Brian Aldiss - The Twinkling of an Eye

An entire period of their lives had come to an end. A more challenging one was about to begin.

Towering above the parade, moored to the quayside in the quiet waters of the Clyde, was the troopship Otranto , 21,500 tons. Prior to the war, the Otranto had belonged to Canadian Pacific Steamships, when it was accustomed to making the journey between Vancouver and Hong Kong. Seagulls screamed about its funnels. Orders were shouted. Loaded down with kit, the men climbed the gangplank, forced by its steepness to cling to a worn wooden rail. One by one, they stepped into the open maw of the ship, to be dispersed among its many decks.

So alien was this experience to most men that some were immediately seasick, although the ship lay without motion at its moorings.

Among the thousands forced to climb that gangplank was a lad not then nineteen. He entered the threadbare floating world with some excitement, being at that period of life where everything is novel, and what is novel is welcome. He was in misapprehension about many things; but many of those things, such as his emotional nature, he was able to set to one side under the greater urgencies of war. With energy and resource, he set about finding himself the best possible position on his allotted mess deck, in the depths of the ship.

He also pursued a line of conduct developed long before at school, that of making light of circumstances by joking with his fellows.

When he left home at the end of his embarkation leave, this young man promised his mother, Dot, that he would write home regularly. This promise he kept over the next four years.

Owing to Dot’s dedication, the letter I wrote home after boarding the Otranto , complete with its inked illustration, was preserved. It shows me in ebullient mood.

Now as I write it’s nearly sunset, with the sun flaming over the waters. Although we have moved away from the port, we’re anchored in sight of land – our land … I’m writing on a raft on the Boat Deck and a chap with a ukelele is leading community singing. (They’re just singing ‘Lili Marlene’: ‘Orders came for sailing Somewhere over there …’)

I don’t actually know how I feel. It’s difficult to describe. Everything has a dreamlike quality, we don’t quite believe it … But I’m trying to record all I see, and store everything that happens in my imagination. It’s certainly going to be interesting!

A new life’s ahead but, boy oh boy, we’re ready for it. Please try and don’t worry. As yet I’m enjoying myself – and it’s broadening my mind …

Some phrases in the letter, such as ‘broadening the mind’, were family catch phrases, jokes.

Wartime security decreed that we should never reveal where we were. Troop movements could provide useful information to the enemy. In everything – as in family life – there was secrecy. And England was a kind of family in those years. A companion poster to the ones saying ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ admonished more gently: ‘Be Like Dad – Keep Mum’.

The Otranto had been christened The Empress of Canada at its launching in 1922. Came the war and its feminine name had been ripped from it. Refitting on a large scale had taken place. It had been painted a North Atlantic grey from stem to stern. Just as those climbing up its gangplank had suffered the severest haircut of their lives, so the old ship had been shorn of its luxury trimmings. Except, that is, in the officers’ quarters.

Under cover of dark, the troopship slipped away down the Clyde, past the Isle of Arran and the pendulous Mull of Kintyre, round the sleeping north coast of Northern Ireland, to where the shallows of the continental shelf gave way to deeper waters – still the haunt of Germany’s U-boats at that period.

Dawn came. Ships, naval and merchant, were gathering, and spent the day manoeuvering into formation. Towards sunset we began to move. The cold grey ships slid into the cold night. Possibly twenty-eight ships all told, forming the last of the big wartime convoys. The strong heartbeat of the Otranto ’s engines was never to leave us over the weeks to come.

No smoking allowed on deck. The glow of a cigarette could be seen seven miles away.

Only the captain knew our destination. North America? The Middle East? Not, with luck, not India! India meant Burma. Our progress southwards consisted of a series of long zigzags, to west, to east: a manoeuvre against an enemy who still patrolled Atlantic waters. Yet by July 1944, the tides of war were turning in the Allies’ favour. No more was the Mediterranean Mussolini’s mare nostrum. Malta had survived more bombs than fell on London, Rommel had been defeated in North Africa. Our convoy was to be the first one not forced to sail by the longest route, travelling round the Cape of Good Hope, calling in at Durban for shore leave.

We sailed into the Mediterranean, through the narrow mouth guarded by the Rock of Gibraltar. Part of our destroyer escort left us, turning back into the prison-hued Atlantic. Suddenly, the sea was blue, sea birds cried, the great rock sang to port. Northern Europe had sunk below the horizon. My sails filled with excitement. The world looked wonderful, basking in balmy air. At sunset, a great warm breath was exhaled from the African coast, the very aroma of all that was exotic: perfume, camel dung, armpits of Oued-Nails, apricots, limes, other unknown fruits, frangipani, and the entrails of Arab towns.

Five thousand men were packed aboard the Otranto . On each deck, men, crowded like slaves on the Middle Passage, ate their food at mess tables, lived and slept there. So cramped were our quarters that half the men slept overhead in hammocks, while below them slept the other half, flat on the deck on palliasses.

The Otranto had five or possibly six decks above the water line: Sun Deck, Promenade Deck, Boat Deck, where the officers were quartered, A Deck, B Deck and C Deck. The detachment I was with was down on H Deck, the lowest deck in the ship, Damnation Deck, Doolally Deck, Dead Duck Deck, five decks below the water line, carved out of the very keel. To escape to the Boat Deck, the highest deck on which Other Ranks were allowed, entailed a long climb upward, through other crowded decks. Had a torpedo struck us, no one of H Deck would have stood a hope in hell of survival. We knew it.

But underlying the crowded discomfort of the ship, and the tedium of life aboard, went excitement at a first encounter with a hitherto inaccessible world, danger, and the quest for a drinkable mug of tea.

As soon as we were in warmer waters, I slept up on deck. It was permitted, yet few men took advantage of it. Over the rail lived the unceasing sea, heaving as if in the throes of giving birth, often phosphorescent with great sheets of wavering life, murmuring to itself in a green marine dream.

Our only enemies were the matelots. The sailors, hating soldiers, cleansed the decks at dawn every morning and hosed any sleepers with icy jets of sea water. We woke early to avoid them, both sides cursing the other. To return to H Deck was like trying to breathe stale sponge cake.

Of all the troops aboard ship, I seemed almost alone in enjoying the voyage. In the warrens of the ship, looped about with grey pipes of every bore, coiling along the bulkheads or snaking overhead, it was easy to imagine we were on a giant spaceship, heading for unknown planets. It was an enthralling fantasy.

So, in a sense, we were. We passed Malta and Pantelleria. Our first harbour was Port Said, at the head of the Suez Canal.

We passed slowly through the canal, pursued on either side by twin humps of wake. Heaving to in the Great Bitter Lake, we waited while a troopship passed us, heading north, homeward bound for England. Those aboard called mockingly across to us, ‘Get your knees brown!’ We moved at snail’s pace into the Red Sea and a zone of intense heat, where mirages trembled on either desolate bank.