She wasn’t much of a ship. The bridge was open to everything the Atlantic could throw at us. No matter how careful you were, the sea found its way down the back of your neck into your oilskins and into your boots. I joined her at Portsmouth on the tenth of May 1940. I’d been told the captain was a Tartar but I was confident we would muddle along somehow. I was wrong.’
Lindsay turned to look at her: ‘I need a cigarette.’ He swung his legs off the bed and padded across the room to his jacket which had been carelessly thrown on a chair beneath the window. Mary watched him as he took a cigarette and lit it, his neck and chest flickering in the lighter flame. He settled beside her again, sitting upright against the bedhead.
‘I remember Commander Cave’s first words to me were, “More horsemeat from the universities?”’ Pritchett Ernle-Erle-Cave; he considered himself to be among the nobility of the sea. His father was an admiral but the brains skipped a generation. After thirty years’ service Cave was lucky to be the captain of a vintage destroyer. He cursed like a stoker. I think he must have been the rudest man in the Navy and unfathomably ignorant. The Admiralty dusted him off at the beginning of the war and gave him Culloden. I sensed in my first hours aboard that she was an unhappy ship.
‘We missed Norway, Dunkirk and the fall of France. We muddled along that summer, escorting convoys in and out of the North-West Approaches. There was no hierarchy of misery at first. Cave treated everyone with equal contempt but then I did something very foolish. In an unguarded moment I mentioned my mother to one of the other officers. I don’t know why, it was something I had learnt not to do at school. A couple of days later Cave walked into the wardroom beaming from ear to ear and asked if I would care to join him in the captain’s cabin. He asked me about my family and was incensed when I refused to answer. After that, he brought it up time and again, anything and everything to do with my family, Germany and the war.’
Lindsay paused for a moment to look down at Mary: ‘But this isn’t only my hard-luck story, Cave made it unpleasant for all the officers. You know he must have been a very lonely man.’
Mary reached for Lindsay’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. In turn he lifted hers and, opening her fingers, kissed her palm tenderly.
‘A lot of ships were lost in the summer but our convoys were fortunate. Merchant ships began to call us “the lucky Culloden ”. And then convoy HX. 70. I can remember the face of our Canadian sub-lieutenant John Parker very clearly. We’re leaving Liverpool, passing into the swept channel and Johnny’s excited because he’s met a nurse called Grace. There’s a big grin on his face. He was nineteen, a lawyer preparing for the Toronto Bar.
‘Four escort ships with Cave as senior captain in command of the group. We met the convoy north-west of Rockall Bank on September the fourteenth, some three hundred miles from home, a grey Atlantic sky and sea, the wind like a knife, nine columns of four ships five miles wide, all struggling to hold their station. Cave spoke to the Commodore of the convoy on the wireless and I remember the little-boy excitement in his face when he was told that five ships had been sunk the night before. With the convoy travelling at no more than six knots it was a racing certainty the enemy was still in contact. I swear it was the happiest any of us had seen him. His moment of glory had come, his chance to prove the Navy wrong after years of being passed over.
‘All gun crews at action stations before sunset. I remember a thick white strip of moonlight rippling across the sea to the horizon and I could sense the enemy close by. Fear. Then at a little after eight o’clock it began. There was suddenly a small bright yellow light on the starboard side of the convoy. We weren’t sure what it was at first and we were under Admiralty orders to maintain wireless silence for as long as possible. Cave tried to signal the other escorts with an Aldis lamp but there was no reply. Then one of the merchant ships hoisted a red lantern and…’
‘A red lantern?’ asked Mary.
‘Torpedoed. And a few minutes later, there was an enormous explosion in the heart of the convoy: a tanker some two miles from us, a blazing mass of white flame, smoke rising in a huge column hundreds of feet into the sky. Then, on the far side of the convoy, another burst of flame and then another and another.
