A Book of Death and Fish (23 page)

We couldn’t live on fresh island air. But the plan to establish the largest quarry in Europe did not in fact go ahead. So there was no huge influx of either ballast water or landfill. And Gabriele went on to bring one additional new life to the Island.

I’d been accepted to train as a full-time Regular Coastguard Officer. We’d not long been offered the Coastguard house on Leverhulme Drive. We had a bairn on the way and I was earning a bit more than the Queen’s shilling. It was walking distance from the olaid’s new council house, where we’d shared the back room.

‘It’s no that your nae welcome but I dinna want to be on top o ye,’ she said. ‘And it could jist be that I’ve been used to hivin a wee bit space. I dinna mind yer Gabriele like.’

That’s the East Coaster’s way of showing love and affection.

I was working my way back into the town after the years of being back and fore. Wanting to be a part of its pulse.

‘What’s fresh?’

‘You’re seeing it. Yourself?’

We’d just met in town. The uncle took me for a dram in the Legion. He was grabbing his chance in case I went back to all that religious stuff. So it was a large Dewars and a half of Export. Each. That was his order. I had money in my pocket to ask for the same again.

I’d only recently re-started taking any alcohol. I knew I was out of practice but I remembered that there’s that point of no return. Like in love and affection. And it sometimes comes across you a bit suddenly. Like in love and affection. So we went out for a stroll after he’d topped up the drams again and we’d sunk those.

If we were seriously interested in the historical aspects of the town, we should go and have a look at the Opera House, Ruaraidh said.

‘The what?’

‘The South Beach pissoire.’ Maybe I was too young to have swilled hot whisky and cold beer, down the neck and then out against the wall. He’d spent a wee bit of his own life pissing against walls.

We walked to the end of the pedestrian precinct then risked a route across. Ignoring the indicators of fast Fords. Escorts now. They used to be Cortinas.

‘Cairo is the only other town where they drive like this.’

‘I’ve never been there,’ I told Ruaraidh, ‘but I’ve driven with someone who has.’

Then my uncle told me one more variation on the story of the guy who went to the gates of heaven.

And in Cuba they keep the wide and long Oldsmobiles and Chevrolets on the road because they have nothing to replace them with, their wings shiny as in the days when Kennedys were Knights.

‘I watched a moon-landing in this town, no not a moon descending on the town. Hell, you know what I mean, Ruaraidh. Squeezed it in between cycling back from Holm, me and Kenny, with tails of mackerel, haddock
and flounder beating a song in our spokes. Staying with you guys for the summer. You let me watch BBC2. They got Pink Floyd to do space age music. We called it Underground. While we looked to the heavens. No wonder so many people’s grannies still believed the whole thing was set up in a studio in London or Cape Kennedy.

‘We were all talking about how crazy it was with Biafra going on and then we all shut up when the footage happened. Think of that still from Glen’s Hasselblad.

‘Then, just a few days after the moonwalk, splashdown. And that was the day Senator Edward walked, on this earth, away from a drowning car sinking into Chappaquiddick. Mary Jo sank with it. Put to the Democratic-ish test, he was re-affirmed as the candidate. He won and his majority was only slightly down on ’64. The power of the Kennedy myth remained but the big dream of the dynasty was all over.’

‘Hell of a story to tell me when we’re trying to cross a road,’ Ruaraidh said. ‘Any road. But hell, this road?’

So the uncle and me were now two wanderers. OK, you’re supposed to say so and so and I. It doesn’t sound too good in the SY twang. All these years, all these teachers, good ones among them, and they never quite got me out of it.

One of the best of all was in the Clock School. We were a family in her classroom and you still nod to folk you recognise, in their greying hair. Frostiest time of the Cold War. Of course, we guys were still all Uri Gargarins. Did you know that our hero was 5ft 2ins tall, by the way?

The Opera House was still standing but only just, near Number Two Pier, across from the Weighbridge. A stink from the joined forces of whisky and ammonia still hung in the air around it. A stout wooden barrier bolted across the entrance. The Opera House was
OUT OF ORDER
.

‘See that gate,’ Ruaraidh said. ‘It would keep a herd of bloody elephants at bay. But that’s not enough. There has to be that sign as well. It says a lot, that additional
KEEP OUT
.’

We went to the café. Me and my mates all got banned from these in our day. They all changed their names as the next generation took over. Cabrelli’s became The Town House, Scaramouchie’s became The Coffee Pot.

