greenblue · · · · · mahogany · · beer can · · the wood · · the polish, sheets, no pillows · · sleep · · · · · no movement · · no movement! The ship is not rolling, or pitching! Or hardly. Up then, not sleepy, time · · Christ, it’s seven, I must have slept all of twelve hours, more, amazing, my capacity for sleep, now, here, there must be some physiological or biochemical reason for it, surely, yes. Now: what has happened, why are we still? Not in port, we must still be at sea, yet last night the sea was violent, and we were far out of sight of land? Festy, is Festy underneath? No, and Mick’s asleep, dare not wake him. Get up and see, then, only thing to do, good to be up for breakfast, for a change, anyway, half an hour, up on the bridge then, for a little while, then, dress, easy now, no movement, I should seize this opportunity to change my underpants, or otherwise my balls will be in danger of rotting off, ha, with the dirt, no chance to bath yet, or wash down even, filthy, but there are so many more important matters, than washing, that really it is marginal, of little account. · · So then. Clean pants in airing cupboard, my locker, warm to the touch, to put on, good. So: clean shirt as well, push hair back, feel brighter than I have done for days, purple sweater on top—my overcoat, just remembered, seeing it, that I brought it: but have not needed it: either I am in the warm, needing only a sweater extra, sometimes not even that, or I am out, in the cold, on the deck, in skins. · · · · · · · · The Skipper greets me with theatrical surprise as I come on to the bridge, asking if we are to have the rare pleasure of my company for breakfast, and smiling as I peer out to port to see land just near us. He tells me we had to run for shelter as the weather deteriorated quickly: fog thick as guts, as well, he says. We are now in the lee of the land near Vardö. We ran for Norwegian shelter rather than the Russian coast, not for any political reason but because the former gave more protection from the WNW wind. · · Now we wait for the weather to lift. The atmosphere on the bridge is quite different, the Skippers mood is almost lighthearted, though he is obviously impatient at the weather. But there is nothing he can do about it, so he, and everyone else, can relax. Ah whale, Said the sole, the Skipper says to me unexpectedly and whimsically, Ah sole, Replied the Whale. I fall about laughing. Stagg, on watch, does not laugh, does not move, gives no sign he has even heard: perhaps he has not. The Skipper shows me where we are on the chart, and I make one of my infrequent checks on the Sal log to see how far we have steamed since leaving: 1642, I make it: I had a chance to note the figure when we started, for I stared at it a long while before I slept that first night aboard. · · · · · At breakfast the Chief is more talkative, as well, and says to me Why don’t you come and have a look at my engines? Why, takes up the Skipper, Is something wrong with them? Everyone laughs, except the Chief. · · · · · · · · I walk out on to the deck, strangely level, though there is a slight swell, stand by the aft gallows looking towards the land. Fairly low-lying, no great fall of cliffs to the sea, a green cap, surprisingly, to me, who had not expected green, of this shade at least, yellowish-green, though the sea sometimes is green, that dark transluscent green, a threatening green, really, yes, threatening. No habitation, no buildings, no animals on that green ledge, as far as I can see, no port, it must be round that point, beyond the arm to starboard and astern. The clouds, grey streaked with black, move quickly everywhere above: bearing rain, or even snow, I would think: I cannot tell how long it will be before a break comes, but at least it is not raining now, nor is there fog, and the wind is nothing to what it was yesterday afternoon, when I had to hold starkly to the rail down from the bridge, to avoid being taken off into that threatening green sea. · · Jack calls me, from the liver-house, Jack, who keeps interesting things for me, curiosities which turn up in the trawl. Today he has a dogfish, the only one caught so far, stiff and bent rigorously by the shape of the bucket it has lain in, about two pounds in weight, looking just like a baby shark, vicious enough for its size. Jack cuts off its fins, then flenses it of its white and blueblack skin, for me, he says, to try to persuade the cook to fry it for me: You said you liked rock salmon, says Jack, so here you are. Jack was not there when I said this, I know, so someone on Festy’s watch must have told him: and then, word for word, he says, This one came over the side barking! This is not the first time I have noticed the repetition of my remarks: after all, there is little new to talk about, anyone new at all is a diversion: and I have given little to them really, because of my seasickness. Jack also has best part of an enormous crab, legs here and there being missing, a spider crab, just like the illustrations on Russian crabmeat tins, which contain very good crabmeat, but the crabs themselves