The 'Sound' of the Rainbow (Chapter 2) (standard:mystery, 1100 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Sep 10 2005	Views/Reads: 3413/2387	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Back on the island I look up some old friends, still hopeful that someone will have the clue to me learning more about Frank's disappearance.

Chapter 2:  Friends 

Frank was born two years before me on Barra, an island at the southerly
tip of the Western Isles. We fished together, drank together, hit on 
girls together, and one angry time hit on each other. We were thirteen 
at the time and passionate about everything. 

Coming over the brow of the hill, the colourful shop-lined bend of the
harbour came into view. Trawlers, tied up and deserted, as if a flu 
epidemic had happened and everyone had stayed home, lined the quay. It 
was still before nine. The first immediate impact was seeing the new 
fire station completed. For twenty years it was the subject of 
contentious debate, being that, some said, the old station was at the 
wrong end of town. I'd heard of the arguing through Frank, learning, 
finally, that the old station had become a crab market. I stopped the 
car and wound down the window. The familiar odours of wet crab, lobster 
baskets, diesel fuel, fish nets, and freshly painted buoys on the 
quayside were welcome fragrances of home. Out across the waters I could 
see the Kilchoan ferry plugging its way from the Ardnamurchan 
Peninsula. I stepped out of the car, pulled on my overcoat, and headed 
into town. Walking with the certain knowledge of where to find the 
perfect breakfast. During the two minute walk I was reminded that when 
winter sun shines down on the bend of Tobermoray harbour, and trawlers 
line its quay, there isn't a more beautiful place in the world. 

Frank, as well as being a trawler-man, was a sailor, a writer, and an
artist. His paintings, mostly water colours, sold from local ‘artsy' 
shops on the island, though most, he told me, sold from Iona, an island 
a short ferry ride from the point of Mull, and home of Saint Columba. 
Others sold from private exhibitions held in community halls, local 
pubs, many displaying his work on their walls. Restaurants, hotels, and 
even the local bank played their part in making Frank a well known 
artist on the island. 

The bell jingled gaily as I pushed open the door. The aroma of bacon
grilled on an open grate, sausages sizzling, and eggs spitting in a 
huge iron pan excited my taste-buds. 

“Aye, lawdy, ceud mile failte, he come wi the wind an gang wi the
watter.” 

“Hello Aunt Maggie, long time no see.” 

“Ye can be heard whaur ye're no seen, laddie. Come giv yer Anty a hug.” 

We hugged. She pinched my chin between her finger and thumb before
pulling out a chair from under a gingham cloth covered table. A couple 
of regulars, Bert McClellend and Jock Stewart, nodded their 
recognition. I held up my hand and winked. 

“Sit yenself doon an I'll fix yer breakfast.” She said, and rested the
flats of her hands on my shoulders. “On the sea sail, on the land 
settle, you'll no find him, lad. The haar was always goina tak him. He 
was different, he was.” Fishermen and fishermen's wives believe that 
deepening haars are responsible for many such disappearances.  She 
tapped her hands lightly on my shoulders and went back to her kitchen. 

I stared out of the window, allowing my thoughts to drift. Frank and I
sat on the rails opposite, letting our legs dangle over the edge of the 
harbour wall, fishing, and dreaming of the day we would own a trawler. 
No cod, no herring, no salmon, no fish of any kind would be safe from 
our nets. We'd fish the seas clean, then retire at thirty! Instead, we 
battled the Japanese, the Norwegians, and the Russians. Anyone and 
everyone who thought the planets whales belonged to them. We were 
warriors, we thought, black priests, sea shepherds, think of a name and 
we heard it. Bones were broken, sometimes Frank's, occasionally mine, 
and one time both; being hurled twenty feet, one after the other, into 
a vast vat of whale blubber. Boiled alive is how we thought our end 
would come! The Norwegian captain, thankfully, thought better of it; 
moved to consider the proximity of HMS Sirius, with its turrets hiding 
a couple of Vickers machine guns aimed in their direction. Thank God, 
for the Royal Navy. Four mariners stretchered Frank out of the vat, 
then transferred both of us to the warship where we received prompt 
medical attention, and a warning from her majesty's government. For the 
next six weeks Frank laced my shoes, and I wheeled him around the town. 


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