Battlecruiser (1997) (29 page)

More muffled detonations, and moments later the two Seafires roared past, low over the water, heading back to their carrier. There were no more shells from the land, only a serried bank of flame and the sound of exploding ammunition, and the occasional fireball of an ignited fuel storage shelter.

Sherbrooke called, ‘
Cease firing!
’ The stillness and the sudden intrusion of pain was almost worse.

One shell, fired at a very high trajectory, had hit
Reliant
on the superstructure, exploding as it burst through the searchlight platform and shattering the admiral’s bridge, leaving only smashed communications gear and trailing wire, with the sunlight breaking at last through mist and smoke to reveal the full extent of the damage. A few feet in either direction, and the shell might have continued, barely hindered by
Reliant
’s thin plating, to explode finally in the magazine below B Turret.

One of the first in the party to be sent from the bridge was the seaman Alan Mowbray, for a brief period of his young life a promising art student. Like most recruits selected as potential candidates for wartime commissions, Mowbray had spent very little time at sea before being pitchforked into the training establishment,
King Alfred.
His ship had spent most of Mowbray’s sea time in dock, undergoing repairs after months on escort duty.

He had never been in action before. He had heard the old Jacks in his mess talking about it, embroidering it for his benefit. They had pulled his leg about his posh manner of speaking, and a gentleness which they had wrongly regarded as innocence; but in the navy the lower deck had its own rules, and a justice as rigid as any in the K.R.s and A.I.s. Leg-pulling was accepted: bullying was not.

He clung to the side of the steel door. There were holes punched through it, like the fingerprints of a potter in clay,
and blood on the broken furniture and splashed like paint across the deckhead. One man lay crushed beneath an upended wireless receiver, the back of his head smashed open, the bone protruding like the shell of an egg. The admiral’s secretary sat in one corner, his face in his hands, groaning but otherwise unmarked, even though the sunlight piercing some of the splinter holes was only inches away.

‘Out of the way, laddie!’ A sickberth petty officer and two stretcher bearers pushed him aside. The P.O. said curtly, ‘Leave that one. Get the admiral’s sec out of it. You, Toby, lend this chap a hand.’

Mowbray would have fallen but for his grip on the steel door. It was his friend, Peter, now Sub-Lieutenant Forbes, who had been told to assist Lieutenant Villar with his extra duties. He sat with one leg doubled under him and his face pressed against the steel side, his eyes closed, while he gasped for breath as if he were drowning. There was a small hole halfway down the side of the compartment, and a smear of blood where he had slithered to the deck.

Fear and shock forgotten, Mowbray flung himself down and cradled his friend in his arms. He did not know what he was saying; the words seemed to flood out of him. And all the time he was holding him, willing him to speak, to open his eyes.

The petty officer knelt down and tore open the young officer’s shirt, and with surprising gentleness prised his interlocked fingers open and away from the wound. Another man was standing nearby, ready with a large shell dressing. For Mowbray, it was a moment locked and motionless in time.

Two things happened. Forbes opened his eyes and stared at his friend, and in that small instant there was complete recognition. Then the frantic breathing stopped, and the eyes were closed again.

The P.O. said, ‘Save the dressing, Toby. He’s bought it.’

Mowbray stared at him, and then into his friend’s face. ‘
Don’t leave him!
He’ll be all right!’ He tried to drag the torn shirt across the wound. ‘Must get him to a doctor!’

The P.O. stood up and exchanged a glance with his assistant.

‘We’re needed down there.’ But something held him back. He said, ‘It’s no use, my son. He’s dead. Nothing anyone can do.’ He looked round as a messenger hurried past. ‘Better tell the bridge. He was an officer, after all.’

Mowbray tried to fight them as they dragged him to his feet, but his strength was gone.

He felt the sea air in his face, the ship beneath him still surging ahead.

There was a lieutenant and another working party clambering along a broken ladder, and when the petty officer described what had happened, he looked at Mowbray and said, ‘You knew Forbes, eh? Hard luck! Could have been worse.’ He stared at the sea far below the bridge. ‘For all of us, remember that!’ Then he was gone, running with his men.

Mowbray cried out, ‘
He was my friend!
’ Then he collapsed.

His words seemed to linger outside the door with the holes punched through it, like an epitaph.

