by Mark Neilson
The old skipper knocked out the dottle from his pipe against his heel.
‘About Neil?’ he asked. ‘Fire away. Chrissie is my cousin, and has been out and in our house from before the boy was born. We’ve no secrets from her.’
Jonathon hesitated. ‘Your decision. My friend runs Craiglockhart – that’s a convalescent hospital for officers. The condition is well known and documented. It’s a mixture of what my friend called “survivor’s guilt”. That’s when somebody survives, while everybody else dies. The survivor feels that he has no right to live – that he should have died as well. It escalates into guilt – even into believing that you were responsible for the others’ deaths. It’s utterly destructive of a man’s self-confidence and mental well-being.’
He paused, as seagulls wheeled and called above them.
‘Add to that, for some men,’ he continued, ‘it just seems that the brain is battered once too often, by explosions and the carnage. Their mind simply freezes, locks up. We have called the condition shell-shock, for want of a better term. It turns some men into rigid living corpses, and sends others screaming and hiding beneath the bed at any sudden noise.’
‘Or diving into doorways,’ Chrissie said quietly. ‘When a charabanc backfires.’
‘Exactly.’
The seagull calls above Eric’s head were like the cries from lost souls.
He shivered. One of these lost souls was his son.
‘And the cure?’ he asked steadily. Skippers don’t ever give away that they’re scared half out of their minds. Not with the crews’ eyes always on them.
‘It’s a new condition. We don’t understand it, so we don’t know how to bring about the cure. We can only wait, and see. Have patience.’
Blindly, Eric groped for his pipe and tobacco tin. He eased out a flake of the dark tobacco, and slowly ground it into crumbs between the heels of both hands, conscious that the other two were watching him. Feeding the tobacco crumbs into his tar-darkened pipe, he searched methodically for his box of matches. Struck a match and cupped his hands to shield it as he puffed away.
The great thing about a pipe is that it buys you time to think.
Even if thinking brings nothing. Other than an ache deep in your chest.
‘Aye,’ he said finally. ‘Well, I have all the time in the world to wait.’
‘You’ll need patience too,’ said Chrissie.
Eric turned, and spat to the leeward – the habit of a lifetime.
‘It’s not me that will need patience. It’s our Andy. But patience, and him, have been strangers all his life,’ he commented.
The steam drifter rose high as the grey/green wave flowed beneath the slim bows, then slid sideways, shaking herself like a wet dog. From behind the shelter of the deckhouse, the horizon tilted from one impossible angle to another.
Aggie gripped the deckhouse handrail. ‘I hate the sea,’ she said.
Mary held on with hands that were blue and red from the damp and the cold. ‘Rich people go to sea for cruises,’ she offered.
‘If I’m ever rich, I promise you that I will never go on any cruise,’ groaned Aggie. ‘Is there any land in sight yet?’
‘Over to the west, I think. Behind that bank of cloud.’
Aggie fought the spasms starting to build in her stomach. ‘My old dad used to tell me about a deepwater sailor who retired, and set off walking into the dry bush country of Australia, with an anchor over his shoulder. When people stopped asking him why he was carrying an anchor, and started asking him what was that funny metal thing he had, he finally threw the anchor away, and lived the rest of his days in that scruffy little town. This morning, I can really understand why he felt like that.’
The drifter plunged, burying its nose deep in green water. They heard the propeller rise into thin air and begin to scream. There was a thud as the living wall of water hit the deckhouse sheltering them; then it was surging past, drowning their feet and legs in icy water and white foam.
‘Aaargh!’ moaned Aggie. ‘Now my feet are wet as well.’
‘Maybe we should go below,’ suggested Mary, clinging to the rail with one hand, and holding Aggie with the other.
A crewman swayed past, whistling. His feet gripping the foam-streaked deck planks as if attached to them by suckers. ‘A nice, fresh day,’ he said. ‘But ye’d be safer below for when we hit the Pentland Firth.’
‘Does he mean that this gets worse?’ hissed Aggie. ‘Look, if you want to go below, feel free. I’m staying up here until …’
‘Until what?’ asked Mary.
