Ten in the evening. Yes, 2200 hours precisely, on Saturday the fourth of January 1901 the regulars in the Café Cadena would confirm at the enquiry. That’s when they heard the first explosion. The second followed about fifteen seconds later. They knew right away that it was artillery fire and so were puzzled when no detonations followed the firing of the shells.

“Blanks,” said Joe Abela, addressing his fellow whist players.

“Or Duds,” suggested Tony Quintano, who was ex-Royal Navy himself. “We fired off plenty of them in that business down at Buenos Aires in eighty-eight.”

They left the table and shuffled outside to see what was happening, going as far as the terrace in front of Our Lady of Fair Havens, from where they could make out the riding lights of a battleship.

“She’s HMS Devastation. I watched her berthing from the veranda earlier. Her first time in Valetta I believe,” said Joe.

The wind dropped a little. They heard the clatter of boots on the ship’s deck and shouted orders. A noisy scuffle, and then silence.

“Very odd,” said Joe, pulling his scarf tighter round his neck. “Let’s go back in, it’s turning chilly. I’m sure we’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow.”

The friends had lost the appetite for cards, so they finished their brandies and bid each other goodnight.

As Joe got into bed his wife asked about the noise she heard earlier. “It sounded like thunder,” she said.

“Some crazy matelot, I guess, Almira. Playing about with the guns,” he said. “Nothing for us to worry about.” He kissed her on the forehead, laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.

EXTRAORDINARY ACTION — Of an Insane Bluejacket

News has been received of a singular occurrence at Malta. About ten on the night of January 4 two guns of the battleship Devastation, in Malta Harbour, were suddenly fired… It was shortly ascertained that a young midshipman, who had lately joined, suddenly became insane, got below, and forced open a magazine, took two charges, rushed on deck, and fired a 6-pounder quick firing gun before he was secured, and removed... Fortunately both charges were blank, for the gun was actually pointing on Valetta. 1

John Wylie, Glasgow merchant, hoists his son Billy onto his shoulders; elevated above a sea of ladies’ bonnets: pink, peach, mauve, lilac; a frothy softness punctuated by an unruly jumble of black stove-pipe hats. On patent-leather tip-toe, the gentlemen stretch for a better view.

Billy can just make out the bearded figure at the top of the gangplank. The man raises a uniformed arm, dark blue, banded with gold, and waves to the crowd. His left hand rests on the gilded hilt of his sword. The ship is en fete with pennants of every color.

A skirl of a whistle and Billy sticks his fingers in his ears. To avoid falling, he presses his knees into his father’s sides. He sees masts and rigging; flags ascending like eager birds in the breeze; lights blinking code from ship to ship; over a hundred, no, two hundred, spread across the bay. From a forest of funnels nutty black smoke smudges the sky.

All at once, great guns rise in unison to make the salute: Boom. Boom, Boom, spitting fire and smoke. The noise rolls across the wide estuary, resounding back and fore between the green hills of Clyde, from Greenock to the Cowal shore. Billy’s insides tremble with fear and pride all at the same time.

“Stop squirming, boy,” says his father. “Look Billy, there’s the Prince of Wales. See, see him now…there. Sit at peace!” and he nips Billy’s leg. Hard.

“He’s over-excited Johnnie. Leave the wee lamb be…he’s only six, for the love of God.” Elspeth Wylie’s languid voice trails away.

“He must learn to behave like the man he’ll be.”

His father’s words, only half-understood, perturb Billy. He can learn, he knows. He is the quickest in the school room, but where is the book to study? He wriggles and slithers to the ground into the swaying groves of grey and black flannel, drifts of chiffon and whispering silk; the scent of Eau de Cologne, starch, camphor, tobacco, the reek of old men. John screws the collar of his son’s sailor suit in his fist, holding him like a dog on a leash.

There is a cheer, and the muffled ripple of gloved applause. Another cheer, and a long blast on the flagship’s horn.

