Most Secret (23 page)

V.A.C.O. bowed to the daughter and nodded to Colvin. “I have met Mr. Colvin,” he said. “Is this the little girl you had at Malta?”

He sat down with them and began reminiscing with the old lady. Colvin was looking awkward still; I moved over to him.

“I say,” I said in a low voice, “I’m damn sorry about that cat. I ought to have remembered what he thinks of cats and warned you.”

He said: “That’s all right, sir. I’m glad that was the only thing he found to bawl us out on.”

“There was nothing else,” I said. “I think he was very pleased with what he saw.”

We sat chatting about this and that for a quarter of an hour; then dance music sounded from another room, and Colvin took the girl through to dance. I heard the old lady say to the admiral:

“What a nice man that Mr. Colvin is! Is he under you?”

He said: “In a way he is. Commander Martin here knows more about him than I do.”

She smiled at me. “Elaine and Mr. Colvin are great friends,” she said. “He comes and takes her dancing whenever there is a dance. It’s very good for Elaine. Living as we do in hotels like this she meets so few young men. Sometimes I feel it’s rather selfish keeping her with me.”

The conversation shifted on to something else, but I had heard enough to make me just a bit uneasy. I was fairly certain Colvin had been lying when I had asked him if he was married;
at the time I was quite glad, because that was the answer that I wanted. I watched when they came back after two or three dances. The girl had got a colour in her cheeks and she was as radiant as a bride.

Geneviève
was due to sail on operations in a few days’ time. A damn good thing, I thought.

I went back to London with the admiral the next afternoon, Sunday. That was some time at the beginning of September, and the nights were long enough for what she had to do. I made the necessary arrangements, and they sailed her round to Penzance on the Thursday and Friday, working up as they went.

There was a full moon that week, and the weather was perfect, much too good for them. I wasn’t going to be any party to sending them over to the mouth of Brest upon a blazing moonlit night half as light as day. I talked it over with McNeil, and we kept them there at Penzance for the best part of a week before we let them go. By then the moon was waning, and we got a forecast of unsettled, rainy weather. That was more the sort of thing we wanted, and I went down to Penzance with McNeil overnight.

That morning, Thursday morning, was grey and dreary with a light rain falling.
Geneviève
was anchored just outside the harbour; I went to the Naval Centre and got a boat out to her. Colvin had been ashore to report when they got there; apart from him none of them had left the ship. They had been out each day exercising in Mount’s Bay, but it was very cramped quarters in the ship for the full crew, and they were anxious to get away.

I had a conference with them in the cabin that forenoon, Simon, Colvin, McNeil, and I. By the shortest route they had about a hundred and ten miles to go to a point half-way between Le Toulinguet and the Ile de Sein, where they might reasonably expect to find the fishing fleet. I wanted them, however, to keep clear of Ushant by ten miles or so; that made their route about a hundred and seventeen sea miles. At their comfortable cruising speed of ten and a half knots, that meant a bit over eleven hours.

I did not want them to get to the rendezvous before midnight, in order that they should have plenty of darkness in which to approach the coast, and I told Simon that he ought to get away soon after three in the morning.

Colvin marked off their course upon the chart and measured
it carefully. “Get under way at one o’clock,” he said. “Hands to dinner at twelve. I’d better tell the cook.” He went out to the galley.

I turned to Simon. “If you can make it, come to Dittisham direct on your return,” I said. “I shall go back to Dartmouth and wait for you there.”

Brigadier McNeil said: “Is there anything more that you want? Anything we can do for you when we go ashore?”

Simon brushed back the long, dark hair that had fallen over his forehead. “There is nothing that we want,” he said. “We now have everything. Only if you are going back to Dartmouth, would you do one thing for me?”

He said: “Of course.”

“These Frenchmen that I have here in the ship,” said Simon. “In England they can none of them afford to drink the French wines, and they do not like the heavy English beer. When we come back, in two days or in three, they will be very happy. I would like that they should have each a bottle of French wine to their dinner—cheap red wine, like Pommard, or the St. Julien that English people drink. I will pay, but will you find the wine for me?”

