‘Less than fifty pounds.’
‘You see? You cannot buy me out. And I have nothing. I am living on borrowed money. So what is the point of an agreement?’
‘I thought you didn’t trust me?’
‘I don’t. Your head is too full of strange ideas – about people and politics and the economics of the world. Oh, don’t think I have been spying on you, but they tell me everything, about what you eat, how much you sleep, what you talk about. And there is the gossip here, too. You came to see Hilda Manson, making enquiries about your father. The house where he was born is just up the road, and there is that tablet in the church, so I know something about him.’ She was looking at me, a gleam of humour back in her eyes. ‘I think probably you suffer from some sort of a father complex.’ Her hand reached out and touched my arm. ‘Do not please be offended. I am an expert on this subject. Jan, you see, had a father complex, so that in a sense I married two men. Far Petersen … I always called him that, it is the Norwegian word for Father … Far was with us always, from the very beginning of our marriage. But it did not matter. I loved that dear gentle old man very much, even though he is so stupid about money.’ She moved her hand to the bottle. ‘So, you see, I know,’ she said, filling my glass, but not her own, and then rising to her feet. ‘Now we will eat. It is fish, do you mind?’
I shook my head.
‘Fish to start with, then meat.’ She bent towards me, laughing. ‘Cheer up! It is not the end of the world that another person knows something about what is going on in your mind. For me, it gives you a certain integrity. And because of that you get no agreement, but a celebration dinner instead.’ And she turned to go to the kitchen.
I offered to help her, but she waved me back into my chair. ‘Have your drink and relax. About five minutes I think. And if you are bored with your own company, there are the logs over there.’ She indicated the table by the window. ‘I looked them out for you this afternoon. The voyage which brought Far Petersen and Jan to Shetland is in the second book.’
I took my drink over to the table, moving the lamp so that it shone on the little pile of books tied up with string. There were seven of them, and all but two were hardbound books like ledgers. These covered the voyages from 1966, when Jan Petersen and his father began fishing out of Lerwick and Hamnavoe. Courses, speeds, fixes, weather, everything was recorded, including the time spent trawling and the catches for each voyage. Mostly they were fishing around Shetland, occasionally Orkney or Fair Isle. These voyages were a week, or ten days at the most. But in the summer they had fished up to Faroe and then the voyages had been longer.
I glanced only briefly at these logs. It was the two others, both exercise books, that interested me. They were not proper logs, but a personal record of patrols, incidents and voyages completed in the early part of the war. They had been kept by a Lt Adrian Farrant. The first covered the Scapa Flow period and the evacuation of British troops from the Narvik area of Norway in June, 1940. The second was a record of voyages made in the winter of 1941/42, mostly to rendezvous with local fishing boats off the coast of Norway, but a few to the coast itself north of the Arctic Circle. It was one of these that Gertrude had marked with a slip of paper: Three men and a small boy were taken off from Lyngenfjord at 01.00, the time agreed; Mark Johnston, a mining saboteur with SOE, Knut Hansen, a business man from Trondheim, Olav Petersen, a whaling captain from Selmvaag, and Jan Petersen, his son, aged 8. The worst conditions possible, clear sky and bright moonlight. I wished the agent who had radioed a report of inshore fog could have been with me for we were spotted before we were even clear of the fjord …
No wonder Lt Farrant had hidden the books at the back of the locker. In every case he had given the names and occupations of those he had landed in Norway and those he had brought out, a highly secret record.
I began from the beginning then, turning the pages quickly, reading only the names with a growing certainty of what I would find. And in the voyage that began: Sailed from Graven at 19.00 on January 6, I found it: Arrived off the RV near Oksfjord in Finnmark at 21.33, weather ideal with low cloud and drizzle, wind light from WNW. Took off Nils Storkson as arranged. He is an officer of the Company Linge, I think, but there is another man with him, Alistair Randall, who claims he is a British citizen. Storkson says he is an agent, but not one of ours, and insists I put him under guard. Both are suffering from exposure and Randall from slight frostbite. He is a much older man and badly scarred, an old injury. Only Storkson is armed. I have taken away his gun and given them the cabin for’ard of the galley.
