Trawler

by Redmond O'Hanlon

  I thought: so that’s a great relief—because that means I’m not the only nutcase in this fish-room… Make-up? What’s wrong with make-up?

  “Because I’ll want her exactly as she really is: no bullshit! No pretence—I’ll want her, for herself, no argument; and especially, aye, I’ll want all those little things that she imagines are her faults—or big things, come to that, I don’t care, just as long as she stays with me for ever, and I really want children, but say she can’t have children, for some reason, I’ll still love her to bits as long as she stays with me for ever. Aye! No lies—exactly as it is when you go out on a shout in a flying gale, a Force 10! Aye—and then I’ll respect her, and love her, I’ll love her to bits until I die—and maybe, you know, just maybe, we will have children, lots of children, but there again, who can tell?”

  “Luke—you’ve got to go to Shetland for a month or two! Hunting!”

  “Aye! So if it’s a district nurse and we’ll be together always then I can add to my fantasy, can’t I? You know—the Viking cottage, as it were, all that, I can add to it, can’t I?”

  “Of course! Why not?”

  “Because by then I’ll be earning good money, and so will she, so maybe, just maybe, in the honeymoon period, you know, which I’m sure will last for years, because I’ll love her to bits … we might buy a sailing-boat? What do you think? Eight metres or so? And I’ll name it after her, of course. And that’s all a secret dream, really secret, a silly fantasy that I’ve had for twenty years … And we’ll explore the coast of Shetland from the sea, just the two of us, and then, when she’s used to it, we’ll sail to Norway together, just us, and we’ll nose around the islands and push up the fjords between Bergen and Stavanger; and then we’ll return to our cottage! Aye—and we’ll have children. And another thing: I know—this will seem ridiculous to you, I know it will; but I want a garden; because I want to grow vegetables; and I want to plant trees. Aye, I hear you, as you’d say… But you’re wrong, because even on Unst, between 60 and 65 degrees north, I forget exactly, but it’s on the same latitude as southern Greenland, it’s the most northerly of all the islands of the British Isles, the far north of Shetland—aye!—and the most beautiful, believe me, the most beautiful place on earth, excuse me, because even there you can grow trees!”

  “Bullshit! There are no trees in Shetland—everyone knows that!”

  “You’re wrong!” Luke became so agitated, passionate about—what?

  Trees? It was trees now, was it? And for a moment I thought he might get to his feet and ruin everything (the old men; the conversation; peace; the park-bench). But, just, he stayed where he was, on his red-plastic-basket rim; and yes, I thought, the bounce in these up-and-down (and sideways) plastic seats: wow! So active-kind, so move-you-about-comfortable at the base of the back; and maybe, with a twist or two, you can visit the site of that low-down back-pain and shift it? To the right? Oh Jesus! No! So: to the left? Yes! That’s better; that really is so much better, such a relief…

  “You’re wrong Worzel—aye, because, as it happens, I have been to Shetland! And aye, as it also happens, I fucking well was not looking for a district nurse!”

  “You weren’t? Really not? Then more fool you! That’s all I have to say—because you should, and fast, Luke, fast: because you’re ageing! Now—now is your last chance.”

  “Jesus! Will you lay off? Will you lay off for just a moment—and listen?”

  (Luke said Jesus, didn’t he? So I’d got him—yes: Luke was coming apart; so Luke would take my advice; wouldn’t he? Yes—whatever happened, I’d make so sure that this absurd wayward hero of a young lifeboatman was happy! And as for that: there’s no other way, everyone knows—all you need is the right woman …)

  Luke, aggrieved, but not (I was so pleased!) moving from his basket, said: “Because—the great Dr. Saxby, a guy you’d really like—och aye, you really would, because he lived in the nineteenth century, and now he’s dead! Aye, Dr. Saxby was the island doctor, the man who wrote The Birds of Shetland; well, to be accurate, as you say, his brother (a vicar! How’s that?)—he put it all together from Saxby’s papers after his death and published it in 1874… Still, where was I? Aye! Trees! So Dr. Saxby loved trees too: and he built a big walled garden beside his little house near Baltasound on Unst and he planted sycamores (I think it was sycamores)—and guess what? They grew! The most northerly wood in the British Isles! But now his house, the scene of all that nineteenth-century northern science—it’s a ruin … But if you climb over a broken iron-gate—you can go and enjoy this little wood: spooky, magic! A magic place! And all those poor migrant little birds, the robins and blackbirds and God knows what else who have to get out of Scandinavia where they breed so well in summer (the insects! the blackfly!) but which in winter becomes one impossible bird-hell of snow and ice—aye! The lucky ones, of all those thousands (millions, perhaps?): the lucky ones of all those thousands of little land-birds blown off course in the wrong Arctic wind (so that almost all of them ditch exhausted into the sea and drown, pronto, and feed our fish)—aye, the very few lucky ones all get to go to Dr. Saxby’s wood: and they can’t believe it, they’re safe, they’re in a wood, they survive!”

