The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  Finn suddenly gripped Rob by the arm. “Listen!”

  Rob half-cowered from the leap of the dark, breathing, “What is it?”

  “It’s the silence,” said Finn.

  “The what?” breathed Rob, looking over his shoulder.

  When, from their gay voices as they moved on, Rob began to understand what Finn had said, he grew angry and hinted at unnameable things that would yet astonish them. “You’ll remember my words, maybe, when it’s too late.”

  So that Henry had some difficulty in wakening them in the grey of the morning. Callum he gave up, but Finn brought his mouth to Callum’s ear and shouted, “Herring!” Whereupon Callum threshed about him, muttering, “What? Where? …”

  The wind came cool from the morning’s mouth behind the hills. Round the Cape and out into the Minch they sailed in a gentle breeze, and lifted the coastline of the Lews, and marvelled at the ease of this trip compared with the last.

  “It just shows you,” said Rob, with his sideways nod of wonder.

  “What does it show you?” asked Callum.

  Rob ignored him.

  “Never mind, Rob,” said Finn. “You sang well last night. You kept up the honour of the boat.”

  “Sang?” repeated Henry, raising his brows in real surprise.

  “Don’t you listen to them,” said Rob. “They’re trash. They haven’t the manners of my foot. There we were, being entertained by decent, honest people, who gave us food and a song, and when they asked for a song back, which was but right, you would think it was two of Dannie Sutherland’s stots I had with me.”

  “So you gave them a song yourself?”

  “I gave them a stave or two,” admitted Rob.” What other could I do?” His shoulders hunched in ill-humour. “Oh, I’m seeing you winking all right,” he added to Callum.

  “And they never sang at all?” asked Henry.

  “Sing, is it?” and Rob snorted a ruthless sarcasm. “Once they plucked up courage from me, it wasn’t the singing then; no, it wasn’t the singing.”

  “What was it?” asked Henry.

  “It was the getting them to stop,” replied Rob. “I thought that fellow there,” nodding sideways at Finn, “was going to throw the lassie through the roof.”

  “Through the roof?”

  “With the dancing that was on him,” said Rob.

  “She was a fine lass,” murmured Finn, “with a soft eye.”

  “Soft eye, my—huh!” said Rob. “And it wasn’t the eye that was bothering you, moreover.”

  In past Goat Island to Stornoway itself.

  *

  After over two weeks in Stornoway, the crew of the White Heather were wondering if they would clear their expenses. They missed the hope and enthusiasm that sustained their own home coast even when herring were not on the ground. There was a half-hearted air about the whole undertaking and disputation amongst those on the curing side. Maciver had suffered financially through the loss of an uninsured trading schooner, and the small type of fishing-boat out of the creeks round the coast, not lured by bounties from “the Stornoway financiers”, preferred the tolerable certainty of the cod and ling fishing, backed up, as June came in, by the kelp-burning.

  “Besides,” said Henry, “they’re too poor to buy nets and their boats are too small. They’ll never do anything of themselves, never a dam’ thing.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me they could do much whatever,” said Rob. “You cannot catch what’s not in it.”

  “I must say I think it is a bit early myself,” said Callum. “The fishing will come on all right, but by that time we’re getting ready for our own home fishing. And there it is.”

  “But when the fishing comes on here, why don’t they fish it?” asked Henry.

  “You need curers for that—and the curers are on the East Coast then,” answered Rob.

  “They had bad luck in the days of the Government bounty,” said Finn, “and they’ve never got over it. There were fellows then, calling themselves curers, who were just pure chancers. They had no money, and all they were after was the bounty. Seumas was telling me about it.”

  “They’re too poor and landlord-ridden, if you ask me,” said Henry. “They strike me as a people who have lost hope. And I don’t blame them. Take the kelp-burning itself. Was there a single landlord from here to Barra Head who didn’t make a fortune out of it—before the tax came off the barilla? The crofter and his family worked like hell, gathering the seaweed off the beaches and out of the sea and burning it—and at the end they would get three to four pounds for a whole ton—which the landlord, who hadn’t done a hand’s turn about it, then sold for twenty pounds. And even the herring itself down the coast—there are places they can’t even sell them except through the landlord or his factor. It’s a bloody shame,” declared Henry.

