The Tomb and Other Stories

by Stanley Salmons

  ‘Here for the fishing?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the general idea.’

  ‘I’m Kevin. Do you want to bring your drink over? There are a few of us here.’

  ‘Dave. Thanks.’ We shook hands. I couldn’t very well refuse to join them.

  Kevin introduced me around. I didn’t catch all the names. There seemed to be a group of four, which included one woman, and three groups of two. They evidently knew each other, although they had travelled separately. The ones at the other end of the table almost immediately went back to their conversations, but Kevin, Morton and Bill at my end of the table remained engaged. Morton seemed particularly interested in me. He was a florid, somewhat overweight individual and I realised that the loud voice I had heard when I was up at the bar belonged to him.

  ‘First time here, Dave?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose you heard about it through that listing in “The Secret Ireland”.’

  ‘Well actually a friend recommended it.’

  It was as if I hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Can’t think why they wanted to do that. We’ve been coming here the last four years, and there’s always been a comfortable number. This year they’ve had to draft in more staff for the kitchen and dining room. Can’t cope, y’see. You fishing the lake tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, I’m down for the lough.’

  We were in Ireland, and as long as we were in Ireland I was going to call it a lough. If I were in Scotland I wouldn’t be talking about Lake Ness either.

  Kevin said: ‘We’re on the lough tomorrow too.’ He gestured with his head towards the other end of the table. ‘Gordon and the others are on the river, the rest of us are on the lough.’

  ‘They’ll have all the boats out tomorrow, then,’ Morton added. ‘And they’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel for ghillies.’

  Colom came over with a tray of drinks, and started to set them on the tables. Morton didn’t shift his gaze from me, but raised his already loud voice to include Colom in the conversation.

  ‘Colom here knows who I’m not going out with, though.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘Padraic, of course!’

  ‘Padraic Mounihan?’ asked Bill casually.

  (They pronounced the name ‘Porrick’. It was only later that I found out how it was spelt.)

  ‘The same,’ replied Morton with heavy emphasis.

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked, more out of politeness than curiosity, but it was all the invitation that Morton needed. He leaned forward.

  ‘Picture in your mind Boris Karloff, the original Frankenstein’s Monster. Got that? Now try it without the sense of humour!’

  The others tittered uneasily and he sat back with satisfaction, glancing to see if Colom had heard, but Colom was serving drinks at the other end of the table. He leaned forward again.

  ‘What does the man do for a living when they don’t drag him in here, I wonder?’

  ‘Unskilled labour, I think.’ Bill said. ‘I heard he works on a farm, but he probably takes casual jobs on building sites when he has half a chance.’

  ‘Well he should stick to that. He’s no bloody good as a ghillie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Morton. He knows the water pretty well.’

  ‘Look, all right, he knows the water, and he can handle a boat. But you want more from a ghillie than that. You know, a bit of chat, a bit of conversation, some of those funny Irish stories. Pass the time if the fishing’s slow. The man sits there like a bloody thundercloud. Puts me right off.’

  ‘Some of them loosen up if there’s a bit of the old Irish in the boat,’ offered Kevin.

  ‘Oh, not Padraic,’ cut in Bill. ‘He never touches a drop.’

  ‘What, really?’ said Kevin. ‘I never heard of a ghillie who didn’t like a drop of the hard stuff. He’d take a Guinness though, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘No,’ said Bill. ‘Not even that. I offered him the Guinness in the lunch hamper once. The way he turned it down I could have been offering him poison.’

  ‘There you are, you see,’ Morton weighed in again. ‘A kind gesture and that’s his response. The man’s a social misfit.’

  ‘Easy,’ said Kevin. ‘Dave here could be getting him.’

  ‘I take people as they come,’ I said.

  ‘Well, then, you almost certainly will get him!’ boomed Morton triumphantly. ‘All I know is he’s not coming in my boat. Isn’t that right, Colom?’ he addressed this last remark to Colom, who was now passing with an empty tray.

  ‘Well now,’ said Colom gently, ‘he’s a good man, right enough, but I’ve noted your preference, Mr Treen.’

