Horse Under Water (11 page)

The big droplets of rain dabbed at the grey slate windows. The bad weather had moved south from Lisbon as the radio forecast had predicted. The wind and rain gave no sign of relenting before tea-time, and we all sat around the house and moped. Albufeira was a town designed for the sun to shine upon. When rain came it looked confused and betrayed. In the market place rain dripped from the trees on to wet shiny vegetables and fruit, and in the café the proprietor whiled away the time playing draughts with his son and drinking his own coffee.

At Number 12 we had a late breakfast. Attention was now equally divided between devouring vast amounts of coffee and pancakes and watching Giorgio refolding his rubber suit in talc for the sixth time. He finally got it away into the polythene bag and dusted the surplus talcum from his cashmere sweater. Every day, whether he dived or not, Giorgio inspected his rubber suit, carefully pulling at the seams under each arm and leg where it had the most
wear. Charly told me that he always did it with the same amount of care and professional attention, and each day his hands shook a little more than the day before.

Giorgio wasn’t keen on the idea of my going down, as I had decided to do when the weather eased off. ‘It will be too dark to see,’ he said. Singleton disagreed. He said that since they were using large underwater torches powered by batteries in the boat, ‘there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be better to dive at night than by day. We could go across the beach ready dressed. No one would notice what we were wearing even if anyone saw us.’

I watched him look towards Giorgio to see if he would veto it from a technical point of view. I forestalled that. ‘I’m not putting it in the form of a resolution,’ I said. ‘If the weather eases at slack water – we dive.’

‘Great,’ said Charly; it was as sincere as a singing commercial, but it indicated that Charly, at least, would jump if I said ‘jump’.

I continued: ‘The first dive will be me and Giorgio. Then a dive by Singleton, then Giorgio and me again.’

Singleton said, ‘Do you think it’s wise? It’s quite tricky to …’ I fixed him with a malevolent eye. ‘Yes sir,’ he said.

‘I’ve been very quiet lately, sonny,’ I said to Singleton, ‘but I’ve just been ruminating. Not mellowing.’

Take the Atlantic ocean on a cold November night and keep a brisk and chilly wind striking across it from the north. Put a fourteen-foot dinghy somewhere between the heaving waves with the swell on its port quarter, and into it put a damaged echo-sounder, underwater lighting equipment, spare open-circuit bottles and five Thermos flasks of hot wine. Upon it, too, put a Portuguese fisherman with hands sore from trying to hold a heaving boat snagged against a submerged wreck. And standing clad in black rubber suits, complete with their own private arrangement for breathing, put three men: Singleton – a career naval officer anxious to demonstrate the bungling inadequacy of a civilian intelligence organization; a professional salvage free-diver anxious to collect a bribe for betraying his employer without betraying him; and a third man, who, thinking about scribbles on a U-boat chart, just can’t forget that ballpoint pens were not on sale until after the war.

The swell was enough to tip us down in the valleys between the waves at an alarming angle.

To the north I watched the coastline come into view from each wave crest. The scene was blue in the moonlight, and across the sea, like static, ran streaks of phosphorescence. The echo-sounder gave a shiver of noise and its needle began a steady metronome scratch across the roll of paper. From the bows came a momentary red glow as Giorgio tested each underwater lamp, pressing his hand over the thick glass as he did so.

I was already feeling the constriction of the tight rubber suit and began to wonder whether Singleton should wear his for another hour before diving. Giorgio gave me some last-minute words of advice. ‘… Dolphin,’ he said, ‘knees together, that’s the secret.’ (The ‘Dolphin’ is a swimming movement like that of the crawl, except that legs move together instead of alternately.) I said I would remember. He patted my arm. After the waterproof lamps had
been lowered overboard on their cables, Giorgio clambered over the side and I followed. The coldness of the water bit to the bone as I lowered myself in. I snapped the evil-tasting rubber mouthpiece between my teeth and pulled the rectangular face-piece down. A rivulet of salt water flowed from my thumb into the corner of my mouth. I wasn’t to be rid of that salty taste for a long, long time. I pushed the flat of my hands against the soft, splintery side of the dinghy. A wave descended upon my shoulder-blades, and I found the boat resting upon my hands high above me like the world of Atlas.

