North Star Read online

  I don’t think she had known my father at all, only the gossip. She was a good deal younger. But she could remember the farm being sold and she showed me the dower chest her mother had bought at the auction, a plain oak piece carefully polished. Some people called Eunson lived there now and she told me how to find it. She also told me that the plaque I had heard about was not in Hamnavoe church, but in Grundsound.

  Grundsound was another mile down the road. There was a little war memorial where the road to Houss branched off to the left across a stone bridge and the view down the South Voe was a bright vista of water, flat as a mirror in the sun. The church was just beyond the bridge, a small stone building close by the school. Fresh-dug earth, black as peat, was piled in one corner of the graveyard and the church door stood open. It was dark inside and stark in its plainness. The plaque was at the west end and the inscription, etched black on the plain brass, read:

  ALISTAIR MOUAT RANDALL

  Journalist and soldier who died

  in the Spanish Civil War, 1939

  ‘No, when the fight begins within himself,

  A man’s worth something.’ – Browning

  I stared at it a long time, wondering who had put it there – the date of death not given, nor the side he had fought on, and those lines from Browning. Was it my mother? Had she made that strange choice of an epitaph? I turned to the nearest pew and sat down, wishing I knew the rest of that poem.

  Footsteps on the gravel outside and a single bell in the roof struck an uncertain note. It struck again, and then again, a slow toll, rhythmic as the strokes of an oar. The door swung open, the sunshine flooding in, and then four men bearing a coffin on their shoulders. There was no music, only the tread of their feet to act as a dirge. They laid the coffin down before the altar, the daffodils on it a blaze of spring in a shaft of sunlight. The men took a pew to the left and then a Presbyterian minister came in, followed by a young woman in a tweed skirt and a monkey jacket, a brown scarf tied over her head. Her face was set and very brown. Behind her was a shambling giant of a man, blond and bearded, and several others, all ill-at-ease in their Sunday best.

  They were fishermen by the look of it. The girl didn’t notice me, her gaze on the coffin, but the big man did, his eyes steel blue and his huge hands clenched. I waited until they had settled and then slipped away out into the sunshine, back to the little war memorial where I sat on the grass looking down the long vista of the voe to Houss Ness.

  I was still there when they came out of the church. I saw the coffin laid to rest in its grave, and then they all left in a Land-Rover, heading south down East Burra towards Houss, the girl driving. The minister locked up and followed them in his car, leaving only the gravedigger shovelling at the peat-black earth.

  The sad little scene and the two lines of that poem … Death the solution to everything. Who had known him so well that he had revealed to them an inner conflict that matched my own? Who had cared enough to blazon it to the world, and understood enough to claim that, and not his death for a cause, as the real worth? Not Anna Sandford surely. Not my mother. But somebody. I stared blindly at the stone cross, bare against the blue sky, and wished I had known him. And then a car came from the direction of Hamnavoe and stopped in front of me, its bright red body blocking the view.

  ‘You’re Randall, aren’t you?’ The driver was a man of about my own age, perhaps a little more, his dark hair greying at the temples and blown by the wind. He wore a fisherman’s jersey and his face was round and plump, the eyes slightly bloodshot. ‘I was told I’d find you along the road to Grundsound. Can I give you a lift?’ And he pushed the door open for me. ‘I’m Ian Sandford.’

  I hesitated, wondering what he wanted. I’d as soon walk,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, it’s a fine day, and we’ve not had many of those this last fortnight.’ He was leaning towards me across the passenger seat, his face framed in long sideburns. ‘Mother said you were a trawlerman. That right?’

  I didn’t say anything, trying to recall what else I had told her; the islands were an enclosed world and gossip travelled fast.

  ‘Would you know the worth of a trawler lying beached with a hole in her bottom?’ There was a speculative glint in his eyes.

  ‘Depends how badly she’s holed and what it’s going to cost to get her off.’

  He nodded. ‘Jump in then and I’ll drive you over. Take about an hour, that’s all.’

