“Well done! You did it!”
“No … Not at all… You don’t understand a thing! You’ve no idea… So, as I say, the RNLI picked five lifeboatmen from the Aberdeen crew, and that was that, and I was one of them. And we rehearsed, over and over and over, in the locker-room of the new lifeboat-shed that cost the earth—and all that money was raised by local people, you know, and it guts you, the support from local people, and most of them can’t afford the amounts they give, and they’re not rich at all: they just believe in us. And although it’s true we don’t get paid a penny, that’s not the point—the point is that all these local people believe in us. Imagine it! There’s some van driver who works his arse off round Aberdeen every day—and yet he gives us part of that labour, cash that he ought to keep for himself… So it’s not just us, you know: we’re only the ones who get the adrenalin rush, the blame if we get there too late, the praise if we don’t!”
“Hang on, Luke! You were talking about this lecture you gave … I really want to hear about that! The lecture on this big stage?”
“Aye. We rehearsed for so long. So many hours of our time. And when it came to the date itself—you know, the one I’d been dreading, like some terrible exam, all those days that pre-date, and those post-date days which you can’t believe will ever exist, those far-off date-less days of unimaginable happiness …”
“Luke—the stage?”
“Aye. Well. When it came to the date itself we had to stay backstage—in full kit from eight in the evening to midnight. And no drinking allowed, of course. So you can imagine—you can imagine just how bad that was!”
“Eh?”
“Aye. I’d rather’ve been on a shout, strapped in my harness in the crew cabin in January, you know, monkey-bollock cold out there, and you sit inside like people in a mini-bus or something, except you’re rolling—not just down to the rails, you know, but through 360 degrees if it’s really bad, because the boat, she capsizes, turns turtle, whips over and rights herself, as she’s designed to do, so you hardly lose power, and all the time she’s tracking towards the GPS position, the May Day origin. And you’re ready for action—everyone knows the job he’ll have to do when he gets there. And when we reach the target we swarm aboard like your sailors, except, Redmond, as far as I know, it so happens that not one of us is gay! Aye, it’s rocket lines, inflatables, anything and everything that a boat can do—and if it’s really bad we’ll have RAF helicopter back-up from Lossiemouth. So there’s nothing like it! Nothing can match it! And then we strap the survivors into the seats in the crew cabin or on to the stretchers and give them first-aid—and it’s sometimes heavy first-aid, you know, burns, the lot—and if they’re well enough we give them soup, lots of soup. And you wouldn’t believe how pleased they are! Aye! For those few hours back to Aberdeen harbour—these other human beings, strangers, people we don’t know, they love us! Can you believe it?”
“Yes Luke, I can! I really can—but Luke, let’s be brave and do this thing! Right? Yeah? The stage! The stage—remember?”
“Ach, Jesus, och aye, Redmond, the stage—so there we are, in full lifeboat gear including helmets: and then midnight comes. And Redmond, it was so horrible, so squirm-making. And I’ve never forgotten it…”
“Yeah?”
“Because under our sensible, brilliantly designed and thoroughly tested kit, you know, survival suits with many very special and expensive standard RNLI extras—stuff that works, every time, even in weather like this, and out there, right in the sea itself if you’re unlucky—under this kit, Redmond under this kit that I really respect, we’re wearing these truly horrible nasty little dishonest thongs, skimpy red thongs.”
“Thongs?”
“Aye. Porn-stuff And they are so uncomfortable! They rub your bits off.”
“What?”
“Aye. So midnight comes and on we go. We troop on, in a line. And then the band strikes up and they play that terrible tune. I think of it even now—every time I strap on my helmet for a shout: ‘You can keep your hat on!’ Aye. And we crewmen—we did the full monty…”
“But Luke!” And I really laughed—all the insane tension of the fear, the howitzer-blasts against the inward-bulging decrepit rusted plates of the hull a few yards in front of our heads: it all dissolved in a howling laugh. “Luke! … Luke! … But Luke! … You won’t have to strip off!”
“Aye! Well… maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe not. But that’s how it’ll feel! Of course it will!”
“No Luke, it won’t. In fact I think it’s safe to say, I really do-look, Luke, if you strip off while engaged in an academic lecture … I think we can say… I think we can say with some conviction: you’ll get the sack!”
