The Cruel Sea (1951) (16 page)

Lockhart pointed. There, sir . . . We’re on the outer zigzag,’ he added, to justify a blank horizon. ‘We’ll meet them again in seven minutes.’

Ericson grunted. It was not a reassuring sound, and Lockhart, counting the minutes, wondered what on earth he was going to say if this time his nightmare came true. When at last the ships came up again, black and solid, he had a surge of relief, which he felt the Captain was aware of.

‘Zigzagging on time?’ said Ericson curtly.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Check your course each time you alter. Don’t leave it to the quartermaster – he might make a mistake.’ Then he walked off the bridge without further comment. That was what Lockhart liked about the Captain: if he trusted you, he showed it – he didn’t fiddle about in the background, pretending to do something else, and all the time watching you like a nursemaid. And he was quite entitled to be worried, and to ask questions when he felt like it: if they did lose the convoy, whichever one of them was responsible, it was, as far as the official record went, the Captain’s fault.

What Lockhart found especially annoying was handing over his watch to Bennett. By tradition, the First Lieutenant had the morning watch – four a.m. to eight: Bennett followed the custom as far as the actual time went, but in other respects he scarcely justified his position. It was mortifying to cling on to the convoy all through the middle watch, keeping exact station and a fast, accurate zigzag, and hand over
Compass Rose
in a pinpoint position at the end of it; and then to hear, as he left the bridge, Bennett saying: ‘Signalman! See that ship there? Tell me if we start to lose her,’ and then settling down inside the asdic hut. One of these days, thought Lockhart, they might all forfeit their lives, simply because Bennett had a dislike of fresh air. But it was hardly a matter he could complain of, officially. It would have to wait till the Captain took notice of it.

At this stage – still unwarlike, still a tame apprenticeship – they found hardest to bear the monotony of rolling, with, as an occasional variant, the shuddering crunch with which
Compass Rose
greeted a head sea. The rolling affected every single thing they did, on watch or off. Often they had to cling to the bridge rail for hours at a stretch, drenched, and cold, while the ship disgraced herself with a tireless forty-degree roll; and then, off-watch and supposedly resting, they had to eat their meals with the food continually slopping into their laps, and the wardroom furniture creaking and sliding and occasionally breaking adrift altogether and hurtling across the room. They were always being hurt, in spite of a continual watchfulness: doorways hit them as they were leaving their cabins: they were thrown out of their bunks as soon as sleep relaxed their tense care, and all round them on the floor would be books and papers and boots and clothes, which some especially violent roll had released from control.

It was tremendously exhausting, this never being able to rest without something going wrong, something hitting them, something coming adrift and breaking, or making a noisy clatter for hour after hour. There was a damnable rhythm about the movement: they got tired of it, they got tired of always hanging on to something, they got tired of paying for a moment’s forgetfulness with bruised legs and shoulders, cut lips, wrenched ankles. But they could not escape it: it was an inherent element in going to sea in corvettes. Sometimes, up on the bridge, they would watch
Sorrel
being chucked about like a cork, and the spray going over as she punched her way through a rough sea, and they would think how tough she looked, and what a pretty picture, handsome and determined, she made. It was a pity that the reality, in
Sorrel
as in
Compass Rose,
was so infinitely unpleasant.

One of their convoys, about this time, was a classic in this respect. After nine days on the outward trip, they had turned for home, with some hope of making a quick passage and getting back in less than a week. It did not work that way . . . The gale which sprang up did more than scatter the convoy: it kept every single ship in it hove-to for two days on end, waiting for the weather to moderate. In those two days,
Compass Rose
covered eighteen miles – sideways, and due south: she spent them in company with a small merchant ship which had engine trouble and asked for someone to stay with her. For all the forty-eight hours,
Compass Rose
circled very slowly round the derelict, taking three hours to complete each circuit, moving with agonising slowness against the mountainous seas and rolling, rolling, rolling all the time as if she wanted to tear her mast out.

