10
The Conger, the Cod and the Cumberland Sausage
AT QUARTER TO eight on Wednesday morning, as Peter was eating his cereal and revising for a history test that day, the telephone rang. They were surprised. Jim, unshaved and in his stocking feet, padded into the hall. It was Miss Berry, Peter’s class and English teacher, a kindly woman known to generations of Tarridale children as the Goose. A digger had torn up a major electricity cable and half the village, including the school, was without power. No lighting, no heating, no lunch, which meant there could be no school that day. Peter, along with the other hundred and fifty pupils at Tarridale High, was delighted.
‘That means I can come out with you in the boat,’ he told Jim.
‘Seems like it.’ Jim poured himself another cup of tea and reached for the toast. ‘Leave about ten, all right? Got a few jobs to do about the yard first.’
Peter loved going out with his dad. Their boat, an eighteen-foot, clinker-built, open boat with an eight-horsepower Yamaha outboard, rocked at its mooring in the little Tarridale harbour. Jim had painted it red and white for visibility when he bought it and renamed it the Audrey, in honour of Audrey Hepburn who was his favourite film star. The heavy outboard remained clamped to the stern, secured by a strong chain and protected by a canvas cover. The oars, fishing tackle and orange life jackets were locked in a stone shed against the harbour wall. They hung their oilskins and sou’westers in there too. On a day like today with little white crests on the waves, they were going to need them.
Peter untied the painter from a rusty iron ring and hauled the boat to the jetty. Grasping the handrail, he descended the slippery stone steps and went aboard. Jim handed him a half bucket of stinking mackerel which they would use as bait, and a tin squirming with lugworms which he’d dug at low water the previous day. The tide was three-quarters full. Looking down through four metres of water, Peter saw clumps of weed, stones, a few fish boxes and shoals of tiny fish swimming above the sand. Businesslike, he removed the engine cover and lowered the propeller into the water.
He exchanged places with his dad and pushed off, using the boathook to get clear of the harbour wall. Jim gripped the tiller with a bony hand and tugged the starting cord. The engine choked. He set his feet and tugged again. With a cloud of blue smoke it burst into exuberant life. Peter tidied the bottom of the boat and coiled ropes out of the way. Jim put the engine from neutral into ahead gear and eased open the twist-grip throttle. The powerful propeller churned the water into foam. Slowly they moved out into open water.
At once, as the Audrey rounded the breakwater, they were hit by the breeze and met the waves rolling in from the North Atlantic, or at least rolling in from the off-shore islands which gave the harbour some protection from the storms of winter. Broken water, bright in a shaft of sunlight, tumbled over the rocks. Beneath the keel the water was dark. Forests of tangle, five metres long and tough as belts, streamed and turned in the currents.
That October day Jim had thirty-two creels set round the islands, two and three miles off shore. They headed into the wind. Waves slapped the bow; spray rattled against their oilskins. Peter was caught unawares. He looked back at his dad and grinned, seawater trickling down his face. In twenty minutes they were in the lee of the islands.
The first float, looking like a bright orange football on the water, lay close to an outcrop known locally as the Red Rock. Jim brought the Audrey alongside. Peter reached out with the boathook and grabbed the float, its long rope descending into the depths. Sometimes, in calm weather, Peter lifted the creels, but they were heavy for him. On a lively autumn day like today, with the boat tossing, he handled the engine while Jim hauled them up, hand over hand, from the weedy depths of the sea.
To Peter it was constantly exciting, watching the mesh frame, dim and wavering, rise through the water, never knowing what it might contain. Then a gush of water as it was heaved aboard and the discovery of their catch.
The first creel, that day, revealed nothing but two small starfish and a green shore crab that was no good for eating. Jim dropped them overboard and threw away the half-eaten bait which could act as ground bait. Then he re-baited the creel with a smelly half mackerel from the bucket at his feet and dropped the heavy frame into the water. Peter watched it sink from sight. Taking care that the rope did not tangle in the propeller, he opened the throttle and chugged on to the next float.