The crowd shifts like kelp at the tide’s turn, leans forward for an instant, and gently recoils. Small groups re-form as the mass loses its identity; families and groups of friends coalesce and start back along the Esplanade. Billy walks by his father’s side.

“His Royal Highness looks well in uniform,” says the pale lady with the purple ostrich feather.

“Stouter, though, than in the newspapers,” asserts an army captain in khaki.

Another: “So glad to be a Briton!”

And so the chat flows, relaxed and easy, like the lazy eddies caressing the great piles of the pier.

“Very like his mother.”

“Kingly, I thought.”

“Too long to stand, though, even to see the Prince of Wales.”

“Such ships, such a Navy.”

“The Kaiser builds two for every one of ours.”

“We must watch our time. The train goes in ten minutes.”

“Oh, we’re taking the steamer back to the Broomielaw. We’ll get another look at the fleet that way. Worth the extra two shillings, I’d say.”

“Will we see you at the Kirk tomorrow?”

“Now, be sure to remember me to your mother.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

“A grand day.”

“Yes, grand.”

John Wylie takes a swig from his silver flask and says, to no one in particular, “Aye, it’s fine to have such a Navy. And proud a man would be to serve in her.” He puffs out his chest and shows to advantage his canary-yellow silk waistcoat.

Billy slips his hand snugly into that of his father. For this moment it fits perfectly. As the clouds part, Billy feels the warmth of the evening sun on his face; he sees his course ahead. He says: “I’ll be a sailor too when I’m grown, Papa.”

John looks down at his son and gives the briefest of smiles. He spots a business acquaintance in the crowd. “There’s Sir Archie, from Matheson and Yuill! I’ll go and say ‘hello.’ Elspeth, mind the boy.”

“City professional gentlemen and merchants who can afford the time and expense are now bent on country residence all the year round. The evenings in Glasgow, unless on rare occasions, have no charms for them: they prefer the pure air and wooded knolls of the country to the din and smoke of the city… Dullatur is situated… on the brow of a slope to the south east of Kilsyth… from the summit of the hill there is a prospect all around and objects can easily be recognized with a powerful glass, from the tall stalks of the Townhead of Glasgow to the steamers on the Firth of Forth…” 2

On the brilliant white linen of the breakfast table- a package wrapped in blue paper. Billy unties the string, neatly coils it, and slips it in his pocket.

Two novels: A copy of Treasure Island, inscribed,

To my Dearest son- my one true consolation, Happy Twelfth Birthday, your ever- loving Mama.

6th June, 1895.

…and a copy of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. The cover shows a ghostly lady in a white dress, pointing; a gentleman in a bowler, his cane tucked tight beneath his arm; behind them, shadowy woods under a quarter moon. She looks so lonely, thinks Billy.

Papa’s already off to his warehouse in the city; ladies’ shawls, baled, ready for consignment across the Empire. Catalogues, correspondence, checks, orders and profit, the essentials of his trade.

That evening, Wylie takes a sherry before dinner with his wife.

He lifts a copy of Pearson’s Magazine from the ottoman. The cover illustration shows an outlandish object like a great insect, with spidery arms and legs. The heading reads, “The War of the Worlds” and the caption: “Slowly a Humped Shape Rose out of the Pit.”

“Good Lord, Elspeth,” Wylie says. “What trash.”

Elspeth looks into the face of the Pekinese in her lap, speaking in a baby-voice, as though the dog and she are alone. “Johnnie doesn’t like the stories Mummy reads, Patsy. All he likes is his business, and his golf and…” she glances towards the pantry door and back at her husband “…oh maybe there is something else he likes.”

Wylie returns her gaze and says nothing. There is a wan cast on her cheek. Gone is the rosy glow she had when they first met. On the death of his father, Wylie had sold the family plantation, slaves and all, to come new from Jamaica to Glasgow. With his legacy, and an introduction to the Duncan family, Glasgow magnates big in the West India trade, Wylie was set fair to make his way in the second city of the Empire.

