Atlantic Fury (10 page)

I sat on the bed, smoking a cigarette and watching him. Time passed. I found some paper in the bureau and began to sketch him. Periodically he spoke, but to himself rather than to me: ‘The
Kincaid
. An old freighter that, six thousand tons. She's outward bound for the Saguenay to pick up a cargo of aluminium. Reports wind north-easterly, force four …
Bismuth
– that's one of the Hastings on air reconnaissance five hundred miles west of Ireland; reporting to Bracknell.' He picked up two more ships out in the Atlantic, and then he was talking to a trawler south-east of Iceland. ‘
Arctic Ranger
. Wind veering northerly and a swell coming down past the east coast of Iceland. Getting quite cold up there. Temperature down to thirty-eight and flurries of snow. Wind increasing, around thirty-five knots.' He took off his earphones. ‘I think I'll go up to the office now and see what Ted has on the teleprints.' He switched off.

‘Worried?' I asked. I had finished my sketch and was lounging back on the bed.

‘No, not worried. Uneasy, though. And if it develops as I think it might …' He pushed his chair back and stood there a moment, running his hand through his thick dark hair, biting on the pencil clenched between his teeth. ‘It would be unusual – so early in the season. In January now …' He gave that quick little shrug of his that always seemed accompanied by a sideways movement of the head, and then he was pacing up and down; half a dozen steps and then about and retrace them, back and forth with his eyes on the ground, not seeing anything but what was in his mind. He could have got the habit from his time in prison, but I thought it more likely to be the loneliness of his job. He was a solitary. Why otherwise become a meteorologist and then take to operating a ‘ham' radio station as a hobby? There are countless men like Cliff Morgan – intelligent, sensitive, artists in their way. They get on all right with women, but escape from the competitive male world by burying themselves body and soul in work that is concerned with things rather than people – impersonal things. With Cliff it was the impersonal forces of the earth's atmosphere, his human contacts mostly made at one remove through the tenuous medium of the ether. I wondered what he'd do if he met opposition – direct opposition, man to man, on his own ground. I thought perhaps he could be very tricky then, perhaps behave with quite astonishing violence.

He had stopped his pacing and was standing over me, staring down at the sketch I'd drawn. ‘You work pretty fast.'

‘It's just a rough,' I said. ‘Pencil sketch of a man who's made his work his life.'

He laughed. ‘Oh, I can relax. Indeed I can – if she's pretty enough. But then there's not much difference, is there now; women and weather, they both have their moods, they can both destroy a man. That's why storms are given girls' names. Do you need that sketch? I mean, if you were just drawing to pass the time …'

I saw he really wanted it. ‘It's your paper anyway,' I said and I handed it to him. He stood for a moment looking down at it. Then he placed it carefully on the keyboard. ‘This trip to Laerg,' he said. ‘Do you have to go – I mean now, tomorrow morning?'

‘Of course I'm going,' I told him. ‘It's what I've wanted ever since I returned to England.'

He nodded. ‘Well, let's go over to the Met. Office and see what makes. But I'm telling you, man, you could have it very rough indeed.'

‘No good telling me,' I said. ‘Better tell the skipper of the landing craft.'

He didn't say anything, and when I glanced at him, his face was clouded, his mind concentrated on a world beyond the one in which we walked. Two big towing trucks went grinding past trundling red-painted trailers piled with stores. I don't think he even saw them, and in the Met. Office he went straight to the teleprint file and without a word to Sykes settled down at the desk to mark up a weather map.

Now that I knew something of the set-up, the Met. Office seemed somehow different – familiar ground like the bridge of a ship. The rain had stopped and it was lighter, the visibility much greater. To the left I could see the single hangar standing in the drifted sand like a stranded hulk. It was the only building in sight. Ahead, the wide windows looked out across the tarmac to a sea of dune grass rippling in the wind, humped and hollowed, as full of movement as the sea itself. And beyond the grass-grown dunes was the white blur of broken water, wind-blown waves moving in long regular lines towards the Sound of Harris.

