A Book of Death and Fish Read online

  Going into it from the top was dangerous. By the time you got what was left home, the thing would fall apart. You could usually get away with tackling it from the side. First, the flakes which naturally came off in your hand. Then you found yourself pulling a bit, like with a scab. Instead of blood, steam would spill out. You could remove and swallow some of the doughy bits, as long as you concentrated. If you didn’t, you could easily arrive at the back door with a good crust and a hollow loaf. You weren’t too popular.

  You’d to watch for the herring coming in. Maybe a notice would be up in the shop saying that salt-herring were in at two and six the score. They wouldn’t have been long in the small barrel of bleached wood beside the ha’penny tray of spongy goodies. That was just the word we used. It sounded childish when a visitor said sweetie.

  In Commando books or The Victor, you were either a Kraut or a Tommy. Some editions had Nips as well. An older guy might call you ‘my china’ or just ‘mate’. You wouldn’t find these words in the lists on our jotters but you’d find how many drams were to something else. And a gill wasn’t a part of a fish. It sounded like a girl’s name and it was another measure. But you’d soon get to know that a gill was also a quarter-bottle, the way a firkin was a quarter-barrel. It was a full, whole container and then again, it wasn’t.

  The gang would get out to the castle grounds. They were given to the people of Lewis by Lord Leverhulme. He realised at last he could only do things for this Island if there were no strings attached, so my olman said. You could imagine him addressing a gathering of peasants and soldiers and sailors and curers and labourers, with a sprinkling of the more educated. ‘Here’s all this bloody ground, bought courtesy of Sunlight Soap. Now do with it what you will.’

  But we didn’t set out to destroy the bushes we dived through, launched from rocks. Maybe it was seeing Elvis doing a dive from Acapulco. In the ninepenny seats, you were that close to these big stars that you were blinking for half the movie. There was always a chance of a runner to the back-rows when the torch was on someone else. They were mostly empty, on a Saturday afternoon, the snogging seats.

  Sir James Matheson Bart commissioned these forests, mostly broad-leaves and conifers, native to the United Kingdom but interspersed with Tibetan rhododendrons, South American monkey-puzzles and North American sequoias. There was yew and there was cypress. This cove, the great benefactor, was only modestly represented under a life-sized marble statue of his noble lady. She lost her stone hand, like the statue of Venus in the Arthur Mee books. Sir James’s head and shoulders just came out a few inches from the marble block that supported his wife. This was better than the trees for scratching your initials. The script doesn’t hold back on praise, for himself. I wonder who wrote it.

  All these grounds, for the marble lady to stroll through, sprouted from opium. That explained the bulging poppy heads, frozen in marble, repeated as a decoration all around the canopy above the pale dame’s gentle head. None of us noticed them, back then. They were a lot higher up at that time.

  The other place was the pier. In the evening we’d go down to observe the Loch Seaforth berthing. We’d bide the time by leaping on bales of wool. I always thought these were related to the fanks my uncle brought me out to. The olman didn’t want too much to do with the family croft. People were giving up on the single cow and going more for sheep. You got wool from sheep. So I thought this was used by the weavers in a park of sheds, round the corner from the auction mart.

  I was beginning to notice that common sense didn’t always work. We went down the road, in a gang, to the Nicolson Institute buildings. We started off in the clock-school and moved across to Matheson Road. These were the original sandstone buildings. The pink-school was bigger and newer. I think it was yellow, by the time we got in there. We still called it the pink-school. Still do.

  We learned that Manscheefend was to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. It took longer to find that the first word was three words. And some day we were told that our Island’s wool normally went for carpets. So the bales on the quay were Cheviot wool, from the Borders, imported to make our tweed softer. As sure as linoleum was made in Kirkcaldy. Jute and marmalade were both Dundee.

