The Lion at Sea (22 page)

The sky seemed to grow darker as the clouds crowded against each other. The water looked black and oily and lifted sluggishly in the wind, and the line of the shore seemed to grow more ominously, menacingly, dark. The song from below had stopped, almost as if the drab colours above the conning tower had penetrated below to the crowded little world of pipes, wheels, and levers and subdued the singer. For a while they progressed at slow speed down-channel testing equipment then, without warning, Lyster called out, ‘Prepare for diving manoeuvre! Exercise alarm!’

As they went tumbling down the aluminium ladder to land heavily on the deck plates, the klaxon shrieked throughout the boat and the machinists grabbed the valve handles and swung from them.

‘Take her down and steady her at fifty feet,’ Lyster said, slamming the hatch, and with a roar, water rushed into the tanks. The submarine dipped so quickly Kelly had to grab for the ladder to stop himself falling.

The dive appeared to be unusually steep and he was watching the depth gauge over Bennett’s head when a shout, loud and urgent, brought his head round.

‘Outboard air induction valve doesn’t close, sir!’

‘That’s torn it,’ someone gasped and Lyster jerked upright.

‘She’s at it again,’ he said and, as the bow sank, a face appeared in the opening of the engine room bulkhead.

‘We can’t stop the leak, sir! Head valve must be jammed!’

Lyster acted immediately. ‘Blow all tanks! Both planes to rise! Surface!’

Within seconds the depth gauge needle had dropped to sixty feet, seventy, eighty, then the boat balanced briefly on an even keel and began to tilt towards the stern.

‘God damn this bloody tub,’ Lyster snorted. ‘There’s a jinx on her!’

As the stern dipped further, Kelly began to slide aft and had to grab an overhead pipe. The boat was still tumbling towards the bottom, this time stern-first, her descent so steep that everything not fastened down rolled dangerously down the centre aisle. The two men operating the hydroplanes slid from their seat into the valve station and Rumbelo, flung through the forward hatch, clung to it with frantic fingers. His eyes met Kelly’s and Kelly was relieved to see they were steady. It made things seem better and he gave him a sickly grin.

As the boat settled, Lyster’s head lifted slowly as if it were heavy. ‘Stop blowing,’ he ordered. ‘The boat’s out of control.’

As
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reached the ocean floor, a terrifying roar came from the engine room as water rushed through the leak, then the boat hit with a shuddering jolt and they sprawled on the deck, all of them tumbling and sliding helplessly about. The lights went out and for a few moments there was only terrifying darkness. Then, as the emergency lighting came on, they held their breath, blinking at each other in thankful relief.

Bennett was gazing intently at the depth gauge. The vibrating needle had stopped at 100 feet, which was as far as it would go. Mingled with the heavy smell of diesel oil, there was now a new odour as fear opened pores and activated the sweat glands of the crouching men. With the rise in tension there was also a rise in temperature. Like animals feigning death, everyone had frozen into rigid positions and the control room was as quiet as the grave, the air hanging heavy like the still period before the beginning of a thunderstorm.

There seemed something ominous in the long gap in information from the engine room. The usual funny comments didn’t come and men began to crowd in, their faces damp and drawn with strain. Still no one spoke. The silence had a glass-thin brittleness, and a heavy tension seemed to have settled over them. Beads of sweat showed on Lyster’s face and the muscles of his jaw stood out. His shoulders were hunched, and the lines at the sides of his mouth seemed deeper than before, the hollows under his eyes like coal smudges. In the silent control room the creak and tick of strained plates sounded malevolent, and an enormous sense of claustrophobia gripped Kelly so that he wanted to scream.

They were all waiting tensely, Lyster bent down near the eyepiece of the periscope, ready to raise it the moment they regained control, and Kelly saw everybody watching him with wide eyes and grey perspiring faces. Still no one moved, all eyes firmly fixed on the commanding officer, waiting for the next order. The tension was agonising and the silence seemed to go on for hours.

Then Lyster came to life at last. ‘Take the angle off, Number One,’ he said quietly.

