Читать книгу Storm Below - Hugh Garner - Страница 10

CHAPTER ONE

Lieutenant-Commander Joseph Frigsby, DSC, RCNR, stood on the bridge of his ship, leaning forward over the dodger. Now and again he glanced back at the boiling wake, running white in the green water, and murmured steering instructions down the voice pipe to the seaman at the wheel.

He was a short, thin man with sharp features beneath the visor of his cap. He was attired in a roll-necked woollen sweater, over which he wore a shabby officer’s uniform jacket from the sleeves of which the pair of lieutenant’s chain-linked stripes had been torn. His cap was regulation, but upon its front was fastened a soggy green replica of a naval officer’s gold badge. On his feet he wore a pair of turned-down rubber boots, and covering everything but the boots and cap hung a long khaki-coloured sheepskin coat.

His thin jaws worked methodically as he chewed a peppermint drop. He was thinking that no matter how often he crossed the ocean he could not get away from the feeling that when the ship was running a northerly course it seemed as though it was running uphill, and when it was travelling south, it was running down again. Of course it is ridiculous, he argued with himself, just one of those ridiculous little thoughts which people use to amuse themselves, especially ships’ captains whose life is much more introverted than those of others on the ship. He thought, it is the fault of the Mercator’s Projection which hangs on the wardroom bulkhead to show the U-boat dispositions.

But regardless of the fantasy of such thoughts, you could not get away from the fact that as soon as your course became southerly, somewhere west of Iceland, a new feeling gripped everybody aboard; and when you drew the new line on the wardroom chart it looked for all the world as though you were coasting downhill to Newfoundland a few hundred miles ahead.

You knew that it affected others the same way because you had seen the steward’s face light up each time he had noticed the new change in course on every crossing. The junior officers became a little more boisterous, and the men showed their feelings in a hundred ways: more singing and shouting, more laundry being done, a general relaxation from the tenseness which had gripped them all since the beginning of the trip....

He sighed and stepped back from his position at the voice pipes and took a turn around the asdic cabin, which housed the submarine detection gear, motioning to Lieutenant Harris, the officer on watch, to take over.

Dawn was breaking, the slow zigzag pattern of the ship’s course swinging the rising sun along the port side from the bow almost to the quarter. Mechanically he glanced at the lookouts on the bridge wings to see that they were keeping an eye out.

As he stepped to the watertight door opening into the radar cabin, he met the leading steward coming up the ladder with a teapot and cups in his hands. He reached out and took a cup while the steward poured it full of hot black tea. “Thanks, Roberts,” he said. “What’s on for breakfast this morning?”

“W-w-w-w-w-w-eggs, sir,” the steward answered.

“Thank you,” said the captain, walking away. It was a damnable affliction, stammering. He wished that Roberts could be drafted. A bloody embarrassing thing to have to listen to. Eggs, but what kind of eggs? It was impossible to ask Roberts.

He drank the cup of scalding tea with a smacking of lips, feeling the heat of it warm him under his sheepskin coat. Placing the empty cup on the starboard Oerlikon-gun platform, he made his way once more to the radar cabin and looked inside. The operator, a middle-aged Scotsman, named Wright, was sitting with his back against the bulkhead, his eyes on the screen in front of him. “How are the ships showing up?” asked the captain.

“They’re nae bad, sirr; it’s been guid ever since I came on watch.”

“Do you get a pip from the Milverton?”

“Where’s she, sirr?”

“Let’s see, she should be on the port beam. Around four thousand yards.”

As the operator began manipulating his wheel, the door flew open, and the face of Sub-Lieutenant Peter Smith-Rawleigh looked in. He was excited, and his pudgy countenance was filled with the momentousness of the occasion. He was freshly shaved, as he always was since he had found that his sparse beard was an object of levity among the men. He was the only man aboard who shaved every day at sea. He said, “Sir, there’s been an accident to one of the seamen. He’s pretty badly hurt.”

The captain asked, “Did you get the Sick berth attendant?”

“No, sir. That is, I’ve sent for him, sir.”

“Tell him to report to me as soon as the man is made comfortable.”

The sub-lieutenant made his way down the ladder again, his oversized feet gripping the rungs carefully in his descent.

He’s rushed off to get the sick bay tiffy himself, the captain thought. Caught with his pants down. Bloody little snob. How did a Canadian get a hyphenated name? It was as ersatz as his Vancouver Island English accent.

“I’ve got the Milverton, sir,” Wright said.

“Eh? Oh, good! Good work!” said the captain, glancing at the screen.