  Our Island had fishing and tweed. Kenny F lived across the road from me, in the house with the garden full of lobster pots. We’d both have to stand, in turn, and say what our fathers did. You usually got offered an extra bottle if you performed like this. One third of a pint. Another full container that wasn’t. In the clock-school, your bottle of milk would be heated by the coal fire, if you wanted. I didn’t like the taste or feel of it warm. The crate would be divided into milk for sheep and milk for goats. So my own bottle was left out in the cold, by request.

  Kenny F took his milk cold, as well, but he had treacle on his porridge in the morning. Tate and Lyle. The tin had the lion from the bible story. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. In black and red. Golden Syrup tins were green and gold. If I called for him on a Saturday or a holiday, I’d get that porridge with the black swirls, as a second breakfast. I took it, joining in the grace before it. These patterns are connected with their religion, in my mind. Free Presbyterians. The olaid said that fishermen were mostly very religious. She loved to see the kirk full, if there was a big gale and the East Coasters couldn’t get home. Sometimes we’d have a visitor, in his best gansey, a Brocher fa kent her people.

  Kenny F’s olman never seemed to be around. He was always out in the boat, along with Kenny’s big brother, except on Sunday. The only time you’d see him was when he was mending creels, stacked in their front garden. They didn’t have any flower beds. The two of them worked away with what they called needles. The tools were called that but they looked more like the shuttle my olman sent skelping through the warp. These guys didn’t talk to you much.

  Not that my olman, the weaver, talked much more, when he was setting up a tweed, in the shed. But Kenny F and me would earn extra money by filling his bobbins, on the machine by the door. Maybe six feet from the loom. That was a fathom. I can’t remember how much of a chain or furlong. The oil from the wool would smell, along with the oil from the Hattersley, but the door would always be wedged open. On a windy day, it would be held by two hooks and eyes. The shed could be shaking. The olman never shut the door completely.

  Mostly it was grey herringbones. I remember once there was a glut, with American markets saturated. The word made me think of guts and more fish landed than could be sold. That happened sometimes too. My olman carried on weaving. He’d to keep the loom and himself in condition, he said. And he couldn’t go laying off his squad whenever things went quiet. So Kenny F and me still got to fill bobbins.

  In these quiet times, the colours were different. He would be trying this, trying that. He talked to us more, not having to go all-out to finish three tweeds for the week. And how was the fishing?

  He said this, only to hear Kenny F say, ‘Mì-chàilear.’ It wasn’t just the word but the tone and the shake of the head with it. The other stock answer was ‘I suppose we’ll just about cover the diesel’. I think that meant a good week.

  ‘You fishermen are as bad as farmers,’ the olman would say. The Inland Revenue chasing them and them writing off everything from their underpants to their pork chops, against the tax. The weaver got his standard self-employed allowance and that was that. No negotiation. But you couldn’t grudge the fisherman what he got when you saw some of the weather he was out in.

  Funny thing was, he said, they always say the weather’s Mì-chàilear. If it’s any better you don’t want to risk breaking it by saying so and if it’s worse, that’s a thing you don’t spell out.

  What sort of night is it? This time Mì-chàilear meant something damn near a hurricane. Same word, different tone of voice.

  I knew the word but didn’t know it was real Gaelic. Thought it was maybe like a stroll down the hoil for a fry of mogs and skeds. Our own words, found nowhere else, except for a pocket or two in Drumchapel or Christchurch, Ne
w Zealand. This means going down by the harbour to scrounge mackerel and herring.

  Gellie is another of our words. This one sounded Gaelic to me. It could be any fire, like your own living-room one, when the shovel of coal was flashed up by a good draught. Or at Kenny F’s when a bucket of caorain was thrown on. We’d all gathered these up. Most people in and around Westview still cut peats and everyone helped to bring them home. Us kids gathered up the broken and small bits and got goodies while the grown-ups were at their feast, the work done.

  My olman said he hadn’t moved in town to import big chunks of the moor in with him. He wondered who the hell ever discovered that the brown soggy mass was combustible.

