Trawler (37 page)

Luke, fully attentive, said: “He was embarrassed? He was
shamed
by it?”

“Yep. He was in the Kirkwall lifeboat—and he
left.
Because half of them all have no experience or nothing.”

“Aye, right!” said Luke, for some reason restored to himself, professional, reassured. “That’s easy, no sweat—it’s all in the mind, as the Royal Marines, the Special Boat Service, as Dicko, an ex-SBS man, in our very own lab—as he’d tell you—all it takes is
training.
Townies, fantasists? Who cares? Training: practice, routine, repetition, a hundred times for each procedure, if you’re very lucky, you know, until they’re sick of it all and on the point of leaving from sheer fuck-you-in-the-head boredom—and they’re
volunteers,
remember, they can leave any time—and after about six months or so they’ll come and tell you, all worked up, they’ll say: ‘This petty mindless routine is driving me nuts, nuts!’ And then—one night—there’s a
real
shout (and they turn up bolshy: they think it’s another pointless practice)… But no, baby, big time, this really is it, their first time, and it helps no end, if it’s a bit dramatic, you know, a storm in the dark, and the boat, she turns turtle and rights herself, and you get to the target, and it’s bad, because half the crew of the sod-unseaworthy Russian merchantman have drowned already—and you have to do the whole biz you’ve trained for: rockets, lines, grapnels … And it’s smack-violent and you’re carried away off-board yourself, but
you’re equipped,
you’re on a line,
you’re trained;
and your helmet protects your head as a wave chucks you skull-first against the side of the Russian ship; and you reel yourself in, as if nothing had happened; and you try again, and you get lucky—you’ve saved yourself, no problem; but now you find you’re saving others
instinctively;
you’re so well trained it feels like
instinct.
And then—guess what? Townies, fantasists? Who cares? They’ve got the point. They never complain about anything again—believe me: when you
save
someone for sure,
no argument,
there’s nothing like it, I promise you: from that moment on,
they’re in the service…
”

Well, myself, despite being full of clapshot, I very nearly got to my feet and saluted, but something saved me, kept me in my place—and Robbie, tough wiry Robbie, he just carried on as if Luke had said nothing of the remotest interest…

“The one Kirkwall captain was going to go over this shallow-he thought he’d get over it in the lifeboat—but there’s no way he woulda done it… That’s what the captain was gonna do.”

Bryan laughed—he remembered.

“Aye!” said Robbie, at Luke. “But that’s the main joke between the Kirkwall and the Stromness lifeboat.
That was it—
when they got the brand-new lifeboats … in Stromness and Kirkwall the same.”

“The Trent Class?”

“Yep. The Stromness lifeboat went doon sooth, two weeks, doing their training.”

“At Poole?”

“They did it, standard. But the Kirkwall boys were down there for weeks and weeks.”

“Aye. So bad?”

Robbie said: “Yep.”

“Yeah well,” I said, butting in, just to show that I was thoroughly familiar with this Poole business. (And why? Because Luke had told me about his Poole training, but for the moment I’d forgotten that, and so now, in sleepless eagerness, I imagined that I myself knew all about these macho rites of passage, first-hand …) “Yes, I’m well aware that Luke had no problems in Poole, none at all. He seems to enjoy RNLI super-discipline. And he’s never missed a shout, as he calls it. He’s always there. He’s been out every time he could.”

Robbie said: “Yep.”

Self-important, I held Robbie in my seen-it-all gaze and
said, as if I was on a selection board: “And so you think Luke’s a fine seaman? Eh? Knows his stuff?”

“Yep. Aye. Bloody fine like.”

Bryan, his huge frame inflating further with suppressed laughter, a ridiculous grin on his massive face, mimicking my accent, said, “Oh yes!
Awfully
so in fact, Captain Redmond. And if
I
was a skipper, sir, and Deckhand Luke Bullough applied to join my crew, I can say, without reservation, old bean: I’d take him.
He’s a damn good chap.
He’d be a simply splendid addition
to the team.”

And they all laughed outright, the bastards, and I went hot in the face, and turned to my plate, but I’d already cleaned it up, like a dog, so I put my head in my hands, and closed my eyes.

