North Star (11 page)

I stood there for a moment, not saying anything, her appearance so unexpected. She had always seemed to me a sturdy, solid Norwegian, and Fuller’s phrase, ‘the legal owner’, had fitted her exactly. ‘Well, are you coming in or not?’

I went in slowly, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t changed.’

‘Does it matter?’ She was smiling as she closed the door.

‘No, I suppose not.’ I was staring at her as she turned into the lamplight, her long dress flowing and her eyes bright. This was the first time I had seen her with any make-up on. ‘Takes a bit of getting used to.’

She laughed. ‘Tonight I am celebrating.’ And she added over her shoulder as she took me into the living room, ‘I’ve not had much to celebrate these last few years. But when I saw the
Duchess
coming in round the end of The Taing …’ She stopped, turning and facing me. ‘You will never know what that meant to me.’ And then she asked me whether I had fed. ‘I hope you haven’t.’

‘No, I’ve come straight ashore as you suggested.’

‘Good. Because otherwise you would have to eat two meals.’

‘It’s not impossible.’

She laughed. ‘You don’t know what I’ve cooked.’ Her teeth flashed white, her eyes sparkling. It crossed my mind that she was a widow now and flying some sort of flag, with the table laid for two, lace mats and rough-carved wooden candlesticks. And then she said, ‘If Jan were here, how he would have enjoyed it. Don’t you feel you deserve a celebration after all the work you have done? Now, take off your oilskins please and we will have a drink.’

She went into the kitchen, returning with glasses and a bottle. ‘I found this when I am going through Far’s things – it is aquavit, real live aquavit. I think it came with the ship from Norway and he kept it against some happy day.’

She was in a mood of strange elation, gripped by a sort of
feverish belief that now the ship was back at her old mooring everything would be all right. ‘You bring me luck,’ she said, raising her glass, the too-wide mouth smiling at me. ‘Skål!’ And she tossed the drink back, her eyes on me, watching to see that I did the same.

‘Are you trying to drink me under the table?’ I asked as she refilled my glass.

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ She was laughing, but at herself I think, at the invitation in her eyes that she didn’t bother to conceal. ‘You haven’t wished us luck.’

I got up then, remembering how formal Scandinavian ships’ officers could be, and made a little speech. She clapped her hands, and after she had drunk, she put her glass down carefully, holding it cupped in her capable brown hands, her head a little bowed so that the fair hair cascaded over her face. ‘I think we are very strange partners, you and I, neither of us knowing what we want of life or where we are going. All I know is what I feel inside me, that tonight is different – the start of something. But I don’t know what.’ She raised her head and looked at me questioningly. ‘Don’t you feel that?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ I said guardedly.

‘I think for you also this is a new beginning.’

‘What about that agreement?’ I asked her.

‘Have you thought about it?’

‘No. I haven’t had time. But I think we should discuss it now, while we are still sober.’

‘There is nothing to discuss.’ Her hand reached out to the bottle. ‘Will you have another drink?’

I shook my head. ‘Not now. When we’ve settled this maybe.’

‘There is some wine to follow. What you would call plonk, I think. I bought it at the stores this morning. But now –’ She filled my glass again. ‘Now I think we have one last aquavit and drink to a partnership.’ She picked up her glass, not looking at me, but staring down into the heavy pale liquor. ‘You see, I have had time to think about it. There is no way that I can see to draw up a legal document between us
that is of any use. I am the owner. You hold the mortgage. Either we are partners or one of us must find the money to buy the other out. How much money have you got?’

‘Less than fifty pounds.’

‘You see? You cannot buy me out. And I have nothing. I am living on borrowed money. So what is the point of an agreement?’

‘I thought you didn’t trust me?’