  “Well, they don’t get four pounds now,” said Rob.

  “No, they don’t get two, and the landlord makes out he’s a fine, helpful fellow because he only gets four. He’s just allowing them to carry on for their own benefit. Saves him having to give them meal when they’re starving.”

  “Ay, ay,” said Rob.

  Finn laughed.

  “What are you laughing at?” asked Rob.

  “There’s nothing else to do,” said Finn. “Are we going to sea to-night or not?”

  “Why?” asked Callum. “Anything on?”

  “You never know,” said Finn.

  Henry looked at him. “We’ll leave it to you.”

  “In that case we’ll go,” Finn said promptly.

  They eyed him, then Rob scratched his beard. “There’s a dirty bit of sea running, and it’s worse it’ll be before it’s better.”

  “We’ll go,” said Henry, whom talk of landlords always put in a bitter humour,” if you’re all agreeable.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Callum.

  “We come from a rock-bound coast,” said Finn, “and here there’s always a hundred places to run for. At least let us show them an example.”

  “Ay, ay,” said Rob.

  Finn laughed and winked to Callum, who asked him, as they walked along behind Henry and Rob, if he really had had anything on.

  “I had, as a matter of fact,” replied Finn. “But only if we weren’t going to sea.”

  “And you’re sorry now!”

  “Not a bit! Dammit, let us give things a chance. It’s the sea first.”

  “You’d better watch yourself with that lassie.”

  “Which one?” asked Finn largely,

  Callum laughed, for Finn in this humour always enlivened him.

  A few fishermen were hanging about, some making fast their boats against a blow. When they saw the White Heather pushing off, they were astonished. “You’re not going out this night, surely?” called the old skipper of the Sulaire.

  “We thought we might go out and see what it is like,” answered Henry.

  “Well, boys, I don’t think you should,” replied that wise old man.

  Bain now came over to the wall and shouted.

  “We’ll give it a trial,” Henry cried back.

  Bain stood still for a moment and then saluted them. They knew he would now boast to Maciver about the East-Coast spirit.

  Once outside the Point, they found a nasty sea running, as if it were catching on the bottom and falling over itself into breaking water and long swinging troughs. But they had experienced this peculiarity of this part of the coast before, and kept her heading into it, until they began to open out Loch Erisort.

  “I’m afraid it’s not to-night we’ll shoot nets,” said Rob.

  The wind was a little south of east, blowing fairly strong, and if they did not want to go back to Stornoway now, they could run into Loch Erisort. No one spoke, however, and Henry drove on.

  “I’ll tell you what I was thinking,” said Finn. He could see they were now out of humour with him, holding him responsible for this foolish adventure. “What harm in running south—even a long way south—if
only to find out if there’s herring on the coast?”

  “And what good will that do us?” asked Henry.

  “Well, at least we’d know,” said Finn.

  Rob’s breath left his nostrils in a noisy snort.

  “You mean down Harris and Uist way?” asked Callum ironically.

  “Why not?” challenged Finn. “What’s the good of sitting in Stornoway?”

  “And supposing we found herring, what then?” asked Henry. “Where would we take them?”

  “It would be fine to see them, at least,” replied Finn, with a sudden smile, for there was no answer to Henry’s question.

  But Henry, looking at Finn, suddenly liked the humour in his smile, its air of daring, of taking a chance first and finding out what would happen afterwards. There was the old memory of Kebock Head, which they could now see; there was last week’s rumour of herring off the Shiants. The weather was getting no worse, though the sky was ugly. “We’ll hold on a bit, anyway,” said Henry.

  They held on past Kebock Head; they opened Loch Sealg, with the Shiant Islands some five miles to the south. The wind was moderating. They might yet shoot their nets inside the Shiants and perhaps fetch Stomoway on the morrow with a good shot!

