North Star (7 page)

I walked on through Houss, across Ayre Dyke and over the Ward of Symbister to a view of the Stacks of Houssness and South Havra beyond, and all the time I was thinking about the ship, how much she would fetch at auction, what it would feel like to be an owner and in business for myself. The urge to achieve something constructive, that creative instinct I had ignored for so long … It had all suddenly become focused on that trawler.

I was so full of plans that it never occurred to me Villiers would turn down my proposition. God! How simple
everything is when you are walking alone with the sea all round you and dreaming dreams!

But when I got back to my lodgings late in the afternoon I found a long envelope waiting for me; inside were documents for signature with a note from Fuller explaining them. Instead of a loan, Villers had instructed him to acquire the mortgage. This he had done and he was now offering to assign it to me as advance payment for a three-month charter on the terms I had already turned down. But after that he would be prepared to renew it monthly at progressively higher rates. The documents enclosed with his letter were the Charter Agreement and the Deed of Assignment for the mortgage, and there were three copies of each.
All copies require the signature of both yourself and the legal owner of the vessel
,
one copy to be retained by her
,
one by yourself and the third to be returned to me at the Lerwick Hotel by tomorrow evening at the latest
. And the letter went on:
We think it best that you negotiate direct with Mrs Petersen. She may well be reluctant to accept you as the mortgagee
,
or – and this is equally essential to what Mr Villiers and I have in mind
–
to agree to your captaining the vessel once it is in commission again
.
In which case
,
the auction will proceed and the vessel will become the property of the highest bidder.

The mortgage was for £12 000 at twelve per cent interest, and sitting in my bare little room, going over those documents in the fading light, I found it difficult to concentrate on the legal phrases. Was it Villiers or Fuller who had devised the scheme? Not that it mattered, but Villiers I thought – it was so simple, so damnably clever. A cheap charter that committed me to getting the trawler into commission by 20th April and then running her on a shoestring to keep out of debt … and leaving me to fix it all with Gertrude Petersen.

I saw her the following morning and by then I had been over all the arguments. To my surprise she was waiting for me when I came down the track to Taing House. It was blowing hard from the south-west, her fair hair flying in the wind as she took me inside. ‘I was told to expect you.’ She didn’t offer
me a chair, and she didn’t sit down herself, but stood facing me, her legs slightly apart as though the floor of the sitting-room was a deck that might heave under her feet at any moment. ‘I saw Mr Fuller yesterday. In the evening. He explained the arrangement to me.’ Her manner was cold and distant and her voice controlled. ‘You have the deeds with you?’

‘Yes’ I said, surprised and relieved that I didn’t have to explain it all to her. ‘What made you see Fuller?’

‘I heard he was looking for a trawler.’ No emotion now, and the grey eyes fixed on me, hard and businesslike. ‘You’re not the only one with ideas about refloating her. Johan is down there working on her now and I have talked with Jim Halcrow.’

‘I see.’ So she had reached some other arrangement with Fuller. But when I suggested this, she shook her head. ‘You think I cut you out?’ A flicker of a smile showed at the corners of her mouth. ‘Hardly. I do not have a master’s ticket, nor does Johan, and neither of us has worked in a shipyard. Jim Halcrow says you have. Is that right, Mr Randall?’ And she added, her eyes narrowed as though trying to make up her mind about me, ‘It is Randall, isn’t it? I understand when you arrived in Sumburgh –’

‘Randall,’ I said. ‘Mike Randall.’

She gave a little shrug. ‘Well, Mr Randall, the question is, can you get her sufficiently watertight to float her off?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

She looked at me a moment and then she nodded. ‘Good. Then let us start with the Deed of Assignment. I am told it is the simpler of the two.’

She made room on the table by the window and I spread the three copies out for her. ‘I should warn you,’ I said, ‘there is a clause in it making its validity dependant on your signing the Charter Agreement.’

