‘Now I know you know all about gutting herring,’ he told her with his neat little smile, ‘but kippering is different. We split them along the back so that they can be flattened and hung up for smoking by the strongest part, the shoulder.’
Ina watched him, wondering how anyone could get so much real satisfaction from smoking fish.
‘We take the intestines out,’ he continued, and it seemed entirely in character, somehow, that he said ‘intestines’, it fitted with the neatness of the man. ‘Neatness’ might have been his middle name.
‘And then,’ he said, leading her to a barrel of fish steeping in a dark brown liquid, ‘we put them in salt and dye for about fifteen minutes. We call it BFK dye – brown for kippering,’ and he laughed as though he’d made a joke, as he put a hand under her elbow and led her to a table covered with freshly salted and dyed fish. The table had a slope towards the middle for the excess liquid to run off, and lassies stood at either side. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are tintering sticks,’ pointing to strips of wood running above the table at eye-level in front of each worker. Ina noticed the sticks were about a metre long and studded at close intervals with nails like hooks. ‘And if you watch the ladies you’ll see that they hang the fish on the hooks – by the shoulder, as I said – to let the BFK dye drain off.’
Ina wondered why he was giving her a guided tour, why he hadn’t just said ‘Watch the others and you’ll get the hang of it,’ then she noticed the other lassies, most of whom she knew, grinning quietly and exchanging glances with each other.
‘The ladies all look as though they’re heavy smokers,’ Aeneas smiled – another joke, she supposed – ‘but they’re not, their hands and arms are stained by the dye you see. It’s an occupational hazard, I’m afraid, a cross you have to bear, eh ladies?’
The ‘ladies’ made no reply, but Ina read their sly smiles.
‘When we have about eight pairs of drained kippers on each stick it goes in to the smokehouse,’ Aeneas said, walking off. ‘Over this way, Miss Polson.’
Ina followed but swore to herself that she’d have a word with the ‘ladies’ when the little man had cleared off.
‘As you can see, it’s high so that we can get lots of tiers of sticks inside, but it’s narrow, and the smoking’s done by lighting a fire of oak chips and sawdust and letting it smoulder away for anything up to twelve hours. I actually like that smell, don’t you?’ he asked brightly.
Ina nodded as the tutorial continued.
‘The main problem we face is controlling the temperature,’ he sighed, ‘that’s one of the improvements I hope we can develop in due course. The optimum oil content is about fifteen percent, but I don’t have to tell you, Miss Polson, that the fish don’t care about our preferences. In November it can be as low as nine percent and in summer as high as twenty-five percent.’ His brow furrowed and he shook his head; this was something that mattered greatly to Aeneas Hamilton, she realised, the vagaries of fish and their seasonal oiliness.
‘If the heat’s too high we get burned offerings instead of kippers, and even a slight draught through the smokehouse can bring the lot crashing down on to the floor.’ To his furrowed brow he added a shake of the head this time, then he suddenly brightened up. ‘Did you know that we also make red herrings?’ he asked, almost excitedly. ‘We leave them to soak in brine for weeks and weeks, then we smoke them for weeks and weeks more, that’s what gives them their colour. Started out as food for slaves on ships taking them to America, so they tell me, and now they’re part of African cuisine. Very strong taste, though,’ he said, this time grimacing, ‘not at all my cup of tea, Miss Polson, but they’re very popular abroad. No accounting for tastes, I suppose.’ He stood in silence as if contemplating a deep mystery of the universe before looking up at Ina again. ‘If you’d like to look around on your own, do feel free,’ he smiled and left her.
If she wanted to look around by herself, Ina thought savagely, heading back to the tintering tables, where she was met by raucous laughter from ‘the ladies.’
‘My God, Ina Polson!’ shouted Maggie, a woman she knew from Lerwick, twisting around to wipe her eyes on her rolled-up sleeve, ‘and that wee man has a fancy for you all right! Wait till the folks at home hear you’ve caught yourself a big fish, even if he is a dry one!’
