Godliman said, “What’s this—‘Regards to Willi’?”
“Now, that’s important,” said Bloggs. He was getting enthusiastic. “Here’s a scrap of another message, quite recent. Look—‘Regards to Willi.’ This time there was a reply. He’s addressed as ‘Die Nadel.’”
“The Needle.”
“This one’s a pro. Look at his message: terse, economical, but detailed and completely unambiguous.”
Godliman studied the fragment of the second message. “It appears to be about the effects of the bombing.”
“He’s obviously toured the East End. A pro, a pro.”
“What else do we know about Die Nadel?”
Bloggs’s expression of youthful eagerness collapsed. “That’s it, I’m afraid.”
“His code name is Die Nadel, he signs off ‘Regards to Willi,’ and he has good information—and that’s it?”
“’Fraid so.”
Godliman sat on the edge of the desk and stared out of the window. On the wall of the opposite building, underneath an ornate window sill, he could see the nest of a house-marten. “On that basis, what chance have we of catching him?”
Bloggs shrugged. “On that basis, none at all.”
I
T IS FOR PLACES LIKE THIS THAT THE WORD “BLEAK”
has been invented.
The island is a J-shaped lump of rock rising sullenly out of the North Sea. It lies on the map like the top half of a broken cane, parallel with the Equator but a long, long way north; its curved handle toward Aberdeen, its broken, jagged stump pointing threateningly at distant Denmark. It is ten miles long.
Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage; a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity.
In the cup of the J the sea is calmer; there it has provided itself with a more pleasant reception. Its tides have thrown into that cup so much sand and seaweed, driftwood and pebbles and seashells that there is now, between the foot of the cliff and the water’s edge, a crescent of something closely resembling dry land, a more-or-less beach.
Each summer the vegetation at the top of the cliff drops a handful of seeds on to the beach, the way a rich man throws loose change to beggars. If the winter is mild and the spring comes early, a few of the seeds take feeble root; but they are never healthy enough to flower themselves and spread their own seeds, so the beach exists from year to year on handouts.
On the land itself, the proper land, held out of the sea’s reach by the cliffs, green things do grow and multiply. The vegetation is mostly coarse grass, only just good enough to nourish the few bony sheep, but tough enough to bind the topsoil to the island’s bedrock. There are some bushes, all thorny, that provide homes for rabbits; and a brave stand of conifers on the leeward slope of the hill at the eastern end.
The higher land is ruled by heather. Every few years the man—yes, there is a man here—sets fire to the heather, and then the grass will grow and the sheep can graze here too; but after a couple of years the heather comes back, God knows from where, and drives the sheep away until the man burns it again.
The rabbits are here because they were born here; the sheep are here because they were brought here; and the man is here to look after the sheep; but the birds are here because they like it. There are hundreds of thousands of them: long-legged rock pipits whistling
peep peep peep
as they soar and
pe-pe-pe-pe
as they dive like a Spitfire coming at a Messerschmidt out of the sun; corncrakes, which the man rarely sees, but he knows they are there because their bark keeps him awake at night; ravens and carrion crows and kittiwakes and
countless
gulls; and a pair of golden eagles that the man shoots at when he sees them, for he
knows
—regardless of what naturalists and experts from Edinburgh may tell him—that they
do
prey on live lambs and not just the carcasses of those already dead.
The island’s most constant visitor is the wind. It comes mostly from the northeast, from
really
cold places where there are fjords and glaciers and icebergs; often bringing with it unwelcome gifts of snow and driving rain and cold, cold mist; sometimes arriving empty-handed, just to howl and whoop and raise hell, tearing up bushes and bending trees and whipping the intemperate ocean into fresh paroxysms of foam-flecked rage. It is tireless, this wind, and that is its mistake. If it came occasionally it could take the island by surprise and do some real damage; but because it is almost always here, the island has learned to live with it. The plants put down deep roots, and the rabbits hide far inside the thickets, and the trees grow up with their backs ready-bent for the flogging, and the birds nest on sheltered ledges, and the man’s house is sturdy and squat, built with a craftsmanship that knows this old wind.
This house is made of big grey stones and grey slates, the color of the sea. It has small windows and close-fitting doors and a chimney in its pipe end. It stands at the top of the hill at the eastern end of the island, close to the splintered stub of the broken walking-stick. It crowns the hill, defying the wind and the rain, not out of bravado but so that the man can see the sheep.
