Trawler

by Redmond O'Hanlon

  Bryan’s big Viking bass drowned him out in easy waves of deep sound: “You’ll get used to it, no your next trip, mebbe no your next twenty, but after that, aye, then you’ll know when you’re no talking, you’ll know when you’re dreaming.”

  Robbie leant right across the table, intense, and he said, in a powerful whisper, 6 inches from my left ear, “Bryan talking, aye, he can and he does, but dinna listen no more, because he only talks, like, when there’s extra food to be had—he’s big and he burns it up and he needs it, aye! He’s like a dog—a St. Bernard, yep—that’s our Bryan, he’s big and fluffy, and he gets hungry and out comes his tongue … But Redmond, listen to me, all that guff, aye, it’s waking-sleep, that’s what we call it, but who cares? No, listen to your real friend, me, Robbie—you mustna mind Allan, it’s nothing to do with you, but I saw, you got hurt inside, real bad like, and you lowered your head, so slowly, right into your plate, and you went to sleep: to shut everything out.

  “So Allan Besant like,” said Robbie, sitting back, raising his voice, “he came into this money, lots of money. And what does he do? Aye! He bought a house, cars. More than one car.” (Big Bryan, I noticed to my surprise, now looked so relaxed that he seemed to have lost his high-tensile giant status altogether. Big Bryan looked almost floppy. Yes, Big Bryan did look like a St. Bernard lying massively in its warm corner, secure in the knowledge that another meal was on the way…) “And he got married. And then, well, mebbe we’d all do the same, who can tell? He had all this money, so he was allowed to be just himself like, no restraints, as Captain Sutherland was forever telling us, every man needs restraints, and he hadna got them any more, no discipline—or as I’d put it meself, he’d got clean away from the fucking bother of mad skippers or anyone else, if you know what I mean, because Redmond, apart from Jason, you know—and I hate that, yep, that’s the only one thing that’s not right between you and me, you as a writer, and this your one chance, and you’re trying to get it as much like it is as it really is, I can see that, yep, you’re busting your old balls to try and tell the truth! Aye—we can all see that—it’s so obvious, and it’s questions, questions! And one in five of them, that’s what we decided, mebbe one in five of them makes sense, and it sets us thinking—and when you’re not around we discuss it, of course we do! And Jason and Bryan here” (we both glanced, on the instant, at Bryan—and he was asleep, so peaceful, massively wedged into his corner, his head upright, resting against the base of the bracket that supported the small platform for the video-machine, the screen—lovers and gangsters, inaudible—above him: his face had lost the anxious creases of a First Mate: asleep, but for his newly grown, his absurdly potent beard, I could imagine Big Bryan as a little boy…), “Jason and Bryan think that writers, now and then, they do tell the real truth, you know, not like newspaper-truth (but Allan, well, he’s a great guy—and I’ll tell you—but he’s sure that no one ever tells the truth). So Jason and Bryan like, they think that if you do write the book, and we all agreed, on the bridge like, that that was a chance of one in a hundred, like the fishing, because you’re old and you don’t have the life in you, and oh shite”… Robbie looked at me, so friendly, so apologetic… “I shouldna said that, I shouldna said that in a hundred years … Anyway, if you do manage it like, and you tell the truth, and you’ve come out at the worst time of year, there’s no denying that: then—we can give the book to our wives, women, our girls, whatever, that’s the point, that’s why Jason had you aboard, you know, aye, he wasna fooled by no shite about the Marine Lab in Aberdeen… So we can give the book, if you ever do it, whatever, to our women, you know, the one we really fancy, OK, fuck it, the one we love! Shite! Yep! But that’s the way it is: you give this book to the woman you love—and she’ll take it all in, and slowly, you know, for weeks, as she reads it, in silence, you know, she says not a word, and you have to put up with that—when she’s reading it, if she loves you enough to read it at all, if she loves you enough to bother to read a single fucking word of it—eh? Well, as Jason says, it’s up to you, Redmond, isn’t it? Are we wasting our time with you? Are you really just an Old Worzel? Eh? Or are you the whole ching-bang? Or even a peedie bit of a ching-bang? Can you get our women, the ones we fucking love, to understand what happens out here? Can you? Because we canna tell them ourselves, that’s for sure, because they wouldna believe it—and no matter what, every last one of them seems to think that we want to be out here, that we want to be with the boys, whatever, or that we love the sea (we love the fucking sea!). So maybe your book, even if it’s a piece’a shite, maybe she’ll read it and understand a peedie bit and love us, and aye, maybe she’ll let us sleep straight out for two days and nights when we get home—and then we’ll have sex!”

