Trawler (38 page)

Allan Besant, stung in some way, snapped at Robbie: “Aunties? It’s
you
who’s got aunties!”

Robbie, on his seat, edging towards Allan Besant, said: “You!
You lay off me aunties!”

Big Bryan broke up; he came apart; and his mega-bass full-out laugh was deep-down reassuring: it was something so elemental, so powerful that, had it come at the right time, it might have removed, for half a second or more, all fear of the wind and waves and the depths out there… “Aunties!” (A deep seizure, a phlegm-block in the foghorn.)
“Aunties!”

Big Bryan, facing forward, his big head in his big hands, massaged his eyes with his palms, as if he was very tired, and with his fingers he was wiping away—what? Yes: tears! … Big Bryan had been
crying with laughter…
“Redmond!” he choked, and tried
again: “Redmond! … Robbie here … you won’t know, but our Robbie …” Bryan mastered himself; he turned to address me, his big hands, bizarrely, still pressed to either side of his bearded face: “Our Robbie… he’s got
ten
uncles: Ronnie! Tony! Jeremy! Bobby! Billy! Colin! And
oh shite,
forgive me, I’ve forgotten, and I’m only telling you their names, the names of his uncles, because they dinna matter,
because he’s also got six aunties,
and I’ll no be telling you
their
names, because they do matter, that’s for sure,
because his aunties…
” Big Bryan’s hands released his head; it was all too much to hold in; and his infrasound of a happy laugh, an all-in laugh—it travelled, on that longest of wave-lengths, leisurely through the rusty double-hull of the
Norlantean,
and it fanned out across the surface-to-upper depths of the ocean: where it lifted the spirits of several bored and lonely Minke whales; and a group of friendly Pilot whales; and one whole iffy pod of Killer whales … “No!
I’ll no be telling you the names of his aunties!
Because his aunties, I’ve seen them all—and they’re goers, they’re real lookers, believe me! You’d never know” (another pulse of the very happiest infra-sound). “Aye! Yes! You’d never know—not one of
them—you’d never know they were aunties!
And I can tell you straight, Redmond, because I’m
married,
and I tell you, Redmond,
I’m happy with it,
I’m very happy, and that’s a fact—so I can say, without offence, I can say without offence to anyone, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t come right out and say it: because Robbie here, he has six slim sexy aunties, believe me!
And he could start a strip-club!”

There was a short, shocked silence. And then Robbie, delighted, said:
“You big dirty bastard!”

Allan Besant, still aggrieved, immune to aunties, said, “Scientist? Worzel a scientist?
Scientist, my arse!
You should hear him talking to Luke! He knows no more science than I do. In fact, Worzel” (from 18 inches away across the table—he gave me a big, kind, friendly, condescending grin: and I thought: am I
really
this old?), “what are the different regional names of the saithe?”

Now, I said to myself, hang on, calm down, even
you
know that the various dialect names of the saithe have nothing whatever
to do with science, but all the same, I’ve got the answers,
so up yours,
Allan Besant…

Bryan (who’d stopped shaking) and Luke (mild again, his relaxed self) and Robbie (no longer quite so protectively murderous) looked at me, too, exactly as anyone in any classroom in the world (if they’re lucky enough to
have
a classroom) always looks at Teacher’s potential victim …

I said: “Coalfish! Coley!” And, naturally enough, I expected tumultuous applause …

“Is that all? Worzel—is that the best you can do?”

“Yes!” I was pleased with myself, very pleased. Here was an absurd question
—and I’d got it right.
“Those are the names. What an easy, what a silly question! Go on—try me again, ask me something
difficult.”

Allan Besant, acerbic, said: “Coalfish, coley?” And then, like Bryan, only with a bitter-teacher edge, he mimicked my English accent: “How
awfully
unimpressive, old chap. No, Worzel, no …” And he gave me, this time, a genuine big grin, his young eyes alight: he was enjoying himself. And the two deep vertical furrows which ran upwards from the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows, for an inch or so (converging) into his otherwise flawless forehead (and which told you, without the trace of a conscious thought: “This young man
—he’s suffered”)—
these furrows, for a moment, they disappeared, as if they didn’t live there at all. Allan Besant, for this here and this now, he was happy.

