The Last Wanderer

by Meg Henderson

  ‘I’d have stopped them!’

  ‘And you think you could have?’ Father Mick asked kindly. ‘And if you had managed it, what then? He’d have sat about the house all day, taking it easy?’

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘And suppose the tests had showed he had something wrong with his heart. You’d have kept him sitting quietly in the corner, too?’

  ‘Of course I would!’

  ‘And that’s the Sorley Mor you knew, Chrissie?’ he asked. ‘Content to live out what was left of his life sitting quietly in the corner without a dram, without a bit of a laugh with the lads, just with the thought that he was too feeble ever to go to sea again? Wouldn’t he have escaped time and time again – because he was who he was – leaving you worried sick the whole time in case he dropped dead walking back home again? You know perfectly well that even you couldn’t have stopped him living life the way he lived it, and all that time you’d have been a nervous wreck, wouldn’t you?’

  Chrissie said nothing.

  ‘Isn’t that so, Chrissie?’ Father Mick persisted.

  Chrissie said nothing but she continued to glare at them, her anger and contempt searing them to the bone.

  ‘There was nothing certain about it, Chrissie,’ Gavin said gently. ‘I knew his father had died young of a heart attack, so did his uncle at Black Rock. I was just trying to be as careful doing my job on land as he was at sea. Maybe all Sorley Mor had was indigestion; maybe it was a case of an active man getting older, not working as often and eating too many of Dan’s Ploughman efforts. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing something because he was Sorley Mor and I grew up convinced he was invincible.’

  ‘The man was doing you a kindness,’ Gannet muttered.

  ‘You be quiet,’ Chrissie said viciously. ‘You at least should have told me. There was no patient confidentiality where you were concerned, you viper!’

  ‘And what would you have me do?’ Gannet demanded in a loud voice that startled everyone. ‘He made me promise to keep it to myself and I have never broken a promise to him in my life. And is that what you think of me? That I would sneak around behind the skipper’s back and report every tiny detail to you, as if he was a daft child? He was a man, for God’s sake, and so am I, and it’s about time you treated me like one!’

  The taut silence continued as Chrissie walked back and forth in her living room, casting glances at the empty corner.

  ‘So,’ she said eventually, looking at Gavin. ‘Anything else you can tell his next of kin now that he’s dead and you’re no longer bound by confidentiality?’

  Gavin winced. ‘I gave him a different antacid, that was actually all he wanted, and told him it was time he put his feet up anyway, that he’d worked long enough. I said the same thing to him in this room the day Gannet hurt his shoulder, if you remember.’

  Chrissie looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. ‘Aye, you did,’ she said.

  ‘He didn’t believe there was anything wrong,’ Gavin smiled. ‘As far as he was concerned a trip to Glasgow was just an excuse for him and Gannet to have some fun.’

  ‘No doubt you’d have gone, too,’ Chrissie shot at Father Mick. ‘The three of you loose in Glasgow. Dear God, what a thought!’

  Father Mick chuckled. ‘But I have to say in my defence that he told me nothing of this. He probably knew I’d crack under interrogation.’

  ‘I wish he was here right now,’ Chrissie said with feeling.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Father Mick said soothingly, ‘we all wish that.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Chrissie responded. ‘Keep your sanctimonious claptrap for those fools who believe it! I mean, if he was here now, I would give him such an ear-bashing, such a slapping … !’

  When the atmosphere returned to normal, Rose’s situation was discussed once more. They would have to call on her, it was decided, regardless of how unwelcoming she was, to let her know that life did go on and would go on, regardless of how much she resented it.

  ‘Dougie, you’ve been great, but we have to face facts, you have to get back to your work. We can’t let Rose go on like this. We really have to convince her that there’s a life out there waiting for her,’ Chrissie said.

  ‘We could maybe use Gannet against her,’ Gavin suggested thoughtfully.

  Gannet looked at him in total puzzlement. Gavin laughed, then explained what he had in mind.

  Before he left MacEwan’s Row, Gavin dropped in on Rose. He wanted to talk to her about Gannet, he said, and Rose looked as puzzled as Gannet had.