  “But Allan Besant,” I said, “you know—you said I was not to be so wounded by, you know—by Allan Besant!”

  “Yep! Yep! He’s a great guy, but you need to understand about him. Or you’ll take it personally, you will, because you’re that kind of a Worzel. And you need protecting. But I tell you: all the times I’ve been to sea you ken the skippers, apart from Jason, they rip you off, they use you to get their money, so they make their money. You get a good percentage, most times, but it’s no what the amount they’re getting—they’re getting a real good wage for you working for them, plus, like, as I said, all me pals ashore, in me car I’ll run them here, I’ll run them there, I’ll be a real good friend to them, and because I’m a trawlerman, they think I’m rich, they’ll ask me for money, and it’s as if they’re sure I’ve no earned it in the first place—and there’s precious few amongst them, builders, farmers, butchers, there’s precious few amongst them that will ever return that money—it’s only yer mates at sea who ever remember a loan. Aye! I get stabbed in the back like … Yep—you give your friends money, even to help them over the night or something, small amounts, but even so you never see it again—because you’re rich, you’re a trawlerman! Aye, Redmond, sometimes it seems that all me life I’ve been used and abused, lots of times—and the women, well, mebbe it’s my fault, not theirs, but they’re the worst. Every woman I’ve ever bin with, apart from Angela, me first, and she was sensible, older than me, and we had a boy, my son, you could say, and he, well he’s the light of my life! And you know what? I even like Angela’s new man, aye, there’s nothing wrong with him! But apart from that, as I say, every woman I’ve been with, the four I’ve been engaged to, every last one of them—she’s done it to me.”

  “Done what?”

  “Gone with another fellah when I was at sea! You stupid? That’s what happens—the same for every trawlerman.”

  “But why? They can’t wait?”

  “Yep! I tell you—they can marry you for your car, that’s what! Because they think you’re rich. And they dinna mean any of it—one of them, I’ll no name names, but when I was at sea she were brakkin the bed with the Stromness gravedigger! And I come home and mend the bed—and when we parted her dad blamed me for all of it, because I was away at sea!”

  “But Allan Besant? You were telling me about Allan Besant… you said I shouldn’t feel so bad…”

  “Aye! Well—he got married, too, but then, you see, he was really rich, and it went to his head as it would to any of us, I’m sure of that, with the possible—no, forgive me, the certain exception of Bryan—aye! So then Allan Besant resumed his old ways, and dinna get me wrong, he’s a grand guy, and it’s only when he’s drunk that you have to watch yourself—his eyes—you dinna know what he’s thinking! And that’s scary, it really is! So, as I say, he took lots of girlfriends, so he had to sell the house, and even the cars, and eventually he was out of money, he’d lost it all, so he had to go back to sea, to sign on with Jason, so no wonder he’s not like the rest of us…”

  “But heroes, the Victoria Cross—what was that about?”

  “Aye, well, yep—I’ll no name names, but that’s what I had to tell you, to cheer you up, you old Worzel, I was forgetting, but aye, that’s what it was: that
’s what I had to tell you, fast, because I need my sleep, you mind that—I’m away to ma bed—because I saw how cut-about, how wounded you were, and it wasna your fault—it was nothing to do with you!”

  “Yes? You sure? Robbie?”

  “Aye—dinna you worry—and I’ll no name names, and it happens all the time, all the time with trawlermen, but Allan—and how do we know we wouldna do the same? You can only judge people like that, and that’s what I think, that’s my opinion—you can only judge if you’re 100 per cent sure you wouldna do the same! Aye—so Allan, he’s almost out of money, and he’s living with his great best friend from childhood, who’s a trawlerman and a lifeboatman. And this friend has a very beautiful wife and, fact is, in my experience, all best friends fancy each other’s wives, just like they share most of their other interests—or they wouldna be best friends! Right? So—probablybefore he meant it—when his best friend’s away at the fishing, or, more likely, when he’s called away at night on a shout (women really hate that! They’re insulted, like), Allan finds himself with his best friend’s wife: and who’s to judge? Who knows? Eh? Redmond? What if—and I know them well—what if the lifeboatman’s bleeper went off when he was makkin love to his wife? Eh? And he answered the call and got to the launch? Eh? If you were a woman how’d you feel? Because those bleepers, you know, you can turn them off… So she’s very angry, like, and she goes to the lodger’s room. Aye! But it all came out; as everything does on Orkney; and this was a mess, such a mess: and she tries to kill herself several times, she slits her wrists; but Allan saves her, and it seems he really loves her now, and he cares, he lives with her—but who knows? It’s no easy, life at sea. It all depends on the woman at home. But the point for you, Redmond, the reason I’ve stayed away from ma bed, it’s this—-dinna mind what Allan says about life or lifeboatmen… OK?”

