A Book of Death and Fish (16 page)

Robbie said he knew I was into diesel engines but I’d have to make do with a petrol two-stroke when I came to visit him. I said that a Seagull engine had plenty of character. At least it wasn’t a Suzuki. Then I remembered his guitar was a Suzuki.

He lived pretty close to that guitar. You had to make an appointment to get into the toilet in the flat we shared. It was in a square box set right between his room and mine, neutral territory. The extractor fan used to make a big noise but hadn’t worked for a while and the acoustics were good. He might have disconnected it.

When you did get to hear him play, it could be just about anything. Robbie alternated between chords to accompany the Shetland fiddle, contemporary jazz and a few acoustic versions of rock riffs. One of his heroes was Peerie Willie, the Shetlander who fingerpicked all that lot together, maybe with some bluegrass. And got away with it.

Robbie was also good enough to get away with it. But he could cope with a lot of things because he could adapt. Eat any food. Play Country and Western in some zinc shack he’d been driven to on a Friday. You had no choice when the motor stopped for you and someone who was needing a guitarist came knocking at the door.

My sleeping bag was stretched out somewhere in his Da’s house. At the heart of a scheme in Lerwick which was the double of another one I knew well, on another island. In both towns, the council housing was back a good way from the harbour and up a slope. Maybe the site of the Lerwick one had been a cornfield too. Not that we’re short of decent arable land in the outer Isles, you understand.

I wouldn’t have minded being in the down cocoon, right then. His father had lodged a wee protest. You can’t go hauling that boy out to sea now, after he’s been on that P&O boat for fourteen hours. Robbie said he could, the forecast wasn’t that great for the rest of the week so we’d have to grab our chance.

He knew I was keen to get out in a Shetland skiff. Shetland Model, they called them, here. Makes them sound like toys but they’ve a name as sea boats. More of a rowing boat you can sail, compared to the beamy, load-carrying boats of Orkney and Lewis.

The keel of the Shetland Model runs the full length of the hull, thus presenting sufficient area of timber against drift. That would be oak. Then there would be the lighter larch of the first broad plank. The Shetlanders would shift their weight to keep her well down in the water. They fair crowded on sail, to race them, so one man was there with a shovel, bailing all the time. The out and out racers would have some extra keel. That would help them keep a course close to the wind.

Robbie’s father had never sailed this one. Even those who did sail might have a Seagull stashed away under an oilskin for when they just went fishing. I held the door of the shed open and Robbie carried the beast out. This one had a square cylinder and even had a clutch. It was a late-Sixties model. A good period. Think of Jimi Hendrix. As he said to me quietly, once, in that Aberdeen flat, you don’t write off Hendrix’s music just because the guy’s dead. Where would that leave Samuel Taylor Coleridge? I couldn’t argue with that.

He’d liked
The Ancient Mariner,
rediscovering the thing after it had been murdered at school, the Anderson High. It was the open-endedness that hit him, the way you couldn’t fit it all into this moral framework it was pretending to illustrate. We traded studies in our better moments. I was doing a Literature module that year – reflections on the French Revolution and all that. Leading into a short course on the European historical novel.

Robbie swapped Basic Navigation for Literature. Not basic enough, sometimes. He had to get the star-sights in there. Capella and the like. Only high-sounding names to me. My olman would have hung on every word.

A bearing and a distance. A vector. A line carrying both magnitude and direction. I could get a grip of that. But there were a couple of wee complexities.

‘Tell me more about Variation and Deviation.’ They sounded quite sexy. You have to allow for the difference between True North and the way the compass points, varying slightly year by year. Then there’s compensation for the vessel’s own magnetic field, on a given bearing.

I’d seen his advert. Our flat was cheap but we had to pay the price. It wasn’t that quiet. He’d grabbed the chance to rent it from another Shetlander, who’d got a job back home. It was just off Market Street. Walking distance from the Nautical College. Fish lorries passed under our window at any hour. We got the stale smoke from up the road, when the wind blew it down – the place with the sign we wanted to liberate and install in the flat.

Robbie was soft-spoken, for a Viking. Younger than me but used to being attended to by stewards and so on. I taught him a few survival skills. There was the cheese sauce, roux method, livened up with some leek and Stilton. Your own curry paste, with natural yoghurt, lemon juice and coriander. A basic garam masala prepared in small quantities, for freshness. He was too easy to lead. I shouldn’t have got away with it for so long.

The hint of his other side came when I saw him cruise up and down with the other half-dozen regulars of the early morning session at the Bon Accord Baths. His fair hair looked even thinner, plastered wet and still not much sign of a beard. But a bow wave coming off him as he swam miles, propelled by a steady breaststroke. All these swimmers, navigating on lines of black tiles along the blue. They passed each other as courteously as ships following the secure rules of their roads.

He phoned me before I left from Lewis. Yes, the trip was still on. But there was something up. I’d get the story when I got there. Robbie wasn’t a guy to give away much on the phone. I’d to bear with him but it was time I saw his home ground.

Robbie wouldn’t let me carry the Seagull from the shed beside the running-mooring. That would have been the usual thing. One guy would pull in the boat and the other get the engine down.

