Murdo's War
Page 7
It was a relief when the last case was carried up the beach and stacked away on the shelf. Leaving Henry Smith and Knut talking in the cave, beneath what now was an impressive pile of crates, Murdo and Hector trudged wearily up the dunes and home.
Murdo was too tired to wait for tea and took a rough jam sandwich up to bed with him. But within ten minutes of entering the house he was sound asleep, the bread half-eaten on the chair beside his bed.
Twenty minutes later, on his own way to bed, Hector knocked softly and pushed open the door. Murdo had fallen asleep with the candle still burning. He was dead to the world and looked very young. With troubled eyes Hector regarded him and thought of the strange life the boy was presently leading. An arm lay outside the bedclothes, the blankets had fallen from his shoulder. Hector hesitated, then left him as he lay and blew out the candle.
While Murdo slept the snow swept on, settling, always settling over the wild landscape. For a while before dawn, the wind rose fiercely, a precursor of what was to come, rushing under eaves, singing its wild arctic tune in the wires and fences. A pale gloom displaced the darkness of night. Straggling herds of deer made their way down from the hills. Daylight came, struggling through the clouds and thick air, revealing dykes plastered on one face and capped with six inches of snow. Roads were white plains between flawless embankments, blocked on the exposed heights and at field gates by slanting snow wreaths. Black lochs appeared bottomless, rivers wound their inky paths from somewhere beyond. In the glens and along the coast the jumbled fields resolved into simple patterns, outlined in the contours of walls and black splinters of fence posts.
By eleven o’clock the snow had stopped and the skies cleared, but the sun brought no warmth. The landscape glittered and the snow did not melt. The hills cast blue shadows in the low winter sunlight, and beneath the pale sky the sea was a dark misty blue.
When Hector woke at midday the first thing he noticed was the unaccustomed brightness of his room. A strip of diffused light spread across the ceiling. He grunted, remembering the snow, peered at his ancient watch on a nail at the head of his bed, and turned to the window. Like Murdo, he rarely closed the curtains and it was dazzling. There had been a good fall, the snow was weighing heavy on the heather. Beyond the headland he could see white horses, suggesting a blow of force six or seven. He listened to the sigh of the wind around the house and caught the faint keen- ing in the landing skylight – force seven most like. He reached for a packet of Woodbines: it was the only time of the day he liked a cigarette, first thing in the morning before he got up.
The snow was beautiful. With a romantic eye Hector appreciated it; as a countryman it disgusted him. He gazed at the wintry scene and wondered how long it would last. Gradually, as the new day swam more fully into focus, he became aware of an occasional swishing, scraping sound from outside. He could not place it. Intrigued, he swung his feet to the bedside mat and reached for an old coat which served as a dressing gown. Tying the cord at his waist he crossed to the window.
Murdo was nearing the top of a rough knoll at the side of the house with an old tin tray in his hand. He dropped it on the snow, settled the toorie on his wild hair, sat on the tray and launched himself at the steepest part of the slope. Legs and arms flying he shot down, slewing wildly out of control, bucking over boulders and little cliffs, finally tumbling and careering head over heels to the bottom. He sat up smothered in snow, brushed himself down and rescued the tray from a wilderness of whin bushes. Earlier tracks showed where he had started on more gentle slopes.
Hector was pleased to see him enjoying himself. He pushed open the window. A ledge of snow whirled in and sifted to the bedroom floor.
‘Have you had breakfast?’
Murdo looked up, his face glowing, and nodded vigorously.
‘Well I’ll make dinner for two o’clock. All right? Don’t be late.’
‘Right. What time is it now?’
‘Just on twelve.’
Murdo raised a hand and returned to the top of the knoll. Because of the bad early conditions and the fact that many children had a good distance to travel, school had been cancelled for the day. Murdo saw boys sledging on the main hill at the far side of the village. Tucking the tray beneath his arm he went off to join them.
From his seat at the fire after lunch, Murdo could see the white waves racing up the bay. A long, low swell was beginning to surge across the rocks of the headland, sliding in from the north-east. Throughout the afternoon it worsened. Ominous clouds began to rear above the horizon.