  And Robbie, nimble, a little Pict, so athletic, even now, in the middle of the night, or the black dawn, or whatever it was, got to his small feet, and disappeared.

  And I myself, I thought, trying to stand up (and oh god, of course, once again, I have cramp down my left thigh, and my ankles—where the hell are they? They’ve gone absent without leave again: they’ve gone walkies to somewhere more interesting …) “I must get to my bunk,” I said to myself. But as I couldn’t move, I sat there, massaging my legs …

  Big Bryan, surprisingly, woke up. (And the worst part of myself said to itself: was he ever asleep?) Big Bryan, sleep free and succinct, said: “Aye, Redmond, I was having a dream, you know, about Allan Besant—and I can tell you, in my dream, on his next boat out, he was completely changed, a different man. It’s odd how it takes us, isn’t it? Because, on his next boat out, he had to be the best, but the best at everything—so he was gutting so fast he left half the guts in; and in the hold, right there with the ice all round him, he’d only wear a T-shirt; oh yes, as you writers say, he was punishing himself, or not, or he’d gone mad, or not… But you know what I think? I think that all that time, with all that money (so he really could), Allan Besant, like Luke perhaps, but then I dinna know Luke, Allan Besant was looking for the ideal woman—aye, and such a focking big mistake, an outsize mistake, the ideal woman! I’ve seen it so often, all the young deckhands, the deck-ies, but never on that scale, never the same search backed with so much money—no, never the ideal bullshit pursued to ruin like that, if you excuse me. Because of course it’s bullshit! The ideal anything is always bullshit! And if you go after it, in religion or politics or love or what the fuck—the result, it’s always the same: you destroy yourself; and, far more important, you shit on the lives of everyone around you. Isn’t that right? People like you—they’re meant to know about such things, aren’t they? The Ideal Woman! Such bullshit! If only these young guys would realize—but it’s not my place to tell them, so I don’t—but if only they’d realize that all you have to do is find someone, anyone, that you like to talk to, to get drunk with, to be with: that’s all: it’s so simple: that’s it!”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “Aye,” said Bryan, “I’m glad you agree—and that’s a fact!” He leant towards me, half off his bench. “But… aye, dinna get me wrong… those pork chops? You and Luke—I couldna help but notice … You had the one each? So would you object, as it were—would you object if I took those unwanted second chops from the both of you? Just asking you, mind …”

  “Please do!” I said, with absurd emphasis, because it was such an unexpected pleasure, such a kick to be able to do anything for Big Bryan. “Help yourself! Eat all you can—you deserve it.”

  “Thank you,” said Bryan, formal. “I appreciate it.” And he reinhabited his muscles, he moved himself, tight and massive, to the stove.

  And hey—he brought me, round the partition, he brought me a huge bowl (OK: so all the bowls were huge), a bowl of Jerry’s vegetable soup, and he set it gently in front of me, and he produced a spoon from his trouser pocket and he said (I took the spoon): “You’re an odd one you are, and no mistake. But you’ll do, I suppose.” And without a word, true companions, we began to eat. And even I, an old man with very few taste buds and a very limited experience of soups that had not come (their contents freshly and specially annihilated for your exquisite pleasure, as the labels always say) from a tin or a packet—even I could tell that this soup was the kind of soup that you’d get given (the super-sexy waitresses all fanning you, gently, with their little fluffy golden centre-spread wings) in paradise, if only such a thing existed…

  “So Bryan,” I said, after ten or so unbelieving slurped mouthfuls of small-boy delight (and it’s a soup!), “how come you’re a trawlerman? Is that what you wanted—as a boy?”

  Bryan, happy as he ate, I could see, would have been yet happier if, for this one half-hour, say, he’d been allowed to eat in peace. And I understood, of course I did, because I myself, when it comes to a meal you need, or something special: a small piece of a fillet of a hunted roe-deer that you’re now roasting in the entrance to the family cave, say—well, you want to take it off to a darkish safe corner, don’t you? You want to eat it, to enjoy it, mouthful by bolted mouthful, in complete privacy, like a dog.

