The Last Wolf (4 page)

She put on her kilt and a clean jumper, stuffed her feet into socks and shoes and brushed her hair. Cutting it herself with the kitchen scissors had been a big mistake; she had cut too much off in some places and not enough in others so that it looked an awful mess. She brushed it hard and pulled a hideous face at herself in the wardrobe mirror.

The German boy had spoken English with a funny accent but he hadn't looked anything like the sinister spies in Hamish's stories. True, he had been staring through his binoculars, but he might just have been admiring the view and, anyway, there was nothing to spy on except the island ferry going to and fro between Port Askaig and Kennacraig, and the distillery boats and fishing boats passing by. Sometimes a Royal Navy ship went through the sound, but not very often. As Grandfather had pointed out, the war had finished ages ago, long before she'd been born. There was no need to spy any more.

Just the same, the Germans had known about Glas Uig, which was strange because the narrow entrance was hard to spot. It was easy to sail past without noticing it or realizing that there was a deep cove beyond. Once upon a time, years and years ago, the old jetty had been used for loading sheep and cattle on to boats to be taken across to Jura and to the mainland, but now they left from Port Askaig or Port Ellen and nobody went to Glas Uig any more. Nobody except her and Hamish.

The dinner invitation had been delivered by an estate worker and though the Richters had had difficulty in understanding his Scottish speech, the writing was clear enough.

Sir Archibald and Lady Mackay would be pleased if you would care to dine with them at Craigmore House this evening. 7.30 for 8.00 p.m.

They had no smart clothes on board, but Father insisted on them wearing the most respectable available.

‘I do not wish us to be taken for pirates.'

The joke was that he could very easily have been taken for one in his U-boat days, and so could all his crew. There had been photos of Kapitänleutnant Richter returning from patrols in the war – bearded, long-haired, spotted scarf knotted round his neck, battered cap on his head. The U-boat men had always been welcomed back to their base by bands playing on the quayside, bouquets of flowers and smiling girls. They may have looked like pirates, but they were glorious heroes.

The lawn where the boy and girl had been playing their game of croquet lay on the seaward side of the house, a few feet below its level. As they walked up a gravel pathway to the front door, Reinhard could see iron hoops spaced out across the grass and a post painted with bands of colour in the centre. The girl had said that it was a complicated game but it looked simple enough to him.

The door was opened by a doddery old manservant who smelled of mothballs and whisky, and they followed him down a flagstone hallway lined with stuffed stag heads mounted on panelled walls. The manservant opened another door into a large room – a room with an elaborate plaster ceiling, fine old furniture and furnishings, rich velvet, Scottish tartan, a grand piano, silver-framed photographs, oil portraits and misty Scottish landscapes with shaggy, long-horned cattle, and a vast stone fireplace big enough to roast a sheep.

Their host rose to greet them. He was a tall, handsome gentleman with thick white hair. His wife was white-haired, too, and it was worn in an elegant coil at the back of her head. Reinhard could see that she must once have been very beautiful. This would be the Italian grandmother, Rosabella, who had emigrated as a child to Canada. He and Bruno followed Father's lead, clicked their heels together smartly and bowed.

The grandmother said to him, ‘I believe you have already met my granddaughter, Stroma.'

He hadn't noticed the girl until she stepped forward and he scarcely recognized her from the little urchin he had met before. She was wearing a kilt and a dark green woollen jumper; there were white socks and shiny shoes on her feet, and her hair had been brushed. And she was clean. Clean face and hands and legs, the blood washed away, a sticking plaster stuck crookedly over the cut knee. Underneath the dirt, she was surprisingly presentable. He smiled at her. Bowed politely.

‘Yes, indeed, we have met.'

She did not smile back.

‘And this is my grandson, Hamish.'

The brother was taller and older than he had expected – about fourteen, the same age as Bruno. Dark-haired, like his sister. He did not smile either.