‘As we approached the tanker, we could hear thump, thump, thump against the sides of the ship as if a giant sea creature was trying to batter a hole in our hull. Cave shouted, “Go and see what that is, Number One.” The ship slowed and I made my way down to the fo’c’sle. The sea was heaving with timber, heavy wooden pit props. Then one of the crew shouted, ‘Over there, sir, look’, and there was a collection of little red lights dancing on the water, tossed towards us by the swell. We must have passed within a couple of hundred yards of them. I couldn’t see their faces but I could hear them: ‘Help, help, please God help…’
Lindsay reached over to the bedside table and lit another cigarette, smoke curling to the ceiling. Mary felt suddenly tense and cold and conscious that it was late, the still time between two and three o’clock when the night is at its darkest. In the silence she wrapped the sheet more tightly about herself. Lindsay did not look at her, but after a couple of minutes he began to speak again, quickly, harshly: ‘But I can’t blame Cave for leaving them, the convoy was under attack. We threw Carley rafts and promises, “We’ll be back.” But we didn’t go back. And then we were closing on the tanker. The sea was calmer about her, heavy with a sticky blanket of oil, and in places it was on fire. The ship was burning from stem to stern, the bridge just a twisted shell. We weren’t that close but I could feel the heat and hear the whoosh and roar of the flames, and the smoke was a billowing, choking black mountain even against the night sky. The convoy scattered. The Commodore must have despaired of the escorts and with good reason, never mind the enemy; we hadn’t even managed to make contact with each other. Honestly, it was a shambles, really a total shambles.
‘I’d returned to the bridge to find Cave in an impotent rage, cursing the other escorts and his own crew. It was a little after eleven, and I remember thinking, “Oh God another four or five hours of this.” Of course, we know now it was one of Donitz’s first pack attacks and there were four, perhaps five, U-boats chasing in and out of the convoy. They were all there, the U-boothelden — Otto Kretschmer, Prien, Mohr…’
‘Mohr?’ said Mary with surprise. ‘Mohr attacked the convoy? When did you find out?’
But Lindsay ignored her question: ‘We zigzagged to and fro for more than an hour, firing round after round of star shell over the sea in the hope of catching sight of a U-boat but we didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. The Asdic detector was useless, just an empty echo…’
‘They were on the surface,’ said Mary.
‘And it was quite obvious to me that we were wasting our time. By now we’d fallen five or six miles behind the convoy. I drew this to Cave’s attention and he exploded. I was forgetting my place, he said, I was questioning his judgement, thirty years’ experience he said. The U-boats were forgotten, I was now the enemy. It was a very unpleasant scene. My God, he’d more important things to worry about than me, but it was panic, he’d lost control. We weren’t “lucky Culloden ” any more. Then there was a terrific flash on the port bow, followed by another column of fire and smoke and that put an end to his diatribe. It was obvious even to Cave that we were searching in the wrong place. We went chasing over to the burning tanker, the men still at their stations, cold, tired, frightened. As we approached, we could see by the light of the flames another ship close by, a large freighter with her deck and cargo lights burning. She was listing heavily to port. We put scramble nets over our sides with a couple of burly ratings at the bottom to help survivors aboard but we didn’t find any one — just empty life jackets. I remember a small explosion somewhere deep inside the freighter, a sound like breaking glass; it blew the hatches off and there was a shower of wet ash from the funnel. The sea was in the engine room. The lifeboats were out there somewhere but Cave was anxious to rejoin what was left of the convoy. It was almost three o’clock and the sea was rough and getting rougher. By then we felt helpless and rather ashamed. Cave had a face like thunder. He used to glare at you from under dark bushy eyebrows. I remember glancing about the bridge that night and everyone was concentrating hard on the horizon, desperate not to catch his eye. For a moment I was barely able to contain myself, I had this mad, mad urge to laugh out loud.
‘We overhauled the main body of the convoy and the other escorts just before dawn. The Commodore’s ship was among them but he had no more idea than we did how many ships had been lost in the night. One of the other destroyers had picked up two hundred survivors, some of them in bad shape, and Cave gave her permission to leave us and make best speed to Londonderry. He sent the other escorts to round up stragglers and we were left with the rump. I shouldn’t think our presence was very reassuring.
