‘What’s wrong with aiming high?’

  ‘Nothing at all. But you should remember there is more to life than just this. I know you’ve had it drummed into you by that fancy school you went to.’

  ‘Don’t they teach you the same at grammar school?’

  ‘Yes. But I also know you need more than that for a happy life.’

  ‘You mean, a wife and family? Like you.’

  ‘Exactly. Man cannot live by bread alone … there’s drink and women and singing …’ Mole starts to sing. It’s a song that Charlie recognises as ‘Calon Lân’, one of the Welshman’s favourites. The notes bounce across the harbour and out towards the hills. As his voice fades, so too do the lights in the sky, and once again they are left in silence and darkness. Charlie feels a deep hollow in the pit of his stomach and with surprise he realises his eyes have filled with tears. Must be the whisky. He leaves Mole on deck and heads for the isolation of his cabin.

  Charlie is woken by a loud bang. It is 0104 in the morning. The night is black as coal. He stumbles to the door of his cabin. A signalman trots along the corridor. ‘It’s the battleship, sir,’ he says. ‘Some fuel or ammunition gone up in the bows.’

  Charlie nods. Through his porthole he can hear a faint tinny voice. Probably a message on the ship’s Tannoy system. ‘OK. Thanks, Walker. Let me know if they need help.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’ Walker jogs back along the corridor, his feet reverberating through the metal tunnel.

  Charlie turns back to his cabin and closes the door. He isn’t concerned. After all, this is a naval base. They couldn’t be safer. He has almost reached his bunk when there is another almighty boom. There is no mistaking that noise. It is an explosion – and a large one. He opens the porthole and sees flames across the water. He grabs his clothes, his boots, and runs up on deck still clambering into them. He pushes past the crowd of men to the rails. The battleship is listing like a drunk. Everyone is shouting at the same time: ‘Away lifeboat’s crew! What else can we do? Hurry!’ Charlie runs for the tender they used only a few hours ago. But it has already cast off with Frank and a petty officer to go and help. The aircraft carrier has switched on her searchlight and aims it at the water where the vast ship is now floundering, almost flat on her side.

  Men and boys are scrabbling from every part of her in desperation. They are sliding down her hull, jumping into the water, crying out from where they are trapped inside. Fierce white flames rip out of the vents and portholes as there is another echoing blast. Suddenly the ship heels further, the weight of her guns pulls her over and under and she vanishes from sight, sinking towards the mud of the harbour floor, with so many men still screaming from within. The bitter stench of cordite stings Charlie’s nostrils. The sea thrashes with survivors and debris. Cries. Flames. Frank’s tender joins a converted drifter moving among the objects in the water. The drifter has managed to rescue several people. More clamber at the sides to be hauled in by their friends. They cry out in terror. Other bodies float face-down in the water. A few of the men strike out for land. It is less than a mile’s swim. The sea is an oil slick. Deadly and viscous. There is smoke everywhere.

  Charlie helps transfer the rescued men from their own tender on to the deck. Many are wearing only their nightclothes: vests and pants. They shiver uncontrollably. Their skin is covered in oil. Some are burnt. Their skin is blackened, blistered, bubbled. Some of them die there and then on the deck. The oil has coated their lungs and they can’t breathe any more. Others whimper and cry out. The legs of the men who slid along the hull of the ship as she went down are shredded: the barnacles have ripped into their skin. Their teeth chatter with cold and shock. Among the faces of the survivors Charlie cannot find one that he recognises – not Bruce or the officer with the narrow nose.

  At four in the morning they give up looking for survivors. The sea is ominously quiet. There is no life left upon its dark and indifferent surface. ‘Any sign of Summers?’ Charlie says to Frank when he hauls himself back on to the ship. ‘Summers? With the freckles?’ Frank shakes his head, tries to say something, but it comes out as a gurgle. Charlie gets him a drink and a blanket. ‘Come on, Frank. Have some of this.’ He holds the drink to Frank’s lips, but before he can drink, Frank turns and retches violently. ‘They were stuck in the gangways. We could hear them. They couldn’t get out …’

  For a moment Charlie hears again the voices of those boys and men who cried out as they sank and the icy water filled the corridors and they scrabbled to get past each other. It was too crowded and dark and they were half asleep or in a nightmare, and they gulped great mouthfuls of air, and then water, until they were silenced for ever.

