Unto the Haven by Ronald Mackay
Brittle frost that coated the meadow-grass caught the low winter sun, breaking its light into shards of stained-glass on a cathedral floor.
O give thanks unto the Lord for he maketh the storm to cease, so that the
waves therof are still.
Then are they glad, because they are at rest: and so he bringeth them unto
the haven where they would be.
waves therof are still.
Then are they glad, because they are at rest: and so he bringeth them unto
the haven where they would be.
Hugh Bentley had often read these words aloud in the long nights of off-shore patrol work. He found them rousing at times, always reassuring. As commander of the tiny Royal Navy corvette HMS Balmuir, he was charged not only with the physical safety of his seamen but their moral well-being too. Hugh took both charges seriously. Most of his able seamen had been enlisted as teenagers from Scottish farms and factories. But U-boats cared nothing about the age of those who manned a wartime patrol vessel.
Early morning sunlight invariably brought back memories of these years of trial, of occasional victory and deep sorrow. Unsought memories would assault when frost refracted a beam from a spikey white blade of grass or an overnight spider’s web and unexpectedly caused it to erupt into the rainbow’s spectrum. The spectacular flash of colour within which his command had exploded from under him, sucking most of his crew into the North Sea. A U-boat’s triumphant conning tower, bridge and periscope sank beneath the waves in search of its next victim.
Strong arms had gripped and dragged him onto floating debris. Together, they had struggled to reach and rescue the few – so few they failed to match the numbers on one hand. The pair worked as yoked horses might, accustomed to drawing together in synchronized silence.
Then, when hope of more survivors was gone, they’d spoken reverently. Throughout the night they’d kept each other awake, aware of being officer and able seaman but conscious too of a deeper bond although their pre-war lives would have been unlikely to bring them together. Shared survival after violent danger, binds souls.
Hugh had confided that he was a career officer deemed just experienced enough, in these needy times, to command the smallest naval warship charged with keeping vital sea-lanes open. The boy had listened in silence.
“You?” asked the commander.
“Under pressure,” the boy admitted.
“How so?” Hugh was puzzled.
“It was prison or the Navy!” The boy glanced away. He still remembered the judge looking at him in bewigged seriousness. “It’s your choice. Which is it to be?”
Hugh had nodded, understanding now.
“Your offence?”
“Poaching.”
“Poaching what?” Hugh’s had long been a landed family. They knew the nuisance of poachers, their covert practice despite the law. Hugh also knew the consequences for repeat offenders. Not a rap on the knuckles nor a ruinous fine but time in jail for an adult, in a reform school or a borstal for a minor.
“So, not your first time?”
The boy shook his head. “Like my faither learned to poach at his faither’s knee, so mine taught me. It’s in our blood.” His soft voice was tinged with seriousness and pride, as he quoted a universal truth in his Angus dialect:
“It’s a poor man that canna keep his own pot boilin’.”
Clasped to the floating detritus reeking of scorched oil, alongside the young man who had dragged him aboard and with whom he had striven to save others, Hugh had reflected on the laws of chance. If the boy’s father hadn’t taught him to poach, if the boy hadn’t learned how to snare a rabbit, if the landlord hadn’t reported him, if he hadn’t been prosecuted, found guilty and given the choice between jail or the Navy, the boy might never have been aboard the Balmuir. Hugh might never have survived.
“It’s a poor man indeed who can’t look after the needs of his own family.” Hugh pondered the meaning of the boy’s words knowing them to be true; knowing that his life had been saved by someone brought up not only to embrace that wisdom but also to act on it in part from necessity, part custom. Life is not easy.
The commander, the boy and the four wounded were spotted by an aircraft from RAF Leuchars, then picked up by an Arbroath trawler that same day. Hugh never saw the boy again but he never forgot him nor what he had made of the option offered him by an enlightened judge. Prison or the Navy?
