‘And have you ever seen anything so big?’ Gannet asked. ‘Can you imagine running in to him in the dark?’
‘Aye, well, that was my thinking, Gannet,’ Sorley Mor lied. ‘I was thinking to myself that we’d never be in trouble with a man like that at hand.’
Gannet laughed out loud.
‘No, no, hear me out,’ reasoned Sorley Mor. ‘And will you stop a minute till I catch my breath, man?’
‘You’re getting out of condition!’ Gannet accused him.
‘I am not!’ Sorley Mor puffed. ‘What you don’t take into consideration, Gannet, is that it’s hard for normal people to climb hills and talk at the same time.’
‘What do you mean by “normal people”?’
‘People not like you, that’s what I mean. You go about not talking unless you’ve had a skin-full, which I’ll grant you is often enough, while the rest of us have to talk all the time. It’s not that you have more puff than the rest of us, you just don’t use all the puff that you have at your disposal.’ He sat on a large boulder by the side of the road. ‘And those bar lunches of Dan’s!’ he said, rubbing his chest and belching loudly. ‘My God, but the man has nothing in common with Stamp at all, has he, apart from his name? He can’t cook to save himself!’
‘I tried to tell you,’ said Gannet smugly.
‘Oh, aye, be Holy Joe,’ Sorley Mor said, wincing slightly, ‘that’s a big help.’
‘I don’t know why you insist on eating at the Inn,’ Gannet continued in the same tone of voice.
‘You see, there you go again, Gannet. You ask these wee questions knowing full well that I’ll have to go into all sorts of detail to answer them. I eat there because that’s where I am when I’m hungry. Or would you rather I ran all the way home to Chrissie for a bite to eat, then ran all the way back to the Inn again? Now, as I was saying. About the big fellow there. We’ve been in a couple of tight corners over the years, in different ports, like, we’ve run into the odd troublemaker, is that not true?’
Gannet nodded. There had indeed been a few incidents in their younger days they might not want Chrissie to ever hear about, though privately he was sure she had anyway and had stored them up to use as ammunition at some later date. ‘There was that time you were making remarks about yon big fellow off that Russian klondiker when we’d stopped in Shetland for a few days,’ he said.
‘Now, Gannet,’ said Sorley Mor severely, ‘you know that’s not true. He thought I was making remarks about him, but I wasn’t.’
‘Aye you were, Skipper,’ said Gannet. ‘You said his beard looked daft, as if somebody’s had grabbed it and cut across the bottom with a pair of scissors, then you fell about laughing fit to burst, you know the way you do when you’ve had more than enough and everything seems helluva funny to you.’
‘He didn’t understand English, Gannet, that was the real problem, if you remember. I simply said it was interesting, not “daft”. That’s just one of those lies certain people tell to make it all sound funnier than it was.’
‘He didn’t think it was funny,’ Gannet scoffed. ‘As I remember it we had to leg it back to the boat with a big crowd of drunken Russians after us. If they’d known what boat we were off we wouldn’t have stood a chance. And what’s more, they must’ve been in a worse state than us not to find us, with you laughing like that, and shouting at them in the dark that their mothers took in washing.’
‘Now, Gannet, I don’t remember it like that at all—’
‘And worse than that about their mothers, too. I was shocked at you, Skipper, I was that. Chrissie would’ve given you a hiding if she’d heard the things you were saying about their mothers; in fact she still might. It was lucky their English wasn’t very good, or as you say—’
Sorley Mor held a hand up to fend off further disclosures. ‘Not that we’ve ever caused trouble, ourselves,’ he butted in self-righteously, stressing every word, ‘but as you say yourself, we’ve been caught up in the odd thing.’
Even though Gannet knew this was stretching it a bit, he nodded all the same, curious to know what Sorley Mor would come up with.
‘Well, I was thinking, there would be no trouble, none of those wee misunderstandings if we had a man like that beside us, now would there? I can just see us marching down some harbour with that big bear of a man bringing up the rear, and him staring like that and everybody watching. Ach, I’m telling you, no one would dare cross us in any port in the land!’
