Once we’d found a dry spot under a large oak tree to sit down, Jenkins began his account.
“My real name is Edmund Reeves and once upon a time, I was the engineer on Shetland Jack’s cargo boat, SS Rose. Before I took the job, a lot of people warned me that Jack had a reputation for being both ill-tempered and mean. And all that proved to be true. I came close to resigning many times over the years, but Jack always managed to convince me to stay. He knew how hard it would be to find a good replacement: anyone applying for the job was likely to be doing so in the hope of stealing his necklace.”
“What about you?” the Chief said. “Were you never tempted?”
Jenkins shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Not while Jack was alive, anyway. Stealing his necklace would have been like murdering him. The only 486thing that kept him going was the dream that one day he would hang those pearls round his daughter’s neck.”
Jenkins raised his eyes and looked out over the river. The lights from the streets on the other bank were reflected in the black waters.
“Jack was stronger and more stubborn than anyone else I’ve ever met,” he continued. “But all the years searching for Rose took a real toll on him, and as time passed, it became more and more difficult for him to keep his courage up. He tried to drown his doubts in cheap whisky, but it didn’t work. Come the end, I think he had given up hope of ever finding the girl. And then, just when everything was at its bleakest for poor Jack, it happened. What he’d been dreaming about for so long.”
Jenkins took a deep breath, as if to gather strength.
“It was in Glasgow, one spring day in April 1913,” he said. “We were moored in Kingston Dock, where we’d just loaded a cargo of machine parts to be shipped to Liverpool. I was taking in the mooring ropes in preparation for departure when I happened to see a young woman standing on the quayside watching our vessel. She was clean and tidy and neatly dressed, and for some reason she was looking slightly nervous. I asked her whether there was anything I could do to help.
‘Are you Captain Jack Shaw?’ she asked. 487
I told her that I wasn’t.
‘Is he aboard?’ she asked.
‘Yes, he is. Who shall I say is asking for him?’
The young woman looked at me and said in a very earnest voice, ‘My name is Rose… Rose Henderson.’”
Jenkins filled his corncob pipe with tobacco. He lit it and puffed out a couple of small, evil-smelling clouds of smoke before continuing.
“I shall never forget the expression on Jack’s face when I went down to the cabin and told him who was waiting for him up on the quay. Jack, as usual, had a massive hangover, but he quickly pulled himself together.
‘Is it true?’ he croaked. ‘Because if you’re making a fool of me, I’ll kill you!’
‘It’s true,’ I said.
‘God in Heaven!’ Jack said. ‘And the state I’m in! Help me get some shoes on!’
Jack hurriedly washed his face and swilled out his mouth before following me up on deck and down the gangway to the quay. His legs were shaking so badly I was afraid they would give way. He walked up to the young woman and looked her up and down. 488
‘Right, young lady,’ he said in a gruff voice, ‘do you have anything that can prove you really are my daughter?’
‘Of course I do,’ the woman said in a broad Highland accent.
She opened her handbag and passed Jack a sheet of paper. His hand shaking, Jack took out his spectacles and began reading, while I looked over his shoulder.
The paper was an identity document for Rose Henderson, issued by the Child Welfare Board in Inverness in 1904. All the information seemed to fit and, at the bottom of the sheet, a stamped photograph was attached. There could be no doubt that it was a photograph of the girl standing in front of us.
You’d have imagined that Jack would have been beside himself with joy and rushed to embrace his daughter. But not Jack, oh no! He wasn’t going to be that easily convinced. So he began asking the young woman about her early childhood on the Shetland Islands.
‘Forgive me, Father,’ she answered. ‘I’ve hardly any memories left from that time. I was only four when I was sent to the orphanage, but I do remember that my mother had beautiful hair. She always wore her hair up, with a ribbon in it.’
Jack asked what colour the ribbon had been and the young woman immediately answered.
‘I remember it as being blue… yes, Mother always wore a blue ribbon in her hair.’ 489
I could see from the look in Jack’s eyes that this matched his own memories of Mary Henderson.
Jack gathered his thoughts and then asked the young woman whether there was anything else she remembered about her mother.
‘Just one other thing …’ she answered, looking sad and soulful. ‘Mother used to sing the same song to me every evening to get me to sleep. It was a song about a rocking chair, I seem to remember.’
On hearing this, Jack’s legs began to give way and he staggered. The young woman quickly stepped forward to support him.
‘“The Old Rocking Chair”…’ I heard Jack gasp. ‘Mary loved that song …’
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Rose Henderson said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. But I had to come and meet you and let you know I’m alive. I know you’ve been looking for me for many years.’”
Jenkins pipe had burnt out and he scraped it out with a piece of stick.
“This is all pretty strange,” the Chief said. “Your story doesn’t agree at all with what Mrs Culduthel at the orphanage told us about Rose.” 490
“Wait a moment,” Jenkins said. “Everything will become clear.”
And so he continued. “The cargo of machine parts was due to be delivered in Liverpool the following evening and we really had to set sail immediately. But Jack couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Rose now he’d found her at last, so he asked her whether she would come with us. That would give them plenty of time to talk. Rose, it seemed to me, was reluctant at first, but then she agreed to the proposal. But she did have one condition.
‘I’ve got a close friend who can’t manage without me,’ she said. ‘Will you let me bring him to Liverpool with us, Father?’ she said.
‘What kind of friend?’ Jack asked.
The young woman told him her friend was called Bernie and he was an orphan. He had lived in the Highland Orphanage at the same time as her and she’d been looking after him ever since.
‘He’s like a brother to me,’ she said.”
The Chief and I didn’t understand. We looked from Jenkins to Bernie and then back to Jenkins.
Jenkins turned to Bernie and said, “You remember this, don’t you?”
Bernie swallowed hard.
“Yes,” he said. “I remember. Moira came and fetched me from where we were living and said we had to hurry down to 491the docks. We were taking a ship to Liverpool, she said. And she also said that I mustn’t use her real name: I was to call her Rose instead. That was really important, she said, though I didn’t understand why.”
My head was spinning. But then I remembered the photograph of Bernie and Moira on the stairs at the Highland Orphanage, and suddenly I understood how it all hung together.
“You’re going to have to explain everything,” the Chief said. “Was that Moira? Do you mean the same Moira that we met?”
“That’s it, exactly!” Jenkins nodded.
He looked over at Bernie and said, “Moira told me her and your life story, Bernie, and I’ll willingly tell it to our friends here. But only if you’re happy with that?”
Bernie took some deep breaths.
“Yes…” he said quietly.