Dougie flew back three days later and immediately met with Father Mick and Gannet. The divers had brought up all the crew, he told them, and he had identified them. All that was, except one. Sorley Mor had been found at the bottom of the stairs to the wheelhouse, fully dressed and freshly shaven. Gannet nodded. ‘Sorley Mor was on lookout,’ he said quietly. Stamp, Pete, Stevie and Eric had clearly been asleep and were in various stages of trying to escape from their bunks, but Sorley Og was nowhere to be found. Five widows would be told that their men had been recovered and one would be told that her man was missing: Rose. Gannet and Mick closed their eyes; it was the worst possible outcome. For Chrissie the waiting would be only half over. Instead of burying her husband and son together, a fate that was bad enough, she would have to face Sorley Mor’s funeral, then later, if he was found, Sorley Og’s. Rose was in the worst position, though, and Dougie would tell her himself, he said.
‘You don’t have to do it, Dougie,’ Father Mick said. ‘You’ve already had to break the news of her husband’s death to her, you’ve more than done your bit. Let one of us tell her.’
Dougie shook his head. ‘She’s my sister,’ he said simply.
The arrangements were the same as before; Gannet and Father Mick would tell Chrissie, the Mission men would tell the others, and Dougie would talk to Rose. She looked at him expectantly as he entered the house.
‘News?’ she asked, staring at him. Going through her mind was the fantasy that when he got there he had found that it was all a mistake, that it hadn’t been the Wanderer at all, that they’d headed for some other port and every communication device had broken down at the same time. They’d all laugh over this, one day …
‘It’s not good, Rose,’ Dougie said. ‘The divers got all the men except Sorley Og.’
At first her heart soared. OK, it was the Wanderer, but obviously Sorley Og wasn’t on board, maybe he’d stayed behind in Esbjerg when they’d landed the previous catch. He’d probably wanted to buy her something special to mark the event; what Dougie was saying confirmed it. Dougie saw what was in her mind.
‘Rose,’ he said slowly but firmly. ‘Sorley Og was aboard—’
‘But you’ve just said—’
‘I said they hadn’t found him yet, but they’re still looking. They’ll keep looking till they find him.’
Rose shook her head. ‘You don’t know that, Dougie,’ she said brightly, ‘you don’t know for sure that he didn’t change his mind and go off somewhere. He could’ve arranged to be picked up on the next trip into port.’
‘Rose, don’t do this to yourself. He called you from the middle of the ocean the night before she went down, don’t you remember? He called from the boat and you told him about Sandy Bay!’
‘Maybe I got that wrong—’
‘Stop it!’ he said harshly, moving towards her with his arms outstretched. ‘Sorley Og went down with the Wanderer. He’s still on the boat, he’ll be found.’
Rose moved her arms backwards to avoid his grasp.
‘So what are you going to do now, Rose MacEwan?’ he asked softly. ‘Hit me again? That will make it not true, will it?’
‘No, no … I … I wasn’t going to—’ she stammered, then she put her head down, wrapped her arms around her body defensively, and sobbed.
Next door Chrissie was taking the news stoically, nodding her head as she was told. ‘And the other women have been told?’ she asked. ‘They’re being taken care of?’ She nodded, satisfied. ‘I’ll have to see Rose,’ she said.
‘No, don’t,’ Father Mick said. ‘Not now, anyway. Dougie’s handling it. The Nicolsons have always been a tight lot, better leave him to it.’
‘What about her mother?’ Chrissie asked, puzzled. ‘I haven’t seen her up here yet. She lost her own man at sea; surely she should be with her daughter?’
‘I don’t know if she’s offered, but Rose doesn’t want her anyway,’ Father Mick said. ‘She doesn’t want anyone. Dougie suggested that Sally could stay with her. Alan’s gone down to Glasgow to be with the family – Eric was his cousin, as you know – but Rose won’t have it. Things haven’t been good between her and Sally, as far as I can gather, since that nonsense over the wedding.’
‘But that means she’s alone in that big house!’ Chrissie said. ‘That’s not good. Tell her I’d appreciate her company. Maybe she’d come over and stay here with me till this thing’s over.’
