‘About me?’
‘Ja.’
‘What was the message?’
‘That is for Gertrude to say.’
I hesitated. But it was obvious I wouldn’t get anything more out of him. The relationship I had so carefully built up with the big Norwegian was gone now. I left him and went back to my boat. I didn’t even bother to leave a note. I had nothing to say and not much hope that he would have delivered it anyway.
We sailed immediately, and as we motored out, I could see the crew of the Duchess – my crew, all the old faces – standing on the deck staring at us. We passed less than half a cable from her, her hull showing streaks of rust, her superstructure dirty with lack of paint, and there was a green fringe of weed along her waterline. I would have given anything to be back on board her.
It was a grey dirty morning with cloud low on the Sutherland hills, and it stayed grey all the thirty-nine hours it took us to raise the light on Muckle Flugga. The time would have been about ten-thirty, a pitch black night, and we lay hove-to with a good offing till dawn. By then we had the tide against us so that it was an unpleasant passage until we were out of the stream and into the quiet of Burra Firth. Ian came off as soon as we had anchored to check the cases. I left him to go down into the hold on his own, and Jamie followed him.
A few minutes later he came storming up into the wheelhouse, banging the door to behind him. ‘There’s two of them been broken into. Jamie says it was you.’
I nodded. He had discovered it when they had lashed the cases down on our way out of Loch Inchard.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘They might have contained contraband, or explosives.’
‘Explosives!’ He snorted. ‘You have the most fertile imagination.’
‘Why send me all the way down to Scotland for them?’
‘If you own a ship, you might as well make use of her,’ he snapped. ‘And it’s not for you to query your orders, or break into cargo. You’d no right.’
‘It would have been a lot cheaper to have them sent up on the boat from Aberdeen.’
‘And a lot slower.’
‘Why the hurry?’
‘Because Dillon is due up here this weekend. He’s my backer. He’s had this equipment made specially and he wants to try it out.’
‘Where?’
‘How should I know? Wherever there’s fish, that’s where.’ He turned to the door and a shaft of watery sunlight showed as he opened it. ‘I’ve told Jamie the men can go ashore as soon as they like. They’re due a few days’ rest.’
‘What about the cases?’
‘They’ll remain on board. An engineer will be out shortly to install the equipment. And don’t go monkeying around with it when the crew have gone and you’re on your own.’
He left me then and I sat there smoking my pipe and wondering what sort of a man Dillon would prove to be and how he was going to get a weekend’s fishing with the crew gone to their homes and only myself on board.
Later I went out to see the men away in the boat. The sun was glinting on the water and the old man sitting on the bench outside the hotel. The left side of his face was in shadow so that he looked like any harmless old gentleman taking the sun. He was so still I thought he must be asleep, but when I looked at him through the glasses, I could see his eyes watching me below the hooded lids, and his lips were moving as though he were mumbling something to himself.
I could have hailed him and asked to be brought ashore. Was that what he wanted? I could almost feel him willing me to come to him. It would have been the natural thing for me to do, but in other circumstances. What would be the point now? To resume our probing of each other? I sat on the deck in the sunshine, my back against the side of the wheelhouse. It was warm and I closed my eyes. But I couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts were chasing through my mind.
The sun went in and I wished I had gone ashore to stretch my legs on the steep slopes behind the hotel. I could have walked across Mouslee Hill to Goturm’s Hole, perhaps had a word with Robert Bruce. Bored with myself, I went into the wheelhouse and switched on the R/T. Almost without thinking I turned to the frequency used by North Star. But there was no traffic. Probably I was too far away, and I began idly playing with the dial, picking up scraps of talk, but all very faint. And then suddenly a voice said through a blur of static, ‘… ready for me.’ I was almost on the frequency for the Norwick voice channel and something about that voice made me hurriedly adjust the tuning. I went too far and missed something, but then the same voice came in loud and clear; ‘… the hurry? Where are you speaking from?’
I knew who it was then, that slight lisp.
