Just a minute or so with every eye on the mine’s bobbing, obscene shape, a signal lamp stabbing from the ship which now lay resting alongside, so that the shattering roar of a diving aircraft had made several believe that the mine had exploded. Out of the clouds, perhaps returning from a sortie over the mainland; they would never know. The rattle of machine-guns and cannon fire, then another roar of power as the plane had climbed away to the clouds, heading for home.
They had not even time to track it with the Oerlikons, let alone the main armament. It was over in seconds and David lay dying, his blood thinning in the spray boiling over the stern as they increased speed away from the mine, which was dispatched by marksmen on the trawler that always followed astern when they were sweeping.
Mercifully he had died before the ship had berthed alongside. The cannon shell which had cut him down had blasted off his shoulder and half of his face. Nobody else had received so much as a scratch.
The telephone jangled sharply on the desk, and Ransome had to pull his thoughts together, to accept that the ship was connected to the shore switchboard.
It was a woman’s voice, a Wren from the S.D.O.
‘Lieutenant Hargrave will be joining Rob Roy as expected, sir.’
Ransome stared at the ship’s crest. He must get over it. A new first lieutenant? So what?
The voice said, ‘Are you there, sir?’
Ransome pushed back his unruly hair again.
‘Yes. Sorry.’ What was she like, he wondered? ‘Too good a lunch, I expect.’
She laughed. ‘All right for some, sir.’ The line went dead.
Ransome tried again. He stared at himself in the small mirror beside his bunk. Shadows beneath his eyes, lines of strain which seemed to tighten his mouth. He leaned closer and touched his sideburns. White hairs. He straightened his back and tried to grin at himself. He noticed that the grey eyes did not smile back at him.
He sighed. Aloud, he spoke to the small cabin. ‘Not surprised. I feel bloody ancient!’
Ian Ransome was twenty-eight years old.
Lieutenant Trevor Hargrave returned the salutes of two passing seamen and swore silently under his breath. He carried a heavy suitcase in one hand and had his respirator haversack and steel helmet slung from the opposite shoulder. Even sailors who normally went to great lengths to avoid saluting anybody seemed to take a delight in doing it when an officer had his hands full.
Hargrave was tall and had even features and blue eyes which had made several of the Wrens at the base watch him as he passed. He shivered slightly as he looked at the moored vessels, and an idling Air Sea Rescue launch about to get under way from one of the jetties. His deeply tanned face told its own story. He had been back in England for six months, but even now in April it seemed bitterly cold after the glistening expanse of the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic.
He thought of the powerful cruiser which had been his home for over a year. She had been employed as a main escort for long-haul convoys, most of which carried troops and all the equipment and vehicles they might need when they were finally delivered to their theatre of war. Simonstown, across the ocean to Ceylon or down to Australia and New Zealand. They were there just in case a commerce raider, or some death-or-glory German cruiser, broke out to savage the convoy routes before she was run to earth. Just one major enemy unit could tie down convoys for weeks; even the rumour of one was bad enough.
But all in all they had seen little of the real war. Lines of deep-laden merchantmen, sometimes with an escort to provide air cover for the dicey parts where ocean-going submarines, German and Japanese, might be at large.
It was as if the war had been held at arm’s length. The cruiser reacted accordingly, and there was little difference in her ordered world from the days of peace. Mess dinners, banyan parties on the islands, even some regattas when they had been down-under with the Aussies.
He thought of his dismay when he had gone to London to protect about his new appointment. A minesweeping course. He could still see the contained amusement on the commander’s face in the dusty Admiralty office.
He had tried to discover his father’s whereabouts but had met with a stone wall. The Western Desert, Scotland – nobody knew or would tell him. At the back of his mind he nursed the suspicion that his father was behind it somehow.
Hargrave stopped and looked along the old stone wall. The course was over. It was not next month. It was now.
He felt the breeze flapping at his blue raincoat. Everything looked tired and run-down. Like the town with its bombed houses and boarded-up shops. And London with its wailing sirens and shabby people, ration queues and uniforms everywhere. He had never seen so many foreign servicemen. Free-French, Norwegians, Polish, Dutch – the list was endless, as if to record the enemy’s total oppression of Scandinavia and Europe.
His eyes narrowed as he saw the two fleet minesweepers. At this angle they were almost bows-on to him. As if they were resting, leaning against each other for support.
His gaze rested on the outboard one and he felt his heart sink still further. He had read all he could about HMS Rob Roy but seeing her in the frail sunshine was still a shock.
He saw the scars on her paintwork. Coming alongside in the dark, or manoeuvring against another vessel to take off survivors probably. Hargrave knew quite a lot about Rob Roy’s history. She had even been at Dunkirk where she had made several trips, returning home each time loaded with exhausted soldiers.
He saw her pendant number, J.21, painted on her side, the thin line around her single funnel which marked her as the senior ship in the flotilla. It gave him no comfort at all.
He went through the details once again in his mind. It had not taken him long to gen up on the ship; after all, she was not exactly a cruiser. Two hundred and thirty feet from stem to low stern, 815 tons with an armament of two four-inch guns, two Oerlikon twenty-millimetre cannon and a few heavy machine-guns. He began to walk along the edge of the wall towards her; the nearer he drew the smaller she seemed to get. And yet crammed into her neat hull she carried a total complement of eighty officers and men. It did not seem possible.
He reached the steep brow which led down to the inboard ship. He saw her name was Ranger, built in 1937, the same as Rob Roy. The year made him start. How would he have felt about the navy had he known this would happen?
He had applied for the submarine service when the time had come to leave the big cruiser. Apart from his other qualifications he was a good navigator, and on the long hauls and across those far-off oceans he had had plenty of opportunity to extend his knowledge and ma-ke full use of the ship’s chartroom.
After a brief interview his request had been turned down. His own captain had merely informed him that he had been considered unsuitable for submarines. What the hell did that mean? As soon as he had this appointment sorted out he would apply again and make certain he saw the right people. He was being childish and he knew it. Destroyers then? He stared down at the minesweeper’s deck and saw the sentry watching him with mild curiosity. He did not move to help him with the suitcase, however.
As Hargrave clambered down the steep brow and saluted, the sentry tossed up a careless acknowledgement. For some reason it irritated him.
Hargrave snapped, ‘I’m going across to Rob Roy.’ He looked meaningfully at the slack webbing belt and heavy pistol holster. ‘Aren’t you going to ask for my identity card?’