  “Goaaal!” I shouted, automatic, formulaic—but all the same, it was a great story, wasn’t it? And then huffy, feeling left out (hadn’t Luke agreed to tell me everything?), I said: “Luke—you never told me you’d stayed on Shetland!”

  “Aye: because my mum paid. That’s why I never told you. And another thing: I really want to own a dog. A collie. One of those magic dogs: they’re so intelligent; you wouldn’t believe it! Aye: a big fluffy female collie—their eyes! They look at you all the time … And when you say, ‘Sit!,’ they sit…”

  “Yeah, yeah. But Shetland? You never told me you’d stayed on Shetland…”

  “Aye, well. I did. And I can’t tell you everything, can I?”

  “Oh yes you can—and you should. You told me about Signy Island—but Shetland?”

  “Aye, OK, well, no wonder I didn’t tell you, because my mum paid. But the fact is—it was two months, in the slack period for us, in Aberdeen, at the university, at the Marine Lab; and, as you know, a graduate working on his doctorate is allowed no more than two weeks off a year, and, for some reason, especially not mature students … But I think my supervisor (a great guy!) and my mum (she’s lovely: you’d really like her)—I think they must have got together, because, it’s true, I was having terrible trouble starting my doctorate! Aye—I already had lots of data from trawlers, from the sea; and from the landings, from the fish-market at Scrabster, where people like Jason come into harbour at three in the morning; and the lumpers arrive and do the unloading from the hold on to the boat’s hoist down there; and the boxes are swung up and ashore under the trawler’s lights; and the crew pull them into the great shed on these horrible unstable three-wheel market-trolleys … Aye, and the merchants arrive around six in the morning, and it’s all so tense… And when everyone’s ready the auction begins—hundreds and hundreds of boxes, if you’ve been successful, all spread out, and the auctioneer and the merchants step from box to box, row on row, and the sale is done …”

  “Luke! Shetland! I really want to hear about Shetland!”

  “Aye, well, okay—but you see, despite my earnings, my savings from my years in the South Atlantic, on Signy Island, and as a Fisheries Inspector in the Falklands: fact is, I was out of money. And in Aberdeen, well, you know, the distractions! The Moorings, the pub in the docks, full of all your friends, every night! And the clubs—the dances! Aye, so as I think I told you, my mum and my supervisor may have had a word on the phone—and the choice was a cottage in Penan, the prettiest little east-coast Scottish tourist village where they made scenes for a film called Local Hero. Or, more expensive (because it’s so far away), a place way up north, on Unst. Well—that was it, wasn’t it? The obvious place to send someone into isolation to begin real work on his doctorate … So I took my little white van from th
e lab, the one I use for all the kit, for sampling species in Scrabster market—and I had my thesis-notes and computer in one case, and my clothes in another, and my boots and anything else I thought I might need in the back—but no, even then I made an effort: I thought about what I might need: I did not bung everything in like you do: socks, papers, books that are one hundred years out of date, piles of crud… No! … I couldn’t stand that!”

  “Yes, yes! Great! But where did you go?”

  “Aye!” Luke, uneasy, looked hard away to port. (To port, there was nothing to see: just the rusty brown-circled rivets, the rusty brown-orange-edged plates; but hey, I thought, it must be dawn out there; because the weak pure white Arctic light is coming in here, horizontally, through the starboard scupper—and it’s making the loveliest patterns with the stains of rust on the iron, and across the old, bubbled white paint; and yes, watch it, I thought, both ways, because that, I suppose, is exactly how otherwise perfectly reasonable people decide to become painters, artists …) “Aye!” said Luke, turning his head, concentrating, now staring straight in front of him—at the gutting table (littered with a miscellany of his lovingly documented but now discarded fish). “For me—it’s not a good story, which is why I’ve never told you, despite something: well, to be honest, it was absolutely the best time I’ve had in my life since Signy Island: since the South Orkney Islands, the Antarctic!”

