Atlantic Fury (30 page)

I didn't see my brother again until the Board of Inquiry, which was held at Scottish Command on November 2. He had, however, been in touch with me once, very briefly, during the intervening ten days. It was a phone call late at night, about eleven-fifteen. I recognised his voice at once for he made no pretence of concealing his natural accent. ‘Donald? Is that you, Donald?'

‘Where are you?' I said. ‘In London?'

‘Aye, in some bluidy nightclub – I forget the name. I must ha' a wee talk wi' you, Donald. Can you come down here? Right away. I must ha' a talk wi' ye.'

‘Of course.' And I added, ‘Are you all right, Iain?' His voice sounded thick and slurred. I thought he'd been drinking.

‘Yes, I'm all right, laddie. It's just that I've made up my mind. I must talk to somebody. I'm all alone, you see. An' I thought maybe if you'd nothing better to do …'

‘Whereabouts are you?' I said. I didn't want to lose him. ‘I'll come right down. Just tell me where to meet you.'

‘Aye, weel – I'm somewhere doon Curzon Street way.' The accent was very broad and getting more slurred. ‘What aboot Cook's now, meet me outside Cook's in Berkeley Street.'

‘Okay, I'll be there at midnight,' I said.

‘Fine, fine, that'll do fine. We'll ha' a wee drink together, eh? Like old times. Only hurry. I canna stand my own company much longer.' And he'd hung up.

I'd just gone to bed, so that I had to dress, and then there was the problem of transport. Fortunately I had enough money in the studio for a taxi and I found one on the rank outside Aldgate East Station. I was at Cook's by five to twelve. But he wasn't there, and though I hung around until 2 a.m., he never showed up.

He didn't ring me again and that was my only contact with him until I saw him in Service dress walking out of the Conference Room where the Board of Inquiry was being held. I was shocked at the change in him. The twitch at the corner of his mouth had become much more marked, the lines of his face deeper. There were bags under his eyes, and above them the eyes themselves stared weary and lack-lustre out of darkened sockets. He'd obviously been drinking heavily. His hands were trembling. He passed me without a flicker of recognition.

Shortly afterwards I was called to give evidence. The Inquiry was being conducted by a colonel. He sat at a mahogany table with a major on one side and a captain on the other. None of these officers was connected with Northton. They were taking depositions and by the way they questioned me I was certain it was merely the prelude to a court martial.

They took my evidence under oath. To some extent it was a cross-examination, with the Major making notes of my replies. They went over the whole sequence of events and my part in them. And when I had told them all I knew, the Major laboriously wrote out a summarised version in longhand. Then he read it through to me and when I had agreed that it was a fair statement of what I'd told them, I was asked to sign it.

I thought that was the end of it and was just getting up to leave, when the Colonel said, ‘One moment, Mr Ross.' He searched through the folder in front of him and produced a letter. ‘D'you know anything about a Mr Edward William Lane of Vancouver, a Canadian businessman?' I'd been expecting this and I was prepared for it. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘He visited me in London on October 15. My brother Iain Was among those missing when the
Duart Castle
was torpedoed in 1944. Lane had a theory that he was still alive.'

‘In fact, he thought Major Braddock might be your brother. Correct?'

I nodded.

‘The next day you left London for the Outer Hebrides. You landed at Rodil in the Island of Harris on October 18 and I understand you saw Major Braddock the following day.'

‘Yes.'

‘Had you ever visited the Outer Hebrides before?' And when I admitted I hadn't, he said, ‘I take it then that you went up there for the express purpose of checking on Major Braddock's identity? In other words, you thought there was a possibility that he might be your missing brother?'

‘It was partly that,' I agreed. ‘Lane had convinced me that my brother could have been with Braddock on that life-raft and I thought he might be able to tell me what had happened. Also,' I added, ‘there seemed a possibility that I might be able to get out to Laerg.' I started to explain to him then about my connection with the island and my desire to paint the scenes that my grandfather had described, but he cut me short.

‘We are only concerned here with your visit as it affected Major Braddock. Now then, is there any truth in Lane's suggestion?'

