by Mark Neilson
‘The Fraserburgh and Buckie lads promised me that they’d spread out and comb the fishing grounds, on their way north. If they found anything, somebody would have come back to tell us.’
Mary blinked.
‘You can’t just hold a one-person wake,’ Gus argued. ‘I’ve got the tickets. We’re all going home at four this afternoon. Then the night train north. You’ll be in Buckie with the milk, tomorrow morning.’
‘I’m staying here,’ Mary said quietly.
‘What good will it do?’ he demanded. ‘It won’t bring them back.’
‘I’m staying on. You take the girls.’
‘If you stay here, then Elsie will stay here too. That crush on Andy … she’s just a girl, a school lass barely. You cannae give her the excuse to stay behind. What will her family say?’
‘She’s a woman now. She can make up her own mind. I’m staying.’
‘Aggie’s got your tickets. She’s desperate to get back, to her little boy.’
Mary blinked again.
‘Come on,’ Gus pleaded. ‘This isn’t Buckie. The Findlay’s boat hasn’t disappeared in the Moray Firth. We can’t keep a vigil for her, like we would, up there. If they’re still afloat, they’ll be found. If they aren’t found, if they don’t come limping back … then they’re gone. It makes no difference whether you stand here, waiting, or come back home.’
‘It makes a difference to me,’ said Mary. ‘And maybe, just maybe, it will make a difference to them too.’
Gus threw up his hands. ‘You can’t keep them alive by willpower alone, Mary! This is the sea you’re dealing with. We live by her and, if she gets tired of us, we die by her. Men disappear, become only memories – whatever we’d rather have.’
‘I’m staying,’ said Mary.
‘And I’m responsible for four teams of quines, and getting them back to Buckie tomorrow morning. I can’t keep them here and change the tickets, waiting until you finally give up.’
‘I’m staying on,’ said Mary.
The iron in her voice reflecting the iron in her will.
She edged over the grey horizon, so tiny against the vastness of the sea that even watching for her, Mary didn’t think it was a boat. She screened her eyes, her heart hammering. Then the tears began to flow, making it impossible to see clearly, when clear vision was needed to be certain.
Mary watched, and waited. Terrified that the next time she wiped the tears from her eyes, the tiny dot would have disappeared.
It stayed stubbornly solid, travelling so slowly that time ground to a halt: a fishing boat, limping towards Yarmouth harbour, when everyone else was heading home. It could have been one of these, run into trouble. But Mary knew with total certainty that it was the Endeavour, bringing Neil safely back.
She flew from the pier head to their hut, crashing through the doorway, to find the place almost deserted. Only the few Buckie teams were left, sitting on the stripped beds, kitbags and cases at their feet.
‘They’re back!’ she shouted. ‘Our boys. They’re coming home …’
Elsie covered her face. Aggie threw her arms round Mary, and hugged her tightly. Then Elsie was off like a fawn, swooping down to tell Gus, leaving him far behind her flying feet as she raced down to the harbour mouth.
The women poured out into the cold, shouting, skirling. It was a Buckie boat, with Buckie loons, and there would be Buckie women waiting to cheer them home. They overtook Gus, tears streaming down his face.
Aggie scooped him up into the crowd of women.
‘Look at you!’ she scolded. ‘Greeting, worse than any bairn.’
‘You’re greeting too,’ he snuffled, long red nose shining.
‘I’m a woman,’ she said. ‘I’m entitled to greet.’
‘And I’ve been with women far too long,’ sighed Gus.
In a tight-knit band, they marched down to the harbour. With most of the fishing boats gone from the quays, the place seemed empty. But local fishermen, colliers, and fish merchants shouted to ask what the news was, then dropped their work and followed too. The sea was a common foe, and any boat saved from her an occasion for delight. Within minutes, the harbour mouth was lined with people. The quines pushed through to reach Elsie at the uttermost point of the harbour, where she was skipping and dancing, like a madwoman – and nobody cared.
As she approached, everyone saw how low in the water the Endeavour was, travelling at a speed which barely made a ripple round her bows. When she limped into the harbour entrance, they saw the chain of weary men on deck, bailing endlessly, returning seawater to the sea.
