A Book of Death and Fish (8 page)

‘You and your sister still hae the Churchill croons your auntie sent doon?’

He told me my grampa had been against the idea of getting one for all the cousins. The aul man remembered Gallipoli. ‘That wis a disaster, sending these great ships intil a tight corner to git hammered. And leaving all these good men, the Kiwis an Aussies, all jist stranded. Churchill gave these orders. Maybe so but it was the same chiel’s speeches held it aa together afore the tide turned, next war on. Peace and love is all very fine, trying to stop that nonsense in Vietnam but it widna hae stoppit an
invasion nineteenbloodyforty. We cam close enough. And it widna hae stoppit Rommels Panzers in North Africa neither.’

I could make the quote now and I think my uncle might have joined in it then. ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

That was 1942. A lot of deaths to come but the myth of the invincible enemy was shattered. A poor start to the war at sea, that same year. The code machine used by the Germans was adapted so there were four rotors instead of three. I might not have been great at maths but I could guess that was a hell of a lot more combinations. Our codebreakers had been ahead of the game. They’d been given a helping hand by Polish intelligence, just before the 1939 invasion. This change was a huge setback. It was going to take a long time to crack the combinations delivered by the new model of machine. So we lost the power to intercept key messages and more and more ships went to the bottom.

But in the autumn of that same year a U-boat forced to the surface of the Mediterranean was going to cough up a codebook. These clues would be fed into our own tonnage of machinery, manufactured by an American cash-register company. The results would prove decisive in the Atlantic.

I learned that the battle against the Nazis was gaining hope, by the end of 1942, in the desert, the sea and the huge snowfields surrounding Stalingrad. Churchill’s rhetoric probably helped. So did his ability to hug uncle Joe.

Andra let me show off my new knowledge but then he pulled another book off the shelves. Another volume by Sir Winston,
The World Crisis.

‘Aye, the same chiel had the giftie o the gab richt enough but ye ken he blew his ain trumpet that much in this book, it’s what led to the German code machines in the first place.’

And sure enough, my uncle read me the passage where the cocky author is boasting about the British ability to anticipate every move of the German High Seas fleet. Even then, I could see the writing was over the top. Stuff about the Russians picking up the body of a German sailor from the
Magdeburg
, clutching the cipher book to his breast. A bit unwise for an ambitious author to go revealing privileged information in 1923
when an enemy laid low by the Treaty of Versailles was wanting for an advantage.

History really shouldn’t be written by the people making it. It’s either unreliable or dangerous. Or both.

Never mind 1942, there was a fair bit going on in 1967. By the end of the year there were 500,000 American troops in Vietnam. In one demonstration, that same year, marching in Central Park, New York (neighbouring city to Stornoway, looking west) near enough the same number was claimed, by the protesters. And it was all coming in, sometimes live, to the TV in West Road, Fraserburgh, a few miles along from the United States listening installation on Mormond Hill.

Next day when I switched on the news, Andra was not yet back from the town, on his day-off and Maggie was not yet back from the first half-day of term.

All these rows of rifles. This time it was Washington D.C. Last time I’d seen all these tanks on the telly, in black and white, I was in Stornoway and it was Poland and the Russians were taking over. Now it was the National Guard, in colour. Strange thing was, all these people in uniform were frozen in black and white. The colours all belonged to the people in long hair and long clothes.

Another image. So common now you can’t honestly remember when or where you saw it first. But it’s definitely monochrome. You know the picture. A person drops a flower down the barrel of a rifle held by a tense guardsman.

Auntie Maggie saw it repeated on the one o’ clock news. Andra had so far failed to appear. She went at a run when the doorbell went. Caught him as the taxi-driver dropped him. ‘Give me a hand, then,’ she said but she didn’t really need it, getting herself under one shoulder and levering all that weight around. He made a fair attempt to get into the sitting room. He was maybe aiming for the self-assembly rocking chair he kept having to glue up. But my auntie wasn’t having it. ‘Come on then, gie us a hand till we get him in the door.’

I did and he went through easily, offering no real resistance when he saw he was going to his bed. He was asleep as soon as she had his shoes off.

‘Does your ain faither git himself intae states like this?’