By War’s end, Hugh commanded a sizeable frigate, faster and more powerfully armed than the Balmuir. Standing securely on her bridge in sweater and duffle coat he had accompanied scores of transatlantic convoys as part of a flotilla of protection. Sometimes they failed, often they were successful. At least he never ended up in the sea again, nor had to be hauled aboard a shard of oily flotsam by a teen-aged able-seaman.
Over the years, Hugh’s family circumstances changed. His elder brother died of wounds sustained in battle. Hugh married. When his father died, Hugh abandoned his career in oil and gas exploration to manage the family estate.
Now, on this winter morning, as he watched the lad crouch down to remove the rabbit from the snare he recalled, in his mind’s eye, the poacher on the raft in the swell of the North Sea.
The boy stood up and killed the rabbit with a single blow. He pulled the snare and the stake out of the ground and walked down the fencerow looking for signs of another rabbit-run where he might reset them profitably.
Hugh had spotted the set snares and the occasional drop of blood but this was the first time he’d caught a poacher red-handed. He waited till the boy was hemmed in by the angle where the tall hedge met the fast-flowing Dichty Burn before breaking cover.
The boy froze. Sharp young ears had heard the crisp crackle of a boot on frosted grass. He looked up, saw he was cornered and stood stock-still, rabbit held by its hindlegs in one hand, snare in the other. All the evidence that a judge would need for a successful prosecution.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Hugh was conscious of the officer in his voice.
The boy didn’t move. Then he raised both hands displaying what they held.
“It’s a poor man that canna keep his own pot boilin’.” Only the slightest hint of belligerence.
Hugh had to grasp the top rail of the fence to prevent himself from reeling. It’s a poor man indeed who can’t feed his own family.
The boy noticed the stumble and called out, betraying concern.
“You all right, Surr?”
It took Hugh a moment to bring himself back from the day his world erupted and a torpedo hit his Balmuir amidships with the loss of most.
“Pickin up a wee rabbit for me and my mither.” Expressionless, the boy held the lifeless rabbit higher and let the snare fall to the ground.
Hugh fought to regain control. “Where do you live?”
“Kirkton.” He gestured towards the subsidised municipal housing beyond the estate boundaries towards the encroaching suburbs of the city.
“Why are you not at school?”
“School?” The sound was dismissive.
“Why are you not working?”
“Because I can’t get a job.”
“There’s work enough.”
“Not if you were at the Baldovan.”
Baldovan Approved School was the borstal where offenders were sent, too young to withstand the barbarism of prison.
“Why Baldovan?”
“Gee Bee Aitch.”
Hugh looked at the face pinched white with cold, the skinny frame dressed in hand-me-downs, at cracked shoes glistening wet from the frost.
The boy must have felt the silent disbelief in Hugh’s eyes. “How could a poor specimen like you be capable of inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm?”
“I used a knife.” Offered without emotion or apology.
Hugh wondered if he was carrying the knife now, but asked, “Do you want a job or do you prefer to steal?” He heard the superiority of the officer in his own voice. A superiority he didn’t feel inside himself but a trait that had developed early --- naturally -- and had become a habit first as a naval officer and then as a captain of industry.
“Tried that.”
“Where?”
“Docks, ship-yards, the jute mills.” He gestured towards the port on the river.
“And?”
“Nuthin. Soon as I say Baldoven, it’s: We don’t need the likes of you!” After a pause he added, “See?” as if he felt a need to check if Hugh understood the endless challenge of a borstal reputation.
Hugh remembered the night on the North Sea. Yes, he saw.
“Your name?
There was a hesitation, then: “Reilly.”
Hugh waited.
“Willy Reilly.”
The diminutive, Hugh realised, was what this boy’s mother must call him: Willy. He hadn’t yet, neither in body nor in soul, grown into “Will” for her. Maybe not for anybody. Not even in his own mind. Willy.
“Do you want a job, Will?” Hugh used the adult form intentionally.
