“Jason,” I said, “yeah, good evening. But is this it? Is this a Force 12?”
“Aye,” he said, not looking at me. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares? Only you! But I’ll tell you this, Redmond. In my opinion, and please, feel free to disagree, I’d say it’s a stormy, stormy night.”
“Jeesus, Jason,” I said, turning on him, for some reason, with real aggression (and holding tight with both hands to the arms of the chair, despite my chest-harness), “don’t you sleep? How can you do this?”
“It’s like I told you,” he said, speaking fast, clipped, articulate, staring straight ahead at the whited-out central bow-window, “I sleep at home. Here I’m the skipper-owner, the best—and OK, so she’s not really mine, she still belongs to the bank. But come on, how many bank managers have you seen at sea? Zero! So when I’m out here, she’s mine. The responsibility-it’s all mine. You know? The boys, their women, their homes, their health, their morale—if you like—it all depends on me. And I promise you, there’s no greater kick than that. To know, for sure, no argument, that it’s all up to me, as skipper. I decide where and when to fish—it’s up to me and no one else at all, anywhere; it’s up to me alone to decide where to shoot the net, to start the trawl. And if there’s nothing in the cod-end—who do you think gets the blame? The EU fishing-policy tossers? God? The bank? The weather? No, Redmond: it’s Jason Schofield—he’s the only one who can fail!
“And I tell you, Redmond, my dad, you know, he’s younger than you, but I can see, you two, you’d get on so well. When you were young, your kicks, real kicks, what were they? Jeesus, you sad old fucks, you lot who thought you were going to change the world (save us!)—you beatniks, hippies, flower-power jerk-offs, gentle layabouts, whatever you called yourselves, what did you really do? Books, fine, I’ll give you that, you loved books, and that was great. And you loved your music. But give me a break, look, so what? The fucking sparrows love their music. So you gave up and lay around and smoked dope or cannabis or hashish or gear or grass or hemp in spliffs or joints or whatever you chose to call it—all those words! Worse than winos! And that’s right, shit, I remember, that’s the word, you smoked shit, in a mental world of hippie shite, real shite, and in the least aggressive possible way you fucked up your own lives, and you took away the motivation for your children. And free love! Spare us! So it was all cool, man, to leave one chick and hang out with another. Except, fuck you, one of those chicks happened to be my mother. Yes, my mother! And to me, not to you, a mother is a serious business. And if you leave her, you ought to be shot!”
“Jason, hang on, what are you talking about? I thought you’d been here for ever. I thought your great-to-the-nth grandfather swam ashore from the Armada …”
“You know what I think? I think there’s nothing bad in itself about dope. Not in itself. Of course it does less harm than alcohol. Of course it should be legal. It’s a piss-nonsense. But you people, you, my dad, the old UK hippies—you invested that shite with wisdom. Just because it made you feel good. A herbal ga-ga tranquillizer. It’s a plant, for Chrissake! Harmless. A couple of dreamy relax-me pills. No more, no less. And you made a fucking religion out of it!”
“Jason, hold on. Please—tell me about your dad, tell me about your mother.”
“My mother? She’s a Costello. Spanish. She was a great beauty in her time. Still is. And one of her very first boyfriends was John Lennon.”
“Christ.”
“And my dad—he was very clever, Cambridge. He was a rocket engineer, a rocket scientist in your part of the world, right down in the far south—and then he decided he shouldn’t be doing anything that might help people make weapons, so he came up here and bought a croft on Sanday. The house—it’s called the Fish-House! It’s right on the sea. And the sea came up and up and into the house once. Slim Schofield, that’s him—and you two’d get on so well! The croft, it’s basic—30 acres and that’s it. He keeps cows. He milks one by hand! You’d like him, Redmond. And his latest girlfriend, she’s just moved out, she lives down the road. Yes, you should go and stay there, with my dad…”
“Yeah, I’d like that… I really would … but Jason, you know, what’s happening now, at this moment, technically speaking?”
