few – and that was that. All in a day’s work.”

“I remember, Flight. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Hell, I’m still laughing about it. I split a gut every time I remember. She’d no sooner got her divorce from me organised, and arranged to marry her sailor, when he was posted overseas. And there she was with me, who she’d slung out, back home, and the sailor, who she wanted to marry, posted to the Middle East. Laugh? I thought I’d bust my poop string.” But Slingsby’s face showed no traces of mirth.

“Think I like chasing Tebbitt?” he went on. “It’s my job. Think I like riding that kid – the medical orderly? I got one like him myself, waiting to be called up. He’s got guts, that kid.”

“You’re telling me! You’ve got him in the galley again, washing up. He looks as gay as an old street-walker, but he’s not complained yet.”

“He’s in the Air Force now. This isn’t the Infants’ Department. I don’t hold with all this kiss-and-be-friends stuff between NCOs and other ranks they’re trying to kid us into these days. Oh, sure” – he nodded as Robb opened his mouth to speak – “I know. They’re not the same as the recruits we had before the war. They’re civilians really. They’ve got to be wet-nursed. Lots of love and kisses and hoping it finds you as it leaves me at present. Hell” – he glared at Robb – “you’re a civilian in for the duration, aren’t you? You made it – and the same way as this kid’s got to make it. With nasty little flight sergeants coming the old acid all the time.”

“I was a bit older.”

“He’ll soon grow old. I’ll see that he does.” Slingsby scowled through the Perspex window for a while, his eyes angry, then he burst out again. “Hell, I know what’s wrong,” he said. “It’s my fault. I ought to be helping the war effort as an air-raid warden or something, playing darts and pinching lady telephonists’ behinds. I’m a reservist, I am. I’d left the Raff and I’d settled down. I was called back. That’s what’s wrong. I’ve got ten years too many on my back for this game. Besides, I’m the sergeant and the sergeant’s got to be a bastard. You’ve read Beau Geste, haven’t you? Now wrap up!”

Tebbitt heard Treherne return to the wheelhouse and Slingsby became silent. Then Treherne put his head through the wheelhouse door and thrust himself up the two steps to the bridge and stood beside Tebbitt. Ahead of them, they could now see the Walrus slowly circling over the water.

The bridge was crowded by this time, everyone staring ahead at the plane. As the launch drew closer the aircraft roared over them, low enough for them to see the pilot pointing ahead and down.

“Keep your eyes skinned,” Treherne warned.

“Some poor beggar’s had it,” Knox said. “Here comes the funeral party.”

Slingsby glared at him but said nothing. Then Westover, on the sick bay roof flung out an arm and pointed.

“Something in the water dead ahead, Skipper!” he shouted. “Looks like a stiff.”

“Throttle back a bit, Robby,” Treherne said into the wheelhouse. “Keep your eye on it, Gus!”

“I’ve got it, Skipper. Looks like a man, all right.”

The Walrus roared overhead again and began to circle once more. Everybody on the bridge had become silent. Then Westover shouted again and his voice was suddenly excited.

“It’s not a man, Skipper. If it is, he’s had all his clothes blown off.”

Slingsby gave a great shout of glee as he stared and did a little jig. “It’s a fish,” he yelled joyously. “It’s a porpoise! Ha, the Navy’s made a balls-up of it again!”

He turned towards the Walrus and waved both arms in a wash-out sign as the launch passed the great fish that floated low on the surface of the water in a long valley between two waves, its silver belly facing the sky, the victim of some mine or depth-charge blast, then he held his nose and pulled an imaginary chain.

“Let the Walrus know, Knocker,” Treherne said. “OK, Robby, back on your original course. We’ll sort out this five minutes’ run at the other end.”

The boat heeled again as the wireless operator began to flash at the Walrus, then she slowly lifted and began to corkscrew across the surface of the waves once more on her original course.

“We shouldn’t be far off now, Skipper,” Slingsby said.

“But we’ve only a little daylight left. How about pushing up the revs a bit?”

“OK” Treherne took the hint and put his head into the wheelhouse. “Push ’em up, Robby.”

The twists of the boat were noticeably more vicious as the engines’ deep-throated roar grew, and the lurches as she hit the waves were more sickening and more tiring.