The boy hesitated, caught off-balance. Here he was, discovered red-handed by the toff himself, the estate-owner, the Laird, and he heard himself being addressed by his adult name for the first time. The very first time in his life. Was this a question? Or was be being baited? Baited for amusement and benefit or so that the toff could share more damning evidence with the judge: The poacher said he preferred stealing to working, your Honour.
“This is my family’s place. This estate.” Hugh gestured to the fields, trees, to the walled garden and to the chimneys of the big house among the chestnut trees in the distance.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Seen you drive to toon. Big shiny black car.”
“No doubt.” The pre-War Daimler attracted attention.
“You’ve passed me when I’ve been walkin into town to look for a job. Or walkin back.”
“Without one.”
“That’s right.” The anguish of repeated failure glistened for a moment in the lad’s eyes.
“So, Will, here’s your chance. I need a good man for our market garden. A man who knows wildlife and the land, a man who can keep the rabbits out of my cauliflower and cabbage fields. A man who can use a knife to clean the rabbits so I can take them into Nicholson’s.” Hugh chose his words carefully, wanting the boy to feel more like a fellow-man than a miscreant; to know that his skill with a knife could be channelled to good use.”
“Mr Nicholson takes my extras too.”
Hugh had to subdue a smile. Canny old Nicholson, the best butcher and poulterer in the city! Buying from whoever, not caring where the rabbits, hares, wood-pigeons or pheasants came from. The Laird’s legitimate game hanging alongside the poacher’s. For the same price.
“You serious, Surr? About the job?”
The Sir took him back to the raging North Sea, the heaving grey Atlantic. Formal discipline essential in the face of war. Conduct that can pull success from the ravening jaws of failure.
“Dead serious, Will. Five pounds a week. Start at eight, finish at five. One on Saturday. Sundays off. Arrive at the back door of the big house at 7.30 every morning and cook will give you porridge in her kitchen.”
Over the months, in front of Hugh’s battle-bruised eyes, the boy turned into a young man. He worked hard; grew and filled out with the porridge; learned additional useful skills; how to stand up straight, speak man-to-man with respect for both himself and others; how to complete well, a job unsupervised.
Hugh watched him with quiet satisfaction, watched without saying just how proud he was to see him grow. He allowed the increasing demands he made on Will and the increasing responsibilities he charged him with to speak for themselves. From rabbit-trapper, fence-maker and odd-job-man to game-keeper responsible for hatching and raising the pheasants for the shoot. An estate had to rely on revenues from a broad range of sources -- cattle, forage, corn and cash-crops, seasonal vegetables, raspberries and soft-fruit, and of course sport-shooting.
In time, Will courted and then married the daughter of a ploughman at Claverhouse, a few miles to the west. Hugh renovated a small cottage on the estate and offered it to the couple at nominal rent.
One Saturday in spring, as Hugh handed Will his wage-packet, Will thanked him then asked:
“Surr, I have somethin to say to you.”
“Then say away, Will.”
“It’s not just me. It’s Lizzie too. Could we speak to you this efternoon? Both of us?”
Despite the spring birdsong, Hugh’s spirits chilled. He’d imagined the day might come when Will would move on. Here, he was part game-keeper part general farm-worker. It was natural for the young man to want to advance. But he had hoped that the cottage might offer an incentive to stay.
Will and Liz arrived at his office at three. Candles of ivory flowers graced the horse-chestnut trees outside his window. Both visitors were bathed and dressed. Will had shaved. Lizzie stood shyly, her coat unbuttoned. Will carried his bonnet in both hands. Hugh had prepared himself for what was coming.
“Surr,” began Will then stopped. Lizzie looked at her husband. A man now, though barely 20.
“It’s like this, Captain Bentley.” Then she stopped too.
“Out with it!” Hugh heard impatience colour his voice. One failing among others that he had promised to rid himself of after his wartime command ended, after he retired from industry. But he never had.
“I’m gonna have a baby, Surr. We think it’s gonna be a boy.” Lizzie’s face was radiant.
Will smiled at her, proud, loving, then turned to Hugh. “So we want – we’re askin your permission, Surr, to call our son Hugh.”
