Not Thinking of Death Read online

  I touched the little tape-recorder. ‘Switch off, finish.’

  ‘Very well, then.’ He moved his head, indicating the house behind us – former farmhouse, with this large stone terrace which he’d built to take advantage of the view across Glandore Bay. This is in West Cork; I’d heard he was there and written to him, and he’d replied that his wife was going to be away in England the week after next – a grandchild’s birth expected, and he couldn’t go with her ‘on account of the dogs’. (They bred red setters, I’d since learnt.) He couldn’t put me up, he’d written – he’d be ‘pigging it’, on his own – but there was a decent hotel in the village.

  So here we were. He was saying, ‘I’ve a snap of that Baby Austin – if you’d like to see it. Other stuff too – including snapshots. Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry – you’ll want that.’

  ‘I’d like to borrow whatever you have – after we’ve got an outline on tape.’

  ‘You can take it all away with you. I was casting an eye over it last night, refreshing my outworn memory. It’s the connections that link the brain-cells that wear out, I’m told. Can’t remember what they’re called… Where was I, now?’

  ‘Passing Crianlarich southbound for Dunbarton, where you said you’d found yourself some digs.’

  ‘Two rooms – bed and sitting – and the use of a bathroom. Breakfast and evening meal laid on. A Mrs Blair: a strikingly – er – substantial widow.’

  ‘Not so much wrong with the memory, I’d say.’

  ‘No one could possibly forget Mrs Blair!’

  ‘Ah… Anyway, when you got back you telephoned your fiancée – and your brother?’

  ‘Yes. I must have. But thinking of it – the Cameron-Greens’ generous hospitality – well, that Sunday afternoon when Sir Innes and Suzie came in my motor on a tour of the estate – not all of it, of course, a lot of it’s steep hillside, forested, and the bare tops which take a bit of getting up to, I can tell you—’

  ‘That Sunday afternoon, you said—’

  ‘Yes. By the end of it, when Lady Cameron-Green asked me to rope in a chum to join the summer’s frolics, an obvious candidate sprang to mind. Man by name of Dymock.’

  He’d grimaced. I waited, and he added after a moment – his face averted, eyes resting on the ruffled water in the entrance to the bay – ‘Worst mistake I ever made.’

  Chapter 3

  At about eight next morning he drove in between Barlows’ tall iron gates and parked his car behind the shed they called the Submarine Office. It faced the fitting-out basin – on the far side of which a more or less submarine-shaped object surrounded by a platform of floating timber was eventually to become His Majesty’s Submarine Threat. It wasn’t yet: in Barlows’ books it was Job No. 1793. Still an ‘it’, rather than a ‘she’. The job number was stencilled on every sheet of steel currently being welded to a grid-like framework on top of her pressure-hull: her casing, that grid would become, a steel deck on which men could walk when she was on the surface but through which the sea would flood when she dived. Chalk lit his first cigarette of the day: inhaled deeply as he studied her. Studied it – bare steel glittering in the flare of oxyacetylene torches and elsewhere patched and streaked tawdry-bright with red lead, and the sparking of flame from the torches reflected in the basin’s scummy water.

  Festoons of electric cables leading into the embryo’s hatches from shoreside powerpoints was evidence that work was in progress inside as well. And it would be oven-like in there within an hour or so, he realized. The sky was clear, there wasn’t even a light breeze and the sun was already well up. As it would be over Glendarragh too by this time. One could visualize that scene – as a dreamlike contrast to this one: sun poking over the hills to flood the glen and flush the stone of the house and outbuildings, and the hills’ tops clear against blue sky. Just up the road, you might say, but – another world entirely. Inhabited by different creatures? The harshness of the contrast – here – brought a line of Kipling’s to his mind: Reeking tube and iron shard… Glancing to his left to where on this near side of the basin Threat’s, sister-ship Trumpeter lay stem-on to him, and in a comparatively advanced state. Externally, in fact, Trumpeter was complete. She’d be commissioning, in two or three weeks’ time, would be wearing the White Ensign when they started on the series of tests and inspections culminating in her Final Acceptance Trials.

  Lucky beggars, he thought.