‘The men were allowed to stand down from action stations, stand down before they fell down, weary and demoralised. I managed to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep too. Some stragglers joined us during the day but the glass was falling, sea state eight and worsening and we were soon struggling to keep our little convoy together. I don’t think Cave took any rest, he was running on adrenalin, a little unhinged.
‘Then at about eight o’clock that evening we did pick up a firm contact. Ping, ping, ping: imagine, Asdic contact at last,’ “Echo bearing one-sixty.” I remember the operator bouncing with excitement. He lost contact in the wake of a merchant ship but just for a few seconds. Bugger the convoy, Cave was determined to hunt and sink his U-boat.’
Lindsay sighed and reached down to stroke Mary’s hair: ‘By then the wind was almost storm force and we were ploughing into a head sea. The ship dragged her old bones to the top of a wave then raced down into the trough, before struggling to rise again. After ten minutes of this sort of pounding the submarine disappeared. We were disappointed, of course. A chance to redeem ourselves had slipped away. I remember Cave bullying the Asdic operators with threats and imprecations. The sub-lieutenant, Parker, felt sorry for them, he was a sensitive chap — more “university horsemeat” — and he said very tentatively: “Perhaps the submarine has surfaced, sir?” Of course it had, it was taking advantage of darkness and the weather to make its getaway. But Cave was furious again, furious. Was Parker trying to undermine his authority? Did anyone else want to pass an opinion? And he gave orders for another Asdic sweep. The temperature on the bridge dropped an uncomfortable couple of degrees but Cave didn’t care because he found a strange comfort in bullying his officers.
‘Imagine our situation. We’d left the convoy again, God knows if it was safe, we were trying to echo-find a submarine that was almost certainly on the surface and we were travelling at barely six knots on an almost straight course. The U-boat was out there somewhere in the darkness. We were asking for trouble. I remember glancing across at Parker and he caught my eye and nodded, or rather twitched, meaningfully at Cave. And I thought, “Oh God, he wants me to say something.” Reasonable you might think — I was the first lieutenant. “What’s the point?” I asked myself. My opinion would be neither sought nor welcomed, far from it, and so to my eternal shame I kept quiet. In fact I managed to shake my head a little at Parker and he rolled his eyes upwards, no doubt in complete exasperation. And so it happened.
‘Half an hour later I was visiting the quarterdeck watch when a torpedo hit us on the starboard side. I was thrown to the deck and something must have hit me because the doctors found a jagged cut on my back…’
‘The scar,’ said Mary. She was still holding his hand and she gave it an affectionate squeeze.
‘Then a terrible grinding noise and — well — it was terrifying. The whole bloody forepart of the ship was listing to starboard, toppling into the sea. Just seconds, that’s all, it happened in seconds, no time for anyone to escape. And there it was drifting away from us on its side — the wind shrieking around it and…’
‘Darling, please, you’re hurting me,’ said Mary.
‘I’m sorry.’
He let go of her hand, took a slow deep breath then reached for his cigarettes, but he did not light one, he just held the packet.
‘Most of the crew was in that part of the ship, almost two hundred men. There was nothing we could do, nothing. Cave, Parker, all of them lost. No survivors. I didn’t see the forepart sink, we were fighting to keep what was left afloat.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I tried to be busy and to keep the others busy. I don’t think I thought, “I’m going to die”, not while the wreck was afloat. But it was obvious that the boiler-room bulkhead was beginning to buckle and that we wouldn’t last until the morning. I remember holding on to the edge of a Carley raft, and I remember the deep cold and others close by — we were between the hulk and the corvette, Rosemary.’
Lindsay paused, then said: ‘I’m not entirely sure what happened next…’
He took out a crushed-looking cigarette and tapped it on the back of the packet. Then he lit it and by the lighter flame Mary could see that his hand was trembling, although his face was composed and quite calm.
