Atlantic Fury (29 page)

We steamed into Leverburgh just after four-thirty in the afternoon. We had been hove-to twice for the M.O. to carry out minor operations. The rest of the time we had managed little more than seven knots. The tug's internal accommodation was sufficient only for the serious casualties. The rest – men suffering from exposure and extreme exhaustion – had to be left out on the open deck. Anything over seven knots and the tug would have been shipping water in the heavy seas. As a result the voyage took almost fourteen hours and during all that time the men were exposed to wind and spray. One man died during the night and there were several showing symptoms of pneumonia by the time we docked.

The quay was packed as we came alongside, packed solid with men whose dress proclaimed them foreigners to the Hebrides. Army personnel in charge of the vehicles to take the survivors to Northton tried to hold them back, but as the tug's side touched the quay they swarmed on board. They were all after one man. ‘Where's Braddock? Which is Major Braddock? Where is he – in the Captain's cabin?'

In fact, Iain had been sleeping in the scuppers on the port side. ‘I don't think he'll see anybody. He's very tired.'

‘I can't help that. He's news.' He told me the paper he represented and thrust a note into my hand. ‘Here's a fiver. Just point him out to me, that's all.' And when I told him to go to hell, he tried to make it a tenner.

They found him in the end, of course. They brought him to bay like a pack of hounds in a corner under the bridge housing and he stood there, facing them, his battered face grey with fatigue, his voice hoarse with shouting above the wind. They were all round him, their notebooks out, firing questions. And all he said was, ‘No comment.'

He didn't realise that this was his one opportunity to defend himself – that he'd never get another. He stuck to the letter of QRs and refused to make a statement, relying on his superiors to back him up. Relying, too, on the fact that without his efforts the survivors would never have been got off Sgeir Mhor alive. He didn't know then that his superiors were going to throw him to the wolves, that he was to be the scapegoat. How could he? For the last thirty-six hours he'd been involved in physical action, body and mind devoted to one thing alone – getting those men off. He didn't understand that these reporters couldn't visualise the circumstances. He was dead tired and his own mind was incapable at that moment of making the leap from individual effort to the broader aspects of the affair. No comment! A statement will be issued in due course. His Army training overlaid whatever personal inclination he had. He behaved, in fact, with perfect correctness and in doing so he damned himself before that most violent and blind of all judges – the public.

I saw the faces of the reporters harden. Frustration developed into anger. One man, snapping his notebook shut, seemed to speak for the rest: ‘Okay, Major, have it your own way. But don't blame us if the public forms its own opinion of your evacuation order.'

Other notebooks snapped. The circle broke up and Iain stood there, tight-lipped and with a baffled look on his face, as they suddenly abandoned him to move amongst the survivors in search of personal, human interest stories. There was no shortage of these. The struggle to get the landing craft off the beach, the fight to get her out of Shelter Bay and clear of the rocks of Sgeir Mhor in the teeth of the hurricane, the failure of the engines, the scene of utter confusion as she struck with the bridge deck concertinaed against the fortress mass of Sgeir Mhor; how for a short while the up-lifted stern section had acted as a sort of ramp, enabling those that were still alive to scramble ashore, the desperate hours of waiting through that ghastly night and the rising seas and the new storm breaking over them.

There was so much of human interest. In particular, there was Field. They got the story of his climb from Sergeant Wetherby and a bunch of them crowded round him. ‘Tell me, Mr Field – how did you feel? Were you scared?' He tried to tell them about Braddock's crossing of the gut between the Butt of Keava and Sgeir Mhor, but they weren't interested in that now. Reporters in London, working on the background of the officers involved, had interviewed Field's wife. As a result they knew who he was. ‘Could you give us your reactions please? … How did it feel climbing that sheer cliff face? … Was it as stiff as the climbs you faced in the Himalayas?' Cameras clicked, the TV men closed in.