‘I doubt that’s it for tonight, boy,’ Hector said, turning once more from the window. ‘It’s not the sort of weather I like out there.’ Murdo looked up from sharpening his father’s pocket knife, seeing the dark thrusting clouds beyond Hector’s silhouette. They were hostile and forbidding, and spoke of storm. The coming night was not one in which to be abroad – on the land, let alone upon the water. He had been carving a small mallard from a piece of drift-wood. Brushing the chips from his lap, he picked the matches off the dresser and put a light to the lamp.
As he did so the clock whirred into life and chimed once: half past three. Hector gazed at its fine yellow face, then down at Murdo, and once more out of the window. He was restless.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think I’d better go down and have a word with Mr Smith. See how he feels about it.’
Murdo tested the blade of the knife with the tip of a finger, and snapped is shut.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
The snow had not thawed at all. As the sun declined over the snowfields they walked in blue shadow. The few cars and lorries had compressed the crystals into shining ribbons. Murdo ran along the road in his rubber boots and slid in the tracks. When he bent to make a snowball to throw at a neighbour’s chimney the snow was too powdery to stick, and crumbled as he threw it. His fingers ached with the cold and he thrust his fists into the pockets of his battledress.
When they reached the inn they found that Henry Smith had been drinking. He was sitting by himself in a corner of the hotel lounge and did not see them for a moment as they came through the door. The lamp was lit and a peat fire glowed in the hearth. A small side-table stood at the arm of his chair, with a part-empty bottle of the Orkney whisky and the remains of a plate of sandwiches upon it. His hands rested in his lap, curled loosely around a glass. An inch of the golden spirit rocked slightly in the bottom as he breathed.
When he saw them he jumped to his feet. Half of the whisky splashed down his cardigan.
‘Oh damn!’ He brushed away the drops with his fingers and mopped it with a clean handkerchief. ‘Come in, come in. Do sit down.’ He set the glass on the table and pulled a couple of armchairs towards the fire.
They sat as they were bidden, but he remained standing. He leaned towards Hector. His face was flushed and his eyes a little clouded.
‘You’ll have a drink,’ he said. ‘Whisky?’
Hector shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Not right now. I’m just after my dinner.’
‘Beer, then.’ The Englishman smiled a little tipsily. ‘Anything you want, so long as it’s beer.’
Amused to see him so, Hector smiled, but shook his head.
‘Nothing at all?’
Hector gave way with a good grace. ‘Oh well, then. A whisky. Thank you very much. A small one.’
Henry Smith went to the door and called to a lady in the private part of the inn. A minute or two later she came through with a tray of coffee and an empty whisky glass. Hector and she were old friends. Unseen by the Englishman he gave her a conspiratorial wink. Briefly her eyes twinkled, though the days were long gone when the comings and goings of the incorrigible old man caused her any surprise. When she had gone, Mr Smith poured a heavy measure for Hector, and a drop into the bottom of his own glass.
‘Good health,’ he said.
‘Slàinte mhath.’
Hector drank, and the Englishman tossed the last of his own whisky down his throa
t. His face twisted with revulsion. He pushed the glass far from him and rubbed a hand over his face.
‘Where’s the coffee?’ he said. ‘I’m not used to that stuff, it’s devilish.’
Hector felt it burning in his stomach along with his dinner, and burped behind his fist.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘What about tonight?’
Anxiously Henry Smith looked up from pouring his coffee, and glanced at the door, but it was shut.
‘I don’t like the look of the weather at all,’ Hector said. ‘It’s fairly rough now, and it’s blowing up nasty. It will be bad out there. I think it might be wise to leave it for tonight.’
Henry Smith had been expecting it. He too had watched the weather deteriorating throughout the afternoon. ‘If only the old fool had gone on Sunday’, time and again the thought had recurred. Now he suppressed it.
‘We’ve got two more crossings,’ he pleaded. ‘Just two small loads, and the men. If a real storm blows up it might be days before you can get over again.’ He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, then shook his head slightly to try to clear the alcohol from his brain. ‘I know I’m a little drunk, but is there no chance?’
