by Lamorna Ash
‘It’s deceiving,’ Andrew says, joining me on the balcony. ‘Look at it long enough and you’ll start to see all sorts … Go on, get yourself to bed now.’
No one sleeps much that night. The fishermen call it ‘channelling’: when thoughts of your missus and your children and your home at home swim through your mind all night, waking you repeatedly from sleep. When I first heard the term, I assumed it came from the idea of a channel as a watercourse, connecting two greater regions of water together, but another fisherman tells me it is drawn from channel in the spiritual sense: to convey the message of a spirit from another world to this one. The Filadelfia herself is the medium in this sense, providing the link between the men’s two worlds, the sea and the land. Our channelling seems to fill the whole cabin, as if Newlyn were radiating out from our bunks, each of our personal images of it merging together into a single, shimmering image at the room’s centre. We wake from our half-dreams, bleary-eyed. While we have been rocked and tossed in our sleeping bags, the sea has grown impatient, and by morning resembles a threatening mass of dark waves like a herd of buffalo waiting to charge.
‘See, I told you,’ Don announces as I enter the wheelhouse. ‘You always pay for good weather sooner or later.’ I track the gradually worsening conditions through the surface of my coffee, its usual concentric circles of activity developing into a whole tidal movement in my mug that occasionally spills over the rim and onto my now blackened and gut-sodden tracksuit bottoms. I go to the fridge to make myself a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast and a pack of butter leaps out at me from inside and hits me square in the face. Several cold Yorkshire puddings follow it out, like the more cowardly members of a gang coming in for a final beating once I’m already down. When it is rough weather, Andrew likes to tease the men watching the waves nervously by saying: ‘You pay thirty quid to go to Alton Towers, and out here you get it for free!’
All those months before, during my final night on the Crystal Sea, I similarly saw the predicted Force 8 storms begin to transform the sea. The gentle rhythms of the waves picked up into a violent lurching motion, shifting from ‘milk’ to ‘smoking’ – when the wind is so fierce it knocks the tops off the waves, creating something that looks like smoke. I stayed up in the wheelhouse the whole way back to land during the ghostly period of the Dog Watch, gripping onto the sides of my seat, not daring to move. To take my mind off the brewing storm, the crewman on watch, a Newcastle man named Jimmy, recited to me his favourite conspiracy theories as we drove back to shore. In those unslept hours before the sun rose, I began to imagine it was his words that were making the seas churn – chimeras surging out of the blackness and slamming against the square wheelhouse windows, while his yarns become wilder. Jimmy told me that at the centre of the earth there existed a nether region where aliens lie dormant, waiting for some sign or final act of destruction upon the earth by humans before they reveal themselves and save our planet from us. The Pyramids were actually nuclear sources that power alien spaceships, each story becoming more plausible as the storm blew outside. His final tale, he claimed, he had seen with his own eyes. ‘On a raging night, much like this,’ he narrated in a prophetic tone, ‘a creature believed to be no more than a myth appeared right beside the boat.’ A white vortex with a black circle at its centre surfaced slowly from the water. The black circle flicked around to stare right at Jimmy and, to his horror, he realised he was being watched by the humongous, globe eye of a giant squid. The eye watched him; he watched the eye. He yelled out to the other crew, but the gale swallowed his voice and the eye disappeared back into the sea. No one ever believes him, Jimmy told me, but he knows what he saw.
Back on the Filadelfia, it is Kyle who is on watch for the three hours it takes us to return to shore with our seagull companions littering the deck and flying alongside us like streamers. When he tells me that once we are exactly five miles from the land, our phone service will return and with it the whole mood of the boat will shift, I am unconvinced. After eight days, the crew feel akin to my family and I cannot believe such closeness is merely one of proximity and lack of other options. ‘Any second now,’ Kyle announces half an hour later, his eyes glued to the radar. ‘Yep, here we go.’
I can feel my phone burning through my pocket, imagining the strips of light darting across it with each new message. All vows to keep myself from it are forgotten. I should at least text my parents, and what if something had happened to a friend while I was away? I reach into my pocket and turn it on.