‘But Sorley Mor,’ Gannet said patiently, ‘it wouldn’t be just the opposition that would be scared to cross him. He put the fear of death into me the minute I saw him! That look of his! Did you see a smile once cross his lips? How are we going to handle him aboard the Wanderer?’
‘Ach, now I think you’re maybe overreacting there,’ Sorley Mor said persuasively. ‘You know what you’re like when you’ve had a couple, now, Gannet.’
‘You were shaking in your boots, man!’
‘I was not!’
‘Aye you were. If I hadn’t been there to brace you you’d have slipped off your stool.’
‘Now that’s a damnable lie, Gannet! And furthermore, I’m sure it’s treason as well.’
‘How the hell do you work that out?’
‘Well I’m your skipper, and if it’s not treason it’s definitely mutiny, I’m sure of that.’
As they approached the house Chrissie opened the door. ‘What’s the noise about?’ she asked, glancing suspiciously from one to the other.
Gannet and Sorley Mor exchanged looks. ‘Oh, just pleased with ourselves, that’s all we are, Chrissie,’ Sorley Mor smiled at his wife. ‘Having a bit of a crack, like. We’ve got ourselves another engineer and we were just saying what a fine fellow he is. Were we not, Gannet?’
There was a slight pause.
‘Aye,’ Gannet replied. ‘That’s what we were saying, right enough.’
‘And I suppose you’ve been eating Dan’s garbage again?’ Chrissie asked. ‘What have I told you about that? Sure, even Gannet there doesn’t eat it, and if you gave him a spoon he’d munch his way through a dustbin. Am I wasting my breath, or what?’
‘Now, Chrissie, I’ve had a delicate digestion all my life,’ the skipper said. ‘It has nothing whatever to do with Dan’s food, it’s just a sign of a sensitive nature.’
‘Sensitive,’ Chrissie snorted, rolling her eyes. ‘There’s no point in talking to you. The Milk of Magnesia is on the table by your chair.’
Sorley Mor pulled a face as he looked at the bottle.
‘I’ve just been saying the same thing myself, Chrissie,’ Gannet said righteously. ‘He never learns.’
‘Ach, be quiet, you,’ Chrissie said, waving him away with her hand as he passed her anyway. ‘Sure, when have you ever been a good influence on him?’
13
Eric and the latest Ocean Wanderer had arrived in Acarsaid at more or less the same time in 1976, and they were both still there over twenty years later. In due course Sorley Mor and Gannet would realise that he had kept a little something hidden during his ‘official interview’, his real reason for wanting out of long voyages with the Merchant Navy; but even if his off-duty passion had been known at the time, he was still a fine engineer. He was introduced to the rest of the crew the next day, most of whom had been with Sorley Mor since his earliest days as a skipper. Brothers Alex and Davie Kerr were still deckies at that time; they’d worked with Sorley Mor’s father and, when they retired in due course, Alex’s son, Pete, Acarsaid’s playboy, would take his place, with Sorley Og joining the crew as Davie left. Stevie Smith was the other engineer, a Fifer in his twenties, and Donald Stewart was the cook, a little man of, he insisted, over five feet tall, though no one ever measured him to make sure. Donald was around the same age as Sorley Mor and Gannet; in 1976 they were each of them a few months before or after the age of thirty-seven years. Donald was a slight man with calm, grey eyes set in a complexion criss-crossed with lines that would deepen and increase with the years. No
one knew for sure if he had hair, because since his teens he had worn a checked bunnet, or flat cap, waking or sleeping, and unlike his skipper he even wore it when off duty. Rumour had it that he wore it in the bath, too, though no one felt strongly enough to check the accuracy of that either.
He had earned the job of ship’s cook permanently when Gannet’s subsequent efforts proved that his earlier forays into the world of preparing simple meals had been his best efforts. His memorable kippers-and-custard breakfasts were followed by many others, all equally gut-wrenching. Lumpy semolina was not, it was discovered, an acceptable substitute for mashed tatties, and he never did master the basic fact that water had to be boiling for even the best-intentioned egg to progress from raw to semi-raw. And they couldn’t even accuse him of doing it deliberately to get out of the galley, of serving up horrors that he wouldn’t eat himself, because he did eat them – and with relish.