‘I’ll mention it to Dougie; he’s the only one she seems able to talk to at the moment,’ Father Mick said. ‘But, Chrissie, maybe we should leave her to handle it in her own way.’
Chrissie thought for a moment. ‘Don’t mention it to Dougie,’ she said. ‘I’ll go over there later and talk to her myself.’
Chrissie left it till that evening, then she went over to her son’s house, where Rose was sitting in darkness by the big window.
‘I was wondering if you might like some company, Rose,’ she said.
Rose smiled but made no reply.
‘It’s not good for you to be all alone here,’ Chrissie persisted. ‘What about one of your family? Your mother, one of your sisters?’
Rose shook her head.
‘Well, how about coming over and staying with me and Gannet?’ she laughed gently, trying to conjure up something of the atmosphere that was gone for ever. ‘Between the two of us we should be able to keep him under control.’
‘I don’t want to leave the house,’ Rose said simply.
‘But you’ve barely left it for more than a minute all week, lassie,’ Chrissie said, ‘and that was to come the few yards to my house.’
‘I can’t,’ Rose repeated, then her head slumped forward and she wept.
‘Oh, lassie,’ Chrissie said, moving forward and putting her arms around her, ‘you can’t stay here alone like this.’
‘I can’t leave!’ Rose sobbed. ‘I can’t!’
‘But why?’ Chrissie asked. ‘You won’t miss any news, it all comes to me first.’
‘I have to be here,’ Rose said desperately, her voice broken with sobs at every word. ‘Don’t you understand, Chrissie? What if he phones or comes home and I’m not here?’
The two women stood by the big window, holding onto each other and crying together.
It was, of course, a story tailor-made for press interest. They had several widows, one of whom had also lost her son, while another was due to give birth for the first time in less than three months. Then there was Rose, the one in limbo, the one who had a husband to grieve for, but not to bury; for Rose the anguish spread out without any end in sight. Though information was being fed to the media through the Mission and they had been asked not to contact the families, inevitably some did. Cars sat outside family homes with cameras focused and primed for action at a moment’s notice, though they were assured that no one would be saying or doing anything. A relative leaving his house was told by a voice from within a waiting pack of reporters, ‘If you don’t give us a quote we’ll just print what we like!’
Inside the homes of the bereaved, phones were constantly ringing, and every relative felt they had to pick up, because if they didn’t they might miss something important. They were in a constant state of waiting for any scrap of news, their emotions unable to cope with delay; they had to know as soon as there was anything to know, and so lifted the phone at its first ring, just in case.
They tried not to read the newspapers, but those who did passed on their outrage at some of the coverage and, inevitably, it got back to those it would hurt most. One newspaper printed a diagram of the Wanderer on the seabed, split in two by the impact, and the missing crewman, Sorley Og, floating off into the distance; possibly, it was said, never to be found. The wreck had been found and divers had gone down to examine it very quickly on that terrible Sunday, reporting back that the Wanderer was intact apart from damage to the bow. This information had been released to the media, so it had been perfectly clear from the outset that she had been holed, not broken in two. There was
, therefore, no possibility of a body floating off into the distance. No one in Acarsaid could understand the need to suggest anything so deeply hurtful, the thing was offensive, and from then on their blank looks when approached by anyone from the press were replaced with abuse.
While arrangements were being made to return the crew of the Wanderer, or those who had been found, their funerals were being planned in Acarsaid. Again it was Dougie who took the lead, anxious to have the whole awful experience pass off as smoothly as possible for his sister and the others. The two engineers, Stevie and Eric, would be buried in Fife and Glasgow at the request of their families, and Sorley Mor, Stamp and young Pete in Acarsaid. The families wanted to attend every burial, so they would be carefully co-ordinated, starting with the skipper’s first. It was agreed that the relief crew, the men who filled in when a regular crewman was away for some reason, or when more men were needed in the busy seasons, would carry every coffin. From Gannet there had come a measured intervention.
