A Dawn Like Thunder Page 2

  He prepared himself unhurriedly: he had even managed to shave, and paused now to regard himself in someone’s metal mirror. An open, homely face with eyes the colour of a clear blue sky. Tucker was twenty-five, or would be next month with any luck, and a regular with seven years’ service behind him. All that time back, how they had pulled his leg about it at home. He had been born and raised in Winstanley Road in Battersea, South London, and home was a crowded house shared with three brothers and three sisters, not far from Clapham Junction where his father worked as an engine-driver on one of those funny little tank-engines that were used for shunting goods wagons, back and forth, day and night, clink clink clink, pushing the trucks into formation, long trains which would eventually head off into the smoke. His father was a firm man, but quiet with it. After a day shunting wagons, he would stroll down to the pub with his fireman on the way home, and once a week he would visit the British Legion. Like so many round there, he was a veteran of that other war, a survivor he had called it once when he had had a pint too many. Otherwise he said little about it, hoarded the memories and shared them only with a few, and certainly not with the kids.

  Tucker had had a few days’ leave before joining the submarine at Portsmouth. Nothing had changed. The house was shabbier, with a few slates missing, like the blind windows in other houses in the street where bomb-blast had damaged them. But the kettle was always on, and there was plenty to eat despite the rationing.

  His mother, now seemingly old and tired, had asked him, ‘Do you still miss her, Mike? Not found another girl yet?’

  His father had been sitting at the kitchen table, his driver’s cap with the oilskin top and Southern Railway badge still on his head. ‘Leave it, Mother. So long as he’s safe, that’s the main thing.’

  They had exchanged glances: understanding, gratitude; many would describe it as love.

  The house had seemed empty, somehow. His brothers, willingly or otherwise, were in the Army although Terry, the youngest, was in the Andrew. Two of his sisters had married and were doing war-work and Madge, the baby of the family, was working in a club in the West End which had been opened for the American forces in London. She was breaking her mother’s heart with all that make-up and the silk stockings, the late hours and nights when she did not come home at all. He could imagine what she was up to.

  His father, of course, had said, ‘Don’t worry so much, Mother. She’s young, and there’s a war on.’ They had both laughed at the absurd comment.

  Tucker thought of the officer he would be joining shortly: Lieutenant James Ross. At first he had told himself he could never work with an officer, and a regular one at that, but now they were on a first-name basis and had slowly developed a closeness that would have been unthinkable in any other section of the Navy.

  Tucker had worked with Ross for almost two years, and trusted him completely. But know him? He knew he never would.

  Now, he glanced at the inert shape of the sick rating with whom he had been attempting to play cards. Poor little bugger: his first ever operational cruise in this or any other submarine. Days out from Portsmouth on passage for the Med, they had been on the surface running the diesel engines to charge batteries. It was supposed to be a safe area, and the boat’s skipper would have had strict orders not to forget his mission just to give chase to a juicy target. It should have been all right. The skipper and two lookouts had been up on the open bridge, swaying about like drunken seals in their streaming oilskins, when two aircraft had appeared. Out there, it did not matter much if they were ‘theirs’ or ‘ours’. The klaxon had shrilled, Dive! Dive! Dive! and the water had thundered into the saddle-tanks to force her down. One of the lookouts had been this young, green seaman, no doubt up until then feeling like part of a wartime film.

  Tucker had learned the hard way. When the klaxon sounded, you had fifteen seconds to clear the bridge and get below, pausing only to slam and lock upper and lower ‘lids’ as you went. By then, the hull would be diving fast, the sea already surging into the confined place where you had been standing.

  The kid had fallen, breaking his ankle and fracturing a wrist; it had been no help that the others had landed on top of him. A submarine did not carry a doctor, and first aid was simple and basic: the powers that be obviously thought that anything more was needless luxury. In a submarine it was accepted that either everyone lived or everybody died.

  Tucker watched the youth’s face, drugged, pinched with pain. He would not receive proper attention until the boat returned to base, or to wherever else they might be ordered.

