Trawler (40 page)

Robbie said:
“But Redmond, listen to me, your friend, Robbie…
”

Bryan’s big Viking bass drowned him out in easy waves of deep sound: “You’ll get used to it, no your next trip, mebbe no your next twenty, but after that, aye, then you’ll know when you’re no talking, you’ll know when you’re
dreaming.”

Robbie leant right across the table, intense, and he said, in a
powerful whisper, 6 inches from my left ear, “Bryan
talking,
aye, he can and he does, but dinna listen no more, because he only talks, like, when there’s extra food to be had—he’s big and he burns it up and he needs it, aye! He’s like a dog—a St. Bernard, yep—that’s our Bryan, he’s big and fluffy, and he gets hungry and out comes his tongue … But Redmond, listen to me, all that guff, aye, it’s waking-sleep, that’s what we call it, but who cares? No, listen to your real friend, me, Robbie—you mustna mind Allan, it’s
nothing
to do with you, but I saw, you got hurt inside, real bad like, and you lowered your head,
so slowly,
right into your plate, and you went to sleep:
to shut everything out.

“So Allan Besant like,” said Robbie, sitting back, raising his voice, “he came into this money,
lots of money.
And what does he do? Aye! He bought a house, cars. More than one car.” (Big Bryan, I noticed to my surprise, now looked so relaxed that he seemed to have lost his high-tensile giant status altogether. Big Bryan looked almost
floppy.
Yes, Big Bryan
did
look like a St. Bernard lying massively in its warm corner, secure in the knowledge that another meal was on the way…) “And he got married. And then, well, mebbe we’d all do the same, who can tell? He had all this money, so he was allowed to be just himself like, no restraints, as Captain Sutherland was forever telling us, every man needs
restraints,
and he hadna got them any more, no discipline—or as I’d put it meself, he’d got clean away from the fucking bother of mad skippers or anyone else, if you know what I mean, because Redmond, apart from Jason, you know—and I hate that, yep, that’s the only one thing that’s not right between you and me, you as a writer, and this your one chance, and you’re trying to get it as much like it is as it
really
is, I can see
that,
yep,
you’re busting your old balls to try and tell the truth!
Aye—we can all see that—it’s so obvious, and it’s questions, questions! And one in five of them, that’s what we decided, mebbe one in five of them makes sense, and it sets us thinking—and when you’re not around we discuss it, of course we do! And Jason and Bryan here” (we both glanced, on the instant, at Bryan
—and he was asleep,
so peaceful, massively wedged into his corner, his head upright, resting against the base
of the bracket that supported the small platform for the video-machine, the screen—lovers and gangsters, inaudible—above him: his face had lost the anxious creases of a First Mate: asleep, but for his newly grown, his absurdly potent beard, I could imagine Big Bryan as a little boy…), “Jason and Bryan think that writers, now and then, they
do
tell the real truth, you know, not like newspaper-truth (but Allan, well, he’s a great guy—and I’ll tell you—but he’s sure that
no one ever tells the truth).
So Jason and Bryan like, they think that if you
do
write the book, and we all agreed, on the bridge like, that that was a chance of one in a hundred, like the fishing, because you’re old and you don’t have the life in you, and
oh shite”…
Robbie looked at me,
so
friendly, so apologetic… “I shouldna said that, I shouldna said that in a hundred years … Anyway, if you do manage it like, and you tell the truth, and you’ve come out at the worst time of year, there’s no denying that: then—we can give the book to our wives, women, our girls, whatever, that’s the point, that’s why Jason had you aboard, you know, aye, he wasna fooled by no shite about the Marine Lab in Aberdeen… So we can give the book, if you ever do it, whatever, to our women, you know, the one we really fancy, OK, fuck it, the one we
love!
Shite! Yep! But that’s the way it is: you give this book to
the woman you love—and
she’ll take it all in, and slowly, you know, for
weeks,
as she reads it, in silence, you know, she says not a word, and you have to put up with that—when she’s reading it, if she loves you enough to read it at all, if she loves you enough to bother to read a single fucking word of it—eh? Well, as Jason says, it’s up to you, Redmond, isn’t it?
Are we wasting our time with you?
Are you really just an Old Worzel? Eh? Or are you the whole ching-bang? Or even a peedie bit of a ching-bang? Can you get our women,
the ones we fucking love,
to understand what happens out here? Can you? Because we canna tell them ourselves, that’s for sure, because they wouldna believe it—and no matter what, every last one of them seems to think that we
want
to be out here, that we
want
to be with the boys, whatever, or that we love the sea (we love the fucking sea!). So maybe your book, even if it’s a piece’a shite, maybe she’ll read it and understand
a peedie bit and love us, and aye, maybe she’ll let us sleep straight out for two days and nights when we get home—and
then
we’ll have sex!”

