The Last Wolf (28 page)

The Royal Navy was patrolling the seas round Britain as thoroughly as ever and Reinhard was forced to keep the U-boat submerged as they headed away from Norway towards the north coast of Scotland. They cruised at twenty-five fathoms during the day and at Snort depth by night in order to recharge their batteries. Shorthanded, there was much more work for every man. His crew had started out as war-weary and exhausted as himself and he soon saw from the dull look in their eyes that they were totally unfit for the ordeal ahead. The months spent below without fresh air or daylight had turned faces grey and cheeks hollow, and skin infections took hold and flourished.

The conditions on the boat were even more unpleasant than usual. Rubbish could not be jettisoned underwater, and so was piling up in decomposing and stinking mess. Morale was already low among his men. Good men whose lives were in his hands, who trusted in him.

Reinhard reached a decision. Their route round the coast of Scotland would bring them near the southern Hebrides – close enough to pay another visit to Glas Uig where they could rest and regain some strength. They would remain under water in the cove during the day and surface after dark, when the men could go up on deck, breathe fresh air, take exercise, swim – prepare themselves better, mentally and physically, for the long voyage which could take as much as three months. It was worth the risk of discovery in order to increase their chances of success.

Engelhardt was delighted at the idea.

‘Another sheep, sir? And maybe some fishing, too?'

‘We'll see. For all we know, the house has been reoccupied. We need to make sure it's still empty.'

‘I'll check, sir.'

His Number One was obviously remembering the decanter – and probably the Bechstein piano.

As before, they passed submerged along the Sound of Islay and slipped into the hidden cove. As soon as night fell, they surfaced. He sent Engelhardt up to the house and his Number One returned to report that it was in darkness with no sign of life.

‘How about the whisky? Still there?'

Engelhardt looked injured. ‘You said not to go inside, sir. So I didn't.'

‘Quite right.'

He let the men up on to the decks in small groups of five or so, gave them time to breathe the Scottish air, stretch their legs, work their cramped muscles, strip off and swim in the clear water of the cove. No splashing, no talking, as little sound as possible.
A day or two of this
, he thought,
and we'll be fit to go
.

Stroma took the night sleeper up to Glasgow, sharing a compartment with a Wren officer who was going home on leave. The Third Officer had every intention of staying on in the WRNS even though the war was over.

‘I wouldn't go back to Civvy Street for anything. Not now. Too boring for words. And there's still going to be plenty for us to do.'

There would be plenty to do at Craigmore, Stroma thought, as the train rattled north through the dark. The house would be damp and dusty, full of cobwebs and mice – probably rats, too – and all kinds of insects that would have to be routed out. She would need help. If not Ellen, then another woman, at least, and a gardener to replace Mack. Everything would have to be put in order with the house before she could turn her attention to the mill.

From Glasgow, she began the long trek by bus to Gourock where she took a fishing boat to Dunoon. A farmer gave her a lift in his cart up the glen and as far as Portavadie where she caught the ferry across to and stayed two nights at the old hotel at West Lock Tarbert, waiting for the paddle steamer
Lochiel
to come in to Kennacraig and take her over to Islay.

They'd not seen much of the war, the locals told her. The army had been stationed in the area for a while, but that had been in the early days when they'd thought the Germans might invade Scotland. Daft idea, if ever there was one. There'd been rumours of U-boats snooping round the coast and some folks claimed to have spotted them on the surface, but that might have been after a dram or two. The RAF Coastal Command had been overhead with their big flying boats, making a lot of noise and commotion and scaring the animals, but they mostly went far out into the Atlantic to look after the convoys.

She watched cows being loaded on to the steamer – swung aboard by crane in nets, bundled high in the air, hoofs askew. Undignified, but they didn't seem to mind too much. After that, it was crates of this and barrels of that, sacks of the other, then two cars and a van. It took most of the morning to load the ferry and begin the four-hour crossing. She sat at the captain's table for lunch, as the family had always done, eating with polished silver knives and forks and on starched linen, for all the world as though they were on a luxury passenger liner headed for the New World and not being tossed about in an old paddle steamer butting its way across to a small Hebridean island.