Then followed a brief account of the voyage back to Shetland. It concluded: Berthed alongside the quay at Graven 09.45, January 12, and handed passengers over for interrogation. Both are fully recovered and both tell different stories. A matter for Intelligence. I am only the bus driver …
I sat back, staring at that page, reading it through again. Garrard had been right and the confirmation that my father had not died in Spain left me confused and more than a little puzzled. An agent, but not one of ours. Whose then? Not the Germans. Had the Russians had agents in North Norway at the beginning of 1942?
The door to the kitchen opened. ‘Finish your drink and come and eat.’ She put the plates she was carrying on the table. ‘It is steamed halibut. I hope you like.’ I sat down, remembering the presence I had felt on the bridge, that strange sense of companionship when I had stood alone at the wheel that first time. ‘Is it all right?’ she asked. ‘You are very silent.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. Could it have been his presence I had felt? Had he been in such a state of nerves that it had left an indelible impression?
‘You are thinking about their voyage to Shetland. It was very dangerous, to come right into the coast like that. The Duchess is not a Norwegian ship like the boats they had sailing out of Lunna and Scalloway. She was based at Graven in Sullom Voe and it was her speed and range that made them use her. But she only went in to the coast in an emergency or when it was something very important. It wasn’t Far Petersen they went in to get on that trip, it was the man Johnston, an English agent; also to land explosives and equipment.’
If she had seen the name Randall in the log she didn’t mention it. Probably she didn’t remember, and when I had opened the bottle of red wine, and the joint of lamb was on the table, I forgot about it, too. I remember I talked a lot about my early life in America and how I had worked my way from Germany across the Middle East to India. She was curious about me, and in the candlelight, with the drink inside me and her large eyes staring, I even told her about Düsseldorf. To be able to talk freely like that, to have somebody listen – it was something I found I needed very badly. And to add to the enjoyment, there was the knowledge that the evening could only end one way, and that there was all the next day ahead of us. Our hands touched once as I took the tray with the coffee on it and a bottle of Glen Morangie. I felt the movement of her fingers and my blood leapt. We sat, very properly, on two separate chairs, facing each other and sipped our coffee and our whisky, talking gently in the lamplight, each of us knowing what was going to happen and the delay making the sense of anticipation almost unbearable. I hadn’t had a woman for a long time. And now, with all the work behind me …
The knock on the door was sudden and very loud. I thought it must be Johan or somebody from the ship. Gertrude must have thought so, too, for she said as she got up, ‘They are becoming too dependent on you.’ But it wasn’t anybody from the ship. It was Sandford, and he had a policeman with him. He came in smiling, his sharp eyes taking in the cosy intimacy of the room at a glance. ‘I thought we’d find you’d slipped round here.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked him, but with the constable there we both knew.
It was the same man who had escorted me to the police station. ‘You have foreign nationals working on your boat. Is that correct?’
I nodded, and he read out the four names.
‘They’re Norwegian,’ Gertrude said. ‘I am Norwe
gian, too. We have residents’ permits.’
‘Aye, I know that. But what about work permits?’
‘Those have been applied for.’
‘Would that be for renewal, or are they new applications? We have checked with the Department of Employment and there is no record –’
‘My fault,’ she said quickly. ‘Well, Mr Petersen’s really, and nobody ever troubled us about it. But now the applications for permits are in and I have seen the Fisheries Inspector in Lerwick. He has agreed to recommend them, so you don’t have to worry.’
‘Not if you send the men ashore,’ Sandford said. ‘And when the Inspector has had time to think about it, I doubt very much if he will support your applications.’ He looked pleased with himself as he turned to me. ‘You’re sailing tomorrow, or is it Sunday? You’ll be short of a crew. I could help you there.’
‘We’ll manage,’ I said.
‘You can’t act as stand-by boat to an oil rig if your manning strength is below the regulation minimum.’
