Sacrifice (24 page)

‘You feel the need . . .’ I said to Duncan.

He jumped up from the bed. ‘I feel the need for speed!’ he finished. We slapped a high five.

Twenty-five minutes later we were at the Uyea clubhouse, tucking into bacon sandwiches washed down with strong, milky Nescafé and looking out over Uyea Sound to—

‘My God, that’s it!’ I said, between mouthfuls.

‘What?’ mumbled Duncan. He was already on his second sandwich, fully kitted up and fastening his lifejacket.

‘Tronal island,’ I said. ‘There’s a maternity clinic there. And an adoption centre.’

‘Come on,’ said Duncan, getting to his feet. ‘We have an hour and a half before it pours down.’

Directly above us the sky was as blue as a robin’s egg but out over the ocean, several miles beyond Yell, low clouds hung ominously. The wind was strong, about a force five, and coming in an easterly direction. Duncan was right: the storm was on its way.

‘It can’t be much more than quarter of a mile away,’ I said, my eyes still fixed on Tronal as we pushed the dinghy down the slipway.

No reply.

‘Can we go?’ I said as we reached the water’s edge and Duncan began to lift the boat off its trailer.

‘No, we bloody well can’t,’ he replied. ‘For a start, it’s private land and the navigation’s a bugger. There are rocks that’ll rip the hull off before we get near.’

Duncan couldn’t stop me looking, though, as we
sped away from the jetty, he at the helm and I controlling the jib. I realized I must have seen Tronal a dozen times or more but had never really registered it. I don’t think I’d even realized it was an island. The coastline of Shetland undulates and twists so much that it’s often difficult to tell what’s attached to the land you are on and what isn’t.

Tronal sat low in the water, without the mountainous cliffs that characterize so much of Shetland. In the early-morning light, against the blue backdrop of the sky behind, I could see tracks and, behind one ridge, the tops of buildings. No other obvious signs of life.

The wind was perfect and the dinghy was tearing along, but starting to keel over. Duncan signalled to me to put the trapeze out and a few minutes later I was skimming just inches above the water, at a speed that felt like flight. We bounced high on a few rogue waves and the spray stung my eyes. Beneath me, the sea looked like a shimmering mass of diamonds.

‘Ready about,’ called Duncan, and as I prepared to tack I saw that we were now only yards from Tronal. A crumbling stone wall rimmed the lower reaches of the land and, just a foot or so outside it, a barbed-wire fence. The land the double barrier enclosed had been tilled and green shoots of some early crop were forcing through. I saw a man on his knees, digging. He wore dull brown overalls and was almost invisible against the earth. He stopped working and turned round. I followed his gaze and saw a woman some twenty yards further up the hill.

‘Lee-ho!’ called Duncan and the dinghy turned, disorientating me, as it always does. When I got my bearings and glanced back we were already too far away to make anyone out against the dull backdrop of the island.

We were now heading south-west. Given the strong winds and the approaching storm, Duncan had chosen to steer us not out towards the North Sea but into the much more sheltered waters that lay between Unst to the north, Yell to the west and Fetlar in the south. We tacked again and Duncan had to shout at me to pay attention. But my mind was full of the woman I’d just seen. I couldn’t be sure, I had seen her so briefly, but she’d looked in the later stages of pregnancy. I wondered if she were one of the unhappy souls about to give up her baby.

The boat was keeling hard, even though I was fully out on the trapeze, and Duncan wasn’t looking particularly relaxed. Although these waters are more sheltered than the open seas to the east and west of Unst, the winds are notoriously flukey. Whatever the prevailing conditions, there are so many headlands and islands for the gusts to bounce off that you never really know what’s going to hit you and when. We’d also strayed into the triangle of sea that the ferries use and had to keep a sharp lookout; those beasties move fast and they won’t shift their course to avoid a careless dinghy. We sped up past the small island of Linga and I breathed a sigh of relief as we passed Belmont and were out of reach of the big boats. The thing about sailing that non-sailors never quite understand
is that your mood can shift so quickly from exhilaration to anxiety to mind-numbing terror. Right now I was into anxiety and climbing. The wind seemed to have picked up, the trapeze was not stabilizing the boat and the rigging was starting to creak.

