The Cruel Sea (1951) (71 page)

‘The trouble with these people,’ said Lockhart, ‘is that you can’t help liking them, even though you know you oughtn’t to . . . Do you remember what it was like, back in the middle thirties? They lectured and screamed at us for years on end about stopping Mussolini, stopping Franco, stopping Hitler: it was a pretty safe lecture to give, three thousand miles away across the Atlantic. When war did break out, they waited over two years before they came into it: waited while we were Dunkirked and bombed to hell and lost nearly two thousand ships and Christ knows how many men: while we bankrupted ourselves, while we gave them almost all our overseas investments to buy arms, while we signed away British possessions like Bermuda and Antigua, in exchange for fifty rotten destroyers that were never out of the repair dock. Then they did decide to come in themselves. With a rush? Like hell . . . They came in because they were attacked by the Japanese, and for no other reason: if it weren’t for that attack, we’d still be waiting – and so would Hitler. If ever there’s another war,’ he said dreamily, ‘I shall stay out of it for at least two and a half years – that’s the average period of American neutrality, so far: in the meantime, I’d send plenty of instructions on being brave and standing firm, and I
might
start an organisation called “Bundles for Both Sides” – it would depend on how nice people were to me . . . But when this one is over, the thing to be will be an American – and at that point I wouldn’t trade my own nationality for all the gold in Fort Knox. But they’ll be running the world, because we’ll be broke and exhausted: they’ll be in charge of everything – these dunderheaded children who can’t see round the very first corner of history, these products of a crapulous chauvinism—’

‘Steady!’ said Allingham. ‘Fighting words. What do they mean?’

‘They mean that I still like the Yanks, but I miss my soapbox. Have a rum ‘n coke, bud.’

‘The trouble with these people,’ said Johnson gloomily, ‘is that they’ve no common sense. They’re not a bit like us.’

He began to read it again, without understanding it at all – the terrible letter from a friend.

You will have heard about Julie Hallam
[it said]
, horribly sad, and the worst luck in the world. She would never have been in the picket boat at all if she hadn’t been standing in for another girl who was ill. I gather it wasn’t anybody’s fault: they were making the long trip back from Hunter’s Quay, late at night, and a bad squall blew up which no one could warn them about. Perhaps the engine failed as well. None of us here knew anything about it for hours, and then a man rang up to say he’d seen the picket boat’s lights disappear, and was it important? . . . By that time, even if they’d been able to swim round at all, they couldn’t have survived the cold long enough to get ashore. We got all the bodies in the end – seventeen, mostly liberty men, but four Wrens among them. I thought you’d like some details, as I knew you were a friend of hers. We miss her here very much. When do you and
Saltash
get back to the war?

Better, perhaps, to hear it like this – almost accidentally, from a man who thought you knew already, a man not fumbling for the first foolish phrases. But drowning . . . The fearful images slipped readily before Lockhart’s eyes, because he knew Julie so well, because he knew drowning by heart: he saw the spread hair round her lolling head, the murky river rolling her over, the embryo child growing cold under her breast. Ophelia, he thought immediately: something about ‘poor wretch’; and with sick apprehension he recalled the exact phrase – ‘and dragged the poor wretch down to muddy death’. Mud in Julie’s eyes and nostrils, mud clogging her livid throat: icy cold attacking her, and then the sucking currents where the river met salt water.

It was like
Compass Rose
again, though this time it was a single sword. But the same enemy had robbed him: a small wave of the cruel sea had taken her for ever.

Better to hear like this, pierced unawares as by an ill-chancing thrust in the dark. But drowning, Julie, drowning . . .

