They accepted that Sorley Mor had been on lookout, and they surmised that prior to the collision he had suffered a fatal or life-threatening condition that had rendered him unconscious. The alarm that sounded every three minutes was activated, but because of engine and other onboard noise, it could not be heard in the cabins, not even when it had gone unanswered and grew louder each time; neither could it be heard where Sorley Og had been found. So a picture emerged of the skipper being taken ill, putting his boat on auto-pilot to leave the wheelhouse in an attempt to get help, then collapsing and possibly dying, with everyone else on board unaware of his problems and of the advancing freighter. The lookout on the freighter had spotted the Wanderer and, though he denied it, there was evidence that he had then nipped below for some reason, leaving no one in his place, expecting the Wanderer to change course as she should have. When he returned the two vessels were less than two minutes apart, too close to avoid collision. There hadn’t even been time for the freighter to sound her whistle five times in warning, as maritime law demanded, and the damage she had sustained proved that she was only just beginning to change course at the moment of impact.
Dougie couldn’t believe it; it was all Rose could have asked for, and infinitely more than he himself had expected, and he couldn’t wait to get to Chrissie’s house to tell the women. He took Father Mick with him, but again Gannet had gone elsewhere. The women listened as Dougie read out the relevant passages before he handed each woman a copy of the report.
‘And this will go to the press?’ Chrissie asked anxiously. ‘They’ll print that it was a good boat with a good skipper and crew and that something had happened to Sorley Mor?’
‘It’s all in the report,’ Dougie said. ‘We’ll make sure their attention is drawn to the relevant points.’
‘Well,’ Chrissie sighed, ‘I’m content.’
Around her the women murmured in agreement. There was a great sense not only of relief, but also of anti-climax; the lads had all been cleared, but they were still gone. It seemed only fair that they should now be able to play the incident over again with the ending they wanted – their men safely back home. But no report could do that; nothing could bring them back. They sat for a long time thinking their silent thoughts, then suddenly Rose spoke.
‘I’m not content,’ she said, throwing the report back at Dougie.
Everyone looked at her.
‘What happens to the skipper of the freighter?’
‘The MAIB had no control over that, Rose. His own country’s maritime authority made that decision after they had carried out their own investigation. They decided the cause of the collision was 50–50, and it was punishment enough that the skipper of the freighter would have to carry the knowledge that his boat was at least half responsible for the deaths of six men.’
‘So he just walks away from it, does he?’ Rose demanded.
‘Well, what do you want to happen, Rose? Do you want him put in prison?’
‘Yes!’
‘What good would that do?’ Dougie persisted.
‘At least he wouldn’t be on the sea. He wouldn’t be in a position to kill any more innocent men!’
‘Rose, he didn’t kill them, it was an accident,’ Dougie replied patiently.
‘In that case we should let every murderer go free, not put anyone away, because they’ll have to carry the guilt for the rest of their lives and that’s clearly enough!’ she shouted.
She got up and walked up and down the room, her arms folded tightly around herself.
‘You can see what she means,’ said Father Mick. ‘Do you remember Eric’s little run-in with the law before the sinking? He went through a red light in the early hours of the morning with no traffic and no people about, against the law to be sure, but he did no actual harm to anyone, he even freely admitted it when the police came calling. He was fined four hundred and fifty pounds and got six points on his licence. A boat gets run down on a clear day with no other vessels in sight, six men die and, well, nothing, and we’re all sitting here grateful that this report has reflected what we knew to be the truth. Where’s the justice in that? I’ll be buggered if I can see it.’
‘How about Christian forgiveness?’ Dougie suggested, glaring at him. ‘I would’ve thought that came within your remit.’
‘I’m only saying that sometimes there are grey areas and limits, even for Christians, smart arse.’ Father Mick retorted. ‘I can fully understand Rose’s feelings that basic justice has not been served here.’
‘But what makes you think justice should even come into it?’ Dougie persisted. ‘And if it does, maybe this is the nearest we’ll ever get to it. I doubt if this man will ever forget what happened, do you?’