‘I know how to carry it,’ I said. ‘The gearbox end held below the level of the fuel tank.’

He let me take the oars and that was about it. Anchor, warp, spare fuel, spare plug and spanner. No lifejackets, no flares.

The sky didn’t look too good to me. There was a couple of old guys yarning by the boats, leaning against the archetypal harbour rail.

‘No yous are not going out today, boys, not far anyhow?’

Robbie told them he’d just get out to lift a few pots. He’d to recover them before the sea got up.

‘Well if du lads are set on going, it’ll have to be da sooth way.’

Robbie grinned. His look said,
Aye, northabout as planned.

The trim of this boat was important. He sat me on the forward thwart then pulled her out clear of all the moorings. Then dropped oars and pumped fuel through the engine. It fired, second pull, on its bracket of bent galvanised bar. This was bolted to the stern post, where the rudder would have been hung.

I sat as directed. The Shetland Model seemed narrow, to the Lewis eye, and the seas were building up. It took them well, punching in.

‘She’s good in a following sea too,’ Robbie shouted, over the motor. ‘You won’t ship a green one in this.’

That was about as much as we could say, over the engine. That type of unit vents directly to the grey air above the shifting water level. Water coolant gushed out in a healthy jet. The rich fuel mixture was smoking, even in this breeze.

He throttled back a bit and it was quieter or maybe I was just getting used to it. I asked if it was a ten-to-one mix.

Robbie nodded.

‘You get a wee kit now,’ I started, ‘to convert the carb to take twenty-five-to-one.’

Shit, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

‘Ten-to-one sounds fine to me,’ Robbie shouted above the exhaust. ‘Keeps it smooth on short runs. Around the pots.’

I noted the direction of buoyage as we passed a cylindrical port-hand buoy. It was across from a yard. Just like the Arnish buoy at Approaches to Stornoway. The one that replaced the fallen beacon.

‘Norscot,’ Robbie said. A lot of guys who used to throw fishing gear out here were working in there, now. Lucky for him. Otherwise there would be no lobsters left for us. One for the fuel, one for the table.

‘Da kens i Norscot recipe for kippers?’

On the night shift, you wrapped them in newspapers. Shoved them behind a radiator at the start of the shift. Dug them out at the meal break. That was it.

He throttled back up. I saw the seas were getting longer. Less breaking waves. Had to be deeper water.

He signalled me to move to the middle thwart. He was wanting to keep the prop down so it would bite more. I realised that I wasn’t too happy. I’d been out in a lot worse seas but there was something about the situation. Not being in control.

Bare islands were close now. Could just as easily have been the entrance to Loch Erisort. Skuas dodged in the airways above our heaving boat.

‘That rain’ll keep the wind doon.’

But I came close to mutiny at the narrows. Robbie cut the engine.

‘My gear is in the lee o that lot. It’ll be no bother to haul. We can git through wi da tide like this but it’s safer just to pull.’

Without thinking, I took up one of the narrow-bladed oars as he took the other. In the short swell, I missed one stroke.

‘It’s easier if there’s only one guy pulling,’ he said and took over my oar. I went forward to look for nasty stuff. It was worse when you had nothing to do with guiding the boat through. I swallowed words.

It was like a lagoon, through these narrows. He’d known it would be, of course, in this wind. I hauled the gear while Robbie handled the boat. That thrill of gambling with traps is the same everywhere. A few crabs, just big enough to be worth boiling up. Two indigo snapping shapes, but just under the limit. And one decent lobster. I found the rubber bands in the fish box and doubled them round the claws then placed it in the other end of that box, with an old oilskin separating it from the crabs.

Robbie then motioned me to go forward while he stowed the six or so pots, with their ropes and buoys placed inside, to avoid tangles. When he was happy that the boat was back in trim, we were back on the go, him on the stern thwart. He told me then, he wasn’t going back to Aberdeen.

He’d heard so many local versions of his own story, it was getting kind of difficult to explain the real one. He’d heard he’d failed his last ticket. He’d jumped ship in the Pacific, over a woman he was involved with. She was younger than him of course but he didn’t know if she was Polynesian or not. Then there was the older woman theory, Unst, Walls or Yell versions. Met when he was playing music on one of those islands.

Let’s just say the ticket he did have would do him for any North Sea job he wanted and he’d be back home for the two weeks off. He’d probably not get sponsored to carry on but so what? He wasn’t so sure of the ring of Captain Sinclair anyway. Too many of them round here.

Sure enough, in front of our window in Aberdeen, the lines had been getting longer and thicker. Converted trawlers, built high to be reborn as supply ships. Painted in new liveries. Between that boom coming and the Lerwick connections, he’d be OK.

More important to him right now, to keep the music going, the two weeks at home. He was lucky. His father wasn’t the sort to put pressure on him. He was glad of the company in the house.

He still didn’t give me the tiller on the way back. I knew for sure then that I’d tried to steer him more than enough in the recent past. You think you know someone but maybe part of the person you think you’re seeing is only your own impression.

