Bel Ria by Sheila Burnford

Author:Sheila Burnford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-883-6
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2014-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

Then, God willing, one of these fine days we will be able to take the dog off your hands at last. It cannot have been easy for you, looking after him on a boat and all, and Donald has fretted often over what he put upon you when he was not, as he says, himself. For a while he could remember very little, now it is gradually coming back. One day we hope to repay you, even if it is only with our thanks and hopes of friendship. My Aunty knitted the enclosed for you . . .

The enclosed was a pair of socks. MacLean examined them critically. Aunty was an expert, but had been overgenerous in length. They would do nicely for Reid.

He put the letter away, his feelings very mixed, and went out into the warm September sunshine on deck. It had been an exciting and eventful time, these last three days, and an almost holiday atmosphere still prevailed in every quarter of Tertian as she swung gently to her buoy off the fishing port of Oban.

They had been diverted from the Clyde on the homeward leg and sent on up the west coast of Scotland on a reported sighting of two U-boats. One of the quarry had escaped, but the other was hunted up a long sea loch until trapped and forced to the surface — where she had been promptly scuttled. The crew, complete even to a sinister parrot which swore fluently in English, was picked up by a jubilant Tertian and taken to the nearest port, Oban, as she was running low on fuel. There she disembarked her not altogether glum captives, and among the congratulatory signals that followed was one delaying their return to the Clyde for twenty-four hours, thus giving both watches some hours ashore.

This was familiar ground to MacLean, the waters all too familiar, and he had hoped never to see them again. The mountainous island of Mull dominated the western horizon, and some twenty miles away as the crow flies north, but nearer eighty by road, was the farm where he had been born. This was the land of his forebears, and of Margaret’s. Twenty-four hours here could only be twenty-four deeply disturbing hours too long in his estimation.

It was a Sunday, and in the rare peace of make and mend that settled over the ship after Divisions, he settled himself with his back against the aft superstructure. One watch was going ashore in search of what limited diversion a Highland town on the Sabbath pubs-closed afternoon could offer. Most of the remaining watch slept below, only the few who were not afraid of fresh air sprawled around the deck in the sun, a good stodgy ship’s dinner behind them, the prospect of a good stodgy tea ahead with a couple of hours uninterrupted kip in between.

But MacLean was not one to waste the idle hour: he knitted, and as he knitted he read (General Gordon, Hero of Khartoum), Ria tidily disposed on one side, a mug of tea on the other.

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