by Ian Stephen
She might make Calbost of it but she wouldn’t get as far as Loch Shell. She was remembering the day she took the Rana all the way to Molinginish, the shore that opens up, past the south side of Loch Shell.
From there, all the small islands in the Shiants group were distinct. When you were closer, details distracted you from taking in the overall shape. That was the day she’d found the carcass of a young sperm whale, up the shoreline.
Molinginish is a boulder beach, accessible from sea but a long walk-in. An old settlement had become a seasonal bothy. She’d beached the boat on that flat-calm day and found herself drawn right up to the beast. The whiteish leather had been scored with short marks. It must have been not long dead, otherwise she couldn’t have come so close. Her strongest memory was the detail on that stretching skin. Years later she’d done Raku at the art class in the Nic and there it was, a ceramic impression, like that remembered skin but baked permanent.
Shape was also important. You had to judge when to stop working at that. They hadn’t been able to fire the work down the shore, on a driftwood fire, as planned, but the teacher had linked with the techie department to set up an old oil drum as a kiln, fired by one blowtorch. Lewisian Raku. A metaphor for the fire which had produced all this exposed igneous rock. Volcanic activity, breaking from the tides, to form the Shiants.
As she grew, she was allowed to do more with the boat and more on the croft. She remembered the first time she’d been allowed to stay in the byre when a butchering was going on. ‘It’s not a proper deer, where are its horns?’
That brought out a laugh from himself and his usual accomplice. Then they’d bent back to the physical graft of skinning the hind. Later she’d seen this happen to a wedder but the colour of the deer’s meat was different, darker and without the layers of yellowish fat. Sheep or deer or whale, the animal was something different, in death.
Her father’s stroke, so sudden, so massive, they’d tried to keep the lid on the box. You don’t want to see him like this. But she’d known she had to. She didn’t care whether he was as pretty as he could be. Her mother too, she’d needed to see him. That maybe helped but she’d never really got over it. She lost her heart for living so far from town. The sheltered housing suited her fine. It was pretty social in there.
You couldn’t look towards the Shiants without thinking of the bodies washed up on the shingle bank, the shore of rolling pebbles between these main islands. Her father would explain the song.
In Ailein Duinn, the sea captain from Stornoway must meet Anna, the black-haired daughter of the Scalpay merchant. They were promised to each other. His slim black ship of oak sets out from Stornoway but fails to reach East Loch Tarbert.
Anna cannot bear the loss. She composes the most painful expression of grief you’ll ever hear. Then she succumbs. Her own coffin is taken for what they think will be its last journey, by sea, to be buried at St Clements’, Rodel. But they’re caught in a gale. Her brother, the skipper, decides that the living have to come before the dead. He lightens his vessel by casting Anna’s casket adrift. So Anna’s own sea voyage began out of East Loch Tarbert. Her body would be set nornoreast, which is the bearing of the Shiants.
But Ailean’s vessel was overcome, close to the Shiants. His body would have been filtered through the outlying reefs of the group of islands, never straying far because the tidal effect, there, is cyclical. He was waiting for her. His brown hair and beard moving, like kelp, in the tides.
The force of the northern set is stronger than the ebb, south of the Shiants, so Anna’s body had to move towards him. Both bodies were washed up together on that long thin neck of gravel.
Sure enough, they often sighted whales or dolphins in the Sound of Shiants. Big fish, small fin, her father had said to imprint the shape of the diving back of a minke whale. The orca was unmistakable, and usually there would be a tall male dorsal and a rounded female one. ‘Do you think that’s them?’ he’d whispered. She could just about believe it. Anna had escaped the oak confines of her own casket.
She still heard the story in his own voice, no doubt about it. His catchphrases had soaked into the fabric of this vessel, like creosote. ‘We’ll try a jury rig.’ Any kind of improvisation. She’d tried the phrase out at Cearsiadair school, last day of term. They’d all brought in records and the old Dansette player in the building failed to drive at 48. ‘We’ll just juryrig it,’ she’d said, experimenting with a single at 78rpm. A pile left by the older pupils who were now in the Nic. The Stones version of Little Red Rooster. Everyone reckoned the adjustment was an improvement. Soon everyone was asking for more singles at 78.