“To speak technically,” said Jason, obviously trying to control something stronger than amusement (which was good of him, but offensive all the same), “to speak technically, Redmond, we are now dodging. All I have to do is keep her head into wind. And for that I trust Dougie …” (The incipient, the imminent burst of outright laughter receded from his face, from his lanky frame, from his taut body—which seemed over-active even when it was double-cross-strapped into a purpose-built withholding chair.) “We all have to trust Dougie with our lives, Redmond, but it’s only for three or four times a year, in January and February. So that’s OK. This just happens to be one of them. That’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mean? What do I mean?” (Jason turned to me briefly; he looked concerned.) “You’re tired, aren’t you? You’ve lost it! You’d better sleep. And here was I, thinking you’d be intelligent! This is what I mean, Redmond—if Dougie’s done his job, and he always does, because I’ve picked the best engineer in Orkney, but don’t you go telling him that, then the buggered old Blackstone engines in this boat, my boat, maybe they’ll last one more stormy night. OK? But if he hasn’t done his job, if he’s not good enough, if I misjudged him, then it’s my fault.”
“What?”
“If the engines fail! If we turn beam-on to this weather!”
“Then what?”
“Then what? Then what! Then, Redmond—we drown. It’s so simple. There’s no argument. I like that. I like that a lot. There’s no uncertainty about it. No bullshit. There’s no maybe this and maybe that, and on the other hand, and if you look at it from a different point of view, or perhaps percentage this and percentage that, and you could say it’s his rotten childhood or his bent social fucking worker or his great-fucking-granny, or come on, that Hitler, he only had one ball, so of course he had to invade Poland. No! Here there’s no bullshit! That’s not what it’s like here! You make a mistake? Simple. You drown.”
I was silent, mesmerized by the lines of foam streaking towards the bow window, lit by the bow searchlight, flying seawater whipped into white by winds gone berserk, like snow in a blizzard, except that the snowflakes had got together, coagulated, as if they were whole long lines of detached wave-crests, coming at me in a solid weighted mass—and yes, I thought dimly, hang on, that’s right. Except that you can bunk off the simile. As Sean might say. Or perhaps not. But where was I? Yes, that’s right, these are entire detached wave-crests coming at you horizontally, and each onslaught probably weighs half a tonne …
“Anyway,” said Jason, “go on, Redmond! Next time we’re up here alone, I’ll show you something to cheer you up. On the main computer. Davy’s tow! But for now—you’re OK. You’ll do, I suppose. But go on, show me! Because Redmond, I’m going to count to three—and on the count of three, no matter what, I don’t care, you’ve no choice, no choice at all, you are going to unbuckle yourself and then, steady as a trawlerman, you are going to go safely to your bunk below. And sleep. And sleep. OK? So: one … two … three!”
I rose like a ghost. I went aft like a sleepwalker. And that’s exactly what you are, I thought, except that you’re walking towards your bed, falling towards a sleep that even you have never wanted so badly, never, not in fifty years—and yet I’m feeling so peaceful. Hypnosis, yes, they can all do it. They’ve seen too much, these people.
And, as I went (very slowly), half-way down the wheelhouse stairs I heard a spectral laugh that rose above the drumbeats, the banshee wails of the outside world (a world, it has to be said, that was almost half-stilled in the quiet, double-insulated, wholly enclosed braincase of the ship’s bridge). But yes, there was no doubt about it, it was a laugh, the overwhelming, energy-packed, unrestrained laugh of a focused and happy young man at the height
of his physical powers, a laugh to which there was no possible reply, the kind of laugh that, once heard, you know you will never be able to expunge from your head. And, as I pinned this sound to its source above me, I thought: could there possibly be a laugh that’s worse, right now, you know, from a personal, from a selfish point of view?
“Armada!” it yelled, full-throated, into the storm. “Fuck that for a laugh!” And, with a howl of appalling happiness: “Save us!” And then, on a rising note of all-out hilarity: “Armada-Dada! And he’s a writer! Get that! The Armada-Dada!”
I fled.
