Denied a normal home life, Lindsay had given everything to the Navy. In his heart he wondered if that driving force, his inbuilt trust, had been the main cause of his breakdown. For war was not a matter of weapons and strategy alone. Above all it was endurance. To survive you had to endure, no matter what you saw or felt. The Atlantic had proved that well enough. Endurance, and the grim patience of one vast slaughterhouse.
Could anyone thing break a man? How many times did he ask himself this same unanswerable question?
He sat down and stared at the glowing bowl of his pipe.
The Swedish ship had taken Vengeur’s survivors into New York. Had it been a British port things might have been different. But to men starved of bright lights, kindness and a genuine desire to make up for their suffering, it was another, unreal world.. The cloak to hide, or at least delay the shock of war.
After one week Lindsay and his men, some other survivors and a large number of civilian passengers had been put. aboard a Dutch ship for passage to England. It had an almost holiday atmosphere. The British seamen loaded with gifts and food parcels, the friendly Dutch crew, everything.
Lindsay had felt the loss of his ship much more once the Dutch vessel had sailed to join an eastbound convoy. Perhaps because for the first time he had nothing to do. A passenger. A number in a lifeboat, or for a sitting in the dining room.
He had shied away from the others, even his own officers, and had found himself mixing more and more with some of the civilian passengers. He had known it was to help him as well as them. He needed to do something, to occupy his mind, just as they required someone to explain and to ease the anxieties once the land had vanished astern.
There had been one family in particular. Dutch Jews, they had been in Italy when war had begun, and unable to reach home had started, as best they could, to escape. They needed no telling as to what would happen if the Germans got to them first. A nondescript Dutch Jew. Plump, balding and bespectacled, with a chubby wife who laughed a good deal. A quick, nervous laugh. And two children, who were completely unaware of their parents’ sacrifices and strange courage on their behalf.
The family had got aboard a Greek freighter to Alexandria. Then in another ship via Suez to Durban, with the little man using his meagre resources and his wife’s jewellery to oil the wheels, to bribe if necessary those who were too busy or indifferent to care about them.
Finallyy they reached America, and after more delays, examination of papers, and with money almost gone, they got aboard the Dutch ship.
Lindsay had asked why they had not remained in America. They would have been safe there. Well looked after. It made more sense. The little man had shaken his head. He was a Jew, but foremost he was Dutch. In England he would soon find work, he was after all a professional radio mechanic and.highly skilled. He would seek work to help those who had not given in. Who were fighting and would win against the Nazis.
Almost shyly he had said, ‘And I will know Holland is nott so far away. My wife and children will know it, too.’
The pipe had gone out, and Lindsay found he was staring fixedly at the closed scuttle. Holding his breath.
It had been a fine bright morning and warmer than usual. He had been sitting in his cabin watching the horizon line mounting the glass scuttle, hanging motionless for a few seconds before retreating again as the ship rolled gently in the Atlantic swell. The, previous evening he had been on the bridge with the Dutch master, who had told him that six U-boats thought earlier to have been near-by had moved away towards another convoy further south. This convoy was fast, and with luck should reach Liverpool in two more days.
The Dutch family had been getting visibly anxious with each long day, and Lindsay had called into their cabin before turning into his bunk to tell them the news. He could see them now. The two children grinning at him from a bunk, their parents sitting amidst a litter of shabby suitcases. They had thanked him, and the children had thrown him salutes as they had seen his men do.
That following morning he had wondered how he would pass the day. He had known that the Dutch family would be awake in their cabin, which was directly below his own. They had often jokedd about it.
At first he had thought it to be far off thunder, or a ship being torpedoed many miles away.
Even as he had walked to the scuttle there had been a tremendous explosion which had flung him on his back, deafening him with its intensity. When he had scrambled to his feet he had seen with shock that the sea beyond the scuttle was hidden in smoke, and as his hearing had returned he had heard screams and running feet, shrill whistles and the clamour of alarm bells.
Another explosion and one more almost immediately shook the ship as if she had rammed full-tilt into a berg. When he had regained his feet again he had found he could hardly stand, that the deck was already tilting steeply towards the sea.
When he had wrenched open the scuttle and peered into the smoke he had realised that the ship was already settling down, and when he had looked towards the water he had seen one of the sights uppermost in his nightmare.
The sea had almost reached the next line of scuttles below him. And at most of them there were arms and hands waving and clutching, like souls in torment. It was then he had realised that his own scuttle was just too small to climb through.
More violent crashes, the sounds of machinery tearing adrift and thundering through the hull. Escaping steam, and the banshee wail of the siren. It had taken all his strength to stagger up the deck to the door. The passageway had been full of reeling figures, forgotten lifebelts and scattered trays of tea which the stewards had been preparing at each cabin door.
Lindsay was on his feet again, pacing up and down as. he relived each terrible minute. Fighting his way down companion ladders, looming faces and wild eyes, screams and desperate pleas for help, and with the ship dipping steadily on to her side.
Their cabin door had been open just a few inches, and he had heard the woman sobbing, the children whimpering like sick animals. In a shaky voice the little Dutchman had explained that the whole cabin bulkhead had collapsed, had sealed the door. They were trapped, with the sea already just a few feet below the scuttle.
Lindsay could hear himself saying, ‘You must put the children through the scuttle.’ It had been like hearing someone else. So calm and detached, even though every fibre was screaming inside him to run before the ship took the last plunge.
The other voice had asked quietly, ‘Will you look after them?’
Lindsay could not remember much more. The next scene had been on the ravaged boat deck. Shattered lifeboats and dangling falls. Two dead seamen by a ventilator, and an officer falling like a puppet from the upper bridge.
Down on the water, littered with rafts and charred wood, with bodies and yelling survivors, he had seen the children float clear of the hull. Very small in their bright orange lifebelts. He had jumped into the water after them, but when he had looked back he had seenn that the whole line of scuttles had dipped beneath the surface. But here and there he had seen pale arms waving like human weed until, with a jubilant roar the pressure had forced them back out of sight.