The Fisher Lass (42 page)

‘D’you know, Dad,’ Angus chattered on as they clambered down the ladder, ‘Sammy ses Joe hardly ever lets the mate tek over the ship whilst they’re fishing. Once he
only had four hours sleep in six days. I can’t imagine that, Dad, can you?’

‘No,’ Robert replied soberly, but in his mind he was thinking, but you may well be about to find out, son.

There was a sense of excitement throughout the ship the first time they hauled in the gear. Everyone was waiting to see if the skipper had got it right. The deckies were all
there, some operating the winch whilst others stood by to secure the doors as they came on deck. Up came the metal bobbins and then they heaved on the net itself, leaning down over the side as the
ship tilted and rolled and the waves lashed on to the deck. As the cod end floated they could see that the catch was good. Now the cod end was lifted aboard by the derrick. Sammy dodged beneath the
water gushing from the mass of fish, jerked the knot undone and, in a second, fish of all shapes and sizes cascaded on to the deck. Robert watched the figure of his son, almost hidden beneath his
yellow oilskins, yet he could see the boy’s face wreathed in smiles and even above the throb of the engines, he could hear his jubilant shouts.

The boy was a natural, a fisherman born and bred. There was no denying it. Whatever he or Jeannie might do, Robert knew now, they were never going to stop Angus coming to sea.

Despite his size and youth, the boy worked alongside the experienced deckhands. He was quick to learn and, with no serious repairs needed to the net, the trawl was soon back at the bottom of the
ocean once more. Then began the hours of work to gut and put away the fish.

Angus, standing close by Sammy now, who was in charge of this operation, watched closely as the man took a cod into his hands, slit open its belly and removed its guts, separating its liver
which he dropped into a basket. Then he lobbed the gutted fish into the washer from where it would slide down a chute into the fish-room below. There, the mate, with a deckie to help him, packed
the fish in ice and stowed it away.

Robert found he was holding his breath as he watched Angus pick up a sharp knife and take a fish into his left hand. It took the boy a dozen or so fish before he was gutting like an old hand.
Robert suspected that this was not the first time young Angus had tried his hand at gutting. Obviously, his hours spent haunting the Havelock fishdocks had not been wasted. Not that he worked with
the speed of the other men yet, but that would come. Robert smiled to himself as he remembered, years ago, watching Jeannie at the farlanes. It seemed that young Angus had not only inherited his
grandfather’s seamanship, but also his mother’s dexterity with a gutting knife.

It was a good catch so there was only half-an-hour for deckies to eat and snatch a short rest before the next cod end swung on to the deck and deposited its silver haul.

‘Take this to the skipper, Rob, will you,’ Ted asked. ‘He’ll not leave his wheelhouse for the next ten days.’

‘You’re joking.’

Ted wasn’t. ‘No, I’m serious. It’s his job. He’ll stay up there now until the job’s done and we make for home.’

‘What about sleep?’

The toothy grin was evident again as Ted said, ‘Sleep? What’s that, mate?’

Six trawls in twenty-four hours with snatched meals and even less sleep had Robert worried for his son. He was only a boy, only fourteen. Surely he couldn’t keep up this
pace? But Angus was determined and it wasn’t until Sammy himself ordered him below for a six-hour period off, that the youngster gave in.

Robert followed him down to help him take off his oilskins, but the boy said, ‘Don’t, Dad, I can manage.’ And Robert was obliged to stand and watch while Angus, reeling with
exhaustion, pulled off the stiff, unyielding clothes. Blood and fish guts streaked his pale face. His hands were blue with cold and he winced as he flexed the fingers of his right hand that had
held the knife. But the grin on his face was still stretched from ear to ear and even though his eyes were large with tiredness, there was still in them the sparkle of excitement.

‘Did you see that huge plaice that came up? “Dustbin-lidders”, they call them. Wasn’t it huge?’

‘It’s certainly the biggest I’ve ever seen.’

‘Isn’t this great, Dad?’

Robert had to swallow the lump of sheer pride that rose in his throat before he could say, ‘Yes, son, it’s great. Now, come and eat your supper and away to your bunk.’

It was the first time on board Robert had come face to face with Joe. The skipper, with his own cabin directly behind the bridge, rarely came down to the lower deck and never
during the time at the fishing grounds.