  Bryan, resigned to this questions-business, the tiresome Worzel-factor (and after all, I just knew he was thinking: it’s only for the one trip, the one landing—otherwise we would, we really would, we’d have to do something to stop it); Bryan said, in slow bursts, between huge, slow mouthfuls: “Aye, Orkney. I was brought up in Orkney, Stromness. And I’d set my sights, you might say, on the Merchant Navy. Aye! The big ships! The really big, the beautiful ships!” A long, a chewing, a contemplative pause, and then: “So I did my O levels in navigation and seamanship—you can do O levels like that, you know, in Orkney and Shetland.” He looked at his warm and welcoming, his friendly plate—and not once at me. “And I did well, because I enjoyed it, because it’s in the blood, and so I went to Captain Sutherland’s great, in my opinion, nautical school, Stromness.”

  “And after that?”

  Bryan took his time, so very calm, so at-ease-with-himself, the only man on board who really was all-of-a-piece, right through, and besides, there was half a chop to go, and still warm. And the clapshot, too, of course, the mashed turnip and potato and lashings of butter and a little salt and pepper, but that wasn’t so important, not at all… And he said: “Why the fuck don’t you eat your soup?”

  So I did.

  And when I’d finished (how did something so comparatively simple, you know, food—how did that make one feel such a different person? So happy and so confident all of a sudden?) I said: “And after that?”

  “After that?” he said, well settled. “After that—I discovered that the British Merchant Navy, the fleet that no long ago was the best and the biggest, by far, in the whole fucking world, and that’s a fact—guess what? It had ceased to exist! That’s what! There were no jobs! So I went to the creels, the lobster-pots, the crab-pots, and I have to say I loved that—but it’s no much of a job for a young
man who wants to be away to sea, to the deep sea, is it? So I took a chance, Redmond, and I joined a trawler—and my mother never forgave me, that’s what I suspect, because it’s no like the Merchant Navy. No. Not at all. She’s right. Because it’s fucking dangerous and crazy for half the year—and for the whole year it’s no secure and you don’t get a salary and you have to take your chance—but you know what? I’m happy with it!”

  “You are? Because you’ll be a skipper one day?”

  “Fuck no, Worzel! And sorry, but how would you say that politely? Eh? Absolutely not. Yes that’s it: absolutely not, old bean.” Big Bryan’s red-tired eyes went bright, and twinkly Yes, I could see, he liked that, the old bean…

  “To be a skipper? No—hell on earth, that’s what that is. And if you don’t believe in eternal life—aye, and most skippers do—but I don’t, really don’t: then why spend your one chance of life here, at sea, and on earth ashore (because you’ll no forget your debts, even ashore): why spend the one chance of life you’ve got in hell? Why? No—never be a skipper. That’s what I think. Let someone else worry.”

  “So what do you mean-you’re happy with it?”

  “Worzel—I thought you were supposed to be a writer, you know, someone who thinks about these things, the stuff the rest of us don’t have time for, emotions, all that, guts and offal really, isn’t it? But I agree, and Jason says so too—you’re a dead man without your own guts and offal… Yes, that’s what we said to each other about you, and don’t get me wrong, because Jason and I and Robbie—we’re pleased you’re aboard, we really are, though one of the boys isn’t, really not, but Jason said, in the galley, right here, only a few days out, when you were still throwing up and before we knew that you’d actually join in, and try and help, when we all assumed you’d just stay in your bunk or simply ponce about with a notebook or whatever and observe us, like in a fucking zoo, Jason says, ‘Boys!’ he says. ‘Look at it like this, Luke’s a prize, a worker, the best you’ll see, and boys—we have him for nothing and he guts as fast as any of you and, compared to him, you’re fucking ignorant peasants, aren’t you? When it comes to fish—and, fact is, we’re all supposed to know about fish—that Luke knows the lot! But Redmond, yes, he’s old and for now he’s sick, but he’s paying us £50 a day and he doesn’t have to do that, so he knows he’s no good, and that’s something to respect in a man, and besides—he’s official, he’s an Honorary Member of our Marine Lab in Aberdeen and he’s Luke’s assistant, so if he gets drowned or injured, as he surely will, that’s not our problem, we’re not liable, no, that’s for his boss, that’s for the lab in Aberdeen!’ And then Jason says—and I can’t remember if Luke’s there or no, but aye, he can’t’ve been—Jason says, ‘Besides, boys!’ he says. ‘Whatever the fuck, that’s what, to have a Redmond aboard, I’ve never heard of it happening to any other skipper, ever. So just enjoy it while it lasts, whatever he does, because you’ll never go to sea again with anything as weird as this—I can promise you!’