Twelve Seconds to Live (2002) Read online

  Masters could remember Fawcett’s first visit there. He had glanced around cheerfully at the staff and technicians, and said, ‘Well, if the worst happens, you’ll all be safe enough down here, what?’

  But he had been quick to learn; he never seemed to make the same mistake twice. The Beehive was in fact reinforced to protect the rest of the base if any explosion occurred. Those inside would be obliterated.

  Masters walked to the other desk, his own. There was a miniature mine on it as a paperweight, which had been presented to somebody or other in 1940. There was not a face he did not know, or remember. They came and went, promoted, decorated, killed in action, missing. And I am still here.

  Perhaps today.

  He straightened his back and immediately checked himself. He did not need to test either his feelings or his memory. It would always be there.

  The Wren said, ‘He’s leaving the Ops Room, sir.’

  Masters glanced at the mirror which hung by the steel helmets and the notices about gas attacks and ‘careless talk costs lives’. Someone had brought it back from a party aboard one of the sweepers.

  In one corner there was a picture of a voluptuous, scantily clad girl, and the advertisement read, Try one of mine. The offer was unclear but a few suggestions had been scratched underneath.

  He touched the pale, comma-shaped scar on his left cheek. It had been that close.

  The door was opened by one of the lieutenants, and Rear-Admiral Bumper Fawcett, his cap with its double embellishment of gold oak leaves tilted at the familiar angle, embraced the room.

  ‘Ah, Masters, glad to find you up an’ about at least, what?’

  He did not shake hands; he never did unless with some senior officer, when it was unavoidable. Masters had become used to these irregular and unorthodox visits. Resentment was pointless: it was just Fawcett’s way.

  He had in fact been shaving at five-thirty when the blare of Reveille had shattered the silence and sent the gulls screaming up from the parade ground and the roof of Vernon’s little church. Across the harbour and the barracks bugles had sounded, and from hundreds of tannoys in ships of all classes and sizes quartermasters had added their own chorus to the squeal of boatswains’ calls.

  Wakey wakey, rise and shine! And the response of as many curses.

  But the most remarkable thing about Fawcett was his appearance. Until a day ago he had been at the naval base in Portland; this morning he must have been driven straight down the Portsmouth Road either from his quarters in London or the Admiralty bunker itself. There was not a crease in his impeccable doeskin uniform, and his shoes shone as if they had just been polished, and as he laid his cap on the desk and flashed the Wren a smile his hair looked as if it had been recently trimmed; it always did. Not a tall man, and not prone to quick gestures, yet he gave the immediate impression of energy. Now in his fifties, he had an alert, mobile face dominated by clear blue eyes, as if the younger Fawcett were still looking out.

  The door closed behind the harassed lieutenant and Fawcett said, ‘Your people are on their toes, I’m pleased to see. Too much over-confidence in some of the places I’ve been lately.’ Then, ‘Any tea going, Sally?’

  He rarely got a name wrong, and never with women. She picked up another telephone and nodded. ‘Sir.’

  Masters had noticed the admiral’s tan, and felt another unreasonable touch of envy. Fawcett had been sent to Sicily; the first thrust in the right direction, he had called it.

  It had once seemed unattainable. After the months, the years, of setbacks and disasters, Dunkirk, the constant bombings and the inability to hit back, the Atlantic and the U-Boats scattering and savaging desperately needed convoys, and even the gallant Eighth Army retreating to the very gates of Cairo. And now everything had changed. The Eighth Army, the Desert Rats as they were known to everyone who could read a newspaper or watch a newsreel, had turned at some unheard of place called El Alamein. Not only had they withstood the full might of the German Afrika Korps, under its equally formidable general Rommel, but they had broken the enemy and sent them into full retreat. Now the only Germans in North Africa were dead or prisoners of war. The invasion of Sicily had been the first step back into Europe. A combined force of British, American and Canadian troops, supported by every available warship, had carried out the landings. It had been decided that July was the most favourable month in the Mediterranean, especially for men in landing craft attacking in deadly earnest for the first time. The weather had turned out to be the worst for that time of year anyone could remember, but in three weeks they had done it. Masters looked over at the admiral. He was leafing through the top file of signals, his rectangle of bright medal ribbons shining in the harsh overhead lighting.

