Death on a Longship

by Marsali Taylor

  I’d heard this bit already. He’d been supervising the work at the new Lille Opera, and he’d seen her in the chorus.

  ‘It was her life, you know. Pretty as a picture, she was, with this cloud of dark hair around her face, just like yours would be if you didn’t tie it back, and a waist that tiny I could span it with one hand. You wouldn’t want her to give it all up and come back home just as she’s making a name for herself, now, would you?’

  I wasn’t sure if he even believed it himself. He must have seen my scepticism, for he changed tack quickly.

  ‘But of course it’s hard being alone, very hard on me.’

  The confident voice went suddenly uncertain, and I thought of the way Jessie had glanced at the sitting room door as she’d spoken about her lodger. ‘Just the Baker lass – but you’ll likely ken all about that.’ Was he trying to break the news of a new girlfriend? Perhaps that was why he’d wondered about where I’d be sleeping; not reeling me in, but fencing me out. Well, that suited me.

  If he was, he bottled out. ‘Now, then, are you still getting to Mass?’

  ‘Of course.’ It was one part of my upbringing I’d kept, regular attendance somewhere between Dad’s rather fierce determination and Maman’s more casual approach, as if she’d just happened to drift by the church as the bell was ringing, and come in on spec. ‘My local’s St Paul’s Church in Bergen. How’s the parish here going?’

  ‘Growing, girl, growing. We’ve got a whole community of Poles here now, even read the Gospel in Polish as well as English. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it at first, but I’m starting to pick out words now. Fine bunch of people, a real asset to the community.’ Dad had all sorts of strange prejudices, but xenophobia wasn’t one of them. ‘Shall I pick you up on my way past?’

  No way. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll be doing on Sundays, but I’ve got the car, if I’m free.’

  We ate in silence for a bit. It was my turn to choose a topic. ‘Has anyone seen poor Barbara Pitcairn recently?’

  Dad gave me a blank look.

  ‘The ghost here. Looking for her child.’ It was a sad story. The penniless young cousin who’d married the son and heir had had her marriage lines taken from her by his mother, and she’d been treated as a servant. When she’d had a child, Madam Busta had taken him too, sent Barbara to live in Lerwick, and raised him up as her own.

  ‘Oh, that,’ Dad snorted. ‘Girl, there are people here who’ll see anything after the second whisky.’

  ‘Inga saw her, when she was working here.’ I hadn’t meant to get into an argument, but couldn’t stop myself. ‘A white-faced girl in old-fashioned clothes, searching in the room. She just vanished when Inga came in.’

  Dad shook his head. ‘Imagination. Liver. A touch of the sun.’ I had to admit, too, looking back, that Inga could have been just winding me up, to see how much I’d swallow. She’d had a sly, secretive streak that meant you couldn’t totally trust her, and at the time I’d been more and more involved in sailing, leaving her to find her own pals at the weekends, like Natalie What’s-her-name, who’d wanted Inga to be her best, her only pal.

  I tried another topic. ‘Are their puddings still as good as they used to be? Do you suppose they still do cranachan?’

  ‘We can ask,’ Dad said, and called the girl over. They did, and it was as good as I’d remembered, the smoky taste of the whisky colouring the cream, and the raspberries tart in the oatmeal. I ate every last scrap and vowed to myself to try making it aboard ship, while we were moored in the marina.

  I had a salary now, and wanted to pay the bill, but Dad wasn’t having it. ‘Now, Cassie.’ His face twisted, vulnerable. ‘You’ve not been home this long time, girl. You invite me over to your boat, now, and make me a meal there.’

  He’d been over thirty when he’d had me. He was over sixty now, an old man. I felt ashamed of my hardness, and took my credit card back. ‘That’s a deal.’

  In the car park, he paused with one hand on his car door-handle. ‘You have fun with your longship, now. I told Berg she’d be a good buy. His company’s involved with ours, you know, so when you talked to them in the restaurant of course he linked you up with me, and gave me a ring.’

