Trawler (26 page)

“Aye! Well done! But Redmond—nuts! The Navy? The British Navy
at sea?”

“Yeah yeah Luke
—but if you’d just stop interrupting,
I could tell you, couldn’t I? Yes, on those farms you were talking about, where we grew up, you and I (didn’t you?)—I tell you, I
knew
perfectly well, even at ten year’s old, that no stockman, no tractor-driver was
stupid. Absolutely
not! Because if they were—they lost their
jobs, pronto. Believe me, there’s no such thing as a
stupid
farm-labourer. His knowledge may be
limited,
sure, but in his
field,
so to speak, it has to be intense, just like any
social-nutcase
of a Professor of Sanskrit… And then a few years ago taking my own children round Nelson’s great flagship from the battle of Trafalgar, the
Victory
now in permanent dry dock at Portsmouth, with all the mute wooden evidence you’d ever need—the answer came to me. Of course! Here it was:
Victory!
The
perfect
Club! Heaven! All those guys living so
very
close together. And the powder-monkeys, so called, the post-pubescent boys who (excuse me) were already fully aware of their sexual preferences, the youngsters who fetched the gunpowder from the casks in battle, who served the canon—there were lots of them, and they were
there.
And everyone got
paid
for this! And almost no one
ever
tried to desert, to quit this Club, H.M.S.
Heaven—even
though, for Chrissake,
there was no leave
for ordinary sailors, no time ashore, no chance to see your family:
Luke, get this:
even after Trafalgar, Jesus! The
Victory
simply re-armed and re-victualled and went straight out again. So? Got it? And there again you have to remember that there was all the S-and-M that any decent gay could
want—everything so far invented then—
cat-o’-nine-tails, the lot! The
entire
British Navy, for one hundred years, was gay! And Luke, I just think that people like you and me, who love women, should stop being so insecure, so
mean
and cowardly and self-serving about this. Yes! We should say: ‘THANK YOU BOYS!’ We should
thank
them—for beating the shit right out of anyone who wanted to kill us, or disrupt our family life, or take the bread out of our children’s mouths! Yes, so where’s the gratitude? Where’s the respect those guys deserve? And in battle? Imagine it! The same system as Sparta—young sex-objects first. Their tough lovers, one-to-one precisely, in rank
three.
And my god, the moment the British grapnels bit, how they
swarmed
aboard those poor heterosexual French ships! And the problem? The nonsense about the wicked press-gangs? No. That’s not how it was. Not at all. No—all over England and Wales and Scotland young gays were saving their every last penny to pay for a ride on a cart to the nearest port where they’d heard that the
navy-recruitment teams
(all
gay, of course) might be operating—and, once there, they observed the gay code (it’s
our
fault, Luke, our crass majority psychically-defensive braying oppression—so they
have
to have a code)—so yes, once there, they lay down broke and sober outside a likely pub. And they got carried away to Heaven!”

“Magic!”

“Yeah, so Luke—if you want to be happy in a different way, to settle down, as you say, then: you must give up the lifeboats! Because, come on, you’re not that young any more, and you’ve done it all, you’ve been heroic for years! And if you keep going much longer, right up here in the north, you know better than I do, don’t you? Statistically speaking, as you say. Two or three more years. And you’re dead, Luke, you’ll drown. Remember the
Longhope?
Not a single crewman came back! And, like you, all volunteers, saving other people’s lives for free! And all dead.”

“Aye.”