None of them were quite as good. Then she’d hit on putting on a Calum Kennedy Gaelic anthem – the teacher’s choice, a 78 at 33. She always thought Kia-ora was a Gaelic name. The name of the ship in the song. Another success. The game was more popular than Monopoly. She could hear the speeded up riff in her ear now, above the swell. Sure enough, things just weren’t the same in the farmyard.
Calum Kennedy had missed a trick. He was the local hero. He could have recorded a Gaelic version with the rooster transformed into the proverbial cow. As in, sad day we sold her.
‘Time these bloody fish came on or I’ll be singing it,’ she thought. A passing boat would sight the drifting Rana with a demented singer giving it serious welly. They’d send the lifeboat to tow her in to protective custody.
‘Talking of lifeboats, I’d better show my face back in the Ops Room,’ I said.
‘I was forgetting. You’re running the watch now. I was wondering why you still had the tie on.’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘but you’ll need to come back and give me the next instalment.’
She nodded. ‘Part of my own job. Liaison visit. Your fishing vessel records are still way out of date.’
Nine Pounds
You don’t go in to the bay at Calbost. Just stay out a couple of cables from the point to the north. Hold Eilean Mhuire at the Shiants just open on the Kebock. You’re looking for about six or seven fathoms. You can feel the lead bouncing on the hard ground. That’s the drift you want.
I might be a proper townie but Mairi and me went to the same academy of angling. She got her marks direct from her own father.
Now we were in nearly matching woolly pooleys of government issue or rather Agency issue. Mairi had her own laptop along. All the commercial boats registered SY or CY would now be on our own system. Phone numbers and addresses for skippers, owners or shore contacts, the lot.
‘Yes, thank you. I will accept that mug of tea now, Mr MacAulay.’
She had a word with the others then followed me through to the rest room. Took a seat. I knew there was something else she had to say. She’d get back to that drift, up from Calbost. First she told me about diving at the Shiants.
Once you’d been down there, you could imagine it again, the territory under the surface. So that day, in the fast changing light, she could just make out the shape of Eilean Mhuire but she had this picture of the way the landmass continued under sea level. She’d dived there, in a calm, at slack water and found it as clear as anywhere except St Kilda. She’d been distracted from following the underwater topography by the sheer abundance of fish. Lythe and coalfish, up to ten pounds, swimming as grey-green individuals and yet so dense as to be one body.
Now, she had that imagery in her mind when she was fishing. ‘I think like a fish,’ she said. She would jig her chromed lure and vary the rhythm of it, to entice that big one to snap at it. She could see a yard of bronze, shimmering by the kelp.
She checked her bearings and knew she could drift a while before there was any risk of being drawn too close in. The wind was mainly westerly, off the land and the tide was slack. She’d got that about right.
Her own internal dials shifted from metres to fathoms, whenever she was afloat. She gave her line a good tug upwards and just let her lure fall, wriggling down again. The boat rolled in a wave and she thought it was the kelp gripping her big t
railing hook. But then there was that nudging, shaking and the rod tip bent till it was right under the surface.
She felt the dive of a fish that had to reach the kelp to live. Don’t let it fall off till I see what it is. Only now, she realised how keen she was to take a fish from the old marks. Just the one would do. She was desperate to know what species she’d hooked.
She knew from the job, the Spanish want hake. That’s what drove them all west of the Hebrides, whatever the weather. English folk want cod. In Iceland they export the cod and eat the haddock. Norwegians don’t turn their noses up at coalfish.
When this fish plunged again, shaking its head like a labrador, she was picturing it, tethered. The diver in her was meeting the angler. It was a ling or cod, she’d bet that now. A lythe, even a big one, would swim with you then dive again. This was a steadier resistance and an impatient jerking. She just held while it did its best to shake free. Then she recovered line between the strongest tugs.