Aggie was wretchedly sick, over the shining deck and her wet skirts.
‘Too late,’ she said. She turned a woebegone face to Mary. ‘I don’t know where we are, I’ve no idea where Orkney lies, or if we will survive long enough to get there. All I know is …’
She turned away, and began to retch again.
Mary reached over. With a frozen hand, she held Aggie’s head, and comforted her until the spasm had finished. ‘Better now?’ she asked.
‘All I know,’ Aggie continued doggedly, ‘is that nothing is going to stop me from getting there, and earning money.’ She braced herself, staring out across the heaving waves.
‘I’m not going home empty-handed,’ she said. ‘Not if it kills me …’
Chapter 2
In high summer, up this far north, it scarcely got darker than twilight in Papa Stronsay. That made sleeping difficult in their communal hut, but gave plenty daylight for their early start. The gutter quines bolted down breakfast, and were waiting on the quay long before 6 a.m. It was cold, but not as cold as it would be later in the herring season. They were on edge, wanting to get started on the new fishing, and lose themselves in its constant pressure.
Mary checked the strips of rag she had bound round her fingers. The girls called them ‘clooties’, or cloths. They had a double use. First they helped you grip the slippery herrings before you started the single deft knife-stroke which sliced the fish open from gills to tail. Second, they were there to stop you from cutting yourself to the bone, if the razor-sharp knife slipped. At fifty herrings a minute, for long, cold hours on end, the mind tended to wander and the slimy knife became dangerous.
‘Think we still remember how to do it?’ Aggie asked ironically.
‘It’s like riding a bike. You never forget.’
‘Aye. But I’ve never had a bike. Neither have you.’ Aggie flapped her arms, generating body heat. ‘That’s the sixth time you’ve retied that pinny, Elsie. You’ll have the strings worn out, lassie, before we start.’
Elsie flushed. ‘I’m scared I’ll forget how to pack properly.’
‘Do it like we showed you,’ Mary reassured. ‘Just don’t use too much salt.’
Elsie nodded numbly. How much was too much salt? Trust her Uncle Gus to put her with two of the best gutters in the town. She would never keep up. Then she’d be so clumsy she’d have the cooper scolding her, when he came to fit the wooden top into the barrel, then stamp it with the Crown symbol – to show that the herrings had been caught, gutted and packed within twenty-four hours. No rotten fish in here.
Nervously, she glanced along the table – a huge, scarred surface with tubs and barrels set out round and behind each team. The gutters cleaned the fish and graded by size. Her job was to take the gutted fish and stack them tight into each barrel. She had never been more nervous in her life.
In the distance, a bell struck once, twice, three times. The auction of catches had begun. Elsie swallowed convulsively. Out of nowhere, she found herself engulfed in a wave of homesickness and blinked back tears.
The gutting quines waited silently. Normally, they made as much noise as a flock of starlings. Girls from Ireland, the west coast of Scotland, all down the east coast, as far as Lowestoft. Places she had only heard about, from the men in her own family talking fish.
These women were a hardy independent bunch, with more freedom than most women knew in 1920. They worked as a group, l
ooked after each other as a group, sorted out their problems as a group. No need for any man to step in and help. These women stood on their own two feet, and were proud of it.
Headscarves covered their hair. Thick cardigans or jerseys to keep them warm in all weathers. Oilskin pinnies wound round them, to keep off the fish slime and scales. While their feet were encased in thick wellington boots, with as many pairs of socks as they could wear, to keep warm on the stone quay.
Elsie fidgeted, torn between wanting to get started and being terrified she would make a mess of everything.
Aggie understood, and slid an arm round the younger woman’s waist. ‘I mind the first time I did packing,’ she said. ‘For the first ten minutes, I couldn’t see the fish for greetin’. Then my hands started thinking for me, and all I had to do was bend.’
‘We’ve all had first days, and lived to tell the tale,’ Mary smiled.
Elsie tried to return the smile. Failed. Then came a rumble of metal wheels on cobbles. The first wave of fish was coming to the different tables.