He was so anxious that Hector sighed and scratched the back of his neck. He looked at Murdo and raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, I’ve been out in worse,’ he said. ‘If we went now we might get one load in. But I must say I don’t like it.’
Henry Smith nodded. ‘That’s fair enough; we can but try. Thank you, Mr Gunn.’
Hector chuckled. ‘Wait until we’re out there. You can thank me then.’
The afternoon was wearing out as they put to sea. The edge of the clouds that had been rolling westward obliterated the low-burning sun, wiping the last vestiges of colour from the landscape. All turned grey and black and white. Lobster Boy was very small amid the ocean of waves that poured in from the north-east. Her bows rose and fell, leaped and splashed, as she chugged steadily northwards up the bay towards the point. Icy spray whipped into their faces, and Murdo tasted the familiar salt tang on his lips.
A violent smack lurched the boat sideways and Henry Smith slithered awkwardly to the bottom boards. Dripping, he pulled himself back to his seat.
‘It’s not so good!’ he cried.
Hector pushed the tiller across, bringing his boat back on course. ‘Och, she’s not so bad at all here,’ he called above the noise of the wind and waves. ‘We’ll do fine. We’ve got the sea on the bows now. It’ll be a bit bouncy when we get round the point and have to turn beam-on, though.’
He shrugged his head comfortable in the clumsy merchant navy life-jacket he kept at the cottage for such seas. On the side bench by the engine, Murdo also was wearing one. Hector only had the two. An old motor-bike inner tube, fastened to a lanyard, lay on the boards for Henry Smith, who had insisted on coming.
As they rounded Strathy Point it was just as Hector had said. Head-on the Lobster Boy might pitch, but beam-on, as she exposed her starboard flank to the waves and wind, she rolled and swung, yawed, pitched and flung her head in every direction.
Braced against the engine casing, Murdo loved every moment of it, feeling the boat leaping beneath him. His dark eyes shone as the spray lashed up and struck him with hard, rattling smacks. Beneath his oilskins he remained dry and warm, save at the neck where a heavy scarf absorbed the salt water that trickled from his face.
‘How do you think she’ll do?’ he shouted to Hector, turning his sou’wester into a heavy veil of sea-water that whipped across the boat.
‘All right. She’ll do all right if it gets no worse than this.’ Hector turned to Henry Smith. ‘We’ll get you there, anyhow,’ he said cheerfully.
But there was no answer. Henry Smith had turned ashen pale. With hollow eyes he stared wretchedly at Hector, then hung his head and gave an enormous yawn.
‘Not feeling too good, are you?’
He shook his head abjectly, and looked up at the water. A huge wave swept in from the near-darkness, towering above them. The little boat heaved, lurched up sideways, and slid down the far side. For an instant Mr Smith paused, then suddenly he twisted round, grabbed at the gunwale, and hung his head far out over the water. There was an ugly, coughing sound.
Murdo looked across at Hector and grinned.
With the wind behind them it took little longer than usual to reach the island. By the time they arrived Henry Smith had collapsed into a sodden bundle of misery at the lee gunwale. The tide was not yet half way in, and despite the surge of the sea it was calm enough in that sheltered corner of the bay for Hector to nurse his boat through the tunnel into the mooring pool. Murdo climbed to the jetty and Hector passed him the shaded lantern.
‘Well, we’re here, at least,’ he said a minute later, as he stood with Henry Smith watching Murdo pull the Lobster Boy out of her mooring in the middle of the pool. ‘Let’s hope we get back as easily.’ The Englishman stood shakily in the circle of lamplight. He wiped his lips with a handkerchief and mopped the cold sweat and sea-water from his face. A thick skein of spray rattled on the concrete at their feet.
‘Get back?’ he said weakly. ‘Through that? Heading into it?’
‘Well I’m going back, anyway,’ Hector said positively. ‘I’m not sitting out a storm on this island. You’re the one that wanted to come: and now we’re here. So where are the cases?’
