Atlantic Fury (32 page)

The President nodded. ‘And in your view the accused officer was not responsible at that time?'

‘That's my impression – that Colonel Standing was in control.'

The Prosecuting Officer continued: ‘You mentioned that radio conditions were bad …' He was shifting his ground, but at that moment the sergeant came down the room, his footsteps loud on the bare boards. He handed the President a note. When he had read it, the President glanced quickly at me, and from me to Iain. He didn't say anything, but after consultation with the Judge Advocate he cleared the Court.

Nobody has ever told me what was in that note. But I can guess, for Lane made a statement to the Court and this was supported by the man he had brought with him. After we had been kept waiting about half an hour, it was announced that the Court was adjourned until the following day.

Knowing what Lane would have told the Court, I was expecting every moment to be called to an interview. But nothing happened. Instead a rumour circulated that Major Braddock had collapsed and had been rushed unconscious to the Medical Reception. This proved correct. A statement was issued to the Press that night and the following morning my newspaper carried the story under the headline:
ACCUSED MAJOR BREAKS DOWN
–
LAERG COURT MARTIAL POSTPONED
.

I read it over my breakfast and I was still drinking my coffee and wondering about it when the hotel receptionist came in to tell me there was an Army officer waiting to see me. He was a young second-lieutenant and he had orders to take me to the hospital. It is not clear to me even now whether the Army had accepted the fact that Major Braddock and I were brothers. I think probably they had – privately. But the Army, like any other large organisation, is a community in itself with its own code of behaviour. As such it closes its ranks and throws a protective cloak over its members when they are attacked by the outside world. I suspect that Lane's accusation was not accepted by the Court – officially, at any rate. In any case it was quite outside the scope of their proceedings.

To Lane it must have seemed nothing less than a conspiracy of silence. First the Army, and then the Press. I know he approached several newspapers, for they dug up the
Duart Castle
story, and in addition they wrote up Lane himself – not very kindly. But none of them referred to his accusations, other than obliquely. The law of libel made that too hot a story. There was another factor, too. Braddock's collapse had to some extent swung public feeling. The disaster was now past history. It had happened more than three months ago and here was this man being hounded into a nervous breakdown.

A RAMC Colonel and a psychiatrist were waiting for me at the M.R. Station. Possibly they thought my presence might jerk Braddock's mind back into awareness of the world around him. In fact, he stared at me without a flicker of recognition or even interest, face and eyes quite blank. He had a room to himself and was lying in bed, propped up on pillows. The lines of his face seemed smoothed out so that he looked much younger, almost like the youth I had known. He could talk quite lucidly, but only about the things going on around him. He appeared to remember nothing of the Court Martial or of the events on Laerg. At least he didn't refer to them. ‘Do I know you?' he asked me innocently. ‘We've met before, I suppose, but I'm afraid I don't remember. They say I've lost my memory, you see.'

‘Talk to him about Laerg,' the psychiatrist whispered to me.

But Laerg meant nothing to him. ‘You were there,' I said. ‘You saved the lives of twenty-three men.'

He frowned as though making an effort to remember. And then he smiled and shook his head. There was a vacant quality about that smile. ‘I'll take your word for it,' he said. ‘I don't remember. I don't remember a damn' thing.'

I was there nearly an hour and all the time, at the back of my mind, was the question – was this a genuine brainstorm or was he pretending? There was that smoothed-out quite untroubled face, the vacant, puzzled look in his eyes. And in a case of this sort where is the borderline between genuine mental illness and the need to seek refuge from the strain of events? One leads to the other and by the time I left I was convinced that even if he had deliberately sought this refuge, there was now no doubt that he had willed himself into a state of mental blackout.

‘Kind of you to come and see me,' he said as I was leaving. He spoke quite cheerfully, but his voice sounded tired as though talking to me had been a strain.

Outside, the psychiatrist said, ‘Afraid it didn't work. Perhaps in a few weeks' time when his mind's rested, eh?' No reference to the possibility that we might be related. But it was there all the same, implicit in his assumption that I'd be prepared to come all the way up from London at my own expense to visit him again.