“Hugh, like yoursel. For all ye’ve done for Will, Surr. All ye’ve done for both of us.” Lizzie smiled.
Hugh nodded briskly giving his assent, not trusting himself to speak. They thanked him and left.
Hugh remained at his desk, head bowed, for a very long time.
When he was finally ready, he rose and went upstairs to share this honour with his wife and give thanks that they, theirs and all for whom they had been made responsible, had been brought unto the haven where they would be.
Early morning sunlight invariably brought back memories of these years of trial, of occasional victory and deep sorrow. Unsought memories would assault when frost refracted a beam from a spikey white blade of grass or an overnight spider’s web and unexpectedly caused it to erupt into the rainbow’s spectrum. The spectacular flash of colour within which his command had exploded from under him, sucking most of his crew into the North Sea. A U-boat’s triumphant conning tower, bridge and periscope sank beneath the waves in search of its next victim.
Strong arms had gripped and dragged him onto floating debris. Together, they had struggled to reach and rescue the few – so few they failed to match the numbers on one hand. The pair worked as yoked horses might, accustomed to drawing together in synchronized silence.
Then, when hope of more survivors was gone, they’d spoken reverently. Throughout the night they’d kept each other awake, aware of being officer and able seaman but conscious too of a deeper bond although their pre-war lives would have been unlikely to bring them together. Shared survival after violent danger, binds souls.
Hugh had confided that he was a career officer deemed just experienced enough, in these needy times, to command the smallest naval warship charged with keeping vital sea-lanes open. The boy had listened in silence.
“You?” asked the commander.
“Under pressure,” the boy admitted.
“How so?” Hugh was puzzled.
“It was prison or the Navy!” The boy glanced away. He still remembered the judge looking at him in bewigged seriousness. “It’s your choice. Which is it to be?”
Hugh had nodded, understanding now.
“Your offence?”
“Poaching.”
“Poaching what?” Hugh’s had long been a landed family. They knew the nuisance of poachers, their covert practice despite the law. Hugh also knew the consequences for repeat offenders. Not a rap on the knuckles nor a ruinous fine but time in jail for an adult, in a reform school or a borstal for a minor.
“So, not your first time?”
The boy shook his head. “Like my faither learned to poach at his faither’s knee, so mine taught me. It’s in our blood.” His soft voice was tinged with seriousness and pride, as he quoted a universal truth in his Angus dialect:
“It’s a poor man that canna keep his own pot boilin’.”
Clasped to the floating detritus reeking of scorched oil, alongside the young man who had dragged him aboard and with whom he had striven to save others, Hugh had reflected on the laws of chance. If the boy’s father hadn’t taught him to poach, if the boy hadn’t learned how to snare a rabbit, if the landlord hadn’t reported him, if he hadn’t been prosecuted, found guilty and given the choice between jail or the Navy, the boy might never have been aboard the Balmuir. Hugh might never have survived.
“It’s a poor man indeed who can’t look after the needs of his own family.” Hugh pondered the meaning of the boy’s words knowing them to be true; knowing that his life had been saved by someone brought up not only to embrace that wisdom but also to act on it in part from necessity, part custom. Life is not easy.
The commander, the boy and the four wounded were spotted by an aircraft from RAF Leuchars, then picked up by an Arbroath trawler that same day. Hugh never saw the boy again but he never forgot him nor what he had made of the option offered him by an enlightened judge. Prison or the Navy?
By War’s end, Hugh commanded a sizeable frigate, faster and more powerfully armed than the Balmuir. Standing securely on her bridge in sweater and duffle coat he had accompanied scores of transatlantic convoys as part of a flotilla of protection. Sometimes they failed, often they were successful. At least he never ended up in the sea again, nor had to be hauled aboard a shard of oily flotsam by a teen-aged able-seaman.
Over the years, Hugh’s family circumstances changed. His elder brother died of wounds sustained in battle. Hugh married. When his father died, Hugh abandoned his career in oil and gas exploration to manage the family estate.
