The Maggie

by James Dillon White

  In exasperation Marshall shoved his papers into his briefcase, grabbed some blankets and the palliasse, and stamped up the ladder to the deck.

  In the cool night air there was peace. From the cottages round the harbour a dozen lights shone warmly; the jetty was like a white path through the darkness; across the still water two cargo ships passed with winking lights. Marshall threw down the palliasse by the wheelhouse and, with a feeling of relief, sat down with the blankets wrapped round him like a cloak. In the stillness he began slowly to relax. There was nothing here to worry him, nothing he could do. Beyond any reasonable doubt he knew that the Maggie could not move until daybreak. He could relax and sleep.

  From the forward hatchway a small gnomish head appeared. Bright eyes were watching in the darkness. The wee boy climbed on to the deck and came deferentially towards the passenger.

  ‘Would you like a mithfa tay, sir?’

  Marshall looked at him, startled. ‘What?’

  ‘Can I bring ye a mithfa tay, sir?’

  Marshall turned the words over in his mind – ‘A mithfa tay’. Presumably they were English, his own language. They only needed decoding.

  ‘Can I bring ye a mithfa tay, sir?’

  Marshall waved his hand testily. ‘Well, whatever it is, no.’ He watched the wee boy turn disappointedly towards the hatch.

  Peace returned again, but not comfort. After a few minutes the deck assumed an uncanny torturing hardness, the metal rivets on the wheelhouse were small but irritating as a stone in the shoe. For thirty years Marshall had not suffered any discomfort more severe than a bumpy air crossing. Now, with flesh and bones still aching from the long car ride, he tried to wriggle first one way, then another, to find a position of comfort and sleep. This day was a complete loss. He was resigned to that. But it was essential to sleep well tonight so that at least some of tomorrow’s hours might be saved. A cool breeze had sprung up and the wind blowing in from the open loch was chilling his body wherever the blankets slid away. He clutched at comfort with both hands, nestling into his blankets like a Red Indian beside a camp fire.

  At last as warmth returned Marshall began to feel the first drowsy symptoms of sleep. His eyes were heavy, his thoughts blurred. It had been a long day.

  Another figure came noisily from the forward hatch. This time it was the engineman with a bucket and rope. He stepped over Marshall’s body and from the stern rail threw the bucket into the harbour with a resounding plop. When he drew it up, brimming with water, he clattered carelessly back across the deck, stepping over Marshall and spilling a good deal of water in the process.

  Marshall stood up furiously. He looked wildly round the boat. For one moment he was tempted to find a room at the inn. Then he walked round to the other side of the wheelhouse. He opened the door. There was just room enough, he considered, for a man lying hunched up to prostrate himself on the floor. Dragging the palliasse and blankets along the deck he wondered desperately whether there would be any end to his annoyances. Sleep: all he wanted was some small corner where he could be quiet and free from interruption. Grovelling in the darkness he managed to fix up an unsatisfactory bed, but when he lay down he found that he was so tired that sleep would surely come.

  At first he did not hear the mate coming along the jetty. A low murmur of conversation, a hum of lover’s talk like bees on a summer afternoon; then quite definitely they were there, only a few feet from the wheelhouse – Hamish and a girl. He could hear every word they said.

  ‘Did ye really mean what ye said, Hamish? Tell me the truth.. . . Am I really the one for you?’

  Marshall opened his eyes, deliberately listening.

  ‘Ach, ye said that the last time, and then ye went away and didn’t come back for over a year . . .’ There was the sound of a kiss – ‘Ah, Hamish, me love . . .’

  Marshall rose slowly on to his elbows.

  ‘Do ye love me, Hamish? Oh, Hamish . . . Hamish.’

  Marshall’s face appeared slowly above the level of the window. He stared out at the couple on the wharf with the eyes of a madman.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the brightness of morning Marshall felt confidence returning. Although it was only an hour since dawn the sun was already warm on the deck. The cottages, the pub, the small grey chapel, were sharply delineated in the clear air. Across the water a heat mist was rising and the distant mountains were shrouded in haze. From the harbour wall the fishermen passed slowly across the smooth loch, rowing because there was not a breath of wind to fill their sails.

