Rogue's March

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

James Alexander McAndrew is an artist, a raconteur and a drunk. A roarer who fights his way through every pub in Tiger Bay to become a bouncer in Toulouse-Lautrec's Montmartre. Yet despite his restless nature and his wild adventures, he still longs of a girl he left behind Wales, the beautful Miss Ellie Kendall.

Release date: August 21, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

1940

William Seddon, of Seddon and Partners, Solicitors, was unaware that summer morning as he left his office that he had less than an hour to live.

He crossed the Strand at the pedestrian crossing. With his brief-case under his arm he entered the Savoy Hotel.

Pilot Officer John McAndrew, slim, fair, was awaiting him in a cocktail bar.

The airman’s back was to Seddon. He was sitting on a high stool in the hunched despair of isolation.

Wandering the counter before him, seemingly unaware of the young man’s existence, a barman polished a glass with an equally desultory air.

‘Pilot Officer McAndrew?’ The solicitor offered his hand.

‘That’s right. How did you know me?’

Seddon put his brief-case on the bar. ‘Actually, old chap, I’ve seen a photograph.’

‘My God,’ muttered McAndrew. ‘Really? You little chaps do get around, don’t you?’

Seddon nodded. ‘In the interests of our clients, although they’re rarely as rude as you were on the phone, Mr. McAndrew. Another drink?’

The young man pushed his glass towards the barman. Seddon said, glancing around, ‘The rendezvous I find impressive, but I’d rather we’d met in my office. It’s only across the Strand, you know.’

‘I’d rather we met here.’

‘Any reason? A hotel’s not always the best place in the world in which to conduct business.’

‘Business with pleasure, Seddon. I’m meeting a girl. Also, this place is central. Furthermore, it stays open despite any particular hell coming loose at the time. Or would it have been poetic expediency to have met in the National Gallery?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Seddon’s expression didn’t change. He paid for the drinks and lifted his glass.

‘That’s what you’ve come about, I take it? It’s usually the subject of conversation the moment I meet a reporter or solicitor . . .’ McAndrew gulped at his whisky.

‘As a matter of fact that’s not the subject at all.’

‘Then for Christ’s sake come to it. You fluffed about enough on the phone, and we’ve been here too long already.’

The man’s impatience was understandable, thought Seddon, with James Alexander McAndrew for a father.

He drank slowly, watching his shadowed eyes and drawn cheeks; he was possessed, thought the older man, of the sickness and the pallor of war.

 

There was a criminology about this particular war that went beyond the bounds of mere slaughter, Seddon considered. It was a decimation of innocence, of the impossibly young who possessed all the impossible dreams. They sat out their lives in personal dungeons of despair, either in the seats of fighter aeroplanes or on plastic-covered high stools, affronted by the gaudy tinsel of battles or cockpit instruments . . . usually amid the high-pitched mundanities of girls a quarter of their intelligence, the easy lays. Their expectation of life, now that the Battle of Britain had begun in earnest, was in the region of twenty flying hours. It was a crime from which they would never recover.

Naturally they were touchy, thought Seddon, and often to the point of rudeness. Their front was a façade of vast understatement, a hostile verbiage that paid the bills of death.

McAndrew added, more amenably, draining his glass, ‘I suggested this place because I might have a date here, as I say. So come clean, Seddon. I take it that you’ve had yet another application from some obscure faculty of art?’

‘No. But I’ll come straight to the point as you suggest. Does the name Antonio Salieri mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Or Mama Meg?’

‘Christ, what is this?’

‘Only that under the terms of that lady’s will you’ve been left a considerable amount of money.’

‘So you said on the phone. But surely it’s a joke. Who is she, anyway?’

Seddon answered brusquely, ‘It is not a joke. It’s a legal fact. Would I have brought you all the way from Biggin Hill for nothing at a time like this?’

The other said, smiling, ‘Right, I’ll buy it. How much has the old clown left me?’

