A Book of Death and Fish (51 page)

There’s still a lot to be learned from Korea and Cyprus. It’s amazing what we find when long-held documents are released. Suez is an interesting one but how can you compete with that great movie,
The Ploughman’s Lunch
. Fiction, though it is.

But I knew what to go for, in my own kitchen, as I realised the filter in the end of the rolly-up was dead in my hand. It was the inner journey of Keitel that fascinated me, as much as his own presentation of the events which can be verified. How people justify themselves. But maybe it’s time
to look a bit closer to home. Bonny Scotland, we’ll support you evermore. Aye but good to face up to the fact that folk’s attitudes are also a matter of fact. Maybe attitudes shape future facts.

You ever get the feeling that you were on good lines a long time ago? You were in the groove. You just didn’t realise it.

Scots were never blameless. Nobody was or is. It’s a sliding scale. Maybe we can agree to place Hitler pretty close to the extreme end of it. The victors agreed to hang Keitel and put Hess in jail for life, meaning life, despite his descent by parachute to Eaglesham on the 10th May in 1941. Churchill considered him of unsound mind, rather than guilty. They didn’t shoot the deputy but his signature was on an abundance of orders before his wilful attempt at a peacekeeping mission with the fourteenth Duke of Hamilton. Hess might have been spending a quiet evening with the family the night they burned the synagogues but he’d already signed the Nuremburg laws and the banning of Jewish doctors and lawyers. I’ve not managed to shift from the World War Two period yet, but bear with me a little longer. A last fankle. A persistent, twisting loop.

You might also come to a stage in life when you want to fit things in. Just in case you don’t get another chance. There’s no suggestion that the Duke knew he was the key to a negotiated peace which would have mitigated the extremely worrying plan to invade Russia. The Duke was in charge of air defence in Scotland. Now there’s a subject for connoisseurs of conspiracy theories. Could this explain how Rudolf Hess’s Messerschmitt BF 110 eluded British guns and fighters?

The answer is no. Excuse me mentioning my particular sphere of interest again but engines are relevant. Hess had learned to fly after recovering from his wounds in the First World War. Test pilots at the Messerschmitt factory allowed the deputy free access to their latest developments. So he might have started off on a moonlit night with heavy long-range tanks but by the time he swung a left off the North Sea airspace, he was flying a very interesting aircraft. He was fast and high, driven by a pair of Daimler Benz, twelve-cylinder, fuel-injected petrol units. That’s a lot of energy under your wings. One of these engines survives and is on loan to a museum in Scotland.

It looked like Hess was going to live forever too but he didn’t. The original plan was to scatter his ashes to the mercy of the four winds but the body was handed over discreetly to his surviving family. His remains were buried in Bavaria but later uplifted again after the site became a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. If I said that there was a memorial stone in polished black marble at the site of the aircraft crash, on Scottish soil, would you believe me? And if I quoted the engraved words as ‘Brave heroic Rudolf Hess’, would that be completely implausible?

How far along the sliding scale do we place the man who was to hang himself with an electrical cord at the age of ninety-three? He regretted nothing a long time before Edith Piaf. He was the ultimate believer and his faith was blind until he knew his hero really did intend to take the holy mission eastward in ’41. Then again, the purpose of the invasion was not that clear. First there was the mythology of Madagascar as the place to contain the driven Jews. Then there was the far lands, the eastern edges of the former Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks would be destroyed. The bones of the commissars would fertilise the grain-lands of the Ukraine. Comrade Stalin had already done his bit in arranging for the starvation of millions who would be in the way of the true citizens of the Reich.

Since the lightning-war ground down to a more gradual way of terror and death, the mythology had to change. The killing of Jews had to become the prime reason for this war, since it was impossible to take Moscow or break through at Stalingrad. Hitler was a hoor of an orator but a shit storyteller. I’ve nothing against making it up as you go along but his narrative of a purpose is tied up in knots. Once the policy was formulated, the use of all these resources at killing pits, ghettoes and transports and death-factories was justified. Even a generation later, my most liberal heart couldn’t bleed too much for those sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials or after. And a less smooth history teacher in the Nicolson Institute, Stornoway, was to ask more difficult questions than any which might come up in the Higher exam. Sixth Year Studies, even.

The subject of capital punishment led to a comparison of the ideas behind the words ‘justice’ and ‘revenge’. ‘So what about Brady and
Hindley?’ he asked. The image of the second of these is also a historical icon with a length of hair sweeping across a partly obscured face.

