The Last Wolf

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Margaret Mayhew from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

1936

1937

1938

1939

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

1949

A FOREIGN FIELD

I'LL BE SEEING YOU

THE LAST WOLF

THE LITTLE SHIP

OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE

OUR YANKS

THE PATHFINDER

QUADRILLE

ROSEBUDS

THOSE IN PERIL

THREE SILENT THINGS

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published 2011

in Great Britain and the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2011 by Margaret Mayhew.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Mayhew, Margaret, 1936-

The last wolf.

1. Germans–Scotland–Fiction. 2. World War, 1939-1945– Participation, British–Fiction. 3. World War, 1939-1945– Participation, German–Fiction. 4. Germany. Kriegsmarine– Fiction. 5. World War, 1939-1945–Naval operations– Submarine–Fiction. 6. Submarine captains–Fiction. 7. Great Britain. Royal Navy. Women's Royal Naval Service– Fiction.

I. Title

823.9'14-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-336-5 (Epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8033-8 (cased)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

For Tricia

I should like to thank Tricia Quitmann, Libby Hayward, and Rosemary and Paul Segrott for telling me all about their Islay and for kindly lending me books. Also, Sandy Mactaggart, who showed me the Green Cove where a German U-boat hid. Also, James McMaster, who always had patient answers to my questions on sailing, fishing and shooting. My husband, Philip Kaplan, gave noble help on our visit to Islay and I thank him for it.

The loch water was dark and deep. It felt as cold as ice and yet as soft as silk.

When Stroma had been younger she had been afraid to swim in the loch because of the monster who lived at the bottom. He had once caught hold of her by the ankle and she had screamed her head off in terror. But she had stopped believing in him at about the same time that she had stopped believing in Father Christmas.

She sat in the stern of the dinghy while Hamish rowed to the windward end of the loch. When they had reached it, her brother shipped the oars and let the boat drift back gradually with the wind. She watched him prepare the split cane rod that Grandfather had given him, choose a fly from the box – also given by Grandfather – and attach it carefully to the hook. When he was ready, he stood athwart the boat to cast the line out into the water. He went on casting, twitching the line, pulling it in and casting again, and she went on sitting still and quiet until suddenly the line tightened and there was the swirl in the water which meant a take. The fish would be diving downwards and Hamish would lift the rod to set the hook through its lip before he played it on the end of the line. This was the part that Stroma hated – the part where the fish tried to get away, where it struggled and pulled against the line till it was worn out and rolled, exhausted, on its side. She felt sorry for the fish – sorry, too, for the deer when they sank to their knees, and for the pheasants and the geese when they plummeted out of the air, and for the woodcock and the snipe, the teal and the widgeon, and for the hares and rabbits. But she was most sorry for the fish because they always fought so hard and because the fight took so long. Of course, she would never have admitted such a feeble thing to Hamish.

‘Get the net, Stroma! Quick!'

She grabbed the net and lowered it over the side of the boat while Hamish towed the fish towards it.

‘Now!'

She lifted the net out of the water, the fish trapped inside. It was a brown trout with a beautiful speckled back and a shining white front: a big one, at least a foot long. It lay gasping and helpless.

‘Nearly two pounds, I reckon,' her brother said, pleased. ‘Pass me the priest.'

She handed him the lump of wood; he held the trout in his left hand and bashed it quickly on the head between the eyes before he put it into the creel. At least Hamish never let a fish flop about suffering, as she'd seen other people do.

He caught three more big trout while the boat drifted gently back across the loch.

‘You can have a go now, if you like.'

‘Thanks.'

Grandfather had taught them both to fish – trout in the lochs, mackerel in the sea and salmon in the rivers and pools. Salmon fishing was still hard for her because she couldn't handle the big rod well enough; trout were easier because the rod was smaller, and mackerel easiest of all because it only needed a line with hooks on.

She chose another of Grandfather's flies – and it wasn't long before the line jerked and the water swirled, but she was too slow with the next bit and too clumsy.

Her brother shook his head despairingly. ‘You let him get away, you idiot! Hopeless!'

Angus was standing on the loch shore, knobbled stick in hand. Even from a distance he looked like a giant. When they were small he had carried them both for miles across the island, one on each shoulder, striding over the moors and peat bogs, up and down the hills and across fast-flowing burns that might have swept them away. He had a thick red beard and whiskers and always wore the same clothes: ancient deerstalker, tweed jacket, waistcoat, plus-twos, woollen socks and heavy brogues. He lived with Grace, his wife, in the gamekeeper's cottage on the estate and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather had lived there before him. He had the Gaelic and a Scottish-English that was sometimes hard to understand.

