The Fisher Lass

by Margaret Dickinson

  ‘We’ll take her when we get back,’ Angus shouted above the throb of the diesel engines beneath his feet. ‘She’d like that.’

  The ship passed between the Orkneys and the Shetlands and on past the Faeroes towards Iceland.

  As they neared the fishing grounds, Robert went up on deck. He thought he had never seen such a beautiful sight in the whole of his life. For a moment, he wished Jeannie were standing beside him, seeing what he was seeing.

  ‘It’s a rare sight, ain’t it?’ Sammy said at his elbow. Without taking his gaze away, Robert murmured, ‘It certainly is. I wouldn’t have missed seeing this for the world.’

  They were silent, standing together, watching the small pack ice drift by as the ship nosed her way carefully further and further northwards. The sea was calm, sparkling in the spring sunlight and already sea-birds circled above their heads waiting for easy picking when the fishing began.

  ‘It all looks so – so untouched,’ Robert murmured. ‘As if no one’s ever been here before us. Just look at the blue of the sea and the sky and the whiteness of the ice. It’s magnificent. Oh, I’m glad I came – if only for this.’

  ‘It’s certainly picture-postcard scenery when it’s like this. But get a freezing force ten blow and it’s a fearsome place. Mind you,’ Sammy nodded towards the bridge, ‘I don’t know how far north he’s planning to go this time. Sometimes he . . .’ Sammy stopped suddenly and glanced at Robert in embarrassment.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m not on board as The Boss, Sammy,’ Robert said quietly. ‘Anything you say goes no further.’

  ‘Well, sometimes he goes right to the edge of the ice field, y’know. Fish are often plentiful there.’

  More confident now, Sammy grinned impishly, puncturing Robert’s romantic image of the magnificent scenery all around him and bringing him back to stark reality.

  ‘You’ll be sick of the sight of ice before we’ve done and so will Angus. He’s been down in the ice-room all morning, breaking it up ready for our first trawl. But we’ve let him up on deck for a bit now, though.’ Sammy pointed to where Angus stood on the fo’c’sle, eagerly scanning the horizon. ‘He can’t wait to get started, can he? But he shouldn’t have much longer to wait now.’

  ‘Are we nearly there, then?’ Robert asked.

  Sammy nodded towards where Joe stood in the wheel-house, a pair of binoculars to his eyes. ‘He’s got Sparks listening in to the radio to see if he can track the other ships.’

  Robert glanced around him, the blue water stretching emptily as far as he could see. ‘I don’t see any others.’

  ‘You will,’ Sammy said, confidently. ‘Sparks’ll find ’em. Good lad is our Sparks. He listens in to all the radio conversations. He’s even picked up a smattering of German and can listen into them, an’ all. And he’s fathomed out some of the others’ codes. Them that don’t change their codes regular like we do. Mind you, Skipper won’t join the other ships. He hates bein’ in a crowd. But he uses them as a marker, y’know. He’s a good skipper, is Joe, and a lucky one. He seems to have an instinct for where the fish are. It’s usually us the other ships follow.’ Sammy glanced sideways at Robert. ‘Course he shares the info with the other Gorton boats . . .’ He paused almost waiting to see if Robert would refute his words. Robert managed to keep his face straight, though inwardly he was thinking, pull the other one, Sammy.

  The Gorton fleet used a system of codes which their skippers could use to help each other find the good grounds, but Robert knew from overhearing the other skippers as they came ashore that Joe Lawrence was a loner. Rather than fish in a crowded area, he would deliberately steam off and trawl in waters ignored by the other skippers. More often than not it paid off. As Sammy said, Joe was a ‘lucky’ skipper. But sometimes the gamble failed and Joe had a poor haul.

  But now, as they neared the grounds, Sammy was full of confidence. ‘If we get a good catch,’ he was saying, ‘Skipper has everyone on deck. All except the cook. He even has Sparks boiling the livers. So get yer gutting knife ready, he’ll mebbe not let you stay warm an’ cosy in the galley.’

  Robert’s expression must have been comical for Sammy laughed and slapped his shoulder just as Angus came running along the deck, sure footed as a goat on a slippery mountain side. ‘There’s a ship to the north west. Have you seen it?’

