Читать книгу Storm Below - Hugh Garner - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

Ransome Shelley Bodley — to give him his complete name, although he never gave it to himself except when sheer necessity compelled — was twenty-two years old, a retail clerk in civilian life, who had joined the navy as a sick berth attendant under the mistaken impression that he would be employed solely in hospitals ashore. It was to his credit that when he had found out the fallacy of such reasoning he had not attempted to back out of going to sea, but had accepted the draft to the Riverford with a sang-froid which was as brave as it was pretentious. Now that he had been a member of the ship’s crew for a year he was glad that things had happened as they had. The mere thought of serving as a pot juggler in a hospital had now lost its allure, and the only time he wanted to visit a hospital was on his infrequent trips to Halifax when he could call on some of his old classmates and let them see what a real sailor looked like.

He was a very handsome young man, was Shelley, with straight white teeth, a mother’s boy complexion, and black oily hair which he arranged in a series of waves by a deft, practised chop of the heel of his hand. He was not effeminate, although some of the more rough-and-ready members of the crew were under the impression that all sick-bay tiffies were.

On the morning when he was so rudely awakened by the bosun’s mate he was attired in his regular sea-going night clothing consisting of two-weeks’-old underdrawers, a pair of regulation heavy serge trousers, a once-white collarless shirt, a hand-knitted blue sleeveless sweater (a donation by the Imperial Order Daughters of The Empire of Quebec City) and a pair of black cotton-and-wool socks. It was his boast that the action station bell would never catch him unprepared, and his affairs were so arranged that it was only necessary to step into his boots and pull his duffle coat over him before he raced for the upper deck.

He followed the bosun’s mate up the slightly weaving ladder, and they crossed the narrow space which lay between the wooden safety door at the top of the companionway, and the steel bulkhead, behind which was the small canteen. They went to starboard, passing the forward food stores, and climbed across the foot-high coping beneath the heavy watertight door which gave access to the seamen’s mess deck. Immediately inside the door was the ship’s refrigerator, and as they passed it they looked inside where the supply rating was struggling with a welter of piled-up meat, trying to retrieve a cellophane-wrapped cottage roll. The bosun’s mate could not resist the opportunity to make a remark about the supposed state of putrefaction of the food which the icebox contained. “Phew!” he exclaimed, so that the supply rating could hear him. “What the hell you got in there!”

“It smells like a bag shanty,” commented the sick berth attendant, playing along with the joke despite his eagerness to get to his patient.

They pushed past the open door of the icebox and entered the mess deck. It was a chamber stretching across the width of the ship at their point of entry, and narrowing towards the bow, where it ended at a watertight door opening on a paint locker. The low deckhead was a maze of pipes, air ducts, and hammock bars sprayed with a cork solution to keep it from sweating. This, however, was hidden at the moment by a false ceiling of undulating hammocks which covered every available inch of space, and narrowed the head room beneath to about five feet. The deadlights were battened down over the portholes, and the only light came from two or three sixty-watt bulbs which tried vainly to shed their light through the close-knit hammocks beneath. The furniture consisted of a pair of wooden cupboards containing some enamel dinnerware, three salt shakers and a pepper shaker, an inadequate amount of cutlery, the remains of a soggy pound of butter, two opened tins of evaporated milk, and a canister of tea-stained sugar. Against the after-bulkhead, between the port and starboard doors, was a heavy, wooden, cattle-stall affair which served while in port as a receptacle for the rolled-up hammocks of the seamen. At the moment it was doing duty as the sleeping place for two men who had been unable to find room to sling their hammocks above. There were three tables bolted to the deck, which served as the eating places for the thirty men who lived there, and along their sides were three narrow benches, also bolted down. Around the sides of the chamber were a tight-packed series of wooden lockers, the tops of which formed a wide shelf upon which was stored accumulated duffle such as bags, boxes, headgear, mitts, photographs in frames, good shoes, dirty socks, and such miscellaneous possessions as could not be safely stored elsewhere. Beneath this shelf, but jutting out from it, were the tops of the clothes lockers which formed a long seat continuing down both sides of the mess. This was covered by a number of long leather cushions used by other members of the crew for sleeping accommodation due to the overcrowding.

The sick berth attendant pushed his way through the small knot of seamen and stokers to where Ordinary Seaman “Knobby” Clark lay upon a table, still attired in boots and duffle coat, his face white and strained under its tan. One of his arms was folded on his chest, while the other lay loose and twisted beside him.