When they first met in her father’s lofty Greek-Thomson drawing-room overlooking Great Western Road he was intrigued by Elspeth Duncan’s quiet charm. Her Celtic beauty (quite the fashion at the time), the rich auburn tresses, and those hazel eyes, antidotes to the garish colors of Montego Bay. The family connection would help to progress his business prospects. But he came to know that Elspeth was a retiring woman, her good looks had given a false impression of authority. What he took to be a maidenly modesty was in fact a deep-rooted shyness. She avoided social contact, apart from, he noted, with domestics and the lower sort of person. She would not mix at the tennis or golf club with people of worth and interest. She preferred her trashy magazines; escape to a world of fantasy (Martians indeed!), or to muddle around in her clammy fernery, like some fey fairy, escaping the real world.

“Can you not stop that infernal dog from snuffling and slavering?” and he raps his empty glass down on the table.

After dinner, Papa says to Billy, “Step outside, Admiral Wylie.”

In the stable yard, lashed atop the spare gig sits a wooden dinghy. Mickey, the stable-boy, is leaning against the curve of the bow, staring straight at Billy, all the while stroking the varnished wood that glistens in the sinking sun. Bess, the parlor maid, said Mickey was nothing but a dirty Irish navvy, cursing and thieving at every chance. But when the master is at home, he’s on his best behavior.

“A business associate of mine had no need of her. So…I thought you might…” says Pa. “Clinker-built, so strong enough, I’d say.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

“Mickey, go you and take Master Billy down to the canal and try her out.”

“I can manage myself,” says Billy.

“Nonsense. Let Mickey row. You, Billy, can be the navigator. Just like Mickey’s father, eh?” And he winks at the lad who looks up, grinning at the rooks cackling high in the sycamores.

Papa forms a sort of tube with his fingers and makes a piping-whistling noise, like Billy heard at the Review of the Fleet, and shouts, “prepare to receive aboard Admiral Billy Wylie RN! Make sure that you don’t drown Master Wylie here when you take him out, Mickey.”

Mickey harnesses Daisy the sheltie to the gig. Her shoes slide on the road, the brae’s that steep. They take the track below the wood they call “The Shore,” though there was no sea, nor a loch here, only the canal. Billy holds Tess’s cheek-piece, his knuckles press against her rough coat, her jawbone hard and moving beneath the skin.

Mr. Spence the Geography master said that four hundred million years back there was a sea here. The lime and the sandstone that rattled every day in trucks down to the canal-wharf was the bed of that sea; warm and full of creatures. In the museum Billy sought out the fossilized bones of a creature that had swum in it, with great daggers of teeth to tear the flesh of the other strange animals too slow or too timid to escape.

Mickey and Billy slipped the boat into the canal. Mickey took the oars and rowed east towards Craigmarloch basin. The Gypsy Queen, the pleasure steamer out of Glasgow, passed in a flurry of smoke and splashing, making the dinghy bob. There was the smell of tobacco and whisky, mingled with the reek of wild garlic and the sweet hawthorn blossom seeping from the woods. The skirl of a fiddle somersaulted over the breathy chords of a squeeze box.

Billy says: “It is getting dark. We’ve gone further than we ought to. We should go back.”

But Mickey says, “Wheesht. Dinna be a fearty. Wait til you see what’s at ‘The Bungalow,’” and his eyes have a gleam on them.

The sun is down, and the wake of The Queen shows creamy in the darkening. She reverses engines. Her screws churn, backing in to dock at the tea rooms where the dancing has already started. Mickey rows the dinghy in among the rushes opposite. They sit quiet, oars shipped, watching the factory lassies dance in the yellow gas light that flickers, and the men spooning with them and laughing, arms round waists. On the veranda the girls’ eyes shine beneath the colored lanterns, and some, with the buttons on their blouses loosed, lean forward, their bosoms glow palely in the gloaming. The lads press their bodies up against them. Mickey with his hand down his pants and working it like he was scratching the most awful itch, and then he shuts his eyes and grunts. The funny feeling in Billy’s tummy. Then Mickey shakes his hand in the water. He makes Billy swear not to say a word or he wouldn’t take him out in the boat again, and though he doesn’t want to go in the boat again, he swears.