A myopia descends upon the whole crew simultaneously. Our smiles turn inwards as our home lives open outwards. At once, Kyle and I, who have yarned and prattled together all week, lapse into silence, transfixed by our screens. Our fingers caress the smooth, clean surfaces of our virtual lives and in each of our eyes shines a reflected blue oblong. And, like that, the community of the past eight days fractures. The Filadelfia, moments before the only world that mattered, is no more than a place of work once more, or a vehicle to convey us back to our real lives. I find myself already trying to condense eight days’ worth of life into digestible anecdotes for friends. I send long, apologetic texts to my frantic parents, who, not knowing I would have no signal, had gone into panic mode when I suddenly went silent – they later admit that they called both the Harbourmaster’s Office and Stevenson’s and tracked every second of my journey back on the AIS, their daughter represented by a small green arrow making zigzags across the oceans.
The land comes as a genuine surprise. I don’t think I had imagined it as a single, unbroken entity the whole time we were at sea; I was only able to conjure up pieces of it, isolated in time. We sit in the galley eating crisps, looking from our phones to the views beyond the galley windows and back again, our eyes resting briefly on each recognised landmark along the scabrous cliffs. There is Land’s End, where I am reminded each year by my parents that I threw up in the car park when I was seven because the road to it is so winding; there is Porthcurno with its telegraphy history; the tumbling granite terraces of the Minack Theatre; my namesake, Lamorna, which, from a sea distance, appears insignificant and grey.
At this point on the voyage home, Don calls his brother Shane. Their conversation is brief. Shane, an ex-fisherman who works on Newlyn’s fisheries patrol boat, lets him know that things are all okay on land; Don fills him in on the success of the fishing trip. After the call, Don tells me he and his brother made a pact when they were boys to call each other on the way home every time either of them were coming back from sea. Don and Shane lost their brother at sea when he was a teenager and their father, a fisherman too, died when they were just children. And so now they make this weekly call, just to say, ‘Hello. I’m okay. I’m coming back again.’
We round the next bend in the coastline and see St Clement’s Isle, the small cluster of rocks where a hermit once lived, at which I have stared at drunkenly for many happy hours from the Old Coastguard in Mousehole. And then, as we reach the final jut of shoreline before Newlyn, my gaze lingers upon the forlorn shape of the old lifeboat station at Penlee Point, hanging out above the sea. I remember Roger the geologist telling me that beneath this extrusion in the land is a dolomite foundation. It is this foundation that provided the bay with a natural shelter, allowing the first people to be protected from the desolate conditions of the Cornish coast. This means, Roger had informed me with a wry smile all those months before, that the very basis for Newlyn’s existence, the reason it ever became a fishing port at all, was geological.
As it was with our departure, the sun is just going down behind Mount’s Bay on our return. Where before the panorama opened up to show us the whole sky and every moment of the sun’s descent, now the sun disappears quietly again behind Mount Misery. I find myself feeling bereft, almost, as I realise that my perspective will be bracketed by the land once more – for who knows how long this time. I ask Don, who has taken over from Kyle to moor the Filadelfia, if it is still exciting for him to see Newlyn emerge along the coast after al
l these years. ‘You see the Mount,’ he replies solemnly, ‘and it doesn’t matter whether the trip was the best you’ve ever had or a pile of crap, you think “I’m home”.’ The ‘h’ of home is swallowed, the contracted word pronounced with great meaning, like a word of prayer. ’Ome.
The other men and I, without seeming conscious of our movements, have gravitated towards the very extremities of the deck, the same position from which Newlyn fishermen have for hundreds of years leaned out as they steer back towards the harbour; at this point, they too, like Don but with an even thicker Newlyn accent, would cry out: ‘I’m ’Ome.’ Andrew sees me craning my neck, my eyes squinting to make out Denise and Lofty’s cottage and calls out to me: ‘It’s a good sight!’
