The Sea for Breakfast Page 15

  ‘There’s seven more still wantin’,’ said Erchy. ‘They think I’m goin’ back for them.’

  Hector looked speculatively at his packed boat and then yearningly at the seven extra fares. ‘Best go for tsem,’ he said.

  ‘No damty fear I’m not,’ said Erchy relentlessly. ‘They’re all old or fat or lame so we’ll be the better without them.’ He clambered aboard and went forward to cast off the mooring as the engine throbbed into activity. Wayfarer’s bow commenced to dip a series of smug farewells to the disappointed tourists on the shore and then headed out of the bay.

  ‘You can give her the gutty now,’ Erchy shouted as he finished coiling ropes and picked his way carefully among the bodies back to the wheelhouse.

  ‘You’d best make tse tea,’ Hector said, ‘before we get out of tse bay.’

  ‘Here, here,’ remonstrated Erchy, ‘how am I goin’ to serve tea rou-this lot. It’ll all be spilled and wasted.’

  ‘We’ve said tea was included in tse fare so we must offer it to tsem,’ insisted Hector. ‘Be quick now and let tsem have it before we get outside. It’s no our fault tsen if tsey canna’ drink it.’

  Erchy grumbled a little more and then dived down below. I wedged myself in a corner of the wheelhouse and watched with mounting satisfaction the seas growing shaggier and shaggier as we approached the open water. Morag had found an old newspaper and was engrossed m reading the obituary notices. Hector leaned against the wheel, apparently steering with his backside, and riveted his eyes on the luxuriant tresses of the blonde. Erchy soon reappeared from the fo‘c‘sIe with slopping mugs of milky tea which he thrust sulkily at the startled passengers. His arm also described a semi-circle with a tin of biscuits but the gesture was so repressive that no one had the courage to do anything but refuse. Some of the biscuits looked to me as though they had been refused for a long time.

  Before we reached the black rocks, crenellated with shags, which flanked the entrance to the bay, Wayfarer had begun that confident surging and swinging motion with which a sturdy boat meets the challenge of the waves. It was not a savage sea but a snarling and defiant one and our course lay directly into the wind. The bow was soon lifting to each breaker, sagging down into the troughs and flinging lacy scarves of spray up over the half-decks. The passengers, amply clad in anaraks and waterproof trousers, appeared so far to be enjoying the cavorting of the boat. Right up on the foredeck a muscly young giant sat with his arms tightly encircling his emaciated girl friend. Each time the bow dipped his arm tightened; it was debateable sometimes whether the noise we heard was the crackling of water under the stem head or the scrunching of the poor lassie’s bones. The girl cart-horse leaned resolutely over the gunwale and waited for something to come up. Miss Flutter knitted industriously.

  Suddenly a peculiar bumping sound became apparent. The two boatmen looked at each other questioningly.

  ‘Tsat’s tsat light anchor come loose,’ said Hector. ‘Best go and fix it.’ Erchy started forward along the side deck, which was now wet and slippery.

  Once aboard the Wayfarer the sexes seemed to have mutally agreed to separate and the starboard deck was lined with huddled girls while the smaller number of men spread themselves out in comparative comfort along the port deck. Erchy picked his way gingerly through the mass of girls, secured the anchor and came back the same way. We had not progressed very much farther when the bumping began again.

  ‘You couldn’t have done it properly, Erchy, it’s loose again,’ said Hector.

  Erchy muttered imprecations under his breath and prepared to go forward.

  ‘Erchy,’ I suggested, ‘wouldn’t it be better, with the boat tossing about like this, if you went along the port deck. It’s not so crowded.’

  ‘No damty fear!’ he replied. ‘Those decks are slippery for me in gumboots.’

  ‘That’s why I suggested you should go along where the men are,’ I said; ‘after all, if you did happen to slip.…’

  Erchy stared at me in serious surprise.

  ‘What’s the use to me of a lot of bald heads or crew-cuts if I lose my footing?’ he demanded scathingly. ‘I’m goin’ where the women are so I’ll have some hair to grab hold of.’

  I dwindled back into my corner of the wheelhouse.

