“Luke, I’m sorry, but I can see: it’s time you started breeding…”
“And there are otters down there too of course, and minke and pilot and killer whales—they all come into the bay. But I tell you what worried me: birds, as you know, they’re not my thing—I like fish, I really do! But all the same, I got really fond of these Red-throated divers—which they call the Rain-goose in Shetland, because they make this cry that sends shivers down your spine—wild! Really wild! And just before it rains! But there again: it’s always just-before-it-rains up there—unless it’s raining … Anyway—you’d know—so why, when they’ve been feeding in the bay down there, why, when they fly back in the evening right over Hannigarth to their children in a nest beside a lochan, why do they call wack! on every down-beat of their wings, and wack! on every upbeat? Isn’t that an insane waste of energy—big time?”
“Search me, Luke—because I’ve never heard it. But look—are you sure that anyone can go to this special place of yours? Eh?”
“Of course! You just book it. My mum did it for me—because really, she thought, Unst is almost off the end of the earth … So it was obvious: that had to be the perfect place for me to start on my doctorate, my thesis—so far from any social life, distractions, dances—because even then the first deadline was getting close!”
“So who owns it?”
“I told you—Mary Ourousoff; and they say she’s one hell of a character: she’s an interior designer, you know, and that’s another reason I felt so guilty up there—furthest north, and yet you’re so comfortable; well, aye: it’s fucking luxury, excuse me … A converted croft, but so well done. Preserved, somehow… And her husband, well, I never met either of them, of course; he’s a White Russian, I suppose, but he’s a real inventor, unlike you, you wanker …” (Luke, reminded of the offence of it, the camera, business, took the big black apparatus off his neck and laid it gently, it has to be said, on the floor in front of him—which was OK, because the floor was now only a little wet and salty and besides, young Luke was my friend… And there again: he was offering me this place, Hannigarth—and that was in Shetland, for Chris-sake …) “Aye, Mr. Ourousoff, they say he’s a real inventor, not like you; no, he’s designed all kinds of things: real agricultural bits of kit, apple-pickers, all kinds of new machines …”
“Great!”
“Anyway, Hannigarth—it’s magic! Pure magic! So that’s what I’m giving you: the chance to go to this paradise! Aye—and when you get there, you’ll meet Dougal, who crofts the land; you’ll see his sheep and his collie, of course, she’s called Meg, but also his chickens, and the movable hen-house that he made himself; and I only mention the hen-house-on-wheels, you know, because he’s very proud of it; and, in my opinion, as you’d say, he has every right to be: because, believe me, it’s one hell of a piece of carpentry, sweet as a nut!”
“So what happened, Luke? Did you do any work? Any writing, I mean?”
“And you’ll also meet his wife, Angela, who grew up in Hannigarth when it really was a croft… She’s come back to Unst; and she brought Dougal with her, from the south, from Scotland. And they’ve two lovely perky little girls … And that’s how it goes. I tell you: Unst is something else, smashing! So everyone born there tries to get back home, eventually… Angela, she teaches physics in the island school… But OK—the real point, it’s this: they’re musicians! Grand musicians! Dougal plays the guitar; and Angela—she plays the fiddle, the real Shetland fiddle, a technique, you know, passed down from generation to generation—and you’ll no hear better, and they play together in a band, a group aye, they play at all the dances in the community halls, and they’re so good: magic! And you wouldn’t believe it: the dances! So many nights of dances! The drinking! The friendship! The social life! Right up there on Unst! I tell you, it wears you out… Smashing! Wild! Aye—so much better than Aberdeen! And when I got home to Fittie I passed out for a week…”
“Luke!”
“Aye, I know—and please don’t tell my mum, my folks … Still, it was some time ago … But all the same …”
“So, the actual writing of the doctorate? As opposed to the fun, the excitement, of lifeboats, of trawlers? Yes, Luke, you’re hooked on the adrenalin-rush, that’s your problem; so—did you get any writing done?”