‘Eighty thousand, all told, I’d say.’

‘She’s nuts.’

‘Mama Meg? Perhaps.’

‘Therefore the will might be contested.’

‘Probably not.’

There was a faint air of pomposity about Seddon which McAndrew resented. The puzzle would be unravelled, apparently, but at Seddon’s legal pace and within the accepted jargon.

The solicitor added, ‘No, not necessarily, and any such claim would fail, I think. The lady who left you this money has undoubtedly had some sort of contact with your family in the past. True, she died in a mental home. But she was housekeeper, she says, to a man called Uncle Dumb, who, in her will, she refers to as God. Immortal or not, it appears that he left her not only the residue of his fortune, but also a place called Atopia House.’

‘Go on.’ McAndrew lit a cigarette.

‘Meanwhile, the will . . .’ Seddon lifted his brief-case. ‘And I have it in here, appears legally sound, as I say. Psychological aberrations of this kind rarely affect the legality of bequests, providing, of course, that the beneficiaries can be properly identified . . . as I have identified you.’ He frowned at the other and began to unlock the brief-case.

‘Not in here.’

‘Over in my office, then? That’s what I originally suggested.’

The younger man asked, ‘What’s Mama Meg’s real name, do you know? And where’s this Atopia House?’

‘In East Yorkshire. As for the lady, she lived for years in the old place . . .’ Seddon smiled suavely. ‘In case you don’t know, incidentally, Atopia is a Greek derivative of eccentricity. Other people were there, it seems, and she names some, including, she says, your father, James Alexander McAndrew.’ Seddon raised his eyes. ‘Are you quite sure you’ve never heard the name Salieri used in your home? By your mother, perhaps?’

‘No. I keep telling you.’

‘Or Constanze, Conrad, Mr. Toppam, Banker – unusual names like that?’

McAndrew said, ‘Look, this is getting us nowhere.’ He slipped down off his stool. ‘Write to me, for God’s sake, I’ve got better things to do.’

‘They’re important names. The old girl mentions them more than once,’ continued Seddon, unperturbed. ‘And she specifically identifies you as the son of James Alexander McAndrew, alias Antonio Salieri.’

‘She was mad. You said as much yourself.’

‘Maybe, but yours is a very strange reaction to someone who’s left you nearly eighty thousand pounds. What are you hiding?’

McAndrew replied with hostility, ‘Nothing. And it so happens that I’m not particularly short of that kind of money.’

‘I’m aware of that also.’

 

People were drifting into the lounge now. Jostling at the bar, they called their orders, and their confusion invaded McAndrew’s thoughts. Seddon guessed them.

The lad was thinking that tomorrow he might be dead; that there was no good reason to rake up the past. The motto of the McAndrews clan (properly spelled MacAndrew) was Nemo me impune lacessit – ‘No one threatens me with impunity’ (rightly or wrongly claimed) and the lad, thought Seddon, was living up to it. Among its heroes and historical holies the clan had harboured alcoholics, sheep-stealers, murderers and power maniacs; he could be forgiven for not adding to the list . . .

Seddon said now, staring into his glass, ‘There simply must be some significance in the appendage ‘. . . the son of Antonio Salieri.’ The woman couldn’t have just picked it out of the air, mad though she may have been . . .’ He added, ‘Young man, one way to stop a muck-rake is to nip all the facts in the bud. Ignore them, and they breed. Clearly your father’s involved, isn’t he . . .?’

John frowned. ‘I’ve got a marvellous mother, Seddon, and I’m not having her brought into this.’

‘All right, but look, son – establish your identity – that’s all I’m asking. The files will stay open all the time you don’t. Listen to me.’ Seddon spoke with sincerity. ‘Solicitors are not always versed in the purism of art. But if my firm doesn’t handle this will, somebody else is going to, and probably after a lot of embarrassing publicity to one of the most important families in Scotland. You know, do you, that Salieri was supposed to have confessed to poisoning Mozart, and made attempts to seduce his wife, Constanze?’