  He recalled talking quietly with him before he had slipped again into a drugged sleep. The boy had asked, ‘What’s he like, Tommy?’ Even that had made him smile. So young, and yet already trying to play the Old Jack. If you were a Tucker in this regiment, you were always a Tommy, no matter what your paybook said.

  He thought of the lieutenant again. Grey eyes that assessed, calculated, took nothing for granted. He could remember exactly when he had been told he was to be paired off with Ross after his previous partner had been put ashore sick. Bomb-happy, more likely. The captain had said cheerfully, ‘You’ll get along like a house on fire, Tucker. He’s bloody good.’

  Tucker had already known that: Ross would not have lasted otherwise. When the kid had asked him, he had heard himself reply, quite simply, ‘He’s a hero.’ But he had already dropped off to sleep.

  And then there had been that terrible raid in the Norwegian fjord. Two chariots had been involved, the other one commanded by Ross’s best friend, some said his only friend.

  The floating dock had been the target, but at the last moment the unexpected had changed everything. A German cruiser, damaged by a mine in the North Sea, had entered the fjord and without delay prepared to use the dock, offering them a double target which they could not ignore.

  They could not delay either, for as the dock was flooded to receive the damaged cruiser, the narrowing space between the dock’s bottom and the bed of the fjord made the attack even more hazardous. Both chariots had been half surfaced between some Norwegian fishing boats. Tucker had seen Ross gripping his friend’s wrist, forcing home a point, and the other officer’s apparent reluctance. Time was short: as an instructor had once said wryly, ‘With six hundred pounds of high explosive between your legs, you could do yourself a real injury!’

  The attack had gone like a drill. After dodging past a small launch they had dived to some thirty-five feet below the dock and fastened their charges to it without difficulty.

  Right on time, while they had hidden amongst the fishing boats, both charges had exploded in one deafening thunderclap. The dock had seemed to fold like cardboard, while the damaged cruiser had rolled over, scattering trestles and wires alike, until both hulls were half submerged. Neither Ross’s friend nor his rating were ever seen again. They were probably caught in the mud beneath the dock, and had gone up when the fuse ran out.

  For that, Ross had been awarded the Victoria Cross. Tucker was still not sure how he felt about it.

  He heard men gathering beneath the forward hatch. This was a submarine’s most perilous moment: on the surface with the hatch open. It was time.

  He felt very calm, and turned to leave. But before he was sealed completely in his suit he pulled out his wallet in its oilskin pouch and, after the smallest hesitation, opened it and looked hard at her photograph. Do you still miss her? his mother had asked.

  He held the picture in the dimmed lights. Eve. Evie. So pert and pretty in her bus conductorette’s uniform, the huge double-decker towering behind her.

  It had begun in the middle of an air-raid, just as the bus returned to the Lambeth garage for the night.

  ‘I’ll see you home, love . . .’

  And the quick, searching glance he had come to know and love.

  She had answered, ‘All right, sailor, no tricks now!’ They had both laughed: her family lived just around the corner in Livingstone Road. He had seen her give as good as she got from booz
y passengers when the pubs turned out, or amorous Yanks who thought that every English girl was fair game.

  It had ended, too, in an air-raid, although he had been at sea and had not been told about it until much later. They said it had been the worst bombing in London’s dockland since the outbreak of war: fifty-seven consecutive nights, until the warehouses, docks and ships, and eventually the Thames itself, were ablaze. The double-decker bus was completely destroyed. She was never found. Was that why he had volunteered for Special Operations? Because he had nothing to live for?

  He did not realize that the injured youth had opened his eyes and was watching him fixedly as he gently kissed the photograph and whispered, ‘Oh, Evie, where are you?’

  He felt the deck tilt and heard the muffled bark of commands. Going up.

  He began to put his wallet into its pouch, but looked once more at the photograph. He gave a great sigh. ‘Here we go again, Evie. I’ll be back!’

