by Ru Pringle
Then suddenly she’s looking at seawater and a line of raven-dark cliffs.
Coira yells something as she scrambles to her knees. ‘Tack the jib!’ squeaks Alistair’s voice, strangled and weirdly staccato, as though he’s trying to enunciate very fast. ‘No depth – we’re out of room, we’re out of rooooom …’ Shoving the tiller sideways, he yanks the jib sheet free of the port winch. ‘Oh God. Shit, shit shit shit!’
The boat slams over. Coira slides and tumbles down to the new low side. The starboard winch is under water. Having fumbled three turns of jib sheet around it, she gropes for the socket, finds it by touch, rams the winch handle into it and cranks for all she’s worth. The stern of the ship is approaching again, but she can already see they’ll be further away on this pass. Their tacking is winning over the wind and the force of the waves.
After a few minutes they tack again. Then Alistair points the bow out to sea. The waves aren’t breaking any more. He furls the jib. Asks her to drop the mainsail.
Breathing heavily, the two of them watch the ship and the shore recede, listening to the bass rattle of the engine. Alistair uses a hand like a windscreen wiper, scraping seawater from his face and beard and flicking it on the deck. For a while he just stands, frozen, with a hand over his mouth.
‘We’re not safe yet. Um – any sign of our hitch-hikers?’
She looks for the binoculars. Discovers them washed into a corner of the cockpit. They don’t seem any worse for the experience. Huh. Waterproof too. She scans the waves astern. Follows the tied-together ropes they’re towing as far as she can.
Her heart sinks. ‘No sign of the dinghy.’
‘You think … it got torn off?’
‘Maybe. Probably. Hang on …’
Something grey is floating in the water behind them. It doesn’t look like the dinghy. Then again, it’s the same colour. And it appears to be moving with the yacht.
Shit. ‘Dinghy’s upside down.’
Alistair shows his teeth. ‘They hanging off the sides?’ She keeps looking. Squints and stares. Tries drying the lenses with her fingers.
Nothing.
She can’t believe it. After all this, when they had been so close! She watches the upturned dinghy sink behind a wave.
‘Alistair … fuck, I think they’re being dragged behind. On that rope of theirs.’
His eyebrows shoot up. ‘They won’t survive ten minutes in that. Quick, pull them in. Sorry, not going back to fetch them. Fuel’s down to dregs, and tank sediment could clog the engine. I’m half expecting to lose it any moment.’
She’s opening her mouth to ask how she’s meant to achieve this when she remembers the dinghy’s cleated to a winch. Idiot. She starts cranking. It’s gruelling, particularly with the boat pitching so heavily, and she’s exhausted before the dinghy seems any closer. The shore and the container ship recede steadily astern.
Come on!
Arms burning, she adopts a pace she thinks she can sustain, trying to let her legs and torso do the work. She worries how she’ll get past the first knot, but tensioning the free side of the rope provides enough friction to wind the lump of rope past the winch.
When she looks up again, the sea is calmer. The light is dusky and they are almost out of the bay. Alistair sets the engine to idle and helps her haul the dinghy in by hand. Pulling it aboard with a hooked pole from one of the bench lockers, he untangles the loop of frayed hawser it’s been dragging and sends her to lash the dinghy to the foredeck as he heaves the heavy rope into the cockpit. She returns expecting to see bodies tied to the hawser’s ends, but both escapees are attempting a feeble front crawl, the whites of their eyes eclipsed intermittently by the waves.
Reaching the stern, both raise arms as though expecting hands to be offered. Coira gestures for them to grab the ladder, dragging them aboard by their soaking clothes.
They aren’t even wearing life vests.
‘Sit.’ Alistair gruffly points to the middle of the port bench. ‘Stay out the way.’
Coira has the sails up within a minute. After reading The Complete Sailing Manual she even knows how to “reef” the mainsail, reducing its size by lashing folds of it along the boom to avoid it being overpowered in strong winds. As the bow comes round, the boat comes alive, springing over the swell towards Neist Point. Alistair turns off the engine. For a moment, even with the wind whistling through the rigging and the blades of the still-locked generator, everything seems supernaturally still and quiet.
