Trawler (9 page)

“Luke. Listen …”

“Yeh?”

“Look Luke, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m ready for that. You know. Not just yet…”

“Aye!” said Luke, with a yap of laughter which the wind snapped short and spat away to port. “Of course not! Maybe I couldn’t do it myself… at least… not now … not any more.” With a convulsive spasm, as if this particular hypothetical inability represented some deep personal failure, Luke’s hand gripped me above the elbow, tight as a tourniquet. “But—you’ll see—we’ll have other things to do. So much to do. So exciting …”

“Yeah. Great. Luke, I…”

“So the net’s gathered in. Then Bryan lowers the power-block, and the boys heave the last section of net on to it, on to the three-quarters circle of rubberized hook—and then Bryan swings it right round from the stern to starboard, to the hopper there.” (An outsized tubular climbing-frame with a central suspended hook, above a closed hatch.) “And then it’s a ritual
—it really
matters—
the skipper himself throws a grapnel on a rope into the sea to grab the lazy-deckie as they call it, the rope they need to attach to the lifting-beckett, the block above the hopper. To lift the fore-cod-end on to the block above the hatch. It’s the Scottish system—other boats take the whole lot straight up the stern-ramp. And that’s simpler, but far more dangerous. Because for that interval—with your stern-ramp down, and everyone’s tired, and one-third of the ship open and vulnerable: well, one lump, one following lump, and that’s it, you can’t launch a life raft, ridiculous, there’s no time, you’re all gone, you’re finished. So this system, Redmond—I know what you’re thinking: it’s Scottish, it’s a real drag, it’s complicated, it’s fussy, and it’s expensive, because you need extra crew. But remember this—on average, ten fishermen a month die in UK waters. So we couldn’t be out here at all, not expecting a Force 12, not unless we were in a boat like this … But hey—Redmond!
Don’t look like that!”

“Like what?” (Blank, I supposed. The spray in the eyes, and the cold, so very cold…)

“OK. So you don’t understand? Huh? Well, you have to imagine the main warps way astern plunging down to the doors, the otter-boards. And the doors are bouncing and banging along the bottom, a kilometre or so down. Imagine
that—
it’s pitch darkness down there,
really
black, because sunlight penetrates no more than 30 feet below the surface of the sea, and the pressure! One atmosphere per 10 metres. One mile down it’s a ton, plus, to every square inch, and that—that’s where Edward Forbes in your century, the nineteenth century, thought no life could exist. He called it the azoic zone. Azoic zone! And he was wrong, so very wrong. It’s full of animals—and Redmond,
what animals.
You’ll see—in less than half an hour you’ll see, right here and now, down there” (he jerked an emphatic forefinger at the slimy deck) “right below us, in the fish-room. I promise, just wait—it’ll change your life!”

“Yeah?”

“Aye. For sure. But those doors—they’re on the way up now—but just think of them still on the bottom. OK? So they’re frightening
the fish towards the back of the triangle, the following net. And they keep the mouth of the net open—because they’re so designed they want to sheer off port and starboard, but they can’t, because the warps are pulling them forward, and astern they’re attached to the sweeps, the two cables towing the net. Now, half-way along the sweeps, either side, the headline is attached—the rope which becomes the upper lip of the net. It’s buoyed up with floats. And a length behind it the sweeps themselves curve inwards to become the groundrope—and that’s rolling along the bottom on your car tyres, the rock-hoppers, the lower lip of the net. Sweet as a nut! Because the fish—before they even realize it, the net is above them! They’re funnelled towards the cod-end. And there you go. A catch!”

“At last!”

“So you got it? You understood? You can picture all that?”

“No. I can’t.”

“Look—I know it
sounds
complicated, but we’re not talking gluons and quarks and string theory and the origin of the universe here—it’s ropes! It’s cables! So let’s start the other end, shall we? Here—on deck, right here. So—those main towing warps” (Luke released my arm, to point aft with his right hand) “they’re being hauled by the main winches. And at the moment they’re controlled by the auto-trawl. The computer system. As they are throughout the tow. But Jason will take over from it before the doors arrive. And, as I said, the doors are made fast to the gallows—or sheaves, if you prefer. The warps are slackened and attached to the single sweep aft of the door by the pennant. This is hauled until the tension is taken off the doors. The doors are then disconnected from the system—at the back strops.”

