The Fisher Lass (40 page)

‘And Grace,’ Robert murmured. ‘Don’t forget Grace.’

‘No, no,’ Jeannie said. ‘I willna forget Grace.’ But guiltily she realized that she often did forget that poor Grace had been Sammy’s mother and not her.

‘Take me to see the ships, Dad.’ Every weekend when his father was not at the Company’s office, Angus would make the same request. He was besotted by the sea
and everything to do with it. All the toys he asked for were boats, all the picture books and later, reading books, were about the sea or ships. When his parents took him on a day trip to the
nearby seaside town, he would smile and say, ‘But can we go to the docks on the way back home? Please?’

When he started school and began to read and write, the teachers despaired. ‘Can he think about nothing else, Mrs Gorton, other than trawlers and fish? I know we’re a major port and
justifiably proud of our fishing industry here, but there are other things that Angus should be learning.’

But neither Jeannie nor Robert could do anything.

‘Where is he? Robert, I canna find Angus.’ As he grew older and learnt to ride a bicycle, the boy would go missing. In the school holidays Jeannie’s anxious telephone calls to
the office punctuated Robert’s working day.

‘My darling, you know where he’ll be. But I’ll find him.’ And Robert would leave his desk to walk along the jetties until he saw his son watching the latest catch being
landed. Some mornings Angus even crept out of the house before dawn to be in time to see the first fish sold in the auction on the dockside.

He would still be there late at night when the trawlers were being coaled up and supplies taken aboard for the ship to go out with the next tide.

‘One of these days he’ll really go missing. He’ll stow away. I know he will,’ Jeannie would say distractedly, but Robert would only smile.

‘Darling, he has the sea in his blood from both sides of his family. If ever there was a born fisherman, Jeannie, then it’s our son.’ His glance roamed lovingly over his
wife’s face as he added softly, ‘I’m sorry if it’s not what you want for him.’

‘Maybe we should have sent him away to boarding school,’ Jeannie mused. ‘Put some distance between him and the sea. But I just couldna bear to let him go.’

Robert snorted. ‘What? And have him turn out like Francis? No fear, Jeannie. Besides, I’m proud of the lad.’

Jeannie glanced up at her husband, a mischievous look on her face. ‘Despite my smothering him, so am I. But dinna tell him I said so.’

They laughed together.

Robert put his arm about her and she leant against him. ‘Just so long as you know, my darling, that one day he’s going to want to go to sea.’

‘Aye,’ she whispered. ‘Aye, I ken.’

The moment Jeannie had been dreading came soon after Angus’s fourteenth birthday.

‘I’m off to sea,’ he announced.

‘You can go in the school holidays,’ she said, valiantly trying to stave off the moment even though she knew it was hopeless. ‘I don’t mind that. Just for one
trip.’

His eyes were twinkling with mischief and he was smiling broadly. ‘And then when I leave school, I can go to sea as a real fisherman.’

Now she came to stand before him and place her hands on his shoulders. Already he was almost as tall as she was. As she looked him straight in the face, her heart turned over. He had her red
hair but in so many other ways he reminded her of her father. He even smiled in the same way and laughed in that big, head-thrown-back, hearty manner. He was the image of old Angus. And now it
seemed, sea water ran in his veins the same as his grandfather had always joked it ran in his.

‘Angus, I couldna bear to lose you. I’ve already lost a father and a husband to the sea.’

‘I know, Mother,’ the boy said gently. ‘But Joe and Sammy are fishermen. And they’re all right, aren’t they?’

Jeannie nodded, biting on her lower lip. ‘Aye, I pray every night to keep them safe . . .’ And then she added in a whisper, ‘But they’re as good as lost to me, for I
never see them.’

Now Angus’s smile broadened. ‘Well, you might soon, Mam, because in the Easter holidays I’m going to sea on the
Arctic Queen II
, the boat Joe skippers.’

Jeannie gasped. ‘On Joe’s boat? You’re going to sea with Joe and Sammy?’ It was a Gorton boat, she reminded herself, but even so . . .

At that moment, Robert walked into the room and Jeannie whirled around to face him. ‘Did you set all this up?’ she demanded.

His glance went from one to another. ‘Now what am I supposed to have done?’ he asked.

‘Did you ask Joe and Sammy to take Angus to sea on their boat?’

