Atlantic Fury

CHAPTER TWO

(October 15)

It was two days later, just after ten on the morning of October 15, that my phone rang and a man’s voice, rather soft, said, ‘Mr Ross? My name’s Ed Lane. Are you by any chance related to a Sergeant Iain Alasdair Ross reported lost when the Duart Castle was torpedoed in February, 1944?’

‘He was my brother.’

‘He was?’ The voice had a vaguely American accent. ‘Well, that’s fine. Didn’t expect to strike it that fast — you’re only the fifth Ross I’ve telephoned. I’ll be with you inside of an hour. Okay?’ And he’d rung off, leaving me wondering what in the world it was all about.

I was working on another book jacket for Alec Robinson, but after that phone call I found it impossible to go back to it. I went into the little kitchenette and brewed myself some coffee. And after that I stood drinking it at the window, looking out across the rooftops, an endless vista of chimney pots and TV aerials with a distant glimpse of Tower Bridge. I was thinking of my brother, of how I’d loved him and hated him, of how there had been nobody else in my life who had made up for the loss I’d felt at his going. And yet at the time I’d been almost glad. It had seemed better that he should die like that — in the sea, a casualty of war.

I turned away from the grubby window, glanced at the jacket design lying on the table amongst a litter of paints and brushes, and then fell to pacing my studio, wondering what this fellow Lane wanted digging up the past that was dead these twenty years and more. Surely to God they weren’t going to rake over the whole wretched business again. I could still remember the shock when the Military Police had come to interview me at the factory. Did I realise he’d deserted? Slinging questions at me until they’d discovered my father was dead and my mother alone and ill at Ardnamurchan. ‘We’ll pick him up there then.’ And my bursting into tears and shouting at them that whatever my brother had done it was justified and why the hell did they pick on him and not the officer. And that M.P. sergeant with the big ears and the broken nose — I could have drawn his face even now — snapping back at me in a grating Glaswegian voice, “The officer was unconscious, laddie, with machine-gun bullets spraying him as he lay on the ground with a broken jaw. Aye and damn near twenty men dead who needn’t have died. Justified? Christ, it was plain bluidy mur-rder.’

The jacket design stared at me, the lettering of the book title already pencilled in — THE PEACE THAT FOLLOWED. I had read it, thought it good, but now I dropped a rag over it, remembering the wartime passages, the sense of futility the writer had invoked. Sounds from the street drifted up to me, the bustle of London’s East End. My studio was just an attic over a butcher’s shop. It was all I could afford. Bed, table and easel took up most of the space, and the canvases stacked against the wall, all the work I’d done on Milos — there was hardly room to move. A cupboard in the corner held my clothes and above it was piled the camping equipment I’d bought from the proceeds of the only two pictures I’d sold — Milos at Dawn Seen from a Caique and Greek Galley Under Water. That was when I planned to paint on Laerg, before I’d been refused permission to go there.

I crossed to the window, thinking back over my life, back to the carefree days on Ardnamurchan and Iain in the glory of his youth fighting imaginary battles among the rocks below our croft, always in defence of Laerg with myself cast in the role of invader — a Viking, a pirate, a marauding trawlerman, anything that had recently captured his fancy. And in the evenings, sitting by the peat fire listening to the old man talking in that thick burr — tales of the Lovers’ Stone, of cliff-crawling in search of puffins, of boat journeys to Fladday for the gannets which he called solan geese; wild tales of gales and ships being wrecked.

So long ago and yet so vivid, and Iain tall and handsome with his dark face, and his black hair blowing in the wind; a wild boy with a streak of melancholy and a temper that flared at a word. He could have done something with his life. I pushed up the window, leaning out to feel the warmth of the sun, thinking of my own life, stuck here in this dirty back street doing hack work for a living. I should be painting on Laerg, getting the lost world of my grandfather down on canvas. That would be something, a justification. Eleven years at sea, followed by the years learning to paint, and it all added up to this miserable little room and a few pounds in the bank.

