North Star

She was against the lights, in silhouette, her hull black as the water that separated us. But when you have worked on the hull of a ship, when you know every inch of her, you cannot mistake her lines. No doubt at all — it was the Duchess lying there against the quay. And my boat ashore, no means of getting to her.

I forgot about Marine Electronics after that. I was thinking of Gertrude, of what I would say to her when we met. Would she slam the door in my face? And if she didn't, what then? All the explanations, the fight to try and clear myself. Nothing else would do. I knew that. And suddenly I realized she was the crossroads in my life. She was the focal point of all my doubts, the centre around which I could rebuild my life — if I had the guts.

The boat came back about ten o'clock. By then the Duchess was anchored off and I had drunk a lot of whisky. I decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I would be sober enough and clearheaded enough to face her. But when I went across to her in the cold grey light of dawn her decks were deserted. The other trawlers had all gone or were getting under way, but the Duchess lay there silent and asleep.

Nobody answered my hail, and when I climbed on board and went through the starboard gangway into what had been my cabin, it was empty. Her things were there, her clothes in the locker, but the bunk had not been slept in. I routed Johan out and he stared at me as though I were a ghost.

'Where's Gertrude?' I asked him.

'Ashore,' he growled.

'At the hotel?'

'No. She is gone to Inverness.'

I felt at a loss, utterly deflated. The confrontation for which I had prepared myself was suddenly not there. 'What the hell's she doing in Inverness?'

'A message we have over the R/T when we are fishing.' And there was hostility in his voice as he added, 'It is about you, so we have to haul our gear and come in here.'

'About me?'

'Ja.'

'What was the message?'

'That is for Gertrude to say.'

I hesitated. But it was obvious I wouldn't get anything more out of him. The relationship I had so carefully built up with the big Norwegian was gone now. I left him and went back to my boat. I didn't even bother to leave a note. I had nothing to say and not much hope that he would have delivered it anyway.

We sailed immediately, and as we motored out, I could see the crew of the Duchess — my crew, all the old faces — standing on the deck staring at us. We passed less than half a cable from her, her hull showing streaks of rust, her superstructure dirty with lack of paint, and there was a green fringe of weed along her waterline. I would have given anything to be back on board her.

It was a grey dirty morning with cloud low on the Sutherland hills, and it stayed grey all the thirty-nine hours it took us to raise the light on Muckle Flugga. The time would have been about ten-thirty, a pitch black night, and we lay hove-to with a good offing till dawn. By then we had the tide against us so that it was an unpleasant passage until we were out of the stream and into the quiet of Burra Firth. Ian came off as soon as we had anchored to check the cases. I left him to go down into the hold on his own, and Jamie followed him.

A few minutes later he came storming up into the wheelhouse, banging the door to behind him. 'There's two of them been broken into. Jamie says it was you.'

I nodded. He had discovered it when they had lashed the cases down on our way out of Loch Inchard.

'Why did you do it?'

'They might have contained contraband, or explosives.'

'Explosives!' He snorted. 'You have the most fertile imagination.'

'Why send me all the way down to Scotland for them?'

'If you own a ship, you might as well make use of her,' he snapped. 'And it's not for you to query your orders, or break into cargo. You'd no right.'

'It would have been a lot cheaper to have them sent up on the boat from Aberdeen.'

'And a lot slower.'

'Why the hurry?'

'Because Dillon is due up here this weekend. He's my backer. He's had this equipment made specially and he wants to try it out.'

'Where?'

'How should I know? Wherever there's fish, that's where.' He turned to the door and a shaft of watery sunlight showed as he opened it. 'I've told Jamie the men can go ashore as soon as they like. They're due a few days' rest.'

'What about the cases?'

'They'll remain on board. An engineer will be out shortly to install the equipment. And don't go monkeying around with it when the crew have gone and you're on your own.'

He left me then and I sat there smoking my pipe and wondering what sort of a man Dillon would prove to be and how he was going to get a weekend's fishing with the crew gone to their homes and only myself on board.

Later I went out to see the men away in the boat. The sun was glinting on the water and the old man sitting on the bench outside the hotel. The left side of his face was in shadow so that he looked like any harmless old gentleman taking the sun. He was so still I thought he must be asleep, but when I looked at him through the glasses, I could see his eyes watching me below the hooded lids and his lips were moving as though he were mumbling something to himself.

I could have hailed him and asked to be brought ashore. Was that what he wanted? I could almost feel him willing me to come to him. It would have been the natural thing for me to do, but in other circumstances. What would be the point now? To resume our probing of each other? I sat on the deck in the sunshine, my back against the side of the wheelhouse. It was warm and I closed my eyes. But I couldn't sleep. Too many thoughts were chasing through my mind.

The sun went in and I wished I had gone ashore to stretch my legs on the steep slopes behind the hotel. I could have walked across Mouslee Hill to Goturm's Hole, perhaps had a word with Robert Bruce. Bored with myself, I went into the wheelhouse and switched on the R/T. Almost without thinking I turned to the frequency used by North Star. But there was no traffic. Probably I was too far away, and I began idly playing with the dial, picking up scraps of talk, but all very faint. And then suddenly a voice said through a blur of static, '.. ready for me.' I was almost on the frequency for the Norwick voice channel and something about that voice made me hurriedly adjust the tuning. I went too far and missed something, but then the same voice came in loud and clear;'… the hurry? Where are you speaking from?'

I knew who it was then, that slight lisp.

'The ferry. Have Ian meet me in the Land Rover. And he's to take the boat back to Lerwick, tell him. As a member of the Council, that's where he should be now. Got it?' And then a different voice came on — 'Thank you, Norwick. That's all. Over and out.'

I switched the set off and stood there, thinking about that scrap of conversation. Dillon presumably. And in a hurry to get to the Mary Jane. Why? I was still thinking about that when the inflatable came alongside. Ian was at the outboard and another man in the bows. He was young with a wisp of a beard and shoulder-length hair blowing in the breeze under a grey woolly cap. He looked like a student, his eyes magnified by round glasses as he handed a metal toolcase up to me. 'The old man wants to see you,' Ian said to me as the engineer climbed aboard.