Mistress and Commander Read online

  ‘Oh, Papa, it’s you, how nice. How are you?’

  ‘All well here.’ He sounded as positive as ever. ‘How are things with you? How is Digby?’ He could always tell when I was a bit low, and Digby found even the early summer warmth difficult. ‘Yes, it is extremely trying, I know. But it’s time you and John had a break. Digby will be fine. You’ve not left him day or night for almost four years. It will be good for you. I’ve chartered a small boat for a week on the west coast of Scotland. The highlight will be visiting St Kilda.’

  ‘Papa, I’ve never heard of St Kilda and I really don’t want to leave Diggers.’ I was not the slightest bit keen, but he was used to getting his own way.

  Diggers, as he was always known, was our second son. Hugo, the eldest, had burst into the world, pink, happy and bouncing fit, like a miniature Buddha, but Digby had been frail from the start and I had known something was not right. He was smiley, and usually happy, but at times was clearly in pain and I seemed unable to help. He was regularly drenched in sweat and often overheated. Feeding him was difficult too and he was horribly thin. Four years of ceaseless hospital investigations had come up with nothing. None of the experienced medics at Great Ormond Street Hospital had an answer. He’d fought pneumonia three times, his skin was thin and fragile and at the age of four he was still unable to walk. I spent every moment of every day, and most of every wakeful night, trying to figure it out. But he was also utterly endearing and rewarding. He was very bright, delightfully musical, had a glorious giggle and a disarming smile. ‘You’re not going anywhere! You’re staying here with me!’ he would say when I bent down to kiss him goodnight, locking a thin arm around my neck. I was lucky to have wonderful help in the pretty Sarah, whom the boys adored and who was as calm as I was frantic. She loved the boys but was rather less sure of our springer spaniel, Conker.

  John, rather to my surprise, had agreed with my father. A break would do us both good and so, with much trepidation, we had left the boys in Yorkshire with John’s efficient mother and major-general father in charge. But once we got to Scotland I knew I’d be out of communication, bobbing around in a boat way out in the Atlantic.

  As we travelled north, my mother told me, ‘As you know, Amelia, I’ve travelled all over the world with your father, and really, the west coast of Scotland still remains the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.’

  The two of them had travelled widely, to New Zealand, Capri, Dubrovnik and Sicily. They had stayed at the Cipriani Hotel in Venice and in glorious private chateaux in the Medoc attending glamorous wine parties, so it seemed curious she regarded Scotland so highly. As my mother wittered on, I pretended to be dozing. I had a good excuse after hours in the rattling so-called ‘sleeper’ from London.

  I gazed out at the hills as the train trundled towards Oban. They really were a soft heathery purple and the wild irises beside the track made spectacular splashes of gold. It was a perfect early summer’s morning in June and my first visit to Scotland. We were an ill-assorted party of twelve. No one knew everyone. Glancing around the carriage, I surreptitiously tried to size them up. In Oban we were to join the boat chartered to take us to what had once been Britain’s most remote island community – the jewel in the crown of the Scottish National Trust – the lonely archipelago of St Kilda. My father and his chum Viscount Livesey were involved in raising money to support the Trust’s projects there and felt they should visit the island and learn first-hand why it mattered.

  It was my thirty-first birthday but even the champagne at breakfast had made little difference to my mood. I felt utterly miserable at leaving the boys, wondering if Diggers would be OK and whether Sarah would remember to check on him every hour through the night as I did. My charismatic, charming gynaecologist, Dickie, who had delivered Digby and now sat opposite me, nodding off, had insisted I should have bubbly for breakfast. Disapproval tinged with envy had oozed from every smoke-reeking pore of the elderly waiter in the station hotel at Glasgow Central, and in the Victorian gloom the early risers had been shocked at the sight of bubbly at seven a.m. I was still not sure what had made me suggest to Dickie and his wife, Sarah, that they might like to come with us. We had been practising a whip finish on a particularly pretty Green Highlander double-hooked salmon fly we were learning to tie at evening classes in Putney when the idea had come to me. And so here they were. They seemed happy enough, but who could tell?

