Convoy Homeward Read online

  Kemp turned away himself and joined Captain Maconochie at the binnacle. Maconochie, his ship now in station on the flagship, handed over to his Officer of the Watch and glanced at Kemp’s somewhat set face.

  ‘Difficulties?’ he asked.

  ‘A fan that doesn’t work properly. And a steward who doesn’t answer bells.’ Kemp hesitated. ‘Look, Captain, I don’t want to be a pain in the neck and I certainly don’t mean to interfere, but —’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Maconochie laid a hand on Kemp’s shoulder. ‘I’ve heard a lot about your late OC Troops. I dare say you and I have similar thoughts. I’ll send down at once to my chief steward. We’ll do what we can to make things as easy as possible for him.’

  Kemp was about to express appreciation when there was a report from Yeoman of Signals Lambert taking the signal watch. ‘Flag calling up, sir.’

  Kemp saw the signal lamp flashing from the Resolution’s flag deck. Yeoman Lambert’s lamp clacked out the acknowledgement. Lambert took down the message on his signal pad, then reported to Kemp.

  ‘From the Flag to Commodore, sir. Captain (D) reports single contact bearing red zero two five distant four miles. Message ends, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Yeoman. Repeat to all merchant ships in convoy.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Kemp caught Maconochie’s eyes. ‘The buggers are quick off the mark. This, I did not expect.’

  ‘Nor me. Do we scatter?’

  Kemp shook his head. ‘Not at this stage, Captain. We hope the destroyers can deal with a single contact. But we’ll take prudent precautions.’ He turned to Sub-Lieutenant Finnegan. ‘Close up guns’-crews, sub.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Commodore.’ Finnegan saluted and ran for the wheelhouse and the Tannoy. As he went, Kemp passed orders for the zig-zag to be started. The danger area had indeed come sooner than expected.

  Chapter Two

  ‘If they’re going to get us at all,’ Petty Officer Ramm observed to his gunlayer, Leading Seaman Purkiss, ‘they may just as bloody well get us ’ere, nice an’ close to bloody Colombo. I’ve done my time floating around in a lifeboat.’ He fished out a packet of Players cigarettes and lit up without offering the pack to Purkiss. Ramm, Purkiss thought sourly, was a man who watched his pennies: he needed them for his philanderings ashore. Purkiss, who had joined the Commodore’s staff at Colombo as a casualty replacement, was a time-expired Royal Fleet Reservist like Ramm himself, and also like Ramm was of the Portsmouth Port Division. He’d come across Ramm back in the thirties, in RNB, when Ramm had been number two to the Parade Chief Gunner’s Mate and a right bastard with it. Ramm had been known as Ramm by Name and Ramm by Nature and Purkiss doubted if time had dimmed his desires to any great extent.

  ‘Zig-zagging,’ Ramm said suddenly, as the Aurelian Star’s gun deck lurched a little to starboard. ‘Increasing speed, too.’ Aft, the water was churning like a mill-race, and the wake was widening as the ship turned to the zig-zag pattern. In the van the destroyers of the A/S screen were moving ahead and a little to port at their maximum speed of around 35 knots. Ramm and Purkiss watched and waited for the first of the depth charges to rip open the flat blue Indian Ocean water. Ramm began to look restive; he wasn’t specially worried about a solitary U-boat, not with all the armour floating around him, but personal inaction could look bad from the bridge and he didn’t want that young Yank balling him out. All subbies, in Ramm’s view, were bloody useless, wet behind the ears and full of bull with it, British as well as American.

  He looked around for something to make his presence felt: in no time at all he found it. The panacea for all fault-finding gunners’ mates: rust on the barrel of the three-inch alongside which he and Purkiss were standing. Just a pinpoint.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said in a tone of shock.

  ‘What, PO?’

  ‘Rust, that’s what.’

  ‘Can’t see any rust.’ Purkiss peered around.

  ‘Need glasses, you do. Like a ploughed field. Get it removed pronto, all right?’

  ‘I still can’t see it, PO.’

