Lightly Poached (15 page)

‘You'd best hurry then,' instructed Angy. He went outside and Behag again rushed into my bedroom to change.

The skipper and crew hauled Behag and me aboard their boat with awkward gallantry and the cook came up on deck to show us the grey-green loaf which he had taken from its wrapper only that morning. ‘Not that the fresh stuff we get is much better,' he complained. ‘It's that soft an' doughy you'd think the pollis could use it for takin' fingerprints.' With an expression of disgust he tossed the loaf into the sea.

He invited us into the fo'c'sle where a dusty grey, hot-smelling iron stove was almost covered with kettles and metal teapots. ‘Sit you down,' he commanded hospitably and Behag and I inserted ourselves into position on the narrow bench between the bunks and the table. Angy sat beside Behag and the skipper and the two members of the crew took the opposite bench. The cook remained standing, pouring out black tea into permanently tanned mugs and sliding them one at a time along to us.

‘I see Hector's boat's away,' observed the skipper in a voice that ‘glugged' as if it was being poured out from a bottle.

‘Aye, they're takin' that corpse from the mainland,' Angy told him.

‘They're takin' it?' The skipper sounded astonished. ‘I never thought a Bruach boat would take on a Roman Catholic corpse,' he remarked, stirring his tea perfunctorily before passing on the spoon to his crew.

‘Do they know it's a Roman Catholic?' I asked, thinking of Bruach's rabid presbyterianism and abhorrence of ‘Papists'.

Angy nodded.

‘So that's why they were so reluctant,' I said.

‘Ach, they wouldn't have taken it except for bein' paid double,' replied Angy with a smile.

‘Oh, that's terrible,' said Behag, trying hard to disguise her approval for the deal.

‘It would be the same if it was the other way round,' said Angy.

I smiled. ‘You know,' I told them, ‘I've always thought of Bruach people as being some of the most tolerant in the world and yet they have this fearful prejudice against Roman Catholics. I just don't understand it at all.'

‘Are you a Papist?' asked Dodo suspiciously.

‘No,' I replied, ‘but some of my friends are.'

‘An' can you trust them?'

‘Of course,' I replied, chuckling.

‘Aye well,' summed up the skipper. ‘It's just the way they have hereabouts. I get on all right myself with them but all the same, there's a somethin'.' He nodded towards one of the lockers. ‘Come on, Sammy, with that stuff,' he said.

The cook opened the locker and took out a large tin of pears which he opened.

‘You'll take a wee bitty fruit?' he asked me.

At that moment I was not really feeling much like eating anything let alone sweet tinned fruit since the boat was rolling steadily and the fo'c'sle was at the same time both draughty and fuggy. It felt as if someone was packing round my feet with ice cubes while swathing my head in hot towels. However, I smiled acceptance, and the cook carefully slid the tin of pears along the table towards me along with a spoon and a tin of evaporated milk.

‘Help yourself,' he invited.

I waited for the expected bowl or plate but to my surprise saw that the cook was opening another large tin of pears which he slid along the table, again with a tin of milk and a spoon, to Behag. Next the skipper was presented with his tins, then the crew and Angy. Finally the cook was able to sit down with his own allotment in front of him. I felt shaken. Seven large tins of pears and seven tins of milk for seven people. The skipper's eye was on me. ‘Go on, don't be waitin' for everybody else,' he urged, mistaking my hesitation for politeness. He tipped milk into his tin of pears and began spooning the fruit into his mouth.

‘Look, I can't possibly eat all this,' I protested. ‘Couldn't I put some out into a dish first to save wasting the rest?' Beside me Behag murmured that she too could never cope with such a quantity.

‘Ach, just leave what you don't want,' instructed the skipper, loftily. ‘Sammy will get rid of what's left over the side.'

I felt guilty about leaving so many of the pears and more than two-thirds of the tin of milk and would have felt even more guilty had I not observed that only Angy and the cook had managed to dispose of the whole contents of their tins. The skipper and the other two crew had eaten only about half of theirs before pushing the tins away.

The cook picked up a bucket with a rope in its handle. ‘Are you sure you can no' eat just a wee bit more?' he enquired, looking solicitously at Behag and me and when we shook our heads he swept all the remaining tins higgledy-piggledy into the bucket and whistling nonchalantly climbed up on to the deck. I had always been brought up on the old adage ‘Waste not, want not', and I winced as I heard all that good food splashing into the sea. The cook came back into the fo'c'sle with the pail rinsed clean. Behag and I exchanged dismayed glances.