She asked but she didn’t want a reply. She had to say something. She said quite a lot. It was time to make myself scarce. I went to the shed for the bike and the fishing gear. But the window went up and Andra’s feet appeared. I wondered how he’d managed to get his shoes back on. He hauled a shoulder out next. When his arm got itself liberated, Andra held a finger up to his lips. I could hear his phrases, as he was climbing.

‘No names. No pack-drill. We’re maybe no Top o the Pops. But we did oor bit.’

He was away down town again.

I didn’t tell Maggie and got sheer hell from her, the first time in all these weeks. ‘Why did ye nae tell me? Him gaun back doon t’ that Legion t’ mak a feel o himsel. Fit why did ye nae tell me? That’s aa you’d t’ dee.’

‘I thought he’d sobered up.’ I said it and it sounded as lame it sounds now.

‘Sobered up. Sobered up, fan he’s climbing through his ain bedroom windae. That man’s jist a bairn fan it comes t’ drink.’

It was June. A settled Scandinavian high was bringing great weather to the Island. It was all timed for our family’s return. The sister was starting her nursing studies down in Stirling. And we were staying with Ruaraidh. One night, I got to go out late, with the net. We’d struck lucky and I posted my share of the salmon money to my sister along with detailed instructions. Kirsty scored me a pair of red-tag Levi’s Originals. And she chipped in a bit more in cash and shoe leather, to get hold of a matching jacket. Most guys were wearing Wranglers in the Scottish cities, these days. Every radio, every jukebox, was belting out Mungo Jerry’s
In the Summertime
and
Badge
or
White Room
or
Born to Be Wild
could easily sound out between the wall-to-wall Motown. Even my mother was glad to be back, free of money worries. The Mill was renovating an old house for us. Tweed was in demand again and so was my olman’s skill. We’d be down Inaclete Road, by welders and builders’ yards but who the hell cared.

On Friday afternoons, after one double period of schoolwork, you strolled out to your Activity. I thought the guys were winding me up, the first week. Last two periods, Friday, you could choose anything from ping-pong to sea angling. Of course you chose partly for the thing itself and partly for who else was doing it. My first choice was badminton because there was a girl I liked. She was the first dame to play snooker at the YMCA. All that stretching and sweating was kind of engaging.

I think swimming was my second choice, the following year. I wasn’t ready to give up on the badminton blone, yet. At that time the Sports Centre and Swimming Pool were only a plan. The proposal was for the site of the original Primary, but leaving the clock-tower, jutting up, sandstone
over concrete. That’s how it is now. You can swim, have a sauna, use the Games Hall. All of these. Then, it was just a plan, framed in a public place. With collection tins around it.

Two seasons went by, back on the Island. Mungo Jerry were about extinct. Cream had split. Hendrix was dead and it was January.

Even when the guy taking the Activity gave us one big shit of a lecture to state that swimming meant swimming, in the sea at the end of the road at Melbost, I wasn’t sure he was serious. This man was a music teacher. He had given up on teaching us notation, even songs. One day you would bring in your LPs of Leonard Cohen or Deep Purple and he would play them first and comment afterwards. Another day you would listen to Shostakovich. Fair trade but we didn’t find his week-two sessions all that cheery.

True, others in the Activity nudged you and said no he really wasn’t kidding and it wasn’t as bad as you thought. But that was like a good con, rehearsed with collaborators. Of course it would be classroom instruction. Techniques, maybe a film. Wasn’t there a wee covered training pool, somewhere on the island? And I did seriously want to swim better. Get a bit of muscle on my slight frame. I’d grown too high, too fast. Now I needed to fill out the shoulders of my jacket.

Most of us, the new additions to this Activity group, had been together years back, making our first attempts to swim. In May, with sun catching dust, we’d raced when the bell went. Got our gear and gone down the lane to the saltings at the Cocklebb. The tidal pools were warm and shallow. We floundered and practiced what we’d seen others do, on the flickering black and white set.

We were aware there was a sewer outlet half a mile away but the tide came in over the bar and everything was flushed out twice a day. We watched that tide once, nearly caught by its speed. No waves, just advancing movement, right up to the tussocks and muddy pools where we caught sticklebacks. Once we’d seen it, we remembered the warnings. Primary School stories of the tide in the Solway Firth, flooding faster than a man on a horse. It was only ten years since the last local drowning. We were just far enough away from that time to be able to persuade parents against their better judgments. We never went alone.