There is another house, very similar, ten miles away at the opposite end of the island near the more-or-less beach; but nobody lives there. There was once another man. He thought he knew better than the island; he thought he could grow oats and potatoes and keep a few cows. He battled for three years with the wind and the cold and the soil before he admitted he was wrong. When he had gone, nobody wanted his home.
This is a hard place. Only hard things survive here: hard rock, coarse grass, tough sheep, savage birds, sturdy houses and strong men.
It is for places like this that the word “bleak” has been invented.
“IT’S CALLED STORM ISLAND,”
said Alfred Rose. “I think you’re going to like it.”
David and Lucy Rose sat in the prow of the fishing boat and looked across the choppy water. It was a fine November day, cold and breezy yet clear and dry. A weak sun sparkled off the wavelets.
“I bought it in 1926,” Papa Rose continued, “when we thought there was going to be a revolution and we’d need somewhere to hide from the working class. It’s just the place for a convalescence.”
Lucy thought he was being suspiciously hearty, but she had to admit it looked lovely: all windblown and natural and fresh. And it made sense, this move. They had to get away from their parents and make a new start at being married; and there was no point in moving to a city to be bombed, not when neither of them was really well enough to help; and then David’s father had revealed that he owned an island off the coast of Scotland, and it seemed too good to be true.
“I own the sheep, too,” Papa Rose said. “Shearers come over from the mainland each spring, and the wool brings in just about enough money to pay Tom McAvity’s wages. Old Tom’s the shepherd.”
“How old is he?” Lucy asked.
“Good Lord, he must be—oh, seventy?”
“I suppose he’s eccentric.” The boat turned into the bay, and Lucy could see two small figures on the jetty: a man and a dog.
“Eccentric? No more than you’d be if you’d lived alone for twenty years. He talks to his dog.”
Lucy turned to the skipper of the small boat. “How often do you call?”
“Once a fortnight, missus. I bring Tom’s shopping, which isna much, and his mail, which is even less. You just give me your list, every other Monday, and if it can be bought in Aberdeen I’ll bring it.”
He cut the motor and threw a rope to Tom. The dog barked and ran around in circles, beside himself with excitement. Lucy put one foot on the gunwale and sprang out on to the jetty.
Tom shook her hand. He had a face of leather and a huge pipe with a lid. He was shorter than she, but wide, and he looked ridiculously healthy. He wore the hairiest tweed jacket she had ever seen, with a knitted sweater that must have been made by an elderly sister somewhere, plus a checked cap and army boots. His nose was huge, red and veined. “Pleased to meet you,” he said politely, as if she was his ninth visitor today instead of the first human face he had seen in fourteen days.
“Here y’are, Tom,” said the skipper. He handed two cardboard boxes out of the boat. “No eggs this time, but there’s a letter from Devon.”
“It’ll be from ma niece.”
Lucy thought, That explains the sweater.
David was still in the boat. The skipper stood behind him and said, “Are you ready?”
Tom and Papa Rose leaned into the boat to assist, and the three of them lifted David in his wheelchair on to the jetty.
“If I don’t go now I’ll have to wait a fortnight for the next bus,” Papa Rose said with a smile. “The house has been done up quite nicely, you’ll see. All your stuff is in there. Tom will show you where everything is.” He kissed Lucy, squeezed David’s shoulder, and shook Tom’s hand. “Have a few months of rest and togetherness, get completely fit, then come back; there are important war jobs for both of you.”
They would not be going back, Lucy knew, not before the end of the war. But she had not told anyone about that yet.
Papa got back into the boat. It wheeled away in a tight circle. Lucy waved until it disappeared around the headland.
Tom pushed the wheelchair, so Lucy took his groceries. Between the landward end of the jetty and the cliff top was a long, steep, narrow ramp rising high above the beach like a bridge. Lucy would have had trouble getting the wheelchair to the top, but Tom managed without apparent exertion.
The cottage was perfect.
It was small and grey, and sheltered from the wind by a little rise in the ground. All the woodwork was freshly painted, and a wild rose bush grew beside the doorstep. Curls of smoke rose from the chimney to be whipped away by the breeze. The tiny windows looked over the bay.
Lucy said, “I love it!”
