by Ian Stephen
But he and the New Arrival were still gabbing away all right so we just carried on.
The Year of the Fathers
Kenny gave his nod to the choice of subject, like he was bidding for a box of fish at the mart. I don’t think he’d heard this yarn of Mairi’s either. Had the feeling they’d not been together that long so maybe they didn’t spend so much time talking, yet.
She rolled herself a smoke and held the tin out. I shook my head and Kenny noticed. We’d both gone that way. She shrugged and took a big draw, to keep her going.
The year of the herring ban. First, everyone was talking about the big shots the Quo Vadis was bringing in. The records getting toppled. Then the Minch was closed. They’d even stopped the Scalpay drifters. What was the point of that, for all the herring they took? And the small ones swimming through. They could have chucked out the purse-seiners and left it at that. But you couldn’t land a herring even if you’d caught one.
Now salmon that year – you couldn’t give them away. It was a dry summer and they were going crazy at the mouths of all the rivers and burns. Everyone had their freezer full and there wasn’t much point in going out for more. Mairi said:
This was the year after my father died. He wasn’t that old, and it just wasn’t expected. It happened in the winter so everything had already been put away. When I went into the byre, there it was, the drift net with the corks, a different mesh from the salmon net, stretched and dried. The Seagull engine, the big one with the brass tank, on its bronze bracket, all the old fuel drained. The plug loose in the cylinder. A new one in a box, ready.
So I put the boat back on the running mooring. My sisters – you know there wasn’t a boy in our family – had taken her in, when we stopped setting the net in the bay. The estate had started lifting nets by then. Well, I’d never been out at night, of course, but I found myself following my nose. I’d his oiled gansey with the grey fleck in it, the Norwegian one that sheds the rain. I wasn’t cold, wasn’t scared and I knew where to go.
You know the east gap – out by Orinsay island? You can just about cut through the narrows to Loch Erisort in a dinghy on a big enough tide. And the south way takes you to a good fishing at Calbost. Or right clear down to the Shiants. There’s a couple of rocks to watch out for, both routes.
Choke on. Fresh mixture. New plug. I primed it, pumping that nipple on the carburettor. There was a spark and clean fuel. It had to go first time. It did. I went out the south gap at half throttle. Once we were through, there was enough light to make out the marks. I opened her up then.
But don’t ask me how I knew when it was time to stop. Just like himself reminding me to put the brass tap in to shut off the fuel. ‘Enough vessels dropping their oil and muck in the Minch without us adding our tuppence-ha’penny worth.’ It was his own voice, telling me.
I remembered something else he’d said. Something about a light that was very handy. No, not a lighthouse. One house up Calbost way. One old guy was always up half the night. He’d keep his light on. You could catch sight of that white light and hold it on the point.
I paid out the net then, just like going for salmon, only rigged to fish deeper and I held the rope. I wasn’t sure where to tie it on but it was as if he was in the boat with me, pointing out the eye bolt at the bow. Round turn with two half hitches but I took the end back through the first hitch. Same as the anchor knot.
You know how you set the salmon net with a grapnel and hold off to watch it? I mean you know their runs, where they’ll come close for a taste of fresh water. Well, I knew just to drift with this one and I wasn’t cold. Wasn’t lonely or scared. Don’t ask me how I knew it was time to haul but I did. It was heavy to get in. I thought of these stories you hear of – a basking shark caught in it. But it was herring.
Again, it was as if he was in there with me, explaining how to shake them out in one part of the boat. Clear of the anchor and other gear. The light was coming back into the sky. The tide had gone and returned to about the same level so I’d have plenty of water, coming back in the loch.
I got the shovel from the byre and more boxes. Didn’t fill them too full so I could drag them in under shelter. It was cold in there. Planks and a concrete block on top so the rats or mink or cats wouldn’t get them. I’d phone around later in the morning for people to come and help themselves. But I put a decent fry in a bag in the fridge. That was going to be a special delivery, for the old guy who keeps his light on.