‘The ferry. Have Ian meet me in the Land-Rover. And he’s to take the boat back to Lerwick, tell him. As a member of the Council, that’s where he should be now. Got it?’ And then a different voice came on – ‘Thank you, Norwick. That’s all. Over and out.’
I switched the set off and stood there, thinking about that scrap of conversation. Dillon presumably. And in a hurry to get to the Mary Jane. Why? I was still thinking about that when the inflatable came alongside. Ian was at the outboard and another man in the bows. He was young with a wisp of a beard and shoulder-length hair blowing in the breeze under a grey woolly cap. He looked like a student, his eyes magnified by round glasses as he handed a metal toolcase up to me. ‘The old man wants to see you,’ Ian said to me as the engineer climbed aboard.
I hesitated, torn between a desire to talk to the man who had come to install the equipment and the urge to get ashore. ‘All right,’ I said and got my anorak from the wheelhouse. But when I joined him in the boat he knew nothing about the telephone conversation. He had only just got back from Haroldswick.
We landed on the little beach at Fiska Wick and walked to the hotel. The old man was waiting for me in the room where we had talked before. There was a peat fire still glowing in the grate and the single window looked out on to the green slopes of the hill behind. He fixed Ian with his eyes, a hard, flat stare, waiting until he had left and the door closed behind him. Then he turned to me and said, ‘It’s some months now since we had our first talk. Now it’s time for you to reach a decision.’
He was silent a moment, trying no doubt to think how best to put it to me, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. ‘Was that Dillon on the phone a while back?’
He looked surprised, and when I explained that I had picked up the conversation on the boat’s radio, he said:
‘Then you know.’
‘What?’
‘That North Star has struck oil.’
3
The news came as a shock. We had had our first flurry of snow the previous evening and there had been a drift of white on Hermaness Hill as we had come into Burra Firth. Winter here, and North Star striking oil, everything suddenly come at once and my father demanding I make a decision. What decision? But I knew. I could see it in his cold blue Nordic eyes. ‘Who is this man Dillon?’ I asked him. And I think I knew that, too.
‘You’ll be meeting him in a few hours.’
‘A property man, Ian said, with an interest in fishing. But it’s not fishing, is it? The equipment in those cases –’
‘You broke into them – why?’ I don’t think he expected an answer, and after a moment he said, ‘Sit down.’ He waved me to a seat on the far side of the fire, then slumped into the wing chair. ‘There’s no more time.’ His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper and there was a look of weariness on his face. ‘I wish now you hadn’t come.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘I suppose it was inevitable, but …’ He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, twisting his mouth around it. ‘I could have wished it had been some other time.’
‘It’s North Star. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
He didn’t answer, sitting there watching me. ‘You have to make up your mind now.’
‘What are you planning to do?’
But he ignored that. ‘I’ve given you a job, kept you clear of t
he police –’
‘What are you planning to do?’ I repeated.
‘That’s not for me to say. It’s not my plan. Once, yes – but I only came into this because of Ian and the hotel here.’ That twisted smile again. ‘I hardly expected the two of you.’ And then he said, ‘I’m getting old, you see. And it’s been a hard life.’ He seemed to brace himself. ‘But I’m still alive. Very much alive. And he’s right. We can do a lot with this rig. It’s a very good situation, if it’s handled right. And it will be.’ His eyes were closed, his voice very quiet, and I had the feeling he was talking to himself.
‘Is Ian in on this?’
His eyes flicked open. ‘Good God, no. Of course not.’ He made a dismissive movement of the hand. ‘Money. That’s all he’s interested in. It’s the be-all and end-all of his existence.’ The weariness was back in his voice. ‘Anna was like that, under the skin, under the lovely bloom of youth – He shook his head. ‘Perhaps that’s why I didn’t marry her. So pretty, so sweet, but under the skin – nothing, no love of poetry, no inkling of the ideological turmoil, the reaching out to the stars …’ His voice faded.
‘Yet you wrote to her – from Spain.’
