No Safe Anchorage

by Liz Macrae Shaw

  Tom laughed. “I wasn’t alone in that.”

  “No indeed, but Alasdair was worried about what you said when you were with drink. You spoke about deserting your ship, a serious matter.”

  Tom groaned and rubbed his eyes.

  “He says that no one here would dream of betraying you, but you must guard your tongue. Whatever you’ve done the people here think highly of you and want to be of service. Alasdair has a son who works at Tainuilt, not far from Oban. There’s a big ironworks near there at Bonawe. It employs hundreds of men. He believes you would be safe enough there.”

  “I know Tainuilt, ‘the house by the stream.’ I remember the Cap … no matter. I suppose it’s all men working there? I’m still looking for that lassie.” Alasdair gleaned enough of his words to break into a wheezy laugh while MacLean cleared his throat.

  “You’re fortunate to have a chance to redeem yourself. I would advise you to stay sober and work hard.”

  Tom blushed with a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. Alasdair patted him on the shoulder and winked.

  His new friends from Tiree delivered him to the quay at Bonawe. A row of carts were being loaded with iron ore disgorged from a steamship. Tom ambled after them when they set off inland. He didn’t want to risk seeking work on a boat again but what else could he do? Sailors laughed about landlubbers who turned green in a storm but they were the ones out of their element on land. He had spent all his adult life at sea and knew nothing about iron smelting. There had to be a furnace, of course, but what else? He felt as dumbfounded as he did when he first arrived at boarding school, standing alone among jostling crowds of boys who knew their way around. He would have to look nonchalant and watch the others until he knew what to do. As the carts lumbered along, he could see a sullen fog above the trees ahead. Soon there were more carts coming up behind, piled high with charcoal. Horses whinnied, men shouted, and hammers thudded. They passed by houses, a solid stone terrace alongside makeshift wooden cabins. Then he could see the furnace itself, stretching over forty feet into the sky, a hulking landlocked lighthouse, spewing out smoke instead of light. There was the wheel turning with a gentle slap of water. Nearby was a collection of stone buildings. He supposed they would be used for storing the fuel that was shoveled into the furnace’s gaping mouth. The first man to catch Tom’s eye was a figure clad in business black with a clutch of papers in his hand. He stopped when Tom intercepted him.

  “I’m looking for a position. I’ve a fair hand and I was quick at arithmetic at school.” He thickened his voice, trying to appear both humble and keen.

  “Hmm. I’ve enough clerks already.”

  “I can turn my hands to most things. I used to work with horses.”

  The other man looked doubtful.

  “John Robinson at your service,” Tom said with his most winning smile. He had decided to use his grandfather’s Christian name and his mother’s maiden name, hoping that their familiarity would make them stick more readily to his tongue.

  “I’m William Brown. I look after the business side of things for Mr. Armstrong while he’s down in Furness.”

  “And you’re from there yourself? It makes a pleasant change to hear an English voice, especially a North Country one.”

  Brown didn’t reply at first. He seemed to be puzzled by a stranger with a gentleman’s manners who wanted a laborer’s job.

  “We use local men for the fetching and carrying. Hmm, well we are losing the Campbells, father and son. They’re off on an emigrant ship. Very well. I’ll give you a week’s trial.”

  Tom’s face lit up.

  “Six days a week, loading the carts. Half-day on Saturdays. It’s hard labor.”

  Tom brushed the warning aside but he soon found out the truth of Brown’s words. He would have said that he had endured long hours as a naval officer with the endless round of watches. But there were plenty of slack times while the ship steamed on her way and he could sit quietly at the chart table. His body had hardened with all the tramping through rough countryside, but even that hadn’t prepared him for what he faced now, loading iron ore and limestone from the quay and charcoal from the woods, carrying hay to the horses and sweeping out their stables. He set to the work willingly and Brown kept him on after the first week.

