A Book of Death and Fish (46 page)

I was missing the driveway more than the village of outbuildings but it felt good to be back in the sway of the town. You could say I’d never been out of it, but it wasn’t about where you were laying your head. It was about being hemmed in. Anna was off to Newcastle. I said the Geordie accent would blend well with SY. I made my own move, not long after. It was a shit time, some ways. Gabriele wasn’t in a good state. I’d lost my own buoyancy. I was sluggish in the water. But some mornings I woke with a sense of relief.

When you’re unsettled, you go out on walks without being definite about where you’re heading. Or you find you’re in the car that’s stopped in front of a workshop. You have to re-map your own home town for yourself.

There’s one Italian café left, out of the three or four, including the one where you received very sound advice along with the coffee. The shoeshop (and centre of moral philosophy) has been converted to flats. The blacksmith is still inventing things and contradicting the pattern of economic activity still somehow generally accepted in the developed world. When you ask him what the damage is, he says, ‘Bring it back when you’re finished with it and I’ll make it into something else.’ And the hoil is in the throws of shifting from a haven for commercial fishing vessels to catering for leisure activities.

I stroll down there most days. I like the colour of the big boats. They’re ageing as fast as me and one by one you simply notice that there’s a name you’re not seeing. Al Crae never fixes a black-bordered notice in the butchers, for them. There was no funeral to mark the passing of
Braes
of Garry
or
Sonas
or the
Golden Sheaf
. Their remains would take a bit of carrying, even if a big squad turned out to share the lift. Could be an argument for cremation, there.

The
Sonas
kept her varnish finish later than most. She might be pulling gear round the bottom of other UK coastal waters. Her larch planking is maybe what inspired me to keep to the natural grain of the timber in the rebuilt
Peace and Plenty.

Once, I bought a painting that caught the changes in the colours you see round the hoil. It was in the Save The Children, when I was kitting out my hideaway with coffee cups. It was briefly installed up on the crisp new mezzanine library, over the workshop on Leverhulme Drive. That’s before I realised there was no thinking space in that building either.

I look at a particular orange in Donald Smith’s arrangement of components of heavy vessels and a mizzen sail across a weathered gable. His later paintings show the more bold colours that come from the cans in the Fisherman’s Co-op. Teamac – made or mixed in Scotland.

The prawns from the trawlers don’t go direct to Spain. That market’s served by the neat and careful creel-boats. The selected crabs and lobsters, fit enough to travel far and maintain the standard of Hebridean shellfish. And some of these creel-boats were built not so long ago of Scottish larch. Before architects started specifying it for eco-friendly cladding so it’s well nigh impossible to find boatskin-grade timber in the north of Scotland. Great broad planks of larch are imported from Siberia now.

But the
Peace and Plenty
has three sections of snug sawn frames. Cut by the cove, from wind-distorted oak and larch, found with the grain that meets the curvature of a given shape. Found amongst the storm-felled timbers out The Grounds. Larch and oak amongst the rare breeds – the russet-grained yew and the cypress that still smells like retsina.

The few trawlers still go out on days when the wind dictates that the new old boat has to stay tied up. You don’t want to get rescued by your former colleagues, even though it’s good to keep guys in jobs. The fisher-boys are generous. One of them will throw you up a few flatfish from the debris on deck. Obese seals cruise in the decklight-lit waters as the sifting and sorting continues. It’s not herring guts that ferment in our
mud now, it’s the antennae of small nehrops and immature whitefish. You sift through the muddy shapes and touch the rough skin of a small turbot.

I might get a John Dory, though the larger ones are set aside now for the mixed box for another specialised supplier.

‘We can’t sell one of them, on its own. Is this any good to you?’

I took that one home.

My Episcopalian
amigo
was back up the road to sort out some of his affairs of this world. Rented property. I steamed the fish for us, cutting insertions so the flanks could be filled with slivers of ginger and lemongrass. Slices of lime go down its gob and into its belly. The spring onions go in after the Sauvignon Blanc and stock. I’ve seen us eating the tail section first, with a touch of the green-top soy sauce. Then it goes on for another minute so it heats up again and the thicker parts will be cooked, till the red at the bone goes pale. And the reduction is intense, to hit the grains of rice and give that background taste which does not dominate the delicate fish.