Somewhere inside the harbour, a vessel started blasting her foghorn – its celebration taken up by others. While the waiting crowds began to wave, and cheer. The sea seldom releases her victims – but this one had made it home.
The deckhands stopped bailing, surprised by the welcome they were being given. A couple of them waved back, self-consciously: then the chain of buckets coming up took over again. The temporary caulking with blankets had slowed the leak but the longer they had edged through the sea, the less effective the repair had become. So the crew were working just to keep the water level where it was.
Whoever was steering had the presence of mind to head straight for the ramp of the dry dock, with the tide on the ebb. The cheering crowd following the Endeavour in. Men fought to catch the warps thrown up to them, then watched as the dry dock team manoeuvred a cradle under the hull. She would be left to drain, before being winched into the dock to be repaired.
Mary pushed through the watching crowd. Neil was standing outside the deckhouse, his faced lined with dirt and exhaustion. The sunken eyes lit up when he saw her.
‘Mary Cowie!’ he called up. ‘Come aboard. We need a doctor.’
Fishermen never allowed a woman to step on board their vessel: it brought bad luck. So whatever the problem, it was serious. The cheers died away, and Mary was helped down onto the steel ladder below the lip of the quay, its rusty rungs rough on her hands.
She felt herself steadied, and turned to find Neil towering over her: ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she said quietly. ‘Who’s hurt?’
Neil scrubbed his face. ‘It’s Andy,’ he said.
There was a wail from above.
‘He’s taken a bad blow to the head. He’s sick and confused. And I think a couple of ribs have gone. He’s lost a lot of blood … but at least he isn’t coughing it.’
‘Let me see him,’ Mary said.
They guided her to the crew’s quarters, where Andy was lying, ashen faced and childlike, in a bunk. Mary took a deep breath, and kneeled to examine the torn skin, now clotted with congealed blood.
‘He needs a doctor, but I can clean the wound,’ she said. Gently, she palpated the skull. ‘We’re best having X-ray plates taken, to make sure the skull hasn’t fractured raggedly inside. But it feels sound. He’s a lucky boy.’
She looked up. ‘Gus will know who to ask for a charabanc to run Andy to the infirmary. Ribs too, you said …’ As she spoke, her hands moved gently down. Andy groaned.
The quayside was so quiet that many of the watchers heard. Gus was already running to the harbour master’s office and its telephone. Elsie was struggling to get down, but the Buckie women were gently holding her back.
Mary straightened. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
Neil wiped his face with a filthy hand. ‘We hit something big and heavy, floating in the water. Luckily, we weren’t holed – or we wouldn’t be here now. And if that storm had lasted a few hours more, our repair would never have held. We were blown miles off course.’
‘But you brought them home,’ she said. Aching to hug him tight.
‘I brought them home,’ he said wearily.
Then his back straightened, as if a giant burden had gone. ‘This time, I really brought them home,’ he said, wonder in his voice.
In his mind’s eye, a series of flashes from shell explosions. Mud and torn bodies everywhere. Barbed wire. Broken, skeletal trees. Ra
w ruins of farmhouses. Muddy faces of the youngsters with him, shining in the flares of battle. The faces of boys who would soon die, and horribly, whatever he did to try and save them.
The shakes came out of nowhere, like they always did.
‘We’ll look after him,’ Padraig said gruffly. ‘These shakes don’t bother us. He’s our skipper, and he brought us home.’
On the station platform, there was an awkwardness between them which Mary neither understood, nor wanted. But he was back and, for the moment, she was content.
‘You should be up at the hospital, with Andy,’ she scolded.
Neil tried to stifle a yawn. Couldn’t. ‘I’ll go, as soon as your train has left,’ he promised. Then fought another yawn.
‘When did you last sleep?’ she asked.
‘Not since we struck that bit of timber.’
That was two, even three days ago: no wonder he looked exhausted.
She wanted to be in his arms, not chatting quietly at his side. The other Buckie women had made room for them and were further down the platform – watching from the tails of their eyes, no doubt. She didn’t care.