I stared at him, wondering what was behind it. ‘You’re quite a sea lawyer,’ I said. And then I turned to the constable. ‘Have you a warrant?’
He shook his head. ‘There’ll be no charge so long as you send them ashore. Those are my instructions.’ And when I asked him to produce them, his face took on a stolid look. ‘Verbal instructions, from my sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’m to see that those four men are brought ashore. They may have to be deported.’
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Gertrude said. ‘They live on board. It’s their home.’
‘It will be for the Home Office to decide.’
I got my oilskins from the door where I had hung them. I was boiling with anger, but I had too much experience of the slow inexorable process of the law to argue. I just wondered what that little bastard Sandford was up to.
Gertrude came at me as I was zipping up my oilskin jacket. You are not going to bring them ashore?’ Her voice was high and strident, her eyes blazing. ‘You can’t. I forbid it.’
‘Just leave it to me,’ I told her. ‘It’s my responsibility.’ I reached for my cap and put it on. Then I went across to Sandford. ‘You’ve been to a lot of trouble over this – why?’
‘You got that ship by a trick.’
‘It’s not the ship you’re after now,’ I said. ‘It’s the crew. You want your own men on board. Why?’
He hesitated, his eyes gone dead and I knew there was something else, something he hadn’t told me. ‘It should be a Shetland crew,’ he murmured. ‘Shetlanders have a right to exploit their own oil.’ But he couldn’t look me in the face, his eyes shifting. ‘I offered to help, that’s all. Crews aren’t easy to get.’
‘But you have one willing and ready to take over. Your own skipper, too?’ There was something here I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t take hold of him and shake the truth out of him, not with the constable standing there. I glanced at Gertrude. Her long dress looked suddenly incongruous, the candles behind her guttering in the draught from the open door. ‘I’ll tell them,’ I said, and I went out, walking quickly down to the landing beach with the aid of my torch. It was very dark now, a soft rain falling and only the riding light of the trawler showing blurred in the night. The constable came with me and helped me launch the Zodiac.
‘How long before we get the permits?’ I asked him.
‘Normally it’s a matter of a few days. But in this case –’ He straightened up, facing me in the darkness. ‘It’s politics, you see, sir.’
‘You mean Sandford is right and the applications will be refused.’
‘It’s only what I hear.’
‘And who instructed your sergeant to send you down at this time of the evening?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘But it was Sandford who was pressing the matter.’
‘Several councillors, too.’
I was in the boat then. Fortunately he didn’t insist on coming with me. He pushed me off clear of the boulders and then I was out from the land, rowing towards the ship. Halfway there I stopped and lit my pipe, the rain drifting in the flare of the match. The sound of an accordion and men’s voices singing came to me across the water. I sat there for a moment thinking about what I was going to do, about Shetland politics and how I would stand in law. But Block 206 was in international waters. Out there I was my own master, and if the permits were refused, then I could still send the men ashore when Gertrude had found replacements. I started rowing again, the rain coming in flurries, hissing on the bowl of my pipe.
It was Duncan who answered my hail as I came alongside. He helped me climb aboard and I told him to get the engines started. ‘We’ll be leaving as soon as we’ve fetched our anchor.’
He didn’t argue, just nodded and said, ‘Aye. But ye’d better break it gently to the lads. They’ve got a bellyfull of beer and they’ll no’ think much of the idea.’
They were crammed into the mess room aft, their faces sweating in the naked light, the table littered with beer cans and young Per swaying to the tune he was squeezing out of the box. The song died as I looked at Johan sitting by the galley hatch. ‘You’ve got out of here at night before, haven’t you?’ I asked him.
‘You want to leave now?’
‘If we don’t go now, we don’t go at all.’ And I told him what had happened.
He finished the can of beer he was drinking and got slowly to his feet. ‘Ja. We can try.’ He pushed his hand up over his face, rubbing at his eyes and swaying slightly. ‘What is the weather?’
‘Dark,’ I said. ‘And raining.’
‘And the wind?’
‘Still from the south-west.’