  The darkness began to dim the sea. There were porpoises about. The wind died away suddenly. “I don’t like it,” said Henry.

  “If it doesn’t veer round and come in a sudden lump,” said Rob.

  And veer round it did, and came with terrific force, smothering the half-light and blotting out the land.

  *

  The following day they fought their way into a small creek, and when Henry asked the man who helped them to make fast what the name of the land was, the man answered that it was called North Uist.

  “You’ve got your wish,” he said to Finn.

  “Thanks to you,” answered Finn quietly.

  *

  The nights they spent in that remote place were never to be forgotten by Finn. They had the influence on his life of a rare memory that would come and go by the opening of a small window far back in his mind. Through such an opening a man may see a sunny, green place with the glisten on it of a bright jewel, or a brown interior place and the movement of faces, or a strand in the darkening and the crying of a voice, but whatever the sight or the sound or the moment, it is at once far back in time and far back in the mind, so that it is difficult to tell one from the other. Indeed, an odd commingling seems to take place, and a curious revealing light is not even thought of, yet had always been there.

  They were a friendly, hospitable people, full of an extreme inquisitiveness. But their curiosity did not offend the four men from Dunster. On the contrary, they understood it, and Rob’s intricate and circumstantial way of telling all that could be told pleased them highly. Henry’s reticent irony was understood also, and sometimes one of his dry sayings would be appreciated like a proverb; while Callum’s friendliness, particularly with children, was welcomed by the women, who greeted him in the most cheerful way. Never before had Finn so clearly seen how different each one of the crew was from the other.

  If they questioned Rob, Rob did not fail to question them. Their circumstances were poor and their houses more primitive than anything now in Dunster. They lived under a system of rack-renting that made Henry’s eyes glisten, and when he questioned them, after telling how his own people had been treated in a clearance, they gave him an old saying to the effect that it was bad enough to be a tenant, but to be a sub-tenant was the evil of the Evil One. A great landlord would lease swatches of his land to relations or other tacksmen, and these would screw out of the sub-tenants everything but bare life. Yet they had no active grudge against landlord or tacksman, who in times of great scarcity might give them meal, and who, for the rest, seemed in some strange way to be related to them like fate. No, they had never tried the herring fishing; they hadn’t the boats or the nets for it, and, anyway, there had always been the kelp-burning at this season, and the coming of the crops.

  The crops looked healthy enough, but the patches of land were tiny for the number of houses squatting about them. From a slight eminence, it was a world of sea-inlet and fresh-water loch and peat. There were moments, then and afterwards, when to Finn it seemed a forgotten place that had lived on.

  But however all that may be, there was no lack of hospitality for the strangers, though it was the poorest time of the year for grain, lying between the last year’s crops that the spring had lived on and the new crops that were not ready. But oatmeal and beremeal bannocks there were, and some milk and butter and cheese, dried cod and ling, and a fresh egg, for the hens were laying fairly well even if here and there a squawker had to be shoved under a basket to put the brooding off her.

  What is misfortune to one may be fortune to another, they said pleasantly, for the storm had thrown much tangleweed on the shore, and when the crew of the White Heather had had a good sleep, they gave a hand in the gathering of the tangle, distributing their efforts amongst their hosts in the fairest way they could. When it seemed the storm was going to take off, it would start to blow again, not strongly but with the persistence of an anger that could not get rid of its grudge.

  Finn enjoyed this work. There was much merriment amongst the young folk down on the sea-edge, racing in, gripping the tangle, and getting out before the wave overtook them. When a boy was worsted by the wave and the others laughed, he would snatch the long, sinewy arm of a tangle by the root and switch sea-water from the frond into their faces. Some of the young girls would scream, but always one here or there would cry “Stop it!” in an imperious voice. From a wary distance, a boy would ask, with false concern: “It’s not wet you are, Alastair?” until poor Alastair would be near dancing with rage.