  Shetland Eco-Energy. Dad’s company. I stood stock-still, a cold fury swelling inside me. Miracles didn’t happen, after all. Berg had recognised my name, in the Shetland context. He’d gone back to his house and phoned my dad, and dad had praised me up, and probably called in a favour or two, and it hadn’t been my brass neck or my qualifications which had given me the job, but the old boys’ network. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Berg would have told him where we’d met. ‘Your daughter was waiting at table in our restaurant.’ Just as Dad had predicted all those years ago, taking all sorts of menial jobs to keep myself afloat in between charters. Not a success story but a failure, desperate enough to beard total strangers in restaurants.

  I forced my shaking legs to move again. ‘I’ll have fun,’ I said. And he’d manoeuvred me into inviting him for a meal. He could damned well take me as he found me. ‘I’ll give you the grand tour of Khalida, once I’ve got the longship repairs under way.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said. Only a suspicious daughter would have heard the smooth satisfaction in his voice, the businessman who’d sneaked the deal across.

  He got back into his 4x4 and started the engine. ‘Empires to run, girl, empires to run.’

  It might be through him that I’d come home, but I resolved, as I shut the car door, that I’d make damned sure he didn’t run me.

  I hadn’t tried to phone Dad earlier, because I knew he’d still be out cold, after last night’s bender. I was sorry now that I hadn’t kept ringing until he’d answered. I should have told him myself that Maree was dead.

  Chapter Four

  I didn’t say all that to the inspector, but I’d said more than enough. It was the way he sat there, looking like everybody’s favourite bosun, tying his flies with the air of someone who had all day to hang around.

  He nodded. ‘Now, once you’d had a look at the boat, Stormfugl, you hired –’ He gave another glance at his notebook. ‘– Gibbie Matthewson as an extra hand, and brought her round to the jetty here.’

  It was a relief not to have to stonewall. Crew or not, I didn’t care what I gave away about Gibbie.

  ‘The world’s worst grump,’ I said. ‘Dad’s cleaner’s husband.’

  He’d come round to Khalida the evening after our meal at Busta. ‘Jessie told me you were looking for an extra hand.’

  ‘We’ll need someone once we get the longship launched,’ I agreed. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be him. He had one of those faces my Irish gran used to say would turn the milk sour just by looking at it, with a long nose that twitched as if he was smelling something dead under the floorboards. Like Magnie, he wore a traditional Shetland jumper in shades of blue and stripes of dazzling white, and beneath his face it looked like a clown’s waistcoat on an undertaker. He was very tall, and strong-looking, with big, calloused hands that clenched and unclenched as he spoke. His voice had that flat tone of poor hearing. Beneath the sleeked-back hair his eyes were grey and quick, darting here and there, focusing on me, flicking toKhalida, back to me again. If it hadn’t been for the memory of Jessie’s years of kindness I wouldn’t have had him nearer Stormfugl than a sea-league, but I knew what it had cost Jessie’s Shetland pride to ask for a job for him, and I couldn’t knock her back. I had no doubts about his ability as a seaman, or his knowledge of the area, and that was what I needed him for.

  ‘It’ll just be a deckhand post. I know that’s well below your qualifications.’

  A shrug. ‘You need a man who knows the area, Dermot was saying. This longship of yours is just the size of my Azure. I’m well used to handling something that size, taking it into smaller bays.’

  ‘We’re still getting her ready for sea. It’d be good if you were able to help with that. After that, we’ll
do the sea trials, and bring her round to Brae.’

  He was a good worker, but after the first couple of days both Anders and I made sure we were in another part of the boat, so as not to have to listen to his running commentary. He seemed to spend his evenings watching TV just so he could disapprove of the example these soaps were setting to the bairns with their bad language and immorality, the strange things people cooked, in his day he had mince and tatties and was glad of it, and the way politicians were running the world. He was worst on Mondays. It turned out he was the caretaker of the local hall, and so the person who had to clear up after discos. ‘Floor just clarted with dried beer. Spewings everywhere and worse. They sell condoms in the lasses’ toilets now, did you ken that? If my faither could have seen that …’

  We quickly learned not to mention the EU. He blamed them with an intensive hatred for the loss of his Azure. ‘No fish in the sea, there’s plenty o’ fish in the sea. This Spanish and French trawlers, they come and fill their holds, don’t they? You don’t hear any bruck about quotas for them. When I fished first, in the sixties, well, you could barely get a berth in Lerwick or Scalloway for the boats. Peterhead, Buckie, Stonehaven, Portree. The whole north of Scotland, the men lived by the fishing. Now you’re not going to tell me all those fish got wiped out. Na, na. It’s this foreign boats. If this Westminster government was any use they’d take control of our waters again. I’m telling you, I’m voted for Jo Grimond all my days, but this last two times I went for the SNP. We need our own government, and a strong line on what belongs to us.’