  Sammy glanced around and squinted in the direction the boy was pointing. ‘Where? I can’t see. By heck, lad, your eyes must be sharp. Away and tell the skipper. I don’t reckon he’s spotted it, even with his glasses.’

  Robert watched as Angus climbed the ladder to bridge. He saw Joe turn briefly as the boy stepped inside the wheelhouse. Then Angus was pointing and Joe was putting the binoculars to his eyes once more and training them in the direction the boy pointed. The two watching from the deck saw him search the skyline for a few moments and then, dropping the binoculars momentarily, he gave the lad a brief nod and a quick smile and then his attention was once more on the trawler on the horizon.

  Angus left the wheelhouse and clambered down the ladder. ‘He ses he can see several ships. We’re there, Dad, we’re there.’

  ‘Right then,’ Sammy said. ‘There’s work to be done. ‘You come with me, Angus. I’ve a job for you.’

  Happily, the boy trotted after his cousin.

  Robert watched them go. It was the longest conversation he could remember having with Sammy, he thought, and certainly the friendliest. If only they could carry this camaraderie back to shore, back to Jeannie, how happy she would be.

  And work there was in plenty. From the moment they reached the fishing grounds and Joe turned his ship port-side to the wind to shoot the first trawl over the starboard side, Robert lost all account of time and only the cook seemed to keep a tally of whether he should be serving breakfast, dinner, tea or supper.

  ‘You go up on deck whenever you want, Rob,’ Ted said. ‘I know you want to keep an eye on that lad of yours.’

  ‘You sure, Ted? I’m supposed to be helping you.’

  The man grinned, showing a broken front tooth. ‘Yer more of a hindrance than a help down here, but I’ll give you a shout if I need a hand.’

  So Robert was able to watch as they shot the first trawl. When the shout went up, ‘Pay away’, over the side went the net, bobbins, trawl doors and lastly several hundred feet of three-inch steel cable. As the net sank below the surface to the bottom of the sea, Joe turned the vessel in the direction he had chosen to fish. For the next three hours the ship would trawl at a steady four knots.

  Angus was beside him. ‘Sammy ses I’m to get summat to eat and some kip, ’cos once the first haul comes up, we’re going to be busy.’

  Robert smiled at his son. ‘Then I’d better go below and see if I can be of any help to Ted if it’s “grub up” time.’

  ‘D’you know, Dad,’ Angus chattered on as they clambered down the ladder, ‘Sammy ses Joe hardly ever lets the mate tek over the ship whilst they’re fishing. Once he only had four hours sleep in six days. I can’t imagine that, Dad, can you?’

  ‘No,’ Robert replied soberly, but in his mind he was thinking, but you may well be about to find out, son.

  There was a sense of excitement throughout the ship the first time they hauled in the gear. Everyone was waiting to see if the skipper had got it right. The deckies were all there, some operating the winch whilst others stood by to secure the doors as they came on deck. Up came the metal bobbins and then they heaved on the net itself, leaning down over the side as the ship tilted and rolled and the waves lashed on to the deck. As the cod end floated they could see that the catch was good. Now the cod end was lifted aboard by the derrick. Sammy dodged beneath the water gushing from the mass of fish, jerked the knot undone and, in a second, fish of all shapes and sizes cascaded on to the deck. Robert watched the figure of his son, almost hidden beneath his yellow oilskins, yet he could see the boy’s face wreathed in smiles and even above the throb of the engines, he could hear his jubilant shouts.

 
; The boy was a natural, a fisherman born and bred. There was no denying it. Whatever he or Jeannie might do, Robert knew now, they were never going to stop Angus coming to sea.

  Despite his size and youth, the boy worked alongside the experienced deckhands. He was quick to learn and, with no serious repairs needed to the net, the trawl was soon back at the bottom of the ocean once more. Then began the hours of work to gut and put away the fish.

  Angus, standing close by Sammy now, who was in charge of this operation, watched closely as the man took a cod into his hands, slit open its belly and removed its guts, separating its liver which he dropped into a basket. Then he lobbed the gutted fish into the washer from where it would slide down a chute into the fish-room below. There, the mate, with a deckie to help him, packed the fish in ice and stowed it away.

