Herring Girl

by Debbie Taylor

Then she tells me that she’s had her own word with Da before he set sail last night. So now I’m fair dancing crazy, and asking what he said, till she holds up her hand and tells me that Da judges Sam to be a steady lad and a fine fisherman who’s making something good of himself from a bad start.

  ‘What about us walking out?’ I’m asking, so she says, with a laugh in her voice: ‘Your Da said to tell Annie he was minded to break the legs of any lad who came knocking, but he reckons that Wellesley lad’s a better choice than most he can think of, so he’s decided to stay his hand.’

  A better choice than most! Mam says them were his very words!

  Now I’m at the very top of our stairs, on the high bank, staring out to the Tyne’s mouth, where the slow brown river meets the hickety sea – for it’s canny breezy today, with white spume blowing off the tops of the waves. And from every direction, here come the luggers racing home, red sails bellying with the gold of the sun and their holds brimming with silver fish. And that’s just how I feel: full of gold and silver and racingness.

  I’m waiting for Flo to braid her hair, but I’m so bursting full after what Mam’s just told me, that I can’t stay still on the stairs, but must run up to the very top, and make my heart thunder and the breath burn in my chest. So here I am sucking in great gasps of this bright morning, that’s heavy with sea smells and fish stink and lum smoke, and bread from the bakery and frying bacon bits and herring. I fancy I can even catch the velvet yellow smell of the wyn on the hill, and want to run there too, and watch for Sam’s boat coming in.

  For he’s out there somewhere, on his way home. And when they’ve moored up and cranned out, and he’s lain down for his bit sleep in the afternoon, that’s where I’m going straight after work’s finished. Never mind my tea, never mind folk talking, today all I’m doing is throwing off my oilies and running to my lad.

  I mean to kiss him awake and I don’t care who sees me opening his door. For aren’t we promised now, and can’t a promised lass kiss her lad awake from his bit sleep? And later – oh, later! – we’ll go wandering out to where the wyn’s thick and tight-knit, and the sun’s warmed the long grass, and find a hollow to lay out my shawl.

  How is such sweetness possible from just his mouth kissing me, or the sea-salt smell of his neck? Our little slivers of stolen time, them whisperings, them gentle burrowings of fingers that stir up such a buzzing that I can’t see how a body can bear any more! But there’s so much more to come – of his strong back under my hand, tracing the ladder of his bones, nudging into the damp tufts in his oxters. And all the places I’ve not seen, or touched, and hardly dare imagine – but can’t help but imagine! – Oh, and just blethering, strolling along and not minding who sees us.

  It’s like here’s a Yuletide cake, full of currants and glassy cherries; and I’ve had the lid off the cake tin and peeked in, and pressed the middle to feel how moist it is, and sneaked off a split almond or three, and tongued them till they’re gone – and now at last here’s a whole big slice on my plate!

  Flo’s ready now and shouting up to me to come down, but I’m liking it up here on the top bank, with the wind in my face and the sight of all them red sails coming in. So I’m shouting back no, I’m going by the top bank; and she waves and says she’ll meet me down on the quay.

  And all the while I’m checking the sails as they swoop in for the Osprey’s newly fitted dark mizzen. Oh, and there she is! Tacking out along the far shore, swift as a bird, for if there’s a breeze Da likes to ride it in, and save on tug fees, and wave at the crews being towed home, tame as lapdogs on a lead.

  She’s too far off for me to make out the lads on deck or what they’re about, but if she’s the Osprey – and she is, she is! – then my Sam’s aboard somewhere, feeling this same sun on his face, this same breeze that’s whipping my skirt round my ankles.

  Now I’m walking along the top bank, to Nater’s Stairs, with my eyes fixed on that dark mizzen, watching her sails fold like a butterfly’s wings as she comes about, then belly out again till she’s aiming straight as a red arrow for the quay. And I’m thinking, if I run I can meet her, and watch her tie up, and who cares if I’m late to the farlane for once? For this is the first day of my life as his promised lass, and I want to taste every bit of the sweetness it brings.