“Clear a gangway there!” shouted the young sub-lieutenant, whom Bodley now noticed for the first time standing at the head of the table. He placed his first-aid bag on the deck, and said, “Let’s get his boots and coat off, fellows.” Two of the seamen pulled at the injured man’s boots which they threw on one of the lockers. The sub-lieutenant and another eased Knobby out of his coat.

Bodley leaned over the table and began feeling the arm which lay along the injured boy’s side. As his fingers followed the bones he was conscious that the others were watching him in silence, showing the respect and awe for medical knowledge which the layman usually does. When his fingers felt the rough, gritty fracture below the elbow he took his hand away and said, “There it is.”

He looked up to find them staring at him, and he thought, what the hell, any of them could have done the same! But the fact that none of them were aware of it gave him a feeling of power; and for the first time in his life he basked in the importance which comes with the respect of one’s fellows.

He was about to open his bag and take out the bandages and splints it contained, when suddenly the surgeon’s instructions during his course returned to him. “Never believe that a patient’s only injuries are the obvious ones.” Trying not to show his indecision, he straightened up again and felt the pulse of the injured man’s good arm. Then he passed his hand over the patient’s forehead. “Take everything off him,” he said to those standing around. It was good to be able to give orders which the sub-lieutenant could not countermand. “Get his blankets out of his hammock and cover him well.” As they began doing this he ran down below to the small medicine cabinet over his locker and returned with a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia.

When the patient was undressed and under the blankets he passed the bottle of ammonia under Knobby’s nose. There was no response. He pulled the blankets down and looked the man over for other injuries, but none were apparent. The crowd in the mess, reinforced now as the next watchkeepers were awakened, were beginning to grumble impatiently. To show them that he knew his job he took out the wooden splints and bandage and with a dexterity he had not known he possessed he pulled the arm into position and applied them. Taking a piece of unbleached cotton from the bag he fashioned a sling and tied it behind the patient’s neck.

“How do you think he is, Bodley?” asked the sub-lieutenant. “I can’t say, sir. His arm is okay for now, but there may be internal injuries.” It elated him to mention such things, although he was ashamed of his elation as soon as he had felt it. Knobby was his first real patient in a year with the exception of several gonorrhea cases, a stoker who almost severed a finger in the heavy washroom door, and ten survivors whom they had picked up off Iceland the previous summer.

The survivors had been a disappointment. They had been floating high and dry in a sea boat for only a few hours, and they had drunk the rum from the first-aid kit, so that they came aboard in a happy state singing “Roll Out the Barrel.” The only medication they had required was a spoonful of bicarbonate the morning after their rescue.

It seemed that sailors only became gravely ill in port, and except for mal de mer, of which there was plenty on a corvette — especially among the new men the first day out — there was not enough sickness among his charges to let him earn his passage.

The voice of the sub-lieutenant interrupted his thoughts.

“Can you find out whether he has any internal injuries?”

“No, sir. We should get a surgeon to look at him.”

“Will you leave him here?”

“There’s nowhere else, except in one of the officer’s cabins.” Sub-Lieutenant Smith-Rawleigh blanched as he suddenly remembered that he, as junior officer, would be the one who would be asked to give up his berth and sleep on the wardroom settee. (This had happened when they took aboard the newspaper correspondent for the trip from Gibraltar to Londonderry before Christmas.)

Several of the bystanders snickered when they realized that it would be the subby’s cabin which would become the sickroom. To cover his retreat from such insubordination Smith-Rawleigh barked, “You fellows see that he doesn’t fall off the table,” pointing to the injured man. Then he said to Bodley, “The captain wants you to report to him immediately.”

Bodley followed the officer under the blackout curtains and along the deck to the ladder leading to the bridge.

The sky which now stretched overhead was a deep blue, and the clouds which had scudded across the sun following the dawn had melted into the horizon where they lay like a low pile of slate-grey dough. The wind had dropped, and with it the sea had ceased to run so wildly as during the night. The waves were longer and greasier, and their white tops no longer blew from crest to crest, but melted into the green with every falling motion.

The Riverford was passing close to the convoy as it made a bow sweep. The first file of merchantmen lay to starboard a quarter of a mile away. Members of the closest ship, an empty British tanker, were standing alongside the forward structure watching the movements of the little corvette, while on its poop the gun’s crew were cleaning the gun, stopping now and again in their labours to point at the smaller ship.

