The Silver Darlings (47 page)

They had been seen coming from the top of the Head, and when at last they opened out the bay, there was a dark crowd beyond the white crescent of surf, for the wind was on-shore.

No-one had known what had happened to them during their long absence, and their women had prayed
passionately
in the night, when the wind was screaming round the gable-end, that God would spare them.

Week after week—no news. That was good. They did not want news. They should be coming soon. Suddenly they would appear out of the sea—and be there. Like a miracle. Would they? Everyone in the district was concerned in some measure, for this was a venture into the unknown, a new experience brought into their lives.

Here was the miracle coming now! Yes, the whole crew were there! And Roddie making straight in. He would! Seamen got ready, for the swell was nasty enough. Down went the sails. He was taking no foolish chances, was Roddie! Out came the oars. Pulling back against a comber … pulling on…. Then, look out! She’s coming! And on the crest of it she came, while the coils of rope uncurled through the air from Henry’s hand. They took her on the run. She grounded. They took her again. They got round her, and she went with them.

CHAPTER XIX

SEA LOVE

A
t the stepping-stones beyond the Steep Wood they stopped, and Finn refused further help, saying he would take his chest himself, though Donnie was anxious to give him a hand. So he parted from Roddie and Donnie, the chest on his shoulders, and went up the slopes to his home.

His cousin Barbara saw him coming, and, though she was fifteen, she turned and ran to the house, shouting. There was his mother. His heart began to beat heavily.

“Finn!” she said and stopped.

“Hullo, Mother!” He stood, hanging on to the chest.

“Oh, Finn!” she cried, and took her eyes off him in a sudden swirl of action that had the chest on the ground in no time, with Barbara at one end of it and herself at the other. Her eyes were wet; her emotion was very strong; she was laughing.

He looked round the kitchen. “It’s the same old place.” He did not know what to say, but he had to say something, because of the strong emotion in his mother. It was in
himself
, too. It was as well Barbara was there, though her presence irked him at the moment. Suddenly Barbara went out.

His mother turned to him. “How are you, Finn?” she asked in a quiet voice, her face glimmering in the kitchen’s faint gloom.

“Fine,” he replied cheerfully. “You’re looking well yourself.”

“I’m fine.” She turned abruptly away. He didn’t know what to do and stood smiling.

Barbara came in with potatoes in the iron pot. She was thin and dark and moved awkwardly with the pot, which Finn took from her and hung on the crook, talking loudly to her, asking how she enjoyed being in Dunster and how everyone was in Dale. His mother, busy getting food ready, began to put her word in, and presently asked him how he had got on in Stornoway. “Not too badly,” he answered, “but the fishing itself had its ups and downs.” “You got on fine?” and she stopped again to look at him. “Yes, all right,” he said, with a careless nod. “I must have a turn round,” and out he went. The cows, and the stirks, and the few sheep, and the slopes of the brae going down to the burn. He felt he had been away years from them, surprised an intimacy that he could not quite catch, like days of long ago vanishing in the mind. There was something pleasant about this and also, somehow, sad; something in his mind that would not form, that he could not speak. The
movement
of his mother’s bustling body and how she felt was everywhere.

He should go back into the house, but a reluctance to do this came upon him strongly; so he clapped the cattle, and examined the tender corn, and went down past the door noisily towards the byre to examine that. Then he went into the little barn and got its old, stuffy smell with an overwhelming familiarity. He handled Kirsty’s
reaping-hook
, with its broken point, curiously. Standing still,
listening
, he had the feeling for a moment of immemorial refuge. Slowly he looked round at the odds and ends and saw them with an extreme distinctness. He was here and he was not here, as if there was one world behind the other. But all the time he knew he must go in. When he came out, his mother was at the door. “Everything is looking fine!” he called. She came quickly and took his arm and went walking on gaily. “Yes, everything is grand,” and she began to point out this and that. “Haven’t the lambs grown?”

By the time they came in he felt so relieved and happy that he began to open his small wooden kist.

“Did you get your things washed at all?” she asked, waiting to take the clothes from him.