  Ramm jabbed with a finger. In so doing, he caused the rust to disappear. ‘There. Blind as a bat, you are, Leading Seaman Purkiss. Should ’ave spotted it before me. Mind, it’s PO Biggaris fault, that I don’t deny, but it’s your job too and if you can’t do your job you’re not fit to ’old your rate as a killick. Get the ’ands onto it. I’m not going into action with me guns looking like a derelict plough in a farmer’s barn.’

  Looking surly, Leading Seaman Purkiss detailed a hand from the gun’s-crew to dig out the cleaning materials from the ready use ammunition locker. From the bridge, where he had reported back after checking that all guns’-crews had been closed up in obedience to the orders, Finnegan looked down in wonder. There were some things about the British Navy that he would never understand. It was true the limeys had a reputation for spit-and-polish, true that they were almost main deck awash with bullshit, but to see a petty officer busting his guts about cleaning a gun when within the next few minutes the ship could take a tin fish in her innards was quite something. Maybe it said a lot, but Finnegan didn’t know quite what.

  *

  In addition to the zig-zag, which would now be maintained, Kemp had swung the merchant ships away from the bearing indicated by Captain (D) via the Flag and had steadied them on their original course five miles to the west of the U-boat’s position. By this manoeuvre he had brought the great bulk of the Resolution between the convoy and the enemy while the destroyers closed in. The cruisers, under the orders of CS23, had shifted with the convoy and were guarding the flanks. From all the ships a sharp lookout was being maintained, binoculars constantly sweeping on all bearings: there might well be another U-boat, or more than one, on the starboard side, not yet picked up by the asdics.

  It ended in anti-climax. Yeoman of Signals Lambert reported the next signal: ‘Lost contact, sir.’

  Kemp nodded. ‘I fancied that might happen. She’s gone deep. Stopped diesels as well. She’d probably been on the surface just before dawn, recharging batteries, and picked us up as we came out. For my money she’ll let us get well ahead, then keep just out of range of the asdics.’

  ‘Tail us, sir?’ Finnegan asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m suggesting, sub. And I think the Flag has had a similar thought.’ There was an exchange of light signals between the Flag and Captain (D) on the heels of which the flotilla leader began signalling himself to his destroyers. A moment later two of them began swinging heavily to port, then steadied to come up astern of the convoy to act as rearguard. Captain (D) with the remainder of the flotilla raced ahead to resume station while the cruisers remained on the flanks. Astern of the convoy, immediately ahead of the guarding destroyers, the escort carrier Rameses came on with her aircraft — Barracudas of the Fleet Air Arm, ranged ready for take-off on her flight deck.

  Kemp left the open bridge and strode into the wheelhouse. He switched on the Tannoy. ‘This is the Commodore speaking to all hands.’ He paused. ‘Well, it’s begun. Something of a damp squib you may think. Don’t be fooled. That U-boat won’t go away. From now on out, we have to be ready — for her and any other U-boats that may be around. That is all.’

  Kemp returned to the bridge. He swept his binoculars all around the convoy, all over the smooth, peaceful-looking Indian Ocean. The peaceful look was a mirage; it could all change within moments. A thought passed through Kemp’s mind: the naval flag that was flown in peacetime when submarines were exercising in company with surface ships was a two-coloured one, blue over red. Danger under the Blue, they called it. For Danger, in wartime, read Death.

  Twenty minutes later, seeing no virtue in keeping men at action stations too long, Kemp passed the word for the guns’- crews to fall out.

  *

  The Captain’s message had gone down to the chief steward, Mr Chatfield. Chatfield was an experienced chief steward; he’d seen and suffered all sorts, particularly when he’d been a dining-room
steward in the liners many years before. Passengers came in all shapes and sizes, mentally as well as physically. Many of them were nice enough; many chucked their weight around and treated stewards as dirt. Haughty: they had a special inflexion in their voices when addressing stewards, like addressing shop assistants — you could hear the change, like a car changing gear, when they turned to their table companions. That had riled Chatfield, though he’d never let it show through his professional urbanity. End-of-voyage tips were important; a steward’s rate of pay was poor enough. And passengers could be generous if you didn’t get their backs up and did a bit of arse-crawling, much as doing that went against the grain of a self-respecting man. A few years of that before becoming head waiter (which meant even more arse-crawling) had turned Chatfield bolshie. Not exactly a communist, but certainly very red. When later, as assistant second steward, he had observed practices in the galleys that would have sent the directors of the Line into apoplectic fits, he had turned a blind eye — a red eye. Spitting in the soup destined for the first class, gobbing after a lot of hacking and hawking. The rubbing of chicken legs into hairy armpits running with galley sweat before they were delivered to the commis waiters. That and other things were passed over.