‘Oh, yes.’ He smiled. ‘She showed it to you, did she?’
I nodded.
‘And asked you for money?’
‘I hadn’t any.’
He smiled at me, and the twisted mouth made a mockery of it. ‘You’re different, aren’t you? Different stock. And you had it as a child. Money, I mean. You could afford to turn your back on it. Nobody can buy you.’
‘Did you buy Ian?’
‘Ye-es. I suppose you could call it that.’
‘To what end?’ And when he didn’t say anything, I told him how we had sighted Island Girl that night the rig had had her windward anchor cables cut. ‘There was no other vessel there, so Ian must have been responsible –’
But he shook his head. ‘Ian wasn’t on board.’
‘Dillon?’
He nodded.
‘It’s not fishing he’s interested in then – it’s sabotage.’
There was a long silence, and he sat there, drawing on his cigarette and staring at me. ‘It’s a rough world,’ he said very quietly, the peculiar lisp coming through strongly. ‘Some day man will learn to organize it so that he can live in peace. But not yet. You have to accept that. You have to accept the reality of the world in which you live.’ He leaned forward, his voice urgent. ‘Life is a battlefield, a political struggle, you see. And we’re all a part of that struggle. We take sides, get involved –’ His cigarette stabbed the air. ‘You. Me. All of us. You made your decision. You involved yourself – just as I did. And now – you can’t escape that involvement now.’
He paused, breathless, and I said, ‘What are you trying to tell me? That I should be a party to locating a wellhead and then destroying it?’ His eyes widened slightly and I thought I had guessed the purpose of that equipment. ‘A man calling himself Stevens followed me into Foula, when I was skipper of the Duchess and we had the North Star contract. He said what you’ve just been saying. He said Villiers was vulnerable, capitalism at its worst, and that there was political advantage to be had out of it. And with Ian on the Zetland Council –’ My God! He had manipulated it all so cleverly. ‘And you a Shetlander,’ I cried. ‘You were born on the west coast. Are you prepared to see the whole of that coastline scummed with oil, a massive pollution that will destroy the livelihood –’
‘I tell you, it’s a rough world,’ he said sharply. ‘And there are always sacrifices. Think of the loss of life in the war, twenty million in Russia alone, the destruction, the appalling conditions.’
‘And this is war.’
He nodded slowly. ‘As good a name for it as any.’
‘And I’m to be in the front line, with you. Bringing unnecessary pollution –’
‘Michael, you can’t help yourself.’
‘I bloody well can.’ I had got to my feet and I stood over him, hating him for what he was, for what life had done to him. ‘You’re so twisted in your mind it’s a pity that shell didn’t kill you.’
He sat very still, looking up at me, and there was something almost pitiable in his expression. ‘You didn’t mean that.’ And when I remained silent, the two of us staring at each other, his face gradually hardened. ‘That’s your answer, is it?’ He got slowly to his feet, reaching for his stick. ‘I had hoped …’
‘That I’d co-operate?’ The anger and disgust in my voice seemed to touch him on the raw.
‘That you’d have more sense,’ he snapped at me. And then that strange, disfigured face softened again. ‘Would you like some lunch? It’s almost time.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll go for a walk.’
He nodded. ‘Good idea. Give you a chance to think it over.’
‘There’s nothing to think over.’
‘No?’ He smiled. ‘Well, maybe not. But just remember what I’ve said. There’s no escape, the police against you and your ship the only one they know was there when the cables of that rig were cut. Go for your walk and think it out. Your liberty, your future …’ He left it at that, still smiling and a devil lurking in his eyes, as though in me he saw a reflection of himself. ‘Come back not later than five. Dillon will be here then and we’ll be running tests in the firth before dark.’ And he added, ‘The North Star strike is only a rumour based on core samples flown to Aberdeen. There’s still some time yet.’
Still time. I went out on to the track and walked slowly back to Fiska Wick. The little beach was empty, the inflatable gone, and the water was like lead under a leaden sky. I went out on to The Ness where I could see the Mary Jane lying like a black rock against the pale glint of the water. She was swinging to the tide, the inflatable snugged against her side, and the cases were all on deck, the engineer and another man opening them up and getting the equipment into the wheelhouse.