‘Christ, man, where are you going now? You’re back in the eighteenth bloody century!’

Seddon lifted the brief-case. ‘It’s all in here. Even your date of birth is in the will.’

There was a silence of noise and discord. People were coming up to the bar.

‘How . . . how did you get my address?’

Seddon shrugged and sipped his whisky. The younger man said:

‘You’ve been to Duke Street, haven’t you . . .?’

‘Yes. And that’s mentioned in the will as well.’

‘And talked to my housekeeper.’

‘Actually, your housekeeper was away. One of the servants gave me your Biggin Hill address. Your mother, the Princess, is out of the country.’

‘Keep away from my mother or I’ll bloody kill you!’

‘You really are the most pugnacious beneficiary it has been my sadness to meet,’ said Seddon, drolly. ‘What do I do with this eighty thousand?’

‘Tell her to stuff it.’ McAndrew left him, pushing through the growing press of people.

The solicitor followed him to the door.

Here a young girl was standing.

Her name was Hilary and she was wearing the uniform of the W.A.A.F.

She was chattering vivaciously to an escort, a somewhat languid young man with a stoop, meanwhile flashing glances in McAndrew’s direction.

‘Is tonight on, then?’ McAndrew asked her.

She averted her face, whispering as Seddon went past, ‘Well yes, Johnny, but I’ve got to get rid of Stephen. I can’t just . . .’

‘Yes you can. If you don’t, I will. See you here tonight at seven-thirty for dinner.’

‘And what about this, then?’ interjected Seddon, tapping his brief-case.

McAndrew swung to him.

‘Do I have to keep telling you? Do what you like with it, will and testament. This time tomorrow we may all be dead.’

‘That,’ said Seddon, ‘is a distinct possibility,’ and he walked through the foyer entrance.

The commissionaire said as the air-raid siren wailed, ‘Why not wait a bit, sir? You’d be safer under cover ’till we know what’s happening . . .’

‘That’s all right, old man,’ said Seddon. ‘My office is only across the way.’

The bomb dropped, said the commissionaire later, just as the poor gentleman reached the Strand. ‘Honest to God, sir, it seemed to fall right on top of him. I remember him, you see, because he was carrying this brief-case.’ He touched it with his foot.

Chapter 10

‘Miss Ellie!’

McAndrew was closer now. Reaching out, Ellie turned down the wick of the lamp. The whale oil smoked, the air of the small room was suddenly acrid. Then a footstep slurred the quarter deck and she heard the terrier’s pattering feet; the moonlight lying beneath the cabin door was scarred by shadow. Faintly, between quick buffets of the wind, she could hear McAndrew breathing.

‘Miss Ellie?’ It was a question now.

She did not reply. The door-handle turned.

 

There was growing within Ellie a self-revulsion. It was foreign to her nature to sit thus, awaiting the pleasure of any man’s mood. Never before had she been dominated and it expressed itself in a nagging impatience. She wanted to fling open the door and face McAndrew, yet deep within her moved a warning.

This in itself was unusual. On other nights he had come back drunk to the ship; roaring his bawdies, mumbling his incoherent fancies he had stamped for hours along the quarter deck, yet no fearful premonitions of disaster had discomfited her then.

The men knew her in Barry and McAndrew now knew these men; presumably her reputation for virtue had preceded her. Once, much earlier, he had told her of the women up in Stirlingshire, presumably his home, though he had never enlarged on this. They were high-breasted and robust women, he said, and with one of these, in his youth, he had fallen in love.

In the telling he showed this woman scant respect, and Ellie remembered it now. He had taken this girl’s comforts, apparently as acts of homage, and with the casualness of a drunkard taking a drink. Even Jake had mentioned McAndrew’s obvious disrespect of women.

‘Open the door, Ellie.’ The Scotsman’s speech was slurred.

