Atlantic Fury

CHAPTER ONE

(October 16 — I9)

I left for the north the following day; the night train to Mallaig, the steamer to Rodil in the extreme south of Harris. And all the way there thinking of Iain — Iain and Braddock. The rattle of the wheels, the thump of the screws; their names pounding at my brain, till the two were one. And that Canadian … walking up the street to the bus stop there’d been a man in an old raincoat; he’d been on the bus with me and I’d seen him at King’s Cross, just behind me waiting to get his ticket. Coincidence perhaps, but if I’d been Lane …

I pictured him sitting by the telephone in some London hotel waiting for a report, smiling gently to himself when he was told I’d left for the north. Well, to hell with that. It was natural, wasn’t it — that I should want to be sure?

I’d finished that jacket design in two hours flat and Alec Robinson had liked it sufficiently to pay me cash. Fifteen guineas. It had made all the difference. Camping out I could manage for a time and I had my return ticket. Something else I’d got from Robinson, too — an introduction to Cliff Morgan, a meteorologist working at Northton five miles north of Rodil. I’d done the jacket for his book, Airman’s Weather. It was a contact at any rate and Robinson had told me that Northton was where the Guided Weapons Establishment was.

I’d never been farther north than Ardnamurchan and all up through the islands, through the Sounds of Sleat and Raasay, I was conscious of a growing sense of familiarity, a feeling almost of contentment. The sea and the islands, and the great canopy of the sky — it called to me and my spirit sang with the smell of the salt sea air and the cold wind on my face. And then the mountains of Harris, rising abruptly from the rim of the sea, piled against a leaden sky, their tops blurred by a rainstorm. Rodil proved to be nothing but a hotel and a grass-grown quay falling into decay with an old stone church on the hill behind, built on the pattern of Iona. The boatman, ferrying us from the ship to the quay, looked at my tent and said, ‘If they’ve nae room up yonder, I could fix ye a bed maybe.’ His voice was soft as the rain that was beginning to fall and when I declined his offer, he said, ‘Och weel, it’s yer ain business. But it’ll be a tur-rible wet night I’m thinking.’

The night was both wet and cold and I went to sleep with the sound of the waves sloshing among the seaweed that clothed the rocks, and in the morning I started to walk to Northton. Just beyond the church a girl in a small estate car stopped and offered me a lift. She wore a faded green anorak with the hood pushed back and her face had the freshness of the islands; a dark, wind-browned face and bright blue eyes. ‘You must have had a very uncomfortable night,’ she said as we drove up the glen. Her voice was soft and that, too, belonged to the islands. ‘Why didn’t you come to the hotel?’ Something about the way she said it, the quick, almost hostile glance she gave me — it was almost as though she resented the presence of a stranger.

But my attention was concentrated on her features, which were unusual; the dark colouring, the wide mouth below the strong, slightly beaky nose. I knew there were islands up here where Nordic blood had mixed with the Celt to produce blue eyes and dark hair and skin, and because it interested me, I said, ‘You’re an islander, aren’t you?’

‘I live here.’

‘No, I meant you come from one of the islands up here.’

‘My father does.’ The blue eyes staring at me and again that sense of hostility. ‘I’m Marjorie Field.’ She said it defiantly, adding that she worked part-time at the hotel. She seemed to expect some reaction from me, and then she began asking me a lot of questions — my name, where I had come from, how long I intended to stay. At the time I put it down to the natural curiosity about strangers in an isolated community.

The fact that I was an artist seemed to surprise her. ‘You mean you paint — for a living?’ We were at the top of the glen then and she concentrated on her driving until the road straightened out, running down to the flat desolation of buildings scattered round marsh and loch; ugly modern dwelling houses, impermanent-looking against the misted bulk of the hills beyond. ‘Artists don’t come here at this time of the year,’ she said quite suddenly. ‘And they don’t live in tents, Mr Ross — not when it’s cold and wet.’

‘Do you know many artists?’ I asked.

‘A few.’ She was tight-lipped now, her manner cold, and I had a feeling she didn’t believe me. We drove through Leverburgh in silence. This, according to my guide book, had been the village of Obbe until Lord Leverhulme renamed it as part of his grandiose scheme for making it the centre of the west coast trawler fleet. Beyond the village she turned to me and said, ‘You’re a newspaper man, aren’t you?’ She said it flatly, in a tone almost of resignation.

‘What makes you think that?’

She hesitated, and then she said, ‘My father is Charles Field.’ She was watching me out of the corner of her eyes and again she seemed to expect some reaction. ‘He’s the Education Officer at Northton.’ And then she slowed the car and turned her head. ‘Please. Won’t you be frank? You haven’t come up here to paint. It’s something else — I can feel it.’

Her reaction was disturbing, for this was something more than ordinary curiosity. We had reached the top of the next glen and there was the sea and a cloud-capped mountain, half-obscured by rain. To distract her I asked, ‘Is that Toe Head?’

She nodded. ‘The hill is called Chaipaval.’ It seemed bedded on sand, for the tide was out and the bay to the north was a dull, flat gleam running out to dunes. Dunes, too, formed the neck of land that made Toe Head a peninsula. But much of the sand-bunkered area had been bulldozed flat to make a camp and a landing place for helicopters. Seaward of the camp was a wired-off enclosure with blast protection walls. The whole effect — the tarmac apron, the tight-packed ranks of the hutted camp, the flat square of the launching pad — it was raw and violent, like a razor slash on an old oil-painting. ‘And that’s the rocket range, I suppose?’

She nodded. ‘Surprised?’ She gave me a quick, rather hesitant smile. ‘It always seems to surprise people. They’ve read about it in the papers, but when they actually see it …’

And she added, ‘Of course, being near the road, it’s much more obvious than the old range down on South Uist.’

In a few minutes now we should be at the camp. ‘Has a Major Braddock been posted up here?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘He arrived a few days ago.’ And after a moment she said, ‘Is that why you’re going to Northton?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping he’ll be able to get me across to Laerg.’

‘Laerg? Then it isn’t my father… You really are a painter.’ She gave a quick, nervous little laugh — as though laughing at her own foolishness. ‘I’m sorry, but, you see, we get so few people at Rodil — only fishermen, a few tourists, the occasional bird-watcher. Why aren’t you in the Mediterranean, somewhere warm and sunny? I never knew an artist come to the Hebrides, not for the winter.’ Her voice ran quickly on as though by talking she could conceal from me that the presence of an unexpected visitor had scared her. ‘You’re Scots, aren’t you? Perhaps that explains it. But an artist wanting to go to Laerg — it’s so unusual. And the birds will have flown. No gannets or puffins. They’ve all left now. What are you going to paint?’

‘The island,’ I said. ‘Laerg as the islanders knew it at the worst time of the year.’

She nodded. ‘I’ve never seen it. But Mike says it can be very beautiful, even in winter.’

We were in Northton now and I could see what it had been before the Army had come, a line of small crofts clinging to an old existence in a land as old as time. It was an anachronism now, pitiful-looking against the background of the camp with its fuel dump and its M.T. workshops and the barrack lines of its huts. ‘Where will I find Major Braddock?’ I asked.

‘His office is in the Admin, block. But he may not be there. He’s supposed to be flying to Laerg today.’ She drew up at the main gate where the model of a rocket stood and a notice board read: Joint Services Guided Weapons Establishment. ‘The Admin, block is down there on the left,’ she said. I thanked her and the little estate car drove off along a concrete roadway drifted with sand that led to another part of the camp.

There was no guard on the gate. I simply walked straight in. The huts stretched in two straight lines either side of a concrete road; sand everywhere and the rain driving like a thick mist. A staff car and two Land-Rovers stood parked outside the Admin, block. There was nobody about. I went in. Still nobody, and a long passage running the length of the hut with glass-panelled doors to the offices leading off it. I walked slowly down it, feeling oddly nervous, conscious of being an intruder in a completely alien world. Small wooden plaques announced the contents of each closed box of an office: RSM — W. T. Symes; Commanding Officer — Colonel S. T. Standing; 2nd-in-Command — Major G. H. Braddock, (this lettered in ink on a paper stick-on); Adjutant — Captain M. L. Ferguson.

I stood for a moment outside Braddock’s door, unwilling now to face the awkwardness of this moment. Lane and his snapshots seemed a whole world away and I felt suddenly foolish to have come so far on such an errand. How could the man possibly be my brother after all these years? But I had an excuse all worked out, the excuse that I wanted to visit Laerg. He could only refuse and at least I’d know for certain then. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I pushed it open. There was nobody inside and I had a feeling of relief at the sight of the empty desk.

There was a sliding hatch in the partition that separated this office from the adjutant’s and I could hear a voice talking. But when I went into the next office Captain Ferguson was alone at his desk. He was speaking into the telephone. He wore battledress, a ginger-haired youngster with a square freckled face and a Scots accent that took me back to my Glasgow days.

‘… I can see it is … Aye, well you check with the Met. Office… Damned if I do. You tell him yourself. He’s down at Leverburgh, but he’ll be back soon. Eleven at the latest, he said, and he’ll be mad as hell when he hears … Laddie, you haven’t met the man. He’ll be across to see you…. Okay, I’ll tell him.’ He put the phone down and looked at me. ‘Can I help you?’

‘My name’s Ross,’ I said. ‘I wanted to see Major Braddock.’

‘He’s out at the moment.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Back in about twenty minutes. Is he expecting you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I don’t know whether he’ll have time. He’s very busy at the moment. Could you tell me what it’s about?’

‘A private matter,’ I said. ‘I’d like to talk to him personally.’

‘Well, I don’t know…’

His voice doubtful. ‘Depends whether this flight’s on or not.’ He reached for his pad. ‘Ross, you said? Aye, I’ll tell him.’ He made a note of it and that was that. Nothing else I could do for the moment.

‘Could you tell me where I’ll find Cliff Morgan?’ I said. ‘He’s a meteorologist at Northton.’

‘Either at the Met. Office or in the bachelor quarters.’ He picked up the phone. ‘I’ll just check for you whether he’s on duty this morning. Get me the Met. Office, will you.’ He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘There are two of them there and they work it in shifts. Hello. That you Cliff? Well now look, laddie, drum up a decent forecast, will you. Ronnie Adams is on his way over to see you and he doesn’t like the look of the weather…. Yes, Himself — and he’ll raise hell if the flight’s off. Okay. And there’s a Mr Ross in my office. Wants to see you…. Yes, Ross.’

‘Donald Ross,’ I said.

‘Mr Donald Ross…. Aye, I’ll send him over.’ He put down the phone. ‘Yes, Cliffs on the morning shift. You’ll find the Met. Office right opposite you as you go out of the main gate. It’s below the Control Tower, facing the landing apron. And I’ll tell Major Braddock you’re here as soon as he gets back from Leverburgh.’

I wished then that I hadn’t given my name. But it couldn’t be helped. I zipped up my windbreaker, buttoning it tight across my throat. It was raining harder now and I hurried out through the gate and along the road to the hangar. Pools of rain lay on the parking apron where an Army helicopter stood like some pond insect, dripping moisture. The bulk of Chaipaval was blotted out by a squall. Rain lashed at the glistening surface of the tarmac. I ran for, the shelter of the tower, a raw concrete structure, ugly as a gun emplacement. Inside it had the same damp, musty smell. The Met. Office was on the ground floor. I knocked and went in.

It was a bleak dug-out of a room. Two steps led up to a sort of dais and a long, sloped desk that filled all the window space. The vertical backboard had a clock in the centre, wind speed and direction indicators; flanking these were schedules and code tables, routine information. The dust-blown windows, streaked with rain, filtered a cold, grey light. They faced south-west and the view was impressive because of the enormous expanse of sky. On the wall to my right were the instruments for measuring atmospheric pressure — a barograph and two mercury barometers. A Baby Belling cooker stood on a table in the corner and from a small room leading off came the clack of teleprinters.