  They give the survivors whatever clothes and rum they can find. No one knows what caused the explosion, although there are rumours that the impossible has happened and a U-boat has sneaked like a wolf into the lambing shed. More than eight hundred men have drowned within yards of them. Many were only boys, asleep in their hammocks. It is impossible to comprehend. They were supposed to be safe. Charlie sits in the yellow light of the wardroom in silence. Tonight he has stared death in the face and he will never forget it. It doesn’t matter how old or experienced you are. In the eyes of death, all men are equal.

  That a German U-boat managed not only to infiltrate the impregnable Scapa Flow but also sink an iconic battleship is a devastating blow not just to the Navy, but to a nation that believed it ruled the waves. The men fret about the families and friends they have left behind in the towns and cities, the villages and hamlets of home. The odds of war are stacking up against them. The Germans have pushed relentlessly on, into France, the Netherlands, Belgium. Sometimes it feels as though the Navy is all that stands between the enemy and Britain.

  Charlie’s aircraft carrier is assigned a new captain as Captain Turnbull is promoted to commodore, his expertise needed elsewhere. Captain Pearce is a mean little man, cross that he’s been called back from retirement; already fed up with the constant demands of life at sea, particularly on his weary old bones. He had imagined his life would end differently, preferably in the garden with his prize dahlias, but another war has put paid to that. He has no experience of flying, and the pilots cannot stand him. Worse, he believes the Fairey Swordfish to be outdated relics of the past: he cannot see their advantages. He makes them fly in the most terrible conditions, unaware of the finely-tuned capabilities of individual pilots and planes. He sometimes makes them fly without their accompanying plane guard, which means a downed crew would be left to fend for themselves in the water. The carrier is deployed to the African coast to search for a German commerce raider that has been causing havoc. Captain Pearce sweats and grumbles about the heat. Then they escort a damaged cruiser back to Britain, ending up a few months later – and after the turn of the new year – back at a windswept Scapa Flow. The captain shivers and moans about the cold. They say goodbye to the Blackburn Skua squadron, who are left – to their delight and everyone else’s envy – to add to the defences in northern Scotland.

  The only joy at this joyless time is another letter from Olivia. Charlie thinks longingly of a visit to Loch Ewe, but there is not time to get there overland for a day’s leave, and Captain Pearce won’t allow them longer: they have been assigned to the Mediterranean fleet for exercises. He consoles himself over the weeks by savouring every word that she has written. It sounds as if she is settling in, as he knew she would. His mouth waters when she talks about how rationing doesn’t affect her because she has milk and butter and fresh eggs in exchange for helping on the Macs’ farm, and later there will be honey from Mrs Ross’s bees. She has been preparing the ground for vegetables in the walled garden under Greer’s beady eye, and the housemaid, Clarkson, has been teaching her to forage for young shoots of nettles and wild garlic. There is even talk of trapping rabbits.

  Charlie’s aircraft carrier is called back from exercises soon enough, and near to Scotland: it is to make up part of the large British fleet trying to prevent the Nazis from taking Norway. The Germans are pushing into Scandinavia, creeping closer to Britain every day. The first British civilian is killed: a young man the victim of an air raid on Scapa Flow. Charlie shudders: his anxiety about Olivia’s safety rises. He has received another two letters from her, and they are fast becoming the only things he has to look forward to, apart from the hours spent flying. He rereads the letters daily. They warm him up and pour a little colour back into the grey and white world of snow and ice that is life on the Norwegian Sea. She is expert at painting a picture of the landscape. When Charlie closes his eyes, he can see the liquid gold of autumn bracken, the spring riot of red and orange and white magnolia, rhododendron and azalea, the gnarled silver alder trees all hung with pale green lichen and the changing colours of the loch.

  Conversation on board often turns to home, and now Charlie feels he can join in. Mole talks about his young son and wife. Billy wants to get back to his childhood sweetheart. They gently tease each other. Mole and Billy quiz Charlie about Olivia, and he smiles and tells them to mind their own business, but that she has hair the colour of the rising sun and eyes the colour of the morning sky, and they laugh and say he hasn’t got a hope in hell: he’s fallen hook, line and sinker.