‘Get back in,’ Duncan yelled at me, none too soon, and I started to pull myself back towards the marginally greater comfort of the boat.

At that moment, there was a deafening crack.
Thunder
, I thought,
the storm’s an hour ahead of schedule
. Then I heard a loud tearing noise and a cry of warning from Duncan. I was thrown up in the air and came down in the cold waters of Bluemull Sound.

Instinct had turned me the right way up and several feet above me I could see sunlight and clear, sparkling water. I kicked hard and broke through the surface. I coughed over and over, with no time in between to take in more air. I started to go down again.

Back under the surface, I remembered that although I was wearing a life jacket, it wasn’t inflated. Forcing myself not to panic, kicking hard to keep myself from sinking too deep, I fumbled under the canvas flaps of my jacket for the red pull toggle. I had only to tug on it and the jacket would automatically fill with air, propelling me to the surface. Except I couldn’t find the damn thing!

I knew I had to stay calm, so I gave up and went for the surface again. This time I managed to control
the coughing just long enough to breathe in. The water was choppier than I’d thought and all I could see were the short, aggressive waves that bounced around me. No sign of the boat. Nor of Duncan.

I gave up on the toggle and fumbled for the air inlet that allows you to inflate a life jacket manually. I found it easily enough, ripped off the stopper and started to blow. After eight blows I was exhausted. I replaced the stopper and lay back in the water. My natural buoyancy kept me on the surface but the waves splashed so aggressively into my face that I felt myself panicking again. I pulled upright. Sixteen puffs later and I had to admit defeat. The life jacket was not inflating and I was exhausting myself for nothing.

I think I almost gave up at that point. I sobbed aloud and tried to yell but I could barely hear my own voice above the wind. I tried to raise myself higher in the water, to get some sort of bearing. The Bluemull Sound was no more than half a mile wide at this point and I appeared to be directly in the middle. I turned round in the water and caught sight of the boat, little more than a white speck, a quarter mile, maybe more, further up the Sound. Its sails were dragging in the water and it looked as though the mast was gone. There was no sign of Duncan.

I thought quickly. Unst or Yell? Unst looked closer and, instinctively, it felt right to head for home, but the cliffs are steeper and far less forgiving than those on the neighbouring island. There’d be little point in reaching land only to die of exposure at the foot
of a thirty-metre cliff. I turned for Yell and started swimming.

Several minutes later, I’d made no progress through the water. I couldn’t remember what the currents were like here in the Sound but I guessed I was swimming against one. I looked around again, hoping in the face of no real probability that someone would see me: a passing fishing boat, a cliff walker, another dinghy, anyone. That’s when I saw the thing that was to save my life: not ten yards away and barely visible against water that was getting darker and greyer by the minute was a broken-off chunk of wooden pallet. I swam for it. Several times I touched it only to have it swept away, but finally I had it. I gripped it tight and started to kick.

The wind got up; the waves became choppier and the rain heavier. From time to time, sea-birds dived close, cawing at me. At first, I thought they were merely curious, then I got to wondering if they were trying to tell me something:
not that way – you’re heading straight for a rip-tide, swim south now – the current will take you in.
After a while, I wondered if the prospect of carrion was the real attraction.

I know exactly how long I spent in the water that day because I always wear a waterproof wristwatch when I’m sailing. Having the watch helped almost as much as having the pallet. It kept at bay the bewildering disorientation of not knowing how much time was passing and it enabled me to set little targets for myself, even play games. I would swim for ten minutes and then rest for two, timing it to
the second. Then I would lay bets with myself. How many more minutes before I could recognize sea birds on the cliffs? How many more before I could make out wild flowers on the rocks?

The pallet kept me afloat; the watch kept me sane; and my legs, strong from years of daily horse-riding, kicked me back to land.

It took three hours and twenty minutes to swim the quarter-mile from where the dinghy capsized to the island of Yell. That’s the equivalent of about thirty lengths of a twenty-five-metre municipal swimming pool, and if it seems wimpishly slow, then you have to remember that swimming pools do not, as a rule, have tides, nor currents, nor freezing temperatures, nor heavy rain pelting down on you. But eventually it was over and by ten minutes to twelve I knew that if death by drowning was to be my fate, it wasn’t going to happen that day. Thirty seconds later I staggered on to the beach.

