Submarine

Scanes glanced around the mess, the compartment which the senior rates had tried to make homely. The two royal portraits hung above the bar; and on the bulkheads, the mess committee had hung prints of country scenes given to them by Vickers. Messes were usually adorned with toothy, busty nudes, but the President of the Mess, the Fleet Chief MEM, an old-timer and a stickler for standards, was right: the mess was pleasantly dignified and peaceful, except when the mess idiot and his buddy, Bull Clint were around.

Bull, the cox'n, tried over-hard to project his image as a character, brandishing that ridiculous fly-whisk he had picked up in Beira, he was, to Scanes, a trifle pathetic. Scanes felt embarrassed when sometimes intercepting JRs' glances behind Clint's back.

Scanes glanced at the clock: he was the MEAOW for C watch, a watchkeeping roster of one in four which this section of the propulsion department kept. The propulsion department ran the 'Augment' or five watch system, even in wartime, with a fifth watch, and those under training, always on leave. This was the only practical way to run the one department in the nuclear submarine which could never shut down; the kettle was a demanding mistress. Scanes remembered those hard days when he had started in Valiant, and the fifth watch system had not been devised: the incessant work for the senior rates was hellish. Things were better now, but trickle drafting still threw too much weight on the senior rates: no sooner had a youngster been trained to be useful, than he shoved off to another boat. But what else could the Navy do? If it had not been for Beryl he would have quit long ago. She had been right to persuade him during those hard years to stay in the service — and Scanes leaned back, shutting his eyes to retrieve in his imagination those last days they had shared before the Soviets took out Faslane. Beryl had travelled down to Meavy near Yelverton to see her mum, when Safari had put in for five days before her first wartime patrol. It was a lucky escape for her, because their married quarters in Faslane had been one of the houses destroyed. And what was more, in Devonport, she'd had her hopes for a child confirmed by their doctor: after six years of marriage, they were having their first in November — and they had begun to swap possible names for it in their letters.

Safari and Orcus had picked up their bags of mail in Lochalsh. Scanes had a good run ashore with Tom Grady, Scane's oppo from training course days. Grady was enjoying being Orcus' outside wrecker; he liked his new skipper, an unusual, solitary sort of bloke, apparently, but efficient and fair. Grady had received some good news in his mail: a cousin of his in the Fleet Air Arm called Osgood, who had been reported missing from Furious, had been picked up and was recovering in hospital. Grady had 'insisted on celebrating that evening and he and Scanes had drunk too much of the local fire-water.

They were lucky, too, in Safari to have a good skipper, but Commander Coombes could not be a more contrasting character than Orcus' CO, judging from Grady's remarks Coombes was flambuoyant, irrespressible, an extrovert. The troops loved him, and not only because he'd been in the boat longer than most. He knew every inch of the boat and exuded confidence: not a bad quality when belting along at thirty knots at five hundred feet, outward bound on a special mission He'd told them all about sow after they'd finished mucking about south of Ireland, frigging around with other SSNS and exposing themselves deliberately on ECM as part of the deception plan. It wasn't until 1100 on 14 May that they had started north from the Flannan Isles; Safari had been steaming at thirty knots ever since. Being in the propulsion department was bloody hard work.

Scanes enjoyed his duties, liking the freedom and the edge given to the job by the continuous search for trouble. Scanes had a roving commission: the MEAOW was a trouble-shooter monitoring the remoter machinery, searching for faults before they occurred, checking the junior stokers isolated as watch keepers on the remoter auxiliaries. These young men kept their four-hour watches on the machinery until they could barely stand in the overwhelming noise and heat.The poor sod, the lower watchkeeper, always emerged pale and grey at the end of his watch. His one craving was for sleep, but six hours was the maximum time off-watch he could get, six hours in which to eat, wash and sleep before his treadmill duty began again. The lives of everyone hung upon these lads: if the vital distiller went duff- it could happen in seconds — the boat would come to a grinding halt. How many lads in civvy street, Scanes thought of the same age as these junior MEMS bore such responsibility Scanes got up, stretched himself. He'd take over his watch then start his rounds.