Something Fishy
Page 34
‘Now tell me, Lambert, what have you done to compensate for what you have taken? Can you even put a number to the fish you have taken from the sea, the shellfish you have plucked from the sand? What have you put back? What have you done to balance the scales?
‘Think about this and let me know your response. All my love, Millie XXX’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Lambert. He got up, poured himself another beer and went out onto the veranda, sat in Millie’s chair and gazed at the fine line where the ocean becomes the sky. He didn’t know about the eleven dimensions or the parallel universes but there was something naggingly sensible about what Millie called the Druidic Path and in maintaining a balance with nature. As an ex-bank manager he knew all about balances and he had to concede his fishing ledger was, to say the least, one-sided. He had treated the ocean with disdain, taking all the fish he wanted from it as though he had some kind of divine right. He had assumed that the ocean would always replace what he took and that it would be that way for ever. He’d given the ocean no more consideration than he had the fridge, and treated it in much the same way.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said again as it occurred to him that nature, or the ocean, had finally rebelled and decided he’d had his lot, that his quota of fish had been filled. He couldn’t bear the thought of never catching fish again, of never again having the thrill of a big snapper stripping line off his reel, of never having a big kingfish set off for South America with his hook in its mouth. He immediately went back indoors and wrote to Millie. His letter went on a bit but in essence it said, ‘You’re right. What do I do?’
It took nineteen days for Millie’s reply to reach him, nineteen fretful days during which the seas dropped, the wind dropped and nobody in town could believe Lambert hadn’t taken his boat out and caught fish the way he always used to do. When they’d come up to him in the pub to ask why he hadn’t gone fishing, he’d been grimly circumspect.
‘I have my reasons,’ he’d said in a manner calculated to discourage any further discussion. The townsfolk were beginning to think he’d lost it.
Millie’s letter was short and to the point. She told him that, beginning the night of the new moon, he had to go out to his favourite and most secret fishing spot and stay there for an hour either side of high tide. Once there, he had to throw into the water exactly the same amount of bait he’d use if he were fishing and at roughly the same rate. On no account was he to take a fishing line or even so much as a fishing hook with him. While there, he was to think about all the fish he’d caught over the span of his life, the cycle of the seasons and the wonderful, precious, regenerative power of an ocean accorded appropriate respect and care. He was to repeat the procedure every night for the entire cycle of the moon, weather permitting. Then, and only then, was he allowed to bait a hook.
Lambert followed Millie’s instructions to the letter. As he sat out on his rodless boat alone in the dark, he began to hear and see things he’d never noticed before. One night he heard an almost human gasp, which initially scared him witless, but turned out to be a green turtle taking a breath. It hung around the boat for some ten minutes, probably helping itself to the delicious pieces of bait Lambert tossed overboard. When it finally glided away into the blackness, Lambert felt as if he’d lost a friend.
Over the four weeks that he patiently did his penance, porpoises and sharks came up to make his acquaintance and partake of his generosity. Large schools of pelagic fish swept by and, one night, a river of squid streamed by on either side of his boat. They were iridescent in the light of his torch, an ever-changing ribbon of blue, green, white and silver, their eyes bright and shining like precious stones. It took nearly fifteen minutes for the last of the squid to pass by and Lambert was overcome by the sheer magic of it. He felt privileged and humbled. He felt that in some small way, Nature — that is Nature, Millie’s Nature, with a capital N — was letting him know She — with a capital S — was aware and appreciative of what he was doing. Sometimes the timing of the tides kept him out in the boat till dawn and he bore silent witness to the birth of a new day. Of course he’d been out on the water for many dawns but he’d always been going somewhere, deciding which reefs he was going to fish, which rigs he was going to use, and sunrise was merely a cue to turn off his running lights. For the first time in his life, Lambert had nothing to do but simply watch the night fade and the horizon colour up, and was deeply touched by the splendour of the awakening day.
At the end of his penance, with the tide peaking a few minutes after 9 pm and with the slim crescent of a new moon for company, Lambert set off for his most secret reef, this time with rod and reel. His hands shook as he baited his hooks, but why wouldn’t they? They’d been shaking since midafternoon when the wind had died and the possibility of going fishing had become a certainty. Lambert had never felt so apprehensive, not even when he’d stood in church awaiting the arrival of his bride, not even when his first child was born, or his second, not even when, heavy with grief, he’d given the eulogy first for his father, then for his mother. Lambert’s breath came in shallow gasps as he cast and allowed his line to sink. What if his penance had not been enough? What if his penance had been in vain? What if the fish continued to shun his baits? He actually squealed with fright when his rod suddenly doubled over. Then it was business as usual, yes, business as usual. But not entirely as usual.