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ Ina retorted, trying to ignore the laughter. ‘He was only showing me round.’
Maggie looked around the other lassies and shouted out ‘Hands up any other body here who was given a personal tour by wee Aeneas.’
There was a moment of silence as Ina scanned the room but not one hand went up, then she met Maggie’s gaze and the entire workforce of lassies burst out laughing.
‘I told you!’ Maggie said smugly.
‘Rubbish,’ Ina replied dismissively and turned to go.
‘You mark my words, Ina, don’t you let that wee dry fish get you in a corner, that’s all we’re saying – right lassies? You’ve brought out the beast in him, Ina, and I’ll be buggered if I ever thought there was one in him!’
As she left, Ina tried to walk as slowly as possible to give the impression that the banter had failed to hit its target, but all the same, she was glad she didn’t bump in to Aeneas again on her way out.
The part of the herring trade at Sutton’s she never liked was canning, though she was fast enough at it. After the fish were canned a spoonful of vinegar would be put in, or some kind of sauce like mustard or tomato. For some reason she couldn’t stand the smell of it, even if she did get used to it to some extent.
‘All these years covered in fish guts, scales and blood,’ Ella would laugh, ‘and it’s the tomato sauce that does for you!’
‘I know, I know,’ Ina would laugh. ‘I can’t understand it myself, but I hate it!’ And though she never complained, she noticed that Aeneas didn’t ask her to do canning work unless there was no one else to do it.
Then came the war in 1939 and the lassies were sent home or to work wherever they were told by the authorities. It was the end of an era, though they didn’t know it then. Ina was told that she would be going to work in the Naval Hospital in Aberdeenshire. She was quite happy about it. As ever, she didn’t want to go home. She was over thirty years old, well on her way to being an old maid, and contentedly so. There hadn’t even been a near miss, so the gypsy had been as much a waste of money as she had suspected at the time. She had been away from Lerwick longer than she’d ever lived there; she wasn’t who she had been then and knew she could never live there again. Over the years, she and Ella had established the pattern of their lives, working their way down the east of the country for however many months the fish kept being landed, taking any odd jobs here and there that would keep them from going home until absolutely necessary, then returning to Lerwick, hopefully for as short time as they could manage. The war had brought that to an end, though, and Ella wasn’t just disappointed, she was distraught at the prospect of going home for what could be the rest of her life. And that was when Ina found out her sister’s secret and cursed herself for not knowing before. What was it about her that she didn’t spot things?
‘I don’t want to go back to Ronnie,’ Ella sobbed, ‘and anyway, I can’t.’
Ina looked at her, bemused. ‘Why not?’
‘Because he hits me, that why.’
‘He hits you?’ Ina asked in a silly tone of voice that annoyed even her, but it had taken her by complete surprise. ‘Since when?’
‘Since the day we were married,’ she said quietly. ‘I’d looked at him in the wrong way, so he said, though I couldn’t remember it, and the minute we got back to the croft he punched me in the stomach. Some brides get carried over the threshold, I got punched across it.’ She looked at Ina and mistook her shock for disbelief. ‘Oh, he was always careful,’ she said darkly, ‘never hit my face, so nobody would ever have cause to mention it. And if I had a few bruises on my arms, well, you get bruised working about a croft, don’t you? Usually he went for the
body.’ As she talked she wrapped her arms around herself protectively. ‘He has a mean kick with those boots, I can tell you, would’ve made his fortune if he’d gone in for the football.’ She tried to laugh but broke down in tears again.
Ina’s mind was in turmoil. She thought of their father and brothers. They wouldn’t let any man hit Ella. ‘And have you told Da?’ Ina asked.
Ella laughed bitterly. ‘What good do you think that would do?’
‘But Da and the lads, they’d never let him get away with that!’ Ina said, shocked.
