Trawler (45 page)

And so it proved to be—once the redfish began to tumble remorselessly down the wide-diameter tube from above, way above, from the end of the forward conveyor: and you lobbed them into the white-plastic fish-boxes (which you took from a ten-foot-high stack to starboard of the mound of ice, which, surely, had once been a mountain). And Allan shovelled in the ice, and I carried the box (so heavy) to Bryan who, without a word, took it (as if it was a box of feathers) and stacked it—a hard shove, right in, at the top of the line of boxes, his big arms outstretched, two and a half feet above his head; or, with less effort, as he built up the next wall of boxes, he’d bend easily, his back still flexible, intact, despite the weight he carried in front of him—whereas I, doing no more than carry a full fish-box from the packer Allan to the stacker Bryan: I felt it, that terrible warning at the vertebrae at the base of the spine, that dull nasty something at the pelvis, the sacroiliac joint. (“No, we do
not
like this,” said the muscles and the vertebrae: “No, you really
are
a jerk—and we, we’re going to sort you out! Because—before you went to
Congo
, you
prepared
, as
you should, as the SAS told you, and you really
did
go to the gym three times a week for two years to prepare your back to carry those 70 lb loads … But for
this
, you wanker—what did you do? Did you train us? No! Did you hell! Because you, you pitiful bozo, no: you’d decided that there
were
no wild places in the UK! So what did you do to prepare? Nothing! You drank and you slept… you couldn’t even get your fat self to run round your local wood! Yes … we’ll get you for this: four months or so flat out to rest us, on your back, unable to walk; yes—that’s about right as a prison sentence goes …”)

Bryan said nothing, Allan said nothing, and me? Well, I was far too hot and exhausted and sweat-slimed even to
think
of the effort of speech … So was this the final stage of sleep-deprivation as observed by Luke (probably backed up by hundreds of studies in what’s-the-point-of-sleep labs)? No, I thought, really not, this is called simple all-out pressurized physical labour when no one can speak… That’s all. And, oh god, my old back,
how it hurts
… So I repeated the mantra that I’d found a
great
help in jungles (but when I was more or less fit, and when I was
young
too), the incantation (on-and-on) that eventually saw you through those eight-or ten-hour so-called
walks
, those demi-runs that went on way beyond your idea of time, with the Iban or the Yanomami or the northern Congo pygmies: “This will all be over one day… This will all be over one day…”

And, at last, it was: and Allan Besant, without a word, but so kindly now, so caring, so gentle (and
no
, Redmond, do
not
say anything—and above all: get a grip, be a man, do not burst into even silent tears of gratitude or exhaustion or any other fucking thing: yes, your muscles are shaking, you’re shaking-weak all over) and Allan, well,
he’s coming up the ladder right behind you
, and somehow or other he has his right hand at the base of your spine, so you can’t pitch back way down into the ice: and jeeez, that’s right, even the muscles in my legs are shaking, and they won’t do what I say, but what’s that? Yes. Allan Besant must have his left hand on the ankle of my left sea-boot, and now my right—one, two, yes, the next rungs up … So why’s he being so kind to
me?
… OK—so
maybe, as Matt Ridley thinks, there is no mystery about it: maybe, most of the time, most of us, we’re
not
selfish, we’re altruistic, we can’t help it…

And, at the top of the ladder, at first on all-fours in the fish-room, and then (the sea out there—it must be flat-calm), when I managed to stand up … Allan Besant (dressed in his yellow oilskin trousers and waistcoat, a one-piece with braces over a thick, red-cloth fleece-jacket), his hands still in their blue gloves … he took my own right blue-gloved hand and shook it, and smiled, and gave me a wink, and raised his blue-gloved right index-finger to his lips (not a word!) and, without bothering to change on the bench, he swung open the heavy bulwark-door to the galley, stepped over the sill, and disappeared.

“Hey Redmond!” came a familiar shout—and yes, it was Luke, and he was standing way over there by his baskets, to port of the corrugated-iron door to the hopper, and oh no, he looked so eager… “Come on! Just in time! What took you so long? Bryan—he was out and gone:
way before
you and Allan!”

“Oh god!”

“
No—come
on: get your camera: it’s on its hook in the laundry there—I took the liberty of changing the film and slotting on your Micro-Nikkor!”