Oh, no.
Millie laughed out loud when she read how Lambert had placed a smoked snapper on Hika’s grave. Most people take flowers but her husband had taken a fish. Her smile softened to one of affection when she read how he’d watched the seagulls devour the fish and how he’d naively imbued the event with Druidic significance, regarding it as a symbolic act of giving back to Nature. He even used a capital N. Her smile warmed further when she read how he stopped fishing the moment he’d caught all the fish he needed, how he no longer continued fishing purely for the sport, and how he put his rods away and, bit by bit, threw the remaining bait over the side. He also regarded this in a Druidic light as ‘giving back for what he’d taken’.
She laughed again when Lambert gave her credit for his change in fortune, and solemnly thanked her with a sincerity bordering on the painful. It amazed and amused her that he couldn’t see what he’d done. For forty years she’d listened to her husband’s fish stories and knew with blinding certainty that if you burleyed the same fishing spot for four weeks at the same time of the tide, fish would wake up to the fact. She also knew that if you went to that spot to fish on the new moon after all the burleying, a period which the Maori fishing calendar claimed was the hottest time of the month to fish, you really couldn’t miss. There was nothing Druidic, Celtic, mystical or magical about it. She laughed again but once more her smile softened to one of affection. She liked the sound of the change that had come over her husband. For the first time in all her wandering she began to think about going home.
Acknowledgements
Writing and fishing are compatible occupations. At no time are they more compatible than when the fishing is slow and night’s mantle shields me from the rest of the world. The glowing lights on my fish finder take on a whole new meaning as my mind races trying to imagine exactly what it is that is lurking beneath the hull. One night when the screen went crazy a one-point-three-metre turtle surfaced alongside my boat. A one-point-three-metre turtle in Pittwater? The product of that encounter is included in this collection. But stranger things happen.
On Norfolk Island I met and went fishing with a man who has seen a sea serpent. We were discussing the encounter while a two-metre tiger snake played around our boat like a puppy.
In Mexico I fished with a local skipper and deckie who passed the time between strikes reciting dialogue from the movie Snatch in ripe Cockney accents. One of them didn’t even speak English. It was the last thing I expected to happen eighty kilometres out to sea off Acapulco.
In Fiji I came across a small fish with a really weird claim to fame. It scares me more than a tank fu
ll of starving piranha. It’s also in the book.
Inspiration can come from the oddest places, often when it’s least expected. The only thing I’m sure of is that the more places I go and the more times I go fishing the more likely I am to find it.
For much appreciated help, advice and hospitality, thanks to:
Peter and Peggy Trethewey, Lionel and Judy Hunt, Peter Clarke, Ian Kenny, Graham Bland and Norman and Valerie Thompson.
Thanks also to my publishers, HarperCollins, agent, Margaret Connolly, and editor, Nicola O’Shea, for their unswerving support and encouragement.
Oh, one more thing.
All the characters in this book are my own creations except for Captain Pete and Miss Peggy, Low Gear Joe, amigos XR, Chuy and Pinky, Peter Clarke and Ian Kenny, Howard Christian and Ian Walters.
About the Author
DEREK HANSEN is the author of several bestselling novels and collections of short stories. He divides his time between his home on Sydney’s northern beaches and his winter hideaway in Doonan, southeast Queensland. He’s one of those authors who has to know how a story ends before starting it. This is hard going and involves endless hours of lonely contemplation, exiled on his boat with a couple of lines over the side and a cold beer in hand. It’s tough, but someone has to do it.
Also by Derek Hansen
Remember Me
Lunch with the Generals
Lunch with Mussolini
Lunch with the Stationmaster
Lunch with a Soldier
Sole Survivor
Blockade
The Perfect Couple
SHORT STORIES
Dead Fishy
Psycho Cat
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2005
This edition published in 2016
by HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Limited
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www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Derek Hansen 2005
The right of Derek Hansen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Hansen, Derek
Something fishy.
1. Fishing - Fiction. I. Title.
A823.3