“Aye—I did! So sod you! Excuse me! Yes—I did… Three chapters. Well, very short chapters … and I did those in no time, in two weeks. Aye—I did those in the two weeks before I got to know Dougal—before he told me about the community halls, the dances! And after that… Grand! Big time! And I met all his relatives by marriage; and just about everyone else on the island. But all the same … as it happens … I don’t think I ever saw a district nurse.”
“Of course not. District nurses—you have to hunt for them.”
“But for the thesis, you know, to be honest, I really did try—when I first got there, ach, with the curlew calling, and Golden plover actually breeding all over the place, and I was all alone and there was nothing else to do, so it was easy. I moved the smaller of the two kitchen tables under the window of the ground-floor big bedroom. And that looks straight out to this wild sea. And I found exactly the right chair and I got to work.
“But there’s a low-walled enclosure immediately outside, once a nursery for young vegetables, I suspect; and in the far left-hand corner of this small enclosure there’s an upturned white fibre-glass dinghy. And as you try to concentrate on your work (statistics! I hate statistics!) and you look out the window—a baby rabbit will pop out from under this dinghy; he’ll check out the world, he’ll wiffle his nostrils, you know, and he’ll start right in on the serious business of eating grass … And you get back to work and do some calculation and write down some boring figure—and then you look up: and there’s another baby rabbit, ears flat, peering out from under the upturned boat. Aye! There’s a whole family: a doe, a big buck, and lots of children… And guess what? They’re all that smashing soft brown, you know, as rabbits should be—but every last one of them has this little vertical white stripe—a flash! That’s it: a flash!—right in the middle of their foreheads, just above their eyes; up a bit and just between their big soft brown eyes …
“I tell you, in those two weeks, I got so fond of my rabbits … And you, Worzel, you’d love those rabbits—aye, just right for you, you white-haired old Mr. McGregor, you.” (Luke rocked with laughter.) “Aye! You could push a wheelbarrow about up there! And manhandle a watering-can! But you, you don’t fool me, you’re an old softee, you’ve lost it—so you could never shoot those rabbits!”
I said: “Cold iron!” And touched the stanchion to my right.
Luke, the laughter instantly frozen inside him, said: “Jesus! Aye! What was I thinking?” And “Cold iron! Cold iron!” (And he touched the stanchion to his right.)
And I said: “You superstitious git!”
BEEP-BEEEEP-BEEEEEEP went the siren.
“Shite!” said Luke, springing up so violently that he knocked over his seat, the red basket—it was empty. “Come on! We must clear all this!” With both hands, left, right—one skate, two, up and over to the exit-chute, three skates, four … And when the skates had Frisbee’d away towards the light he began to throw the discarded fish on the gutting table after them. “Robbie—hell kill me if he comes in and finds his table in a mess like this!” … Luke could move so very fast; whereas I had collected the camera, sure, and put it round my neck, and I was doing well, easing my stiffened back this way and that (Ow! Yes, there’s no doubt about it, my back hurts; so I must be old) and I had very nearly succeeded in the great, present and still almost possible achievement of standing up straight.
“Worzel—come on! What are you doing? Quick! We really do need to clear this place up before the boys arrive—hey! And what’s in your basket? The blue basket—is there anything left? Have we missed something? Go on, dumbo, Mr. McGregor—tip it up!” Luke laughed; yes, I thought, annoyed, Luke’s temporarily frozen capacity for laughter has
thawed out fast—in fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if young Uncle Luke is about to pretend that he’s never touched cold iron in a little spasm of fear in all his life, no, not once…
“Go on! Tip it up!”
So I did.
And out came one male Arctic skate and something that looked like a haddock and something else …
I said: “One male Arctic skate and something that looks like a haddock and…”
Luke, now scrabbling about, gloves on, in a tray at the far side of the gutting table (“I’m going to have to hose the whole area!”), jumped up on a fish-box and attempted to peer over the table, across the hopper-conveyor and down at my bit of floor—but he wasn’t tall enough.
“Aye, McGregor—if it looks like a haddock—guess what? It’s a haddock! Ach, I’d forgotten—I did keep a haddock, because it came up from deep water, at around 800 metres—and their normal range is from 80 to 200, but it’s not that interesting, is it? Not after all the different species we’ve caught since—so bung it, will you? Just chuck it down the chute. And the skate too …”
“But, Luke! There’s this other thing …”
“Oh come on! Bung them!”