As the sub-lieutenant and the sick bay tiffy reached the bridge they found the captain working on a chart in the asdic cabin. He motioned them inside. “How is the lad?” he asked, addressing Bodley.

Smith-Rawleigh began, “He’s got a broken —”

“That’s all for now,” said the captain crisply, dismissing the officer with a nod. Then he turned to the other.

“Well, sir, his right arm is broken below the elbow, but I’m afraid that there is more wrong with him than that. I don’t like his pulse, and he’s unconscious.”

“Traumatic shock?”

“Beg pardon? — oh, yes, probably, sir.” It was remarkable how much a ship’s captain could know about another’s job.

“Is he warm and fairly comfortable?”

“Yes, sir,” Bodley answered. He looked around him at the asdic operator, who lolled on his stool and held an earphone to his ear. There was the steady, rhythmic “p-i-ing” of the submarine detection gear as it sent back its echoes through the earphones.

“We’ll leave him where he is then until after the watches are changed. You stay with him and try to bring him around. If he is still the same we’ll move him down to one of the officer’s bunks.”

“Yes, sir,” Bodley answered, wondering whether to salute or not. He suddenly remembered that they were under cover so, desisting, he turned on his heel and went below again.

“Butch” Jenkins, ordinary seaman, RCNVR, leaned his back against the mast, and from his lofty position in the crow’s nest surveyed the gently pitching expanse of ocean clove by the dipping bows of the Riverford.

To starboard the nearest file of plodding freighters seemed stationary, but for the small white bones they bore in their teeth. The coxswain had told him that they were carrying nothing but a ballast of sand and shale in their holds, the tankers weighted down with water ballast. He could see the crew of a ship standing in the lee of a deck house as they watched the corvette passing before them. He hoped that they noticed his woollen-helmeted form as he stood there doing his part to protect them. It made him feel proud and — part of things, to be one of those doing his bit out here. The sight of the merchant sailors was the first real intimation that the convoy was not only formed of the shapes of ships, but also contained human beings, who, like him, formed a close-knit fraternity arrayed against the U-boats. He wondered how many people were represented by the ships stretching over ten square miles of ocean. He thought, I’ll give them at least seventy-five men to a ship. There are fifty-six merchant packets and seven escorts, counting the trawler. That makes sixty-three ships at seventy-five men apiece — almost five thousand men out here. The thought of being only one of so many suddenly raised his chances of survival.

As he watched the merchantmen, they began a flag-hoist, first one and then the other along their ranks bending the pendants to their halyards as they answered the convoy commodore’s signals. The gaily coloured bunting reminded him that this was the culmination of everything he had trained and hoped for since leaving high school the year before. He had been afraid that the war would end before he had a chance to get into it, and at night he had lain awake dreaming that if God was willing to keep it going a few more years he would probably end up in London on the Horse Guards Parade while the king placed on his chest the wine-coloured ribbon of the Victoria Cross….

He happened to glance below and caught Lieutenant Harris staring up at him. Suddenly he was all eyes for U-boats. Turning from the convoy side he regarded the empty sea stretching a thousand, no, ten thousand! miles to the south — stretching to the barren ice of Antarctica, with nothing between. It was hard to believe that out there beyond the horizon, or closer even, under the ripple of the chop, were the submarines lying in wait for their slow-moving target. It seemed impossible that there could be anything else on the surface, or under it, of this peaceful sea.

This was his first trip on a corvette, and he had been pleasantly surprised to find that there was no apprenticeship. They had left Londonderry behind, and as soon as they were running down the swiftly moving River Foyle to the sea he had been shown the Watch and Quarter Bill, and the coxswain had said, “Read it and remember your stations. You will be on ack-ack ammunition supply at action stations, you’ll take to No. 5 carley float if we abandon ship, and you’ll eat at the port table in the seamen’s mess. You’re in the red watch, and you go on watch in the second dog.”

It had been exciting, and a little scary too, when the coxswain had mentioned taking a carley float when the ship was abandoned. He had found the leading hand of the watch, a fellow called McCaffrey, and had asked him what time he had to go on. “Six o’clock,” the leading hand had answered. “You’ll eat when they pipe ‘second dog-watchman to supper’.”