  After the stale, oily atmosphere inside the boat, the sea air and stinging droplets of spray were exhilarating, and Ross felt a sense of freedom which never failed to surprise and excite him. It was still very dark, or appeared so, but he could see the cruising white cats’-paws breaking against the rounded hull, and feel the slow roll that was making some of the deck handling party reach for handholds as they stooped over the chariot, fixed to the saddle-tank by special fittings which they had collected at Portsmouth.

  He vividly recalled their doubts and uncertainties when, in those early days, they had been introduced to their first human torpedo. About the same size and length as a normal twenty-one-inch torpedo, it carried a ballast tank, pumps and hydroplanes, together with a battery motor that could offer a steady three knots for a limited period. In something rather like a car dashboard, it mounted a compass and an instrument panel fitted with luminous dials. And a joystick. Ross could remember his first trial run, the red-faced instructor’s words ringing in his ears. ‘Like ridin’ a bike – just take it nice an’ easy.’ They must have been simpleminded to believe that.

  He touched Tucker’s arm, glad he had been given him as a partner: a professional seaman, a leading torpedoman, mature and dependable. It made a change from the many volunteers who made up the Special Operations. Telegraphists, cooks, stewards and signalmen: you would never guess their employment from the badges they wore on their uniforms, on the rare occasions when they were wearing them.

  Apart from a quiet reserve, the first things you noticed about Tucker were his strength and the light way he moved. His hands were square and powerful, and Ross recalled a time in Scotland when they had been receiving instruction in self-defence and close combat from some battle-tested marine commandos. One, a burly sergeant, had whipped his arm around Tucker’s throat from behind and at the same time jabbed an imitation blade up into his ribs. His grin had changed to a cry of agony as Tucker had seized his wrist with one hand and squeezed it. The sergeant’s triumph had given way to anger and humiliation. ‘You nearly broke my arm, you mad bugger!’

  Tucker had given his gentle smile. ‘Only nearly, Sarge? I must be losing my touch!’

  A petty officer whispered, ‘Ready when you are, sir.’

  Ross lowered himself astride the chariot and felt Tucker watching him now, his outline suddenly sharper against a sky criss-crossed by the submarine’s jumping wire. It was so cold. He found he could smile. That was the first thing new recruits noticed about the Med. Too many cruising posters before the war made them imagine the place was full of sunshine, warm seas and smiling Italian girls.

  The sky was getting brighter. He could imagine the submarine’s skipper up there on his swaying bridge, gripping his night glasses. He smiled again. Or wiping his hands on his jersey. He tightened his jaw. He had known men crack even at the simplest reminder, a joke, a face, a memory.

  He tested his nose clip; it hurt, but they usually did, especially after so many dives. He adjusted the rubber mouthpiece and fixed the air and oxygen lock until he could breathe easily. He could feel the sailors on the deck-casing staring at him. Willing him to go. The big forehatch was already sealed; if the boat had to dive, these same men would need to race aft to the conning tower, climb it and tumble down to safety with seconds to spare. But this final check could not be rushed. That submerged wreckage, or whatever it had been, might have displaced or damaged something. Pressure-gauge, time-fuse for the massive detachable warhead . . . he looked up and nodded. Tucker climbed on board like a pillion-rider, his position close to the locker where the cutters, wires and magnets were stowed within easy reach.

  Ross raised his arm and saw the dark shapes of the seamen on the casing begin to fade, to merge with the conning tower. Only the petty officer remained until the propeller spluttered into life and the sea surged over the legs of the two charioteers. They were free. Then, with a casual wave, he too was gone.

  The submarine seemed to move away, the sea trembling as the water roared into her tanks, her hydroplanes already set for diving. Some violent turbulence and more spray like tropical rain on his bare wrists, and then the sea was suddenly theirs.

  Ross re-checked his instruments and peered at the small luminous compass. According to all the calculations, it would take two hours to find the inlet and the unsuspecting Galatea from Taranto. Unless something had gone wrong, careless talk, like the posters were always warning. Two hours, then; from this to bright sunlight, according to the submarine’s navigator. The skipper’s friend: you could see it, like something living between them. He tried to shut his mind to it. Like David . . .

