She exchanged a look with Isaak. They were already late, but not by much. ‘D’you think it will wait?’
‘I don’t know,’ Isaak said. ‘I don’t know anything about tides.’ His shoulders drooped, the scorch mark and hole in his coat reminded her of what this journey had already cost him. Like her, he was probably thinking it was a bitter blow to get this far, but fail at the last hurdle, through no fault of their own.
‘Listen,’ Sara said. ‘An engine!’ She ran to the door of the store.
‘No! Come back,’ Astrid shouted. ‘It could be Germans.’ She dived after her and dragged her back, hugging her hard against her chest.
The shopkeeper went to the door and a few minutes later he was back. ‘It’s the Doctor,’ he said.
Dr Moen was weather-beaten and bearded, and an old sou’wester shadowed his face. He looked nothing like Astrid expected a doctor to look. The relay boat was a small fishing coble with a diesel engine but a mast and sail too. Nils, the agent who was to be picked up, was on board already. He had a bullet wound in his foot, well-bandaged. Like them, he’d obviously been in some sort of trouble with the Germans. He eyed them sympathetically but didn’t speak. His foot was obviously causing pain as he kept wincing if he had to move.
As they loaded the bags aboard, Astrid overheard the doctor talking in whispers with one of the other fishermen. She tried to make out what he was saying. She heard whispers of ‘Shetland’ and ‘explosion’.
She hurried over. ‘What’s happened to the boat?’
Moen sighed. ‘We don’t know yet. There’s talk of a warship, and the Vidar being sunk, but we never know anything for certain. We’ve heard nothing from Jørgen Nystrøm, the skipper. It could be a different boat that sank, or anything.’
‘Nystrøm?’ Her heart had begun to thud hard in her chest. ‘You don’t mean Jørgen Nystrøm from Oslo? Has a scar on one eyebrow?’
‘You know him?’
‘I’m from Oslo too. We were…’ she hesitated, ‘friends.’
‘Oh.’ Dr Moen frowned in an embarrassed way, uncertain what to say.
Isaak came over to see what was going on.
‘The boat’s been in some sort of trouble,’ she said, agitated. ‘Nobody’s sure what’s happened yet, they’re waiting for news.’
‘Oh no. What will we do until we hear?’ Isaak asked.
‘Stay calm, sail to the island rendezvous at Radøy and wait for more instructions,’ Dr Moen said. ‘They’ll be keen to get Nils off, and to hospital with that foot. We don’t want gangrene to set in, and besides, he’s a security risk.’ He clapped Isaak on the shoulder. ‘Fetch your lass aboard now, we’ll be off again soon.’
Isaak went to fetch Sara, who was petting one of the skinny grey cats that lurked on the quay looking for scraps.
Dr Moen helped Sara aboard the fishing vessel and within the half-hour they set sail for the tiny island where they were to be picked up. Astrid couldn’t stop thinking about Jørgen. It didn’t seem possible that he’d actually come to fetch her. But the boat had had to go further up the coast for some reason. Now it was missing. She hoped he was all right.
‘Astrid?’ Isaak reached out a hand to press hers where it rested on the wooden crates where they were sitting.
‘Sorry. Yes, I was miles away. I’m worried about the boat. I just found out a friend of mine was on it. They said there was an explosion.’
‘A friend? From Scotland?’
‘No. A Norwegian. Just a man I knew in Oslo.’ His question made her feel immediately guilty.
Isaak was silent a moment. ‘Sorry to hear about your friend. Let’s hope it’s all rumours and we’ll know more soon. It’s not unusual for people to go missing in action, and for them to turn up later.’
It was what people always said when they wanted to be a comfort.
CHAPTER 31
Dr Moen sailed them out to the island of Radøy, a tiny, rocky nub sticking out of the sea, and uninhabited except for two croft-like cottages. To Astrid’s surprise, they weren’t the first to arrive there. The little harbour bobbed with small craft, and one of the cottages was already full of people, the men who’d come to meet the Shetland Bus and take the weapons and armaments to distribution points all over Norway. They rushed out to see who was arriving and seemed disappointed it was only the doctor’s small boat and not the boat from Scotland.