‘I don’t. Your head is too full of strange ideas – about people and politics and the economics of the world. Oh, don’t think I have been spying on you, but they tell me everything, about what you eat, how much you sleep, what you talk about. And there is the gossip here, too. You came to see Hilda Manson, making enquiries about your father. The house where he was born is just up the road, and there is that tablet in the church, so I know something about him.’ She was looking at me, a gleam of humour back in her eyes. ‘I think probably you suffer from some sort of a father complex.’ Her hand reached out and touched my arm. ‘Do not please be offended. I am an expert on this subject. Jan, you see, had a father complex, so that in a sense I married two men. Far Petersen … I always called him that, it is the Norwegian word for Father … Far was with us always, from the very beginning of our marriage. But it did not matter. I loved that dear gentle old man very much, even though he is so stupid about money.’ She moved her hand to the bottle. ‘So, you see, I know,’ she said, filling my glass, but not her own, and then rising to her feet. ‘Now we will eat. It is fish, do you mind?’

I shook my head.

‘Fish to start with, then meat.’ She bent towards me, laughing. ‘Cheer up! It is not the end of the world that another person knows something about what is going on in your mind. For me, it gives you a certain integrity. And because of that you get no agreement, but a celebration dinner instead.’ And she turned to go to the kitchen.

I offered to help her, but she waved me back into my chair.
‘Have your drink and relax. About five minutes I think. And if you are bored with your own company, there are the logs over there.’ She indicated the table by the window. ‘I looked them out for you this afternoon. The voyage which brought Far Petersen and Jan to Shetland is in the second book.’

I took my drink over to the table, moving the lamp so that it shone on the little pile of books tied up with string. There were seven of them, and all but two were hardbound books like ledgers. These covered the voyages from 1966, when Jan Petersen and his father began fishing out of Lerwick and Hamnavoe. Courses, speeds, fixes, weather, everything was recorded, including the time spent trawling and the catches for each voyage. Mostly they were fishing around Shetland, occasionally Orkney or Fair Isle. These voyages were a week, or ten days at the most. But in the summer they had fished up to Faroe and then the voyages had been longer.

I glanced only briefly at these logs. It was the two others, both exercise books, that interested me. They were not proper logs, but a personal record of patrols, incidents and voyages completed in the early part of the war. They had been kept by a Lt Adrian Farrant. The first covered the Scapa Flow period and the evacuation of British troops from the Narvik area of Norway in June, 1940. The second was a record of voyages made in the winter of 1941/42, mostly to rendezvous with local fishing boats off the coast of Norway, but a few to the coast itself north of the Arctic Circle. It was one of these that Gertrude had marked with a slip of paper:
Three men and a small boy were taken off from Lyngenfjord at 01.00, the time agreed; Mark Johnston, a mining saboteur with SOE
,
Knut Hansen
,
a business man from Trondheim, Olav Petersen
,
a whaling captain from Selmvaag
,
and Jan Petersen, his son, aged 8. The worst conditions possible, clear sky and bright moonlight. I wished the agent who had radioed a report of inshore fog could have been with me for we were spotted before we were even clear of the fjord
…

No wonder Lt Farrant had hidden the books at the back of
the locker. In every case he had given the names and occupations of those he had landed in Norway and those he had brought out, a highly secret record.

I began from the beginning then, turning the pages quickly, reading only the names with a growing certainty of what I would find. And in the voyage that began:
Sailed from Graven at 19.00 on January 6
, I found it:
Arrived off the RV near Oksfjord in Finnmark at 21.33
,
weather ideal with low cloud and drizzle
,
wind light from WNW. Took off Nils Storkson as arranged. He is an officer of the Company Linge, I think
,
but there is another man with him
,
Alistair Randall
,
who claims he is a British citizen. Storkson says he is an agent
,
but not one of ours
,
and insists I put him under guard. Both are suffering from exposure and Randall from slight frostbite. He is a much older man and badly scarred
,
an old injury
.
Only Storkson is armed. I have taken away his gun and given them the cabin for’ard of the galley.

Then followed a brief account of the voyage back to Shetland. It concluded:
Berthed alongside the quay at Graven 09.45, January 12, and handed passengers over for interrogation. Both are fully recovered and both tell different stories. A matter for Intelligence. I am only the bus driver
…

I sat back, staring at that page, reading it through again. Garrard had been right and the confirmation that my father had not died in Spain left me confused and more than a little puzzled.
An agent
,
but not one of ours
. Whose then? Not the Germans. Had the Russians had agents in North Norway at the beginning of 1942?