“But Allan Besant,” I said, “you know—you said I was not to be so wounded by, you know—by Allan Besant!”

“Yep! Yep! He’s a great guy, but
you
need to understand about
him.
Or you’ll take it personally, you will, because you’re that kind of a Worzel. And you need protecting. But I tell you: all the times I’ve been to sea you ken the skippers, apart from Jason, they rip you off, they use you to get their money, so they make their money. You get a good percentage, most times, but it’s no what the amount they’re getting—they’re getting a real good wage for you working for them, plus, like, as I said, all me pals ashore, in me car I’ll run them here, I’ll run them there, I’ll be a real good friend to them, and because I’m a trawlerman, they think I’m rich, they’ll ask me for money, and it’s as if they’re sure I’ve no earned it in the first place—and there’s precious few amongst them, builders, farmers, butchers, there’s precious few amongst them that will ever return that money—it’s only yer mates at sea who ever remember a loan. Aye! I get stabbed in the back like … Yep—you give your friends money, even to help them over the night or something, small amounts, but even so you never see it again—because you’re
rich,
you’re a trawlerman! Aye, Redmond, sometimes it seems that all me life I’ve been used and abused, lots of times—and the women, well, mebbe it’s my fault, not theirs, but they’re the worst. Every woman I’ve ever bin with, apart from Angela, me first, and she was sensible, older than me, and we had a boy, my son, you could say, and he, well he’s the light of my life! And you know what? I even
like
Angela’s new man, aye, there’s nothing wrong with him! But apart from that, as I say, every woman I’ve been with, the four I’ve been engaged to, every last one of them—she’s done it to me.”

“Done what?”

“Gone with another fellah when I was at sea! You stupid? That’s what happens
—the same for every trawlerman.”

“But why? They can’t wait?”

“Yep! I tell you—they can marry you for your car, that’s what! Because they think you’re rich. And they dinna mean any of it—one of them, I’ll no name names, but when I was at sea she were brakkin the bed with the Stromness gravedigger! And I come home and mend the bed—and when we parted her dad blamed me for all of it,
because I was away at sea!”

“But Allan Besant? You were telling me about Allan Besant… you said I shouldn’t feel so bad…”

“Aye! Well
—he
got married, too, but then, you see, he was
really
rich, and it went to his head as it would to any of us, I’m sure of that, with the possible—no, forgive me, the
certain
exception of Bryan—aye! So then Allan Besant resumed his old ways, and dinna get me wrong, he’s a grand guy, and it’s only when he’s drunk that you have to watch yourself—his eyes—you dinna know what he’s thinking! And
that’s
scary, it really is! So, as I say, he took lots of girlfriends, so he had to sell the house, and even the cars, and eventually he was out of money, he’d lost it all, so he had to go back to sea, to sign on with Jason,
so no wonder he’s not like the rest of us…
”

“But heroes, the Victoria Cross—what was that about?”

“Aye, well, yep—I’ll no name names, but that’s what I
had
to tell you, to cheer you up, you old Worzel, I was forgetting, but aye,
that’s what it was:
that’s what I
had
to tell you, fast, because I need my sleep, you mind that—I’m away to ma bed—because I saw how cut-about, how wounded you were, and it wasna your fault—it was nothing to do with you!”

“Yes? You sure? Robbie?”

