North Star (34 page)

I don’t know how long I lay there in a half coma, dimly conscious of the salt sea smell of the stowage locker and of the links damp and hard against my limbs. It was freezing cold and I thanked God for my anorak, conscious of the roll and swoop as the boat lay motionless, head-to-swell, but conscious of little else until I had recovered sufficiently to drag myself to my feet.

And with consciousness I cursed myself for my stupidity, for the blind rage which had sent me for Dillon. I should have gone for the impulse transmitter. I should have found something with which to smash it. And I cursed myself for not having thrown those cases overboard. Guessing what they were, why in God’s name hadn’t I got rid of them when I
could, instead of delivering them to Burra Firth? The excuse of time. Time on my side. Christ! All my life I seemed to have been living on borrowed time, and Wiseberg, Stewart, men I had met – a total of more than sixty – all at risk. And myself to blame, their executioner. No, not their executioner. But a party to it.

I stood there, in the blackness of the sea-stinking hole, the chain coming down through the hawsepipe, coiled like a cold steel snake under my feet. And nothing I could do. Nothing. Nothing. Shut in behind a thick barred wooden door, in a space I couldn’t even stand up in properly, my head bowed by the wooden deck beams.

I sank back on to the dank hard bed of the steel links, breathing deeply, easing the pain until it was no more than a numb ache. Time passed slowly, the luminous dial of my wristwatch the only visible companion in the darkness, and nothing there that I could use on the door. Nothing to do but wait. And waiting, my mind focused incessantly on that scene in the hold, the cylinders with wires trailing from the detonators. A freedom fighter – my God! What sort of freedom was that, to roast sixty innocent men alive! Increasingly, as the power to think returned, my mind dwelt on the
Duchess
, the knowledge that she was out here, fishing in these waters – and Gertrude asking for me.

At irregular intervals one or other of the men who had jumped me came into the hold to check the door and make certain I was still there. The first few times I answered them, demanding water, food, anything to get a brief respite from the cramped hole. But they didn’t even reply and the next time I stayed silent. It was Paddy, and he called me several times. Then he went away and a few minutes later he came back with the Swede, the door opening and the beam of a torch blinding me. I hesitated, and then, as I moved, the door slammed in my face.

Shortly after midday the door was opened again and a mug of beer with a thick wadge of ham and bread was set down in
a coil of the chain, the Swede watching me all the time. I tried asking about the weather, anything to get them talking, but they didn’t answer. I knew the weather was worsening. There was considerably more movement, the bows lifting and falling so violently that at times I had to grip hold of the chain, otherwise my body was left suspended for an instant to be slammed down on the hard steel links as we hit the troughs. Sometimes I thought I could hear the wind. I could certainly hear when the seas broke, could feel them, too, as the vessel staggered, flinging me against the wooden side of the chain locker. It was after a particularly bad slam that the ship came alive with the prop turning, the sound of it merging with the increased power from the engine to produce a steady vibration transmitted through the timbers.

All the rest of that afternoon we were under power in order to stay head-to-wind, and slamming into it like that, the swoop and plunge of the bows became unbearably, exhaustingly violent. I no longer cared about anything. All my energies were set on keeping myself from being battered to pieces. And then, when I thought I could stand it no longer, the vibrations of the engine increased and the vertical movement eased, changing to a slow, deep roll. We were under way, with the seas almost broadside, and through the thickness of the hull I could hear the water hissing and creaming past.

The time was eight thirty-four. It would be dark now and I thought of the rig again, wondering how long it would be before we reached it and what was happening on that huge platform. Half an hour later the beat of the engine changed. It was no longer under power and we lay wallowing with occasional waves breaking aboard. I thought we had arrived, but then I heard the sound of a much more powerful engine. I could hear it very plainly, a solid, throaty roar, magnified by the fact that I was lying below the waterline. That, too, slowed and I thought I heard, very faintly, the sound of a hail and voices shouting. They were still shouting when the churn of a propellor close alongside drowned all sound, merging
with the heavy beat of an engine’s exhaust so close beside me and so loud that it seemed like a hammer drill attacking the walls of my prison. I thought my eardrums would split, it made such a thundering noise. Then it faded into a churning of water close alongside. We lay wallowing in its wash, and after a while we got under way again.

