Goss said harshly, ‘You can’t be sure, for God’s sake!’
Fraser looked at Lindsay, his tone suddenly pleading. ‘I’ve been too long in my trade not to recognise a winch, sir.’ He swung round and pointed into the driving snow. It was thicker and the forecastle only just. visible. Beyond the bows it was like a white wall. ‘There was a ship out there, sir. I know it!’
Lindsay stood stockstill, his mind filling with words, faces, sounds. The burial service. The marines in their blue. uniforms. The snow. Two dead children.
Goss said thickly, ‘Suppose you were mistaken, Chief?’ When nobody answered he added in a louder voice, ‘Might have been anything!’
Stannard was still on top of the ladder, unable to get past Lindsay. He called, ‘But surely no bloody raider would still be here?’
Lindsay moved slowly towards the forepart of the screen. ‘Why not?’ His voice was so quiet that the others drew closer. ‘He’s done pretty well for himself so far. Sunk an A.M.C. without any fuss at all.” How could he sound so calm? ‘He’s probably sitting out the snow and preparing for Loch Glendhu’s relief. Us, for instance.’.
Goss stared at him incredulously. ‘But we don’t know, sir!’
Stannard said, ‘Could be. He’d listen for any signals. Just make sure there were no other ships around to spread the alarm.’ He fell back as Lindsay thrust him aside and wrenched open the wheelhouse door.
As he tore off the dripping oilskin and dropped it unheeded to the deck he snapped, ‘Back to your engine room, Chief. I want dead slow, right?’ He looked, at Stannard. ‘Pass the word quickly. I want the hands at action stations on the double. But no bells or pipes, not a bloody sound out of anyone.’ He sounded wild. ‘Send them in their bare feet if necessary!’
Midshipman Kemp had emerged from the chart room and Lindsay seized his arm saying, ‘Get the gunnery officer yourself, lad, and be sharp about it!’
The boy hesitated, his face very pale. ‘Where is he, sir?’
‘Down aft. He’s just helped to bury some of our friends.’ He looked coldly at Goss by the door. ‘Well, I intend to bury some of those bastards if I can!’
He ignored the startled glances and walked to the front of the bridge.
The deck was trembling very gently now. Fraser must have run like a madman to reach the engine room so quickly.
Five minutes later Stannard said, ‘Ship at action stations, sir.
Lindsay turned and ran his eye over the others. Jolliffe had certainly been fast enough. He was still wearing old felt slippers and there were crumbs on his portly stomach.
‘I need three good hands up forrard.’ It was like speaking his thoughts aloud. Describing a scene not yet enacted. ‘Right in the eyes of the ship. Yeo, send some of your bunting-tossers. They’ll have keen ears and eyes. If,’ he checked himself, ‘when we run this bastard to ground I want to see him first. So he’ll know what it’s like.’
Ritchie buttoned his oilskin collar. ‘I’ll go meself, sir.’ He beckoned to two of — his signalmen. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’
Like a towering ghost the Benbecula glided forward into the snow, her decks and superstructure already inches deep from the blizzard.
Apart from the gentle beat of engines, the occasional creak of steel or the nervous movement of feet above the bridge, there was nothing to betray her.
Lindsay took out his pipe and put it between his teeth, his eyes on Ritchie’s black figure as it hurried between the anchor cables: Perhaps Fraser had been wrong. There might be nothing out there in the snow.
He thought suddenly of the dying captain. Something different, he said, ashamed perhaps for not understanding the new rules.
He gripped the side of his chair and waited. At least we will have tried, he thought.
5
Learning
Petty Officer Ritchie tore off one glove with his teeth and fumbled with the clip on the-small telephone locker. He was as far forward in the bows as he could reach, and was conscious of the muffled stillness, as if the ship were abandoned in the steady snowfall. He wrenched the door open and clapped the handset to his ear. As he glanced aft he noticed the bridge was almost hidden by snow, with only the wheelhouse windows showing distinctly, like square black eyes.
‘Bridge.’ It was the captain’s voice, and Ritchie could imagine him standing beside his chair as he had last seen him, peering down towards the forecastle.
‘Yeoman, sir.’ He turned his back on the bridge and stared over the steel bulwark. ‘In position now.’
‘Good.’ A pause. ‘I will keep this line open.’
Ritchie touched the snow which lined the bulwark like cotton wool. It felt stiffer. Maybe a hint of ice, he thought, as he moved his eyes slowly from side to side. Occasionally the wind became more evident as it twisted the snow into nervous, darting patterns, and he saw the sea moving slowly towards him, dark, like lead. Despite all his layers of clothing he shivered. He had heard the officers talking, and his own experience told him the rest. You could not serve on a dozen bridges over the same number of years without learning.
He held his breath as a shadow lifted through the snow, and then relaxed slightly. The wind had cut a path just long enough to reveal an open patch of water. A small, dismal patch which for a few seconds had become a ship. If there was a ship out there, he knew she could just as easily be listening and waiting for them.
The hunter once again. Right now those bloody Germans might be adjusting their sights, hands tightening on triggers and shells while Benbecula’s outline nudged blindly into their crosswires. Even if the captain was right, and they got off the first salvos, both ships might pound one another to scrap, sink out here, one hundred and fifty miles from land.
To his left he heard Cummings, one of the young signalmen, sniffing in the cold air, and wondered. briefly what he made of it all. Six months ago he had been a baker’s roundsman in Birmingham, and now he shook himself angrily. What the hell difference did it make? It was odd the way the snow made you drowsy, no matter how tensed up you were.
God, the deck was steady. Hardly an engine vibration reached him in the eyes of the ship, and in the handset earpiece he imagined he could hear Lindsay breathing. A good bloke, he thought. Not condescending like some of the arrogant bastards he had met. Genuine, maybe a bit too much so. Like someone nursing an old hurt. Something which was tearing him apart, so that when he heard of others’ troubles he felt it all the more. Like the burial service, for instance. He started. Was that only moments ago?
He had seen it then as the captain had spoken the prayer over the corpses. The same expression he had witnessed in London at the mass burial. Almost the whole street. The whole bloody street. They had said the bombers had been making for the London docks, but they
4had hit his street just the same. The East End was never the most attractive of places. Terraced houses, every one the same as its neighbour, and each with its own backyard the size of a carpet. Madge had always insisted on calling it a garden. He felt his lips move in a small smile. A garden.
The burial had been worse because of the weather. Bright and sunny, as if, the world wanted to ignore their little drama. Red buses passing the end of the street in regular procession, making for Bethnal Green Underground station. A barrage balloon, fat and shining in the sunlight like a contented whale. A workman whistling in the ruins of a church which had been blitzed the week before.
But the faces had been the same. Frozen. Like Lindsay’s. He wondered if anyone el3e had noticed. Not Maxwell, he was sure of that. Stupid parade-ground basher. Should have been a bloody Nazi himself.
He stiffened. There it was again. His head swivelled round as he heard the faint but distinct clang of metal.