I pulled the ropes to put the boat back out on the running mooring. I could clean the scales off later. Found myself raking out the ashes in the Rayburn as he always did. A few bits of black caoran to get it warm for the breakfast and I went to my bed before my mother was up.
But it was all starting to move again, this room, at this time. Our personal ceilidhs were breaking up. People were saying they wouldn’t leave it till next year. We’d keep it going, they said.
Kenny F said we wouldn’t say anything. If we said something like that we’d think it was all sewn up. It would be in our minds as having happened already and we wouldn’t do anything more about it. So we’d just shut the old gobs.
Mairi Bhan put down the roll-up that had gone out between her fingers and we made a move. People were putting the remnants into carrier bags and checking on taxis.
Kenny said the VAT man wasn’t going to make it out under his own steam. We’d take a shoulder each. No bother.
‘We’ll get the blame for getting him like this. I’ve been there, man.’
‘Me too and I’m fucking sober. Engage the anus in gear, now.’
The VAT man didn’t weigh much. He didn’t protest.
Then I was hearing another voice, sounding hell of a familiar somehow. It was saying that the floor of this room had started to ripple. Not that surprising really because the whole thing’s built on reclaimed land and therefore still subject to the influence of tides.
But then another voice was sounding, even closer to my ear and it wasn’t my own this time. Wasn’t Mairi’s or Kenny’s. Wasn’t Donnie the guitar man or my bewildered new colleague on his cultural immersion course.
‘You are fucking rat-arsed, Mr Coastguard.’
It was the VAT man talking to me.
West Side Mayday
Once you’d jumped through the hoops and passed everything, you took charge of the watch when the senior man was on leave or sick. You usually worked with the same people and get to know them pretty well. When the watch was short, it could be filled on overtime. You’d find yourself working with guys you didn’t really know.
This guy’s just back from his training course. Pukka procedure. Time and a place for it, as they say. But he’s been a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. Mentioned in dispatches in the Falklands. So he’s got kind of used to getting a bit of authority into his voice on the VHF.
We get this wee shout on channel sixteen. ‘Hello Stornoway Coastguard, can you ring this number in Bernera? Can you do that for me? Over.’
I see his Adam’s apple twitch under the microphone attached to the headset. So I catch his eye and stroll over before he gets his oar in. I know his script. Would have followed it myself, maybe at the trainee stage of the career. You come over as pompous because you don’t know you’re twitchy. Something like, ‘That’s Commercial Traffic. Call Hebrides Radio on channel two-six. Over.’
Instead I strolled over to the channel sixteen desk. ‘Ask him what’s up.’
‘Mallard, this is Stornoway Coastguard. What’s your situation? Over.’
‘Yes, Coastguard, Mallard here. Thanks for coming back. Well, the gearbox is packed in and we might need a tow. Over.’
‘Mallard, Stornoway Coastguard. What is your position? Over.’
They’re talking now but I catch my Number One in the new gold braid and Persil Automatic shirt looking bloody amazed as I hit the Scramble button. Fair do’s, he doesn’t show it in the voice, just a wee bristle but when there’s a wee break and he catches his breath he gives me a ‘You’re in charge bu
t…’
I stop him short. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’ And when there’s a lull, I add, ‘By the way, you’ve just heard the West Side Mayday.’
He’s thinking of wind strength and direction, glancing at the white-boards. If it’s an offshore wind, that strength, what’s the problem? The new boy’s used to a few thousand gross registered tonnes under his arse. Hundreds of guys to run around the ship.
The West Side’s different. The boys are throwing out creels there, as close to the reefs as they can get. Drying bastards, breaking bastards and every other kind of bit of brick. Doesn’t have to be a lot of wind, in from Old Hill. There’s something to collide with, any way you drift.
I ring the number in Bernera. A woman says she’ll get a hold of her husband on channel eight. Should be all right.
The chopper’s on scene in half an hour. ‘Disregard the vessel’s report of Force Four,’ they say. ‘A lot of white down there. Not very good conditions. Gusting over thirty knots. We’ll stick around here till the tow’s connected.’