And for hundreds of years too, wives, parents and children have hurried down to the harbour as soon as news spread that their fishermen are about to return. Kyle talks excitedly of seeing his beloved dog and missus, who has promised to bring him several of his favourite sandwiches; Stevie’s wife will pick him up with their daughter; Andrew’s brother is coming straight down onto the boat to pick up his promised fish and drop off some blackberry wine; Don will stay the latest, sorting out all of the business of the boat, before seeing friends briefly, if he’s not too exhausted, and then heading home to his flat.
The Filadelfia passes the welcoming red and white lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour and makes it way over to the market, where I can already see Stevensons’ employees waiting to unload her catch. I had not expected anyone to be waiting for me, but when we are a hundred metres or so away from the harbour wall, I see a tall figure leaning against a mooring pole. It is Lofty, still wearing his work fleece, hands in his pockets. I race across the deck to greet him, oily-faced engineers peering down in surprise at the girl brought in from the sea.
The last moments on a fishing boat are always anticlimactic. The men, their work not yet over, sigh, stretch and climb back down to the fish room to start attaching boxes of frozen fish to cranes up on the market level. I watch the stream of action occurring around me and feel redundant once more, alone in the middle of the deck.
On the Crystal Sea, one of the crew had warned me of a strange pull that might prevent me from leaving the boat once we reached the harbour. I felt this almost immediately: the everyday world beyond the boat became overwhelming – vast, loud and filled with bodies bustling about. To delay re-entering the fray I stayed with the crew on board for a few hours. Sitting in the belly of the boat with nets sprawled across the floor, I observed the crew skilfully weaving net needles in and out of the loose fabric, replacing deteriorating sections with new, diamond shapes. The heterogeneous texture of these nets, composed of variously aged and coloured threads, told the history of the Crystal Sea’s journeys and of the many hands that have worked together on the boat. At last David the skipper picked up my bag, placed a firm hand on my back, as if he had encountered this reluctance with other visitors to the Crystal Sea too, who had in those few days out on the water forgotten where they were from and had to be gently reminded, and guided me back over the harbour wall.
When I ask Don if I can do anything to help on the Filadelfia, he replies: ‘No, you take yourself home now,’ and gives me a quick hug. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, all right Lamorna?’
‘Right, yeah. See you tomorrow, then…’ I say, disorientated. ‘And thank you!’ I call down to the crew. Andrew climbs back up to hand me the plastic bag filled with the fish I filleted. Kyle tells me he always keeps a few crabs back after a trip so that if you’re pissed and don’t have any money for a Stones Taxi, you can barter with seafood. ‘Couple of crayfish and you can get a nice bottle from the offie, too,’ he advises me and then also hugs me goodbye.
I heave myself up the harbour ladder from the sea, practically falling into Lofty’s arms when I reach the top. In Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss writes that when, after a whole month at sea, the men at last saw Martinique appear on the horizon, they did not cry: ‘Land! Land!’ but, ‘A bath, at last a bath tomorrow!’ It is only then, when coming face to face with Lofty, that I realise quite how rancid I smell. ‘You need a shower!’ Lofty laughs. I stagger down the quay, swaying like a drunkard and almost falling over several times, unused to the land’s stillness.
The town is quiet and dark, the sun now fully submerged behind Mount Misery. Outside the door to Orchard Cottage, I look up at the stars, scanning for the lasso constellation I saw every night at sea, but am unable to find it. Once in, I go straight to the shower and stand right close to the showerhead so that the water pours down my face. I keep my head under until the last entrails of unspecified fish have washed down the plughole, gasping at the strength of the water pouring down on me, my hand placed against the blue tiled walls to keep my balance. And then, still wrapped up in my towel, I collapse into bed.
Most extraordinary to me in Lopez’s account of the narwhal is the fact that their earliest ancestors, and of whales too, were insect-eating terrestrial creatures. After 330 million years facing the sea from the land, they slipped away to start new lives under the skin of the water. I wonder if the narwhals carry any memory of what it was like to walk upon the land and if, in the great passage of time still to come, they might ever return to the solid earth once more.