“Aye. Well, maybe. I hadn’t thought of it. Like you say, it’s the subconscious, I suppose. And it’s not funny! You said so yourself! And I don’t want to talk about it! OK? And while we’re at it—those skates, remember?”
“Yes?”
“Aye. There’s one small thing on which I’d like your opinion.”
“My opinion? You would? You really would?”
“Aye. You remember you said you liked the way those skates smiled at you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good! Then perhaps you can tell me, in your opinion: why would a skate want two eyes, why would a skate want two eyes when the only ones it’s got stare straight into the mud?”
“Uh?”
“Nuts! The eyes are where they should be—on top of the head! Nuts! Nuts! Nuts! Those holes you thought were eyes, dumbo, they’re nostrils!”
SOMEONE TURNED the light on; Sean had turned the light on: “Up ye get, boys! Ye’ve had a whole eight hours! And the storm’s gone—there’s yer heavy swell up there right enough, but it’s bright! Ye can see the sun! Sunlight! It’s cool! It’s great! We’re alive! Ye can see the sun!”
Sean came up close between the bunks, level with our heads, confidential. Sean, it was obvious, had had no sleep: his wide red eyes, the peeling skin on his nose, his red-blotched face. He was the youngest, I remembered, so perhaps he had had to stay on watch in the wheelhouse—it was possible that Sean had had no sleep for forty hours or more …
Luke’s frizzy, dark-haired head was turned away to port, faceless on its pillow, dead, or asleep—and Sean, intending to whisper, it seemed, in the strictest man-to-man privacy, bent down low over Luke’s left ear; but, pressed by his immediate need or, perhaps, released from all inhibition by forty hours of no sleep, he shouted (loud enough for me to hear, loud enough for Jason on the bridge to hear): “It’s Bryan! He’s a big eater! It canna be helped … He’s blocked ours! He’s blocked it again! It canna be helped! That’s Bryan for yer! So … please! … Luke? Canna use yer toilet?”
In their blue sleeping-bag, Luke’s legs thrashed. They propelled him—and the blue sleeping-bag—off the bunk and out of view to port.
Sean, permission sought, honour satisfied, scrabbled with the rope behind the open door, released the knot, slammed the bent sheet of metal as almost-shut as it would go, and, with unexpected modesty, tied it tight.
From somewhere on the floor to my right, Luke said, with clarity: “Redmond, that’s another thing … what happened to my red Jacobs biscuit-box? They’re rare, red ones … they’re a different size … and that was my very best box!”
BUT I WAS ALREADY DRESSED and half out of the cabin. And, yet again, I was thrown through the steel doorway. I took a sprawl to the right—along the passage to the galley; I recovered; I made a spider-climb up the stairs to the shelter-deck. Standing, for a moment, bemused, in front of the pegs to the left of the companionway, I remembered that the day or the night before I had left my sea-boots and oilskins in the fish-room: yes, it was all coming back to me, how bad, how shaming: I had talked too much, I had talked, I had burbled more in one go than I had ever done before, anywhere. Perhaps I had gone mad? Or was that being kind to myself? What the hell had I said to Luke? I’d no idea—but it was bad, very bad, I was sure of that,
and, losing concentration, I stood level with, rather than at right angles to, a slow, gigantic roll. I took a helpless running lurch aft—and there I was: in my socks, frightened, right back in my very own place of inner humiliation. I was there, once again, in the pre-death place, my right cheek pressed ice-glue-cold against the side of the first winch, my left hand and its fingers, rapidly losing all sensation, locked hard around my familiar saviour, the protruding steel bolt…
OK, I thought, so at least I’m safe, and I’m not going to fall down sliding out through that huge scupper, and my feet—they’re knife-cold in this slosh of water but soon they won’t hurt at all, I won’t feel them, so that’s OK too: and there are my gannets and kittiwakes, so close, so very beautiful and Sean is right, as always, because it’s the early morning sub-Arctic sunlight… But hey, hang on, because that really is very odd, the cod-end out there, appearing and disappearing on that vast irregular swell—on those waves that look as if the rolling green downs of my Wiltshire childhood had detached themselves from their bedrock and were after me … And the cod-end, it’s red, light and silver and blood-red … And I shouted into the wind, loud as Sean: “Red fish! Those fish are red! Red fish!”
