I surfaced in the engine-room, the taste of oil on my lips, the water black and scummy, full of floating debris. The two banks of diesels were awash, the coupling to the single screw completely submerged. I floated cautiously to the ladder leading up past the header tank into the crew's quarters and clambered out. The air was warm and stale, smelling faintly of diesel oil. I stayed there for a moment, wondering how the hell those diesels had functioned at all with the engine-room half under water. But then, of course, she was on the bottom now and the tide making. Afloat, most of that rent would have been above the waterline.
I was beginning to shiver; rubbing my hands over my body, I could feel the goose-pimples below the film of oil. I started up the ladder then, unwilling to dive down again into the black murk of dirty water out of which the engines protruded like rocks awash. The ladder led up to an alleyway, and I went aft, past the galley and the messroom, to a door that opened on to the deck, with toilet and showers right in the stern. I moved for'ard, making a quick tour of the ship, careful of my feet and trying to memorize every item of damage. It was dark now, a cold breeze fluttering the flag of a dan buoy, all the nets neatly stowed along the inside of the bulwarks. Up on the road a car's headlights blazed and then vanished.
'You all right?' Fuller called.
I shouted back to him that I wouldn't be long and made my way to the bridge. It was an old-fashioned lay-out, a telegraph on the starboard side and the wheel at the back. But new equipment had been added, most of it ranged haphazardly under the half-circle of insloping windows — Decca radar, navigator and recorder, echo-sounder, log and speed indicator. The skipper's seat was fixed to a piece of metal piping socketed into the floor, and on the wall behind was the VHP set and the Warden receiver.
It was old equipment, probably secondhand. Leading off the starboard gangway, to the right of the companionway down to the quarters, was an enclosed space with a shelf for chartwork, and on it was the main R/T set, a big Cresta-Vega double-sideband. The door to the master's cabin was not locked. Inside, I found the bedding neatly piled on the bunk, all vestige of its dead occupant removed. Somebody — the girl probably, or that shambling giant of a man, who might well be the mate — had been on board and collected the old man's things, all except an aged reefer jacket hanging on the back of the door, salt marks white on the dark cloth and traces of mildew. I put it on and went back into the bridge, standing for a moment with my hands on the wheel, trying to visualize how she would be in a seaway with the diesels at half ahead and her crew shooting the trawl, myself the owner and skipper. It was a dream, no more, and I was too cold to think very clearly, but the longing was there, deep inside me.
It was only a moment I stood at the wheel, but I can still remember the odd feeling of companionship I experienced, as though there was a presence beside me in the darkness of the bridge. Not hostile, just watchful. I let go of the wheel and it was gone, as though it were the helm itself that had communicated with me. How long, I wondered, had the 81-year-old Olav Petersen been master on this bridge?
I went back to the radio shelf outside the skipper's cabin, remembering I had seen charts there. I thought perhaps the log might be there too, hoping that, if it went back far enough, it might give some indication of why Petersen's daughter-in-law had become the owner. Had her husband also died on board?
But there was no log book, only the charts. These were the two Shetland Isles charts, Nos. 11 ISA and B, and I opened them out, laying them flat along the shelf and following the pencil marks of their last cruise. They had been trawling off Ramna Stacks on the 23rd, off Gloup Holm and The Clapper on the 24th, and had started south down Bluemull Sound at 05.35 on the 25th. It was all there, every fix, every change of course, the pencilled figures thin and shaky. But on the 25th the writing had changed. It was larger, firmer, and there were erasures, as though whoever had taken over was unaccustomed to making chart entries.
I was shivering by then, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. I put the charts back in the drawer and with a last glance round the bridge, I went out along the starboard gangway into the chill of the night breeze. I had forgotten about the reefer and I took it off and 5S hung it in the shower compartment at the stern. The freeboard was so small with the tide near the high that I did not bother about a rope, but dived straight over the side and headed for the spit. The coldness of the water took my breath away and I was gasping for air as my feet touched bottom. I heard Fuller speaking, but I didn't catch the words. Then the beam of a torch stabbed the night and a voice demanded, 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' It was a woman's voice, loud and very clear, vibrant with anger.
I stopped, blinded by the glare and shivering. 'I've no clothes on,' I said, feeling foolish.
She laughed, a furious snorting sound. 'Do you think I haven't seen a man naked before? Now come on. Get out and explain what you've been up to.' And she kept the torch full on me all the time I was stumbling ashore over the boulders. I heard Fuller trying to explain, but by then I was past caring. I just reached for my clothes and dragged them on without bothering to dry myself. I thought she was some farmer's wife out after sheep or ponies, and then I heard her say, 'Sharks. You're like sharks, coming out here in the dark-' Her voice was wild and high — 'sniffing round the ship as though it is a bloody carcass.'
I grabbed the torch and turned it on her, the violence of her emotions warning me. Her face was no longer that of the young woman I had seen following the coffin that morning. Gone was the serenity, the tight-lipped control. 'I'm sorry,' I said. What else? I knew how she must feel. I could see it in her eyes, the blaze of anger brightened by tears. And she was right.
Sandford, Fuller, myself, others probably — all of us for our different reasons wanting to know whether the trawler could be floated again. 'You shouldn't have come-'
'Shouldn't have come! My ship, an' you tell me-'
'Feeling the way you do about her.' I lowered the beam of the torch, not wishing to intrude into the private world of her emotions. 'We'll go now.' I heard a sob in the darkness. That was all. She didn't say anything. 'If I had known…' I murmured, then left it at that. No good making excuses when to her we were sharks with our teeth into the prey. But whether the ship was just an outlet for her grief, or something more, I don't know. Men grieve over the loss of their ships, but for a woman…
I was thinking about her most of the time Fuller was driving me back to Hamnavoe. I'd never met a woman owner before. I was still thinking about her next morning as I took the road to Brough again, walking through a light drizzle. Fuller had said he would put my proposition to Villiers and I was remembering the blaze of anger in her eyes, wondering whether she would attend the auction. I was quite sure she had been on board when her father-in-law had died, and this I was able to confirm when I stopped at Miss Manson's cottage. 'She has always gone out with them, even when Jan was alive. He was her husband and she had to, him being so sickly, you see.'
She couldn't tell me very much. The Petersens had only been on East Burra four or five years. Jan Petersen had died about two years ago — of pneumonia, she thought. He had been in hospital at Lerwick, and after his death the trawler had been anchored between voyages in the shelter of The Taing instead of at Hamnavoe. 'So it's not often we see Gertrude now.' And she added, 'She's Norwegian, you know. The old man, too, and most of the crew, they're all Norwegians.'
I walked on then to Grund Sound and the little church, but it was the grave with its bunches of daffodils I saw; I wasn't thinking about my father. I paused for a moment on the bridge, gazing across at the mound of fresh earth. I think I had half hoped to find her there. I could have explained to her then.. But perhaps not. I went slowly on and ate my lunch in a field with three Shetland ponies watching me and a view of the calm circle of water sheltered by a tongue of land that was marked on my map as The Taing. Her house, which was an old farmhouse little bigger than a cottage, stood at the base of the tongue. It was built of stone with a slate roof, superbly set against the steep backdrop of the hills beyond Clift Sound. I could just imagine how it would have been for her, coming back after a week's trawling and waking up in the morning to look out of the window at her own ship lying snug to its reflection. But the inlet was empty now and the house looked deserted, no sign of life.