The place was stuffy, the atmosphere stale with cigarette smoke. Two men were at the desk, their heads bent over a weather report. They looked round as I entered. One of them wore battledress trousers and an old leather flying jacket. He was thin-faced, sad-looking. His helmet and gloves lay on the desk, which was littered with forms and pencils, unwashed cups and old tobacco tin tops full of the stubbed-out butts of cigarettes. The other was a smaller man, short and black-haired, dressed in an open-necked shirt and an old cardigan. He stared at me short-sightedly through thick-lensed glasses. ‘Mr Ross?’ He had a ruler in his hand, holding it with fingers stained brown with nicotine. ‘My publishers wrote me you would be coming.’ He smiled. ‘It was a good jacket design you did for my book.’

I thanked him, glad that Robinson had taken the trouble to write. It made it easier. The clack of the teleprinter ceased abruptly. ‘No hurry,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait till you’ve finished.’

‘Sit down then, man, and make yourself comfortable.’ He turned his back on me then, leaning on the tubular frame of his swivel seat to continue his briefing.

‘…Surface wind speed twenty to twenty-five knots. Ousting perhaps forty. Rain squalls. Seven-eighths cloud at five hundred…. ‘ His voice droned on, touched with the lilt of his native valleys.

I was glad of the chance to study him, to check what I knew of Cliff Morgan against the man himself. If I hadn’t read his book I shouldn’t have known there was anything unusual about him. At first glance he looked just an ordinary man doing an ordinary routine job. He was a Welshman and he obviously took too little exercise. It showed in his flabby body and in the unhealthy pallor of his face. The shirt he wore was frayed and none too clean, the grey flannels shapeless and without crease, his shoes worn at the heels. And yet, concentrated now on his briefing, there was something about him that made my fingers itch to draw. The man, the setting, the pilot leaning beside him — it all came together, and I knew this would have made a better jacket for his book than the one I’d done.

The background of his book was a strange one. He had written it in prison, pouring into it all his enthusiasm for the unseen world of air currents and temperatures, of cold and warm fronts and the global movements of great masses of the earth’s atmosphere. It had been an outlet for his frustration, filled with the excitement he felt for each new weather pattern, the sense of discovery as the first pencilled circle — a fall in pressure of a single millibar perhaps reported by a ship out in the Atlantic — indicated the birth of a new storm centre. His quick, vivid turn of phrase had breathed life into the every-day meteorological reports and the fact that he was an amateur radio operator, a ‘ham’ in his spare time, had added to the fascination of the book, for his contacts were the weather ships, the wireless operators of distant steamers, other meteorologists, and as a result the scope of his observations was much wider than that of the ordinary airport weather man taking all his information from teleprinted bulletins.

How such a man came to be stationed in a God-forsaken little outpost like Northton needs some explanation. Though I didn’t know it at the time, there was already a good deal of gossip about him. He had been up there over six months, which was plenty of time for the facts to seep through, even to that out-of-the-way place. The gossip I don’t intend to repeat, but since the facts are common knowledge I will simply say this: there was apparently something in his metabolism that made him sexually an exhibitionist and attractive to women. He had become mixed up in a complex affair involving two Society women. One of them was married and a rather sordid divorce case had followed, as a result of which he had faced a criminal charge, had been found guilty and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. He had been a meteorologist at London Airport at the time. On his release from prison the Air Ministry had posted him to Northton, where I suppose it was presumed he could do little or no harm. But a man’s glands don’t stop functioning because he’s posted to a cold climate. Nor, thank God, do his wits — a whole ship’s company were to owe their lives to the accuracy of his predictions, amounting almost to a sixth sense where weather was concerned.

The pilot was leaving now. ‘Okay, Cliff, that settles it. No dice.’ He picked up his helmet and his gloves. ‘Pity they don’t admit it’s blowing like hell out there. No down-draughts. Shelter Bay calm as a mill-pond — that’s the report I had from Laerg earlier this morning.’

‘It’s always the same when the boys are waiting for their mail.’

‘That’s true. But this time I’m under pressure from both ends. The mail could just as well go by LCT, but then this fellow Braddock …’

A rain squall lashed the windows. ‘Just listen to that. He should try his hand at landing a helicopter — that’d teach him to be so bloody enthusiastic. What’s he want to do, commit suicide? When it’s gusting forty it whams down off Tarsaval….’ He stared angrily at the blurred panes. ‘Thank God they’re closing the place down. That idea of relying on a helicopter service through the winter months — who dreamed that one up?’

‘Colonel Standing.’

‘Well, it was bloody crazy. They’d have discovered the LCTs were more reliable.’

‘The landing craft never operated in Scottish waters after the end of September. You know that.’

‘Well, the trawler then. What was wrong with that?’

‘A question of cost; that’s what I heard, anyway. And there was still the problem of trans-shipping men and stores from ship to beach. They lost a lot of dories smashed up on the rocks or overturned.’

‘Well, if it’s a question of cost, dories are a damn sight cheaper than helicopters.’ He turned up the collar of his flight jacket, huddling down into it with a jerk of the shoulders. ‘Be seeing you, Cliff.’ But as he turned towards the door, it was flung open and Major Braddock entered. In place of the light suit he wore battledress, but it was the same face — the face of Lane’s photographs, lined and leathery, dark-tanned by the Mediterranean sun, and that scar running in a vertical line down the crease of the forehead to the nose.

‘What’s all this about the flight being off?’ Not a glance at me, yet he knew I was there. I could feel it. And that urgent vitality, the way he leaned forward, balanced like a runner on the balls of his feet. ‘Mike just told me. Is it definite?’

”Fraid so, sir,’ the pilot said. ‘You see …’

But he had turned to me. ‘You the guy that’s wanting to see me?’ The black eyes, staring straight at me, not, a flicker of recognition, only the twitch of a muscle to reveal the nervous tension.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My name’s Donald Ross.’

He smiled. And in that instant I was sure. He couldn’t change that smile; he’d relied too much on its charm all his life.

‘A private matter,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Okay, just let me deal with this… ‘

He swung round on the pilot then. ‘Now look here, Adams, it’s all arranged. I’m staying the night there and coming back by LCT tomorrow. Just because it’s a bit wet and windy … damn it, man, what do you expect in the Hebrides?’

‘It’s the down-draughts,’ the pilot said unhappily. ‘Being slammed down on the deck — well, you ask Cliff here. It just isn’t on, not in this weather.’

And Cliff Morgan agreed, nodding to the wind speed indicator. ‘Blowing twenty plus now, almost forty in the gusts. And beginning to veer already. It’ll be worse out there.’ He shook his head. ‘The forecast’s bad.’

‘The immediate forecast, d’you mean?’

‘Well, no. That’s bad enough. But I was thinking of the next forty-eight hours. I’ve an idea the wind’s going to veer and go on veering halfway round the clock. We could have a polar air stream with a drop in temperature of perhaps ten degrees and wind speeds as high as fifty, sixty knots.’

‘When?’

‘How do I know? It’s just a feeling I have. It may not happen that way at all.’ He indicated the wall to our left, where the big weather maps hung. ‘The lower one shows the position when I came on duty at six o’clock; it relates to o-o-o-one hours this morning. The upper one is my forecast of what the pattern will look like twenty-four hours later.’ This map was Perspex-framed and the isobars had been drawn in with Chinagraph pencil on the Perspex.

Here the High that had covered the British Isles for days, and which was still shown centred over Eastern Europe in the lower map, had disappeared completely, to be replaced by an intense depression behind it and a weak High over Greenland. ‘A south-westerly air stream now, you see — somewhere between twenty and forty knots. But the outlook is entirely dependent upon those two depressions and what happens to that High over Greenland. My feeling is this — those depressions are going to merge, the High is going to build up. The effect would be for that depression to intensify very rapidly. By tomorrow it could be a very deep one centred over Norway and if at the same time the High builds up …’

He shrugged. ‘Wind would be north, you see, gale force at least — perhaps very strong indeed. But there’s no certainty about it. Just my interpretation based on nothing more than a feeling I have.’

Braddock stared at the map. ‘Well, whether you’re right or wrong, the fine spell’s over, eh?’

‘Looks like it, Major.’

‘Still, if you’re right — northerlies; we’d still be able to use Shelter Bay.’

The phone rang and Cliff Morgan answered it. ‘For you,’ he said, handing it to Braddock.

I watched him as he took the call. The way the black brows came down and the lines deepened. The years had greatly changed him. His voice, too, harsher and more mature, ‘… Who? I see … badly hurt? … Okay, Mike, I’ll tell Adams.’ His eyes met mine for a moment as he put the receiver down. I thought he smiled, but it was so fleeting a movement of the mouth below the dark moustache that I couldn’t be sure. He got up, went over to the pilot and stood facing him. ‘Well now, that gives you a fine little problem. McGregor, the driver of the Scammell, has got himself badly smashed up. A piece of radar equipment toppled on him after he’d got it stuck on one of the bends of the High Road. His leg’s crushed right up to the thigh, abdominal injuries, too.’ And he stood over the wretched man, daring him to say that he still wouldn’t go, just as he’d stood over me when we were kids. ‘Doc says he must be flown out immediately.’

Adams licked his lips. ‘What about the LCTs?’

‘No good. Four-four-Double-o left Laerg at eleven-thirty last night. She should be in the South Ford by now. And Eight-six-one-o left shortly after two this morning …’

He shook his head. ‘It’d be almost twenty-four hours before we could get him ashore by LCT, and from what I gather he wouldn’t last that long. His life’s in your hands. Either you fly him out …’

He gave a little shrug and left it at that. And then he turned to me as though the matter were settled. ‘If you’re around when I get back tomorrow, we’ll have that chat, eh?’ He said it with his eyes staring straight at me, still not the slightest flicker and his voice so matter-of-fact I could easily have persuaded myself that he really was Braddock — just Braddock and nothing to do with me.

‘I’ll be here,’ I said.

He nodded and went towards the door, opening it and marching straight out, leaving Adams standing there.

Cliff Morgan glanced again at the wind speed and direction indicators, pencilled a note or two on a piece of paper and passed it to the pilot. Adams took it, but he didn’t look at it, nor did he look at the meteorologist. He didn’t seem conscious that we were both of us watching him. He was facing the window, his eyes turned inwards, his whole mind given to the decision. I knew the answer, just as Braddock had known it. Adams knew it, too. I watched him bow to the inevitable, turning up the collar of his flight jacket and walking out without a word, the decision to fly made against his better judgment.

It was the moment that things began to go wrong, but none of us could know that, though perhaps Cliff Morgan sensed it, or again perhaps he knew his weather better than the rest of us. ‘The poor bastard!’ he murmured, and I knew he was referring to the pilot, not to the injured man.

He looked at me as the door shut behind Adams. They vary, you know,’ he said. ‘In temperament.’ And he added, ‘If it had been Bill Harrison now, he wouldn’t have hesitated. A reckless devil, Bill; but he knows his own mind. He’d never have let himself be forced into it like that.’ He sucked on the end of his pencil, hollowing his cheeks, and then with a quick, abrupt movement, he went into the back room, tore off the teleprint sheets and came back reading them. ‘This bloody evacuation, that’s what it is, man. Thinking God Almighty would arrange the weather for them whilst they got their men and equipment off the island. I warned them.’

It was the first I’d heard about the evacuation, and realising this he began to explain as we stood by the window, watching Braddock and Adams walk out to the helicopter and climb in. But I barely took in what he was saying, for my mind had room only for one thought at that moment — the certainty that Braddock was my brother. This in itself was such a staggering revelation that it was only later that I began to consider the other factors — why, for instance, he had applied for a posting to the Hebrides, why he should have been so set on Adams making the flight?