I didn't give him a direct answer. Instead, I said, ‘I understand that you've already taken evidence from the Senior Meteorological Officer at Northton. My first meeting with Major Braddock took place in the Met. Office. I imagine you have already asked Cliff Morgan whether Braddock and I recognised each other.'

He nodded.

‘What did he say?' I asked.

‘That as far as he can remember there was no indication that you had ever met each other before.'

It was a great weight off my mind to know that. ‘Then that surely is your answer, sir,' I said. ‘If Braddock had, in fact, been my brother, then I would hardly be a reliable witness. At the same time, it would have shown in our reaction to each other at that first meeting. You can have my word for it, if you like, but I think you will agree that the best evidence you have that there is no connection between us is Morgan's.' And I added, ‘Perhaps you haven't appreciated this point. I don't know whether Lane explains it in that letter, but he's now over here in an attempt to prove that Major Braddock is not entitled to a fortune of some quarter of a million dollars left him by his aunt. From what Lane told me, I got the impression that he was prepared to go to almost any lengths to upset the Will and get the money for his wife's family.'

‘I see. No, he doesn't mention that here.' The Colonel hesitated. Finally he said, ‘It puts rather a different complexion on the whole business.'

For Iain's sake I'd been prepared to lie, but after that it wasn't necessary. The Colonel was faced with an unpleasant enough task as it was. He'd no wish to become involved with something that had happened more than twenty years ago. ‘Very well, I agree. That settles it. And I'm glad, for if there'd been any truth in it, then it would have raised the question of what had happened to the real George Braddock.' He gave a little sigh and pushed the letter back into the folder. ‘Extraordinary what people will do for money. I'm sorry I've had to raise the matter … most unpleasant for you.' And he smiled his relief and said, ‘That's all, Mr Ross. Thank you for coming to give evidence. I am also asked by my superiors to thank you for all you did on Laerg to assist in the rescue of the survivors.'

‘I didn't do much,' I said. ‘Braddock's the man to whom the survivors owe their lives. Field would never have made that climb if it hadn't been for Braddock. He organised the whole thing.'

The Colonel's sharp little eyes stared at me hard and I wondered for a moment if I'd said too much. But it was true and I was damned if I was going to leave the Inquiry without making the point. If they were going to blame him for what had happened, at least they ought to realise that without the driving force of his personality nobody would have been saved and the loss of life would have been that much greater.

Probably they knew that already. But it made no difference.

After hearing over a dozen witnesses they passed the depositions to the Director of Army Legal Services and in due course the next step towards Court Martial proceedings was taken. This was a Summary of Evidence and again I was called. Iain was present throughout the examination of witnesses, and this, more than anything else, seemed to emphasise the seriousness of his situation.

I understand he had the right to question witnesses. Whether he availed himself of this right I do not know; in my case he certainly did not, sitting tense and very still, his eyes never raised to my face. I was in the room almost two hours and all the time I was conscious of the nervous tension in him, could literally feel it. And he looked desperately ill.

I thought perhaps he would contact me afterwards, but he didn't, and though I stayed the night in Edinburgh just in case, I had no word from him. Perhaps he thought it would be unwise. In any case there was nothing I could have done – only given him moral support. Back in London I wrote him a carefully worded letter beginning
Dear Major Braddock
and inquiring whether there was anything I could do to help. I received no reply.

The waiting I knew would be hard on him, a nervous strain. The loneliness, too. This worried me as much as anything else, and in desperation I went and saw his wife.

I'd kept a newspaper cutting that gave her address and I found her living in one of the back streets of Hertford, a small woman with doe-like eyes and a will that was hard as iron. I went in the evening with the story that I was a welfare worker for SAAFA, but nothing I could say would induce her to visit her husband. She got the Army allowance, and that was all she wanted of him. And the only clues she gave me to why they had parted was when she said, ‘I had five years of it.' And added, ‘Nerves are one thing, but nerves and drink … No, I don't want to see him again.'