I jack-knifed through the opaque water. Beneath the heaving surface the sea was green and without dimension. A white explosion of microscopic bubbles raced to my feet as I swam down towards the lamps, glowing redder and redder as I neared them. All was calm and soft. The water moved not at all. No longer green, the moonlit upper layer had given way to purple. To my right Giorgio was cleaving a phosphorescent wake. He adjusted the speed of his swimming to cater for my clumsy movement behind him. I watched him turn a somersault and touch his feet to the bottom with scarcely a movement of mud. I tried to do the same, but a tumble-weed of dirty water rose around my flippers. Giorgio handed me one of the big waterproof lamps, and as my eyes became adjusted to the purple darkness one vast portion of the sea bed grew darker than the rest. Fifty feet high, the huge pot
belly of the sunken submarine loomed over us. Giorgio gave a hook-like motion with his free hand and climbed an invisible ladder on to the fore-deck. I followed him past the smooth convex swell of the main tanks. Here and there sections of the original paintwork were still in good condition. In spite of the slight list it was easy to imagine that this was a fully-manned submarine resting momentarily on the bottom before resuming a war patrol. We passed a big painted number on the conning-tower, and in the red glow of his lamp I saw Giorgio’s silhouette as he pulled the hatch open. The big fuzzy glow of Giorgio’s lamp suddenly became a sharp disc as he went inside.

I followed him. The soft paintwork shed its skin under my hand, the flakes spinning upward like perverse seeds. I dropped lightly on to the conning-tower platform, striking an ankle on the hatch cover.

Holding the side of the conning-tower ladder with one hand I controlled my drop into the small oval room beneath. I shone the big lamp around the interior. Red circles flashed from the walls as the glass-faced gauges reflected the light back. My lamp shone upon the hatch above my head. Floating between the piping and the periscope gland was a soft bundle in boiler suit and Draeger Gear.
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I streamed out the lamp cable and moved carefully past the thin corpse of the coxswain, who gently
tapped his head against the huge wheel of the hydroplane controls in deference to my movement through the water. Next to him the helmsman would spend eternity watching the dead face of the gyro compass repeater and waiting for an order that would never now come.

I kept to the port side of the cluttered interior. This was the side Giorgio had cleared and searched. The starboard side was choked with bundles of bedding, bunks, and clothing, among which bodies were barely distinguishable.

Above me broken piping hung like strange stalactites, while chairs and wooden stools danced against the ceiling. I imagined the final scene in this little space, crowded like a rush-hour tube train, all those years ago. I half walked, half swam past broken crates of food and smashed bottles. My light moved across dented metal. Thermos flasks and two photos of a woman still firmly stuck in the air-conditioning trunking, but almost faded away. My breathing became difficult. One bottle was empty. I turned the tap to let the full bottle ‘equalize’. Breathing recommenced.

I could see the glow of Giorgio’s lamp through the next bulkhead door. I moved on, noticing the pressure hull – well over an inch thick – it could withstand water pressures at over five hundred feet. I tapped it and the metal vibrated with a clang. The far side of the bulkhead was the torpedo stowage compartment. It was like looking at a baronial hall from the minstrels’ gallery. The floor lay some ten
feet below me down a ladder. On either side was rack after rack of inert torpedoes, greasy and silver like canned sardines. The mud had been washed gently through the torpedo stowage compartment by year after year of tides. Some of the lowest torpedoes and several bodies had almost disappeared into the silt. I began to check each warhead. Giorgio stood behind me holding both lamps. We both knew that it was not a job without its dangers. At the end of the war the Germans were experimenting with many different types of firing mechanisms or ‘triggers’. There were acoustics, magnetics, electric eye, reflecting echo. It was not at all uncommon for a boat to have a mixed bag of weapons and we both knew that this was one of the most highly developed U-boats of the whole Nazi era.

‘Fourteen,’ I said to myself, chewing on the soft rubber mouthpiece. ‘That’s the lot.’ I ran a forefinger across my throat and pointed upwards. Giorgio nodded. Fourteen torpedoes checked. None of the warheads could contain packages: they weren’t hollow or full of currency; they were solid and deadly. I was disappointed; another theory had had a short life.

