Submarine

'You're cold,' he said, pulling down the sweater. 'I'll find somewhere out of the breeze.' He climbed to his feet and scrambled down to the tide-line fringing the cove. She watched him scouting round the rocks and then, when he was out of sight behind the promontory, swiftly climbed to her feet. Sweeping her sweater over her head, she slipped into her gaberdine raincoat; unzipping her skirt, she watched it tumble to the turf. She stepped from it and folded it inside the sweater. Placing the makeshift cushion on the turf, she buttoned her raincoat and sat down, her hands behind her, waiting for him.

The last rays of the sun were streaming across the wild countryside behind her, deliciously warm, heightening every glorious colour, the vivid greens, the blues, the shining golds…. 'Dear God,' she cried out, 'please, oh please, don't take him from me.' She turned abruptly as she heard Julian scrunching on the shale from somewhere between the rocks.

'There's nowhere better,' he called to her.

She smiled, holding a hand out towards him. 'It's lovely here,' she cried. 'Warm, now, in the sun.' She lay back. 'Come,' she called softly.

Kneeling beside her, he took her face between his hands. Then, without a word, opening the collar of the coat, he began to caress her body.

'My God — you're beautiful.'

She felt his ringers at the buttons, undoing them one by one. She watched his dark eyes lingering over her, saw the gleam in them as he folded back her coat. Her arms went around him, pulling him down roughly, taking him to her:

'I want our child, now, now,' she whispered fiercely. 'Then I'll have you for ever. Whatever happens…'

The peaks of the Cuillins, tipped crimson and orange by the afterglow of sunset, cotton grass whispering in the moorland behind them, and the call of a curlew floating plaintively in the silence of the gathering dusk… she would cherish this instant when time stood still, this moment when finally she opened her eyes, until the end of her mortal days.

Chapter 9

HMS Submarine Safari, 7 May.

'Is that our last run, Number One?' asked Coombes.

'Yes, sir. Noise trial completed.'

Commander Coombes glanced at the clock above the submarine's chart table. 'Time to go home,' he said. After surfacing, you can send your libertymen to clean. I'll take her on the watch to Pabay Island.'

'Thanks, sir.'

'What time's the liberty-boat?'

'1615, sir.'

'ETA Pabay, pilot?' Coombes asked his navigating officer, Lieutenant Everard Farquharson, who was crouched over his chart table in the starboard for'd corner of the control-room.

'1605, sir.'

Coombes glanced at the men around him: Fleet Chief Petty Officer 'Bull' Clint, his extrovert cox'n on the planes was keeping the ordered depth of two hundred feet. Standing alongside the cox'n in the port for'd corner of the cramped control-room was the 'outside wrecker', MEA/Mech I Hank Botham, who was supervising the newly-joined PO MEM watchkeeper on the sec. Between the two athwartship periscopes stood the WEO, Lieutenant-Commander Simon Grenville. The first lieutenant, the senior two-and-a-half on board, Stuart Hamilton, hovered on the port side of the masts from where he kept an eye on his AI team.

'No other contacts, sir: only Orcus bearing 015°.'

'Cabot's keeping the area clear: I won't stop on the way up today, Number One,' Coombes said. 'Stop engine. Periscope depth.' He nodded at the ship control officer of the watch, 'Six up.'

The captain stood between the periscopes, watching as the incredible machine responded to the sensitive controls, all 4,500 tons of her. He could feel her under his feet, the angle coming on as she adopted her six-degree bow-up angle.

'No contacts,' the sound-room reported. In the hands of a good operator, the 2001 sonar was a magnificent set.

'No contacts, watcher,' again from the sound-room.

Coombes was happier now, after the hard time he'd had licking his ship's company into shape before his first wartime patrol off the Faeroes.

'Seventy-two, seventy feet.'

'Up search,' Coombes snapped, taking his hands from his pockets. This was the tricky bit, blind still, unpleasantly vulnerable to deep-draught ship tankers — VLCCS- now drew ninety feet. To be safe these days, Safari had to be at 190 feet.

'Sixty-four…'

He opened the periscope handles. The light from the surface was percolating downwards… and then suddenly came the bubbles and the frothing.

'Breaking.'

'Sixty-two…'

'No contacts, watcher.'

'Sixty feet.'

As the glass cleared Coombes could see Raasay, bare, fresh green at this time of the year — and he swept round in low power: Scalpay, Pabay, Longay and the Crowlins between which Safari would be slipping, the rounded cliffs of the Ross-shire coast: then, back to the north, towards the top of the Sound and Rona — there was Orcus… 'Nothing close,' he snapped. 'Orcus bearing that, six thousand yards.'

'Red 147°, sir,' the bearing-ring reader reported.

'Sonar standard. Fall out, 2001,' Coombes could dispense with sonar now.