  He dropped his cigarette-end and put his toe on it, crossed stone paving to the entrance of the Submarine Office – up two wooden steps into a central passageway which ran between cubicle-like offices – Trumpeter’s first, glass-topped doors marked General Office, Commanding Officer, Engineer Officer, Stores – then his own ship’s similarly labelled, and in one of them Threat’s Commissioned Warrant Engineer, Nat Eason, was stooped over a mass of blueprints and other drawings. Chalk pushed the door open: ‘Morning, Chief.’

  Eason glanced round. As usual, with a cigarette jutting. ‘In for a bloody scorcher, eh?’

  ‘Looks like it. What’s new?’

  ‘What’s on the desk in there.’ Checking the time: the fag-end was between thumb and forefinger as he straightened, smoke drifting from thin lips and nostrils. ‘Good weekend?’

  ‘Marvellous, Chief. Yours?’

  ‘Fair.’ Eason stubbed out the cigarette in the lid of a Players tin, and nodded. ‘Fair.’ He was a smallish, wiry man; Warrant Engineer meant that he’d been commissioned from the lower deck – come up the hard way. He could have been a horseman: sinewy frame, broad shoulders, flinty grey eyes deepset. He paused in the doorway: ‘Yeah, one thing. Bow-cap indicators – they’ll have ’em arsy-tarsy if they get their way.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Fit ’em same as bloody Trumpeter’s, won’t they.’ He pointed with his head at the heap of blueprints. ‘I checked Trumpeter’s drawings too. Want to come down, I’ll show you?’

  ‘They’re not fitted yet, surely?’

  ‘In Trumpeter, I’m saying. Leave ’em to it, they’ll fix us up the same… Look – you got your six indicator dials – right?’

  Chalk stared at him. Bow-caps were the front doors on torpedo tubes, the missiles’ exits when they were fired, and the indicators inside allowed torpedomen to see at a glance whether they were open or shut. This was obviously essential, since if a rear door were to be opened when the bowcap on that tube was already open you’d have the sea gushing straight in.

  He nodded, waiting for the rest of it.

  ‘Five from top is number six. Five’s at the bottom, six where five oughter be. Strictly as per the drawings, this is – would you believe it?’

  At periscope depth, thirty-two feet say, which was where you’d be when you were exercising tube drill or firing practice torpedoes, the weight and force of that inrush of sea would be – murderous, irresistible. A nightmarish vision: not new, one did have to contemplate all such eventualities, the disaster scenarios, in order to guard against their occurrence and – God forbid – to be prepared to cope with them, if they happened… Eason shrugging, muttering ‘You know how they are, these fellers. Here’s the drawings – all right, some bugger cocked it up, we know that, but it’s still how we got to do it – as laid down, right? Squaring their own yardarms, that’s what – they got the blueprint they can point to and they’re in the clear – eh? So in Trumpeter it’s how they’re bloody leaving it. But look, sir – if you’d get that Hamilton geyser by the short an’ curlies—’

  ‘I will. Right away.’ Hamilton was Ship Manager in this yard – a personage, one of the bowler hats. Chalk added, ‘I’d better see it for myself first. Don’t doubt you, Chief, but he can’t bull me then, can he?’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  The engineer took a caustic view of bowler hats. Stooping over his drawings again… Chalk decided that his own desk-work could wait. Visiting Trumpeter now he’d kill two birds with one stone: check on this bow-cap problem, and have a word aside to Toby Dymock, who was
Trumpeter's First Lieutenant – second-in-command – as he himself was, or rather would be, in Threat.

  * * *

  Dymock wasn’t hard to find: he was on the fore casing, in conversation with his CO, a lieutenant-commander by name of Pargeter. Dymock, of fairly rugged construction, looked almost willowy beside Pargeter, who was shorter and stocky with an aggressive stance to match: legs braced apart, bunched fists on his hips… Glancing round at Chalk as he came abreast of them on the stone-flagged quay; Dymock called ‘Morning, Rufus’, and Pargeter told him, ‘Come aboard. Got news for you.’

  About the bow-cap indicators, he guessed, as he crossed the narrow, ribbed plank that bridged the gap between the quay and Trumpeter’s casing. The plank’s inboard end rested about midway between the submarine’s gun and her fore hatch, and below him as he crossed it scummy water lapped the bulge of saddle-tank: newly-painted and already oil-stained. They’d have to paint the ship again when she was out of the yard’s hands, he guessed. Turning forward; a hinged flap of the casing was open and he edged round it, one hand up to the jumping-wire. Then around the fore hatch, which in harbour was effectively the submarine’s front door. Lights inside shone on the gleam of new white enamel paint, and you could smell it. A sailor’s voice was raised in song: Nothing else would matter in the world today…

  He saluted ‘Jacko’ Pargeter. ‘News, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Of your skipper.’