  ‘A fine morning, sir.’ The Skipper, who had come to Marshall’s side, seemed quite unaffected by the previous night’s drinking.

  Marshall looked at him with reluctant respect, the big nose, humorous eyes, the ragged beard that stuck out jauntily through every depression. ‘How far is it to go?’

  ‘To Oban, sir. Well, it’s a gude long journey, a gude long journey.’

  ‘According to my map it’s only thirty miles.’

  ‘Maybe so, maybe so.’ The Skipper nodded seriously. ‘But I wouldn’t want to drive the auld Maggie, ye understand? We’ll take it slow but steady.’

  Marshall turned deliberately to face him. ‘Look, MacTaggart. I know exactly what this old tub will do, I know she’s about the slowest thing that ever put to sea, but I want my cargo in Oban today. Unless you go fifty miles or so off course even you can’t prevent that.’ He took out a small folding compass. ‘But I’m warning you, I can check a straight course as well as you. So don’t try any tricks!’

  The Skipper turned away, offended. ‘Ye don’t have to speak to me like that, Mr Marshall. To go a long way off course with the deliberate intention of missing the CSS boat at Oban – why it’d be – it’d be dishonest.’

  Marshall walked away to the stern. ‘Well, don’t run the risk that I might think that of you.’

  ‘Of course,’ the Skipper said to himself, ‘there might have to be a wee deviation now and then. For rocks or a big ocean liner or maybe a shipwreck.’

  The Maggie, with steam up, was about to go. The mate and the boy were casting off. A girl watched them wistfully from the jetty.

  ‘Goodbye, Hamish.’

  The Skipper and McGregor, who was standing beside the wheelhouse, were watching Marshall in the bows. McGregor was not like the Skipper; he could acknowledge defeat.

  ‘Ach, what’s the use?’ he was saying. ‘He’ll have us in Oban by teatime even if we drift half the way. Fraser’s boat won’t be waiting to pick up his stuff before evening.’

  Leaning out of his wheelhouse the Skipper said, reflectively, ‘It’s thirty miles to Oban. A great many things can happen in thirty miles.

  McGregor took up his meaning at once. ‘The engine . . . ?’

  He may have spoken too loudly, for Marshall glanced back and then came along the boat to join them. ‘I was just thinking,’ Marshall said, ‘about the things that might happen to prevent our reaching Oban by this afternoon. Engine trouble, for example.’ He caught their quick, nervous glances. ‘I think I should tell you, gentlemen, I built a better engine than that when I was eight years old.’

  The Puffer moved out of harbour into the open sea. There was nothing to hinder her progress, no squall, no current, no crossing boats. They waffled steadily along some three miles off the south coast of Mull. To Marshall, sitting in the bows, it seemed that their progress was infinitesimal. The mate was reclining against the hatchway with his concertina. The boy was peeling potatoes in the galley. McGregor stood on the engine-room steps with his elbows on the deck. Only the Skipper seemed to have any part in sailing the boat, and his efforts, a slight turn of the wheel every few minutes, could hardly be called strenuous. After an hour Marshall was fuming with impatience, but there was nothing he could complain about. The bows seemed to be cutting sharply enough through the water, and the course, from frequent checkings on his compass, was correct. The boy came on to deck and listened to the mate’s concertina.

  ‘Mr Marshall, sir .
. .’

  Marshall turned and saw the Skipper beckoning him from the open window of his wheelhouse. He went back suspiciously. ‘Well?’

  The Skipper said, ‘I have a feeling there’s some fog coming on.’

  ‘Fog!’ Marshall looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘It might be wise to put her in somewhere.’

  ‘Are you serious? How on earth could you know that there was . . .’

  The Skipper said vaguely, ‘Well, there’s the time of year, and a bit of a nip in the air after the heat, and the way the wind’s fallen away . . . You might call it a seaman’s instinct.’

  Marshall looked round briefly at the perfectly clear sky. Then he strode angrily back to his seat in the bows. ‘Fog!’

  Within the hour the sea was layered with fog as thick as cotton wool. From the aft hatch the bows were invisible, and from the forward hatch they couldn’t see the wheelhouse. Marshall, who knew enough about the sea to recognise their danger, groped nervously about the deck. He could barely see across the width of the boat. Up in the bows he saw the distorted figures of the mate and the boy. He watched them distractedly. While the mate took soundings with a line, the boy was picking lumps of coal from a bucket beside him and throwing them with all his might into the grey nothingness ahead. After each throw he listened for the plop as the coal hit the water.