As Bennett struggled with the tanks, there was nothing the rest of them could do except wait. The seconds ticked by like slow ponderous steps, while they remained still, not speaking, not daring to speak, avoiding each other’s eyes. Then the boat lurched again and somebody out of sight shouted ‘Shut that bloody door!’ Struggling against the tilting deck, Kelly could see water running down from forward.

Bennett was still working over the panel, desperately seeking an explanation for the boat’s behaviour and they were all acutely aware of the fatal danger of chlorine if the sea water should reach the batteries before they could surface. Kelly’s brain seemed paralysed.

Lyster raised his head, frowning. ‘Submarines,’ he said sourly, ‘are sensitive fish. I’m told it’s possible to trim one so accurately that, by raising or lowering the periscope a few inches, the whole boat can be made to rise or sink in the water.’ He stared round him bitterly. ‘But not
this
one. Pilot, ask the engine room how long they’ll be.’

Kelly was just struggling on hands and knees against the angle, bracing his feet against a pump, a valve, a convenient pipe, towards the engine room when a hollow voice announced, ‘Air induction valve working and closed, sir.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Lyster said. ‘Bring her up, Number One.’

There was no further sign of difficulty as
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rose safely to the surface. The tension dropped away like a discarded cloak and, though the smell of fear still filled the control room, they dabbed at their perspiring faces, trying to pretend they hadn’t had a moment’s anxiety. As the conning tower broke surface they all breathed a sigh of relief, staring at each other with awkward grins, every one of them hoping he’d shown no sign of doubt, almost as if they’d been involved in some joint misdemeanour against the Navy, some group behaviour of which they could all be ashamed.

Lyster was staring at the depth gauge with a deep frown, his eyes glittering angrily.

‘This bloody boat,’ he said, ‘needs looking at again. All the way through.’

There was a blazing row on the casing of
E19
with the engineering manager of the yard and Lyster going at it hammer and tongs.

‘Ten to one Lyster’ll win,’ Bennett offered as he watched with Kelly from the bridge. He has a very persuasive manner.’

‘He looks to me as if he’s about to shove the manager overboard,’ Kelly said.

Lyster remained in a bad temper for the rest of the day and that evening the manager came back aboard with a group of workmen under a foreman. The whole lot of them looked chastened and faintly ill-at-ease and Lyster gave them no encouragement to cheer up.

‘Why is it naval officers consider themselves among God’s chosen few?’ they heard the manager ask bitterly in an aside.

Kelly grinned. ‘Perhaps it’s because we
are
among God’s chosen few,’ he said.

Lyster swung round to Bennett. ‘I’m sending the hands on leave at once,’ he announced. ‘If we wait for that bloody lot to finish we’ll miss our sailing date. See to it, Number One.’

With the deck occupied by dubious-looking wires and boxes of tools, and overalled workmen cursing in every compartment, they sent off half the ship’s complement who made in an excited group for the station, like all sailors ashore heading for women and drink, searching for that something all sailors expect to find when they strike land and never do.
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became a cold cheerless cylinder with Lyster, who seemed to prefer to forego his leave to sit on the workmen’s necks to make sure they neglected nothing, in a foul temper whenever he appeared from the depot ship. Kelly was pleased to welcome Bennett back and vanish with the second batch.

He slept most of the way to London and in the train to Esher he was surprised to bump into Rumbelo.

‘Hello, Rumbelo,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’

Rumbelo coughed and looked faintly embarrassed. ‘Just going down for the day to see Biddy, sir,’ he said.

‘Biddy? Not
our
Biddy?’

Rumbelo smiled. After a lifetime of grey orphanage rooms and grey orphanage helpers, after a service life full of the harsh interiors of ships and the sometimes harsher interiors of seamen’s mission halls, the little Irish girl at Thakeham had brought some colour to his life. For the first time he had sat at a table and eaten off a tablecloth, and for the first time had slept in a bed with sheets and been regarded with an unexpected affection.

‘Why not, sir?’ he said. ‘She’s a very presentable young lady. Thought I might go and help her turn the mangle and do the ironing again.’

‘Good God, Rumbelo, have you got a crush on her?’

