He’d begun to look around the room when she started again. ‘I thought these poor women were deluded by grief but they weren’t. Hector MacKay wouldn’t speak of Uilleam except to say he never wanted to hear mention of his name on the island again. The Rae brothers – all three of them survived – were the same. Two days after the tragedy Hamish Sutherland went to the Sinclair house and told Margaret and Ishbel they wouldn’t be welcome at the memorial service on the pier.’
‘Why ever not?’ Cal almost shouted, forgetting himself.
Grace Ann’s eyes flashed open. She looked at Cal, as if startled. ‘I never knew for certain except that Sandy’s death had to be avenged somehow.’
‘Is that when my grandmother left the island?’
‘It was. Ishbel went to live with her parents on the mainland in December 1942, though her mother-in-law Margaret pleaded with her to stay, for the baby to inherit the croft, so determined was she it would be a boy …’
Grace Ann broke off and Cal prompted her again. ‘My mother was born early the following year?’
Grace Ann nodded. ‘When your great grandmother heard the baby was a girl she left the island too, to go to her sister in Thurso. Murdo Rae and his family took over the Sinclair house and croft as they’d always wanted.’
Neither of them spoke for a few moments, Cal reflecting on what he thought was the end of the story, Grace Ann taking another sip of tea.
After returning the mug to the trolley, she glanced up at Cal and then quickly away. Suddenly she seemed nervous of him again. ‘Did you know my brother’s body was found?’
‘No I didn’t.’ Cal sounded surprised.
‘A letter came to my mother the following spring. It was from the Admiralty informing her Sandy’s body had been washed up on the Lofoten Islands near the Norwegian coast. The commander of the German garrison there had identified Sandy by his wrist watch. He’d been buried where he was found, on the south-east coast of an island called Moskenesoy.’
‘My mother never mentioned it.’
Grace Ann went on as if she hadn’t heard Cal’s comment. ‘I hoped it would bring peace to my mama but she died of a broken heart by the autumn. The morning I buried her I left the island for good.’
She paused again, the emotion of the memory robbing her of words, before stretching her left hand to the stool. She picked up a small red box which had faded in parts to pink. ‘My brother’s watch was returned to my mama with the letter from the Admiralty.’
Grace Ann offered Cal the box.
She said softly, ‘Your grandfather wore one too. All the men were given them when they joined the boat’s crew.’
The watch, like the model of the boat, lay on a bed of cotton wool. The face was cracked and cloudy as if a sea mist was trapped inside it. Only the 1 and 2 in Roman numerals were visible on the hour dial. The leather strap was black, twisted and hard.
‘Would you mind if I held it?’ Cal asked.
Grace Ann shook her head and Cal picked it out and turned it over. ‘Alexander MacKay, Eilean Iasgaich 1942.’ He read aloud the inscription on the back.
‘1942 was when he joined the crew,’ Grace Ann said.
When Cal replaced the watch on the cotton wool, he said, ‘It must be a comfort knowing he’s buried and having his watch …’
‘Yes.’
Once again the emotion seemed to overwhelm her. Warily, he attempted reassurance, expecting another ticking off. ‘Thank you, for telling me this. It must be hard, going back over such painful memories.’
‘Oh it’s not finished,’ Grace Ann said abruptly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cal said.
Then she told him a story he knew already, though he didn’t admit to it: how the depleted crew had continued anti-submarine patrols along the north coast and Orkney; how in 1944 the Eilean Iasgaich had come upon a U-boat on the surface attacking a boat-load of Norwegian resistance fighters, how it rammed the U-boat with the loss of both vessels. The last of the island’s able bodied men died. ‘Every last one of them,’ Grace Ann said.
‘The island was abandoned the following year wasn’t it?’ Cal said.
‘The women tried to struggle on but without their men … well …’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Wasn’t there quite a fuss? I’ve got some old newspaper cuttings.’
‘There was a public appeal to help the widows and children build houses on the mainland. The Norwegian government bought them land along the coast from Eastern Township. I’m told you can see the island from it.’
