The Cruel Sea (1951) (52 page)

The ache in his throat eased, and he walked back, and stood in the entrance to the music gallery, leaning against a pillar. When, after an interval, the notes of the piano started again, he found that their power to unman was gone, and that he could listen, and not be moved. He found also, later, that this was for him the last moment of mourning.

The Clyde shipyards again . . . They were far busier now, Ericson realised, remembering the slow, gearing-up days of 1939, when the Clyde was just getting into its war stride, and there was room to move and time to spare. Now things were very different: from Renfrew down to Gourock, the banks seemed to be lined and crammed with ships at every stage of construction, and the men working on them had a purposeful air, a strained eagerness to be quit of one ship and get started on the next, which had altered the whole tempo of the river. The rate of sinkings in the Atlantic had served as a progressive challenge: air raids had sharpened the will to hit back: the news that now came out of Africa, of an army no longer barely holding its own but romping forward to victory, had been a heartening tonic, prompting the wish to join in that advance and finish the business once and for all. Now the Clyde was on its mettle: after nearly four years of it, the men toiling up and down its banks to meet the needs of the war at sea might be just about ready for a rest, but if that showed anywhere it showed in impatience and haste, not in any slackening of the output of work. That was constant, intensive, and admirable.

Saltash,
the nearly-finished product of their care and skill, lay at the fitting-out wharf opposite John Brown’s yard. Seen close to, the frigate appeared enormous: to Ericson and Lockhart, as they stared up from the dockside, she seemed to symbolise, dauntingly, the size and weight of what they now had to take on afresh. ‘Looks like a block of flats,’ said Ericson, letting his eyes move slowly from the outward sheer of the bows towering over them, past the tall superstructure of the bridge, and along the sweep of the iron deck to the square cut stern; and indeed there was something big, solid, and ponderous about
Saltash
which seemed to match, in permanence, the long sheds that lined the wharf. Somehow, presumably, they would have to take this lot to sea . . . Viewed from the dockside, she exhibited the usual, half-bedevilled air of a ship that was not yet free of the land. Her first coat of naval grey was marred and spotted by red lead: her upper decks were grimy, and littered with the sweepings of weeks of fitting-out work: the shattering noise made by the riveters, still busy on the fo’c’sle head, was the signature tune of the whole disorder.

She was thus dirty, noisy, and confused: to the casual passer-by she seemed hardly worth looking at yet. But Ericson could no more have walked past at that moment than he could have quit the sea itself.

He led the way on board, crossing the rough gangplank and stepping down on to a deck littered with packing cases and empty oil drums. Now the impression of size and complexity increased: even allowing for the confusion of fitting-out, there was clearly going to be an enormous amount to take in and to master.
Saltash
was over three hundred feet long, and she seemed to rise in mounting tiers, building up steeply in a line which climbed by way of the quarterdeck, fo’c’sle, flag deck, bridge, upper bridge, and crow’s nest, to the wireless aerial that crowned the tip of the mast. At all levels, she was already crowded with equipment, and there were indications of much more to come: there was stowage for a huge outfit of depth-charges, there was any number of rafts and life nets, there were dozens of ready-use ammunition lockers to serve the guns. Guns, thought Ericson, appreciatively: lots of guns, not just a gun-and-a-half like the corvettes carried: here there were three big ones, and a four-barrelled pom-pom, and a dozen Oerlikons stuck all over the upper deck like sprigs of holly. There was also, by way of refinement, a power-operated hoist from the main magazine, to keep all these weapons blazing away merrily, with no awkward pauses . . . Two big motorboats: direction-finding apparatus: a very new weapon which threw a positive spray of small depth-charges over the side: echo sounding gear: some equipment for dealing with acoustic torpedoes: these were what even a cursory glance found time to take in. They promised complication, and a lot of new things to learn; but they promised a formidable ship also, as soon as they were in practised use.