  ‘He’s taking this pretty badly,’ Gavin told her.

  Rose looked at him ruefully. ‘Among others,’ she said tartly.

  ‘I’m not minimising what you’re going through, Rose,’ he said gently, ‘we’re all hurting, you know. Point a finger at anyone you see passing in this village and I’ll guarantee that they’re in mourning too. You’ve no idea how many more people are coming to me, mostly with minor problems that I know could best be treated with a script saying, “Bring them all back.” ’ He sighed. ‘Sorley Og was my best friend,’ he said sadly. ‘I can’t imagine never seeing him again either. Sometimes the only way I can cope with that thought is to pretend that he’s on a trip and that any day now I’ll look up and see the Wanderer steaming into harbour fully laden. That gets me through another day, but there’s always the next one.’

  Rose held her hand up, eyes closed. ‘Stop,’ she said quietly.

  Seconds ticked past. ‘So,’ she said, eventually, ‘about Gannet.’

  ‘I was just wondering if you might try and spend some time with him, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t want company,’ she replied, ‘and I’m really not much good to anyone else at the moment. Perhaps later.’

  ‘Well, maybe you could think about it,’ Gavin said conversationally. ‘He really has lost everything and everyone. Did you know that on the day Sorley Og was born, Gannet held him in his arms before Sorley Mor did?’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘My father told me about it. Apparently, when he was told he had a son, Sorley Mor was so excited that the first thing he thought of doing was running outside the house and yelling the news down to the harbour, and all the boats sounded their whistles. Then out came Gannet carrying Sorley Og and holding him aloft for everyone to see, with my father and Chrissie yelling at him to bring the baby back inside immediately!’

  Rose smiled wanly.

  ‘I’m worried about him, Rose, he needs company.’

  ‘He has Chrissie.’

  Gavin smiled. ‘And you know Chrissie!’ he said. ‘The big man needs quiet company, too, Rose. He doesn’t need to be poked in the ribs and ordered about all the time. He could do with some peaceful companionship as well, and Chrissie doesn’t provide too much of that. It makes things worse that his shoulder is still painful at night; it’s going to be like that for months. Even with painkillers it’s impossible to find a comfortable sleeping position, and he spends more hours than he’ll admit wandering about the house or sitting by himself through the night with all that time to brood.’

  Rose looked at him suspiciously; he was describing her existence.

  ‘It’s one of those Catch 22 situations,’ Gavin continued, ignoring her glance. ‘He needs sleep so that the shoulder and all the shredded tissue will heal, and he can’t sleep until it has healed. Plus, of course, there’s what he’s going through; what we’re all going through.’

  Rose didn’t answer for a while, then, ‘Maybe,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll see.’

  25

  They were good companions for each other. Shock hits people in different ways, but Sorley Mor would have been shocked himself to see Gannet’s reaction to losing him; he had become teetotal. There was no way of knowing if this state would be permanent, but while it lasted Gannet had been forced by circumstances to go against his nature and talk without the benefit of a single drop of the falling-down stuff, and he welcomed the opportunity to withdraw into himself again. Rose, for
her part, didn’t want to breathe, far less engage in conversation with anyone. Gannet would wander from Chrissie’s house to Rose’s and back again, and the truth was that the arrangement was doing him as much good as everyone hoped it would do Rose. He too had been drifting since the sinking, unsure of where he belonged, of what part he had to play in any life, his own included.

  Gannet had been part of the MacEwan family practically since birth, but now that Sorley Mor was gone he wondered if he was in the way. He wasn’t sure what use he was being, and if he wasn’t of any use, should he be there at all? Chrissie managed; that was what Chrissie had always done. She also had her daughters and grandbairns to occupy her. But there were times when he knew she looked at him and the memories he evoked were painful for her, so he wasn’t sure if he should clear out and let her rebuild her life. Maybe he was hindering the process; as long as he was around there was a link with Sorley Mor, and in a way that bond would have to at least fade before she could go on without him. Rose, on the other hand, needed something. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, or if he could be of any use to her either, but they rubbed along together – in silence for the most part – and that suited his needs, too. Having him there forced her into some sort of routine. She had to get up, she had to cook occasionally, and out of politeness she nibbled the odd bit herself, though she had become painfully thin.

