The Restless Sea, page 25
‘What cargo have we got?’ Jack asks Carl.
‘Guns, medical supplies. Ammunition.’
‘Let’s hope not too much of that.’
‘A few tanks too.’
‘There’s more than five hundred tanks between us,’ says Mart, who is leaning over the handrail, watching the ships churn through the waves. ‘And two hundred fighter planes.’
‘I heard three hundred,’ says Burts.
‘And thousands of trucks.’
‘Jesus! No wonder there’s such a big escort.’
‘Sounds like everything the Russians need to win the war.’
Although they know they are bound for Russia, it isn’t until the Old Man confirms it that the reality sinks in. He addresses them in the mess, sucking on his pipe and running his fingers through his hair. ‘I won’t lie to you, men. This will be tough. But take heart – we are better protected than ever. The Aurora will make it. You know she will.’ The men mumble and nod in agreement. But Jack’s heart is in his boots, and his mouth is dry.
The ships stumble and grope their way through an impenetrable fog. The wind barrels through, but it won’t shift. The muffled crunch of a ship running aground is drowned out by the shrill whistles of ships trying to steer clear of each other. Jack pulls his duffle coat tight and blows on his hands. It is already freezing.
The fog clears. The ships settle into their formation, keeping speed. Jack’s eyeballs ache on lookout. A thin crust of ice like melting snow lies across the sea. The commodore’s vessel hoists another flag. The message is relayed from ship to ship. ‘Attack imminent.’ Jack strains to see and to hear, scanning the sky and the waves, his heartbeat racing. The convoy moves as fast as it can, but the merchant ships are heavily laden and not one is built for speed. They don’t have the sleek, sharp lines of the Navy ships. The convoy can only go as fast as the slowest ship, a steady eight knots. The Navy ships chivvy them along, worried hens trying to keep their chicks safely under their wings. They signal faster, slower, this way, that way, in a constant exchange of flashes and clicks.
Jack cannot see to the other edge of the convoy. There is no clear water, just a block of ship after ship moving purposefully onwards. And then another fog comes down again, and he can barely see beyond the Aurora. For a while they feel more relaxed, cloaked from the Germans. The ships trail fog buoys from their sterns, desperate to stay in formation and not risk a collision. Jack can just make out the fountain of water spraying up behind the ship, a streak of pale grey in the gloom.
While the creeping, crawling cape of fog swirls around them, they have to slow down and zigzag more. All Jack can hear is the clang and rattle of the Aurora and the clicking of her signal lamp. Their course is constantly altered. There is less room for manoeuvre between Norway and the ice pack. The escort signals the commodore. The commodore signals the convoy.
Jack knows they’re constantly being watched. The hair on the back of his neck tingles. It is only a matter of time. Grabbing some hot food in the mess, they hear the grim sound of the escort depth-charging somewhere far off to starboard.
‘U-boats,’ says Mart.
‘You’re telling us,’ growls an engineer. ‘The noise down there is so loud: we put cloth in our ears to block it out.’ Jack remembers their conversation on the climb to the waterfall. He is glad to get back out on deck, however cold it is.
The fog starts to lift. Through a gap, a Focke-Wulf plane appears as if from nowhere. It swoops over them. They have no time to react. But the clack of its machine gun is half-hearted before it disappears again. There is no doubt that it will send more.
The U-boats harry them, but the escort keeps them safe, seeing off the attackers, keeping the convoy together. The ice floes grow larger: green, blue, and white sculptures smoothed by fierce winds dot the sea. A line of black from a ship’s funnel is like an arrow pointing the way. The signal goes up from the commodore: ‘Make less smoke’.
They swing around the north of Iceland. New escorts arrive. If ships could swagger, then these ones do. Jack hears music playing from their loudspeakers. The confidence warms him. He lets his gaze run across the ack-ack ships to the side of the convoy and the anti-submarine trawlers at the front. With this much firepower, surely they will make it.
The alarm bells start going, calling a warning to each other across the water. U-boat in the vicinity. As if they need reminding. The growl and boom of depth charges and guns’ replies.
The sun spreads across the sea, making it look like molten silver. Now it never goes down: it is perpetual daylight. Even at midnight, Jack can feel the sun on his skin. It makes him think of lying under the rowan tree with Olivia. He longs to be there again. If only to sleep. He aches for sleep. They all do. But brief respite, catnaps are all they get.