  But that was in the past. As chief steward with a position to keep up after changing Lines, Chatfield had himself changed. Like many a politician, in fact. But he still didn’t go much on nobs and he still didn’t like that special voice. And another thing: Chatfield had had a mate aboard the ill-fated Orlando and this mate, who had been a survivor, had told him a lot about Brigadier Pumphrey-Hatton.

  ‘Fans,’ he said to his second steward when the message from the bridge reached his office, ‘is engine-room. When will the deck department ever learn? Not answering bells — that’s you. Chase up the steward on ‘Is Nibs’ cabin, all right? But let me know pronto if there’s any trouble from Pumphrey-Hatton. I’m not having my lads turned into bloody army batmen, on duty twenty-four hours a day every day.’

  The message dealt with, Chief Steward Chatfield sat back and read for the tenth time a letter from home that had come aboard with the last mail before leaving Colombo. The letter was not from his own home, oh no, it was from that scourge of husbands serving overseas, the Well-Meaning Busybody. There had been Carryings On in Southampton, where Chatfield lived. Men had been seen coming and going; and in spite of petrol rationing there had been a Morris Eight parked outside Chatfield’s house. Not once but on numerous occasions, and where was the petrol coming from was what the writer wished to know. Unpatriotic was that; the letter was about patriotism, or so it made out. But obviously what was being got at was Roxanne’s virtue. Innuendoes — very nasty! Untrue, of course — Roxanne was devoted to him, he knew that because she had said so, and Chief Steward Chatfield knew he was a fine figure of a man, very little excess stomach for a man of fifty-four, a man in his sexual prime and one who brought home the bacon — like all chief stewards, Chatfield was by no means poor. In one of the liners of his former company, the chief steward, on return to their home port, used to be met by a fur-coated wife driving a car, and had once or twice given a lift to the Captain, who would otherwise have had to walk or pay for a taxi.

  Roxanne wouldn’t risk all that; she knew which side her bread was buttered, all right.

  There was, of course, another angle: Roxanne was only twenty-six. Also, the war had meant that Chatfield was away from home for very long stretches. So in that respect, well … it was a worry, he had to admit that. Roxanne was very attractive, very seductive, and he’d picked her up in the first place, in the pub where she’d worked as a barmaid. People who’d been picked up once could perhaps be picked up again. Some nasty-minded, war-dodging salesman most likely, with a flattering tongue. Chief Steward Chatfield had never liked salesmen ever since his first wife, later crushed by a Southdown bus when visiting her old ma in Pompey, had been sold a very expensive lounge suite on the never-never, a suite that had collapsed under Chatfield’s weight when he returned home and the firm had refused to honour the guarantee and had indeed been bloody rude about it.

  If there was any truth, it had to be a salesman because salesmen had the opportunities. Chatfield ripped the letter up and dropped the pieces into his waste-paper basket. Of course it was all vicious lies, simple jealousy about the Morris Eight. But, admitting tacitly the Morris Eight, there had to be a reason for its presence. Hadn’t there? Chatfield would have liked to write a stinging answer to that letter, if only to find out more, but he couldn’t, because there was no address given. Nag, nag, nag — his Roxanne with a furniture salesman and a hell of a long way to the Clyde, and then the train south.

  *

  Kemp was still on the bridge when a wireless message was received in the radio room and was brought to the Commodore by the telegraphist rating on his staff.

  ‘From NOIC Kilindini, sir.’

  Kemp nodded, and read the transcript from the naval code. The message was brief, informing him that the convoy would embark two unexpected groups of people at Kilindini for transport to the UK: one, fifty-six British civilians, men, women and children, families caught in East Africa by the war and wanting to return home. This had been the first opportunity of accommodating them. Two, there would be embarked one hundred and fifty Germans, prisoners-of-war taken when an enemy cruiser had been sunk off the port some three weeks earlier. Kemp was instructed to allocate these persons among the ships of the convoy as expedient.