The engine started, the rotor blades began to turn and the helicopter rose from the parking apron, drifting sideways in a gust and just clearing the hangar. Almost immediately its shape became blurred; then it vanished completely, lost in the low cloud and a squall of rain. For a moment longer the engine was faintly audible. Then that, too, was swallowed up as rain lashed at the windows.

The risk they ran in attempting that flight was something I couldn’t assess; I had no experience then of the incredible malignant power of the down-draughts that come smashing down from Tarsaval and the other heights of Laerg, down into Shelter Bay. Nor was it possible for me to absorb the whole complex set-up of this military operation into the midst of which I had suddenly been pitchforked. Even when Cliff Morgan had explained to me the details of the evacuation, how Braddock had insisted on sending a detachment with towing vehicles down to the old rocket range on South Uist so that the LCTs could beach in the South Ford as an alternative to Leverburgh, the night-and-day drive to get Laerg cleared and the round-the-clock movement of landing craft, I still didn’t appreciate how vulnerable the whole operation was to the weather. I had no experience of landing craft.

Nor for that matter had Cliff Morgan. But weather to him was a living thing, the atmosphere a battleground. He had, as I’ve said, a sixth sense where weather was concerned and he was very conscious of the changed pattern. ‘A polar air stream now,’ He said to himself as though facing the implications for the first time. ‘Jesus, man!’ He lit a cigarette, staring at me over the flame. ‘Know anything about weather?’

‘A little,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear.

‘No imagination — that’s the Army for you. Look at Braddock. Up into the air and not a clue what he faces at the other end. And Standing — you’d think Standing would try to understand. He’s got brains. But no imagination, you see, none at all.’ He slid his bottom on to the swivel seat and drew a sheet of paper towards him. ‘Look you now, I’ll draw it for you. As I see it — in here.’ And he tapped his forehead. ‘Not the wind on my face, but a map, a chart, a picture. Imagination! But dammo di, they’re none of them Celts. Though Braddock-’ He shook his head as though he weren’t quite certain about Braddock, and then he reached for a blank sheet of paper and with his pen drew a map that included North America, Greenland, Norway — the whole North Atlantic. On this he pencilled in the existing pattern; the Azores High bulging north towards Ireland and the two Lows driving that other High, that had been over England, east towards Russia.

‘Now, the area I’m watching is down here.’ His pencil stabbed the left-hand bottom edge of the map. ‘That’s about seven hundred miles north-east of Bermuda. It’s the place where our depressions are born — the place where the cold, dry air from the north, sweeping down the east of North America, meets up with the warm, damp air of the Gulf Stream. It’s the breeding place for every sort of beastliness — hurricanes bound for the States, big depressions that move across the North Atlantic at tremendous speed to give Iceland, and sometimes the Hebrides and the north of Scotland, wind speed almost as bad as the much-publicised Coras and Ethels and Janets and what-have-yous that cause such havoc in America. Now look at this.’

He picked up a red pencil and with one curving sweep drew an arrow across to the area between Iceland and Norway. ‘There! That’s your Low now.’ He drew it in, a deep depression centred over Norway, extending west as far as Iceland, east into Siberia. And then on the other side, over towards Greenland and Canada, more isobars drawn in with long, curving sweeps of hand and pencil. A high pressure area, and between the High and the Low, in ink, he marked in arrows pointing south and southeast. ‘That’s a polar air stream for you. That’s a real big polar air stream, with the wind roaring out of the arctic and temperatures falling rapidly. Snow at first in the north. Then clear skies and bitter cold.’

He stared at it for a moment, an artist regarding his handiwork. ‘I haven’t seen that sort of weather pattern up here — not at this time of the year. But I experienced it once in Canada just after the war when I was working for the Department of Transport at Goose Bay. By Christ, man, that was something. A Low over Greenland, a High centred somewhere over the mouth of the Mackenzie River and a polar air stream pouring south across the Labrador.’

fie drew it for me then on another sheet of paper, adding as his red pencil circled in the pattern, ‘Have you any idea what a polar air stream means up there in the Canadian North in October — to the Eskimos, the prospectors, the ships in Hudson Bay?’ And when I shook my head he embarked on an explanation. I can’t remember all he said; I found myself listening to the tone of his voice rather than to his actual words. It had become noticeably more Welsh, a distinct lilt that seemed to change his personality. It was his enthusiasm for the subject, I suppose, but all at once he was like a poet, painting with words on a canvas that was one quarter of the globe. I listened, fascinated; and as he talked the red pencil was constantly moving, filling in that old atmospheric battle picture until the high pressure system over north-western Canada had become a great whorl of concentric lines.

Like an artist he couldn’t resist the picture as a whole, but as his pencil flew over Greenland and down as far as the Azores, it was this big High he talked about; the effect it had had on people, animals and crops — on transportation, particularly aircraft and ships. The High represented cold, heavy air; clean, crisp, dry-frozen stuff hugging the earth’s surface, weighing down on thousands of square miles of ocean, thousands of square miles of pack ice. The winds around this cold mass had been clockwise and wherever they had touched the periphery of the low pressure area to the east, the movement of the cold air stream had been accelerated to hurricane force. At first those gales had been blizzards, thick with driving snow as damp, humid masses of air were forced into the upper atmosphere and cooled to the point of precipitation. ‘When that High got really established,’ he said, ‘there was snow in many places that didn’t expect it for another month. Blizzards in the Middle West of Canada reaching south across the border into the States, and that High was like a young giant. It went on drawing strength into itself — like a boxer in training and working himself up for the big fight.’

‘You make it sound very dramatic,’ I said.

‘Weather is dramatic, man; indeed it is, when you’ve got something like that building up.’ He was entirely engrossed in the picture he had drawn from memory. ‘It’s fluid, you see; always a shifting pattern, never still. It’s a battlefield of pressures and temperatures and humidity; Highs versus Lows, with the cold fronts and the warm fronts the points of engagement. A break-through at one point can spell disaster a thousand, two thousand miles away — a ship overwhelmed, breakwaters demolished, the flooding of lowlands, the destruction of houses, death to men and livestock.’

He was being carried away again on the tide of his imagination. But then he suddenly stopped. ‘It was a long time ago. But I can remember it — by God I can.’ He picked up the map he’d drawn, stared at it for a moment, then crumpled it up and threw it into the biscuit tin that acted as a wastepaper basket. ‘That’s just one of dozens of maps I could draw you — weather I’ve known. Some of it I covered in my book. And when this High disintegrates or that Low fills in it’s something different again.’ He turned with a quick movement of his head to stare at the map framed on the wall, the Chinagraph bright on the Perspex. ‘Those two Lows coming in. Look at them. I’m already getting figures that complicate the whole picture. They may behave normally. They may remain separate entities. But somehow, I don’t know why exactly, they worry me. That’s something you learn in this game, you see — it’s ninety per cent science, a matter of filling in figures, but there’s the other ten per cent… your instinct comes into it then, instinct based on experience.’ He gave a little laugh and shook his head. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said, ‘whilst I catch up on my homework.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Another fifteen minutes and then we’ll go over to the Mess for lunch. I expect you could do with a drink. 1 certainly could.’

I sat and watched him checking his instruments, going through the teleprinter sheets, flying a balloon to check ceiling height, marking up his meteorological forms, phoning his report through to Pitreavie, and all the time I was thinking of Iain, trying to remember him as I had last seen him, nineteen years old and wearing battledress, the sergeant’s stripes white-new on his arm. He’d been drunk that night and within the week he’d sailed with his unit out of the Clyde, bound for North Africa — Operation Torch’.

‘Can I have a piece of paper?’ I said, and when Morgan passed me a scribbling pad, I began pencilling a sketch from memory. The result was the same as when I had tried it in my studio with that bloody little Canadian businessman breathing down my neck. I wondered what Lane was doing now — would he come up here to bust Braddock’s identity wide open?

I didn’t like the thought of that. The wild streak in Iain had always bordered on violence. That poor devil of a lieutenant, his jaw smashed — and there had been other incidents, before that; big Neil McNeill knocked senseless with an oar after he’d shot a seal. My fault that time. I hadn’t wanted the seal killed and when it was done I’d flown at Big Neil, blubbering with anger, and got a kick in the groin that sprawled me screaming in the bottom of the boat. And in Glasgow, at that factory — they’d called him Black Iain — black because of his temper and his dark features and his arrogance. They’d picked him up drunk one night and he’d knocked out three policemen and got away. That was the night he joined the Army.

‘That’s Braddock.’ I looked up to find Morgan standing over me with a puzzled look. ‘Yes, Braddock,’ I said. I’d have to call him Braddock now. I’d have to think of him as Braddock. I tore the sheet from the pad, crumpled it, and tossed it into the biscuit tin.

‘You made him look much younger.’

‘I was just passing the time.’

He gave me a sharp, inquiring look, nodded and went back to the desk. It was a warning. I’d have to be careful. And if Lane came north.

Cliff Morgan was at the barograph now. He went back to his work at the desk and, watching him again, I was conscious of a tenseness. It showed in the way he paused every now and then to stare out of the window, the quick glances at the wind speed indicator. And then the phone rang. ‘All right, Mike — as soon as I’m relieved.’ He slammed the receiver down. ‘Can I give Colonel Standing a weather briefing? No interest in this office so long as the sun’s shining, but now it’s wet and blowing half a gale.’ He shrugged. ‘Have you met Colonel Standing?’ And when I told him No, he added, ‘I’ll introduce you then. Alec Robinson said something about your wanting to get to Laerg and for that you need Standing’s permission.’

Prompt at twelve Cliff Morgan’s junior came dripping in out of the rain, a quiet, reserved man who gave me a fleeting smile as we were introduced. His name was Ted Sykes. ‘I hear Ronnie took off. What’s his ETA?’

‘About twelve-thirty. Wind speed’s twenty-five knots — almost a dead-noser.’ Cliff Morgan pulled his jacket on and took a tie from the pocket.

‘Rather him than me,’ Sykes said, at the desk now, rifling through the teleprint sheets. ‘Braddock with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I hope it keeps fine for them.’ He said it sourly. It was obvious neither of them liked it. Cliff Morgan was standing at the desk, tying his tie, staring at the grey misery of the sky. Rain dribbled down the panes.

‘There’s a casualty to be lifted out.’

‘So I heard.’

‘Keep your fingers crossed then.’ He turned abruptly and got his raincoat, and then we were out in the wind and the rain, hurrying through pools of water to the camp. ‘Better not ask for a flight out to Laerg. It means a bloody chit, you see, and they don’t like it. Landing craft’s all right. I think Standing would agree to that.’ His voice came to me, staccato fragments blown on the wind. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. But it’ll be rough. You a good sailor?’ And when I told him I’d had almost eleven years at sea, he nodded. ‘That’s all right then. At least you’ll see Laerg as it really is. Funny thing. I’ve never been there. Wanted to ever since I came up here. No time, and now it’s being evacuated.’ We had reached the Admin, block. ‘You might offer to do some sketches of the evacuation. Standing, you see, is not a man who’s very easy with strangers, but he’s artistic. Paints a bit himself and I’m told he has some interesting pictures up at his house. Nudes mostly, but not sexy — the real thing.’

Standing was waiting for us in his office, tall and slightly stooped with a thin, serious face and glasses, a tight, unsmiling mouth. He looked a cold, moody man and his long-fingered hands were seldom still, nervously shifting the papers on his desk, toying with the slide-rule or gently tapping. Cliff Morgan introduced me as an artist who wanted to visit Laerg, but all I got was a nod and a cold stare. He had Ferguson with him and he was only interested in one thing, the weather. He listened to what Morgan had to say, his eyes on the window which was tight-shut against the wind. The view was depressing — the brown creosoted back of a hut, a grey waste of sky and the rain driving.