‘You’re helluva daft at times, Ina,’ Ella said quietly. ‘Of course they’d let him away with it. He’s my man, he owns me, he can do what he likes!’
‘But have you told them?’ Ina persisted.
‘I don’t have to tell them, they know. They’re men, Ina. If Ronnie hits me, it must be my fault: that’s how they think.’
‘Now you’re the one being daft!’ Ina said. ‘Da wouldn’t—’
‘Och, Ina, you know nothing! Besides, he has one reason, it’s not the only reason, but Da and the lads would think it reason enough. I’ve always refused to have bairns to him. He hits me for that as well.’
‘But how do you stop having bairns?’ Ina asked innocently.
Ella laughed through her tears. ‘My God, Ina!’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘You really are a bairn yourself, aren’t you? You’re a woman in your thirties, do you really not know?’
Ina shook her head.
‘I won’t sleep with him, that’s how. That first night he raped me. That’s what it was. Though they say a man can’t rape his wife, he’s entitled after all: the law says so, so does the kirk. I was in agony after he’d hit me, so what he got out of it I’ll never know, but he seemed content enough. After that, I refused. I’ve slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow every night ever since. I said I wouldn’t sleep with him till he stopped hitting me’
‘And he didn’t?’
‘Of course he didn’t!’ Ella said wryly. ‘I knew he’d go on hitting me because I wouldn’t sleep with him, so I had the perfect way of never sleeping with him. I hate him; he’s no man. A real man doesn’t have to hit a woman. There were times when I was at home that I hoped he’d try it on again so that I could stab him, I hated him so much. I’d have gone to jail happily to see him dead. They could’ve hanged me and I’d still have thought it was worth it.’
‘Was he always like that?’ Ina asked. ‘Before you married him, like?’
‘I was seventeen, Ina, how would I have known what he was like? That’s why they marry us off at that age up there: we don’t know what life’s about so we accept the one we’re given.’
Ina thought back to the ends of all those seasons when they eventually had to go home to Lerwick, when they had exhausted all the temporary jobs and had no choice. She was so low herself at the prospect each time, and she knew her sister hadn’t been entirely happy either, but she hadn’t noticed how deeply Ella felt. Then the start of the next season would arrive and Ina was anxious and happy to go away again, as was Ella, but at the time she thought it was part of the Polson liking for travel, for being away from their own small place and out in the world, even if it was only the fishing world. Yet all that time Ella was either going back to Ronnie’s violence and his frustrations or escaping from them.
And Ina had to be honest, there had always been a tension in the family about Ella; when her name was mentioned there was an unspoken something. Now she realised that tension marked the knowledge of her parents that their daughter wasn’t happy, and yes, she had to admit it, the knowledge that she was being beaten by her husband. And what if Magnus Polson had taken Ronnie to task for mistreating his daughter, and Ronnie had said she wasn’t fulfilling her wifely duties in the bedroom and thus preventing him from having his own family? It was the truth, after all, not the whole truth, but enough of it, and they would have backed Ronnie, of that she had no doubt. And she thought of herself being in that position, and knew her Da would have done the same, her Da who made her laugh and taught her about the stars; he would have said it was her own fault and let her be beaten, too.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked quietly, her voice still tight with shock.
‘I’m staying in Yarmouth,’ Ella said. She looked up at Ina. ‘I said I couldn’t go back, anyway – well, I was telling the truth. I’m expecting.’
Ina just stopped herself from asking, ‘Expecting what?’
‘But Ronnie will be pleased, then,’ she said happily. ‘Now that you’re having a bairn he’ll be happy and he won’t hit you any longer.’
‘Honesty Christ!’ Ella shouted. ‘Are you really that stupid, Ina?’
Ina stared at her in puzzlement.
‘It’s not his!’ Ella shouted. ‘How could it be his if I never sleep with him? I’m four months gone and I’ve been away for the last six!’
Ina felt as though she’d been thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool.
‘Well whose is it, then?’ she asked.