‘At least,’ said Rose bitterly, opening the front door, ‘he has a life to carry his guilt through. Our men don’t have their lives. They’re lying up on the hillside for eternity. And what about the damage to our lives?’ Then the front door closed and Rose had gone.
She didn’t come out of her house over the next five days, locking the door and refusing to open it, even for Gannet, and ignoring all phone calls. The only way they knew she was alive was because she could be seen at the big window, looking out to sea from time to time. It was the scenario Dougie and the others had dreaded. Chrissie had a key and they debated using it to invade her privacy, but Gannet advised patience.
‘Leave her alone,’ he said quietly. ‘She’ll get through this in her own way and in her own time. It’s really no business of ours.’ On the sixth day, though, Dougie arrived with his mother, took the key and let himself in.
‘Well,’ said Chrissie sarcastically, ‘there’s a sight you don’t see often, Margo Nicolson going out of her way to call on her daughter. I was wondering what it would take.’
‘Now, now, Chrissie,’ cautioned Father Mick, as they watched discreetly from behind the curtains at her house, ‘that thought doesn’t become you.’
‘Aye, it does,’ she replied. ‘You’re such a liar!’
Dougie had wanted a reaction, any reaction, even if he had to dodge missiles as he entered the darkened room, but there was nothing. Rose looked up silently, then looked away again, returning her gaze to the familiar seascape.
‘We wondered if you might like to talk?’ he asked quietly.
‘No,’ Rose replied flatly.
‘Or just some company?’
‘No.’
‘Rose,’ he said helplessly, ‘you have to make some effort to cope with this. You’ve climbed out of the worst kind of despair, you can’t let this pull you down again.’
No reply.
Dougie was casting around in his mind, desperately trying to find something that might rouse her.
‘Look, this other man, he made a mistake. He didn’t get up that morning and decide he was going to down a boat and kill her crew. He didn’t choose to do this.’
Still no reply.
‘If Sorley Mor or any of the others were here they would say the same as I’m saying now.’
‘But they’re not here,’ Rose said. ‘Isn’t that the point?’
Dougie sighed with relief; at least there had been some response. He took a deep breath.
‘And they’re not going to be, Rose, not ever again. No matter how much you may brood in here, they won’t be coming back. Even if the other skipper had been sentenced to life imprisonment, it wouldn’t change anything. They still wouldn’t be coming back.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ she asked, then she turned towards him, tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘The only thing that’s kept me going these last two years was the Inquiry report. I wanted to see some kind of justice for the lads, but it’s not there, is it?’
‘I tried to tell you, Rose, I said it over and over, justice wasn’t what it was intended to deliver. It was only ever meant to be an explanation of what happened that morning, and why.’
‘And I’m never going to get justice, none of us ever will. So tell me, Dougie,’ she asked pla
intively, ‘what do I do now?’ She turned away from him towards the window and her shoulders shook with sobs.
‘Dougie,’ Margo Nicolson said briskly from beside the front door, ‘wait outside.’
Dougie looked at her, unsure of what was going on, but Margo opened the door, waving a hand to guide him out, and he found himself obeying as though he were still a boy. Then she closed it and locked it behind him.
Inside Rose’s house there was only the sound of her sobbing for a long time then, when she had calmed down, Margo spoke.
‘What the hell are you doing to yourself, lassie?’ she demanded harshly.
‘Just go away,’ Rose said wearily.
‘I will not!’ Margo said, raising her voice. ‘I’m your mother, you’re going to hear what I have to say whether you like it or not!’
She walked around the immaculate, stylish sitting room. ‘So this is it, is it?’ she asked. ‘This bloody awful barn is to be your resting place? And how are you going to get revenge on the world, a rope over that beam there? I’m sure there must be a rope from the boat about somewhere. That would be nicely theatrical, don’t you think?’
Rose stared at her, shocked and angry but unable to answer back.