  After about half an hour the Islands retired behind blinds of rain and the sea became perceptibly friskier. Wayfarer’s motion began to have its inevitable effect. The cart-horse squandered herself upon the deck and when several of the others had laid listless heads on the shoulders of their companions Erchy, with great jubilation, was able to point out to Hector that the making of tea had indeed been a waste. I felt dreadfully sorry for poor Miss Stutter, who sat rigid beside her companion, staring with glazed eyes at the sea. Miss Flutter knitted on in desperation. The length of the sleeve had increased considerably during the half hour but whether it was due to her industry or whether it was sagging with the wet it was impossible to tell.

  Hector was obviously anxious to get into conversation with his blonde so he left the wheel to Erchy and in a few moments was luring the blonde into the fo’c’sle. Erchy raised his eyebrows at me meaningly. Morag, who had appropriated the only seat in the wheelhouse, affected not to notice her nephew’s disappearance.

  ‘Here, see that rock we’re just passin’,’ Erchy said to me through the side of his mouth after a swift glance at Morag. ‘Take a good look at it.’

  I stared obediently at an apparently isolated black rock rearing up out of the water a few yards offshore.

  ‘Yes, but what about it?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d wonder at it now, wouldn’t you?’ asked Erchy.

  I looked again but saw nothing curious about the rock which was black and jutty and sea-washed like so many other rocks and which had a small fiat area of green moss, no more than two or three feet across, capping it.

  ‘There doesn’t appear to be anything unusual about it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I daren’t go closer in to let you look, but surely you can see the letters that’s on it?’

  ‘Good Lord!’ I ejaculated. Inconceivably, on the dark face of the rock the tell-tale letters ‘H. M.S.’ had been painstakingly chipped.

  ‘That’s what I was meanin’,’ said Erchy, his voice betraying awe and admiration. ‘You’d wonder at it bein’ possible,’

  I began to find it difficult to stay still for though. I was wedged into a corner of the wheelhouse there was nothing for me to hold on to. Morag’s eyes were closed as she rocked to the movement of the boat. Erchy clung to the wheel and as Wayfarer began leaping I was thrown repeatedly against him.

  ‘Here,’ expostulated Erchy, when a particularly violent lurch of the boat flung me against him so hard that his hand was wrenched from the wheel and Wayfarer swung beam to sea. ‘Get you up on that shelf and stay there out of my way.’ He indicated a shelf across the corner of the wheelhouse about half-way up the sides. I had to be helped up into it, and when I was deposited my legs would not reach the floor and I found there was absolutely nothing I might cling to.

  ‘I shall fall,’ I objected, and screamed, flinging out my arms to save myself as the wheelhouse canted treacherously to port. Erchy rammed the palm of his large hand into my diaphragm and fended me off as indifferently as if I had been a sack of meal. He seemed to find this position very stabilizing for himself and thus ignominously I completed the journey.

  When we arrived at the mainland pier Erchy and Hector abandoned us to rush off and sell their lobsters and to meet a party of campers they were expecting to take back to Bruach.

  ‘See and remind Miss Peckwitt’s fire to keep in,’ were Morag’s parting words to her nephew. Behag had the key of my cottage and so that I should not return to a cold, damp house, she had promised to send Hector to light the fire for me each day.

  The pier was full of activity. Lobsters and crabs were being landed and sorted; baskets of fish were being dumped on the scale; the bell that indicated to buyers that fish was ready for auction w
as being rang imperiously; gulls swooped low and squealed their frustration as lorries were loaded high with dripping fish boxes; boats were being refuelled; trollies were being pushed hither and thither by apathetic porters; fish-box squirters were dreamily playing their hoses on stacks of empty boxes, recollecting themselves only to apologize to passers-by who might be absent-mindedly squirted, or to swear at the unquenchable dogs who were determined to help. Sundry urchins darted among the fishermen rescuing moribund crabs to fling triumphantly at the jettisoned loaves of Glasgow bread, still in their waxed wrappings, which floated in the harbour. I could think of no more suitable fate for Glasgow bread.