‘Can Adams get the man out? That’s all I want to know.’ Even then he didn’t look at Cliff Morgan, but sat staring at the window, drumming with his fingers.

‘Only Ronnie could tell you that,’ Cliff answered, and I sensed his antagonism.

‘Adams isn’t here. I’m asking you, Mr Morgan.’

‘I’m a meteorologist. I feed the pilot information. He makes his own decisions.’

‘I know that, I’m asking your opinion.’

Cliff shrugged. ‘It’s dicey — but then that’s to be expected when you’re flying to a place like Laerg.’ The native lilt was stronger now.

‘The decision was made in your office, I believe. Did Major Braddock order Adams to fly?’

‘How could he? It’s the pilot’s decision — always. You know that.’

‘Very well. I will put it another way. Would Captain Adams have flown if there hadn’t been an injured man to bring out?’

‘No.’

Colonel Standing sighed and reached for his slide-rule, running it back and forth in his hands. ‘Two men’s lives and an expensive machine.’ He was staring at the slide-rule as though calculating the risk in terms of a mathematical equation. ‘Captain Fairweather has all he needs, hasn’t he?’ This with a quick glance at his Adjutant. ‘I mean the hospital is still functioning, isn’t it?’

‘Aye, but it’s little better than a first-aid post now, sir. And Fairweather’s not a surgeon.’

‘He’s still a member of the medical profession. If he has to operate, then he’s got the means and we can link him up with Scottish Command and give him a surgeon’s guidance.’ He dropped the slide-rule. ‘Have them contact Adams. He’s to cancel the flight and return immediately. Now what’s the landing craft position? Stratton is the more experienced of the two. Where’s Eight-six-one-o?’

‘She passed through the Sound of Harris about nine-thirty this morning. If the tide’s right, she should be beaching any moment now.’

‘In the South Ford.’

‘Aye. They’re double-banked, you see. If you remember, sir, it was to cope with just this eventuality that Major Braddock arranged for a stand-by detachment based on the old range. Four-four-Double-o cleared from Laerg on the same tide, about three hours after Stratton. She’d have been in Leverburgh by now if it hadn’t been for a wee bit of trouble with one of the oil pumps. It slowed her down for a while.’

‘How far out is she — an hour, two hours?’

‘Two I should think. I’ll check if you like.’

‘No, there’s no time.’ Standing’s fingers were drumming gently on the desk again. ‘It makes no difference anyway. She’s the nearest. A pity it’s Kelvedon and not Stratton. But it can’t be helped. Have Signals contact him: Four-four-Double-o to turn round and make back to Laerg at full speed to pick up a casualty.’

‘It’ll be eight, maybe nine hours before she gets there. A falling tide then and it’ll be dark.’

‘They should be able to run their bows in, pick the man up and winch off again. There won’t be much of a sea running in the Bay. He’ll just have to do the best he can. See if you can speak to Kelvedon yourself, explain the urgency.’

Ferguson hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t have a word with Bob Fairweather first? Maybe the man’s condition …’

‘No, Ferguson. Captain Fairweather’s concern is with the injured man. I have to consider what the position will be if Major Braddock and Captain Adams are injured, perhaps killed, and their machine written off. All right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Contact Adams first. Then have a word with Kelvedon and get Four-four-Double-o turned round as soon as you can.’

‘She’ll still be loaded.’

‘Of course she will. That can’t be helped. Now get moving. Every minute counts.’ He watched his Adjutant leave. Then when the door was shut he turned to me. ‘You’ve come at an awkward time.’ His voice shook slightly, so did his hands; his nerves were strung taut by the decision he’d had to make.

‘I didn’t realise you were evacuating the island,’ I said.

He was staring down at the desk. Behind him on the wall hung a six-inch to the mile map of Laerg and beside it were graphs, presumably of the past season’s shooting; part of the skin of a rocket, a jagged, crumpled piece of light alloy, lay on the floor beside his chair. ‘There’s always somebody wanting to go to Laerg — naturalists, birdwatchers, archaeologists. They’re a darned nuisance.’

‘My father was born in Learg.’

I made no impression. He wasn’t interested in the island as such. Later I learned that in the year he’d been in the Hebrides, he’d only visited Laerg once — a quick trip by helicopter on a fine day. ‘You’re an artist, you say. Professional?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded to the wall behind me. ‘What do you think of that?’

It was a landscape, the mountains of Harris by the look of it, in sunlight with a glimpse of the sea. The brush-work was technically quite good, but it lacked feeling. I didn’t know what to say for I knew he’d done it himself, and presumably he liked it since he’d hung it in his office.

‘Well?’

I hesitated; but better to be honest. I told him it was nice but that I didn’t think the artist was at home with his subject. To my surprise he nodded agreement. ‘I hung it there just to remind me that the sun does shine up here sometimes. It was hot when I painted that. But you’re right — I’m not at home with landscapes. If you’re here for a time I’ll show you some others. My wife models for me.’ The phone rang on his desk. ‘Standing here. Thinks he can make it?’ He glanced at the window as the rain beat against it in a gust of wind. ‘Tell Adams it’s an order. Yes. Ferguson, an order, do you hear?’ He was trembling again as he put the phone down. For a moment he just sat there, drumming with his fingers at the desk. Then, as though suddenly conscious of my presence again, he said, ‘All right, Ross, we’ll see what we can do. Are you any good at seascapes, ships, that sort of thing?’

‘Sea and mountains and rock,’ I said; ‘that’s what I like to paint.’

‘Good. A sketch or two of the evacuation — a painting perhaps; the DRA would like that, particularly if there are some birds in it.’ I pointed out that the birds wouldn’t be back for another three months. ‘Well, there’s such a thing as artists’ licence. The General likes birds.’ He hesitated. Finally he nodded. ‘All right. Have a word with Ferguson. He’ll fix it with the Movements Officer and arrange with one of the landing craft skippers to take you out. You’ll have about two days there, maybe three.’

‘It’ll be something just to see the island,’ I said.

‘So long as you don’t get in Captain Pinney’s way. They’re under considerable pressure. Where are you staying?’ And when I told him I was camping at Rodil, he said, ‘We can do better than that. I’ll tell Ferguson to allocate you a room for the night. We’ve always plenty of space in the winter months.’

I thanked him and followed Cliff Morgan out of the stuffy little office into the cold, driving rain. I was feeling in a daze. First Iain, and now Laerg … Laerg within reach at last. ‘I didn’t think it would be as easy as that,’ I murmured.

‘Well, they’re not worried about security, you see. The place is a write-off and that makes it easier than when they were lobbing missiles into the water beside it. But you wouldn’t have got there if you hadn’t been an artist.’ And he added, ‘You never know where you are with Standing. And now that Braddock’s here.

He left it at that. ‘What about Braddock?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’s all right, whatever anybody else may say. By God he’s woken this place up since he arrived. Yes indeed, and he’ll have a drink with you, which is more than Standing will.”

The bar was deserted when we reached the Mess. But as we stood there drinking our gin-and-tonic, the officers drifted in one by one. Major Rafferty, the Quartermaster, a big beefy man with a florid face and a Scots accent; the Movements Officer, Fred Flint — short and round with a button nose and the face of a pug, all bulging eyes and a way of dropping his aitches and watching with a glint of humour to see if it startled you; the Doc, also a captain, but younger, with the air of a man nothing can surprise any more; several lieutenants, much younger still; and finally Field — Lieutenant Field who was old enough to be their father. He had a strange hatchet face, grey hair and a mouth that drooped at the corners. His eyes were deep-socketed, tired — blue eyes that had a nervous blink and didn’t look straight at you, but beyond, as though searching for some lost horizon. ‘our Education Officer,’ the ebullient Captain Flint added as he introduced us. ‘Now what y’aving, Professor?’

‘Oh, that’s very thoughtful of you, Flinty. Let me see now. The usual, I think — a gin-and-tonic without the gin.’ He smiled and the smile lit up his whole face so that it suddenly had a quality of great warmth. It was a striking face; moreover, it was a face that seemed vaguely familiar. But not in battledress; in some other rig. ‘I take it the LCTs are all at sea since Movements can take time off for a lunchtime drink.’

‘All at sea is just about right, Professor. Stratton’s missed his tide and dropped his hook under the lee outside Loch Carnan. It’ll be five hours at least before he can get her into the beaching position in the Ford, another three before the boys can start off-loading. Major B will like that — I don’t think.’

‘Braddock won’t know anything about it. He’s flown to Laerg.’

‘Oh yes he will. I just met the Colonel. He’s cancelled the flight. And he’s turned Four-four-Double-o round fully loaded and sent her steaming back to Laerg to pick up a casualty. Proper box-up if you ask me.’

‘Well, why not switch Stratton’s ship to Leverburgh?’ Major Rafferty suggested. ‘Damn it, man, with Kelvedon turned back, the quay will be empty.’

‘Tim, my boy, you’re a genius. I never thought of that.’ The quick grin faded. ‘I did mention it, but Stratton told me to go to hell. His men needed sleep, and so does he. If Major B wants Eight-six-one-o at Leverburgh, then he’ll have to give the order himself. I bet he gets the same answer, too. Those boys are just about out on their feet, and Stratton’s his own master. He’s not at the beck and call of anybody here — the Colonel or anybody else. I only hope,’ he added, ‘that Kelvedon gets there in time.’ He looked down at his glass and then at Field. ‘Did you know this bloke McGregor?’ And when the other nodded, he said, ‘Poor beggar. First blood to the new drive.’ His voice sounded angry. ‘And if you ask me it won’t be the last. When they’re tired they get careless. I told Command it needed more time when they were planning this flipping operation. But they wouldn’t listen. I’m only the bloke that loads the ships. I wouldn’t know.’ Ferguson came in then, the freckles on his face showing up like spots in the electric light, a strained look about the eyes. ‘You look shagged, my boy. I prescribe a night out with the fattest trollop you can find between the Butt of Lewis and Barra Head.’

‘Aye, that’d do me fine.’

‘What’s the matter? Caught between the upper and the nether millstone again?’

‘If by that you mean what I think you mean, then the answer is Yes and it’ll cost you a Scotch for stating the obvious. The Colonel ordered Major B to turn back.’

‘We know that. And he’s bust the schedule wide open by converting Four-four-Double-o into a hospital ship.’

‘This is going to put everyone in a good temper for the rest of the day.’ Major Rafferty downed his drink and set his tankard on the bar top. ‘That poor laddie, Doc — how is he?’

‘He’s still alive.’ The M.O. ordered another Scotch.

‘What are his chances?’

The dark eyebrows lifted. ‘Now? Nil, I should say. If they’d got him out by air.’ He shrugged. ‘But I told the Colonel that. So did Bob Fairweather. McGregor had the whole of that crushing weight on top of him for almost an hour before they were able to release him.’

There was a hushed silence. ‘Oh, well,’ Flint said, ‘let’s have some lunch.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and hitched up his trousers. ‘And after lunch,’ he added, ‘I’m going to have a ziz. Four o’clock this morning, two the night before and stone the bloody crows it looks like four again tomorrow morning.’ He glanced at me, his eyes popping with that irrepressible glint of Cockney humour. ‘Four o’clock suit you — Captain Stratton driving and an iron bathtub slamming into a head sea fit to knock your block off?’

‘For Laerg?’ I asked.

‘That’s right — where the Jumblies live. The Colonel mentioned it to me just now. I’ll fix it with Stratton; he’ll give you the ride of your life … that is if our weather genius ‘ere doesn’t frighten him so as he loses his nerve.’