  He reached back and took Tucker’s hand, strong and firm and apparently impervious to the cold water that surged around them, moulding their suits to their limbs and bodies, making them creatures of the sea once again. Tucker knew what to do. All they needed was trust. The grip of his hand gave him that message.

  He turned back to his controls, but the thought would not release him.

  It was not like David at all. David was dead. And you killed him.

  Waiting was the worst part.

  The submarine’s first lieutenant wiped the lenses of his powerful binoculars and jammed his elbows against the wet plating while he took another slow sweep from bow to bow. It was getting cooler, or perhaps his nerves were playing up. Behind him, the two bridge lookouts were doing much the same, searching for the slightest movement or shadow, while the hull beneath them glided almost imperceptibly across the last great splash of sunset. It was unreal and awesome, one great brushstroke of the deepest red defying even the keenest eyes to discern the darker line separating sea and sky.

  Too long. Too bloody long. He bit his lip, imagining for a second that he had spoken aloud. But neither of the lookouts had noticed anything. Noticed what, he thought bitterly. That their first lieutenant had just about taken all he could?

  All day, since dropping the chariot at dawn, they had tried to keep out of trouble. These waters were not good for submarines, and he had studied the chart too often to be able to forget it. Twelve fathoms at this point, a mere seventy-two feet. He tried not to think about it. The height of an office building – it was like steering the submarine down a street.

  It was too long. Perhaps the chariot had come to grief, or even now was creeping out from the land to look for them. The lieutenant had been on several cloak-and-dagger operations in the Med, dropping agents to work behind enemy lines. It must be a kind of madness which drove them to it, he thought, and they were all the same. Tense, on edge, and yet in some way eager to go, to use and depend on their own resources. One of the agents had been a young French girl; he had tried not to imagine her fate if she were captured and handed over to the Gestapo. One thing was certain: they had never seen the same agents twice.

  The skipper would be up in a moment. His decision, then, to remain on the surface or to decide to leave it. His decision.

  It was strange when you thought about it. He had been recommended for a command course himself, the perisher, as it was called. But a
fter being first lieutenant to this skipper, and briefly with a previous one, he was far from sure. He had watched what command could do, what it was doing to their young skipper.

  Almost the worst thing was that shortly after parting with the chariot they had received a brief signal. The mission was aborted. The two charioteers were to be withdrawn. It had already been too late when some bloody stupid staff officer in London had suddenly had a change of heart on the matter. How often did it happen, he wondered. Men thrown away, like the coloured pins on the wall-charts that were dropped so easily into a little box when some ship or other bought it. He stifled a yawn. A sign of nerves. Even fear.

  They had run for deep water during the day after seeing a pair of aircraft, like glass chips against the clear sky. It was never good to dwell on the possibility that the enemy had been forewarned about this particular attack, and imagine that these aircraft were just the first of many which were being alerted.

  Then, while they had changed course for the rendezvous, the hydrophone operator had picked up the faint effect of a small vessel’s engine. Far astern to the south-west, but it was always there. The H.E. was not that of a powerful warship or motor anti-submarine boat, but the Italians, like the Royal Navy, were known to have converted a lot of fishing vessels for the task, and depth-charges were just as deadly no matter who threw them.

  He watched the red smear across the sky. A few stars already, but no moon. Soon it would be as black as a pig’s belly. No chance.

  A lookout murmured, ‘Skipper’s on his way, sir.’

  How did he sound? Nervous, or merely eager that the skipper was coming up to take over? To get them all the hell out of it.

  ‘All quiet, Number One?’ He was already raising his glasses, his ear pitched for every sound and movement. He added, ‘H.E. is still on the same bearing. May be a fisherman, of course.’

  He gave a dry laugh, and one of the lookouts flinched as if he had yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Marsala’s over there to the nor’east. Had a lovely lobster there once when I was a young snotty. It was really something, I can tell you.’