Atlantic Fury (17 page)

The door at the end of the hut banged and Pinney came in. ‘Clouds lifting. But it's still blowing like hell. Lucky for Stratton he's tucked into Shelter Bay.' He reached into his locker and passed me a plate and the necessary implements. ‘Grub's up. We're calling it a day.' And as we sloshed our way through the mud to join the queue at the cookhouse, he said, ‘Pity you're seeing it like this. Laerg can be very beautiful. On a still day with the sun shining and the air clean and crisp and full of birds.… The best posting I ever had.'

The men had mess tins; it was like being back on active service. A cook ladled stew and peas and potatoes on to my plate. Another handed me a hunk of bread and a mug of tea. We hurried back to the hut, trying to get inside before the wind had cooled our food. Another officer had joined us, Lieutenant McBride. We ate quickly and in silence. A sergeant came in, a small, tough-looking Irishman. ‘Is it true you're wanting the generator run all through the night again, sor?'

‘Not me,' Pinney answered. ‘Captain Fairweather.'

‘It means re-fuelling.'

‘Then you'll have to re-fuel, that's all. They're going to operate.'

The sergeant sucked in his breath. ‘What again? The poor devil.'

‘Better see to it yourself, O'Hare. Make bloody sure no rainwater gets into the tank.'

‘Very good, sor.'

He went out and Pinney, lying flat on his bed, his eyes closed, smoking a cigarette, said, ‘McDermott's as white as a ghost and trembling like a leaf. He was ill coming across, I suppose.'

‘Very ill,' I said.

He nodded. ‘I thought so. He wouldn't have any food. Bob gave him a couple, of slugs out of the medicine chest. Damned if I could operate on an empty stomach, but still …' His eyes flicked open, staring up at the ceiling, and he drew in a lungful of smoke. ‘What the hell am I going to say to his mother? The police will locate her sooner or later and then I'll have her on the R/T and she'll be thinking it's my fault when it was his own bloody carelessness. But you can't tell her that.' He closed his eyes again and relapsed into silence, and on the instant he was asleep. I took the burning cigarette from between his fingers and pulled a blanket over him.

McBride was already in bed, stripped to his vest and pants. ‘You'll have to excuse us,' he said with a sleepy, boyish grin. ‘Not very sociable, but I don't seem able to remember when we had more than four hours at a stretch. We just sleep when we can.' And he pulled the blanket up over his head. A moment later he was snoring with a whistling intake of the breath and a gurgling quiver of the nostrils. ‘Och, he's awa'.' The operator showed his long front teeth in a smile. ‘I mind the time when a' couldna hear a wor'rd they were saying at Base for Mr McBride lying there snoring.'

From beyond the partition the murmur of men's voices continued for perhaps five minutes, gradually dying away to silence. And after that there wasn't a sound except for the generator and the wind blasting the four corners of the hut and McBride snoring. But not everybody was asleep. Through the uncurtained window I could see a glow of light from the next hut. The shadow of a man's figure came and went against the drawn blinds, distorted and grotesque, and I knew it was McDermott … McDermott, who'd retched his guts out all the way across and was now trying to put together the broken pieces of another man's body.

I must have dozed off, but it could only have been for a moment. I jerked awake in my chair to see the operator shaking Pinney by the shoulder. ‘Captain Pinney, sir. Captain Pinney.' There was a movement. His head came up and his eyes ungummed themselves.

‘What is it, Boyd? Somebody want me?'

‘Major Braddock, sir.'

‘Then it's not …' He glanced at his watch. ‘Oh well …' He kicked the blanket aside and swung his legs off the bed. He was obviously relieved it wasn't the call he'd been expecting. ‘What's Major Braddock want?' he asked, rubbing at his eyes.

‘It's urgent, sir. We're evacuating.'

‘Evacuating? Nonsense.' He stared at the operator in disbelief.

‘Aye, it's true, sir. We're leaving right away, tonight. I hear-rd him give the order to Captain Stratton. Eight-six-one-o is coming in to beach noo.'

It was the moment of the fatal decision, the moment when the order was given that was to cost so many lives.