  I hesitated, thinking it was probably just an excuse to find out more about me. But the wind was blowing from the north-west now. It was cold, and anyway it would be interesting to have a look at that trawler; there couldn’t be more than one beached on Shetland. I got in beside him, but instead of turning the car, he said suddenly, ‘What made you come to Grundsound?’

  ‘There’s a plaque in the church here. I wanted to see it.’

  He stared at me suspiciously. Then he laughed. ‘Oh, that.’ He nodded towards the graveyard and the man shovelling earth. ‘There was a funeral here today. I thought perhaps … You saw it, did you?’ And he added, ‘It was the trawler’s skipper they buried. Old man Petersen. Owed money in Lerwick, a finance company mortgage.’ He backed and turned the car. ‘The wreck’s up for sale now.’

  Just outside Hamnavoe we turned right, across the bridge to Trondra. ‘You ever been to Unst?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got a bit of a hotel at the end of Burra Firth where the north road stops. Trolls, Vikings and stone circles, that’s what they come for. And it’s only two miles to the top of Hermaness. They can see Muckle Flugga from there and go home with pictures of the northernmost point of the British Isles.’ He had a quick, energetic way of talking, as though needing to convince himself all the time that he was possessed of a dynamic personality. ‘Birdwatchers in summer. Gales in winter.’ He laughed. ‘It’s a bloody hell of a place.’

  ‘Then why are you up there?’ I asked.

  ‘Oil. I’m waiting for the oil to come ashore, that’s why.’ He leaned towards me, his manner becoming confidential. ‘I’ve got a company now. And I’ve just landed a contract to supply two of the rigs – food mainly. But to ship the stuff out I need a boat, you see.’

  We crossed the Scalloway-Lerwick road, heading north alongside Loch of Tingwall towards the eastern shore. It was shortly after midday when we drove through Skellister, South Nesting Bay blue under a blue sky and the voes, sheltered in the lee of the land, calm as silk. The Duchess of Norfolk lay in the East Voe, so close against a narrow spit of land she might have been moored there. She was low in the water aft, but still neat and trim, not too much rust and her brasswork gleaming in the sun.

  ‘Looks in good condition,’ Sandford said.

  I nodded, thinking of the men following that coffin. So much care, and their ship stranded here and up for sale. ‘She’s holed below the waterline, is she?’ I couldn’t see any damage, part of her bulwarks stove in, that was all.

  ‘It’s on the other side,’ he said, and we left the car, walking through little mounded hills of sheep-cropped grass until we stood on the spit only a few yards from her. I could see it then, a ragged tear in the plating by the stern. It was about five feet long and only just showing above the surface of the water.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  I barely heard him. I was day-dreaming – thinking how it would be possible to repair that rent and get her off. Down by the stern like that, her engine-room would be flooded. But if that was the only damage a single pump would soon float her, once the hole was patched. ‘You don’t know how far the damage extends below the water, do you?’

  ‘About two feet – three feet at the after end.’

  ‘Somebody took you out?’ There was no sign of a boat.

  He laughed. ‘Nobody here last night. It was almost dark. I just stripped off my clothes and swam out.’ There were ropes trailing from her deck aft, but he had not climbed on board. ‘Well, what do you reckon she’ll fetch at auction?’ He was watching me closely.

  She was soundly built and th
ose Paxmans … ‘Have you got enough money?’ I was wishing to God I had.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course I haven’t. But I can borrow it, can’t I? Same as I did when I converted those old wartime buildings up at Burra Firth.’

  I stood there, looking at the chunky vessel with her high straight stem, the rounded stern. She had been drifting before the gale all the time until she struck. It was the bulwarks for’ard that were damaged, nothing much else – a window broken and one of the trawl doors missing, that was all I could see. And if a man who’d never been to sea in his life could borrow the money …

  ‘How much would she be worth down south?’ His voice was eager, greed in his eyes as he stared at me. ‘Slipped and repaired with the engines in proper order.’

