What really surprises Ben though, is that people were worried about overfishing even then, and holding protest meetings about how the big new steam trawlers were taking too many fish and damaging the spawning grounds. Which means it’s been going on for years, with big lads with their big macho boats shoving little lads out the way and grabbing all they can, and ignoring the old blokes who can see where it’s all leading. Which is the collapse of the herring stocks, and cod an endangered species, and Dad doing his nice little earners.
At about half past two, when there’s still no sign of Ian, the doc asks Ben whether he wants to come with her to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle. Pete says that’s where the boat records are stored and she wants to find out who was on Annie’s father’s boat. Ben thinks she must know by now, from talking to Annie. But it’s like she can’t quite believe all this reincarnation stuff unless she sees it with her own eyes – which must be because of all the flack she’s been getting, that Ian told him about.
So they set off on the Metro, with Ben sitting next to the doc, as though she’s his mam, watching all the stations go by – Percy Main, Howdon, Walkergate, where the collieries used to be.
At the museum there’s a posh new glass entrance attached to the side of a dirty old red-brick building. Going in is a bit like travelling through time, because the foyer is all pale wood and blue handrails; then you push through a door to the archives and the walls are covered with old dark wood panels and it smells like an Oxfam shop. When they get to the Search Room, the woman behind the counter brings out bundles and bundles of ancient forms, all stiff and brown, tied up with string, one for every boat registered in North Shields in 1898: all the tugs and trawlers, drifters and collier boats, each with the name of the boat, and its owner, then a list of everyone in the crew.
Ben hardly dares to touch them – because these are actual records over 100 years old, not microfiche copies, filled in by real people, with all their different curly hand-writings, with real blots and smudges. He unties a bundle and starts gingerly leafing through. ‘Why have they got firemen on the boats?’ he asks, then: ‘Oh, right. I get it. They must be the lads who looked after the steam engines. They went on strike, you know – I just read about it in the Daily News. Because they were supposed to help with the nets when they got a big catch, so they’d be really hot and sweaty stoking the boiler one minute, then soaked with freezing water up on deck the next. They said it was making them sick, so they should be paid more money.’
Then, suddenly, before he’s even properly started looking for it, there’s the Osprey. ‘Owner, Henry Milburn, 23 Lambs Quay Stairs, North Shields.’ He tugs on the doc’s shawl and budges over to let her have a look.
‘Do you think he filled it in himself?’ he asks, imagining Annie’s father bent over this actual sheet of paper with a pen in his hand, writing in all the names.
‘Look, there’s Sam!’ says the doc, and she seems really chuffed. ‘And his name is Heron, so I was right about him being that little boy on the Wellesley. And there’s Jimmy – and George Sheraton, the mate, so that must be Flo’s father. And a man called John Hall, in a role they refer to here as “hawseman”, whatever that means – and this must be Tom. Thomas Hall, aged 20.’
‘There’s no cook,’ Ben says. ‘That must be because Jimmy was doing it, but they were paying him as a deckie, though it has him down as a “mariner”.’
‘Thomas Hall,’ says the doc again, slowly, as though tasting the name on her tongue. ‘Initials T.H.’ Then she gets up suddenly. ‘Excuse me, Ben. I’m going outside for a cigarette.’
She’s gone for ages, so Ben goes out to look for her. But she’s not on any of the benches in the car park; so he wanders across the road to the newsagent, thinking she might be in there buying tabs, but there’s no sign. So he goes back into the museum, but she’s not there either; so he leaves a message at the front desk and sets off to catch the Metro back to North Shields. Typical doc, he thinks, stepping on to the down escalator; she’s probably got so caught up with one of her theories that she’s forgotten all about him.
When he gets back, he goes straight to the library, but she’s not there. Ian is, though, parked at one of the computers. Peering over his shoulder, Ben sees that he’s on that ancestors.com website and in the ‘Find’ box he’s keyed in the doc’s name, ‘Mary Louise Charlton’, and in the date box he’s keyed in ‘1967’.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, and Ian sort of jumps, then closes the window really fast, as though he’s been caught on a porno site.
