Land Of The Leal. James Barke

damned mixed crowd of blackguards and fools – and not a man o’ them but you’d find a woman a damned sight worse. I’m quite admitting there’s an odd one here and there that’s different – but only here and there. It’s not what men profess to be that matters – it’s what they are. That’s what’s wrong wi’ religion. You can say you’re a Christian and a’ the rest of it. What does that matter? It’s my experience, Bob: the bigger the Christian the bigger the rogue.’

      ‘That’s true – by God, that’s true. I’ll bear ye out there, Richard boy. But come on! We’ll hae another drink and get off to our beds.’

      ‘Bed? Well, I suppose you have your work in the morning, Bob …’

      ‘Aye, bi-God, there’s work to be done here – I’ll tell ye what, though. I’ve a kitchen lass here. She’s maybe no’ a beauty. I’ll send her up to your room. My mither’s as deaf as a door nail and even if she wasna she wouldna mind.’

      ‘Thanks, Bob: I appreciate your offer – but no: I don’t want any women.’

      ‘Well, you know best, Richard. But mind, she’s all right. Don’t think I’d do this for everybody. And she doesna need to bed wi’ ye …’

      ‘I appreciate your offer, Bob – but see here: give me a bottle o’ whisky – or better still: have you a good bottle o’ brandy?’

      ‘Brandy? Aye: I can give ye a bottle o’ brandy. Grand Imperial all right?’

      ‘That’ll do me fine, Bob.’

      ‘And what time would ye like breakfast? Ye’ll be an early riser?’

      ‘No: send me up a jug of black coffee about eight or nine o’clock.’

      ‘Whatever ye say, Richard.’

      Bob MacHaffie lit a candle and handed it to the Captain.

      ‘Ye’ll manage up the stair yourself?’

      For a moment the men faced each other across the candle-light. Their eyes were horribly blood-shot: they were showing signs of their hard night’s drinking.

      ‘Good-night then, Bob.’

      ‘Good-night, Richard – we’ll hae a crack in the morning.’

      Bob MacHaffie stood at the foot of the stair and watched Captain Richard Ramsay ascend. He ascended slowly, wearily, as if he were an old man. Bob MacHaffie shook his head. There was something damned queer about him – and he had not liked the look in his eyes when he had handed him the candle …

      Richard placed his candle on the mantelshelf of his bedroom. It was a large room, barely but heavily furnished. His trunk stood on the floor at the foot of the enormous four-poster bedstead that occupied two-thirds of the floor space. A large sheepskin rug covered the floor on either side of the bed. Another lay before the fender at the firelace – elsewhere the bare wooden boards creaked to the tread. The walls and cam ceiling were of varnished boards, black-studded with knots.

      It was a depressing room. Richard shivered. Sleep was what he feared for sleep did not come easily to him: it would be doubly difficult in a heavy room like this.

      He wondered why he had come home: why he felt in his bones he would never stride the deck of a ship again…

      He shook these recurrent thoughts from him and drew the cork from the brandy bottle. If the brandy didn’t help him nothing else would – except cocaine – and he was thankful that he hadn’t sunk to cocaine or laudanum. The brandy burned its way to his stomach: there was a bite in it, sure enough.

      Hell – why had he come home? And why did the face of that boy David haunt him – the innocent eyes filled with admiration and trust and supplication? He had come home to do something for the boy: that was it.

      He unlocked his trunk. There was not so much in it. If he had known he was coming home he would have had it filled – and he might have brought David a parrot – or even a monkey. Curse it: he should have brought home something. Tobacco for his father. He would wonder why he had come empty-handed. But then he hadn’t meant to come home.

      Why had he come home?

      He had no home: not anywhere. He had his father … and there was David, a mirror of his own young self. But no home, no fireside that was his. He was nothing but a bloody sailor sailing from port to port: never really dropping anchor. And nowhere a Lizzie Hunter or a Bell MacCready waiting to welcome him – that was what messed the whole thing up. Bob MacHaffie couldn’t understand and he wasn’t child enough to wear his heart on his sleeve – especially in his company. But that was what he needed – a wife: a woman to love: a mate to confide in. Lizzie or Bell might have been such a mate – if he had stayed at home. That’s what he had missed going away. What a damned silly mess he had made of his life. And it was too late now: he had seen too much: known too many rotten women ever to get the taste back in his mouth …

      Again the brandy burned down into his stomach – but the anticipated reaction was long in coming. The candle spluttered and went out. He rummaged for his night-shirt … He drew his hand away as if he had touched a snake. But his hand went back, slowly … the metal was cold …

      Now he knew why he had come home.

      David Ramsay heard the knock on the door as soon as his father. He wondered if he had heard. But even as he wondered he heard the boards creak in his father’s bed and the pad of his feet going towards the door.

      Andrew Ramsay had not slept. He could not stop worrying about his son. He had been trying vainly to find a satisfactory reason for the change that had come over him. Equally vainly he had tried to console himself with the thought that it was the strangeness of his homecoming that was the explanation. The boy had been away for years and now the homecoming was bound to affect him deeply: it would take a day or two to get over it: then he would be his old self again.

      But however he reasoned, sleep would not come to him.

      And then as he lay he thought he heard a step outside: maybe his imagination was playing him tricks. But the knock settled that. He stiffened for a moment and then sprang from the bed.

      Bare-headed and dishevelled, Bob MacHaffie stood at the door drawing his breath.

      ‘What is it, Bob?’

      ‘It’s Richard – for God’s sake come quick, Andra – he’s shot himself.’

      Andrew Ramsay clutched the jamb of the door. The sound that escaped him, like the shriek of a mare, was terrible in its agony.

      LIFE AND TIME

      Time heals everything. David Ramsay remembered Sam MacKitteroch saying these words to his father the day Richard had been buried. He did not fully understand the meaning of the words for as yet time and eternity were synonymous terms. Time had done little to heal the wound of his brother’s death – his mind still went numb when he thought about it. And it was now almost two years since that terrible night.

      David Ramsay was growing rapidly. He was not big-boned. He gave no evidence that he would ever be a heavily-fleshed man. He was thin but unusually wiry. Already he had developed surprising powers of endurance. He still came home tired. No one came home fresh from the fields of Achgammie. But he could put in his day with less extreme of physical exhaustion than when he had first started.

      He still wanted to go to sea – but he would not speak to his father. He had aged since Richard had died and David knew he could not bear the mention of the sea.

      He felt a helpless pity and sorrow for his father who was now so aged and broken. He did not feel angry when he came home drunk. He was in such despair in his drink that David pitied him even more. But he could make no approach to him: could not put in words his feelings, his sympathy, his deep filial love.

      He would need to make his own plans for getting away to sea – getting