The Interrogator (21 page)

‘A red lantern?’ asked Mary.

‘Torpedoed. And a few minutes later, there was an enormous explosion
in the heart of the convoy: a tanker some two miles from us, a blazing mass of white flame, smoke rising in a huge column hundreds of feet into the sky. Then, on the far side of the convoy, another burst of flame and then another and another.

‘As we approached the tanker, we could hear thump, thump, thump against the sides of the ship as if a giant sea creature was trying to batter a hole in our hull. Cave shouted, “Go and see what that is, Number One.” The ship slowed and I made my way down to the fo’c’sle. The sea was heaving with timber, heavy wooden pit props. Then one of the crew shouted, ‘Over there, sir, look’, and there was a collection of little red lights dancing on the water, tossed towards us by the swell. We must have passed within a couple of hundred yards of them. I couldn’t see their faces but I could hear them: ‘Help, help, please God help . . .’

Lindsay reached over to the bedside table and lit another cigarette, smoke curling to the ceiling. Mary felt suddenly tense and cold and conscious that it was late, the still time between two and three o’clock when the night is at its darkest. In the silence she wrapped the sheet more tightly about herself. Lindsay did not look at her, but after a couple of minutes he began to speak again, quickly, harshly: ‘But I can’t blame Cave for leaving them, the convoy was under attack. We threw Carley rafts and promises, “We’ll be back.” But we didn’t go back. And then we were closing on the tanker. The sea was calmer about her, heavy with a sticky blanket of oil, and in places it was on fire. The ship was burning from stem to stern, the bridge just a twisted shell. We weren’t that close but I could feel the heat and hear the whoosh and roar of the flames, and the smoke was a billowing, choking black mountain even against the night sky. The convoy scattered. The Commodore must have despaired of the escorts and with good reason, never mind the enemy; we hadn’t even managed to make contact with each other. Honestly, it was a shambles, really a total shambles.

‘I’d returned to the bridge to find Cave in an impotent rage, cursing the other escorts and his own crew. It was a little after eleven, and I remember thinking, “Oh God another four or five hours of this.” Of course, we know now it was one of Dönitz’s first pack attacks and there were four, perhaps five, U-boats chasing in and out of the convoy.
They were all there, the
U-boothelden
– Otto Kretschmer, Prien, Mohr . . .’

‘Mohr?’ said Mary with surprise. ‘Mohr attacked the convoy? When did you find out?’

But Lindsay ignored her question: ‘We zigzagged to and fro for more than an hour, firing round after round of star shell over the sea in the hope of catching sight of a U-boat but we didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. The Asdic detector was useless, just an empty echo . . .’

‘They were on the surface,’ said Mary.

‘And it was quite obvious to me that we were wasting our time. By now we’d fallen five or six miles behind the convoy. I drew this to Cave’s attention and he exploded. I was forgetting my place, he said, I was questioning his judgement, thirty years’ experience he said. The U-boats were forgotten, I was now the enemy. It was a very unpleasant scene. My God, he’d more important things to worry about than me, but it was panic, he’d lost control. We weren’t “lucky
Culloden
” any more. Then there was a terrific flash on the port bow, followed by another column of fire and smoke and that put an end to his diatribe. It was obvious even to Cave that we were searching in the wrong place. We went chasing over to the burning tanker, the men still at their stations, cold, tired, frightened. As we approached, we could see by the light of the flames another ship close by, a large freighter with her deck and cargo lights burning. She was listing heavily to port. We put scramble nets over our sides with a couple of burly ratings at the bottom to help survivors aboard but we didn’t find any one – just empty life jackets. I remember a small explosion somewhere deep inside the freighter, a sound like breaking glass; it blew the hatches off and there was a shower of wet ash from the funnel. The sea was in the engine room. The lifeboats were out there somewhere but Cave was anxious to rejoin what was left of the convoy. It was almost three o’clock and the sea was rough and getting rougher. By then we felt helpless and rather ashamed. Cave had a face like thunder. He used to glare at you from under dark bushy eyebrows. I remember glancing about the bridge that night and everyone was concentrating hard on the horizon, desperate not to catch his eye. For a moment I was barely able to contain myself, I had this mad, mad urge to laugh out loud.