It took over three hours to lift them all, though midway they turned into a sheltered bay for lunch. The bows drove up onto a little white beach and Peter tilted the outboard to keep the propeller clear of the sand. Lounging against the gunwale, he helped himself to a cheese and pickle sandwich. Bright waves made the stern swing. The ebbing tide revealed colonies of mussels and vivid red sea anemones clinging to the rock walls.
‘Good catch,’ Peter said later when the last creel had been emptied and dropped back over the side.
Jim blew his nose and considered the seven fine lobsters and same number of edible crabs that crawled and clicked around in boxes on the bottom boards. Their powerful claws had been fastened by elastic bands to prevent them damaging each other. ‘Not bad,’ he said.
A brief excitement after lunch had been the capture of a conger eel a good metre and a half long. It had pursued a crab into the creel and been unable to escape. It writhed and twisted behind the mesh, thick as an arm, staring at them with wicked eyes, showing its terrifying teeth. The crab had been torn to pieces.
‘What do you want to do, Pete?’ his dad said. ‘Let it go or chop its head off and take it home? Good eating, eels. Get a few tasty meals out of that.’
Peter wasn’t squeamish but the thought of eating that ferocious blue-black creature did not appeal. He made a face. ‘Let it go,’ he said.
‘Seems a waste, but if that’s what you want.’ Jim heaved the creel to the gunwale and unlaced the fastening. ‘Might save a few fingers, I suppose.’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Peter left the outboard and clambered forward. It was a rare opportunity. He bent to examine the savage head and prodded its muscular side with the tips of his fingers.
‘Strong, I’m telling you!’ his dad said. ‘Get one of those in the bottom of a boat and you’d better watch out.’
Peter gave it the handle of the boathook to bite on. The eel’s jaws snapped shut, leaving deep tears in the wood.
Jim opened the creel wide and tipped it towards the sea. Everything slid out with a rush, but the eel’s tail was caught in the netting. It hung in the air, lashing and furious, then slithered free and dropped into the waves. Fast as a whip it arrowed into the depths.
‘Hey! Wow! I’m glad that didn’t grab a hold of me.’
‘You wouldn’t be laughing if it did, I’m telling you.’ Jim set the creel aside for repair. ‘You know Murdo Sutherland, gamekeeper over the far side of Strath Teal? I have a drink with him sometimes.’
Peter nodded.
‘One day he was out fishing – oh, years ago now – and he hooked a conger. Bigger than this one, close on fifty pound. Heaved it aboard and it went mad, lashing about in the bottom of the boat. Bit him the back of his leg, just below the knee. Didn’t realise what had happened at first, just felt like a bash, so he killed it. Then he saw the bottom of the boat was red. Felt his foot all warm and soggy. It had bitten clean through an artery. His welly was full of blood. Pulled his pants down. The back of his leg was running like a tap. Managed to get a bit of rope round for a tourniquet. Felt himself slipping away. Nearly bled to death.’ Jim grinned. ‘Said the eel was a beauty. Got his old dad to take it to the smokehouse and they ate it when he got out of hospital.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yeah, he showed me the scar.’
They went ashore on Bridget Mòr, the largest of the offshore islands, and walked about for fifteen minutes. Peter found a beautiful piece of driftwood on the dunes, white as bone and scoured smooth by the wind and tide. He thought it would look good in his bedroom and carried it bac
k to the Audrey. Then Jim set off back to the mainland, heading for a dizzy crag white with bird droppings, while Peter prepared the fishing gear.
Gulls and fulmars wheeled overhead. They fished without rods, Jim at the stern and Peter at the bow so their lines did not become tangled. The water was deep, over thirty metres – nearly as deep beneath their keel as the crag was high overhead. Here, where the seabed was rocky and weedy, they fished with day-glo feathers and lugworm. Down went the lead weights, down and down, the line slipping through their fingers, slanting as the tide and breeze carried the boat sideways, then suddenly a slackening as the weight touched bottom.
Peter loved fishing and never more than today when not five minutes after the hooks went down he felt a tell-tale twitch, and a moment later another twitch on the line. He gave the fish, whatever it was, time to take the bait into its mouth then gave a swift tug. On the instant the line ripped away through his fingers. Peter knew he had caught something big.