And so he had learned what he had to know. He had found that a dog watch is two hours long, and that the second one began at six o’clock. After that the watches were four hours long until the next afternoon at four, when the first dog began. Through using his head and ears he had discovered during the last eleven days (except for the second and third when he was too seasick to get out of his hammock) what some of the terms meant, and those which he heard, yet could not fathom, he had enquired about.

Now he looked upon himself as a sailor, a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic. He had been in an encounter with German submarines five days out from the United Kingdom, and the convoy had lost one ship, while another pad been damaged and had gone to Reykjavik, Iceland, for repairs. To the older hands in the crew it had been but an incident, but to him it was the epitome of death and destruction.

Everybody aboard knew that the ship was due for a refit this trip, and he was glad. He would go home to Verdun with something more to talk about this time than barrack-room tales. He could picture himself and Knobby Clark, who had promised to accompany him on leave, arriving in Bonaventure Station.

They would get off the train, and conscious that they were combat veterans, walk down the dusty platform towards the ugly red-brick waiting room. Over their shoulders would be slung the gas masks which were the mark of the overseas man. His mother would be standing there, and as she saw him she would nudge his sister Shirley before beginning her run towards him on shoes that were just a little too tight for a lady of her build and age.

He would kiss them both before introducing Knobby. “Ma, this is Knobby Clark, a shipmate of mine from Medicine Hat, Alberta. He’s going to stay here for part of his leave.” Then he would turn to Knobby and say, “And this is my kid sister Shirley.”

After the introductions were over and they were seated in the taxi he would be asked, “What does it feel like to be on land again?” by a mother who wanted the taxi driver to share with her the knowledge that her son was a seagoing man.

Later, after a supper that consisted of real, honest-to-God roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, they would go for a walk, he and Knobby, and stop in at Beaulieu’s Tavern at the corner for a quick one. Mr. Beaulieu would look at them, mentally gauging their ages, then, seeing their uniforms, would shrug and place the sweating glasses of ale before them.

They would talk of the English pubs, not too loudly, but loud enough to let the civilians hear, and after a few to “give them an edge on” they would take a trolley downtown to St. Catherine Street and see what they could do in the way of picking up a couple of girls....

When the watches changed at eight o’clock Butch eased himself gingerly over the side of the crow’s nest and scrambled down the mast to the bridge. Two of the officers were talking and laughing together as they stood against the voice pipes. One of them was Mr.

Bowers, the first lieutenant, and the other was the Jewish-looking one, Harris. They stepped aside absentmindedly as he passed them.

He hurried to the mess, realizing that if he was late most of the issue would be eaten, and that he would have to make a trip to the galley with his plate. This was a foolhardy undertaking while the leading cook was there. It was better to go hungry or fill up with bread and butter rather than have this martinet give out with a blast about young ordinary seamen who came for second helpings just because the weather was calm.

As he entered the mess he became aware of the aura of quiet where usually at this time of day there was noise and laughter. He peeled off his coat and cap and threw them over the hammock rack.

Instead of the debris of plates and cutlery the table usually contained, there was a person lying asleep. He thought, with a feeling of alarm, “Oh, God, I’m either too early or too late this morning!”

He moved closer, holding with one hand to a stanchion, and peered into the face of Knobby. “Well, you old son-of-a-gun!” he cried, happy to find that it was his friend who lay there. “Get up, we want to eat!”

“Stow it, dough-head!” a voice called from across the mess.

“What’s the matter? I can wake Knobby up, can’t I?”

“Leave him alone; can’t you see he’s hurt?”

He stared at the figure on the table. “Hurt?” he asked bewilderedly.

“He’s got a broken arm. Come on over here and eat.”

Poor Knobby! He had looked forward so much to his visiting with him in Montreal. Now they would be sure to take him off in Newfoundland and send him to hospital. He brightened suddenly.

And yet that didn’t mean that he would be unable to go. By the time they got their leave Knobby’s arm would be healed and he could come back to the ship. Sure, what was he worrying about!

He moved over behind the table and sat down on the locker. Maybe Knobby would like a cup of tea, he thought. He began shaking him by the shoulder to awaken him. Knobby’s eyelids fluttered and he turned his head, but did not awaken.

“Hey, Jenkins, here’s your grub over here,” Leading Seaman McCaffrey yelled through a mouthful of food. “Come and get it while it’s warm.”

“I don’t want any. I’ll sit here with Knobby until he wakes up.” “Suit yourself,” answered McCaffrey. Butch could hear him asking which of the others wanted an extra egg.