Billy’s bedroom in the tower: the pictures of our battleships, Her Majesty’s Ships: Formidable, Illustrious, Implacable, Irresistible, Renown, Repulse, Resolution, Revenge, Royal Oak, Royal Sovereign, Triumph, Vengeance, Devastation. Pennants and charts, blueprints, stories and drawings from The London Illustrated News. His room the highest in the house, but not like the garret where Bess the maid sleeps, with just the one sloped window. Billy’s room looks out on all sides like the bridge of a great ship of the line, and he can see the sea to the east and the factories in Glasgow on the other side.

He wishes for Devastation to be his first posting.

White
Red-1
Yellow-2
Green-3
Brown-4
Blue-5
Pink-6
Black-7

Clack, clack, balls rolling across the green cloth; bump on the cushion. Clack and click, into the pocket. Billy knocks on the billiard-room door.

“Enter”— his father’s voice.

Snooker, new from India, so Papa, must have it. The balls of ivory, hard; they touch but never, never leave a mark. One hundred and forty seven- the most you can score in a break; fifteen reds and all the colors. Nobody got beyond fifty-five yet. Place the white on the spot or, in the ‘D’. Blind Pew gave Long John Silver the black spot.

“Play, Billy,” says Pa. “Pink into the top pocket.”

He’s tall enough now to reach the table without the footstool.

“It’s time to talk about your future. The Headmaster tells me you’re fair at the mathematics and trigonometry. But you don’t get on with the other boys. That angle’s too sharp it’ll not do. Oh well, there you are, it’s in. You’ll not mix with the lads in your class, he says, and you’ve missed sports three times this month. What do you have to say?”

“I’m not sure Papa. I like the mathematics. I can make it work, but the other subjects their too…too…foggy.”

“You’ll not prosper in business if you can’t get on with others. It’s not about counting, we have clerks, drudges, who fill the ledgers with numbers, for that. A man of business needs vision. He needs to work with people, to command.”

“Then I warrant that I’m not for business, Pa.”

The black hangs on the lip of the pocket and slips in with a final click.

“What then, laddie?”

“I thought you fancied I would join the navy, Papa.”

“Your grandfather served his country. Right enough. A soldier, a hero at Waterloo.”

Wylie strikes the white up the table, off the cushion, and fires a red into the top pocket. White, recoiling, loses momentum slowly.

“Maybe the navy would suit,” says Wylie.

“You called me ‘The Navigator,’ Papa. You gave me the boat.”

When Billy turns fourteen Papa signs the Admiralty papers.

Billy tells Mama. She lies on the couch in the conservatory overlooking the garden, her medicine on the Chinese table. She hugs him; the smell of her breath sweet and deadly, and, “Oh my darling child, would you leave me, here alone with him, to sail the seas?”

And Billy says:

“I will write, Mama, once a week and Papa will be proud of me and not scold you. You and Papa can come when I pass out of the Naval Academy, and you will admire my uniform and my shiny sword flashing in the sun on the parade ground, and there will be a Marine Band.”

But still tears streak her cheeks.

And Papa says at dinner, “your son is to be a sailor, he will learn the navigation so that he is not lost somewhere east of Java.” He winks at Bess who clears the soup plates. She curtsies and, blushing, says, “let’s hope not, Sir.” Billy minds a boy from the Smithstone cottages drowned in the harbor at Hong Kong the year before. Mickey said that Bess was sweet on him.