‘So – we okay now?’
Alistair doesn’t respond immediately. Coira sees his throat move.
‘Don’t ask me to do anything like that ever again.’
He manages what could have been a grin, if his eyes hadn’t been so wild and shiny. Coira takes a deep breath and goes below. Water is slopping in the downhill corner of the floor. ‘Put the bilge pump on,’ she hears him call, over the pounding of water against the hull. ‘We took on a lot of sea.’ She finds the switch and a tortured electrical moaning starts. She fetches out a spare blanket which she hands to the two newcomers as she steps back into the cockpit. Both are shivering: a good sign, she thinks. They’re just clutching the blanket between them, watching her with saucer eyes. Sitting together seems to be making them uncomfortable.
‘Hug!’ she barks, hoping they’re not in shock. She mimes for them as she unfolds the blanket. ‘Use each other’s heat to warm yourselves.’ They nod, looking warily between her and Alistair, then fold arms reluctantly round each other as Coira winds the blanket around them. Soon they are bound in it, like a two-headed pupa.
‘Do you speak any English?’
Both nod.
‘We are going round this bit of land,’ she says, enunciating, drawing a course through the air with her frozen hand. ‘To somewhere safe, so we can ask for help. Maybe an hour.’ She holds up a finger and taps her watch. ‘Then we will try and help your friends on the ship. You understand?’
They glance at each other, then look back at her, and nod.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Djibouti,’ says one.
‘South Sudan,’ says the other.
She doesn’t ask their names. Tries not to memorise their faces. ‘How many on your ship?’
They confer briefly in a language she doesn’t recognise. ‘We do not know,’ says the Sudanese man. He frowns.
‘Hundreds?’
‘Yes, yes – many hundreds.’
She is very tired and feels an urge just to lie down in front of them and close her eyes. Instead, she shares a look with Alistair.
‘We will try to help,’ she assures them, and goes below to look for spare clothes and to brew some tea.
CHAPTER 58
______________
Soay
BY THE TIME THE COAST of Skye is approaching, you feel like you’ve run a marathon. In a freezing shower, while suffering food poisoning.
You can barely imagine the same journey in anything with a sail.
To your surprise, frail, alcohol-debased Captain Somhairle gives the impression he’s barely broken a sweat. He’s sat doggedly at the wheel in the same position for the last six hours, give or take occasional breaks to urinate expansively over the side. One hand is on the wheel, gripping a sodden roll-up. The other clutches the neck of yet another bottle of Famous Grouse as spray lashes the wheelhouse’s far from clear plastic windows. The man’s capacity for drink is extraordinary. It’s his second bottle today, and he doesn’t even seem drunk. This amount of alcohol would have killed you.
To your surprise Somhairle’s taken a course slightly away from the wind, perpendicular to the direction you want to be going, towards the strip of dark mountainside visible beneath the clouds. It’s the shortest crossing. Not what you’d have chosen, but in matters of the sea you’re learning that Somhairle knows best. Approaching now is a low headland, with a sea-loch on one side and a channel between the Isle of Skye and a far smaller island on th
e other.
Somhairle examines his diver’s watch.
‘We’ll not make the north of Skye today,’ he shouts, above the combined roar of the wind and the sea.
Not what you wanted to hear. ‘Can’t we keep going after dark?’
‘No indeed, not a chance. It is dangerous about here, particularly with the wind in this direction. The weather is worsening. I am telling you – we need to be finding somewhere safe where we can stay for the night.’
You find it hard to argue. Things aboard Orca are feeling increasingly marginal. Light’s fading, the swell and the wind have both increased, and the boat is being slammed around like a cork. Even with the wind on one side and both outboards sucking fuel, you’ve been averaging barely twelve knots. When the boat starts having to fight against the wind and the waves, as it will when you reach Skye, you could probably halve that.