Giorgio gave me his electric lamp when we were back at the buckled bulkhead. He went up through the gun access trunking to the fore-deck. Giorgio’s last task was to go round the hull exterior to check the bow tubes. I had to go out the way we came in because of the lamp leads. I looked at my underwater watch.

Through the conning-tower hatch and over the 37-mm. gun platforms: the ocean seemed vast after the U-boat interior. I swam gently down to the sea floor holding both lamps under one arm. I looked up at the huge hulk. Still Giorgio hadn’t joined me. I floated easily through the dark water, using only my feet to propel me; I held the lamps to shine ahead. Dolphin: knees together. To be alone on the bed of the ocean at night was an unforgettable experience. The hull loomed over me, and I began to imagine that it was moving with the tide. My breathing starved again. I turned the tap to ‘equalize’, but now only half a bottle would pour into the empty bottle. Time was growing short. Where was Giorgio?

The electric light shone upon the grey metal, and fish and small crawling things scuttled out of the moving beam. I flipped a foot and glided forward past the three starboard bow caps. Around the bulbous snout the three tubes on the port side were closed. I stepped on to the deck. Above my head copious growths of weed swung from the jumping wire. I rested the rubber-clad lamps down in the mud in order to check my watch and compass.

There, inches away from my feet, was a flat, rectangular slab. The mud flurried around as I picked it up. It was a large, leather-bound log book. It was what we wanted more than anything, according to London. I must locate the anchor snag. It should be near the after hydroplane. I stuffed the log book under my harness and bent down to get the lamps.

The soles of Giorgio’s rubber flippers were only three or four feet away from the lamps. His face-mask and rubber mouthpiece were dangling on his chest. One arm of his rubber suit was ripped into several separate shreds and above him rose a thin grey cloud of blood.

I equalized again for the last time, before my air began to starve, and left the tap open. I would have no further warnings of air shortage, but now I would need both hands. At that moment both the lamps went out, and a second or so later the cables came thudding around me. It meant there was no decision to make. I lifted Giorgio’s face and stuck the mouthpiece back into his mouth; he was unconscious, and it fell back on to his chest. I grabbed his armpit and gave a tentative shove off the sea bed with my foot. I pulled the ring on his harness to release the lead ballast and did the same with my own. Our heads broke through the ocean top. Wind ripped into my face like a blunt razor-blade. The splash of the waves broke the silence, and the cold biting into my head and shoulders made me suddenly aware of how frozen my body was in spite of the heavy woollen undersuit. I felt for the book and pushed it tighter under the straps. There was no sign of the boat. Whatever
had caused them to jettison the lamps was serious and dangerous; but I had the log book.

Runnels of dirty white spume slipped down the waves, their black bulk leaned over us before butting us high on to their peaks. I turned Giorgio on his back and struck out towards the almost invisible shore-line. The sky was clear and star-filled. The Plough gave me more reliable bearings than did a glimpse of the coast from the crest of an occasional high wave. ‘Atropos,’ Giorgio suddenly shouted, and struck me a hard blow on the side of the neck with the edge of his palm. A wave, stronger than previous ones, shattered itself upon us and Giorgio wrenched himself free. He swam strongly southward for five or six strokes; then suddenly weakened and, as I grabbed for him, sank without any attempt to save himself. I got him about six feet under, and as we came up together it was hard to say who was nearer drowning. We spluttered and spat and finally I had him in tow again. Twice more he beat me about the head and shouted ‘Atropos, Atropos,’ and a gabble of Italian that I couldn’t even begin to translate. His attacks on me had done wonders for his breathing. Had he not been taking in such a lot of sea water through his open mouth his breathing would probably have become normal, but the loss of blood was making him weaker with every yard we travelled.

The tips of the waves were trepanned by the sharp wind and suffused about our heads with a constant hiss. We had been in the Atlantic for
perhaps one and a half hours. Every part of me ached. For the first time I began to doubt if we could reach the shore-line. I stopped swimming, and, holding Giorgio tightly, tried to see the boat. The waves flung us up and down like a trampoline. I shouted to Giorgio. He turned his brown face towards me. His eyes were wide open and his mouth moved. ‘Atropos,’ he said weakly, ‘why is she putting the stars out?’