‘Oh, just farting about,’ he says, standing up so that his back is between Ben and the screen. ‘Come to think of it, maybe you can help me. I need some images to set the scene. To show people what life was like for Annie in 1898.
‘All I’ve got so far, you see, is Mary chatting away to you on the sofa. That’s fine for radio, but with telly you can’t just use talking heads all the time. You’ve got to give the viewer something else to look at.’ He’s speaking really fast, which is normal for him, but makes Ben feel slightly out of breath. ‘That’s why the news people fly reporters out to Basra or Nairobi. All they’re doing is parroting info from Reuters, but it means the viewer gets an eyeful of whatever bomb damage there is, and gangs with machetes, and so on. Crass but necessary. What a fucking primitive species we are, eh?’
‘There’s some photos in that cabinet,’ Ben says, ‘but most of the good ones have been nicked.’
‘I don’t need that many. Let’s take a shuftie, see what there is. If I need more I’ll put a researcher on to it at the editing stage.’
‘Does it have to be photos?’ Ben’s had an idea.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there’s this old artist dude that Dad knows – the doc knows him too actually. Anyway he’s like an alky and loony combined, but he does these really cool paintings of the Fish Quay. Going back years, right to Annie’s time and before. Dad says there’s even one of the doc’s house when it was practically the only building on the top bank.’
‘So where does he get his information? Or does he just make it up?’ The Ian bloke’s got his Blackberry out, checking for messages. Ben can’t work out if he’s really interested in the paintings or not.
‘That’s the weird thing,’ he explains. ‘Dad says the paintings are well accurate, so there’s always a load of old people crowded round his stall at the market, ooh-ing and aah-ing about things they remember, and trying to spot themselves as kids. Because he’s even got the people right, so you can recognize them. I mean, how spooky is that?’
‘But he’d be pretty ancient, presumably, wouldn’t he? So maybe he can remember back that far.’ Ian puts his Blackberry away and gets out a stick of peppermint lip balm. ‘Sounds to me as though he might be some kind of autistic spectrum case. Have you seen them on the telly? People who can play a Mozart piano sonata after hearing it just once, or draw an exact image of St Pancras station after whizzing past it on the number 19 bus.’
Ben nods, but he’s not convinced. He’s seen those autistic people on TV and they seem really disabled to him, which is why what they can do is so amazing. But old Skip’s sort of normal really, if you can class being an alky and a schizophrenic normal. ‘The doc thinks he’s painting things from his past lives,’ he says.
‘You don’t say,’ Ian laughs. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, running true to form as ever.’
‘Dad says he’s done loads of paintings of boats, because he used to be a skipper, right? In this life I mean. I don’t know about before, because when the doc hypnotized him he had a loony fit, so she had to quit. But I can take you to see them if you like.’
Ian weighs this up. ‘Actually, I might take you up on that,’ he says. ‘If those pics are any good, they might work rather well on the screen. Especially if I can get him talking a bit about the old days.’ He turns round and quits all the windows on the computer, click-click-click really fast, so Ben can’t see what else he was looking at. ‘Do you
know where he lives?’
‘No, but the market’s on every Saturday and Sunday, so he’ll be on the stall today. If we hurry, we can catch him before he packs up.’
The market’s heaving when they get there, with old ladies in flowery dresses fingering the antiques, and mams cruising the craft stalls with their midriffs and muffin-tops on show, which Ben thinks is a mistake unless they’re brown and flat; and dads in combat shorts and trainers, which is also not a good look. And somewhere there must be a stall selling metallic helium balloons, because they’re bobbing around everywhere, tied to buggy handles; and another stall is doing candy-floss, so half the little kids have pink caked round their mouths and are poking at things with the sticks.
Old Skip’s stall is over in a corner, by the railings. Ben points him out and starts heading over, but Ian stops him. ‘Hang on a sec while I take some establishing shots. It’s never the same when someone knows they’re being filmed.’