  It would be Italy next. And soon. And this time the enemy would be ready. It would take every skill in the book to win.

  And I shall still be here.

  Fawcett said casually, ‘I’ve been visiting the submariners too, y’know. First Sea Lord’s idea. Wanted a frank report, for the P.M., actually.’ He paused, one neat hand separating the signals, as if expecting an answer. ‘We all laughed at the Italians when they started messing about with their two-man torpedoes and explosive motor boats, what? Until they sank the cruiser York a couple of years ago in Crete, and then penetrated Alexandria itself to fix mines to Valiant and Queen Elizabeth. A handful of determined men, and the whole fleet knocked sideways, just like that!’

  There was a tap at the door and a small Wren entered with a tray of cups and saucers.

  Masters saw the admiral’s clear eyes move briefly to her. ‘You were a submariner yourself. You can’t turn your back on it. D’you imagine I don’t understand how you feel about this work you’re doing?’ The hand came up in an unhurried signal. ‘It has been my experience that courage and self-sacrifice are just as necessary, indeed vital, in the work of defence. As much, if not more, than the more heady individual acts.’

  Another tap at the door, a leading signalman this time, with a pot of tea. Masters breathed out slowly. What is the matter with me? Why today?

  Were a submariner. That was it. Always lurking, like a wound, like guilt. Perhaps they were right, and he was more suited here, or in some other office. Lucky, some might say.

  Were a submariner. Only words, and casually spoken. Or were they?

  The memory was as sharp as yesterday.

  There is no other moment like it. Any submarine commander knows it.

  His first command. Putting to sea without the dockyard people and the staff officers watching and making criticisms and suggestions. And later, after the commanding officer’s final course, ‘the perisher’ as it was aptly termed, with the new boat and company. Tornado, a T-Class boat, had left harbour on a morning not unlike this, grey sky, the sea like heaving pewter, to most other craft just another submarine leaving port. Going to war.

  But on that day nothing else had mattered. He knew Fawcett was talking to the leading signalman, bridging the gap. He always made a point of it.

  He tried to push the memory away. But the moment remained. The first time . . .

  A glance around the open bridge. Feeling the excitement, sharing it with the two lookouts.

  Then, as if prompted, ‘Clear the bridge!’ He could see the last lookout’s face as he jumped down through the oval hatch. Their eyes had met, just for a second, but Masters remembered it. He had been only a boy.

  Still clear, incisive. Lowering his face to the voicepipe, picturing the features and the minds of the men beneath his feet.

  ‘Dive! Dive! Dive!’ The scream of the klaxon.

  Instant and vital, the craft and the man as one. Just once he had stared over the grey steel screen, had held his breath as the sea had boiled up over the stem and along the casing to surge around the four-inch gun as Tornado went into her dive.

  And there it was. Like a flaw in a photograph, a brief gleam as it twisted in the glare before it vanished under the hull, and exploded.

  He had heard
nothing, nor had he remembered what had happened. Only the aftermath. The pain. The sympathy. The inquiry. He had never heard the announcement; there were enough of them in those days, anyway.

  The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of His Majesty’s Submarine Tornado. Next of kin have been informed.

  There were no survivors. They lay with the shattered hull, all fifty-eight of them, including the lookout with the excited grin.

  He was coming out of it slowly. Were a submariner.

  His first command. And his last.

  He stared at the mirror again, imagining for a moment that Fawcett had asked him something and was expecting an answer. The admiral had not got up this early just to pass the time of day.

  But it was not that. The leading signalman had gone, and the Wren Sally was covering the telephone with her fingers as she always did.

  Fawcett was shaking his head. ‘I distinctly told them!’ It must have upset what he had been about to say.

  She did not give in. ‘Classified, sir.’