  As those early weeks after the tragedy were turning into months, pieces of information about the sinking were filtering back and forth. It had been suggested that there was no lookout on Ocean Wanderer, and that’s what had caused the accident. By maritime law the freighter clearly had right of way and the Wanderer had failed to yield. There was no doubt about that: she had kept steaming ahead on her course as though the freighter wasn’t there, and the freighter, expecting the Wanderer to alter course, had continued on her course too.

  ‘But surely,’ said Father Mick to Dougie in the Inn, ‘you don’t just run a boat down because you have right of way? What sense does that make? You might have the law on your side, but that wouldn’t be much good if you went to the bottom of the ocean too.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Dougie replied. ‘There’s more to it than that. The lawyers are involved now, so the truth will go out the window. It’s all about money to them, closing every loophole to stop their clients being sued.’

  ‘The important thing is, Father,’ said Duncan angrily, ‘that Sorley Mor’s character is being assassinated here. It isn’t possible that there was no lookout on the Wanderer. The suggestion is a disgrace. We can’t let them get away with that.’

  ‘What is Gannet saying?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Not much,’ said Dougie. ‘I get the feeling that he’s angry about it, angry enough to burst, but he’s not saying anything.’

  ‘He knows what they’re suggesting?’ asked Father Mick.

  ‘He predicted it,’ said Duncan. ‘He said from the start that no one would ever know what happened, that anything we heard would be incomplete because it would come from one side only. There was no one left of the Wanderer’s crew to put their side, so the other side can say anything they want. That’s the only truth here; that’s the thing will remain incomplete.’

  ‘What do you think happened, Duncan?’ Father Mick asked.

  The Skipper of Southern Star shrugged, looking down into his pint as if it was a crystal ball. ‘I think someone on the freighter maybe noticed the Wanderer but did nothing because he knew she had right of way and expected the Wanderer to yield.’

  ‘But there had to be a limit to that kind of thinking, surely?’ the priest protested. ‘When you see a boat coming closer and closer, it must cross your mind that there’s something wrong and you might have to take action yourself?’

  ‘Well, that’s another rule of the sea,’ Dougie said quietly. ‘If a collision seems likely you must take action to avoid it, even if you are in the right.’

  ‘So why didn’t he?’ Father Mick demanded.

  ‘Maybe,’ Duncan said, looking around the company, ‘because there was no lookout on the freighter.’

  Father Mick gasped. ‘On a big boat like that? Does that happen?’

  Around the Inn all the fishermen laughed ruefully.

  ‘Father,’ said Dougie, ‘do you remember when Rose married Sorley Og and they went to France on honeymoon?’

  Father Mick nodded.

  ‘Well, they flew over, even though Sorley Og was scared stiff of flying. He refused to go on a cross-Channel ferry because he knew they were even more dangerous than something he didn’t believe could stay in the air.’

  Father Mick looked blank and the others laughed again.

  ‘The English Channel is supposed to be the busiest, most congested stretch of water in the world,’ Dougie explained, ‘but everybody knows that vessels steam about it on auto-pilot without lookouts. There’s an alarm that has to be cancelled every three minutes or it gets louder and louder, but they disconnect it and just trust to other vessels that do have lookouts getting out of their way.’

  ‘But that’s scandalous!’ the priest exploded.

  ‘Aye, well, what are you going to do about it? A few Hail Marys won’t cure this one, Father,’ Duncan said.

  ‘And everyone knows this?’

  Around the Inn, heads nodded in unison.

  ‘So why is it allowed?’