  The Norwegian campaign is fought furiously on land and at sea. The Norwegian ports, tucked inside the folds of their magnificent fjords, are taken and lost, and taken again. Navy warships engage in constant battle with Nazi destroyers. The snow-covered hills are either obscured by smoke or lit by flashes of gunfire. The sound of heavy artillery booms across the sea. The icy waters are full of the wrecks of ships from both sides. The British, the French, the Polish, struggle to halt the enemy. The men on the ground fight viciously. They are hampered by heavy snow.

  Olivia’s letters turn yellow, and the ink begins to fade. It doesn’t matter: Charlie knows them off by heart. He keeps them close. They will protect him from harm. The squadron’s morale is low, not least because of Captain Pearce. The captain briefed them earlier in the ready room, his face devoid of emotion. ‘If Hitler gets control of the Norwegian coast, he’ll be able to reach our supplies coming through the north Atlantic. And he’ll be able to reach Britain more easily. This is an important moment, men: the first airborne torpedo attack from a carrier of the war. You are history in the making. Let’s not make a hash of it.’

  Their target is a German battlecruiser in Trondheim Fjord. Taking her out would be a substantial blow to German morale, and give the Allies a valuable boost. But they all know it is too early to fly – they will not be able to see the target until there is at least a little daylight. They should wait for another hour. But there is no telling Captain Pearce.

  The Swordfish take to the skies. The sun has not yet risen. Below them is darkness; above the stars glitter like thousands of candles. It is confusing, disconcerting. Usually it is lights that twinkle below them, and darkness above. For a second Charlie’s brain is muddled. It feels as if he is flying upside down. He is tempted to right the plane. He checks the faintly glowing instruments in the cockpit again. He has to trust them. Night flying is all about trust: for the engineers who keep the instruments working, to the pilots who keep the planes flying, and the observers who find their way home. Charlie has heard of pilots getting confused, spinning upside down and losing control in similar conditions.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Mole asks.

  Charlie shakes his head. He was too busy concentrating on the needles and dials and numbers around him.

  ‘Starboard,’ says Mole.

  Charlie senses the Kid move, and picks up the shift in tension too. Could it be the German ship? Could something that large manage to slip so silently across the sea? Easily. But he can’t see anything. The wind rushes in his ears. Is that the faint pale mark of waves breaking behind a ship? Or a trick of the light? Captain Pearce’s words ring in his ears. They must not fail. There’s nothing for it. Mole unpacks a flare. Charlie gives him the thumbs-up. The safety and hum of the darkness is theirs for a moment longer, and then phshshshsh, Mole drops the flare and it falls downward, a spiralling comet of light heading into nothing, nothing, and then suddenly streaks of light explode into the air around them, followed by a barrage of gunfire.

  ‘Bloody hell, Mole!’ Charlie dips the plane sideways and lower, swinging through the hail of ammunition.

  It is not the battlecruiser. It is a German destroyer. It will have to do – they have blown their cover now. Charlie steadies the plane through the flak and lines himself up for a torpedo run. The cockpit is lit by flashes of tracer fire. It gives him some sense of direction, but as he looses the missile, he has no idea whether it has found its mark.

  ‘Just get us out of here,’ says Mole.

  ‘Damn,’ says Charlie, partly because he knows Captain Pearce will be disappointed, and partly because there are two neat holes in the fabric of the plane near his right elbow, where bullets have passed straight through. If she was made of metal, she’d have been blown apart. As it is, she is flying, but something doesn’t feel right.

  ‘You all right, Mole?’ Charlie shouts behind him.

  ‘Fine, boyo. You just get us home safely.’ Mole reads him the correct course, squinting in the orange glow of his tiny lamp. They will be there in sixteen minutes.

  Charlie doesn’t want to let them know that the plane isn’t responding properly. But then, he doesn’t need to. Her juddering and balking do the job for him.

  ‘What is it?’ Mole asks. ‘Propeller? Fuel tank?’

