The Restless Sea
The Norwegian campaign is fought furiously on land and at sea. The Norwegian ports, tucked inside the folds of their magnificent fjords, are taken and lost, and taken again. Navy warships engage in constant battle with Nazi destroyers. The snow-covered hills are either obscured by smoke or lit by flashes of gunfire. The sound of heavy artillery booms across the sea. The icy waters are full of the wrecks of ships from both sides. The British, the French, the Polish, struggle to halt the enemy. The men on the ground fight viciously. They are hampered by heavy snow.
Olivia’s letters turn yellow, and the ink begins to fade. It doesn’t matter: Charlie knows them off by heart. He keeps them close. They will protect him from harm. The squadron’s morale is low, not least because of Captain Pearce. The captain briefed them earlier in the ready room, his face devoid of emotion. ‘If Hitler gets control of the Norwegian coast, he’ll be able to reach our supplies coming through the north Atlantic. And he’ll be able to reach Britain more easily. This is an important moment, men: the first airborne torpedo attack from a carrier of the war. You are history in the making. Let’s not make a hash of it.’
Their target is a German battlecruiser in Trondheim Fjord. Taking her out would be a substantial blow to German morale, and give the Allies a valuable boost. But they all know it is too early to fly – they will not be able to see the target until there is at least a little daylight. They should wait for another hour. But there is no telling Captain Pearce.
The Swordfish take to the skies. The sun has not yet risen. Below them is darkness; above the stars glitter like thousands of candles. It is confusing, disconcerting. Usually it is lights that twinkle below them, and darkness above. For a second Charlie’s brain is muddled. It feels as if he is flying upside down. He is tempted to right the plane. He checks the faintly glowing instruments in the cockpit again. He has to trust them. Night flying is all about trust: for the engineers who keep the instruments working, to the pilots who keep the planes flying, and the observers who find their way home. Charlie has heard of pilots getting confused, spinning upside down and losing control in similar conditions.
‘Did you see that?’ Mole asks.
Charlie shakes his head. He was too busy concentrating on the needles and dials and numbers around him.
‘Starboard,’ says Mole.
Charlie senses the Kid move, and picks up the shift in tension too. Could it be the German ship? Could something that large manage to slip so silently across the sea? Easily. But he can’t see anything. The wind rushes in his ears. Is that the faint pale mark of waves breaking behind a ship? Or a trick of the light? Captain Pearce’s words ring in his ears. They must not fail. There’s nothing for it. Mole unpacks a flare. Charlie gives him the thumbs-up. The safety and hum of the darkness is theirs for a moment longer, and then phshshshsh, Mole drops the flare and it falls downward, a spiralling comet of light heading into nothing, nothing, and then suddenly streaks of light explode into the air around them, followed by a barrage of gunfire.
‘Bloody hell, Mole!’ Charlie dips the plane sideways and lower, swinging through the hail of ammunition.
It is not the battlecruiser. It is a German destroyer. It will have to do – they have blown their cover now. Charlie steadies the plane through the flak and lines himself up for a torpedo run. The cockpit is lit by flashes of tracer fire. It gives him some sense of direction, but as he looses the missile, he has no idea whether it has found its mark.
‘Just get us out of here,’ says Mole.
‘Damn,’ says Charlie, partly because he knows Captain Pearce will be disappointed, and partly because there are two neat holes in the fabric of the plane near his right elbow, where bullets have passed straight through. If she was made of metal, she’d have been blown apart. As it is, she is flying, but something doesn’t feel right.
‘You all right, Mole?’ Charlie shouts behind him.
‘Fine, boyo. You just get us home safely.’ Mole reads him the correct course, squinting in the orange glow of his tiny lamp. They will be there in sixteen minutes.
Charlie doesn’t want to let them know that the plane isn’t responding properly. But then, he doesn’t need to. Her juddering and balking do the job for him.
‘What is it?’ Mole asks. ‘Propeller? Fuel tank?’
‘I think it’s the port wing,’ says Charlie.
Mole peers into the dark. ‘Can’t bloody see,’ he says.
The problem is getting worse. The plane dips on her port side. They all lean to starboard, trying to right her, but it’s just a reaction, it won’t do anything.
‘Hang on,’ says Mole. Charlie feels him jiggering around with something. It’s his chart lamp. Mole tries to light the wing, leaning out of the cockpit as far as he can. ‘Pin’s been blown out. The wing is folding.’