Ellie had turned the wick of the oil lamp too low; now, just when she needed light most, the flame spluttered and died, leaving the cabin in blackness about her. Nor did she move to relight the lamp, for the vow of silence was now difficult to break; the light would also betray her presence. Then the humility of her position again assailed her.

The cowardice of the situation was suddenly appalling. She was sitting in the dark like a scared servant girl awaiting the intentions of her master. With a quick movement she flung away the stitching, rose, went around the table and opened the door.

McAndrew was standing within a yard of her, gently swaying on implanted feet. The effect of the moonlight was to increase his immensity, taking away shape, leaving him etched in a black silhouette, like a bear feasting. He, for his part, saw her face pale and startled in the moonlight, the eyes falsely shadowed, the lips black; her eyes were shining with a brilliance he had not seen before. Ellie appeared, to McAndrew’s reeling brain, even more dimunitive than usual; a faint perfume touched his nostrils and he looked over the top of her head into the room.

‘The . . . the light went out,’ she said faintly. ‘I . . . was about to open the door when the lamp went out.’

‘You . . . you wouldn’t keep me out, would ye, Miss Ellie?’ He put a big hand upon her shoulder and gently pushed her before him into the cabin.

Ellie’s hands were sweeping the table for matches. Her fingers were trembling and she hated their weakness; her heart began to thump with such insistent panic that she thought it must betray her. The moon faded; the cabin came to blackness again as McAndrew shut the door behind him. She heard the lock click faintly.

‘Have you got a match?’ She was surprised at the clarity and calmness of her voice.

‘Do we need one?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous . . . Give me a match.’

‘Not good enough for ye, am I?’

‘Mr. McAndrew, please open the door. Stop this at once.’

She spoke with casual gaiety, as one in control.

He said, moving towards her, ‘You’re watering last year’s crops, little Ellie. This is today. You want me as much as I want you, so why the hell don’t you accept it. It’s got to happen some time, woman, why not tonight.’

Ellie retreated, stumbling backwards. He said, with a smile in his voice, ‘Why treat it as tragic? Lovemaking is a sublime activity of the mind; ye canna shut it out for ever, however hard you try. Come now, be reasonable, I’ll treat ye gentle as a kitten.’

‘You touch me – just touch me, McAndrew and I’ll scream . . .’

‘Ach, woman, you’re right to play the rules. Carry on and scream, I’ll enjoy ye the more. ’Tis the eternal comedy of pursuit and forbid, ye know, so ye’ll like it all the better for acting reluctant.’

In the dark there began a blind man’s bluff; McAndrew reaching for her, Ellie slipping away, and his boots were heavy on the boards. Cornered, with his big arms sweeping about her, she dropped down the front of him, leaving him to snatch at air. But she was breathing heavily now and he was following the sounds, and as she continued to elude him so he moved from impatience into a sudden great black rage, grunting furiously as he floundered after her in the dark.

Her nimbleness at first outmatched him, but the longer it continued so the confines of the little room shrank; Ellie’s white blouse revealed her retreat as his eyes grew accustomed to darkness. In the farthest corner beside the bunk he suddenly trapped her, now chuckling bassly as she fought him, twisting away, seeking the door.

The key, she thought; first the key, turn it, then flight into the open quarter deck. Somehow, gasping, she levered her body under his tightening arms and lurched out of the corner. The table impeded her; striking it, she fell, over-turning it with a crash. McAndrew followed, tripped and fell headlong.

‘Ye damned little bitch!’

Ellie no longer knew panic; it was now a fight against outrageous strength. Nor did she particularly fear him because she instinctively knew that, despite his mood, he would not seriously harm her. Amazingly, and afterwards she remembered this emotion with reluctance, she was experiencing invigoration. She had lived closely with this man, too personally to know absolute hatred; so the chase, lusty and exhausting, yet contained an element of seedy humour. And as she stepped aside again, nimbly avoiding a bull-like rush, Ellie wanted to giggle.