‘Or just starve yourself to death to show us all how you’re suffering, to spite everyone who’s tried to help you over this. Looking at the state of you, it wouldn’t take long.’
‘What do you expect of me?’ Rose cried.
‘I expect you to get on with your life.’
Rose laughed bitterly.
‘Aye, I know you’ve heard it before, but this isn’t the life you should’ve been living in the first place. You’re not the first one it’s happened to who’s had to make the best of it. You should never have married him.’
‘That again!’
‘Aye, that again. You’ve got a second chance. Chrissie MacEwan was right, you’re lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ Rose was enraged, her fists clenched.
‘That’s what I said. I wish I’d had the chance you have now when I was in your position, but I didn’t. I had all you bairns,’ Margo said bitterly.
‘What kind of human being are you? Didn’t you have any feelings for my father at all?’ Rose asked incredulously.
‘Of course I did,’ Margo replied amiably. ‘He was quite a nice wee man, that’s what I felt about him, but he was a mistake, the whole thing was a mistake, and then I had to watch you repeat it.’
‘Just how do you make that out?’ Rose demanded.
‘Rose, Rose, you’re a clever lassie, but you’re so daft at times,’ Margo replied, patting the couch beside her, and Rose was so taken aback by what sounded like kindness in her mother’s voice that she sat where she was invited to.
‘Look, Rose, all your brothers and sisters, they’re mostly like your father, not in looks, but in nature. There’s a slight bit of me in them, though, the methodical bit, which is just as well. It’s just odd that you’re his double and you’re like me.’
Rose gasped.
‘Can’t have everything I suppose,’ Margo sniffed. ‘I recognised from the very start that this place wouldn’t be enough for you, that’s why I made sure everything was pumped into giving you the chance to learn. It was to be your road out of this place.’
‘Without consulting me!’ Rose protested.
‘Ah, so you were planning to be one of those modern parents, were you?’ Margo laughed. ‘Not violating your bairns’ rights by changing their nappies.’ She sighed. ‘Your brothers and sisters, Rose, they’ve all turned out decent enough people, though none of them would be where they are if I hadn’t pushed them hard all their lives. I could do that with them, I was their mother. Oh, I know, that Margo Nicolson has no feelings, I’ve heard it all and maybe they’re right, but I did all I was capable of, I swear. My other bairns have no imagination, no fire. Look at Dougie. He’s a fine man, I know that. They’re all so proud of the way he’s handled the whole Wanderer thing, but he was built for just this kind of event. Solid, that’s a good way to describe our Dougie, practical; a decent lad to have around – reliable, but that’s it. Just what you’d expect to come out of a coupling between me and Quintin. You’re like me, though.’
‘Like you? Don’t say that again.’ Rose was aghast. ‘I bloody well am not!’
‘Aye you are, you’re just like me,’ Margo grinned, ‘though as I say, you’re softer than me, I’ll give you that. The way you used to look at Sorley Mor and wish he was your father,’ Margo shook her head, smiling sadly.
Rose looked at her sharply.
‘You think I didn’t notice?’ Margo asked her. ‘I noticed all right. I used to see how fond of him you were and think back to my father and how I could’ve seen him far enough, yet there you were, looking for one, and one in this bloody hellish village at that.’
‘He’s – he was a good man, Sorley Mor,’ Rose said quietly. ‘I’d rather have had my own father but, as I couldn’t, Sorley Mor was the next best thing.’
‘I know, Rose, I know,’ Margo said wearily. ‘I don’t understand but I know that’s how you felt, but I could’ve shaken you for not looking outside this place. You always seemed to look through rose-tinted glasses at Acarsaid, and there’s more to life than a wee village for the likes of you.’
‘I’ve been happy here,’ Rose said defensively, ‘this is my home. What more do I need?’