She had thought that his first act would be to pick her up and smother her with kisses. Mary was aching to abandon herself within his arms. Yet they were standing here as friends – or even strangers.
‘What’s up, Neil?’ she asked him quietly.
That familiar level look: this wasn’t a man who shirked a question.
‘When you think you’re going to die, your survival instinct takes over,’ he said slowly. ‘You fight to save yourself and the people round you. But part of your mind is standing back, thinking. I thought of you, of where the two of us were heading. Knowing that, if I let things run, I was condemning you to a lifetime of standing on cold quays, and waiting for a late boat to come in. Or lying sleepless with worry, every night.’
‘That’s what fisherwomen do,’ she replied.
‘You’re capable of so much better than that,’ Neil said quietly. So quietly, she had to strain to hear above the other noises in the station.
‘My choice,’ she said.
‘Then you’d be wrong. You’d be betraying yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
His eyes bored into her. ‘You have it in you to do something great – something you can be proud of, for the rest of your life. You could study medicine. Become one of these pioneer women doctors you were talking about. Fight for women’s place in the medical profession. Open the door for other women, everywhere. You have the brains – and the courage for it. You would be wasting your life if you did anything less.’
A cold hand gripped Mary’s heart. She shivered.
He gently held her arms. ‘I’m the very thing you should be avoiding like the plague. An ordinary fisherman. Because if you come to me, you will know nothing other than poverty. The only marks you would leave in this sad world would be your headstone, and your family. What a waste of the gifts you have been given, Mary Cowie.’
‘My choice,’ she repeated thickly. ‘What if that’s all I want to be?’
The tired eyes crinkled. ‘It’s my choice too. And I choose to send you back to your cottage hospital. And with every fibre of my being, I urge you to do more than be a nurse there. Use it as your stepping stone. As a marker along your path to becoming a doctor.’
‘Mary. It’s our train,’ said Aggie, touching her arm.
She hadn’t noticed it come in.
‘Neil Findlay …’ Her voice was pinched and hurting. ‘When you bring that ship of yours back to Buckie, I’ll be waiting for you.’
He pushed her gently away. ‘Don’t, Mary. Because I won’t be looking for you on the quay. I refuse to be the millstone that grinds you down.’
Long after the train moved off, and its clouds of smoke and steam had dispersed, he stood there. Alone, on the platform. Looking down the shining rails that were the start of the quines’ long trip home. His face was tired, but set: if his heart was hurting, there was not a man – or woman – would ever read that in his face. Seagulls wheeled and called above the station.
Slowly, he turned away. Then began the long walk to the hospital.
Jonathon rubbed condensation from the windscreen of his car. Another emergency night call, to a house he’d never visited before in Portgordon. In the dark, he’d followed the woman’s instructions: this was roughly where her house should be. Had she left the shutters open, as he’d asked, letting the light from her oil lamp shine like a beacon through the dark?
There: down to the far right of a lane. He left the car and walked briskly towards the house, closing the lapels of his coat against the wind with his free hand. Then knocked on the house door and went in.
Old worried faces. Threadbare dressing gowns thrown hastily over nightclothes. An air of panic, barely under control.
‘Where’s the patient?’ he asked briskly.
‘Up in the guest room, Doctor.’
Probably the children’s bedroom, empty after the flock had flown, under a steep roof with a tiny attic window. It was.
Jonathon blinked. ‘We meet again,’ he said.
Angus Campbell grimaced. ‘I can think of better circumstances.’
‘What’s the problem?’
Campbell groaned, sinking back onto the bed. ‘Gut ache, like I have never known before,’ he said tightly.
‘May I?’ Jonathon lifted the blankets away, then opened the man’s pyjama jacket. ‘Where is the pain?’ he asked.
Campbell’s hand gingerly traced the area. ‘Started down here … then switched to the centre of my stomach. Came in waves. I thought it was something I’d eaten. Cramps.’
‘When was this?’
‘Started a day or so ago. My granddad gave me bicarbonate of soda, but it didn’t help. The pain’s got worse. It’s unbearable now … here …’
Campbell touched the lower right side of his abdomen.
Many ailments might trigger and follow these symptoms. Appendix problems, obviously: but there were others.