  ‘She was built in 1939.’ I was remembering prices paid for old trawlers in Hull, but most of them distant water boats and much bigger than this one. ‘Somewhere around fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘Sixty at the most.’

  ‘And lying here, just as she is, beached in the voe and her engines full of seawater?’

  He wanted a low figure, of course, hoping for a bargain. ‘It depends if anybody else is as keen as you. You might get her for as low as fifteen. But you’d be lucky.’

  ‘Fifteen – that’s about what I thought. Less maybe.’ He was staring at the black hull and I knew he was working out the probable cost of repairs. He didn’t see her as a ship, only as a means of making money.

  ‘When will they fix the date for the auction?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s fixed already – next Monday.’ And this was Friday. The haste seemed almost indecent, but as he pointed out, it only needed a strong nor’easter, and the finance company wanted their money. ‘They don’t care what she fetches so long as it covers the mortgage. That’s the beauty of it.’

  We walked back to the car then, both of us too preoccupied with our thoughts to say much as we drove back through Skellister and along the road to the south. We were in country that was as much water as land, loch and sea all quiet in the lee, the hills smiling in the sun, and my mind on that trawler resting on her bed of boulders. If he hadn’t been so cold-blooded about it, regarding her, not as a ship, but simply as a means of making money, I don’t think I would have done what I did. Or if he had asked me to skipper her … But he was so bloody anxious to get to his bank before it closed that he hardly said a word as he drove straight to Lerwick and parked the car on the Esplanade not far from the steamer quay. ‘Meet me here in an hour’s time and I’ll drive you back.’

  But by then I had made up my mind. ‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I have to see somebody here anyway.’

  ‘Just as you wish.’ He hesitated, then slammed the car door. ‘Well, thanks for your help.’ And he hurried away, across the road and up a steep little alley.

  It was a crazy idea. I had rather less than £100 in my pocket. But to hell with that. To hell with the police. Hull was a long way away and I was thinking of the future now, and Providence in the shape of that trawler beckoning irresistibly. A bank might not give me a loan, but there were companies operating up here now that had the cash if I could provide them with what they wanted. I walked along the Esplanade to the Queen’s Hotel, got myself a beer and a sandwich and phoned Wishart in Sumburgh. I was lucky, he was in and he knew where the oil man who had rented a car from him was staying – at the Lerwick Hotel. ‘His name’s Fuller and he’s got it till Monday.’

  ‘Monday evening?’ I asked.

  ‘No, morning. He’s booked out on the early flight to Dyce.’

  ‘And he hasn’t changed his booking?’

  But he didn’t know about that. ‘If he has, he can’t have the car.’

  I thanked him and rang off. Either Fuller didn’t know about the auction, or else he wasn’t interested. An oil company looking for a trawler would hardly concern itself with a wreck, and wanting one on the cheap was a relative term. I had another beer, enquired the way to the hotel, and set off up the hill behind the port.

  The Lerwick Hotel was out by the hospital, a low building standing well back, with Bressay and the open sea behind it. Fuller wasn’t there. He had left immediately after breakfast, taking a packed lunch with him. I wrote him a note telling him I would call back at six that evening and went down to the port again. In the raised pedestrian way above the Esplanade I found a newsagents and bought an Ordnance Survey map and a copy of the Shetland Times. The local paper was datelined 28th March. It had come out that morning and the wreck of the Duchess of Norfolk was its lead story.

  I read about the wreck sitting on a bollard with the gulls screaming above the fish quay. The engines had apparently been shut down due to overheating, the pipe supplying sea water to the cooling system having sprung a leak. They had been used briefly in an attempt to get her past Fiska Skerry, but had generated insufficient power and a big sea had slammed her sideways against the rock. The Ranger had towed her off and got her as far as the East Voe of Skellister, but had had to abandon the tow just short of Vadill of Garth. The engines had been used again to beach her in the lee of the spit. Unfortunately, both the chief engineer and his assistant were in hospital. They were the two men who had been injured, so there was no indication as to whether the overheating had seriously damaged the engines. At least they had not seized up solid.

