by Guy Walters
‘There!’ hissed Craven, pointing at a gap between two smacks. ‘That looks as if it might do.’
He was right. Bobbing gently up and down against the decking was a clinker-built wooden dinghy, about fourteen feet long, complete with a small outboard engine. It even boasted a pair of oars.
‘Great,’ said Armstrong. ‘That should get us there. I’ll get in, you cast us off.’
Within a couple of minutes Armstrong was rowing them out of the harbour towards the bay. The exercise, together with sharp inhalations of sea air, felt refreshing, and he permitted himself a further ounce of satisfaction that they had got this far. As they reached the bay, he looked to his left, along the line of dark houses and cottages that culminated in the camp. There was no more music emanating from the Albert Hall – just laughter sounding across the water.
‘When should we start the engine?’ Craven whispered.
‘Not for another hour at least,’ Armstrong grunted back.
‘Shall I take over?’
‘No, not yet.’ Armstrong’s pride stopped him from yielding to Craven. Just because he was in his mid forties it didn’t make him an invalid. In fact, he was in much better shape than most of his colleagues, many of whom had lost their post-war leanness to a surplus of dinners. He liked to keep fit, although he had never found as much time as he would have liked, not until he was brought here, at least.
After ten minutes Armstrong had rowed them out into the bay. The coastline disappeared up to the north-east, which was to their starboard side.
‘Have you got the compass?’ Armstrong asked.
Craven fished it out of his pocket.
‘We want to be heading north,’ said Armstrong.
Craven held the compass right up to his face.
‘Bang on target,’ he whispered.
‘Great – make sure we stay that way. I don’t want to end up in Ireland.’
‘Look, are you sure you don’t want me to take over?’
Armstrong continued rowing, ignoring the question. He’d change positions in a few more minutes, and then allow himself a mouthful of bread and cheese as a reward. They had a good twenty-five miles to go, and he wasn’t going to take the engine’s capability for granted. So long as they got to Scotland before it was light, they could rest up all day. He didn’t fancy being stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea in daylight, even if the alarm hadn’t been raised.
Their objective was the Mull of Galloway, Scotland’s most south-westerly point. Armstrong had two reasons for choosing it – first, it was the closest part of the mainland to Peel, and second, Richard Collyer, one of Armstrong’s fellow Gurkha officers, lived nearby. The two men made contact once a year, when Collyer was on his annual visit to London, and on each occasion, as they sat in the Carlton Club, Collyer would insist that Armstrong should ‘really come up one of these days’. Armstrong had never found an opportunity, but if all went well over the next several hours, he would soon be knocking on the door of Logan House.
‘All right, your turn,’ said Armstrong, and the men swapped places.
Initially, Craven’s efforts were cack-handed, and Armstrong feared that he would have to resume rowing, but Craven soon established a competent rhythm. Looking back, Armstrong could see the harbour lights becoming more distant, but he still did not wish to start the engine. Another half an hour, he reckoned.
Armstrong first pulled the starter cord at half past one. By a quarter to two, both he and Craven had given up. The engine refused to start, not even allowing itself to turn over. They had unscrewed the cap and gazed into the fuel tank, seeing that there was indeed petrol in it. Could the boat be a dud? Of all the bloody hundreds in the harbour, it seemed as though they had picked the wrong one.
‘If it’s not even turning over,’ said Craven, ‘that can only mean one thing.’ His tone was one of resignation.
‘What?’
‘There can’t be any spark plugs. The buggers must have taken them out.’
Armstrong breathed out – it sounded plausible.
‘Shit,’ he swore softly.
Craven sat back in a deflated heap.
‘My turn to row,’ said Armstrong.
‘What’s the bleeding point? We’ll never make it.’
But Armstrong ignored the dejection.
‘Come on – let’s unscrew the engine and dump it. We’ll go a lot quicker without the damn thing.’
