A Book of Death and Fish (39 page)

We got a bit of work done on the dinghy trailer – same one we used to move her from my uncle’s croft. Not that light a boat, really. The keen builders, of course, hadn’t been able to resist using some superb quality Oregon pine at two inches thick for the thwarts – that’s the seats which
also brace the whole upper parts of the boat. It came from old doors from a posh house. A dead house on a tidal island.

We put a sail on her. A gunter rig – short mast but a fair amount of cloth – the rig came from Gabriele’s old dinghy project that wasn’t going to happen. That sail had never been used. We got given a wee jib. Perfect. That was my part in the joint enterprise. Anna would have to teach me the finer points of sailing. I’d fallen right into the trap of leaving the finesse to Gabriele. It was getting more and more difficult to get Gabriele out and about for longer than a short walk. There was a name for it, at last. They called it M.E.

We fixed the step – the housing – for the mast so it could be taken up and down, no bother. Anna and me jointly man-and-woman-ufactured a decorative wee rudder with fish shapes for cheeks. We tried her out on the Barvas loch. There’s a few rocky bits but most of it is sandy bottom and the water’s warm.

You’re hearing the roar of the west side surf over the machair. I knew one hell of a story about that but now was not the time to share it with my daughter. All that wind, all that power, gets huge boulders rolling to smoothness along the outside beach. But that’s not going to bother you as you’re speeding about on the flat, brackish water. The pram took off.

I wondered how she could be so fast and then thought, yes, maybe because she’s so bloody long, thinking of the bit hanging over the end of the trailer. But the pretty rudder wasn’t that effective. In fact, as she went like a dart for the shore, it was all getting a bit worrying.

We found out you could turn her by getting our combined weight where it mattered and using the sails. Keeping pressure in the main to take her towards the wind. Let that go and get some power in the foresail to take her off the wind again.

We managed to turn with only a few inches of water left. No harm done – and even the rudder escaped damage. Simple, really. Routine tack. Fuck.

‘Da, I thought you promised Mum you’d be watching your language when I’m aboard.’

‘It’s all about appropriate words for the situation, esteemed daughter.’

Warm rain came on and the breeze got up and we found another problem. She was stable enough, hard over on one side, accelerating away but the water came in. There was the traditional, sawn-off Duckhams plastic oil container, with an angle in the cut so the handle remains. This is a design common to west and east Lewis and which had taken over from the Nestle’s baby-milk tin, which was traditional in the days of my youth. These came to the Island about the same time as sliced bread. It would be worth studying the style of improvised bailer, island to island, Gigha to Unst. These are fine examples of applied physics. Amazing how you can think all that in the second it takes to grab the bloody thing and get it working for all you’re worth.

They race boats this way in Shetland. As long as the bailer can keep up with the volume of water coming in, they reckon the boat can take a bit more yet. Anna was grinning from ear to ear. Then laughing out loud. She got me started. Good job there wasn’t anyone out for a wee stroll in the force six.

We took her out in the loch a few times then put her on a running mooring, far side of the hoil. She proved a good rowing tender – but there’s a tidal bar. Anna was getting into the fishing. So we cut it a bit fine for getting the pram back to her mooring. That bar of shingle was showing. No worries, we could just pull her across. But remember these heavy thwarts. It was a fair old push. Anna was taking the painter and leading from the bow. Then she said to me, ‘Da, you know some people just take their dogs for a walk on the shore. They keep their boats in the water.’

We had another good day on the Barvas loch. It was a bit stony at the edges but fine when you got out. We got a bit casual about leaving the boat but not the gear up there.

Some kids from the village took her for a jaunt. Fine, but they left her untied, banging against the stones. Not so fine. Not a difficult repair job but it took a while to get round to it. Anna was into other things by then. There was a couple of changes in the air. The days of our carefree pottering were numbered.

Willum had done well for himself. He’d got out of the Academy and along to the Buchan College as soon as he could and got to grips with his navigation. He worked through his second mate’s exams, sponsored by the company, then quit and went trawling. But he didn’t just jump on a boat as a deckhand and go straight to the money. No, he did the one-year course in Aberdeen and picked up all the skills, the netmending and wire work and shut his mind off when the lectures in basic seamanship went on. He didn’t appear aloof or anything and the younger guys kind of looked up to him. He was a skipper already, in waiting, and everyone knew it. The last days of the trawling in Aberdeen were rough. The fleet was run down or looked it anyway. I went along to the market once, took my flat-mate, Robbie, with me, to ogle at the catch and eat dripping rowies with the rest of them, the porters and salesmen. That was the starter, for breakfast, before bacon rolls, served with a bucket of instant coffee. We saw a taxi or two arrive. A skipper was rounding up his drunken deckhands while the engineer was coaxing the machinery back to life. They’d be in debt again. They’d need to make one more trip, Iceland way. The cod war was over but the UN deal was going to keep most British trawlers 200 miles out from the coasts of Iceland. Working conditions were just not that great.