He took another turn around the bridge, standing for a minute or two in the shelter of the splinter shield, gazing to starboard where the serried rows of freighters bobbed up and down in the middle distance. Beneath their high-riding plimsolls the red oxide of their bottom plates showed momentarily above the whitecaps. The little Greek coaster trailed a soggy tassel of black smoke along her wake.

~

Leading Seaman Hector McCaffrey lounged on the captain’s couch in the wheelhouse and puffed dreamily on a cigarette. In his hand rested a red-covered, lurid romance entitled The Fleshpots of Sin.

He was a heavy young man who was on the sixth year of his first seven-year hitch in the regular navy. Because of his three-or four-year seniority over most of the other members of the crew he was inclined to be a little distant with them, and he could not forget that for the first three years of his enlistment he had hardly dared open his mouth. Since the advent of so many civilians — “plough jockeys” he called them — he had come into his own, and now that it was his turn to rule the roost he resented the lack of feeling for his position which the new entries showed him. Along with their ignorance of naval protocol was an easygoing camaraderie which they were forever trying to force upon him, a leading seaman. With the exception of the captain and the navigating officer who were ex-Merchant Navy men he had nothing but contempt for the officers, whom he grouped together, regardless of civilian occupation, under the opprobrious term of “bank tellers.”

He settled himself more comfortably on the couch, placing his feet against the wooden foot of the bunk. He was using his duffle coat as a cover, and his lifebelt as a pillow. Over a suit of dungarees he wore a blue denim smock.

“You wanna watch out, McCaffrey,” the seaman at the wheel said, covering the voice pipe with the palm of his hand. “You know what the Old Man’ll say if he knows somebody down here’s smoking. He’s up top, you know.”

“He can’t smell this fag from here.”

“He can smell ’em a mile.”

“Is he on the blower now?”

“No, it’s Harris.”

“Quit worrying.” He went back to his book, waiting until nobody was looking before surreptitiously stamping out his cigarette.

The wheelhouse was quiet again except for the da-da-da-dit, da-dit from the wireless room which was separated from it by a door, and the quartermaster’s answers to the officer on the bridge, “Steady on two-one-oh.”

McCaffrey was immersed in the chapter of his book in which the white girl had been bought at auction by the Bey of Tunis, and was being led away bathed in tears to a fate worse, even, than she had experienced at home at the hands of her erstwhile boss, Karl Tarbish.

The starboard door opened noisily, automatically plunging the wheelhouse into darkness, and a hand pushed aside the blackout curtain and shut the door, turning on the lights again. A seaman entered, the bosun’s mate, who had been sent down to the galley by McCaffrey to scrounge a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

“Hey, Mac, young Knobby’s hurt pretty bad! They got him layin’ on the mess-deck table!”

McCaffrey laid the book down and jumped to his feet.

“What happened?”

“He fell down the ladder right outside here.”

“When?”

“I guess it was about an hour ago when you sent him forward to wake the hands.”

“Is the tiffy there?”

“Yeah.”

“You notify the officer of the watch?”

“The subby is in there now.”

“Okay. Go and report it to the Old Man —”

“The subby’s gone.”

“All right, get these blackout screens down and let some air in here. You relieve Wilson on the bridge and tell him to go aft.” His indolence had disappeared with the coming of the bosun’s mate and the news of Knobby’s accident. Now he was fully awake, his senses tuned to the emergency. There would be a man short on the next red watch. They would have to get the injured man’s hammock slung somewhere out of the way where he could have a tittle quiet and privacy. The coxswain would have to be notified. If they were going to keep a man in the crow’s nest today it would make them still another man short. Have to get the coxswain to take the extra man from the radar people....

With a parting word to the man on the wheel he pulled on his duffle coat, picked up his lifebelt, and pushed his way out into the now lightened day. When he reached the deck he made his way forward under the break of the fo’castle to the seamen’s mess.

Just forward of the depth-charge rails at the stern was the chiefs and petty officers’ washroom, which opened from the upper deck, and stood at the head of the companionway which led below to the quarters of the chiefs and POs. It contained a toilet bowl, a wash bowl, and a shower around which hung a grimy white curtain. It was utilitarian, and had the appearance of being placed aboard as an afterthought by a naval architect who had been under the impression that any ranks below commissioned should excrete over the side. It was much too small to contain more than one person at a time, unless the second person stood in the shower, and showers were disallowed at sea.

Its occupant, Stoker Petty Officer Jimmy Collet, washed his face and neck with hot water preparatory to shaving. About a month before, he had experienced an accident involving a broken tube of shaving cream and a new tailor-made suit of blue officer’s serge which had come in contact, one with the other, in his bag. Since then he had shaved with face soap.