‘Water Transport take the shipping forecasts,’ Cliff said. ‘They don’t trust me.’

‘It isn’t that, Cliff. It’s just that Stratton believes in continuity — likes his forecasts all the time from the same source. But shipping forecasts — hell! What I’ve seen of the shipping forecasts up here, they only tell you what you’ve got sitting on top of you, never what you’re going to get — which for my money is the only thing worth a damn.’ He turned to me. ‘What’s your view? I gather you’ve put in a good deal of sea time?’

It was said of politeness to include me in the conversation, and as I stood there, sipping my drink and listening to their talk, I was conscious that this was a tight-knit, closed little world, a community not unlike a ship’s company. They accepted me, as they accepted Cliff Morgan — not as one of themselves, but as an interesting specimen of the outside world, to be tolerated and treated kindly. I was even more conscious of this at lunch, which was a good meal pleasantly served by a bright little Hebridean waitress. The atmosphere was a strange mixture of democracy and paternal difference; and the youngsters calling me ‘sir’ to remind me how the years had flown. ‘What do you think of modern art, sir?’ Picasso, Moore, Annigoni — a reproduction of Annigoni’s picture of the Queen hung on the Mess wall; they knew the most publicised names and seemed eager for artistic information, so that for the moment they gave me the illusion of being a visiting genius, and I hoped to God I didn’t sound pompous as I tried to answer their queries.

And then Braddock came in and the table fell suddenly silent. He sat down without a word to anyone, and I could see by the way his head was tucked down into his shoulders that he was in a blazing temper.

‘Too bad you didn’t make it,’ Major Rafferty murmured.

The black brows came down in a frown. ‘Too bad, you say?’ His tone was clipped and angry. ‘If Adams had had any sense he’d have unplugged his radio. We’d have made it all right.’

‘Have you seen the Colonel?’

‘He’d gone up to his house by the time we landed. Anyway, no point. He’s made his decision.’ He started in on his soup. But after a moment he glanced at the Movements Officer. ‘Flint. What’s the ETA for that landing craft?’

‘At Laerg? Eight-thirty — nine o’clock. Maybe later. She’s bucking a head sea. And that’s presuming they don’t have any more trouble with that oil pump.’

‘Which means embarking a stretcher case from a dory in the dark.’

‘Unless Kelvedon beaches her. The wind’s westerly. Shelter Bay shouldn’t be too …’

‘He’s not to beach her — do you understand? Stratton might do it. He’s an old hand up here, but Kelvedon’s new and if he gets his craft …’ He gave a quick shrug. ‘I’ll have a word with him.’ His eyes, shifting along the table, met mine for a moment. There was a hardness, an urgency about him. Maybe it was telepathy — I had always been able to sense his mood; I had the feeling that there was something he desperately wanted, something quite unconnected with the injured man. I was remembering the scene in the Met. Office, his determination to make that flight. And then from the files of my memory a sentence sprang: It’s the breath of life to you, isn’t it, Donald? But I tell ye, man, it’s death to me. That I know — deep down. Death, do ye hear, and ‘I’ll not be going there for you or anybody else. So long ago now, but I could hear his voice still. He’d been talking of Laerg — just after that trawler had brought me back. Had he forgotten? For some reason I’d never been able to fathom, he’d been afraid of the place, as though it bore him some personal animosity; and yet at the same time he’d been fascinated — a fascination that was born of his instinctive, almost primitive fear of it. And now he was desperate to get there, had had himself posted up here to the Hebrides for that purpose; why?

The table had fallen silent, an awkward stillness. One by one the officers rose, put their napkins in the pigeonholes on the side-table and went out into the lounge for coffee. I rose with Cliff Morgan, conscious that Braddock was watching me. ‘Mr Ross.’ Strange that he could call me that. His dark eyes held no glimmer of a smile, his voice no trace of the old Highland accent. ‘We’ll have our talk — later.’

I nodded and went out. Surely to God I couldn’t be mistaken. Field handed me my coffee. ‘Sugar?’ I shook my head. The radio was playing softly — some jazzed-up singer mouthing of love. ‘You met my daughter, Marjorie, I think.’ I nodded, my mind still on Braddock. ‘I thought perhaps you’d care to drop in this evening. We’re not far, just beyond the church at Rodil; one of the old black houses. As a painter it might interest you. About nine o’clock. Would that suit you?’

It was kind of him, almost as though he’d known what it was like to lie alone in a small tent on the shores of a loch with a gale tearing at the nylon canopy. I felt I was very near to remembering that face then, but still the connection evaded me. In a newspaper, or a magazine, perhaps. I thanked him and added, ‘But I believe I’m staying the night in the quarters here.’

He turned to Ferguson. ‘Will you be along tonight, Mike? Marjorie’s expecting you.’

‘Yes, of course — my lords and masters permitting.’

‘Then bring Mr Ross with you.’

It wasn’t the sort of face you could forget, just like an axehead, keen and sharp in the features and broadening out to the head. I was still thinking about this when Cliff Morgan said he was going over to his quarters and suggested I might like to see his radio equipment.

Outside, the rain had stopped and the overcast had lifted. ‘That’s the warm front — it’s passed over us, you see.’ The wind was still as strong, west now and colder. ‘Whatever Braddock says, Colonel Standing was right to recall Adams. This is no weather for a helicopter landing on Laerg.’ The quarters were only a step from the Mess. He led me down a long passage and stopped at Room Number 23. As he unlocked the door, he said, ‘I don’t sleep here, except when I’m calling Canada or some place that means staying up half the night. I’ve billeted myself out with a widow and her daughter in one of the crofts in Northton. Very irregular, but I like my comfort, you see.’ He smiled and pushed open the door. There was a bed thrust close against one wall, a bureau and wardrobe huddled in a corner; all the rest of the room was taken up with his equipment. ‘Since I published that book I’ve been able to buy all the things I couldn’t afford before. It’s been produced in the States and translated into German, Italian and Swedish. Now I have everything I need; very complete it is now.’ He switched on, seated himself at the keyboard with his earphones. ‘It’s the weather I’m interested in. But you know that, of course. Now I want to find one or two ships who can tell me what it’s like out to the west and north of here.’ His hands, delicate as a pianist’s, were fingering the dials, deftly tuning. The tall cabinet full of valves began to hum gently. And then his right hand thumbed the key and the soft buzz of his call sign sounded in the room. He was lost to me now, silent in a world of his own.

I sat on the bed, smoking a cigarette and watching him. Time passed. I found some paper in the bureau and began to sketch him. Periodically he spoke, but to himself rather than to me: ‘The Kincaid. An old freighter that, six thousand tons. She’s outward bound for the Saguenay to pick up a cargo of aluminium. Reports wind north-easterly, force four … Bismuth — that’s one of the Hastings on air reconnaissance five hundred miles west of Ireland; reporting to Bracknell.’ He picked up two more ships out in the Atlantic, and then he was talking to a trawler south-east of Iceland. ‘Arctic Ranger. Wind veering northerly and a swell coming down past the east coast of Iceland. Getting quite cold up there. Temperature down to thirty-eight and flurries of snow. Wind increasing, around thirty-five knots.’ He took off his earphones. ‘I think I’ll go up to the office now and see what Ted has on the teleprints.’ He switched off.

‘Worried?’ I asked. I had finished my sketch and was lounging back on the bed.

‘No, not worried. Uneasy, though. And if it develops as I think it might.’ He pushed his chair back and stood there a moment, running his hand through his thick dark hair, biting on the pencil clenched between his teeth. ‘It would be unusual — so early in the season. In January now.’ He gave that quick little shrug of his that always seemed accompanied by a sideways movement of the head, and then he was pacing up and down; half a dozen steps and then about and retrace them, back and forth with his eyes on the ground, not seeing anything but what was in his mind. He could have got the habit from his time in prison, but I thought it more likely to be the loneliness of his job. He was a solitary. Why otherwise become a meteorologist and then take to operating a ‘ham’ radio station as a hobby? There are countless men like Cliff Morgan — intelligent, sensitive, artists in their way. They get on all right with women, but escape from the competitive male world by burying themselves body and soul in work that is concerned with things rather than people — impersonal things. With Cliff it was the impersonal forces of the earth’s atmosphere, his human contacts mostly made at one remove through the tenuous medium of the ether. I wondered what he’d do if he met opposition — direct opposition, man to man, on his own ground. I thought perhaps he could be very tricky then, perhaps behave with quite astonishing violence.

He had stopped his pacing and was standing over me, staring down at the sketch I’d drawn. ‘You work pretty fast.’

‘It’s just a rough,’ I said. ‘Pencil sketch of a man who’s made his work his life.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, I can relax. Indeed I can — if she’s pretty enough. But then there’s not much difference, is there now; women and weather, they both have their moods, they can both destroy a man. That’s why storms are given girls’ names. Do you need that sketch? I mean, if you were just drawing to pass the time.’

I saw he really wanted it. ‘It’s your paper anyway,’ I said and I handed it to him. He stood for a moment looking down at it. Then he placed it carefully on the keyboard. ‘This trip to Laerg,’ he said. ‘Do you have to go — I mean now, tomorrow morning?’

‘Of course I’m going,’ I told him. ‘It’s what I’ve wanted ever since I returned to England.’

He nodded. ‘Well, let’s go over to the Met. Office and see what makes. But I’m telling you, man, you could have it very rough indeed.’

‘No good telling me,’ I said. ‘Better tell the skipper of the landing craft.’

He didn’t say anything, and when I glanced at him, his face was clouded, his mind concentrated on a world beyond the one in which we walked. Two big towing trucks went grinding past trundling red-painted trailers piled with stores. I don’t think he even saw them, and in the Met. Office he went straight to the teleprint file and without a word to Sykes settled down at the desk to mark up a weather map.

Now that I knew something of the set-up, the Met. Office seemed somehow different — familiar ground like the bridge of a ship. The rain had stopped and it was lighter, the visibility much greater. To the left I could see the single hangar standing in the drifted sand like a stranded hulk. It was the only building in sight. Ahead, the wide windows looked out across the tarmac to a sea of dune grass rippling in the wind, humped and hollowed, as full of movement as the sea itself. And beyond the grass-grown dunes was the white blur of broken water, wind-blown waves moving in long regular lines towards the Sound of Harris.

Standing there, with the instruments of meteorology all around me, it wasn’t difficult to slip into the mood of men like Cliff Morgan, to visualise the world they lived in, that great amorphous abstract world of atmosphere. I found myself thinking of Laerg, out there beyond the sea’s dim horizon. I had seen photographs of it — etchings, too, by the Swedish artist, Roland Svensson. It was the etchings I was thinking of now, for I was sure Svensson had caught the mood of the wild wet world better than any photograph. Unconsciously I found my legs straddled as though to balance myself against the movement of a ship. A few hours and I should be on my way, steaming towards those sheer rock islands that for over thirty years had existed in my mind as the physical embodiment of an old man I had greatly loved.

Oddly, I felt no elation at the prospect; only a sense of awe. In my mind’s eye I saw the cliffs rising sheer — black and dripping moisture. But because of my surroundings, the weather instruments and the two men working at the desk, I had also a picture of that other world comprising the moving masses of the Earth’s outer skin. It was no more than the vague impression that a shipping forecast handed to the officer of the watch conjures in his mind, but it produced the same feeling of being at one with the elements, so that I found myself recapturing that sense of responsibility, of being a protagonist. The phone ringing cut across my thoughts. Sykes answered it. ‘Yes, he’s here.’ He glanced at me. ‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’ He put the phone down. ‘Major Braddock. He’ll drive you down to Rodil to pick up your things.’

‘Now?’

‘He’ll be waiting for you outside the Admin, block.’