It took about an hour before the ‘return-to-base’. The boys got it sorted out between themselves, this time. No further assistance.
Couple of weeks later the Mallard breaks up. The guy’s OK. He drifted onto one of the countless skerries in West Loch Roag. It all happened too fast to get on the radio. He got ashore on a reef that wasn’t going to cover too soon. He was picked up from there.
Bits of blue-green fibreglass were getting swept up from Barvas to Cape Wrath. The gearbox again.
That Year Again
This was it, had to be. The croft was newly fenced and you could make out a pattern of plastic tubes, a strange faded pink, inside the wire. These were about four feet high and staked to protect trees at a vulnerable stage. There was shelter from the slopes on either side of the renovated house. As long as the drainage worked, the trees should grow, on this croft.
Kenny was turning a pepper mill over the soup when we came in. This was the New Lewisman before our very eyes, Gabriele said. Another voice said to come and we’d see the virtual Lewis. Through a sliding door, off the kitchen, in what must have been once called a scullery, Mairi Bhan was sitting in front of a colour screen.
‘So you don’t have Windows in South Lochs, yet, blone?’
‘Flick’s sake, a white c on a blue screen is all you need. You don’t want all these icons jumping up to distract you, all over the place. You’re looking at the appropriate amount of technology, SY cove.’
She had a coo at the sight of sleeping Anna. Kenny F was fair taken too. ‘She’s no bother,’ I said. ‘She always goes to sleep in the van. She’ll be down for a couple of hours now.’
Mairi showed me where to put the carry-cot – a quiet, clean corner.
‘A few jobs to do yet,’ Kenny said.
‘Tell me about it,’ Gabriele said.
‘Time was they asked you to take off your boots on a coorse day and warm your feet in the slow oven. Now they show you the pace of the modem.’
‘You can still perform primitive rituals in this house. First thing I do when I get home in the winter. Cup of tea, feet in the stove.’
The heater in the van was on Kenny’s list. A long way from the top. Another year and the South Lochs Autobahn would be ready. Good councillor, they had. European funds.
‘Aye, it cost a lot of cod and hake and haddock, but.’
It was a 22-carat Lewis dinner – soup, lamb, rhubarb crumble. But the soup was a light fish broth with Erisort mussels and singed peppers. The gigot had been marinaded in olive oil, garlic and rosemary and the flesh was still pink near the bone. A dusting of nutmeg, freshly grated on the crumble with its toasted oatmeal topping. ‘Hell, Kenny, that’ll just about do,’ I said.
Half the point of eating like that is the mood you’re all in. The yarns get going when the scoff is done. The girls were on the CabSauv and the lads were on the water. We were also on the topic of uncles. A lasting friendship between North and South Lochs. There was hope for the world. I told him I still remembered a yarn with Angus in the Woolies a few years back. Was he still trapping eels? He’d been good to us when we were young. Hadn’t seen him for a while.
So we got Kenny’s story. I remembered he didn’t get to tell his bit, at the office party. I’d been letting the hair down while there was still some left to do so. Now we were again back to the year of the herring ban. One mo time. Kenny said:
My uncle Angus seemed fit enough then, but he’d to watch the angina. We cracked about the heart condition. What else do you do? How many peats can you cut to one of them pills? If any bit of bare flesh appeared on the telly, we’d say, better get one of them down you, man, so you can cope with the shock. Then we’d be looking out for the first salmon of the year. When you saw a few corks go down, then heard the splash you’d say, pop a pill now, Angus.
Angus said he could handle all them things with only one pill but the first herring would be too much. He’d need half the bottle. Or a half-bottle. And that was definitely not a good idea. He painted the boat, though. Then put the antifouling on. We’d to pull it down to the running mooring he’d laid. He checked the endless rope for wear. He gave it the nod. Then it was time for his siesta.
You know him yourself. Glasses held together with sellotape. Not just the frames. One of the lenses, too. He keeps his good pair in the house, says he’d just leave them behind, when he got talking somewhere. But he never does. Leave them behind, I mean. He gets talking everywhere he goes.