At Port Askaig she got a lift with the post bus. The postman, Archie Brown, took her to Bridgend and then as far as Bowmore. From there she rode to Port Ellen in the cab of the old milk lorry. The driver, Donald MacPhee, who had more Gaelic than English, was always hard to understand and the loud rattling of the churns didn't help. But he kept smiling his two-toothed smile at her and she kept nodding and smiling back. At Port Ellen she stopped to buy provisions – butter, sugar, potatoes, tinned food, cheese, eggs – and, as she came out of the store, Dr Mackenzie happened to come by in his green Morris and he drove her the rest of the way, bumping and jolting down the long track to Craigmore. From him, she learned that Angus was ill – so ill that he had taken to his bed the week before and was still there, which meant it must be bad, though the doctor didn't actually say so.

‘Will you be all right, Stroma? All on your own here?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Well, let me know if you need me for anything.'

‘Thanks.'

She waved as he drove away, and then went into the house.

As she had expected, it was chillingly damp and fusty as a sealed tomb. She went from room to room, pulling off the dust sheets and piling them in corners and opening the windows and the storm shutters to let in the fresh air and the fitful sunlight. The spiders had been busy spinning huge webs and big beetles scuttled out of her path. In the kitchen, the copper pans – once Ellen's pride and joy – had turned black, the scrubbed table was spattered with mouse droppings and something with very sharp teeth had been gnawing at one of the chair legs. The dried food left in the larder had been nibbled through and there was an abandoned nest of chewed-up cloth and paper in a dark corner under the bottom shelf.

It would take weeks to get the place clean and habitable again, but otherwise everything was in its place – furniture, paintings, mirrors, rugs, oil lamps, ornaments, the stags' heads guarding the hallway. Or almost everything. Her Wren photograph had gone from its frame on the piano. Odd, but she assumed Grandfather had probably put it somewhere else.

She left the house and walked the mile to Angus's thatched cottage. The door and windows were shut, the hens scratching about outside, the usually flourishing potato patch overgrown. When Grace opened the door, Stroma saw by her face that things were just as bad as she had feared.

Angus was lying on the brass bed with his eyes closed. His face was like wax, his fiery hair and whiskers faded, his frame shrunken to a shadow of the giant of a man she had known and loved.

When she spoke to him, he opened his eyes slowly and they were faded, too. His voice was no longer a sonorous boom but a faint and hoarse whisper.

‘Ye've come back, then, lassie?'

‘Yes,' she said quietly. ‘I've come back.'

‘Ye'll be stayin' noo?'

‘Yes. I'll be staying.'

He nodded. ‘That's guid . . . that's guid.'

She sat by the bed but his eyes had closed again.

‘Can I bring some food for you?' she asked Grace.

‘He'll no touch it – only a wee bit of broth sometimes, that's all.'

‘What about you, though?'

‘Och, there's the eggs, an' I've a sackful of potatoes and some vegetables. And I can always take a hen, if need be.'

‘What about a rabbit? Would you like one?'

‘Aye . . . they make a good stew. Angus was always fond of rabbit. It might tempt him.'

‘I'll be over tomorrow, first thing.'

Grace's spinning wheel was standing on the hearth and, as she left, she passed Angus's deerstalker and knobbled crook hanging by the door.

Dusk was the best time for shooting rabbits, when they came out to feed. She fetched a .22 from the gun room, loaded it and set off towards the large warren above the woods encircling Glas Uig. The rabbits were already out, hopping about, nibbling at the grass. They were easy enough to catch and, if she hadn't lost the knack, it would be a clean kill. She aimed carefully and bagged two of them in quick succession.

She decided to walk on down through the woods to the promontory where the trees thinned so that she would be able to see the cove below and satisfy herself that nothing had changed at Glas Uig.

In the evening light, the water was the colour of green glass, the rocks a dark necklace round the edge. Everything was very still and very quiet.