Rumbelo was silent for a moment. There hadn’t been a lot of love in his life and he was touched and flattered to be the recipient of admiration. He and Bridget had already exchanged laboriously-written ill-spelt letters which he kept in his ditty box and read and re-read when his shipmates weren’t looking. Rumbelo had discovered that life was twice as meaningful when you had someone to share it with and at Thakeham it seemed he had a whole houseful of people from Bridget upwards.

‘Well, I dunno yet, sir,’ he admitted. ‘But I never will have, will I, if I don’t sort of investigate, as you might say?’

Kelly grinned. ‘Good for you, Rumbelo. Where are you staying?’

‘At the YMCA at Waterloo, sir.’

‘Can’t you find somewhere nearer?’

‘There’s nowhere in Esher, sir.’

‘That room over the garage’s still empty.’

Rumbelo grinned, ‘Couldn’t do that, sir. Got to do this sort of thing proper.’

‘You mean you need a bloody chaperone?’

‘Sort of, sir. Biddy don’t think it ought to be done without, and no more do I.’

‘Right. From now on I’m your chaperone. You can’t court a girl in Esher while you’re based in London.’

It was a strange sort of leave. Kelly had half-expected to spend it having a riotous time but, with spring just beginning, all he wished to do was walk with Charley. Perhaps the very unexpectedness of the leave gave the days a quality of brilliance against the darkening mood of the country, which had settled down to the humdrumness of wartime life after the blazing excitement of the first few weeks. Perhaps also it was that Rumbelo was conducting a serious courtship just round the corner, and when Kelly went to catch the train to London, he was busy down the platform talking in urgent whispers to Bridget.

The occasion was a solemn one, and the leave-taking was a curiously subdued affair. Charley’s mother had given her permission to say goodbye at the station and she was taking it seriously, as though she felt she represented the whole of British womanhood. She’d grown up a lot in the eight months since the war had started, her face narrower but still filled with the same fierce strength and honesty, gentle but full of cheerful pugnacity, wry humour and kindness.

As the guard started pushing people aboard, Kelly kissed her gently. ‘Well, here goes,’ he said. ‘Off for the chopper.’

Her eyes blazed and she was suddenly terribly afraid. ‘Don’t say that,’ she said harshly. ‘Don’t ever say it! It makes it sound as though the whole thing’s ordained!’ Her small features were taut and strained behind her anger and it sobered Kelly at once.

He pulled a face. Everybody aboard ship said things that were more fatalistic than normal, because of the sure knowledge that some of them might not be alive in a year’s time. But they didn’t brood much over it. They were normal healthy young men far more concerned with enjoying the present than dwelling on the future.

She stared at him with worried eyes. ‘I’ll pray for you, Kelly,’ she said, and the words seemed to knock the stuffing out of him.

Two days later, with the wind north-west and the barometer falling, the submarine depot ship,
Adamant,
led four of Britain’s newest submarines,
E11, E14, E15
and
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across the Bay of Biscay in line ahead. There was no other shipping in sight and the empty world of long green rollers was streaked with white under a heavy sky.
Adamant
looked like a steam yacht and rolled heavily enough to show the anti-fouling below her waterline. Because of the demands of fighting ships, she had no means of defence except for a dummy gun her engineers had made out of a stove pipe.

The submarines, all of them identical in design, pitched and rolled with a livelier movement,
E19
bringing up the rear, and every shower of spray that flew over them slopped water into the control room through the open hatch, to be mopped up by a waiting sailor with a rag and bucket. On the diminutive bridge Commander Lyster stood beside the helmsman and gave orders through the voice pipe to the engine room or to the first lieutenant in the control space below. Crammed alongside him, Kelly stared into the compass, swathed in a leather coat and sea boots, watching as the hissing crests of the seas, approaching from the starboard quarter, foamed round the base of the conning tower and receded to show the black bulging cylinder of the pressure hull beneath. The dockyard mateys who had replaced the air induction valve had announced that there was now nothing wrong with
E19.
Lyster had nevertheless insisted on a full series of exercises but there had been no further sign of the odd maverick behaviour beyond a little unsteadiness when they dived, and somewhat reluctantly, he had signed all the necessary documents that shifted the responsibility for her from them to him.

The wind eased as they passed Cape St Vincent and altered course for Gibraltar. The sea was dark blue now and the sky was lighter but clouds were massing in the east.