  Trumpeter’s stared up at him. Brown, rather sad eyes, reminiscent of a bloodhound’s, seemed to belie the man-of-action stance. ‘He’ll be joining on the twelfth. Means he and his wife’ll be up here the weekend of tenth/eleventh. We’re – ah – finding them a billet – something for a couple of months, then they can take over the place we’re in. My wife and Margaret Ozzard are old friends, you see.’

  ‘Well, that’s—’

  ‘He’s been stuck at Palma Majorca – recently. Did you know?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Chalk showed his surprise. All he’d known this far was that Ozzard was bringing an L-class boat home from the China Station.

  Pargeter explained, ‘Diverted there after calling in at Malta. Apparently we have a squadron based at Palma now – Hood included – keeping an eye on the Italians who’ve been throwing their weight about on the Spanish coast. Approaches to Alicante and Barcelona, for instance. It was news to me too.’

  Chalk said, ‘There’ve been rumours, of course, that they’ve been getting up to no good on that coast.’

  ‘In support of Franco.’ Dymock, stating the obvious. ‘Blockading the Loyalists’ supplies. Franco and Co having virtually no navy of their own.’

  ‘Sinking ships without warning, is the truth of it.’ Pargeter gazed sadly at his first lieutenant. He added, ‘Neutrals. No warning – and no opposition, of course. Money for old rope: right up the Italians’ street, eh? Call it a blockade, if you like: but they’ve no damn business interfering in someone else’s civil war.’

  ‘The Mirror was right, then – a week or so ago.’

  ‘Not only the Mirror, Toby.’

  Chalk said – indicating Dymock – ‘All he reads, sir. But we should be giving them some opposition. If it weren’t for the dead hand of the Foreign Office, I suppose – all-same Abyssinia—’

  ‘Yes. Yes, exactly… Anyway, that’s the news, Chalk. Ozzard’s been relieved now, he’s on his way home by train through France and he’ll be with you here by the twelfth.’

  ‘Heady days of freedom numbered, Rufus!’

  Dymock, smiling that film-starish smile of his… Not, Chalk thought – by no means for the first time – that he could help the way he looked. Other men, one knew, tended to look askance at him, on account of those ‘Flash Harry’ looks and rumours of his allegedly numerous successes with women. He’d said to Chalk once, ‘I can’t help it if they like the look of me. I don’t try harder than anyone else does. Anyway, it’s not all that frequent…’ The plain fact was – to Chalk – that he was a good friend and a good submariner, and they’d known each other all their naval lives, from Dartmouth onward. They’d arrived there as thirteen-year-old cadets in ’23, had gone to sea in the training cruiser as cadets in 1928, becoming midshipmen in the fleet in ’29 and both joining the same submarine training course in ’32.

  He told Pargeter – in reference to ‘Ozzie’ Ozzard, Threat’s appointed CO – ‘I’ll be gla' to have him here. Apart from anything else, for some fire-power when it’s needed. Why I’m here now, for instance – I’m told there’s a problem with bow-cap indicators?’

  Dymock nodded. ‘Surely is. These damned idiots—’

  ‘Take him down and show him.’ Pargeter turned away. ‘Meanwhile, Number One, if you want me you’ll find me in the office – until about mid-forenoon anyway.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘You’re fully justified in digging your heels in over this, Chalk. Dig ’em in hard, if I were you. Too late in our case, it’d mean a delay to the schedule, and that’s one thing we can’t afford. But in point of fact the whole system’s wrong, in my view – and that you won’t get changed.’

  Chalk’s fingers touched the peak of his cap, as Pargeter left them. He asked Dymock, ‘What whole system’s wrong?’

  ‘The bowcap operating levers. Instead of the pointers showing either “shut” or “open”, there’s a neutral position. It’s the new thing, Admiralty-approved. Come on down, I’ll show you.’ Starting towards the fore hatch, he glanced back: ‘Good weekend, Rufus?’

  ‘First class. And as it happens I’ve an invitation for next weekend which includes you. Or for the one after – wouldn’t matter. Are you free for either – or both?’