  Morton grunted. He hadn’t said what he did for a living, but it seemed to me that he fancied himself as the picture of a Captain of British Industry. For my money, Corporal would be closer. As for Padraic, I already felt disposed to like the man entirely on the strength of Morton’s rejection of him. Just now Morton was taking a very deep draught of Guinness. I wanted to switch the conversation away from the unfortunate Padraic and I didn’t want him to answer, so before he could swallow I addressed the question quickly to Kevin.

  ‘I thought the river would accommodate more of us. It looks about seven miles on the map.’

  ‘It’s not all fishable from the bank. There’s a lot of bog and woodland in the lower stretches. They don’t allow wading either, it’s too dangerous. It wouldn’t help anyway. You’d stir up so much silt the salmon would choke to death before they’d see your fly. No, it’s all bank here.’

  Morton had swallowed now, and lost no time in joining in. ‘And they limit the number of rods. Not like some places where you pay through the nose and they still pack you in elbow to elbow. You can fish the river here and not be worried about someone following up too close behind you. At least you used to be able to. ’Course, I don’t know how long that will last now.’

  He made me feel single-handedly responsible for an impending decline in standards. I didn’t think it was intentional, but it was certainly maladroit. The others seemed to be sensitive to his clumsiness too, because Bill quickly said, ‘Well, we’ll all have the chance to fish the river before the end of the week, for what it’s worth’ and the conversation switched to other things. Colom came back and told us our tables were ready whenever we wanted, and there was some hurried draining of glasses and standing up.

  I was relieved to find the tables had been assigned according to the way our reservations had been made. That meant I was at a table on my own, and the party from which I had detached myself had been divided between three tables. I think this was deliberate policy, because there were other, non-fishing guests and visitors in the restaurant, and this was the management’s way of protecting them from a large and potentially noisy party. I could therefore enjoy the excellent meal in peace and, as I was tired from the journey, I had coffee at the table rather than in the lounge and went straight up to my room.

  *

  I had an early breakfast and went back to my room, taking my time to put my gear together. Half the fun of fishing was the sense of anticipation. By the time I went down to the foyer it was a mêlée of Barbour jackets, fishing vests, rods, and hats decorated with obscure flies. The ghillies were buzzing around in buoyant spirits, exchanging quips in their musical accents. Before long they cheerfully started to carry the big wicker luncheon hampers out to the cars and quite suddenly the foyer was empty. Empty, that is, except for myself and a big, red-faced, clean-shaven, unsmiling man with beetling black eyebrows and a shock of silver hair. I had not the slightest doubt that this was Padraic, and that he had been assigned to me, probably for the week. He gripped my hand powerfully with a hand that was like a bunch of red sausages, swollen from the wind and sun, dry and rough from use with oars, picks and shovels, muttered, ‘Padraic. How’re ye doing’, and without waiting for a reply lifted the heavy luncheon hamper as I might have picked up a packet of cereal and took it out to the car.

  By the time
we arrived, the others were milling around on the little wooden jetty, so I tackled up near the boat house. Padraic began to show me what had gained him such a reputation with Morton.

  ‘Y’asked f’r the lough, did ye?’

  ‘Not exactly. All the beats on the river were taken.’

  ‘Tha’s a pity, for the river will be fishing well enough just now.’

  I felt a moment of dismay. Then I remembered Colom’s comment that there was not enough water in the river, and wondered who was right. In any case this was my first day, and I was not to be put down.

  ‘Plenty of fish in the lough, though,’ I ventured.

  He sighed. ‘Ah. What ye want is takin’ fish. What’ve ye got in yer box?’

  I opened the aluminium box and proudly displayed my newly acquired salmon fly collection. He poked about dispiritedly with a massive finger.

  ‘Ye haven’t got a Flaherty’s Fancy, then?’

  I had never heard of a Flaherty’s Fancy, and I had a shrewd idea that such a thing never existed. But I apologised for the lack of this evidently crucial item.

