North Star by Hammond Innes Page A

appearing, a grey ghost of a building and the water below it a leaden sheet barely touched by the wind. And when we had let go our anchor, and the echo of the chain running out had died away, our engines stopped, everything so still, so absolutely quiet.
    I thought Gertrude Petersen would have been down at the water’s edge to welcome her ship home, but though there was a light on in the house, nothing stirred. I had the Zodiac inflated and got over the side and rowed myself ashore, not bothering about the outboard. It was warm rowing in oilskins and farther than I thought. The rain had stopped, the evening strangely luminous with fish rising. I could hear the slap of them hitting the water and the circles rippling out were so numerous that sometimes they interlocked. I couldn’t see the the entrance to the voe, it was blocked by the lit shape of the trawler, and with the low arm of The Taing stretching out from the shore, and the steep mountain slopes beyond, it was more like a loch than an indent open to the sea.
    The beach below the house was sand and rock with a small boat jetty of cemented boulder. The cement was crumbling, the boulders loose, and it was already half awash on the tide. I pulled the inflatable up on to higher ground, made fast the painter and then stood for a moment looking back at the voe and the trawler lying there, the ship, the house, the land-encircled water, everything so perfect. I was thinking of Jan Petersen then, wondering how he had acquired such a place. And a wife who would go to sea with him, stand by him through thick and thin. A refugee from another country. And I had started with so much, achieved so little. No matter that the ship was mortgaged, the house, too, probably. They were his. He had owned them. And now he was dead and I was going up to his home to make an agreement with his wife, sitting probably at that table in the window with the photograph of him and his father on their catcher.
    I got out my pipe and filled it. But I didn’t light it. I just stood there, holding it in my hand as though for comfort in that quiet remoteness of the darkening landscape. The moment between light and dark, just as night closes in, is a time of silence when the soul is touched by doubts. I had that feeling now, the past a nothingness, the future all uncertain – and myself not knowing, or even understanding, what I was doing here.
    I put my pipe away and turned abruptly, walking up to the house and knocking on the door. I wanted to get this over and get to sea. Three months in the loneliness of command, seeing nothing but the same patch of sea and the ugly superstructure of a floating rig – three months of that should be enough to sort myself out. The sound of my fist on the door was loud in the stillness and the lamplight streaming out from the window on my right became a muted glow as the curtains were drawn. The sound of footsteps clacking on stone, then the door opened and she was there. But not as I had expected her, in the denim slacks and faded jersey I had become accustomed to. Now she was wearing a long dress and high heeled shoes, and her fairhair, limned by the light of an oil lamp on the chest behind her, fell to her shoulders.
    I stood there for a moment, not saying anything, her appearance so unexpected. She had always seemed to me a sturdy, solid Norwegian, and Fuller’s phrase, ‘the legal owner’, had fitted her exactly. ‘Well, are you coming in or not?’
    I went in slowly, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t changed.’
    ‘Does it matter?’ She was smiling as she closed the door.
    ‘No, I suppose not.’ I was staring at her as she turned into the lamplight, her long dress flowing and her eyes bright. This was the first time I had seen her with any make-up on. ‘Takes a bit of getting used to.’
    She laughed. ‘Tonight I am celebrating.’ And she added over her shoulder as she took me into the living room, ‘I’ve not had much to celebrate