The seat’s got to be where you can look out, see who’s going by, Ruaraidh reckoned. You flirt with muesli, revert to oatmeal porridge, not the flakes. But eggs are probably best. Two of them. Poached ones are all right but fried ones are better. He could remember when they were scarce.

‘The telephone’s a handy instrument, by the way,’ he said. ‘It’s a long peatbank. That was a hint, young man.’

One to cut and one to throw. It was great, swinging them to fall with an inch between each one and delicate thuds sounding out to say they were mostly landing fine.

As for the cutting, I hadn’t done too bad, once I started getting the iron closer in, flush to the wall of the bank. I must have had a good teacher. Or else it was genetic. No disrespect but you could always recognise an incomer’s peatbank. Usually tried to re-invent the whole procedure. Unless they’d teamed up with the right squad. It could be funny until a sheep drowned in it. You’re making a new edge, for next year, as you go along. And the village inspection committee would of course be studying what we’d done. So we shouldn’t be too proud to adopt some kind of pride.

‘Cutting peats is a piece of piss,’ I said. ‘It’s holding your own in the philosophy, the religious, sexual and political discussions while driving a razor-sharp, long iron down to its hilt – that’s what takes a bit of concentration.’

But we both had all five fingers and toes, port and starboard sides intact, with the job complete.

And then we strolled over to that loch, the deep one over the ridge. Ruaraidh said that stories came from it like vapours. Maybe the last water-horse was still down there.

In the village, the word was a Heinkel had gone over. Hadn’t found a target out the Atlantic and had to drop its heavy load somewhere if it was going to get back. Someone heard the controlled thunder of engines, the loose whine of a falling weapon. But then a delay. Only the engines fading distant. No explosion. They’d gone out next day and hunted the moor. They’d want to find it sooner rather than later, not hit it with an iron, at the peats. Not a trace. No new mud. No visible holes in the wet coat of the Lewis moor.

But all eyes went to that deep loch. If there wasn’t a sign of it anywhere else, it might be there still. That bomb might not be dead yet. Our lives could still be affected by the ordnance from a war that was growing distant.

A pal of mine went for one of the ex-Health-Board houses. They were in a group, not so far from Westview Terrace. Nice part of town and in good reach of the Lewis Hospital. It was a good buy. There was a lot of timber under the roof. It was Welsh slate, outside that, and the construction was solid. Like the Coastguard houses. You felt bad at taking advantage of the offer at the time but whatever you said, the next guy was going to buy it. If by any chance he didn’t, it would be sold on the open market.

These were the houses reserved for those with useful occupations. The teachers’ houses on Ripley Place. The nurses’ cottages on Westview. Police houses on Balmerino Drive.

But see, when it came to the plumbing in this house, he was expecting a nightmare of different layers of additions since the Sixties. But no, every pipe was labelled. Every tap, every twist and turn, joint and elbow. He said to me, ‘I think this must have been the gynaecologist’s house.’

I remember a gynaecologist from when I was a hospital porter for a year. He was very proud of his machines. He gave me dirty looks, for my cornering style. I remember this day, giving a young lad who was long-term sick, a spin round with me – a suggestion from one of the sisters. He was a born teacher, telling me the Gaelic for ‘This way North’ and ‘That way South’ and the lefts and rights. We didn’t come that close really but parked up behind the machine outside Maternity. Too close for the gynaecologist. He had these classic authoritarian eyebrows and he told us exactly how much that machine had cost.

When it came to Gabriele’s scans, it was probably the replacement model for that machine – so of course a lot more compact. That’s the way
machines go. I’ve a very early hand-held GPS and you couldn’t fit it in a pocket. They cost a grand when they were new, about the mid-Nineties.

Anyway, when I was showing the new porter round, before going back to Uni, he thought the consultant was the day porter. That was the guy who was into sailing and vans and would stop for a cup of tea and a yarn with you. The gynaecologist was never so familiar. It’s very educational, observing a hierarchy from the bottom.

Gabriele had an issue with his dates. This was a bit crucial for us because our son was due right in the middle of the Coastguard Training Course which we hoped would help feed him and educate him. We knew he was a son because the gynaecologist told us. But he didn’t ask us if we wanted to know. I was a bit pissed off but Gabriele was livid. I had to press on her arm a bit to calm things down. Then she tackled him on the dates again. His answer is burned into my memory: ‘I have never known this machine to be wrong.’