A taxi drew up in the street below and a man got out. All I could see of him was his wide-brimmed hat and the pale sheen of his coat as he paid the driver. It crossed my mind that it was a good angle from which to paint a picture of a London street — but in the same instant I knew I wouldn’t do it; nobody would buy it. He disappeared from sight and a few moments later I heard his footsteps labouring up the bare stairboards. I opened the door and ushered him in, a tubby, round-looking man with small eyes in a smooth face. His clothes were a businessman’s clothes, but not English. The small eyes took in the cluttered studio, scanning the walls as though in search of something. ‘I guess you’re an artist, Mr Ross. That right?’

‘I kid myself sometimes.’

But there was no answering smile. The small eyes stared at me, cold and humourless. ‘You got a picture of your brother?’

‘Just why are you here?’ I asked him.

He took his hat off then and sat down on the bed, a little out of breath. ‘It’s a long story.’ Brown-stained fingers fumbled for his cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’ I shook my head. He flipped one out of the pack and lit it. ‘It’s about the Duart Castle. As I told you over the phone, my name’s Lane, Ed Lane. I come from Vancouver. I’m over here on business — oil and gas; my company runs pipelines. I mention that just to show you I’m a man of some standing. The reason I’ve come to see you is a private one. I’m investigating something that concerns my wife’s family. A matter of a Will. There’s a lot of money involved.’ He paused for breath, reached into the pocket of his light-coloured raincoat. ‘I’ve got some photographs here.’ He had come up with an envelope. But instead of producing the pictures, he sat dragging at his cigarette and staring round the room. ‘An artist,’ he breathed as though he’d just thought of something. ‘Do you do portraits?’

‘No.’

He frowned. ‘You mean you can’t draw heads, faces, people’s features?’

‘I don’t paint portraits, that’s all.’

He looked at the table then, twisting his head round and reaching for the rag I’d dropped over the jacket design. Behind the lettering I had already painted in the first of a series of heads representing humanity in fear. ‘There you are. That’s the sort of thing.’ The little button eyes stared at me as though I’d purposely misled him. ‘You remember your brother, do you? You haven’t forgotten what he looked like?’

‘Of course not. But I don’t see …’

‘You could draw me a portrait of him, couldn’t you?’

‘I could.’

I think he saw I was getting annoyed, for he smiled and said, ‘Sure. You want to know what it’s all about first.’

‘You mentioned some pictures,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. First, there are the press-cuttings.’ He pulled some clippings from the envelope, selected one and handed it to me. ‘You saw that at the time, I expect.’

It was from the Daily Telegraph, dated 24th February, 1944, the news of the sinking of the Duart Castle and the arrival at Donegal, Northern Ireland, of two boatloads of survivors, together with the list of their names, thirty-five in all. Pinned to it was a cutting dated 2nd March giving the official account of the torpedoing and the names of those who were missing, presumed dead. Iain Alasdair Ross. There it was to bring back to me after all these years the sense of loss I’d felt at the time, the feeling of being alone in the world, all my family dead. ‘I read it in The Scotsman,’ I said and passed it back to him.

‘Sure. It was in most of the papers.’ He was riffling through the bunch of cuttings. ‘That all you read about the Duart Castle?’ ‘That’s all there was, as far as I know. Papers were small and a lot of ships were being sunk. They’d plenty of other news …’

‘Then you didn’t see this?’ He handed me another clipping. ‘It’s from a Stornoway paper of March 14.’

‘Stornoway’s in the Outer Hebrides,’ I pointed out. ‘I’d hardly be likely to see a copy of that.’

‘Sure, it’s way up north and this is a local story. No other paper seems to have printed it. You read it. Then I’ll tell you why I’m interested in your brother.’