‘Any ideas?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ He waves his whisky bottle at the smaller island. It’s not far away, but in the wrong direction. ‘As far as I know, no one is living on that island right now. Buildings there should give us shelter.’
You duck your head inside the wheelhouse, brace yourself against the violent yawing, and study the map on your ’phone. The air in here smells like a distillery. ‘What about this … Loch Brittle. Or Loch Harport – we’ve light left, and that’s about twenty kilometres further on.’
‘Loch Brittle will be risky,’ he tells you, and takes a swig. It’s not very accurate: whisky dribbles down his drysuit. ‘It’s an obvious place for us to be getting what you might call an “unwanted reception”. It’s not somewhere I would want to be stopping at all. I have no idea who will be there.’
‘And Loch Harport?’
‘I know people in Loch Harport. We might be able to get accommodation. Or perhaps we will be driven away. Either way, it’s a long way up a coast that’s mostly a lot of cliffs. It would be foolhardy. This boat you are chasing – these conditions will be the same for them. And this may be even more difficult for them, because they are not able to sail directly against the wind.’
‘Can we compromise? What about this other loch. Loch Eynort?’
Somhairle regards you with bleary eyes full of sorely tested patience, but swings the boat into the wind.
Immediately things are ten times worse. The wind howls. Despite progress being reduced to a crawl of less than five knots, the RIB leaps off the waves, becoming almost airborne on the largest, slamming into the troughs almost too violently for you to hold on. Minutes crawl by, along with the mouth of Loch Brittle.
As the loch disappears behind, ominous cliffs rise on your right. You haven’t been sick yet, but you’re feeling very rough. Waves begin crashing over the boat. Drums, boxes and bags bob and jostle around the deck like ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. You’d be properly scared in this situation, you realise, if Somhairle wasn’t here. It’s an oddly humbling epiphany. You hang on, wishing it was all over, dismayed by your soft, metrocentric arrogance. The cliffs crawl by in the howling gale. In a break between them you see a tiny bay, but it’s fully exposed to the swell, which pounds the shore in explosions of white which are blown most of the way up the cliffs.
The boat launches off a particularly large crest and Somhairle neatly turns the wheel.
You cup your hand and shout. ‘What are you doing?’
Somhairle doesn’t answer. Immediately you notice everything is quieter and calmer. You feel the boat picked up by a wave, and shunted powerfully back the way you’ve come.
Fair enough.
You’re bursting with frustration, but you know he’s right. You castigate yourself for not finding a more seaworthy vessel. There were boats in Tobermory you could probably have hired – if you hadn’t already promised Somhairle all your money. You could have duped him, obviously. You’d have been justified, given the stakes, and there was little he could have done.
The thought doesn’t sit well with you.
In less than half an hour, your captain is piloting Orca around the southern side of the island you now know is called Soay, shadowing the coast to a broad bay in the lee of the island’s low western dome. Scrub lines the shore. Amongst trees to the north are what look like stone cottages. You see no signs of occupation: no boats, vehicles, or signs of smoke. To your left a cluster of similar buildings are in various states of disrepair.
Somhairle turns towards them and, without preamble, rams the boat up on to the beach.
‘You must help me pull the boat ashore,’ he tells you, leaping onto the shingle still clutching his bottle. He immediately falls over, stumbling to his feet before waves swamp him. ‘Will you throw me that line. The rope!’
You hold out the rope that’s tied to the bow (you don’t want to throw it in this wind), then follow him up the beach. The rope is a long one. Having passed it around a tree, Somhairle returns to the boat and threads the end back through the ring at the bow, forming a simple pulley. The two of you haul in unison, inching the boat towards the ridge of stones and garbage left by the last storm.
Satisfied, he ties off the rope and spends a minute or so transferring things between duffel bags. Having handed one to you, he shoulders his own and staggers towards the most complete-looking building: an old cottage. You’re shivering, but already things here feel more sheltered. More sane.
The cottage looks derelict, but the windows are intact. There’s a padlocked bolt on the door. Somhairle pulls a crowbar from his bag and, with a grunt and screeches of tortured wood, prises off the entire bolt.