Willum had done his stint on the rustbuckets. He earned his ticket and saved up his deposit. He was up on the game, the shift away from Aberdeen to working the west coast.

‘See that catch, swinging in now, teuchter?’ Willum said, ‘Rockall warriors. We got them over your way. Dinna ken fit way your Stornoway trawlers willna gang oot fir their share o it. It willna be oot at Rockall for lang, fishin the likes o this.’

The warriors were the cod themselves. One to a full box.

That’s how he made his money. He was canny with it too. Of course he had the nice motor. The girlfriend, Sheila, kept the seat warm while he was at sea. It was always parked away from the harbour, out of the salt.

I only spoke to him on the VHF once. Coastguard to fishing vessel. When we got to the working channel I could talk normal.

‘Just heard you calling the other boat and thought I’d shout you. That’s Willum, aye?’

‘Aye and I think I’m talking to the teuchter cousin. Are you nae bored in there when there’s a picking to be had oot here?’

‘You’re out Kilda way?’

‘Well, I’m jist not free tae tell onybody exactly the whereaboots o this vessel at this moment but I can tell ye noo it’s no that fine a mornin oot here.’

He was in the fish again.

I saw him only the once or twice in The Broch, in the new house. He wasn’t that much for the drink but there was a dram out for us both as he spread out the plans. Folk were saying it was a done. Aye, the Aberdeen trawlers were done but plenty Broch and Banff boats making good livings working out of Kinlochbervie. The crewbus was parked outside. He knew I liked VWs and he fired up the turbo-diesel so I could hear her purr. A Type 4 Caravelle. Oilskins were left on the boat. The lads all had a shower when they landed. And a hurl back to The Broch for every second Sunday.

He told me KLB was second only to Peterhead for white fish. Aberdeen was done. Ullapool was booming with the Klondykers, the shotties o mackerel.

This was the new ship. Steel was the way to go. And the blueprints were spread out. Willum took me down to the engine room first, of course. Twin Caterpillars. Then we took the tour right up to the bridge. You couldn’t call that a wheelhouse.

And then he said, ‘But I’m off down the road to pick up young Andra. I’ve only the one loonie. Indoor fitba – that’s his thing. I like tae pick him up. The Broch’s no the quiet place you kent on your holidays. You just talk your Dostoyevskies wi Sheila. She’s back til teaching English. At the Academy. I couldna wait tae git clear o it.’

And we did. And I met his lad, also Andra, named after his grampa. ‘So,’ I says, ‘if I’ve got this right, you’re Andra’s Willum’s Andra.’

‘Aye.’

I hit it off with Sheila. We were soon on the historical novel. Sheila was saying how she could get right inside Raskolnikov’s head. Everything just builds up. ‘Yons like a symphony playing in somebody’s mind and the thocht process canna be shifted nor stoppit. So it hid tae end in the swinging o an axe. But that’s jist the beginnin o the mental journey.’

The next few years did definitely accelerate. Willum’s new ship had her dents but she was still shiny red. Signal red, I think, with that hint of international orange. A safe colour. I was hoping maybe Anna’s team would get to the semi-finals in The Broch and maybe she’d be playing against her cousin. Five-a-side is a big event these days. But it didn’t work out quite like that.

Willum was tied up in business. Nearly as restricted as his ship. The bank was squeezing him and the Fisheries Officers were on top of the vessel. Every vessel. KLB was a quiet place and a lot of the stuff coming through Peterhead was imported from Iceland. They caught their own fish these days. Who could blame them?

‘We should hae done the same. The Common Market was a richt for the farmers but the fisherman was payin the price,’ Willum said.

The VW Caravelle, out the door, was the same turquoise green colour and, I was amazed to see, the same reg. And it wasn’t a customised plate. The skippers would have the boat’s name on the plate, which went from vehicle to vehicle, changed every year or two. There used to be money in the East.

Anna’s team did get to the semis and they did play The Broch. She didn’t meet her cousin. She asked about him but people just said no, Willum Sim’s Andra hadnae been aroon the club for a while.

She didn’t have to go to church on the Sunday though most of her mates did. She just said she had relations to visit. She had her dinner with them but there was still no sign of Andra. Sheila told her pretty well straight out. Anna was shocked by it all. Good that she heard it though. And she reported it back to me.

‘Ah dinna ken fit like Stornoway is these days, but The Broch has its problems. Ane big problem. You must have heard we’re bein cried the heroin capital o Scotland.