“You did? So why the fuck didn’t you go ahead and take the pictures?”

“Eh? What? How do you mean?” said Luke, looking, even at that distance, I could see, semi-poleaxed with some kind of shock-to-the-head… “Do that? I could
never
do that: the grip, the photographer,
he’s the man who owns the cameras—
that’s
his
job! You must
never
, you must
never
take another man’s job!”

Oh Jesus, I thought, all this really is beyond me; but at least my legs seem to have stopped shaking. (But my back, how it hurts all over, but that’s a good sign isn’t it? No
specific injury
, the kind that no one else can
see
, no injury that you know has split you in half; and this huge thing that you take for granted, your back—so very boring, so very physical to your GP, your doctor—but when
that goes
you’re not even half-a-man, you’re a nobody, no work, no pleasure, no walkies, and, certainly,
no sex.
)

“Redmond! For Chrissakes!” yelled Luke, agitated, both hands clamped on the rim of a blue basket, way over there. “Get the fucking camera!
Excuse me!
But please—please!
No trances!
I can’t take it any more! Come on! Now! The camera!
We’ve all the left-overs to photograph—and
the Esmark’s eel-pout that you forgot to photograph. And why?
Because you were in a fucking trance!
And Jason—Jason’s shot the net again already! So we’ve no much time—because this, you, you—
Worzel, this is the Arctic Circle
, a great rich fishing-ground that’s
so expensive
to get to! And there
you
are—in a Worzel-trance!”

Stung, well, buffalo-kicked, I suppose, I grabbed the big camera-and-flash from its hook among the oilskins and, in no time at all, like a real trawlerman (OK—so it was calm out there—and yet so very far north—yes, the fish-room floor of the
Norlantean
, the beautiful shiny wooden floorboards of the fish-room were almost as stable as the floorboards of the bedroom of a terraced granite house in Fittie, in Aberdeen, where the best sex in the world took place … Woof-woof! All that lovely together-sweating … Until, that is, you got a call from that bleeper-under-the-bed…).

“Redmond! Worzel! What’s up? Stop it! Whatever it is—stop it! Because you’re
still
doing it! And you know what? If you were a dog, if you were Malky Moar’s dog—I’d think you’d got rabbits on the brain!”

“Woof-woof! You know?”

“No—I don’t. So now, please, and we have to be fast, because this is great redfish country, and the net’ll be full before we know it: look—all these odds and sods, the important ones, you’re lucky, because I’ve already measured and weighed and sexed them: so all I need is your pictures, OK?”

“OK!”

And it really was easy, at last—no slipping, no sliding, no panic at the impossibility of everything …

“Esmark’s eel-pout!”

So I took two photographs—and Luke tossed Esmark’s eel-pout on to the gutting table, for later transferral down the exit chute, food for the kittiwakes …

“The Blackmouth catshark!”

Lying at my feet, maybe a yard long, its brown mottled back shiny in the overhead lights: yes, there was no doubt about it: the so-called Blackmouth catshark was a
dogfish
.

I said, my energy seemingly recovered (perhaps all that sweat-exercise had done me good): “It’s no a catshark—it’s a dog-fish! Woof-woof!”

“Worzel! Grow up!” said Luke, still a little severe. “Dogfish
are
catsharks. But here—look” (he held it up) “this one is rare, a real deepwater catfish, down to a kilometre and more—and see?” He opened its mouth: yes! It was black inside, and so many teeth… Luke cast it up and on to the table.

“And
this
” (a grab at the basket, a fish at my feet), “this is the spurdog, the Common dogfish—from the first haul.”

The real dogfish—something I recognized, and how! The great meticulous pleasure of those A-level dissections, T. H. Huxley’s biology course, as it still was then—it all came back to me; and to Luke I said: “On Old Olympus Towering Tops a Finn and German Pick Some Hops.”

“Eh?”

“It’s a mnemonic—you know, an aid to memory: the cranial nerves of the dogfish: occipital, trigeminal… oh shite, well, Luke, there you go: at least I remember the mnemonic …”

“Aye. So what?” (Up and across went the dogfish-and-memories.) “Look—I may not even
use
these photographs in my doctorate, but I need to have them, all the same, just in case.” And, one to each hand, he laid a couple of small squid on the floor: “The Short-finned squid! The European flying squid!”