The custom aboard fishing vessels had always been that the youngest man on board worked his way up from cook, earning perhaps a quarter of one share of the catch after the boat’s running costs had been paid. Then, over the years, he would become a deckie and earn a half share. But Stamp proved to have a talent that no one had suspected. Though Donald had gone to school, as his brother, Dan, the barman at the Inn, had mentioned, the world of words was an enduring mystery to him. Normal, routine conversations presented him with no difficulties as long as he spoke plainly and simply, which he did, giving the impression that this was a man of precise speech. Comparisons, similes and turns of phrase would, however, remain a minefield to Donald. Tell him the ball was in his court, for instance, and he would look around for a ball to kick; say something was six of one and half a dozen of the other and he would lie down with a headache. Those who had known him all his life knew how his mind worked, and had developed a sixth sense that enabled them to understand his attempts to repeat these phrases. In fact, instead of Donald’s use of language improving over the years, his ‘Stamp-isms’ as they were known, became widespread within the crew, with Sorley Mor in particular incorporating his very individual sayings into his normal speech without being aware that he was doing so.
Though Donald got by in talking, his main problem in life was that he had never mastered the finer points of reading and writing. As a child the nearest he ever got to writing his surname, Stewart, was ‘Stamp’, so Stamp he remained for the rest of his life. Let him near food of any kind, though, and he became a culinary artist. As he couldn’t read he didn’t consult recipe books, and he never measured anything, but he had a natural instinct for which ingredients went together and in what proportions. There seemed, to him, a very basic and straightforward logic about such matters. His Welsh Rarebit on toast was a delight – not so much a snack as a flavoursome soufflé that literally melted in the mouth – and that was before he hit on the idea of finely grating just the right amount of onion into the mixture to further tickle the taste-buds. His steak and kidney pudding, steamed for five hours in a pot of simmering water while the biggest of swells tossed the boat about, was full of moist, meaty flavour cosseted inside suet so light that to call it a pudding was almost an insult. His meals were legendary, and he couldn’t explain where his talent came from, it was just something he ‘knew’. Chrissie, like all the women in Acarsaid, suspected that Stamp had taken secret courses in cordon bleu cooking at the Paris Ritz, and had once swallowed her pride and asked him for one of his recipes. Stamp shrugged his shoulders; he had no recipes.
‘You must have recipes,’ Chrissie said suspiciously.
Stamp shrugged again. ‘I just throw things together,’ he grinned.
‘But you must know how much to throw together?’ she cajoled, convinced now that he just didn’t want to give away his secrets, and she wasn’t above pulling rank. ‘C’mon now, Stamp, I’m the skipper’s wife. You can tell me, and I swear I won’t tell anyone else.’
Stamp looked back at her from under his bunnet with friendly grey eyes. ‘I would tell you if I knew,’ he said helplessly, ‘but I don’t. Honest, Chrissie.’
‘Did your mother teach you?’ she persisted. ‘Is that how you learned?’
Stamp shook his head. ‘Never cooked in my life till Sorley Mor told me I was cook,’ he smiled self-consciously. ‘It all seemed to come natural, like. I just think of things.’
So though his share in the catch increased with the years, Stamp remained cook: a situation that suited everyone.
‘This is Donald Stewart,’ Sorley Mor had said to Eric that first day in 1976, then suddenly realising the possible implications of Stamp’s magic fingers being mangled in Eric’s great mitt, he placed himself between them, reached up and put a restraining hand on the big man’s shoulder in what he hoped would pass for a friendly gesture. ‘You’ll maybe remember the barman in the Inn,’ he said, ‘well that’s Donald’s brother, Donald.’
Eric looked suspiciously from one to the other. ‘Naw,’ he said, ‘there’s only wanna brothers can be called Donald, surely, Skipper?’ He pointed towards Stamp. ‘He’s Donald, i’n’t he?’
‘Well, aye, he is, but so’s his brother. They’re both called Donald,’ Sorley Mor smiled a little tightly.
‘Canny be,’ Eric laughed quietly. ‘That’s daft!’
‘Well now,’ said Stamp just as quietly but much more firmly, ‘the skipper’s right, you know. Me and my brother are both called Donald.’