They lost one of their boats, which went clean under a huge wave and never came up again: they lost some oil drums which were stowed aft: they lost their patience many times, but patience had to return, and sweat it out to the end . . . When the storm finally blew itself away, they spent another twenty-four hours hunting for the convoy and reassembling it. They were at sea for twenty-two days on that trip: at the end,
Compass Rose,
and her crew with her, looked as if they had all been through the same tidal wave, emerging in tatters at the end of it.

They found, on all their convoys, that the food soon became intolerably coarse and dull.
Compass Rose
carried enough fresh meat, bread, and vegetables for five days: after that, their diet was the same dreary procession of tinned sausages, tinned stew, hard biscuit, and tea. (The tinned stew came in an ornate container labelled ‘Old Mother Jameson’s Farm House Dinner’. Said Morell, surveying the dubious mixture on his plate: ‘I must remember
never
to go to dinner at Mrs Jameson’s.’) It was enough to support life, and that was all one could say about it: since they ate these horrible meals in a wardroom which was sooner or later flooded out or, at the best, ran with sweat throughout the voyage, the pleasures of the table in
Compass Rose
never threatened to seduce them from their duty.

They found, all the same, that there were times when they could still relax – that some moments at sea were enchanting. Now and again, an afternoon watch on the bridge would prove so perfect a way of passing the time that it seemed almost ludicrous for them to be paid for it. The convoy was in formation, and not menaced by U-boats: the hot spring sunshine poured down from a flawless sky: the brave ships advanced in line, leaving behind them, like
Compass Rose,
a broad white sparkling wake that meant a smooth passage and a day nearer home. On the bridge, there was nothing to do but check the change of course as they zigzagged, and keep an eye on
Viperous
in case she woke early from her afternoon siesta: for the rest, it was warmth, cool clean air, a steady ship under one’s feet, and an occasional sound – a gramophone, the swish of a hose, the clang of an emptied bucket – to prove that
Compass Rose
carried nearly ninety men on this prosperous voyage.

They found that some nights, especially, had a peaceful loveliness that repaid a hundred hours of strain. Sometimes, in sheltered water, when the moon was full, they moved with the convoy past hills outlined against the pricking stars: slipping under the very shadow of these cliffs, their keel divided the phosphorescent water into a gleaming wake that curled away till it was caught and held in the track of the moon. It was then that the watches went pleasantly, with the night air playing round the ship like the music of Prospero’s Isle: Morell and Ferraby would talk idly of their homes, or Lockhart and Wells, sharing a later watch, would make it go swiftly in reminiscence and conjecture. These magic nights, unmarred by fatigue or any alarm, were very few: when they were granted, their sweetness remained for long afterwards. Once or twice, Ericson, coming up to the bridge in the early hours of the morning, would find it, and the whole ship, so peaceful and so softly lapped by darkness, that it was hard to recall the purpose of their voyage.
Compass Rose,
afloat on a calm sea, seemed to shed every attribute save a gentle assurance of refuge.

They found, to meet those other nights which were so brutal and so prolonged, that they were toughening up. They became cunning at anticipating what the next big sea would do to the ship, and expert at avoiding its consequences: to hang on as they moved from place to place, to wedge themselves so that even the relaxation of sleep would not dislodge them, to keep themselves warm, and their clothes waterproof – these were lessons which the harsh school drove home until they were ingrained. Even the lack of sleep was less damaging now: they developed the facility of snatching odd moments of it whenever possible, and for the rest they could, if need be, stay awake for an astonishing number of hours without losing the edge of alertness. The process of accepting the hard necessities of their life meant that much of their normal feeling was blunted: Lockhart, finding himself one evening discarding the volume of essays he had bought before sailing in favour of the crudest and most trivial of the current magazines, thought, with faint alarm: hell, I’m getting as bad as Bennett . . . But it was, in a sense, true, and necessary as well: the time for sensibility was past, gentleness was outdated, and feeling need not come again till the unfeeling job was over.