Maybe it’s difficult to really get to know anyone. For all the animated dialogue and shared meals. It takes more time maybe to be aware of what’s particular.

Take a Shetland vessel, broad-planked for strength with lightness but also for speed of build. Primarily a beach-launched boat, held by a bare minimum of sawn frames. Double ended and narrow in the beam. Light and strong. Like boats in Faroes and Fair Isle. But something unique. And this one that Robbie’s father had once got built for him might have had
more flare here or there, than specified. The cut of the larch. The way it grew. The way it bent.

Even if everything was scrupulously done to templates, it must have had additions or subtractions over the years. An eye bolt added or galvanised pins for the oars to replace worn iron ones. An anchor permanently aboard but carried in a slightly different position every trip.

All becoming factors of the vessel’s own individual nature. Its own resultant deviation, valid for the time it has its effect. Causing a swing east or west of the magnetic bearing.

You couldn’t put complete trust in any swinging needle. Any dial.

The room that’s a haven for a while begins to constrain you. Your own legs start to hit against those of the table. You hear the door close behind you and you’re on the stairs. Whatever the weather is doing, out there, it’s welcome.

If there’s a harbour near your room, that’s perfect. There could be high jibs of cranes that run on tracks. There could be the spurts of unburned diesel as big Caterpillars start up in the early hours. There might be landscaped surfaces. Restored buildings. There could even be cobbles (surface of rounded stones) and cobles (flat-bottomed beach boats for salmon fishing) and rows of parlour-pots, stacked up for the photographs.

At Stonehaven you could round the shore towards Low Water and then see the smaller commercial boats discharging their codlings and fluke. The radars would still be spinning. All this in the foreground. A step or two back shorewards, you’d see the signs of leisure activities. Racks and racks of bright sea kayaks. And signs of dinghies, under canopies. A shelf of aluminium masts.

I slept in a garret right over the Bridge of Cowie. Might have been possible to catch a sea trout from the window. I was a bit preoccupied though. Trying to get right back into the studies. Final year. Comes to the stage you just want to get shot of them. Get back out into the world again.

Whatever the hell the real world is. Trouble is, the more you get into a subject, the harder it is to keep it tidy. What’s the point of studying history if you’re not making comparisons? To get steady good grades and deliver on time, you need to limit the fields. Or unlimited time.

I emerged, rubbing the eyes, to phone my mother. I was too late. Poor Sheena had gone down fast. A mercy, really. The funeral had been yesterday. I should phone Ruaraidh or send a card.

You know how it is. Memory sweeps by at a pace within the confines of a regulation King George the whatsit cast iron kiosk. Between the lines of a phone call to your mother, hours and weeks can flash back and fore in time.

Brave woman. I saw her with her hair gone, in the hospital. She was teasing me about the dungarees. Real Soviet-issue job. Very appropriate for the history student. I was thinking back to the summer holiday I’d spent with herself and Ruaraidh. She’d come back from work to find me and my uncle in the living room with the telly on. Newsflashes. I was not away on the bike, fishing. Unusual. She sat to join us, hardly believing the imagery of the tanks. She would call herself a Socialist. We were witnessing something different. That poor Jan Palach. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. My arse.

I’d never heard her swear. Never heard any aunt swear. Not even one by marriage.

She was always witty and wry but she had nothing to say, that time. She never even went for the kettle, never put her shopping bag away. I was shocked when I saw some tears. She was tough and always won arguments.

Last time I saw her, she was home in bed. In remission. But there should have been a meal together. Ruaraidh was to pick me up after the early shift. A fank. Just like we used to. Business as usual. Back to the town homestead after. It would be
marag
and bacon and eggs though. Maybe get a bit of fried duff with it.

But we stayed over at Griomsiadair, at the next croft, for tea and sponge cake and stuff and this is the weird thing. My excuse was that the timing was getting tight for a meeting I needed to get to. But my stomach was in a knot all that year. I couldn’t see me coping with a fry-up after a daft bit of light cake. As the saying goes, you’re not cracking up if you know you’re going crazy. But I didn’t think I was going crazy.

In the phonebox on the Bridge of Cowie, about one year later, I knew it, all right. Fucking meeting. After the olman’s funeral, there was only one meeting that mattered that year. That was eating with Ruaraidh and Sheena. And I’d ratted out of it. Aye, a brave dame all right. Probably the first local woman to a graveside on Lewis. Unless she was being carried. Brave cove, Ruaraidh. Maybe it was no bad thing he liked his dram.

When the olaid sent me the
Gazette
I saw the notice. That was the first time I realised that this woman who had fed me so often was called ‘Sine’. I’d thought of it spelled the way it sounded – Sheena – not like the word from trigonometry. But of course it was a Gaelic name. Sometimes people called her husband, my uncle, Roddy. I knew his friend as Angus but he would be ‘Aonghas’, pronounced Innes, in the villages out of town. Many people on the island had to answer to two names.

Recovering to sound OK for the olaid. Mind, we’re still in the phonebox. Bridge of Cowie.

No problem, no bother. Grades a wee bit down on before but the tutor said there was a good platform to work on. Sure, sure, I wouldn’t leave it so long.