‘Of course.’ She was bending over the documents and she didn’t look up, her hair falling over her face. Her hands, palms down on the table, supporting her weight, were short and
capable, the skin burned brown with salt, the nails cut short, and the gold circle of her wedding ring glinting in the light. Directly in front of her was a photograph in a plain oak frame. The print, blotched with damp mould, faded by exposure to light, showed a man with a thin face under a peaked cap bent over the gun of a whale catcher. Beside him an older man with something of the same cast of features was slapping him on the back and roaring with laughter. ‘My husband, Jan,’ she said. ‘With his father. It was just after the war, the first whale he harpooned after he became schutter. They were very happy then I think.’ She signed her name quickly on all three copies. ‘Now the other documents please.’ And she held out her hand.

But this time she did not sign her name as soon as she had read it through. Instead, she looked up at me. ‘Do you agree with the terms these people are offering?’

‘I haven’t much choice.’

‘No?’ She stared at me, the eyes gone cold again and the hostility back in her voice. ‘Well, I do have a choice, Mr Randall, and they need a stand-by boat very badly. All rigs operating in the North Sea have to have one, by law. I check on that before I see Mr Fuller.’ She nodded emphatically, as though expressing satisfaction at her good sense. ‘So, he has agreed to some alterations. I am to write them on all the copies, each alteration to be initialled by both of us.’

What she had got out of him was a small increase in the charter rate and an interest-free loan sufficient to cover salvage, repairs, insurance, and with luck most of the victualling. ‘I do not intend, you see, to get into the hands of the moneylenders again.’

‘I wonder you ever did,’ I murmured.

‘You think I get into their hands?’ There was sudden bitterness in her voice. ‘You think I forget the insurance premium! Oh, no! But business – that is a man’s job. So my father-in-law always say. My husband, too. They must deal with the chandlers, the buyers, everything to do with money. And they never haggle.’ She gave an exasperated laugh. ‘Too proud to
behave like fishwives, I guess. But now …’ She stared at me very determinedly. ‘You captain the ship. But that is all. You understand? I look after the business.’

I hesitated, thinking of all that had to be done to get the trawler on station by 20th April. It would be hard, slogging work, and the one thing I would have fought Fuller over she hadn’t even raised. ‘You realize you have committed the ship to standing by the rig for three months in all weathers without any relief boat.’

‘That is why I was able to get an improved charter rate.’

‘No crew will stand for it. Three months out there –’

‘Johan says they agree. I have offered a bonus of course.’

‘And the engineers?’

‘Per is already discharged. Some burns, that is all. Duncan has two cracked ribs. I saw him at the hospital last night.’

‘And he undertakes to keep those engines running for three months?’

She nodded, a little defiantly I thought. ‘Yes, he does.’ I forebore to mention that it was a failure of the engines that had lost her the ship, but she must have guessed what was in my mind for she said quickly, ‘Duncan was away sick for almost a month. Per Kalvik, the assistant engineer, is not so good, He is a young man and on his own he do not maintain the engines properly.’ And she added ‘Duncan has never been away from the ship before, not since we install the new engines.’

She had it all worked out, the crew, the engineers, everything, quite prepared to ignore the fact that under the terms of the agreement we had to provide a replacement if for any reason I was forced to run for shelter. But when I pointed this out to her, she flared up at me: ‘It is you who arc raising difficulties, nobody else. Fuel and stores, anything you want, is to be delivered free of any transport charge by the supply ship, and I have arranged for the transportation of men on leave by helicopter from the rig, also free. Since you will not be fishing you will need less crew. Minimum crew for stand-by boats is six – captain, mate, chief engineer, assistant engineer,
cook and one deckhand. You, Duncan and Johan will not get relief.’ She had been talking very fast. Now she stopped abruptly, standing staring at me, her manner suddenly awkward. ‘It is a very difficult situation, between us. We do not know anything about each other. And this agreement –’ She made a motion of her hand towards the document. ‘As soon as I sign, then you are the mortgagee and I am in your hands. Even the loan I arrange – it is made to you, not to me. He insists on that.’

It was certainly an odd arrangement and the division of any profits left to us. ‘I imagine you will require some sort of an agreement drawn up between us,’ I said.

