Hammond Innes: Atlantic Fury

(October 15)

It was two days later, just after ten on the morning of October 15, that my phone rang and a man’s voice, rather soft, said, ‘Mr Ross? My name’s Ed Lane. Are you by any chance related to a Sergeant Iain Alasdair Ross reported lost when the Duart Castle was torpedoed in February, 1944?’

‘He was my brother.’

‘He was?’ The voice had a vaguely American accent. ‘Well, that’s fine. Didn’t expect to strike it that fast — you’re only the fifth Ross I’ve telephoned. I’ll be with you inside of an hour. Okay?’ And he’d rung off, leaving me wondering what in the world it was all about.

I was working on another book jacket for Alec Robinson, but after that phone call I found it impossible to go back to it. I went into the little kitchenette and brewed myself some coffee. And after that I stood drinking it at the window, looking out across the rooftops, an endless vista of chimney pots and TV aerials with a distant glimpse of Tower Bridge. I was thinking of my brother, of how I’d loved him and hated him, of how there had been nobody else in my life who had made up for the loss I’d felt at his going. And yet at the time I’d been almost glad. It had seemed better that he should die like that — in the sea, a casualty of war.

I turned away from the grubby window, glanced at the jacket design lying on the table amongst a litter of paints and brushes, and then fell to pacing my studio, wondering what this fellow Lane wanted digging up the past that was dead these twenty years and more. Surely to God they weren’t going to rake over the whole wretched business again. I could still remember the shock when the Military Police had come to interview me at the factory. Did I realise he’d deserted? Slinging questions at me until they’d discovered my father was dead and my mother alone and ill at Ardnamurchan. ‘We’ll pick him up there then.’ And my bursting into tears and shouting at them that whatever my brother had done it was justified and why the hell did they pick on him and not the officer. And that M.P. sergeant with the big ears and the broken nose — I could have drawn his face even now — snapping back at me in a grating Glaswegian voice, “The officer was unconscious, laddie, with machine-gun bullets spraying him as he lay on the ground with a broken jaw. Aye and damn near twenty men dead who needn’t have died. Justified? Christ, it was plain bluidy mur-rder.’

The jacket design stared at me, the lettering of the book title already pencilled in — THE PEACE THAT FOLLOWED. I had read it, thought it good, but now I dropped a rag over it, remembering the wartime passages, the sense of futility the writer had invoked. Sounds from the street drifted up to me, the bustle of London’s East End. My studio was just an attic over a butcher’s shop. It was all I could afford. Bed, table and easel took up most of the space, and the canvases stacked against the wall, all the work I’d done on Milos — there was hardly room to move. A cupboard in the corner held my clothes and above it was piled the camping equipment I’d bought from the proceeds of the only two pictures I’d sold — Milos at Dawn Seen from a Caique and Greek Galley Under Water. That was when I planned to paint on Laerg, before I’d been refused permission to go there.

I crossed to the window, thinking back over my life, back to the carefree days on Ardnamurchan and Iain in the glory of his youth fighting imaginary battles among the rocks below our croft, always in defence of Laerg with myself cast in the role of invader — a Viking, a pirate, a marauding trawlerman, anything that had recently captured his fancy. And in the evenings, sitting by the peat fire listening to the old man talking in that thick burr — tales of the Lovers’ Stone, of cliff-crawling in search of puffins, of boat journeys to Fladday for the gannets which he called solan geese; wild tales of gales and ships being wrecked.

So long ago and yet so vivid, and Iain tall and handsome with his dark face, and his black hair blowing in the wind; a wild boy with a streak of melancholy and a temper that flared at a word. He could have done something with his life. I pushed up the window, leaning out to feel the warmth of the sun, thinking of my own life, stuck here in this dirty back street doing hack work for a living. I should be painting on Laerg, getting the lost world of my grandfather down on canvas. That would be something, a justification. Eleven years at sea, followed by the years learning to paint, and it all added up to this miserable little room and a few pounds in the bank.

A taxi drew up in the street below and a man got out. All I could see of him was his wide-brimmed hat and the pale sheen of his coat as he paid the driver. It crossed my mind that it was a good angle from which to paint a picture of a London street — but in the same instant I knew I wouldn’t do it; nobody would buy it. He disappeared from sight and a few moments later I heard his footsteps labouring up the bare stairboards. I opened the door and ushered him in, a tubby, round-looking man with small eyes in a smooth face. His clothes were a businessman’s clothes, but not English. The small eyes took in the cluttered studio, scanning the walls as though in search of something. ‘I guess you’re an artist, Mr Ross. That right?’

‘I kid myself sometimes.’

But there was no answering smile. The small eyes stared at me, cold and humourless. ‘You got a picture of your brother?’

‘Just why are you here?’ I asked him.

He took his hat off then and sat down on the bed, a little out of breath. ‘It’s a long story.’ Brown-stained fingers fumbled for his cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’ I shook my head. He flipped one out of the pack and lit it. ‘It’s about the Duart Castle. As I told you over the phone, my name’s Lane, Ed Lane. I come from Vancouver. I’m over here on business — oil and gas; my company runs pipelines. I mention that just to show you I’m a man of some standing. The reason I’ve come to see you is a private one. I’m investigating something that concerns my wife’s family. A matter of a Will. There’s a lot of money involved.’ He paused for breath, reached into the pocket of his light-coloured raincoat. ‘I’ve got some photographs here.’ He had come up with an envelope. But instead of producing the pictures, he sat dragging at his cigarette and staring round the room. ‘An artist,’ he breathed as though he’d just thought of something. ‘Do you do portraits?’

‘No.’

He frowned. ‘You mean you can’t draw heads, faces, people’s features?’

‘I don’t paint portraits, that’s all.’

He looked at the table then, twisting his head round and reaching for the rag I’d dropped over the jacket design. Behind the lettering I had already painted in the first of a series of heads representing humanity in fear. ‘There you are. That’s the sort of thing.’ The little button eyes stared at me as though I’d purposely misled him. ‘You remember your brother, do you? You haven’t forgotten what he looked like?’

‘Of course not. But I don’t see …’

‘You could draw me a portrait of him, couldn’t you?’

‘I could.’

I think he saw I was getting annoyed, for he smiled and said, ‘Sure. You want to know what it’s all about first.’

‘You mentioned some pictures,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. First, there are the press-cuttings.’ He pulled some clippings from the envelope, selected one and handed it to me. ‘You saw that at the time, I expect.’

It was from the Daily Telegraph, dated 24th February, 1944, the news of the sinking of the Duart Castle and the arrival at Donegal, Northern Ireland, of two boatloads of survivors, together with the list of their names, thirty-five in all. Pinned to it was a cutting dated 2nd March giving the official account of the torpedoing and the names of those who were missing, presumed dead. Iain Alasdair Ross. There it was to bring back to me after all these years the sense of loss I’d felt at the time, the feeling of being alone in the world, all my family dead. ‘I read it in The Scotsman,’ I said and passed it back to him.