27
FISHERMAN’S BLUES
All that first night back on land my ears are full of the drone of the Filadelfia’s engine. I dream I am back in the shower, washing yet more fish guts from my hair. They splatter onto the white base of the bath like a crime scene and get stuck in the drain. More guts pour down, coming not just from my hair, I realise, but from the showerhead itself: guts, and then whole fish, fish within fish. And the water is dark, salt. It fills the bath and goes over.
Next morning the world still has not realigned itself. The sounds are all wrong, the ground below me still suspiciously motionless, the lack of distance oppressive. It is as if I am viewing my life through the porthole in the Filadelfia’s toilet, the world outside just the flicking images of a kinetoscope. I call my parents again, unsure what else to do, but when they answer, I don’t know what to say. Each time they ask me for a detail of the trip, my answers come out jumbled or half-finished. I break off and try again, growing more mumbling with every attempt. Eventually I say something like: ‘Sorry, I don’t think I’m properly back yet, actually,’ and hang up on my poor, bemused mother and father.
I try to remember the normal things one does on the land. I send a few letters, do some washing, pick up groceries, nervously peek at my email account with my hands over my eyes and, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of detritus gathering in my inbox, shut it. I return to bed, exhausted. There is a saying that goes: ‘I’m in the harbour again.’ It announces to the world – I’m safe, I survived, I’ve come home. Returning from sea doesn’t feel that definitive. Though your body is in the harbour once more, for a long time your mind is still at sea.
I must have fallen asleep because an hour later I wake to a call coming in from Don. ‘You’ll never guess what!’ he yells down the phone as soon as I answer (after a day without direction, it is a relief to hear his gruff tones once more). ‘We got a boat record at the auction this morning: fifty-four and a half grand!’
‘Fifty-four?!’ I say, ‘Jesus Christ, congratulations!’
‘Don’t forget the half!’ He bellows. And then, joyfully, ‘So we’re getting pissed, tonight. All right?’
Before I can reply, he hangs up.
Cabarouse – a ‘noisy frolic’ or ‘drinking bout’ – is a term that comes to feel as essential to understanding Cornish fishermen as any other dialect word relating to fishing in Nance’s Glossary. By the time I roll into the Star at around five, Don and Andrew are already a few pints down. Our first greeting is uncharacteristically formal, almost awkward, as we take in each other’s clean, land-appropriate appearances. Don has had his hair cut and wears a smart jacket; Andrew has brown leather shoes and jeans; I’ve washed my hair and put on a little make
-up – back on the Filadelfia Andrew joked that I’d turn up in high heels and a skirt and no one would recognise me. Our collective stuttering is broken as soon as Don shouts: ‘Come ’ere!’ and pulls me into an embrace. Andrew joins in and we huddle together in a circle, rejoicing over the victory at this morning’s market.
I take a look around the Star. There is a smattering of bodies: an old man in a cowboy’s hat leaning low over his drink at the bar whom Debbie is cleaning around; a tired fisherman smoking in the doorway; a petite, bald man running his finger down the side of the jukebox, and Rob and Ellen, a retired couple who are good as gold. It doesn’t surprise me that Stevie hasn’t joined us – he doesn’t like to waste precious time in the pub anymore when he could be with his wife and young daughter – but I keep expecting Kyle to appear. Back in the wheelhouse, he would regale me with innumerable landing-day-pints stories, each wilder than the last. Just yesterday morning, he boasted that he’d probably be in the pub by lunchtime and I’d have to catch up. I ask Andrew and Don if they know where Kyle is, but they say they haven’t heard from him all day, and meanwhile set to buying drinks for the entire pub.
We gather cosily around the wooden table in front of the window that looks out to the harbour, where I have sat so many times before with Denise and Lofty. There is a grating of wooden chairs as Rob and Ellen, and the few others who have joined us, dutifully settle in opposite us to play audience for the night. Every time someone in Newlyn told me their story, I wished I had one to tell back – a single story that was not of school, or university, one not set against some kind of institutional backdrop. This is the first thing I have done. It’s the first story I’ll tell about myself.