My father couldn’t swim at all, my mother only slightly. A lot of seamen and fishermen didn’t believe in learning. It would only prolong the agony if you went over the wall. But herself wanted us to be able to swim properly. She believed in it, for companionship as well as for safety. She bought us lessons, at the Bon Accord pool in Aberdeen, when we were on holiday. Ian Black swam there. These people trained every day. My mother pointed him out, quietly, the Aberdeen celebrity who’d won the medal. The one the whole street had watched one Saturday afternoon, on Kenny F’s telly, the first set to be connected, on Westview Terrace.

After one lesson, I was able to put together the movements we’d taught ourselves at the Cocklebb. I could get from one side of the wide pool to the other. It was nearer breaststroke than anything else.

But you got to Melbost by following the tidal flats, watching for soft mud, then down along the Airport beach and round the rocky headland. A shifting shore, mainly shingle but with moving sandbars. Sometimes deposits build up, after big North-Easters.

I think the wind was from the northeast that first day, but not a storm. Only fresh. It was a tough initiation. We all changed at the back of the bus. The small but hardened squad, from the last season, didn’t hesitate. That group filed out after our leader and waded into the surf. He was out in front, furthest from the beach. His hair was cropped, as close as the crew-cuts which had been in fashion when we’d paddled at the Cocklebb. I hadn’t realised he was such a wee guy.

An onshore wind is probably best for swimming from a beach, depending on tide, but Melbost is the other side of that sandbar so there’s not a big tidal flow. We were right at the head of Broad Bay. It was about three in the afternoon, perhaps the best part of the day. Our new group watched at the back of the bus. We made jokes between ourselves. We’d shout down the aisle to form an alliance with a driver who thought we were all crazy but it kept him in a job. All us new boys put our clothes back on. A collective decision made.

None of the swimmers followed the length of the beach. They would make a few strokes along the line of an incoming wave. Then, when they reached the shallows, they would jump a bit before wading back out to
immerse themselves again. The grouping of figures, perhaps five, was an arrangement. They were white to begin with and then began to shade lobster-red, livid against the pebbles, as they ran back for the blue bus.

Our leader was shaking with rage as much as from cold. He had even less meat on his body than me. As he rubbed the towel hard, to generate warmth, he spoke from between clenched teeth. If we didn’t get into the water next week he’d see to it that we got the Activity we wanted least.

Kenny F said that was fair enough by him. Swimming ability wasn’t going to help you stay alive for long anyway if you went over the side, one day. I thought a small tight fist might fly then but our music teacher controlled himself. And Kenny was a powerful-looking guy, even then. So our instructor concentrated on furthering the comradely spirit of the real swimmers. I could see he did have leadership qualities. If you were in the team. He knew it wasn’t worth trying a ‘Come on in the water’s lovely,’ with us. We were hardass bastards. But we weren’t going in there.

The next week, with the exception of Kenny, who was here for the crack on the bus but just wasn’t going for this winter swimming shit, we swam. Not for long. But long enough to find that the initial shock does dim. I believe now it’s dangerous when that lull comes over you. Maybe that was partly why the swimmers went, what they were looking for. A strange tranquility in the searing wind on the shore. Cheaper than LSD at thirty bob the tab. Bloody one-pound-fifty, new money, the price of an average six-pound fish, to a guesthouse with a back door.

The breaking surf inviting you to enter it, under the wind. More difficult to imagine any sexual undertone. Everyone became equal. You’d need tweezers to find your knob, if you’d needed to, when you came out of that water.

Maybe dope would help. A wee blast before you went in. Trouble was it hadn’t done much for me. You’d to take a legit roll-up now and again to keep in training so you could hold the smoke down long enough. My head swam just as much with the Old Holborn. Maybe more. The hash was probably that old and dried up by the time it got across the Minch.

Kenny transferred to the Castle school. He was only interested in preparing for the fishing industry. His mother kept trying to bribe him to
study something else. The only guy left in the swimming activity group, who refused to go in at all, became a policeman. Before that, he worked part-time in a chemist’s shop. You were warned by the elder and wiser guys not to go there for supplies to have ready in your back pocket, just in case. The word was he’d get you some all right but he’d have pricked each one with a pin. So evil a thought that it was probably only a myth.

