A Book of Death and Fish (24 page)
Read A Book of Death and Fish Online
Authors: Ian Stephen
Don’t trip over the VAT man. And there he was, full length on the lino, in his grey suit. A couple of bowls of crisps and stuff on the deck beside him. Of course someone had stuck a pay-slip in the saucer of nuts beside his head. Civil servants work for peanuts.
We were looking for space. The place was heaving. We were the contingency from Her Majesty’s Coastguard. We arrived, the survivors of one office party, bearing gifts. A bottle of Trawler Rum and one of Grouse. Thus we could cater for most normal tastes. A space was being cleared on an office table. It was Mairi Bhan, shifting a case of McEwan’s Export.
‘Room for a discreet little arse here,’ she said.
Then, ‘Is that all you have? You’re as bad as the Customs. I thought they would run to Cognac or Bison-grass, or something kind of special, half-inched from some poor bastard.’
‘Fucks sake. When I was a lad there were only four drinks. Light, heavy, whisky and rum. And we managed to get pissed just the same.’
‘Listen, Mr Her Majesty’s flicking Coastguard in your pretty uniform, you’ve come a long way from Westview flicking terrace.’
She held out her glass and nodded to the rum. I said I didn’t have any mixers, either. She said maybe Her Majesty’s Customs could run to the Coke. But no, that team couldn’t even run to Coca Cola. Good job she liked the black rum just as it came, if there was a tin of a beer to wash it down.
Mairi Bhan seemed to have forgiven me. Our first meeting since Billy Forsyth’s wasn’t too hot. It was over a full pot of coffee in the galley shared by several departments. A liaison visit. We’d got talking. Was she a typist? No, she was a flicking Fisheries Officer as it happened and the Civil Service was an Equal Flicking Opportunities Employer, in case I hadn’t got that yet. OK?
Things had improved over the coffee. Real McCoy. Remember Calum Sgianach’s round the corner? They ground it there, the smell lingering over the worn maple counter. Her olman had developed a taste for the stuff, on his travels. A lot of folk still drank Camp then. Chicory and sugar included. It was a syrup in a bottle, like HP sauce. But there was a soldier in a kilt on the label. She’d liked going in town with himself. So now she insisted on decent coffee, any office she was working in.
The cove she was with had his head turned the other way. He was yarning with another Fisheries Officer, a guitar legend in the city of SY. I remembered his playing. Mairi’s cove turned back to her, I couldn’t believe it. Kenny F.
‘Where the hell have you been hiding? I thought you were still in Glasgow.’
‘I was but I got fed up of waiting for that side of wild fish you promised. You forgotten how to cast? That was a flicking year ago. Is the wife back in
Deutschland
?’
She was indeed. And I had knocked off the day shift with a sleeping day tomorrow before starting nights.
‘I’d never have guessed you’d just come off shift. Nice braid, by the way. Must feel proud to be a servant of Her Majesty?’
I just nodded. My misspent youth was staring me in the face. He looked in pretty good shape. Considering.
‘You guys have some catching up to do. Yeah, suppose you’re both verging on the
bodach
stage.’
‘Trainee
bodaich
. Lads really, I said. Sure I used to know Kenny F but hell, he wasn’t on the orange juice in them thar days, Jim, lad. What have you done to the man?’
Kenny said he didn’t mind being the driver if the crack was good.
‘Thought we’d established there was none to be had? From Customs sources, anyway.’
‘You can chalk that one up.’
She let that pass.
‘Don’t you worry about Kenny. I’ll make it up to him when we get home,’ she said and I got the feeling she wasn’t going to be stopping to pour him a dram.
‘Kenny,
a bhalaich
, let’s make a deal. I won’t go telling nobody bout the crazy things you done in the days of your youth if you don’t tell nobody bout mine, man.’
There was a Gaelic proverb to that effect, he said, so he wouldn’t go spilling the beans to Mairi Bhan about the day his so-called fucking mates left him for dead on the quay and pissed off fishing somewhere.
No and I definitely wouldn’t tell nobody, man, bout the guy who went on a bender the one day in the year we’d got our flicking act together to get out to score some sea trout. But shit, I’d come in with someone, a New Arrival. I couldn’t leave him swimming in this den.
I got my backside off the table and saw my colleague making conversation with another Fisheries Officer.
‘This is…’ I said but that’s as far as I got.
‘Never mind the fucking shop, do you still listen to Hendrix?’
‘Strange thing is I dug out
Axis: Bold As Love
the other night and it didn’t sound too bad. I can’t listen to the Stones anymore. How can you take all this streetfighting talk from these bastards? Never mind my listening, do you still play the stuff?’
He nodded. ‘Sure. Sometimes just for myself. Sometimes I get a shout. You still on the drums?’
I had to shake my head. Donnie, the Fisheries Officer, still had the Strat. The cove brought it out of the house when he got asked to jam but most of the time he just played for himself, the wee amp in his room.
‘This guy was the best. Probably still is,’ I said and my fellow Coastguard Officer politely said he’d missed out on Hendrix first time round but his kids were into it now so he was getting a taste. He wouldn’t mind hearing more.
I topped their glasses and left them to it. Mairi held out hers for a rum. I kind of hesitantly offered Kenny again but you get the feeling some people know what they’re saying.
‘You have your dram,’ he said, ‘but some of us are better off without it.’
‘Shit, the head’s reeling,’ I said. ‘Not whisky, but memory. Stronger stuff, by far.’
‘You got to move on. Someone, sometime did a song about that, too.’
I pushed it. Looking round, you could see that the whole room had broken up into a big number of small ceilidhs. Everyone was gabbing. Except for the VAT man. He was at rest.
‘Times like this,’ I said, ‘people are supposed to remember what they were up to when President Kennedy got shot.’
‘Go on,’ Mairi Bhan said, ‘take it away.’
‘Yeah. I’d been at the Lifies – you know, junior Boys Brigade, uniforms and brass and string – just like the Coastguard, now. Thought I’d got away from that. Anyway, we went to Charlie’s on the way home. That was Cher Ali. His son tried to get the Western Isles’ first Indian Restaurant off the ground. Change from selling nylon drars and FLs but he was way too soon. We bought plates of chips there. I ate mine and went home and it was on the telly, but on the way, you could tell something was on. People talking in whispers, stopping each other in the street. Like, really mourning. Like it was somebody’s brother, somebody you knew.’
Mairi poured me another Grouse, a rum for herself. Kenny got another orange juice. I caught her smile to him, looking like a promise.
She couldn’t care less about John F flicking Kennedy. He had to get hold of a new bit of skirt every day. With the whole world ready to fall in about all our lugholes. It was the brother she felt for. That poor bastard was really trying to do something to stop the war and nail the Mafia. Must have been a hell of a shock for him to find that Daddie Jo had bought into the big firm and paid for elections with these same dollars. That wasn’t Bobby’s fault. And his death was even more weird.
Talking of death, I’d a rabbit called Floyd Patterson because they said he’d fought back and killed a cat that had a go at him when he was out of the hutch.
‘What?’ said Kenny, like the sober bastard he was. ‘It’s not everyone would see the connection. Pick a subject and we’ll run with it.’
‘Skip all this pseudo-historical smalltalk. What about the year of the herring ban?’ Mairi Bhan said. Quite firm. Loud enough to break into the yarns going on a table away because Donnie’s voice came over the top.
‘No Fucking Shop.’
But he and the New Arrival were still gabbing away all right so we just carried on.
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.