  A five-minute walk from the ornate station in Oban took us to the quay. Gulls strutted through fishy puddles, a big black-and-red car ferry loomed over the fishing boats tied up two or three deep alongside the pier. I followed along behind the viscount, wondering if we were in the right part of the harbour, then he stopped at the edge by a gaggle of trawlers and peered down. Twenty feet below, in deep shade, was a small black boat. I had been looking forward to a sleek white yacht, with smart teak deck furniture and cushions neatly piped and plumped, maybe a matching deck awning, and of course a sexy crew of bronzed hunks in white shorts and blue jerseys. Instead there was a scruffy old fishing boat, its deck awash with plastic carrier bags, and no one to be seen. No crew bustling about, no welcome party. We all peered over the edge, looking into the shadows below.

  A tousled head with balding patch was suddenly stuck out of a window. ‘You’ve arrived. Come on down. Can you manage the ladder? Tide’s awful low just now.’ I stood back, waiting for one of the men to go first, to see how it was done. My turn. I plucked up courage and launched myself over the edge of the quay onto the top rung of the ladder, leaning out over the twenty-foot drop while I hung onto a bar set into the concrete and started down the vertical ladder. As I neared the boat the man grasped my arm to make sure I didn’t slip as I stretched across the gap between the ladder and the side of the boat. Rather to everyone’s surprise, we were soon all standing safely on the deck. The man flicked his cigarette into the water.

  ‘Hullo, I’m Cubby. I’ll not shake hands – they’re a wee bit oily.’ I wondered whether Veronica, the immaculate girl I had barely spoken to, had an oily handprint on the sleeve of her cashmere jersey. He turned towards a woman now standing on deck: she looked equally tousled.

  ‘This is my wife, Kate. I’m glad you’re not late. The forecast’s good, a variable 3, so we’ll be off in just a wee while.’ He was quite short, with a neat little beard and a thin line of hair as a moustache along his upper lip. He looked bouncy and compact, light on his toes and completely in command. There was no air of deference to the viscount or to any of us, the charterers standing on his deck. Kate was a good six inches taller and looked a solid, no-nonsense type, with short spiky blonde hair. She smiled welcomingly and told us we’d find crisps and yoghurt in the saloon. Then she scampered up the ladder to deal with the cache of luggage waiting on the quay.

  We stood about awkwardly, trying not to get in the way, as between them Cubby and Kate roped down our bags; soon these nestled amongst the cardboard boxes and bulging carrier bags which littered the deck. Weetabix, UHT milk, digestive biscuits and a catering-sized pack of banana yoghurts snuggled up to tins of baked beans. None of it looked very encouraging.

  ‘Katie! Are you there? Here’s your fish,’ a voice shouted from above. More boxes were roped down, this time with sandwiches labelled ‘crab’ and ‘prawn’ and finally two silvery salmon came swinging down on string looped through their mouths and gills. Papa squeezed about moving amongst the provisions, carefully studying the cardboard boxes. I knew he was searching to make sure the ones stamped Wine Society had arrived.

  Seeing the others going inside the little boat, I followed, stepping up into a cramped passage. The others had all disappeared along the deck and, like everyone else, John and I needed to bag a cabin. We ended up with the smallest, immediately at the bottom of the vertiginous ladder-like stairs. It had two small bunk beds, three shelves fitted across a corner and a minute washbasin. I could just stand upright if I squeezed in alongside the bunks. All the cabins opened off the narrow barely lit passageway and people e
dged politely past each other, manoeuvring about to get their bags into their cabins. It all felt like boarding school at the start of a new term.

  ‘Darling, whatever kind of boat is it? You never said it would be like this!’ Veronica screeched. There was a mumbled reply from her companion Vernon, clearly well practised in absorbing her criticisms.

  A steady rhythmic vibration began. Scrambling hand over hand up the ladder, I lurched over the high metal step and out onto the deck. In the midday sunshine with a cool breeze, the Conochbar had left the quay and was nosing out from between the fishing boats. Curious heaped-up chain-link contraptions stuck menacingly over their sides but she squeezed past without touching anything, turning away from the trawlers and the huge black and white ferries with Caledonian MacBrayne stamped along their sides. I stood in the bow and watched the hills above the town grow as we moved out into the harbour. The deck shook slightly under my feet and our boat turned to point towards open water.