‘Did all the families move there?’
‘Some moved away altogether but the Raes and the MacKays settled there. They took legal title to the island.’
‘They own it.’
‘They do, and there’s a shop and a museum on it, in the old schoolhouse, for the day trippers. Hector MacKay’s log of the Archangelsk convoy is on display there. It was found among his widow’s possessions when she died, wrapped around with prayers he’d written on to sheets of paper.’
Cal said, ‘The memorial’s by the pier isn’t it? When I was a child I wanted to see it but my mother wouldn’t take me.’
‘It’s to the heroes of Eilean Iasgaich, the nine island men who died in the U-boat explosion as well as the ones who lost their lives on the Arctic convoy …’ she hesitated before looking straight at him, her eyes filled with anxiety. ‘Cal. I couldn’t tell you earlier. Your grandfather … his name isn’t on the memorial.’
‘They didn’t leave it off?’ Cal raised his voice in astonishment.
‘God forgive them, but they did too.’ Grace Ann said, closing her eyes and turning away, hiding from him in case he blamed her too.
If he’d lived Grace Ann’s life he’d have gone a little mad too, he thought.
Between 5 and 6pm on a Saturday, Buchanan Street in Glasgow becomes a place of transition. The shoppers begin to go home, or rest in the coffee shops and wine bars in the side streets. Teenage girls in flimsy mini-skirts and cheap white shoes with high heels emerge shrieking and giggling in expectation of the night’s drinking and partying. The boys, in gangs, roam among them watching for possibilities. Everywhere people are moving, mingling, separating. Everyone is going somewhere. Everyone has a direction of travel, except on this Saturday at 5.43pm one slender girl who walks awkwardly and hunched to disguise her height. She stays on the margins of the crowds, her face half hidden by a stained, grey hoodie she found on the railway embankment near her shelter. A distant group of women wearing pink ear mufflers and singing, out of tune, ‘Money, Money, Money’ by Abba are heading towards her. She recoils. It is as if an unseen force travels ahead of the group, a force that only Basanti feels. Everyone near her maintains their course but she stops and turns as though buffeted by it. The women are closer to her now; their singing louder. Their arms are linked. They stretch across fifteen metres of pedestrianised street. They will barely notice her, despite her matted hair and the stains on her clothes. But she doesn’t seem to know they will move aside for her. Their unseen force bears on her again, making her hurry back the way she has come, until she passes a lane. It pulls her in, a refuge. She walks half way up until she slumps on her heels. A wall is behind her. She feels the cold of the stone against her spine where her ill-fitting hoodie and loose shirt have exposed her skin. A black wheelie bin hides her from the street she has left. She hears the young women, more muffled now. ‘It’s a rich man’s world,’ they sing with a high pitch of tuneless shouts and cackles as they go to whichever venue is playing host to their friend’s hen party. She shakes as they pass the bottom of the lane. She isn’t used to crowds, or cities, or this country, or the hostility of the people: everywhere she goes hard, pinched faces stare at her. She’s alone and now she seems also to be lost. She has to travel to Edinburgh. A shopkeeper has told her it is 80 kilometres away. She asks about a bus. ‘Aye, hen, you’ll catch it at the Buchanan bus station. D’ye not know it?’ The woman tells her the way and when Basanti asks the cost of the journe
y, she replies ‘Six, maybe eight pounds, isn’t that so Billy?’ The boy who is loading up the cigarette gantry says, ‘Aye’ without looking round. ‘How do I get pounds?’ Basanti asks the woman, lowering her voice. The woman laughs, a smoker’s rasp. ‘Ach, away with you,’ she says, putting her hands on her hips, and nodding to the next customer.
The street at the bottom of this lane is Buchanan Street. Basanti has seen the sign on the wall. But where is the bus station? Where will she get the money for the fare?