The dawn couldn’t have been more beautiful, but Armstrong cursed it. As the pale yellow light got stronger, he felt increasingly exposed. They had been rowing, mainly in silence, for three hours, and the coast of Scotland appeared still to be several miles away. To their starboard side, the peaks of the Lake District were visible. It was only the second time in his life he had seen them – the first occasion was on the boat that had taken them from Liverpool to Douglas back in June. To port they could see Ireland, another place Armstrong had never visited. He remembered being told about it when he was growing up in India, but it had been a place that had been impossible to imagine.
‘How’s it looking ahead?’ asked Craven, who was rowing.
‘We’ve still got a way to go.’
‘Any company?’
Armstrong looked around – nothing, but that surely would not last for long. At any moment, a naval patrol boat could appear on the horizon, routinely scanning the waters. Even a trawler posed a risk, its crew’s suspicions doubtless raised by the appearance of two workmen rowing a dinghy miles from land.
‘Not yet,’ he replied.
‘How much longer do you reckon we’ve got?’
Armstrong stood up cautiously to get a better view – with the sea being slightly choppy, he did not fancy a swim. Their destination looked further away than ever, but a quick glance over his shoulder towards the Isle of Man suggested they were well over halfway. He estimated they had a good seven or eight miles to go.
‘About four hours,’ he announced, much to Craven’s obvious distaste.
‘Great,’ he groaned. ‘Do you think there’ll be any breakfast for us when we get there?’
Armstrong laughed a little – more out of relief that Craven still had his sense of humour.
‘I’m sure my friend Richard will serve us up an excellent lunch.’
Craven paused before speaking.
‘Roast chicken,’ he said. ‘I feel like chicken.’
‘I can do better than that,’ Armstrong replied.
‘What?’
‘Foie gras sandwiches.’
‘Foie gras? What in God’s name is that? Some sort of French thing?’
‘It’s delicious,’ said Armstrong. ‘It’s a pâté made out of goose livers. Foie gras sandwiches go exceptionally well with single malt.’
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said Craven, taking a big heave on the oars.
‘Not at all – always my favourite snack at the House.’
‘Typical bloody Tory! I bet one of your fancy sandwiches costs more than a coal miner’s weekly wage. Anyway, I didn’t think you drank whisky any more.’
Armstrong gazed down at the water before replying. He missed his whisky; he had missed it every day since she had weaned him off it. In reality he hadn’t eaten a foie gras sandwich since then either, because the thought of them without whisky was unbearable.
‘Just because I don’t go well with whisky,’ said Armstrong, ‘doesn’t mean that foie gras sandwiches have stopped doing so.’
Craven grinned.
‘I still think I’d prefer roast chicken,’ he said.
‘You’ll be lucky,’ said Armstrong, and then he stopped talking and scanned the sea for any other craft.
As they approached the coast, the sea got choppier, much choppier. By Armstrong’s estimate, they had only an hour to go, but as he rowed, he was far from counting chickens, roast or otherwise. So far, barring the outboard motor, they had been lucky, far more so than he had dared hope.
‘This isn’t too pleasant,’ said Craven, his smile doi
ng a bad job of masking his unease.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Armstrong replied. ‘Just keep a lookout.’
Armstrong was feeling exhausted, but his will kept him aflame, kept his muscles going, ensured that he was never going to stop. The last thing he wanted to show Craven was that he too was feeling uncomfortable with the dinghy’s violent pitching and rolling. If he’d been on his own, he suspected he might have had an attack, seen that explosion all over again, found himself shutting down. But with Craven here, someone for whom he felt responsible, he found it easier to stay in control. It was the same as in France. With his men around him, he was more or less fine. But alone – that could be a different story.
‘A lighthouse!’ Craven shouted, interrupting his thoughts.
Armstrong turned round. Craven was right – there it was, on top of a headland, a thin white pillar that marked their objective.
‘Good,’ said Armstrong emphatically. ‘That’s our mull, bang on target.’
With those words, he pulled on the oars even harder. They would definitely get there now; nothing was going to stop them. A couple of curious seagulls circled overhead, reminding Armstrong for a moment of vultures. He dismissed the thought as crass.