Death from exposure was still on the cards, though, and I had to get moving. I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. Ahead of me was a cliff: not massively high but a cliff nonetheless. The beach was very narrow, hardly more than a strip of sand, and behind a very thin causeway there was a small lake. Two streams fed it, running down from the cliff-top above, and I realized they offered my best route up.

I started upwards. The stream I was following had cut out numerous little ledges and gullies over the years, and climbing wasn’t difficult. The biggest
danger was that I would get careless and slip. Before I reached the top I saw a car drive past, not thirty yards away from me, but the driver was staring straight ahead. I kept on going and collapsed at the roadside.

The rain was striking my face like a whip with a thousand tiny lashes and if a patient had arrived in A&E shivering as violently as I was doing, I’d have been seriously concerned. Yet I found I had enough strength left to start worrying about Duncan. Would it really be worth surviving only to find that he hadn’t? He was a better swimmer than I, but what if he’d been hit by the mast? I found I had enough energy left to cry.

By twelve-fifteen I hadn’t seen another car and had no choice but to start walking. I was barefoot. Shortly after the accident my sailing boots had filled with water. I’d kicked them off but I’d have been glad of them – of anything – now. The roadside verges were made of coarse grass, mud, shingle and more stones. After ten minutes my feet were bleeding.

I walked along the road until I came to Gutcher, from where the Yell–Unst ferry leaves, and stumbled into the green-painted, wooden-built café just by the pier.

‘Dat in traath!’ said the woman behind the counter at the sight of me. There were two other people in the café, a boy of about ten and a woman whom I took for his mother. They said nothing, just stared.

‘Do you have a phone I could use?’ I managed.
‘I’ve been in a sailing accident,’ I added, although I’m sure it was hardly necessary.

‘Yan!’ yelled the woman, her head half turned towards a door at the back of the café, her eyes fixed on me. ‘Da lassie is haff drunned.’

They brought me a phone but I couldn’t dial the number. I couldn’t even remember it, but I managed to tell them who I was and they put the call through. It seemed to take a long time and all the while I was bracing myself for the news that Duncan hadn’t made it back. I think I retreated to somewhere inside my head, only vaguely aware of movement and sound around me. I was given hot tea that I couldn’t even hold and someone put a car blanket around me. I became the object of the gentle curiosity and unconditional kindness that you only find in small communities. And I waited to be told the news of my husband’s death.

20

DUNCAN WAS NOT
dead. Duncan came racing into the café an hour later, a little whiter in the face than normal but otherwise perfectly OK. Later, I learned the dinghy hadn’t capsized, just broached violently and then righted itself. Duncan had managed to cling to the tiller and remain on board, but with the mast gone and the sails ripped, it was pretty much uncontrollable, and heading for the cliffs. He’d inflated his life jacket – working perfectly, thank you – and prepared to bail. Then he’d had the good fortune to be spotted by a passing boat. Rob Craigie, owner of one of the largest salmon farms on Unst, had been returning from an early-morning check of his offshore cages. He’d rescued Duncan and the two of them had spent the next hour looking for me. In the face of a steadily worsening storm, Duncan had eventually been persuaded to return to Unst and call out the coastguard. By the time the phone call from the Yell café reached the Guthrie home, I had been missing for nearly four hours.

I don’t remember much about the journey back to Westing. Just that Richard drove and I sat in the back, huddled close to Duncan. No one spoke much. It took longer than it should have because the bad weather was delaying the ferries, but eventually, around mid afternoon, we arrived back. Elspeth had built a huge fire in our room and put extra quilts on the bed. Duncan helped me take a hot bath and then dressed me in a pair of Richard’s flannel pyjamas. Richard checked me for concussion, gave me painkillers for my headache and Temazepam to help me sleep. I didn’t argue, although I doubted I really needed it. Sleep was the only thing I felt I could handle just then.

Voices woke me. I was still drowsy. I wanted to go back to sleep. I closed my eyes and snuggled down.