“So now’s the time. Go on! You’re so
good
at it. And Luke, I should damn well know! Jeesus, Luke, I know about teaching and academic obsession (so rare!) and I’ve seen you in action, and look here—for Chrissake, Luke, I’m old enough to be your father, and yet, after all these days and nights of no-sleep, and what normal student could say that?—you still bring all these fish alive for me. Fish! And what, before
you
taught me otherwise, before
you
inducted me into their impossibly ancient biology, their
kinky
high-anxiety, their truly bizarre, gangster-brutal—and-then-some—unexpected and shocking personal lives: what could have been more
boring
biologically speaking, or just general-ignorance-speaking?
Fish,
for Chrissake! Fish! But now I know otherwise—so Luke: become a teacher! Become a lecturer! Settle down! And I can tell you now, Luke,
right now,
if we survive this, if we ever get out of here alive—if I hear, on the academic gossip-line, as I surely will, that you’ve applied for a lecturing post in marine biology somewhere, anywhere, then I’ll damn well ring up the boss personally, and I’ll go right ahead and tell him or her how you couldn’t even stop teaching a dumbo, a pre-first-year unqualified
dumbo about your subject, because you love it all so much—and for Chrissake it was all on a
commercial trawler,
in a storm gusting Force 11 to a Category One Hurricane Force 12! So how’s that?”

“Terrible! That’s terrible! Because if you’re my referee, they’ll
know
it’s all hopeless, because it’s obvious, you—you’re barking! But it doesn’t matter. So I forgive you! Because it won’t happen—because it can’t happen. Because I can’t, Redmond. I just
can’t.
I can’t lecture.
I can’t go on stage!”

“Hey Luke, tell me, what
is
this fear of yours? Luke, it’s OK, take it easy. Let’s do this thing. Let’s do it together. Right? Let’s face it
now…
”

Luke was silent.

And the sea out there, it was genuinely terrible, anyone would say so, and how easy it is, I thought, to sound decisive, even courageous on someone else’s behalf (what a pleasure!), and the noise of that vast murderous, uncaring force out there, it’s worse, it’s getting worse …

“So Luke, tell me!” I yelled. And then, regaining a little self-control, adjusting the volume, “So Luke,” I said, “tell me—what
is
this fear of yours? Not being able to lecture? Eh? Sorry, but I’m interested. Because I’ve done it, lots of times. It’s part of the job, sometimes, for a writer. So you do it all for a month or two. Or however long the stretch is. And this is the trick: you pretend you’re someone else, your most confident self, the butch you. And you do it. And afterwards, you pay for it, as it were, you probably get ill, you pick up any passing infection—but in any case you take to your bed, you dream and you dream, for two days and nights, or more, you jabber, you whimper. But no one knows, if you’re lucky, only your wife and your children know (but it’s true—they never forget). And then you reappear; and you can work again. And so really you’re the only one who’s registered that delayed fear inside, the panic …”

“Ach. No. That’s
normal.
It’s not like that!
It’s far worse.
It’s the
stage,
you know, standing up on stage!”

“A stage? A stage? Oh
come on,
Luke, you know very well:
even as a professor you’re not always grand enough to have a
stage…
”

“I
was! I really was! We had to raise money for the RNLI! You know! All the Aberdeen crewmen had to agree to take part! And, Redmond, for the RNLI this was an event that
really
mattered, because Aberdeen then—full of oil money—it was the richest city in the UK. So they gave us no choice! It was a Shell business dinner—for two whole departments of the company. You know, hundreds of people, and every man in a dinner jacket, evening dress. All very formal. Well-mannered. Official. Dignitaries, you know! And it was a big stage, with lights, like a theatre.”

“Well done! You did it!”

“No … Not at all… You don’t understand a thing! You’ve no idea… So, as I say, the RNLI picked five lifeboatmen from the Aberdeen crew, and that was that, and I was one of them. And we rehearsed, over and over and over, in the locker-room of the new lifeboat-shed that cost the earth—and all that money was raised by local people, you know, and it
guts
you, the support from local people, and most of them can’t afford the amounts they give, and they’re not rich at all:
they just believe in us.
And although it’s true we don’t get paid a penny, that’s not the point—the point is that all these local people
believe in us.
Imagine it! There’s some van driver who works his arse off round Aberdeen every day—and yet he gives us part of that labour, cash that he ought to keep for himself… So it’s not just us, you know: we’re only the ones who get the adrenalin rush, the blame if we get there too late, the praise if we don’t!”

“Hang on, Luke! You were talking about this
lecture
you gave … I really want to hear about that! The lecture on this big stage?”

