Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) (28 page)

Above it all someone was screaming. High-pitched, inhuman, making thought impossible. Then it stopped, as if somebody had slammed a door on it.

A hand was holding his arm, and for another hazy moment Allison imagined he had not moved from the bridge, that Foley was still gripping him, willing him to move, to act.

But it was the signalman, Bob Chitty, squinting through the smoke, an extinguisher in his free hand.

‘All set, sir? Ready if you are!’

Together they groped down the ladder, past the W/T office and the wardroom. Allison stared at the telegraphist, the rating who had relieved Bush, crouched over his switchboard, one hand to his ear as if he was listening to some important signal. Water was spurting through the side where cannon shells had found their mark, and the spreading puddle of blood around the telegraphist’s feet told the brutal truth. Allison muttered, ‘I don’t even know his name!’

Chitty merely glanced at him. ‘The fire’s in the galley. Let’s ’ave a go at that first!’ He retched, biting back the coughing fit.
If you gave into it, you were bloody done for.

He called over his shoulder, ‘Ready, Smithy?’ He heard the other figure switch on his extinguisher, caught the pungent smell. Chitty wiped his face. The galley would be bloody useless after this. He almost laughed aloud. As if it mattered. At any second now another kraut would come charging out of the smoke, all guns blazing, and then . . . He could scarcely breathe, but the fire was retreating almost as he watched, a few spurting flames
still flickering from a cupboard full of pusser’s jam and marmalade. He thought of the coxswain, Dougie Bass; he fancied himself a chef from time to time. He wouldn’t be too happy about this pot-mess.

The laugh nearly overwhelmed him again. He’d seen a few others crack up like that. He studied the young subbie, fanning his face with his cap, his fair hair plastered to a forehead blackened with smoke.
Tobias.
He relented slightly.
Not a bad bloke, for an officer, that is. Green as grass. Maybe not so green any more.

‘Okay, sir?’

Allison sucked in several deep breaths. The leaks would be dealt with by the pumps. There was no more fire. It was impossible to believe that the whole space had been a mass of flames, until you looked at the burned and blistered paintwork, the charred clothing hanging outside the messdeck. And through that bulkhead, the fuel was unharmed.
Not that we’d have known much about it.

‘I must go up. Can you cope down here?’ Then he grinned and reached out as if to grip his hand. ‘What a stupid question! I’ll send someone to relieve you.’

Chitty crunched into the blackened galley. He had expected to die. To be killed, not for the first time. He had seen the E-Boat surging towards him when his twin Brownings had jammed. He had also seen the skipper stagger, lose his balance; he had felt it as if it was his own pain. He had seen a few go like that.

It was strange to think about it. He had started work, earning a few bob, as a lookout for a street bookmaker in London. He was always quick on his feet whenever the
police arrived or some rival bookie tried to break up the pitch; the betting slips had been safe in his keeping. He had graduated to being a bookie’s tick-tack man at the local dog racing stadium, where he had become adept at using his hands to signal the odds and the chances in a sign language not unlike semaphore. Then working the fairgrounds, chatting up the girls, having a snog on the Ghost Train when a chance was offered, always just this side of the law. He smiled to himself. Even learned to shoot with a .22 on the fairground circuit.

He heard the engines increase their revs. On the move again. His companion, Smithy, who was raking through some burned-out boxes, said, ‘Close thing, Bob.’

Chitty held out his hand and studied it gravely. The green young subbie had shaken it. This hand. What was he? Nineteen years old? He peered at the low deckhead. Right now, he could find himself in command.

‘You shouldn’t ’ave joined . . .’

The man called Smithy grinned, some of the strain draining away as he replied promptly, ‘. . . if you can’t take a joke!’

Allison had to stop halfway up the companion ladder while he pressed his cheek against the handrail, to steady himself, and accept what he had just done. The rail was like ice, and like the breeze that greeted him it helped to drive away the memory of the flames, and the smoke which had seared his lungs. And the dead telegraphist, hunched intently over his instruments as if waiting for some last signal.

As his breathing eased he could hear Chitty and the one called Smithy laughing and coughing alternately
while they raked the charred remains of their messdeck. A cramped space where men ate their meals, wrote letters, slept, or just sat and waited for the shrill of action stations. It was not much, but it was all they had.