After Dr Moen left, Astrid, Isaak and Sara crowded into one of the cottages with the rest. Built from wood planks the house had a selection of benches and no other furniture. It was clearly not lived in, but only used as a staging post. Astrid asked one of the other men what had happened to the relief boat that was to take them to England. He shrugged and carried on smoking his pipe. He had no more news than the doctor. Her neck was so tight with tension, her head ached. She feared they’d be stuck on this tiny island now until the Germans caught up with them.
They were dozing when a boat finally did arrive. The men all started rushing about, getting their small craft ready.
They staggered out into the dark. Thank God, the boat was here at last, the sinking of it must have been just a rumour after all. They all hurried out in the wind to greet it. It was a fishing trawler, about seventy feet, like a huge black hulk. No lights on it, and it looked like it was built a hundred years ago.
When the crew came ashore, she searched their faces, but Jørgen wasn’t there.
‘Was Jørgen Nystrøm with you?’ she asked one of them, a swarthy engineer called Nesse.
‘Nystrøm? No. This is the Bergholt. He was on the Vidar. We’re waiting for news of them.’ He looked exhausted, and she didn’t want to press him. One by one, the men came ashore, all bedraggled, unshaven and haggard.
‘Bit of a rough night,’ she overheard one of them say. ‘One bastard of a storm. Wouldn’t mind a drink if someone could find one.’
A fisherman from one of the small craft brought a bottle ashore and the men were soon passing it round.
‘We’ve missed the evening tide, so we won’t leave until the morning; when the tide turns,’ the skipper said. Clausen, his name was; a rather well-spoken man with a clipped moustache. ‘Suggest you go aboard and have a look around,’ he said to Isaak. ‘Take the kiddie, you’ll find a berth for the three of you below.’
Astrid had the impression they wanted them out of the way, but she could think of no objection, so they went down to the jetty.
‘I think they’ll make a night of it,’ Isaak said. ‘Get roaring drunk.’
‘In that case I’m glad we’ll be somewhere else. Come on, Sara.’
But one look at the boat close to brought up all Astrid’s old fear of the water. It was a wreck of a fishing boat, filthy, and stinking of fish. It didn’t look as if it could go five yards, let alone right across the North Sea. Isaak’s face showed he shared her opinion.
‘We can’t go on that,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look safe.’
‘It came here from Shetland, so I suppose it must be seaworthy,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Anyway, we don’t have a choice. It’s big enough.’ He turned to her with softness in his eyes. ‘We can stay here, and be fodder for the German army, or take our chances. No other boat has come for us.’
A grizzled old fisherman who was standing nearby overheard, and said, ‘She’s a fine sturdy boat that one. She has to look that way. The worse she looks, the less likely the Germans are to think she can make her way to Shetland. If I were you, I’d thank your lucky stars there’s men willing to risk their lives to get you out.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ Astrid said. ‘We’re just tired and anxious.’
‘Not as tired and anxious as those men who’ve just been out in a force ten gale,’ he said, and strode off.
‘Come on, it might not be as bad as it looks,’ Isaak said, climbing aboard, helping Sara up, and then holding out a hand to her.
She took his hand, and the warmth of his grip helped the cramping feeling in her heart ease a little. Once aboard, they fou
nd a lantern and matches and groped their way down into a cabin that had been partitioned off from what looked like a store room. Portholes gave small pinholes to the dark outside.
Sara screwed up her nose. ‘Stinks.’
‘It’s only for a few nights,’ Astrid said, lighting the lamp, and turning it low. ‘Let’s make our own little den here. Like trolls underground.’
‘Trolls are for babies,’ Sara said.
But fortunately, someone on Shetland had sawn a hole in the bulkhead, and made a hole through to the fish hold, and there were some hammocks hanging there. Sara was soon thrilled by this exciting discovery, though Astrid suspected these were for the men and not for them.
Sara was soon swinging there in a string hammock, as Isaak unpacked some blankets and set out their bags as pillows in the cabin. It was the first time she’d slept so close to Isaak and it made her feel a little awkward. It didn’t seem to bother him though, and he was soon asleep. After a while, Sara tired of swinging and came to snuggle in between them.