“Aye!” said Luke, right behind me (where’d he come from? why give me a fright like that?). “Redfish. Scorpaenidae. Scorpion-fishes. And here they’re a species of Sebastes. Aye! This is different. Exciting. We’re in Redfish country! So come on!” And, with the strength of a man three times his size (but that’s a false comparison, I reassured myself, that only applies to males who live on the land), little Luke forced me back to the safety of the shelter-deck, where his tone changed: “So what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Luke’s English accent had surfaced; Luke was angry; Luke was very angry, maybe even furious (and so Luke was special: because Luke cared… He really cared…). “Jesus!” he said. “Do you realize what you did? You were out there in your socks! You think that’s funny? Or what? You think frostbite’s a joke? Is that what you think? Some poor surgeon in Aberdeen has to amputate your toes? It’s so common! But that’s only when it’s serious, when there’s a man overboard up here—and he has to kick off his boots to swim to the stern-ramp, if he can … And how do you think you’ll walk with no toes? Eh? You think that’s funny? To go paddling out there with nothing but your socks? You shit-stupid barking? Or what?”
“I’m sorry … I didn’t mean … I got…”
“Oh come on,” said Luke, pushing me through the companionway. “Go and dry and rub your feet, and find some new socks—and god knows you’ve got enough—they’re all over the cabin! The mess—the mess you make!”
DOWN IN THE FISH-ROOM, the bulkhead-door to the net-deck was open; Luke and I (in full gutting-rig) watched as Robbie, to port, and Allan and Jerry, to starboard, rode the great pile of green net, clinging to the top, hauling more of it inboard from the following sea. As the Norlantean rolled to port the net would slide down the sea-washed steel incline and pin Robbie against the side wall; as she began to right herself, Robbie would throw a right-hand punch into the spray towards Allan and Jerry above him—and he and the net would rise up … and slip down to starboard, when, from below, Jerry would throw a punch at Robbie … I thought: they’re heaving at the net with every muscle of their upper bodies and they’re see-sawing a mere few feet away from the stern-ramp in this terrible swell—and yet they’ve still got the energy to play…
“Come on,” said Luke, “I’ve got things to show you. And besides, it’s dangerous with this door open. It’s not a good idea.” (He forced it shut.) “It’s all going to be different now. Redfish country!” He reached up beside the control levers above the gutting table, pulled out a steel, a knife-sharpener, a tapering rod of roughened steel with a wooden handle, the kind of thoroughly domestic steel you might expect to see flicking lengthwise from side to side of a carving knife (as your salivary glands dribble like those of one of Pavlov’s dogs) before that impossible, unreachable pleasure: a Sunday roast with your family in a house that doesn’t bung you about the place … Luke plucked a couple of gutting knives from their lodgement above the pipes tight against the ceiling to his left. One knife had a red plastic handle which, I knew, would be stamped loewen messer with accompanying lion couchant, to the left, as you held it in your blue-gloved right hand, and solingen germany 825 to the right—whereas, I wanted, I realized, I really wanted, the other knife he held, the plain, unmarked, wooden-handled, double-steel-riveted genuine ordinary knife … If you can just use that knife, my subconscious said, or imaged, or however you think the powerful deep-controlling subconscious communicates—if you can just have that particular knife, the only gutting knife on board that has a wooden handle: then nothing bad can possibly happen to you. And whoaa! said my battered conscious mind, the rational me I still took some pride in: what’s this? You think you’re studying deep-sea fishermen’s superstitions in some academic way? Hey! Haven’t we caught you out? Who’s now afraid of everything? Who’s sensibly transferred it all to one poxy little wooden-handled knife? Eh? Any answer?
Luke passed me the plastic-handled knife, sharp and fresh and ready to go. He replaced the steel. He kept, in his right hand, the wooden-handled knife, which mesmerized me.
