North Star

'The skipper of the Duchess, eh?' He was smiling. 'All right, Paddy. He can come in.' He waved his glass in invitation. 'I wondered how long it would be before you called on us.'

'You knew I was here.'

'Oh, sure. Word of a stranger gets around pretty fast in a place like this. Come on in and have a drink. You're out of a job, I hear.' The same harsh, breezy manner, but there was something in the eyes, an uneasiness, and the cheerful smile seemed somehow forced. 'Come on. You don't hold it against me that I've got the North Star contract now, do you?'

I stepped into the narrow hallway full of stuffed seabirds in glass cases. 'The old man's gone to bed,' he said, leading me through into the lamplit room where a quiet bearded man sat at a table littered with glasses and the remains of a meal. 'Whisky?' Sandford picked up a bottle and poured me a drink without waiting for an answer. 'We're short of a skipper. Interested?' There was a peat fire burning in the grate, and it was warm, his round smooth face shining with perspiration as he handed me the drink, small eyes watchful, waiting for some reaction.

'You offering me a job?' I asked. The whisky was colourless, a home brew from some local still.

'Could be. It depends.'

'On what?'

'How badly you need it.'

'I didn't come here for a job,' I said. 'And I didn't come to" see you. I came to see the man who calls himself Mouat.'

His eyes flickered towards the farther door, the uneasiness there again, and his face changing, a hardening of the mouth. 'I told you, he's gone to bed.'

I moved to the farther door then, something he hadn't expected, and before he could stop me I had thrown it open.

The old man was sitting there, in a wing chair, a lamp beside him and a book open on his lap. The gashed side of his head was in shadow, so that all I saw was the smooth transparent skin of an older version of the face that stared at me every time I shaved. The likeness vanished when he turned his head, but the shock of that moment of recognition was so great that I didn't resist the grip of hands seizing hold of me.

'Let him be, Ian.' His voice was very quiet, his eyes glinting in the lamplight, a searching stare. 'He knows who I am. I can see it written all over his face.' They let me go then and I stood there, feeling numb as he went on, 'It's something of a shock, isn't it — at your age to find your father isn't safely dead and buried?'

Was there a note of bitterness there, of regret? 'Who put that plaque in Grund Sound Church?' I asked, my voice so choked it was almost a whisper.

He contrived a smile that was more of a grimace. 'I did. Or rather I arranged for it to be placed there.' The twist of his mouth gave a curious lisp to his words. 'Leave us alone now, Ian. We have much to talk about — and things must be said that I'd rather you didn't hear.'

But Sandford stood there, frowning angrily and unwilling to leave us. He didn't trust me and the old man laughed. 'The two of you, here together with me for the first time. We should kill the fatted calf.' That ghastly smile and the blue eyes gleaming wickedly up at me in the lamplight. 'You met Anna, I believe — Anna Sandford in Hamnavoe.' His eyes slid away from me, still with that terrible smile twisting his face, and I turned and stared at Ian Sandford, knowing now what it was he had meant with that reference to the prodigal returned. Christ Almighty! Two sides of the same coin, and I was looking at the other half, wondering how much of the same blood each of us had, whether hidden behind the smooth roundness of my half-brother's face was the same devil of self-doubt.

CHAPTER TWO

I was alone with my father in that room for about an hour. It was a difficult, very disturbing interview, for the twisted features, that terrible gash left by the shell splinter that had ploughed the side of his skull, shocked me deeply. It had marked all the left cheek, split the ear and cut deep into the side of his head, and the wired up remains of his jaw gave a lisp to his speech. Yet he wasn't a man you could pity. He was too withdrawn, too self-contained. And old though he was, he still had some of the fire that had driven him to fight for a cause he admitted he knew was lost before ever he had embarked for Spain.

'That plaque?' I asked him.

'What about it?'

'Making out that you were dead when you weren't. What was the point?'

'You have your mother's tidy mind,' he said harshly. 'How is she, by the way?'

'She died two years ago.'

He didn't say he was sorry, just shrugged as though accepting the inevitability of death. 'But there's something of me in you, too, isn't there?' He smiled, grimacing. 'You see, I've checked up on you.'

'Why?'

'Why not? You're my son, aren't you? As soon as Ian told me…' He hesitated. 'I've been expecting you, knowing you were bound to come.' He leaned a little forward. 'What brought you to Shetland seeking out my past? It wasn't affection or filial regard. It was something else. Something you'd been told?'

'No.'

'What then?'

I tried to explain, but it wasn't easy with him sitting there smiling crookedly. He was remote, a stranger, and I sensed an underlying hostility as I told him of the doubts that had gradually ended my early admiration for him.

'So I was a hero to you, eh?'

'At first.'

'And you left your mother, turned your back on the capitalist wealth of her new husband and set out on your wanderings.'

'I wanted to live my own life.'

'We all want that — when we're young. Later it becomes more difficult.' I thought he sighed. 'And for you more than most. You were pulled two ways. That's your nature, Michael. You don't mind me calling you Michael?'

'Most people call me Mike.'

'Your friends and those you work with perhaps. Have you any friends?'

I stared at him angrily, thinking he probably had a liking for getting under people's skin, the bitterness of a man forced into loneliness.

'You're a solitary, is that it?' He nodded, and again that crooked smile. 'I think I know you now. A wanderer. A boy who has never grown up to be a man. Isn't that right? Every time you come up against the rawness of the world we have to live in you run away from it, seeking escape in drugs or…'

'That was only a phase,' I said quickly, annoyed that I felt the need to justify myself.

'… or some eastern religion.' I had never told anybody about that, only Fiona. 'Buddhism, wasn't it? Then playing with Communism, and running away to sea.'

'You went to sea yourself.' I was angry now, and that annoyed me even more, for I knew he was goading me. And the knowledge that Fiona must have been here, before she had gone · to see Gertrude presumably… 'What are you after?' I demanded. 'Prying into my private life, asking questions of my wife.'

'Just trying to understand you. When you've never met your son before-'

'You've a reason,' I cut in hotly.

'Perhaps. But it's natural, isn't it?'

And so it went on, a verbal duel between us, each trying to learn something about the other. But he was more adept at it, side-stepping direct questions and shrewdly needling me until there wasn't much he didn't know. Only once was I able to probe a little beyond the ruined mask of his features. He had introduced Gertrude into the conversation, not very nicely since he had implied that the only thing I had ever done that showed any promise of success was going into partnership with a woman. 'Maybe that's the only way you can demonstrate your manhood.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'You wouldn't have gone into partnership with Ian, for instance, would you?'

'No.'

'Or any other man.'

'I never had the opportunity.'

'Feel safer with a woman, eh? Think a woman's easier to handle. Or are you in love with her?'

'What would you know about love?'