Despite her ever-present anxiety, Isaak’s proximity was comforting and she managed a little sleep, but she woke imagining Jørgen, somewhere out at sea. The ferocity of the wind on the dead man’s farm made her wonder if he’d been caught in it, wherever he was. She kept hoping his boat would appear, that his familiar face would appear at the door. By the morning there was no sign of the Vidar still, and the crew were getting ready to depart in a big hurry.
‘Why the sudden rush?’ she asked Nesse.
‘The Germans are onto us,’ he said. ‘Some bastard has told the quisling police they saw a limping man go into one of the houses in Bremnes. That was probably Nils. Bloody informers. And to make it worse, someone shot two German patrolmen on the fjord. So now they’re sending German patrols to the coast to look for places the perpetrators might get away.’
Blood pounded in her head. The Nazis were after them. ‘Will they catch up with us?’
‘Not if we can help it. Their boats are only an hour or two away. We need to be gone by the time they arrive.’
Nils, the agent was helped to board, though by the reek of him, he needed help because he had a hangover, rather than because of his injury. She wanted to scream at them to hurry, but she could see they were going as quick as they could.
Clausen, very stiff and correct despite his fisherman’s jersey, came down to brief them all. It irritated her that most of his instructions were conveyed to the agent Nils, rather than to them, but she listened anyway. Isaak likewise was giving him his whole attention. Their lives might depend on it.
‘You must stay indoors at all times,’ Clausen said. ‘We are a fishing vessel, and that pretence has to continue. If anyone sees a woman or a child on deck, there will immediately be suspicion. Most Norwegian sailors are for the King, but some are not, and the last thing we want is some quisling alerting the Germans. The weather forecast is for gales, and the journey may be uncomfortable, but I ask you still, remain out of sight.’
‘Okay,’ Nils said, wincing with pain, ‘we get it.’
A crewman called Mathison, a burly Shetlander was in charge of stores, and he supervised the loading of the cabin with empty oil drums and crates. The cramped space was soon filled with the stench of paint and tar. They crammed themselves in around it as best they could.
‘Talk about sardines,’ Isaak said.
Sara huddled under a shelf holding tight to Astrid, and endearingly, Isaak positioned himself close by, on the outside, to shield them.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ve got this far. Soon we’ll be in Scotland. And we’ll be safe.’
‘But if we’re in Scotland, how will Mamma find us?’ Sara asked.
‘I expect she’ll come and find us later if he can.’ He looked to Astrid with a resigned expression, and she suddenly grasped how hard it must have been for him. His whole journey, the rejection of him by his wife, his country, and now even his adopted home. It didn’t seem fair. And now Sara was asking for her mother, who had done nothing to keep her safe at all these last five years.
They finally set to sea from Radøy just before midnight. The sky was dark, but roiling clouds obscured any stars. Already the wind was stinging, and they hadn’t gone very far from land when the boat began to pitch and things inside the cabin started to slide and shift about. Nils struggled to lash everything down as best he could.
Sara was sick over Isaak’s shirt, and as Astrid was trying to comfort her and clean up, the door opened, banging hard as the boat pitched.
‘Take these,’ Clausen yelled over the noise of the increasing wind, and he began to thrust piles of weapons down through the hatch — rifles, machine guns. Nils grabbed them as they came in and he and Isaak tied them in bundles to stop them moving about. Salt water slashed in through the door in icy sheets. From the tiny square windows all Astrid could see were heaving mountains of water.
The howl of the wind and the crash of the sea were deafening.
‘Here, tie these down,’ Nils shouted. ‘Decks are flooded … don’t want to lose anything overboard.’ His instruction kept a lid on Astrid’s terror, but only just.
Night passed. The boat heaved on the waves. Icy water washed in every time the door to the deck opened. Astrid was too sick to do anything except cling to the nearest beam and pray for it to end. When the sea finally settled into just a rock, and a pale grey dawn lit the porthole windows, Nils hauled himself up the few stairs and stuck his head up out onto deck.
‘Are we nearly there, yet?’ Sara whimpered, her face blueish-white.