Jack’s ears are filled with a new sound: the constant buzz of German reconnaissance planes, lazily circling like buzzards. They remain out of range of the escort’s guns. One plane circles so many times that a ship signals with its lamp to ask the pilot to fly the other way and stop making everyone feel dizzy. The plane slowly turns and continues the other way.
As soon as one German plane is low on fuel, another arrives to take its place. It is only a matter of time before the bombers appear. Mart keeps his crew working all the time. They scrub and paint and polish. They splice and check and double check. They try not to think of loved ones. They pass debris in the water. Deflated life rafts, wood, metal. There is no sign of life.
The light is dazzling. The world shimmers. Banks of fog appear to starboard like long low clouds. They disappear just as quickly. The ships in the convoy grow and shrink like images in the hall of mirrors at a funfair. One minute they are tall and thin; the next they are long and flat; sometimes they appear to be upside down. Mirages distort and flicker. Jack feels as though he is dreaming. His thoughts wander. He doesn’t know if it is four in the morning or four in the evening. The ice pack stretches away to port, thick, heavy, endless, sparkling, white.
The U-boats send out long signals, calling the Luftwaffe in. The reconnaissance planes shadow them. The alarm bells start up again. The sky darkens. And finally the Heinkels and the Junkers come. The naval ships retaliate; black puffs of flak fill the sky. It sounds as if every ship is firing. But still the bombers come, darkly swarming over the convoy, and two of the merchant ships are hit, great columns of smoke rising into the air. The wounded ships fall back. The others can do nothing except hope that the rescue ships at the rear will help. No one is allowed to stop when in convoy, even if there are men calling and screaming in the water.
A cool mist offers some respite. Unseen, planes drone above it. Jack’s mouth is parched. Buzz, buzz, buzz. He would prefer to be able to see them. In answer, the mist clears. A fresh wave of torpedo bombers comes from behind. One of the planes flies up the line of the convoy, every ship firing at it until it somersaults into the sea. The ack-ack ships chase the bombers away, but they still manage to drop their torpedoes. The deck crew see the white streaks below the surface. They wonder if it will be their engine rooms next. Speed picks up to ten knots.
There are more planes on the next attack. They fly past the escort, through the barrage of guns, and dive at the convoy. Bombs float through the air, splashing into the sea. Torpedo tracks spiral through the clear water. The merchant ships struggle to avoid them. Jack sees the telltale sign of another damaged ship: the plume of smoke billowing into the sky. He can’t tell which ship it is. The escort fights back. More planes spin into the sea. A German pilot swoops down and lands on the water, scooping up the survivors standing on a downed plane’s wing. The Allies cannot help acknowledging such bravery.
The world is unreal. Jack squints. His head throbs. An iceberg is another ship. A ship is a building. The white tip of a wave is a tinfish speeding past. When he isn’t on watch, it is impossible to sleep. It is too bright. He is too anxious. And there is that constant drone of the German planes watching them, following them, reporting back to base.
They are north of Bear Island. The planes still shadow them. But today the Americans are ebullient. It is Independence Day. They hoist fresh, bright Stars and Stripes. Music drifts across the water. There is dancing. Jack and Carl look at each other. They don’t mention it, but they are both thinking of the last time they danced. On the shores of Loch Ewe, with pretty girls on their arms and solid ground beneath their feet. An American ship signals that Independence Day is a holiday to be celebrated with large firework displays. ‘I trust you will not disappoint us,’ it adds.
The sky soon darkens again. Bombs above, torpedoes below. The sound of retaliation is ferocious. Every gunner is at his gun: the pom-poms, the Oerlikons, the Bofors, the Lewis guns. The sound pounds in their ears. The Luftwaffe fly in fast and furious. Planes dive into the sea. The noise and the acrid stench of burning remind Jack of London. The sun is blotted out by great swirls and clouds of dense black smoke. The Russian tanker is hit. It lags behind. They are astonished to see female crew manning the guns in retaliation, and working hard to put the fires out.
Another German pilot lands to rescue his fellow airmen. They fly safely away from the chaos, leaving behind a sea glistening with multicoloured patterns of oil. But the convoy is in an optimistic mood. They have seen off another attack. They are perfectly protected, and more than halfway to Russia, heading into the Barents Sea. Spirits are high. The afternoon is bright and clear. Jack allows himself to think of Olivia briefly. Of her bright smile up in the hills. Of swimming in the rowan pool. He is ready for the next attacks.