“Aye—dinna you worry—and I’ll no name names, and it happens
all the time,
all the time with trawlermen, but Allan—and how do we know we wouldna do the same? You can only judge people like that, and that’s what I think, that’s my opinion—you can only judge if you’re 100 per cent sure you wouldna do the same! Aye—so Allan, he’s almost out of money, and he’s living with his great best friend from childhood, who’s a trawlerman
and a lifeboatman.
And this friend has a
very
beautiful wife and, fact is, in my experience,
all
best friends fancy each other’s wives, just like they share
most of their other interests—or they wouldna be best friends! Right? So—probablybefore he meant it—when his best friend’s away at the fishing, or, more likely, when he’s
called away at night on a shout
(women
really
hate that! They’re insulted, like), Allan finds himself with his best friend’s wife: and who’s to judge? Who knows? Eh? Redmond? What if—and I know them well—what if the lifeboatman’s bleeper went off when he was makkin love to his wife? Eh? And he answered the call and got to the launch? Eh? If you were a woman how’d
you
feel? Because those bleepers, you know,
you can turn them off…
So she’s
very
angry, like, and
she goes to the lodger’s room.
Aye! But it all came out; as
everything
does on Orkney; and this was a mess, such a mess: and she tries to kill herself several times, she slits her wrists; but Allan saves her, and it seems he really loves her now, and he cares, he lives with her—but who knows? It’s no easy, life at sea.
It all depends on the woman at home.
But the point for you, Redmond, the reason I’ve stayed away from ma bed, it’s this
—-dinna mind what Allan says about life or lifeboatmen…
OK?”

And Robbie, nimble, a little Pict, so athletic, even now, in the middle of the night, or the black dawn, or whatever it was, got to his small feet, and disappeared.

And I myself, I thought, trying to stand up (and oh god, of course, once again, I have cramp down my left thigh, and my ankles
—where the hell are they?
They’ve gone absent without leave
again:
they’ve gone walkies to somewhere more interesting …)
“I must get to my bunk,”
I said to myself. But as I couldn’t move, I sat there, massaging my legs …

Big Bryan, surprisingly, woke up. (And the worst part of myself said to itself: was he ever asleep?) Big Bryan, sleep free and succinct, said: “Aye, Redmond, I was having a
dream,
you know, about Allan Besant—and I can tell you, in my dream, on his next boat out, he was completely changed, a different man. It’s odd how it takes us, isn’t it? Because, on his next boat out, he had to be the
best,
but the best at
everything—so
he was gutting so fast he left half the guts in; and in the hold, right there with the ice all round him, he’d only wear a T-shirt; oh yes, as you writers say,
he
was punishing himself,
or not, or he’d gone mad, or not… But you know what I think? I think that all that time, with all that money
(so he really could),
Allan Besant, like Luke perhaps, but then I dinna know Luke,
Allan Besant was looking for the ideal woman—aye,
and such a focking
big
mistake, an outsize mistake, the ideal woman! I’ve seen it so often, all the young deckhands, the deck-ies, but never on
that
scale, never the same search
backed with so much money—no,
never the ideal bullshit pursued to ruin like that, if you excuse me. Because of course it’s bullshit! The ideal anything is
always
bullshit! And if you go after it, in religion or politics or love or what the fuck—the
result,
it’s always the same: you destroy yourself; and,
far more important,
you shit on the lives of everyone around you. Isn’t that right? People like you—they’re meant to know about such things, aren’t they? The Ideal Woman! Such bullshit! If only these young guys would realize—but it’s not
my
place to tell them, so I don’t—but if only they’d realize that all you have to do is find someone,
anyone,
that you like to talk to, to get drunk with,
to be with:
that’s all: it’s so simple: that’s it!”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Aye,” said Bryan, “I’m glad you agree—and that’s a fact!” He leant towards me, half off his bench. “But… aye, dinna get me wrong… those pork chops? You and Luke—I couldna help but notice … You had the one each? So would you object, as it were—would you
object
if I took those unwanted second chops from the both of you? Just asking you, mind …”

“Please do!” I said, with absurd emphasis, because it was such an unexpected pleasure, such a kick to be able to do
anything
for Big Bryan. “Help yourself! Eat all you can—you deserve it.”

“Thank you,” said Bryan, formal. “I appreciate it.” And he reinhabited his muscles, he moved himself, tight and massive, to the stove.

And hey—he brought me, round the partition, he brought me a
huge
bowl (OK: so all the bowls were huge), a bowl of Jerry’s vegetable soup, and he set it gently in front of me, and he produced a spoon from his trouser pocket and he said (I took the spoon): “You’re an odd one you are, and no mistake. But you’ll
do, I suppose.” And without a word, true companions, we began to eat. And even I, an old man with very few taste buds and a very limited experience of soups that had not come (their contents freshly and specially annihilated for your exquisite pleasure, as the labels always say) from a tin or a packet—even I could tell that this soup was the kind of soup that you’d get given (the super-sexy waitresses all fanning you, gently, with their little fluffy golden centre-spread wings) in paradise, if only such a thing existed…