‘I want to carry the lads,’ he said, as the details were being gone over with Chrissie and the others.
‘Don’t be daft!’ Chrissie replied.
‘I want to,’ Gannet repeated quietly.
Chrissie looked at Father Mick and Dougie.
‘Gannet, son,’ she said gently. ‘You’ve got your arm in a sling.’
‘I’ll take it off,’ Gannet said simply, ‘and I can carry them on my other shoulder anyway.’
In normal circumstances Chrissie would now have threatened violence, but she knew what was in the big man’s mind.
‘Sorley Mor wouldn’t expect this of you,’ she said. ‘Neither would the others. You won’t be letting him or them down just because you couldn’t do it.’
‘Aye, I would,’ Gannet said, ‘and I’d be letting myself down too.’
‘But you’ll be all off-balance and it’ll still hurt.’
‘Gavin can give me something so that I can’t feel it. If I can’t feel it I won’t be off-balance.’
The Chrissie of old, of one short week ago, emerged.
‘But think what a balls-up you’ll make of it if you find halfway through that you can’t do it,’ she protested. ‘What do you think Sorley Mor would feel about that, you great silly sod?’
Gannet shrugged his one good shoulder. ‘He’d probably have a damned good laugh at me,’ he smiled. ‘So what is there to lose?’
The following Saturday, six long days and nights after the sinking, a convoy of three grey hearses drove slowly towards Acarsaid, holding up the traffic. It was a changeover weekend, when one holiday fortnight finished and the next began, so traffic was heavier than normal, but those going to the village were, in the main, those who – rightly or wrongly – felt a sense of belonging, and so had taken note of the tragedy. On the long, twisting road that led eventually to the new road, not one car attempted to overtake the hearses. Everyone sat respectfully behind the cortège and saw Sorley Mor, Stamp and Pete brought home for the last time.
The following day came news that Sorley Og’s body had been found. Sorley Mor had been fully dressed and near to the wheelhouse because he had, as Gannet had stated, been on lookout. The others had been partly dressed and either in their cabins or just outside. They hadn’t found Sorley Og in either place, because he was aft, looking at a pump. He, too, was fully dressed, ready to take over from his father as lookout. Before he flew off to identify his brother-in-law, Dougie went to MacEwan’s Row to tell Rose and Chrissie. Rose was still by the big window, she had rarely left her usual vantage point for a moment in the last week. She looked up as Dougie came in. ‘They’ve found him,’ he said. Rose walked over to her brother, put her arms round him and hugged him, as though he had given her a gift.
It was a bad week to be in Acarsaid, for locals and visitors alike. The villagers were civil, they attended to the needs of the tourists, but they were preoccupied and subdued, and the tourists felt in the way. There were to be funerals every day, either in Acarsaid or in Fife and Glasgow, and notices were posted on shop doors announcing that they would not open as a mark of respect. As Acarsaid closed around itself to bury its dead, most of the visitors did the decent thing and took themselves elsewhere until it was over, but the press remained.
After Sorley Mor had been received into the church for the last time, Father Mick signalled to the men of the village, Sorley Mor’s relatives, friends and neighbours, to stay behind.
‘I though we’d have a wee wake of our own,’ he smiled, filling glasses with whisky and handing them round. ‘And I also thought we should do it with the Skipper here or he’d never forgive us for leaving him out.’
There was a murmured laugh from the men.
‘Aye,’ said a voice ruefully, ‘though he left us out of the good fishing often enough!’ another chuckle.
‘So to the Skipper, lads, Father Mick said, ‘to Sorley Mor!’
‘To Sorley Mor!’ came the reply.
After the men had left Father Mick sat on the altar steps, glass in hand and addressed the coffin.
‘That was a dirty trick you played on me there, Sorley Mor,’ he said sternly, ‘I wanted you to know that. Oh, I can understand why you wanted someone else to get news like that instead of a stranger calling Chrissie on the phone. But why me? I had to stand there in front of her and watch her heart break when my own was already broken and I could be of no use to her.’ He sighed and sipped his whisky. ‘Aye, a dirty trick, I just wanted you to know that before I forgave you.’