He gripped the rail and hauled himself bodily into the bridge. At school, Allison had never had much interest in sport or team games, but he had always enjoyed acting in amateur dramatics, be they Shakespeare or something lighter. He had even tried his hand at producing some of them: quick changes of dress or make-up, scenery or fittings to be moved while the youthful audience whistled or stamped beyond the lowered curtain.

He breathed deeply, staring around the small bridge. It was like that now. Waiting for curtain-up, the players rearranged slightly, but not what he had been expecting. Dreading.

He saw Foley sitting on a locker, supported by Leading Seaman Nick Harrison, who next to the coxswain was the ML’s key rating. Gunlayer on the three-pounder, Buffer of the upper deck when they were in harbour, he was a true seaman who could turn his mind and hands to almost anything. Allison looked quickly forward. The three-pounder was pointing over the port bow, a sprawled corpse nearby, jerking occasionally to the hull’s movements as if still alive. The loading number: he must have been cut down in that last savage burst of cannon fire.

Allison stooped and said, ‘All right, Skipper . . . sir?’

Foley raised his head and looked at him.

‘Did you get it under control down there?’

Allison saw the torn jacket, the shoulder and side bare to the bitter wind and drifting spray, and the dressing which Harrison was trying to hold in position. And blood. Black against the grey paint, and the thin plating which could hardly deflect a spent bullet.

He said, ‘Here, let me,’ and felt Foley wince as he moved the heavy dressing. ‘Sorry, sir. But I can do it. I took a first aid course at
King Alfred
.’ He was speaking jerkily, afraid he might lose the impetus which had carried him this far. ‘During the dog watches, usually. To get out of sporting events, you see . . .’

Harrison murmured, ‘That looks good.’ He sounded relieved, and possibly surprised.

Foley gasped as they covered him with somebody’s duffle coat, then stared around the bridge again, coming to terms with it.

‘Wood splinter,’ Harrison said. ‘Big as a baby’s arm. An inch or so inboard and it would have done for ’im, sir.’

‘I’ll have another go when it’s a bit lighter.’ He broke off as Foley said, ‘You’re all surprises, Toby.’ His teeth were very white against the dark backdrop of sea and cloud; he was grinning despite the pain, and the shock of being rendered helpless at the very moment the boat, his boat, needed him. ‘I don’t know what it is you’ve got, but don’t ever lose it. Promise me that, will you?’

He tried to lift his arm but the pain stopped him. ‘Take over.’ He took another sharp breath. ‘Number One. The E-Boats have pulled off, for the moment, but they might be back. The MGBs are here,
at last
.’ He attempted to smile, but failed. ‘One of ours is in trouble. Starboard
bow. We’re closing now. Get forrard and get ready to come alongside.’ He shook his head suddenly. ‘I can manage up here.’ His hand came up again and reached Allison’s wrist. ‘And the fire really is under control?’

Allison made himself stand, feeling the heavier motion, the reduced speed, and saw the other motor launch for the first time. Drifting and out of control, smoke hanging over and around the hull, pale against the black water.

‘The fire’s out, sir.’ Somehow he knew it was important for the skipper to be reassured. The rest, whatever it entailed, had to wait. He trembled. The stage must be reset for the next episode.

The hold on his wrist tightened. ‘Good lad, Toby. I’ll not forget.’

Bass looked down from his wheel. ‘I’ll take her in, sir.’ He might have chuckled. ‘Done it a few times.’

Leading Seaman Harrison said, ‘I’ll come forrard with you, sir.’

Allison nodded. He must have learned a lot since
Ganges
, he thought vaguely. Harrison’s tone, for instance. The unspoken warning.

Somebody called, ‘Watch yer step, sir!’

It was slippery, treacherous on the unsteady forecastle deck. Plenty of spray, but still a lot of blood as well. Allison recalled the terrible scream, the sound cut off like a slammed door. Somehow he knew Harrison had silenced the dying man, perhaps to prevent a panic, or to lessen his misery. A cannon shell had smashed him down even as he had reloaded the gun and had blasted off both his hands, and he had been badly wounded in several places by the same jagged splinters which had
pockmarked the forepart of the bridge and chart space. Allison retched, but controlled it. One of the severed hands was caught around a mooring cleat, whitened by the constant spray, like a torn, discarded glove.