It makes sense. The wing rattles and jangles ominously.
‘Shit,’ says Charlie.
‘No need for bad language, boyo,’ says Mole.
‘Will we make it?’
‘Depends if it folds.’
The way it’s shaking, Charlie thinks folding is pretty likely. The weight shifts again in the cockpit behind him. Mole starts to hum, but the noise isn’t coming through the Gosport tube: the notes are drifting out into the night.
‘What are you doing?’ Charlie asks.
‘Never you mind, boyo,’ says Mole.
Charlie can feel vibrations beneath his feet. He tries to look behind, but he can’t see anything. He hears Mole say something to the Kid, and the noise of a clip clicking on to something. He senses Mole stand up, the balance of the plane changing. The wing is juddering now.
‘Mole? What …’
‘You just fly, boyo.’ The voice is almost in his ear. Fingers appear next to him in the cockpit. The Welshman has clambered out on to the wing.
‘Get back in …’ But Charlie’s words are pulled into the slipstream. He can just see one of Mole’s arms wrapped around one of the metal struts.
‘You’re a fool,’ says Charlie, but he knows Mole can’t possibly hear him above the screaming of the wind and the rumble of the engine. He concentrates on keeping the plane balanced, checking the instruments, sensing the plane, as if it’s part of him. The extra weight on the wing is pushing it down, but still the plane is coping, and then suddenly it feels right again. Mole edges back into the cockpit, toppling in sideways with a thud. He gives a whoop of delight and bursts into song.
Charlie starts to laugh. He can hear the Kid laughing too. They are all laughing into the night air with a mad joy at being alive. The plane is still coughing and spluttering. Her engine must be damaged too. But he trusts her. She will get them back safely.
As they reach the ship, Charlie flashes the red light on his starboard wing twice, followed by the green light twice. The ship signals back, and the faint path of guiding lights comes on. He has done this landing a hundred times and it makes no difference in the dark. He looks for the batsman’s signal. The lights on the bats are dim but legible. The plane gulps and spits, and when they land he can hear and smell the petrol spewing out of her.
The propeller chokes to a standstill, and Tugger’s face materialises out of the gloom. ‘What have you done to her?’ he asks. ‘And the hell’s this?’ Tugger points at the running repair that Mole has done. Charlie walks around to inspect it, for once glad to be back on solid ground.
The Welshman has used his bootlace to tie the pin back in. It’s pretty heroic. He will dine out on it for months.
‘She’ll be all right,’ says Mole. ‘If anyone can fix her up, it’s you.’
Tugger suddenly steps back and salutes, and Captain Pearce appears behind Charlie. In the dim dawn light, his eyes are cold and hard, his lips thin and his eyebrows bristling. ‘Wrong bloody ship,’ he says. ‘What did you think you were doing?’
Mole and the Kid and Tugger stand there, eyes glazed, faces expressionless. Charlie’s cheeks burn. ‘I know that, sir,’ he says. ‘But once …’
‘And you’ve damaged the plane. Reckless. I’ve a good mind to send you home for reassessment. God help us, if you’re the best we’ve got …’
‘It was impossible to see out there, sir …’
‘Don’t you bloody answer back! You’re an idiot, and that’s it. I will have to report this.’ He turns and stomps back to the bridge.
Charlie swallows in the silence. ‘Don’t listen to him,’ says Mole. ‘He’s a bitter old fool who should be in a flowerbed.’
‘Preferably six feet under it,’ says Tugger. ‘And don’t worry about the plane. She’ll be fine.’
‘We did good, Charlie,’ says the Kid.
But the captain’s words wound Charlie deeply. He is not used to falling foul of those in charge. He feels diminished. Only one person doesn’t see his faults: Olivia. Her letters are a lifeline to cling to in turbulent water. He clings to them all the tighter.
CHAPTER 5
Olivia
Olivia sits on a bench at the station. The heat is already almost unbearable. Her pale green travelling outfit is crumpled and creased. She fans herself with her hat. The din of people and trains arriving and departing has died down. Trucks and cars, horses and carts, troops and families have been and gone, churning up the dust, making it twirl in the warm air before it settles back in a thin layer over everything. In a way she is glad that she is alone, no longer at the mercy of the wandering eyes and nudges of strangers, like the impertinent ratings on the train who had frightened her with their whispering and pointing. She wishes Charlie, the officer who rescued her at breakfast, had got off here too, but he changed for the train to Thurso, taking his raucous charges with him. She feels comforted as she remembers his protective arm ushering her to safety, the aura of confidence. And then she smiles once more at what turned out to be a wonderful coincidence. Charlie’s godmother her aunt? Funny how one chances across these connections, but perhaps not so unusual among her class.