Pinney shook his head, forcing himself back to full consciousness. Then he was over at the set and had the earphones on, speaking into the mouthpiece. ‘Pinney here.' He sat down in the chair the operator had vacated. ‘Well, yes. The wind's off the shore, northerly. There shouldn't be any risk … What's that? … Yes, but what about the rest of the stores? According to the schedule the landing craft should be running six more trips … Yes. Yes, I quite agree, but …' He laughed. ‘No, we shan't be sorry to go. Life isn't exactly a bed of roses here. It's just that my orders … Yes, I gathered it was a War Office appointment. But I should have thought Colonel Standing …' There was a long pause, and then he said, ‘All right, sir. So long as it's understood that I'm quite prepared to continue here until every piece of Army equipment has been shipped out. And so are my men … Fine. We'll get cracking then.' He got up and handed the earphones back to the operator. ‘Remain on the set, Boyd, until you're called for boarding.' He stood there a moment looking round the room as though finding it difficult to adjust himself to the fact of leaving. Then he woke McBride and in an instant all was confusion, orders being shouted and men cursing and stumbling about as they sleep-walked into the clothes they'd only just taken off. Outside, the night was clearer, no stars, but the shadowed bulk of Tarsaval just visible. The wind was still very strong, coming in raging gusts that tore at the men's clothing, bending them double against the weight of it as they stumbled towards the beach.

An engine revved and a big six-wheeled Scammell lumbered past me. Seaward the lights of the two landing craft showed intermittently through the rain. One of them had its steaming lights on and the red and green of its navigation lights stared straight at the beach, coming steadily nearer. Orders shouted above the gale were whipped away by the wind. Pinney passed me, big in the lights of a truck stuck in the mud with its wheels spinning. ‘Better get straight on board.' His voice was almost lost in a down-blast.

I was standing on the beach when Stratton brought his landing craft in towards the loading ramp. There was almost no surf now, the sea knocked flat by the wind. Bows-on the landing craft was square like a box. He came in quite fast – two knots or more, and ground to a halt with an ugly sound of boulders grating on steel, the bows lifting slightly, towering over us. Lines were flung and grabbed, steel hawsers paid out and fastened to shore anchor points, and then the bow doors swung open and the ramp came down; a stranded monster opening its mouth to suck in anything it could devour.

The bulldozer came first, its caterpillar tracks churning sand and water. It found the edge of the ramp and lumbered, dripping, up the slope, clattering a hollow din against the double bottom as it manoeuvred to the far end of the tank hold. The Scammell followed, towing a loaded trailer, wallowing through the shallows and up the ramp where Wentworth and the Cox'n with half the crew waited to receive it. Men straggled in from the camp and they unhitched the trailer and manhandled it into position. The Scammell reversed out and by the time it was back with the next trailer, the first had been parked and bowsed down with the sprung steel securing shackles.

This went on for almost two hours; more than thirty oilskin-clad figures sweating and cursing in the loading lights and the tank deck gradually filling up. By eleven the tempo was slackening, though Pinney was still loading equipment from the camp, sending down all the small, portable, last-minute stuff.

I was working on the tank deck until about eleven-thirty. By then the Cox'n had more men than he needed. I went up to the bridge housing, took over my old bunk and cleaned myself up, and then went into the wardroom, lured by the smell of coffee. Stratton and Wentworth were there and I knew at once that something was wrong. They barely looked up as I entered, drinking their coffee in silence, their faces blank and preoccupied. ‘Help yourself,' Wentworth said. Beside the coffee a plateful of bully-beef sandwiches lay untouched. ‘Afraid you didn't get much of a run ashore.'

I poured myself some coffee and sat down. ‘Cigarette?' I held the packet out to Stratton. He took one automatically and lit it without saying a word. Wentworth shook his head and I took one myself. A message form lay on the table close by Stratton's hand. He glanced at his watch. It was an unconscious gesture and I had the impression he knew the time already. ‘Another half-hour yet before low water. If we offload – sling all this heavy stuff ashore …' He left the sentence unfinished, the question hanging in the air.

‘And suppose nothing happens – the wind remains in the north?' Wentworth's voice was hesitant.

‘Then we'll look bloody silly. But I'd rather look a fool …' He shook his head angrily. ‘If he'd come through just two hours earlier, before we took the ground.' He pushed his hand up wearily over his eyes and took a gulp of coffee. ‘Thank God there's only one of us on the beach anyway. If Kelvedon hadn't buckled a plate …' He lit his cigarette. ‘I'd give a lot to be anchored out there in the bay with Four-four-Double-o right now.'