  A trio of labourers were having some difficulty pushing a large barrel along the pier which, at the point they had reached, was slimy with oil and fish offal. The first of the men crouched down and gave a hefty push but his feet slid from under him and he lay flat on his stomach. It was a very rotund stomach. He picked himself up and swore colourfully at the pier. The second man obligingly thrust his weight behind the barrel but his feet too slid treacherously. His stomach was less rotund and perhaps as a consequence his abuse was even more colourful than that of his predecessor. The third man tried his strength and again exactly the same dung occurred. The trio stood surveying the obstinate barrel and abusing the pier in increasingly picturesque language, much to the amusement of a fry of young fishermen who had gathered to watch the spectacle.

  ‘Here, you’d best be careful with your language,’ shouted one of them facetiously. ‘Likely the pier will be gettin’ up and swearin’ back at you.’

  With an hour to spare before our train was due to leave, Morag could think of nothing but getting herself a cup of tea and left to weave her way through the bustle of the pier to the nearest tea-room. I turned into the butcher’s first with a message from Peggy. One of the disadvantages of living in isolation is that when one does manage to get away, much of one’s time is spent in transacting business for oneself and others in an effort to make the isolation more endurable. The butcher’s shop was low-ceilinged, cool and dim, its floor heavily carpeted with fresh sawdust. A fat, slovenly woman was leaning torpidly on the scrubbed wooden counter, a shopping bag hanging limply from her arm.

  ‘What’ll I give you today, Mary?’ asked the butcher.

  ‘Ach, somethin’ for their dinner.’

  ‘What? Chops, steaming, roasting?’

  ‘Ach, I don’t know at all.’

  ‘What did you have for your dinner yesterday?’

  ‘Ach, stew.’

  ‘Well, I’ll give you a bit of mince today then, will I?’

  He weighed out the meat and put it into the woman’s bag, and watched her slouch out of the shop.

  ‘There’s some of the men heareabouts would get no dinner at all if I didn’t see to it,’ he hissed at me.

  The butcher was an exceedingly devout man, speaking invariably on indrawn breaths that kept his mouth constantly prim, and no one but myself appeared to think the large picture of the Crucifixion which hung above the gory joints so tastefully arranged on the slab behind him at all incongruous.

  I translated Peggy’s complaint of ‘Neilly says he’s not goin’ to put his teeth in just to eat the stuff we’ve been gettin’ lately’ into suitable cuts and joints, and went on to the chandler’s shop which by contrast was cosy as a cabin. It was full of the rugged smells of tar and oil and twine and paint. The chandler, one of the finest characters I have ever encountered, was wearing a grubby white coat which to us who knew him proclaimed the season of the year just as accurately as the weather or the calendar. At the beginning of the tourist season his coat was new-starched and spotless; the chandler himself was correspondingly constrained. As the season advanced the coat became progressively limper and grubbier and its wearer daily more relaxed. At the end of the season the coat was abandoned for the winter and the chandler reverted to his normal happy self. He greeted me now with a genial smile and made a careful note of my order and then he leaned on the counter talking of the things that mattered: of the goings on of Bruach and the neighbourhood with which he was well acquainted; of the merits of different lamp oils; of the construction of a creel; of the fastidiousness of crabs which need fresh bait to lure them into a creel and yet which will pull off their own claws and eat them; of the less fastidious lobsters which are more easily tempted by salted or slightly smelly bait but have less cannibalistic tendencies. There were frequent interruptions to our conversation while he attended to the children, little girls mostly, who came in with their pennies to buy fish hooks for their boy friends to fish with off the pier.

  ‘I’ll bet,’ the chandler said with a smile, ‘they’re for that young Jimsey, Looks like a little angel with his golden curls and blue eyes and all the girls want him for their boy friend. The wee tartar just exploits the lot of them. He’s that clumsy with the hooks anyway he’s always losing them and some of the lassies haven’t a penny left of their pocket money to buy sweeties for themselves.’

  We chuckled together over the ways of love and it followed naturally that he should go on to speak of Hector.

  ‘My, but I got the surprise of my life when I saw him walk in here today,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you know he had come back to live in Bruach then?’ I asked.

  ‘That I didn’t. In fact. I doubted if I’d ever see him again.’