Inside is dim. It smells of mould and rodent piss, but it’s dry. Somhairle unrolls blankets for himself in the nearest corner and climbs inside them, drysuit and all. Wind whistles around the chimneys.
‘We should be out of here early,’ he murmurs, ferreting a whisky bottle from his bag and holding it to his chest like a lover. ‘I would much rather that we weren’t seen here. There is no way of knowing who could be about.’ He points at the fireplace. It’s blackened with soot. ‘You can light a fire if you would like. I’ll not be stopping you. I believe you’ll find plenty of wood outside.’
Sighing, you lay out your own blankets and begin searching for food. Somhairle’s brought some baked potatoes, a quarter wheel of pungent, leathery cheese, and some dried fish.
Maybe you will go and get that wood. Before you change into dry clothes.
‘How old are you, Somhairle?’ you ask. You’re not quite sure why.
There’s a long pause. ‘I am forty-seven.’
You have a suspicion your mouth is hanging open. You don’t know what to say. So you say nothing. A wave of hunger hits you, and you realise that food is more important than warmth.
As you struggle to rips off bits of fish with your teeth, Somhairle is already snoring.
CHAPTER 59
______________
Agenda
THE LIGHTHOUSE PASSES, a blunt shadow raking steel-dark clouds as Alistair follows a heading of due north, parallel to the coast. Steep waves roll under them from directly to port, making the boat rise and fall with no change in pitch. It feels like a broken elevator, or a particularly wearisome fairground ride. Things calm down considerably as they turn eastwards into the mouth of Loch Poolteil, skirting more cliffs at a respectful distance. With twilight bleeding from the sky, they anchor between a concrete jetty and a small island.
‘You’re staying here,’ Alistair tells Coira, in a tone that doesn’t invite argument. When she starts to argue anyway, he puts his hands on his hips. ‘No! Don’t make me play the guilt card. It was your turn last time. Now it’s mine. I have skills which are likely to be needed.’
‘I can shoot.’
‘I’m sure you can. Let’s hope you don’t need to while you guard the boat.’
The two Africans seem comically uncomfortable at what she realises must look like a domestic. When Alistair’s ready to leave a few minutes later, they climb into the dinghy with visible
relief. She watches the three men speed away towards the darkness of the shore.
She has an odd feeling in her stomach watching them go.
She can’t really place the root of it, or even what it is exactly. Alistair’s taken the binoculars. Fair enough, she thinks. He hasn’t taken the gun, though. He’s left that on the cabin table. A little odd. Either he’s supremely confident he doesn’t need it, or he figures – reasonably enough – that running around near people’s houses in the dark with an assault rifle might get him shot. He even checked it over for her, replenishing the ammunition clips and making sure she knew how to use the all-day scope before he left.
She scans the shore with eyes still making the slow transition from sharp colour to grainy low-light monochrome. Halfway up the hill, she can make out untidy clusters of white-walled houses. She can’t see details or people, but lights are coming on. At least there’s no gunfire, or things exploding.
Yet. Only been here half an hour.
The more she thinks about it, the more she has the nagging feeling of something subtly out of kilter. When she was a DI she might have called it a hunch. In those days, most of her hunches involved people she didn’t know. This one’s aimed closer to home. It’s been building all day. Thinking about it, it was probably in the background before that.
For a while, it’s felt like she’s been getting to know Alistair all over again. She’s been surprised at how much of this discovery has been … well, enjoyable. But today, Alistair has just seemed …
She can’t put her finger on what it is. A kind of awkwardness, or ambivalence. It’s like his eyes have been just a tiny bit reticent; his smile fractionally forced. In moments when she’s caught him off-guard, his expression’s seemed close to a kind of panic.
And now he’s gone. And she has no idea what he’s doing, or when he’ll be back.
She’s being uncharitable, she tells herself. Not to mention paranoid. He’s risked his life for you. He’s been nothing but open with you, as far as you know.