The Interpretations

  I didn’t sleep much that day for thinking about the job and Gilfedder and wondering if I could survive either. I decided to build myself a breastplate made of tin with long thin sharp nails protruding on one side. I would goad Gilfedder into hitting me in the stomach again and watch him scream in agony as he smashed his knuckles into the needle-like points of the nails.

  Because I wanted to hurt Gilfedder; I wanted to hurt him very much indeed. It didn’t matter to me if he was off work for weeks and then lost his job. I couldn’t understand how someone so evil could exist at all. He was a bad man and I wanted to hurt him badly. With this vengeance in mind I managed to fall asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up I felt more tired than before and my stomach hurt where Gilfedder had punched me. And I was depressed. My breastplate of nails idea was ridiculous. Any type of retaliation was silly. Escalation of conflict. I could see a future of knuckle-dusters and baseball bats, maybe even knives. When it came to violence Gilfedder was an expert; I was a rank amateur. I decided that the only way I might overcome him would be to take everything he dished out and respond only with silence. After a while he would get bored with the whole enterprise. It wasn’t much of a strategy but it was the only one I had.

  At the beginning of the next shift he slapped me on the back. Hard. ‘Come back for more, eh, new cunt? I thought you’d have more sense, educated bastard like you.’ I turned and looked at him but said nothing. ‘No speakin’, eh?’ He smiled at me. I walked out into the loading bay. We started on the first lorry. As usual Gilfedder worked alone. I started off working with the Mule. At one point Morgan left the loading bay and went into the freezing room to check the vats. I heard Gilfedder shout, ‘Hey, new cunt, catch!’ I turned to see something flying towards me. Instinctively I put my hands up to my face and this thing thudded into them. It was a dogfish. They often turned up among the herring. They were strange creatures, long and thin like stretched out sharks. When you dipped your hands into the herring boxes you had to be careful because dogfish have a long sharp spike that sticks up at the trailing edge of the dorsal fin. Sometimes you knew you’d found a dogfish only when this spur hit you, went through your glove and into your hand. The cut could be deep and painful. As it was on this occasion because it was the back of the fish that hit my palms and the spur entered my hand at the base of my right thumb. I doubled up in pain. There was a lot of laughter, all from the one man.

  ‘He’s a bugger, that man,’ the Mule said to me quietly as he inspected my hand which was oozing blood. ‘Just go through to the office and ask for the first aid box.’

  I did as he suggested. Gilfedder watched me go and laughed some more. When I got back, having dabbed the wound with antiseptic and stuck a plaster on it, I said nothing to anyone. I got a fresh pair of gloves from the store and carried on working. ‘Well!’ Gilfedder said loudly, as usual. ‘Second shift and already got through your first pair of gloves. What a hard worker we’ve got here, eh?’ I ignored him.

  In the morning, at the end of the shift, my tyres were flat again. This time they had been slashed. I wheeled the bike home. I slept for four hours and dreamed of herring. I was in the sea with them, shoals of them swimming round me, and I was trying to catch them. I was wearing a pair of enormous red gloves and perhaps my hands, too, were enormous inside them. I reached out and tried to snatch the fish as they swam past. I didn’t catch any. I got up and wheeled the bike into town. I got new tyres and inner tubes and cycled back. At seven thirty I cycled to work for the start of my third shift.

  ‘Hey, how’s the bike?’ Gilfedder asked me when I walked into the staff room. I ignored him but I sat down at the same table he was sitting at. There was no one else at that table. ‘I said how’s the bike?’ Gilfedder repeated, but I said nothing. I took my piece box from my bag and put it on the table. ‘I fuckin’ asked you a question,’ Gilfedder said and his tone had moved from derision to menace. I continued to ignore him. A hand reached over and swiped the piece box from in front of me. Luckily the lid was still on. It landed on the floor by the door, right at the feet of Morgan who was just stepping in. Bewildered, Morgan picked it up. ‘Whose is this?’ he asked. I stood up. ‘Mine,’ I said and I took it from him. ‘Lorry’s in,’ Morgan said and we all went out to the loading bay.