  ‘Or a Delphi Badger?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said in triumph, ‘I do have a Delphi Badger.’ Nick, my friend at work, had given me one for the trip, assuring me that it was the right medicine on its day. I pulled the hook out of the foam lining and showed the fly to the doleful Padraic. He looked at it doubtfully.

  ‘It’s a bit lairge. Oh well, we’ll give it a try on the dropper. Yer Ally’s will do well enough for the point.’

  ‘Just the two?’

  He looked surprised at the question. ‘Ye don’t want more than two flies for salmon.’ And he went back to his task of ferrying cushions, and petrol containers, and other sundry items from the boathouse to the boat.

  Padraic was good with boats, no question about that. He rowed strongly away from the mooring for what seemed a quite unnecessary distance before starting the outboard motor. Half an hour later we were ready to start the first drift.

  It was a gorgeous day. The sky was deep blue, with just one or two white clouds. The water was calm, deep blue near to us and shining like quicksilver where it caught the sun further off. The banks and the many islands were ablaze with yellow gorse, behind which purple heather spread right back to the mountains. Once Padraic had cut the motor there was no sound but that of the waves lapping the boat, and the rising twittering cry of a distant curlew. A perfect day. For me, but evidently not for salmon.

  ‘Well,’ I said, buoyantly, ‘in with a chance here?’

  Padraic’s demeanour indicated otherwise. ‘One thing about fishin’ for the salmon,’ he said heavily. ‘They never take in bright sun.’

  I was to learn that Padraic had an extensive stock of ‘one things’; indeed they amounted to a veritable litany of reasons why salmon will not take. He must have seen my expression, for he added: ‘Ye can fish away, if ye like.’

  I did like. I hadn’t come this far and paid this much for my boat and my lugubrious ghillie to go home without wetting a fly. Besides, the weather could change.

  It did change. About an hour later the sky had clouded, the water had turned to the colour of lead, and a wind had whipped up that was cutting right through the multiple layers of clothing I’d previously thought excessive.

  ‘Reel in,’ commanded Padraic, as he shipped the oars and prepared to start the motor again.

  Sheets of rain were now moving over the lough. The droplets stung my face as the boat headed into the wind. I pulled the hood of my jacket up and drew the cords tight. For some minutes we continued to lurch over the waves and then Padraic slowed the motor and cut it. The rain was still slanting in.

  ‘The wind’s coming from the North-West now,’ he explained. ‘We’ll drift into Tommy’s Bay.’

  I didn’t know Tommy’s Bay from Bantry Bay, but it sounded like a good prospect. I sat myself astride the boat board, retrieved my rod, and pulled some line off the reel. I always had this rising sense of excitement and anticipation when I was about to make the first cast. Padraic quelled it with a sigh.

  ‘One thing about the salmon. They never take in the rain.’

  A few hundred desultory casts later, and Padraic, who had been eyeing the horizon all the time, announced the imminent arrival of hail. Five minutes later the white stones were bouncing all over the boat, peppering the water and melting into my clothing. Padraic seemed impervious to it in every sense. He was wearing a jacket that seemed to have been made for the Baltic convoys and looked quite capable of standing up on its own. He wore it unbuttoned, revealing what appeared to be several more underneath it. The icy pellets of hail were sticking in the fibres of his wool hat, creating a white halo around his head. It would have been comic had it not been for his unchanging scowl. His only comment was predictable enough: salmon don’t like cold water. I almost said it with him.

  The hail finished as suddenly as it had started. We were entering Tommy’s Bay now and I had hopes that the relative shelter there would afford water conditions more conducive to taking salmon. I had gathered by now that those conditions were something intermediate between a flat calm and a swell so villainous that you were thrown out of the boat on your first attempt to cast. My modest hopes were quickly dashed. The clouds parted, the wind dropped to a mere breath, and the water turned into a sunlit mirror. We decided to go for lunch.

  *

  Actually lunch was the highlight of the day. We headed for one of the islands, where the rest of the group had already assembled in a sheltered cove. Padraic beached the boat, signalling for me to stay put as he went over the side and towed us in. I handed him the basket, a couple of boat cushions, the Kelly kettle, and the teapot and he set us up a little apart from the main group. I sensed that his brooding manner made the others uneasy, but the ghillies all knew him, of course, and their high spirits were not so easily suppressed.