  All the same it was good drying weather for the seaweed. They spread it on the machair, and particularly wherever there was an edging of bank to let the fronds hang down. Finn became interested in the process of kelp-making, and visited the places reserved for the fires, and handled the ten-foot poles with their iron hooks, for when the sun had dried the weed, just enough to make it burn, it was gathered and heaped upon the long, narrow fireplace—anything up to six paces long and nearly one broad—and set alight. Great is the labour and intense the heat, said the old man with the stoop to his shoulders, when the kelpers set about stirring up ash and ember with the iron hooks, keep on working up the whole mass, thickening it, until it becomes like the ball of dough a woman makes for the baking. A long time the grey mass takes to cool, and then it is heavy as stone. Ay, when the season is wet and the drying not too good, it will take twenty tons of the weed to make one of kelp.

  And so the pleasant, informative talk went on through the hours, and the old man, in whose house Finn slept, liked talking for its own sake.

  “You have a great lot of ponies among you,” said Finn to him.

  The old man paused and regarded Finn.

  “Yes, we like our horses, and we like to ride them, and at Michael’s Feast on Mary’s Strand over in the west of the island, there are exciting races, with the girls riding as well as the lads. It’s the great pity you were not here then, for by the look of you, I think you would do well at the games,”

  Finn smiled and asked him more about this Feast. And as he listened he saw, as if he had seen it before, the concourse of the folk on their little horses in processional pilgrimage round the graves of their fathers; the games, with the lads in shirt and short trousers and a whippy tangle-stalk in the hand, racing their horses amid the shouting of old and young; the dancing all through the night, when “You give a gift to her you are fond of and receive from her a gift that her own hands have made”. But this old, stooping man of the bright eyes talked about the angels in heaven as naturally as of the lads on horseback, and brought the Victorious Michael flying over the machair on his white steed, until Finn felt the olden strangeness getting a grip of him.

  Much knowledge Finn received from this old man, who was one of the three story-te
llers of the district. He could have listened to him for hours on end, because as he listened something in himself that had hitherto been dry, like dry soil, was moistened as by summer rain, and became charged with an understirring of life and with an upper movement of wonder like fragrant air. There was perhaps some special concentration of the self in it, too, for the old man’s first name was the same as Finn’s, which was likewise Finn MacCoul’s, the great hero of the noble Fians, whose marvellous exploits were this story-teller’s province in learning and art. The story-teller, Hector, specialized in romance and would draw his own followers; and the third old man, and the oldest, whose name was Black John, cared most for the sonorous flow of certain ancient epic poems.

  The coming of the four seamen, from the continent beyond, had a quickening on the lives of these folk as they gathered in the evening, anxious above all things in the world for news, their faces bright and expectant. They were greatly astonished at the amount of money that was being made at the East Coast fishings, and questioned Henry closely, and shook their heads in wonder. There was a man up from South Uist on a visit to his mother’s sister. “Myself,” said this man, “I come from Lock Skiport, and the day before I left, and it’s no lie, the water was white, as if you were beating it with thongs, and that from the playing of the herring.” Henry’s eyes gleamed as he asked, “What did you do?” The man explained how they had shoaled many on the shore with bits of nets and blankets and other gear as the tide ebbed. Henry nodded twice as he looked at his crew with his slow, ironic smile. “What did you call the place?” he asked. “Loch Skiport,” answered the man. Far in the years to come, with his son setting out to fish for a curer in Loch Skiport, Henry was to remember how and where he had first heard that name. But now he thought of Bain and how he would move the fish-curers. The West was waiting.

  That they were good seamen, Henry knew, for he had already found out that boats ran dried cod and ling to Greenock and Glasgow, and Callum had discovered from the women that young bustling men would come from Lochmaddy and buy up their eggs at twopence a dozen and send them to the same markets, “In what size of boat?” “There will be one or two fully seventeen feet.” “In that case,” said Henry, “we have little to tell you of seamanship.”