This I did about two weeks later at their request. By then my brother had been moved to a civilian institution and he was up and dressed. On this occasion they left us alone together. But it made no difference. His mind was a blank, or it appeared to be – blank of everything he didn't want to remember. And if he recognised me, he didn't show it. ‘They've got microphones in the walls,' he said. But whether they had, I don't know. The psychiatrist said no. They'd been giving him treatment, electric shock treatment. ‘This place is like a brain-washing establishment. Refinements of mental cruelty. They think I'm somebody else. They keep trying to tell me I'm somebody else. If I'll admit it, then I needn't have shock treatment. And when I say I know who I am, they put the clamps on my head and turn up their rheostats full blast. Ever had shock treatment?' And when I shook my head, he grinned and said, ‘Lucky fellow! Take my advice. Don't ever let them get their hands on you. Resist and you're in a strait-jacket and down to the torture chamber.'

There was a lot more that I can't remember and all of it with a thread of truth running through the fantasy. ‘They think they'll break me.' He said that several times, and then words tumbling out of his mouth again as though he were afraid I'd leave him if he didn't go on talking – as though he were desperate for my company. ‘They want me to admit that I'm responsible for the death of a lot of men. Well, old man, I'll tell you. They can flay me alive with their damned machines, but I'll admit nothing. Nothing, you get me. I've even had a lawyer here. Wanted to give me some money – ten thousand dollars if I'd say I'm not George Braddock. But they won't catch me that way.' He had fixed me with his eyes and now he grabbed hold of my arm and drew me down. ‘You know they've got a Court sitting, waiting to try me.'

‘All right,' I said. My face was so close to his nobody could possibly overhear. ‘Then why not tell them: Why not tell them what happened out there in the Atlantic? Get it over with.' All the way up in the train I'd been thinking about it, certain that this was the root of the trouble.

But all he said was, ‘Somewhere in the basement I think it is. And if I admit anything …'

‘It's a long time ago,' I said. ‘If you just tell them what happened.'

But it didn't seem to get through to him. ‘… then they're waiting for me, and I'll be down there, facing a lot of filthy accusations. I tell you, there's nothing they won't do.' And so it went on, the words pouring out to reveal a mental kaleidoscope, truth and fantasy inextricably mixed.

Mad? Or just clever simulation? I wondered, and so apparently did the psychiatrist. ‘What do you think?' he asked me as I was leaving. It was the same man, thick tortoise-shell glasses and the earnest, humourless air of one who believes that the mystery of his profession elevates him to a sort of priesthood. ‘If we let him out, then he's fit and the Court Martial will have to sit again. He's not fit – or is he?' He stared at me, searchingly. ‘No, of course – not your department. And you wouldn't admit anything yourself, would you?'

Veiled accusations like that. And the devil of it was there was nothing I could do to help Iain.

A week later they had another attempt at shock treatment – mental, not electrical this time. They brought Lane in to see him and before the wretched man had been in there five minutes, they had to rush in and rescue him. Iain had him by the throat and was choking the life out of him.

After that they left him alone.

Two days later the police came to my studio. It was just after lunch and I was working on a canvas that I was doing entirely for my own benefit – a portrait of Marjorie, painted from memory. I hadn't even a photograph of her at that time. I heard their footsteps on the bare stairboards, and when I went to the door a sergeant and a constable were standing there. ‘Mr Ross?' The sergeant came in, a big man with a flattened nose and small, inquisitive eyes. ‘I understand you're acquainted with a certain Major Braddock who is undergoing treatment in the James Craig Institute, Edinburgh?' And when I nodded he said, ‘Well now, would it surprise you, sir, to know that he's escaped?'

‘Escaped – when?' I asked.

‘Last night. He was discovered missing this morning. I've been instructed to check whether he's been seen in this neighbourhood and in particular whether he's visited you.'

‘No,' I said. ‘Why should he?'

‘I'm given to understand you're related. They seemed to think he might try to contact you.' He stood staring at me, waiting for me to answer. ‘Well, has he?'