Olivia reaches to fiddle with the bracelet at her wrist, a nervous habit, but then her heart sinks as she remembers that she has lost it, and tears prick at her eyes. She feels so vulnerable sitting here on this bench in the middle of nowhere, travelling on her own for the first time, no handsome officer to protect her now. The fact that she has lost the one treasure that she owns makes her feel all the more so. Perhaps she left it at Stoke Hall, but she is sure she can remember clicking the delicate clasp together and pulling her cuff down over it yesterday morning. Maybe it came loose during the panic when the faulty siren went off at the station. And then there was that boy with the wild eyes … but that’s unfair – the kind of thing her mother might say. He only helped her find her way to the Underground. No. She must have left it at home. The thought of home, and her bedroom, with its pretty bedspread and her favourite lamps with the hand-painted flowers twisting up their stands, and Jasper, her old teddy bear, on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, and Nanny, who always knows what to do, and all the other familiar things she loves, sends a hot, thin tear sliding down her cheek.
She hears a cough and looks up, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The stationmaster is looming over her. ‘Are you sure I can’t call someone for you, miss?’ he asks.
‘Absolutely,’ says Olivia. ‘My aunt will be here any minute.’
He looks disbelievingly up the empty road. ‘Perhaps you got the wrong day, miss.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she snaps at him, immediately regretting it, but she is hot and tired and worried.
‘Maybe she’s driving slowly. To save on petrol.’
Olivia nods and tries to sit up straight and look as if it is a perfectly normal thing to be sitting outside a train station on one’s own.
Eventually a small car materialises slowly out of the haze and draws to a lazy stop outside the station. A sprightly old man with silver hair and a dour expression clambers out of the driver’s seat. His eyes narrow when he sees her, and he tips his head.
‘Lady Bowman?’ he says, with a strong accent.
The stationmaster appears again, and the driver becomes more animated as the two men exchange pleasantries in a language that Olivia does not recognise while the porter packs her cases into the back of the car. Olivia waits for them to finish. It takes a while; neither man appears to be in a hurry. The sun gleams on the car’s shiny black paintwork, the polished chrome of its radiator and the spokes of its wheels. She fans herself with her hat, and tries to look composed. At last the man is ready to go. He climbs straight into the driver’s seat and leans across to do the passenger door from the inside so that she must pull it open for herself. He sweeps a length of twine and a box of fishing weights on to the floor at her feet, where there is already a pair of galoshes and a rain hat. The car smells of rotten fish, and when she turns to look behind her, there is a creel dripping seawater all over the back seat; a straggle of grassy seaweed caught in the netting glistens at her. She shudders and faces forwards again, leaning her head against the side window.
The journey to Poolewe takes almost four hours. Four hours, and they pass not one other human being. Just a few lonely crofts tucked away in the folds of a hill here and there. The fine morning has become muggy, the air heavy, crackling with energy. Olivia stares at the scenery passing by: great bleak spaces of wilderness, long empty expanses of water. Her clothes stick to her, damp against the leather of the seat. In the back, there are small pale deposits of salt where the seawater dripping from the creel has dried. The driver does not speak. He stares resolutely at the road ahead, occasionally grunting when they bump over a particularly deep rut.
Olivia’s mind wanders. What an exhausting few hours she’s had. From the thrill of the station and air-raid siren, to the boy with the wild eyes at the station, and then Charlie, so handsome in his uniform, so gallant, off to protect the seas. Well, if he can face the Nazis, she’s sure she can face some Scottish solitude.
She sticks her hand out of the open window. Beyond her fingers, the desolate emptiness stretches on forever. She closes her eyes. The breeze pushes at her arm, cools her skin, blows in her hair. It reminds her of climbing out on to the roof at home, the view so different to this one: the neatly rolled grass court where the rabbits crouch, flashes of brown and white in the long grass at its edge; the cedars with their stately, sweeping branches; the cobbled stable yard with its bell tower; the pale dovecote next to it; the mottled doves, half-pigeon now, circling above.