“There’s nothing here but a mess,” he said, throwing the cord off and lifting the lid. Then he took out a pair of shoes and handed them to her. They were black and
glistened
, with stylish toe-caps neatly patterned. She obviously had been expecting nothing. Her head bent over the shoes. Her right hand moved over the smooth leather slowly. Her upper teeth gripped her lower lip. He laughed. “They’re good and strong,” he said. “I saw to that.” And from his box he took a red silk ribbon and two white handkerchiefs and handed them to Barbara: “How’s that?” Barbara’s eyes and mouth opened. She flushed with pleasure. “Oh!” she cried, “how lovely!” Catrine looked up, smiling, so pleased at Finn’s remembering Barbara that it eased her own emotion.

Finn was now completely at home and amused them with a description of Callum’s trying to think of something for his wife. “He was a holy mannie and showed Callum some queer things. Then he showed him a skirt and Callum thought that would do fine. ‘What’s her waist
measurement
?’ asked the mannie. ‘You have me there,’ said
Callum
.” Catrine and Barbara laughed as if it were the greatest joke in the world.

“And did he take the skirt?” asked Catrine.

“No, he took a shawl instead. He thought it would be safer.”

They laughed at that, too.

“I thought of a shawl myself,” said Finn, “but didn’t I see a woollen jacket, with green in it and blue, that would be the very thing for you on a cold day. Isn’t it bonny? Look!” And he handed the jacket to his mother.

She did her best, drawing down her top lip stiffly, but fortunately at that moment the potato-pot boiled over and she dashed for the fire.

Finn laughed and, lifting the kist, walked with it into his own room.

Late that evening, in the deep twilight down by the little barn, Catrine said, “I have something to tell you, Finn.”

He did not look at her, but suddenly remembered the stranger on the shore.

“Just when you were leaving, an old friend of your father’s came here to see me. He was with him—in the boat—when they were taken.”

The overstress in her mind, the profound affection, he now understood finally.

“When they were taken, your father fought very hard. But—they hit him on the head—and hauled him up on the ship. Five days after that—he died.”

Finn kept looking away, his face drawn and hard.

“Was it the blow on the head?” he asked.

“Yes. He—never properly recovered. Ronnie and the others did not see him again. He was buried at sea.” Her breath came away quiveringly, but otherwise she made no sound, though the tears were running down her cheeks.

“Why didn’t they tell you?”

“They were put on another ship, on different ships. Ronnie said he did write, but——”

“I mean the authorities?”

“Ronnie thought it was perhaps the man he knocked into the sea——”

“Who knocked into the sea?”

“Your father knocked the leader of the press-gang into the sea——”

“Did he?” said Finn. His skin went all cold, and out of a profound pride for his father, tears came into his eyes.

“Yes. Ronnie said he fought like a lion, but they were too many.”

“Did he?” He could hardly control his voice.

“Yes.” She looked at him, and remained silent.
Suddenly
he walked away from her and, when he had gone over the crest of the brae, sat down by a bush and, lying over, face into the ground, began to sob bitterly. It was not death, it was not his father’s death, it was the odds against him. “It was a damned shame!” he cried and clawed the ground violently.

Presently he became aware of his mother standing near, and sat up, looking straight across the burn whose little pools glimmered in the deep twilight.

She sat down beside him. “I always knew,” she said quietly. “He came to me—the night he died.”

They sat silent for a long time.

“Come in, Finn. You must be tired.”

He got up and as they walked back to the house a deep feeling came over him of being himself and his own father, responsible for this woman walking by his side, who was his mother; deeper even it was than the resentment against the odds which had murdered his father, and within it, too, sustaining it, was a strange new element, quiet as this dim half-light, of peace that was like happiness.

In the succeeding days, Finn found life good. He spent his time between the croft and the shore and he was busy the whole time, with preparations for the summer fishing, cleaning up a new piece of ground on the edge of the moor, and attending to the new year’s supply of peat fuel. Not even a visit by the ground officer depressed his spirit
unduly
. “You have a good place here,” said that reserved and ominous man. “We’re trying to improve it,” replied Finn quietly, leaning on his spade. “It’s as well,” said the man, and walked down through the croft, aloof and noting all things. Finn tore into the ground to ease his
apprehension
.