He stood up unsteadily and poured the last of his whisky over the coffin. ‘This is the last dram I can share with you. Slainte, my friend,’ he said gently. ‘Slainte my brother, because that’s what you are to me in every way but blood and surely, who gives a bugger about that?’
Then he made his way out of the church, switching the lights out as he went, and turned once more to look back at where Sorley Mor lay, the two candles at the head and foot of the coffin picking up the golden drops of whisky.
‘Goodnight, Sorley Mor,’ he said gently. ‘See you in the morning.’
The usual farewell, but this time for ever.
In the chapel house of Our Lady of the Sea, an hour before Sorley Mor’s funeral, Father Mick was trying to pull himself together with little success. Conducting the services of friends was something he had had to do often and was bad enough, but this was different. A disbelieving voice in his head kept repeating ‘Sorley Mor? Sorley Mor?’ He hadn’t come to terms with it yet, even the awful reality of the coffin lying in the chapel hadn’t helped him do that, and now he was expected to preside over his friend’s funeral. In the days since the sinking he had wondered over and over again why Sorley Mor had given him as the emergency contact in case of just such an event, because, as he had said himself, he had been of no use to anyone. He had no comfort to bring because he had none for himself to start with. He felt he had failed everyone. If Dougie hadn’t been there, if Dougie hadn’t been the man he was, it could have been a shambles, and Sorley Mor and the lads deserved better than that.
‘I don’t think I can get through this,’ he said to Dougie fearfully.
‘I told you before, you don’t have a choice,’ Dougie replied matter-of-factly.
Father Mick nodded. ‘I’ve prepared a speech,’ he said, ‘and every day I’ve been going over it, but I haven’t managed to get through it out loud once. What happens if I stand there and collapse in front of everyone in an embarrassing sobbing heap?’
‘Then you let Sorley Mor down,’ Dougie said calmly. ‘It’s as simple as that, and you can’t, can you? It isn’t an option: you have to hold yourself together for him.’
‘No, I know that. But knowing it and doing it are two separate things.’
‘Tell yourself they’re not, then,’ Dougie suggested. ‘Tell yourself they’re the same thing.’
‘You think it’s that simple, do you?’ Father Mick asked.
‘Aye,’ Dougie said cockily. ‘You priests, you get money for old rope
every day of the week, now you’re being asked to earn it and you fall to pieces!’
Father Mick smiled wryly at him. ‘When this time’s over, boy,’ he said, ‘you shall suffer for the way you’ve treated a servant of God, mark my words! Now go away and leave me alone, I still have some time to go over this.’
At that moment Chrissie was having a similar problem with Rose, who had left her home only once in over a week to see Sorley Mor’s coffin be accepted into the chapel in a mercifully brief ceremony the night before.
‘I can’t do this,’ she said helplessly as they were getting ready for the funeral mass.
‘You have to, Rose,’ Chrissie told her gently, ‘because there’s nothing else to do.’
Rose’s shoulders sank and her whole body sagged dejectedly.
‘We have to hold ourselves together till this is over, Rose,’ Chrissie said, taking Rose’s hands in her own. ‘Then we can all fall apart for as long as we need to.’
Rose nodded, her head down. ‘How are you managing to keep going?’ she asked in wonderment.
‘I have to,’ Chrissie said quietly, ‘for Gannet’s sake.’ She looked behind her to where the long, thin figure was standing alone. ‘Look at him. We all have each other, but he’s lost everything.’
A few days earlier Father Mick had asked Gannet how he was managing to bear up so well when he himself felt as if he was dissolving. ‘For Chrissie,’ he replied. When he had asked Dougie Nicolson what trick he was using to keep control, Dougie had replied, ‘For Rose.’ So that was how they were all getting through this torturous time: they were all doing it for each other. Now Father Mick had to do it for Sorley Mor. When it came to the funerals of Stamp, Pete and Sorley Og, he would be doing it for Sorley Mor, too, because Sorley Og had trusted him to do it and therefore he had, as Dougie said, no choice.
The Last Wanderer Page 33