Drinks were served – Scottish whisky for the grown-ups, lemonade for the rest of them. They made stilted conversation for a while until the manservant returned to announce that dinner was ready and they moved into another room – wood-panelled, like the hall, and with a long table laid with silver cutlery and crystal glasses. There were more portraits and misty Scottish landscapes on the walls and more Scottish tartan draping the windows.

Reinhard was seated next to the grandmother. He had half-expected her to have an Italian accent but it was Canadian by the sound of it and she was quite easy to understand. Easier, in fact, than the English who swallowed their words. He answered her questions carefully, anxious to get his English correct. He was seventeen years old, he told her, and, yes, he was still at high school in Hamburg, but he would be leaving next year. When she asked what he would be doing after that, he hesitated. Father answered for him.

‘We are a naval family, Lady Mackay. My late father and my grandfather were in the German Navy, and myself also, as my sons will be, in their turn. It is a matter of tradition, you understand.'

‘How interesting.' The grandmother looked puzzled. ‘But I didn't realize that there
was
a German Navy any more.'

‘Oh yes. It was agreed at the Treaty of Versailles that we should keep a small one and, lately, we have been permitted to increase it, so long as we remain less than half the strength of the Royal Navy. We have an excellent Naval Academy of our own for training young officers, the Marineschule at Mürwik. Very strict entrance tests and very high standards.'

The grandfather leaned forward. ‘Which branch of the German Navy were you in, Herr Richter?'

‘The U-boat force.' His father smiled agreeably. ‘But, of course, now I sail only small sailing boats.'

‘You were a commander?'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘There were a number of U-boats operating in this area during the war. Did you ever come our way, by any chance?'

Reinhard waited with interest for his father to reply. He had not only come their way but hidden his submarine in their cove and stolen their sheep.

‘Occasionally. The sound is deep enough in the centre for a submarine to be able to pass through.'

‘Yes, we know that. However, I understand that the German Navy no longer has any submarines.'

‘We have a few small coastal boats capable of submerging – so small that we call them canoes. They are of no significance.'

This was not the whole truth. Father knew all about the Ubootwaffe that was being built up in secret. The so-called canoes would soon be replaced by much larger under-sea boats; in the meantime, they made useful training vessels. U-boat crews were still considered special: an elite force, much admired and respected by everyone. Reinhard would have no hesitation in becoming one of them, assuming he passed the rigorous training.

The grandfather was speaking again. ‘Your expansion into the Rhineland last March took us by surprise, you see. We are concerned, in this country, that Germany abides by the Treaty rules.'

Father said smoothly, ‘We only reoccupied what was originally ours, Sir Archibald. To give us more living space, that is all. It was not so surprising.'

This was perfectly true. The Rhineland had belonged to Germany before the Allies had taken it away. The French had tried to make use of it and failed pathetically; it was only right that it should return to the Fatherland.

The girl, Stroma, was sitting on Reinhard's other side, and so far she had not uttered a word or even looked his way. Maybe it was shyness, but she had not seemed at all shy before.

He said to her, ‘After I had met you, I found a very beautiful garden. A secret garden surrounded by a wall.'

‘It's my grandmother's,' she answered, her eyes fixed on her plate. ‘Mack made it for her.'

‘Who is Mack?'

‘The gardener. Grandmother wanted somewhere to sit out of the wind. She told him what to plant and where and he did it for her. And the men built the dry-stone wall. There's always a wind here.'

‘Well, it's a very good place. I sat there for a little time myself. I hope that was permittable.'

‘Permissible,' she said to her plate. ‘You mean permissible.'

‘Yes, of course. Permissible.' He flushed at his mistake. The English language tricked you all the time. Made a complete fool of you, if you weren't careful.

‘Grandmother wouldn't mind you going there. Basically, you can go anywhere you like on the island. Nobody locks their houses, or anything like that.'

‘The people must be very friendly.'

‘Not really. If you weren't born on the island you're an incomer – that's what they call them.'

‘You were born here?'

‘No, I was born in London, where my parents live.'

‘So you, too, are an incomer?'

‘Yes. And Hamish. So's my grandmother. My father and grandfather are
ilich
though. That's Gaelic. It means they were born here.'