Jack and Carl are just coming off their watch. It is eight in the evening. The sun is still bright above them, on its endless tortuous circuit. Jack is looking forward to some food, hoping it will dampen the dull fear scrabbling inside him. As the boys make their way along the deck, they hear shouts from across the calm sea. There is confusion. Burts says, ‘What are they doing?’
Someone else yells, ‘Hey! Come back!’
The boys peer across the glassy water, screwing up their eyes against the glare. Jack rubs at his eyeballs. Looks again. It can’t be true. Around the convoy, it appears that the escort is peeling away, one by one, at speed.
The crew stand on deck astounded. ‘Where are they going?’ asks Burts. There is panic in his voice. ‘What’s happening?’ There is panic in everyone’s voices.
Everyone apart from those on watch is called to the mess. Andersson comes to address them.
‘Men, we have received a most important signal. It tells us to scatter and proceed at speed to Russia.’
‘Scatter?’ says Mart.
‘What do you mean?’ asks the Chief.
Andersson pulls on his pipe and repeats: ‘We are to make our own way to Archangel.’
‘Without an escort?’
‘I believe this is right.’
‘Why?’
‘I can only assume that the Kriegsmarine is on its way.’
The men glance at each other. They whisper the name of the largest and deadliest ship in the German fleet. It is enough to make them clench their hands together, in fear and prayer. Cook’s pots clatter and bang in the galley.
Andersson nods slowly. ‘We will head for ice.’
‘There must be eight hundred miles still to go.’
‘Can’t we try and stick with some of the others?’
‘No.’ Andersson rests his pipe in his hand. ‘The order is to disperse. This we have to do.’ He stands. ‘Chief? Some speed, please.’
The Chief nods. He will get the best out of his men. He always does.
The same conversations must be going on aboard every merchant ship in the convoy. The ships are in disarray. Some are going in circles. The last of their naval escort disappears in a south-westerly direction, a pip dissolving into nothingness.
Mart spits into the water. ‘Must be where them Nazis is coming from.’
‘They’d better get them.’
‘They will.’
But Mart’s confidence can’t help the creeping dread working its way along the deck: they are all alone in a sea full of U-boats. They are as close as they can be to the German-occupied airfields of Norway. The German fleet is on its way. And they are as good as unarmed.
‘We’re sitting ducks,’ says Burts.
‘Not for long,’ says Mart, nodding his head towards the funnel, which is beginning to blow more smoke from the Chief’s engines.
Jack still feels dazed. ‘I can’t believe they’ve abandoned us, the bastards,’ he says.
Mart takes him by the neck and slams him against the mizzen mast. ‘Don’t let me hear you speak like that again,’ he says. He sniffs long and hard. ‘Those boys is just following orders like the rest of us.’
The merchant ships flash and signal at each other. ‘See you.’ ‘Good luck.’ The Aurora sets her own course, picking up speed as she goes. Now that they aren’t following directions from the specially adapted compass of the commodore, they have to use their own. It swings and fluctuates. They are too near the North Pole to trust it. The ships quickly lose sight of each other. Before long the Aurora is steaming as fast as she can through hazy sunshine. Around her all is quiet.
Jack prays for cloud, fog, anything to cover them and the foamy line of their wake until they can find somewhere safer. But where is safe out here on the lonely sea? As they head north-east, the sea becomes a patchwork of thin ice stretching for miles. Beyond it is the ice pack, impenetrably thick. On they steam.
The U-boats watch below the waves, waiting for their moment. Andersson takes the Aurora as close to the ice pack as he dares. They don’t want to get stuck in an ice field, but this is as far away from Norway as they possibly can be, and at least the deadly U-boats – painted white especially in this Arctic region – can’t attack them from the port side, can’t surface in the thick ice, or fire at them between the hulking icebergs. The ice clangs and scratches and bumps at the hull. A terrible fear settles over the ship. They are sure the Germans are everywhere, beneath them, behind them, next to them. The men spot things that aren’t there. Waves look like battleships. Ice looks like periscopes. Seagulls look like planes.
