The Fisher Lass (3 page)

‘Bloody Francis,’ he muttered. ‘Some older brother he is.’

He couldn’t remember drinking so much to get this drunk. But then, he couldn’t remember much about last night at all. Suddenly he was still, his hands, covered in lather, suspended
in the action of soaping his hair. Last night! Oh Lord – he could remember. At least, there was something . . . A wave of shame swept over him and yet he couldn’t quite remember the
actual reason for such a feeling. What was it that had happened last night that he couldn’t recall and yet his subconscious mind was telling him that it was something awful? Was it just
because he’d got so drunk? No, it couldn’t be that. He’d been drunk before, though never as bad as this, he had to admit. No, there was something else. There was something
shameful about the previous evening’s escapades.

Slowly, he rubbed his hands over his hair, washing away the stench and massaging his aching head at the same time. Then carefully he stood up and stepped out of the bath, still a little
unsteadily but feeling much better than when he had stepped into it. He dried himself vigorously until the roughness of the towel made his skin glow. Then dropping the towel to the floor he stepped
back into the bedroom, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell coming from the bed. There was no way he was going to sleep there.

The eiderdown had slipped to the floor from the end of the bed and, thankfully, was unmarked. Picking it up, he wrapped it around himself and went towards the couch set beneath the window. First
he opened the top of the sash window and then lay down on the couch, settling himself for what was left of the night. He closed his eyes and tried to will sleep to claim him. In only a few hours
he’d be standing at the altar waiting for Louise and if he looked half as bad as he felt at this moment, there’d be hell to pay. His mother would have something to say about all this,
never mind his bride and
her
mother.

His head still pounded, but the cooling draught from the window soothed his brow and he began to feel drowsy. But in the final moments before sleep overcame him, pictures flashed into his mind.
Fleeting, disturbing images.

Darkness, shouting and laughing and then a girl. She was bending over him, saying something. Shouting at him. Yes, that was it. She was shouting at him.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Tom’ll see you to your lodgings, hen,’ Mrs Lawrence said, levering herself up. ‘Your clothes’ll soon be dry, except your shawl, that is.
I’ll put that in the tub for you and you can call for it another time. I’ll lend you one of mine.’

‘Thank you,’ Jeannie said, but she made no move to divest herself of the blanket nor to rise from the sofa. She glanced up. ‘There’s just one snag. I’ve no place to
go. I was on my way to find lodgings when . . .’ she gave a slight gesture with her head towards Grace, ‘it happened.’

‘I see. Well, you can bide here for the night if you dinna mind sharing with Grace, that is. But we’d best be awa’ to our beds. It’s late and they’re . . .’
she gestured towards the two men, ‘awa’ on the morning tide.’

‘That’s kind of you, but . . .’

‘No “buts”,’ the woman said quickly. ‘We’re grateful for what you did. It’s the least we can do.’

The small terraced house bulged when the two men were home at the same time. With only two bedrooms upstairs, the son slept downstairs on the couch.

At five o’clock the following morning, Nell Lawrence tapped on the door of the bedroom where the two girls had shared the narrow bed. ‘The herring boats are in, Jeannie. Get up. You
too, Grace.’

Jeannie swung her legs to the floor and padded on bare feet to the window. Bending, she lifted the corner of the curtain and looked down into the street below. Already, the fisher-girls were
emerging from the houses in ones and twos, tying the cotton rags around their fingers as they walked, laughing and calling to each other. Swiftly, Jeannie washed in the pink and white bowl and
dressed. Carrying her heavy boots in one hand and her gutting knife and cotton bandages in the other, she went down the stairs to find a bowl of thick porridge awaiting her on the kitchen
table.

‘There you are, hen, made the Scottish way.’

‘This is kind of you,’ Jeannie said, picking up her spoon with relish. ‘But I ought to be away down to the docks. The girls’ll be getting together and if I’m
no’ there, I’ll be left out.’

The herring girls worked in teams of three, two gutters and a packer. As one who had arrived a little later than the rest, Jeannie knew it was difficult to find work. She was an outsider, one
who was not already part of a team.