So we drove down to Bristol and swung on to Christchurch. We had found a cottage to rent, out of season but the occupants were caught up in a chain of buying and selling houses. Everyone was talking about buying and selling houses. The Coastguard houses on Leverhulme Drive were being modernised – double-glazing and central heating from piped gas – but we’d been promised one, soon after the end of the eight-week course. So we found an out-of-season holiday apartment for our nest. It was clean and fine and close to the river.

We’d drive to Boscombe hospital for checks and visits. But our son was not born there. Though Gabriele did give birth there. It was not an easy birth.

The labour took about twenty-four hours and all issues about natural childbirth and waterbaths so the new baby could swim soon after birth – these did not seem very important any longer. So when I went into uncontrollable laughter when our baby was born, the staff must have thought it was simply the relief after all that tension.

Our son was a healthy girl. One arrogant bastard and his machine had been proven wrong. He must have just taken a glance at the scan, peering under all that hair in his eyebrows.

So this is of course a memory of the beginning of a new life. Though a strong case could be argued for seeing the event as a death. Whether you want to or not, you have an idea in your mind, suggested by the abrupt words of someone in authority. So the idea of that son died when our Anna appeared. That stage of the game I don’t think either of us could have cared what sex our baby turned out to be. Except that it was a very good result.

Gynaecologist nil. Anna one.

Razorfishing depends on the day and what’s gone before it. An Atlantic depression will bump up the High Water, way above the predicted level. Wind-driven current, from a spell of strong southerlies, will hold back the tide, preventing the ebb from going as far back as it wants to. Tides are strange things. They can be predicted up to a point but events in distant geographies exert their influence.

You need a big, spring tide – one of only a handful in the year when the ebb goes far enough back – with calm, mild weather. No rain. You’ll see the same faces at the shore. Everyone nods to a new arrival then returns to their own small area of patrol. It’s a blood sport but the red you notice, leaking into the sand, is more likely to have come from the top of your own hand, when you’ve made an eager stab.

If you do get enough razorfish, you place them in a shallow container, maybe a lasagne dish. You pour the kettle, making sure they’re all covered. They’ll open. Meanwhile you’ve the cold tap running. You rinse them. This flushes the sand out and stops them from cooking further. If you leave them in the hot water too long they’ll get tough. I’ve seen a TV chef, handsome chap, make an arse of it. Delicate things till you overdo them and then they’re about the texture of a wellington boot.

There’s a sandy gut to remove. You do this while the butter is melting in a skillet. Crushed garlic if you like it and a twist of black pepper. It’s like making omelettes. Everyone’s got to be ready to eat. You pat them dry and then just turn them in the seasoned butter. That’s it.

I say all this just so you understand that we really wanted to leave the house and get to that shore, Gabriele as much as me. If you don’t catch
that hour, either side of the turn of the tide, you might as well not bother. I abandoned the dishes, unwashed in the sink, as Gabriele was hunting through the row of wellies for a pair which still fitted Anna.

The phone went. I was crashed from our kitchen into Glasgow, at the sound of my mate’s voice. I was back in touch with Kenny F. He was living in a high-rise in Maryhill, very appropriate for a scaffolder. And staying sober, a good idea in that trade. I’d bumped into Angus, in town, and he’d given me the number. I hadn’t given it long before asking the favour. Since he wasn’t a kick in the arse from the city, could he take Anna’s papers, photo and details direct to the Passport Office? The timing was tight. Delays were expected but if you got someone to go along in person…Kenny had indeed been along in person. That fucking office was Kafkaland. Something else. He’d already been an hour over his lunch break when he was given a card which said ‘Turn No. 83’. He’d tried to explain that all the papers were ready with franked photographs but the woman was harassed and told him to wait his turn. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get off the site, long enough, during the day. It might not be the best job in the world but it was a job. Only thing he could think of now was to give a few quid to a mate who wasn’t working, get him to queue.

‘I took a look, of course,’ Kenny said. ‘The photos. The wife and the kid. Isn’t your lady German? Quite tidy, by the way. I thought they were supposed to be organised, I mean with dates and stuff.’

‘Exception that proves the rule?’ I said it though I’d never understood that idea. ‘Thanks anyway, man. Thanks for trying. Hold on. Gabriele’s decision.’

She shook her head. So I asked Kenny if he could just post the whole lot to the Passport Office, registered. We’d take our chance.

What was I up to anyway, apart from international wheeling and dealing? ‘Razorfishing.’

He wished I hadn’t said that. Pity I couldn’t send him some. Put some on the plane, maybe, like they do with lobsters. Remember the raw clams off the line on Broad Bay? But it would only take a delay of an hour or two and they’d be higher than we’d ever got.