Amid the smashing of the cabin furniture as McAndrew floundered after her, she suddenly shouted in triumph as he tripped over a suspended table leg and went down again, emitting soldier’s curses. For, despite her predicament, she had the inner knowledge that an appeal, were she finally trapped, would save her. She could not believe that he would take her against her will. Meanwhile, to play the game to the end, one must seek escape.

Somehow, despite the groping hands that tore her dress and skirt, Ellie managed to reach the door. Clutching the key, her back to it, she turned it the wrong way. Instantly McAndrew was upon her, bearing her down. He was muttering incoherently now, some Gaelic imprecations she did not understand, and in his strength at capturing her he hurt her and she cried aloud.

‘Quiet, for God’s sake! Nobody’s goin’ to eat ye.’ His hands sought her body, their coldness taking her breath.

‘May God forgive ye, McAndrew.’

‘Och, I doubt that. He and I anna on speakin’ terms. Now quiet, Ellie, be reasonable, I’ve wanted ye for weeks.’

She fought, but his strength was beyond her; he held her one-handed with ease, and she knew the weight of him; seeing, for a moment as the moon flooded out again, the outline of his head and great width of shoulders against the curtained fanlight of the door.

‘Please . . . McAndrew, in the name of ye mother . . .’

‘If I ever had one, Missus, I don’t recall. I’m a signed up member o’ the vulgar-tongued classes, ye see, and some of us are parentless.’

‘Please don’t do this, please . . .!’

His lips touched her face and moved slowly to her mouth; despite the strength of him, Ellie sensed in him a tenderness.

The cabin was returning to them both after the exhaustion of the chase; light and darkness, sounds and silences, began to take their place within Ellie’s disorientated mind. She said, while he rested above her:

‘Soon my father will be back. He’ll kill you for this. D’ye realise? He’ll tell the men and they’ll come down from Bangor, and kill you.’

‘Sure, it’d be the first time a crofter’s been killed by a Bible class.’

‘If . . .’ and she stiffened in his arms, sensing escape. ‘If ye let me go now I’ll not tell anyone. I swear it, I’ll not tell.’

He muttered, his voice suddenly cultured. ‘When the wine is from a grocers, woman, it tastes accordingly. God, Miss Ellie, ye lose your charm when ye beg.’ He laughed softly. ‘Let ye go and ye won’t tell? That’s a rational for a school-girl’s argument. Lie still and be obedient, damn ye!’

‘Listen!’ whispered Ellie and tensed against him.

Footsteps on the deck.

They came closer.

She could hear them plainly. He heard them, too, and raised his weight, staring beyond her face towards the locked door. The footsteps stopped.

‘It’s my father!’

McAndrew whispered against her cheek. ‘Shout, then, and let the men come down and bloody kill me. Ach, dear me, I’d be prepared to die for what I’ve had already, to say nought of what I’m about to receive, ye soft wee thing. Shout, will ye? I doubt it.’

The Old Man whispered through the door, ‘Are you all right, Ellie?’

She lay rigidly in McAndrew’s arms: formed her lips for the cry, but no sound came forth. McAndrew saw her lips move soundlessly and lowered his face and kissed her cheek.

‘I heard a noise. Are you in there, Ellie Kendall?’ whispered Jake.

Sometimes, when she was a child, he would call her this. McAndrew lifted his body to allow her to reply. Ellie said:

‘I . . . I was asleep. Yes, I’m all right, feyther.’

‘Is McAndrew aboard, then?’

‘Who cares?’ the reply came instantly. McAndrew grinned, his fist against his mouth.

‘He’s fightin’ drunk. He’s damned near wrecked the Nelson tonight, they tell me.’

‘God alive, mun, who’s afraid of McAndrew?’

‘Then good night to ye.’

‘Good night.’

They listened to Jake’s footsteps going for’ard.