‘This is hopeless!’
They were only fifty yards from the shore, but the current and the waves were rudely dispatching them in the direction of Ireland. They had actually gone past the lighthouse, and were being forced to attempt to row northwards, parallel to the coast, which was to their starboard. They were both utterly spent, as well as being drenched through. At any moment the dinghy would either capsize or sink.
‘Terrible! We’re buggered!’
It was Craven doing the yelling.
‘Stop that!’ Armstrong barked. ‘Keep rowing up the coast! We’ll get in somewhere!’
Every few seconds a wave broke over the bow, mercilessly depositing another few inches of water in the dinghy. Armstrong attempted to bail out with a small bucket, but it was a gesture at best. He tried not to look at the grisly black rocks, unwelcoming in their steep jaggedness. They had to get to a cove, an inlet, a beach – anything to avoid being swept away or, perhaps worse, slammed and shattered against the rocks.
‘I can’t go on!’
‘Of course you can!’ Armstrong yelled back. ‘Come on, twenty more and then I’ll take over!’
Armstrong counted each of Craven’s strokes.
‘One! Come on! Two! That’s it! Three!’
He had got to twelve when, as they had both known it surely would, a particularly savage wave smashed into them. It happened almost slowly, gracefully, but its effect was brutal. It hit the dinghy on the port side, turning it over, knocking both men into the water.
For what seemed like hours there was cold, unyielding blackness and a rush of water. Armstrong could only flail, grasping nothing, feeling himself being dragged in an unknown direction. Which way was up? he wondered. He didn’t know – there was nothing to give him a clue. His lungs howled, longing to be refilled, but he forced himself to disobey his body’s cruelly stupid demand that he open his mouth.
And then light. A huge gasp, mostly air and spray, but it was invigorating, life-giving. And then another wave, and the process repeated itself, but it was easier this time, because he knew which way round he was. Up again. He looked around for Craven, but couldn’t see him. Another wave came towards him. He took a deep breath, and then ducked beneath it. He was getting the measure of this now, establishing a routine. But he was tired, so very, very tired.
‘Craven!’ he screamed. ‘Craven!’
Nothing. He could see the upturned dinghy a few yards away, in the direction of the rocks, and he made for it, swimming as hard as a man who hadn’t spent the night rowing several miles. He would look for Craven when he reached the dinghy – he had to get himself secured first, otherwise any attempt was hopeless.
He reached the upturned boat and clung on to the side of it, his hands being torn by a coating of ancient barnacles, blood streaming down his wrists and arms. He tried to clamber up, but it was impossible. He decided to save the little energy he had by remaining still.
‘Craven! CRAVEN!’
His head turned from side to side, he kicked himself up, but he couldn’t see anything but the water, the murderous water. He felt enraged, impotent. He wouldn’t panic, he wouldn’t lose it – he would stay calm, in control.
‘Craven! Over here!’
As he searched, he realised that he was being sucked towards land, every wave taking him and the dinghy nearer to being wrecked. It was impossible to avoid it, but it also offered him his best chance. He would use the dinghy as a buffer when it hit the rocks, and then attempt to clamber up them. Perhaps Craven was being brought towards land as well, and hadn’t been taken down. Perhaps.
With a sharp crack, the dinghy met its end. Armstrong felt his legs being swept upwards, bending his spine the wrong way, forcing him to release his grip before his back snapped. Another wave flung him forwards, and with a terrific jolt he felt his knees crunch on to the hardness of the rocks. Instinctively he reached in front of him, his arms flailing to get hold of something, no matter how sharp, how vicious. It was his right hand that was successful, gripping the point of a rock. He held tightly to it as another wave surged onwards, scraping his chest roughly against more rocks and, by now, shreds of dinghy. He wanted to yell out in pain, but his head kept submerging, and he needed his moments above water solely for oxygen.