ISLOTTED MYSELF into my sleeping-bag with no difficulty—and why? Because, I told myself, your conscious mind is now entirely occupied with that laugh and its implications, and so it’s not particularly surprising that your involuntary, sympathetic autonomic nervous system can get on with its vital simple life unhindered. But that’s not soothing in itself, is it? No, of course not. So what? So what’s so funny? The Armada, the Picts, the Vikings, the genetic history of the Orkneys—why is that so funny? OK, so maybe this country, which is supposed to be your country politically—and Jesus, it’s not as if it’s big—maybe, just maybe (and this thought gave me a great rush of unexpected happiness), just maybe, despite the depressingly short time-span, the all-modern, the as-it-were-yesterday mere 12,000 years maximum since the end of the last Ice Age, maybe this place is not quite so very boring as compared to the 200,000-year-old mutation (which is, after all, still so very recent), the mutation or series of mutations that gave birth to Homo sapiens sapiens in Central or East Africa. Because you have to think of this place differently. OK! So it wasn’t the Armada! And yes, Jason’s right, because this is a different kind of place altogether—this is not a place that belongs to origins, to the autonomic nervous system, to the preconscious lungfish coming ashore, to hominids, to our 5-or-3-million-years-ago pre-articulate immediate ancestors, or even to our 200,000-year-old forebears, the us-as-we-are-now-in-our-present minds. No, this is a place, Orkney, a magical place if ever there was one, somewhere that belongs to Skara Brae, a village built so well, so recognizable, so snug and right with its stone furniture, its safe beds, its beds that are 5,400 years old; an intellectual place, too, somewhere that was so alive and thinking so hard—whose people built the Ring of Brodgar and made exquisite architecture at Midhowe long before Stonehenge or the Pyramids were even imagined… yes, that’s right, Jason’s right, this is a place, Orkney, to which people wanted to come. This place is desirable. This is at the end of the process to date. This is somewhere to which people chose to come. And still do. And that’s great, I thought, that’s OK, so I don’t need to feel quite so catastrophically diminished by that laughter. But, all the same, the inner voice said, you’d better forget this, and you’re not going to tell anyone, and personal dignity, you know, it needs a constant vigil to preserve it—so, above all, you certainly will not tell Luke…
“Luke,” I said, just short of a shout which, against the shockwaves that, second on second, hit the hull, was no more than a whisper. “Are you awake?”
“Aye, of course I am,” came his oddly testy voice from the darkness to my right. “Look, I told you Redmond, I warned you, I really did—I told you, plain as could be, upfront, I said: ‘Redmond, as yet you don’t know your arse from your tit here,’ at least, that’s what Dick said in the lab. I was honest with you, I said, ‘Look, Redmond, you’ll get so tired you won’t know what to do with yourself—and then you’ll find you’re so tired you can’t sleep. Your brain—it’s all fucked up, it’s like a fever—and I know you’ve had plenty of those in your jungles, but in a way this is worse, because you’re fully aware that you have not been invaded by a bacterium or a virus and yet there’s nothing you can do to help yourself. Your body thinks there’s a battle on, and so it’s packed you full of adrenalin—and as you try to sleep you know your brain’s all fucked up, because it feels like a fever, and all it does is give you short snatches of nonsense that keep changing, and you can’t stop it. So you realize, don’t you? Give it five or six days and nights of no more than half a sleep-cycle a time—forty-five minutes max every twelve hours—and you hit the manic phase of sleep deprivation. And the boys go through this every time they go out! It’s something chemical in our brains, Redmond. No sleep. So the brain tries to order itself for survival, to sort its memories, to clear itself for action by talking instead of dreaming. You tell people things you shouldn’t, your subconscious is out there for other people to see—but at least it’s the same for all of us here, you know, everyone’s the same, and perhaps that’s why you make such intense friendships or hatreds on a trawler, at sea; and you know, Redmond, I can honestly say: I remember every man I’ve been to sea with, at the fishing. There’s nothing like that on land is there? What do you think? One or two, maybe three close male friends—and one woman, max, at a time. And even then it’s messy, isn’t it? Really messy—all over the place, your emotions. There’s nothing clean on land. Anyway, there you go, I’m drifting, like I said. All I meant to tell you is this: the next stage, you know, give it a day and a night, no more, it’s this: the brain, memories, pictures, they shut down, they go all dead and dark, they don’t care any more. You’ll see! We’ll be unable to speak. Zombies! But then of course you will be too—if you keep on like this, trying to join in… Gutting fish and gutting your own gloves! I’ve seen you! And flying—how you flew! It’s dangerous, you know, I thought you’d sleep eight hours a night, like a sensible old fuck, and just be an observer. Isn’t that what writers are meant to do? Eh? How can you possibly have a sensible thought when you’re as fucked up as the rest of us? And besides, I can’t look after you all the time. God knows what you’ll do next—and as Dick said, you’re my responsibility. If you disappear overboard it’ll be my fault. Right? And the effort you put in just to get up the stairs to the bridge! I can’t look after you all the time. Jeesus. I have a doctorate to do, to write, to finish. You know, I’m desperate. And there again, you think you ought to keep smiling. To show you’re OK. And Redmond, that’s when you have this smile like something out of a fuck-bad film. You know—some Hammer-Horror stake-in-the-heart fuck-bad Dracula-film! Eeee, grizzly, yuck, that OK smile of yours—you know, it makes the flesh creep! Horrible! Really horrible!”