  I waited with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ he told me. ‘Hector, as perhaps you’ve heard, was never very quick at payin’ his bills but I just let him go on for while without botherin’ him. They never amounted to much at a time, but when it came up to eighteen pounds I sent him a bill at last. Next time he was wantin’ somethin’ he came in here and promised to pay but he said he hadn’t the money on him then, though I know fine he must have had or he’d never have been able to get as drunk as he did. The next time was just the same, he promisin’ to pay, and the next time again and so it went on for five or six years till he went away. I sent him the bill a few times more but when it got to twelve years and never a word I gave it up as a bad job. Well then, today he walks in here, only a few minutes since. “Sandy,” he says, “I’m owing you eighteen pounds and I’ve come to pay it.” You could have knocked me down I was so surprised, but he put three five-pound notes and three one-pound notes down on the counter and asked for a receipt. I gave him a receipt quick enough but I was so happy to have got the eighteen pounds after all these years that I wanted to do something to make him happy too, so I took up the three fivers and I gave him back the three one-pound notes. It was worth it to see his face light up.’ The chandler grinned benevolently.

  Our gossip had lasted rather longer than it should and I had to hurry if I was to deliver a note that Johnny had asked me to give to the joiner. The road from the harbour was steep and I wished I had the same incentive as the fishermen in whose wake I toiled: the public bar was at the top of the hill and the way they were drawn towards it was like the force of gravity in reverse. I found the joiner’s shed but the door was tight shut and there was little to indicate that any sort of business was carried on there except for a notice-board which bore the esoteric announcement:

  NEW BOTTOMS

  ditto, TARRED

  1/6d each

  2/3d each

  I knocked at the door of a neighbouring cottage, from the garden of which two ragged-looking geese eyed me apprehensively, and enquired after the joiner. He had gone, I was told, with his family on a Sunday School picnic.

  I rushed back down the hill to find Morag.

  ‘Did you give the joiner Johnny’s message?’ she asked, as we hurried to the station.

  ‘No,’ I told her. ‘He’s gone off on a Sunday School picnic.’

  ‘What like of man is that then, goin’ off on a Sunday School picnic on a Saturday,’ she scoffed.

  The guana spattered train with its assemblage of covetous gulls was already in the station and we dived hastily for the shelter of the corridor. We found
an empty compartment and barely had we seated ourselves when the train gave a jolt and started to move resolutely away from the platform. I held my watch to my ear, thinking it must have stopped, but there was too much noise to hear anyway. Then the train stopped, vacillated for a while between jostlings and bumps and groaned slowly back into the station.

  ‘What is all this shunting for?’ I enquired of a flaccid porter who appeared to be rooted to the platform outside our compartment. He blinked, looked pallidly about him and then with an obvious shock of recollection informed me solemnly:

  ‘ ’Tis all for the sake of the fish, madam. Just for the sake of the fish.’

  ‘I expect they’ve had to put us on to an extra fish van,’ Morag interpolated. ‘I was talkin’ to a woman in the tea-room and she told me there’d been heavy landings today.’ She produced a bag of peppermints and sat back, sucking contentedly.

  ‘You mind,’ she said reminiscently when the driver had let the engine have its head, ‘that woman I was talkin’ to in the tea-room? Well, her man’s a fisherman and he was in today with a good catch, but do you know what that man is gettin’ for his tea tonight?’

  ‘Boiled fish,’ I guessed.

  ‘No, but fish fingers—them artificial fish out of deep freezers. And he loves them, she says, and so does the rest of the fishermen.’

  ‘Good gracious!’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Morag indignantly. ‘Them things! For a man! And not a bit of taste to them at all, until they come back.’

  I have an unfortunate habit of falling asleep on trains and so I was soon startled by Morag’s shaking me and telling me to get ready to alight. We were breaking our journey so that I could visit a dentist and so that Morag could seek out a builder’s yard where there might be second-hand sinks and basins for sale, for now that Hector was home she clung to the hope that he would put in piped water for her.

  The delightful lady with whom we had arranged to spend the night heaped our beds with eiderdowns as though the temperature were several degrees below zero, although it was but mid-September, and heaped our plates with food as though we had been starved. ‘Oh my, I wish I had two stomachs,’ sighed Morag greedily when she had eaten.