  Tom moved easily among the other workers, always with a cheerful word for everyone but giving away little about himself. He was a garden robin, hopping close with head cocked but backing away from an outstretched hand. Weeks sped by in a routine of work and sleep. He didn’t risk going into Tainuilt for a drink. He spent what little free time he had sketching in the woods, wishing that he had the paints to reveal the hues and textures there. The bronze green of the beech branches, the pungent cushioned yellow of the lichens and the musty, deep brown, crumbling forest floor beneath. An oak tree wrecked in a storm lay with most of its roots writhing in the air and its moss-furred trunk flat on the ground. Its outstretched branches pleaded for life, a few limp leaves still clinging to its fingers, a felled green giant slowly dying. After discovering the fallen tree, he avoided that part of the forest.

  The charcoal burners lived in the forest, wary as deer. Eventually they crept close enough to watch him. He drew portraits for them but they wouldn’t accept them.

  Sometimes he went sea fishing with Ewan MacKay, a man of few words in either Gaelic or English. They would catch mackerel and string them over a fire on the shore. Tom felt some peace as they baked potatoes in the embers and sat juggling them from hand to hand while they cooled. Mostly he lived in the moment like the horses he tended. He let hard physical labor numb his mind but as spring and summer stretched into the slow decay of autumn he woke early in his bothy with a sense of clammy dread.

  What would become of him? Would he have to wander through his life with a secret past and no future? Soon it would be a year since he deserted and for what? A will o’ the wisp glimpse of a girl he would never see again. Like the departing swallows she had disappeared into endless sky.

  Mostly, though, he wouldn’t let himself think. Just concentrate on leading Hector he scolded himself one misty morning as his breath mingled in the sharp air with the horse’s. What was the matter with the beast today? Usually placid he had become skittish, prancing on his huge feathered feet. He seemed to be infecting the horses behind with his unease, for they too were snorting and tossing their heads.

  In exasperation, Tom raised his whip. As he did so, he felt his arm tremble and his body sway. Using all his strength, he hauled on the reins to stop Hector and turn the beast’s head around. The carter behind him swore as he had to pull his own horse to a halt. By then, Tom had leapt down from the cart, knife in hand and slashed through the traces, slapping Hector on the rump to make him run back. He was cutting through the harness of the horse behind when the ground shuddered beneath them. The sky exploded in spouting flames, spitting out rocks like molten hailstones. A searing ash fell on them. Tom hunched low to avoid the barrage and leapt to seize the reins of a bucking horse farther back in the line. Then something heavy thudded into his back, thrusting him forward. He was tossed into the air before being pitched into a thundering blackness.

  Chapter 24

  Argyll, 1861

  “Captain Otter, you’ve found me. I’m so sorry for all the trouble I caused you.” Through his tears Tom could make out the burly figure with the bristling beard.

  “Not guilty, young man. I’m Matthew Armstrong and I’ve never commanded a ship in my life.”

  Tom gripped the edge of the sheet and closed his eyes. A groan escaped from someone else’s throat. When his eyes popped open again, the bearded face was still there although it shifted and shimmered as if in a heat haze.

  “Lie back. There’s nothing to fret about. You’re in a snug bed, not on a ship.”

  He closed his eyes, heard another groan and squinted through half-closed lids. No, it couldn’t be the captain. The voice was wrong and surely his beard was grayer than the captain’s.

&nbs
p; It was all too much to endure. Terrible dreams, or were they memories, swirled around in his head. Images of being pinned down and suffocated. He had to get up. As he kicked his legs against the bedclothes a scream sliced through the air. This time he knew it was his own voice.

  A heavy hand pressed down on him. “Keep still. You had a nasty break. The doctor put you under to reset it. You were delirious for days.”

  Tom shook his head and crawled back down into tunnels of sleep again. Next time he awoke, the bearded man was there again but solid this time, not a mirage.

  “You’re back in the land of the living at last,’ he said, holding a glass of water to Tom’s cracked lips. ‘Can you remember what happened?”

  Tom shook his head gingerly. His neck seemed too weak to support it.

  “It’s two weeks since the furnace blew up.”