For many years now, the Scottish herring girls had travelled together down the east coast, even as far as Great Yarmouth, keeping pace with the fleet as it followed the shoals of herring,
beginning in the Shetlands in the spring and early summer and then drifting southwards through summer, ending up off the English south-east coast by November. The fisher lasses were a close-knit
band and each girl jealously guarded her place within a team and each team fought to stay together. They knew one another’s ways, each relying on the other’s skill; the packer on the
gutters to work swiftly and cleanly, the gutters dependent upon the packer to lay layer upon layer of salted silver fish neatly and tightly in the barrels so as to pass the foreman’s strict
standards. From the days of the luggers and their great flapping sails to the modern steam-driven drifters the fisher lasses had followed the herring fleet.

‘What job do you do then, lassie?’ Nell wanted to know, sitting down at the table opposite Jeannie and wrapping her hands around a mug of steaming tea.

Jeannie shrugged and said, between mouthfuls, ‘I don’t mind, just so long as I find work. Gutting or packing. I’ve done both, though I like the gutting best.’

Nell nodded. ‘Aye, the packing’s a back-breaking job. I was a gutter.’ She smiled. ‘Not tall enough to be a packer bending right down to reach into the bottom of the
barrels.’

Jeannie pulled a face and laughed with her. ‘Well, I canna make that excuse, Mrs Lawrence. But I dinna mind. I’ll take what comes.’ She did not add aloud, if anything does
come. She would liked to have stayed chatting, to have asked Nell more about how she came to be living here in England, but reluctantly she rose and said, ‘I must be away. I’ve lodgings
to find and . . .’

‘Ah, now about that, hen . . .’ Mrs Lawrence interrupted. ‘I had a word with George this morning and we’re agreed. You can stay here, if you like. Just whilst
you’re with the fisher lasses. You’ll be moving on soon anyway and our menfolk’ll be awa’ now for a while. And even if you’re still here when they come back, well, you
wouldna mind sharing the couple of nights they’re home with Grace, would you?’

‘It’s kind of you, Mrs Lawrence,’ Jeannie said again, but in her own mind she was doubtful about accepting the woman’s offer. As a fisher lass, she needed to be with the
other herring girls. When the boats came in, she had to be there, ready to work at once as part of a team, even in the middle of the night. Being separated from the others might mean that she would
not be fetched and might be left out. Aloud, she said, ‘I’ll be away to the docks to see if there’s work to be had.’

As if reading her thoughts and understanding her dilemma, Nell Lawrence nodded. ‘Aye well, hen. See what happens. You’re welcome to come back here if you want.’ Then, almost as
an afterthought, she added, ‘I’ll come with you, if you like? If Billy McBride is still one of the foremen, then . . .’ she winked broadly at Jeannie, ‘he’ll find you
a job.’ Then, almost playfully, she wagged her forefinger, ‘But dinna tell my George I said so.’

The herring boats had been sighted nearing the mouth of the Humber, the chugging of the coal-fired engines accompanied by the screeching of seagulls driven wild by the banquet
of fish.

The fisher lasses were gathering on the dockside, standing in small groups, binding each other’s fingers and chatting amiably together. Some had their hair drawn back into a bun on the
back of their head; others, like Jeannie, covered their hair completely with a square of cloth. But they all wore oiled cotton skirts and aprons and short-sleeved, hand-knitted jerseys. A few had
thick scarves wound around their necks against the cold wind that whistled in from the river and along the dock.

As they drew near, Nell stopped and looked about her. ‘If I hadna seen it with ma own eyes, I wouldna have believed it,’ she murmured shaking her head. ‘There’s hardly
anyone here.’ Puzzled, Jeannie too glanced around. To her, there seemed to be a great many girls here – and all waiting for work.

‘In my day,’ Nell was saying. ‘The place was just seething.’ She waved her arm in a broad arc to encompass the area where the wooden troughs – the farlanes –
stood awaiting the day’s catch of fish and where the herring girls would stand at their work for the next twelve hours or so. Beyond them were row upon row of empty barrels where a few men
– the coopers – stood waiting for the work to begin. They all seemed to be dressed in a similar fashion: open-necked shirts, the sleeves rolled up above their elbows; braces, holding up
their trousers, covered by a waistcoat. Sturdy boots and a cloth cap completed their workaday attire.

As Nell seemed to be lost in her own memories, Jeannie squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and marched up to the nearest group. ‘’Mornin’.’

The girls glanced her up and down and then nodded in return to her greeting.

‘D’you ken if there’s work to be had?’

‘Gutting or packing?’ was the brief question.

‘Either,’ Jeannie said.

One of the girls jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘See Billy McBride. He’s the foreman. He’ll know.’

Jeannie turned back to Nell Lawrence. ‘He is here. Somewhere.’

