Trawler (48 page)

“Right!” A pause. Flash! “Got it!”

“But what does she
do?
That’s the point. What is her work?”

Luke pretended to be focused on
his
work, on the ventral surface of skate number five. No flash. No reply. He was listening.

“What work would give her a bleeper and call her out in the middle of the night—perhaps to some offshore island, some out-skerry, to save someone’s life? Eh?”

Flash! No reply. Not even a grunt of recognition that this great central question of his life had finally been formulated … A discovery!

“OK, Luke—so if you’re not going to talk to me, if you think
it’s fine to indulge in self-satisfying
passive aggression
at a time like this: fair enough! But I won’t forget your refusal to engage in sexual reality at this point. No! But I’ll tell you anyway! Yes! She’ll be a district nurse!”

“Eh?” Luke stood up straight. He left skate number six unattended. “A district nurse?”

“Yes—on Shetland. You’ll never catch a female doctor, a GP. No, the odds are absurd, the statistics are all against it—but a district nurse? There
must
be a statistically significant number of district nurses of breeding age who might fall in love with you…Yes, Luke! You’ll have to go to Shetland—hunting: a focused, committed, single-minded ruthless hunt for a district nurse…”

Luke, photography forgotten, came and sat beside me, perched on the rim of the adjacent red plastic basket (the
triumph of it!
). And we sat there, on our baskets, hands on knees, like two old men on a park bench.

“Yes, Luke—imagine it! Just imagine—peeling off that blue-and-white stiff starched uniform! And underneath it’s all so soft and warm!”

“No! No!” Luke tensed up: he took his hands off his knees and straightened his spine and put both hands to the back of his neck. “No! How wrong you are! How crude! No—it’s not a
uniform
or a
type
of girl, a blonde or a brunette or a black-haired woman with small breasts or big breasts or with this or that and whatever! No! No! No!”

Taken aback, I edged away from this onslaught and, very nearly, fell off my basket, to starboard.

“No! It’s none of that superficial yuck that you and your kind seem to like. No! I
really
want a woman to live with for ever, aye,
just the one
. And, as you say, Ally won’t do.” (Had I said that? No. Certainly not. At least—I don’t think I had…) “No, sure she’ll leave me; aye, you’re
right
, I’ll give you that: because, just like you said, well, she
did
tell me that in two months’ time she’s leaving Aberdeen (no more dances!) for a great promotion in the company; she’s got a new job in the London offices. But you, Redmond,
you seem to think it’s all a joke
…”

“Of course it’s not a joke! For Chrissake, Luke …”

“Aye, well, I
really
want this woman,
as you seem to have guessed
, perhaps because you’re so old; and I’m getting desperate, it’s true, but I want a woman whose
personality
I can fall in love with, I want to be in love with
who she is
, the real her … Aye—all this
crap
of yours: nurses in uniform, blondes, whatever, where
does
that come from? Eh? Can you
imagine
how offensive that is to a woman?”

“Yes—now you mention it, Luke, yes, I can. I’m sorry. Whatever it was—I take it all back,” I said, feeling, rightly, rebuked; and just, very slightly, ashamed.

“Ach—no: I want to fall in love with the whole, the
real her
” (at this happy thought Luke’s hands returned to his knees and he leant a few degrees forward, relaxed). “And in return, if I’m
very lucky
, she’ll love me, for myself, as it were—and she won’t tell me lies and, above all, she won’t wear lies on her face: make-up!”

I thought: so that’s a great relief—because that means I’m not the only nutcase in this fish-room… Make-up? What’s wrong with make-up?

“Because I’ll want her
exactly as she really is:
no bullshit! No pretence—I’ll want
her
, for
herself
, no argument; and especially, aye,
I’ll want all those little things that she imagines are her faults—or
big things, come to that, I don’t care, just as long as she stays with me for ever, and I
really
want children, but say she can’t have children, for some reason, I’ll still love her to bits as long as she stays with me for ever. Aye! No lies—exactly as it is when you
go out on a shout
in a flying gale, a Force 10! Aye—and then I’ll respect her, and love her, I’ll love her to bits until I die—and maybe, you know, just maybe, we
will
have children, lots of children, but there again, who can tell?”