“For Chrissake, Luke, just be quiet for a moment, will you? You talk so much, you’re such a talker. Jeesus, Luke, I can’t get a word in. So how’s about we have a conversation? Could you handle that? No? Well, you should, because I’ve been thinking about you, Luke. And I’ve solved your problem.”
“You have?”
“Of course I have. I really have. You should be grateful. And instead of that you attack me! About Jason’s gloves! Luke, I want you to know—I only put one or two slits in the palm of my left… OK, OK, I hear you, so yes, let’s be really honest with each other because you’re right, we’re really not alive much longer than a dragonfly—yes? So OK, so may be it was seven slits, or eight. But that’s not the point, Luke. Not at all! You remember? Your problem? Your real bar to happiness? And no, Luke—no, as it happens, I must tell you right now: I don’t think it’s funny. You know? Right? The way women waggle their rear ends at you and flutter their wings and fly off with that special lead-on flight of theirs and knock you off behind a bush?”
“Eh?”
“Yeah, yeah. But you don’t fool me! Don’t be so modest. I thought this was a no-bullshit zone! I thought we’d at least-absolute minimum—I thought we’d agreed to be honest with each other!”
“Eh? Aye! Big time!”
“So there you are, if you’d just stop interrupting, I could help you. I really could!”
“I’m sorry! Aye! Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!”
“Nuts? No, Luke. This is science. So let’s calm down. Let’s be rational. Right? Let’s be scientific. Your problem—in biological terms, it’s simple, now that we know about it. But of course that means that in your case and every other case it’s deep and complex and there’s fu
ck all you can do about it—and that’s the great attraction of biology, of ethology, the study of animal behaviour, and the fact is, Luke, you told me yourself, and I’ve seen it in Aberdeen, in your own nest: you, Luke, are an alpha male. Yes! Nick Davies in Cambridge, I met him once, he did this great experiment. Yes, the Reverend Morris’s bird books, you know, A History of British Birds by the Rev. F. O. Morris, BA, Member of the Ashmolean Society, “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” London: Groombridge and Sons, 5 Paternoster Row—the very first books I bought myself! And plate one, Luke—it was a GRIFFON VULTURE—the feathers, so beautiful, and the eyelashes round its big brown eye, and I watched the clouds whenever I could, because I did not want to miss it, the moment when a Griffon vulture would spiral down and land on the Vicarage lawn and eat Roger, for sure, my dad’s fat old bad-tempered Cocker spaniel that kept trying to bite me… And I bought these books when I was eight years old. I saved up my pocket money and every three weeks I’d go with my dad to Salisbury and the two kind old ladies in Beach’s Bookshop let me buy them, one by one. They kept them for me, under the desk to the left of the door. Magical, small red volumes with gold letters on their spines and hand-coloured plates inside—and in one term and two holidays of saving I had the lot! The complete set. All eight of them! Two whole pounds and ten whole pennies! And in each volume (magical word!) I wrote my name. And the address of our house, in case they got lost. Redmond Douglas O’Hanlon, The Vicarage, Calne, Wilts. Anyway, where was I? Yes, stop sighing. The Hedge sparrow! The Hedge accentor, not, in fact, related to the sparrows, as you know. Well—Morris took the Dunnock, or Hedge sparrow or Hedge warbler or Winter fauvette—how I loved all the names he gave his birds!—he took the Hedge sparrow, as he wrote in February 1853, as an unobtrusive, quiet and retiring, humble, you know, sober exemplar of the Godly life “which many of a higher grade might imitate, with advantage to themselves and benefit to others through an improved example,” or some such pre-Origin of Species natural theology: God’s works, God’s lessons to us in all his Creation! Lovely, so very comforting … Yeah, so every night in my little bedroom, lying in bed next to my collection of birds’ eggs in a tray packed with cotton-wool—eggs which, I was sure, all the birds in the garden had agreed to give me (just the one each): a blackbird, a thrush, a chaffinch, a wren and even a bullfinch—eggs nestled in their wooden tray on top of the chest of drawers: I’d do as promised and read the set lines from my boring little green pamphlet of SPCK bible extracts. Yes! And then I’d read a golden passage or two from my Morris’s British Birds. And my dad’d come up for a goodnight prayer and he’d say, ‘Lighten our darkness, O Lord,’ and I’d reach up and switch the bedside lamp off and on a few times. And then I’d go to sleep!”
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