  Stella

  Kenny F’s olman went fishing in the Stella. I thought it was called after his big sister. She was a nurse, away on the mainland now. But my olman told me it was a name for a star before it was a name for a woman.

  The Loch Seaforth took passengers and sheep. Now and again you’d see a car slung in a net. The Loch Dunvegan took cargo. You got boats and you got smallboats. The Stella was a smaller boat than most of the smooth black hulls. But, she did have a yellow-gold line, finished near the bow in an arrow shape, just like the big boats. My olman would look and comment now and again, on all the piles of creels. Old ones, taken home for repair or new ones, rigged in fleets. That sounded like something to do with the Navy. If you had all that gear shot and there was a big blow coming, you were forced to sneak out, trying not to look at the sky, just to haul and haul, recovering what you had. If you managed in time, you had all this gear piled up high on your decks, round your wheelhouse, cluttering everything while you ran for home.

  The olman knew a lot about fishing though he had no time for it.

  Here’s how it happened, on the day of the gellie. Apart from being a big fire, any big fire, it was also our Guy Fawkes fire. Two cul-de-sacs and a long run of street, two Drives and Terraces pulling weight together for a month. We’d be wheeling lorry tyres, bigger than ourselves, up from the tip between the pink-school and the shore.

  A green van had come to our site, with a full load of cardboard and wooden boxes. Someone in the next street had a relation who worked for Liptons. Amongst the boxes were white shop-coats, clean but frayed. We wore them as a uniform, trailing to our ankles but tied at the waist with twine which we also found amongst this load. There was a freshening wind all day, but it stayed dry and we had all of the lighter rubbish weighed down with broken timber and tyres. We marked every single tyre with a number and our code, in chalk. A protection against raids. Three months of gathering.

  Keeping them moving was the thing. Kind of tricky, crossing roads if anything came along. They didn’t come with brakes. Even now, just before the gellie was to be lit, you could expect the Goathill boys, or a squad from Manor, to come and snatch stuff for their own pile.

  So you could see the white coats milling about. Smaller guys like Kenny F and me nearly tripping up. It was always the coves who collected the tyres. We were the warrior gang. But a few of the blones helped gather and pile the other stuff. Kirsty was allowed into our gang then. Some big coves thought she was too bossy. But the big sister and her pal got the wee fellows running about for them. Kenny and me were now in the middle.

  We were soon gazing up to recognise the big vinyl armchair or the dark, heavy-looking cupboard that hadn’t been any bother at all to tumble up there. Matchwood all right. A sprinkle from a bottle. Plenty of Esso Blue about. The match going to the thing and getting a hold so it didn’t matter when the cold rain started to come. We never realised there was so much wind. It blew right into the crevices of the pile. Soon our white coats had to go over our heads as shields from that heat. But it wasn’t long before everyone started to look away, ready for the fireworks. We were the builders so we remained, loyal to our gellie, even after it had started to die down. Kenny F and me staying close to the fire, after the others were drifting to where the boxes were being opened by someone’s Da. Of course Kenny’s olman and the oldest brother, the crew, weren’t home yet.

  Then his mother appearing, nearly running, gathering her young son in to her, then hunting amongst all these white coats for his middle brother. Everyone starting to shush amongst the talk and roar of the gellie. The rockets were going up in Goathill. Then still more powerful booms from round the corner, at Leverhulme Drive. The Coastguard depot. You’d think you’d never know the sound of these maroons from all the other sounds that night. A bad time to get in trouble at sea.

  But people had started to run. That’s for us. It was the signal for both the Lifeboat and the LSA – boat and shore rescue parties. No-one in our scheme had phones at home then, so they depended on the maroons. The fire station, round one more corner, had a siren fixed to the roof. That went off most Guy Fawkes’ nights, but not, so far, this one.