Now, on this winter morning, as he watched the lad crouch down to remove the rabbit from the snare he recalled, in his mind’s eye, the poacher on the raft in the swell of the North Sea.
The boy stood up and killed the rabbit with a single blow. He pulled the snare and the stake out of the ground and walked down the fencerow looking for signs of another rabbit-run where he might reset them profitably.
Hugh had spotted the set snares and the occasional drop of blood but this was the first time he’d caught a poacher red-handed. He waited till the boy was hemmed in by the angle where the tall hedge met the fast-flowing Dichty Burn before breaking cover.
The boy froze. Sharp young ears had heard the crisp crackle of a boot on frosted grass. He looked up, saw he was cornered and stood stock-still, rabbit held by its hindlegs in one hand, snare in the other. All the evidence that a judge would need for a successful prosecution.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Hugh was conscious of the officer in his voice.
The boy didn’t move. Then he raised both hands displaying what they held.
“It’s a poor man that canna keep his own pot boilin’.” Only the slightest hint of belligerence.
Hugh had to grasp the top rail of the fence to prevent himself from reeling. It’s a poor man indeed who can’t feed his own family.
The boy noticed the stumble and called out, betraying concern.
“You all right, Surr?”
It took Hugh a moment to bring himself back from the day his world erupted and a torpedo hit his Balmuir amidships with the loss of most.
“Pickin up a wee rabbit for me and my mither.” Expressionless, the boy held the lifeless rabbit higher and let the snare fall to the ground.
Hugh fought to regain control. “Where do you live?”
“Kirkton.” He gestured towards the subsidised municipal housing beyond the estate boundaries towards the encroaching suburbs of the city.
“Why are you not at school?”
“School?” The sound was dismissive.
“Why are you not working?”
“Because I can’t get a job.”
“There’s work enough.”
“Not if you were at the Baldovan.”
Baldovan Approved School was the borstal where offenders were sent, too young to withstand the barbarism of prison.
“Why Baldovan?”
“Gee Bee Aitch.”
Hugh looked at the face pinched white with cold, the skinny frame dressed in hand-me-downs, at cracked shoes glistening wet from the frost.
The boy must have felt the silent disbelief in Hugh’s eyes. “How could a poor specimen like you be capable of inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm?”
“I used a knife.” Offered without emotion or apology.
Hugh wondered if he was carrying the knife now, but asked, “Do you want a job or do you prefer to steal?” He heard the superiority of the officer in his own voice. A superiority he didn’t feel inside himself but a trait that had developed early --- naturally -- and had become a habit first as a naval officer and then as a captain of industry.
“Tried that.”
“Where?”
“Docks, ship-yards, the jute mills.” He gestured towards the port on the river.
“And?”
“Nuthin. Soon as I say Baldoven, it’s: We don’t need the likes of you!” After a pause he added, “See?” as if he felt a need to check if Hugh understood the endless challenge of a borstal reputation.
Hugh remembered the night on the North Sea. Yes, he saw.
“Your name?
There was a hesitation, then: “Reilly.”
Hugh waited.
“Willy Reilly.”
The diminutive, Hugh realised, was what this boy’s mother must call him: Willy. He hadn’t yet, neither in body nor in soul, grown into “Will” for her. Maybe not for anybody. Not even in his own mind. Willy.
“Do you want a job, Will?” Hugh used the adult form intentionally.
The boy hesitated, caught off-balance. Here he was, discovered red-handed by the toff himself, the estate-owner, the Laird, and he heard himself being addressed by his adult name for the first time. The very first time in his life. Was this a question? Or was be being baited? Baited for amusement and benefit or so that the toff could share more damning evidence with the judge: The poacher said he preferred stealing to working, your Honour.
“This is my family’s place. This estate.” Hugh gestured to the fields, trees, to the walled garden and to the chimneys of the big house among the chestnut trees in the distance.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Seen you drive to toon. Big shiny black car.”
“No doubt.” The pre-War Daimler attracted attention.