  ‘Is yer man givin’ yer any trobble there, Padraic?’

  ‘He’s workin’ haird enough, Michael,’ Padraic replied, without stopping.

  ‘Where’s yer rod, Padraic? Are ye not fishin’?’ said another.

  ‘One rod’s plenty this day,’ Padraic snorted, and the ghillies exchanged furtive looks of amusement, like a bunch of schoolboys.

  Ignoring the repeated rapier pricks of their quick Irish wit, Padraic lumbered back and forth, setting up the Kelly kettle. It was a fascinating process. First he filled the kettle from the clear lough water and propped it up on some flat stones. Then he began to move about beyond the shore, and returned with handfuls of dead gorse branches, which he packed down the hole in the centre of the kettle. Finally he produced a yellow plastic washing-up bottle, squirted some clear liquid over the branches and on the flat stones underneath, and threw in a match. Had I known the clear liquid was petrol I might have stood further back. The minor explosion was followed by copious fragrant wood smoke, and in no time at all the kettle was boiling.

  Napoleon’s army could have survived for a day on the contents of the luncheon hamper. We worked through it all with quiet determination, washing it down with drafts of the tea made from lough water boiled in the Kelly kettle. It tasted wonderful.

  Padraic had wandered off behind the gorse to make himself comfortable. Just then Michael came past and gave me a friendly smile, and I thought I’d test something Bill had said the previous night. I was putting plates and cutlery back into the hamper, and pulled out a couple of bottles of Guinness, which were evidently standard issue.

  ‘Ah,’ I said aloud, ‘I’ll save these for Padraic.’

  Michael glanced quickly around and said quietly: ‘No, I wouldn’t do that. He’ll not be needing them.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, innocently, ‘doesn’t he like Guinness?’

  ‘No, no, he never touches alcool, does Padraic. He…well, like I say, he won’t be needing them.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, it’s a shame to take them back. Would you like them, Michael?’

  He was reluctant, but not that reluctant, an
d he slipped them into the pockets of his jacket.

  It was now Morton’s turn to come over. ‘Seen anything move this morning?’ he boomed.

  ‘No, not a thing.’

  ‘Nor us.’ He gazed out at the water, pinching his bottom lip pensively. ‘The buggers must be in there. Lying deep I expect. Need a bit of a wave, really.’

  I nodded, but felt strangely unconcerned. After enjoying such a lunch in such beautiful surroundings it was hard to avoid being overtaken by feelings of utter contentment, and I succumbed. The absence of a fish was not going to spoil my day, and it didn’t.

  *

  When I went down to the bar that evening Morton was holding forth at one of the tables. I gave the group a friendly wave but sat at the bar. The previous evening I had sighted eight different single malts on the shelves, and I had mentally resolved to work through them, one each evening. Since I was only there for six nights I would reserve three for any evening on which I caught a salmon.

  Presently Bill came over and joined me. I had the impression that he was a thoughtful and balanced sort of chap, and I think he had had enough of Morton too. I opened the conversation.

  ‘I blanked,’ I said. I was stating the obvious. If someone had caught a fish it would be on display on a board out in the foyer right now.

  ‘We all did,’ he responded. ‘The conditions were never very good. I didn’t see anything move the whole day.’

  ‘I don’t know if I don’t prefer trout fishing. At least you know what you’re up against. You’re thinking about what flies are hatching or dropping on the water, and you’re looking to see what stage of the insect they’re taking, and then you’re deciding what to use to imitate them, and how to present it, if not on the surface then at what depth, that sort of thing. You know, it all makes a certain amount of sense.’

  ‘Yes, but salmon don’t feed once they enter the river. No-one knows why they even take a fly.’

  ‘Precisely. So here we are, casting like automatons, chucking a small bunch of silk and feathers onto acres of featureless water all day. And why? In the forlorn hope that a fish is going to rise from the depths to take something it vaguely remembers attacking or eating at some point in the past. You know, Padraic may be a gloomy old bugger, but he’s got a point.’