Yet she still had his photograph in a silver frame standing on a table beside the TV set – aged about thirty, I thought, and much as I remembered him in the Glasgow days, the lines of his face barely showing, but still that scar above the bridge of the nose. ‘If it's any comfort to him in his present circumstances,' she said as she showed me to the door, ‘you can tell him both the girls are well and pray for him nightly.' And she added, her lips tight and no tenderness in her eyes, ‘I told them he'd been killed – and then this business with reporters coming here and the news of it on the telly, you can imagine the shock it was – how I felt.'

Christmas came and went, the New Year. Marjorie wrote from Rodil that Iain was in hospital. ‘My father says they think Major Braddock is suffering from some sort of nervous breakdown. It's not serious apparently, but I thought you'd like to know. It's the waiting, of course. And now I can't help feeling sorry for him.'

There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't very well write to him again, and if I tried to visit him the authorities would wonder at my interest. I was working all the time and so January slipped into February with news from Marjorie that he was out of hospital. The rest of her letter was about the fishing and how the solan geese were starting to come back. ‘Soon there'll be all manner of birds and it'll be warmer with clear skies. Come back then and paint. It's so beautiful in the spring.…'

And then at last the official letter notifying me that Major Braddock's Court Martial would be held in Edinburgh on February 24, starting at 10 a.m.:
You are pursuant to Section 103 of the Army Act, 1955, and Rule 91 of the Rules of Procedure (Army), 1956, made thereunder, hereby summoned and required to attend at the sitting of the said court … and so to attend from day to day until you shall be duly discharged; whereof you shall fail at your peril
.

Four days later I got an airmail letter from Lane in Vancouver. Obviously he was paying somebody to keep him posted. ‘Tell your brother that I'm flying over immediately and will be in Edinburgh on the 24th. Tell him also that I have some fresh evidence. My agents have located one of the Military Policemen acting as his escort on the
Duart Castle
. This man survived on one of the boats that reached Ireland and he is prepared to swear that Sergeant Iain Alasdair Ross was on that life-raft. He also saw Second-Lieutenant George Braddock clinging to it. Furthermore, he says he would recognise your brother …'

The Court Martial was held at Dreghorn Camp just outside Edinburgh. It opened prompt at ten o'clock with the swearing in of the Court. For this ceremony the witnesses were present, all of us standing at the back of the court. It was a bare, rather bleak room, but the arrangement of the desks and tables and the grouping of the officers transformed it, and the colour of the uniforms made it impressive so that I was conscious of the atmosphere, the sense of being caught up in the Military legal machine. Instead of a judge with his wig and scarlet robes, five officers sat in judgment. And in the body of the court – the accused, the officer defending him, the Prosecuting Officer, all the various officials, even to the NCOs on duty, in full dress. The effect was overpowering and I wondered how my brother felt as the doors closed and quiet descended. The Judge Advocate, seated on the President's right hand, read the convening order.

From where I stood I could see only the back of Iain's head, hunched down into his shoulders, which sagged slightly as he sat slumped in his seat, staring down at the table in front of him. He seemed quite passive, almost dazed, and when he was asked if he objected to being tried by the President or any of the other members of the Court his reply was inaudible. And then the Judge Advocate's voice, clear and crisp: ‘Everybody will stand uncovered whilst the Court is sworn.' A shuffle of chairs and the court-room rose to its feet as he faced the President. ‘Please repeat after me—' The Brigadier spoke the words he knew by heart in a clipped, very clear voice: ‘I swear by Almighty God that I will well and truly try the Accused before the Court according to the evidence and that I will duly administer justice according to the Army Act, 1955, without partiality, favour or affection …'

The four other officers who constituted the Court were sworn and then the President swore in the Judge Advocate himself. After that the witnesses were ushered out into an adjoining room. There were altogether twenty-seven witnesses. Most of them were from Northton – Field, Rafferty, Flint, the M.O., Phipps, Sergeant Wetherby and several other ranks I'd never seen before, including the Signals NCO who'd been on duty when the fatal order was given. Cliff was there and another civilian who turned out to be Fellowes, the pilot who had flown the plane from which Mike Ferguson had jumped to his death. Wentworth, too, and a young Captain whom Field told me was the Commander of L4400. Both Brigadier Matthieson and the BGS from the War Office had also been called, but their rank enabled them to avoid the tedium of waiting in the confines of that small room.