‘Dad!’ he called. ‘Dad! Come here! Quick!’
The pull was terrific. He let the fish run until the tension slackened then began to haul in. Jim fastened his line to a cleat and joined him in the bow.
It was a long struggle. Every minute Peter thought his line would break but he played it carefully and at length the grey, exhausted fish was brought to the surface. It was a fine cod, a fish that weighed in later at over seven pounds.
Jim took the gaff. ‘Hold it there a minute, son, keep the line tight.’ He leaned over the side, and as the fish swam close, rolling on its side, he gaffed it swiftly and hauled it into the boat. Two sharp blows on the head and it was dead.
‘Well done, Pete. Well done, boy.’ His dad put an arm round his shoulders and hugged him tight. ‘A bonny fish. We’ll get a few good meals out of that.’
Peter flushed with pleasure. ‘Better than eel, anyway.’
‘Could be right. Nothing tastier than a nice bit of cod.’
‘With mashed tatties and peas,’ Peter said, ‘and parsley sauce.’
Which seemed remote from the silvery-grey fish with its rubbery lips and white barbel that lay on the sloshing boards at their feet.
In the space of an hour they caught two nice pollack and another conger eel, a much smaller one which had swallowed the hook, so they had to kill it and cut it open. Peter threw the remains over the side. Gulls dived and plunged and screamed, pushing each other right under the water in their frenzy to grab a beakful of the trailing innards.
Jim watched them. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw,’ he said and gazed from the towering cliffs crowned with heather to the late afternoon sun streaked with cloud and sinking towards the sea. ‘God! I love this place.’
They wound in their lines. Jim produced a couple of Mars Bars and rolled himself a skinny fag. They had drifted away from the protection of the islands and the swell rolled in from a thousand miles of open sea, heaping above the horizon as if it must overwhelm the little boat. There was no need to fear. Every time, without losing an inch of freeboard, the Audrey slid up the face of the long swell and dropped away behind, rocking companionably as they munched and chatted, and the breeze tossed the hair that escaped from their warm hats.
Then Jim sailed back towards Tarridale but cut the engine as they crossed Teal Bay, half a mile from shore. Here, where the water was shallower and the bottom mostly sand, they cast their lines for flat fish. Now they used a bright spoon baited with lugworm and tasty scraps of a little squid they had taken from the creels. They did not stay long but that day their luck was in. Jim caught a good-sized plaice with its red spots, and a small dab which he threw back. Peter caught a sole the colour of sand and pebbles.
As they returned to harbour he tossed the stinking mackerel over the side and rinsed out the bucket. It was needed to carry their fish. The lobsters and crabs they would cover with a layer of wet seaweed and leave in the boxes. Next morning Jim would send them off to market on the Clashbay bus.
‘I can’t be bothered cooking tonight,’ he said to Peter. ‘What say when we get back we look in at the Kipper and see what they’re offering? Or do you fancy getting changed first and we’ll go to the Tarry?’
There were two eating – or more commonly drinking – places in Tarridale: the Tarridale Arms, a smart Highland country hotel above the village, and the Cod and Kipper, a friendly but shabby howff close to the harbour, so called because of the old smokehouse which stood close by.
‘The Kipper,’ said Peter instantly. He loved the fuggy, fumy, low-lit, beer-smelling atmosphere of the squat little building with its open fire, and the chat of the village workmen who gathered there in the evening. Also, more often than not, the Kipper had Cumberland sausage on the menu. This was Peter’s favourite meal in the whole world, a huge, golden-brown coil on a mountain of mashed potato, surrounded by a sea of onion gravy. And as if that were not enough, when there were no strangers about, the barman poured him a half glass of beer shandy.
‘The Kipper it is.’ Jim throttled back and turned neatly round the breakwater into the shelter of the friendly harbour.
11
Bunny and Doctor Bryson
JIM STAYED IN the van and Peter descended the short track that led down to Three Pines. He carried the plaice by three fingers through its gills. Stones turned beneath his feet and a chill rain began to fall. Bunny’s animals were locked up for the night; only the tiny wild creatures that lurked in the heather and grasses were aware of his approach.