  Two weeks, how have I lost two weeks of my life? Tom wondered.

  “We don’t know how or why it happened. The smelters all knew their business back to front and inside out. We can’t ask them for every last man died in the explosion. Boiled like lobsters. Their flesh melted like candle grease. But your quick thinking saved more men from dying. You turned the carts back. Do you remember doing that?”

  “Hector, what about him? Is he safe?” Tom jerked himself up into a sitting position, grimacing with pain. Armstrong looked blank. “Hector, my horse. He sensed what was happening and warned me. Is he safe?”

  “What? Oh, all the beasts survived. It was only the poor men in the furnace who died.” He snatched a ragged breath and said more gently, “but you’re still in a state from that bang on your head. A flying piece of metal. Then in all that mayhem one of the carts ran over your leg.”

  Tom fell back on his pillow, exhausted. Warm tears trickled down his cheeks. “Too many men dying horribly.” But it wasn’t the smelters of Bonawe who were at the forefront of his mind.

  “So many, and Andrew among them. He shouldn’t even have been there. But he wanted to know all about the business.” He blew into his handkerchief.

  “Andrew?”

  “My son. He’d come up from Furness to learn about smelting. Forgive me, I didn’t come to burden you with my sorrows but to thank you.”

  For a moment they were both silent. Armstrong roused himself. “Now what about you? You must have relatives who want to hear from you.”

  Tom felt the shaming moisture oozing down his cheeks again. “There’s no hurry. You’re still in pain.” They both stayed silent, each marooned in his own grief.

  The next day when Tom heard Armstrong’s tread on the stairs, he had his answer ready. “Thank you, sir, but I haven’t any family who need to be told.”

  “You’re alone in the world?” Tom stayed silent. “Or you’ve drifted away from them?”

  Tom could have lied or refused to answer. But the wish to confess to this kind, fatherly figure swept over him in a neap tide that he couldn’t resist, drifting as he was without rudder or mast. He longed to be towed into a dry dock, safe from the storms at sea. Over the next few days, Armstrong coaxed the whole story from him. It was like tipping an unstoppered pitcher upside down. At first, the flow was sluggish through the narrow neck, but once it speeded up it wouldn’t cease. All of it splashed out. The pain of his mother’s death, his rage toward his father, his disappointment with life in the Navy, the shock of Richard’s death, the obsession with the mysterious girl, and the shame of his desertion. Once it was all hurled overboard, he felt himself floating lighter in the water.

  “I shall go away and think,” was all Armstrong said at the end.

  Tom let hope trickle into his mind.

  The tread on the stairs was brisker the next day. Armstrong smiled as he perched on the edge of his seat.

  “You can’t carry on with this half-life, always looking over your shoulder. Even if by some miracle you were to find this girl and she wanted you, how would you get by? You couldn’t bear to live in some hovel.” He raised his hand, as Tom opened his mouth in protest. “No, hear me out. And you have to keep off the bottle. Some men can manage it but in your case it’s a bad master.”

  He laughed at Tom’s scowling face. “Lecture over. I don’t want you to waste your life. I lost my son and there’s nothing I can do for him anymore. I’ve decided to repair the furnace and sell the whole business. I’ll get a better price for it that way and the men here will keep their jobs.”

  His voice was businesslike but his expression bleak. “Money’s no good to me now. My hopes are sunk but I can get you afloat if you’ll let me.”

  Chapter 25

  Liverpool, 1862

  Where was she?

  Tom sat in a window seat, smoothing the expensive cloth of his new suit over his knees. No sign of her at the hotel entrance. He forced himself to sit still. He didn’t want to draw attention from the other people drinking afternoon tea. Families, couples, groups of middle-aged ladies but no sign of a woman on her own. Had he made a mistake over the time or the place?

  Ah! There was a woman at the doorway now. No, that couldn’t be her, too matronly surely, too dowdy. Then she looked in his direction and her eyes crinkled in a smile. It was her. He was on his feet, hiding his shock in a broad grin.