‘It’s Eddie’s, of course!’
Eddie? The only Eddie that Ina knew was the fisherman who was always around, teasing the lassies, the one who’d treated her and Ella to a port and lemon in the White Lion all those years ago. That Eddie? And of course?
Ella saw the light finally filter through to her sister’s eyes. ‘That’s right, that Eddie,’ she said. ‘Are you really telling me you didn’t know?’
Ina shook her head dumbly.
‘Well that takes the biscuit,’ Ella laughed bitterly. ‘Every other body knew, but you didn’t. Why does that not surprise me?’
‘Everybody knew?’
‘Of course! It’s been going on for years,’ Ella told her. ‘You mean nobody told you?’
Ina shook her head.
‘Not even a hint?’
She shook her head again, but in the back of her mind she knew hints never got through to her. If anyone wanted Ina to know something, they had to tell it to her straight; she’d always been like that. What was it Dolina used to say about her? ‘Ina spends too much time looking to the heavens to have any time for frills and fancies.’ It had always irked her that she missed things, but then, she thought, the other herring lassies probably assumed that as she was Ella’s sister she would know more than they did, so why would anyone hint to her, far less tell her face-to-face?
She thought back to all those times she had departed alone with her plastic folding telescope for her star-gazing sessions, leaving Ella to read her penny novelettes. Maybe Ella wasn’t reading, then – obviously she wasn’t. How was Ina supposed to have known? It seemed that Ella had found romance far nearer to home, and her own flesh-and-blood hero. There were herring lassies married to fishermen, and whenever the weather was bad they would walk up and down the river, watching for the first sight of their boats. She had seen Ella there, too, and just assumed she was keeping the others company on their vigil, but Ella had been watching for Eddie’s boat, and now here she was, pregnant for the first time at the age of forty. And to Eddie, the fisherman the other lassies warned each other off. ‘It would take a brave lassie or a stupid one to take that one on,’ that’s what they used to say. Which one was her sister, she wondered?
‘So what will you do?’ she asked Ella again.
‘I’m staying here with Eddie,’ she said, looking quickly at her sister then looking away again. ‘Oh, I know what everybody says about him, that he’s a ladies’ man and he’ll never settle down, but that’s all on the outside.’ Ella smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have believed a man could be so gentle, Ina, so kind. My first thought was to get rid of the baby, there’s always somebody can help you out, I’m not the first one to get in this state, for God’s sake, and I won’t be the last, but at my age – you don’t have to tell me how stupid I am! Eddie wouldn’t let me, though. He wants this baby. He wants us to get married, too; but there’s not any chance of that happening. Still, as he says, we’ll be as good as, and them that don’t like i
t can just please themselves. I know one thing for certain, we’ll be more man and wife than Ronnie and I ever were.’
She was silent for a few moments, then she looked at Ina. ‘I was thinking, Ina, that maybe when you go back to Lerwick you’d take Ronnie a letter.’
Ina didn’t reply. She would have no difficulty doing that; she’d like to have a few words with him herself for what he’d done to her sister.
‘And maybe you’d tell Da and the others?’ Ella rushed on, as though the faster she went, the less chance there was of Ina refusing.
Ina looked aghast. Even at her age she didn’t know if she could tell Magnus that his married daughter was expecting by another man and wouldn’t be coming home again.
Then she took a deep breath and thought again. Ella may have been Ronnie’s wife but she wasn’t his possession. She was a human being, she was no one’s possession, and her Da should’ve helped her. ‘I’ll tell them, Ella,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about it.’
But Magnus didn’t have to be told. The next morning they received news that he had died in Lerwick and, wartime communications being what they were, by the time the sisters heard the news he had already been buried. So Magnus Polson had been saved having to face the scandal that would make his family the talk of Lerwick yet again, but he would also escape his youngest daughter’s questions on why he had never tried to help poor Ella.
The Last Wanderer Page 6