“Luke—you’ve
got
to go to Shetland for a month or two! Hunting!”

“Aye! So if it’s a district nurse and we’ll be together always then I can add to my fantasy, can’t I? You know—the Viking cottage, as it were, all that, I can add to it, can’t I?”

“Of course! Why not?”

“Because by then I’ll be earning good money, and so will
she, so maybe, just maybe, in the honeymoon period, you know, which I’m sure will last
for years
, because I’ll love her to bits … we might buy a sailing-boat? What do you think? Eight metres or so? And I’ll name it after her, of course. And that’s all a secret dream, really secret, a silly fantasy that I’ve had for twenty years … And we’ll explore the coast of Shetland from the sea, just the two of us, and then, when she’s used to it, we’ll sail to Norway together, just us, and we’ll nose around the islands and push up the fjords between Bergen and Stavanger; and then we’ll return to our cottage! Aye—and we’ll have
children
. And another thing: I know—this will seem ridiculous to you, I know it will; but I want a
garden;
because I want to grow vegetables; and I
want to plant trees
. Aye, I hear you, as you’d say… But you’re wrong, because even on Unst, between 60 and 65 degrees north, I forget exactly,
but it’s on the same latitude as southern Greenland
, it’s the most northerly of all the islands of the British Isles, the far north of Shetland—aye!—and the most beautiful, believe me, the most beautiful place on earth, excuse me, because even
there
you can grow trees!”

“Bullshit! There
are
no trees in Shetland—everyone knows that!”

“You’re wrong!” Luke became so agitated, passionate about—what?

Trees? It was
trees
now, was it? And for a moment I thought he might get to his feet and
ruin everything
(the old men; the
conversation;
peace; the park-bench). But, just, he stayed where he was, on his red-plastic-basket rim; and yes, I thought, the
bounce
in these up-and-down (and sideways) plastic seats:
wow!
So active-kind, so move-you-about-comfortable at the base of the back; and maybe, with a twist or two, you can
visit
the site of that low-down back-pain and
shift it?
To the right? Oh Jesus! No! So: to the left? Yes! That’s better; that really is
so much better
, such a relief…

“You’re
wrong
Worzel—aye, because, as it happens, I
have
been to Shetland! And aye, as it also happens, I fucking well was
not
looking for a district nurse!”

“You weren’t? Really not? Then more fool you! That’s all I have to say—because you
should
, and fast,
Luke, fast:
because you’re ageing! Now—now is your
last chance
.”

“Jesus! Will you lay off? Will you lay off for just a moment—and listen?”

(Luke said
Jesus
, didn’t he? So I’d got him—yes: Luke was coming apart; so Luke
would
take my advice; wouldn’t he? Yes—whatever happened, I’d make
so sure
that this absurd wayward hero of a young lifeboatman was
happy!
And as for that: there’s no other way, everyone knows—
all you need is the right woman …
)

Luke, aggrieved, but not (I was
so
pleased!) moving from his basket, said: “Because—the great Dr. Saxby, a guy you’d really like—och aye, you
really
would, because he lived in the nineteenth century, and now he’s
dead!
Aye, Dr. Saxby
was
the island doctor, the man who wrote
The Birds of Shetland;
well, to be
accurate
, as you say, his brother (a vicar! How’s that?)—he put it all together from Saxby’s papers after his death and published it in 1874… Still, where was I? Aye! Trees!
So Dr. Saxby loved trees too:
and he built a big
walled
garden beside his little house near Baltasound on Unst and he planted sycamores (I
think
it was sycamores)—and guess what? They grew! The most northerly wood in the British Isles! But now his house, the scene of all that nineteenth-century northern science—it’s a ruin … But if you climb over a broken iron-gate—you can go and
enjoy
this little wood: spooky, magic! A magic place! And all those poor migrant little birds, the robins and blackbirds and God knows what else who
have
to get out of Scandinavia where they breed so well in summer (the insects! the blackfly!) but which in winter becomes one impossible bird-hell of snow and ice—aye! The lucky ones, of all those thousands (millions, perhaps?): the lucky ones of all those thousands of little land-birds blown off course in the wrong Arctic wind (so that almost all of them ditch exhausted into the sea and drown, pronto, and feed our fish)—aye,
the very few lucky ones all get to go to Dr. Saxby’s wood:
and they
can’t believe it
, they’re safe, they’re in a wood, they survive!”