“No, Worzel! You’ve failed! In
f
ac
t—coalfish, coley—
that won’t even get you an honourable discharge,
old chap!
No—you see, I too,
I know some science, Worzel,
and OK, so it’s my party piece, as you’d say, and Bryan and Robbie have heard it all before, but they like me really, you know, so they won’t interrupt and fuck me up and put me off—because they know, science, knowledge, it takes
concentration.”
And he gave me another grin, a last kind of a goodbye smile, and he looked up at the low ceiling, and, with the index finger of his right hand, he checked off the outspread fingers of his left—and the index pointer-finger itself, so close to my nose, was almost hypnotic as it touched and flicked—partly because, as yet,
just above the main joint, ringed with the raised red workings of cells intent on healing a communal wound: it was marked with the clear imprint
of Homo sapiens sapiens’
front teeth: it had got itself bitten when Allan Besant, reasonably enough, was sitting on the prone chest of Gillespie, the Big Fellah, and bravely attempting,
with that very finger,
to poke out Gillespie’s eyes …

“Saithe, coalfish, coley Poor old ignorant Mr. Worzel…” he intoned, face up, staring at the asbestos ceiling-tiles and pretending to be, what? A magician? No—of course, he was a quiz-show host on the telly, or a megawinner, yes, Allan Besant was taking the grand-slam title … “Baddock! bannock—no, sorry,
I withdraw that:
blackjack! Names from eastern Scotland.”

Allan Besant glowed, full of youth in its twenties, packed with unbidden energy and delight: “And then we have” (a flick of opposing index fingers) “the coalmie, a name for the full-grown fish, from the Moray Firth. And the comb—and that’s a fish in its fifth year, in Banffshire, and if it’s made it to fifty, it’s called a
Worzel!”
(Big Bryan clapped.) “And then there’s
real names,
the names the young fish were born with, and they’d tell you so, too, they’d
answer
to those names, because that’s right,
those are their actual names,
their Orkney names: cuth or cooth. But our local village idiot, Sean Taylor, of Castletown, Thurso—well, he comes from Caithness so no one can understand a fucking word he says, whatever it is, but if you ring up the Thurso public librarian and you ask him, politely, what the fuck the horrible prehistoric natives of Caithness call a saithe, he’ll grunt at you and he’ll say: “
CUDDIE
.” So there you go—and in Angus, the small fish, it’s called a dargie. And yes, on the Moray Firth, and I’m not making this up, I promise you—the young stages, the small fish just like Robbie and Luke: they’re
geeks!”
Big Bryan clapped again, caught out (because he should’ve known
not
to join in)—and he looked so pleased with everything, and he clapped with such force (the trapped-air explosions, the shotgun blasts between his cupped outsize palms), and he laughed, and he carried on clapping, letting off his personal hand-to-hand firecrackers for, well,
for more than several seconds too long…

“But decent fish in their second year, in the real language, the Orkney language, the names they were born with—they’re called peltag or piltack—and Worzel, if you don’t believe me, you try it, OK? Promise me? When you’re next fucking about, fatman, in a rowing boat, or sitting on a fat rock: you try it! OK? Promise me? You raise your voice—in an inviting sort of way—and you cup your hands round your mouth, and you call, straight into the water: “Peltag! Piltack!” And they
know
their own names when they hear them called correctly—and they’ll come to you, they’ll swim straight towards you … And then, unless you’re a right little shite, a real peltag-or piltack-teaser, you’ll bung in, pellet by pellet, one half of a stale loaf of bread—just to show that we’re friends really, you know, all the fish and all of us, we understand each other!”

There was a silence—Bryan and Robbie looked away, and then at their empty plates … Because, I thought, on the instant, Allan Besant
was not supposed to be a deep-down emotional softie,
a man who could even imagine the feelings of young fish … No, Allan Besant was meant to be tough, tough right down and through, and yet here he was, a grown man who’d sat on a rock, all alone, more than once, and called to fish, and he’d fed them pellets of bread and scraps of food that he’d saved deliberately, and that’s what this tough guy liked to do, on his own, when no one was looking, and it had all come out by mistake. And well, Bryan and Robbie, instinctively, they felt for him, they were embarrassed, for the future,
on his behalf…