‘We overhauled the main body of the convoy and the other escorts just before dawn. The Commodore’s ship was among them but he had no more idea than we did how many ships had been lost in the night. One of the other destroyers had picked up two hundred survivors, some of them in bad shape, and Cave gave her permission to leave us and make best speed to Londonderry. He sent the other escorts to round up stragglers and we were left with the rump. I shouldn’t think our presence was very reassuring.

‘The men were allowed to stand down from action stations, stand down before they fell down, weary and demoralised. I managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep too. Some stragglers joined us during the day but the glass was falling, sea state eight and worsening and we were soon struggling to keep our little convoy together. I don’t think Cave took any rest, he was running on adrenalin, a little unhinged.

‘Then at about eight o’clock that evening we did pick up a firm contact. Ping, ping, ping: imagine, Asdic contact at last,’ “Echo bearing one-sixty.” I remember the operator bouncing with excitement. He lost contact in the wake of a merchant ship but just for a few seconds. Bugger the convoy, Cave was determined to hunt and sink his U-boat.’

Lindsay sighed and reached down to stroke Mary’s hair: ‘By then the wind was almost storm force and we were ploughing into a head sea. The ship dragged her old bones to the top of a wave then raced down into the trough, before struggling to rise again. After ten minutes of this sort of pounding the submarine disappeared. We were disappointed, of course. A chance to redeem ourselves had slipped away. I remember Cave bullying the Asdic operators with threats and imprecations. The sub-lieutenant, Parker, felt sorry for them, he was a sensitive chap – more “university horsemeat” – and he said very tentatively: “Perhaps the submarine has surfaced, sir?” Of course it had, it was taking advantage of darkness and the weather to make its getaway. But Cave was furious again, furious. Was Parker trying to undermine his authority? Did anyone else want to pass an opinion? And he gave orders for another Asdic sweep. The temperature on the bridge dropped an uncomfortable couple of degrees but Cave didn’t care because he found a strange comfort in bullying his officers.

‘Imagine our situation. We’d left the convoy again, God knows if
it was safe, we were trying to echo-find a submarine that was almost certainly on the surface and we were travelling at barely six knots on an almost straight course. The U-boat was out there somewhere in the darkness. We were asking for trouble. I remember glancing across at Parker and he caught my eye and nodded, or rather twitched, meaningfully at Cave. And I thought, “Oh God, he wants me to say something.” Reasonable you might think – I was the first lieutenant. “What’s the point?” I asked myself. My opinion would be neither sought nor welcomed, far from it, and so to my eternal shame I kept quiet. In fact I managed to shake my head a little at Parker and he rolled his eyes upwards, no doubt in complete exasperation. And so it happened.

‘Half an hour later I was visiting the quarterdeck watch when a torpedo hit us on the starboard side. I was thrown to the deck and something must have hit me because the doctors found a jagged cut on my back . . .’

‘The scar,’ said Mary. She was still holding his hand and she gave it an affectionate squeeze.

‘Then a terrible grinding noise and – well – it was terrifying. The whole bloody forepart of the ship was listing to starboard, toppling into the sea. Just seconds, that’s all, it happened in seconds, no time for anyone to escape. And there it was drifting away from us on its side – the wind shrieking around it and . . .’

‘Darling, please, you’re hurting me,’ said Mary.

‘I’m sorry.’

He let go of her hand, took a slow deep breath then reached for his cigarettes, but he did not light one, he just held the packet.

‘Most of the crew was in that part of the ship, almost two hundred men. There was nothing we could do, nothing. Cave, Parker, all of them lost. No survivors. I didn’t see the forepart sink, we were fighting to keep what was left afloat.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘I tried to be busy and to keep the others busy. I don’t think I thought, “I’m going to die”, not while the wreck was afloat. But it was obvious that the boiler-room bulkhead was beginning to buckle and that we wouldn’t last until the morning. I remember holding on to the edge of a Carley raft, and I remember the deep cold and others close by – we were between the hulk and the corvette,
Rosemary
.’

Lindsay paused, then said: ‘I’m not entirely sure what happened next . . .’