  He passed the transcript to Captain Maconochie.

  Maconochie said, ‘We have spare capacity ourselves, Commodore. Some at any rate.’

  ‘How many?’

  Maconochie shrugged. ‘We can take the families. Some of the Germans too. If we have to.’

  ‘You don’t sound keen, Captain.’ Kemp grinned. He wasn’t keen himself. Prisoners-of-war would not be popular aboard. He said, ‘If you’d get precise figures from your Purser, then I’ll signal the other masters and see what they can take.’

  Within the next fifteen minutes Chief Steward Chatfield, on orders from the purser, had gone through his berthing lists with his second steward. He reported to the bridge that, taking into account the troops to be embarked both at Kilindini and at the Cape, the Aurelian Star could take the families plus fifty of the Germans. Not a soul more. While the Commodore made signals by light around the convoy asking for berthing figures, the word spread through the ship that rows were to be embarked for the prison camps in the UK. Petty Officer Ramm had much to say on the subject later on in the small caboosh allocated as petty officers’ mess — there were just the three POs, himself and Yeoman of Signals Lambert on the Commodore’s staff and PO Biggar of the DEMS contingent. Lambert, relieved from the bridge by his number two, was smoking a fag along with a cup of tea almost black in colour and syrupy with sugar.

  ‘Huns,’ Ramm said angrily. ‘Buggers what ’ave bin shooting at our lads.’ Too many escorts and merchant ships had been sunk by raiders in the Indian Ocean over the months of war. ‘They’d best steer clear of me, that’s for sure.’ He added, ‘That young Featherstonehaugh, what calls ’is bleeding self Festonhaugh. In for a commission, ’e is WC candidate.’ To the lower deck, the Commission and Warrant candidates, properly known as CWs, were known as WCs. ‘On Number Two gun.’

  ‘What about him, GI?’

  ‘’Is dad. Blown up aboard the old Barham in the Med. Blown to little pieces probably. Commander(E) ’e were, down in the engine-room when a bloody bomb went down the funnel. What’s ’e going to think, eh?’

  ‘Same as anyone with any sense,’ Lambert said mildly. ‘As POWs, they’re out of it, facing God knows how many years of being shut away somewhere where it’s not nice. No use blaming ’em for what bloody Adolf made ’em do.’ He drank tea noisily. ‘Me, I won’t let it worry me.’

  ‘Your dad didn’t get killed by the sods, Yeo. Anyway,’ Ramm added with a smirk, ‘you still got other worries, I s’pose. Get any mail in Colombo, did you?’

  �
��No, I didn’t. Would you believe it, eh? Not a thing all the way from the Clyde.’

  ‘Maybe she’s still chocker,’ Ramm said, smirking again. ‘Teach you not to be bloody careless another time.’

  Lambert made no response; it was a very personal matter and no business of Ramm’s to go on and on about it and never mind that he, Lambert, had sought consolation in sharing his worries with Ramm in the first place. That had been a mistake: Ramm, a salacious man, had merely thought it funny. To Lambert it was very far from funny. During his leave immediately prior to rejoining Commodore Kemp for the long eastbound convoy, a french letter had popped out of his top pocket when he’d brought out his pen. Explanations had been useless. Lambert had bought the object years ago, before the war, when as a young signalman in a cruiser on the China station he had been advised by an older shipmate that matelots should always take precautions. Just In Case, Like. You Never Knew, his mentor had said, poking him in the ribs with a heavy hand. Situations could arise, and then what? Nasty diseases was what. Or even, if the woman concerned was not a Chinese prozzie but a respectable young girl who’d let a matelot go too far, children. Bastards, like. Lambert had taken this good advice but had never used the french letter, which had in fact perished. It had remained a virgin packet, if you could use the word virgin, to the day his wife had found it. By the time he had been given the advice, Lambert had already been a married man, the wedding having taken place just a week before his draft to China. He had never had any intention of being unfaithful, certainly not with a Hong Kong or Wei-hai-Wei prostitute. When he had explained this, fervently, to his wife, she had not unreasonably asked him why, if such was the case, he had equipped himself with the offending object?