And all the time Captain Flint with a squad of men was trying to get the injured off the ship and into the waiting vehicles. ‘Get the hell out of it, you bloody blood-sucking bastards.' His Cockney humour had deserted him. The essential warmth of his nature was revolted by this spectacle of news-hungry men milling around amongst injured and exhausted survivors, fighting to get to grips with their stories. I saw him take a camera out of one photographer's hand and throw it over the side. The man had been trying to get a close-up of some poor devil with his face smashed in. ‘The next one of you ghouls that tries that I'll 'eave the beggar over the side, camera an' all.'

I found Marjorie struggling to get near her father – shut out by the ring of men surrounding him. ‘Oh, thank God!' she said when she saw me. ‘What happened? Why are they all crowding round him?' The bloom was gone from her face, all the vitality knocked out of her. ‘I can't get near him.' The pupils of those strangely blue eyes were dilated and the words came in a panic rush, almost a sob.

Briefly I told her what her father had done, and all the time she had hold of my hand, clinging to it as though I were the one stable thing left to her. But as I talked I saw a change come over her. She seemed gradually to come alive. ‘Then perhaps it's all right,' she breathed. ‘Perhaps this is the end of it then.' It was extraordinary – the recuperative power of youth. Her eyes were suddenly shining, bright with hope, and then she kissed me full on the mouth for no apparent reason that I could see except that she needed to express her joy, her sense of relief that her father was safe and she didn't have to worry about him any longer. ‘And what about you? All those hours alone on Laerg. You must be exhausted.' And she suggested that I come up to the croft with her father. ‘It'll be better than going to the camp.' And with an understanding that surprised me because I'd never had anybody who'd cared a damn how I felt, she said, ‘You'll need to unwind – slowly.'

I knew she was right. I was still extraordinarily keyed up. And yet at the same time I was utterly exhausted – a state of complete nervous fatigue. I did need to unwind, and I was grateful to her.

‘If you'll just try and extricate my father …'

And so I left with them in the little estate car and I didn't see my brother again for a long time.

The next day's papers were full of the story of the disaster, pages of it – eye-witness accounts and personal stories, timetables of the events leading up to the rescue and Field's climb. Charles Field was suddenly a hero again. There were pictures of him. Pictures of the survivors. But reading the papers with the whole story written up like a thrilling serial, the blow-by-blow account of a great storm with human courage surmounting disaster, I detected an ominous note. There were leaders implying that men had died unnecessarily. There were feature articles that showed the whole course of that intense local depression – some gave the wind speed as high as 150 knots, though they had no means of knowing since there were no anemometers to record it – and here the implication was that if the officer in charge (meaning my brother) had taken the advice of the local Met. Officer, no lives need have been lost. They completely ignored the fact that Cliff's warning had come too late, almost three hours after the order to evacuate had been given.

Throughout every paper there was the same searching, angry note of inquiry. Somebody was responsible, and with Standing dead that man could only be Braddock. The order to evacuate, taken on his own responsibility, and his subsequent arrest, damned him utterly. There were questions asked about it in the House. The Secretary of State for War promised a full-scale inquiry.

It was a witch-hunt, nothing less, and my brother was the man they were all gunning for. The people responsible for his appointment to the Hebrides did nothing to demonstrate their confidence in him. The reverse, in fact. They relieved him of his temporary command and sent him on indefinite leave pending the results of the Inquiry. No doubt this action was intended to relieve him of the pressure of phone calls, but its effect, inevitably, was to confirm the Press in their condemnation of his conduct.

I only heard that he'd been ordered away on leave two days later when I felt sufficiently recovered to visit Northton. Marjorie drove me to the camp. With her father and myself to look after, the croft to run and reporters to keep at bay, she was out of touch with camp affairs. I went straight to the Admin. block. There was a new adjutant, a Captain Davidson, short and dapper with a little moustache. ‘Major Braddock? I'm sorry, he's away on leave. Colonel Webb's in command here now.' And he added, ‘I'm afraid I can't give you Braddock's address. I don't think we've been notified where he's staying.'

And that was that. I saw Rafferty and Flint. Nobody had Iain's address. The slate had been wiped clean, my brother expunged as though he'd never existed. Whether they acted under orders, I don't know. The effect, at any rate, was the same. He was gone and nobody would, or could, tell me where. I returned to Marjorie waiting in the car and all the way back to Rodil I was thinking of Iain, somewhere in the British Isles, a man condemned without a hearing. They hadn't even been able to tell me when the Inquiry would be held. ‘You'll be notified in due course, Mr Ross,' the dapper little adjutant had said. ‘At least, I imagine you will, since I gather you're a vital witness.'