  So now I’m running, and my shawl’s coming adrift, and my scarf loosening so my hair’s fairly whipping round my face. And here’s Nater’s Stairs thronging with folk, so I must dodge round them, and grab at my scarf to stop it falling, and unhook my shawl where it’s snagged on a cran, here, and again here, and say sorry, sorry, as I gallop past, taking one step, two steps at a time, and trying not to look down, for I’ll lose my balance if I do, and stumble, and be delayed and I mustn’t be delayed for I’ve a boat to meet.

  Now I’m on the quayside, and there’s a line of carts for the ice factory, so I’ve to duck under a whiskery shire’s head to get through, and step over a pile of fresh dung, and dodge round trundling barrows and scurrying herring lasses.

  Now at last here’s the river, and I’m ransacking the boats with my eyes for the Osprey. By, it’s canny easy to find her when you’re up on the top bank, but if you’re looking for a boat on the quayside, there’s a forest of masts and rigging to peer through. So I’m pacing along, bobbing my head side to side for a sight of the new luggers coming in.

  And there’s a commotion started up a bit along from where I’m standing – except it’s more a quiet than a commotion, with crews throttling back their capstans, and loosing off their warps from the mooring posts – then using their poles to push apart, to open a space on the water for a new boat to come in. Which is something they never do, for a good berth by the market’s like gold dust and no skipper would give it up lightly.

  So I’m thinking, maybe there’s a lifeboat arriving, or one of the hospital ships from the cod grounds – for there’s a solemnness about the crews making space that sends a shiver right through me. They’ve gone so quiet, all the lads, setting down their crans and barrows. And all just staring at the boat that’s nosing in to the berth. And I see straight away that it’s the Osprey’s prow, with the carved bird’s head—

  ‌Chapter Twenty-Eight

  2007

  Ben opens his eyes and looks around. ‘I remembered my sign,’ he whispers.

  ‘Yes, I noticed,’ says the doc. ‘Well done. That’s excellent. Perhaps if you learn to control when you exit a scene, you might be able to tolerate staying a bit longer to find out what’s going on.’

  He shivers. ‘Something must have happened on the boat,’ he says.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The other boats were all getting out of the way, which they’d never do normally. It was normally a right dodgems getting a mooring.’

  Ian swings his camera down from his shoulder. ‘So, a man overboard maybe? Or someone injured?’

  ‘Ian, please!’ snaps the doc, almost spitting she’s so cross. ‘I’ve warned you about this. If you can’t prevent yourself from suggesting possible scenarios, I’ll have to ban you from our sessions.’

  Ian puts up a hand and ducks, pretending she’s going to hit him, but he’s obviously got the message.

  Ben feels sick. ‘I don’t think I want to know what happened,’ he says quietly. When he pictures the Osprey chugging into dock, and the other boats edging out of the way, it feels like there’s this hole opening up in his tummy, and his heart and lungs are dropping into it.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ says the doc. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’ She puts a gloved hand on his knee and rests it there a moment. The weight of it makes him feel a bit better.

  ‘Remind me who’s on the boat,’ says Ian. ‘Annie’s father, Henry, is the skipper, right? Then there’s her brother Jimmy, and his pal Tom. And Annie’s sweetheart, Sam, from that training ship.’

  ‘The Wellesley, that’s right,’ says Ben. ‘Plus Flo’s dad and Tom’s dad; they’re mate and third man. And an older lad to min
d the capstan and that.’ Ben can see where Ian’s going with this; he’s trying to work out who Annie cared about on the boat, who might have been injured or drowned – which could only be her father, or Jimmy or Sam.

  He’s still shivering so he sits up and puts on his hoodie – it’s more proper boy than having the doc’s blanket round him, but he misses the smell of it.

  The doc turns to Ian. ‘Ben tells me you’ve been looking at Mr Skipper’s paintings,’ she says, trying to change the subject.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he says, sitting down on the pouffe. ‘I get the message.’

  ‘They are quite remarkable, aren’t they?’