‘There are only impressions, snippets of memory. There may have been an explosion inside the wreck that detonated some of our depth charges. There was fire on the water and I tried to swim away but couldn’t and it caught my sleeve, it was sticky, and I held it under. And I remember panicking because I couldn’t see the corvette through the smoke. For a moment I couldn’t see anything, anyone, and then as the smoke drifted I saw a man close by, and I tried to reach him. I’m not a strong swimmer but I tried to hold his head up. And at that time I knew I was going to die in that smoke and fire. And then the next thing I remember is someone pulling at me. One of the R osemary’ s officers told me later that I was as black as a Negro when they fished me out. I was clinging to another member of the crew — Baker — but he died almost as soon as he reached the deck. In the end they pulled fifteen of us from the sea alive and of those, three died aboard the Rosemary.’
Lindsay leant over to the bedside table to put his cigarette out and then turned and shuffled down the bed until he was lying under the sheet again. Mary touched his chest. It was cold and she moved closer to share the warmth of her body. His eyes were closed. She bent forward to kiss him tenderly.
‘Darling,’ she whispered. And she stroked his cheek.
‘I’m sorry. You didn’t need to know all that.’
‘Don’t be sorry, I’m glad you told me.’
He smiled wearily: ‘Do you understand?’
‘Understand?’
‘You’ve seen the official report. For once there wasn’t a Board of Inquiry. I gave my version but the Admiralty wasn’t interested. One senior officer said to me, “Unlucky name Culloden, you know”, as if that explained everything. Ironic don’t you think? For a time we were the lucky ship. Fleming told me there was some private criticism of Cave but the Admiralty buried it, saved his posthumous reputation. So there are just those few meaningless lines in the report. In my judgement he was responsible, not just for the sinking of his own ship but for most of those we lost from the convoy — fifteen in all. Sheer bloody incompetence. And the other officer who was to blame, well he was decorated.’
‘Douglas, no.’
‘I share responsibility, of course I do,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Remember the look Parker gave me on the bridge, pleading with me, “Say something, Number One, the ship’s in danger.” And I shook my head, too frightened to speak my mind. I know I am to blame.
‘The Admiralty wanted to hand out medals and it wanted photographs and newspaper copy, something to deflect public attention from the losses, and I was one of the chosen. Someone decided I’d shown the necessary presence of mind on the wreck — enough to justify a Distinguished Service Cross. And to my eternal shame I accepted it. Here…’
Lindsay opened the drawer of the bedside table. The decoration seemed to draw the thin light from the window, swinging silver at the bottom of its ribbon.
‘A silver cross.’
He put it back on the bedside table.
‘Some time after the sinking, I was asked to identify the body of a sailor washed up on a beach in Ireland, naked, torn, four weeks in the water. And I recognised the man, at least, I recognised his red hair. Short, good-humoured George Hyde, married with a daughter. And I cried for him.’
Lindsay’s voice cracked with emotion but when Mary tried to kiss him, he stopped her, taking her face in his hands.
‘No sympathy. I’ve told you all this so you know. I have a duty to Parker and the others to speak my mind. I don’t just follow orders any more.’
Mary leant forward again and this time he did not stop her. She kissed him long and tenderly and stroked his hair, pressing herself tightly against him. She felt so sorry for him, she wanted to say, ‘Don’t blame yourself, what could you do?’, but she knew it would sound trite. What could she say? His judgement was clouded by mad destructive guilt. It was the root of his troubles, Mohr, the codes, as if he needed to expiate what had happened to the Culloden. She knew she should end this nonsense. It was just that she had given her word to people she respected, people who trusted her and, yes, she would be breaking orders — breaking the law.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘You said you’d found out more about our codes?’
Lindsay looked at her closely: ‘Do you really want to know?’
He told her of his conversation with Samuels and the note he had been given on British codes: ‘Our codes have been broken before. It played a major part last summer when we lost so many ships…’
There was an almost indecent note of satisfaction in his voice.
‘Who is this friend of Samuel’s?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘He should know better.’
Lindsay pulled away from her a little: ‘We’re on the same side, remember? Perhaps Charlie’s friend felt we were on to something.’
‘Does Samuels think so?’ she snapped.
‘No. But if they’ve been broken once…’
‘Leave this, Douglas. You’re wrong. Believe me.’