He was a slight young man of medium height, with the arms and hands of a manual worker. His face, even under the quick ministrations of soap and water, showed the black pits which were the result of his trade, as though the pores had absorbed their quota of oil and grit from long association. He wore a pair of oil-dulled issue boots, above which hung from his spare hips a pair of stiffened, brass-riveted dungaree pants. He was naked from the waist up, and the white, almost feminine, skin of his arms was covered from wrist to shoulder with various inked mementos of the tattooist’s art.

His face felt good after its eleven-day holiday from the razor. He figured out mentally that he had about two more days to go. He wouldn’t shave again until they entered the gates of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Then a real clean up, with a bath, and up to the canteen on Water Street, dressed in his second-best “drinking” suit — there to absorb a dozen or so bottles of ale to wash away the taste of the cook’s smoked fillets.

The PO’s messman, a stoker, came through the hatch from the quarterdeck and leaned his body inside the washroom door.

“One of the seamen is knocked cold,” he said.

Collet turned from the mirror, half his face camouflaged with soap suds. “Who?” he asked disinterestedly.

“One of the new kids we picked up this trip.”

“Oh. Hurt bad?”

“They got him in the mess deck; on a table.”

“How’d he do it?” he asked, slicing carefully down the right side of his jaw with the safety razor.

“Fell down the wheelhouse ladder.”

“Mmm! What’s on for breakfast?”

“Shirred eggs, the cook says,” answered the other, brought back to the realization of his duties by the question.

“What the hell’s shirred eggs?”

“You know, done in the oven, in a bake-tin like.”

“Okay. You woke the watch yet?” asked Collet, as though to end the conversation.

“I’m going to as soon as I get this coffee down below.” The messman turned from the doorway, and gripping the hot handle of the coffee pot through the thickness of a handful of cloth waste, he manoeuvred himself down the heaving steps to the mess where the engine room watchkeepers and the ship’s coxswain were sitting at the table awaiting breakfast.

As he finished shaving and wiped his face on a bath towel Jimmy Collet was thinking of the news he had just received. It was tough on the kid, getting hurt on his first trip. Seemed to be a nice kid too, not a Jack-Me-Hearty like some of the punks they were getting these days. Probably wasn’t hurt very bad.

He cheered himself with the thought that in a couple of days they would be in port, and making ready to proceed to Canada for a refit. The thought of a refit made everything, including the seaman’s hurts, seem very inconsequential. As he rubbed his face vigorously with the rough towel he contemplated the good times waiting for him on twenty-eight days’ leave at home in Hamilton.

He thought, it will be around the end of March when the first half of the ship’s company take leave, and around the end of April before they come back. If I wait for the second shift, it will get me home in May for the warm weather. I’ll go down to the plant and see the boys, and maybe take a bottle of hard stuff with me. After that I’ll go up to the Delight Café and see Daisy — that is, if she’s not in war work at the Canadian Car or Westinghouse. Anyway, I’ll go and make the round of the hotels, and see who is still around…. He began to whistle as he gathered up his things, and made ready to go below for his portion of shirred eggs.

The ship’s sick berth attendant swung gently in peaceful slumber in his hammock, on the port side of the communications mess, which was reserved for the miscellaneous ratings: cooks, stewards, supply assistant, and himself.

He was dreaming that he was berry picking in a heavy wooded copse that lay about a half-mile behind his father’s farm in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. Somehow or other he was accompanied by his old school teacher, Mrs. Gregory, and she was shouting to him to move along the raspberry patch, for the berries he was picking were blue ones, when they should have been red....

“Hey, Tiffy!” somebody was shouting as they grabbed him by the shoulder.

“W-w-what!” he yelled, automatically grabbing for the deck-head pipe which he used for a trapeze in getting in and out of his hammock.

“Come on up top, somebody’s hurt!”

“Hey?” Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he looked over the side of the hammock at the face of a seaman who was standing on one of the lockers beneath.

“Come on, one of the new kid’s hurt himself. They’ve got him on a table in the seamen’s mess!”

“Okay,” he said, as the reality took precedence over the dream. He swung himself over the side of the hammock and dropped in his stocking feet upon the deck.

“Are you coming right away?” asked the seaman, whom he now recognized as the bosun’s mate of the watch.

He shook the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes. “Sure. Let me get my boots on first. How bad is he hurt?”

“I guess his arm’s broke, and he’s unconscious.”

He pulled on his sea boots and unslung his first-aid bag from its hook on the bulkhead. Then he followed the seaman up the ladder.