I had known this moment would come, but I’d have been glad to postpone it. What did you say to a man who’d spent twenty years masquerading as somebody else, and that man your brother? ‘All right,’ I said, and went out into the wind, wishing at that moment I’d never come north to the Hebrides. Even Laerg couldn’t compensate for this.

He was sitting at the wheel of a Land-Rover, waiting for me. ‘Jump in.’ He didn’t say anything more and we drove out through the main gate and down the sand-blown road to Northton. Neither of us spoke and yet oddly enough there was nothing awkward about the silence. It helped to bridge the years, both of us accepting the situation and adjusting ourselves to it. Side-face his true identity was more obvious — a question chiefly of the shape of the head and the way it sat on the shoulders. The profile, too; he couldn’t change that. And the hair and the short, straight forehead, the shape of his hands gripping the wheel. ‘Why didn’t you contact me?’ I said.

‘You were away at sea.’ He hunched his shoulders, an old, remembered gesture. ‘Anyway, what was the point? When you take another man’s identity — well, you’d better damn well stick to it.’

‘Did you have to do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Take Braddock’s name?’

‘I didn’t have to, no. But I did.’ A muscle was moving at the corner of his mouth and his voice was taut as he added, ‘What would you have done? Given yourself up, I suppose. Well, I wasn’t going to stand trial for busting the jaw of a man who hadn’t the guts to lead his own men.’

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘What exactly happened out there in North Africa?’

‘You really want to know?’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘Well … It was after we’d landed. The French had us pinned down. They’d got a machine-gun nest in one of those walled villas. We were all right. We were in a dried-up wadi. But it was murder for the lads on our right. They were caught in the open, a whole company of them lying out there on the bare rocks, and we had the shelter of that gully.right up to the villa’s walls. Instead of attacking, Moore ordered the platoon to stay put and keep their heads down. He was frightened to death. In the end I knocked him out and took command myself. It was the only way. But by then the French had got a gun in position to cover the wadi and they opened up on us when we were halfway up it. That’s when I got this.’ He pointed to the scar on his forehead. ‘I lost eighteen men, but we took the villa. And when it was all over, I was under arrest. If I hadn’t hit the little sod I’d have been all right, but that fixed me, so I got the hell out of it and back to the beach. Wasn’t difficult; everything a bit chaotic. The fact that I was wounded made it dead easy. I was taken off, to a troopship that was just leaving. She’d been damaged and when we were clear of the Straits she was ordered to proceed to Montreal for repairs. That was how I landed up in Canada.’ He glanced at me. ‘They didn’t tell you that?’

‘Some of it — not all.’

‘I had just over a year in Canada before they picked me up. It was conscription that fixed me. I hadn’t any papers, you see. And then, when the Duart Castle went down.’ He gave a quick shrug. ‘Well, I took a chance and it worked out.’

But looking at the deep-etched lines of his face, I wondered. He looked as though he’d been living on his nerves for a long time. There were lines running underneath the cheek-bones and down from the sides of the mouth, others puckering the scar on the forehead, radiating from the corners of the eyes; some of them so deep they might have been scored by a knife. Those lines and the harsh, almost leathery skin could simply be the marks of a hard life, but I had an uneasy feeling they were something more than that.

Through Northton he began to talk — about the Army and the life he’d led and where he’d been. It seemed to help, for he began to relax then and become more at ease;

in no time at all the years had fallen away and we were on our old, easy footing, with him talking and myself listening. It had always been like that. And then suddenly he said, ‘You married Mavis, did you?’

‘For my sins,’ I said. ‘It didn’t work out.’

‘And the child?’

‘It died.’

I thought he didn’t care, for he made no comment, driving in silence again. But as we came down the hill into Leverburgh, he said, ‘What was it — a boy?’

‘Yes.’ And I added, ‘I had him christened Alasdair.’

He nodded as though he’d expected that. We were passing ugly blocks of Swedish pre-fabs and as we turned right past the loch, he murmured, ‘I’m sorry.’ But whether he was sorry for what he’d done to us or because the child had died I couldn’t be sure. We were on a track now that led out to the quay. ‘I just want to check that they’re moving the stuff fast enough,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll drive you on to Rodil to collect your gear.’

The quay looked a mess, the whole length of it littered with material brought from Learg — piled-up sections of wooden huts, double-ended dories, trailers still loaded with stoves, radios, refrigerators, a deep-freeze, clothing, and crates full of foodstuffs, sacks of potatoes, fruit, coal; all the paraphernalia of an isolated unit being withdrawn in a hurry, and all of it soaked by the rain. One Scammell was trying to inch a trailer through the debris. Two three-ton trucks were being loaded, the men moving slowly, lethargically as though they had been doing this a long time. A single mobile crane swung its gantry lazily against the leaden dullness of the sky, and beyond the quay skerries barred the way into the Sound of Harris with here and there a light mounted on iron legs to mark the channel through the rocks.

It was a depressing sight. I wandered along the concrete edge of the quay whilst Braddock spoke to the officer in.charge. ‘A fine mess you’d be in,’ I heard him say, ‘if Four-four-Double-o had come in on schedule instead of being sent back to Laerg fully loaded.’ His voice, harsh now, had a whip-lash quality.

‘We’re shifting it as fast as we can,’ the youngster answered. ‘But the men are tired. They’ve been at it since early this morning, and we’re short of vehicles.’

‘They’re tired, are they? Then just think how Captain Pinney’s men must be, working round the clock, crammed into only two huts, soaked to the skin. Now get moving, boy, and have this quay cleared to receive Kelvedon’s ship when it comes in.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Dawn I should think, or a little after.’ I saw him grip the young man’s shoulder. ‘Between now and the end of the operation this may be our one chance to catch up. See the men understand that. If Stratton’s crew hadn’t been dead beat you’d have had Eight-six-one-o here by now. Make the most of this opportunity, Phipps.’

‘I’ll do the best I can, sir.’

‘Better than the best; I want miracles.’ The hard face cracked in a smile. ‘Okay?’ He patted the lieutenant’s shoulder, instilling into him some of his own urgent drive. Then he turned. ‘Sergeant!’ He had a word with the sergeant and then came back to the Land-Rover. ‘Peacetime soldiering,’ he muttered as he climbed into the driving seat. ‘They don’t know what it is to be beaten to their knees and still fight back. They haven’t known a war. I was in Burma.’ He started the engine and yanked the wheel round. ‘That was after the Normandy landings. Half these guys would get shot to bits before they’d dug a slit trench. Just because they’re technicians a lot of them, they think the Army’s a branch of industry — a cosy factory with set hours and plenty of recreation.’

We drove out of Leverburgh and up the glen with him talking about the evacuation and how he’d had his leave cut short to come up here and see the operation through. ‘If I’d known what I know now I’d never have accepted the posting. It’s drive, drive, drive, and they hate my guts most of them. But what can you do with the weather on top of you and time so short? And now we’re at the critical stage. The run-down of accommodation and stores on Laerg has reached the point where the operation has got to be completed. Pinney’s detachment haven’t enough food and fuel left on the island to last a fortnight, let alone see the winter through. And the weather chooses this moment to break. Goddammit, the War Office should have had more sense.’ He glanced at me quickly. ‘What did you think of Standing?’

I hesitated, not knowing what he expected. ‘I’ve only seen him for a few minutes.’

‘Long enough to fix yourself a trip to Laerg.’ There was a bite to his voice, a resentment almost, as though he disliked the thought of my going to the island. ‘You were there when he cancelled that flight. How did he seem?’

‘A little nervous,’ I said. ‘But in the circumstances …’

‘Nervous! He’s scared. Scared he’ll make a wrong decision. In fact, he’s scared of making any decision. Scared, too, of leaving it all to me. He’s a bloody old woman with a mind like an adding machine. And his wife’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.’

‘Are you married?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but it didn’t work out any better than yours. Lasted longer, that’s all. And I’ll never get shot of her. She’s a Roman Catholic.’ We passed the church and a moment later drew up by the hotel. He came down to the loch-side with me and helped strike the tent and carry my stuff to the Land-Rover. It only took ten minutes or so and then we were driving back. It was as we topped the rise and sighted Northton that he said, ‘D’you know a man called Lane — a Canadian?’ He tried to make it casual, but the tightness in his voice betrayed him.

, ‘I’ve met him,’ I said. ‘Once.’

‘And that’s why you’re here.’

‘Partly — yes.’

He braked so suddenly that the engine stalled and I was flung forward in my seat. ‘Why do you want to go to Laerg?’ The tension in his voice flared to a higher pitch. ‘What’s behind it? What are you expecting to find there?’

‘Peace. Subjects to paint.’ And I added, ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Laerg.’

‘But why now? You’ve managed very well for over twenty years. Now, suddenly, you have to go there. Why? What did Lane tell you?’

‘It’s nothing to do with Lane.’

‘Then what the hell is it?’ He had gripped hold of my arm and was almost shaking it. ‘As soon as I was away on that flight you went running to Standing and somehow persuaded him to ship you out on an LCT. What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing about you,’ I said. ‘Just that my father came from Laerg and that I wanted to paint there.’

‘That all?’ He was staring at me, the pupils of his eyes almost black and strangely dilated. And then he let go my arm. ‘You could have waited.’ His voice sounded suddenly tired. ‘I’d have got you to Laerg in time — if you’d asked me.’

Was he hurt that I hadn’t? ‘I was going to ask you,’ I said. ‘But you went off on that flight, and then, when I saw Colonel Standing …’

‘Standing’s not running this operation. I am. And I’m not having you or anyone else going out there and making a nuisance of themselves.’ He shifted in his seat, watching me, his mouth twitching and a gleam of perspiration on his forehead. ‘After all these years. Bit of a shock, isn’t it?’ He was smiling now, trying to recapture the old charm. But somehow the smile wasn’t right. ‘Be frank with me.

You always were — in the old days. We never hid anything from each other.’

‘I’m not hiding anything from you now.’

But he didn’t seem to hear. ‘What did Lane tell you? Come on now. He told you something that sent you scurrying up here with a sudden, urgent desire to get to Learg.’

‘He guessed who you were. Suspected it, anyway. He’s been interviewing survivors.’

‘I’m talking about Laerg. What did he say about Laerg?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He’s discovered you were on that raft and he’s put two and two together.’

‘Then why are you so anxious to get out to Laerg?’

There it was again. Laerg — Laerg! Why did he keep harping on Laerg? ‘He never mentioned Laerg.’

‘No?’

‘Just listen to me, Iain,’ I said. ‘I came up here with one object in mind — to find out whether you were still alive or not. Having done that, I thought it was a good opportunity to see the island. I’ve been wanting to go to Laerg for two years now, ever since I came back from the Aegean. I want to paint there. Just to paint, that’s all. Nothing else.’

But I don’t think he believed me even then. His face had a stony look as though he’d shut his mind to all reason, and I had a sudden feeling there was tragedy here, a deep, wasting wound that fed on his nerves. It was a moment of intuition, I think — blood calling to blood and the sense of his desperation very strong.

‘Well, you’re not going.’ He said it flatly, more to himself than to me. And then, as though suddenly aware of what he’d said and the need for some explanation: ‘This is a military operation. The landing craft are fully committed. It’s no moment for shipping tourists out to the island.’

‘I’m not a tourist,’ I said, resenting the implication. ‘Not where Laerg is concerned.’

(‘You are from the Army’s point of view. I’ll have a word with Standing.’ And he got the engine going again and we drove down into the camp, neither of us saying a word. He dropped me off at the officers’ quarters. ‘Room forty-two,’ he said as I got my gear out of the back of the Land-Rover. ‘Maybe I’ll have time for a drink with you before dinner.’ He was Major Braddock again and we were strangers. I watched him drive off, wishing now that I’d made more of an effort to discover what it was that was eating into his soul, for this wasn’t the brother I’d known. This was quite a different man — a man driven and desperate. I had that feeling, and it scared me. Later, I said to myself. Later I’ll find out.