The interior had been cleaned and aired and painted, and there were thick rugs on the stone floors. It had four rooms: downstairs, a modernized kitchen and a living room with a stone fireplace; upstairs, two bedrooms. One end of the house had been carefully remodeled to take modern plumbing, with a bathroom above and a kitchen extension below.
Their clothes were in the wardrobes. There were towels in the bathroom and food in the kitchen.
Tom said, “There’s something in the barn I’ve to show you.”
It was a shed, not a barn. It lay hidden behind the cottage, and inside it was a gleaming new jeep.
“Mr. Rose says it’s been specially adapted for young Mr. Rose to drive,” Tom said. “It’s got automatic gears, and the throttle and brake are operated by hand. That’s what he said.” He seemed to be repeating the words parrotfashion, as if he had very little idea of what gears, brakes and throttles might be.
Lucy said, “Isn’t that super, David?”
“Top-hole. But where shall I go in it?”
Tom said: “You’re always welcome to visit me and share a pipe and a drop of whisky. I’ve been looking forward to having neighbors again.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy.
“This here’s the generator,” Tom said, turning around and pointing. “I’ve got one just the same. You put the fuel in here. It delivers alternating current.”
“That’s unusual—small generators are usually direct current,” David said.
“Aye. I don’t really know the difference, but they tell me this is safer.”
“True. A shock from this would throw you across the room, but direct current would kill you.”
They went back to the cottage. Tom said, “Well, you’ll want to settle in, and I’ve sheep to tend, so I’ll say good-day. Oh! I ought to tell you—in an emergency, I can contact the mainland by wireless radio.”
David was surprised. “You’ve got a radio transmitter?”
“Aye,” Tom said proudly. “I’m an enemy aircraft spotter in the Royal Observer Corps.”
“Ever spotted any?” David asked.
Lucy flashed her disapproval of the sarcasm in David’s voice, but Tom seemed not to notice. “Not yet,” he replied.
“Jolly good show.”
When Tom had gone Lucy said, “He only wants to do his bit.”
“There are lots of us who
want
to do our bit,” David said.
And that, Lucy reflected, was the trouble. She dropped the subject, and wheeled her crippled husband into their new home.
WHEN LUCY
had been asked to visit the hospital psychologist, she had immediately assumed that David had brain damage. It was not so. “All that’s wrong with his head is a nasty bruise on the left temple,” the psychologist said. She went on: “However, the loss of both his legs is a trauma, and there’s no telling how it will affect his state of mind. Did he want very much to be a pilot?”
Lucy pondered. “He was afraid, but I think he wanted it very badly, all the same.”
“Well, he’ll need all the reassurance and support that you can give him. And patience, too. One thing we can predict is that he will be resentful and ill-tempered for a while. He needs love and rest.”
However, during their first few months on the island he seemed to want neither. He did not make love to her, perhaps because he was waiting until his injuries were fully healed. But he did not rest, either. He threw himself into the business of sheep farming, tearing about the island in his jeep with the wheelchair in the back. He built fences along the more treacherous cliffs, shot at the eagles, helped Tom train a new dog when Betsy began to go blind, and burned off the heather; and in the spring he was out every night delivering lambs. One day he felled a great old pine tree near Tom’s cottage, and spent a fortnight stripping it, hewing it into manageable logs and carting them back to the house for firewood. He relished really hard manual labor. He learned to strap himself tightly to the chair to keep his body anchored while he wielded an axe or a mallet. He carved a pair of Indian clubs and exercised with them for hours when Tom could find nothing more for him to do. The muscles of his arms and back became near-grotesque, like those of men who win body-building contests.
Lucy was not unhappy. She had been afraid he might sit by the fire all day and brood over his bad luck. The way he worked was faintly worrying because it was so obsessive, but at least he was not vegetating.
She told him about the baby at Christmas.
In the morning she gave him a gasoline-driven saw, and he gave her a bolt of silk. Tom came over for dinner, and they ate a wild goose he had shot. David drove the shepherd home after tea, and when he came back Lucy opened a bottle of brandy.
Then she said, “I have another present for you, but you can’t open it until May.”
He laughed. “What on earth are you talking about? How much of that brandy did you drink while I was out?”
“I’m having a baby.”
He stared at her, and all the laughter went out of his face. “Good God, that’s all we bloody well need.”
“David!”
“Well, for God’s sake…. When the hell did it happen?”
“That’s not too difficult to figure out, is it?” she said. “It must have been a week before the wedding. It’s a miracle it survived the crash.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”