‘The world, Rose, that’s what you need, the outside world.’ She looked at her daughter, trying to find a way of explaining what was in her mind in a way that Rose could accept. ‘Look, when I was young I had what was considered to be all. It was money mostly, but that means a lot to most people, and don’t believe anyone who says it isn’t important. I was odd, I always knew that, I never fitted in, and if I’d had no money I’d have been regarded as a pathetic character, but because I had it I was just eccentric. That’s what money does, it smooths over rough edges.’ She laughed quietly. ‘The trouble was that I was like you. I was bright, I had my eyes on wider horizons. We both get that from Granny Ina, by the way: she knows it, even if you don’t. What I should have done was to get away from here. I could have done it too, but I made a mistake.’
Rose looked at her quizzically.
‘I got married when I shouldn’t have,’ Margo said.
‘If you’re going to start in on Sorley Og again—’
‘Be quiet, Rose,’ Margo said firmly. ‘Just listen. I don’t know if we’ll ever have another conversation after this one, so make the most of it. In my day, Rose, you had to have a man, that was the size of it. Even misfits like me had to toe that line. It wasn’t like now – my God, how I envy this generation of lassies! In my day, if you didn’t have a man you were a failure, a “poor old spinster”, that’s how they talked about you, “left on the shelf”. Not that that kind of talk bothered me, but getting married presented a way out, or so I thought. I had my father on one side doing everything he could to keep me here while my every instinct was to get away; that’s when I made my mistake. A married woman in those days passed from being the property of her father and became the property of her man, so I looked around and picked the most amenable man I could, the one I could make do what I wanted. That seemed to me to be Quintin.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’ Rose accused her.
‘It probably is, but it’s the truth and, anyway, he got the last laugh. My downfall was in not knowing anything about men. I suspect you’re like me in that respect, too. Quintin might have been quiet and easy-going, but he was stubborn. Nothing would’ve taken him from this place; he was like all the rest – Sorley Mor, Gannet and Sorley Og, too. By the time I realised I’d got it all wrong, I was pregnant.’ She laughed. ‘Now there’s an irony. All he had to do was wave to me from the boat and I was caught again! I took my fertility from my fisherwife grandmother; she couldn’t stop having them to save herself. You’re lucky. You seem to have taken yours from your father’s mother. So there I was, stuck here, having baby
after baby, and don’t mention the Pill or abortion, this was Acarsaid, not Hampstead, but I’m telling you truthfully, I would have grabbed at either one. Then my father’s business failed and there was little money either.’
‘You sound as if you regret having us!’ Rose said moodily.
‘Now don’t be childish,’ Margo chided her, ‘you’re an adult. Of course I regret having six bairns! If I hadn’t had them I would’ve been free when your father was killed. Want to know what I felt when I heard he was dead? Relief.’
Rose gasped.
‘Terrible, isn’t it? The truth often is, Rose,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But I wasn’t free, I had five bairns and another on the way. Even then I’d have dumped the lot with old Ina and Aeneas, with old Ina herself after he died, and that’s the truth too, but you changed that.’
‘Me?’ Rose exclaimed.
‘Aye, you,’ Margo replied quietly. ‘From the minute you were born I knew you were different from the others, and as you were growing up I could see that I’d been right. I knew your brothers and sisters would plod along, though I always hoped they’d escape this place. I don’t suppose I gave up till they married people with little Acarsaid minds, but that’s all I ever had with them anyway: hope. But as I say, there was something in you that reminded me of myself, Rose. You wanted more, you needed more, so I thought to myself, “Better face facts here, Margo. You’ve blown it as far as your life’s concerned, but if you concentrate on this one, get her educated, you could get her out of here, win something back from this … this bloody disaster of a place.” ’
Rose looked at her, too confused to answer.
Margo laughed wryly. ‘Oh, I’m not saying your father was a bad man or anything like that, but he bored me, he had one of those small minds, an Acarsaid mind. He was quite happy to go to all those different ports in the name of fishing, but he wouldn’t travel ten miles on land – and I wanted to see exciting places in far-off continents.’
The Last Wanderer Page 41