  The most surprising information in the report was that the insurance on the vessel had been allowed to lapse. It was owned apparently by Gertrude Petersen and skippered by her father-in-law, Olav Petersen, 81, who had died of a heart attack during the gale while they were steaming south between Whalsay and the Out Skerries. It was the lack of insurance that had decided the mortgagees to foreclose. ‘We naturally presumed the insurance had been maintained,’ the manager was reported as saying. ‘When we learned that the premium had not been paid we had no alternative.’ The amount of the mortgage was not given.

  On the back page, under ‘Auctioneers’ Announcements’, was a notice of the sale – At the Queen’s Hotel on Monday, 31st March, at 12 noon, the trawler Duchess of Norfolk of 190 tons presently lying aground in the East Voe of Skellister, by order of the owner, Mrs G. Petersen of Taing House, East Burra, and of the mortgagees, North Scottish Land and Securities.

  It took me the rest of the afternoon to track down the equipment I thought I might need and to establish some sort of relationship with the yards. The smallest proved the most helpful. It was out beyond the breeze-block plant on a dirt road that led to the old gun emplacements on Green Head. The owner, a cheerful, bald-headed man named Jim Halcrow, had been an engineer in the Navy. It was little more than a workshop with no slip and only four men employed. He serviced engines and deck gear, and as luck would have it one of the boats he was working on at the moment was an oil rig supply vessel in for emergency replacement of a fractured prop shaft. ‘We’ll be going for trials about a week from now, and who’s to care if I take her up to South Nesting on test? If I did, an’ if we hapt on yon trawler lying afloat, it’d be natural for us to take her in tow, now wouldn’t it?’ He gave me a broad wink. ‘Provided, of course, we’re doing the engine repairs for you.’

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Say fifty for the tow, cash and nobody breathing a word, and the rate for the job on her engines.’

  It was a little after six before I got back to the hotel. Fuller was waiting for me in the entrance lounge, a solid man with grey hair and a grey face. He smiled when I asked him if he had found the trawler he was looking for. ‘We’ll be needing two and with summer coming there’s not many owners interested in chartering. I’ve got the offer of one, but it’s old and available only at the end of July. That’s too late.’ He offered me a drink, and when he had given the order, he enquired whether I was a trawler owner.

  ‘Not at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘Your note said you had a proposition.’ He had a faintly harassed air.

  For answer I handed him my copy of the Shetland Times. But he had already seen it and he knew about the auc
tion. Briefly he explained his requirements: a vessel in commission and complete with crew to act as watchdog to a drilling rig his company would start operating in Shetland waters about a month from now. It would probably be drilling through into the late summer, early autumn; the stand-by boat was required to keep station, whatever the weather, which was why he had wanted trawlers rather than small coasters. ‘And we don’t want to own them. We just want to charter.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you bought it.’ The drinks came and I asked him what the charter rate would be. His figure was too low and I told him so. ‘You loan me twenty thousand for six months at a nominal 2 per cent and I’ll accept the charter at your rate.’ And I went on to give my qualifications and the general outline of how I thought I could get the stranded trawler serviceable enough to pass survey inside of a month.

  His questions were mainly financial. I think he had been trained in accountancy. He had that sort of a mind and he knew very little about ships. But he was desperate to get something settled. That was obvious when he invited me to stay on for dinner. The reason emerged during the meal. He worked at the Head Office of a shipping line that had just been taken over by a City finance company run by a man who, as he put it, had a flair for getting into the right thing at the right moment. This man was arriving at Sumburgh next day, flying his own plane, and as soon as he mentioned the name I understood his need to have something to show for the two days he had been up here. Vic Villiers had been acquiring a reputation for the ruthless exploitation of under-developed assets when I was still at the LSE. This was his first venture into oil.