My mouth lockjawed by the cold, I said, or thought I said, “Wassa pennant? Wassa back strop?”

Luke ignored me, his eyes set on the appalling swell astern. “Here they come!”

The massive rusted rectangles of iron, the doors, hoisted, clattered tight against their derricks, the gallows, to port and starboard. Bryan and Robbie to starboard, Allan and Jerry and
Sean to port, crowded round the derricks, obviously engaged in intricate tasks which yet required great strength (oilskins taut across the shoulders).

“So now the single sweeps are hauled on to the main winch,” said Luke. (And you’re a natural teacher, I thought, but manic. Or maybe it’s just all this excitement, the being at sea, the hunting … but please, I haven’t eaten a thing in years, and I’m fizzed up with Lucozade, and dizzy…) “And when the double sweeps, the doubles or spreaders, arrive at the block, the boys will attach a messenger chain from the net drum to each one. They’ll slacken the singles until the messengers take the strain. The doubles—they’re hauled on to the net drum, on the deck below, and that takes tension off the main winch, so you can disconnect the single sweep. Simple! Alan and Jerry and Sean—there they go, down the port stairway—they’ll be doing that any minute now. The net and the rest of the bridle system—the double-sweeps section—they’ll attach that by the short messenger chains to the net drum. Then the rest of the sweeps—now you call them bridles-are wound on to the net drum. First the two wing-ends appear—they go on to the drum—then the headline with the floats and the footrope with the rock-hoppers. And most of that lot stays on the deck…”

Fortified by a brainful of bewilderment, I released my grip on the bolts of the winch and took a step towards the hopper. Luke grabbed me. “Careful!” he said, guiding me gently but firmly by the arm, as if I was blind. “We had a real lump just now. Awesome! Forty feet, fifty, maybe even sixty. I don’t know. Everyone just stopped and stared up at it. You know, like I was telling you, a real monkey-bollock frightener of a lump! But she rode it OK—up and up. She’s a great boat! We all took a tumble. Even Bryan fell. We all did. I fetched up against the gunwhale!”

“You did? Hey Luke. That explains it… something
really odd
happened to me down there. Down in the cabin …”

“Look! Redmond! The net!”

And there it was, streaming astern, snaking in the swell, one long green translucent line of mesh, seemingly far too small
and narrow and fragile for all this effort, for the work of this whole ship.

“That’s the bellies, nearest us, then the extension—the tunnel—and there’s the cod-end!” (A big green mesh bag, bloated with fish, bobbing on the swell, white and silver, way astern.)

We lurched against the frame of the hopper and I held on, with both hands.

Jason, in blue overalls and yellow sea-boots, a grapnel in his right hand, bounded past us.

The kittiwakes and the gannets rose into the wind, banking round towards the cod-end. The kittiwakes alighted alongside the line of net (and they seemed so light, so delicate, so out of place in all this unremitting violence); they rode the small waves on the big swell with ease; they flicked up their wings as they pecked at the mesh. The gannets, 60 or 70 feet above the surface-hills of the sea, would flip over to one side, half close their 6-foot expanse of wing and, elbows out, streak down towards the cod-end in one long low oblique-angled dive, folding their wings tight against their bodies, a second before impact, to become a white underwater trace of bird and bubbles.