  ‘Uncanny, more like – assuming he hasn’t got a secret doctorate in historical topography. I thought he might be autistic spectrum. What do you think? Or some kind of idiot savant. You know, focal brain damage after a fall or something.’

  ‘His alcoholism would certainly predispose him to stumble.’

  ‘But you have a far more interesting explanation.’ He’s being sarky because she’s told him off again, but it’s obvious he wants to hear what she’s going to say.

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it as an explanation,’ says the doc. ‘But as an hypothesis it does account for some of Mr Skipper’s symptoms that are problematic for more conventional theories.’

  Ben lies back down to listen. He loves it when the doc gives one of her lectures, because they’re full of amazing ideas and she explains them really well, so he can understand even when she’s using loads of big words – though some of this rings a bell, from when she’s talked about old Skip before, so he feels he has a bit of a head start.

  ‘I published a speculative paper on schizophrenia a few years ago in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, in which I suggested that a small but significant subset of schizophrenic patients may have been misdiagnosed. My hypothesis was that the auditory hallucinations typical of the illness may in fact be intrusions of past-life experiences into the consciousness of these particular patients.’

  ‘OK,’ says the Ian bloke. ‘So why aren’t we all schizophrenic?’

  ‘Well, in the majority of people, the border between the conscious and unconscious is quite robust. When we wake from a dream, for instance, we have no trouble distinguishing that dream from reality. Similarly, we never mistake our waking reveries and daydreams for the truth. Indeed, so robust is the border that many artists find they must devote considerable effort to overcoming or subverting it in order to gain access to their unconscious inspirations.’

  ‘And everyone knows that artists are nuts.’

  ‘My hypothesis is that the strength or permeability of the border between the conscious and unconscious may vary from person to person and could possibly be genetic. So, just as with height or intelligence, any one individual’s “score”, as it were, would lie somewhere on the normal distribution. So though the majority of people have an IQ of between 80 and 120, there are always the odd few dullards at the lower tail of the distribution and a clutch of geniuses at the opposite extreme.’

  The Ian bloke’s leaning forward now, really into it. ‘So, applying your “permeability” theory, people at one extreme of the normal distribution will be almost completely repressed, with no insight into their unconscious motivations.’

  ‘Yes. While those at the opposite end of the spectrum may traverse that putative border with comparative ease – which may or may not be an advantage, depending on their circumstances.’

  ‘Artists or madmen.’

  ‘Indeed. And shamans, nyangas, mediums, intuitives of all kinds. In another culture – or another time – our Mr Skipper might have been revered as a visionary.’

  ‘So much for the schizophrenogenic mother.’

  Mary turns to Ben. ‘Ian’s referring to the theory that schizophrenia is caused by bad parenting,’ she explains. ‘But he’s forgetting that my hypothesis only applies to a very small subgroup of people with schizophrenic symptoms.’ That’s what Ben really likes about the doc: that she always includes him in her grown-up conversations, and always assumes he knows what they’re about, which he does, actually, most of the time.

  Ian has taken out his Blackberry and is making notes. ‘So, getting back to old Skip: you reckon his paintings are scenes he’s actually remembering, from various past lives he’s experienced in and around the Fish Quay, right?’

  Ben sits up. ‘Dad says he was the best skipper ever and could always find where the shoals were. Dad says it was like he knew every single rock on the sea bed. Maybe that’s because he’d been a fisherman loads of times in his other lives and just got better and better at it.’

  The doc smiles at him. ‘In cases of exceptional skill or knowledge – with child prodigies, such as Mozart or Picasso, for example – that does often seem a compelling explanation. And there are many documented cases of children exhibiting spontaneous xenoglossy, that’s speaking fluently in a language they’ve never encountered before.’

  ‘I thought I might put him in the film,’ says the Ian bloke, sort of shifty and casual at the same time. ‘Use his paintings to set the scene and maybe show him working on one, with you doing a voiceover about your theory.’

  ‘As long as you bear in mind that he’s a very vulnerable individual. So please don’t attempt to interview him – and make sure you give him a fair price for those paintings.’