But Robert looked genuinely startled and glanced at his son, who spoke up before his father could answer her question.

Angus drew himself up. ‘No, Dad knew nothing about it. I asked ’em.’

‘You? But – but you dinna ken them.’

‘Course I know them.’

‘But – how?’

‘Every time they dock, I meet the ship. Joe’s a great bloke.’ He smiled at his mother and added gently, ‘I think my half-brother’s beginning to like me. And I know
Sam does.’

Jeannie opened her mouth to say, of course Joe likes you. But in this family, that was no guarantee. She had not spoken to them since the day she had gone to ask them both to be godfather to
Angus. Fourteen long years ago, and since then not a day had gone by that she hadn’t thought about them. But until this moment she had had no idea that Angus had even met them, let alone
spoken to them. The revelation came as a shock. And yet, rationally, if she thought about it, he had spent such a lot of his young life down at the docks, it would have been odd if he had not run
into them. But it sounded now as if he had deliberately sought them out.

‘How – how long has this been going on?’

The boy wrinkled his forehead. ‘Oh about six months I suppose. I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to go to sea and I thought the best way would be to go with Joe. And Sammy,
too, of course. He’s my cousin, isn’t he?’ He looked towards his father for confirmation. All Robert could do was nod.

They had never tried to keep the fact a secret. Indeed, from an early age, Jeannie and Robert had spoken openly about Joe and Sammy in front of Angus and, when he was old enough, Robert had
explained gently all that had happened in their families to cause the rift between them. He had even, Jeannie thought with admiration, told their son of the very first time he had encountered
Jeannie, hiding none of his own shame at the memory.

Now Angus took his mother’s hands into his own and, looking straight into her eyes, he said quietly, ‘I thought I might be able to bring the family together at the same
time.’

Tears blurred her eyes and she reached out and touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers but no words would come. He was a deep thinker, this youngest son of hers, with a kind and generous
nature. He knew that her dearest wish was to be reunited with Joe and Sammy and, to try to bring it about, he was willing to go to sea with them. All three would be on the same ship at the mercy of
the mighty ocean.

No, no, she couldn’t let it happen. She must talk to Robert alone. He must stop Angus going.

‘Now you are being silly, darling,’ Robert said. ‘This isn’t like you at all. Where’s my strong Jeannie? The girl who once brandished a gutting
knife under my nose? Not that I didn’t deserve it,’ he added hastily.

‘But how do you know they will look after him? How do you know that they’re not taking him to sea to – to . . .?’

Even she balked at putting her deepest fears into actual words.

‘To tip him over the side in a gale, you mean?’ Robert said bluntly, bringing her worst nightmare into the open. ‘Oh come now, Jeannie. You’re talking about your own son
and about my nephew. I know Francis was a bad lot but I don’t think even he would stoop to something like that. And as for Joe, well he’s your son and Tom’s.’

Jeannie faced him. ‘Aye, and Tom carried a hatred for you and your family all his life. A resentment that Joe seems to be carrying on. As for Sammy, well, he’s his own particular
bitterness, hasn’t he? I always used to fear for you when you and Tom served on the same minesweeper in the war. More than just the enemy’s aircraft and the mines you were
clearing.’

Robert stared at her. He opened his mouth to argue but then he remembered. Remembered, suddenly, the times he had felt Tom’s antagonism. It had been real, very real. So real that on the
odd occasion – strange how he had forgotten it until this moment – the thought had crossed his own mind that he might be in physical danger from the man.

Quietly he said, ‘And now you fear for Angus’s safety if he should go to sea with Joe and Sammy?’

Wordlessly, because to say it aloud seemed so awful, she nodded.

He was thoughtful for a moment before he said slowly, ‘Then I’ll go with them. No one would misinterpret that. He’s only fourteen. And after all,’ he gave a half-smile,
‘I am in the happy position of being able to “pull rank”. I own the ship.’

She rushed to him and flung her arms about him. ‘Oh Robert, would you? Would you really go?’

He put his arms about her and sighed against her hair. ‘You know, Mrs Gorton, that I would do anything in this world for you.’

The day they left, Jeannie refused to come down to the dockside to see them off. Childhood superstition was still strong within her and though her hair now had more strands of white than of the
rich, red colour, her fear was still there. ‘It might make things awkward if I come with Joe and Sammy there.’ She made the excuse that they could not deny, but when she saw
Angus’s crest-fallen face, she forced a brightness into her voice to promise, ‘But I’ll come and meet you the day you come back.’