are not the same kind as English ones. And this crab is red, as though it had been cooked already: I tell Jack that I think he is kidding me, as I know that lobsters go red only after they are cooked: but he assures me that this is how the crab came out of the sea, and that if I do not believe him, I can watch every haul until they bring up another, and thus see for myself. I apologise, for he has taken offence I did not intend, and to cover up our mutual embarrassment Jack shows me at the bottom of the bucket the brown flatness, flecked with orange spots, of a plaice. As he puts his hand in, the plaice flaps twice before he can hold it through the gills: looking at me as though about to reveal a secret, he suddenly reverses the fish to show that the bottom two fillets have been cut away. That’s what I like about plaice, Jack says, They do keep trying. This cruelty, as many would call it despite the anthropomorphic fallacy of such a description, does not disgust me, does not make me feel for the plaice: it might have done on land, but here the life itself is so near to cruelty, the sea so merciless, the air so biting, that keeping a plaice alive to make fresher fillets for a trawlerman’s tea seems a very minor thing, nothing to bring down the RSPCA about, no. Indeed, I ask Jack if we have caught any more plaice in order that I may have fillets for my own tea, but no, like the one dogfish, this is the sole plaice that has been seen on this trip. Jack tells me that most things like this never reach market, that if a salmon were by chance to be caught then there would be little likelihood of it reaching shore. Life is that hard, I see, that such diversions, such small delicacies, are so welcome, so esteemed. If it were a dozen salmon, of course, or a kit of plaice, it would be a different matter. · · Jack shows me how they boil the livers in this little space at the stern, this fairly stinking little liver-house. They all like to show me their parts of the ship, their function on it, all of them, the Skipper, Duff, Festy, the Chief asked today, and now Jack: at least I am that much to them, provide them with some relief, some conversation, allow them to reassure themselves of their identities, as a pleasuretripper. I am not very interested in the liver-boiling, however, especially as I learn that codliveroil can also be obtained from haddock and most other livers available. And even though the liveroil is doubtless a highly-valued commodity, not only by us, but by seabirds, as well, and other fish, still these facts do not make me more interested in this method of extracting it by the application of scalding steam in three vessels, filled from the liver-chopper on the deck forward. Nor does the speed with which the livers must be, are, processed, within an hour or so of death, that is, impress me overmuch. There are some things I just cannot be interested in: and there are no livers to boil at this moment, anyway. Just a little more am I interested in the towing block, just forward of the liver-house, since this it is which wakes me with its craangking so often. It’s a German invention, says Jack, You just pull this lever and your trawl comes free. It keeps the warps free of the screw aft, until you want to haul. Last trip it broke, one of the castings, here, this one, and we had to use a block and chain arrangement instead, which wasn’t so handy. · · · · · From inside we hear the bell of the telegraph, and are both glad that we are about to move again. Jack says the Skipper is moving early, taking a chance that by the time we are out where he wants to fish the weathe
r will have improved sufficiently for us to begin fishing again. He moves away, about forty-five years old, six foot four or five, with the paunch many trawlermen put on because of the lack of exercise and the farinaceous food: though they are tough enough in the arms and legs with all the heaving and holding, and there is enough protein in fish to fill themselves with if they choose. · · · · · I wander up the deck towards the pounds, tapping the paunch that lack of exercise gave me on land, reduced now because for at least half the days we have been at sea I have not been able to retain what I have eaten to nourish it. It is one advantage, I suppose, the only effective way of reducing I have yet come across, but how painful! But I have conquered seasickness now, I feel as though I shall never again be seasick, I shall be able to face any voyage I might have to undertake without any fear of it again: at least this trip has done that for me. Starfish, red too, like the crab, perhaps I was wrong to doubt Jack, of course I was wrong to, bend down to pick—aha! She rolls! Though nothing much. We are really moving out now. The starfish rough, sandpaper-like, to the touch, not very delicate, as the cliché would have it, but rather crude, clumsily designed, thick edges. But the colour subtle, the shading subtle, the roughness pleasant to the fingers. Skim it away into the sea, star-spread-eagled. What else? · · The odd gut here and there, caught up by some obstruction on the deck, not