I’m more worried about saying the bloody name of the job than I am about the job. You’ve to make an appearance at the surgical ward. But you only get changed and recover in the ward. All the action happens downstairs. But you go down in a lift, trolley and all.

I’m changing into the gown – fastened at the back, like a wetsuit but it’s nothing like a wetsuit. Except for having to stretch for the ties or getting some help.

I’m recognising the voice of the big guy talking to the nurse. His symptoms have cleared up so he reckons there’s no point in going down. That’s what they call it here. Believe me, the term has got nothing to do with oral sex. He’s turned up anyway and they’re trying to get a doc to see him. It’s a conveyor belt of jobs so it’s not easy. Maybe he’d better just go down.

My symptoms aren’t so bad either. I got scared when there was blood round the bowl in the morning. I got the outside area checked. My arse, not the toilet. No sign of piles or anything, so they want to know where that blood’s coming from and why. Then there’s blood in my mouth. And I’m crapping more and softer than I should be. Maybe losing a wee bit of weight and I don’t have a lot to start with. So they want to have a look next compartment up – the bowels.

I’ve mucked it up already, before the New Year. I got three dates. Changed one. Forgot all about the second – till the morning I was supposed to go in and that’s no good because you’ve got to do a treatment first. And of course I didn’t read the instructions on the laxative properly,
the third time unlucky, so there wasn’t much point in going in. To go into the ward, get changed and go down. So that was me off the list till I went to the doc about something else and she said I’d better get that posterior of mine back on the list and get it checked properly.

So there I was. No solids since midday Sunday. Just green tea and water and the sweetened solution that turns everything into liquid. You know how they told you at school how mostly everything is water. Well, I believe it now. Steak, sausages, anything that looks solid. It’s not really.

Back to the waiting ward. First I recognised that tall guy’s voice. From the harbour. The boat-watchers society of the city of SY. Then I caught the twang of the twin-port man. That’s another popular club, the classic vehicle brigade. I’m just going to call him my neighbour because operations are a wee bit personal. Mine’s a colonoscopy. I kept calling it other things but the auxiliaries and sisters and porter kept correcting me.

Cheery guy, the neighbour in the ward. I knew, first hand, he had a good bedside manner himself, if the parts were going to be expensive. Breaking it to you gently. Usually he just took bits from one he’d dismantled earlier. I could hear him now, keeping up the banter with the nursing-auxiliary. Weather outside, change in the seasons and how life was in general. I didn’t want to interrupt his flow but I did want to know if he was still into VW engines.

Beetles, Type 2 vans, Karmann Ghias.

One trolley was ready, parked at my neighbour’s. I couldn’t see him, because of the all-round curtains. Then the chocks were away. I caught a glimpse of it, passing a gap in my own curtains. He was being wheeled to the lift. The style of driving the trolley is good for a minute or two’s discussion along the way. It’s hospital etiquette – a thing you’ve got to do, discuss the driving. Award the points. I used to swerve a trolley round the round myself. Just for a year. A lot of years ago.

‘I think you’ve a deal going with the painter,’ someone would say. ‘Hell, the plasterer, too. Shit, the brickie as well? You’re keeping them all in work with that driving.’

So time passes and the cove who was pushing the trolley is going to be lying on one very soon.

Never mind going on or off the trolley. When you’re lying down, the mind can get into athletic mode. Before sedation. Or maybe it’s the first stage of sedation, before you let go completely to it.

I’m going to speak to you of the beauties of the VW twin-port engine. Mounted at the back. Guys like that cove who was in the neighbouring bed – they can drop one of these beauties onto a trolley-jack to change a clutch. In about twenty minutes. It’s a good idea to feed the throttle-cable through first before you re-connect it. Otherwise, you’ll need to drop and jack-up the whole unit, over again. You’ll be quite intimate with every nut and bolt but you won’t be popular with the mate who’s giving you a hand. If that happens to be your daughter, you’ll be lucky to remain alive.

