Murdo's War (9 page)

The flooding tide was nearly to the stacks. They landed the boxes on the upper beach, and while Hector took his boat round to the anchorage, Murdo and the two men carried them up to the cave. The sand was very trampled, a broad path from the sea’s edge to the cliff, but already in the backwash of the waves their tracks were obliterated. Long before morning the night tide would have washed the beach smooth again. It occurred to Murdo that even when they were making two trips a night and arriving home shortly before dawn, this would still be the case. He remarked on it to Mr Smith.

‘Yes, we are very lucky with the tides,’ he said. ‘I confess that was something we –’ he bit the word back ‘– that I did not take properly into account. We have the guard – but still, it could have been important.’

Within half an hour of landing, the boxes were neatly stacked away on the ledge. Knut spread a sheet of heavy waterproof canvas by the tumble of boulders at the inner end of the chamber, and laid out his bed-roll.

‘Seven o’clock tomorrow, then,’ Henry Smith said to him. Knut pulled on his cigarette and nodded, accompanying them
to the mouth of the cave.

The cars were thick with frost. With the palms of his hands Murdo melted a small patch on Hector’s windscreen and rubbed it dry with a rag. Henry Smith watched him, resting an arm on the roof of the car.

‘Well, that’s the first load,’ he said cheerfully to Hector. ‘I
thought it went off very well.’

‘Aye, it went all right,’ Hector said.

Henry Smith reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a wallet. He counted out some notes and passed them across. Hector counted them for himself and pushed them into his back pocket.

‘Thank you very much.’

‘And the same to come again when the job’s finished.’

‘Aye.’ Hector climbed into the driving seat.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then. At the cave – seven o’clock.’

The car was hard to start. After eight or ten shots with the button, Hector reached back for the starting handle on the back seat. A few vigorous cranks and the engine sprang into life, shuddering violently.

THE FINE WEATHER CONTINUED. The following night – it was Friday – they made two trips, and the night after they made two more. The Norwegians had the cases ready by the jetty at the entrance to the bay. As they were loaded the
Lobster Boy
rose and fell beneath the cliffs, sheltered from the Atlantic swell. They kept to schedule, four and a half hours for the round trip, with a break of thirty minutes between midnight and one for a mug of hot soup prepared by Knut. The moon set shortly before they arrived home. It was six o’clock in the morning.

On the fourth night, however, Hector had refused to go out. There was heated argument. As they prepared to cast off for the last run home in the early hours of Sunday morning, the old man resolutely shook his head. Henry Smith’s face was dark, he was unused to being thwarted. The men on the jetty leaned forward, but Hector was quite impervious to their pleas.

‘No, it’s no good going on. We’ve been out three nights running, and it’s the Sabbath. That’s it till Monday. I never went to sea on the Sabbath all my life – he sniffed ‘– well, not very often; and the sea’s been good to me. I’m not starting now. No – no! It can blow a hurricane on Monday if it likes, but I’m still not coming out. Besides –’ even in the lamplight he could see the tiredness on Murdo’s face ‘– the boy needs a night in his bed. We all do.’

There was unconscious prophecy in his words, for on Monday the weather, which had been so fair, changed. The barometer fell. The wind moved around into the east and soft grey clouds began to roll up out of that quarter. All day the frost did not yield. Dry, icy reeds clattered as the wind swept, strengthening, over the moorland bogs. The ice-fringed lochs, which had rippled and glinted in the winter sunshine, now turned steel-grey, ruffled and blown into small waves like minature seas. The hills, where the dead bracken had glowed russet in the sunshine, turned their fires off and hunched forbidding shoulders against the clouds. Shepherds ranged the
hills with dogs, bringing in stragglers to join their flocks in the fields, where they could be watched and fed when the snow came. The sheep huddled for warmth in the lee of stone dykes and under peat banks. Men and women came indoors gladly, rubbing their hands and shivering, to the fires.

But the sea held its legacy of fine weather, and on Monday night Hector, Murdo and Henry Smith were able to make the two trips. The sea was beginning to rise, however, and the boat sheered and fell in the troughs of the waves as she chugged across the miles of open water between Strathy Point and the island.