The sudden rippling on the surface could have been caused by a large fish, or by a freak gust of wind. She watched, puzzled, as the ripples spread wider and wider and became a boiling and bubbling whirlpool. A dark monster burst up from below, cascading water from its flanks. A monster as big as the whale that had once been trapped in the cove.

A U-boat.

The hatch was flung open in the control tower and men came out on to the decks and began securing lines to the jetty rings. Then another man appeared on the bridge – a tall figure wearing a white cap. The commander. She watched him leaning on the bridge railing, looking about him at the cove.

U-boat commanders had been feted like royalty, worshipped like film stars. They had been awarded medals, presented with flowers and champagne on their triumphant returns to port. Bands played for them, girls smiled at them, crowds waved and cheered. Someone at Western Approaches had shown her German newspaper photos of U-boats returning to port. Propaganda pictures to thrill the
volk
and alarm the enemy.

She dropped the rabbits and lay down flat on her stomach, the gun butt pressed into her shoulder, her elbow resting on the ground, the commander's white cap fixed in the rifle's sight. The .22 held five bullets and it was possible to kill a man even at that distance. Hamish, who had learned all about it from his war comics, had once explained to her that you had to go for the head or the heart if you wanted to be sure. But Hamish was a far better shot, and the light was poor and her hands were shaking. And even if, by some miracle, she managed to hit the U-boat commander, there would be a crew of at least forty others to be reckoned with.

She began to slither backwards on her stomach towards the cover of the trees, and had almost reached them when the commander turned and looked up the hillside, straight in her direction.

He must have spotted her because he jumped on to the jetty and began walking up the hill towards her. She turned and fled in panic up through the woods. A hidden rock brought her crashing painfully to her knees but she scrambled up and limped on.

The key to the front door of the house had been lost years ago and the bolts were too rusty to move. She ran into the drawing room and crouched behind the sofa.

The front door opened and she could hear footsteps on the flagstones in the hall. She shut her eyes and held her breath.

He came into the room and paused for a moment. When she opened her eyes she could see his sea boots through the space under the sofa. As they started to come towards her, she stood up, waving the rifle.

‘Don't come any closer, or I'll shoot.'

He stopped.

‘I warn you,' she said. ‘I'll shoot.'

‘Yes, I can see that you will.'

She waved the gun fiercely again. ‘Put your hands up.'

‘If you wish.'

He raised his hands slowly.

She stared at him, shocked. He looked as if he had been incarcerated in a dungeon for a long time. The haggard face, the beard, the matted hair, the oil-stained overalls, the battered white cap . . . none of it resembled the immaculate German naval officer in the photograph that Miss Calder had torn into small pieces and tossed so disdainfully in the waste paper basket. The blue eyes, alone, were the same. If it hadn't been for them she would never have known him.

He said, ‘You don't recognize me, do you, Stroma?'

‘Yes, actually I do. But you've changed rather a lot, Reinhard.'

‘Submarines are not very good for the health or looks. Tell me, is that gun loaded?'

‘Of course it is. I've been shooting rabbits.'

‘Don't you think I'd better have it now, before you kill me too?'

He moved forward, took the gun from her grasp, emptied out the remaining bullets and dropped them into his pocket. He laid the empty rifle down on the sofa between them and looked at her for a moment in silence. ‘I have always dreamed of meeting you again.'

She said coldly, ‘Have you really? What on earth are you doing here anyway?'

‘The last time nobody was living here.'

‘The last time?'

‘Two years ago when we needed to make repairs to our boat, I came here. My father did the same with his U-boat in the first war, you see. We knew all about your secret cove before we came with
Sturmwind
that summer. This time, I sailed my boat into the cove and I came up here to the house with my first officer. We found that the door was not locked. I regret that we entered and we drank some of your whisky. Also, my officer played the piano. I hope you don't mind.'

‘What a cheek! And that's my scarf you're wearing.'

‘Yes, I took it from your coat pocket in the hall.'