Eric now stared again in his solemn way from Sorley Mor to Stamp and back, then he broke into a grin. ‘See yous teuchters,’ he laughed. ‘Ye’re tryin’ tae make an arse o’ me! Dae ye think Ah came up the Clyde in a banana boat? Ah might come fae Glesca, but Ah’m no’ saft in the heid.’
The tiny Stamp looked up at him like, as Sorley Mor related to Chrissie afterwards, ‘Samson and Delilah’. He meant David and Goliath – he had known Stamp all his life and sometimes it showed – but Chrissie understood.
‘I can assure you, my friend,’ said Stamp in a very calm, precise and decidedly unfriendly tone, the lilt of the West Highland accent soft and gentle against the big engineer’s harsh Glasgow tones, ‘that no one is trying to make an arse of you.’ He pulled himself up to his tallest and craned his neck to return Eric’s frank stare, ‘And no one here is suggesting your head is soft either, but I am called Donald and so is my brother.’
Sorley Mor looked desperately at Gannet, trying to work out in his mind if they should both attempt to restrain Eric together, or if he could telepathically instruct Gannet to launch himself into the fray alone, while he looked around for a hawser that might hold him after Gannet had subdued him.
There was a long, silent moment, then, ‘Nae offence, wee man,’ said Eric apologetically. ‘It’s just that Ah’ve no’ come across that afore. Where Ah come fae we a’ hiv different names, that’s a’.’
‘It’s quite logical,’ said Stamp with great dignity. ‘Both grandfathers were called Donald. As the eldest son, my brother was named for my father’s father, as happens in these parts, and when I arrived I was called after my mother’s father. That’s how we … “teuchters” … do things, you understand.’
Once again everyone present held their breath.
‘Ah’m helluva sorry,’ Eric said contritely. ‘It’s just me an’ ma big mooth, Donald, son.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ Stamp replied condescendingly.
‘Ah can see noo that it isnae really daft, but dis it no’ cause a bit of bother, like? When yer Maw shouted “Donald” when ye wur weans, did ye no’ get mixed up?’
‘Not at all,’ Stamp replied, without absolute logic. ‘I can understand an outsider might be thinking that, but my brother has always been called Dan and I’ve been called Stamp since I was at school, so there’s never been any confusion whatever.’
Eric soundlessly mouthed ‘Dan? Stamp?’ then shook his head slightly. ‘Naw,’ he said to himself under his breath, ‘Ah don’t think Ah’ll bother askin’.’
It was yet another case, as Sorley Mor told his
wife later, of Samson beating Delilah.
It didn’t take long for the difficulties surrounding Eric to appear. That he was teetotal could have been a difficult one to overcome – no one had ever heard of a fisherman who didn’t drink, after all, and his masculinity could well have been called into question if the crew were to return to port, go through the welcoming ritual at the Inn and then request a mineral water for the big engineer. It would, as Sorley Mor knew, reflect not only on Eric, but on the entire crew, and especially on himself as skipper. At first he had tried very gently to find out why this sorry state of affairs had come about, and was staggered when Eric replied that he simply didn’t like alcohol; so staggered, in fact, that in the skipper’s desperation other possibilities began to suggest themselves. Then he hit on it, the perfect plan of action.
‘We won’t actually say he’s an alcoholic, Gannet,’ Sorley Mor explained. ‘No, no, we don’t have to actually say it. All we have to do is hint at it.’
‘Hint at it?’ muttered Gannet.
‘Aye, sneaky like. We say, “I wouldn’t offer Eric there anything with alcohol in it,” and give them a look.’
‘A look?’
‘A look, Gannet. One of them looks that suggests they shouldn’t take the matter further. A kind of a wink.’
‘A look that’s a wink?’
‘Now stop being difficult, Gannet, you know damned fine well what I mean,’ said Sorley Mor. ‘One of those looks that might come across as a wink. Holy Jesus, it’s simple enough, man! We just let them understand that Eric has a problem with the drink, infer that with a bit in him he can become, well, dangerous, and with the size of him, who’d be daft enough to ask him about it?’
Gannet nodded uncertainly, knowing perfectly well that his opinion was of no importance, that the skipper had made up his mind.
The Last Wanderer Page 17