Andersson doesn’t sleep. He keeps watch in the wheelhouse, inspects the charts. He orders the crew to hang anything white – sheets, tablecloths, vests – over the ship to disguise it against the ice. A snowstorm blows up. The men grab fitful sleep while they can. For hours they see no other ships. They wonder how many of the others have survived.
Jack rings the alarm bell. The plane is on the horizon. Easily close enough to spot them, it arcs slowly through the sky and disappears, a black dot receding into nothing. Far away to the east, a pall of black smoke rises into the air and then along. Another plume drifts to the south – and another. It is as if the sea is bleeding into the sky. Jack’s insides are a lead weight. In the radio room, Sparks relays the distress calls from their fellow ships to the bridge. The Aurora bumps and grinds against the thickening ice.
When it happens, it is a shock. Jack is just changing on to watch, and there is a crunch that goes through his body as the Aurora rolls and shudders. At first he thinks they have hit an iceberg, but then black smoke begins to billow into the sky. The world grows dark. The ship bucks again. Burts screams. There are men in the water. Men Jack has lived with for more than a year. Men who are his family. The sea is on fire around them. He tries to help Mart release a jammed life raft, using Olivia’s knife to hack at the rope, but he can’t stay upright because the whole deck is tipping, tipping, and now the ship is rising straight out of the water above him. And soon he’ll be in the water with the fire and with the bodies and he mustn’t breathe; he doesn’t want to let oil get into his lungs. But his feet are slipping and the water is coming towards him and he tries to move back, to grab on to something and – is that Mart? And where’s Carl? The sky is so blooming bright, but he can’t see anything because of the smoke and something is stinging his eyes and there are too many men shouting and screaming and he can hear himself calling for Carl but he can’t hold on any more and the ship is gone, the Aurora is folding and sinking, just her stern left sticking up above the water and he knows he’s going into the flame and debris and ice but he promised he’d survive. He promised.
Jack hits the water, and the breath is knocked from him as if he has hit concrete. Freezing liquid splashes into his face, into his ears, into his eyes. The air above him is thick with black smoke, and the sound of explosions and yells mixes with the roar of the sea. His hands are numb. His mouth is slick with the oil that is spreading across the surface. He retches, then gasps for air, but water fills his lungs and he gags again. A wave smashes into the back of his head and he is underneath. Sounds are muffled here, but he can still make out the shouts of his friends, the whoosh of fire, the sharp zing of bullets. He tries to propel himself upwards, to force his head above the water, to try and suck at the oxygen above. But his legs are uselessly numb. He is suddenly launched skywards and he gulps at the air, but it is full of fumes and smoke and he chokes again. The planes above are still hammering at them, strafing the water with bullets and charges that splash into the sea all around, exploding out of sight. He barely cares any more. Someone unrecognisable is flung past, a saggy, pale face empty of life, pummelled by water and thrown against the floating, sinking, broken parts of their ship. There are men everywhere: confused, scared or face down, as if searching for something beneath the frothing sea. They move up and down, side to side, but their movements are not their own. They have become playthings of the sea, tossed about like seaweed.
How long has he been in the water? Ten seconds? Twenty? What was it that Mart always said? One minute was goodbye to your feet? Two, and goodbye world? Or was it three? He glimpses flashes of things: rags, limbs, a comb, a mug all bob past; close one second, they disappear and reappear further ahead or behind him. Blackened cheeks, melted skin, lumps of flesh mixed with ice and debris. There is no order, no sense in what he sees. He could be back on the streets, running past the limbless and the dead. Water splashes into his nostrils: freezing, salty, it scrapes at his eyeballs. His mind slows. The noise and the smell and the cold recede. He sees his father and brother before they wore khaki, sitting at the kitchen table, laughing. He sees his mother drying her hands on her apron, her dark hair loose and curling against her shoulders. His sister is there too, limp with sleepiness, curled against him in the chair, solemn and trusting, in the time before she grew so scared. And he sees Olivia on the hill. Her fearless eyes are the colour of the early morning sky. Her skin is smooth and brown. Her smile wide and kind. He hears the oystercatchers calling to each other across the loch, but he realises it is men shrieking to be heard above the thunderous, crashing noise. Another explosion, and he sees the silhouette of a lifeboat and then something whacks into the side of his head. He knows this should hurt, but he is numb and the world is black.