He was walking alone among tall buildings, buildings which crowded in but failed to crush him, leaving the top of his brain fatally free to think and feel. Men have never cried on this street, he thought: no tears on Eighth Avenue – but what did the rules matter, when every rule in earth and heaven had been broken at one stroke? He had lost the immediate picture of Julie dead: now it was the ache, the grip of bereavement, and the wild self-reproaches that went with it – how he should never have left her, how he should have married her straight away, how perhaps he had killed her, by betraying his dedication, and hers . . . She had even been dead when he sent his last letter: he had been writing to a wraith, a spirit, a poor pale Julie who, when he tried to reach her, could only whisper and fade and leave him cold and alone, as he was now: stricken and shivering, among the crowds and the traffic and the buildings that would not fall.

Suddenly, up the street, he saw her coming towards him: Julie herself, with her dark hair piled up, Julie walking with that odd economical gait which was still the most feminine thing about her. Weak with shock and with longing, he waited for her to reach him: it
was
she – no one else walked like that, no one else had that lovely hair, that shape of head. It was she: the letter must have been wrong; even the countries had got mixed up.

When she had only a few more steps to go, he reached out an uncertain hand, and with it the crazy spell broke and his brain cleared agonisingly.

The stranger passed him, staring.

Something about ‘another country’, he thought. Some man from the grave once more sharing the shroud of his thoughts. Julie had died to such thoughts, such words, such mournings . . . ‘But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.’

Now it was not the vile image of death, nor the ache of loneliness: now it was a wild desire to be away, to work, to do something to kill time and memory.

Up on the fo’c’sle, coiling down a wire, a man had made a clumsy job of it. ‘Look,’ Lockhart began, in a mild rebuke, and then he had remembered, and turned away, unable to finish the sentence, leaving the man puzzled and relieved. But ‘Look’ had been Julie’s phrase, whenever she wanted to claim his attention. ‘Look,’ she had said, ‘you don’t know what love is,’ and ‘Look – if you want
anything
from a woman, it is to be from me.’ To stumble thus upon the word ‘Look’, upon the very voice and touch of her wrapped in an innocent phrase, was enough to destroy him; it seemed that it might do so utterly, unless he could somehow exorcise the past. For now, pinioned by misery, he was the target of every stray dream, every longing which before had been thankfully referred to her.

‘Dry sorrow drinks our blood,’ he had thought; and presently, down in Ericson’s cabin, appealing almost wildly. ‘Can’t we get away? Can’t we start?’

‘Soon,’ answered Ericson, watching him with compassion that was very nearly love. ‘Just as soon as we can. You know I’ll do my best.’

It was, cruelly, a good time to be dedicated, a good time to flog the body and the brain; for when
Saltash
did return, it was to a wonderful moment – the beginning of winning.

It was not yet victory: the enemy still had snapping teeth, and still used them when he could; but it seemed that success could now be sighted, far away at the end of the enormous tunnel of the years, and that
Saltash
was returning to a conqueror’s ocean. They had been away only two and a half months, but already it had happened, already the wonderful change was apparent. Another colour seemed to have been added to the Atlantic, another blue to the sky; at night, the stars pricked a heaven full of the balm of victory. For after four and a half years of deadly struggle, when both sides, locked in combat, had stung themselves to a vicious and mortal fury, the enemy had begun to crack.

It showed itself in small things, it showed itself in big. It showed in the number of U-boat sinkings – ninety of them were sent to the bottom during the first five months of the year: a single escort group on a single twenty-day cruise accounted for six at one stroke. It showed in the huge convoys that went unharmed across the Atlantic, pouring the stuff in for the last assault; in March, for example, only one merchant ship was sunk, out of the enormous total that crossed and recrossed the ocean. It showed in U-boat tactics, which had become a pale shadow of what they had been in the past: now, cautious and indecisive, they broke off the battle as soon as resistance was met, and they exhibited no sort of readiness to come back for more.

It showed in an ignominious surrender at sea, with the U-boat captain the first to start swimming towards the ship that had attacked him. It showed in a signal which came from
Rose Arbour,
one of the corvettes, when
Saltash
rejoined and took over command of the group.