He’d just need to come up and get some. They still printed the tides in the
Gazette
when they remembered.

‘I’ll see if I can swing it.’

Was he coming to visit, Gabriele asked, when I put the phone down and I said, no, only promising to. He could cope with it if he kept his distance. There was no work for him here and he went crazy with boredom after a while.

Gabriele said she’d need to cancel. There was no way she could organise a passport for Anna in time. There was an international panic going on.

Anna didn’t like hanging about after we decided to get going somewhere. It took a while to get boots and hats and everything arranged but now she was kitted out and looking in despair at her mother dialling numbers. I lifted her, wellies and all, though there was a taboo on them in the living room. We went over to see what we could see, out the window. Bushes were only wavering. Nothing was bent over. Looking good, if we could get down there. Some brightness warming the equinoctial sky. It was ten minutes to Low Water but we’d have an hour the other side, if we got shifting.

Gabriele came off the phone. The girl who’d dealt with the booking was out to lunch. Someone else took a note. She didn’t have the details. Best to call back later.

We drove to the shore at Holm. These excavations struck you again, even though you knew they were there. I said how the sight was not as hard to take as the first time we saw all the earth-moving equipment getting stuck into the quiet bay. Now there was some sign of the road being restored, with huge boulders being shoved to the sides to shore it up against tides that might advance further than they’d been known to come before.

I caught Gabriele looking again at the small house, last one before the water, down a croft. It was now renovated to make a holiday home. She said she’d risk it, a few metres increase from global warming, to have that outlook.

We turned our backs on the roadworks. We saw Holm as we’d known it. From here, the airport, across Branahuie Bay, looked as sleepy as it used to. You didn’t see the new constructions.

Slight and variable wind hadn’t held the ebb back. A huge expanse of Branahuie was exposed. The piles of the fuel jetty now looked stronger than ever, driven in regularly, at set angles, out to the deeper water. A road of concrete went out on the structure to about halfway along. Soon it would carry the fuel lines.

Then Nato would at last have the ability to protect itself in the Atlantic Gap, from here to Iceland. Well, not quite. There was still the final phase, which was the most expensive. Installation of the missile stores and shelters. But for now, the runway extension was proving very useful for civilian flights. The construction of this fuel jetty was too far ahead to stop but could have its uses. The local word was that it would go right out to reach the mackerel in summer, codling in winter.

These Reds hadn’t played by the rules at all. Move and counter-move have to be kind of predictable, fair’s fair. You don’t invest all these billions into an outreach of bloody, former herringville, SY, just for the planned enemy to fall apart at its own seams. The stitching holding the Soviet empire was failing – like the pale orange lines on my Levi’s jacket.

So the Expansion of Runway, Extension of Facilities would benefit a few Bolshy Heb civilians and their visiting tourists. And the Nato fuel jetty would be about as useful as the World War Two Nissan huts, refusing to rust away. At least they’d had their day, sheltering the horseshide and fleece-clad flyers who’d ventured up in flying boats and seaplanes.

I felt a small weight hit my shoulder. Anna had gone off to sleep in the backpack. She’d be out for an hour now. She’d be safe enough in the child-seat in the car. We’d have it in sight, all the time.

A few figures were well spaced along the shallows. Some strolled gently, water to the ankles of their boots, plastic bags held behind their backs. Others trod backwards along the wet sand, looking for a spout raised by the pressure of their boots.

‘Cartier-Bresson would have a lot of fun here,’ Gabriele said. I’d seen some of the photos her father had taken. The ones she used to take, herself. I could also now see the photo that would not get taken.

The breeze was colder than it looked, from the car. We worked together and became involved. Gabriele did the backward bit. You forget how daft
it is whenever there’s a spout. Everybody around is quietly doing likewise. Our mood was recovering from the tension of the phone calls. I followed her and stooped fast when there was a show in the wet sand.

I’d glance my finger on a shell and be too slow. Then I’d feel one pulse, releasing the jet of water that would send it fast, deeper into the sand than you could follow. But my finger managing to nudge it against the side of its track. Gabriele would loosen the sand around it with the long trowel, until I had a safe grip. With patience, it was ours. Pull too fast and you left the meat in the sand.

Someone near me said they were deep today. I knew this cove. He had a small trawler and was having a day off. The prawns were there but the market was quiet. ‘Not worth bothering, this week. Blame it on the Gulf.’