I didn’t know that there wasn’t going to be a later, that time was running out and I’d missed the only chance I’d get of being alone with him before it was too late.

Room 42 was the same as Cliff Morgan’s, a standard pattern and standard furniture — bed, bedside table, bureau, chair, wardrobe, all in natural oak, an armchair, wash basin and the rusted steel windows looking out on to a drab patch of coarse dune grass. I dumped my things and went for a walk, heading north from the main gate, away from the camp and the landing apron. Ten minutes and I was amongst the dunes, alone in a world that hadn’t changed since the first man set foot in the Outer Hebrides. To my left Chaipaval reared heather and grass-clad slopes to the clouds. To my right the mountains of Harris stood black and sombre, their stormbound peaks shrouded in rain. I came to the last sanded bluff and ahead of me was a great stretch of sands, glistening wet, and a line of dunes standing like a breakwater between them and the sea. The island of Taransay rose misty-green beyond the dunes. There were sheep sheltering in the hollows they had worn along the edge of the bluff and below a river of water flowed towards the sea, fish marking the smooth surface with little whorls.

It was a wild wet world and I walked there until it was almost dusk, thinking of Laerg and my brother Iain, the wind on my face bringing back to me the salt taste of Ardnamurchan and my youth. The picture in my mind was of a bare, wood-lined room and the two of us, sprawled on the floor, gazing with rapt attention at the craggy, bearded face of my grandfather softened by the peat fire glow — old Alasdair Ross at the age of eighty-five or thereabouts telling two boys of the wonders of Laerg, describing the strange remote island world that had been his life and speaking all the time the Laerg brand of Gaelic he’d taught us to understand. It was a picture etched for all time in my mind. It had stood between me and the fear of death as I’d gazed down at the waxen face and the pitifully shrunken body in the big bed; it had comforted me that cold day when I stood shivering and crying bitterly beside the open grave. I could hear the rattle of the first frozen clods on the coffin lid still, but the face I remembered was the live face, vital and glowing in the firelight, the soft voice, the sea-grey eyes beneath the shaggy tufted eyebrows.

And here I stood now at the threshold of his world. In twenty-four hours I should be ashore on Laerg. Would it match my dreams, or had the old man so coloured the picture with his longing to return that he’d spoiled it for me? I wondered; wondered, too, about Iain. Was the picture the old man had painted as vivid to him as it was to me? Was that why he’d been so determined to make the flight? Or was it something else — something to do with the tension I’d sensed in him?

I had a drink with him that night in the Mess, but there were others there and I couldn’t probe. In any case, his mood didn’t encourage it — he had a black look on his face and was barely civil to anyone. And after dinner, Mike Ferguson drove me down to Rodil. By then the weather had closed in again, the rain slanting in the beam of the headlight. ‘The forecast’s not too good,’ he said. ‘You may be out of luck.’

I thought for a moment he was breaking it to me that permission for me to sail with the LCT had been withdrawn. But then he added, ‘Stratton may decide not to go.’

‘But if he does?’

‘Then Movements will get you on board in time. Colonel Standing’s orders.’ And he added, ‘Major Braddock wanted him to cancel your trip. Said visitors were a damned nuisance. But the Old Man dug in his toes.’ He seemed preoccupied and I didn’t like to ask him what had been said. In any case, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t solve the mystery of my brother’s extraordinary attitude. That was something deep-buried in his past, and I sat, puzzling over it, silent as the road unwound in the headlights, my interest in Laerg more urgent than ever.

The Fields’ croft was just below Rodil church. It was stone built with small windows and looked like a cow byre, the thatch curving in dim silhouette and roped against the wind, each rope-end weighted with a stone. Field met us at the door, dressed now in grey flannels and an open-necked bush shirt. ‘Come in, my dear fellows.’ The gentleness of his voice struck me again, strangely at odds with the hard lines of his extraordinary hatchet features. ‘Marjorie’s seeing to the coffee,’ he told Ferguson. ‘You’ll find her in the kitchen.’ He took me through into the living-room which was spartan and furnished only with the bare essentials. A peat fire smouldered in the grate. ‘We live very simply, as you can see.’ But they had electricity, and despite its bareness there was an intimacy, a cosiness about the room that made me feel instantly at home. ‘Marjorie usually makes coffee about this time. Would that be all right?’ There was a note of apology in his voice as though he thought I might have preferred whisky. ‘I imagine this is the first time you’ve seen the inside of a black house?’ And he went on quickly to explain that the word derived from the fact that the original Hebridean croft had virtually no windows and a peat fire in a central hearth that was never allowed to go out. ‘The chimney was just a hole in the roof and smoke blackened the interior.’ He smiled. ‘I should know, I was born in one — not far from here, on the west coast of Lewis.’ He was talking quickly, putting me at my ease, and all in the same soft, gentle voice.

He sat me down by the fire, gave me a cigarette, went on to talk about crofting, the subsidies, land disputes. The religion, too, and drunkeness, so that the impression left in my mind was one of a feckless, hard-drinking, lazy people. ‘It’s the climate,’ he said. ‘The remoteness of the islands. It’s as insidious as a disease.’ He smiled gently as though he himself were infected by it.

‘It must be a pretty hard life,’ I murmured.

‘Aye, and they’re the salt of the ear-rth.’ There was a twinkle of humour in his eyes. ‘Being one of them myself I understand them. But I’ve been outside the islands most of my life. It makes a difference. And coming back.’

He shrugged. ‘One would be more sympathetic if they made a greater effort to help themselves. Take this place; here’s a dwelling ideally suited to the climate, the materials all ready to hand — but the status symbol up here is something constructed by a builder out of breeze-blocks. You try and paint the interior of any black house that’s still occupied. They wouldn’t let you cross the threshold.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Because they’re ashamed of them now.’ He was staring into the glowing peat, his long legs stretched half across the bearskin rug. ‘Islanders should never have contact with the mainland. It’s destroying them here just as it’s destroying the people of the out-islands. Laerg would never have been evacuated if the island had remained in isolation. It had a perfectly sound economy until the outside world brought to their doorstep the illusion of an easier life. They had their sheep — the sheep the Vikings introduced a thousands years ago — and they had the birds. In its heydey Laerg supported a population of over two hundred. They salted away huge numbers of puffins each year, splitting them open like kippers and hanging them up to dry in the peat smoke. Puffins and guga — that’s the young of the solan goose. They had the down of the birds for bedding, the oil for lamps. They carded their own wool, wove their own clothes. Peat was there for the digging and the wind dried it in the loose stone diets that litter the slopes of Tarsaval. They didn’t need money.’

I knew all this — from my grandfather, from the books I’d read. What I wanted to know was how much the island had been changed by the Army. ‘Not a great deal,’ he said. ‘There’s a concrete ramp built on the storm beach in Shelter Bay for the LCTs. There’s the camp, of course. That’s just below the village, near to the Factor’s House. And there’s the High Road. That’s probably changed the island more than anything else. It starts at the camp, skirts the Bay just back of the beach, climbs Keava in three hairpins, then up the ridge to Creag Dubh where the radar station is. There’s a spur, too, that runs out to the Butt of Keava overlooking Sgeir Mhor. I can show it to you on the Ordnance Survey, if you’re interested.’

The door opened and Marjorie Field came in; Ferguson followed with the coffee tray. ‘Talking about Laerg,’ her father said.

‘Learg?’ She smiled. ‘Everybody’s always talking about Laerg, and I’m not allowed to go there.’ She turned to me. ‘I owe you an apology, don’t I? You are a painter. I checked.’

‘How?’

‘With Cliff.’ She turned to her father. ‘Mr Ross did the jacket for Cliffs book.’

‘Your daughter seemed under the impression I was a journalist.’ A shadow crossed his face and he didn’t smile.

‘You like it black or white?’ she asked me.

‘Black,’ I said and she handed me my coffee and then switched the conversation by asking Ferguson if there was any more news of the Russian trawlers.

‘Coastal Command had a Shackleton out yesterday. They didn’t see anything.’

Field shifted in his seat and reached for his coffee. ‘It’s just a newspaper story, Mike.’

‘Not necessarily. Visibility was bad and with the cloud base down to between four and six hundred the search was very restricted. There is no doubt whatever that they do have trawlers operating in the area.’

‘So have the French, the Belgians, the Portuguese. Anyway, what information could they hope to get? It would be different if the range was operating. If they could check the accuracy of fire of the various units.’

‘That’s not half so important, sir, as the fact that we’re getting out of Laerg. It means we’ve developed some other method of pin-pointing the fall of shot — a long-range tracking service. Moscow would be very interested to know that.’

‘But, my dear fellow, they wouldn’t need trawlers to tell them we’re getting out. Any crofter in Harris …’ The discussion didn’t concern me and I took the opportunity to examine the room which I found much more interesting. The walls were bare; no pictures, no photographs even, nothing to give a clue to Field’s past. Only that bearskin rug. I wondered where that had come from. It was old, the head marked by burns. Had he shot it or was it something they’d picked up in a junk shop? The door to the kitchen had been left half open. His Service greatcoat hung there, the two pips a reminder of the incongruity of his age and rank. Below it hung a quilted jacket rather like a parka; green once, but now faded and worn and rather dirty.

My eyes turned to the daughter then; the nose, the blue eyes — I could see the likeness. But the mouth was softer, the skin darker. I wondered who her mother had been. She was perched on the arm of Mike Ferguson’s chair and she looked strikingly beautiful, her face glowing in the lamplight, the skin almost nut-coloured and soft with the bloom of youth. I felt my blood stirring as it hadn’t done since I’d left the Aegean. Her glance met mine and she smiled quickly, a wide-mouthed smile that had her father’s warmth, lighting up her whole face. ‘So you’ve got your wish; you’re going to Learg.’

‘Yes.’

It was then that Field gave me the clue to his identity. ‘Learg,’ he said, and there was a wistfulness in his voice. ‘I shall miss it. One of the plums, being Education Officer here, was that I got out to Learg once in a while. I should have been going next Saturday.’ He shrugged. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve had three tours.’ He smiled. ‘I’m envious, you see. It’s an experience, particularly the first time. And, of course, the cliffs — there’s some of the finest rock climbing …’

‘It’s the birds he’s really interested in,’ his daughter said quickly.

But she was too late. That reference to climbing. I knew who he was then, for his name had been in all the papers. Pictures of him, too. Some time in the early fifties it must have been for we were still on the Far East run and the papers had come aboard with the mail at Singapore. He’d been the leader of one of the Himalayan expeditions. I couldn’t remember the details, or the name of the peak, only that he’d been brought down from somewhere near the summit just before the final assault. The official statement had simply announced that he’d been taken ill, but the newspapers had reported it in a way that made it obvious there was more to it than that. As though conscious of my thoughts, he turned away from me. ‘Any news of McGregor?’ he asked Ferguson.

‘An emergency operation. I fixed Bob up with a link through to Command on the Military Line just before I left Camp. He’s doing it under instruction.’

‘How horrible for him.’

He glanced up at the girl. ‘Aye, and the laddie could have been in hospital hours ago. As it is …’ He shook his head. ‘Bob’s not happy about it; nobody is.’

‘You think the man’s going to die?’ Field asked.

‘Frankly, yes. I don’t think he has a hope. When Bob’s finished with him, the poor devil’s got ten hours or more being bucketed about on a landing craft and then a flight to the mainland. If the Colonel had only left it to Ronnie Adams.’

‘The helicopter might have crashed.’