At last they turn through an ornate pair of iron gates and bump along a potholed drive at the end of which is a large white house. Taigh Mor. Olivia scrambles out on to the gravel, glancing up at the smart black windows, and then across the lawn that sweeps down to an enormous loch surrounded by hills. The front door is wide open, but instead of Aunt Nancy appearing, Olivia is greeted by an elderly servant with hair that was once black but is now peppered with grey.
‘Your aunt sends her apologies,’ says the servant. ‘But she’s a wee bit tied up with unexpected visitors. She says Munro’s to take you down to the bothy, and she’ll be there as soon as she can.’
Olivia stares at the maid blankly.
The man who she assumes is Munro grunts as he opens the trunk and starts to unload the cases, handing two to her, by which she understands that she is meant to carry them.
‘Shouldn’t we leave them here?’ she asks.
‘Oh no,’ says the maid. ‘You’ll be needing your things.’
‘You mean I’m not staying in the house?’
‘No, no. Didn’t I say? You’re in the bothy. You’re very lucky. She doesn’t usually let anyone stay down there.’
The maid disappears back into the house. Olivia’s bottom lip trembles. Munro looks her up and down with disgust. She digs her nails into her palm. She won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
She traipses after him down a dry, rutted track covered in wispy, pale grass that soon becomes a tunnel flanked by twisted rhododendron bushes beneath thick woodland. The house disappears behind them. The air is cooler here, and birds and other creatures call warnings to each other as they trudge on. Olivia’s fingers ache, the blood squeezed out of them by the handles of the bags. A layer of dirt attaches itself to her shoes. They will soon be ruined.
Eventually, they emerge into the sunlight on another lawn that ends only a couple of hundred yards away at the shore of the loch. To their left is a small white cottage, bright beneath the dark Scots pines of the woodland behind.
Munro puts the bags down on the stone steps.
‘Is this it? Is this the bothy?’ she asks.
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘You go and have a look around. Take your time. We’ve plenty of it.’
Olivia climbs the steps. The door is propped open with a large pebble. Inside, it is cool compared to the thundery heat outside. It smells of flowers and the sea. Along the sills are old shells, stones, sea urchins, and driftwood that have paled in the sunlight over the years. To the left is a small sitting room that looks out towards the loch; on the right is a tiny kitchen warmed by a large range stove, and a bedroom that is just large enough for a bed and a dressing table, also with a view of the loch. Someone has blown the dust from the kettle, there are fresh sheets on the bed, the cupboards are filled with food, and the windows have been flung open. At the back of the cottage an old lean-to has been converted into a lavatory accessible through the kitchen; the other half acts as coal shed and wood store.
The entire cottage is smaller than the folly at Stoke Hall.
Munro is still standing on the steps, staring out towards the loch. The only sound is the rasp of water on the shingle and the whisper of wind in the leaves behind the bothy. What Olivia would give to hear a familiar noise: the whistle of the groom, or cook shouting in the kitchen, or Pike banging the gong for tea. She makes a noise, a half-strangled sob, and Munro turns to look at her, his eyebrows knitting together. He clears his throat. ‘Where would ye like to start?’ he asks.
‘I don’t want to start anywhere,’ says Olivia.
‘Would ye rather fish?’
‘No,’ says Olivia. ‘I don’t want to fish. And I don’t want to stay in this hovel. I can’t understand what I’m doing here. I just want to go home.’
He watches her without blinking, and then slowly shakes his head as she runs past him and back up to the house.
Olivia stumbles through the front door and across the echoing hall, wildly trying every door to every empty room until she finds the occupied one. It is a large drawing room with French windows opening out on to the lawn and grand views of the loch, the sea a sliver of silver beyond it. And there at last is her aunt, head bent over a table, deep in conversation with a couple of men. As her niece enters, Aunt Nancy looks up, a smile breaking across her face. ‘Darling girl,’ she says. ‘So sorry. We’re just wrapping up here …’
Olivia stops, suddenly self-conscious. She smooths the creased pale-green coat and pats her blonde hair. Her hat is lying somewhere on the floor of the bothy. She is out of breath, and aware that she is not entirely decorous before these men.
Her aunt bustles out from behind the table, extending her arms and clasping Olivia’s face in her hands. ‘Look at you! You must be exhausted. Have you found everything you need?’