  There was nothing anyone could do about the fire, short of calling the brigade. It was in a clear space and could be left to burn out. Flat, bright boxes were getting closed again. They had pictures that might have been from the Dan Dare. Rockets were taken back out of bottles. I was crying. Kirsty grabbed my hand and hauled me off. My crying was nothing to do with realising why Kenny F had been dragged off home. I thought that was just his mother, laying down the law on heathen bonfires.

  The olaid quietened us, dishing out pancakes by the fire, after our baths. The radio purring away with a serial we liked. She only said it was the weather, a big storm coming. I got going with divers from the cornflakes packet. You used baking soda in a bottle with a screwtop. They were grey and ascended and descended slow and calm. Some of my mates had sea-monkeys. You could create life from dry seed in a packet. A bit of salt water, you could do anything. Walking on water was tricky but the word was, it had been done. We’d all had a good go at it but nobody had lasted more than a second. Better not try it down the hoil. Big bastard conger eels down there.

  I did hear the gale, through my sleep. Slates rattling. But I was exhausted and got back down under.

  In the morning, the curtains were still drawn in Kenny’s windows, across the road. Before I went to school I saw people going in, wearing their church clothes. My olman didn’t leave at the usual time, to go to the shed. Instead, he also had his good clothes on, dressed as if he was going to church though he never did. He went across the road for a few minutes. The olaid went over when he came back. She took some packets of tea and some sandwiches she’d made up.

  My olman said he’d get me up and down the road today. Kenny F wouldn’t be going to school. He met me at the gate. On the way home, we had to pass the Coastguard store at the bottom of Leverhulme Drive. There was a stack of creels and buoys. Some of them were crushed, the bamboo hoops all splintered. They’re like chimney-rods, bent to take the netting over them. Everyone was whispering things.

  About two weeks later, Kenny F was called away from school again. A teacher’s car took him home. When I came in for my cup of tea and a roll, to keep me going, my mother told me, in a low voice, that Kenny F’s father and brother had been found. No, no, they weren’t alive, poor souls, there had been no hope of that but it still meant a lot to the family to get them back. Now there would be a funeral. Kenny would be off school for a few more days. I’d to promise not to ask him anything.

  So I was left wondering about the return of the bodies. I imagined them in clothes like all the neighbours wore now, going to visit. They weren’t in their bobbin-wool genseys and overalls. There weren’t any haloes or anything. Just the father and brother in dark suits, the older one in wider trousers, big lapels and a wide tie. The younger with the thin tie over the white shirt and tighter suit. Probably I had seen them dressed like this on Sundays. But I heard it from someone at school that they’d been found in a fisherman’s net.

  I could see pure bodies, from the Bible, returned from the nets as a present. Dressed in these suits. The nets were not the usual black stuff but made of something silvery. Those cast on the starboard side of a vessel aflo
at on the Sea of Galilee.

  I asked the olman about it. He said it didn’t matter how the bodies came back, my mother was right, it made a big difference to the family. It was the same in her town – The Broch. They’d lost two lifeboat crews there, at different times. Both within sight of the harbour, everyone watching as the boat went to help someone who’d been caught out.

  It was so many years later, more like twenty, that the olaid told me how my father had gone across the road, when everything was quietening down. He went to sort out arrangements that nobody else could cope with. Everything from legal statements to insurances. The way he put it, there was plenty of people to see to the spiritual side. Since he wasn’t so tied up with prayer meetings, he could do his own bit. The olaid told me the tweeds had picked up, about then. The markets he thought he’d escaped from, had recovered. He was one of the few with a stockpile because he’d kept on going to the shed, not really because he saw it as an investment but because he wanted to make cloth. There also seemed to be a demand for these unusual designs.

  That’s when they spoke to him about coming into the Mill, setting up patterns. But anyway he was doing all right just about then.

  So he’d gone to gather together the gear collected by the Team and still stacked at their store, down the road. Uninsured loss, it was called. The creels, ropes and buoys, what was left of them. Seems the way he put it to Kenny F’s mother was there was plenty at the lobsters down in Lochs, now, crying out for gear. He’d get her a fair price for it.