But safer to go to the grocer down the road, open till late, and ask for a jar of coffee off the top shelf. I did that once and who should walk into the shop right then but the olman of another of the swimmers, one of us, the second group. The irregular swimmers. He didn’t try to make small talk as the young Pakistani guy passed the packet to me.

It became like Shostakovich – we entered the water every second week. One of the hardcore – the few guys who went in every week – he shone when he stayed to do Sixth Year History. The run-up to the Second World War. He was an expert. He had subscribed to all these magazines that build up week-by-week or month-by-month and are bound in embossed folders.

I met him at the class reunion, the year most of us turned forty. He was there, only I didn’t know him at first, near bald and with the hair left at the sides and back of his head cropped almost to the skin. Lean and looking well on it.

I mentioned the swimming group when we got into a huddle over the fourth or fifth pint of the night. He was away. Every New Year, he said, when his olaid was still around, he’d be back. Of course he’d to be home for the bells.

Early on Hogmanay evening, he’d take a drive out, whatever the weather. He’d park at Melbost and put the headlights on the surf. He might have the wetsuit in the back and the board on the roof but that’s not what he’d come for. He’d study the water for some minutes, then strip off. Not much chance of anyone else being there. He’d enter it. Going back somewhere or carrying an experience forward, he didn’t know which. Didn’t really want to know. Just went for that feeling, when you got over the shock and your every muscle was tuned. Your senses picking up everything for a range of miles but not overwhelmed. You were coping with it, calm. Of course he knew there was a risk. And he hadn’t forgotten about
the boy who never reached our own age, the one who didn’t walk back from the shore at the other side of the tidal bar.

Maybe it was that first ingestion of choking seawater that took you down. If you couldn’t clear your lungs, you’d be bound to take in some of the airborne spray. But he had to keep coming back to that shingle between the conglomerate down from the Airport and the conglomerate below the old Ui churchyard.

I thought back to the leader of the Activity. He never tried to hide his addiction to cigarettes. He told us how you got in the thrall of a thing you didn’t enjoy any longer. He put that very well. But maybe there was other stuff he couldn’t talk out to any of us. Not even the swimmers.

He would find plenty to discuss though, in the intervals between playing his records and ours. Which was, that term, in the intervals between weekly excursions to the turning-place. To swim or not to swim.

Talking of choices. There was maybe an option, he told me. The music teacher waited till there wasn’t an audience. He said he knew I wasn’t getting on so well with most of the staff. But he’d seen me find the will to join in a few times, the winter swimming. But that’s not what he wanted to say. That drumming of fingers on the desk. It was distracting for the others, but it was in time.

He meant it. I had a sense of rhythm. It was flawless. Like a machine. He could arrange access to a drumkit. I could just go in, in spare periods and at lunchtimes. Get it out of my system. Or learn it by doing it. I wouldn’t need any tutors. And the school band might be looking for a percussionist.

He did me a real favour, there. Stuck his neck out. I wasn’t much of a drummer but I realised I liked machines.

And what happened to our music teacher? Some form of early retirement. A lonely life, with not much more than us and all these difficult LPs. Some said the curtains of the mock-stone house, where he lived alone, would part but not until he’d made sure that the streets were quiet so he could emerge to buy what he needed, down Bayhead. Or a taxi would appear. The driver might take a bag to his door, take the folded notes and drive away again.

This was a teacher’s house, set across the road from a hostel where all these lanky boys from rural areas boarded, during the week. We townies might visit to play ping-pong. But it all went pretty dead, early in the evening and from midday Friday to midday Monday.

Back to the reunion. The historian got me thinking. A long blue bus at the end of the black road, at the start of the cropped green turf. That first time you plunged into cold surf. When your heart kicked fast to get the blood where it thought you needed it. The sheer, bloody beauty of the water in winter light. And it wasn’t pain any more. Maybe I’d been in the wrong number. We shouldn’t have disrupted the cohesion and the intimacy of that small band. Brave guys who let themselves go for these short moments into cold water. But the swimming pool was to open only a couple of years later. So the Activity could not have survived, in any case.