Courts are now deciding on levels of compensation paid to workers deported to keep German industry turning, between the bombing. Some chemical companies had to produce the gas that would make industrialised killing more efficient. BMW made aircraft engines as well as army motorcycles. Sadly, we have to admit that Volkswagen Beetles were part of Nazi propaganda as well as the later war-effort. But if we notch up that score we have to look at the man behind the rally Escorts and all these Cortinas. Mondeo sounds neatly universal but Henry Ford published a collection of his strongly held views on the subject of the ‘International Jew’. Maybe it wasn’t so original, his theory that the Jews were the real cause of World War One, but it still won him the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in 1938.

It’s not all about nice motors. Clothing plaid a part too. So to speak. Hitler wasn’t too pleased with Leni wasting all these rolls of Agfa and Kodak on Jessie Owens. But when it came to
Triumph des Willens
(
Triumph of the Will
), how could she have infused all that drama into the depiction of the court of the war-gods, if her subjects had not been so very well dressed. You won’t find it difficult to believe that the Hugo Boss firm manufactured clothes for the Nazis, from the plain brown shirts to the black uniforms of the Waffen SS officers. Who says that ‘Dead men don’t wear plaid’?

I have to point out that the uniforms were not designed by the Boss firm. They only made them. Working to specifications. With forced labour.

When you’re trying to sort out line that’s fallen off a frame or a spool, you have to be willing to tease out every element to the full stretch. But you’re looking for the cheating heart of the issue. That could be an accidental knot, in danger of being unique. You might never come across one quite like it again. But it’s going to be difficult to find. Each section of the problem will draw you into it. I’m thinking now of the film-stock of these documentaries, the amateur and professional movies which have caught more than they aimed for.

Kodachrome is about to go out of production. Super 8 is now an expensive atmospheric alternative to digital. The study of the fate of one company could be a tool to use to examine the shifting attitudes which lie behind votes and party memberships. How guilty was Leni Riefenstahl along the slippery scale? Should Speer have been released? He was known to be a cultured man so his dedication to the cause gave the more obvious thugs some credibility. He managed the slave-labour programme even if he didn’t work out the starvation ration. He didn’t live to be over ninety like Hess or over a hundred like Riefenstahl. But he wrote his version of events.

We seem to be back with the issues of crime and punishment and the elusive notion of justice. Let’s not forget that a terrible murder was committed by an individual or individuals in the midst of God-fearing Lewis people. The culprit might not have been from outside our circles. And the culprit may have been protected by others.

Over on the mainland, a minister of the kirk, in civilised Cromarty, was an outspoken defender of the trade in slaves. He wasn’t an outsider. That’s the thought which stayed with me, after I’d considered the incredible but true journey of Herr Hess. I needed to get back to the internet, once I’d cleared a tangle, cleaned a route to a toilet, cooked a dinner and had a conference with the literary daughter.

I can’t leave you in suspense. I got to the root of the fankle. You get through a slough of despond where the temptation grows. You’ve got to resist making a cut in the line. You then have two angles of attack but that’s a divided front. And we all know the dangers of that now, don’t we? A fisherman’s bend will make a strong join when the problem’s been solved but that’s a confusing thing in a line where knots mean depths. After one long, long loop was pulled through another, the problem fell apart. I was able to wind an unbroken red cord on a solid piece of timber and present it to my daughter, with said sounding-lead attached. An aid to navigation and angling. Intermediate technology.

I also removed the machine from the box and dysoned in the disaster area. I’d been a bit scared Anna would roam outwith allotted territories and find that box unopened. So I was able to remove much of the dust from the lower regions of the kitchen terrain.

Since you ask, I did monkfish seared in light oil with a sprinkle of fresh red chilli. A few drops of the light Japanese soy sauce, the one with the green lid. Served with a
jus
made from the backbone of the fish, with other trimmings from other species and lemongrass and coriander. But not thickened, so it’s a soupy bath for the rice-noodles. I think she enjoyed it. Once she’d opened every window she could get near. Must have been the chilli oil. A lot of folk can’t handle that. Suppose I’m just used to it. And the tube on the Dyson wasn’t really long enough. There’s an extension do-for you’re supposed to use for getting into inaccessible pinnacles. I couldn’t cope with that. I think I made a decent effort.

Language and Literature did lead into Outdoor Education. Anna could be doing expeditions in Canada and in Alaska. Sounds like there’s two women across the pond she has to meet. She never really had time to develop her relationship with her aunt. I told Anna I sent my sister and her good lady
Bothy Culture, Hardland
and
Grit
– a hell of a trilogy of albums, mixing heavy dance beats and samples from the voices of Scotland, sung and spoken. A lifetime’s work in a short allotted span of years. Martyn Bennett. I also put in a book by the mother who outlived him. Margaret Bennett has been noting and recording the songs and tunes and stories from a Gaelic culture, surviving in Cape Breton and Québec. A couple of generations’ work in one jiffy bag.