Standing there, with the instruments of meteorology all around me, it wasn't difficult to slip into the mood of men like Cliff Morgan, to visualise the world they lived in, that great amorphous abstract world of atmosphere. I found myself thinking of Laerg, out there beyond the sea's dim horizon. I had seen photographs of it – etchings, too, by the Swedish artist, Roland Svensson. It was the etchings I was thinking of now, for I was sure Svensson had caught the mood of the wild wet world better than any photograph. Unconsciously I found my legs straddled as though to balance myself against the movement of a ship. A few hours and I should be on my way, steaming towards those sheer rock islands that for over thirty years had existed in my mind as the physical embodiment of an old man I had greatly loved.

Oddly, I felt no elation at the prospect; only a sense of awe. In my mind's eye I saw the cliffs rising sheer – black and dripping moisture. But because of my surroundings, the weather instruments and the two men working at the desk, I had also a picture of that other world comprising the moving masses of the Earth's outer skin. It was no more than the vague impression that a shipping forecast handed to the officer of the watch conjures in his mind, but it produced the same feeling of being at one with the elements, so that I found myself recapturing that sense of responsibility, of being a protagonist. The phone ringing cut across my thoughts. Sykes answered it. ‘Yes, he's here.' He glanced at me. ‘Okay, I'll tell him.' He put the phone down. ‘Major Braddock. He'll drive you down to Rodil to pick up your things.'

‘Now?'

‘He'll be waiting for you outside the Admin. block.'

I had known this moment would come, but I'd have been glad to postpone it. What did you say to a man who'd spent twenty years masquerading as somebody else, and that man your brother? ‘All right,' I said, and went out into the wind, wishing at that moment I'd never come north to the Hebrides. Even Laerg couldn't compensate for this.

He was sitting at the wheel of a Land-Rover, waiting for me. ‘Jump in.' He didn't say anything more and we drove out through the main gate and down the sand-blown road to Northton. Neither of us spoke and yet oddly enough there was nothing awkward about the silence. It helped to bridge the years, both of us accepting the situation and adjusting ourselves to it. Side-face his true identity was more obvious – a question chiefly of the shape of the head and the way it sat on the shoulders. The profile, too; he couldn't change that. And the hair and the short, straight forehead, the shape of his hands gripping the wheel. ‘Why didn't you contact me?' I said.

‘You were away at sea.' He hunched his shoulders, an old, remembered gesture. ‘Anyway, what was the point? When you take another man's identity – well, you'd better damn well stick to it.'

‘Did you have to do that?'

‘Do what?'

‘Take Braddock's name?'

‘I didn't have to, no. But I did.' A muscle was moving at the corner of his mouth and his voice was taut as he added, ‘What would you have done? Given yourself up, I suppose. Well, I wasn't going to stand trial for busting the jaw of a man who hadn't the guts to lead his own men.'

‘What happened?' I asked. ‘What exactly happened out there in North Africa?'

‘You really want to know?' He hesitated, frowning. ‘Well … It was after we'd landed. The French had us pinned down. They'd got a machine-gun nest in one of those walled villas. We were all right. We were in a dried-up wadi. But it was murder for the lads on our right. They were caught in the open, a whole company of them lying out there on the bare rocks, and we had the shelter of that gully right up to the villa's walls. Instead of attacking, Moore ordered the platoon to stay put and keep their heads down. He was frightened to death. In the end I knocked him out and took command myself. It was the only way. But by then the French had got a gun in position to cover the wadi and they opened up on us when we were halfway up it. That's when I got this.' He pointed to the scar on his forehead. ‘I lost eighteen men, but we took the villa. And when it was all over, I was under arrest. If I hadn't hit the little sod I'd have been all right, but that fixed me, so I got the hell out of it and back to the beach. Wasn't difficult; everything a bit chaotic. The fact that I was wounded made it dead easy. I was taken off to a troopship that was just leaving. She'd been damaged and when we were clear of the Straits she was ordered to proceed to Montreal for repairs. That was how I landed up in Canada.' He glanced at me. ‘They didn't tell you that?'

‘Some of it – not all.'

‘I had just over a year in Canada before they picked me up. It was conscription that fixed me. I hadn't any papers, you see. And then, when the
Duart Castle
went down …' He gave a quick shrug. ‘Well, I took a chance and it worked out.'