  Gilfedder’s big joke on that third night was to fill my piece box with herring guts. He laughed when I opened the box and found my sandwiches inedible but I said nothing. I knew I’d be very hungry but I still said nothing. I drank my tea in silence. I carefully sniffed the tea first, believing that he might have pissed in it but he hadn’t. Maybe he was saving that for the next night. ‘Eat your sandwiches, why don’t you, eh?’ he said. I continued to ignore him. ‘Hey, new cunt, I’m talkin’ to you. I’m fuckin’ talkin’ to you.’ He leaned over the table.

  I knew the next thing would be a hand swiping at my mug, and I was right. I just moved the mug back out of Gilfedder’s reach and he missed. Not only that but, in trying to deliver the blow he’d overstretched himself and he lost his footing on the slippery tiles of the floor. He tumbled over, catching his side on the corner of the table and he landed on the floor in a heap. Everyone in the staff room, except me, burst out laughing. I carried on drinking my tea.

  As he got up from the floor Gilfedder winced very slightly, just enough to show that he had done himself some damage as he fell.

  But when he managed to stand up, leaning on the table for support, he was more enraged than before. ‘Which o’ you cunts was laughin’ at me!’ he screamed at us. I wanted to say, ‘Everyone,’ but I didn’t. The Mule said it for me.

  ‘We all laughed, ye daft gowk,’ he said. ‘You fair excelled yourself there.’

  ‘I’ll brain any man that laughs at me,’ Gilfedder shouted.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to wipe out the entire gang o’ us then,’ the Mule went on in his usual quietly amused fashion. ‘Which is fine if you fancy unloading all those lorries just by yourself.’

  Gilfedder stood there for a few moments without saying anything. He was full of anger which hadn’t yet found a way out. He turned to look at me. I knew he was looking at me because he seemed to be turned in my direction but I was not looking at him. This was part of my plan. I would never talk to him and never look at him. But I knew he was looking at me. I was nearest, just across the table. He could easily hit me now; there was nothing to stop him. I expected him to hit me. I might try to move away but I would not retaliate. I would not retaliate because that’s what he wanted me to do. I sipped my tea and waited for the blow.

  But he didn’t hit me. He just pointed at me. He pointed at me and said, ‘I’ll fix you, you cunt. I’ll fuckin’ fix you.’

  Now he was a little boy in the playground, reduced to making threats. I decided I was winning.

  During the course of the next hour it became clear that Gilfedder was struggling. He continued to work alone when unloading the lorries but the fluency with which he plucked the crates from the stack and flung them down on the pallets was not there any more. He began to keep his right arm tucked close in to his body so that he looked lopsided and awkward. The other men noticed this too. I could see nods in Gilfedder’s direction and I heard them muttering that it served the bastard right.

  By six in the morning when the fifth lorry of the night arrived Gilfedder was still working alone but he was moving slowly. He was clearly in pain. I tried to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t. Morgan came over to me and said, ‘Give Gilfedder a hand, will you, Tom.’ The nearest men paused in their work and looked over at the two of us. Gilfedder was standing to one side, breathing heavily. I wasn’t sure if he’d heard Morgan’s request but I made sure he heard my reply. I said, ‘I’m not working with that.’ I rejoined the Mule and we worked together till the end of the shift. No one spoke to Gilfedder. Everyone left him to work at his own pace which became slower and slower. During the breaks he sat at the same table as me in the staff room but he said nothing to anyone. At seven o’clock Morgan sai
d to him, ‘Why don’t you go home if you’re in pain.’ And someone added, quietly, ‘Aye, and fuckin’ stay there for the rest of your life.’ But Gilfedder shook his head. He was determined to make it to the end of the shift. And he did.

  But he didn’t turn up for work the following evening. ‘Cracked rib,’ Morgan reported when someone finally got round to asking, during the first break. ‘He’ll be off for a while, too. Great shame, he’s a good man.’

  ‘Define “good”,’ the Mule asked but Morgan didn’t reply.

  Someone else said, ‘How long’s a while?’