I heard Allan Besant say: “Worzel!” And I heard his sharp snort of a laugh. (I looked at him.) “The questions you ask! Right out of order! But I know what you’re thinking, and I’ll tell you! You’re right!” He put his elbows on the narrow table, into
my
space, way over the half-way mark, and he got very close, trying to look into my eyes (
I don’t like that,
no, I don’t—so I concentrated on him below the neck: he was wearing a dazzling white-clean T-shirt with an inscription, but only the capital letter B was visible in the open-V of his dark-blue, expensive-looking fleece-jacket, complete with toggles). “Worzel—I know you want
the truth,
anyone can see that, and it’s a pain in the arse, because whose truth? But I’ll tell you, my truth, and it’s this, so listen up, Worzel! Lifeboatmen?
They’re all mad.
Because who’d want to go out on a lifeboat? For
free—for no money?
What’s healthy about that? Thank Aunt Fanny they do it, sure, but
listen, Worzel”
(maybe I’d tried to look away at Luke, 12 inches to my immediate right, for comfort), “it’s like the VC.
I’ve read about it.
Those guys who won the Victoria Cross—unless they’re from the best men in the British Army,
the Gurkhas,
men from an entirely different culture, like the Shelties at sea, Shetlanders to you—all those men who go for acts of impossible bravery, the ones we hear about, because 99 per cent of them of course get killed, and there’s no story in that, is there?—there’s just 1 per cent who succeed and really do wipe
out a machine-gun nest single-handed—and guess what? They were depressives like your tutor:
they wanted to die,
that’s why they were brave! They didn’t care if they lived or died. Sure—they got the VC, so that keeps them going a little longer—the adulation in the mess, as it were, even Colonel Jason Schofield respects you for a time … But Worzel, what happens next? They get discharged, they’re back ashore, or rather, they’re back in civilian life—and then? Can you guess? Of course you can:
a huge percentage
of those men with a VC, I forget the exact figures, but it’s way over half—they failed that one time when they really meant it, when they charged that machine-gun nest or rescued a wounded colleague under intense sniper-fire, whatever, you know… But next time, in civilian life, they slit their own throats
so neatly;
they jump off a cliff or under a train and no mistake; they put the shotgun barrel right in, right in tightly against the roof of the mouth
… And it’s just the same, in my opinion, with lifeboatmen,
with heroes, like Luke here … No, I don’t trust heroes, not at all
… I don’t believe in them…
”

I looked straight at him, outraged, and with the uncensored angst of a teenager I said: “That’s sick! That is! Sick…”

“Oh, is it?” said Allan Besant, immediately turning on Bryan. “So maybe Old Worzel here has a touch of the lifeboatman too—you know, death or glory, all that shite, and he hasn’t got the energy, but all the same, here he is and you have to admit there’s something not quite right about it: because here’s Worzel…” From his elbow-propped hand under his chin, he unfurled his right fist, palm up, fingers and thumb out-stretched towards me: the exhibit. “And what’s he doing here at his age, fifty, or what-the-fuck, and he knows
nothing
anyone can see that, and he’s come out in this piece of Jason-Schofield-scrap-metal in the worst shit-weather an idiot could imagine
—you can all see that—and
yet no one says a thing? And why? Bryan—have you
ever
heard of this happening to any other boat? Why the fuck should we have to look after a Worzel? Is it because he’s paying Jason £50 a day for his keep, and Jason’s sharing it with us, so we’re supposed to look after him? Well, frankly, I’ve other things to do, but there again,
Worzel’s hardly spoken to me, so maybe that’s why I’m angry with him, and he’s
paying
to suffer all this shite! For the privilege! Whereas you, Bryan, I know, there’s no denying it, you yerself, you appear to be a good man, everyone thinks so, but for me, it’s like this, I can’t help it, it’s the truth as I see it: there’s something warped, there’s something wrong with Luke, lifeboatmen, with anyone who’s ever won a medal—and as for Worzel, well, search me, I give up!”

Big Bryan gave me a quick, kind, fatherly glance … (And hadn’t he strapped me into that First Mate’s chair, his chair, on the bridge, when I couldn’t stand up, when I’d felt worse than at the onset of cerebral malaria? And hadn’t he guided me there with real sympathy, without the faintest trace of the professional derision to which he was fully entitled,
without even a smile?)

Agitated, Bryan said to Allan Besant: “But Redmond’s here to write about you, to tell the truth about our way of life, you understand, Jason told me, and besides, he’s done his apprenticeship, and that’s not easy, at his age, he’s apprenticed to Luke, at the lab in Aberdeen—so he’s not just a writer, he’s a
scientist.
He’s here to help us.”