  ‘It’s not allowed as such,’ Duncan said. ‘It’s about money, everything’s about money, didn’t you know that? Vessels are kept undermanned to save money, crews don’t always get their seamanship training at Dartmouth, often they come from countries where there are more important issues than safety; they get tired, people take risks when they’re tired. My brother’s boy works on one of those ferries. He says they come across vessels every night, shine their lights into the wheelhouses and there’s no one there. That’s the norm, not the exception, it’s part of the job now.’

  ‘But even so, the Wanderer went down in early morning, in perfect conditions,’ Father Mick said.

  ‘What do people do early in the morning, Father?’ Dougie asked. ‘They either sleep, or, if they’re awake, they have a shower, grab a bit of breakfast. And even if you see this fishing boat miles away, you’re bigger than she is, so if you can see her, she can see you, right? So you go below for a cuppa, and when you come back, there she is, coming straight at you, and it’s too late to do anything.’

  ‘You think that’s how it happened?’ Father Mick asked.

  ‘It’s one scenario, but it’s the one that we all thought of first, isn’t it lads?’ Dougie looked around and all the fishermen murmured in agreement. ‘But we’re not asking the right question here. There was a lookout on the Wanderer, it was Sorley Mor. That is a fact, not something up for discussion. Anyone who wants to debate that is throwing us a red herring. Right?’ Once again all heads nodded. ‘The question is, had something happened to Sorley Mor before the collision? It’s the only explanation. The lawyers are wriggling around, playing with words. “There was no lookout.” Well, that’s strictly correct if the lookout was already unconscious or dead, but it’s not the truth, is it?’

  On his way back up to the chapel house, Father Mick felt even more depressed. He knew the fishing was a dangerous occupation; he’d sat in on enough stories to pick that up. The lads always remembered the funny parts even if the tale was a serious one, but he’d heard about bad weather: sudden, unexpected storms with mountainous seas; boats becoming iced up and capsizing without warning as a result; accidents on board and accounts of being adrift in liferafts for hours, wearing very little and knowing that hypothermia was creeping up on you. He knew about all the difficulties of random quota cuts and incomprehensibly stupid decisions being made by people with no knowledge of the sea, the industry or the families being hit. This was different, though, this was an added dimension. It seemed that everyone knew that justice and truth didn’t matter. If the crew weren’t there to object, anything could be said about them to ensure those who had survived woul
d not lose money. Suddenly he remembered Gavin’s suspicions that Sorley Mor’s indigestion might be more than that, and he ran into the house, picked up the phone and dialled Dougie’s office number.

  ‘Dougie, Dougie, it’s me!’

  ‘Aye,’ said Dougie.

  ‘Dougie, what you said about the lookout maybe being unconscious.’

  ‘Aye,’ Dougie repeated slowly.

  ‘Well, what if Gavin was right and Sorley Mor didn’t have indigestion at all? What if he had something wrong with his heart and that morning—’

  ‘My, but you’re quick,’ Dougie teased him. ‘I don’t know, Father, you Holy Joes might have a direct line to your God, but you’re not so fast on other wavelengths, are you?’

  ‘You mean you’d thought of that?’

  ‘Had we thought of that? You’re really a bit of a Charlie on the side, aren’t you?’ He grinned. ‘We’ve always suspected it. What did you think we were talking about earlier? Of course something happened to him, but we’ll have an uphill task to get that acknowledged in the final report.’

  ‘Why? It’s bloody obvious!’ the priest exploded.

  Dougie laughed gently. ‘Father Mick, these reports are done in officialese. There’s no place for thoughts, suspicions, feelings – or us saying we knew Sorley Mor and he wouldn’t have left the Wanderer without a lookout. The problem is that there’s nothing to prove it. He’s not here to give his account, is he?’

  ‘But that’s not fair! It’s not right!’

  ‘So?’ Dougie asked lazily. ‘I’ve always said your lot know nothing about the real world, Father. Welcome to the place where the rest of us live.’

  ‘Isn’t there some way of proving it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dougie replied. ‘Post mortems on the crew, but there were none performed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Danish law didn’t need them and, as they were working outside Scottish waters, neither did Scottish law. We were all too involved in getting our heads round what had happened to think about it at the time.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Father Mick moaned.