A witness! I hadn't thought of that. A witness against my own brother. And Iain wandering lost and alone with nobody to turn to. If he hadn't been separated from his wife, if he'd been able to draw on the strength of his family … But life had kicked even that support from under him.

‘He's alone,' I said, not realising I was speaking aloud. ‘Absolutely alone.'

Marjorie braked, glancing at me quickly. ‘Who? Major Braddock?' And then, in a quiet voice, she said, ‘Donald, I've been wondering – we've both been wondering … What is your connection with Major Braddock?' She was staring straight ahead of her then, her eyes fixed on the road. ‘There is a connection, isn't there?'

So they'd noticed. I didn't say anything for a moment. ‘If you don't want to talk about it.… But I thought perhaps it might help.'

I had to think about this, about whether it was fair to Iain. But I, too, was alone. And they'd been kind to me. Friendship, understanding … I suppose even then I was aware of the attraction of this girl, a growing closeness between us that wasn't only physical. And to share my fears …

But remembering the haunted look on his face, I shook my head. ‘Not now,' I said. ‘Later perhaps …'

She touched my hand, a gesture of sympathy. ‘If I'd known …' But then she shook her head. ‘No, I'd still have felt the same. He did give the order, you know.' And she added, ‘Why? Why was he so determined to get them away on that last LCT?'

Why indeed? With a woman's intuition she had hit on the real point, the basic fact that made my brother guilty. But I couldn't see it then. I was thinking only of the disaster, not of what might have gone before when he cloaked himself in another man's identity, and I said, ‘It was because he knew if he didn't get them off then, they'd have been stuck there for the winter with insufficient supplies.' I was quoting Field, who'd had it from Rafferty, and all the time the thing was there, staring me in the face.

But Lane, his mind concentrated on his own monetary affairs, unclouded by all the details of the disaster, had seen it. I had a phone call from him within an hour of my return to London. ‘That you, Ross? Glad to know you're back at last. Where's your brother?' I tried to deny that he was my brother, but he ignored that. ‘I want a word with that guy. Now you just tell me where he is or I'm going to pass this whole story over to the Press. After what's happened, they'll just lap it up.'

‘I don't think so,' I said.

‘And why not?'

‘In this country the law of libel is still very—'

‘Libel!' His soft voice was suddenly tough. ‘You talk about libel when the man may prove to be a murderer. Yeah, a murderer.' I thought he was referring to the men who'd been drowned. But it wasn't that. His one-track mind was making a much more specific charge. ‘Have you considered, Mr Ross, what happened to the original Braddock – the young George Braddock, aged twenty and just commissioned, afloat on that life-raft with this monster of a brother of yours? Have you considered that?'

It came as a shock. And yet it had been at the back of my mind ever since I'd seen Iain standing with his finned feet in the surf, staring up at the hidden heights of Laerg; ever since that moment when I'd come ashore to find him waiting up in the camp, desperate to be left alone there. ‘I think,' I said, trying to keep control of my voice, ‘you'd better not repeat that. Major Braddock may be facing an Inquiry, but that doesn't mean you can make wild accusations …'

‘Major Braddock!' There was anger and contempt in his voice. ‘His name's Iain Ross. It's Iain Ross we're talking about, and you know it. Why else did you go north to the Hebrides? How else could you have managed to get on that landing craft and finish up in Laerg? Both of you, there on your own island together. Now you just tell me where I'll find the son-of-a-bitch. That's all I want from you – for the moment.' And when I told him I didn't know, he said, ‘All right, Ross. You stick by him. Very admirable of you – very fraternal. But you won't fob me off as easily as that. I'll just stay on here in England. I can wait. They'll produce him when the Board of Inquiry sits. And then I'll get him. I'll get the truth out of him then, so help me God, and if it's what I think it is, I'll brand him for the Goddamned murdering bastard he is. Goo'bye.' And he slammed the phone down.