‘I'm afraid I can't help you. He certainly hasn't been here.'

I saw his eyes searching the studio as though he wasn't prepared to take my word for it. Finally he said, ‘Very good, Mr Ross. I'll tell them. And if he does contact you, telephone us immediately. I should warn you that he may be dangerous.' He gave me the number of the police station and then with a jerk of his head at the constable, who had been quietly sniffing round the studio like a terrier after a bone, he left.

Their footsteps faded away down the stairs and I stood there without moving, thinking of Iain on the run with the police as well as the Army after him. Where would he go? But I knew where he'd go – knew in the same instant that I'd have to go there, too. Everything that had happened, his every action … all led inevitably back to Laerg.

I lit a cigarette, my hands trembling, all my fears brought suddenly to a head. Twenty-two days on a raft in the North Atlantic. Sooner or later they'd guess – guess that no man could have lasted that long, not in mid-winter; and Laerg on his direct route. They'd work it out, just as I had worked it out, and then … I turned to the window; drab vistas of grey slates, the mist hanging over the river, and my mind far away, wondering how to get there – how to reach Laerg on my own without anybody knowing? I hadn't the money to buy a boat, and to charter meant involving other people. But I could afford a rubber dinghy, and given twenty-four hours' calm weather … I thought Cliff Morgan could help me there. A radio to pick up his forecasts, a compass, an outboard motor – it ought to be possible.

I was up half the night working it out, making lists. And in the morning I drew all my cash out of the bank, booked a seat on a night train for Mallaig and began a hectic six hours, shopping for the equipment I needed.

CHAPTER TWO

LONE VOYAGE

(March 1–6)

There was news of Iain in the papers that night. It was in the Stop Press –
MISSING MAJOR SEEN AT STIRLING
. A motorist had given him a lift to Killin at the head of Loch Tay. And in the morning when the train pulled into Glasgow I found the Scottish papers full of it, his picture all over the front pages. he'd been seen on the railway station at Crianlarich and again at Fort William. A police watch was being kept on the quay at Mallaig in case he tried to board the steamer for the Western Isles and all the villages along the coast had been alerted. The net was closing in on him and in that sparsely populated district I didn't think he had a chance.

A man who boarded the train at Arisaig told me a stranger had been seen walking the coast towards Loch Moidart, and with Ardnamurchan so close, I toyed with the idea that he might be making for our old croft. But at Mallaig there was more definite news, a lobster boat stolen during the night from a cove in Loch Nevin. The whole town was talking about it and an old man on the quay told me it was an open boat, 30 feet long with a single screw and a diesel engine. ‘An oldish boat, ye ken, but sound, and the bluidy man will wreck her for sure.' I was certain he was wrong there; just as I was certain now that Iain was making for Laerg. He'd push across to Eigg or Rum or one of the smaller islands and lie up in the lee. But to cross The Minch and cover the eighty-odd miles of Atlantic beyond he'd need better weather than this; he'd also need fuel. By taking the steamer I'd be in the Outer Hebrides before he'd even left the mainland coast.

It was late in the afternoon of the following day, March 3, that I reached Rodil. The passage across The Minch had been bad – the steel-grey of the sea ribbed with the white of breaking waves, the sky a pale, almost greenish-blue with mares' tails feathering across it like vapour trails. Later the black outline of the Western Isles had become blurred by rain.

I had planned to pitch my tent at the head of Loch Rodil, well away from the hotel, but the boatman refused to attempt it and landed me at the jetty instead, along with my gear and two other passengers. ‘Will you be staying long this time, Mr Ross?' He eyed me doubtfully. ‘Last time you were here …' He shook his head. ‘That was a tur-rible storm.' The two passengers, Army officers in civilian clothes, regarded me with interest.

I dumped my gear and got hold of Marjorie. I was in too much of a hurry to consider how she would react to my sudden unexpected appearance. All I wanted was to contact Cliff and get away from Rodil before the Army discovered I was there.

As she drove me in to Northton, she said, ‘It's true, then, that Major Braddock has stolen a Mallaig boat. That's why you're here, isn't it?'