‘Aye, it's good to have fresh milk for a change.' said the skipper, gulping tea from his mug. ‘I fairly enjoy the taste of fresh milk in my tea.' He winked at me, the diffident fisherman's method of saying thank you to a strange woman.

Behag addressed her cousin's wife's brother, Dodo, who was sporting a large piece of sticking plaster behind his right ear, a colourful bruise on his jaw and a deep ruddy scar on the back of one hand.

‘Were you in an accident?' she asked him.

‘Some accident!' snorted the cook and Dodo's face split into a bashful grin.

‘What were you doin'?' pursued Behag.

‘I fell down one of these manhole things,' Dodo told her in tones that implied it had been a pleasant experience.

‘How did you come to do that?' she pressed anxiously.

‘He was drunk,' supplied the skipper. ‘Go on, Dodo, tell her the rest of it while you're about it.'

‘Ach, right enough we had a good drink on us,' admitted Dodo sheepishly. ‘It was on Saturday night when me an' some of my pals were at a dance. We didn't think much of the lassies there so when a gang of strange fellows came in we started tormentin' them. It turned out they were Irish an' it ended up by us bashin' one another about a bit. The next thing we know is somebody's got the pollis so me an' my pals start to run before they can get a hold of us.'

‘Only they didn't run fast enough,' interjected the cook.

‘Was it run?' echoed Dodo indignantly. ‘We ran like tinker's ponies. “You lead the way, Dodo”, my pals shout to me seein' I know this place as well as I know the deck of this boat, so I dodged down this dark entry but by God! hadn't some damty fool left open one of those manhole covers an' plump! down I went into it an' plump! plump! plump! down came my three pals on top of me. If they'd kept quiet we would have been all right even then but they were swearin' at me so much for takin' them there the pollis heard an' that's how they found us. They carted us off to the station then.'

To me it sounded just like a description of a scene from one of the old ‘Keystone Cops' films.

‘Did they put you in the cells?' questioned Behag in a horrified voice.

‘Aye, until the Monday mornin' an' they charged us five pounds apiece to get out again.' Dodo shook his head regret-fully. ‘I took ten pounds of good money to go an' enjoy myself on Saturday night an' when I got out of the cells I hadn't a penny in my pocket.'

‘But you had five pounds' worth of whisky inside your stomach,' the skipper reminded him.

‘Aye,' admitted Dodo. ‘You can say it cost me five pounds to get in an' five pounds to get out.'

The skipper drained his cup and pushed it towards the cook for refilling. ‘Right enough, the Irish are the ones for fightin'.' he opined. ‘I believe myself if an Irishman was on a deserted island an' he couldn't find another body to attack he'd have his left hand fightin' his right before he'd be satisfied.'

‘When I was in hospital we had an Irish cleaner in the wards,' I recalled with a smile. ‘She had rather badly fitting false teeth and one of the patients used to say that even without hearing the cleaner speak she could tell she was Irish because her top set of teeth were always fighting the bottom set.' ‘I'll tell you this much,' declared Angy with some ferocity, ‘it's not just the humans but even the bloody Irish lobsters fight.'

I could not repress a smile.

‘It's true,' reiterated Angy. ‘I was workin' on a lobster boat for a time fishin' off the Irish coast so I know what I'm talkin' about.'

‘Aye?' said the skipper with a wry smile.

‘Well, skipper, you know yourself I've fished lobsters off the coasts of England, Scotland an' Wales in my time an' in the ordinary way when you take the beasts out of the creels an' put them on the deck they'll stay quiet enough till you can tie their claws. But you try doin' that with the Irish lobsters. By God! The minute you put them on the deck the buggers are starin' round with them stalky eyes of theirs an' as soon as one spots another it's straight across the deck they are and tearin' one another to pieces before you can bait a creel. No, if you're fishin' off Ireland you need an extra man to tie the claws of every lobster as it comes out of the creel,' he concluded.

The skipper stood up, glancing at the clock on the bulk-head. I pushed Behag and Behag pushed Angy along the bench.