He did not know Bunny Mason well enough to go directly to the back door, so he opened the rickety gate and went to the front. It was bright blue. His torch picked out the big black knocker. BANG! BANG! He didn’t knock hard but in the silence the noise was shocking. Within the house a dog began to bark. He heard a voice telling it to be quiet and the rattle of a bolt. The outside light came on.
‘Good gracious! Hello, Peter.’
Bunny Mason stood in the entrance, square-faced and without make-up, her wild grey hair chopped short. She wore a thick cardigan and baggy jogging pants streaked with paint. The hall and stairs were lit by a warm apricot globe. An inquisitive Jack Russell terrier sniffed at the fish in Peter’s hand.
He held it out. ‘Dad thought you might like this.’
‘How very kind.’ She took it from him and stood back. ‘Come on in.’
‘No, I can’t. He’s waiting up in the van.’
‘Come in out of the rain for a second anyway.’
Peter looked over his shoulder then stepped into the hall and scrubbed his shoes on the mat.
After the chill of the night the house was warm. Bunny led the way into the kitchen. It was a large room, two rooms knocked into one like a farmhouse kitchen with an Aga cooker and big Welsh dresser. She had been working. A half-finished painting of two goats lay on the table. Other pictures were scattered about the room. She shifted some crockery and laid his fish on the draining board. ‘Thank you so much. What a beautiful plaice.’ She looked at it with an artist’s eye. ‘Have you just been out?’
‘Yeah. Well, came back before it got dark. Dad took us to the Kipper for something to eat.’ Peter liked Bunny well enough but he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to linger. He eyed the spotted fish. ‘He knows you don’t like boiling lobsters so he told me to bring this down.’
‘I’ll clean it tonight and eat it tomorrow.’ She smiled. ‘With peas and a nice glass of Chablis.’
Although she scarcely knew Peter, their paths crossed from time to time. She liked him. He was well spoken of in the village.
Her terrier, with a brown patch over one eye and another on his back, looked up at the draining board. He adored raw fish. Slavers drooled to the floor. ‘All right, Jasper.’ She raised a warning finger. ‘If you behave yourself you’ll get a little bit. But not just now.’
Bunny had moved to Tarridale in the spring of the previous year. Her cottage, Three Pines, stood below the track, only a five minute walk from the road but hidden from it by the rolling moor. It was a
n old shepherd’s cottage with two dormer windows, a yard and outbuildings, not unlike Scar Hill although the layout was quite different. In two other respects it was different also. Many years earlier an owner, having perhaps come into money, had roofed the house and outbuildings with red pantiles. They were unique in that part of the country, patched now with moss, but gave the place a jolly air. And Bunny, having no one to please but herself, had painted the woodwork and surrounding fences in cheerful colours, red and blue and green, even yellow in places. With the animals wandering around, it gave Three Pines, from a distance at least, a picture-book quality.
Closer at hand the image was more typical of life in the country. Rabbits dug under the fence and nibbled her garden to stalks. Attila, her tabby cat, killed things and left them on her bed. Damien, the smelliest of her goats, learned to unfasten the gate. Einstein, her much-loved pig, rooted in the flower beds until they resembled a ploughed field. And Molly, her red and white cow, stored up the vast quantities of hay, grass and wildflowers she consumed each day and dropped them in huge splats round the doorstep. Perhaps, Bunny tried to persuade herself, this was a mark of affection but it would be nice if Molly could find some other way of showing it.
This boisterous behaviour, undesirable to most people, turned out to have one big advantage, although for the first few months, as Bunny hosed her steps and chased goats from the kitchen, she would have been surprised to hear it. For Bunny Mason, whose public school accent and mysterious background made her an enigma to the people of Tarridale, had come north to write and illustrate children’s books. And good books require characters and plots. She found these in her new life and the behaviour of her beautifully-drawn animals – real behaviour like the cow that pooped on doorsteps, the cat that crunched winkles, the parrot that was hooked on the sound of breaking ornaments, and the missing hen that emerged from the spare bedroom surrounded by a flock of cheeping chickens. Her first book was about to be published and another was in preparation.
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