  Fawcett snapped, ‘Bloody hell!’ and almost snatched the receiver from her. ‘I left instructions. Orders . . .’ He broke off and stepped away from the desk. ‘Where? When?’ He reached down, removing the telephone flex from around the teapot; he did it with great care. Then he said quietly, ‘Took you long enough.’

  Masters waited. He could sense Fawcett’s uncertainty, irresolution. Like discovering a secret about somebody you thought you knew as well as he would ever let you.

  ‘You’re certain, then? Critchley?’ He nodded once. ‘Keep me posted.’ He handed the telephone to the Wren officer without expression.

  Masters turned. Critchley . . . Commander John Critchley. This same room. The smile. Persuasive, encouraging. His charm.

  Fawcett walked to the window and stooped to peer out at the sky.

  ‘Use the other office, will you, Sally?’

  The door closed, and Fawcett turned to face him.

  ‘You knew him, of course? A good officer. A leader, and an example, especially to all the green young types straight out of civvy street. He could charm anybody.’

  It was as if Fawcett had read his thoughts.

  ‘How did it happen, sir?’

  ‘When I know that . . .’ He looked up, angry and impatient. ‘I was at the Admiralty. People listened, for once.’ He walked across the room, but Masters knew he was unaware of the movement. It was like seeing a complete stranger. ‘He was the man for the job. My choice.’ He lowered his voice and said, almost offhandedly, ‘A mine. Type Charlie, apparently. Army Bomb Disposal were involved. When I discover . . .’ He broke off again and stared at the telephones. ‘He must have been out of his bloody mind! Should never even have been there, for God’s sake!’ He paused by the other desk and patted his pockets. ‘Don’t have a cigarette on you, I suppose?’ He glanced at the Wren’s handbag hanging from the chair. ‘I forgot, you’re a pipe man. Now, a good cigar . . .’

  Masters waited, watching him trying to come to terms with it. Like watching a hurricane, and trying to predict its course.

  Fawcett said, ‘At first I thought we’d never get along together. Not my style. Part-time sailor, R.N.V.R., plenty of money, he had no need to be in the service at all.’ He stared at the neat lines of signals. ‘Electronics, that was his business. I’ll lay odds that half the equipment which ends up here began life in one of his factories.’ He swung round and looked at him directly. ‘Yet he was an adventurer, enjoyed taking risks. Used to race that bloody great Bentley of his, Monte Carlo, right? A fair yachtsman too, I believe.’

  The pale blue eyes wandered, then settled on Masters again. The storm was passing.

  ‘Taught you a lot, eh?’

  ‘Everything, sir.’ He had often thought about it, driving himself or being driven by something he could not contain. Because of Tornado, because of guilt, or a need for revenge. It was madness, and yet he had forced himself to do it. From an open bridge to the confined world of fuses and intricate mechanisms, theirs or ours; it all had to be studied, and learned by heart. There were rarely second chances.

  In his heart, he had not expected to succeed. Perhaps he had even come to terms with it. Until that first incident, the mine which had fallen in Southampton Docks, and had been recognized as something quite new and different. His first ‘beast’.

  He said, ‘He had the touch with people. Civilians especially, the ones who had to take it day after day, and nights as well in some places. That was his strength, and they loved him for it.’

  Fawcett nodded. ‘I agree. It’s different for us in the Andrew. We obey orders, we do as we’re told, we live, we die. It’s what we are, what we do.’ He gazed at the girl on the mirror. ‘The civilians get another war entirely. Somehow they go off to work each day, worrying about the family, the bloody rations, not even knowing if the office or the factory will be standing when they arrive. More to the point, not knowing if their homes and families will still be there when they come back.’ He pounded one fist into his palm without making a sound. ‘Without that sort of strength, faith if you like, all our efforts would be a waste of time, and I mean that!’

  Somewhere in another world, a telephone jangled noisily. Fawcett looked at the door, obviously restraining another impulse.

  ‘The mine is a deadly weapon, and it is cheap to produce. It’s effective because even the hint or the sighting of one can cause costly delays. The channels have to be swept, each fairway rechecked even if sweepers have carried out that thankless job only hours earlier. Mines, no matter what kind, don’t just go away. They have to be tackled by individuals with the courage and the will to do it. When I was in Sicily I saw some of the defences Jerry had been preparing when he realized the Afrika Korps was on the run. The Italians were good at it. The Germans will be better, next time.’