I took their pictures—and Luke lobbed them on to the table. “Hey Luke—come on!” I said. “What’s happened? Don’t be so aggressive all of a sudden … What’s up? You call it a European
flying
squid… And yet you won’t tell me about it?”

“Oh—Worzel, let’s just get this job done!”

“No,” I said. “Certainly not. No! That’s not right. The bargain was: you’d
tell
me about things!” And, indignant, for the first time I drew myself up to my full height (well, I couldn’t do that
before, could I? Not with the floor chucking you all about the place), and, like a Dowager-Duchess, I repeated: “Certainly not!” And, thanking Luke’s absurd ideas of job demarcation (learnt at his Antarctic station, surely?), because, after all, it was obvious, he knew far more about this poncy camera-kit of mine and could take far better pictures than I
ever
would—I said, tucking my camera into my ample Dowager-Duchess oilskin jacket: “No info! No pictures!”

“Oh for Chrissake!” said Luke,
almost
mean. “I told you—it can happen to us any time now. And it’s sudden and
total—
you can’t speak.”

Slightly alarmed, I meant to say, man to man, in words as commanding as Big Bryan’s: Luke—the European flying squid! Tell me about it now—
or else!
But instead I heard myself say (and meanwhile Luke had slapped a couple of small flatfish at my feet), “Oh
please
, Luke—it won’t hurt you—
please
tell me about the European flying squid!”

“OK! You win!” said Luke, disgusted, backing off, sitting on the edge of his blue plastic basket, drawing his right hand across his forehead and then, for some reason, snatching off his blue woolly hat (anger!) and stuffing it (right hand to the small of his back, forward, down, and into the pocket of his jeans beneath the oilskin apron-and-trousers)… “Squid—well they’re not my thing, nothing personal, you understand, they’re about as interesting as marine biology gets, and that means they’re
far more interesting
than most animals on land—but, can’t you see? It’s
impossible
to know everything about life in the oceans! I’d like to, I
try
, I really do—but sometimes I can’t take it any more, you know, because it’s
all
so exciting,
so unexpected
, you couldn’t invent it for yourself! No! Never! Sometimes it gets
overwhelming
, you know, like the biggest lump in the worst storm you ever saw! Aye—and I feel myself drowning… Because I can’t know it all! I’m reading for my doctorate, for Chrissake, that’s all—and yet you, you seem to think I should know everything!”

“Oh Jesus, Luke! I’m so sorry, don’t be silly, yes, but maybe I do, I did, you know, yes, you’re crazy, but I’m sorry—forgive me,
no, it
wasn’t like that—
” And, guilty, I took the huge camera-and-flash out from under my oilskin jacket.

“OK! So!” said Luke, not moving but, disconcertingly, shutting his eyes tight. “Squid! There are two great and weird things that you need to know about squid! One: you remember your Darwin and
The Origin
and how he talked us through, step by step, the probable evolution of the mammalian eye? Because that was
his
big test! Because religious people said: ‘Up yours!’ Excuse me. But they did—they said, ‘OK, just you explain to us how the human eye evolved!’ Because what use could a wonky blurry half-formed eye possibly be to anyone? No! God made it—perfect, fully formed! Well, no, as it happens, because he didn’t. No—for humans, proto-angels, whatever we were, you’d know! Pre-angels, wingless angels,
so special
, each of us, and yet we still have to shit at least once a day: and the odd Worzel-angel—
that one throws up!
” Luke, happiness re-approaching, opened his eyes and looked at me, and almost laughed: but no, he shut them tighter than ever (which wiped the furrows on his forehead down to his eyebrows and away off his face, his brow was stretched clear—and, even as he concentrated so hard, he looked ten years younger, back to his early twenties).

“No—fact is—get this!
God prefers squid!
Our own god-given perfect eyes—they’re nothing of the sort! What a lie! Like all religion … No:
God likes squid best. Their
eyes evolved entirely independently of the vertebrates’ and sure, they developed in much the same way, convergent evolution, but their eyes are
so
superior: because their retinal cells face towards the incoming rays of light and they have their ganglion-cells, their receiver-cells,
behind
them; whereas with us, God was having a sleep, he messed up, big time! Because our ganglion-cells are
in front of
the light-sensitive cells—they
really
foul up the light-rays forming the image … Aye, compared to a squid, we’re practically blind!”