So she did not go down to the dockside, but, unknown to them all, from the window of the Gorton-Hathersage Trawler Company’s office, Jeannie watched the
Arctic Queen II
nose its way
out of the dock and head for the open sea. Beside her stood her brother-in-law, his arm about her waist.

‘Oh Edwin,’ she sighed, resting her head against his shoulder for a moment. ‘They’re all aboard that one boat. The four most important people in my life, and I’ve
let them all go together into the treacherous Icelandic waters.’

‘They’ll be all right.’ Edwin squeezed her waist, still as lithe and trim as a young woman’s. ‘Joe’s a fine skipper. He may be the youngest we’ve ever
had on our boats but he’s one of the best. And Sammy too. Not skipper material, maybe, but he’s a good seaman. They’ll be all right,’ he said again, but she had the
uncomfortable feeling that he was trying to convince himself as much as comfort her.

The 1950s had been a boom time for the Gorton-Hathersage Trawler Company of Havelock. Having weathered the economic problems of the ’30s, it had seemed ironic that a
world war should smash all that they had built up. At the end of the war, Robert believed he had little to return home to in the way of the business. Caught up in his love for and hopes for the
future with Jeannie, he was not too concerned, but after her rejection of him, Robert’s only salvation was to plunge himself into work.

Under Edwin’s steady hand on the financial side of the business and with Robert’s natural flair for dealing fairly with the men in their employ, the company began to flourish. Whilst
the brothers themselves might have missed Francis’s leadership, amongst the fishermen there was little regret.

By the early 1960s the Gorton-Hathersage Trawler Company of Havelock was reckoned to be the biggest trawler-owning company on the north-east coast of Lincolnshire, and the most modern thinking.
And some said they even rivalled the owners in the port of Hull on the opposite bank of the Humber.

‘An old man and a boy? Dead weight they’ll be. The skipper must be out of his mind teking ’em.’

‘He hasn’t got a lot of choice, has he? Seeing who it is?’

‘Why? Who is it?’

‘Don’t ya know? Mester Robert Gorton and his young son.’

‘Never! I dun’t believe you.’

‘True.’

‘Well, the skipper has lost ’is marbles then.’

The other man laughed. ‘Like I said, he ain’t much choice seeing as ’ow Mester Robert’s the owner of this ship.’

‘And I suppose . . .’ there was a note of comic horror in the man’s tone now, ‘you’re going to tell me next that I’ll get the brat working with me as galley
boy?’

The other man laughed. ‘No, the young ’un wants to be on deck, so they say. No, old son, you’ve got the mester as your “galley boy”.’

The choice words that followed made even Robert’s ears burn. He hadn’t meant to listen to the conversation, but had found himself trapped in the tiny cabin stowing his gear when the
two men, passing by, had spoken in such loud voices that it was impossible for him not to overhear. He held his breath, hoping they would not step into the cabin and only let it out when the
footsteps went on.

The final words Robert heard were, ‘Mind you, I dun’t reckon the skipper does like it – the old man coming along, I mean. They say he dun’t have nowt to do with any of
the family even though his mother’s married to Mester Robert.’

‘What about the lad?’ At this point the voices became indistinct and Robert could not hear the reply but he could have told them. Oh yes, he could have told them about the lad.

‘The lad’ had been in a turmoil of excitement ever since the trip had been finally agreed upon. At first he had argued about his father coming too. ‘What’ll the crew
think? It’ll make me look a baby.’

But, credit due to the boy, Robert thought, when he had seen his mother’s genuine anxiety, Angus had given her a bear-hug accompanied by his engaging grin of capitulation.

And now he was aboard, his belongings stowed and already he was on deck demanding of Sammy – the third hand – what he could do.

The first two days at sea were awkward. The crew were ill at ease. Conversations stopped abruptly whenever Robert or Angus approached and were virtually non-existent when they all sat together
in the messroom. But then, forty-eight hours out to sea, the natural hierarchy aboard ship took over. Though the men all had work to do on the voyage out, there was nevertheless a relaxed
atmosphere. When the nets and all their gear had been made ready and the skipper sent down the first tot of rum to ‘wet the net’, Robert and Angus felt themselves accepted.