  It was odd he’d wanted the job. I was a woman skipper, and Anders was young enough to be one of the bairns whose parents didn’t know what he got up to. Maybe Jessie wanted him out from under her feet. I didn’t blame her. Anders and I gritted our teeth over tea-break and lunch, and quoted him to each other in the privacy of Khalida of an evening, and with him working too then Stormfugl was ready for the sea in the first days of May.

  We launched her on the fifth of May, when the forecast had promised us our first real summer day. The crane lifted her, belly swinging above us, and lowered her, inch by inch, back into her element. Father Mikhail said a blessing over her, then we all clambered aboard. My dozen rowers stood to their oars; I took the helm, and Anders started the engine and pumps. Cameras flashed. We headed out through the sectored lights and past the reefs into the Atlantic curve of St Magnus Bay. Ah, they were seamen, those long-dead Vikings. She breasted the waves as if she was rejoicing in the sea. We raised the yard, and the ochre and red striped cotton sail billowed out, caught the wind, and Stormfugl rose with it, the helm suddenly lightening. I looked forward at the milky horizon, at the great curve of sail above me, and sent up a thanksgiving for the day.

  There was a flotilla waiting for us at the mouth of the Rona, local boats; one even had a miniature brass cannon aboard, and gave us a gun salute as we entered Busta Voe. We sailed up to the club with them clustered around us, white-sailed yachts, fibre-glass motor launches, Mirrors flying their coloured spinnakers and the pink-sailed Picos from the newly started sailing classes, with Magnie circling them in the guard boat. We rolled the sail well clear of the marina, Anders started the engine, Gibbie hung out the fenders, and, heart in mouth, I edged her into the pier. She didn’t like the engine, but she was too well built not to go where she was steered. A touch of reverse, and she halted exactly where I wanted her. Gibbie stepped onto the pier and began tying up. Anders and I exchanged triumphant grins. We’d made it. Then we laid the gangplank and invited everyone aboard.

  The boaty people were first, of course, and the reporter and photographer from the Shetland Times, but there were local folk there as well, including an old school-friend, Dodie, whose dad had had a job at Sullom. His family had come from Yell to stay in Brae for his secondary school years, and his only ambition then-a-days, to the despair of our teachers, had been to be a ferryman on the Yell ferry. If anyone suggested going further afield, he’d concede that the Unst or Fetlar ferries might make a change, so long as he didn’t have to stay overnight. Now, it seemed, he’d achieved his ambition. He was working full-time on Daglion.

  ‘Now, then, Cass, it’s fine to see you. I spied you going up Yell sound. Well, I didna ken it was you at first, but I spoke to Jamie o’ the Coastguard over the VHF, and he was able to tell me whatna peerie yacht it was that had come over from Norroway.’ He looked around at Stormfugl’s shining varnish. ‘This is a fine boat, this.’

  ‘Come down when your shifts allow,’ I said, ‘and we’ll take you out.’

  I left him to inspect, and looked over the crowd for other people I ought to know. I wouldn’t have noticed the dark woman with the pushchair if her toddler hadn’t made a break for it, racing towards the ship in a flurry of dungareed legs and golden curls. I stopped him before he could go over the edge of the pier and offered him my hand for the gangplank. He clutched his little arms tightly around himself and shook his head. ‘No hand.’

  ‘Then you don’t come aboard,’ I said. ‘No hand, no boat.’

  He peered up at my face, and saw I meant it. One grubby hand came out to clutch mine. His mother abandoned his empty pushchair and came after him.

  ‘Thanks, Cass. He goes so quickly.’

  I found myself looking at Inga.

