The Unforgiving Sea (The Searight Saga Book 2) Read online

  *

  I slept so much in that first week or two in Karachi that the days merged into one. I sat in an office that looked out over the sand dunes and beyond that the sea; a large, spacious office, white walls, large windows, another ceiling fan, a set of bookshelves to one side, a portrait of the king. Outside, a lorry passed, a cloud of sand in its wake. Behind a desk in front of me were two men and a woman. The younger man, perhaps in his forties, was a medic, a doctor perhaps, wearing a cloak so white to be almost painful on the eye. The woman, an army private named Sophie Jones, sat to one side of her companions, her legs crossed, a notebook and pen poised in her hand. She was young, probably no more than twenty. The major, sitting in the middle, introduced himself as Bryant and the medic as Doctor Karr. I recognised the doctor from one of the many quacks that had stood next to my bed. I’d become a bit of a curiosity amongst the medical staff and indeed everyone in the camp. I could imagine the talk – hey, come see our new patient. This is what you look like after two weeks on a lifeboat. On first sitting down on the chair placed in front of the desk, I complained apologetically that the chair was too hard. They understood – I still had no flesh on my buttocks. Private Jones fetched me a cushion and pointed to a glass of water on the desk. I thanked her. Major Bryant leant forward, his fingers steepled. He was a gaunt man, his eyes large, a red mark on the bridge of his nose. With his head cocked to one side, he asked how I was. I told him I was fine, that I was feeling much stronger. And it was true – the staff had been feeding me up slowly – bowls of watery soup replaced by thicker soup, then dishes of rice with little bits of chicken and vegetables. I savoured every mouthful. Never again will I take food for granted. But, I told the nurses, I didn’t want any more chicken. In fact, I never wanted to eat meat again. I told them about my diet of pills and Doctor Karr confirmed my daily intake of vitamin and protein tablets. Private Jones took notes.

  ‘By the way, Searight,’ said Major Bryant, ‘it says here your first name is George.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But I’ve always preferred my middle name.’

  He looked at me as if I was a circus oddity.

  ‘We want you to tell us everything,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘That’s fine. We have all the time in the world. We need to know everything.’

  ‘Everything, sir?’

  ‘There were forty-two men on board the Academic plus a couple of Indian coolies – you were the only one to survive. It’s important we establish the facts, as far as you can remember them, so we can account for the ship and the men that went down with her. We know you suffered a terrible ordeal so if you think you’re not up to it yet…’

  The three of them looked at me expectantly, waiting for my answer. Major Bryant may have offered me the option but somehow, having gathered together, I knew they would prefer not to wait. Anyway, I thought, there was no point in delaying it. I knew I had to tell the tale at some point, so I might as well get on with it. Who knows, perhaps at the end of it I would feel better.

  ‘I think, sir, I’d rather tell you now.’

  I felt the sigh of relief. ‘Good. Well, there’s water if you need it, and if you get tired as you go along, we can always take a break. Feel free to smoke.’

  ‘I did smoke, sir, but with so long without I don’t feel the need to any more.’

  ‘Understandable. Right…’ He glanced at his companions. The doctor nodded. ‘So, these are the facts as we know them…’ He picked up a sheet of paper, and reaching for a pair of spectacles began to read. ‘The HMS Academic left Gibraltar on 11 May heading here, for Karachi, a distance of some six thousand miles, expected to take four weeks. You were hit by a torpedo fired from a German U-boat some nine hundred miles from land. Correct?’ I nodded.

  ‘And it says here that although you had a companion ship, the HMS Heritage, you were unescorted.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you were transporting mules – six hundred of them.’

  ‘Yes, odd as it sounds. They were destined for Burma to move supplies through the jungles there.’

  Doctor Karr chortled. ‘What was it like with six hundred mules on board?’

  ‘Smelly and noisy.’

  ‘I bet it was.’

  Bryant turned the sheet of paper. ‘So, the Heritage, which was carrying some five thousand tons of coal, had to turn back after two days because of… it says here jammed steering gears.’

  ‘Yes, sir, it was unfortunate.’

  ‘Unfortunate indeed. So you were out on the seas without any escort of any kind?’

  ‘Yes, we’d been in that situation before, and it’s not a pleasant experience. We knew we were sitting targets for any U-boat in the area, although we’d been assured that they were few and far between in that stretch of water. But of course, that’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And that’s where I want you to start, Searight. What was exactly the sequence of events that allowed you to live while every one of your forty-one comrades perished?’

  I looked at the three of them, Major Bryant with his eyes fixed hard on me, Doctor Karr, his arms stretched behind his head, and Private Jones, crossing and uncrossing her legs. A shout from outside distracted me. A group of soldiers were jogging along the sea front, a sergeant on a bicycle yelling at them. Two middle-aged women, arms linked, stepped aside to allow them to pass. ‘I don’t really know where to start, sir.’

  ‘Just start at the beginning. What time of day was it? What was the weather like?’