It was on the last run home that the snow began to fall, blind flakes that struck softly on their faces like a hundred tiny paws, pattering over cheeks and lips and eyes, icy and tickling. The shore disappeared. Hector made his way to the for’ard locker and produced the lantern. When it was lit he set it in a bracket by the compass, adjusted a rough shade, and took the tiller from Murdo. Murdo, in Hector’s place on the side bench, shook his arm and the settling snow fell in a flurry to the bottom boards. It was not lying there yet because of the dried salt spray. But by and by the salt was washed clear and the snow began to settle and gather in corners and crevices. On top of the boxes it lay from the start, and soon a half inch layer covered the tarpaulin.

By the time Hector swung to starboard around Strathy Point, the whole boat, with its occupants, was mantled in white.

Knut had set a guiding lantern on the beach, hidden from the village by a wall of damp sand. As the boat ran in they saw the spark of light in the swirling darkness. It was dead ahead.

It was a relief when the last case was carried up the beach and stacked away on the shelf. Leaving Henry Smith and Knut talking in the cave, beneath what now was an impressive pile of crates, Murdo and Hector trudged wearily up the dunes and home.

Murdo was too tired to wait for tea and took a rough jam sandwich up to bed with him. But within ten minutes of entering the house he was sound asleep, the bread half-eaten on the chair beside his bed.

Twenty minutes later, on his own way to bed, Hector knocked softly and pushed open the door. Murdo had fallen asleep with the candle still burning. He was dead to the world and looked very young. With troubled eyes Hector regarded him and thought of the strange life the boy was presently leading. An arm lay outside the bedclothes, the blankets had fallen from his shoulder. Hector hesitated, then left him as he lay and blew out the candle.

While Murdo slept the snow swept on, settling, always settling over the wild landscape. For a while before dawn, the wind rose fiercely, a precursor of what was to come, rushing under eaves, singing its wild arctic tune in the wires and fences. A pale gloom displaced the darkness of night. Straggling herds of deer made their way down from the hills. Daylight came, struggling through the clouds and thick air, revealing dykes plastered on one face and capped with six inches of snow. Roads were white plains between flawless embankments, blocked on the exposed heights and at field gates by slanting snow wreaths. Black lochs appeared bottomless, rivers wound their inky paths from somewhere beyond. In the glens and along the coast the jumbled fields resolved into simple patterns, outlined in the contours of walls and black splinters of fence posts.

By eleven o’clock the snow had stopped and the skies cleared, but the sun brought no warmth. The landscape glittered and the snow did not melt. The hills cast blue shadows in the low winter sunlight, and beneath the pale sky the sea was a dark misty blue.

When Hector woke at midday the first thing he noticed was the unaccustomed brightness of his room. A strip of diffused light spread across the ceiling. He grunted, remembering the snow, peered at his ancient watch on a nail at the head of his bed, and turned to the window. Like Murdo, he rarely closed the curtains and it was dazzling. There had been a good fall, the snow was weighing heavy on the heather. Beyond the headland he could see white horses, suggesting a blow of force six or seven. He listened to the sigh of the wind around the house and caught the faint keen- ing in the landing skylight – force seven most like. He reached for a packet of Woodbines: it was the only time of the day he liked a cigarette, first thing in the morning before he got up.

The snow was beautiful. With a romantic eye Hector appreciated it; as a countryman it disgusted him. He gazed at the wintry scene and wondered how long it would last. Gradually, as the new day swam more fully into focus, he became aware of an occasional swishing, scraping sound from outside. He could not place it. Intrigued, he swung his feet to the bedside mat and reached for an old coat which served as a dressing gown. Tying the cord at his waist he crossed to the window.

Murdo was nearing the top of a rough knoll at the side of the house with an old tin tray in his hand. He dropped it on the snow, settled the toorie on his wild hair, sat on the tray and launched himself at the steepest part of the slope. Legs and arms flying he shot down, slewing wildly out of control, bucking over boulders and little cliffs, finally tumbling and careering head over heels to the bottom. He sat up smothered in snow, brushed himself down and rescued the tray from a wilderness of whin bushes. Earlier tracks showed where he had started on more gentle slopes.