The cutting was headed: ORDEAL BY RAFT — Terrible Story of Lone Survivor: On Tuesday evening Colin McTavish, seventy-two-year-old lobster fisherman of Tobson on Great Bernera, whilst rowing out in his boat to visit his pots, came upon a Carley float lodged amongst the rocks of Geodha Cool. The figures of two men lay on the raft, both apparently lifeless. The raft belonged to the Duart Castle, sunk by torpedoes some five hundred miles out in the North Atlantic on February 18th. They had, therefore, been adrift on the raft for twenty-two days. Colin McTavish took the bodies into his boat and rowed back to Tobson. There it was discovered that despite the long time at sea, one of the men was still alive. His name is George Henry Braddock, 2nd-Lieutenant Royal Artillery, aged twenty. The terrible story of his ordeal cannot be told yet for a Merciful God has wiped it from his mind. He has been transferred to the hospital at Stornoway suffering from exposure and loss of memory. But we all know what he must have suffered out there in the open sea exposed to bitter cold and severe storms with no protection but the tattered remnants of a sail and his only companion dying before his eyes. The dead man is Pte. Andre Leroux, a French-Canadian from Montreal. He has been buried at the old cemetery above the bay at Bosta. Colin McTavish’s rescue of 2nd-Lieutenant Braddock brings the total of survivors of the Duart Castle to thirty-six and this doubtless writes finis to the tragic story of a ship that was transporting Canadian reinforcements to and the fight for freedom.

‘I didn’t know about it,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see what that’s got to do with my brother — or with me.’ ‘Your brother was on that raft when the ship sank.’ ‘Well, he’s dead,’ I said. ‘What difference does it make?’ He didn’t say anything; simply handed me one of the photographs from the envelope. It showed a man in a light suit walking along a street — tall, black-haired, with a dark moustache and what looked like a scar running down the centre of his forehead. It wasn’t a very clear picture, just a snapshot taken in very bright sunlight. He passed me another. The same man getting out of a car. ‘And here’s one taken with a telephoto lens.’ Head and shoulders this time, the face heavily shadowed by sunlight. ‘You don’t recognise him?’ He was watching me closely.

‘Where were they taken?’

‘Famagusta in Cyprus.’

‘I’ve never been to Famagusta,’ I said.

‘I asked you whether you recognised him?’

‘Well, I don’t. Who is he?’

He sighed and took the photographs back, sitting there, staring down at them. ‘I guess they’re not very clear. Not as clear as I would have liked. But …’ He shook his head and tucked them away in the envelope together with the cuttings.

‘They’re pictures I took of Braddock. Major Braddock.’ He looked up at me. ‘You’re sure they didn’t strike some chord in your memory?’ And when I shook my head, he said, ‘They didn’t remind you of your brother, for instance?’

‘My brother?’ I stared at him, trying to think back, remembering Iain’s dark, handsome face. ‘How the hell could it be my brother?’ The face in those photos, lined and scarred. ‘There’s no resemblance at all. What are you getting at?’

‘Think what he’d be like now.’ The small eyes stared at me, cold and with an obstinate look.

‘He’s dead,’ I said again, angry now, wondering what the hell this wretched little man was trying to dig up. ‘And the past, that’s dead, too,’ I added.

‘Okay, Mr Ross. If that’s the way you feel. But do something for me, will you. Draw me a picture of your brother — as you think he might look now.’

‘Damned if I do.’ I wasn’t going to help him or anyone else rake up the past. ‘Why should I?’

‘I’ll tell you why.’ His voice had a sudden bite to it.

‘I don’t believe the man I saw in Famagusta was Braddock.’ The eyes, staring at me, still had that obstinate look. ‘And if he wasn’t Braddock, then who was he? That’s what I want to know, and that’s what I intend to find out.’ He dived into his breast pocket and came out with a diary. ‘I’ve got a list of five names.’ He turned the pages quickly, spreading the diary open on his knee. ‘Five men definitely identified. That’s in addition to Braddock and Leroux, the two who were still on the raft when it was washed ashore in the Outer Hebrides.’ He looked up at me then. ‘That makes seven we know for sure were on the raft at the time the Duart Castle went down. No doubt there were more, but those seven have been identified by witnesses I consider absolutely reliable. Your brother was one of them, Mr Ross.’