I watched for a while, but it was cold and no way of getting out to her, so I turned to the slopes behind and began climbing Mouslee Hill, regretting now that I had refused the offer of lunch. Still time, he had said, and I could claim that he misled me. But it wouldn’t be true. Where a decision is required the fault lies always in ourselves. From my experience of the sea I should have known that mistakes compound to produce disasters. The mistake I made that afternoon was to do nothing.
There were things I could have done. I could have gone into Haroldswick and phoned the police, or made an anonymous call like the bombers do. I could have gone aboard the ferry and radioed to North Star direct. Or I could have simply gone to Bruce’s cottage and lain low there, watching to see what happened. But instead, I did nothing. I couldn’t make up my mind.
I walked west across the backs of the hills to the high bold cliffs of Tonga, not a soul to be seen, not even Bruce, and conscious all the time of the solitude, the remoteness of this wild northern land, and of my own isolation. I stood for a while on the peat moss slopes above Tonga Stack, which is joined to the land, and north and south of me there were other, isolated stacks with the seas breaking against them. Birds everywhere, the air flecked white and shrill with their cries. And below me the water seethed, a chill north-westerly wind churning the flood tide into a welter of overfalls. The wildness and the solitude were overwhelming.
It was not the place to consider the merits of political activities and the role of economic warfare in an industrial society. Here only the elements counted. Nothing else. I walked south across Libbers Hill and Sneuga, as far as the brough on Flubersgerdie, and all the time I was walking I had the feeling that nothing beyond the peat moss hills and the distant glimpses of granite cliffs had any reality under that vast expanse of grey sky. Here was nothing made by man, nothing controlled by man. All was free and uncontaminated, and power lay in the wind, in the drive of the great depressions endlessly marching up to the white fish grounds from their birthplace far out in the Atlantic.
I was tired and hungry, and no nearer a
decision, when I came down the slopes above Fiska Wick, the Mary Jane looking like a toy ship in the pale slash of the firth. The inflatable was back on the beach, the Land-Rover backed up and two men loading cardboard boxes. They were the same two I had seen when I had first come to Root Stacks and they were waiting for me as I came down the beach.
‘Will you be going on board now?’ the Irishman asked. They were standing in the water in their sea boats, ready to push off. ‘The old man said to take you out if you wanted.’
‘Has Dillon arrived?’
But he only motioned me to get in, the two of them holding the tubed sides to steady the boat. It was only when we were under way that I realized they had their own gear with them. ‘You’re going out tonight then?’ I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of the outboard.
The quiet bearded man nodded. He was lying sprawled across the stores, spray whipping over him as the laden boat slapped into the wavelets. ‘If everything works all right.’
I asked him what his name was, but he just stared at me. He had a soft, gentle face, very full in the cheeks. He didn’t look like a seaman, more like an intellectual – a teacher, possibly a writer or a lecturer. And there was a tenseness about him, his brown eyes staring.
The engineer was waiting for us as the outboard died and we came alongside. There was a big fair man with him. They called him Swede and the way he grabbed the painter and made us fast I knew he was used to boats.
I gave them a hand with the cases, and when it was all on deck, the outboard started up again, the Swede casting off and the inflatable swinging away from the side and heading back for the Wick. I went straight to the wheelhouse, but the door was locked. The engineer stood watching me. ‘Where’s the key?’ I asked him.
‘In my pocket.’
‘Give it to me,’ I said. ‘You don’t keep me out of my own wheelhouse.’
He backed away at the tone of my voice. ‘You don’t give orders. You’re not the skipper now.’ He said it with the truculence of a young man who resented all authority.
I held out my hand. ‘Give me that key.’ But the Swede moved between us, and his hand closed on my arm, holding me gripped. ‘Nobody goes into that wheelhouse now, only Mr Dillon.’
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