He gets out his camcorder and hoists it on his shoulder, then darts about among the buggies and old ladies, filming the stall from all angles while old Skip sucks on a rollie-up and nods as some beardy bloke natters on to him about something. The paintings are higgledy-piggledy everywhere, propped up along the front of the stall, and down either side, and hanging on the railings behind. They’re all in cool arty frames he’s made out of driftwood: all sizes, from really tiny ones that you could hang in the bog, to huge paintings that would have to go in the living room, over a fireplace, if you had one.
Ben’s eye is caught by one small image of two herring girls walking along, arm in arm, with their heads thrown back, laughing. But before he can take a closer look, Ian gives him a nudge. ‘Now we know where all those photos went from the library,’ he whispers, stowing the camcorder in his bag. Which is so out of order, because old Skip probably doesn’t even know where the library is, plus Ben’s seen him with his easel on the top bank with his own eyes and he wasn’t copying from anything.
‘These are bloody fantastic,’ says Ian in his normal voice, looking at the paintings on the railings. ‘Could be just the business.’ He peers at a price tag and whistles. ‘I wonder if he’d lend them to me in exchange for the publicity,’ he says, half to Ben but really talking to himself.
Old Skip spots Ben and nods gruffly. ‘Howay, Paul’s lad.’
‘You must have quite a memory to do all these,’ says the Ian bloke.
‘Ay,’ says old Skip, polite enough, but as though he’s heard it all before.
‘Fancy a fag?’ says Ian, taking out a pack of Marlboro and flipping back the lid. ‘Take two,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to give up.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
…You’re down on the Fish Quay with the Scottish women. It’s dark and the shadows from the lamps make it difficult to see what you’re doing. You seem to have cut yourself, is that right? What happened?
1898
I sliced the top clean off one of my fingers. It bled like the dickens, and I was near swooning at the sight, thinking of that dead lass, but it was just a sliver of flesh and scabbed over in no time.
Ellie told me later that them two lasses are training up a ’prentice to do the work now, but she’s even slower than me so their barrels are well down. They’ve got their lamps, though, so that’s a blessing, but they’re still simmering on about the night hours they’re working for their day rate, for it seems there’s no abating with the herring this season.
Da says he’s never seen the like of the catches they’re hauling. But it’s not the size of the shoals that’s changed, Da says, it’s the size of the new luggers that’s going after them, which can take a bigger net and a stronger capstan, and engines to take them out faster to the grounds on a still day, and back to port with a bigger catch without waiting on the tugs.
He’s been barnying with the younger lads about it, for Tom’s forever on at Da to fit a proper engine. But Da says where’s the sense in hauling up more fish if they’re to end up ploughed into Potts’s fields? For the gippers can’t work any faster, and there’s only so many red herring a drunk Grimsby lad can stomach.
Da says there’s a sort of madness with some of the crews, that makes them coal up the engine when there’s enough wind for the sails, to get that bit more speed. And I’ve seen them myself mooring up, using the capstan to haul on the warp and ram between the boats tied up ahead of them, with engines belching and timbers screeching and lads yelling as they wedge in.
Now here’s Flo and me off on the monkey run, with our clean tresses and light skirts, linked in and looking in all the shop windows. I’ve an inkling she’s catching on to me and Sam, for she’s starting to press me about what lad I like, and I’m saying no one, but she’s insisting there must be someone, for I never took so much care of my looks before. Which is true enough: I did buy a new blouse last Saturday, and I’ve been trying that different way with my hair at the front, which she’s been going on at me about for months but I never heeded before.
When I keep on that there’s no one, she gets peevish, for I’m sure she can tell it’s a lie. So I’ve started some daft nonsense about a liking for one lad, but I can’t say his name for he’s promised to someone else. So now she’s on about is it Tom, all sharp like, and I’m sighing, for we’re back to that again. So I’m saying, no, swear to God. But I don’t know if she’s convinced, for here he comes striding along to meet us, and I’m fretting and daresn’t meet his eye and slip away soon as I can.
Now off she’s gone with him, back to his folks’ place, where she’s invited for tea, so I’m calm again – or calm as I can be when I’m fair jumping at every dark-haired lad, thinking he might be my Sam.