  She must see a change in him, too. Both of them were youngsters when he had left home. Still he thought with satisfaction that the differences in him were an improvement. He had stayed slender but hard work had broadened his shoulders and bronzed his face so that it made a striking contrast to his pale hair. He knew that women slid their eyes over him with approval.

  “Emma, at last.” He reached his arms out and then let them hang, as she stood still in front of him. He gestured for them to sit down and caught the eye of a waiter. After ordering afternoon tea, there was a bristling silence while they stared at each other.

  “Well, here you are, back from the dead. I was astonished to receive your letter.” Her tone was clipped.

  “I’m so glad you could come up to see me.”

  He had forgotten how direct her gaze was, her dark brown eyes fixed on his face.

  “You didn’t say in your letter, but I already knew what you had done.” Her words sank like a stone into a deep well.

  “When you didn’t answer my letter after Papa died, I feared some terrible accident had befallen you.”

  He hung his head.

  “So I made enquiries and—”

  His head shot up, eyes flashing, “Not at the Admiralty?”

  “No, I was circumspect, through an acquaintance I could trust. He was mortified to be the bearer of bad news about your … disappearance. Captain Otter was reprimanded for the loss of two of his crew. You didn’t know?”

  He shook his head.

  “How could you, to … to John? You’ve brought shame and disgrace on yourself and your family.”

  He didn’t reply at first. He had hoped for more compassion from this sister who had looked up to him when they were children. He stared at her clenched face and thought that it wasn’t only her appearance that had changed. So had her character and he felt he didn’t know her at all. “I’ll try to explain.”

  He told her how the manner of Richard’s death had left him floundering and rudderless.

  She listened until he lurched to a halt. “I can see your shipmate’s death upset you greatly, but I don’t understand why it made you desert.”

  He squeezed his hands together. “Well, I haven’t told you the whole story. Here’s the missing piece.” He took the stained portrait out of his pocket. “This has survived everything. I believe it’s an omen.”

  She traced the outline of the face with a finger, as he told her about the fateful meeting. “You do understand now?”

  She said nothing at first. Then abruptly she ripped the paper from his grasp. He lunged for it, but she wrenched it away and held it on her lap under the table.

  “Understand what?” she kept her voice low, as she spat the words out. “Are you some lovesick boy? You’ve ruine
d your life and tainted us all for some young woman you glimpsed once? You’ve not changed at all. You’re still as selfish as you always were. And now you appear again, dragging a broken wing and expect sympathy for trouble you brought on your own head.” She jumped to her feet, nimble in spite of her plumpness and thrusting back her chair, rushed out the door.

  The buzz of conversation around them faltered as heads turned at the noise before the voices resumed talking in loud, bright tones. He glanced around him, furious at her for drawing attention to him. Throwing some change onto the table, he strode out, trying to look composed. He scanned the busy street in both directions. He had to get the portrait back. Although he could draw another likeness, this picture was a talisman. A superstitious part of his mind was terrified at the idea of losing the drawing he had kept safe through all the hazards he had endured. Would losing it mean he had also lost all chance of finding the girl? Sweat drenched the back of his fine new jacket. Emma had no right to snatch the paper away and lecture him about his actions. A new fear gripped him. Maybe she would be spiteful enough to report his presence in Liverpool to the Admiralty?

  Ah, there she was ahead on the right, dodging around the strolling shoppers. He followed her, never taking his eyes off her bustling figure. With his longer strides, he soon caught up with her. As he drew level he ducked down to whisper, “Please wait.”

  She kept hurrying on, “Why should I? I’ve traveled all this way at some personal inconvenience. I didn’t dare risk tell anyone I was coming and you’ve not even had the decency to ask me how I am.”

  “You’re my only link to my old life. I don’t want to lose you again after we’ve just met.”

  By now she had slowed to a halt. “We can’t go back to that hotel. They’ll all be talking about what a hoyden I was.”

  “Or what a cad I was for upsetting a respectable lady. Look, we’re heading toward the water. What about a ferry trip over the river?”