“I wonder what he’s after?” Catrine came and asked Finn when the man had gone. She still had the feeling that they were strangers here and might be driven out. “You needn’t worry,” said Finn. “It’s money he’s after.” “I
always feel afraid when I see him,” she murmured. “Everyone does,” said Finn.

Catrine stayed beside Finn for some time. In the end he had her laughing over his sarcasms. “You’ll have old Annie up wringing her hands,” he prophesied. “But you should hear Henry on him!” As she was turning away, reluctant to leave him, she cried, “Look! There’s Annie coming!” He laughed. Old Annie had a very small holding, but the neighbours helped her to cultivate it, and with a small black cow and some hens she managed along. It was not a very tidy place, and there were many who might be glad of the chance to improve it. We have money! thought Finn to himself, with a grim but easeful humour.

The Stornoway trip became in retrospect not merely an affair full of odd adventure but also a half-secret code of private amusement. “Why did you send her to me?”
demanded
Rob. “Well,” answered Callum solemnly, “she’s a widow woman, and if there was a bit offish going I knew you’d give it to her.” In this atmosphere a net seemed to get mended of itself.

Then one day Finn got a slight shock. A boy of twelve had fallen over a rock and broken his leg. That he had not fallen a further fifty feet to his death seemed a miracle. Two boys of fourteen had brought off a daring rescue. And all this, Finn discovered, was a direct result of his own exploits on the Seven Hunters, though he himself had never made any reference to them. He had observed that boys liked to be in his company and were willing to do anything for him.

Catrine had persuaded Barbara to stay on with them over the summer fishing. In this way, Catrine was never alone and Finn was glad of it. Roddie came over once or twice in the evening, but if he had heard of Tormad’s death, he made no reference to it and, with Barbara and Finn about, there was a household.

Meantime every day was working up to the climax—that broke over the whole district in the shape of the
summer fishing. Life grew hectic. George, the foreman, was full of figures. Everywhere the fishing was growing, was sweeping the villages, the great ports, in a torrent of new boats, nets, curers, men, and banknotes. Ten and even fifteen-pound bounties from the curers were the order of the day. A skipper got his bounty—whether he caught herring or not. Hendry was commonly reputed now to be a wealthy man. Good luck to him! They showed him all the more respect on that acount. His whisky was ever ready, and if he took a note of quantities against their accounts, what else would any natural man expect?

In Wick, the provision of liquor, at a price, was part of a skipper’s agreement. It made life seem large and gay and spendthrift. Why not? Wasn’t it a grand thing that life should be warm and full of generosity and not for ever dogged by care of the morrow? To walk down the quays in your
seaboots
, from a refreshment house, after landing a fair shot, and see the women busy as wrens, the foremen shouting, the salt swishing in showers, the coopers hammering, the fishery officer testing the herring for the Crown brand, was a pleasant experience. You had given them something to work on! Let the world be happy and the hand generous. It’s a poor mouth that never sings. Give with lordliness and grudge nothing. Only the mean heart and the mean hand are an abomination in the day of fullness.

Their nets shot, they lay back, eating in the peace of the evening, at sea once more. Not the inlets, the low shores, the islands, the soft wonder of the west, but the grey,
unending
cliffs of home.

It was the height of summer, and the night never grew quite dark. Finn loved to feel the gentle movement of the boat under him again. It produced, too, the old dreaming effect and passing of images. But the images were
altogether
from the west now. He had not seen
Una since he came home and had no special desire to see her. His cousin Barbara was a friendly, bright girl, and treated him like a brother. He was growing fond of her. But the dark Lewis
girl, Catrine, came into his mind now on a few notes of that song which he could not whistle entirely and which haunted him often. In a curious way, however, the influence of the song was stronger than she was. In a few seconds it would grow into a hypnotic tyranny that he could not rouse himself to throw off, and the girl would recede, shadowy, and bodiless.

He saw Roddie trying the net in the grey of the morning and the old excitement crept over him. The net fell back with an empty splash. But he was not very disappointed. The herring were not yet on the ground.