“You’ve passed me when I’ve been walkin into town to look for a job. Or walkin back.”
“Without one.”
“That’s right.” The anguish of repeated failure glistened for a moment in the lad’s eyes.
“So, Will, here’s your chance. I need a good man for our market garden. A man who knows wildlife and the land, a man who can keep the rabbits out of my cauliflower and cabbage fields. A man who can use a knife to clean the rabbits so I can take them into Nicholson’s.” Hugh chose his words carefully, wanting the boy to feel more like a fellow-man than a miscreant; to know that his skill with a knife could be channelled to good use.”
“Mr Nicholson takes my extras too.”
Hugh had to subdue a smile. Canny old Nicholson, the best butcher and poulterer in the city! Buying from whoever, not caring where the rabbits, hares, wood-pigeons or pheasants came from. The Laird’s legitimate game hanging alongside the poacher’s. For the same price.
“You serious, Surr? About the job?”
The Sir took him back to the raging North Sea, the heaving grey Atlantic. Formal discipline essential in the face of war. Conduct that can pull success from the ravening jaws of failure.
“Dead serious, Will. Five pounds a week. Start at eight, finish at five. One on Saturday. Sundays off. Arrive at the back door of the big house at 7.30 every morning and cook will give you porridge in her kitchen.”
Over the months, in front of Hugh’s battle-bruised eyes, the boy turned into a young man. He worked hard; grew and filled out with the porridge; learned additional useful skills; how to stand up straight, speak man-to-man with respect for both himself and others; how to complete well, a job unsupervised.
Hugh watched him with quiet satisfaction, watched without saying just how proud he was to see him grow. He allowed the increasing demands he made on Will and the increasing responsibilities he charged him with to speak for themselves. From rabbit-trapper, fence-maker and odd-job-man to game-keeper responsible for hatching and raising the pheasants for the shoot. An estate had to rely on revenues from a broad range of sources -- cattle, forage, corn and cash-crops, seasonal vegetables, raspberries and soft-fruit, and of course sport-shooting.
In time, Will courted and then married the daughter of a ploughman at Claverhouse, a few miles to the west. Hugh renovated a small cottage on the estate and offered it to the couple at nominal rent.
One Saturday in spring, as Hugh handed Will his wage-packet, Will thanked him then asked:
“Surr, I have somethin to say to you.”
“Then say away, Will.”
“It’s not just me. It’s Lizzie too. Could we speak to you this efternoon? Both of us?”
Despite the spring birdsong, Hugh’s spirits chilled. He’d imagined the day might come when Will would move on. Here, he was part game-keeper part general farm-worker. It was natural for the young man to want to advance. But he had hoped that the cottage might offer an incentive to stay.
Will and Liz arrived at his office at three. Candles of ivory flowers graced the horse-chestnut trees outside his window. Both visitors were bathed and dressed. Will had shaved. Lizzie stood shyly, her coat unbuttoned. Will carried his bonnet in both hands. Hugh had prepared himself for what was coming.
“Surr,” began Will then stopped. Lizzie looked at her husband. A man now, though barely 20.
“It’s like this, Captain Bentley.” Then she stopped too.
“Out with it!” Hugh heard impatience colour his voice. One failing among others that he had promised to rid himself of after his wartime command ended, after he retired from industry. But he never had.
“I’m gonna have a baby, Surr. We think it’s gonna be a boy.” Lizzie’s face was radiant.
Will smiled at her, proud, loving, then turned to Hugh. “So we want – we’re askin your permission, Surr, to call our son Hugh.”
“Hugh, like yoursel. For all ye’ve done for Will, Surr. All ye’ve done for both of us.” Lizzie smiled.
Hugh nodded briskly giving his assent, not trusting himself to speak. They thanked him and left.
Hugh remained at his desk, head bowed, for a very long time.
When he was finally ready, he rose and went upstairs to share this honour with his wife and give thanks that they, theirs and all for whom they had been made responsible, had been brought unto the haven where they would be.