I didn’t see what he was driving at. Whether Iain was on that raft or in the water didn’t seem to make much difference. It didn’t alter the fact that he was dead. ‘Who told you?’ I asked. ‘Braddock, I suppose.’

‘No, it wasn’t Braddock. Braddock says he doesn’t remember. What you might call a mental blackout, I guess. Very convenient. No, your brother’s name was given to me by a man I saw in Lyons on my way back home from the Middle East — Tom Webster, an English textile buyer. He came ashore in one of the boats.’ He closed the diary. ‘I’ve seen altogether eight of the survivors, in addition to Braddock. The first seven were Canadians, I interviewed them before I left for Europe. Only one of them remembered seeing the float. He gave me two possible names. Webster gave me a further three, and he was very positive about them because he was thrown into the water and clung to the float for a time before swimming to the boat.’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘The three men Webster was positive about were the Master-at-Arms, the second officer — and your brother. I’ve checked on the first two. Neither of them had any reason to change their identity. But your brother had. Did you know he was being brought back from Canada under escort to face a number of very serious charges?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know that. But he’s listed among those lost and it’s over twenty years …’

‘He was presumed dead.’ His emphasis was on the word ‘presumed’, his voice flat and hard and very determined. ‘There’s a difference. His body was never recovered. He wasn’t identified. And that brings me to the reason I’m here. The Duart Castle was a troopship. Most of the boys sailing in her were young Canadian conscripts. A hundred and thirty-six of them were officers, newly commissioned. Braddock was one of them.’ And he went on to tell me Braddock’s story.

I wanted to throw the man out. This monstrous, fantastic suggestion of his … But he went on talking — talking in that flat Canadian monotone. It was like a river in spate and I listened to it because I couldn’t help myself, because the seed of doubt had been sown and curiosity is a universal failing.

Braddock had been born in London. His father was English, his mother Canadian. When he was two the family had moved to Vancouver. That was in 1927. In 1938 they had returned to England, the father having been appointed London representative of the Canadian firm he worked for. On the outbreak of war a year later, George Braddock, then a boy of fourteen and their only child, had been evacuated to Canada. For the next four years he’d lived with his aunt, a Mrs Evelyn Gage, on a ranch in northern B.C. ‘A lonely sort of place out on the old Caribou Trail,’ Lane added. ‘And Evie had just lost her husband. She was alone there except for the stockman. She’d no children of her own and … well, I guess it’s the old story. She came to regard young George Braddock more or less as her own son, particularly after his parents were killed. They died in the bombing — a direct hit on their flat. Now this is where I come into it. When the boy went off to join the Army she made a Will leaving everything to him ‘in love and affection for the boy who was like a son to me’ — those are the actual words. She died last year, aged seventy-two and that Will still stands. She never made another.’

‘And you’re trying to break it?’ Money, I thought — this smooth-faced, hard-eyed little man’s whole life was money.

‘Well, wouldn’t you? Evie was my wife’s aunt, too — by marriage; and the ranch alone is worth a hundred thousand dollars. And the boy never wrote to her, you see. All that time. It’s taken lawyers six months to trace the guy. They thought at first he was dead.’

So that was it. Because the fellow hadn’t written…‘It doesn’t occur to you, I suppose, that Braddock might not be interested in a ranch in Canada.’

‘There’s more to it than the ranch — around a quarter of a million dollars.’ He gave me a tight little smile. ‘You show me the man who’ll turn down that sort of money. Unless there’s some very good reason. And in Braddock’s case I’m convinced there is. He’s scared of it.’ He got to his feet. ‘Now then. You draw me a portrait of your brother and then I’ll leave you. Draw it as you think he’d look now. Okay?’

I hesitated, my mind a confused mixture of thoughts.

‘I’ll pay you for it.’ He pulled out his pocket book. ‘How much?’

