"Innes Hammond - North Star v1.1 (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Hammond)

'They want to interview you. I suppose you know why?'

'Yes, I know why.' I stuffed the paper into my pocket, staring out into the night, saying nothing. I had been afraid of this all through the voyage. Somebody must have recognized me, and now, when I stepped ashore, the police would be there, wanting a statement. And if I gave it to them, if I admitted I knew who the men were, then I would be a witness for the prosecution, and the decision would no longer be a personal one, something between me and my conscience and made of my own volition. It would be the result of police interrogation. At least it would seem like that to everybody but me.

'D'you want any sort of a message sent, a private message - lawyers or anything like that?' He was still standing there at my elbow, a man whose world was the ether, who fed on information dragged out of the air on invisible wavelengths, his curiosity glowing in his owlish eyes.

'No,' I said. 'There's nothing a lawyer can do.'

He hesitated, standing there beside me, waiting. Doubtless it was kind of him, but radio operators are all the same. They want to be in everybody's confidence. In the end he left me and I was alone again, watching as the ice-battered trawler plunged southward down the North Sea, each surge and twist carrying me closer to the moment of decision. But you don't change the whole direction of your life because a child is nearly burned alive. Or do you?

The storm was rising, and in the end I gave up thinking about it and went to my cabin, lying there, sleepless and fully clothed, the ship's plates writhing to the violence of the movement. I was back on the bridge in time to get the news. It came right at the end, the talks broken off and the strike still on. Weeks now and every shipyard in Hull at a standstill. Did that mean Pier son & Watt were out, too?

The skipper was there and he turned and looked at me. 'You hear that? And the poomps going full bat.'

They'd been going flat out ever since we'd hit the ice. They'll get us home,' I said.

He didn't answer, moving to the port side of the bridge, his carpet slippers flapping loosely. He wasn't a big man, but there was a lot of strength in that short, long-armed body, the round bullet head almost neckless on broad shoulders. And he had an inner strength, his silences more telling than words. He stood there for a while, staring out into the murk ahead. 'Better get some sleep. It's going to be a long night.'

I nodded. It was his watch now and I went below, checking the engine-room and the hold. The fish pounds were just about full, almost 2,000 kit - that would be about 20,000 stone landed, a lot of it high-priced. Worth the bashing we had taken up there on the edge of the pack and my share as mate looking good. The fact that she was low in the water did not matter now. We were running with a quartering sea and the pumps were holding. If we'd been steaming into it things might have been different.

It was a long night all right. At four in the morning I was back on the bridge, visibility almost nil and the big deckle they called the Porpoise with his eyes glued to the radar screen. The skipper was in the chartroom working out a Decca position. His thick hairy hands juggled with the parallel rule, pencilling a cross just east of our intended course. 'Wind's veered a point,' pooshing us more than I thought.' He ordered a correction to the helm as he entered up the log, and then, instead of leaving me to my watch, he slid the chart-room door shut. 'Three weeks now. You heard what they said on the news. Every yard in Hooll at a standstill.' He had his broad bottom wedged against the chart table, his slightly protuberant eyes fixed on me. 'Every blasted yard.' He pulled his pipe and and began to fill it. 'When did you first go into trawling?'

'Some years back now.'

'Ah asked when.'

'Spring of 1969 - the Lady Betty.'

'Old Harcourt. Shipped as a deckie, did you?'

I nodded.

'And your mate's ticket four years later.' He lit his pipe, solid and immovable as the ship fell off a wave-top, sending the rule and dividers skidding across the chart. 'Ah doan't understand you, and that's the truth. A bloke with your education--' He shook his head, frowning. 'Still got your union card an' all?'

'Yes.'

'But not the Hooll Trawlers' Officers - shipyard, isn't it?'

I didn't say anything and he grunted. 'What made you switch to trawling?'

'My own business,' I said.

'Aye.' He took the pipe out of his mouth, his eyes staring. 'But just tell me. Ah'd laike t'knaw.'

I laughed. What could I tell him? 'The sea,' I said. 'It's in my blood, I suppose.'

'You were at the Marston Yard on Clydebank, a member of the strike committee in 1968. And before that you were in prison, result of a demo that tangled with the police.'

'That's a long time ago.'