So I grasped the big haddock at the base of the tail and slung it towards the chute, the scupper—where it went, sort of, only not quite; so I heard it bounce a bit, just the once or twice, across the floor, towards, I think, the side-wall of the laundry. Encouraged by such damn-near accuracy I took the skate by its right wing, copying the Frisbee-master, Luke (although, it has to be said, I’d never actually thrown a Frisbee). And, with my right hand, and arm, just like Luke: yes, for the best effect you kind of bend your right arm, at chest-level, way over to your extreme left as far as it will go, which you’ll find, surprisingly, is behind your back, roughly in the lower-middle of your left scapula. And then, with all your upper-body strength, you uncurl your hand and wrist and arm and send the Frisbee rotating, uplifted, into the air, a flying saucer, its path steady (because it’s spinning) and laser-accurate … Except that it wasn’t quite like that, not really—because the skate, spinning, it’s true, exactly as it should, clockwise, its tail hard-curled to the right, its undercarriage, its two enormous dicks, bent flat to their right against the wings: it took off, not towards the exit-chute, but in a low curving fly-past over Luke’s curly head and, rising still, slapped, hard, against the upper steel-plates beyond the laundry and—a distinct, wet, multiple zappy slosh—it hit the top of the closed bulwark-door to the galley and dropped to the boards. Wow! I thought, if only that door had been open and young Sean had been in the passage out there, all unsuspecting, and besides, maybe I should have taken more interest in sports at school…
Luke, upset, said: “Mr. McGregor—that was not funny!”
“I didn’t mean it to go that way!”
“Och aye. Of course not.”
“But Luke! There’s something else here!”
“Och aye?”
“Yes.”
“So what is it?”
“Well, search me, Luke, I don’t know, how could I? I’ve no real experience of these things … But I’d say the bloke in question was big, way over six feet, maybe nearer seven …”
“Eh?”
“Yes. Because it looks to me…” (I took a closer look) “… Yes. Certainly. A bit has fallen off a drowned sailor. In fact, Luke—it seems to have got clean away.”
“What has?”
“No. That’s fine. That’s fine by me. I don’t care. I can take it. If you’re not interested—if you’d rather wash the dishes over there, be a new man, all that, well—I’m a tolerant sort of a guy, so that’s fine by me.”
“You what?”
“No—don’t bother. Why should you be interested? It’s just that I’m not used to this kind of thing … But after all I’ve seen on this trawler… OK: I am now quite prepared to accept that this probably havens all the time…”
Luke, reluctantly, pausing to scrape off fish-scales from the trays as he came, began to make his way towards me round the table. “What does? For fuck’s sake?” (And not even an excuse me…)
“This does—look! Look at this! On the floor here! It’s obvious: some poor big drowned bloke—he’s lost his penis. It’s taken itself off—-it’s broken free; and now it’s doing exactly what it wanted to do all along; so, naturally, it’s got just a little excited; in fact, it’s semi-erect, right on the floor here, right in front of me; but it’s still remarkably bendy and Luke—it’s squirming about the place …”
Luke, interested at last, vaulted over the hopper-conveyor, and took a look. “Jesus! You silly bastard! You silly bastard! It’s a hagfish!”
“OK—fine—if that’s your pet name for it. Not bad. But I have a friend who calls his moldeewarp and that’s Anglo-Saxon for a mole, because it will only come to life in the dark, in a tunnel.”
“It’s a hagfish!”
“Sure—suppose it is: not bad, not bad at all! Because it’s not so young or pretty any more, is it? It’s old, obviously; and at that age it’s learnt, hasn’t it? Yes—it’s learnt—you must only search for an appropriate mate; and for this one here that means a truly lovely cuddly old hag …”
Luke lost his cool. Right at me he shouted: “Myxine glutinosa!” And, in case I hadn’t heard: “Myxine glutinosa!” He flicked his short supple body down and picked the thing up. “And stop it, Worzel! My head! Stop pissing me about!”