Thirty six hours on the train to the Naval Academy and across the Solent to Osborne House. The King himself had given over the stables to the navy for the training of cadets. The classrooms smell of horse piss, and Billy thinks of Daisy. He takes to the navigation because it’s mathematics and he had been Top of The Class in math and trigonometry. He aligns and turns the protractors and the set squares and the compasses, with their sharp points pinning the paper to the board, and the dividers, sextant and parallel rules; calibrated, exact, precise.

Cocooned in his hammock slung from the hay racks, Billy hears the sea breaking below the cliffs; like the noise of the burn at home. The sound of shadows talking. He remembers nights in the tower: the water rushing down the glen to wash the dust from the coal at the colliery. But you couldn’t tell if it was the water you were hearing, or if they were arguing again. Him shouting, Mama crying and pleading with him, and the stink of drink on him.

The night before he left them forever Billy heard Mama scream. He crept out to the top of the stairs. Mama naked in the hall, and him pulling her back from the front door. Her belly swollen and stretched like a balloon, and between her legs—a strange hairy triangle.

He wondered if all women have that. Bess, who was too pretty, her skin so soft-looking and smooth, to have that ugly lump between her legs? Or Mrs Hogg, too, that had the shop in the village. And the lassies at the dance-hall?

Bess’s door opened behind him and he saw her pale face peer over the bannister, down into the gloom of the hallway …and he looked up and shouted, “get back in your blasted room, girl.” Her door slammed shut. From the shadows he dragged Mama into the Morning Room, and she fell onto the red Turkey carpet moaning all the while.

And the next day Doctor Griffiths called and saw Mama in her bedroom. Bess kept her eyes lowered at breakfast and did not look at Papa. She touched Billy’s shoulder as she passed. Billy heard her sniffing behind the pantry door. The doctor said that Mama could not see Billy before he took the train. “She’s been through enough already,” he said, checking his watch and slipping it back into his waistcoat pocket. Billy left her a note to say that he had gone.

When he got to Osborne, a letter:

Dear Billy,

I am so sorry, my dear, that I was unwell when you left. I would so liked to have seen you trigged out properly in your uniform. I am a little better now. Bess is a great support to your father and me. She is kept busy running to the chemist for me.

I fear I will miss the Tennis Club carol service.

I hope that you might be back at Norwood with me at Christmas,

Your loving Mama

John Wylie laid the open copy of The Kilsyth Chronicle on the table before his wife. “Is this the so-called church where you waste your time?” he asked.

Elspeth reached for her spectacles, as if to read the article he pointed to, though she knew already what it contained.

“Allow me,” he said, ‘“…extraordinary scenes have been witnessed in connection with special services in the Westport Hall.’ That’s the place -the miserable hole with the stink of the butcher’s yard and offal at the back, is it not?”

He read on, ‘“All sects and creeds were represented; the acknowledged Christian, the avowed infidel and the thoughtless scoffer found a seat.’ Huh! ‘Christ was in the meeting just the same as on the Sea of Galilee.’

“Good Lord, you and that blasted church of yours, crammed with stocking-weavers and shop girls. ‘Speaking in tongues.’ What trash have you been taking on? Eh? Do you hear me woman? It’s the asylum that you should be in, not some ruin of a hall in the Westport with four hundred other deluded souls.”

Elspeth spread her fingers wide upon the table. She gazed out to where the sun was setting beyond the bare beech trees. At least the gloom would hide her tears when Bess came in to light the lamps.

Norwood
Victoria Road
10 December 1900

My Dear Billy,

I hope this finds you well, and safe in the Lord.

I said in my last letter that I have attended the Westport Hall these last three weeks. Great things have come to pass there. On Friday the Holy Spirit fell on Mr. Murdoch and he spoke in a new tongue. The fire fell, and thirty people were prostrate on the floor under the power of the Holy Spirit, and among them, myself, your own mother. Blessed!!!

I am now uplifted as never before and my sorrows are melted as the snow from a dyke in the spring sunshine of our Lord Jesus’ love.