‘It may not come to anything,' Wentworth said. ‘The midnight forecast didn't say anything about it. Troughs, that's all. And the wind northerly …'

‘Of course it didn't. This is local. Something very local.' Stratton shook his head. ‘Nothing for it, I'm afraid. We'll have to unload. Empty we'll be off – what? An hour sooner?'

‘Three-quarters anyway.'

‘Okay. Find Pinney. Tell him what the position is. And get them started on off-loading right away.'

Wentworth gulped down the remainder of his coffee and hurried out. Stratton lay back against the cushions and closed his eyes with a sigh. The effort of reaching a decision seemed to have drained him of all energy. I was thinking of the wasted effort, all the trailers and vehicles to be got off with the men tired and exhausted. ‘You've met this fellow Morgan. How good is he?' His eyes had opened again and he was staring at me.

‘I think very good,' I said. And I told him something about Cliff's background and about the book he'd written.

‘Pity you didn't tell me that before. I might have taken him more seriously.' And then angrily: ‘But it's all so damned unofficial. Coastal Command don't know anything about it. All they could give me was what we've got right now – wind northerly, force nine, maybe more. They're checking with Bracknell. But I bet they don't know anything about it. Read that.' He reached out with his fingers and flipped the message form across to me. ‘A polar air depression. That's Morgan's interpretation. And all based on contact with a single trawler whose skipper may be blind drunk for all I know.'

The message was impersonal, almost coldly factual considering the desperate information it contained:
GM3CMX to LCTs 8610 and 4400. Urgent. Suspect polar air depression Laerg area imminent. Advise you be prepared winds hurricane force within next few hours. Probable direction between south and west. Interpretation based on contact ‘Viking Fisher' 23.47. Trawler about 60 miles S of Iceland reports wind speed 80 knots plus, south-westerly, mountainous seas, visibility virtually nil in heavy rain and sleet. Barometric pressure 963, still falling – a drop of 16 millibars in 1 hour. Endeavouring re-establish contact. Interpretation unofficial, repeat unofficial, but I believe it to be correct. C. Morgan, Met. Officer, Northton
.

I didn't say anything for a moment. I had a mental picture of Cliff sitting in that room with his earphones glued to his head and his thumb resting on the key, and that big Icelandic trawler almost four hundred miles to the north of us being tossed about like a toy. I thought there wouldn't be much chance of reestablishing contact until the storm centre had passed over, supposing there was anything left to contact by then. A polar air depression. I'd heard of such things, but never having sailed in these waters before, I'd no experience of it. But I knew the theory. The theory was very simple.

Here was a big mass of air being funnelled through the gap between the big Low over Norway and the High over Greenland, a great streaming weight of wind thrusting southwards. And then suddenly a little weakness develops, a slightly lower pressure. The winds are sucked into it, curve right round it, are suddenly a vortex, forcing the pressure down and down, increasing the speed and size of this whirligig until it's like an enormous high speed drill, an aerial whirlpool of staggering intensity. And because it would be a part of the bigger pattern of the polar air stream itself, it was bound to come whirling its way south, and the speed of its advance would be fast, fast as the winds themselves.

‘Well?' Stratton was staring at me.

‘He had other contacts,' I said. ‘Those two trawlers …'

‘But nothing on the forecast. Nothing official.' He was staring at me and I could read the strain in his eyes. No fear. That might come later. But the strain. He knew what the message meant – if Cliff's interpretation was correct; knew what it would be like if that thing caught us while we were still grounded. The wind might come from any direction then. The northerly air stream from which we were so nicely sheltered might be swung through 180°. And if that happened and the wind came in from the south … I felt my scalp move and an icy touch on my spine. My stomach was suddenly chill and there was sweat on my forehead as I said, ‘How long before you get off?'

He didn't give me an answer straight off. He worked it out for me so that I could check the timing myself. They had beached at nine-forty-eight, two and three-quarter hours after high water. Next high water was at seven-twenty. Deduct two and three-quarter hours, less say half an hour to allow for the amount the ship had ridden up the beach … It couldn't be an exact calculation, but as far as he could estimate it we should be off shortly after five. I glanced at my watch. It was twenty minutes to one now. We still had nearly four and a half hours to wait. Four and a half solid bloody hours just sitting here, waiting for the wind to change – praying it wouldn't before we got off, knowing the ship was a dead duck if it did. ‘No way of getting out earlier, I suppose?'