Lieutenant Dick Rayner gripped a stanchion and stared up at his Walrus flying boat, perched on the catapult like some tethered bird of prey. The plane was untouched; not even the smallest splinter had damaged it, although one enemy shell had exploded directly alongside the ship.

He felt the mounting pressure under his hand and knew
Reliant
was turning again, and still working up to her full revolutions. It was a strange reaction, now that it was over,
he thought, but he had felt a sense of helplessness. Here, but not a part of it. While the guns had roared and thundered, shaking the battlecruiser from masthead to keel, and the reports of the first hits on the enemy had been shouted down to them, he had been conscious of a peculiar remoteness, rather like the Walrus, painted in her new markings, a mere spectator.

Splinters had penetrated one compartment, which had been used as a paint store, and for a moment Rayner and his fellow airmen had imagined the whole area would be engulfed in flames. He had sent some of his own deck crew with extinguishers and had watched as a grubby leading hand had emerged, giving a thumbs-up.

He wondered what had happened to the survivors from
Montagu
, if there had been any. She had made a terrible sight going over, explosions and shattered machinery tearing her apart as she took the last plunge.

Like the dead airman he had seen in his dinghy, or Jim Hardie in the broken Shagbat. Somebody would miss them, perhaps keep hoping . . .

Rayner turned away from the sea, and saw the new pilot banging his cap against his thigh to remove some of the paint chippings that covered it.

Lieutenant Leslie Niven had the additional Walrus, which had remained in the hangar during the bombardment. R.N.V.R., with what Eddy Buck had described as ‘a typical uppercrust drawl’, he would be considered dashing by many women. But ‘uppercrust’? Rayner thought of some of the other officers he had met, and had learned to judge for himself. Affected might be a better description. It was unfair, and he knew he was wrong to make such snap decisions about someone he hardly knew, except for an occasional meeting here by the catapult, or across the table in the mess.

Niven said, ‘My God,
Seeker
’s Seafires made a picture!’ He jammed the cap onto his head at a rakish angle.

If he was an R.A.F. type he would probably grow one of those ridiculous moustaches too, Rayner thought.

‘They made a lot of noise,’ he said. ‘I thought they went in too fast to be really sure of a target.’

Niven gave an amused smile. ‘Loyal to the old banger to the end, aren’t you?’

Rayner leaned over a rail and saw two more stretchers being carried aft. There was no urgency this time, and the faces were covered.

‘How many do you think?’

Niven shrugged. ‘Twenty, I’d say. One of the stokers just told me the flag lieutenant was killed, with another officer.’ He gestured toward the bridge, around which they could see the motionless barrels of B Turret, a hose playing water on something below the forward funnel. ‘Blown to bits, apparently.’

Why is he trying to shock me? Why pretend that he doesn’t care, that he’s above it?

Rayner said, ‘That’s one job I couldn’t do. Trotting around after some admiral, wiping his ass for him if you’re told to. Not for me. I’d tell them to stick it!’

Niven’s smile broadened into a grin. ‘I think you would, at that!’

They looked up as a speaker squeaked into life. ‘D’you. hear there? Stand by for the Captain!’

It goes with the job.
Rayner glanced down at the spray-dappled planking. There were several deep scars on the quarterdeck: the Bloke would have something to say about those. He looked up again toward the scattered parties of seamen and marines, some filthy and bedraggled after dealing with splinter holes along the waterline, and restoring communications where voicepipes and telephone
lines had been broken. And the line of bodies, wrapped in blankets or pieces of canvas. Anonymous, except to the men who had found and carried them there, and then they, too, would forget them, out of necessity. The ship came first.

‘This is the Captain. We are rejoining the group without delay. I want you all to know that the attack was a success, there can be no doubt about that. Some of you are quite new to this ship – something your captain can share and understand.’

Rayner saw some of the men grinning, and he heard an ironic cheer from one of the gun mountings. He hoped Sherbrooke would hear it, too.

‘I have to tell you that it was not without cost.
Reliant
had twenty-eight casualties, half of which were fatal.
Montagu
’s losses must have been considerable. It is something we have to accept, but to which we can never become accustomed.’

He heard Niven say, ‘Told you. I was about right!’

Rayner did not reply. He wanted to hit him, like the man in the car, who had been trying to rape the girl.
My girl.