His left hand grabbed some rock too, and he pulled, yanked himself upwards, feeling his muscles almost tear themselves with the effort. His feet were touching something, and so he attempted a step, which was only half successful as a mass of water punched him over. Another step, this one more effective, and he simultaneously moved his hands up another few feet, both of them finding new holds.
Armstrong noticed the rocks were not that steep, just arranged haphazardly. He scrambled up them in a furious burst, feeling the anger of the sea behind him, the killer annoyed that it had failed to claim another victim. With a few more steps and scrabbles, he found a patch that was flat and relatively smooth, somewhere he could sit and look for Craven. He hauled himself up, and then sat, breathless, bleeding.
He stared down at the grey-blue foaming water beneath him. There was no Craven, just the battered, splintered dinghy. He looked further out, and saw what looked like a body. He screwed up his eyes, and realised that it was an oar. His gaze darted to and fro, settling on patches of darkness, scraps of seaweed, driftwood, all of which played tricks on him, all metamorphosing into Craven.
But there was no Craven. As Armstrong’s breath subsided, he knew that it had been too long. Craven had gone, been taken from him not by the sea, but by that bastard Mosley, by the fucking Leader. He was too exhausted to weep, but the tears would come later. He had known so much death, far too much. Only very occasionally had death come at the right time, and this was certainly a wrong time, as wrong as every bloody time when one of his comrades had been killed.
And the forms death took . . . In his lifetime, it had liked being bullets and bombs best, but sometimes it was more insidious and liked to come as a creeping gas, or the sharp end of a twisting bayonet. Drowning was common enough too, not only in the trenches but in shell holes. But the sea was a new one for Armstrong; he had never seen death come as a wave. There was one other way he had seen it come, but for now he was only going to permit himself to mourn Craven, because that seemed fair, felt proper, felt correct for heaven’s sake.
For the next two hours Armstrong walked in a stupor. He knew he had to head north, along the coastline, because that was the direction for Logan House. God knew where it was exactly, but as the southern point of Galloway was not much more than two or three miles across, he knew he would stumble across a clue at some point – a road sign, an estate wall, something, anything.
He stopped at a cove for a while, mesmerised by the immensity of a ship’s boiler that had been washed
up. It must have been twice his height and forty feet long. Watched by some sheep, he sat next to it, among the salt-stained beer bottles and drums of engine oil, trying to imagine what had happened to the ship that once held this giant metal cylinder. Had those on board been luckier than Craven? Or had they too been thrown below, never to resurface, except as dead men?
He didn’t know how long he had paused there, because his watch was broken – smashed against the rocks. He guessed that it was late morning, and he felt faint and sick. He needed food, but he had none left. He debated whether he should risk knocking on the door of the next farmhouse he came across. Could Mosley’s reach have extended even here? Surely there were some parts of the country that were untroubled by the secret police. It seemed incredible to imagine that there might be informers around, but he knew that word would travel quickly round here. The farmer whom he asked for food might be well-intentioned, but he would doubtless tell someone about this bedraggled, well-spoken Englishman who had stopped by for some bread. No, Armstrong resolved, he would have to keep going until he was about to collapse. There were plenty of streams, and he could drink from them. The hunger was unimportant – food would have to be regarded as a luxury, something that he would get at Richard’s.
An hour later he was looking down at a row of cottages that lined a sandy bay. A few boats were moored near a small lighthouse. On the other side of the bay he could see some woodland, which he suspected might contain Logan House. He remembered Richard had been very proud of his garden, and had planted thousands of trees to act as windbreaks for his more fragile botanical specimens. So far this was the only woodland he had seen. It had to be worth exploring.
It took little more than twenty minutes to circumnavigate the village, a process that saw him stumble into a brook, once more soaking himself through. The woodland was surrounded by a stout fence – another good sign – which Armstrong climbed over with difficulty, his energy so low that every subsequent step was an ordeal. He stumbled and lurched forward, and soon found himself slithering down a slope and landing in the middle of a well-tended path.