‘Some of them are bairns still. They smoke it. They’re thinkin that wilna dae much. Then they’re gettin sick if they dinna get it. That’s when they start injectin, tae get the maist oot o the bag. Your young cousin Andra has a these pals on the boaties. They dinna go tae the pub these days, they hiv pockets fu o cash and they go and git a bag for the weekend. And the ones that dinna hae the cash, they lie an steal. There’s nane o them you could trust.

‘That’s ane o the reasons Willum is thinking o givin up the boat. It’s that dangerous like. He disna ken if the loonies aboard on a Monday is still high. If they’ve sneaked something oot wi them. An there’s wires runnin an swell runnin and there’s been a hell o a number o accidents. Mair than ony time.’

As my lawyer and former classmate advised me, when I thought of tackling a certain builder, justice is for the next world. This one is all about probabilities. Sir James Matheson was only able to become a benefactor (mainly to himself) by distributing drug-fuelled havoc in Asia. There might have been some Old Testament justice if Stornoway had been hit by the epidemic which ravaged The Broch and Alness and other unlikely towns. Or maybe it
has
been bad enough here. Just that you’re out of touch with it, another stage of your own life. A guy was done for taking a serious amount of cocaine across the Minch, not that long ago.

It was Sheila on the phone.

‘It’ll be a very quiet funeral. There’s no need for you to come over but you’ve kept up wi your Broch relations and Willum thocht you’d want tae ken.’

I thought of old Andra, the one surviving brother of my mother. I’d missed seeing him, last visit. He’d also had a stroke. He was recovering but he was in dry dock at Foresterhill Hospital. I didn’t make it through to Aberdeen.

‘No no it’s nae your uncle. Aul Andra is nae baud. He’s an army o hame helps and he’s gettin by. I hiv to tell you, our ain young Andra has passed awa.’

I booked into the Alexandria Hotel. It wasn’t very expensive. I was anxious, driving down on my own. The hail was lying. I had the estate car which looked like shit but was mechanically sound. It looked after me fine. I was knackered and didn’t even go out. For a while, driving, I was thinking of the chip shop where you can ask for lemon sole rather than haddock but I was beyond that now. I’d picked up a sandwich when I stopped for diesel and I had that with the tea, in my room. Shit, UHT in plastic tubelets.

Das Boot
was on the telly. I’d never seen the whole film. Men trapped in a steel cylinder. Now that must be close to Hell. A crew with a skipper who never gives up. But it’s the engineer who saves the ship. The ironies build up at the big parade. They’re about to get another batch of medals. But an air-raid comes and they all die, on the surface, in port. I never watched telly at home. I’d spend most evenings in the workshop itself or else leafing through files in the storage area up above it.

I’d thought I might have a view of the stretch of coast between the harbour and Broadsea, where Willum had once let me work the wee yole when he hauled a couple of pots. But now, I looked away from the sea to a row of houses that had been handsome once.

These must have been a big step up for folk like my roller-skating, singing and dancing grandparents. They’d stepped up to one of these, inside cludgy and all, from living with all the eight bairns piled into one room.

These same houses were boarded up now. Sheets of ply were nailed across where the windowpanes might still be. Talk about seeing through a bloody glass darkly. I think that was Paul rather than Peter. You could see a bit of coming and going but not much. One door at least could still open, in the block.

I remembered where I’d seen something like this before. We’d driven through the streets of Belfast on our way to a music festival in Dundalk, when I was a student. There were houses boarded like that. And I’d seen worse later in Derry, a visit for research. I’d decided that events were still all too close to be a suitable subject matter for a dissertation.

The
War of the Worlds
robot feet on the electronic watchtowers. They were surveying the estates. You could see a bright sprinkling of tricolours and Palestinian flags. Over in the rival estates, the Loyalist side, they flew Israeli flags in response. A few years later, I saw an exhibition where a Scot called Alec Finlay had asked to replace all the national and sectarian emblems with printed studies of wind-blown clouds. It was a reference to Basho, a Japanese poet. It gave a calm feel for a short time.

Back to this war-zone in the town that used to be our family’s El Dorado.

Young Andra was a casualty. They say some people have greater tolerance to addiction of any sort. I thought I was like that with the tobacco and the dope but now I’m not so sure. Some people get hooked faster and get off it earlier. Folk like me maybe take a long time to succumb to their deep wants and then have to give in to them.

I only ever really knew one guy who’d had a full-time addiction to opiates. I’d never heard from Torcuil, my old angling mate, since he left the Island all these years ago after burying his girlfriend.

Once, I stopped the car on the quiet street in Coalsnaughton. Off the main road. I used to reach out to Torcuil’s along the railway line. Sauchie was in the news too, for a few days of tabloid headings. A Scottish Republican living there was done for carrying arms. I might have gone to school with him.