  Marshall asked nervously, ‘What are you doing that for?’

  Hamish, the mate, turned with a grin. ‘Radar!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The boy explained. ‘So long as it plops, we’re all right. But if it rattles . . .’

  Marshall said, ‘If it rattles, what?’

  ‘Then we’ll know we made a mistake.’

  Trying to mask his fear by action Marshall groped slowly back to the wheelhouse. He was hardly reassured by the fact that the Skipper was quite unperturbed. He had already decided that MacTaggart was a madman.

  ‘I’m taking her into Fiona Bay,’ the Skipper explained calmly. ‘To beach her. It’s all right, sir. It’s what she was built for.’

  ‘But what makes you think you’re going into Fiona Bay and not on to some rocks?’

  The Skipper paused to listen to the plopping of the coal. Then he said, ‘Ach, weel, I’m not sure I could explain it to ye. Ye just know.’

  When the fog lifted, as suddenly as it had fallen, the Maggie was indeed safely beached, but in a position that made her appearance even more ludicrous than usual. She was high and dry on a sandbank, half a mile from the sea and half a mile from the shore. It would be hours before she could float from her indignity with the incoming tide.

  Marshall, who had fallen asleep in the captain’s cabin, was suddenly conscious that the engines were not going. He sat up with a startled expression, thinking that perhaps the boat had been abandoned, or was sinking. He looked at his watch, leaped up and tried to peer through the porthole. But it was too dirty for him to see anything at all, except that the mist had cleared. Scrambling clumsily from the bunk he clambered up on to the deck.

  He looked wildly round and saw the Skipper with McGregor and the boy talking quietly in the bows. The mate was asleep on the hatch. On all sides the sand stretched desolately away.

  Marshall came up to them furiously. ‘It’s almost four o’clock. Why didn’t you wake me?’ Then, before the Skipper could speak, ‘All right, it doesn’t matter.’ He spread out his map. ‘Show me where we are on here.’ As the Skipper indicated, ‘Right. Where’s the nearest place with a telephone?’

  The Skipper said, ‘Weel, ye could walk back to Inverkerran, but that’s over the hill there. It would be quicker to go to Loch Mora – here.’

  Marshall said, appalled, ‘But that’s almost ten miles!’

  The Skipper shrugged sympathetically. Marshall furiously folded his map, shoved it in his pocket again and strode across the deck to the side of the ship. ‘All right. Let’s get going.’

  The Skipper looked at him doubtfully. ‘Were ye wanting me to come with you, sir?’

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to leave you here so that you can accidentally drift away again, do you?’

  ‘Drift away, sir? The tide won’t be in for hours. She’s no’ on wheels.’

  As he glanced at the vast expanse of rippled sands, wet with sea puddles and rivulets, Marshall knew that the Skipper was right, but for once in his life he was ready to acknowledge someone smarter than himself. If there was a chance in a thousand of a double-cross the Skipper would know it. He said, ‘I’d rather you came with me. A little exercise will do you good.’

  The Skipper shrugged and smiled as he followed him down the rope ladder.

  Across the interminable half-mile of sand Marshall plodded ahead, feeling all the time that in the eyes of MacTaggart and his crew he was the eccentric. To them his need for speed and efficiency was quite incredible. Given good weather and their own peculiar knowledge of these western lochs and isles they would have proceeded happily enough, at three or four knots, until with God’s good grace they might even have reached Kiltarra. A few days, a few weeks: what did it matter?

  Well, to Marshall it mattered a great deal. All his life he had requested and understood the power of money. Now, with his marriage breaking up, he was going to try to buy back his young wife’s love. At Kiltarra, in the Western Isles, he had bought a mansion: the cargo, which he had taken months to collect, was to make it agreeable to Lydia’s fastidious taste without spoiling its picturesque appearance. Plumbing and heating apparatus, building materials, some modern ‘period’ furniture. Only, the whole affair must be a surprise. The cargo which now lay in the sloping hold of the Maggie was more important than MacTaggart realised.