The brigadier said: “I’ll look after that. I’ll have it there at Dartmouth waiting for you.”

I straightened up above the chart-table. “Well, away you go,” I said. “Wish I was coming too.”

We went on deck; the boat was waiting for us at the side. I took a last look round. Rhodes was there, and he came up to me.

“You going back to Dartmouth, sir?” he asked.

I told him that I was.

“If you see that Wren, Miss Wright,” he said, “would you remind her to be sure and feed my rabbit? She’s the Wren that drives our little Austin truck.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “Anything else?”

He grinned and said casually: “Give her my love.”

“I’ll do that, too,” I said. McNeil was already in the boat, and I went over the side and joined him, smearing black, tarry paint over my bridge coat as I went. We pushed off, returning their salutes, and made our way back to the harbour in the rain.

It was nearly twelve o’clock. Neither of us wanted to leave Penzance or to sit down to lunch till we had seen them on their way We went into a pub beside the harbour and had a couple of whiskies in silence; neither of us could think of anything to
talk about except what could not be talked in a public-house. At a quarter to one we went out and walked up and down on the sea wall watching the ship.

At five minutes to one we heard the rumble of her Diesel motor over the water and saw that she was shortening her cable. The anchor came up to the hawse, and she turned to the south. She put on speed, and very quickly vanished in the rainy mist.

I
WENT back to the Naval Centre and made a cryptic signal to V.A.C.O. to tell him that the ship was on her way. Then we had lunch and got on to the train; we arrived back in Dartmouth late at night and slept in the Naval College.

I say we slept, but speaking for myself, I was awake for most of the night. I had been intimately concerned with this venture from the beginning, and I had come to know the officers if not the ratings more intimately than was usual in operations that I had to do with. It makes it difficult to sleep when you possess that knowledge; you lie awake hour after hour, wondering whether, sitting at your desk, you could have thought more deeply for them, organised them better, made them safer in the perils that they had to face. It’s really not so good to know a ship so intimately as I knew
Geneviève
.

We did not hurry in the morning. By the shortest route, close round by Ushant, it is a hundred and seventy sea miles or so from the rendezvous where they expected to find the fishing fleet, to Dartmouth. Assuming that they left the area at two in the morning, they could not possibly arrive before six o’clock in the evening; in all probability they would be out another night unless they put into some nearer port. There was nothing for us to do all day but to keep within hail of the telephone in the Naval Centre.

We made our way down there after breakfast. Outside the door the little Austin van was parked; the Wren driver was walking up and down disconsolately outside. She brightened when she saw us coming up the street, and went and stood by her car.

I stopped for a moment. “Miss Wright,” I said. She came to attention, which rather put me off. “I had a message for you from Lieutenant Rhodes. He wanted me to remind you to be sure to feed his rabbit.”

She coloured a little. “Very good, sir,” she said formally. And then more humanly she asked: “Did they go?”

This girl already knew sufficient to blow the gaff if any gaff was to be blown, and had known it for weeks. “They got off yesterday,” I said in a low tone. “They should have done their stuff last night. They may be back here late to-night or very early to-morrow morning.”

She said: “Thank you, sir, for telling me.”

“Keep it under your hat,” I said. “And don’t let Rhodes come back and find his rabbit hungry.”

She smiled at that; she was really quite a pretty girl.

I turned away, then stopped. “Oh, and one other thing,” I said. “He asked me to give you his love.”

She blushed suddenly scarlet; it seemed that I had hit the bull’s eye quite unwittingly. “He did what, sir?” she muttered.

I grinned. “You heard me the first time,” I said, and turned and went into the Naval Centre with McNeil.

I rang up V.A.C.O. and told the duty officer where I was in case any news came through, and I did the same with C.-in-C. Western Approaches. It was then eleven o’clock in the morning, and there was nothing to do but sit and wait for news.