The woman blinked and, pulled out of her reverie, gaped at Jeannie for a moment. ‘Och aye, aye,’ she said, suddenly remembering exactly what she was doing here. ‘I thought he
would be, but it’ll be finding him that’s the problem.’ Nell chuckled. Then she glanced at Jeannie and pointed to her hair that curled waywardly on to her forehead, however
tightly she tied it back beneath the triangle of cloth. ‘Tuck your hair well oot of sight, hen. Billy’s one of the old fishermen. He doesna trust red hair.’

Jeannie smiled and did as she was bade. She had every respect for the superstitions of the fisherfolk. Maybe, she thought sadly, I brought my own father bad luck when I went down to the harbour
to wave him off that last time. The thought hurt, but she swallowed her private feelings, lifted her chin with a tiny gesture of determination and followed Nell.

They wandered amongst the throng asking, ‘Billy McBride?’

A shake of the head, a shrug, and ‘I havena seen him,’ until one girl said, ‘He was here a minute ago. Och, there he is.’

Jeannie looked where the girl pointed, but could see no one. Nell, however, threaded her way through and Jeannie followed in her wake until she came up behind Nell almost bumping into the woman
as she stopped suddenly.

‘Well, well, Nell MacDonald. Yer’ve no’ altered a scrap, young Nellie.’

Jeannie watched the woman’s shoulders shake and heard her laughter. ‘You auld rascal, Billy McBride. You’re still a right blether.’

Over Nell’s shoulder Jeannie saw the man they were seeking. No wonder, she thought, he had been so difficult to find. Whereas on her first sight of Nell Lawrence’s husband, Jeannie
had thought him the biggest man she had ever encountered, now she found herself facing perhaps the smallest man she had ever seen. He was no more than four feet tall and whilst at the present
moment he was greeting Nell like a long-lost friend, Jeannie could see that the man’s sharp, beady eyes would miss nothing and that his mouth, at the moment stretched wide in a smile, was
capable of contracting into a hard, thin line.

The girls who mingled around them were certainly in awe of this little man, for their jobs depended upon his say-so.

He would have hired the teams in Scotland, bringing them down the east coast, probably even arranging their travel and accommodation, keeping the girls tightly under his control. It was doubtful
that there would be any work to be had, Jeannie realized with a sinking heart, yet he was her only hope, so she smiled at him and stood meekly behind Nell whilst the older woman chatted and almost
flirted with her old friend.

Then his glance came beyond Nell to appraise Jeannie. ‘And who’s this, then, Nell? Your lass, is it?’

Nell shook her head. ‘No, Billy. I have a daughter – and a son – but they’re working. No, this is Jeannie Buchanan. She arrived last night and . . .’ Nell’s
swift glance at Jeannie silently asked that she should not recount the circumstances of how she came to meet the Lawrence family. ‘And,’ Nell went on, ‘I was wondering if you
could find work for her.’

‘Och, well now, Nell, that might be difficult.’ The man stroked what looked like a three-day growth of grey stubble on his chin. ‘The girls are already in teams, ye
ken.’

‘Aye, but if you could, Billy . . .?’ Nell left the plea hanging.

Now the man addressed Jeannie. ‘Gutting or packing, lass?’

‘I dinna mind. I’ve done both.’

‘Your first time in England, is it?’

Jeannie was obliged to nod, ‘Aye, but,’ she added swiftly, ‘I went to the Shetlands last year.’

‘Well, you’re tall enough to do the packing, but, as it happens, it’s a gutter we’re short of. The lass cut herself badly and it’s gone septic. She didna bind her
fingers properly. Now – let me see your hands.’

Smiling with a sense of pride, Jeannie obediently held out her strong hands for inspection, knowing that the tiny faint scars on her fingers were her passport to employment. Taking them into his
own, he turned her hands over, his glance keen and knowledgeable. Jeannie knew that the foreman would be able to tell, just from looking at them, if she were speaking the truth. If she were a
practised gutter, Billy McBride would know.

Then Billy looked up into her face, staring at her, shrewdly assessing her character. Her clear green eyes returned his scrutiny steadily and she allowed her mouth to curve in the hint of a
smile, not so much as to be thought too forward, but just enough to give a small sign of self-confidence in her own ability. She was dressed like all the other girls mingling on the dockside and
now as a final proof, if proof were still needed, from her pocket she pulled out the binders for wrapping around her fingers to protect them from the sharp gutting knife.