washed clear by the thousands of seas which must have beaten their way across us these last two days: rope-like pink strands, twisted curlicues of fishflesh, not flesh, exactly, fishmeat, fish intestines, fish offal: no doubt all good protein, but no use for it here: I suppose factory ships process it into fishmeal. But here it is shot into the sea, discarded, but for these few relics, sad, no, rubbish! They are washed-out colours, at least the sea has done that to them, faded bloodred to pink, purple to lilac, Oxford to Cambridge blue, fleshcolour to white. This is boring. · · Ah! A ginnie, I must take special care of the ginnies, for her sake, for that is my name for her, I can’t call you that, I said, when I first met her, I’ll call you Ginnie. Special care: but mind the bony ridge along the back, nasty: is she still alive? I doubt it, but I must give her that chance, must, so carefully, lift, ease, jammed under the pound board, so lift, take the weight carefully, weight off carefully, yes, control, sorry, must kick you, both hands needed for the board, oh, little ginnie, freed now, pick her up carefully, daintily, by the root of your cracking tail, yet, so white underneath, to the rail, over! Yes, floats, does she swim, I cannot tell, no movement, ah! The wave swept her. Little ginnie. Anyway, I did my best, I made the effort to do what was right, as I saw it, as I see it. · · · · · · · · The Skipper is worried about a Norwegian line fisherman in a small boat off to our starboard, who looks as if he may have laid lines right across our course. He tells me of how such as this man will claim months later through his government that on such-and-such a day he lost so many hooks and so much line as a result of a trawler fouling him up: and there is no way of proving it either way, so the trawler owners usually paid up. The Skipper regards the line fishermen as a menace, for their lines often stretch for two miles with nothing to indicate them except a small buoy at either end. · · On such small things do trawlermen build a talking point, making as much as they possibly can out of it. Yet I could stand here for hours, just watching the wash from our bow wave, staring at the way it furrows out, the form of the green-white waves we make, the pattern which is always different for each yet always related to the others, our bow wave wash, and the way the foam boils up furiously, to decline into less than—God, she rolls, I begin to feel sick again! Again! No, not again, I can’t believe it! Yet the pattern is as before—accustom, calm, then sick again! Oh, no! No, aaaah, my solar plexus grinds on my ribs, or something! Out, then, don’t care if they do laugh, down, the wrong side, I’ve chosen the weather side, who cares, sick, sick, can’t hold it, aaaaaaaaaaagh! · · · · · Relief, yet know it is not finished, no, more to go where that went, all staining down the companionway, hope a sea will wash it away, it can do, though the weather is not bad enough for that, yet, no, almost I hope it will be, to clear up my mess on these brass and teak steps leading down: seas were coming higher than this yesterday, at one point I stood on the bridge ladder while the other side of the bulkhead a few inches away a great sea thundered past and parallel to me, a sea that would have washed me a hundred yards astern, if it had caught me, it seemed. Such a sea would rid these steps of my vomit, on its backwash through the lower door, but no sign of that yet, the seas barely flood the scuppers, as she rolls, now: But it is enough to make me heave, the rolling, yes, I feel it again, aaaaoaoagh, nooo, plooogh! A great heave, but far less than last time, down now to the almost colourless stuff, my diaphragm or whatever it is hurts like hell every time, and to touch it hurts, too. I should move, to heave over the rail, at least, one more heave and I can go down below, sleep, or at least lie, though I have only just got up, so down, careless about stepping in the vomit, my own puke, left through the door, gap, there ought to be a shipname for it, pushing aside the rope that is always for some good reason slackly from the top down across, I on to the deck and on to the rail yet again, hard, cold, black-rusted steel, giving off that smell of seawater-corroded iron which, together with diesel oil, makes up that peculiar smell of a ship, which I first remember associated with the nausea of seasickness when I went across to the Scilly Isles. Or so it seems, I connect the smell with seawater corroding iron, but perhaps it does not make a smell, this chemical action, I do not know, I would not know, I was . . . last time, aaaaagh! Not so bad, that time, no, even when so racked with puking I notice I still keep desperate hold of the rail, so it does not appear to be true that one would just as soon die when being seasick, no. Well enough, then, to get back down—oh, she pitches now as she begins to hit the big seas, the rough outer water, as that strip of green land is now a grey line on the horizon, ah, down, rest, rest, rest.
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