He and Knobby had gone through training class together. They had been inseparable on the liner going over to Scotland, and in the barracks there they had been together every time they got the chance. When the draft came for two men to proceed to Londonderry for the Riverford they had asked for it and, miracle of miracles, they had been sent together.

He was a year younger than Knobby, but between them was the bond which joins the last two entries into a mess, or the two youngest members of a group, anywhere. During the incubation period, before a man proves himself to his fellows, he is lonely and hurt at their misunderstanding. He wants them to know him as he really is, but is prevented from showing them by the fact that he cannot hurry up the process without being brash and forward, and thus defeating his purpose. Knobby had been a fellow sufferer upon whom he had leaned for the companionship denied him by the others. To remain alone was unthinkable.

Low, so that the others could not hear him, he whispered, “Knobby!”There was no movement to reward his plea. He pushed his way under the hammocks and went below to the sick bay, the euphemism given to a small cupboard screwed on the bulkhead in a corner of the communications mess. The sick berth attendant was eating his breakfast by himself. He looked up as Jenkins descended the ladder. “What do you want?” he asked.

“It’s about Knobby.”

“What about him?”

“He looks pretty sick.”

“Do you want me to hold his hand?” asked Bodley sarcastically. The remark was not meant to show a lack of feeling toward the injured man, but was a protective mechanism thrown up by a person who knows that something is beyond his limitations.

“I want you to do something for him,” cried Butch angrily. “Listen, mate, I’ve done everything I can, so far. After breakfast we might move him into one of the officers’ bunks, and I think that the Old Man is going to get the MO over from the St. Helens,” Bodley said, his impatience gone now as he saw the genuine distress upon the other’s face.

“Oh,” said Butch, mollified. He was glad to learn that others were also trying to do something for Knobby. “Okay, thanks!”

He hurried up the ladder and took his place again beside the table upon which Knobby was lying. He straightened out the blanket covering the boy, being careful not to move the injured arm. After this was done he sat staring silently at the face of his friend.

From across the mess could be heard the subdued laughter and talk of the other seamen. A stoker came through the hatch from below and took a look at Knobby. He asked an unspoken question of Butch, who shook his head.

After a few minutes Knobby seemed to rally. His head twisted on the rolled-up duffle coat serving as a pillow, and his legs stretched as though feeling for the bottom of a bed.

“That-a-boy, Knobby!” Jenkins said. “You’ve got it beat, kid.

Wake up, fella, this is Butch here.”

“How’s he doing?” McCaffrey asked from the other table.

“He’s coming round.”

“Sure, he’ll be all right.”

Butch lifted Knobby’s head and cradled it in his arm. The boy lifted his eyelids and stared uncomprehendingly at the low ceiling of hammocks above his face. Then he turned his eyes and looked at Jenkins. His good arm moved from beneath the blanket and gripped Butch by the front of his shirt.

“That’s the stuff, Knobby. Relax, kid, and I’ll get you a cup of tea,” said Butch happily.

The hand gripping his shirt twisted itself into the denim, and Knobby’s eyes fluttered wildly before rolling back into their sockets. His breath was expelled in a long, low snarl, and from his nose and ears the too-red blood flowed down in slow, limpid streams upon the shoulder of his friend.

“Hey!” yelled Jenkins, panic-stricken at the sight. “Hey, get the tiffy quick! Knobby’s bleeding!”

Two or three ran over from the other table. Jenkins saw it all in slow motion, even to one of the seamen dropping a cup he was wiping into the wash bowl. He saw their eyes, which were staring his way, slowly turn from disbelief, to compassion, to horror as they gazed at the boy cradled in his arms. And without looking down again he knew that Knobby was dead.

He tried to back away and remove his arm from beneath the other’s neck, but the death grip on his shirt held him fast. It held him while the blood of the other rolled slowly down across Knobby’s cheek and spread in a small pool on his own shirt. “Get him off!” he screamed. “Somebody get him off!”

“Shut up!” shouted a voice in his ear, and the heavy hand of McCaffrey slapped the panic from his face. The leading seaman unclenched the fingers of the dead boy and placed the limp arm beneath the blanket. Two of the others lifted the almost-fainting Butch from the locker and led him across the mess.

McCaffrey said, “Williams, you go and get the tiffy. Manders, go down to the wardroom and tell the Old Man that Clark is dead. You — you there with the dish-cloth — get something else and wipe this blood up outa here before it washes under the lockers.”