  Robert found he was holding his breath as he watched Angus pick up a sharp knife and take a fish into his left hand. It took the boy a dozen or so fish before he was gutting like an old hand. Robert suspected that this was not the first time young Angus had tried his hand at gutting. Obviously, his hours spent haunting the Havelock fishdocks had not been wasted. Not that he worked with the speed of the other men yet, but that would come. Robert smiled to himself as he remembered, years ago, watching Jeannie at the farlanes. It seemed that young Angus had not only inherited his grandfather’s seamanship, but also his mother’s dexterity with a gutting knife.

  It was a good catch so there was only half-an-hour for deckies to eat and snatch a short rest before the next cod end swung on to the deck and deposited its silver haul.

  ‘Take this to the skipper, Rob, will you,’ Ted asked. ‘He’ll not leave his wheelhouse for the next ten days.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  Ted wasn’t. ‘No, I’m serious. It’s his job. He’ll stay up there now until the job’s done and we make for home.’

  ‘What about sleep?’

  The toothy grin was evident again as Ted said, ‘Sleep? What’s that, mate?’

  Six trawls in twenty-four hours with snatched meals and even less sleep had Robert worried for his son. He was only a boy, only fourteen. Surely he couldn’t keep up this pace? But Angus was determined and it wasn’t until Sammy himself ordered him below for a six-hour period off, that the youngster gave in.

  Robert followed him down to help him take off his oilskins, but the boy said, ‘Don’t, Dad, I can manage.’ And Robert was obliged to stand and watch while Angus, reeling with exhaustion, pulled off the stiff, unyielding clothes. Blood and fish guts streaked his pale face. His hands were blue with cold and he winced as he flexed the fingers of his right hand that had held the knife. But the grin on his face was still stretched from ear to ear and even though his eyes were large with tiredness, there was still in them the sparkle of excitement.

  ‘Did you see that huge plaice that came up? “Dustbin-lidders”, they call them. Wasn’t it huge?’

  ‘It’s certainly the biggest I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Isn’t this great, Dad?’

  Robert had to swallow the lump of sheer pride that rose in his throat before he could say, ‘Yes, son, it’s great. Now, come and eat your supper and away to your bunk.’

  It was the first time on board Robert had come face to face with Joe. The skipper, with his own cabin directly behind the bridge, rarely came down to the lower deck and never during the time at the fishing grounds.

  ‘Thanks,’ Joe said, taking the meal Robert had carried up to the wheelhouse. As he turned to go, Joe mumbled, his mouth already stuffed, ‘He’s a good lad, that.’

  As Robert turned back to face him, he was amazed to see a grin spread across Joe’s face. ‘I can tell he’s my brother. He looks a bit like me an’ all, dun’t he?’

  Robert smiled, anxious to meet Joe half way, yet at the same time careful not to appear over-eager.

  ‘Your mother always says you both take after your Grandpa Buchanan both in looks and in your love for the sea.’

  ‘Aye well, there’s worse to tek after than him.’

  Robert wondered if it was a veiled reference to the Hayes-Gorton family, but he said nothing.

  Her name was between them now. She was almost a physical presence here in the cramped quarters of the wheelhouse on this heaving ship eight hundred miles from home. And yet she was here with them both. He could see the same hurt mirrored in Joe’s eyes that he had seen so often in Jeannie’s. He tried to think of something to say, something that could heal the breach yet at the moment he opened his mouth, Joe turned away, his attention once more upon the job in hand. The moment was lost.

  But at least, Robert thought, Joe seems to be coming around to Angus.

  It was a start.

  Fifty-One

  ‘Have you had no word at all from them, Edwin? Don’t they keep in touch regularly with their position?’

  Edwin smiled at her. ‘Not Joe, Jeannie. He’s a law unto himself when he’s fishing. But,’ he shrugged philosophically, ‘we’ve learnt to trust your son. Oh, he’ll radio in when he feels like it. And if there’s any trouble . . .’

  ‘Trouble?’ she said sharply. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  Edwin swallowed swiftly, realizing his slip. He smiled again. ‘That’s what I mean, Jeannie. No news is good news, where your Joe’s concerned.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, a little mollified, but her shrewd glance at Edwin left him wondering if he had entirely convinced her.