Ericson left Lockhart staring at some minesweeping equipment which was entirely novel to both of them, and made his way down to the engine room. The succession of steep ladders that led to the lowest level of the ship became progressively more oily and dirty: by the time he had reached the engine room itself, badly lit by makeshift ‘shore lighting’, Ericson’s hands and the sleeves of his coat were much the worse for wear. The place, full of shadows, seemed to be a tangle of unrelated equipment: it was also cold and damp. A group of men were working on part of the oil feed, and on the other side from them a man in white overalls and a naval cap was examining the main switchboard with the help of a torch. He turned as he heard Ericson’s step behind him, and Ericson looked at him more closely. He was a small man of about forty, with thin greying hair above a solid brown face: he had an air of energy and competence, with something else added to it, a sort of ingrained deference which came immediately to the surface as soon as he saw the brass hat and the three gold rings, and the D.S.C. ribbon on Ericson’s shoulder.

‘I’m the Captain,’ said Ericson after a pause. ‘Are you my engineer officer?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the other man, somewhat warily. ‘Johnson. Commissioned Engineer.’

‘How do you do, Chief?’ Ericson held out his hand. ‘What’s the state of things down here?’

Johnson swept his arm round. ‘All the main machinery’s in, sir. I’ve been here three weeks now, and of course they were working on the fitting-out long before that. They’re doing the fans and dynamos now. They reckon another month before she’s ready for trials.’

‘What’s the quality of the work, generally?’

Johnson shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s a bit austerity, sir. Fourth year of the war . . . But the turbines are all right – lovely job. They say they’ll give us twenty-five knots.’

‘Sounds promising . . . What was your last ship, Chief?’

‘Manacle
, sir. Destroyer. In the Med., mostly.’

‘Is this your first time in charge?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He hesitated. ‘As an officer, that is. I’ve just come up from E.R.A.’

Ericson nodded to himself, in satisfaction. A youngish Commissioned Engineer, newly promoted from engine room artificer, and ex-destroyers, sounded a likely proposition. It was probable that none of his skill would be wasted in the new job. A twin turbine ship of 2,000 tons was no longer in the ‘simple’ class, as
Compass Rose
had been: she was a complicated mass of machinery which would need a high degree of attention for most of its working life . . . He saw Johnson glancing uncertainly at his hands, and smiled and said: ‘I got a bit dirty on the way down here.’

‘I’ll find you a pair of gauntlets if you like, sir.’ Johnson was quickly apologetic, and ready to help. ‘She’s very dirty all over, I’m afraid. These dockies don’t seem to care what they do to her.’

Ericson nodded again. ‘You can’t do much about keeping her clean at this stage, I know. Yes, get me a pair of gauntlets, and some overalls, too, if you can. I’ll be doing a lot of climbing about, the next few weeks.’

‘Do you want to look round here now, sir?’

‘Not yet, Chief. I’ll leave it till things are a bit more shipshape.’

He paused, before ending the interview, and Johnson, hesitating, asked: ‘What was
your
last ship, sir?’

‘A corvette.
Compass Rose
.’

Immediately an alert look came over Johnson’s face. Ericson thought: he’s heard about
Compass Rose,
he probably remembers the exact details – that she went down in seven minutes, that we lost eighty men out of ninety-one. He knows all about it, like everyone else in the Navy, whether they’re in destroyers in the Mediterranean or attached to the base at Scapa Flow: it’s part of the linked feeling, part of the fact of family bereavement. Thousands of sailors felt personally sad when they read about her loss; Johnson was one of them, though he’d never been within a thousand miles of
Compass Rose
and had never heard her name before.

He became conscious that Johnson was still staring at him, and he said, with an effort: ‘She was torpedoed.’

Johnson said: ‘Yes, I know, sir.’

That was all there was for either of them to say.