‘Just dinnae rush at it,’ said Aggie. ‘Get these first two or three layers neat, and the rest will follow.’
One of Gus’s barrows spilled its silver load of fish across the table. Herrings slid everywhere, piling up against the fiddles that kept them on the table.
‘Let’s get started,’ Mary said.
She reached forward. Got the grip she needed to hold the slippery brute firmly, while the knife and her fingers did the rest. The razor-sharp knife sliced into the herring’s throat, and down. The fingers following, hooked out the intestines and dumped them. The gutted fish was flipped into the empty tub, and she was reaching already for the second, and the third …
Too slow. She had never been this slow before.
A herring spun out of Aggie’s hands, and leapt across the table.
‘Is that one a salmon?’ an Irish quine quipped from her side.
‘If it is, then it’s come to the wrong table. We only get paid for herring here.’ Aggie reached grimly for another herring, taking an instant more to make sure she had the beast in a proper grip. Firm, without damaging the flesh.
They were desperately slow, all three of them. Falling far behind the flying hands of the seasoned gutters and packers round them. Then, by about nine o’clock, they stopped falling behind. Gradually, as the unending flow of fresh herrings to the table stopped overwhelming them, they began not just to hold their own, but to catch up. By then, Elsie thought her young back would break in two. And had lost count of the barrels she had filled.
Gritting her teeth, she packed on. Pulling her weight for the team.
‘We need to set things straight,’ Andy said. ‘We’ve got to know where we stand.’
He leaned against the steering wheel as the drifter buried her bows in a huge white-laced swell. Solid sheets of green water flew back across the deck and exploded against the windows of the deckhouse. The steam drifter staggered, then its big propeller bit again and thrust her forward.
Neil wedged himself in the corner of the deckhouse. Once, this had been his second home. His hands, not Andy’s, gripping the wooden spokes of the wheel.
The drifter plunged again. Another boom as the water exploded against her port bow. Another wriggle as, dog-like, she shook herself free.
Andy glanced over. ‘I didn’t want you here. That was our da’s decision, not mine as skipper. With the bank threatening to take over the boat, we can’t afford to carry any passengers. Not even family ones …’
He turned the wheel to port, meeting the next big swell.
‘You shouldn’t be on board,’ he ground out.
Odd how the flaring temper of his youth had gone, Neil thought, leaving him almost indifferent to his brother’s open hostility.
‘I’ve no intention of being a passenger,’ he said mildly. ‘I’ll pull my weight.’
‘What if you get the shakes, when we are shooting nets or, worse still, hauling them? Leaving us one man short on the ropes and struggling. Everybody at risk – and nobody with the time to drag you into someplace safe.’
‘It might never happen. And if it does, then it’s up to me to get out from under your feet.’
‘And be swept off the deck?’ Andy demanded.
‘My choice. My risk.’
‘And my job to tell our da that I have lost you.’
The drifter lunged sideways, then soared up again. So normal, in these wild northern waters, that neither man noticed.
‘You’ve got a full crew of deckies,’ Neil said. ‘Plenty hands on the ropes. The only job you hadn’t covered was the cook. That’s what I’m here to do.’
‘The cook’s job is always for a schoolboy,’ Andy spat out.
Fuelling his anger was outrage that his ex-skipper brother was taking on the most menial job on the ship – and it didn’t seem to bother him. It was Andy who felt the shame. It was the first job any lad was given, when he went to sea. The thankless task of making the galley fire and cooking basic meals, while the crew worked out on deck. Serving them, then washing up in a bucket of water drawn from the engine’s condensed steam. But also to be on hand as the ship’s dogsbody, throwing his weight onto the end of ropes when they were hauling nets, helping the engineer to shovel coal for the boiler. First up, and last to bed. The harsh training given to any lad, and that harshness needed – because the sea was a far more savage taskmaster than any skipper and his crew.