‘We must go back ashore,' we said, and soon we were out on deck.

‘I'm right sorry we hadn't a fry to give you,' the skipper apologised. ‘But next time we're in maybe.'

‘We have plenty of bree,' offered the cook generously. ‘D' you care for bree?'

‘Bree?' I echoed and shook my head emphatically. ‘Bree is the mixture of blood and salt and fish oil left in the barrel after fresh herring have been salted and kept for about six months. It looks and smells revolting.

‘What are you doin' with bree aboard?' asked Angy.

‘Ach, we met up with a Norwegian fishing boat last week an' they said would we bring them some bree if we could get a hold of it. We took it for them but we didn't see them so we still have it,' explained the skipper.

‘What do they do with it?' I asked,

‘Drink it,' replied the skipper and seeing my expression added, ‘they nearly come to blows over it they're that keen on it.'

‘Great bowls of it they'll drink,' volunteered the cook. ‘Honest, they just tilt back their heads, open their mouths an' pour the stuff down their gullets. They'll pay for it if you'll let them.'

Behag and I grimaced at each other.

‘They reckon it cures cancer in humans an' foot-an' -mouth in cattle,' said the cook, ‘so it must be true there's goodness in it.'

We let ourselves down into the dinghy, the crew dismissing us with enthusiastic promises of a ‘good fry' next time they came in.

‘Oh, how terrible it was to see all that lovely fruit an' milk goin' over the side,' moaned Behag. ‘I felt like jumpin' in after it.'

‘That's our skipper,' said Angy proudly. ‘Unless there's food to throw over the side he thinks his men aren't bein' well enough fed. He's not a great eater himself, mind, but unless he sees food left on the men's plates he tells the cook to be sure an' provide more next time.'

I had from time to time heard of the prodigality of the catering on some fishing boats: the dictum that there should be ‘double helpings for single appetites and all gash straight over the side', but I had never expected to witness it for myself.

‘But all those pears!' I expostulated. ‘I doubt if we ate more than three tins among the seven of us and yet seven tins were opened. Anyway,' I added, ‘surely there was no need to ditch what was left. They would have kept for another meal?'

‘It's easy to see you're no' used to boats,' retorted Angy. ‘How would you keep opened tins of fruit an' milk an' stuff on a boat that's likely to be jumpin' all over the sea an' over one side then the other when the nets are hauled in?'

‘Well,' I began lamely but he cut me short.

‘No, it's not “well” at all,' he insisted. ‘A man would be comin' down below for a sleep after a heavy night's fishin' an' maybe find tins of milk drippin' into his bunk, or sticky fruit juice all over the fo'c'sle. Indeed, any fisherman findin' that's as likely to throw the cook overboard as the food. No,' he repeated. ‘Eat what you want at the time an' dump the rest, that's the only way on a fishin' boat.'

‘But,' I persisted, ‘if we'd been given plates or bowls we could have taken out only what pears we wanted. There would have been no need to open all seven tins of pears and seven tins of milk.'

‘The skipper would have been feared you were stintin' yourselves to be polite,' explained Angy. He back-watered with the oars as we came in close to the shore. ‘Anyway,' he added, ‘that would have meant there was seven bowls to wash up an' you'd have to have a woman aboard to want to do that.'

All day the village had been swathed in mist and silence and fine silky rain that trilled reassuringly from the roof gutter into the half-empty water butts. It had been the sort of day when, since it was impossible to work in the hay, Bruach women felt justified in catching up with their washing or in baking a mountain of scones and oatcakes; a day when Bruach men, anxious to get away from such activity, chose to foregather in the doorway of a neighbour's barn or byre in the hope of being able to pass the time by watching someone else at work. For me it had been a relatively lazy day which, now that evening was thickening the mist, was going, I suspected, to leave me as tired at the end of it as if I had spent it raking and carrying hay. I had finished my evening meal and had put the sewing machine on the cleared table intending to put ‘sides to middle' a sheet which had worn thin, but so dim was the light in the kitchen I had to use a magnifying glass to thread the needle. For over two months now I had not needed to light a lamp in the evenings and I felt if I lit one now it would be like betraying what was left of the summer. I decided to leave the sheet mending for another evening and go to call on Janet at whose house there would undoubtedly be some sort of ceilidh in progress.