  Oban, compact with its prim little station and neat Victorian houses circling the bay, was to become the beginning and end of countless voyages. It was a view I would come to welcome. But for now I had not the slightest indication that from the first beat of the engine, my life had changed. My first experience of the west coast and my life at sea had begun.

  John, calm as ever, stood chatting to Dickie. My mind drifted back to the boys, wondering again how they were. Glancing up at the windows of the wheelhouse high above the deck I could see Cubby was at the wheel, Kate standing next to him. I waved cheerfully and then felt rather silly as neither waved back. I realised they were doing whatever you needed to do to get out of harbour on a busy sunny weekend at lunchtime in June. Ahead, there was an imposing fortress-like castle and a little lighthouse like a tiny white exclamation mark; both were dwarfed by the magnificent hills. Scotland. It was just as I had imagined: it really did look like a picture on a biscuit tin.

  Our party of twelve was made up of the viscount’s six and my father’s six. Viscount Livesey, a Yorkshire friend of Papa’s, with his wife, Patsy, had brought their four friends: a journalist called Veronica with her absorbent boyfriend, Vernon, and an elegant couple who it seemed had their own yacht. Not, I suspected, like this workaday trawler, as they lived in the Canaries and owned a banana plantation. They had brought their house flag with them and now a bright yellow curved banana on a pale blue background fluttered incongruously beside the radar on the Conochbar’s stumpy mast.

  We cruised up the Sound of Mull heading north-west. Little villages and white cottages dotted the shores, and it all looked idyllic in the warm sunshine as we ate our sandwiches on deck. After about three hours, the coast fell away behind and out in open waters the deck began to lift, much to my delight. It was like being at the fair.

  ‘Hello! Can I come in, please?’ I knocked on the wheelhouse door.

  ‘Aye, in you come. There’s not much of a seat, but you’re very welcome.’ I squeezed in and sat down quietly on the port side. ‘That’s Ardnamurchan light.’ Cubby pointed to a big white lighthouse standing out on a rocky promontory. There were bumps of other islands, smoky blue and hazy in the distance. ‘Those’ll be the Small Isles, Canna, Rum, Eigg and Muck,’ he went on, seeing where I was looking. ‘And that’s Skye away over there with the high hills. They’re the Cullins; they just rip the arse out of the clouds! That’s why it rains so much.’ I giggled at the graphic description. It all seemed pretty with the sea a soft blue. Maybe my mother had been right after all.

  Fourteen hours after leaving Oban we arrived at the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. We’d been rocked to sleep after a surprisingly delicious dinner of salmon and plum crumble, not a sign of the banana yoghurt, while our floating home had steamed steadily across the open waters of the Minch. Cubby had told us we’d be allowed ashore and, as the boat neared the quay in the little port of Lochmaddy, Dickie announced he’d been at medical school with the doctor who had kindly offered us the use of his car. The four of us jumped in; Dickie knew the island well from previous holidays spent fishing amongst the tiny lochs spattered amongst its flat, peat bog terrain. He headed the car across the island towards the beaches on the western side until we found ourselves looking again at the sea, at the open Atlantic with nothing between us and America, only our destination, St Kilda, way out there in the soft misty distance. The beach stretched away into the distance: right and left, pure and white, it stretched, unrolling like a ribbon, as far as I could see.

  ‘Where’s Dickie disappeared to?’ I asked, turning to John who was sitting on a tuft of grass taking off his socks.

  ‘Wha-hay!’ A naked man hurtled past me down the beach and plunged into the waves. Dickie! Starkers! It was usually he who saw me with not much on, not the other way round. Sarah was snuggled down into her Barbour jacket with clearly no intention of joining him. Three of us, trousers hitched up, paddled rather primly along in the strand while Dickie swam way out into the silvery sea.

  Cubby’s strictures about boat behaviour and timing had been unequivocal: we knew not to be late and we also knew by now that Cubby was God. The skipper is always God, but Cubby had made his command quite clear from the moment we had stepped onto the deck of ‘his’ boat. We could join him in the wheelhouse and he had joined us for a dram after dinner, but whilst we might have chartered the boat, viscounts, surgeons, judges, journalists and financial wizards were all to dance to Cubby’s tune.

