and the mainland was about fourteen miles. I was roughly halfway between. There was no sign of any other boat and I was aware of being pulled along by a steady current towards the next bit of mainland: either Northern Ireland or Newfoundland. Such information was only going to be relevant to my bloated corpse.
On the plus side, even at this time of year, the water wasn’t cold enough to kill me outright. The blessed Gulf Stream kept the waters lapping Ayrshire and the west coast at a temperature that was survivable. For a while. Not quite the Murmansk run. Or not immediately. I could last for, well, hours, until the cool Atlantic slowly sapped my strength and my body shut down bit by bit.
Though I could swim well enough, I’d never swum seven miles in my life, far less in the open sea. My trousers were tugging at me and I slipped them off as well as my shirt and socks. They weren’t keeping me warm and were only making me struggle against their sodden weight. I would look like I’d gone for a dip in my vest and pants, and got carried away by the currents. Apart from the chain marks across my face.
Big Bill, my old Geography teacher, was always telling me to pay more attention, that knowing how the natural world worked was essential knowledge in a man. I wish he’d told me it could be a matter of life or death. I had no idea what the tides and currents did in the Firth of Clyde. I didn’t know their direction or whether they changed depending on the phases of the moon. All I recall was that the currents were supposed to be treacherous.
At least the seas were calm, just a shallow swell and steady ripple of waves that lifted me up and down like a soggy cork. I turned on my face and, for want of a better idea, started swimming, a steady crawl towards the mainland. I gave it up after a couple minutes with no sense that I’d made any impact whatsoever on the distance. I tried backstroke, as it was more like floating, but that got me nowhere either as far as I could see. All I was doing was using up energy and therefore body heat.
I wasn’t entirely alone: the odd seagull squawked and hovered over me until it decided I wasn’t yet ripe for nibbling. It would keep coming back until I was. There was other debris in the water, junk from ships and from the mainland. A nice big log would do me fine, or a stray rowing boat. Flotsam and jetsam. I tried to recall the difference; I think I was technically jetsam.
I looked at my watch. It seemed to be living up to its claim of being waterproof up to a depth of twenty feet. Though if it hadn’t I wasn’t in much of a position to complain about it to the manufacturer. It was already five thirty and would be dark by eight. After that? Could I go on floating till morning? At what stage would I just say sod it, and let it all go? They say drowning is easy, just fill your lungs with water and relax. But I reasoned that if evolution had removed our gills in favour of nostrils, it wouldn’t be that comfortable to go into instant reverse.
Suddenly my already damaged head took another belt. I sank and spluttered around to see what had hit me. It was a crate, a packing crate, half submerged. It said ‘Tea’ on the side. Thank you, Lipton’s. I swam to it and clung on to it. The tea chest immediately sank. I let go and it bobbed up. I felt round it. It was open on one side. I turned it and emptied it as best I could and then upended it trying to capture as much air inside as possible. On my third try it bobbed with about-one third of its bulk out of the water. Gingerly I got my arms over it and my upper body part on it. It was precarious but it held me. Only my hips and legs dangled in the water. I’d seen an odd shark hanging bleeding at Ayr fishing harbour before but couldn’t recall if they were the type that had a penchant for hairy legs. But in such ignorance there is hope.
I’d been in the water an hour, and from my wobbly perch there was no doubt: I was being pulled parallel along the coast and towards the south. For a while, Holy Island off Lamlash had been my nearest chunk of dry land but I was being dragged away from it into the widening bay where the last Ice Age had taken a bite out of Ayrshire. For a time I felt I was being pushed towards the coast and my hopes rose. But then the capricious tide seemed to grip again and I lost way. Another hour later, as darkness softened the seascape, I was numb and frozen, and certain I couldn’t hang on till morning. It wasn’t how I expected to die. I’d been attacked by tanks in the desert and blown up in Italy, and shot at all across northern France to the Rhine. But here I was, about to drown a couple of miles off the beach I used to build sand castles on. It was almost as though I’d been living on borrowed time and the big guy who kept count had finally noticed. All those months after demob when I wished I was dead came sharply into focus. I suddenly realised I very much wanted to live. Too late. I should have spent the rest of my savings on drink and wild women.
The sun finally set way to the west but, funnily, it hadn’t gone completely dark. A northern light imbued the great plain of water with a sullen glow. A half-moon rose and added to the sheen on the wave tops. That’s when I saw the distant lights.
TWENTY-TWO
At first I thought it was simply town lights, from Troon or Ayr or maybe Girvan by now, but then I realised they were closer and bobbing about. Maybe a mile away, though it was hard to gauge. But there was no doubt what they were: I could make out four or five craft with lights on their masts, swinging and dipping in the swell. They had sails up and were heading – well, I couldn’t tell where yet. Night fishermen. I even heard a distant voice calling and getting a laugh in response.
I shouted. Or tried to. It came out like a bark. I swallowed and tried to get more saliva down my throat, and gave it another go. I kept it simple.
‘Help!’
I shouted until my throat, roughened by the salt water, began to close up. I stopped and listened. Nothing. I now thought I could see them moving. Away. It was hard to tell in the shimmering gloaming.
The trouble was I was too low in the water, except when I bobbed up on the crest of swell. I needed to be standing on this crate, like an evangelist at Speaker’s Corner. I let myself sink back a little into the water then with my hands on the side on the box I shot myself up on to it, as though I was getting out of a swimming pool. I felt it begin to capsize but I kept going anyway and managed to get a knee up. With a last despairing surge I got to my feet, feeling the crate tip and sink beneath me. As I began to fall into the water, I cupped my hands to my mouth and bellowed, ‘Heeeelp! Help! Help!’ before I tumbled into the sea.
I nearly didn’t have the strength to surface again. I just let myself float up. The crate seemed to have sunk completely. I looked around and saw it just below the surface but swamped by waves. I doggy-paddled to it and grasped its rough squareness. I didn’t have the energy to right it and get an air bubble into it. I just lay there wallowing. Until I heard, from a long way off but clear enough:
‘Hello!’
Their paraffin lamps triangulated on me, and their rough hands dragged me into a small fishing boat. I lay shivering and gasping in the bottom like one of their herrings. They plied me with questions and – wonder of wonders – hot tea from a flask.
They were from the tiny fishing village of Dunure, five miles south of Ayr. They interrupted their work to land me in their high-walled harbour. They were all for phoning the Ayr Constabulary in a state of righteous anger at what had been done to me. But all I wanted was a few pennies and a phone box. They left me to it and reset their trim sails and steered back out of the harbour to plunder the waiting shoals.
I stood shivering in a borrowed plaid as the operator connected me. When I heard her voice I slammed the money in.
‘Sam, it’s me, Brodie. Sorry to-’
‘Oh thank God! Where are you? What happened?’
I was touched at the concern in her voice. Apart from my mother, no one much bothers if I live or die. In fact, lately, rather more seem to want me dead.
‘I’m in Dunure, down past Ayr and I’m in a bit of bother.’ I gave her a short sketch of why I was standing semi-naked and dripping in a phone booth at nearly midnight. She told me to wait.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning and I was sitting on the harbour wall, gazing out on the silver lit sea. My thoughts kept turning to what I was going to do to Fergie and his pal when I caught up with them. I’d seen men live for hours in excruciating pain from a bayonet in the guts. Everything about this wretched business was making me seethe. I’d been hauled away from a new life in London on a hopeless mission. I’d been duped by a duplicitous priest. And two low-life scum had tried to dispose of me like fish bait.
I suddenly stopped the self pity. What about Sam? What had they planned for her? I wasn’t a praying man