Henry Smith turned and surveyed the white water that roared across the rocks at his back, then picked up the lantern and made his way to the higher rocks at the foot of the cliff steps. The last of the crates were stacked in a sheltered cranny where even the highest waves would be unable to reach them. They were covered with a heavy tarpaulin. The top of the tarpaulin and all the rocky ledges were thick with snow.
‘That’s the last of them,’ he said.
Hector surveyed the stack briefly and sniffed. ‘Too much for one load in a sea like this,’ he said. ‘We might have managed a few days ago, when it was calm, but not now.’ He turned to Henry Smith. ‘So – what’s it to be? Take as many as we can now, and come back for the rest later? Or do you want to take some of the men? They haven’t got life-jackets, mind.’
Henry Smith thought for a moment. ‘A mile or two off shore in a sea as cold and rough as this, I can’t see a life-jacket makes all that much difference,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll take some of the men. Half the cases and some of the men.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Hector. ‘You go up and tell them to get ready. Murdo and I will take the boxes down to the boat.’
Henry Smith did not reply, but from his silence it was clear that he did not like the arrangement. He tapped Murdo on the shoulder. The boy turned back from looking at the sea.
‘You go on up to the house and tell them, will you? You’re more sure-footed than I am. I’ll give Mr Gunn a hand with the cases.’
Murdo looked to Hector for confirmation, then back to the bespectacled Englishman. He nodded.
‘Remember the names,’ Henry Smith said. ‘We’ll take Peter, Sigurd, Arne, and –’ he paused for a moment, thinking; ‘– and Carl Voss. Got it?’
‘Peter, Sigurd, Arne and Carl Voss,’ Murdo said.
‘Yes. They’re to put their stuff together and get themselves down here as quickly as possible.’
‘Right.’ Murdo turned to the gale-swept cliff steps.
‘Watch how you go,’ Hector called across to him.
He nodded and started climbing. The gale was wild, rattling the oilskins about his body as he went higher. The crumbling ascent was treacherous beneath the snow and he had to feel carefully at every step, kicking his boot to the back of the tread. Once his feet skidded from under him and he fell forward, knees and toes digging in for dear life, hands grabbing at the steps to pre- vent himself sliding backwards. A foot went over the edge. When he began climbing again he was shaking. But he reached the top safely, and within five minutes of leaving the boat, was being blown across the crown of the island with the gale at his back.
Hector and Henry Smith had finished their job and were sheltering behind a big rock having a smoke. They had double-lashed the tarpaulins and anchored the boxes securely to the bottom-boards and deck cleats. Tight lines ran to a for’ard thwart and the engine mounting so that they could not possibly shift.
Hector stood up as he heard them approaching. A moment later they appeared through the rocks.
‘Let’s get straight away, then,’ he said. ‘The sooner the better.’ He pushed the pipe into his jacket pocket and untied the painter.
Soon they were all sitting in the boat, the shaded lantern on the bottom boards at their feet. Its light caught Mr Smith’s face, grim as he prepared for his personal ordeal of sea-sickness. He looked up at the Norwegians who were not leaving that trip, and had accompanied the others to the shore with two boxes of provisions.
‘We’ll be back when we can,’ he said. ‘I hoped it would be tonight, but...’ he shrugged and held his hands out.
Little Dag, red hair blown back from his good-natured face, raised an arm in acknowledgement.
Hand over hand Murdo pulled them out to the anchor and heaved it up. Three minutes later they were heading out between the cliffs into the very teeth of the gale.
The waves broke against the crags with explosions that flung sheets of white water fifty feet into the air. In torrents it roared across the rocks. The wind had torn the lower clouds into tatters and stars danced between the dark masses of snow clouds. Ahead, where the sky was clear to the horizon, a sick orange moon heaved itself out of the sea. The ragged waves leaped up as if to pluck it down again.
Dauntlessly Hector headed his little boat straight out from the rocks into the open sea. She swung violently as the waves thudded against her planking, and the spray whipped across the faces of the passengers. The men looked anxiously from one to the other and at the old man at the tiller, sou’wester flattened over his forehead by the wind. His wrinkled eyes flicked down to the lamplit compass and back to the waste of waters ahead, never flinching in their concentration.