Hamish rowed the dinghy in and Angus helped them haul it up on to the quartz beach. He peered at the trout in the creel.

‘Guid enough to eat. Well done, laddie.'

He would have seen Stroma lose her fish, though he kindly didn't mention it. That was the nicest thing about Angus – he never said a harsh word or yelled at you if you got something wrong, and where praise was earned, he gave it. Lots of it. In a while, he'd start teaching her to shoot – same as he'd been teaching Hamish who had been allowed out last year with the guns when they had spent Christmas on the island. She was still practising with targets at the back of the barn and she'd have to get good enough to hit them properly every time. The kill must always be clean, that was the strict rule. Meanwhile, she made herself useful by beating on the shoots whenever they were at Craigmore in the pheasant season – scaring up the game with a stick and making loud bird noises. It was hard and rather miserable work, out all day in wind and rain squelching across the boggy land and watching out for the hidden peat hags that filled up with icy water. Some of the holes could be so deep that if you fell in you couldn't get out. Angus had rescued her many times – hauling her out with his huge hand so that she dangled in the air like a half-drowned puppy. One day, perhaps, she'd go stalking, though the idea of killing such a big and noble beast as a stag seemed terrible to her.

Eating the fish made catching them more excusable – or so she reasoned to herself. At least they hadn't died for nothing. In fact, so long as you ate what you killed, it was all right. She and Hamish would often cook a fish on the loch shore or down on the beach by the sea. They would gut it, put a green stick through the mouth and prop it on two Y-shaped uprights, then they would light a wood fire underneath. When the fish was cooked they ate it with their fingers and it always tasted far better than any fish cooked indoors. This time, though, they were taking the trout back to the house for Ellen to cook for supper.

Angus went part of the way with them, striding out so that she had to hop and skip to keep up. He left them before they reached the house gates and went off with a wave of his stick towards the cottage where Grace would be waiting for him with a rich stew simmering over the peat fire and a large dram poured ready.

In the kitchen, Hamish presented the gutted trout to Ellen who inspected them with her sharp eyes before she passed them as good enough for the table. She was very particular. The plucking and the skinning and the gutting must be faultless and game had to be hung for just the right length of time. Anything not up to scratch was thrown to the gun dogs in the kennels. When Hamish had shot his very first rabbit Ellen had told him to get it ready for the pot: to take out the insides, hang it up in the outhouse for a day till it went stiff, then cut its head off and strip away the fur and skin in one piece. Even Hamish had been a bit squeamish that first time.

The kitchen maid, Sally, was frightened to death of Ellen, and so was Meg, the woman who came to clean the house every day. Logan, Grandfather's butler, was too old and deaf, and often too tiddly, to pay her any notice but there was a non-stop war between Ellen and Mack, the gardener, over the vegetables and fruit that he brought in from the kitchen garden. To Ellen, the vegetables were either too small or too big, the fruit under-ripe or over-ripe; to Mack, anything he grew and picked was perfect. Stroma had once come into the kitchen to find them fighting hand-to-hand, like wrestlers. Mack was trying to make Ellen take some runner beans and she was thrusting them back at him. They were too big and stringy, she'd said, and not fit for the table. Mack, who won prizes in shows for his beans, was purple in the face with fury and beans were flying all over the floor. In the end, of course, Ellen had won.

Almost all the food they ate at Craigmore came from the island. The milk came straight from the cows on the farm, carried over in a can and kept cool in the larder. They ate fish and game and venison and rabbits from the estate, fresh vegetables and fruit from the kitchen garden. The cooking was done by Ellen on a great iron range fuelled by peat dug from the Craigmore moors.

Stroma's shorts were wet from the fishing so she went up to her bedroom to change them and to put on her sandals before supper. The grandparents didn't mind much what she and Hamish wore, except for going to the kirk on Sundays or if there were visitors, when they had to wear proper clothes and shoes. During the long summer holidays they were left to run wild on the island – to sail and row on the loch, to swim, to fish, to ride the half-wild ponies bareback across the moors among the gentle Highland cattle. They climbed the hills and tracked the red deer, watched the surf pounding against the western shores, the otters lolloping across the beaches, the grey seals lying on the rocks and followed the wild birds through Grandfather's old binoculars – sandpipers, geese, curlews, puffins, oystercatchers, choughs, cormorants, reed buntings, skylarks, countless gulls . . . They slid down the sand dunes, collected fishy-tasting gulls' eggs, explored the rock pools at low tide – each one a limpid aquarium of scuttling crabs, flowery anemones, bootlace worms like liquorice, frondy seaweed and clinging limpets. They beachcombed for wreckage washed up from old sunken ships, hunted for the most beautiful shells and gathered driftwood to store in the barn for the winter fires.