  “Yes?” I said, easing forward slightly, trying to move the pain in my back without standing up from the rim of my blue plastic basket—because, it was obvious, I must not move, I must not disrupt things in any way, no, not at all…“But Shetland?”

  “Aye! I took the St. Clair, the ferry (a big ship!), from the pier in Aberdeen—right out of the harbour-mouth, past Fittie, and you can see my place as you leave the coast…”

  “So what was wrong—why wasn’t it a good story?”

  “Eh? Because I wasn’t paying, of course! All my life, until this fucking doctorate, excuse me, I’ve paid my way, and more. But now, it’s so shaming, I can’t: and the lifeboats, you see, I’m a volunteer, and I wouldn’t change that for anything—but I don’t get paid.”

  “Luke—come off it—no graduate students get paid! But you’re going to finish your doctorate: and everyone will want to employ you! And, in a year or two, you can pay your mum back, all of it, with interest!”

  “Aye. If she lives long enough.”

  “Ah. Well. Sorry. Forgive me …”

  “Aye. It’s bad. But look—now I’ve told you … I’ll tell you all about it: because the place I stayed, the place she paid for, well, it was bound to make me feel guilty… Because it was the most beautiful cottage in the whole world!”

  “It was?”

  “Aye! It was! It really was!” Luke looked at me, full on, such a grin, such a set of perfect frontal-upper-jaw white teeth. (So how old was he? Really? Thirty? Thirty-five?) No—come on—but all the same—how’d he managed that? Yes, of course, I thought, all his active working life, of course—Luke had eaten nothing but the very freshest fish …) “Aye! But there again, right enough,” he said, “I don’t bullshit like you! No, nay, never—so maybe it was only the most magical cottage in the whole of Europe: aye! And everything about it: sweet as a nut!”

  “Yes? Really? So for Chrissake—where is it?”

  “OK, OK—I hear you—so I haven’t seen cottages in Europe, so I don’t know; but I’m sure of it, OK? Because you couldn’t imagine a better place, however hard you tried! But maybe, Worzel, just maybe, you’re so old, and you’ve been around and you’re worn out, old as the Blackstones, the engines, as the boys say, excuse me—so maybe you have seen better cottages in Europe: but I don’t believe it! So, I tell you what: how’s about this? It is absolutely the most smashing cottage in the whole of the UK, the entire British Isles! So how’s that?”

  “Luke, for Chrissake—where the fuck is it?”

  Luke—so fired up by the thought of this cottage, a mere place (and no, it really did seem that no woman was involved in the memory)—Luke, all black-topped and curly and looking so young said: “Hannigarth, Uyeasound, Unst, Shetland. Aye—that’s all you need to remember: and anyone, even you, can go there! You can hire this place, rent it! And you should, Worzel—because it will change your life!”

  “But,” I said, immediately sullen at the thought, despite all the excitement, “I don’t want to change my life! No! Not in the very smallest, not in the tiniest—not in one single fucking harvest-mouse of any particular! No—I don’t.”

  “Worzel!” said Luke, still horribly buoyant and revitalized by the thought of this dot on a map. “Worzel!” And then, from nowhere, with an all-over, genuine, right-through-body laugh (which was almost as wounding as Jason’s, and less explicable) he spluttered, through those perfect teeth which, in my opinion, he had no right to own: “Mr. McGregor! His wheelbarrow! A watering-can! Peter Rabbit!”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Eh? That—that is” (he imitated my accent) “to say things like that, old chap, that is not nice—”

  “Up yours!”

  “Aye—but joking apart, and smashing jokes too” (Luke was still rocking slightly) “you should go there… To Hannigarth. Everyone should … Just once in a lifetime … And it’s easy, so easy… The Shetland Tourist Board—they know all about it! Although no one else does … Mary Ouroussoff, she lives near Gloucester somewhere … That’s it! Weird, isn’t it? Magic—whatever? Something that happens just the once in a man’s life … Is that right? You’d know! Ach—the point is, as you’d say, it was only a cottage, a converted croft: no woman, no romance; no, just a place—but what a place! Aye: it’s the nearest that you or I will ever get to paradise … You know—the bullshit that you pretend you don’t believe in; and which I really don’t!”