There was something strange about the drift of the boat. It couldn’t be big enough to be towing the Rana, surely. Maybe just acting like a sea-anchor. That was possible. Now she was watching for a first glimpse. The glint of her own lure would show first. They went for the flash first then smelled the oily bait and saw the whiteness of the strip of squid. Her father’s trick. He had a collection of lead rippers. You had to shine them up with scrapes of a penknife. She preferred chrome. The door-handle of a Ford Anglia used to be the business. These parts were thin on the ground now and in demand for restoration jobs. Her present stock of lures was made from the leftovers of a set of pram wheels.
She was kind of an acceptable aunty, making the fish-box cart with the brother’s kids. That was only a few months back. The big bro was a few years older. They’d never been that close but he’d settled down, as they say when they mean mating. Twins as it happened. She’d noted the big looks from the mother but she’d never said it, why don’t you find a man you can depend on and do likewise?
But she didn’t mind taking the twins for a while. She’d let the toddlers bash in hundreds of nails to fix a board to a box. Property of Kinlochbervie Fishselling. Not now it wasn’t. ‘Don’t you go getting hammer-rash.’ That was another fine phrase he’d got her into. The wheels were still on their axles, the chassis of an old pram from the shed, with the rest rotted away. She’d realised then she could even get the brake working if she ran a pulley and jury-rigged a ratchet and lever.
She’d had to trim the original chrome lever so it wouldn’t catch the ground. So there she was, asking the kids to stand back for one moment, please, madame et monsieur. The metal was hard on the hacksaw but she had the technology. The aunty with the angle-grinder did her stuff. The niece and nephew had been impressed while the sparks were flying. They’d be even more impressed if she could bring them the fish that was clinging to the lure she’d made from the offcut of that lever.
Whatever it was. It was still diving and keeping just out of her grasp.
Playing with kids was OK. They weren’t babies but kids. Babies didn’t do so much for her. Her own chance couldn’t have come at a worse time. It was going to be difficult enough, chucking the public service security to set up her own IT consultancy. She knew she had to pay off the home improvement loans first. Kenny was cool about all that but then she’d realised she was late, that month. She’d been sure even before the test. If she was going to get something done, it would have to be fast. She’d known for a fact Kenny wouldn’t have been able to handle the thought of losing it.
Now the fish was showing. Too compact for a ling. Even the white barbel, under the chin, was distinct. Not the kelp red of the bodach ruadh, the resident rock cod but its deep-sea cousin, come inshore for the winter. No gaff aboard.
She’d be fine. She was remembering how she’d taken the neglected tackle-box in hand. She’d shone up that lure, rubbing polish over the pitted bits. The falling verdigris. Renewed the trace with fifty-pound nylon. She’d replaced the rusty hook with a new forged job. None of your fine finicky ones, designed for anglers on wide craft, bristling with landing nets. She wasn’t a real angler after all but a Lochy who wanted the glory of bringing home the dinner. This one fish would feed a few folk if she could get it in the boat. It had to be close to double figures.
Now. She got a hold of the trace and timed the pull with the roll of the boat. She just knew it was going to fall back but her new trace held and the cod was on the boards puking pinkish slime and venting it at the same time. Gorged on shrimp and prawn. As good a fish as you got, this side of the Island. About nine pounds. Salmon or cod. That was a good weight.
Her own stomach was tight. Knotted. And only then did she face the fact that she was on a lee-shore. Disorientated, she looked back to the Shiants but they were gone. The wind had veered to north and a bit east of it. Something strange was happening in the sky. It was too bright, under fast darkening clouds. The wind doesn’t often shift as far as that in the time it takes to bring a decent fish from the bottom. She was observing cumulus nimbus. Cu-nim, the airman’s nightmare. Big anvil-shaped clouds ready to spit hail and thunder.
If this was the movies, the music would be getting up. Gaelic gospel, your cue has come.