She is exhausted. Her limbs are aching. Her stomach is tight. Her head is spinning with this unfamiliar city and its people. She is frightened. Since leaving her shelter on the railway embankment she has been tense with worry and fear. The men who own her will find her. The men who abused her will be in the crowds; somewhere. They will recognise her. The police who are patrolling the streets will arrest her. By now they will be looking for her, for stabbing the Albanian.
Only the thought of Preeti keeps her going. She is her strength. She is what makes her get up and walk along the lane. She is what gives her the courage to approach a man in white overalls sitting on a step, outside the back door of a restaurant. He is smoking and he watches her coming towards him with surly indifference.
She isn’t looking at him when she speaks. She studies the space between them. There’s a pigeon’s feather floating in a pool of greasy water. She watches it. ‘Please can you tell me the way to the bus station?’ There is a tremor in her voice.
He detects her fear. He gives her directions. It’s no more than five minutes walk. He says, ‘Are you ok?’ She hears what she thinks is sympathy so she asks him if he will lend her money. £8 she mentions. She’s still not looking at him so she doesn’t know he’s looking at her, or the way he’s doing it.
‘I’ll give you £10 if you do something for me,’ he says and his voice changes, a tone she recognises. She feels her body go torpid, like a lizard’s when the sun dips before night. It’s a feeling to which she is accustomed. Isn’t this how she has coped these past months, years?
As he penetrates her she makes a solemn promise.
No man will do this to her again, ever. But she needs the money. For Preeti. To travel to the address she’s read in the newspaper, to find the man with a picture of Preeti on his wall.
He pushes into her. Basanti’s face conveys no emotion or feeling. Her hand tightens around the £10 note. Otherwise she is quite still.
Chapter 10
There had been a reason after all.
Cal recalled his childhood complaint, ‘Why can’t we go to Grandpa Uilleam’s island?’ His mother answered him with more questions, a family failing. ‘Why on earth would you want to?’ or ‘why waste precious holiday going all the way up there?’ This response left Cal perplexed. Driving for hours to damp cottages on remote coasts was what they did for their summer holidays. Eventually his father said to him, ‘Don’t keep bothering your mother, Cal.’
Cal had asked why.
‘Well, grandpa died before she was born and your grandmother’s side of the family is all she’s known. Aberdeen is where she’s from, not Eilean Iasgaich. So let it drop, eh?’
There was an undertone of warning in his father’s voice, and Cal did let it drop, though his mother’s odd reticence and his father’s caution only stimulated his interest. He was 11, and two years into his attempt to solve the mystery of his missing grandfather after coming across the unnamed graves in Ardnamurchan. All his calculations now pointed to his grandfather’s body being encased in Arctic sea ice. The Norwegian government had to be notified, or so he thought, but he needed advice on the appropriate recipient of his carefully typed letter.
‘Can I ask mummy?’
His father didn’t answer his question, not exactly.
‘Oh, can’t I help you?’ He’d sounded disappointed. ‘After all, I’m the one who knows about coordinates, longitude and latitude and so on.’
Which, of course, was the case: James McGill was head of geography at the senior school of Edinburgh Academy – Cal was still in juniors. But once more there was that insistent undertone in his father’s voice.
From then on he made sure he had his father alone whenever he discussed his latest theories about currents or the location of his grandfather. Recollecting it now, Cal appreciated his father’s patience. A less sensitive man might have tried to dissuade him from the very idea of his grandfather’s body still being intact and incorruptible so many years after his death. Cal’s father never attempted to do so, nor was it strictly necessary. By then Cal understood the process of decomposition but he was so accustomed to regarding his grandfather as a benign and continuing presence that in his imagination he was still happy, smiling and wearing a hat like the photograph of him on his mother’s dressing table.
Uilleam was like a make-believe friend: both real and fantasy but most of all a companion for the solitary child Cal had already become. His father understood or at least recognised his son’s need and indulged it.
Of course, he was also protecting Eilidh, Cal’s mother.
Cal knew that now, after listening to Grace Ann. Once more, and only once more, had he tried to probe his mother for information. He must have been 13 or 14 and he was on an end of holiday break with her on Skye (on another remote coast). His father had stayed behind to prepare for the new school term. They were walking along the beach by their B&B when he said to her, ‘Don’t you love the sea?’