But looking at the deep-etched lines of his face, I wondered. He looked as though he'd been living on his nerves for a long time. There were lines running underneath the cheek-bones and down from the sides of the mouth, others puckering the scar on the forehead, radiating from the corners of the eyes; some of them so deep they might have been scored by a knife. Those lines and the harsh, almost leathery skin could simply be the marks of a hard life, but I had an uneasy feeling they were something more than that.

Through Northton he began to talk – about the Army and the life he'd led and where he'd been. It seemed to help, for he began to relax then and become more at ease; in no time at all the years had fallen away and we were on our old, easy footing, with him talking and myself listening. It had always been like that. And then suddenly he said, ‘You married Mavis, did you?'

‘For my sins,' I said. ‘It didn't work out.'

‘And the child?'

‘It died.'

I thought he didn't care, for he made no comment, driving in silence, again. But as we came down the hill into Leverburgh, he said, ‘What was it – a boy?'

‘Yes.' And I added, ‘I had him christened Alasdair.'

He nodded as though he'd expected that. We were passing ugly blocks of Swedish pre-fabs and as we turned right past the loch, he murmured, ‘I'm sorry.' But whether he was sorry for what he'd done to us or because the child had died I couldn't be sure. We were on a track now that led out to the quay. ‘I just want to check that they're moving the stuff fast enough,' he said. ‘Then I'll drive you on to Rodil to collect your gear.'

The quay looked a mess, the whole length of it littered with material brought from Laerg – piled-up sections of wooden huts, double-ended dories, trailers still loaded with stoves, radios, refrigerators, a deepfreeze, clothing, and crates full of foodstuffs, sacks of potatoes, fruit, coal; all the paraphernalia of an isolated unit being withdrawn in a hurry, and all of it soaked by the rain. One Scammell was trying to inch a trailer through the debris. Two three-ton trucks were being loaded, the men moving slowly, lethargically as though they had been doing this a long time. A single mobile crane swung its gantry lazily against the leaden dullness of the sky, and beyond the quay skerries barred the way into the Sound of Harris with here and there a light mounted on iron legs to mark the channel through the rocks.

It was a depressing sight. I wandered along the concrete edge of the quay whilst Braddock spoke to the officer in charge. ‘A fine mess you'd be in,' I heard him say, ‘if Four-four-Double-o had come in on schedule instead of being sent back to Laerg fully loaded.' His voice, harsh now, had a whip-lash quality.

‘We're shifting it as fast as we can,' the youngster answered. ‘But the men are tired. They've been at it since early this morning, and we're short of vehicles.'

‘They're tired, are they? Then just think how Captain Pinney's men must be, working round the clock, crammed into only two huts, soaked to the skin. Now get moving, boy, and have this quay cleared to receive Kelvedon's ship when it comes in.'

‘When will that be?'

‘Dawn I should think, or a little after.' I saw him grip the young man's shoulder. ‘Between now and the end of the operation this may be our one chance to catch up. See the men understand that. If Stratton's crew hadn't been dead beat you'd have had Eight-six-one-o here by now. Make the most of this opportunity, Phipps.'

‘I'll do the best I can, sir.'

‘Better than the best; I want miracles.' The hard face cracked in a smile. ‘Okay?' He patted the lieutenant's shoulder, instilling into him some of his own urgent drive. Then he turned. ‘Sergeant!' He had a word with the sergeant and then came back to the Land-Rover. ‘Peacetime soldiering,' he muttered as he climbed into the driving seat. ‘They don't know what it is to be beaten to their knees and still fight back. They haven't known a war. I was in Burma.' He started the engine and yanked the wheel round. ‘That was after the Normandy landings. Half these guys would get shot to bits before they'd dug a slit trench. Just because they're technicians a lot of them, they think the Army's a branch of industry – a cosy factory with set hours and plenty of recreation.'

We drove out of Leverburgh and up the glen with him talking about the evacuation and how he'd had his leave cut short to come up here and see the operation through. ‘If I'd known what I know now I'd never have accepted the posting. It's drive, drive, drive, and they hate my guts most of them. But what can you do with the weather on top of you and time so short? And now we're at the critical stage. The run-down of accommodation and stores on Laerg has reached the point where the operation has got to be completed. Pinney's detachment haven't enough food and fuel left on the island to last a fortnight, let alone see the winter through. And the weather chooses this moment to break. Goddammit, the War Office should have had more sense.' He glanced at me quickly. ‘What did you think of Standing?'