But this time I was on my way back from a Coastguard training course. I’d brought a rod along, to cast a spinner in the sea at Highcliffe, in the hope of catching a sea bass, a fish I’d never seen in the flesh. Of course we went for pints when the official day was done and that was the real training, maybe even the therapy. Amongst the shop and the gossip, the stories of incidents. So I never wet a line.

I’d turned off before the Forth Bridge and crossed at Kincardine. I’d got the bus out there once, from Sauchie, to catch dark flounders we didn’t
risk eating. I found the road up to Gartmorn Dam. There was something different but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought there might have been more pike fishers about. This was getting close to winter and I cast the spinner out near the island, the place where Torcuil took the big pike. Something wasn’t right. I folded the telescopic rod and walked all the way round to where the burn ran in. The water was high but the ripples and deep browns were the backs and dorsals and adipose fins of trout that still had the spawning instinct.

Folk must have netted the pike and perch and restocked the dam – but not with the imposter rainbow trout, peely wally shadows of their North American originals. These were native browns, bred for the entertainment of fly-fishers. Probably Loch Leven stock, in genetic origin, like the trout shipped out to India to stock the clear Kashmiri streams.

I was lucky not to get arrested on two counts – spinning in fly-only water and out-of-season with it. So I watched and noted the change of circumstances. The condition of the place had not remained frozen in the same state it was in that year the teuchter went home. I drove away from the Dam and out the road to Coalsnaughton. Parked just along from the large detached house. I had no way of knowing if Torcuil’s mother was alive or if her son was clean now or even still on the planet. It might or might not still be the family house. Courage failed me and I didn’t leave the car. I drove on before I was reported as behaving suspiciously.

Old Andra’s bairns helped get his wheelchair into the kirk. He wasn’t going to make it to the graveside. The service was as good as it could be. The minister had known young Andrew personally and seen him develop into a potential leader, potentially a great sportsman, with a very winning personality. Sadly, Andrew’s case was like many others in this town at this time. We would have to hold together as a community and look to see what we could do to help without having to assign blame. There were guilty people of course and they brought a plague as surely as if they had brought bacteria to the town rather than drugs. But once a new group had succumbed they also became dangerous to others. Because the habits of one fed on the habits of another.

In that same way, we had to be aware we were in possession of a more powerful source of change. In that same way, we would use our interdependence to counteract the threat to our community. We could only continue to offer support to our neighbours like Sheila and William and think of them and be with them at this time.

I went to the graveside. I threw my handful of sandy soil and I shook hands with my cousins. I didn’t go back to the house. There would be plenty and they could speak whatever comfort they could, in their own language. There were others who had lost their children or as good as lost them. I said I was sure they understood I’d need to get moving towards the ferry. They thanked me for coming. I sent the wishes of my mother at home and my sister from Canada.

But I had one more night in the Alexandria. It was too tight to catch the ferry. Anyway, I wasn’t in a hurry to get back, this time. This was a very rare patch of breathing space. This time I did queue for crisp lemon sole – the olaid’s own favourite. It was firm and sweet, steaming when you split the batter. But then I bought a reporter’s pad and a twinpack of Mitsubishi pens. A half-ounce pack. Some papers. A lighter.

I walked out for the paper, before breakfast. I’d written what I’d needed to write. I didn’t need to show it to anyone. The shop had a metal grille over the window. I thought of knickerbocker glories and bright Broch Candy.

For some reason I took the
Fraserburgh Herald
as well as the
Independent
.

I had fresh grapefruit then real porridge and a smokie with a poached egg on top. A buttery roll along with it. They called them rowies in Aberdeen but my Broch granma called them butteries.

There’s a lot of luck in how things turn out. Our gang sniffed solvents once shopkeepers started withdrawing the bottles of tincture containing opiate from the SY shelves. Soon they withdrew shoe-conditioner too and limited the supply of glue. That’s when someone sussed out the active ingredient could be drained into a lemonade bottle, in the Mill.

Most of us got away with streaming eyes and short-lived bouts of paranoia. But we’d set the local precedent. Did that mean I had a share of the blame for the lonely death of a kid who went on to do what we’d
done, out there in Sir James Matheson’s overgrown gardens?

I read through the local paper, looking for signs of something I recognised – The Broch of Jimmie Sinclair’s ice cream. There was a paragraph referring to the cause of death of the youngster whose body had been released to the family last week. The body had been recovered from Fraserburgh harbour by police divers, following a short search.

Persons were being questioned by the police in connection with the incident but no arrests had been made. It was thought that there had been a scuffle and there was some suggestion that the incident had some link to drugs. The deceased was a known user of heroin.

The cause of death, however, had been found to be by drowning.