He took out a crushed-looking cigarette and tapped it on the back of the packet. Then he lit it and by the lighter flame Mary could see that his hand was trembling, although his face was composed and quite calm.

‘There are only impressions, snippets of memory. There may have been an explosion inside the wreck that detonated some of our depth charges. There was fire on the water and I tried to swim away but couldn’t and it caught my sleeve, it was sticky, and I held it under. And I remember panicking because I couldn’t see the corvette through the smoke. For a moment I couldn’t see anything, anyone, and then as the smoke drifted I saw a man close by, and I tried to reach him. I’m not a strong swimmer but I tried to hold his head up. And at that time I knew I was going to die in that smoke and fire. And then the next thing I remember is someone pulling at me. One of the R
osemary’
s officers told me later that I was as black as a Negro when they fished me out. I was clinging to another member of the crew – Baker – but he died almost as soon as he reached the deck. In the end they pulled fifteen of us from the sea alive and of those, three died aboard the
Rosemary
.’

Lindsay leant over to the bedside table to put his cigarette out and then turned and shuffled down the bed until he was lying under the sheet again. Mary touched his chest. It was cold and she moved closer to share the warmth of her body. His eyes were closed. She bent forward to kiss him tenderly.

‘Darling,’ she whispered. And she stroked his cheek.

‘I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know all that.’

‘Don’t be sorry, I’m glad you told me.’

He smiled wearily: ‘Do you understand?’

‘Understand?’

‘You’ve seen the official report. For once there wasn’t a Board of Inquiry. I gave my version but the Admiralty wasn’t interested. One senior officer said to me, “Unlucky name
Culloden
, you know”, as if that explained everything. Ironic don’t you think? For a time we were the lucky ship. Fleming told me there was some private criticism of Cave but the Admiralty buried it, saved his posthumous reputation.
So there are just those few meaningless lines in the report. In my judgement he was responsible, not just for the sinking of his own ship but for most of those we lost from the convoy – fifteen in all. Sheer bloody incompetence. And the other officer who was to blame, well he was decorated.’

‘Douglas, no.’

‘I share responsibility, of course I do,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Remember the look Parker gave me on the bridge, pleading with me, “Say something, Number One, the ship’s in danger.” And I shook my head, too frightened to speak my mind. I know I am to blame.

‘The Admiralty wanted to hand out medals and it wanted photographs and newspaper copy, something to deflect public attention from the losses, and I was one of the chosen. Someone decided I’d shown the necessary presence of mind on the wreck – enough to justify a Distinguished Service Cross. And to my eternal shame I accepted it. Here . . .’

Lindsay opened the drawer of the bedside table. The decoration seemed to draw the thin light from the window, swinging silver at the bottom of its ribbon.

‘A silver cross.’

He put it back on the bedside table.

‘Some time after the sinking, I was asked to identify the body of a sailor washed up on a beach in Ireland, naked, torn, four weeks in the water. And I recognised the man, at least, I recognised his red hair. Short, good-humoured George Hyde, married with a daughter. And I cried for him.’

Lindsay’s voice cracked with emotion but when Mary tried to kiss him, he stopped her, taking her face in his hands.

‘No sympathy. I’ve told you all this so you know. I have a duty to Parker and the others to speak my mind. I don’t just follow orders any more.’

Mary leant forward again and this time he did not stop her. She kissed him long and tenderly and stroked his hair, pressing herself tightly against him. She felt so sorry for him, she wanted to say, ‘Don’t blame yourself, what could you do?’, but she knew it would sound trite. What could she say? His judgement was clouded by mad destructive guilt. It was the root of his troubles, Mohr, the codes, as if
he needed to expiate what had happened to the
Culloden
. She knew she should end this nonsense. It was just that she had given her word to people she respected, people who trusted her and, yes, she would be breaking orders – breaking the law.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘You said you’d found out more about our codes?’

Lindsay looked at her closely: ‘Do you really want to know?’

He told her of his conversation with Samuels and the note he had been given on British codes: ‘Our codes have been broken before. It played a major part last summer when we lost so many ships . . .’

There was an almost indecent note of satisfaction in his voice.