When he left the engine room, Ericson went up to the bridge: he had been saving it until the last, and this seemed to be the moment . . . It was deserted, and his feet left fresh tracks in the frosty rime that covered the planking: he was struck, first, by the amount of space there was, and then by the array of equipment that lined it. There were rows of telephones, there were batteries of voice-pipes; there were special radar repeaters, and a big chartroom at the back, and gunnery control instruments, and a really tremendous asdic set. There was an illuminated plotting table which recorded the ship’s movements electrically: there was a wide flag deck with a pair of outsize signalling lamps. They would need a lot of men up here at sea, he realised presently: two officers-of-the-watch, two signalmen, two lookouts, two asdic operators, a bridge messenger – nine at least, even at normal cruising stations. But from this centre of control, command could be fittingly exercised . . . And then, as he walked slowly to the front of the bridge, and looked down at the fo’c’sle with its two hooded guns, a feeling of futility suddenly attacked him. Certainly he could command the ship, from this wide high platform with its mass of technical aids: but what was the point of it? Look what happened to the last lot . . . He shivered involuntarily in the raw morning air, and gripped the steel plating at his chest level as if steadying himself against the shock of a breaking wave: below him, the black and greasy Clyde, meandering past their hull, was an uncomfortable reminder of the sea lying in wait outside. There had been many thoughts like this during the past two months, and he had hoped that he had begun to be free of them: he had not guessed that they would return so strongly, as soon as he stood on the bridge of another ship.

He
must
be free of them – and there was only one cure . . . He straightened up, and walked across the bridge and down the ladder towards his own quarters. On the way he met Lockhart.

‘Collect all the plans, and whatever else the Chief has, Number One,’ he said briskly. ‘We’d better learn the complete layout, for a start.’

The job must begin all over again.

The next officer to arrive, a few days later, gave Lockhart a singular shock. He was sitting in the small dock office which had been set aside for their use, working out a rough watch bill from the scheme of complement, when the door opened behind him, and a voice said: ‘Say – is this right for
Saltash?
’

That tone, that accent . . . Lockhart spun round in his chair, and then relaxed again. It was
not
Bennett, their old Australian First Lieutenant, but the two voices could not have been more alike: the one he heard now had the same broad twang, the same sharpened vowel sounds, recalling heaven-knew-what annoyance and dislike from the past. The newcomer was a lanky, fresh-faced lieutenant, in a uniform of a curious light blue serge: he stood in the doorway with a confident air, and then as his eye fell on Lockhart’s sleeve he straightened up promptly and said: ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. I’m looking for
Saltash.’

Lockhart, listening in fascination to his voice, gathered himself together. ‘This is the right place – she’s the one over there.’ He pointed out of the window, towards the untidy grey hull. ‘Who are you?’

‘Allingham, sir. Gunnery Officer.’

‘Australian?’

‘Yes. R.A.N.V.R.’ He looked down at Lockhart’s two-and-a-half rings again. ‘Are you the captain, sir?’

‘No – First Lieutenant. The captain’s a Commander.’

Allingham abandoned formality again, with perceptible readiness. ‘Big stuff . . . But why so much brass?’

‘We’re going to be in charge of the escort group,’ said Lockhart, somewhat austerely. Hearing the loathed accent, he was ready to dislike on sight, and readier still to resent any kind of uppishness. ‘So I’ll be senior First Lieutenant.’

Allingham nodded. ‘Fair enough. What’s the ship like?’

‘Still in a mess,’ said Lockhart. ‘But she’s going to be good.’ He relaxed a trifle. ‘There are lots of guns for you to play with.’

‘Good oh!’

Once more the accent and the expression stabbed Lockhart’s memory, an authentic, arrow-swift echo from the past, and he could not resist remarking on it.

‘We used to have an Australian First Lieutenant in my first ship. His name was Bennett.’

‘Not Jim Bennett?’

‘I expect so.’

Allingham whistled. ‘Say – he was a bit of a success up here, wasn’t he?’

‘No,’ said Lockhart. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

Allingham put his cap and gas mask down on the table. ‘But if it’s the same man, he certainly was. I heard him lecturing back in Australia.’