‘… they may very well have broken them again.’
‘Didn’t you hear me? You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.’
He was staring at her, trying to gauge her expression, collecting his own thoughts. She wondered if he was angry. But when he spoke his voice was quite calm.
‘What do you know?’
Mary took a long deep breath. This was a betrayal, no matter the reason, the person.
‘I know our codes are secure. Naval Cipher One was changed after Norway and the Germans haven’t broken Cipher Two,’ she said quietly.
‘You know?’
‘Yes. I know.’
Lindsay lay there in silence for a moment, then rolled away from Mary and off the bed. She watched him walk across the room and take his dressing gown from the hook on the door.
‘Where are you going?’ She pulled the sheet a little higher, suddenly conscious of her nakedness beneath it. He was standing with his back to the window.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Come back to bed then.’ She knew he wouldn’t.
‘How do you know, why are you so sure?’
It was impossibly hard to answer, and she thought for a moment of Lindsay stepping over the side of the Culloden into the storm. She curled into a tight anxious ball beneath the sheet.
‘Well?’
‘There are some things I know that you don’t,’ she said at last. ‘Of course there are.’
Lindsay said nothing. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness.
‘I tried to tell you.’
‘Tell me what? You didn’t try very hard,’ he said coldly.
‘I couldn’t tell you, Douglas.’
‘You couldn’t?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ve changed your mind.’
‘Yes. Because I love you and this obsession with our codes is dangerous — it’s damaging you.’
‘I see.’
Seconds slipped by and she watched him stiff and silent against the window as he pressed the last pieces into place. And she was afraid and full of regret and wanted to deflect his thoughts: ‘Come back to bed, please come back to bed.’
‘We’re reading their signals, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’
It tumbled out of her: ‘Yes.’
And for a moment the room itself seemed to be alive and physical like an animal breathing heavily, its heart thumping in the darkness. She spoke quickly and nervously as if to hold it at bay: ‘Our code people at Bletchley Park — Station X — have broken their Enigma ciphers — everything, well almost everything. We can decipher and read their signals, sometimes only hours after they’re sent. Donitz’s orders, the reports the submarines sent to headquarters — the fuel they need, the ships they’ve attacked, course and position. When the wife of the engineer on U-552 had her baby we were among the first to know. Do you see? If our codes had been broken we would know, believe me.’
And now Lindsay was moving away from her to the door and the room filled with blinding light.
‘That was cruel,’ she said.
‘No more than you deserve.’ He clearly meant it. She heard him drawing the blackout curtains.
‘Have you a dressing gown I can borrow?’
‘No. Yes, there’s another one on the back of the door.’
Then she heard him leave the room. She opened her eyes and glanced at her watch on the bedside table: it was four o’clock. She felt weary and very weak at the prospect of the questions, the conversation to come. Slipping from the bed, she walked quickly to the door and wrapped herself in Lindsay’s dressing gown. It was a burgundy colour like the flock wallpaper in the hall and she wondered if it was a gift from his mother. Lindsay was in the kitchen, she could hear the kettle and the chink of china being loaded on to a tray. He had turned the lights on in the sitting room. ‘That must be where he wants me,’ she thought.
On the couch, feet curled beneath her, Lindsay’s dressing gown pulled comfortingly tight, she waited in tired silence. It was such a long night, a mini melodrama, like one of the baroque mysteries her mother enjoyed, drawing people’s motives and the threads of their lives together. Stories that always seemed to end so neatly.
‘Tea? I haven’t any milk.’
Lindsay put the tray on an occasional table and knelt beside it. As she watched him there, bone china cup in hand, ancient green dressing gown, tousled blond hair, she felt a pang of love and longing, a need to be close to him again. She wanted to lean forward and touch him, but before she could move he turned to offer her the cup. How small and fragile it looked in his hand.
‘Thank you.’
He did not look up but turned to the tray to pour another. She knew what he must be thinking.
‘I’m sorry, Douglas, but I couldn’t tell you about the Enigma ciphers. We’ve been told to say nothing to anyone, to husbands, to lovers, to anyone.’