Andy checked their course, and altered the ship’s head a fraction into the waves. Light was going fast. ‘It’s going to be a right old job to shoot and haul the nets tonight,’ he grumbled. His mind had already moved onto other things, because it’s the skipper’s job to think ahead. To guess where the shoals of herring would surface in the darkness. To guess what depth they would be swimming at and all of this on a dirty night, when there were no signs – like the phosphorescence shoals gave to the night sea – which would guide his choice. He was conscious that his record didn’t match up to his dad’s, or even Neil’s.
That knowledge ate into him, like acid.
‘Are we heading round behind the island?’ Neil asked, as much a gentle prompt to his preoccupied brother as a question.
‘Dunno. I’ll see how I feel when we get there.’
The two brothers stared out at the rolling sea, and the low, grey clouds that whipped across it almost at mast height. Once the skipper had chosen the spot, it would take them a couple of hours to shoot their nets – steaming quietly ahead and letting the sea pull the net overboard. Then they would drift silently for maybe four, or even six hours, before they began the back-breaking work of hauling in over a mile of nets. Shooting them again, if they were empty.
‘I’d better be going,’ said Neil. ‘Make some grub for the men, before they start.’ He waited until a wave surged past, then opened the deckhouse door.
Andy peered forward through streaming windows. ‘Don’t expect gentle treatment,’ he warned. ‘I’m treating you like the rest of the crew. Worse. So that nobody can ever say that I’m going easy on my brother.’
‘I wouldn’t want it any other way,’ Neil replied evenly. Then closed the door, and stepped over the streaming decks, towards the galley.
‘My nose is itchy,’ Aggie complained.
‘Want me to scratch it?’ Mary held up hands that were dripping with fish slime and scales.
‘How about these ones?’ Elsie asked.
Mary saw that the young girl’s hands were raw and red, from handling wet fish and salt. She felt pity, but there was nothing she could do to help. The damaged skin would toughen up – but never enough to cope with the agonizing hacks that all gutters and packers suffered, in the cold of the late season.
This was their second day of work, easier from the start. But the clouds were low and rain was driven across the tables by the westerly wind.
Aggie reached for another herring. With little more than a roll of both wrists, she had it gutted and dropped into a tub.
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br /> ‘Less fish been landed today,’ she judged. ‘The boats should get a better price for their night’s work. The ones that found herring, anyway.’
Nobody mocked a boat returning empty-handed. It could happen to any of them. There was luck as well as skipper’s skill in finding the shoals. But, since a share of what they caught made up a fisherman’s wages, nobody sailed with an unlucky skipper for long. The crews, like the sea, were hard taskmasters.
Once the table was emptied, the women wiped their hands, and went over to sit on old boxes or barrels. Glad to take the weight off their feet, until the next batch of fish arrived. A few of them brought out their lunchtime ‘piece’, and started eating.
‘There’s Mary Cowie! Sitting like a queen.’
She looked up to see Andy Findlay grinning.
‘So you managed to find your way back to the harbour?’ she asked sweetly.
‘Full of herrings,’ he boasted. ‘These fish scales on your nose suit you.’
Mary made no attempt to remove them. Fish mess was a way of living, when you were a gutter quine. She glanced beyond Andy, to see his brother standing quietly there. His eyes crinkled, and she smiled back at him. Glad that Neil had found his way back into the family boat and up to Orkney. In that tumble of wind and water lay his best chance of finding himself again.
The two fishermen headed into the village, for provisions. Most of the crews were catching up on sleep in the moored boats. They would be putting to sea again by late afternoon, ready for the night’s fishing.
‘I think that Andy fancies you,’ Aggie commented.
‘Andy fancies anything in skirts.’
‘He’s very good looking,’ Elsie said.
‘There’s more to a man than a head of curly hair,’ Aggie replied.
She turned away. It came as it always did, a wave of misery that surged to overwhelm her. Two waves. First, for the loss of her man. Then second, her worry about what was happening to her bairn, back home. Was he missing her? Was he crying himself to sleep at nights, like she was doing? Or was he just too busy being a bairn, chasing other children, finding crabs in a pool. Climbing into doctor’s cars …