In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers (2 page)

Ben scurried to the kitchen while Mary poured beer, and the bar filled with townsfolk. Conall carried glasses and a bottle of whisky to the table. The man with the cane grasped the bottle and poured, handing a glass to each of the sailors, and the last to Conall.
 

“Drink with me boy,” the man said, “it’s only polite.”
 

“I shouldn’t, not while working.” Conall glanced over his shoulder towards the bar and the kitchen where Ben was cooking.
 

“Nonsense,” the man said. “I insist.” He slugged his whisky and roared with satisfaction, then fixed Conall with a stare.
 

He raised the glass to his lips, let droplets of whisky run over his tongue, musty and fierce, burning with buried flavours. The sailor grabbed the glass and upended it into Conall’s mouth. He spluttered as he swallowed, feeling the fiery tang at the back of his throat.
 

“That’s better, what do they call you boy?”

“Conall Hawkins, sir.”
 

“Gaelic eh? But you’re not from Shetland. Talk different to the rest of these I’d say.”

“Brought as children, by our parents. On the way north.”
 

“Ah, north, everyone goes north. And where are your parents now?”
 

Conall dodged the question. “More beer, sir?”
 

“Fill them up boy. I’m Jonah Argent and these are my crew.”
 

“Are you the captain?”
 

“That I’m not. Not on this voyage. First mate of
The Arkady
, at your service, though I’ve been captain, had my own ship, in the day.”
 

Conall gazed through the window to the bay where the ship swayed in the midday sunshine. “She’s beautiful.”
 

“She should be,” Argent said. “Seven years these folks spent refitting her, doing it with hand tools, making her ready and watertight and now she’s the best ship afloat. With the best crew too.”
 

The sailors roared their approval and took long swigs of beer. Ben arrived from the kitchen carrying a tray of plates. “Don’t stand here talking,” he hissed at Conall. “Sell drinks to this lot.” He gestured with his chin over his shoulder at the gawking townsfolk. “Get their money while we’ve got a show for ‘em to watch.”
 

Conall hurried behind the bar to help Mary serve, keeping an eye on the sailors. Where were they heading, and what cargo did they carry? Who rebuilt that ship and why? He had to find a way to get back to the table and hear more about their voyage.

Ben whistled to him from the kitchen and waved him inside. The smell of cooking meats and vegetables made Conall’s stomach churn with hunger.
 

“You stay away from that crowd, you hear,” Ben said. “Serve their drinks, laugh at their jokes and make them welcome, but don’t trust them, whatever you do.”
 

“They seem all right to me.”
 

“That man’s a scoundrel. Been running a pub for twenty years and I know a rascal when I see one. Stay away from him.”
 

“They’re not slavers.”
 

“Ask me they’d do most things for profit. You’ve been warned, can’t say fairer than that.”

Conall made his way back to the bar, filled a pitcher of beer and pushed his way through the crowd. He topped up their drinks and listened as the sailors told tales of life on the mainland.

Jonah Argent spoke of troubled times, food shortages and droughts, wars over water one day and then sudden floods the next. Desperate farmers whose top soil had blown away. Hot winds from the desert that had crept into the heartland of Europe.
 

Conall listened to snatches of talk as he wove through the crowd. The townsfolk groaned as they listened to Argent’s tale. The world to the south had been closed to the people of Shetland, none willing to make the sea journey to Scotland in their fishing boats. They lacked the wood, the tools, the know-how to build bigger ships.
 

Once the sailors had finished eating, the townsfolk began to drift away. Ben called Conall into the kitchens and gave him a meal. He wolfed it down, bread and potatoes and goat meat, carrots and cabbage in a hot stew. He finished one bowl and gladly accepted a second. By the time he finished, his stomach felt as full as it had in a long time. “Can I take something for Faro?”
 

Ben shrugged, but nodded. He wrapped half a loaf of bread in paper along with cheese and two apples, and handed it to Conall. “There’s more, if you come back later, help clean up this mess.”
 

“Back in an hour.”
 

“Make sure of it.”
 