“Is he hell? So how come he asked me, Is this a Force 12? Is this
really
a hurricane? You sure? You ever been in a Force 14?
Is there a Force 14?’
Old Worzel here” (he outspread his right hand, palm up, in my direction, again), “old Worzel—fact is, he’s disappointed with our fuck-horrible see-you-every-January hurricane. Oh yes—he wants that total boring pointless all-out ocean shite that drowns everyone pronto—he wanted to
come here and give up and die!
Why’s he so interested in manic depressives? Bi-polar disorder, my arse. Why? Because he’s one himself. That’s why! I know what he’s after, you can’t fool me… To write about us? Shite! He might, he might not. Who can tell? And anyway, as it is, he could just as surely have gone overboard and drowned, or banged his head open, or stuck his gutting knife into his wrist” (my friend, my ally, Uncle Luke, he began to laugh; yes, he did, making no noise, shaking the bench beside me, looking away,
hard, at Bryan) “—or,
Jesus wept!,
into his throat! Because, Bryan, you were below, but you should’ve seen him pitching about, trying to gut a Black butt, a Black butt! When we had that weather! Stand clear, boys—because Worzel’s knife,
there’s no telling where it’s going next!
So I ask you, Bryan,
First Mate,
and you, Robbie Stanger, one of Jason’s favourites, as we all know, why do we have a Worzel on board who could go get himself killed so easily and stop the fishing and halve our earnings? And why did we all have to go to nautical college for so long?
I’ll tell you—
to stop us dying at sea the first week out, that’s why! And Worzel—not that I’ve anything against him personally, even though he’s hardly fucking bothered to speak to me (‘Besant?’ he says. ‘So are you related to Annie Besant, the playwright?’ Well yes, as it happens, probably,
but fuck that for a laugh!)—
and Bryan,
you
know what I mean, innocents at sea, on a
trawler
of all things. Jesus wept! It shouldn’t be allowed!”

Luke, I felt, was no longer so amused… And as for Robbie-he turned sharp right on his bench to confront Allan Besant across the alley-way between the tables. Robbie’s biceps, his triceps, his pectorals were so taut, and his singlet, I was sure, stretched further with other groups of muscles whose names I couldn’t raise from my dimming memory of the illustrations in
Gray’s Anatomy
(those extracted cardboard plates we used to place alongside the corpse in question): but
pow!
I thought, comforting myself, maybe they
weren’t
illustrated: because only trawlermen develop them—and who’s ever got lucky enough to dissect a trawlerman in his prime? No, that’s right—you can’t just drop in to your local hospital: you’d have to search the bottom of the sea…

Robbie, so intense, said to Allan: “It’s no allowed—and you, you mind that right enough!” (And Jesus, I thought, this Robbie, my new friend, my Jason-appointed protector, it seems he’s biologically ready
to fight
for me, my inconsequence, our friendship; I’m sure that’s not required, as it were, not right at all…) “Redmond here—he’s a scientist! He’s from the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen. He’s Assistant to Luke Bullough! And Luke’s here to
help us oot, whatever
you
may think, and Luke gave Jason a copy of one of his papers in
Fisheries Research,
and Jason says its
really
bloody interesting like, and he’s lent it to me.” (Luke looked startled, and, a second or two later, as proud as he should.) “And it’s on commercial deep-water trawling at sub-zero temperatures in the Faeroe-Shetland Channel. Yep! Something like that
—and you should read it.
And anyway, Jason told me to look after Worzel, Redmond rather: so he’s
my
responsibility,
my job.
He’s
not
your worry. So what’s it to do with you? Eh? He’s a scientist. So you, Allan,
well: you can go fock your auntie!”

Bryan, I noticed, in his turn, like Luke, began to laugh, internally, as it were, obviously trying so hard to control it, as if he were in church, and failing … What was it? I hadn’t seen all this since school… and yes, maybe that was it, on a trawler, so
very
close to everyone, the fire-hose shut-tight pressure not to offend, the need to get along, to control yourself… But Big Bryan, the alpha male, he began to shake in earnest with silent laughter: he turned his head away to inspect the imitation-wood plastic panels to his right, a foot from his eyes … and his back, the back of his massively muscled upper body in its supposed-to-be-loose, outsize, black woolly sweater—it stretched tight, it earthquaked with deep tremors of a soundless hilarity…