North Star

He talked about birds until we had finished our meal, and then he began telling me the story of Goturm's Hole, how the son of the jarl of Stackhoull had been killed returning from a raid into Norway and the man who had killed him had had his boat wrecked on the rocks north-west of Unst. 'He climbed the cliffs to the hole named after him and there he would have been killed but for the young man's sister, who had some contact with Christianity and couldn't stomach vengeance for vengeance's sake. Goturm was a Dane and became a king of the Danes, and years later, when the Norse people in Unst had been overrun by yet another invasion from Norway, he repaid the debt he owed for his life, sending one of his captains with a great treasure to the girl who had saved him, now a woman and no longer living in the great hall at Stackhoull, but in a little cot on the Milldale burn. I may well have walked on the ruins of it this very day.

A wild place, Captain Randall, this island of Unst — and nothing ever certain in an uncertain world.'

'Why are you telling me this?' I asked him.

'Bobbie loves telling the old legend stories,' his sister said.

'Aye.' He nodded, filling his pipe and watching me, his eyes full of curiosity. 'Y'see, I taught history as well as English and geography. A bit of natural history, too, of course. I love this land of ours, so rugged, bleak and beautiful. It fascinates me.'

'But you had a purpose,' I insisted. 'All your stories are of invasion and retribution-'

'Your name,' he said. 'And you salvaging the Duchess. We may be lonely island people, but we do get the Shetland Times.' I waited while he lit his pipe, staring at me over the flame. 'Now that's a strange coincidence. You and the Duchess. It was during the war and that same trawler putting in to the firth here in a westerly gale. The winter of 1942 it would be and I rowed out to her. A young naval lieutenant was in command and she was on her way back to Sullom Voe from the Norwegian coast. There was a Randall on board there, a man with his face all twisted and the scar of a gash that had bit deep into his skull. I heard he was some sort of an agent — a Russian agent, so the story went, but it was later I heard that.' There was a long pause and I thought I knew what was coming. But then he said, 'There's nobody here walks the cliffs of Tonga, Saito, Neap and Toolie, all the way out to Humlataes, as often as I do. Not much happens in the neighbourhood of Herma Ness that I don't know about. And often I catch a glimpse of those big trawlers that hang around our coast with more aerials and scanners than they have fishing gear. About two months ago it would be and I was up on Tonga with the sun shining brightly and a grey greasy-looking bank of fog hugging the sea. Sticking up out of it were the masts and antennae of one of those big trawlers, and coming in from the north the tip of a single mast, cleaving the fog like a submarine's telescope. It was a queer sight I can tell you, the two of them coming together and voices drifting up through the swirl and the shriek of the birds.'

'What's this got to do with the man you saw on the Duchess all those years ago?'

'Aye, it'd be thirty-two years now. But a man so disfigured-'

'He's come back, is that what you mean?' The man on that bench in the sunshine, old now and walking with a stick. My God! And the two of us separated only by.that narrow strip of water. 'He's at the Root Stacks Hotel. That's it, isn't it?'

He nodded and his eyes gleamed with the certainty that here was another story. 'A week after I had seen that trawler rubbing shoulders with a fishing boat in the fog, I came down off Sothers Brecks to join the track at Fiska Wick and there he was.'

'Are you sure it was the same man?'

'No doubt at all,' Bruce said. 'Though his name is not Randall now. But a name doesn't matter, not with the mark of a terrible wound like that.' And he added, 'He was sitting there this morning. You must have seen him.'

I nodded, feeling it couldn't be true, but remembering the old man's face in the glasses, the twisted, broken features. About the right age, too, and Root Stacks run by Anna Sandford's son.

'Mouat, he calls himself now.'

His middle name, and mine, and I knew it must be true.

Bruce leaned towards me. 'That's a common enough name in Shetland. But Mouat isn't his real name. It's Randall.' His large hand gripped my knee. 'And your name is Randall, and whatever you may say, Captain, you're not here to look at the birds.'

'No.'

'Then what are you here for?'

I shook my head, not sure I had really known until this moment. 'I think that man may be my father,' I said. And after that I told him a little about myself, enough at any rate to satisfy his curiosity. 'Do you know if a man calling himself Stevens is ever at the hotel?' But he shook his head, and when I gave him a description, he said he had never been to the hotel, had never seen any of them close to. 'Is he Irish?' he asked. 'I know there's an Irish lad works there. And others, they come and go, claiming they're birdwatchers, same as you, and a mixed lot they are by all accounts.'

'I'll be_ going up there this evening.'

He nodded. 'Ask Mouat where he was in 1942. It'll be the same man I'm sure.'

I left just after nine and he walked with me as far as the neck of land that separated Loch of Cliff from the Burra Firth. There was a lot of cloud and the light was fading. 'If a new invader were to come to our islands,' he said, 'this is as good a place as any. It's happened many times before — but so long ago nobody remembers, only old men like me who know the history of the islands.'

I looked at his weatherbeaten, gnome-like face, the bright blue eyes, a man so deep in the legends of his land, so close to the wildness of it, that for him the prospect of a new horde landing on the rocks was not beyond the bounds of credibility. 'There are more subtle ways-' I checked myself, conscious of the dark hills against the clouds and my thoughts running away with me. A light gleamed down the track beside Burra Firth, a door opening; then it was gone. 'Don't wait up for me,' I said.

I saw him hesitate, but then he nodded. 'The door will be on the latch.'

I left him and went down the track along the water's edge. The Root Stacks buildings were dark in the shadow of Mouslee Hill and, as I approached them, I was thinking back to that night on board the Fisher Maid with Shetland's hills black lumps against a cold green strip of sky. It was then that I had decided to come north to the islands, seeking some knowledge of my father that would help me to understand myself. Barely three months, yet it seemed an age, and now, here in the dark of Unst with my mind stuffed full of the ghosts of old legends, in the dark shadow of these buildings…

My pace faltered and for a moment I stood listening, unsure of myself and reluctant to face him. The dog was barking, and I walked quickly up to the door and knocked. I could hear voices, but it was some time before anybody came, the dog protesting from its kennel at the back until a shout silenced it. The door opened and a man stood there, short and squat in an island jersey. 'What is it? If it's a drink you're wanting-'

'Mr Mouat,' I said. 'I'd like a word with him.'

'Mouat, eh? Are you sure of the name now?'

'Quite sure.' I thought he was going to close the door in my face and I put my foot against it. 'Better call Sandford,' I said.

He hesitated, looking at me curiously. Finally he turned and called out, 'Ian. There's a man here asking for Mr Mouat.' The lamp-glow in the stone-flagged hallway brightened as a door was flung wide and Sand-ford appeared, his shirt open at the neck and a drink in his hand.