‘I wonder what your islanders would think of real foreigners – like us?'

She muttered at her plate. ‘They wouldn't trust you.'

He suspected that she didn't trust him either; nor did the brother. The grandparents were very polite and smiling on the surface but you couldn't tell what they were thinking underneath. The British were suspicious of Germans – his father had often said so. They wanted to keep them crushed under their heel so that they could never rise again. The Treaty at the end of the Great War had punished Germany very harshly and the Allies should not be surprised if Germans got tired of such humiliating and unfair treatment. Adolf Hitler, the Führer, had promised to undo the wrongs of the Treaty, to unite the German people and to give them space for living. He had taken back the Rhineland, which was of course theirs by right. But it was better not to speak about that. It would not be polite, as an invited guest. It was safer to speak of other things.

He said to the girl, ‘I like this house very much. It has much character. Is it very old?'

‘Yes. Very. There was a castle here before but most of it fell down and the house was built with the old stones.'

He had looked in vain for lights. ‘Is there no electricity?'

‘Oh, no. Just oil lamps and candles. And there's only one tap with any running water in the house. In the scullery. It's cold water, of course. Very cold, actually. It comes straight from the burn,' she went on – rather gleefully, he thought. Perhaps she was trying to shock him? ‘And the water comes out all brown because of the peat.'

‘Peat? What is peat?'

‘It comes from bogs on the island. You dig it up and dry it out for fuel. It doesn't smell much then, but when it burns it smells lovely. Like smoky flowers. They use it for making the whisky. Which is why it tastes so special.'

‘But you only have one tap for water in such a big house? That is not very . . .' He struggled for the right word. ‘Very convenient.'

‘Oh, we don't mind. We have to tie an old sock over it to stop wriggly things getting through from the burn, but sometimes they do anyway. A serpent came out of the tap once.'

‘A serpent?'
My God, what did she mean?

‘An adder. A snake.' She wriggled her hand along the table edge. ‘It slithered around in the sink till Ellen, the cook, put it outside with a broom.'

‘That must have been a big surprise.'

‘Not really. There are lots of adders on the island but they're not really poisonous. Hamish got bitten once but it wasn't too bad.' She gave him a sideways look, probably still hoping to shock him. ‘Craigmore's very old-fashioned. There aren't any bathrooms or proper lavatories, of course, and Grandfather won't have a telephone. He likes it that way. Ellen – that's our cook-housekeeper – does all the washing in the outhouse in a copper.'

‘A copper?'

‘It's a great big basin made of copper, with a tap on the side so you can drain it. You fill it with water and light a fire under it to heat the water up.'

He thought of the modern apartment in Hamburg – so well-appointed, so comfortably furnished, so civilized.

‘Perhaps your grandmother would prefer to live somewhere else – somewhere more modern?'

‘No, she loves it here. It was just the same where she was born in Canada. She's used to it.'

‘So, your grandfather would never wish to sell the house?'

‘Sell Craigmore?' She stared at him as though he had said something lunatic. Even insulting. ‘Of course not. Why would he ever do such a thing?'

So if Father still had any hopes of buying the house, it seemed unlikely that it would be possible – at any price. Reinhard changed the subject. ‘I have seen the bone of the whale you spoke of.' He had noticed it wedged in the rocks at the cove, just above the high-water mark. ‘It must have been a very big whale. We have seen a minke whale near the sound from our boat but it was not so big. What kind was this one?'

She shrugged. ‘I've no idea.'

‘An orca, perhaps?'

Another shrug.

The grandfather was asking his father more questions. What route had they taken from Germany? What other islands had they visited? Where were they going after Islay? Father was answering the questions politely and he made it sound so simple. They had come directly across the North Sea, sailed round the northern coast of Scotland, between the Orkney Islands and the mainland, and then down through the Inner Hebrides. They had already visited Skye and Mull and now Islay and planned to explore some more islands before returning to Hamburg by the same way. They usually sailed in the Baltic but now that his sons were old enough, he had decided to widen their horizons. Give them some experience of other places and a bit of a challenge.