He tried to shut it from his mind, his brain, and made himself stare at the other motor launch. He could just make out the number on her shining hull, ML417, one of the extra boats which had been called in for the minelaying escort.

So unlike his time aboard the old destroyer, in the convoys, those long lines of hard-worked, rusty merchantmen. The flash of an explosion in the night as a torpedo had found its target, and then a ship falling slowly out of line, dying as you watched. And the commodore’s signal.
Close up.
You must not stop. Fill in the gap, until the next one caught it.

This was different. People you knew, if only by sight, or responding to a wave or some witty signal when the senior officer chose not to be looking. He recalled the charred messdeck, the few possessions scattered amongst the debris.

He said, ‘Stand by with the fenders!’ and watched the other boat moving down on him, or so it appeared. But Bass was gauging it, and the skipper would be holding on. Making sure. Like hearing him speak.
Good lad. I’ll not forget.

He could smell the damage now, burned wood, and the lurking danger of leaking fuel. A heaving line snaked out of the night and a hand caught it neatly, as if it was broad daylight, and in harbour.

‘Take her head rope!’ Allison winced as the two hulls
jerked together and the rope fenders took the full shock. He wondered what it must be like in the engine room, the Chief and his small team sealed in with the pounding machinery, the din which would drown out the sound of an approaching shell, until it was too late.

He heard the tough leading seaman say, ‘Lieutenant Baldwin’s the C.O., sir.’

Some of the injured men were being dragged across the treacherous gap between the two boats. Others lay where they had fallen. A sub-lieutenant, he guessed the Number One, was urging the last few to jump to safety.

Harrison murmured, ‘
Was
the C.O., anyway.’

He turned as Foley called down from the bridge. His voice seemed stronger. Unchanged.

‘Cast off, Number One! She’s going down!’

Allison stared at the other boat. If there was anyone else, it was too late.

‘Let go! Fend off, forrard!’

A shadow moved up beside him. Without looking he knew it was the subbie, his opposite number.

He said, ‘Lost seven chaps.’ Someone cried out behind them. ‘Skipper bought it in the first attack.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘So long, old girl.’

Allison watched the other hull turning on her side, bubbles bursting around the motionless screws and through the shell holes along the bilges.

The subbie turned away as somebody took his arm to guide him aft. But he hesitated, and then seemed to shrug.

‘Maybe I’ll do it for you some day, eh?’

The engines were growling again, and the next boat astern was taking up station even as the abandoned motor launch lifted her stern and dived out of sight.

Brock’s boat came creaming past, rounding up the depleted flotilla. The loud-hailer was mercifully silent.

The E-Boats had gone. Allison felt something like weariness sweeping over him and had to shake himself. It was not the time to step back and be thankful. It never was.

He said, ‘Clear up here, Hookey. Get more hands from aft if need be. Must get the three-pounder on top line again, right?’

It had come out sharper than intended, but Harrison replied, ‘Right, sir!’ He was satisfied although he would never say as much.
That’s more like it. No room for passengers in this boat.

He glanced at the corpse of the man he had known for several months. A lifetime. His knuckles still ached from the punch he had thrown to silence his screams; he had been finished anyway. He peered at the splinter holes and jagged scars.
Only two sorts of matelot in this man’s navy. The quick, and the dead.

He thought about the motor launch he had watched go down. He had had a good friend aboard her. He had not been one of the survivors he had seen dragged over the side. When it happened, it was the best way to go. With your mates. And with your boat. He thought of the other Jimmy the One, his quiet
so long, old girl
. It had broken through his defences, and that had surprised him.

A group of figures were scrambling towards him, the
‘extra hands’. There was a lot to do before daylight found them again.

‘Come on, you idle sods! Move yerselves!’

Leading Seaman Nick Harrison, the Buffer, was back.

Petty Officer Ian Shannon, the Chief, wedged himself in one corner of the bridge, an oilskin covering his familiar overalls to protect him from the keen air which must be a testing contrast to the heat of his engines.