  ‘There’s one of you not here!’ he growled as we climbed down the ladder to get back on board. ‘You were to be back for four and it’s now fifteen past.’ Above the sound of the engine, John shouted, ‘Veronica’s squatting in the pub!’ As Dickie had parked the car, Veronica, swathed in a Hermes headscarf, had stalked past us, going in the opposite direction away from the quay.

  ‘Just orff to the pub, darlings!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘I’m totally constipated at the sight of that loo! And how could anyone possibly call it a bathroom?’ Now, she was just visible, as she sauntered slowly along.

  ‘Buck up or the gap’ll be too wide!’ John called, standing on the gunwale with hand outstretched as the Conochbar steadily moved backwards. Cubby hung out of the wheelhouse window, watching, a roll-up firmly clamped between his lips as he judged the slowly widening gap. He winked and took the cigarette out of his mouth, pointed at me and then at the seat beside him. No one else had seen; all eyes had been on Veronica and the carefully judged widening gap.

  John pulled her over the gunwale and inelegantly she fell onto the deck. Cubby knew exactly how to make it difficult but not impossible even in high heels.

  The route out to St Kilda, between the islands of North Uist and Harris, was tricky to navigate and shallow so our boat could only make the passage at the right state of tide. Most boats, I later learned, avoided the route, deeming it far too complicated and dangerous, but it was shorter than going north around the Butt of Lewis, or south to Barra Head and offered less open water for the crossing: Cubby knew it well. I had loved every single second since leaving Oban: the space, the swooping, swirling seabirds, the misty blue islands strung out across the soft blue sea, the whoosh as the bow cut through the clear rolling swells. Every moment had filled me with a sense of mystery and excitement and even the ceaseless worry of Digby was easing. John’s mother knew how to contact the boat, so I fervently hoped no news was good news, but I did wish there had been time to ring and check he was all right.

  Squeezing past Kate and Dickie who were chatting in the galley, I knocked on the little door into the wheelhouse. Cubby, at the wheel, had the VHF handset tucked under his chin. He waved me in, still speaking to someone he clearly knew well.

  ‘Thanks, Murdo, it’s good to know there’s not too much of a swell out there.’ The VHF, it seemed, was not just for serious things, but gossip too; not only could you chat, you could also learn about the swell and sea conditions where you were going.

  I carefully eased past him and tucked myself into the corner seat out of
the way. I looked at the chart – yet another new thing.

  ‘Here you are at last,’ he said as if I’d been away for days. ‘Could you do a wee job for me? I don’t want any others up here while we go through the Sound. But could you tick off each of the damn buoys on the chart as we get on past it? They’re that alike it’s awful easy to forget where we are.’

  ‘Of course, I’d love to.’ I picked up the pencil and peered earnestly at the chart.

  ‘It’s not difficult, each has a number. We’ll not be in the channel for another hour so you can relax just now.’ I stared up at the radar screen above my head. I wondered if that was the land glowing green and the sea that seemed to be black. Cubby rolled another cigarette and occasionally gave the wheel a slight turn; the VHF let out intermittent crackles. In the low afternoon sunlight, fulmars trailed their wing tips through the tops of the waves, slipping sideways through the air overtaking the boat. We sat in companionable silence.

  A green blob appeared on the radar. Through my binoculars, I could see a red-and-white buoy far ahead. ‘Is that the first buoy?’ I asked, hopefully.

  ‘You’ve sharp eyes,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘No. That’s to mark the entrance to the channel, it’s those around the corner you’ll need to look out for.’

  Once we were past the buoy, he turned the wheel and Conochbar headed straight into the sun. Silhouetted in the golden light, I could see the first of the huge channel markers ahead: No. 1. The bell, hanging inside the metal cage, tolled eerily in the gentle motion. Carefully, anxious not to get muddled, I ticked them off one after one as the boat made her way further west. After three hours of weaving through them, the Conochbar began to lift in the swell of the open Atlantic and way ahead I could see a small grey smudge just visible on the horizon.

  ‘Is that it? Is that St Kilda?’ I asked excitedly. ‘Not too far to go then. When do you think we’ll get there, Cubby?’