  ‘You want to know that much detail?’

  He nodded. ‘I think it’s important. Don’t you?’

  Chapter 2

  Another Month Earlier

  It was, I remember, the twenty-first day of our journey. The sky was clear and the Indian Ocean as still as a sheet of glass. Idyllic as it may sound, it was a cause for worry – the calm conditions were ideal for U-boats. As much as it was unpleasant to be working in foul weather, one at least felt safer from attack. It was seven in the evening and I had four hours off ahead of me. I’d had my dinner and retired to my cabin, which I shared with seven others. There was a porthole designed not to be opened, and the lack of fresh air, and the stench of sweat, unwashed bodies and damp and dirty clothes coated in seawater made for unpleasant living conditions. But for now my only companion was an Essex man by the name of Bernard Swann, a man mountain of a sailor. He was one of those men made for the sea. He’d been seafaring since the age of fifteen, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. A black bushy beard made him look much older than his twenty-eight years. I sat down on the edge of my bunk and sipped my tea, swirling it around in its tin mug.

  ‘You can still bloody smell them, can’t you?’ remarked Swann, lying above me. ‘Even in here.’

  ‘You mean the mules? You’d think we’d have got used to it by now.’

  The Indian authorities had given us two coolies to look after the mules, but watering, feeding and clearing up after six hundred of them was proving to be a full time occupation, and gradually the foul smell permeated every far-flung corner of the ship. We realised the expression ‘stubborn as a mule’ was not without foundation. The beasts had refused to step on the gangplank and onto the ship. The coolies thought they had the solution but no amount of carrots would tempt them across. And so we had to resort to manhandling them aboard. With a man on each side, we stretched a leather strap across their rumps and with much swearing and sweating in the blazing Gibraltar sun, and that was just from the mules, we physically dragged them aboard ship – virtually every one of the blasted animals. Then, with the help of a crane, came the bales of hay – tons of it. It took the whole day, leaving us exhausted but satisfied with our day’s work.

  I finished my tea and swung my legs onto the bunk. Above deck, port side, Clarence, my older brother, was due to finish his look-out duty, peering through the dusk with his binoculars, watching out for the slightest movement. Ours was a peculiar relation
ship when aboard ship. Clarence had signed up to the merchant navy as an officer, wanting to make a livelihood out of it. I, on the other hand, joined up only because of the war, forsaking my job at a bank in Plymouth, the nearest city; therefore I was as low as one could get in the pecking order. The consequence of this was that, on addressing him, I had to call my brother ‘sir’. Although he tried not to show it, I think it rather pleased him.

  Indeed, without so much as a knock on the door, he showed up. We didn’t share the same cabin but he liked to call on me every so often. ‘How goes it?’ he asked breezily, shaking dry his water cape.

  ‘About to have a shut-eye.’

  ‘Don’t you ever knock?’ asked Swann.

  ‘And what about some protocol round here? I’m ‘sir’ to you, Swann. Or had you forgotten?’

  ‘I beg yours, sir.’

  ‘All quiet out there?’ I asked.

  He took a seat on the single chair we had in the cabin. ‘It would be if it wasn’t for the captain’s jittering. He’s convinced it’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘He’s right,’ growled Swann. ‘Perfect weather for a U-boat.’

  ‘That’s what he reckons. I say, Robert, haven’t got a spare ciggie, have you?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Go on, man, just the one.’

  Reluctantly, I gave him a cigarette from the pack I kept under my pillow. ‘You’re not going to smoke that in here, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t worry, little brother, Father’s not here to smell it on us. We can get away with it.’

  We both had the image of the canning I got when, aged about eleven, my brother persuaded me to have a cigarette, then told on me. It was wintertime, raining hard. Sheltering in the coal shed, shivering, I smoked my first cigarette, feeling slightly sick throughout but determined not to let it show in front of my brother. Father, when he found out, was furious. He spanked me with the palm of his hand. It hurt not the slightest but the humiliation, knowing I’d been set up, caused me to cry. Clarence claimed Father had smelt it on me but I knew.

  Swann cleared his throat. ‘What he means, sir, is that your brother knows I can’t abide fag smoke.’

  Clarence hesitated. ‘I’ll save it for later,’ he said, placing the cigarette behind his ear.

  A few weeks after the cigarette episode, I tried to get my own back. Having caught Clarence smoking behind the elm tree at the end of our garden, I told Father. My attempt at revenge backfired – those who told tales, I was told, deserved a thrashing. I never tried again.

  ‘Don’t suppose you can smell the mules from where you are, can you, sir?’

  ‘No, Swann, boatswain’s aftershave sees to that.’

  ‘Boatswain wears aftershave aboard ship?’

  ‘I was joking, Robert, just a little joke.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My brother was never any good at spotting a joke,’ he said to Swann, who was still lying flat out on his bunk. ‘Never particularly blessed with a sense of humour was my brother.’