  ‘We’ll maybe get a message when they’re on their way home,’ Edwin said. ‘Cheer up. Only one more day and they’ll be turning for home. That’s if Joe’s fish-room is full.’ He laughed. ‘If it isn’t, he’ll stay out there as long as he’s catching fish and as long as his supplies hold out.’

  ‘But if they’ve had a good catch, they could be home in four to five days?’

  When Edwin nodded, the light came back into Jeannie’s eyes.

  ‘Last day’s fishing today, Dad.’ Robert heard the disappointment in the boy’s voice.

  Sitting beside Angus in the messroom, one of the deckhands shovelled the thick white flakes of fish into his mouth, anxious to snatch a few minutes’ sleep before the next haul. It was a shame, Robert thought as he placed bread and butter and a mug of tea in front of the man, that they hadn’t time to savour the meals Ted cooked. What that man couldn’t do with haddock, wasn’t worth knowing. He could teach the chefs in smart hotels a thing or two. That was for sure. Fresh bread buns baked every day. Three main, three-course meals and plenty of snacks in between, to say nothing of gallon after gallon of strong tea. The food was good, Robert was pleased to see, but if only the crew had time to enjoy it.

  Picking up on Angus’s remark, the deck-hand laughed. ‘That’s if he can stuff another six hauls into yon fish-room. Have you taken a look down there? We must have got fourteen hundred kits down there.’ Grinning at Angus, he added, ‘That’s almost ninety tons to you, laddie.’

  Much too polite to tell the deckie he knew very well the weight of a kit, Angus merely smiled and nodded. ‘There doesn’t seem much room left.’

  The man swallowed his tea and stood up. ‘Best trip we’ve had this year.’ He touched the boy’s shoulder and winked. ‘You must ’ave brought us luck, lad. I have to say it, I thought at first you might be a Jonah, but you’re not, you’re a good ’un. You can come again.’

  The smile on Angus’s mouth threatened to split his face in two.

  As the final day’s fishing began, the weather, which had been kind throughout the whole trip, deteriorated. When the third haul came up over the side, the wind lashed the deck and the ship tossed from side to side in the mountainous waves.

  The cod end swung in over the deck and Robert could see at once that it hung limply, devoid of its usually bulging weight of fish.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he mouthed to Angus. The boy shrugged as together they watched Sammy duck beneath it and release the knot. A pathetically small catch of fish slithered on to the deck. Sammy was issuing orders, pointing and sh
outing to the men close by and then he was running along the deck towards the bridge.

  ‘He’s going up to see Joe.’

  Though he passed close by, they did not try to detain him. They’d find out soon enough what had gone wrong.

  On his way back, Sammy said briefly, ‘We’re turning for home. The net’s badly torn and it’ll take an hour or more to repair. With the weather worsening, it’s a sensible decision.’ He grinned suddenly, his face drenched beneath his sou’wester. ‘’Sides, he’s got enough fish, if only he’d be satisfied.’

  Robert had experienced rough weather during his years at sea aboard the minesweeper, but it was nothing compared with the ferocity of the storm they ran into as they left the Icelandic waters.

  The ship was tossed and thrown as the winds, ever changeable, whipped the waves in every direction, so that one moment they were on the crest of a sixty-foot wave, the next being plunged into the trough below.

  Grasping Robert’s arm, Sammy bellowed into his ear, ‘Get the lad below. The mate’s going up on to the bridge to help Joe. He’s close to exhaustion now. This is all he needs.’

  Robert took hold of Angus’s arm and was about to pull him towards the ladder when they all felt the ship plummet into a kind of vacuum created by the turbulence of the ocean. Robert and Angus looked up as a huge wave hovered above them and almost in slow motion came down upon them engulfing the ship in a deluge of water.

  He put his arms about his son and clasped him to him as they fell together on to the deck. It seemed to last an age that they were tossed and thrown about the deck, bruised and battered. Robert was praying like he’d never prayed in his life before, not even when he had been under enemy fire aboard the war-time trawler. Never, ever had he known such fear. But all the while, he clung on to his son and prayed that they would both live to see Jeannie again.

  He was fighting for air and then strong arms were lifting him up and he found that Angus and Sammy were hanging on to him.