The Silver Darlings

by Neil M. Gunn

  Finn could hardly tear himself away from the beach. Because he hated going home, he hung about avid for any amusement or hilarity. Sometimes he grew quite reckless, and was the leader in any ploy where brandy was concerned. He reckoned he knew something about brandy! Three other lads and himself did a bit of secret trading at night, and succeeded in concealing on shore a gallon of fiery cognac.

  The sea was his element. “The sea is our salvation,” said George.

  “Our worldly salvation,” corrected Finn solemnly.

  “It’ll be the only salvation most of you young devils will ever know unless you mend your ways,” retorted George.

  “I doubt if it can last,” said one man in a dubious tone.

  “Last!” exclaimed George. “I’ve just had the figures from the Fishery officer, for this parish alone, although it’s not all in his jurisdiction.”

  That was a cracker of an English word! Their eyes gleamed.

  “What figures?”

  “The figures for the season just ended. We had 73 boats fishing out of here. We had 94 boats out of Lybster, 30 boats out of Forse, we had 49 boats out of Clyth and 15 out of East Clyth. Altogether we had 305 boats for this parish coast alone. What do you think of that? We had 1,257 fishermen actively engaged; we had about 900 women, and 160 labourers of one kind or another.”

  “You wouldn’t count the coopers?”

  “And,” continued George, “we had 99 coopers—the only skilled men in the whole business for without them there would be no business at all. A total of 2,400 persons—not counting the 45 fishcurers.”

  “Why don’t you count them?”

  “Altogether there was cured about 40,000 barrels of herring—and that doesn’t include the 3,000 barrels that must have been cured by all of us for our own use nor the hundreds of barrels that were sold fresh. The average price of the cran here was nine shillings, and the price of the cured barrel was one pound.”

  “But what price did the curer get when he sold abroad?”

  “That’s his business. Do you grudge it to him?”

  “No, och no. We only want to know.”

  “And what do you want to know for?” demanded George.

  “Just to make sure that the poor man was not out of pocket.”

  “Some of you are not worth talking to, upon my word,” cried George against their laughter. “You cannot understand the bigness of what’s happening before your eyes. Even if the curer got two or three pounds a barrel—what would that mean? It would mean that from the coast of this poverty-ridden parish, with its calfie or its stirkie—its calfie or its stirkie,” he repeated derisively, “it would mean that there has been exported—exported, do you understand?” he boomed, “about ₤100,000 worth of fish. About ₤100,000!”

  It was an astonishing figure. Its size warmed them. They felt friendly to George. Thier eyes travelled out to sea, while they moved restlessly, prepared for more wonder of the kind. But George now seemed to be on his high horse.

  “Ay, but will it last?” asked the man, who had asked it before. He was a small round-shouldered man, inclining to pessimism, with a large wife and a large family of daughters.

  “By the look of things, it will last as long as you whatever,” retorted George. There was a smile all round at this thrust, for they wanted a large optimism, not the crofter’s niggardly fear.

  “You cannot tell that.”

  “Can’t I?” said George. “Believe me, I can tell you a few more things besides. What goes on in your own house through the winter and spring? Do your family spin hemp and make nets or do they not? And if they do, is it found money?”

  “I’m not denying that. I never said——”

  “No, you wouldn’t. And yours is not the only family nor score of families. What do I do myself, and the whole squad of coopers on the station from now on? We make barrels—and get paid for it. All the thousands of barrels we need are made on this same strip of coast. Last! Will it last? Huh!” barked George. “You can take it from me—it will last as long as we have the spirit to make it last. The spirit!”

  A droll voice made the inevitable reference to spirit in a bottle and the pleasant fun increased.

  Finn always felt invigorated by George. The sight of the sea brought him out of himself. He did not want to think of his mother and Roddie. He hated to think of them. Going back home was like retreating into a dark silent hole.

  So he recounted George’s talk to Henry, “They’re wanting a deck hand on the schooner,” he added lightly.

  Henry looked at him. “Thinking of going?” he asked in a quizzing tone.

  “You would never think of going, Finn? Surely not!” exclaimed Henry’s wife, with a touch of dismay.

  Finn had become very friendly with Henry lately, finding relief in his dry satiric manner and the real ability and generosity underneath it. Henry had three children, with another not far off, and the second boy, Andrew, was Finn’s favourite. His wife was fond of company and Finn could be so gay that he seemed not to have a care in the world. She was always glad to see him about the house.

  “Why not?” Finn smiled at her. “It would be fine to see a bit of the world. I would like to go up the Baltic.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I am—unless Henry here falls in with my plans for the cod-fishing.”

  “Oh, you and your schemes!” she cried, relieved. “Henry is worse than yourself, I do declare.” She laughed.

  And so, in good humour, Firm started out for home. But as he approached the Steep Wood in the gathering dusk, the usual nervous tremoring began to affect him.

  It was now nearly a fortnight since the incident that had estranged his mother and himself. For a few days she had left him alone, and he could see she was hoping that time would heal the difference between them. But something was hidden in her mind, something more than the resignation the difficulty demanded, an inner troubling, and now and then she did not seem to care whether he spoke or not.