‘There will be an issue of rum shortly.’ Rayner thought he heard or imagined a catch in Sherbrooke’s voice, distorted as it was over the tannoy. ‘I am very proud of you.’

Buck had joined them, in an unusually serious mood. ‘That’s what I like about him. No bullshit.’ He did not look at the other pilot. ‘Not like some!’

He would tell Andy about it when they next met.
Why am I so sure we will?
Don’t write about it,
tell her.
She would understand, better than most, what it cost men who had to fight, and give, and keep on giving. Like the pilot called Jamie.

He leaned out to see all that he could. There was no cheering, nothing heroic or dramatic. They had lost some men they had known, but they had survived. Until the next action. And now there would be an extra rum ration. The silence made it all the more memorable, he thought. As he was about to turn away he saw two seamen coming around the after turret, who almost collided.

Obviously, they were seeing one another for the first time since the cease-fire gongs had sounded. One was carrying a broom, the other a canvas bucket. But they stopped, oblivious to everyone else and to the silent, shrouded shapes laid by the rail to await burial, and then they shook hands, as if they were meeting on a street or in some country lane. Rayner thought he would tell her that, too. It said it all.

Surgeon Commander Farleigh stood by the chart room door, and observed the activities of some seamen clearing up broken glass. He was still wearing his white coat, and there were spots of blood on it.

He said, ‘Two amputations, sir. I did not count the cuts and bruises brigade. They’ll mend quickly enough.’ He held out a list. ‘Here are the others.’

Sherbrooke reached out for it, but Stagg, who was sitting on the chart locker, said, ‘Here, let me see it.’

Sherbrooke watched the flecked eyes moving over the list.

Stagg asked, ‘And my flag lieutenant died instantly?’

Farleigh regarded him without expression. ‘He was directly beneath the point of impact, sir.’ He sounded almost surprised at the question. ‘An explosion like that would leave nothing of the body. Total disintegration. Oblivion.’

Stagg nodded gravely, and returned the list to Sherbrooke.

‘I see. I shall write to his father, the admiral. A sad loss. I shall tell him what a promising officer Stephen Howe turned out to be.’

Sherbrooke glanced through the list, able to put faces to most of the names, and recalling Stagg’s vicious comments on Lieutenant Howe. A violent, terrible death had given the ‘jellyfish’ unexpected status.

Stagg stood up. ‘I shall be down aft if you need me,’ and to the surgeon, ‘Good work.’

Sherbrooke heard someone laugh, probably in the W/T office; the shock was dissipating.

He saw the correspondent writing rapidly in his notebook. He seemed to feel Sherbrooke’s gaze, and looked up, his eyes like slate in the reflected glare.

‘Not too many casualties, Captain? In those circumstances you might have suffered far worse, I’d have thought.’

He recalled
Montagu
’s failure to acknowledge the order to avoid action, and later, Stagg’s insistence that
Reliant
should remain on the same course. But for the gunnery department’s quick observations and reactions,
Reliant
could have been crippled before a target had been selected.
Could have been. Might have been . . .

He was tired and feeling the strain, a bruising of mind and body, like that evening in London after the bomb had fallen.

He said, ‘I accept that. Did you get what you wanted?’

Drury looked away.

‘More than enough. I recorded some of it, but the first message will tell my people what to expect . . . what to do.’

Sherbrooke said, ‘You make it sound easy.’ His hands were very steady, something he observed without emotion.

‘We can’t afford to clutter up valuable space on naval
wireless, Captain. We use codes, a bit like your chaps.’

A messenger called, ‘Chaplain requests permission to come to the bridge, sir.’

Sherbrooke saw Yorke, the yeoman of signals, pause in polishing his telescope and give a grimace. They all knew what that was for.

Sherbrooke said, ‘Ask him to wait, please. I have things to do at the moment.’

Drury raised his book as though he had found something else to write, and then decided against it. He looked instead at the broken glass, the smoke still rising above the place where he had felt and heard the shell explode. He had thought for a moment that the whole bridge would go. He must have dropped to his knees, a reaction born of experience, just by being with, and watching, men at war. Men with faces slashed by flying glass, somebody screaming, and screaming, until he could feel his mind cringe from the sound as if in physical pain.