‘Thanks,’ Joe said, taking the meal Robert had carried up to the wheelhouse. As he turned to go, Joe mumbled, his mouth already stuffed, ‘He’s a good lad,
that.’

As Robert turned back to face him, he was amazed to see a grin spread across Joe’s face. ‘I can tell he’s my brother. He looks a bit like me an’ all, dun’t
he?’

Robert smiled, anxious to meet Joe half way, yet at the same time careful not to appear over-eager.

‘Your mother always says you both take after your Grandpa Buchanan both in looks and in your love for the sea.’

‘Aye well, there’s worse to tek after than him.’

Robert wondered if it was a veiled reference to the Hayes-Gorton family, but he said nothing.

Her name was between them now. She was almost a physical presence here in the cramped quarters of the wheelhouse on this heaving ship eight hundred miles from home. And yet she was here with
them both. He could see the same hurt mirrored in Joe’s eyes that he had seen so often in Jeannie’s. He tried to think of something to say, something that could heal the breach yet at
the moment he opened his mouth, Joe turned away, his attention once more upon the job in hand. The moment was lost.

But at least, Robert thought, Joe seems to be coming around to Angus.

It was a start.

‘Have you had no word at all from them, Edwin? Don’t they keep in touch regularly with their position?’

Edwin smiled at her. ‘Not Joe, Jeannie. He’s a law unto himself when he’s fishing. But,’ he shrugged philosophically, ‘we’ve learnt to trust your son. Oh,
he’ll radio in when he feels like it. And if there’s any trouble . . .’

‘Trouble?’ she said sharply. ‘What sort of trouble?’

Edwin swallowed swiftly, realizing his slip. He smiled again. ‘That’s what I mean, Jeannie. No news is good news, where your Joe’s concerned.’

‘Oh,’ she said, a little mollified, but her shrewd glance at Edwin left him wondering if he had entirely convinced her.

‘We’ll maybe get a message when they’re on their way home,’ Edwin said. ‘Cheer up. Only one more day and they’ll be turning for home. That’s if
Joe’s fish-room is full.’ He laughed. ‘If it isn’t, he’ll stay out there as long as he’s catching fish and as long as his supplies hold out.’

‘But if they’ve had a good catch, they could be home in four to five days?’

When Edwin nodded, the light came back into Jeannie’s eyes.

‘Last day’s fishing today, Dad.’ Robert heard the disappointment in the boy’s voice.

Sitting beside Angus in the messroom, one of the deckhands shovelled the thick white flakes of fish into his mouth, anxious to snatch a few minutes’ sleep before the next haul. It was a
shame, Robert thought as he placed bread and butter and a mug of tea in front of the man, that they hadn’t time to savour the meals Ted cooked. What that man couldn’t do with haddock,
wasn’t worth knowing. He could teach the chefs in smart hotels a thing or two. That was for sure. Fresh bread buns baked every day. Three main, three-course meals and plenty of snacks in
between, to say nothing of gallon after gallon of strong tea. The food was good, Robert was pleased to see, but if only the crew had time to enjoy it.

Picking up on Angus’s remark, the deck-hand laughed. ‘That’s if he can stuff another six hauls into yon fish-room. Have you taken a look down there? We must have got fourteen
hundred kits down there.’ Grinning at Angus, he added, ‘That’s almost ninety tons to you, laddie.’

Much too polite to tell the deckie he knew very well the weight of a kit, Angus merely smiled and nodded. ‘There doesn’t seem much room left.’

The man swallowed his tea and stood up. ‘Best trip we’ve had this year.’ He touched the boy’s shoulder and winked. ‘You must ’ave brought us luck, lad. I have
to say it, I thought at first you might be a Jonah, but you’re not, you’re a good ’un. You can come again.’

The smile on Angus’s mouth threatened to split his face in two.

As the final day’s fishing began, the weather, which had been kind throughout the whole trip, deteriorated. When the third haul came up over the side, the wind lashed the
deck and the ship tossed from side to side in the mountainous waves.

The cod end swung in over the deck and Robert could see at once that it hung limply, devoid of its usually bulging weight of fish.

‘What’s happened?’ he mouthed to Angus. The boy shrugged as together they watched Sammy duck beneath it and release the knot. A pathetically small catch of fish slithered on to
the deck. Sammy was issuing orders, pointing and shouting to the men close by and then he was running along the deck towards the bridge.

‘He’s going up to see Joe.’

