A Book of Death and Fish (37 page)

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 trailing 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.

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.

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.’

‘And if it rose to a nine?’

‘Put out another anchor, sir. With plenty of cable.’

‘And a storm ten?’

‘Have to put out the fourth anchor, sir.’

‘Yes, and now can you tell me where you’re getting all these anchors?’

‘Same flicking place you’re getting all that flicking wind from.’

As she was remembering, she was knocking in the pin at the stock of the fisherman anchor, always ready to go, at the bow. Three fathoms of chain and plenty of nylon warp but it wouldn’t be enough, in this swell, unless she was lucky. As the warp was hissing out she looked for anything that would do for a second anchor. So she moved astern, with the spare rope and made an anchor bend – a round turn but the first half hitch also
goes through that turn – fixed to jam below the cylinder of the nearly-new outboard. She couldn’t resist one more pull of the cord just in case some seizure had been freed and splintered shards of alloy had healed themselves. They had not. Her fingers were working on the clamps holding the engine to the transom. No snags. So she put her strength into lifting engine, bracket and all, and dropped it over.

A moment of slack when it hit the bottom. She grabbed some of that line and led it round, crawling her way to the bow. She let out still more line, running through the fairlead so there would be no dangerous chafe. This would let the Rana plunge nearer the rocks but there was more chance of holding the ground.

She breathed deep, now both lines were tied off. That fixing point. What was its name?

‘The bitter end. From the Dutch word
bitts
– that part where the anchor is secured. You see it wasn’t only silver we got for our herring.’

All these things she hadn’t even realised she’d picked up from the olman.

Her voice was sounding out loud but not shouting. Singing. Best Church of Scotland voice. Nearest you’d get to a good going Baptist choir in a hundred mile radius of Garyvard.

‘Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?’ And the reply.

‘We have an anchor that meets the strain, steadfast and sure while the billows rain.’

Billows sounded a bit soft for these short, violent bastards. Was it her imagination or were they easing? She was swinging bow-in to the seas now. The gear was holding. The sacrifice might not be in vain.

Someone might have seen her leave and reported her caught -out. The SY lifeboat could be belting down here at eighteen knots with the wind behind her. U.S. Cavalry job, bugles blasting. The boys would find her, giving it laldy with seafarer’s hymns. That would be a performance, all right. Who was she kidding? The report of the overdue boat would not be sent till nightfall.

Another wee precaution. She took up the fat buoyancy aid, from under the thwart. She carried it but couldn’t work in it. Now she wrestled it over
her bulky oilskin jacket. She was between a rock and hard place. Miracles were getting scarce.

But she might not need one. The savage edge of the front was through. There was still fierce power in the squalls but there was some breathing space between them now. Maybe she just had to bide her time. Hang on, the Silva compass was in the inside pocket. She couldn’t see a mark to line up but if the bearing to the point was constant, her anchors were holding. Norwegian wood. Wasn’t it good?

Call it zero one five. Wait a few minutes and check again. She was about to take away the eight degrees for variation then laughed at herself. No point in translating it to True. A constant bearing is a constant bearing. She wasn’t going to plot it on a paper chart.

The seas were no longer breaking. You could still see them coming. Dirty lumps of grey water. There wasn’t much white showing at the tops of them. The wind was right down again and returning to the west. The flood tide north would start any time now. She was going to get out of this. This boat was light enough to row well. That wind would take her out clear of the point and then the tide would help her along. She could sneak into Mariveg, the south entrance and moor the boat there

But she couldn’t afford any pissing about, trying to recover the engine. It had done its work. She had to let that rope run then haul up that anchor if it wasn’t snagged.

It wasn’t easy to get momentum against the run of the swell. But the Rana boat is a light craft and the low freeboard helps when it comes to rowing. She got her craft into the safety of Loch Mariveg under her own steam. Own muscle, anyway.