  ‘I think it’s the port wing,’ says Charlie.

  Mole peers into the dark. ‘Can’t bloody see,’ he says.

  The problem is getting worse. The plane dips on her port side. They all lean to starboard, trying to right her, but it’s just a reaction, it won’t do anything.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Mole. Charlie feels him jiggering around with something. It’s his chart lamp. Mole tries to light the wing, leaning out of the cockpit as far as he can. ‘Pin’s been blown out. The wing is folding.’

  It makes sense. The wing rattles and jangles ominously.

  ‘Shit,’ says Charlie.

  ‘No need for bad language, boyo,’ says Mole.

  ‘Will we make it?’

  ‘Depends if it folds.’

  The way it’s shaking, Charlie thinks folding is pretty likely. The weight shifts again in the cockpit behind him. Mole starts to hum, but the noise isn’t coming through the Gosport tube: the notes are drifting out into the night.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘Never you mind, boyo,’ says Mole.

  Charlie can feel vibrations beneath his feet. He tries to look behind, but he can’t see anything. He hears Mole say something to the Kid, and the noise of a clip clicking on to something. He senses Mole stand up, the balance of the plane changing. The wing is juddering now.

  ‘Mole? What …’

  ‘You just fly, boyo.’ The voice is almost in his ear. Fingers appear next to him in the cockpit. The Welshman has clambered out on to the wing.

  ‘Get back in …’ But Charlie’s words are pulled into the slipstream. He can just see one of Mole’s arms wrapped around one of the metal struts.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ says Charlie, but he knows Mole can’t possibly hear him above the screaming of the wind and the rumble of the engine. He concentrates on keeping the plane balanced, checking the instruments, sensing the plane, as if it’s part of him. The extra weight on the wing is pushing it down, but still the plane is coping, and then suddenly it feels right again. Mole edges back into the cockpit, toppling in sideways with a thud. He gives a whoop of delight and bursts into song.

  Charlie starts to laugh. He can hear the Kid laughing too. They are all laughing into the night air with a mad joy at being alive. The plane is still coughing and spluttering. Her engine must be damaged too. But he trusts her. She will get them back safely.

  As they reach the ship, Charlie flashes the red light on his starboard wing twice, followed by the green light twice. The ship signals back, and the faint path of guiding lights comes on. He has done this landing a hundred times and it makes no difference in the dark. He looks for the batsman’s signal. The lights on the bats are dim but legible. The plane gulps and spits, and when they land he can hear and smell the petrol spewing out of her.

  The propeller chokes to a standstill, and Tugger’s face materialises out of the gloom. ‘What have you done to her?’ he asks. ‘And the hell’s this?’ Tugger points at the running repair that Mole has done. Charlie walks around to inspect it, for once glad to be back on solid ground.

  The Welshman has used his bootlace to tie the pin back in. It’s pretty heroic. He will dine out on it for months.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ says Mole. ‘If anyone can fix her up, it’s you.’

  Tugger suddenly steps back and salutes, and Captain Pearce appears behind Charlie. In the dim dawn light, his eyes are cold and hard, his lips thin and his eyebrows bristling. ‘Wrong bloody ship,’ he says. ‘What did you think you were doing?’

  Mole and the Kid and Tugger stand there, eyes glazed, faces expressionless. Charlie’s cheeks burn. ‘I know that, sir,’ he says. ‘But once …’

  ‘And you’ve damaged the plane. Reckless. I’ve a good mind to send you home for reassessment. God help us, if you’re the best we’ve got …’

  ‘It was impossible to see out there, sir …’

  ‘Don’t you bloody answer back! You’re an idiot, and that’s it. I will have to report this.’ He turns and stomps back to the bridge.

  Charlie swallows in the silence. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ says Mole. ‘He’s a bitter old fool who should be in a flowerbed.’

  ‘Preferably six feet under it,’ says Tugger. ‘And don’t worry about the plane. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘We did good, Charlie,’ says the Kid.

  But the captain’s words wound Charlie deeply. He is not used to falling foul of those in charge. He feels diminished. Only one person doesn’t see his faults: Olivia. Her letters are a lifeline to cling to in turbulent water. He clings to them all the tighter.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49