  Masters heard voices in the passageway, and could imagine the decision being reached.

  Fawcett looked at the office clock. ‘And I don’t just mean Italy. The mine has no discrimination. It lies there. It kills and it maims, and cares nothing for the uniforms of those who laid it. If the final invasion – dare I speak the word after all we’ve seen – is to succeed, we must be ready to act before the first landing craft drops her ramp.’

  What Critchley had been doing. Should have been doing. My choice, Fawcett had said. Was that only minutes ago? It was as if time had stopped.

  Were a submariner . . .

  On that same morning, the channel had already been swept. Ex-trawlers, and a lot of ex-fishermen too in the minesweeping service. And many of them had died.

  It could have been one of their own, a solitary drifter, perhaps, from a local field. And he had seen it, for a split second.

  He came back to the present as Fawcett said abruptly, ‘He was married, of course. I suppose I’ll have to say something.’

  The admiral was almost himself again. He raised his voice slightly. ‘Come in, and stop muttering!’

  It was Vernon’s Chief Yeoman of Signals, a squat, solidly built man who over the years had grown immune to the ways of flag officers. As a boy signalman, he had stood on the bridge of Jellicoe’s Iron Duke at the Battle of Jutland.

  ‘Signal from Tango Charlie, sir.’ He held out his pad. ‘An’ one on the scrambler from F.O.I.C.’

  The blue eyes moved briskly along the lines of round, schoolboy handwriting, and he grunted, ‘About time, too.’

  The Wren officer was just outside the door, and Masters could hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of another class heading to its next instruction. We obey orders, we do as we’re told, we live, we die. He saw, too, that the Wren’s eyes were red, something he had never known before.

  The admiral folded the signal and said quietly, ‘I want you to take his place. The way back, remember?’

  Masters straightened his back; always the reminder of being smashed into the conning tower. But there was no pain.

  Faces stood out, the Wren openly crying now, the Chief Yeoman be
aming, wanting to share it.

  And the rear-admiral. Composed, and quite alone.

  He scarcely heard his own reply but saw Fawcett give a brief smile.

  ‘I shall make the necessary signal.’ He lifted the gleaming cap and adjusted it to the expected rakish angle. ‘Now, it’s up to you.’

  It was anything but just another day.

  2

  No Looking Back

  The Dorset village of Chaldon St Mary, like countless towns and communities throughout the country which had been occupied by the armed services, would not be recognized by those who might have known it in peacetime.

  On the fringe of Weymouth Bay, and more to the point as the Admiralty had noted from the outset, only five miles from the naval base and anti-submarine establishment at Portland Bill, the village had served a rural area of scattered but prosperous farms, and the road which had skirted it to head further west to Devon and Cornwall. It consisted of one street, a church, one pub, a school, and small houses which looked as if they had been here for ever. In those other times people had paused here, perhaps to fish or to sail. The more adventurous had pressed onto the West Country, leaving Chaldon St Mary in peace.

  If you turned your back on the sea it might appear little changed, if you had known it before, amid the great sweeping beauty of the Dorset countryside, the hills, and even now the cattle dotted about in groups, or making their unhurried way to milking.

  Only a trained eye would detect the massive posts mounted in every field, the only defence against troop-carrying gliders in those early days when invasion had seemed inevitable, or the gun emplacements beneath their camouflaged netting. Now the narrow lanes shook to the rumble of army trucks and armoured vehicles, and the snarl of despatch riders’ motor cycles, scaring chickens and bringing shouts from servicemen on foot. The school was empty of children; all had been evacuated after the fall of France. The pub was busier than ever but always filled with uniforms, the older, local people a small minority. Only the fine church remained the same, with its well-kept memorial to the previous generation of plough boys and thatchers who had fallen at Passchendaele and Ypres. Now they had been joined by a neatly written list, more local names, and perhaps El Alamein.