Knox, who had had his head near to the wireless cabin hatch, talking to his mate, looked up. “7526’s nearer, Flight,” he said slyly as he went below again, as though he rejoiced in rubbing Slingsby’s wound raw. “Botty says he’s slightly east of us now. She’s got the legs of us – as usual.”

 

Down in the engine-room of the launch Corporal Skinner was studying the revolution counters. He cast a quick glance at the oil-pressure gauges as the revolution counter needles moved further to the right with the increased speed, then his eyes flickered anxiously to the glass tube on the oil tank on the bulkhead. Dray was singing soundlessly on his toolbox above the deafening roar, his mouth opening and shutting like an actor in a silent film as he beat time with a spanner on the box between his knees. But Corporal Skinner, plugs in his ears, noticed that his eyes were never far from the dials in front of him.

Down there in the stifling heat there was little suggestion of the heave of the sea because the drag of the propellers in the water held the stern steady, so that most of the motion came from the bows. But the howling engines played the same sort of devil down there with the nerves that the jarring deck forward did to the deck crew. The very air seemed to vibrate and, in vibrating, to add to the clamour.

Skinner casually moved aft, screwing down the greasers on the water-pumps and adjusting the sea-cocks to the new speed of the boat. He knew already that the chances of getting back to base in time to dance with and make love to his girl were growing slimmer, though he still hoped to reach the station before it was too late to take her home. It was useless carrying on a search after dark, he knew, and they were invariably recalled when it was hopeless to hang on any longer.

There’d be just time, he decided, to see her back to her billet and crawl into his own bed before that damned Tannoy would be shouting in his ear again across the barrack-room where they slept: “Crew of HSL 7525 report to base immediately. Crew of HSL 7525 report to base immediately.”

Skinner scowled and hoped hard they’d make a pick-up quickly – or that 7526 would; he didn’t care much which, so long as they could turn west and head for home.

He felt the change of course as the boat swung back to the north-east, though he had no idea of their direction. It was only that he felt the slight tug of the boat’s turn – far less noticeable down there than on deck – and he could feel the different motion through the water. Then he saw the revolution counters jump forward a little more and he glanced anxiously round him again and down at the spinning propeller shafts.

He was beginning to wish now he’d changed the faulty piping in the oil-feed. He’d seen clearly that the jubilee clip was cutting into the rubber joint and if it cut too far – . Again he looked round, half expecting to see the spurt of bright hot oil heralding the colossal overheating that would drive the temperature needle clean off the dial, and to hear the shattering vibration of a seize-up, and he was quite relieved when he didn’t.

He rested the palm of his hand on the port engine, feeling its vibration run through his arm like the blood through his veins and so through his whole body. It was running well. Damned well, considering, he told himself.

Considering – considering – he glanced quickly at Dray as the little canker of doubt entered his brain – considering the slap-happy job he’d done the previous night. Skinner was a good engineer in spite of his indifference, good enough to know what he ought to have done and to realise the possible disaster that might arise from what he had not done, but he nevertheless attached little blame to himself. He felt only an angry resentment, a bitter sense that someone had played a dirty trick on him. After months of dreary hanging about on rendezvous, after months of monotonous waiting on the grey seas for an emergency call, with the war almost over and the days of urgent excitement past, some fool would have to choose that particular day to fall into the drink – and on 7525’S beat, too.

He took his hand from the engine, which was running perfectly alongside him. Then he remembered uneasily that they’d both been running perfectly the previous day but there’d still been the damage in the oil-feed, a tiny fault caused by vibration, nothing to worry about in itself but something that might cause trouble with high-speed running for long distances. And that was something that had never happened for weeks. Not until today.

The engineer – the undoubted engineer – who lay beneath Skinner’s shiftless, casual, indifferent manner stirred uneasily. His conscience was nagging at him with the knowledge of what he had failed to do, prodding him like a tormenting imp with a sharp stick, urging him to do something when he knew it was already too late to do anything. All he could do now was wait for the bang and the stream of bright oil.

Skinner moved aft, where the boat sat low in the water. Beneath his feet he could feel the propellers turning at hundreds of revolutions a minute. The air about him was oven-hot and stank of oil and baked steel but it seemed twice as stifling because of the conscience that was gagging him, the sense of guilt that seemed to suffocate him. Thoughtfully, but almost without being aware of what he did, he lifted the cover of his tool-box and idly toyed through the tools inside, making sure they were all there.

All he could do now was hope and be ready.