  Morgan thought for a moment. ‘Signed off for a month, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Could you not make it two?’

  Morgan looked at the man who had spoken. The rest of the men laughed. ‘So what’s wrong with Gilfedder, then?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘What’s right wi’ him, more like,’ the Mule said.

  ‘Well, he works hard,’ Morgan replied.

  ‘Does he work any harder than any of the rest of us?’ the Mule countered.

  Morgan looked round the assembled men. After a silence that lasted too long, he said, ‘Well, no, I wouldn’t say that, no.’ A few moments later he left the room.

  Then the Mule said, ‘Daft or what? If Gilfedder’s the biggest bastard in the world, then Morgan’s the daftest. Canna see what’s starin’ him in the face.’

  ‘But when you think of him workin’ wi’ a cracked rib,’ Morrison said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gilfedder, workin’ wi’ a cracked rib.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I’m just sayin’ . . . pride, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Well,’ the Mule went on, ‘it’s not pride if you ask me, it’s his damn hard head. You’re not takin’ his side now, are you?’

  ‘No, no. I’m just sayin’ . . .’

  ‘Just sayin’ what?’

  ‘Well, that you’ve got to hand it to him, that’s all . . .’

  ‘Hand it to him? By God I’d fuckin’ hand it to him. You’re beginning to sound like Morgan.’

  And at that point Morgan returned and announced that the fish were now frozen and it was time to get them out and stacked.

  While Gilfedder was away, things were so much easier. I even began to enjoy the work. The fact that Gilfedder would inevitably return was a threat, of course, but not for the first week, at least. I got to know some of the men and I began to learn from them about how to work more efficiently – how not to tire myself out in the first couple of hours of my shift. They taught me by example a number of things which were apparently very simple but also very useful. I learned the correct way to lift a box of fish so that I didn’t expend too much energy. If I needed to lift it two feet then that was precisely how far I should lift it. Not three feet or even two feet and an inch. Just two feet. ‘Push and slide as much as possible,’ the Mule told me. ‘And when you’re lifting, use your legs as much as possible. Don’t lean over. Bend your legs then straighten. They’re stronger than your arms, after all. And don’t charge at the work. It’s a long race this, not a sprint.’

  One of the things I never got used to was the smell. You couldn’t get away from it, even in the staff room, because we never took our aprons off during the entire shift and we always kept our gloves with us. Red aprons and red gloves, covered in fish scales and slime and threaded with fish blood. I got into the habit of having a set of clothes just for travelling to the fish plant and back. So, I left my actual working clothes at the plant and changed into them, from my travelling clothes, when I arrived. On the homeward journey, I took off my travelling kit at the front door of the flat and made my way through to the shower naked. By this method I hoped to keep the smell of fish out of the flat. I succeeded, more or less, though once or twice Mike complained that the place was a bit fishy. This was usually when I brought my working clothes home for their weekly wash.

  ‘So what about Gilfedder?’ I asked the Mule one day.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘All this business you were telling me about not charging at the work. That’s exactly what he does.’

  The Mule shook his head. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You’re right. Don’t know where he gets the energy from. So much fuckin’ energy he canna keep it in.’

  Mostly it was my doing but often the talk came back to Gilfedder. I learned a lot about him, or rather, I learned a lot about what people believed of him. And there were many contradictions. Morrison swore on his life that Gilfedder’s father had been a miner and had died in a pit accident when Gilfedder was eight years old. But Bob had met a cousin of Gilfedder’s when he was on a construction job in Aberdeen and he’d said that Gilfedder’s father had been in the Army and had died in a car accident up in Caithness, somewhere near Halkirk.

  One of the men had been at school with Gilfedder but even he seemed unsure about the facts. Gilfedder had been suspended from school several times but he couldn’t bring to mind the details of any of the offences involved. Certainly Gilfedder had played football for the school and he’d even had a trial for a team in one of the Scottish divisions – Motherwell, he thought. Morrison said no, it was definitely Celtic but everyone laughed at this. Anyway, all were agreed that whichever team was involved nothing had come of it. Like most of his classmates at school, Gilfedder had wound up in a succession of labouring jobs. This was his second stint at the fish factory. He’d spent a year here about three years ago but left for a better job on a construction site on the West Coast. When that job ended he’d come back and been rehired here straight away.