‘It might. But I doubt it. The worst the down-draughts have done to a helicopter so far is slam it on the deck so hard the rotor blades were shivered and split for about a yard from the tips. Anyway, it’s for the pilot to assess the risk. That was Braddock’s view, and for once I agreed with him. Not that either of them asked my views. They were too busy hammering away at each other.’

‘When was this?’

‘Just before dinner.’

‘And you think Standing was wrong to cancel the flight?’

Mike Ferguson hesitated. ‘Yes. Yes, I do; considering what was at stake — a man’s life.’

Field sighed. ‘Every man makes his decisions in the light of his own experience, Mike. Did you know that Colonel Standing once saw a helicopter crash? It caught fire and the chaps inside it were burned alive, right before his eyes. It makes a difference, you see.’

‘And he told you about it?’ Ferguson smiled. ‘You’ve become a sort of father confessor to us all, haven’t you.’ There was affection as well as admiration in his voice.

‘To some, yes. Not all.’

‘Meaning Braddock?’

‘Perhaps.’ He leaned forward and poked at the fire. ‘Man is a complex mechanism, each individual a solitary unit afraid of loneliness. That’s something you’ll discover as the years pass. Most of them seek escape from loneliness by membership of a group. The herd instinct is very strong in all of us. But there are always a few rogues — some of them men of real stature, others forced by circumstances to live solitary lives.’ I thought he was speaking from experience then. The gentle voice sounded tired, weighed with weariness.

‘They needn’t be solitary if they’re happily married,’ his daughter said. And she added, ‘I saw Laura this morning. She looked almost haggard.’

‘Laura could never look haggard.’ Her father smiled.

‘Well, strained then. She knows what’s going on. Ever since Major Braddock was posted up here.’

‘Braddock’s only doing his job.’ Field glanced at me. ‘I’m afraid Mr Ross must find this very boring.’ It was a signal to close the ranks in the face of the outside world, and after that the talk was general. We left just before ten, and Ferguson drove fast, anxious to contact Laerg and get news of the LCT.

He was reluctant to talk about Field at first, but when he realised I’d already guessed his background, he admitted I was right. ‘That business … it pretty well broke him up at the time. His whole life was climbing.’

‘What did he do — afterwards?’

‘Took to drink. That’s why there’s no liquor in the house.’ And after a moment, he added, ‘Maybe you can’t understand it. But I can. I know how he must have felt — and it’s not something you can control. It just takes charge.’ We were on the hill above Leverburgh then and he slammed into lower gear. ‘Damned shame. To escape it all he came up here, back to the islands where he was born. Then the Army arrived and that gave him the opportunity to do something useful again. He’s all right now as long as Marjorie keeps an eye on him.’

I asked him then why she was so worried about newspaper men bothering him after all this time.

‘Oh, it’s his wife,’ he said. ‘He’s quite a story — wartime hero, then all through the Karakoram and up into Mongolia. Now she’s found out he’s buried himself in the Army and she’s threatening to put the Press on to him again if he doesn’t go back to her. She’s a bitch and no good to him — or to Marjorie.’

I thought he was referring to the girl’s mother. But he said, ‘No, this is his second wife I’m talking about. The first was an islander like himself. From Pabbay, I think, though he met her out in Egypt. She was a nurse in the hospital where he was sent after getting himself shot up in a Long Range Desert Group foray. Unfortunately she was killed in a plane crash. If she’d lived it might have been different. They were very happy, I believe.’ And after that he was silent and we drove down into the camp.

Back in my room I found a note waiting for me. The trip to Learg was off. Owing to bad weather L8610 will not be sailing on the morning tide. It was scribbled on a sheet of paper torn from a notebook and was signed Fred Flint. I had seen a light in Cliff Morgan’s quarters as we drove in and I walked across.

He was seated at the keyboard and didn’t look up as I entered. He had the earphones clamped to his head and his mind was concentrated on another world. I sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. He didn’t notice me until he looked up to change the tuning. He started to speak, but then held up his hand, listening. After a moment he pushed up one earphone. ‘You’ve heard the news, have you?’

‘Captain Flint left a note in my quarters. Eight-six-one-o won’t be sailing.’

‘I wasn’t referring to that. I thought as you were with Ferguson … He’s calling him now.’

‘Who?’

‘Four-four-Double-o — Captain Kelvedon. He’s in trouble. I picked him up on Voice about half an hour ago asking for Major Braddock. He’s got himself stuck on a falling tide. Went in to pick up McGregor. Ah, here we are. Listen!’ He switched in the loudspeaker and a metallic voice broke into the room. It was Ferguson. ‘… ask him, but ‘I’m quite sure he wouldn’t agree to Adams attempting it in these conditions. I don’t think Adams would go, anyway.’

‘The Doc here says there isn’t much time….’

‘That’s Kelvedon,’ Cliff whispered.

‘… and I can’t get out of here for another five hours at least. We’re grounded hard.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was the wind partly. We had it westerly, bang on the nose most of the way across. Then it suddenly backed. ‘I’d never have attempted it, but Fairweather told me the man wouldn’t live if they tried to bring him off in a dory. It was dark as hell and quite a sea running, but I thought I could edge in close enough to drop the ramp with the kedge well out astern. Maybe it was badly laid. And that sandbank. I think it must have been building up without our realising it. The seas slewed us round and we touched the edge of it. Two hours after high water. When we came to winch off we found we were stuck fast.’

‘I see. And what about McGregor?’

‘He’s back in his bed in the hospital hut. But Fairweather doesn’t think he’ll last long. The only hope is to get him out by helicopter.’

‘Okay. ‘I’ll tell the Colonel. What about you, now? Do you want me to have the Navy stand by?’

‘Oh Lord, no. We’re pounding a bit and it’s not very comfortable. But the wind’s veered now. Seems all over the bloody place. But if it stays where it is, north of west, we’ll get off all right on the flood.’

‘Fine. Call me again if there’s anything fresh to report.

Good luck.’ And then he was calling Learg. ‘Are you there, Laerg? Base calling Laerg.’

‘Laerg here,’ a Scots voice answered. ‘Go ahead, Base.’

‘Captain Ferguson here. Keep your set manned throughout the night. I may want to contact Captain Fairweather later.’

‘ Very good, sir.’

‘Is Captain Pinney there?’ There was a pause and then a new voice answered, ‘Pinney here.’

‘How does the landing craft look from the shore, John?’

‘Slewed off about twenty degrees and grounded on that ridge of sand. Nowhere near the ramp.’

‘And the sea?’

‘Moderate. Wind’s getting round into the north-west, so the beach is sheltered, but there’s still a biggish swell coming in. The old can’s grinding a bit, but she’ll be all right. It’s this poor devil McGregor ‘I’m worrying about. Just nothing but bad luck.’ The voice sounded tired.

‘Do what you can, will you? Have a talk with Major Braddock.’

‘He’s down at Leverburgh trying to get the quay cleared.’

‘Well, send a car down for him, see if he can persuade the Colonel. This boy’s going to die if somebody doesn’t take a chance.’

‘Okay, John. Leave it with me.’ Cliff Morgan switched off and the room was suddenly dead as he reached automatically for a cigarette. He lit it, gulping a mouthful of smoke deep into his lungs, breathing it out through his nostrils. ‘Not good, is it? And the wind playing tricks like that …’ He noticed his old cigarette still burning in the ashtray at his elbow and stubbed it out. ‘I don’t like it when I feel like this. The number of times I’ve sat talking to some poor beggar riding the night sky with a load of trouble, or tapping out a message with the radio shack turning somersaults around him. I’ve been right too often, you see. There was that trawler, Grampian Maid. Nobody else could raise her and I was relaying messages until black ice turned her turtle. And a Boeing up over the Arctic — ice again and I was with him up to the moment when his message ceased abruptly. I’m not like an ordinary ‘ham’, you see. I’ve got something to give them — the weather. Ships, aircraft, they live by the weather, and if you know as much about it as I do….’ He sighed and scratched himself under the arm, his hand burrowing inside his shirt. It was an unconscious reflective gesture. ‘You’d better go and get some sleep. And have your things packed ready.’ He was leaning forward, tuning the dials of the radio again.

‘You think the LCT will sail?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Anything could happen…’ He shifted in his seat, his body tense, his eyes fixed on the set as his fingers moved with the touch of a pianist, filling the room with the crackle of static. And behind the static a man’s voice, the words indecipherable. ‘There they are again. Two trawlers south-east of Iceland.’ He clamped both earphones tight to his head, leaning forward, his whole being concentrated in the tips of his fingers as they hovered over the dials. He’d left the loudspeaker on and a Scots voice came faintly, a voice so broad it might have been talking in a foreign tongue: ‘A’ dinna ken w-what it means ony mair thin ye du yersel’, man. Two hoors ago the wind was fra the north. Noo it’s roond into the sou’ east an’ blowing a bluidy gale.’ And another voice barely audible through the crackle: ‘Aye, an’ the glass ganging down agin.’

‘Did ye hear that noo? A bluidy great wave reecht o’er the bows, and the fish still coming in.’

‘ Ye’re on top of a shoal, are ye, Doug?’

‘Aye, blast it. But this is no’ the time to be trawling whativer the bluidy fish. It’s a hell of a night. You hove-to the noo, Jock?’

‘Aye, hove-to and wishing to God I were in me bed with the wife and a wee dram inside o’ me. Ha’ ye got the forecast?’

‘Bluidy lot o’ good the forecast was…’ The static overlaid the voices then and I couldn’t decipher the rest.

After a moment Cliff Morgan pulled his earphones off. ‘ Arctic Ranger talking to Laird of Brora. It’s bad up there and I don’t know quite what it means yet. There’s no clear pattern, you see.’ He was staring down at his notebook, drawing without thinking deep concentric rings. ‘You go to bed,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep whilst you can.’ He ran his hand up over his face, rubbing at his eyes. He looked tired.

‘Are you going to stay up all night?’ I asked.

‘Probably. Maybe when they’ve stopped getting in the nets I’ll be able to contact their radio operators — get some facts out of them. A pair of skippers blethering at each other. Doesn’t tell you anything. I don’t want to know how they feel with all hell let loose. I want to know what the barometer reads and how it compares with the reading three, four hours ago, what the weight of the wind is and whether the temperature is rising or falling.’ He leaned back. ‘Leave me to it, will you now. I want to see if I can raise some vessel further west. If not, I’ll have a talk with the weather ships, see what they’ve got to say.’

‘You get their reports anyway, don’t you?’

He nodded. ‘But it takes time. And talking to them is very different, you know, from reading the lists of figures they send in.’ He put the earphones on again, leaning closer to the set as he began to tune, his fingers light as a caress on the dials. ‘Those trawlers …’ He was speaking to himself, not to me. ‘On the fringe of the High and now that first depression’s starting to come through. Still two of them, but very close. That would account for what happened to Kelvedon — the sudden changes of wind….’ His voice died away, his expression suddenly intent. And then his thumb was on the key and the buzz of Morse, very rapid, filled the room as he made contact across miles of ocean.

I watched him for a moment longer, and then I left. Back in Room 42 I undressed, doing familiar things slowly, automatically, smoking a cigarette and mulling over the day. It had been a long one, so much packed into it, and London, my dismal attic of a studio, the years of hard work to become a painter — all seemed so far away. I was back now in a man’s world of decisions and action involving ships and weather, my movements governed by the sea, and I found I was glad, as though painting had been no more than an affair with a beautiful woman and this the real love of my life. I sat on the bed and lit a cigarette from the butt of the old and thought about that. Was I painter or sailor, or was this new mood that had my blood tingling the physical reaction to the prospect of a childhood dream becoming a reality? I didn’t know. My mind was strangely confused. All I knew for certain was that the sea was calling.

I finished my cigarette, turned the thermostat of the central heating down to ‘low’ and went to bed thinking of Laerg.