The only music she wanted to hear was the husky tone of that motor. She’d been drifting without it running because two-strokes weren’t so keen on idling for too long. She’d stopped it her father’s way, fuel cut off so everything in the bowl of the carburettor would be used up. So now she’d need to flood it, choke down. Mairi could hear his voice.
‘If it’s getting fuel and there’s a spark, it’s got to go.’ Her father’s lessons for the circa 1944 British Seagull applied equally to the circa ’89 model she’d bought new, with her Civil Service paycheck.
She was close to hugging this motor, bought in the teeth of the best Far East competition. I’d helped her source the unit. The QB Seagull was no longer modestly stamped ‘The Best Outboard Motor For The World’ but you could recognise it was from the same stable. The design had been passed to Queen’s University, Belfast. Nothing to do with politics or bolstering the Union, just that these guys were best when it came to two-strokes. The design remit was to keep it simple and rugged. Bronze and brass where it mattered. But it had to be a bit quieter and more fuel-efficient. So we were progressing to a 50 to 1 fuel mix when the opposition were on 100 to 1 or oil injection. But the fancier engines had more to go wrong with them. This was the business and it would take her clear, out of this mess.
The cod was still gasping on the boards. Normally she’d have hit it on the head at once. The gills were heaving, doing their best to find oxygen. At least the spray was keeping it all moist. It wasn’t like a conger that could stay alive for hours out of water but only a minute or two had gone by. She had it in her arms. Strange thing, the weight of a fish and the weight of a baby. A good nine-pounder.
Anchors
I put the kettle on again and let Mairi get her breath back. I told her there was no hurry. We just sat in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t awkward. Then she carried on with her story.
She held the fish and could feel the muscles moving, see fins bristling. She knew she was risking the remaining stability of the boat by leaning over to release it but she couldn’t just ditch it over the gunnel. It had come from shallow water so the swim-bladder would be intact. Sure enough it dived, with power, and was gone.
It was ale you needed for a decent sacrifice to the sea gods. They had access to plenty of cod. Or maybe not. Protected species, now, on the Grand Banks. Endangered species in the North Sea, if you believed the scientific officers’ reports.
She sighed when the Seagull fired second pull though she’d known it would. But she’d left the throttle full on when she’d shut the fuel cock, earlier. So now it was roaring in neutral. Not too nice. She went to throttle down, the black thumb-lever still the same shape as the old chrome one. The engine shouted at her. Her onshore drift was increasing with the northeast squall.<
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Fuck.
But she was seeing how the throttle cable was a bit kinked. She’d sprayed it with liquid grease. This was just lack of use. There just wasn’t enough time to get out, anymore. Maybe she was missing her man’s contribution more than she’d thought. Her right hand went to tweak the throttle, get these revs off. But she was too slow to respond to the urgency of that screaming pitch. Slowed by memories.
At last she remembered that the QB had a stop-button and went to press it just as a thump and a squeal came from within the cast cylinder. A painful, crippled movement continued, sounds she’d never heard from any engine. It would be pretty damn messy in there now. Seemed like an hour but it had probably only taken under a minute to destroy her pride and joy. The motor was dead.
She was calm now, studying the green ones starting to roll in with white crests on them. A low roar was sounding above the slap of smaller waves on the clinker boards. This was the breaking and turning of building seas on the lee shore. She was one of the few swimmers in her class, at school. Her father had persevered, showing her all the breast-stroke movements at home, then taking her to warm rockpools he knew so she’d put them together. It wouldn’t help her now. With that surge she’d be ingesting more water than air. OK, there was oxygen in water but even the old guys couldn’t show her how to extract that.
Hell, she was close to the rocks. What was the village tale of the fellow up for his mate’s ticket, getting questioned?
‘What would you do if you found yourself on a lee shore with machinery failure?’
‘Drop anchor, sir.’
‘And what would you do if the wind rose to Gale Force?’
‘Let out more cable and drop another anchor, sir.’