Nils ducked his head back inside. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. Gundersen in the charthouse says the storm blew us off course back towards the coast. We’ve covered less than fifty miles, and we’re only just out of Norwegian waters.’
Isaak groaned. The sound was the one Astrid wanted to make, had she been able to speak without vomiting.
A low drone. ‘I’ll go and see,’ Nils said, hobbling to the door and throwing it open to reveal a view of grey sky.
The plane came from nowhere. A black shape. A burst of gunfire.
Astrid ducked down and covered her head with her hands.
‘Pass the rifles!’ Mathison yelled.
She and Isaak scrambled to untie them. So the Germans hadn’t given up trying to find them. They were sitting ducks for planes, this small dot on the open sea. And worse, the storm had left them unprepared. Unprepared and unarmed.
As the drone of the aircraft engine faded, the crew dashed in and out of the cabin as they dragged out rifles.
‘The Brens!’ Clausen yelled. ‘Get the Brens!’
The door was open, so Astrid could see Mathison bolting a machine gun onto detachable mountings on deck. Despite his injuries, Nils was half-crouched, holding something steady in the spray as the boat turned hard to starboard.
In the distance the speck of black in the sky turned. My God, it was coming back. The door was still yawning open. ‘Get down,’ Astrid screeched to Sara.
Isaak huddled over Sara, and dragged Astrid in beside him, cowering into the small space left by the luggage. The plane’s engine drew nearer, a horrible rattling hum.
There was another deafening splatter of machine gun fire, but this time from on board. Nesse the engineer was manning the gun but in the confusion it blasted holes in their own mast, not the enemy.
Unscathed, the plane banked and turned. Through the small square of window, Astrid couldn’t take her eyes off it as it dived low, bearing down like a wasp. Flashes spat from it, as the boat juddered and heeled. Splinters of wood flew from the door and bullets embedded themselves in the bulwark behind.
‘Scheiss!’ Isaak cried, dragging them both further into the darkest corner, out of range of the door. The German word. He was being shot at by his own people.
The plane veered away, but the next time it came around the rat-a-tat of bullets was insistent, an assault on the eardrums, needles spattering the deck. They gripped each other, praying for it to end.
/>
Then silence, as the plane engine drew away.
No sound from the deck above. What if the skipper had died? What if there was nobody left alive on deck? They’d be floating there with no idea how to get anywhere. Where was Nils?
Astrid scrambled out, to see the deck riddled with holes and the wheelhouse splintered into matchwood.
Nils was flat out on deck, his shoulders and back of his head torn by bullets and shrapnel. Water sloshed back and forth around him as if he’d drowned and been washed up.
‘You okay?’ Clausen appeared.
She nodded dumbly, then burst into tears. She was so relieved there was someone left alive who could steer the boat.
‘The others?’ He put a firm hand on her shoulder.
‘All okay,’ she said, sniffing and wiping her wet face.
‘Then go back below. We’ve a lot of mess to sort out, and we don’t know if they’ll come back with reinforcements.’
She stumbled back inside. Isaak’s face asked a silent question.
‘Nils got hit,’ she said. ‘He’s…’ She shook her head and he seemed to understand.
A few moments later and Clausen and Nesse staggered inside, carrying another of the crew, Mathison, who’d been hit on the right side of the chest and had shrapnel wounds to his legs. His trousers were in shreds, torn by splinters of wood.
Astrid shifted their bags to make space for him to lie down. Isaak had a shirt in his, and got Sara, who was silent and white-faced, to tear it up to make cloths to staunch the wounds. It was hopeless, for the boat was still rolling, and trying to pick out the shrapnel caused Mathison too much pain. Astrid took hold of Sara’s hand, which was icy cold, and squeezed it.
‘How much blood does a man have inside him?’ Sara asked, in a whisper.
‘Oh, I don’t know ... lots,’ Astrid answered, looking to Isaak for help.
‘How much of it has come out?’ Sara asked, wide-eyed.
‘Not too much,’ Isaak said. ‘But we have to look after him until we get to Scotland.’
‘Will they take him to hospital in Scotland?’
The Lifeline Page 26