‘Glad to see you back,’ ran the message. ‘We were afraid you’d miss the last act.’

May, 1944, was not
quite
the last act, but it was near enough for the signal to make cheerful sense. The lights were brightening for the final scenes: there could not be many of them, and the play was now too far advanced for there to be any chance of a surprise ending.

But before that ending could be reached, the soldiers had one more thing to do.

On the bright and awful morning of D-day,
Saltash
found herself, for the first time for many months, in unfamiliar waters. She was one of a number of support groups patrolling in a wide ring across the mouth of the English Channel: they were there to intercept any U-boats that might be tempted to leave the dubious shelter of the Atlantic and make for the invasion beaches. They were, in fact, on guard at the back door, and Ericson, for one, felt very glad that he was doing a job connected, however loosely, with the main fabulous assault. On June 6th, 1944, there was only one piece of land and water worth concentrating on; and any soldier, sailor, or airman who could not join in was missing an irretrievable moment of history.

Stretching far out of sight on either side of them, the lines of destroyers and frigates and corvettes wove a search pattern that covered five hundred miles of water. It needed patience, that endless patrol – with the news coming over the wireless every half-hour, with the knowledge that, one step beyond the horizon, the huge armada had just delivered its first thrust. Viewing the battle from afar, knowing what was involved, they could only hope and pray: the men in the escort ships stood on guard at a distance, but others, fighting and dying as
Saltash
circled peacefully, were making this the most solemn and moving moment of the war, in which an outsider must take a truly humble part.

‘I’m glad we got as near as this, anyway,’ said Ericson, standing on the bridge and watching out of the corner of his eye the rest of his group turning at the limit of their search area. ‘It’s not exactly spectacular, but at least we’re part of the main operation.’

‘I wish we could have gone across with them,’ said Lockhart wistfully. ‘
Some
frigates did . . .’ He looked outboard, where far away to the north-east the outline of Land’s End and the Scilly Isles lay like a purple shadow on the horizon. ‘It’s funny that, in all these years, this is the only time we’ve ever been anywhere near the Channel.’

‘Good moment to make the trip,’ said Allingham, who was also up on the bridge, drawn there by the feeling they all shared – that this was not a day for being alone, or shut off from one’s friends. He looked at his watch. ‘Midday already. Wonder how it’s going.’

‘It’s
got
to be all right!’ said Lockhart, almost violently. ‘This is the whole point of the war . . . It’s just our luck to be on the wrong side of the wall.’

It was the first time any one of them had felt involved in any theatre of war except their own. But on this day, the great Atlantic was nothing: all the sea war and all the land had shrunk down to a few miles of beach, a few yards of shallow water, and nothing else counted at all.

Saltash guarded the back door. Northwards to Land’s End, eastwards up the Channel to Plymouth Sound, south-west towards Brest – the area altered daily, but the intention and the drill were the same. As a safety measure, the patrol proved well worth while; the U-boats were leaving the Atlantic, to try (as they thought) the rich and easy pickings waiting for them off the Normandy coast, and the dozens of escorts that barred their way were in a position to score decisively. The U-boats never did get through, save in negligible strength, and they never came to grips with any of the cross-Channel convoys: in trying to do so, they suffered losses as heavy, proportionately to their numbers, as any of the war.

Saltash
herself, with
Streamer
in attendance, added one to the quota of loss: she cornered her quarry close inshore, off Start Point on the Devon Coast, and blew it to the surface with astonishingly little trouble. But it was odd, and faintly alarming, to be hunting a U-boat to its death and at the same time keeping a sharp eye on the depth of water under their keel, and the rocks lying offshore: it was the first time they had ever had to worry about lack of sea room, and it seemed as if they had left their proper element altogether and were splashing about, naughtily chasing goldfish in a pond. The crowds of people waving to them from the nearest headland were the final disturbing item. This was not the Atlantic pattern at all . . .