Though he passed close by, they did not try to detain him. They’d find out soon enough what had gone wrong.

On his way back, Sammy said briefly, ‘We’re turning for home. The net’s badly torn and it’ll take an hour or more to repair. With the weather worsening, it’s a
sensible decision.’ He grinned suddenly, his face drenched beneath his sou’wester. ‘’Sides, he’s got enough fish, if only he’d be satisfied.’

Robert had experienced rough weather during his years at sea aboard the minesweeper, but it was nothing compared with the ferocity of the storm they ran into as they left the
Icelandic waters.

The ship was tossed and thrown as the winds, ever changeable, whipped the waves in every direction, so that one moment they were on the crest of a sixty-foot wave, the next being plunged into
the trough below.

Grasping Robert’s arm, Sammy bellowed into his ear, ‘Get the lad below. The mate’s going up on to the bridge to help Joe. He’s close to exhaustion now. This is all he
needs.’

Robert took hold of Angus’s arm and was about to pull him towards the ladder when they all felt the ship plummet into a kind of vacuum created by the turbulence of the ocean. Robert and
Angus looked up as a huge wave hovered above them and almost in slow motion came down upon them engulfing the ship in a deluge of water.

He put his arms about his son and clasped him to him as they fell together on to the deck. It seemed to last an age that they were tossed and thrown about the deck, bruised and battered. Robert
was praying like he’d never prayed in his life before, not even when he had been under enemy fire aboard the war-time trawler. Never, ever had he known such fear. But all the while, he clung
on to his son and prayed that they would both live to see Jeannie again.

He was fighting for air and then strong arms were lifting him up and he found that Angus and Sammy were hanging on to him.

‘Dad, it’s all right,’ Angus was panting, gasping through the water and the spray. ‘Feel that?’

As he spoke, Robert felt a tremor run through the whole of the ship.

‘We’re going to be all right, Dad. We’re all right.’

Much later, Robert asked Angus what he had meant.

‘That shudder, you mean? If you feel that, then the ship’s buoyant. I just knew we were going to be all right. That’s all.’

Robert stared at his son, marvelling yet again at the boy’s instinctive knowledge and understanding. But the dangers were not over yet for the bad weather did not let up. Through the
driving rain and sleet, now ice began to collect on every part of the surface of the vessel, but not so much that the crew were called upon to chop it away.

Robert was as busy as when they’d been trawling, carrying tea and food along the heaving deck and up to the wheelhouse.

‘This is a bad ’un. I’m sorry you and the lad are having to go through this,’ Joe said.

His eyes were dark-ringed with tiredness and the anxiety never left his face. He had the ship and the whole crew, to say nothing of a hold full of fish, for which he was responsible. Grimly,
Robert said, ‘No apology necessary. I’m glad I came. No, I mean it,’ he added firmly as he saw Joe’s look of scepticism. ‘And you might not believe me, Joe. But
it’s been an eye-opener for me. I thought I knew about ships and going to sea when I served in the war, but this.’ He shook his head. ‘My God, this is hell on earth out here. Oh,
it’s all fine when the weather’s good and the fish are there. But face this weather?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Joe, I never realized.’

They stared at each other for a moment whilst beneath their feet the ship heaved and rolled.

‘So,’ Joe said slowly, ‘you’ll not be letting young Angus come to sea again, then?’

Robert allowed himself a quick, wry smile. ‘I shan’t be able to stop him. Nor shall I try.’

‘You won’t?’ Joe was obviously surprised.

‘No. If he wants to make the sea his life, I shan’t try to stop him. Though,’ again he smiled, with a tinge of sadness, ‘I don’t doubt his mother and I will worry
every moment he’s away. Just,’ he added softly, ‘as she has always done about you and Sammy.’

The man was silent and he looked away, out of the screen overlooking the deck, unwilling to meet Robert’s eyes.

Robert cleared his throat. ‘You may not believe me, Joe, but I promise you something. When we get home, I’m going to do everything I can to improve the lot of the fishermen, at least
in our fleet. And you know something else too, Joe?’ Though he waited a moment, there was no response from Joe, but Robert knew by the rigid set of his shoulders that the skipper was
listening to every word. ‘Sammy – and you as well – could do so much to help us. If only you would.’

He turned then and left the wheelhouse, clambering down the ladder and along the deck with the waves like walls on either side.