“Goaaal!” I shouted, automatic, formulaic—but all the same, it
was
a great story, wasn’t it? And then huffy, feeling left out (hadn’t Luke agreed to tell me
everything?
), I said: “Luke—you
never
told me you’d stayed on Shetland!”

“Aye:
because my mum paid
. That’s why I never told you. And
another thing: I really want to own a dog. A collie. One of those magic dogs: they’re
so
intelligent; you wouldn’t believe it! Aye: a big fluffy female collie—their eyes! They look at you all the time … And when you say, ‘Sit!,’ they sit…”

“Yeah, yeah. But
Shetland?
You
never
told me you’d stayed on
Shetland
…”

“Aye, well. I did. And I can’t tell you everything, can I?”

“Oh yes you can—and you
should
. You told me about Signy Island—but
Shetland?
”

“Aye, OK, well, no wonder I didn’t tell you,
because my mum paid
. But the fact is—it was two months, in the slack period for us, in Aberdeen, at the university, at the Marine Lab; and, as you know, a graduate working on his doctorate is allowed no more than two weeks off a year, and, for some reason,
especially not
mature students … But I think my supervisor (a great guy!) and my mum (she’s
lovely:
you’d really like her)—I think they
must
have got together, because, it’s true, I
was
having terrible trouble
starting
my doctorate! Aye—I already had
lots
of data from trawlers, from the sea; and from the landings, from the fish-market at Scrabster, where people like Jason come into harbour at three in the morning; and the lumpers arrive and do the unloading from the hold on to the boat’s hoist down there; and the boxes are swung up and ashore under the trawler’s lights; and the crew pull them into the great shed on these horrible unstable three-wheel market-trolleys … Aye, and the merchants arrive around six in the morning, and it’s all
so tense
… And when everyone’s ready the auction begins—hundreds and hundreds of boxes, if you’ve been successful, all spread out, and the auctioneer and the merchants step from box to box, row on row, and the sale is done …”

“Luke! Shetland! I
really
want to hear about Shetland!”

“Aye, well, okay—but you see, despite my earnings, my savings from my years in the South Atlantic, on Signy Island, and as a Fisheries Inspector in the Falklands: fact is, I was out of money. And in Aberdeen, well, you know, the distractions! The Moorings, the pub in the docks, full of all your friends, every night! And the clubs—the dances! Aye, so as I think I told you, my mum and my
supervisor may have had a word on the phone—and the choice was a cottage in Penan, the
prettiest
little east-coast Scottish tourist village where they made scenes for a film called
Local Hero
. Or, more expensive (because it’s
so
far away), a place way up north, on Unst. Well—that was it, wasn’t it? The obvious place to send someone into isolation to begin real work on his doctorate … So I took my little white van from the lab, the one I use for all the kit, for sampling species in Scrabster market—and I had my thesis-notes and computer in one case, and my clothes in another, and my boots and anything else I thought I might need in the back—but
no
, even then I made an effort:
I thought about what I might need:
I did
not
bung everything in like you do: socks, papers, books that are one hundred years out of date, piles of crud… No! … I couldn’t stand that!”

“Yes, yes! Great! But where did you
go?
”

“Aye!” Luke, uneasy, looked hard away to port. (To port, there was nothing to see: just the rusty brown-circled rivets, the rusty brown-orange-edged plates; but hey, I thought, it must be dawn
out there;
because the weak pure white Arctic light is coming in
here
, horizontally, through the starboard scupper—and it’s making the
loveliest
patterns with the stains of rust on the iron, and across the old, bubbled white paint; and yes,
watch it
, I thought, both ways, because
that
, I suppose, is
exactly
how otherwise perfectly reasonable people decide to become painters, artists …) “Aye!” said Luke, turning his head, concentrating, now staring straight in front of him—at the gutting table (littered with a miscellany of his lovingly documented but now discarded fish). “For me—it’s
not
a good story, which is why I’ve never told you, despite something: well, to be honest, it was absolutely the best time I’ve had in my life since Signy Island: since the South Orkney Islands, the Antarctic!”