It was a sly question he hoped would lead somewhere.
‘It’s curious isn’t it Cal? I was brought up in Aberdeen which is beside the sea and we live in Edinburgh which is beside the sea but I think of myself as someone who comes from the city, not the sea-side.’
‘But you were born beside the sea.’
She didn’t reply immediately. Cal remembered his anticipation of her response, hoping it would let him ask another question without making his intentions obvious.
‘Yes, I suppose I was.’
He decided on another foray despite his father’s warning.
‘Why did you leave?’
‘I suppose it was time for a change that’s all. I was ten and my mother wanted to send me to a good secondary school. The one she knew best, where she’d gone to school, was in Aberdeen. My grandfather was ill by then and the shop wasn’t the business it had been. My mother had friends and cousins in Aberdeen too.’ They walked on for a few steps and she added, ‘There’s no mystery to it, Cal.’
Straight away she challenged him to a race along the sand and that was the end of that. As he lay gasping for breath by the rocks, while she gave up winded 20 metres before the finish, Cal thought he believed her. Its mysteriousness had lain in her silence but now it seemed ordinary, not mysterious at all.
The next year she was diagnosed with breast cancer and his father took him aside one day and said ‘we must do all we can to avoid upsetting your mother.’ So he hadn’t attempted to broach it again, slyly or otherwise. She died when he was between school and first year oceanography. She was 53, coincidentally the same age her own mother, Cal’s grandmother Ishbel, had been when she died, also from breast cancer. His mother’s death left his father incapable and turned Cal into his unqualified counsellor. The reversal of roles made him resentful and intolerant of his father’s fragility. They weren’t emotions he’d expected. His father took bereavement leave from school and moped at home all day. When he pulled himself together, he announced he was going to join VSO and teach in Papua New Guinea. ‘I’m no good to you like this Cal,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’ But other destinations had followed: the latest a two year stint in Swaziland. Cal’s small family had disintegrated about him.
He had never seriously considered visiting Eilean Iasgaich since his mother’s death. Something warned him against it. Perhaps it was loyalty to her or simply that her passing had severed his only living connection with the place. Whatever the reason, these vague half-feelings had deterred him.
There w
ere other islands, other oceans, after all.
Now, in Grace Ann’s bungalow, a different set of conflicting feelings assailed him: sorrow for his mother’s unspoken memories which must have been too painful for her ever to confide in him; shame at the unintentional distress he inflicted on her every time he mentioned Uilleam’s name; anger at the injustice of it all. There was another sensation too, one that had been dormant since his mother’s death. Rachel talking about her documentary had disturbed its sleep; Grace Ann’s story had awoken it. The island had an emotional pull on him again.
‘Do you think my mother knew?’ He asked Grace Ann.
Grace Ann was looking out of the window, distracted. ‘I dare say she knew some of it,’ she said after some consideration, without turning to Cal. ‘She would have attended primary school in Eastern Township. There would have been talk. But your grandmother and mother went back to Aberdeen after the war. The Raes opened a garage in Eastern Township, and then a general store. They put poor Ishbel’s parents out of business. I heard her father had a stroke and her mother had to sell up to the Raes of all people.’
Neither spoke for a few minutes until Cal said, as though thinking aloud. ‘It’s odd my parents never mentioned your brother’s body being found.’
Grace Ann still didn’t look at him. ‘The letter about Sandy arrived the spring after he died. By then Uilleam’s mother had gone to Thurso and Ishbel, your grandmother, was on the mainland. No-one from the island had anything to do with her family after what happened so it’s likely she never knew.’
Now her voice had an irritable tone which seemed to discourage more questions.
‘You’ve been kind, telling me the story.’ Cal said in case she had become impatient with him for staying so long. ‘Thank you.’
He wrote his address and phone number on the notepad pad on her trolley. ‘I’d like to come and see you again; talk some more …’
The Sea Detective Page 11