Hector was pleased to see him enjoying himself. He pushed open the window. A ledge of snow whirled in and sifted to the bedroom floor.

‘Have you had breakfast?’

Murdo looked up, his face glowing, and nodded vigorously.

‘Well I’ll make dinner for two o’clock. All right? Don’t be late.’

‘Right. What time is it now?’

‘Just on twelve.’

Murdo raised a hand and returned to the top of the knoll. Because of the bad early conditions and the fact that many
children had a good distance to travel, school had been cancelled for the day. Murdo saw boys sledging on the main hill at the far side of the village. Tucking the tray beneath his arm he went off to join them.

From his seat at the fire after lunch, Murdo could see the white waves racing up the bay. A long, low swell was beginning to surge across the rocks of the headland, sliding in from the north-east. Throughout the afternoon it worsened. Ominous clouds began to rear above the horizon.

‘I doubt that’s it for tonight, boy,’ Hector said, turning once more from the window. ‘It’s not the sort of weather I like out there.’ Murdo looked up from sharpening his father’s pocket knife, seeing the dark thrusting clouds beyond Hector’s silhouette. They were hostile and forbidding, and spoke of storm. The coming night was not one in which to be abroad – on the land, let alone upon the water. He had been carving a small mallard from a piece of drift-wood. Brushing the chips from his lap, he picked the
matches off the dresser and put a light to the lamp.

As he did so the clock whirred into life and chimed once: half past three. Hector gazed at its fine yellow face, then down at Murdo, and once more out of the window. He was restless.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think I’d better go down and have a word with Mr Smith. See how he feels about it.’

Murdo tested the blade of the knife with the tip of a finger, and snapped is shut.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

The snow had not thawed at all. As the sun declined over the snowfields they walked in blue shadow. The few cars and lorries had compressed the crystals into shining ribbons. Murdo ran along the road in his rubber boots and slid in the tracks. When he bent to make a snowball to throw at a neighbour’s chimney the snow was too powdery to stick, and crumbled as he threw it. His fingers ached with the cold and he thrust his fists into the pockets of his battledress.

When they reached the inn they found that Henry Smith had been drinking. He was sitting by himself in a corner of the hotel lounge and did not see them for a moment as they came through the door. The lamp was lit and a peat fire glowed in the hearth. A small side-table stood at the arm of his chair, with a part-empty bottle of the Orkney whisky and the remains of a plate of sandwiches upon it. His hands rested in his lap, curled loosely around a glass. An inch of the golden spirit rocked slightly in the bottom as he breathed.

When he saw them he jumped to his feet. Half of the whisky splashed down his cardigan.

‘Oh damn!’ He brushed away the drops with his fingers and mopped it with a clean handkerchief. ‘Come in, come in. Do sit down.’ He set the glass on the table and pulled a couple of armchairs towards the fire.

They sat as they were bidden, but he remained standing. He leaned towards Hector. His face was flushed and his eyes a little clouded.

‘You’ll have a drink,’ he said. ‘Whisky?’

Hector shook his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Not right now. I’m just after my dinner.’

‘Beer, then.’ The Englishman smiled a little tipsily. ‘Anything you want, so long as it’s beer.’

Amused to see him so, Hector smiled, but shook his head.

‘Nothing at all?’

Hector gave way with a good grace. ‘Oh well, then. A whisky. Thank you very much. A small one.’

Henry Smith went to the door and called to a lady in the private part of the inn. A minute or two later she came through with a tray of coffee and an empty whisky glass. Hector and she were old friends. Unseen by the Englishman he gave her a conspiratorial wink. Briefly her eyes twinkled, though the days were long gone when the comings and goings of the incorrigible old man caused her any surprise. When she had gone, Mr Smith poured a heavy measure for Hector, and a drop into the bottom of his own glass.