We have named our humble meeting-house ‘The Church of God, Kilsyth,” as our forefathers in Christ named their places in Corinth, Antioch or Thessalonica. I pray your ship might visit these holy places.

I rejoice in the Lord, and pray one day you too will know the joy I have found.

Your loving mother,

P.S. Daisy had the colic. Mikey gave her a powder and she is better now.

HMS Collingwood
Portsmouth,
20th December 1900

Dear Mother,

Thank you for your last. I am sorry father’s business keeps you from attending my passing-out parade. I hoped he would be proud of me. My passes in the examinations have been at the highest level.

I find, however, that I am not best suited, perhaps, to Navy Life. I have persevered at Osborne, and now here at the training school, as I have made a promise to you and Papa. But the life here is difficult for me. One is never at peace- always people, always noise, talking, talking, shouting, banging; the crack of the guns till you can’t hear.

Mama, I can no longer be a sailor.

There, I have said it.

A black cloud hangs over me and only you and Papa can relieve me of this. Let me come home. I have lost my way and don’t know where to turn. I beg you to persuade Papa to consent. I would not ask this huge favor were I not desperate,

Yours,

Billy.

Norwood
Victoria Road
24th December 1900

My Dearest Son,

I read your last with great sadness. It is such a pity to hear that your childhood dream has come to naught. From your infancy you were set to be a sailor. I feel sure that these feelings of yours are likely to be short-lived.

I have not shared your request with your father. He is so occupied at present with business, and I fear that it would anger him to introduce such a subject.

I commend you to prayer, and to trust in the Lord Jesus,
Your Affectionate Mother.

Sunset at 20.20. Wind in the North East. Tug, tug, tug she pulls against the hawser. The crowbar from the artificer’s store, wrapped in oilcloth, heavy in my hand; back pressed against the cool steel of the forward bulkhead. Blanks— no one will die; but at least they'll notice.

Three bluejackets clatter down the gang-plank and climb into a gig waiting on the quay. Out for a Saturday night on the town. The echo of hooves moves up the steep street leading to the old city. Now, only the slap, slap, slap of the waves against the hull. Wait.

Screech of metal as the magazine hatch yields.

Quiet!

The hum of the C-deck generator.

Two dozen six-pound shells; domed brass noses gleam in the light from the companionway. Eggs in a box. Two into the bag, gently, over my shoulder, and climb the ladder. Kneel before the rapid-fire gun, port-side.

Open breech block.
Check for obstructions.
Insert round.
Close breech.
Pull lanyard.
Eject cartridge case.
Repeat.

The mass ended, Joe Abela steps out from the dim womb of Our Lady’s into the bright Sunday morning. The cool air, refreshing after the cloying incense; the honeyed stone reflects back the soft warmth of the sun. Joe lights a cheroot. The preacher, Fr Vincent, is an old fool. But it’s good to be out, and the singing was beautiful. People asked fondly after Madam Abela and sent their best wishes. Her legs, he explained, wouldn’t allow her to walk as far as the church these days.

He stops off at Tony’s shop for his newspaper, two honey rings, and a box of the special Egyptian dates that Almira likes. Yes, it’s such a beautiful morning that he takes the longer way round by the ramparts.

Below him sits the warship, the scene of last night’s incident. On board a door slams shut and the Master at Arms, with two ship’s corporals, frog march a midshipman along the deck. The sailor, his wrists bound in irons, is bundled down the gangplank into a Black Maria. No more than a boy, thinks Joe.

Something to tell Almira over coffee, then. It might almost be warm enough to sit on the veranda. She’ll like that.

He thinks on what might have led the youngster to such a desperate act; how his parents’ hearts would be broken, their hopes for him in ruins. Their own son, Albert, in Vancouver. Doing well, he tells them. But still, how they worry, looking every day for a letter. Joe takes out his handkerchief and wipes a tear from his eye. That wind! There’s still a bite in it.