‘That’s better, lassie,’ muttered McAndrew. ‘Now lie still and I’ll make a woman of ye.’ He gripped her and lifted her hard against him. ‘What you’re hearing now is the thunder, bonnie girl, the lightning is about to come.’

‘Dear me,’ said Ellie.

‘What did ye say? I didn’a catch it . . .’

‘You talk too much,’ said Ellie.

The moon was coming up again, the fanlight glowed.

He was intent on her, as a tiger at prey; therefore did not see Ellie smiling in the dark.

 

For two months more they did the Barry-Penrhyn run and a sickness came to Ellie Kendall in the mornings, and a thickening of her waist.

‘Is there something amiss with ye, sweet girl?’ asked Jake, and came to Ellie and took her hands and looked into her face.

‘I am with child,’ said Ellie.

Jake started, momentarily transfixed.

‘God grant ye forgiveness! I don’t believe it. Say it again!’

Ellie said, ‘I’m with child, Feyther, and no amount o’ biblical palaver will alter it.’

‘And the parent?’ Jake gripped the rail for support. ‘Oh, holy God, protect us from the infidels, the fallen women and the fornicators!’ And he put his hands together and sank to the deck in prayer. ‘What will I tell the Bible class?’

But Ellie was not listening. They were between Worm’s Head and Tenby and they ploughed the silver sheen of the sea in strickening light; the sun burned in the azure sky, the distant shores flashed greenness.

‘I asked ye who was the father, woman! Answer me!’

‘McAndrew – who else do you think?’ Ellie raised a pale face.

And Jake held himself kneeling there on the deck, then clapped his hands together like a priest at a Shinto shrine trying to evoke the Deity. He shrieked, ‘That Scotsman is the Devil’s instrumental!’

‘The damage is done, Feyther – it takes two to make a baby, so do not blame it all on to McAndrew.’

‘Shameless hussy!’

‘It were loneliness, you see,’ said Ellie at the sea. ‘Him and me. Nobody has discovered the trick of making perfection. He was there, you understand, and for us it were the loneliness.’

‘By heaven!’ cried Jake, getting to his feet. ‘A primitive and fiery glare will rise from Hell, for you, daughter, and all seducers.’

‘Perhaps. Meanwhile, we’ve a man to carry on the trade. A man married and part o’ the family. One I can lean on for a change, for I could never lean upon you.’

‘Ah, yes,’ answered Jake, his anger cooling. ‘I never thought of that. He wouldn’t be able to leave us, you mean, if he was sort of signed for, sealed an delivered?’

‘That’s the general idea. Now you can act the outraged father and bring down the wrath of the Bible class.’

‘For marriage, you mean – done proper and official?’

‘That is what I mean,’ said Ellie.

‘You’re a business woman if ever I saw one,’

Fanning his wrath to keep it warm, Jake went aft in search of McAndrew.

‘I decided it was worth a try,’ said Ellie after he had gone.

 

And so, on the twentieth day of August 1896, Eleanor Alicia Kendall took the name of McAndrew in Seion Chapel in William Street, on a hill in Bangor.

She wore a full white dress pleated at the waist and down to her ankles; upon her head was a mantle of lace and lace was at her wrists and throat.

McAndrew, towering above her, was resplendent in tartan trews, a fine lace jabot and a cap with an eagle’s feather; on his cap was pinned a silver brooch of the Stewart clan and printed thereon were the words, ‘Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,’ which, being translated, means, ‘No One Threatens Me With Impunity.’

The sun burned down and the leaves were falling in the distant forests; the mountain of Snowdon was lying on its shoulder in the fine, crisp morning; the sea glimmered and shone.

And the elders of Jake’s Bible class, men and women dressed in black, walked in double file on to the deck of the Sarn Helen; the labourers of the port stopping to stare, believing this to be a funeral without a corpse.

In bowler hats and wing collars, starched and stitched in worsted homespun went the men, their boots creaking. Their women, hands delicately on their escorts’ arms, walked in bombazine black, their wide-brimmed hats inclining right and left to friends and strangers.