“OK,” I said, extraordinarily calm. “So don’t call me Mister McGregor.”
“Worzel—you’re a schoolboy! How could the things we’re called, names, labels, whatever—how could any of that possibly matter when you look at this?” He held the hagfish six inches in front of my face. So (as short-sighted as Mr. McGregor) I took off my glasses and grasped them by the right ear-piece between my teeth (a salty taste). He said: “The very oldest, the most interesting fish in the sea!”
Light brown, a foot long, three-quarters of an inch thick, muscular, cylindrical, it appeared to have no fins—unless that narrow keel of wrinkled flesh snaking down the centre of its underside and vertically folded into hundreds of little flaps—unless that was a fin? And what were those white pimples—two lines of them, one to either side of the fin, the central fringe of flesh? There were two regular rows of tiny white raised roundels—as if the animal had been double-slashed with a razor all the way along the underneath of its bendy shaft of a body, and the twin slits stitched, and it now bore the scars: the entry and exit holes of a fine needle …
“Luke—I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“Of course not! It’s a hagfish!” He waggled it; he curved it about in front of my face; and I thought: OK, so that’s OK, because it must be dead—or it would bite him. And come to that: where is its mouth?
“Where’s its mouth?”
“Here!” said Luke, pinching the hagfish behind the head with the thumb and index finger of his right-hand—as you would hold a dangerous snake. “Here!” He rotated the head, underside-up: set back between a pair of downward-and-backward-pointing tusks, like those on a walrus, was a tight-shut puckered hole, flanked, on either side, by two nasty-looking swellings.
“Don’t be silly! That’s its anus—and it’s got a couple of nasty eruptive haemorrhoids …”
“It’s the mouth, you hinny!”
“Hinny?”
“Aye, dumbo!” said Luke, inserting the tip of the little finger of his left hand into the upturned mouth that was obviously an anus: “A hinny—the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse: that’s you! Because look, feel this: stick your finger in here—is that sharp or what?”
“Sharp!” (As sharp, to either side, as the edge on the little special wooden-handled gutting-knife.) “OK, so you win! But tell me—which end are its eyes?” (Removing my little finger, resolving never to let a mouth like that anywhere near me ever again, I flicked a tuft of four small horns on its head.) “And what are these?”
“Barbels, feelers. And it
s eyes, as we say, are much reduced—in fact, as far as we know, they’re not functional.”
Luke (still holding the hagfish in his right hand) restored the blue basket to its usual place, but bottom-up; and he sat on it.
So, with the red basket, I followed suit, and there we were again, two old men on a park bench—except that now, it seemed to me, there was nothing peaceful about either of us: because, well, there is nothing restful about the presence or the thought of a hagfish …
“And you wouldn’t really want functional eyes—but there again, its sense of smell is so acute, how it can smell things out!—and maybe you wouldn’t want that either, maybe you wouldn’t want sight or smell?”
“Eh? Why not? We all want sight and smell.”
“Maybe,” said Luke, reflective on his basket. “But maybe, just maybe, even you wouldn’t want to see and smell too well—not when you’re forcing your way head-first up the arse of some poor drowned sailor. What do you think? Ach—and you’ll be chewing and cutting and rasping, with your primitive horny teeth, teeth on your tongue and palate. And that must be an effort, because you’re such a survivor, such a very ancient form of a fish that you have no jaws—you haven’t even evolved a pair of jaws! But you’re rasping, you’re eating your way, as fast as you can (because there’s competition, there’s always competition, because hagfish swarm), you’re racing to get to that paradise for hagfish, a liver, anyone’s liver.
“But Jesus, Redmond, what am I saying? It’s true, that does happen to a drowned corpse—and the amphipods, like fat shrimps, thousands of them, they pick you clean from the outside … but really they scavenge dead fish and crustacea on the seafloor, they live in burrows in the mud and they come out and scavenge—so why are we talking about my mates, trawlermen? It’s your influence, aye, I’ve got crude, I’ve been infected, I’ve got really crude, just like you …”
Trawler Page 37