  Sometimes his heart cried out to her, but in a moment there would follow a relentless feeling, a deliberate vindictive pleasure in the thought that she was being hurt. It usually eased the stress on the knot in his mind, but left his mouth bitter.

  What he really feared as he came by the Steep Wood was that he might meet Roddie, or might meet both Roddie and his mother in some moment of secret communion, and he did not know how he himself would behave. There was that occasion in the public house in Stornoway when he had lost his head. He did not care to remember its hysteric weakness.

  These last few days, too, a change had come over his mother. Her preoccupation with herself had increased. Instead of the gradual re-establishment of the old relationship, there was suddenly a deepening of the existing trouble. He had seen this in Roddie too; a gathering of him inwardly into a relentless strength.

  As he came up to the dry-stone wall, he heard his mother’s voice cry out, beyond, amid the salleys by the stream. It was a strange, sharp, heart-wrung cry. Roddie’s head and back appeared. He had Catrine in his arms, bearing her lightly, and he was laughing.

  Over Roddie’s shoulder, Catrine saw Finn. She was borne several steps in Roddie’s triumph, before she could cry to him to let her down. She struggled violently. “It’s Finn.” He set her on her feet and turned round.

  Finn was standing motionless behind the wall, his face white. There must have been something uncanny about his head and shoulders, of the nature of an apparition, to Catrine, for her voice, breaking in distress, emitted half-whining sounds.

  “All right,” said Roddie coolly. “We’ll tell him now.”

  Finn’s face turned away, and in a few steps his head sank below the top of the wall, and he was walking down the burnside. Roddie’s voice cried to him sharply, but he did not rightly hear it and continued on his way.

  In a wood of small birches, he lay until it was quite dark. Occasional spasms of violence forced his fingers into the earth and contorted his body, but they were formless and wi
thout any conscious cause. For the most part he lay in a quiescent state, and more than once a queer ultimate sensation of solitariness touched him.

  In the star-lit darkness, he could walk anywhere without fear of being met, for most people were afraid of what might be encountered in the dark.

  There were two ceilidh-houses where folk gathered at night. Outside one of them, Finn listened to the singing of a traditional song, until he could no longer bear it. Then he drifted away. At various places he appeared, and had anyone seen him drifting away voiceless they would have said it was his wraith. Out of the moor, miles distant, he came down on Una’s house and from a hundred paces stood looking at the glimmer of light in its little window.

  He went up to the window on quiet feet. The slip of blind had not been drawn, for busy folk used all the daylight they could get, and in the slow change to the peat light would sometimes forget the blind altogether. There was a young woman with her back to him, sitting on a small stool just beyond the fire, making a net. Her right hand was extremely dexterous and the white bone needle flew out and in. The mother was spinning and humming. Duncan, Una’s brother, was helping his father to make a heather rope. There were others, but Finn could not take his eyes off this stranger, this dark young woman with her hair up. All at once, she turned her head over her shoulder and looked at the window. It was Una. He saw her eyes open, her expression grow rigid in terror, and at once he tip-toed away. A dog barked.

  Surely she could not have seen him! But he knew by her expression that she had seen something.

  When a young woman hears her name called from outside at night and no-one else hears it—and there is no-one outside—it is a sign of her near death.

  But he had not called her name. She would think it was his wraith!

  From the land, he turned at last to the sea and appeared among the looming bows of the boats drawn up over the ridge of the beach. He leaned against one of them for a while, then, going down into the mouth of the river, unfastened a small boat, slid her as noiselessly as he could into the water, and began to row out towards the schooner.

  When he drew quite near, the man on watch cried, “Hullo, there!”

  “Hullo,” answered Finn.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me. I heard——”

  “Who are ye?”

  “I’m a fisherman. I heard you were wanting a sailor.”

  “Oh, is that it? Well, ye’re too late, my lad. A young fellow signed on this evening.”

  Finn sat quite still. The man spoke again, but he did not answer.

  “Hullo down there?”

  “Hullo,” answered Finn. “You don’t want anybody then?”

  “No. Ye’re a bit slow, my lad.”

  “Thank you,” said Finn, and he rowed away.

  The small boat was old and heavy and altogether beyond Finn’s power to haul up the steep slope. He hunted about for wooden rollers and when he had got her three-quarters out of the water he fastened her short painter to a boulder. The tide was making but had still some three hours to flow. After he had stood for a while in the windless night by the sea, he began to shiver with the cold, and, going up among the boats, climbed into one and huddled up on the planking between two timbers.

  That the schooner had been unable to take him deepened his misery, but somehow now he did not greatly care and closed his eyes in a weariness beyond thought. Every now and then, however, he found himself regarding figures with an extreme clarity. His mother’s heavy elderly body—so it struck him—in Roddie’s arms, with Roddie’s laugh, the laugh that could harden into a cackle, like a gull’s, the whole action had for him elements of the obscene. The revulsion blotted out the picture. Una did not trouble him much. She was Jim’s “armful”. Obscene enough, too. Suddenly there were footsteps and low voices—of two men, who came and stood on the other side of the planking. They talked for half an hour and revealed to Finn a harrowing story of secret family trouble. Finn knew the family, and wouldn’t have believed the story possible. “For God’s sake, never by word or look …” The footsteps died away.