He left by the back door, whistled for Rufus and headed towards the harbour. A crowd loitered outside the town hall where the captain from the ship was meeting with the council leaders. They waited for news, hoping this ship was the start of something, a trade route opening, the revival of the old world. Conall spotted his brother sitting in a doorway, scowling. He handed Faro the bread and cheese. “Learnt anything?”

“Enough,” Faro said. “Where’s this from?”
 

Conall told him of the inn, the sailors, and Ben’s offer of more food.
 

“No time,” Faro said. “The ship’s not staying long, I heard the captain. They sail before sunset.”

“We can still get work, Ben will need us.”
 

“We won’t be here.” Faro lurched to his feet. “They’re going north. To the arctic. To Svalbard. I heard one of the sailors.”
 

Svalbard. The word echoed like a bell back and forth between the two boys. The wild land to the north, free now of ice, the stories said. Their parents had been heading for the archipelago, for the island of Spitsbergen, to make a new home.
 

Conall remembered little of them. Blurred faces, strong arms, a comforting voice, moments of kindness. A feeling of safety. Then they were gone. They’d set out as a family for the far north, but the boys had been left behind, when Conall was only five. Without Faro, he could never have survived.
 

He looked across the Bressay Sound to the ship, then back to his brother. “We can’t leave. They might come back. They’ll look for us here.”
 

“Ten years,” Faro’s voice was angry, bitter. “They’re not coming back. Understand? I’m getting on that ship. Come if you want or stay here. It’s up to you.”
 

 
“The sailors’ll want payment, we’ve nothing to trade.”
 

“We’re not asking. We sneak on board, hide ’til they’ve sailed. Even if they find us, we’ll make it to Norway. It’s a start. Better than being stuck here.”
 

Conall grimaced. How would Jonah Argent and his crew at The Old Broch deal with a pair of stowaways? “They’ll throw us off.”

“I’m going to try,” Faro said. “I’m sick of waiting.”

It was no idle threat. Conall would be left alone on Shetland, and the townsfolk, even the kind ones, would never take one of the Hawkins boys to their hearts. He would always be an outsider, an incomer: flotsam washed up on the island. “How do we get aboard? They’ll see us.”
 

“They’re doing a trade,” Faro said. “Tools and maps and old tech from the south. For hay and straw.”
 

Conall looked at his brother, puzzled. Faro shrugged. “They need it for something.”
 

“How does that help us?”
 

“You’ll see,” Faro said with a smirk. “Good thing you’ve got me here, if you can’t figure it out.” Faro threw the last of the bread to his brother and gestured for him to follow.
 

Conall looked over his shoulder towards the Broch, thinking of Ben and his offer of another meal. He could work there, if he stayed on Shetland. But his brother had protected him all these years, his only family. His only friend. The only one he could trust. They looked after each other. They were brothers.
 

“Enough of this dump,” Faro yelled as Conall ran to catch up. “Get your things together, anything you want to take. We can’t carry much. Tthis is our chance. We’re going to Svalbard. Good riddance Shetland. We’re going north.”

Conall clutched a battered leather shoulder bag against his chest, surveying the room where he’d lived these past ten years. Only one section of the half-ruined house still gave any shelter. They’d patched together enough of a roof to keep them dry but fierce winds off the North Sea whipped through the old building. An improvised shelf held rough wooden carvings he’d made as a child. Conall picked up a model boat, turned it over in his hand, examining the workmanship. Not so bad. But leave it, leave them all. Take only the essentials – and the binoculars, above all things.

They were his prized possession, discovered years before in the wreckage of a trawler, skewered on a windswept headland: a relic of the old world forgotten by the fishermen of Lerwick, home only to crabs and ghosts and barnacles, until the Hawkins boys came exploring, dreaming of hidden gold. Faro was the oldest, so he went first, clambering on board and rushing to the wheelhouse, but he found nothing. Conall explored the bones of the ships, and it was there, hanging from the transom, exposed like the rib of a great whale, he spotted the binoculars. He remembered holding them in his hands for the first time, the smoothness of the cold steel, the smell of the leather strap – and the envy on Faro’s face when he saw what Conall had found. No one could make lenses like that anymore, not on Shetland, not anywhere.
 