‘Gud. Then we know when we clear Houss Ness.’ The thrum of the diesels started and he turned. ‘Lars. Henrik.’ He said something to them in Norwegian, then went down the alleyway, pushed open the door to the deck and went out into the night, not bothering about oilskins. Henrik followed him and Lars came up to the bridge with me. I didn’t switch the deck lights on. We needed night vision. It was very dark, so dark I could barely see them working on the foredeck, the winch clattering and the chain beginning to come in.
A light shone out from the shore. Gertrude had drawn the curtains back, and when the winch had stopped and Johan had joined me in the bridge, he got us out past the end of The Taing on compass bearings taken on the faint glimmer of that light. We lost it as soon as we were out into Clift Sound, a slight swell under us and everything black. We headed south on a compass course of 175° with myself at the radar and Johan watching the glimmer of the waves breaking against the cliffs. I think he distrusted electronics, for he conned the ship by eye, and when we began to feel the full weight of the sea, he ordered a change of course to the west.
He wasn’t a navigator. He couldn’t handle a sextant. He could barely plot a course on the chart. But he came from Luro and had learned how to pilot a boat fishing the Inner Lead up towards the Lofotens. We passed so close to Houss Ness that we could hear the roar of the waves breaking against the Stacks. He came in from the starboard gangway then. ‘Okay. We are clear now on due west. In one mile Groot Ness is to starboard. After that there is nothing between you and the bottom of Greenland.’
Lars was already steering 270°. I went into the chart recess and switched on the light. Foula was the obvious choice. ‘What’s the holding like in Ham Voe?’
‘In this wind, gud.’ He leaned over the chart beside me, his jersey sodden. ‘Foula is okay. Nobody bother us there.’
He went below then and I switched on the bridge radio. It was 23.36 and I got the tail-end of the late news, something about an oil slick off the Northumberland coast and the local MP to table a motion in the House about pollution and firmer Government control of oil rigs. In Hull a meeting of shipyard workers to consider the latest offer was disrupted by militants. With fish being imported to augment supplies and prices soaring the Government is being pressed to intervene in the dispute … I switched on one of the heaters and remo
ved my oilskins, waiting for the inshore forecast. The news seemed remote, another world, as I listened to the sounds of the ship, the slam of the bows as she fell off the tops of the waves. All your life you work for something you believe in, then three weeks of hard, concentrated effort, and it means nothing. I crossed to the radar set, but nothing showed and I stood there, staring out at the black night with the waves coming at us as smudges of grey in the darkness, the radio drowning the plunging impact of the bows. Three months, and what at the end of it? I was thinking of Gertrude, wondering what our relationship would have been now if Sandford hadn’t turned up. A partnership, she had said, but the only experience I had had of partnership with a woman had disintegrated into ideological arguments and recriminations.
I switched the Decca to maximum range and as the radius lines changed the outline of Foula appeared little more than 22 miles ahead. Speed 7 knots. In three hours’ time … Gale warnings Hebrides, Rockall and Malin: westerly gale Force 8 may be expected in the next 2 hours … We would have to anchor close in to be under the lee and Ham was sure to have a police station. Why was it that everything I did seemed to lead inevitably to a clash with authority? And Sandford – there was something about him, something familiar that I didn’t understand. I tried to see behind the bright aggressive eyes, the truculence of his manner, but instead I found my mind switching to the entry in that exercise book. An agent, but not one of ours. And he had been on this ship, in the cabin for’ard of the galley. A matter for Intelligence. Somewhere, in some record office, there would be an Intelligence report. I tried to imagine what it said, but I couldn’t think clearly. I was tired, my stomach queasy. It was always like this at the start of a voyage. Just nausea. I was never sick. I leaned on the chart shelf, pushing back my cap and wiping the sweat from my forehead.
Two hours later, the large comforting bulk of Johan appeared at my side. He had been into Ham Voe before, so I left it to him, and at 03.07 we let go our anchor about a cable off the end of the pier. It was still and very peaceful in the lee of the towering mass of Hamnafjeld and I went to my bunk, thinking I was clear of trouble tucked away here under Foula.
North Star Page 9