I thought it was
Island Girl
that had come alongside us and that we had now taken over the stand-by duty from her. But time passed and we held our course, rolling wickedly with the waves breaking against us on the starboard side, so that I knew we were steering south. We stayed on the same course for almost three hours, then the engine slowed and I heard the beat of another boat passing us to port, and after that it was all I could do to save myself from injury, for the seas were big now and we were headed straight into them, the fall and crash of the bows sudden and very violent. I heard the sound of movement on deck, orders being shouted, but only vaguely through the din of the waves. And then we turned and the roll threw me against the side.

I was still lying against the side, clutching the links of the chain under me, desperately trying to hold myself there, when I felt the first explosion through the timbers at my back, not heavy, more like a sharp tap against my shoulders. But I knew what it was, and lying there in the dark I could visualize the scene on deck, the fishing lights probing the darkness for the anchor buoys and that wicked little torpedo trailing astern, sending its impulses through the water to some submerged receiver on the end of a trailing wire that went down five hundred feet to the explosive device grappled to a cable on the seabed.

Clinging to the links, I counted the minutes on my watch – four, five, and at five and a half the second tap of a detonation hit the timbers. Two of the anchors gone, the windward ones presumably. And then we were turning, but not into the seas – away from them, downwind. Footsteps in the hold and the door opening, the beam of light dazzling after the darkness.
‘On deck.’ A hand grabbed hold of my arm, hauling me to my feet, pulling me out of the locker and I was so cramped and exhausted I could hardly stand.

They dragged me up the narrow companionway that led direct into the wheelhouse and forced me to stand, propped against the closed door. I saw Dillon’s face, but only as a blur, the wheelhouse lit by a weird glow. It shone on my father’s twisted face, and I blinked my eyes, weeping after the long darkness. ‘You heard the anchor cables go,’ Dillon said. ‘You heard, did you?’

I nodded, wondering what he wanted of me, and desperately trying to recover myself. I was sore all over, a deep ache.

‘Your ship has cut numbers One and Four.’
Your
ship! What did he mean by my ship? His face was strangely lit, a livid red, his cheek puffed and a scab of dried blood on the side of his head where I had slammed it against the R/T transmitter. Slowly I turned, my weeping eyes narrowed against the glare. The bows swung wildly, the break of a wave lashing the windows, and suddenly I saw it, heaving and tossing in the glass panel opposite, Dillon’s face no longer red, his head in silhouette.

It was the rig. It rose up out of the wildness of the seas no more than three cables away, towering above us and lit the way I had so often seen it, like a factory complex with the tall finger of the derrick climbing into the night, a tier of ruby lights. But now, from the very top of it, a long gas jet streamed in the wind, and at deck level, thrust out from the side of the platform at the end of a steel boom, a huge tongue of burning oil, a great flare of flame like a dragon’s breath, pulsed into the night, spray jets of water shooting out in a lurid flare.

‘The moment we’ve been waiting for.’ Dillon’s voice was tense, his eyes glowing with a deep inner excitement. ‘Only two anchors holding her, the wind around thirty knots, gusting forty, and yours the only ship here.’

I looked at my father, sitting wedged in the corner of the wheelhouse, a crumpled, silent figure.
Quite ruthless
. His words
came back to me as Dillon’s voice, tight with tension, said, ‘We’re turning now for the final run. And when we cut those two remaining cables she’ll go, just like that.’ He banged his hand on the flat of the ledge we used as a chart table, and the boat, completing its turn, his face was lit again by the red flaring of the oil, the skin shiny with sweat, his eyes glowing. ‘They won’t have time to disconnect or operate the kill and choke. And at the end of it all it’s you they’ll blame.’ And he added, ‘But once you’re in the inflatable you won’t care. You won’t care about anything, you’ll be too frightened.’

My mind was slow and confused, unable to grasp his meaning, still thinking of the rig and the cold ruthless drive of this man who could see the killing of so many men, a group of fellow workers, the destruction of the rig, as justified, as part of the struggle …

‘You could have done it for us,’ he said. ‘You could have done it, so easily. And I asked you. I came to you –’

‘I’m not a murderer,’ I said, my voice strained and hoarse.