She didn’t seem to hear me, her head turned to the window, gazing out at the water. ‘These business men are very clever.’ There was a long pause, and then suddenly she was facing me again. ‘Two complete strangers. And they have hung us round each other’s neck.’ She smiled, a gleam of humour that was gone in a flash. ‘Well, there it is. Neither of us can argue, we have no money.’ She pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘I agree. We shall need to have an agreement. But not now. Later.’ And she began writing in the alterations.

She wrote fast, as though by concentrating on the words she could relieve the tension and frustration that was in her, initialling each alteration as she made it and signing the copies at the bottom. Then she pushed the whole lot over to me. When I had signed she said, ‘Johan is living on board. I suggest you do the same now.’

‘And the crew?’

‘They are at the Seaman’s Mission, available whenever you want them.’ She collected the papers together and put them in the envelope. ‘Now if you are ready, we will pick up your things and I will drive you down to the boat.’

It took me four days to complete the welding of a steel patch. The biggest problem was rigging a secure platform on which to work in the cramped space between the starboard engine and the hull. After that it was a question of following each tide down as the water poured out of the engine-room through the rent in the hull. The job was slow and dirty, and though we had spring tides, the last six inches or so of steel sheet had to be left unwelded. It was on the Tuesday morning, just as Johan and two of the crew were holding the first sheet in position and I was spot-welding it to the hull plates, that Sandford arrived.

No doubt he called my name several times before he tapped me on the shoulder. The arc of the welding torch made a hell of a row in the confined space of the engine-room. I swung round, the arc sputtering in my hand so that I nearly knocked him off the single plank we had rigged as a walkway from the ladder. ‘What do you want?’

‘That mortgage. I’m told you own it.’ He had to yell to make himself heard. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’

I turned back towards the hull plating. With the tide falling, and the sheet not yet fixed, this was no time for interruptions. His hand gripped my shoulder. ‘How much do you want?’

I pushed my visor up. ‘Talk to Mrs Petersen,’ I said. ‘She’s the business brains.’ His eyes, bright in the spotlight, reminded me of the way his mother had looked when she thought there might be money in my visit.

‘I have. I saw her last night.’

‘Then you know the answer.’

‘She isn’t the mortgagee.’

I glanced at my watch. Just over an hour of tide to go. I turned my back on him, pulling the visor down and flicking the jet full on. He shouted something at me as I bent to my welding again, the bearded face of Johan watching with his big hands on the plate, dangerously close as the gobs of molten steel flew out. I forgot about him then, my mind concentrated on the job.

Before the tide was up again I had the whole plate welded, except for the last six inches which had still been underwater at the bottom of the tide. It was late afternoon then and we went up to the bridge, the four of us sweating and tired and dirty. ‘You want tea?’ Johan asked as we reached the top of the ladder and felt the cold air of the deck.

‘No, beer I think.’

‘Ja. Beer.’ His blond beard, all grimed with oil and slightly singed, cracked open in a grin. ‘Beer for me also. Lars? Henrik?’ The two seamen nodded and he sent Lars to raid the pantry. We had left our jerseys in the bridge and we entered to find Sandford seated in the skipper’s chair, a pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray behind the wheel housing. ‘I’ve been watching the tide on the rocks. Thought you wouldn’t be able to work down there much longer.’

I pulled on my jersey, chilled now with the sweat drying on me. ‘You been waiting here all the time?’

He nodded. ‘Can’t discuss business with a man waving a welding torch in my face.’

‘There’s no business to discuss,’ I said.

‘No?’ He swivelled the chair as though enjoying the feel of being in the master’s seat. ‘I’ve been thinking. It was clever of you. I never thought of buying the mortgage. Nor did any of us. There were five of us turned up at the auction yesterday morning, all of us with money to bid for her, and nobody was exactly pleased when they told us it was off.’ He lit a cigarette from the butt of the one he had just finished and stubbed the old one out in the ashtray. ‘Can we go somewhere where we can talk?’

‘I’m living on board,’ I told him. ‘If you want to talk it will have to be here.’ Lars appeared with four cans of beer.

Sandford got to his feet. ‘Come into the master’s cabin then. We can talk there.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ I said. But he insisted and in the end I followed him. ‘Well, what is it?’ I said as we faced each other alone with the door closed.