‘Let’s take your temperature,’ Jonathon reached into his old Gladstone bag and brought out the thermometer case. He gently flapped the instrument, to neutralize the reading. ‘Slip this under your tongue.’
He turned to the old man in the doorway: ‘When did he last eat?’
‘He’s had nothing since his dinner, yesterday.’
Dinner – that meant lunch. Midday.
‘Has he been sick?’
Shake of the head.
‘Starting to feel queasy now,’ Campbell mumbled.
Jonathon checked the temperature reading: very high. ‘Do you feel fevered?’ he asked.
‘I’m swinging between sweating, and shivering.’
Campbell’s body bucked, as a wave of pain hit. Sweat ran down his face – ivory yellow, unlike the weatherbeaten skin Jonathon remembered.
Not good. He didn’t like the way the symptoms were adding up. ‘Let’s check your abdomen,’ he said, rubbing his hands briskly together, then down the sides of his trousers, to generate some heat. ‘The doctor’s curse,’ he smiled. ‘Cold hands.’
‘I’m past caring,’ Campbell said.
Jonathon gently palpated the abdomen. As he suspected, reasonably normal lower left quadrant: and upper left. But muscles rigid and tensed anywhere near the lower right. Almost certainly appendicitis – even if the man was older than the normal range.
Surgery was needed: with the cottage hospital as good as closed and the nurse away. Jonathon straightened. Highland doctors had often done the job on kitchen tables. He could manage better than that.
He sniffed Campbell’s breath: it was rank. Another symptom. Gently, he palpated the abdomen again. It might be imagination, or Campbell tensing in anticipation of pain, but the rigidity had increased. Muscles contracting in the abdomen wall? If so, not good at all.
More than a day of steadily increasing pain? This man could be very sick indeed: peritonitis – the ruptured appendix infe
cting the membrane of the abdomen, and a killer if it wasn’t treated quickly.
He checked his pocket watch. Coming up to 5.30 a.m.
Campbell groaned again.
Jonathon sat on the bed. ‘You need to be hospitalized,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’m diagnosing appendicitis. The hospital best equipped to deal with this is over an hour away in Elgin. We’ve a local cottage hospital in Buckie, where I can do the surgery. If we act quickly, it’s a routine procedure. But I’m in the middle of closing the cottage hospital down – we have to be out of the building in a few days’ time. So I will have to arrange a transfer for you, to either Banff or Elgin. But by then, the crisis will be over.’
‘Can’t it wait until I get home?’ Campbell asked.
‘Quite impossible.’
‘That serious?’
‘Not yet. But if we don’t act fast, it might be. I’m not prepared to take that chance.’
Campbell grimaced. ‘Hospitals spook me. I spent weeks in one with a smashed leg once. But I don’t have any choice, do I?’
Jonathon silently shook his head.
Campbell sighed. ‘Your call, Doc. I’m in your hands.’
Jonathon stood up, his mind already racing ahead.
‘I’ll fetch my car,’ he said.
If the problem was appendicitis, then he could do the job himself, Jonathon thought. No need to bring back the nurse until later. He could anaesthetize, make the incision, fumble around for the appendix, remove it, seal the intestinal opening, stitch everything up. But peritonitis … even if he brought her back, would the nurse be capable of assisting?
One step at a time. Hospitalize the man, prepare both him and the theatre. Then take it from there.
As Jonathon headed through the town, he braked suddenly. A group of fisherwomen in shawls were trudging from the station, cases or kitbags in their hands.
‘Mary!’ he shouted over. ‘Can you come up to the hospital and assist? Right now? I need a theatre sister – and there’s nobody I’d rather choose.’
She came over, looking as if she hadn’t slept in days.
‘What procedure?’ she asked, her mind sharp as ever.
‘Appendectomy. Possible peritoneum infection.’
She nodded. ‘I can help. A lot of the shell wounds meant surgery and cleansing in the abdominal area.’ She glanced at Campbell, reading the same symptoms that had brought worry-lines to Jonathon’s face. ‘I’ll get into the back,’ she said. ‘The girls can look after my kitbag.’