They found, above all, that one part of every trip could be actively enjoyed: the last day of it, when they were in sheltered water and getting ready for their return to harbour. Now was the time when, running down the Irish Sea and making the last turn for home, they set to work to tidy up the ship after the chaos of the voyage; portholes were opened to the cleansing breeze, wet clothes stripped off and hung out to dry, the furniture and the tables and stools in the mess decks released from their lashings and set out properly. The sun gleamed on the saturated decks, and dried them off swiftly, leaving a rime of salt: round the bows, the porpoises and the seagulls played, crossing and recrossing their pathway as if clearing a way of welcome for them.

The convoy, the line of ships they had been guarding for so long, began the last mile of its journey, upriver to the docks: deep-laden, crammed to the decks with cargo, immensely worth while, it struck a note of thankful pride as it was safely delivered. The escorts parted, steaming in single file past their charges and farther upriver. For them, at last, here was the haven where they would be; peace alongside the oiler, the mail coming aboard, hot baths, clean clothes, rest and sleep after many days and nights had denied them all these things.

Suddenly it was time for their first spell of leave: six days, for half the ship’s company and all the officers save one, so that
Compass Rose
could have her boilers cleaned and a few small repairs carried out. It was their first break since the ship was commissioned, five months previously; they felt that they had earned it, and Ericson, while not encouraging them in this view, privately admitted that they were right.

He himself, sitting opposite Grace in a comfortable armchair for six successive evenings, could not get used to the stillness of the house. Aboard
Compass Rose
there was always something stirring: even when she was in harbour, there were engine room fans and dynamos going all the time, there was the quartermaster clumping round the upper deck, there were signals coming down, and the noise of Morse from the W/T office, and the wardroom radio doing its best to cheer the lonely-hearted sailors, cradled in the deep of Gladstone Dock. Here there was nothing, save the click of Grace’s knitting needles and the rustle of coal in the grate. Her mother had postponed her visit, though she might descend on them in the near future: John, their son, was away at sea – Ericson still had not managed to meet him since
Compass Rose
was commissioned, even though they went in and out of the same port. So, in the silent house, they sat opposite each other. To Grace, it was nothing out of the ordinary: to Ericson himself, it was an unsettling contrast with what must be his true habit of life.

There were other things he could not get used to. It was a woman’s house, soft and rather frilly: the cushions multiplied on the sofa, the ornaments were brittle and inescapably gay, the tablecloth was a lace affair that caught against his hands whenever he moved them. He felt out of place: he felt as if he were somehow breaking training, at a time when a hard austerity was the essential choice. Sleeping with Grace in the big double bed upstairs had an indulgence, an added warmth, which he did not really want to enjoy. She was his wife, but to lie with her, even in passive sleep, had a sensual element which betrayed his instinct for celibacy.

If she was aware of this subtle withdrawal, she gave no sign: for very many years she had taken things at their face value, her husband included, and a war was not the time to question what lay below the surface of any reasonable relationship.

‘You’re restless, George,’ she said, one night when he had tossed and turned till past midnight, and finally woken her from a comfortable dream. ‘Can’t you get to sleep?’

‘It’s the bed,’ he answered irritably. ‘I can’t get used to it.’

‘I thought sailors could sleep anywhere.’ Between waking and sleeping, her common sense had a fugitive quality which occasionally betrayed her into flippancy. Ordinarily, she would never have made so derivative a comment.

‘This one can’t.’

‘Shall I make some tea?’

‘No thank you.’

Now that he had woken her, he wanted nothing except that she should go to sleep again, and leave him to his isolation. The longer they talked, in this intimate setting, the deeper he was involved in a softer world which might destroy his resolute spirit. Even in peacetime, he had sometimes resented this recurrent surrender: seagoing was really a job for a single, tough man. Now, in war, relaxation seemed a form of treason . . . The odd, overdramatic thoughts continued to pursue him, as Grace turned over and went to sleep again. He had never felt quite like this before: perhaps he was worrying too much, perhaps he
did
need a spell of leave after all. But that didn’t mean letting everything slip. Tomorrow he would go down to the ship again. Just to look around, just to see how she was getting on.