Listen to the word. Listen up now. Hear the dulcet putter. Right enough, they might not be all that fuel-efficient by today’s standards. But then there’s the issue of life expectancy. And they can be rebuilt. Which was our man’s forte. And maybe still is.

Lewis sheds. Sheds, all round the coast of the British Isles, host these fine machines which were manufactured pre-1979. And you will find them throughout the continent of Europe and in all other continents, with a very high density in North and South America. I was thinking of the time one chassis needed complete reinforcing to get an MOT – you don’t get them in a lucky-bag any more, that piece of paper I mean. Well, the chassis neither. That’s not exactly a spare part. So someone might put a tarp on a motor on a pallet and it’s waiting for the day someone else has a good body and an engine that’s done its work. Very frustrating thing. When the driving force is still sweet as a nut, steady as a Singer, and the joints, the spine, the very chassis of life is rotten.

OK, I was infatuated with a purple Leyland 1275 GT Mini for a wee while. But when you look at it now, what do you expect from a repressed twenty-year-old? Vroom vroom. A slightly older model with a bit of flash and a touch of fading class.

Never really went in for the RS 2000 ambition or the bright yellow or red American Auto. Pal of mine had a big motor for a while. His pay was getting transferred into the bank, tax free. He had to spend it on
something. But you’d need a tanker behind you to get the length of the Island. He gets as far as Glasgow once – maybe to get rid of it. Pulls up at a gas station. Attendant whistles.

‘Nice motor, son,’ he says. ‘But must be costing you a fortune in… Durex.’

That was the same guy who sidestepped all that unapplied maths and physics and did navigation at the Castle. Him and Kenny F led that way but I didn’t follow. I heard he jumped ship in Aussie not long after he gave me a practical lesson in berthing boats.

I heard there was a car chase and then a spell in jail. And a woman. I met him a year ago and asked him if it was all true. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was the USA.’

He came to, upside down, held by the seatbelt. Looking at the boots of a trooper. Noticing the sweet MaryJane dribbling out of the traditional top pocket. Gravity was a mixed blessing. There was about enough for one joint but there was some law about inter-state drugs. And his wheels were now across the border. This was New York State and he was caught by the short and curlies.

So he made a deal and got deported. He lost the car and the woman. But he got out of jail. A spell on dry land. No shipping company would take him on then. He was in Tehran when the revolution happened. Pictures of the cleancut Shah one day and the cove with the beard the next. Time to get out. His brother went travelling, too. Different directions. The bro was in Kabul when the Russian tanks rolled in. Crazy times. Lewismen should really stay at home a bit more. It’s maybe not their fault but stuff like that just happens all around them.

But that was a diversion. We’re back to remembering twin-port motors. It was slow, stately motoring for me, after that one throaty car. Anna loved the vans. She was very good at reading out the instructions from the Haynes manual. See that moment when the motor we’d rebuilt spluttered into life. We did a wee victory dance round the drive. The olaid was up to have her dinner and she was killing herself laughing. Nearly fell out of the wheelchair.

But the twin-port man who went down a few minutes ago – he was VW trained. Never seemed in a hurry but the diagnosis would be sound. The cure would work. Mechanics is simple, he’d say. I can understand engines.

The tall guy decided he might as well go down on the lift, get the check done.

Lying there, I was remembering conversations past. But I was also thinking of my own blood, seeing it in unexpected places. Tasting it in the mouth.

Maybe when I’d meet the twin-port man again we’d talk about our operations. Maybe not. I could ask him to look out for a decent Type 2 VW project. They cost serious money now, in good nick, but Anna was keen on finding one. That would be an incentive for her to pass the test.

But that engineer with the gentle touch was out the door by the time I recovered. I hope he got a good result, his operation I mean. Mine was OK. That test was OK. Just something to keep an eye on. So to speak. I wonder how the tall guy from the hoil got on. Just as well to go down, get it checked. An MOT doesn’t last forever.