You know what the weather was like that year. There was no fun in taking salmon any more. Fish were queueing from the Creed to Eishken to get up the burns but there was only a trickle.
We had all the troops from Glasgow home for the summer holiday. They weren’t that impressed with the swimming pool and carnival and other town stuff. So there was this wee exodus to the uncle’s, down Garyvard. Sure, sure, I know I never came clean about the Garyvard Connection – good name for a rock band. Think the olaid had the idea of getting me out of the Crit and the Star and back to the great outdoor life. The uncle’s boat was the thing but I wasn’t so sure about taking the whole gang out the loch. You know the tides sweep round the points. You’re past the Kebock into the Sound of Shiants before you know it.
A good sea boat, though. On the heavy side but stable. Built by Matt Findlay, on Goat Island, for the seaweed cutting. We always had her painted plain grey. Think we got a job lot of it with the boat. Good colour if you don’t want to be seen. Bad one if you’re in the shit. Tidy transom stern and a decent inboard. The Norwegian one, a Sabb.
‘The one with the big flywheel,’ I said. ‘Sabb with the double b, not to be confused with the Swedish car. Chemical cigarette for the cold start, in winter. Beautifully balanced. Not one of these bastards that shakes the ribs out of the boat.’
That’s the one. Everybody’s on holiday. Angus is off to his bed, next door after giving me a warning look. Kids are out of the game. The visitors are staying over. The bottle’s getting passed about. Nobody’s warned them their cousin Kenny’s got to watch it. The word ‘herring’ was mentioned.
So the bottle was emptied and there might have been another and that went too so there was no chance of me getting a livener in the morning. A short night. Next day, the kids are jumping on top of you. Everyone was digging out herring nets, buoys. Making pieces, filling flasks, diluting orange squash, all that.
I’m not feeling that great. The weather’s clear and I’m trying to backpeddle. I’m saying it’s not going to get dark till late on. It’s a bit dodgy with wee Murdo and Cathy. Angus is looking over the top of his glasses and telling me, I was out in the boat at night, at their age. It wasn’t as if there was school tomorrow. And he’s going over his marks and the tides. Telling me when we’ve got to start back, so we’ll get the last of the flood come home on. There’s a wee margin but we couldn’t linger too long at the nets.
We had plenty of diesel, warm jerseys, the compass, all that. Angus checked it
all over. No flies on him. He knew me as well as that boat. He knew I thought the world of these wee guys.
You stood up to steer that boat. One hand by the gear and the other by the throttle. Just like the old Heron. The tiller nudging against the leg of your jeans. The way a collie puts her snout against your knee. We were soon out the loch and no-one was trying to gab against the thump of the engine. The kids were right up for it.
So we sent a big pink puta over the wall and then the corks were going out. I got her going astern and it was all running sweet. We were getting the second net ready. The cousins were going for it.
When the last of the gear was out we’d just tie everything off. It would be a waiting game then. Time for a game of I Spy. That would be tricky. I was just giving her a few kicks astern now and then, to keep her moving away from the corks, leaving a line of them, well clear. And then one of the wee ones came running forward to tell me something and hit against the gear lever. So we shunted forward towards the net. I kicked the lever back but the screw was in it. Maybe my reflexes weren’t as fast as they should have been.
I could have gone over the side with the knife to free the prop, but not in that tide. I didn’t fancy trying anything heroic. We just cut it as close as we could so there wouldn’t be much loose stuff trailing. I tied on our last buoy so we wouldn’t lose the net. We dug out the big sweeps. There was no chance of turning the prop. Rowing practice, folks.
We wouldn’t make the entrance in the time we had the tide with us. We had to get in close and get an anchor down. So I knew I’d got to involve the kids. They were right up for it.
I rowed till the blisters came up. When the tide turned, we threw the hook over. It held. Everyone was in a huddle, getting some rest. I rigged handlines for the kids and that kept them going. One of them got a big lythe and they thought it was all great. The kids got some more juice and another jersey on and there wasn’t a moan.