  “Oh, Luke: for Chrissake!”

  “There you go! Aye—but it’s true.” Luke looked away again, to port, a quick little convulsive movement of the head. “I’ve been thinking what I could give you—to thank you, you know, for your companionship on this trip, one of my many trawlers: but the truth is, I’ve never had a time quite like this one, because, I’ll be honest, normally it’s just a routine number of stations, hauls, whatever you’d call it: a record of depths, of everything that comes aboard, the temperatures from my mini-log on the net… all that… but I’ve never had someone else with me before, you know, someone from the outside world, as it were, a companion who’s made it all so different and completely fucked up my head…Jesus! I’ll need to sleep! But I thought, all the same—maybe, one day, we could have a joint venture to search for the females of the Arctic skate; or the very young Greenland halibut, the Black butts—and Robbie: I’ll bet he’s right! Aye—or better still, I thought, we could explore the Rockall Trough—lots of trawlers work there; or the Porcupine Seabight or, best of all, the Porcupine Abyssal Plain—and those areas, seabed and waters that are only a few hundred metres deeper than here (although, aye! the Porcupine Abyssal Plain is a little different, because there, I think, if I remember correctly, the seabed is around four and a half kilometres down): but the point is this: those areas, on our doorstep, so to speak, just off our coasts—those areas are almost totally unknown… So is that wild—or what?”

  “Wild!”

  “Aye, but I can’t guarantee any of that, not until I’ve finished my doctorate: if I ever can, or do! So instead I thought I’d tell you about this secret place, Hannigarth! Because you can go there, anytime; and you can take your family; your wife; and your children, too! So, you see, I have to pay you in knowledge; because I can’t do presents; because I have no money!”

  “Luke! Luke! Don’t be silly! Of course you’ll find a wife—you really will marry a district nurse… And yes, sure as hell you’ll have children!” Which didn’t sound exactly right; and anyway, I thought—Luke is still facing away; but if he says just one more kind word to me like that: well, I’ve had no sleep, have I? (Or rather, said the inner voice—yes, you’ve
had some good sleeps lately; but not, of course, the ten-hours-plus you’re used to …) Luke, I said to myself, stop it, please, Luke, stop it: because I’ve had no sleep; and that’s not my thing; and if you thank me for anything ever again: I’ll burst into tears … And how would you handle that?

  Luke, coming to himself, I supposed, was now staring straight ahead, at the long conveyor whose stainless-steel sides led from the gutting table to the hold (and the top two inches of its port side shone in the horizontal light from the scupper to starboard)… “Hannigarth looks out across sheep-grazings down to the sea, to the great bay in front of you, and there’s a real Viking cottage down there on the upper shore of the beach: you can still see the walls, and the cow-shaped (it’s wide in the middle) entrance to the beast-house. And—I can’t describe it, but I tell you, it’s all in my head, even now—the headlands, the cliffs away to the right (where there’s a huge deep raven’s nest at the side of a gulley—aye: the ravens have been there for thousands of years, too, it’s not just us). And under a grass-overhang on the foreshore you’ll find the nest of a Shetland wren; and there’s Arctic terns and their children on the beach; and as you walk north to the little cemetery where so many drowned seamen have their memorial stones, the adult terns, the parents, they dive-bomb you—tirrick-tirrick! And there’s a pair of Arctic skuas that breed there, too, and you should see the way they fly! Bastards—because they wait sitting on the beach and they watch until they see a plunge-diving tern come up with a sand-eel, you know, and then pow! They’re off up into the wind—and you should see them! The swept-back wings, the wedge-tails with a pair of feathery pincers out the back… So what are they for? Aerodynamics, I’ll bet. That little extra something that helps you as you come curling down and get right on the tail of an Arctic tern… An Arctic tern—the best long-distance flyers in the world… The one bird that migrates each year from the Arctic to the Antarctic; and yet those two Arctic skuas, nine times out of ten, as I watched, they outflew the Arctic terns, and the tern dropped its sand-eel into the water and the skua picked it up and glided back to its nest, to feed its children!”