  Wet to the knees, with the sand and water squelching to each step, Marshall pressed doggedly towards the shore. It was forty years or more since he had walked on a sandy beach, but he couldn’t remember it being so wet or that there had been so much of it. Looking back he saw the Maggie as a small craft on the horizon, but the scrubby foreshore and the rising hills beyond seemed as far away as ever. He was breathing hard and perspiring. To lift each foot from the clinging sand was an effort. The Skipper, he noticed, was wearing Wellingtons and was so little exercised that he was puffing quite easily at his pipe.

  Marshall said vindictively, ‘I’ll tell you something else. If you think that even if you did get away with that cargo, and landed it at Kiltarra, I’d pay you, you’re out of your mind! You won’t get another penny from me!’

  The sand was drier near the shore, but, unexpectedly, as the beach ended, they came on a stretch of boggy ground. To Marshall this was even more of a hardship than the half-mile of sand, but the Skipper seemed so little concerned that he stopped to fill his pipe and was still only a few paces behind when they came at last to the road.

  They strode silently along the quiet edges of the coast. It was a scene of utter tranquillity: the rising mountains, sheep grazing in the heather, a crofter’s cottage in the sheltered lee of a quarry. The only human they saw on their long walk was a shepherd; the only sounds to break the mountain silence were the bleat of sheep and the occasional flutter of pheasants. At first Marshall led the way, striding along the rough road in an angry silence, but soon, as the stones began to cut through his thin city shoes, his pace flagged and he had difficulty in keeping up with the Skipper’s unhurried step.

  When they reached Loch Mora – two or three houses grouped round a pier and a stone wharf – the Skipper was still sauntering easily, but Marshall, some way behind, was a pathetic sight. He was out of condition and obviously in real pain. At the first of the houses the Skipper waited for him to limp up, but Marshall, staggering like a drunkard, passed him with a murderous look and made for the pub.

  The innkeeper rose in some surprise as a man, apparently in the last stage of exhaustion, staggered through the doorway.

  Marshall gasped, ‘I’d like to use your . . . telephone.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Campbell’s voi
ce came over the telephone with the air of incredulous amusement that Marshall had come to dread.

  ‘On the beach, Mr Marshall? But how . . . ? The last time I heard from you . . .’

  ‘We’re on the beach,’ Marshall insisted gratingly, ‘What I want to know is, can your boat wait for us to get off?’

  Campbell said, ‘I’m afraid there’s no possibility of keeping Captain Anderson’s boat another day . . . no . . . I’m sorry.’ He asked, ‘Where are you, by the way?’

  Marshall looked round as though he couldn’t even be sure of this. The tiny bar, MacTaggart and the landlord talking closely, outside the blue water stretching away. ‘I’m at a village – if you can call it that – called Loch Mora.’

  Campbell’s voice came, ‘Well, if you’ll hold on a minute, I’ll just see . . .’ He was back almost at once, ‘By the way, our friend Fraser has been doing you well in the Star. You won’t have seen it. ‘‘The Puffer. Marshall’s Assistant on Charge’’.’

  ‘One thing about you Scotsmen,’ Marshall said, ‘is your wonderful sense of humour.’ He asked plaintively, ‘But what about Loch Mora?’

  ‘Ah yes, Loch Mora. Well, you’re in luck, Mr Marshall. We have a cattle boat calling there tomorrow afternoon to pick up some beasts. I’ve just checked in our records. There’s an old abandoned pier which is being dismantled next week.’

  Still holding the receiver, Marshall looked out of the window. There was a pier, undoubtedly: a rickety construction of wood which looked as though it might subside at any moment. ‘Well,’ Marshall said, ‘It looks worse than abandoned. I’d say it was debauched.’

  Campbell said, ‘If ye can have your cargo there by three o’clock ready for loading I can put some stevedores aboard. But be sure to get your cargo on the wharf. The pier won’t be strong enough to take it. The stevedores can manhandle the cargo out to the head of the pier, where our boat can load.’ Suddenly he began to chuckle. ‘I’ve just realised what you meant when you said that the pier looked worse than abandoned.’ He laughed heartily. ‘That’s very amusing, Mr Marshall, very amusing. I must remember to tell Mrs Campbell.’