  ‘He’s just going to borrow them,’ says Ben, because he’s been thinking it’s really out of order of Ian not to buy them, because he’s obviously loaded but Skip is just a poor old alky.

  ‘Is he now?’ goes the doc.

  ‘It’ll be good publicity for the old geezer,’ says Ian, trying to brush it off. ‘They’ll be worth a fortune afterwards.’

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. Taking advantage of a brain-damaged old man. I’d forgotten you were such a skinflint.’

  Ian actually blushes at that. ‘I think we may have identified another one of my specialist subjects,’ he says, whatever that means, though the doc seems to understand.

  ‘So you’ll pay for the paintings?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Anything to avoid another resit. And to show I’m serious, how’s about I treat everyone to supper this evening, at a hostelry of your choice?’

  They’re at the Low Lights Tavern, which is a really ancient pub, just three dark little rooms with a bar and open fire in each, though the fires aren’t lit now because it’s summer. Dad says that before the new landlord took over and started serving food, this was a ‘spit and sawdust’ pub, which is what most pubs used to be before they allowed women and kids in. In the old days there used to be sawdust or sand on the floor, to soak up the spilt beer and the spit, which is really disgusting when Ben thinks about it, because everyone used to smoke high-tar tabs and pipes, so they all coughed up really gross thick brown phlegm. And the fishing pubs were open all hours, because they had a special licence; so there would be alkies in there all day, puffing away. Dad says when the new landlord took over, he had to ban the alkies because they were frightening away the ladies from the posh flats along by Dolphin Quays.

  The Low Lights is Dad’s territory, where he goes drinking with the lads after a trip, so it’s weird to see Ian strutting around being the boss, getting the waitresses to push the tables together, so they can all sit on one long table, and moving all the chairs round.

  Dad’s doing his usual thing of getting out his wad of money and calling the waitress over to get the first round in. But Ian beats him to it: ‘I’ve set up a tab behind the bar,’ he goes, waving Dad’s money away. ‘Order whatever you like – it’s on the Beeb.’

  ‘Cheers,’ says Dad, looking a bit spare. He shoves the wad back in his pocket and drapes his jacket over a chair.

  Ian’s said they can invite Nana, which is brilliant because they’d never have heard the end of it if they’d gone without her. It’s all she’s been talking about the last few days: film director this, BBC that. She’s sitting opposite Laura,
and they’re nattering on like old mates – which they are, in a way, as they go to the same hairdresser in Whitley Bay, because even though Laura’s got all the proper equipment at Salon Laura, she says you can never do a proper job on your own hair – though she always calls it your ‘barnet’ or ‘riah’, which is hair spelt backwards. She’s always using weird words for normal things. She explained it to Ben once: in the old days trannies and homos had a special language so that they could talk to each other without people understanding what they were saying. It was a mixture of Italian and Spanish and backwards spellings; so the word for ‘eating’ is ‘manjare’, ‘man’ is ‘omee’ and ‘face’ is ‘ecaff’, which is face backwards.

  Nana’s really dolled herself up in a new glittery top and push-up bra with turquoise lacy bits showing, and matching eyeshadow and kitten heels. She’s knocking back her vodka lemonade and ordering a top-up, and doing that thing she always does when she’s excited, asking question after question but not waiting for an answer, so whoever she’s with ends up gaping like a haddock trying to get a word in. But Laura’s not putting up with it, so she’s reached across and put a hand on Nana’s arm to slow her down a bit, which seems to be working, though it could be the vodka calming her down.

  Compared to the racket everyone else is making, the doc seems rather quiet, taking it all in and sipping steadily at a big glass of red wine. She’s looking really glam, in one of those long silk pyjama suits that Asian women wear, in a dark plum colour, with her bun unrolled into a long plait down her back. She’s next to Dad, who’s bagged the chair at the head of the table, which in his mind probably makes up for Ian paying for everything – though Ian’s bagged the one at the other end, so between them they’ve nabbed both of the macho positions. Ben’s seated opposite the doc, so he can see her and Dad together, which is sort of freaky, because it’s seeing like the two halves of his life side by side, dipping into the black olives like it was totally normal.