The door to the kitchen opened. ‘Finish your drink and come and eat.’ She put the plates she was carrying on the table. ‘It is steamed halibut. I hope you like.’ I sat down, remembering the presence I had felt on the bridge, that strange sense of companionship when I had stood alone at the wheel that first time. ‘Is it all right?’ she asked. ‘You are very silent.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. Could it have been his presence I had felt? Had he been in such a state of nerves that it had left an indelible impression?

‘You are thinking about their voyage to Shetland. It was very dangerous, to come right into the coast like that. The
Duchess
is not a Norwegian ship like the boats they had sailing out of Lunna and Scalloway. She was based at Graven in Sullom Voe and it was her speed and range that made them use her. But she only went in to the coast in an emergency or when it was something very important. It wasn’t Far Petersen they went in to get on that trip, it was the man Johnston, an English agent; also to land explosives and equipment.’

If she had seen the name Randall in the log she didn’t mention it. Probably she didn’t remember, and when I had opened the bottle of red wine, and the joint of lamb was on the table, I forgot about it, too. I remember I talked a lot about my early life in America and how I had worked my way from Germany across the Middle East to India. She was curious about me, and in the candlelight, with the drink inside me and her large eyes staring, I even told her about Düsseldorf. To be able to talk freely like that, to have somebody listen – it was something I found I needed very badly. And to add to the enjoyment, there was the knowledge that the evening could only end one way, and that there was all the next day ahead of us. Our hands touched once as I took the tray with the coffee on it and a bottle of Glen Morangie. I felt the movement of her fingers and my blood leapt. We sat, very properly, on two separate chairs, facing each other and sipped our coffee and our whisky, talking gently in the lamplight, each of us knowing what was going to happen and the delay making the sense of anticipation almost unbearable. I hadn’t had a woman for a long time. And now, with all the work behind me …

The knock on the door was sudden and very loud. I thought it must be Johan or somebody from the ship. Gertrude must have thought so, too, for she said as she got up, ‘They are becoming too dependent on you.’ But it wasn’t anybody from the ship. It was Sandford, and he had a policeman with him. He came in smiling, his sharp eyes taking in the cosy intimacy
of the room at a glance. ‘I thought we’d find you’d slipped round here.’

‘What do you want?’ I asked him, but with the constable there we both knew.

It was the same man who had escorted me to the police station. ‘You have foreign nationals working on your boat. Is that correct?’

I nodded, and he read out the four names.

‘They’re Norwegian,’ Gertrude said. ‘I am Norwegian, too. We have residents’ permits.’

‘Aye, I know that. But what about work permits?’

‘Those have been applied for.’

‘Would that be for renewal, or are they new applications? We have checked with the Department of Employment and there is no record –’

‘My fault,’ she said quickly. ‘Well, Mr Petersen’s really, and nobody ever troubled us about it. But now the applications for permits are in and I have seen the Fisheries Inspector in Lerwick. He has agreed to recommend them, so you don’t have to worry.’

‘Not if you send the men ashore,’ Sandford said. ‘And when the Inspector has had time to think about it, I doubt very much if he will support your applications.’ He looked pleased with himself as he turned to me. ‘You’re sailing tomorrow, or is it Sunday? You’ll be short of a crew. I could help you there.’

‘We’ll manage,’ I said.

‘You can’t act as stand-by boat to an oil rig if your manning strength is below the regulation minimum.’

I stared at him, wondering what was behind it. ‘You’re quite a sea lawyer,’ I said. And then I turned to the constable. ‘Have you a warrant?’

He shook his head. ‘There’ll be no charge so long as you send them ashore. Those are my instructions.’ And when I asked him to produce them, his face took on a stolid look. ‘Verbal instructions, from my sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’m to see
that those four men are brought ashore. They may have to be deported.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Gertrude said. ‘They live on board. It’s their home.’

‘It will be for the Home Office to decide.’

I got my oilskins from the door where I had hung them. I was boiling with anger, but I had too much experience of the slow inexorable process of the law to argue. I just wondered what that little bastard Sandford was up to.