Now and again I give my custom to the fish shop. There’s Ronnie Scott’s which is not a branch of the jazz club but is a fine source of rhythmic conversation. I used to enjoy the stroll out to the industrial end of town and a yarn as I selected something for the restaurant and something for my own lunch. I’ve taken to having my dinner in the middle of the day, the way I did growing up.

My Da, like most Da’s who worked in town, would come round the corner on his bike and the stew would be ready.

But I’ve taken to the route round Lazy Corner. I used to think the turn in the hoil was called that because of the railings. Whenever there’s a railing in Stornoway there’s some old guy’s foot leaning on it and the other straight beside it. You take a look for yourself. It was a Skyeman pointed this out to me. It’s what we do. Though I’m not an old guy yet. On a good day there’s a couple of coves yarning though storytelling is of course a thing of the past, they tell me.

It’s called Lazy Corner because that’s where any debris will collect. The tide is slack there and the rainbow of diesel will lie on the surface for longer. I went into the other fish shop, by the fisherman’s co-op. There’s a fellow in front of me but he waves me on. He’s in for a yarn with the guy behind the counter, before he buys his fish.

‘It’s all from the east coast the day, Peter, the boat’s haven’t got out.’

‘No, it’s been shit weather,’ the other fellow says.

I knew his voice. ‘Well, hell, it’s yourself. Remember all the Broad Bay haddies you flogged from the Bedford van,’ I says.

‘Yes and I used to give you and your pal a spin round Westview and drop you off on the corner of Leverhulme Drive. That’s where you are now, isn’t it? Still with the Coastguard?’

I told him no, I was working for myself now and living round the corner from here. ‘Think of all the lorry-loads of whitefish we sent from here to Aberdeen market. The by-catch from the prawn trawl.’

‘Where did it all go? What happened?’

The former fish merchant looked younger than me. He took a look at me and he said, ‘You don’t half look like your olman. Sound a bit like him too.’

‘So is that you getting younger or me getting older?’ I asked.

The guy who was serving was also from these streets. This was his retirement job, three days a week and this was why he was doing it.

‘You used to work with old Seamus, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘He didn’t last long after he retired. There was some characters in the Coastguard, then.’

‘Aye, first watch with him, he taught me how to skin a rabbit. Tying a bowline behind my back came later.’

I was there again. That first cut with his neat small knife of German steel. Seamus showed me that. Then he told me to get my thumb in between the skin and the meat and left me to get on with it. I looked down at the skate wings, through glass. They would be local and skate doesn’t have to be as fresh as other fish. My old neighbour behind the counter was the man who showed me how to skin skate. A small cut. Just enough to prise your thumb in. It’s a bit tougher on the hands than a rabbit. But I didn’t buy a skate wing. I knew I shouldn’t be eating a big slab of butter and probably not the capers and balsamic either. It wouldn’t be the same without the old
beurre noir.

Then I saw the razors.

‘Somebody diving for them?’

A guy brought up in the town, a guy who should know better, got done for wiping out a whole bay with some electric gadget. It was worth checking.

‘Aye, there’s a cove getting a few from Broad Bay’

‘I’ll take six and a few of these mussels.’

‘What’ll you do with them, Peter? He’s good on the pans, this one, so they all tell me.’

‘I won’t know till I start. But maybe I won’t steam them, this time. Had some in a Chinese in Edinburgh. Sort of place all the specials are in Chinese script. I asked for the fish dish one day and got razors. They just roasted them in garlic and chilli and a touch of soy sauce, on the half-shell. Slit them and gut them and throw them in the oven in some warm oil.’

‘I thought you’d go out for the shellfish yourself,’ said the cove who used to have the Bedford.

‘I used to. Over in Lochs for the mussels and down Holm for the razors. I suppose I could time it to get the airport bus down but I’d rather come in here than dodge the hail showers.’

‘Hell, I’m still seeing your father in you.’

‘And you still look like you’re ready to charm the
cailleachan
of Kennedy Terrace, from the running board of that van.’

‘Where did the years go, Peter?’

The conversation got something going, in my head. I had to sit down, after I got through the door, once I’d put the bag of razorfish in the sink. Catch the breath. I never even put the kettle on. You know when you can hear yourself thinking.

At last, I knew what I was doing. The strands were all there, the same way the olman’s warps and all those bobbins of wool were delivered to his shed. ‘Christ, I’m weaving,’ I said to myself.