‘Does Checkland know?’ He sounded tired and low. He had finished pouring a cup of tea for himself but was still kneeling at the table with his back to her.
‘Checkland? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Probably. Yes he does.’
‘And your brother?’
‘Perhaps.’
Lindsay’s cup and saucer rattled a little as he lifted them from the tray. With what seemed like a great effort he stood up and made his way to one of the armchairs on the other side of the table. Only when he had settled in it did he look up at Mary.
‘What an idiot you must think me, all of you.’
‘Darling, of course not.’
‘No one considered telling me, I suppose. Why? I couldn’t be trusted?’ He felt wounded and was making little effort to disguise it.
‘Douglas, I don’t know how or why Checkland and my brother know — perhaps they guessed…’
‘Samuels,’ said Lindsay breaking in, ‘I think Samuels must have.’
‘But most people in the Division don’t know,’ she said. ‘Rodger Winn told me most of the government don’t know, so, you can’t really..’
Lindsay was shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Aren’t you listening to me?’ she asked exasperatedly.
He raised his head to look at her, and his expression was stiff, almost hostile. ‘I’m still a bloody idiot. God, I was so sure.’
‘Douglas, please.’
‘I suppose I understand why no one else told me. Of course it’s of the first importance, but you, you…’
He did not finish and he did not need to because Mary knew what he was thinking and she flushed hot with embarrassment.
‘I was told to say nothing.’
‘Yes, yes, husbands and lovers, you explained.’
‘But you don’t believe me or you blame me…’
‘… for allowing me to make an idiot of myself? Of course not, I applaud your discretion,’ he said bitterly.
‘You know now and it could cost me my job, who knows, my liberty too.’
Lindsay put down his cup, got to his feet and walked over to the fireplace, cursing quietly under his breath: ‘Such a bloody idiot.’
‘Please, Douglas, come here, please.’ She wanted to end this hateful talk of secrets and codes but his back was resolutely turned towards her. He seemed to have forgotten the love, the intimacy they had shared only hours before, brushed it aside. When she spoke again her voice trembled:
‘Please, Douglas, I’m sorry but I…’
She stopped abruptly in an effort to control her feelings. Her chest felt tight with frustration and disappointment and exhaustion. And Lindsay must have sensed that she was close to tears because he was at her side, his arm about her.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what else could you do?’ he whispered as he stroked her hair. And he lifted her chin and brushed away a silent tear with his lips.
It must have rained in the night because a fine mist was rising from the roofs, the sun blindingly bright on the wet grey slate. It was after nine o’clock but Sunday quiet. Standing at the sitting-room window, Lindsay could hear the bells of Westminster Abbey calling, an insistent but comforting round from treble to tenor. He had slipped out of bed without waking Mary, gently lifting her arm from his chest, and he had watched as she curled into the warmth they had shared, tracing with love the curve of her breasts and hips beneath the thick cotton sheet. Her face was white with exhaustion, worn down by the emotional battering of the night and long hours at the Citadel. ‘God, I love you,’ he had whispered, ‘I love you so much.’ But now, standing there at the window, gazing out to the world beyond the bedroom, he felt empty and useless, as if someone had kicked the stuffing from him. And yes, he loved Mary very deeply, but no matter the words and kisses of reassurance, he could not quite forgive her. She had been part of a conspiracy to hide the truth from him. He knew it was foolish to think so but he could not help it. Yes, orders, a secret of the first importance, but Mary had watched him throw away his position, behave like an idiot. She had told him about the Enigma ciphers only when the damage had been done.
He walked across the room to his dark galley kitchen, picked up his cigarettes and lighter, then, returning to the window, lit one and exhaled, a comforting stream of smoke. He had noticed he was smoking more, forty or even fifty a day, but he could think more clearly with a cigarette in his hand. And in its reflective haze it was easier to admit that the emptiness he felt was not just disappointment that Mary had hidden the truth from him. He wanted to be right. He had been so certain the Navy’s codes were compromised, so sure that he was doing something useful, something that would help to wipe the slate clean. And now that hope was gone.