‘Aye, it’s some of that bloody plant up there we’d need to dig down to them, the day. JCB-assisted razorfishing.’

And the three of us glanced to the excavators, which had started again after the lunch break.

Gabriele and me looked to each other, both of us sensing the Caterpillar tracks too near our car. Digger shovels too high, up over it. We went, both of us, without saying anything. Anna was still dead to the world. But our peace of mind was gone.

I was left to the tide while Gabriele drove back with Anna. This business of the flights was worrying her anyway. She’d have to sort it out.

I knew something was up when she returned to collect me. Anna was bright again, so I sat in the back by her car seat.

‘Get on OK, then?’ I said to the front.

‘Not really. There’s a problem. No refunds. Mutti always pays for the flights but we can’t ask her for that if I don’t get to Germany. It’s a lot of money.’

By this time I should have guessed that Gabriele was in her own dilemma. It was an increased state of alert. A car on the A9 this time of year was a more dangerous way to travel, even with a war on. Fear isn’t all that rational, though – and we couldn’t say it then – how it wouldn’t have bothered us so much, somehow, if we were all going together, as a family, sharing our fate. But we’d used my leave. I had shifts to do and that was that.

It wasn’t the best time to travel but she’d felt she had to do her best to get to Bonn this time in case it was the last time she’d see her mother. A big birthday. Michel had got in touch with the aunt and the cousins. But she’d left it too late to arrange to have Anna placed on her passport. The olaid would have helped me out but Gabriele was still breastfeeding. Not an option.

So I shifted into the driving seat when we got home, though Anna wasn’t keen on letting me go away again. I left them and went down to the travel agents. These daft company clothes. I waited to speak to the right woman.

They had a special number for the Passport Office. There would be someone there, till about five. Not much time. Yes, they were through.

Not by post. A personal visit. Wait, what? Oh, that was unfortunate. Maybe the person who came had not made it clear the party was due to travel in two weeks. If someone else could come and quote this reference…

I said thanks but I’d need to make one more phone call. They nodded to the one on the desk. Kenny F was back in the flat. Early start, early finish. No overtime. Fixing some scran to make up for the missed lunch. OK, I felt guilty. Not guilty enough to stop me asking the question: had he posted the stuff?

‘No.’

‘That’s the right answer, cove.’

My long-suffering comrade agreed as absolutely the final favour to go back to Kafkaland tomorrow lunchtime and quote this reference. It would work. And re lunches, what about a side of smoked wild fish, guaranteed illegal, posted, vacuum-sealed. Forget all that crap, chemical stuff at Glasgow Airport.

‘Done.’

I felt proud. The great Lewisian network. They were shaking their heads at the travel agents’ desk but not too bothered. The booking for Gabriele and Anna held. Mission accomplished. It was like going back to the elation of three-card-brag, played blind, with Kenny and me as a team on a Friday night. Go home early, skint, or get plastered. Nothing in between.

Gabriele didn’t look so pleased with the news. I thought she was still doubting that this passport thing was going to happen in time. But it wasn’t that. Mixed feelings about the visit. She didn’t want to have to explain why she wasn’t talking German to Anna. I refrained from saying how I still didn’t understand that one myself.

A registered envelope arrived in the post, in time. So Gabriele had Anna’s daft big passport, bound in black, to put beside her own more demure green one. I drove them to the airport, glancing across to Holm, on the way. The tides were not too huge now but still significant. It was Low Water and the ebb had left our own desert right out to the piles of the Nato pier.

I waited till the propellers were turning. Casablanca moment. Anna would be getting the royal treatment. Loving it. After all the arrangements, I was ready to get my head down.

Had a bit of a tidy up first. Breakfast dishes. Quick hoover. Things turn over when you’re doing jobs like that. I thought of a prawn fisherman with his boat tied up all week, due to poor markets. The conversation. Blame it on the Gulf. No-one wanting to hang around restaurants in big hotels. There had been a scare. There was always a scare. If it wasn’t Saddam, it was the other guys.

I found my oblivion. I didn’t always manage a doss before the first night-shift but I was wrecked. At least there should be a break from teething now. For me, anyway. Not for Anna and Gabriele.

I woke up hot. I was seeing a shape cross a sky which was like sand. A desert landscape and the long razor-shell hurtling above it. Vapour trailing from an end but the detail of the shell amazingly clear. So clear that I could see the layers of growth, the swirls. As well as the rivets, holding the shell together. The rivets that were popping, the shell falling apart, quietly, as it continued at speed.