  ‘I – don’t know, exactly. I mean thanks, but – life’s a bit complicated, just at the moment. I’m thinking of buzzing down to London, in fact, this next weekend. But then again – look, let’s get this inspection over, eh?’

  He rattled down the upper part of the sloping steel ladder, grasped a projection overhead and swung himself down the rest of the way, landing on his toes on the corticene-covered deck below, Chalk following suit.

  ‘Look out for wet paint.’

  ‘Bet your life!’

  ‘Probably for’ard too.’ Nodding towards the Tube Space, where they were going. He asked a torpedoman in dungarees, ‘Still wet around the tubes, is it, Harrison?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be, sir. Except in spots, you might find.’

  ‘We’ll try not to.’

  This compartment – the Torpedo Stowage Compartment, more usually referred to as the Fore Ends – in which there’d be three reload torpedoes in the racks on each side, and in which the torpedomen and some others would sleep, was about 25 feet long and 16 wide – 16 feet being in fact the internal diameter of the pressure-hull. And forward of this – where Dymock led now, stepping over and around electric cables, tool-boxes, paint-pots and men at work – was the Tube Space. Heavy watertight doors, one to port and one to starboard and both latched open now, gave access to it – actually to a shelf of decking behind the upper four tubes’ rear doors. Smaller, separate bulkhead doors below the level of the platform were for use when loading torpedoes into the bottom pair of tubes. The tubes were of a size to hold 21-inch-diameter torpedoes; the six of them filled most of the space even at this after end of the compartment, and just about all of it at the bow end where it narrowed. Whatever space wasn’t occupied by the tubes was filled with a mass of piping and firing gear that served them: all of it, each pipe and valve, familiar, instantly identifiable to Chalk and Dymock as they wormed their way forward between the various projections, checking carefully for wet paint as they went.

  ‘There you are.’ Pointing. ‘Number five at the bottom, and six where five should be.’

  Nat Eason had been right, anyway. Chalk asked Dymock as they made their way back towards the platform, ‘Did I understand your skipper correctly – that you’re leaving this as it is?’

  ‘We really haven’t much option. Changing it would mean pretty well tak
ing all this lot out again. Or so we’re told. Could be a case of bullshit baffling brains, but – well, for instance it’s a fact that a team’s due up from Pompey this week to check the tubes’ alignment, and if we put ’em off we mightn’t get ’em back for a month of bloody Sundays. And—’ he joined Chalk on the ledge behind the tubes – ‘as the skipper mentioned, we’re on a tight schedule. Final acceptance trials last week in August, for instance – and he’s dead against allowing any postponement.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘Can’t really tell you. Except they want this class at sea and operational, and we’re supposed to keep our place in the queue. Skippers may have been told to push things along at all costs, for all I know.’

  ‘Might be more effective to tell the yards that.’ Chalk added, stooping and peering forward to where they’d just been, ‘You can see number five indicator from here, you know—’

  ‘Can indeed – if you hang upside down like a bloody bat!’

  ‘– and there’s a lot more wrong than five being where six should be, isn’t there?’

  ‘You mean the positions of the pointers.’

  He nodded, checking the rest of the dials. ‘Vary from one to the other, don’t they?’

  The bowcap indicator dials were circular metal discs five or six inches in diameter, with a brass pointer on each that circled to point at ‘shut’ or ‘open’. But the ‘shut’ and ‘open’ positions weren’t by any means in the same position on all six dials. On numbers five and six, especially, they were in opposite positions.

  Chalk shook his head. ‘Toby, I wouldn’t wear this. Delay or no delay, I’d insist they refit the whole damn lot and do it properly. Heaven’s sake, man, you know as well as I do, you need to be able to run your eye over those dials and see all the arrows pointing one way – parallel to each other, right? Not have to waste time reading each one individually – which way’s that pointer, which way’s this…’

  ‘Sorry to horn in.’ The voice came from behind him, the open watertight door, and glancing round he found Mike Searle, this boat’s torpedo and gunnery officer. Searle, who’d only recently put up his second stripe – promotion from Sub-Lieutenant – was smallish and dark, darkly tanned too. He played a lot of cricket, which would account for the sunburn. Telling Chalk, ‘Fact of the matter is – well, skipper says leave it as it is, we can get used to it. And the TI’s reasonably happy. Obviously, it’s a major cock-up, but—’