Conall had carried them proudly from the ship, taking the binoculars to a vantage point on the headland to gaze across the ocean. How old had he been: nine or ten? So many years spent waiting, hoping, dreaming – and gazing to sea.
 

He tucked the glasses into the bag and gathered up the dog’s blanket. He squashed it into the bag. “In you get.”
 

Rufus looked at him, ears raised. Conall picked him up, using a calm voice to put the terrier at ease, and tucked him on top of the blanket. The dog fitted but there was little room left. He’d leave his spare shirt and socks, but the wool jacket might come in useful, on a sea voyage to the arctic. He’d carry it loose, and it had two pockets he could stuff with things. He looked through a pile of books, scavenged from deserted houses or given him by townsfolk. He’d leave the novels, read repeatedly until they became old friends. He picked up a battered book that had belonged to his parents, a natural history of the arctic, from the days when it was frozen: ice, snow and bitter cold. Slipping the book into a pocket of his coat, he looked through what remained: histories and manuals and travel books, lives of famous men. The photographs in the botany textbook had faded with age, the illustrations of plants and trees barely legible. But the book was filled with wonders, plants treasured for their flowers, their colour and beauty. Exotic trees and shrubs that grew so fast they had to be hacked back in Autumn. On Shetland, even grass and wheat struggled in the parched summers. He tucked the book into a pocket and slung the jacket over his arm.
 

Leave the bedding, the shells collected from the beach, the plate and cooking tools. He pressed a pocket knife into the bag where Rufus had snuggled into the blanket. The dog opened one eye and gave a mournful stare. “You’d best keep quiet. And still.” He took a last look at the ruin that had been his only home and stepped outside to where his brother waited, staring to sea.

“You’re taking the dog?” Faro said. “Leave him, he’ll be safer on shore.”

Conall had found the terrier on the town dump two years back, abandoned as a pup, and the two of them had bonded on sight, never parted since.
“I can’t. No one’ll feed him.”
 

“He’d better not give us away,” Faro said. “Come on, we’ll miss our chance.”

≈≈≈≈

The brothers headed to the harbour where three cart loads of hay and straw stood ready to be loaded on boats and taken to
The Arkady
. Faro volunteered to help in return for a chance to see the boat up close and the town mayor waved them forward, happy to use free labour. He stood beside the captain of the ship, a bearded man in his fifties with a weather-beaten face tanned by long hours in the sun.
 

Conall stared at the man, getting his measure. He had a serious face, stood tall and straight and strong, but somehow he didn’t look born to the sea, not like Jonah Argent. He wasn’t the best sailor on board, that was clear. He was captain because he owned the boat, or built it, or led the expedition.
 

Conall and Faro grabbed pitch forks and began to load the hay into large sacks which they stacked on a twelve-foot row-boat. When no one was looking, Conall slung his bag into the back of the boat. He lowered it carefully to avoid hurting Rufus and whispered to the dog to keep quiet. The bag wriggled and writhed but Rufus held his bark. Once the boat was filled the two boys leapt in. Two fishermen took up the oars, and the boat pulled away from shore towards the waiting ship.
 

A line of faces along the ship’s deck watched them draw closer. He recognised Jonah and others from the inn. A woman in her late thirties, maybe older, leaned on the rail, dressed in a white blouse and grey trousers, her hair tied back. She had her arm around a girl, Conall’s age, he guessed, maybe younger. He glimpsed her face and long brown hair, almost black, then she was gone.
 

The fishermen pulled the row-boat alongside
The Arkady
and the crew lowered ropes to haul up the sacks. Conall helped Faro tie them securely while the fishermen kept the boat steady, firm against the keel.
 

Faro shouted up to the sailors. “Where do you need the hay? Below decks? We’ll move it, for a look around the boat.”
 

Jonah’s face appeared, staring down at Conall. “You do all the jobs in this town boy? Aye, come up if you want, save us the bother and we’ve got a ship to prepare. But take care and don’t steal anything. It’s ship’s law on here.”