  ‘They like him because he works hard,’ the Mule said, shaking his head.

  ‘Well, he does work hard, doesn’t he?’ Morrison offered.

  ‘Would you employ him then?’

  ‘Well, no, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Well, he’s . . .’

  ‘He’s no right in the head,’ the Mule said. ‘Clean daft and dangerous with it. Should be in Nain House, if you ask me.’

  ‘He’s been there,’ Morrison said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s been there. Twice that I know of.’

  ‘Now he tells us.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it was a while ago now,’ Morrison said.

  ‘A while ago?’ the Mule asked.

  ‘Years ago. Ancient history.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So why did they put him in there?’ the Mule asked.

  ‘Yes. What happened?’ I repeated.

  It was clear that Morrison now regretted having mentioned the issue. ‘I’m no sayin’ nothing more,’ he said, but then added, ‘He wasnae long out of school. A long time ago. All forgotten now.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten it,’ the Mule said. ‘And I’m damn sure Gilfedder hasn’t forgotten it.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Morrison said. ‘It’s . . . I shouldna have mentioned it at all.’

  ‘Damn right you shouldna have mentioned it,’ Bob said. ‘I imagine Gilfedder’ll no be too pleased either.’

  ‘Don’t none o’ you fuckers mention this to him,’ Morrison said. ‘Not a fuckin’ word.’ For a moment he looked genuinely scared.

  ‘Just tell us why,’ the Mule said. ‘Just tell us why he was in there. We’ll no say a word. None of us.’ There were murmurs of approval from round the room. ‘Come on.’

  Morrison looked at us. He looked over at the men sitting at the other tables. ‘Not a fuckin’ word, right?’

  We all agreed to this. ‘Not a word. Don’t worry. Nothing. Not a word.’

  Morrison looked down at the open sandwich box in front of him. ‘Depression,’ he said. ‘Tried to kill himself.’

  Someone said, ‘No!’ in a voice of quiet surprise. Then there was a short silence until the Mule said, ‘Twice?’

  Morrison nodded. ‘Twice.’

  Someone said, ‘Poor bastard. Would you believe it. Poor bastard.’<
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  Someone else said, ‘Poor bastard my arse. Two chances to be rid of the bugger and neither o’ them came off.’

  Gilfedder may have been signed off for a month as Morgan had suggested but he was back within two weeks. He was first in the staff room at the beginning of the shift, sitting at his usual table. He winked at me when I came in and he must have noticed the surprise on my face, though I said nothing. I sat down and emptied my haversack as usual and I didn’t speak. Nor did he say anything to me but I knew he was looking at me. As the men trooped in there were a lot of surprised faces. ‘So soon?’ someone said, and someone else said, ‘Aye, Donnie, how’s the ribs, eh?’ But he said nothing in reply, nothing at all. He spoke to no one and this was new and it made me afraid.

  When we got to the loading bay to tackle the first lorry of the night, Gilfedder tore into the stacks of boxes as if his two week absence had been for special training rather than convalescence. His work rate through the first two hours of the shift was so high that even Morgan found it hard to believe. ‘Will you look at that,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘God almighty, what’s that man on?’ The Mule said, ‘Diesel, most like. Gives you a fair boost, eh?’

  Gillfedder’s huge energy and drive depressed me because his injury had obviously not slowed him down at all, nor subdued him in the slightest. And his silence was unnerving. It didn’t strike me until much later that he might be using the same tactics as me. But whereas my silence was that of feigned indifference, his was all about the creation of menace.

  At the end of the first break, during which he didn’t say a word to anyone, he was one of the last to leave the staff room. I stayed until he’d been gone perhaps half a minute before I too set off back to the loading bay. But he was waiting for me in the corridor. And he spoke for the first time that night.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said to me. ‘You’re still here, eh?’