“OK,” said Luke, assuming the control position at the gutting table (and I wedged myself into my usual place against the stanchion, where I felt secure), “in front of you—incised into each section of the table, yes? Two lines set apart? Yes? Good. So all you have to do with redfish—you measure them against that standard length set by MAFF. If they’re too small—leave them in the discard tray. If not, chuck them down the tube …”
“Hey Luke …”
“Aye, and we’ll get three different species, if we’re lucky, the true redfish, Sebastes: Sebastes mentella, the Oceanic or deep-water redfish; and Sebastes marinus, the Golden redfish, my favourite, really big ones; and then Norway haddock, wee dumpy ones that produce live young. And they all have nail-sharp spines along the dorsal fin—and an extra set, to surprise you, on the gill covers. Your gloves, Redmond, whatever you do—you’ll shred them! And your hands? Pin-cushions! But the wounds heal or, at least, most of them do—and that’s not the best bit, no, it’s their parasites. You wait! I love parasites … So many millions of years! And there they are: perfect, for now…”
“Hey, Luke, I’m sorry… but could we swap knives? You know, I’ve… well, I’ve developed this thing about that wooden-handled knife. You know, it’s not exactly a superstition… well, yes, actually, of course it is … But there again,” I said, suddenly inspired, “it’s no worse than your thing about your red Jacobs biscuit box, is it? Well, maybe it is … but all the same, Luke, couldn’t we swap? Please? And anyway, look, I’m sorry, I should have told you, but it seems so unlikely and, look here, it’s not the kind of thing I’m used to—but that lump you talked about, well, I found myself in the air, suspended just above your bunk, and I landed on my right buttock on top of your box, and somehow it’s all rather disgraceful…”
“Ah, so that was it? Then that’s OK,” said Luke, as if it certainly wasn’t. “That’s OK!”
We exchanged knives, lobbing them across the table.
“But that red Jacobs biscuit-box—you know—that was my best box, they’re a different size, red ones, they’re rare, they’re difficult to find and they’re just right for the larger specimen-bottles and anyway, I liked that box, and now it’s shattered, destroyed. It’s gone!”
ROBBIE, IN CONTROL POSITION, filled the gutting-table sections. Luke stood to my left, Jerry to my right. The redfish were about 16 inches long, covered in scales, firm to the touch, and looked exactly as a fish is supposed to look, except for their eyes, which were huge, bulbous, half-popped-out of their heads. The scales on their backs really were a delicate red, shading down to pinky-white on their bellies—and their fins were a darker orange-red. Their lower lips protruded and curved upwards, giving them a permanently hungry, a begging look—but don’t you get s
uperior, I heard an inner voice say to me, because we were all fish once, and if you don’t believe me, take a look at the human embryo at—what is it?—six weeks? It has gill slits… and these fish are clean and free of slime and firm to the touch and altogether beautiful.
“Luke,” I said, “you didn’t tell me, they’re… they’re beautiful!”
“Eh?” said Luke, preoccupied with some altogether more sensible thought of his own, throwing redfish, one to each hand, down the central tube. “Their eyes? That’s right. They are slightly enlarged. Because these Sebastes mentella have been trawled up from around a thousand metres down—but their eyes are naturally gigantic. As you can see for yourself, these fish” (he flapped one in front of my face) “have gone for a strategy of all-round awareness, speed—feel their muscles!—and a semi-armoured defence. Scales, not slippery slime, and spines—lots of spines. Fifteen or so on the dorsal fin, three on the anal. But we’re lucky—their speed, as it were, makes us lucky, because their spines are not poisonous. They just hurt, that’s all. You’ll find out!”
“Their speed?”
“Aye! It all costs, as you know, it all costs biologically, as I told you, it costs whatever you decide—so these fish are almost fast and almost armoured, a little bit of both strategies. Escape-generalists, you might say. Whereas—isn’t this great? A close relative of theirs—aye! magic! dingle day!—but I’ve never seen one of course, the very same family, the scorpion-fishes, Scorpaenidae, guess what? The stonefish, genus Synanceia horrida—horrid! you bet!—that is the absolute number-one most poisonous fish in the world!” (Jerry, to my right, stopped sorting the fish in his tray. He leant across me, the better to catch this startling news, his mouth slightly open; the hair on his head was bristle-short; and a silver ring, clipped into the outer whorl of his left ear, just below the rear-top downwards curve, winked at me in the overhead lights.) “As far as we know, of course. Because as I told you—and you must always remember—the deep ocean is 95 per cent unexplored. And that’s great too, isn’t it? So get this—if the stonefish is the most poisonous fish in the world, what else is special about it?”
Trawler Page 20