Allan Besant came to himself, and reasserted himself, and his body tensed and he raised his voice: “And in eastern fucking Scotland, for Chrissake, the small saithe are called pirrie or poddlie or prinkle which just shows you, doesn’t it? Because that’s where Jerry comes from—and he can’t make up his mind about anything, either, so that makes sense. Whereas in Banff-shire, boys, they at least
try
to say what they mean, so a saithe in its second year is called a queeth—and in Orkney and Shetland which, by the way, Worzel, and you don’t seem to understand this:
they have fuck-all to do with horrible Scotland—
in Orkney and
Shetland, a no-religion,
a no-bullshit zone,
as I think you noticed yourself, a place where people know they’ll have to die, and face the fact… Aye, there the fry of the saithe have their own real names, the names they were bloody well born with, and no mistake: sellag or sillack. And in Shetland, where, it’s obvious, isn’t it? because that
must
be the place where the number-one name really came from: from the crazy Shelties who dinna
say
anything much: great guys, aye! But Worzel, in
your
language, or any other, come to that:
they don’t speak.
Aye? So the fucking delicious fish they send south or chuck overboard or use for bait in the creels, because they willna eat it themselves, they despise it, it’s unfit for a real man, guess what they call it? Guess what they call it—when you can get those big fuckers drunk enough to speak at all? No? No idea? Well, I’ll tell you—they call it a
said,
a
seid.
And why? Because that big giant motherfucker Sheltie, who can lift eight sacks of salmon feed on his shoulders, no problem, you know what? Rumour has it that
he said something,
so he’s not a real man, he’s a poof, he’s almost a woman, you know, because he
spoke
last month, and everyone got to hear of it and it’s all over Yell, the very worst of their islands, and so now he’s like that fish that’s taboo, the one that no genuine male will eat: the he
said,
or he
seid.”

(OK—so it took more than a moment to get the point—but then we all clapped, and Robbie yelled: “Goaaal!”)

Allan Besant turned to Bryan, the only real could-be Sheltie present. “And do you know what they call a Worzel-saithe, in the Firth of Clyde, an overgrown and ancient saithe? No? You don’t? Well—it’s a stenloch, a stone in the loch, whatever, something that gets in everyone’s way … And the Yanks? That’s where we should all go, where we ought to
be—right out of all this shite—
because they’re sensible, they don’t give a shit, whatever the damn thing is, they call it a pollock! And if you really love it—you call it a clare pollock! And what could be better than that?”

Allan Besant, exhausted, took his elbows off the table and leant back against the bench-rest. It was obvious that the show was over—and it was such a polished theatrical piece that we
clapped again, all four of us, without a thought and with no reserve. Allan Besant beamed transitory happiness at each of us, in turn, as if taking a bow to all four quarters of the theatre. I thought:
What a guy!
And Luke said: “Aye, magic! So what’s its scientific name?”

We stopped clapping, and watched.

“Its
scientific
fucking name?” said Allan Besant, getting to his feet, reverting instantly to the resentment that seemed to suffuse him. “Who cares?”

“Ach,” said Luke, affronted, in his turn. “If you don’t know the scientific name, even on this trivial level, excuse me, then you can’t call yourself a scientist, can you? And besides” (he looked at me, for support—which was touching—and so: “Absolutely!” I interjected, and nodded, with vigour), “the scientific names, they’re beautiful, they sound so good, don’t they?” (I nodded further, as if, well, to me, you know, these names were not just musical, but full of meaning, and besides,
I knew them all.)
“The saithe,
Pollachius virens
(Linnaeus).”

“Fuck that!” said Allan, half out of the door. “Who cares? And get this—people like you, full of shite, and they all live in Angus, you know what they call it there?”

“No,” said Luke simply, taken aback.

“Rock halibut! Lies—fucking lies!”

“Wait! Wait!” boomed Big Bryan. “Allan—what’s up? That was star-turn stuff! And no mistake!” His bass voice, not even raised much—with no effort it filled the galley, and, in its mesh of deep waves, it seemed to hold Allan in the doorway. “So—halibut? What’s the scientific name for White halibut in Shetland?”

Allan swung right round. He put his large muscled hands, one to each top corner of the door jamb, above his head, and he leant in towards us. “Fuck you, Bryan! Mister Blameless-Silence! You think I can do that with anything else? You think that was easy? You mad as Worzel all of a sudden? Jeesus—I
learnt
that. Took me weeks! The women love it! But that’s it—finish-that kind of thing, science, it
hurts
you know,
it hurts the brain!
So fuck off!”