It’s very trying when you have to wait like that. McNeil and I did not talk much; we sat there smoking our pipes, trying to read and concentrate upon our newspapers in the bare little office. So many things could have happened to them, apart from enemy action. It had been a dark night up till two o’clock, though it had not rained much; at Dartmouth visibility had been poor, and it was probably much worse around Ushant. We had sent them in in the dark night to close a coast that was unlit and sown with reefs. To the north of their area ten miles of half-tide rocks run out from St. Mathieu to Ushant; to the south the Saints stretch a great tongue of reefs westward fifteen miles offshore. In the middle of the area the reefs outside Le Toulinguet stretch two or three miles out; in amongst all that mess they had to find their fishing fleet. The tides were strong round there; in places they ran four or even five knots. If in the darkness and the run of tide they were five miles out in their position at the end of a hundred-and-thirty-mile trip, they might have met disaster absolute.

I sucked my pipe and tried to read the news, which was all bad. The Russians were being driven farther and farther back, and now the Germans were approaching the Crimea.

McNeil and I went out to lunch in turn, one of us staying by
the telephone. We walked up and down outside the office after lunch in the fitful sunshine between bursts of rain; the Wren was still there waiting with her little truck. At about four o’clock I went and saw the secretary, an R.N.V.R. lieutenant.

“There’s the Watch Point up on the cliff, sir,” he said. “We’ve got a direct line to that. Your Wren knows where it is and I’ll have any call that comes put through to you there.”

I went down with McNeil and got into the truck, telling the Wren to take us to the Watch Point. She said eagerly: “Are they coming in, sir?”

“It’s not time,” I said. “They can’t be here much before dark.”

The Watch Point was a little camouflaged hut on the cliff-top, half sunk in the earth. There was an old petty officer in charge and a signalman with him; they had a good big telescope upon a stand and a couple of pairs of field-glasses. Three hundred feet below us lay the sea, grey, dappled, and corrugated with wind. It was a better place to wait than in the office.

The signalman made tea, and I had the Wren in and gave her a cup. She sat in a corner silent, waiting with us. We waited on there, smoking patiently, talking very little, hour after hour. And in the end they came.

The signalman first saw them at about half-past seven, when the light was beginning to fade. He saw a vessel through the telescope many miles out, heading for the harbour. We all had a look in turn, continuously; even the Wren had a look, the signalman helping her with the focusing. When they were three or four miles out and we were quite clear it was
Geneviève
I rang through to the duty officer and told him they were coming in.

“Make them a signal to go straight up to their mooring at Dittisham,” I said. “I shall go round and meet them there.”

“Very good, sir.”

I sent a message to their mess steward at Dittisham to get a meal ready, and then we left the hut and got into the truck. Half an hour later we drew up outside the villas, left the Wren there to help with the meal, and walked down to the hard.

The vessel was already in sight down the reach, coming up in the last of the evening light. Down at the water’s edge there was an R.N.V.R. surgeon-lieutenant waiting in the boat, who had come out from Dartmouth on a motor-bicycle. A rating rowed us out towards the mooring as the ship drew near, and we scrambled over the side before she was secured.

Simon met us and helped us over the bulwark. He was in fishing clothes, dirty and unshaven, and very, very tired.

He said: “We got a
Raumboot
with the flame-gun, sir.”

McNeil said: “You did get one? God, that’s fine! Did you sink her?”

He shook his head. “I do not know. I think she may have sunk in the end. She was all burning end to end when we had finished, but we did not stay around. And then the rain came down again, and we lost sight of her.”

McNeil went on with Simon; Colvin came up to us. “This is a damn good show,” I said. “Did you get any casualties?”

“Not one,” he said. “They never got a single round off at us. That fire-gun surely is the goods.”

I asked a few more hurried questions, but the men were obviously very tired and I wanted them to get ashore. The full report could wait till they had had a meal and some sleep; there was no urgency. I told Colvin to get everyone ashore and hand over to the shore party for an anchor watch.

Boden said: “What about the Jerry? Do we take him too, or leave him here?”

Colvin said: “Leave him here the night. He’s all right as he is.”

“Do you mean a German?” I asked, startled.

“Sure,” said Colvin. “We picked one up out of the water, but he died pretty soon.” He paused. “We put him down alongside the fuel-tanks. Do you want to see him?”