But the time’s passing, and he’s nowhere to be seen, and other lads are starting to come up to me, and blether on – decent, like, for there’s old folk about, but irksome just the same. And I’m starting to feel testy and to wish Sam would make his visit to Da, so’s I could say to these lads I’m taken, and to Flo and Tom too, and stop sneaking around like a thieving brat. And link in with him in front of the whole world, and go for tea at his folks’ place, even if it’s just fish heads and bread. Is that such a big thing to ask?
I’ve worked myself up into quite a lather, so when at last here he is, leaning up against a postbox and just watching me, I’m straight off into a great rant about fish heads before he can say howay.
So he’s canny flummoxed, isn’t he? For last time he saw me, we were kissing at the foot of our stairs and he had to push me away, I was that loath to be parted. Anyway, he listens while I go on, and when I’m done he offers his arm and invites me to tea at his place. Just like that!
Which has me flummoxed, and asking is he sure, and what about his mam? And he’s saying, no, it’s time, and he’s sorry, and he’s been daft thinking we can keep on as we are. So now I’m running up the steps to tell Mam where I’m off to, and to make an excuse to Da for why I’m away.
And now we’re back on Bell Street and sauntering along, but not linked in, for there’s folk I know all about. But I don’t mind, for it seems we’re on our way again, and maybe tomorrow he’ll talk to Da, but anyway I’m sure it will be soon. And by and by we’re into his part of the Low Town, and I’m taking his arm and would be stepping out with my head held high, except these are alleys were you’d best watch where your feet are treading.
But now Sam’s stopping and turning me to face him, and explaining he’s not told his mam about us, so she’ll be in a canny flap, but that’s for the best for she’d be in an even worse flap if she was expecting me. So I’ll have to be prepared to – now he stops, for he’s not sure what I’m to do about his mam, for it seems he hardly knows what to do about her himself. And his face is such a picture of woe, that I’m brimming with tenderness all of a sudden, and a sort of fightingness that I suppose a wife feels when she’s facing a trial with her husband.
‘Howay,’ is all I say. ‘She’s your mam and I need to meet her.’
The alley we tu
rn down is one I’ve not entered before, and didn’t know existed, for it’s a dog’s leg leading off what looks like the dead end for a beating loft, where there’s a great cutch tank and heaps of clinker from the boiler, and the ground’s rusty with cutch stain.
You’ve to pick your way over the clinker; then you’re in a narrow lane of rough cobbles leading onto a wooden quay with sheds either side, except these sheds are folks’ houses, and they’re resting on staithes and quay planks that reach out over the water, as though the Low Town’s slipped down the bank and into the river and taken the poorest folk with it, and tried to shake them off, but they’re too stubborn, and have clung on and made their homes on the water itself.
Sam’s house is the last in the row, patched with new wood, and freshly creosoted, so I see where his share’s gone, and his time, bless him. There’s beating hooks and nets on the wall, and a tin of tar by the door – to paint on the inside, I suppose, though I can’t see how anything could fend off the wet in a place like this, that’s built over the wet, and must get the winter rain head on, and winter swells splashing up under the floor.
There’s two weans outside on a bench threading needles, who stop when they see us, and run inside shouting to their mam that Sam’s here with a lass.
When she comes out my first thought is that she’s a beauty, with Sam’s wild hair and pale eyes, that are even more fitting on a woman. My second is that she’s ailing, for her cheeks are that flushed, and there’s not a spare ounce of flesh on her.
By, but she’s that antsy I’m tired after two minutes in her company! So she’s wiping her hands on her pinnie, and asking my name, and chiding Sam for not warning her and asking do we want tea, all before we can open our mouths. And Sam’s trying to gentle her, and sending one of the weans off to the rain-barrel with the kettle, but she can’t be gentled. For now she’s on about the state of the house, how she’s had a lint to finish so she’s never swept up or done the pots – though it all seems neat enough – and sending the other wean off for Carnation, then running after with another threepence for butter.
Herring Girl Page 20