‘I … Well …’
‘Did Munro show you how to light the stove? Don’t you love it? It’s my favourite place in all the world. So special …’
Olivia swallows, aware that the men are watching her. ‘It’s just,’ she says. ‘It’s just … so … so lonely.’
‘Such bliss.’
‘But couldn’t I stay here? I’d so love to catch up with you …’
‘There’ll be plenty of time for catching up. I can’t wait to show you about the place …’
‘But I really don’t want to stay down there. Isn’t there a spare bed here?’
Aunt Nancy’s smile is beginning to look a little worn. ‘There just isn’t enough room at the moment, what with Commander Shaw and Brigadier Worthington here.’ The men nod apologetically. ‘And more arriving tomorrow.’
‘But I’m your niece!’
‘And these are my guests …’
‘But what will I do? There’s no one to help me …’
‘There’s Munro …’
‘I don’t think Munro wants anything to do with me …’
‘Hush, hush.’ Her aunt is holding up her hand. She ushers her out into the hall. ‘Now what exactly is the problem?’ she asks.
Olivia starts to list. ‘There’s no bath.’
‘There’s a tin bath in the shed.’
‘How am I meant to fill it?’
‘From the tap.’
‘You mean with a bucket?’
‘You’re jolly lucky there’s running water. I had it put in especially for you. We used to have to fetch it from the burn.’
‘There’s no electricity.’
‘Did Munro not show you where the oil lamps are kept?’
‘I don’t know how to light a fire.’
‘Munro will show you.’
‘I don’t know how to cook.’
‘Then it’s about time you learnt.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I’ll take myself.’
‘The station is at least a twenty-four-hour walk …’
‘Surely Munro can give me a lift?’
‘No one will give you a lift. There’ll be petrol rationing soon, and besides, your mother has asked me to keep you here. Now pull yourself together. You’re making a scene. I can’t think what my sister is doing bringing up a creature with no idea how to think or do anything for herself. Do you know what I was doing at your age?’
Olivia does not reply.
‘I was driving ambulances in France for injured and dying men. You think living in a warm cottage by the side of a loch, where your family have sent you to be safe, is a hardship? I could tell you things that would fill your childish slumbers with nightmares. I could tell you how I watched your uncle bleed to death before I could get him home. And now here you are, in his home, safely. I do not want to hear such nonsense again. Now stand up straight and behave as a woman of your standing should. With a bit of bloody backbone and some good grace.’
Olivia swallows, shamefaced. She has only met her aunt a couple of times. She had been fooled into thinking that she was like her sister, Olivia’s mother, a quiet and kind, gentle person. But this steely creature whose young life was forged in that Great War is nothing like her. In the dark of the great hall, poor, dead Uncle Howard stares down at them through the gloom, handsome in his olive-green army uniform and peaked cap, painted into a frame from which he will remain for ever twenty-five years old.
Aunt Nancy pats her shoulder. ‘Now,’ she says. ‘I’ve said my piece and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s done and dusted. Come and have some tea and meet the brigadier and commander properly.’
Olivia hopes her cheeks will stop burning before she re-enters the drawing room.
After that first afternoon, Olivia resigns herself to this temporary new life. There is no time to mope: Aunt Nancy is determined that her niece will be useful, helping in the garden and on the farm now that all the young men have rushed off to join up. She soon has Olivia digging for potatoes with Greer the gardener, hauling creels in and out of the water with Munro, wheeling manure, drying seeds, not to mention plucking pigeons with the maid and cook, who she now knows as Clarkson. Her time in the bothy is spent reading through the cobwebbed copies of books on the shelves, learning by trial and error how to cook, how to keep the greedy stove going, and how to light a fire in the sitting room, how to wash her own clothes, how to refill the oil lamps, to make her own bed.
Then the first letters arrive from Charlie, and Olivia is hugely grateful to him, for her aunt seems to warm to her a little. She really doesn’t need Aunt Nancy to encourage her to write back to the young officer; she enjoys it, writing letters as though Charlie is a diary, a confidant. For although she is busy, she is terribly lonely. Her aunt is always preoccupied with visitors and paperwork – something to do with joining the FANYs again, as far as she can glean from Munro – and the local schoolchildren – of which there are only a handful – are all half Olivia’s age. The other neighbours are kind, but they are not companions, and she still does not speak Gaelic.