  After a time, Finn went to the small boat and found her afloat and wet his arms to the shoulders getting the painter off the boulder. When at last the tide was full in and he had made her fast, he turned for home. As he approached the house, the old trepidation beset him, but now his mother would be in bed for it must be three o’clock. All at once he stood still, unable to move, for he imagined Roddie and his mother sitting by the fire, waiting for him. It was an extremely strong visualization, and may have been prompted by an instinctive knowledge of how Roddie would act. And indeed Catrine had had great difficulty some hours before in getting Roddie to see the wisdom of his going home. Finn approached the blinded window quietly and listened. The fire was not smoored and there were no voices. The silence affected him in an appalling way, and he had the desperate sensation of pushing noisily against it, slowly, in at the door, and into the kitchen.

  His mother rose from her stool and saw him glance about the kitchen.

  “You’re late,” she said quietly.

  “Am I?”

  “Would you like something?”

  He did not look at her and turned for his own room.

  “Finn!”

  He stopped.

  “This can’t go on,” she said. “I can’t——” She had meant to be calm, but now her voice had suddenly risen and threatened to break.

  “Good night.”

  “Finn! You must listen to me. You must. I—I have something to tell you. We can’t go on like this.”

  “What is it?” He half-turned his head but did not look at her.

  “Why are you—why do you make it so difficult? Cannot you understand——”

  “What is it?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then she said, “Roddie and I are going to get married.”

  There was a further and complete silence.

  “Finn,” she said appealingly, desperately, “why are you against me? If you are to be against me, life will be unbearable.” Her voice went on, suddenly released, and then abruptly stopped, as if she were on the verge of a breakdown and a storm of tears.

  “It’s got nothing to do with me what you do,” he said, and walked away into his room and shut the door.

  She could weep herself to death for all he cared. He did not even listen. “I don’t give a damn,” he muttered, and pulled the blankets around him. If she came to the door, he would drive her out—as Alan had driven his sister. She did not come to his door, however, and when at last he had to listen he heard a silence intense and desolate.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE WRECK

  Roddie and Catrine were married within a month. The wedding was popular and exceptionally gay, for Roddie was looked upon as the leader of the herring fishers and his old saying that he had “wedded the sea” was used against him with sly fun. In fact the best of it was that Roddie, who normally had a reserve one did not introde upon wantonly, now seemed open to any attack, so delighted with himself did he appear to be. And his pride in Catrine was no less obvious than his happiness. It was he himself who said, “There’s no fool like an old fool,” with the smile curling from his teeth. And no-one thought him old, not even the young, because of his great strength and fabulous fighting powers.

  The wedding took place after the grain had been harvested and, with everyone free and in the mood for merriment, it lasted several days. Roddie’s house was open to all Dunster and a large party came from Dale. They danced in the barn, they danced in the kitchen, and the Dale folk slept in the barn, together with others who were not in the mood to go home, men on one side and women on the other, upon new straw. The presents of dressed fowls, butter, cheese, eggs, bannocks and other foods were sufficient to support a small army. Hendry sent twenty bottles of “special”, and old Wull, the smuggler, brought a two-gallon cask of his finest “run”. Roddie was now reckoned to have “a good bit of money behind him”. And if he had, they
added, he knew how to spend it.

  “This is a real wedding,” declared Wull, his eyes lit up at the merry sounds and the whirl of the young bodies.

  “How do you make that out?” asked an elderly solemn and argumentative man.

  “Because”, said Wull, “I hold that a wedding is a public affair. They should be married not only in the sight of Him above, but also in the sight of us below. And when I say married, I mean married.”

  The solemn man nodded. “I think I see what you mean.”

  “How do you see it?” asked Wull.

  “And then we know and it’s settled for good,” nodded the solemn man, following his own thought. “Quite so. At the same time——”

  Wull laughed. “You’re drunk,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Wull gave his neighbour a dig with his elbow and cried to the solemn man, “You’re drunk. You’re as full as the Baltic.”

  They all laughed.

  “Me drunk? I’m not in the least drunk.”

  “Can you stand on one leg?”

  “Yes, and on two legs.”

  “Ay, but can you stand on one?”

  “Why couldn’t I?”

  “Ay, but can you? Let’s see you try.”

  The solemn man paused to think this out, as there might be a catch in it somewhere. He was only sixty and regarded Wull as a wily old fellow who was worth the watching. He did not mind standing on one leg, which he knew he could do easily, but if so, then Wull would have to stand also. Only thus could he be sure of getting the better of Wull. But in the contest his one leg proved less biddable than usual and he was getting ready for a second effort when Wull overbalanced against him. They continued the argument on the floor. “You pushed me,” alleged the solemn man.

  This little incident was used as a text by Sandy Ware. But no-one bothered about Sandy at the wedding. A dry harvest was gathered in. The fishing had been good. The long winter nights were before them. And here was a wedding, wherein the happiness of their lives was gathered in warmth, with creation beyond it.