  Older? Yes. Her velvet-dark eyes were the same, round and liquid, like a seal’s when it pops its head out of the water to watch you, but her skin had coarsened from the teenage wild-rose I remembered to a weathered fawn, and there were lines running across her forehead. She was curvily plump under her lycra T-shirt. The make-up she used to spend hours applying had been abandoned, and the dark hair she’d straightened with tongs and sprayed to a glossy shine had been cut short. The wind had tousled it back to its natural curl, and the sun brought out the purplish sheen of dye.

  ‘Inga!’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Admit it, if I hadn’t spoken you’d not have known me. I’ve grown old and fat. That’s what domestic boredom does for you.’

  ‘What’s your peerie boy’s name?’

  ‘Charlie, after his dad.’ She made a grab at him as he started towards the side of the boat. ‘Come here, Charlie.’

  ‘I’ll take him to look over,’ I offered. ‘Hand again, Charlie.’

  The little hand clutched mine again, and I felt a pang of longing. This was what Inga had, this small hand coming so confidently into yours. Someone who loved you and trusted you; someone you’d always be there for. I held on to him as he clambered onto one of the rowing benches and stood looking down at the water glinting below him. ‘Nice,’ he said clearly.

  ‘Yes, it is nice,’ I agreed. He gave me an intelligent glance, pleased that I’d understood, and launched into a babble. I managed to distinguish ‘boat’ in among it.

  ‘She’s a Viking boat,’ I said. ‘A longship.’

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Inga said. ‘I heard the interview on Radio Shetland. It sounded as if you’d been all over the world. I’ve never been anywhere.’

  ‘Not even Scotland?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Only visits. I didn’t go to uni. I got married instead, and had children. Oh, they’re great, of course I wouldn’t be without them, but there are times when I’m stuck in the house all evening, and Charlie – big Charlie, my husband –’ Her voice snagged like a kink of rope reaching a block, then straightened itself again. I tried to remember what Jessie had said – Charlie was having an affair? ‘Well, he’s at sea all this month, and I canna leave the house, no even for five minutes, because of the bairns. I’m even taking an interest in the garden –’ She made a face, mouth turned down incredulously, then laughed, one of Inga’s lightning changes from grumble to gaiety. ‘Listen to me complaining. I wouldn’t change my bairns for all the tea in China. Peeriebreeks here’ll be at toddler group soon, and I’ll be able –’ There was that flash of something furtive again. ‘Able to go for a swim or a game of badminton and get my waist back. Then once he’s at school I c
an go back to work.’ Another laugh, a quick glance at Anders. ‘I may not get your perks, though. He’s like something out of a Norse myth. Is he …?’

  I shook my head. ‘Just a friend.’

  ‘Always a good start. Or is there someone else?’

  I thought of Alain and forced the thought away. ‘Nobody special.’

  You can’t lie to someone who knew you at school. She flicked a quick glance at me. ‘Tell me another time. Which is your boat, the one you sailed from Norway?’

  I pointed. ‘The little one at the end of the pontoon. Khalida. Come and have a cup of tea aboard once this circus is over.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ She gave me a quick, intent look. ‘I was wanting to have a word with you anyway, about –’ The dark lashes lifted. She gave a tiny tilt of the chin towards Gibbie. ‘Will you be about tomorrow, say about three?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’ll come over then. Come on, peeriebreeks.’ She scooped Charlie up, tucked him under one arm, his legs flailing behind her back, and headed briskly back across the gangplank. The screams intensified as she strapped him into his pushchair, then diminished as she marched him off.

  We sat in Khalida’s cockpit the next day, the sun warm on our faces. Anders had gone for a walk along the shore, taking Rat with him. Peerie Charlie had stomped off below; he’d tried out each of the berths in turn, and was now taking all the tins out of one locker and laying them in a line on the floor. That seemed a harmless amusement, so I left him to it.

  ‘I just wanted to warn you to maybe keep an eye on Gibbie Matthewson,’ Inga said. She looked far more like her old self again today, with a fitted fleece in slimming charcoal, and full war-paint emphasising those dark eyes. Her skin was smoothed over with foundation, and her lips pillar-box scarlet. I didn’t think it was for my benefit. She had that something-nice-happening-today air; she stretched back against the cockpit rail like a seal basking on its rock. ‘My mother-in-law, see, she’s some kind of cousin of Jessie’s. She said Jessie was really unhappy about asking you for a berth for him, but Gibbie nagged her into it. Insisted.’