  Chapter 3

  It came into view – a silver speck on the horizon. So far away, I couldn’t tell at first what sort of plane it was, whether it was friend or foe. I radioed up to the bridge, informing the captain that something was heading our way. The word spread quickly. Soon Clarence was by my side. ‘Here, let me take a look,’ he said, grabbing the binoculars from my hand.

  Untangling myself from the strap, I asked if it was one of ours.

  He answered, not by addressing me, but by radioing upstairs. ‘It’s a Condor, Captain.’

  The news may have been alarming but I knew he still felt a shiver of satisfaction at being the first to spot it. I saw the crestfallen look on his face as the captain bellowed back down the line, ‘We’ve worked that out for ourselves, Searight, thanks all the same.’

  We watched it as it came towards us, yet the nearer it got, the higher it flew. ‘That’s a Condor, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, a Focke-Wulf Condor.’

  Soon, it was directly above us, circling like a real-life condor, a bird of prey eyeing its next victim. ‘I don’t understand, why aren’t we firing at it, and why is it not attacking us?’

  I feared a scathing response. Without taking his eyes from the binoculars, he said, ‘It’s out of our range and he knows that. They carry bombs but he’s unlikely to hit us from that height.’

  ‘So, what’s he doing then?’

  ‘The blighter’s reporting our position, that’s what he’s doing.’ Finally, taking his eyes off the plane, he turned to me. Placing a heavy hand on my shoulder, he said, ‘He’s telling his mates in the U-boats exactly where we are. We’re buggered, we really are. Out here alone, unescorted, and whose bright idea was that, on a ship with a single gun that’s as much use as a peashooter. We’re being hunted and we don’t stand a chance. Not a chance.’

  *

  The hours that followed were torturous. Everywhere I went I saw my own worried expression reflected back to me. The captain first doubled, then trebled, the number of men on lookout at any one time. I took turns with a man who, apart from my brother, was my only link to my previous life. Owen Gardner and I were almost neighbours, both residents of the same village. Unlike me, a relative newcomer and an outsider, Owen had been brought up in the village – man and boy. ‘Imagine we were back at home,’ he said, ‘sitting in front of the fire at the Ship right now with a pint each in our hands.’

  We didn’t look at each other – we had to keep our eyes to the binoculars constantly.

  ‘It seems a thousand miles away, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It probably is.’

  We scanned the water near and far, looking out for a conning tower of a submarine, the telltale ‘feather’ in the wake of a periscope, or the spray generated by an incoming torpedo. Owen, a handsome chap with enviable blond hair, was married to an attractive, older woman called Joanna, a German, who, one day, simply appeared in the village as Owen’s wife. No one had known he’d even had a girlfriend, but they seemed well matched, quite the most attractive couple in the village.

  When not on lookout, there was little else to do. I wandered the decks preferring to be outside than cooped up inside. The few times I did venture down, I rearranged my few belongings in my locker. I wrote a letter to my parents. I told them everything was fine, how we were making good progress and how we were due in Karachi in just over a week. This much was true; I didn’t say that none of us had any great expectation of making it. I told them Clarence was doing well, how the men respected him and the senior officers valued him; I told them about the mules, and how much I enjoyed our stay in Gibraltar and how lovely the weather was there. I told them about life on the ship.

  Clarence sought me out numerous times – asking me how I was. We even had dinner together. The lounge area was almost deserted. Everyone seemed to have lost their appetites. We picked at our meal consisting of some form of meat and mashed potatoes. ‘It’s like a last supper,’ he declared. ‘Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. At least the tea’s strong.’

  ‘Drink – in remembrance of me. So, what’s the news from the bridge? They must be expecting something.’

  ‘Nope. Captain radioed through for assistance. They won’t be able to get anything to us for at least two days, so they’re not bothering.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  He shook his head while considering a forkful of meat. ‘They’re leaving us to our fate. Us and the mules.’

  ‘But it’s been twelve hours since we saw the plane. Wouldn’t they have attacked by now?’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t have anything in the vicinity either. But those U-boats can speed along once on the surface. It’s only when they’re submerged do they slow down. They won’t be able to resist an easy kill. They’ll send something, mark my words. What is this meat?’

  ‘I think it’s pork.’

  ‘I reckon it’s mule. Either way, it’s foul.’

  ‘No, it’s not fowl
.’ I sniggered at my joke.

  ‘Very funny. So, still happy you joined up?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I remember as a kid during the summer holidays, going into Plymouth with Father. He’d go off to some meeting and leave me to wander round Devonport. You were at home with Mum, I suppose. I loved it. I used to gaze at the ships wondering where they’d been, where they were going to. I’d see the sailors and envy their adventures and their travels. I used to love that smell, you know. That’s when I knew I wanted to be on the sea. Father thought it a good idea. He was an army man, as you know.’

  ‘He’s never talked about it.’

  ‘I used to ask him about the war but he said you couldn’t ask questions like that. He said men like him saw things that no man can put into words. He said no generation should have to experience that again.’