I damn near hit him then. What with his suspicions, the stupid allegations he’d made, and then offering me a bribe. ‘Fifty dollars,’ I heard myself say and even then I didn’t realise why I’d decided to take his money.

I thought for a moment he was going to haggle over it. But he stopped himself in time. ‘Okay, fifty it is.’ He counted five ten dollar bills on to the table. ‘You’re a professional. I guess you’re entitled to your fee.’ It was as though he were excusing himself for being too open-handed.

But when I came to draw it, I found it wasn’t so easy, I started the first rough in black with a brush, but it was too strong a medium; you need to have your subject clear in front of your eyes. And when I switched to pen-and-ink it required too much detail. In the end I used an ordinary pencil, and all the time he stood over me, breathing down my neck. He was a chain-smoker and his quick panting breath made it difficult to concentrate. I suppose he thought he’d be more likely to get his money’s worth if he watched every pencil stroke, or maybe it just fascinated him to see the picture emerge. But my mind, going back, searching for the likeness I couldn’t quite capture, resented it.

It didn’t take me long to realise that time had coloured my memory. Iain’s features had become blurred and in that first rough I was emphasising what I wanted to remember, discarding what I didn’t. I scrapped it and started again. And halfway through something happened — it began to take on a vague, shadowy likeness to the man in those photographs. I tore that sheet up, too. But when I tried again the same thing happened — something in the shape of the head, the way the hair grew down towards the forehead, the lines round mouth and eyes, the eyes themselves, particularly the eyes. A pity he’d shown me those photographs. But I knew it wasn’t that. It had been quite unconscious. I screwed the sheet up into a ball and threw it in the wastepaper basket. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought I could remember him. But I can’t. Not clearly enough to draw you a true likeness.’ And I picked up the fifty dollars and thrust the notes back into his hand. ‘I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

‘You mean you won’t.’

‘Have it your own way,’ I said. I wanted to get rid of him, to be alone with time to think, and I thrust my hands in my pockets, for I knew they were shaking.

Donald my Donald. How Iain’s voice came back to me down the years — cruel and charming, gay and sombre, that queer Celtic mixture. And Laerg of our imagination that was like a Shangri-la, like a talisman — but still one thing to him, another to me. If I go to Laerg it will be to die. Aye, Donald my Donald — death to me and life to you.

A quarter of a century and I could remember the words, still hear his voice slurred with drink in that dirty little pub. And his face, lined already, sodden that night…

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I can’t do it.’ And I opened the door for him, anxious to be rid of the man.

He paused, staring at me hard. ‘Okay,’ he said finally in that flat voice of his. I thought he was going then, but he paused in the doorway. ‘If you should want to contact Braddock he’s in this country.’

‘I thought you said he was in Cyprus.’

‘That’s where I saw him on my way through to the Middle East. But he was due for leave. Now he’s been posted to the Hebrides.’ I didn’t say anything and he added, ‘You’ll find him at the Guided Weapons Establishment on Harris. Just thought you’d like to know.’ He was starting down the stairs when I asked him how he’d found out. ‘Private inquiry agent. They’ve been keeping an eye on him for me.’ He smiled. ‘Odd, isn’t it? Why should this guy Braddock get posted to the Hebrides now? And another thing, Mr Ross. I know why you wouldn’t complete that drawing. I was watching your face.’ He pulled his hand out of his pocket. ‘I guess I’ll leave these here.’ He placed the dollar bills on the top step of the stairs. ‘Tear them up if you like. But before you do, remember they’ll just about cover your fare to the Hebrides.’ And with that he left me, standing there listening to his footsteps descending the bare boards, staring down at those damned dollars.

And I thought I’d covered up. How many times in the past had I covered up for Iain when he’d acted on the spur of the moment without thought of the future? Father, the police, that poor little idiot Mavis …

I reached down and picked up the dollar bills, feeling like Judas. But I had to know. A brother is still your brother — hate and love, the old hero-worship still there, dormant, but leaving a vacuum. And I’d no one else. No one in the world I’d really cared for. I had to know.