‘You think it’s murder?’ His voice had risen. ‘How can it be murder when you’re fighting a war?’ The man at the helm reported ‘On course’, but he took no notice. ‘Korea, Vietnam Angola – a soldier doesn’t call it murder when he destroys defenceless villages, or a pilot when he bombs a town, spreads napalm and burns up innocent children. And if anybody dies out there, it’ll be their own fault. They’ve got safety rafts, scrambling nets –’

‘They’re testing,’ I said, cutting short his outburst of selfjustification. ‘There’s oil flowing up from thousands of feet down, under pressure – and this ship’s a floating mine.’

‘And who will they blame – not me.’ He laughed, but no mirth in it and his eyes cold with contempt. ‘I gave you the chance to prove yourself. Think of Villiers, with the oil flowing and his shares booming. He’ll make millions out of this. Is that the sort of world you want?’

‘Destruction doesn’t build a new world,’ I said.

‘What do you care about a new world? You’re not a fighter.
You’re not one of us. You’re nothing. A little shit of a bourgeois radical who can’t make up his mind which side he’s on. Radicals!’ He spat the word out. ‘Get him into the boat.’

The old man stirred in his corner. ‘He’s my son,’ he said, but hands were gripping my arms, the wind roaring in, solid with spray, as the door slid back. I was thrust out into the gale and I saw a buoy in the spotlight, riding the crest of a breaking wave, and right below me the inflatable bouncing alongside. The vessel rolled in the trough, hands thrusting me against the bulwarks, and above the noise of the sea I heard a voice say, ‘Let him be.’

A wave rolled under us, the deck heaving and I turned on the Swede as the roll caught him off balance, hitting out at him, and in that moment I saw the old man standing in the gap of the wheelhouse door. ‘Let him go.’ The grip of their hands relaxed. I was suddenly free, the twisted side of my father’s face lit by the oil flare, the deep gash a lurid red, his voice saying, ‘He comes with us.’ He was facing Dillon, and Dillon saying, ‘No. He takes his chance, and whether he survives or not doesn’t matter – he gets the blame.’ The bows crashed down, a roar of water, the ship staggering under the impact and his voice whipped away in the wind: ‘… out of this. You were only brought into it because you’re a Shetlander and knew …’ The rest I lost as another gust hit us, the ship leaning away from it and the old man clutching at the door frame, not looking at Dillon now, but at me. I thought his lips framed the words ‘my son’ again, but there was no determination, no fight – only acceptance.

I shall never forget that helpless, hopeless look on his face, a man acknowledging his own son, yet acquiescing in his destruction. There were tears in his eyes and the wind tore them away. And that’s all I remember – that and Dillon’s face and the fist in my guts as I tried to wrench myself free of them. And then the hard top of the bulwarks against the small of my back, a voice high in the wind saying, ‘Over the side,’ and I was falling, the black plastic fabric of the boat coming up at
me on a crest. It was half-full of water and for a moment I lay clutching at the smooth rolled air cushions as the wave broke over me, lifting me almost to the level of the deck. The Swede was fumbling at the painter, the nylon cord difficult to handle, a riding turn.

In that moment, with the Swede right above me, holding a torch and working at the cord with his other hand, the meaning of Dillon’s words dawned on me, the reality of my situation suddenly very clear. A wave broke under me, lifting me in a smother of foam, and I heard the Swede call to Paulo, saw him reach out his hand for the knife, and in that moment I dived for the bows, gripping the cord, shortening up on the painter. That torch was my only hope. The next wave broke hissing behind me, the inflatable lifting me to the bulwarks again, the Swede sawing at the cord, and on the crest of that wave I reached out and grabbed hold of the torch.

The boat fell away in the trough, my whole weight on his arm, and the fool didn’t let go, the trawler rolling and his body coming with the roll, sprawling over the side to hit the airtight slippery curve beside me as I fell back. The nylon cord parted, the
Mary Jane
’s hull sliding past, faces looking down, the whole scene vivid and red in the glare.

I lay in the water, gasping, and the Swede’s face close beside me disappeared, his hand scrabbling at the drum-tight curve of the fabric. Then suddenly I was alone, the boat’s engine, a distant beat in the wind, gradually fading. It was quiet then, the wind almost soundless as I drifted with it, and only the hiss of the wave crests.