Bryan, back at his levers at the base of the crane, swung the big semicircular power block astern, amidships, and down. “He’s got to manoeuvre that under the net,” said Luke, adjusting his blue woolly hat under his oilskin hood, pulling it further down over his forehead and ears. “Sometimes there’s a rope they call a joker attached to the net—the boys use it to bunch the net and hoist it on to the block—it’s easier that way. The winch hauls the bellies and extension and the boys flake them inboard—until the cod-end comes alongside. And as you can see
… Hang on, Redmond, try and roll with the boat… stand with your legs across the roll, for Chrissake, that’s better, at 90 degrees to the roll…
we’re beam-on to all this weather, and that’s because the prop’s stopped. Too bad—you can’t risk fouling the net. If that happens you’re powerless, you’re in real trouble, big time …”

The power-block swung back round towards us, towards the hopper. “That’s right. He must keep the block high. To drop the
fish in the extension down to the cod-end. Ach well, Redmond, I’m sure you’ve got it now. Got it sorted. My minilog—it’s still on the headline. Hang on. I’ll be back.” And Luke, as the
Norlantean
wallowed beam-on to the swell, stepped calmly away over the net-troughs, from rim to rim.

A
LLAN, SEAN AND JERRY
, appearing from the port stairwell, joined Robbie and Jason along the gunwhale where the extension hung from the power-block; the cod-end, bulbous, floated in the swell below, small fish hanging trapped and silver from its green mesh. From the gunwhale Robbie and Allan plucked out the fish they could reach in the extension, dropping them into a big plastic openwork basket at their feet. Sean, in front of me, climbed into the A-frame and lifted back the hatch of the hopper.

Jason threw the grapnel—and everyone seemed to move at once, a confusion of ropes, net, red and yellow oilskins, a swinging power-block. Somehow the cod-end pursued a rope up towards me over the side—and it came to rest, rounded and swinging and full, in the middle of the A-frame, right above the hopper. “The jilson winch,” said Luke, from behind, in my right ear.

No one else spoke. They stared in silence—that meat-stare from the cave-mouth round the fire; except that this, I thought, as I tried to rub a little feeling back into my face, this is a fish-stare; and here and now it’s so cold it hurts, right through, and there’s no fire anywhere …

Robbie, without a word, took off his blue rubber gloves, laid them beside him on the deck, reached in under the big mesh bag and pulled a knot undone. Fish cascaded, out of sight, down into the hopper.

“Come on, Redmond!” yelled Luke, already several yards away. “To the fish-room!”

I followed him at once without a thought, and I fetched up against the roped-back door to the bridge (stairs up) and the cabins (down). “Better take off your boots and jacket,” said Luke, with an expert shake and twist. “Carry them down with you.” Surprised that I no longer felt sick, that I seemed to be able to balance well enough to get where I wanted to go, within a couple of yards, or even less, and that, on the very small scale, the micro-scale, personally, life suddenly seemed to have a future back in its familiar place, I followed Luke down the companionway

“Did you see that business with the cod-end knot?” he said, over his shoulder, as we slid on the cardboard squares of discardable carpet, along the passage past the galley. “Did you see that?”

“Yes, I did. I’d no idea what happened, exactly… But yes, I did.”

“Good, because that’s
important.”
He dropped his jacket and sea-boots to the floor, and paused to pull down the levers on a white-painted bulkhead-door. “There are several types of cod-end knot. The boys here use a chain knot. Usually only one man in a crew ties it—I suppose it will have come about somehow” (he swung open the door) “that if there was a big shot once, whoever tied the knot that time always ties it from then on.”

“A big shot?”

“Aye,” said Luke, picking up his yellow boots and red jacket, stepping over the high steel sill in his blue socks. “Come on—you know. I don’t have to repeat
everything,
do I? A shot. To shoot the net. A big shot, a
really
successful catch.”

“Ah, yes, I’m sorry,” I said, pitching awkwardly over the shin-high steel plate, barking my shin. “Shit.”

“No. No shit,” said Luke, sitting down on a small bench to the immediate left, pulling on his boots, “if that time he tied thirteen loops, then from then on there must always be thirteen and so on …”

“Yes, of course. Great!” I sat down beside him and tried to get my own boots on—in short bursts, because it was obvious
that you must not lean forward, as the bare washed shiny dark wooden floorboards sloped down and away and your buttocks lifted clear off the tilt of bench… Wait. Here we go. Backwards. Lift a foot.
Pull.