Up the hill from the quay they came in double file, taking the road to the chapel where the minister waited in the sun.

On McAndrew’s arm, went Ellie; in elegance and purity, bowing this way and that to the assembled villagers, smiling up into McAndrew’s face, while he, gaunt with the cares of captivity, walked hunched and forlorn, with Caesar, head down, slouching behind him.

And in the rear, in his role as official gaoler came Jake, to give the bride away: stiff-legged went Jake, with the key of the ship’s armoury in his pocket and a twelve-bore down the leg of his trousers.

In this manner proceeded Ellie Kendall to the chapel on the hill; knowing, as she gracefully swayed along, that her future was assured; that the partnership of Kendall Associates, fortified now by a man on the board, would soon be legally ratified.

Later thought Ellie, the partnership might be legally consummated, but strictly according to the dictates of her mood; this part of the bargain, as McAndrew was soon to discover, Ellie considered to be singularly unattractive.

Later, with the wedding guests departed and Jake at his Bible class up in Bangor, Ellie locked herself in the aft cabin and awaited the coming of the groom.

McAndrew, after fruitless knockings, abandoned the nuptial chase, and, going to his fore-cabin, fetched out his bagpipes.

Sitting on a bollard on the quay he played ‘The Black Bear’ to the moon, and people stopped their activities in Snowdonia to listen. So did Ellie, smiling thinly as she lay in her narrow bunk.

When he had finished the melody, McAndrew bellowed down to the Sarn Helen’s deck, ‘Did ye hear that, woman? That was a black bear dancing, but I’m tellin’ ye this for free – you’re not gettin’ me dancing to any of ye bloody tunes, so hang on to ye hat till the mornin’!’

Tomorrow, thought Ellie, was another day.

It might take time . . . but he would learn.

He then began to play ‘MacCrimmon’s Lament’. With her eyes closed, Ellie listened . . . it was quite beautiful . . .

Chapter 11

McAndrew’s son, Thomas Jason McAndrew, was born in March of the following year, on the Sarn Helen and in a storm off St. Ann’s Head, near Skokholm.

The glass was falling even as Ellie went into labour, and McAndrew looked at the sky and said: ‘God, we’ve got nothin’ in common, you and me, but think o’ the bairn. With old Jake useless and these clumsy hands . . .’ and he held them out before him while the little ship dipped her bow into a rising sea and the wind came howling in from starboard.

When the glass fell further he ran around the hatches with a sledge-hammer, swinging lustily and driving home the wedges, fearful that the slate cargo would slide and cut a way through the hatch covers like razors.

White breakers were building up from the east and the Sarn Helen took a heavy drift to windward, losing her course. And Old Jake, fighting the wheel, peered through the spume-swept glass of the bridge while the little ship rolled and plunged beneath him in a pea-green, furious sea.

At noon, with sight of land lost to them on the port bow, the wind rose to greater anger, whining through the masts and rigging; a giant swell on a following sea lifting the ship stern-high and foam-topped waves slid down the after-deck, deluging the waist. Half submerged, she rose and rose again, shaking herself in a vibrating thunder of her freed propeller, putting down her head in a threat to plunge to the bed of the ocean.

A premature darkness fell at four o’clock and, with Jake still at the wheel, McAndrew staggered along the port rail and across the deck to the aft cabin. Timing the plunge and roll of the ship, he swung open the cabin door and stood with his back against it momentarily; the hurricane lamp hanging from a beam before him assumed a perplexing angle, then swung in the other direction, flashing over Ellie’s face.

McAndrew had spent the storm rushing up to the bridge to lash the ship on to a new course, dragging Jake off the seat of the harmonium and scrambling back to Ellie. Somehow, in his pitching, bucking world of wind-scream and waves, he managed to warm a saucepan of soup in the pantry; this he spooned gently to her lips, first blowing on it, his f