“Aye. We rehearsed for so long. So many hours of our time. And when it came to the date itself—you know, the one I’d been dreading, like some terrible exam, all those days that pre-date, and those post-date days which you can’t believe will ever exist, those far-off date-less days of unimaginable happiness …”

“Luke—the stage?”

“Aye. Well. When it came to the date itself we had to stay backstage—in full kit from eight in the evening to midnight. And no drinking allowed, of course. So you can imagine—you can imagine just how bad that was!”

“Eh?”

“Aye. I’d rather’ve been on a shout, strapped in my harness in the crew cabin in January, you know, monkey-bollock cold out there, and you sit inside like people in a mini-bus or something, except you’re rolling—not just down to the rails, you know, but through 360 degrees if it’s really bad, because the boat, she capsizes, turns turtle, whips over and rights herself, as she’s designed to do, so you hardly lose power, and all the time she’s tracking towards the GPS position, the May Day origin. And you’re ready for action—everyone knows the job he’ll have to do when he gets there. And when we reach the target we swarm aboard like your sailors, except, Redmond, as far as I know, it so happens that not one of us is
gay!
Aye, it’s rocket lines, inflatables, anything and everything that a boat can do—and if it’s really bad we’ll have RAF helicopter back-up from Lossiemouth. So there’s nothing like it! Nothing can match it! And then we strap the survivors into the seats in the crew cabin or on to the stretchers and give them first-aid—and it’s sometimes
heavy
first-aid, you know, burns, the lot—and if they’re well enough we give them soup, lots of soup. And you wouldn’t believe how pleased they are! Aye! For those few hours back to Aberdeen harbour—these other human beings, strangers, people we don’t know, they love us! Can you believe it?”

“Yes Luke, I can! I really can—but Luke, let’s be brave and do this thing! Right? Yeah? The stage! The stage—remember?”

“Ach, Jesus, och aye, Redmond, the stage—so there we are, in full lifeboat gear including helmets: and then midnight comes. And Redmond, it was so horrible, so squirm-making. And I’ve never forgotten it…”

“Yeah?”

“Because under our
sensible,
brilliantly designed and thoroughly tested kit, you know, survival suits with many very special
and expensive standard RNLI extras—stuff that works, every time, even in weather like this, and out there, right in the sea itself if you’re unlucky—under this kit, Redmond under this kit that I really respect, we’re wearing these truly horrible nasty little dishonest thongs, skimpy red thongs.”

“Thongs?”

“Aye. Porn-stuff And they are so uncomfortable! They rub your bits off.”

“What?”

“Aye. So midnight comes and on we go. We troop on, in a line. And then the band strikes up and they play that terrible tune. I think of it even now—every time I strap on my helmet for a shout: ‘You can keep your hat on!’ Aye. And we crewmen—we did the full monty…”

“But Luke!” And I really laughed—all the insane tension of the fear, the howitzer-blasts against the inward-bulging decrepit rusted plates of the hull a few yards in front of our heads: it all dissolved in a howling laugh. “Luke! … Luke! … But Luke! … You won’t have to strip off!”

“Aye! Well… maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe not. But that’s how it’ll feel! Of course it will!”

“No Luke, it
won’t.
In fact I think it’s safe to say, I really do-look, Luke, if you strip off while engaged in an academic lecture … I think we can say… I think we can say with some conviction:
you’ll get the sack!”

“Aye. Well, maybe. I hadn’t thought of it. Like you say, it’s the subconscious, I suppose. And it’s not funny! You said so yourself!
And I don’t want to talk about it!
OK? And while we’re at it—those
skates,
remember?”

“Yes?”

“Aye. There’s one small thing on which I’d like your
opinion.”

“My
opinion? You would? You really would?”

“Aye. You remember you said you liked the way those skates
smiled
at you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good! Then perhaps you can tell me,
in your opinion:
why
would a skate want two eyes, why would a skate want two eyes when
the only ones it’s got
stare straight into the mud?”

“Uh?”

“Nuts! The eyes are where they should be—on top of the head! Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! Those holes you thought were eyes, dumbo,
they’re nostrils!”