Cam drew up beside The Annamae and squinted through the driving rain. He could see Slim’s shadowy figure through the window of the wheelhouse and took his hand out of his pocket, put his fingers in his mouth, and gave a loud whistle. Slim looked up from what he was doing and when he saw Cam he raised a hand in solemn greeting. Even through the rain-obscured window, Cam could tell he was in a grim mood and considered turning on his heel.
Cam climbed up on to the side of the boat and jumped nimbly over the gunwale and on to the deck. Slim kept a tidy ship and everything was in its rightful place, tight coils of rope, heavy rusted chains wound carefully, washed down stacks of yellow plastic boxes ready and waiting to be filled with fresh fish and ice.
As Cam walked into the wheelhouse Slim greeted with him with a nod of the head.
Cam leant against the doorframe. ‘The boys,’ he said. ‘They’re keen to get out.’
Slim raised his eyebrows in mild amusement. ‘And they’ve sent you to convince me?’
Cam didn’t reply.
Slim’s real name was Jim Baker, but everyone knew him as Slim, a nickname he’d been given because of the many things Baker was, slim wasn’t one of them. He was a big man, six foot two or three, and heavy-set with a stomach that strained against his clothes. He dressed well, in white collared shirts and neatly pressed trousers. His wife, Betty, had standards, and would send him on every trip with a holdall of perfectly ironed clothes, with a fresh shirt for each day. The rest of them wore the same clothes for days at a time, some not even changing to sleep. Slim never set foot on any boat without his scrimshaw knife, a bone-handled penknife engraved with a simple drawing of a clipper ship. The crew of The Annamae, like all fishermen, were slaves to superstition. Slim’s knife had become their talisman. Who knew what bad luck they’d be hit with if he ever came aboard without it? The knife had belonged to Slim’s great, great grandfather who was famed for causing the only recorded injury in the Newlyn fishing riots of 1896 when he clocked a policeman on the head with a fish box. According to Baker family lore, after knocking the man to the ground, he kissed the handle of the knife, disappeared into the melee and escaped.
Slim rubbed his jaw and sighed heavily. ‘There’s a break coming in the next day or two. But it’s short. Maybe not even half a day. Enough to get out but with more gales forecast …’ He sucked on his teeth. ‘The other skippers are staying in. Say it’s not worth it.’ Slim hesitated. The truth was it could well be worth it. Trawlers had been tied up throughout the country for over two weeks and prices were soaring. There was money to be made for the first boat to take a chance on the forecasts. When he next spoke, Cam was surprised to hear uncertainty in his voice. ‘But then again, we’re all skint as monks. Christmas is coming. Betty’s worrying about presents. Jesus, she’s ordered a turkey the size of a car. I owe money on The Annamae. The repairs last month cost a small fortune.’ He glanced at Cam with an expectant expression.
‘You want my opinion?’ Cam stifled a laugh.
Slim didn’t reply. He never asked for advice. It was his job to make the decisions, Cam’s to haul the fish in.
Cam thought of Hannah’s arms looped around his neck, her fingers lightly stroking his back as her tongue explored his mouth. The thought of leaving to battle freezing waters, haul nets until his bones ached, and sleep in the bunk room, stacked like sardines next to unwashed fishermen, while she was lying warm in bed, hair fanning the pillow, soft and sweet-smelling, was agonising. But he needed to get paid. Just thinking about that Cardew prick turning her head with fancy meals was enough to make him breathless with jealousy.
‘I vote to go,’ he said. ‘The lads are climbing the walls. Geren’s like a caged dog.’
Slim laughed. ‘He a madman, that’s why.’
‘We’re all madmen. Have to be to do this job. Look, it’s your call, Slim, but you’d not get any argument from us.’
The Annamae set off from Newlyn a shade before two in the morning. There were no stars or moon to soften the darkness, and as she chugged through the ebony water towards the opening in the harbour wall, they could hear the sea raging like a ferocious beast in the dark. The fishing gear was stowed on deck, the heavy chains and nets tucked in beneath the overhanging gunwales, and the cupboards were stacked with supplies for two weeks. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the galley as the crew sat and nursed mugs of thick coffee. The group of men included a youngster – seventeen years old – called Lawrence Mould, or Lawrie, he said, for short. Lawrie Mould had shown up a few days before and begged Slim for a place on his next trip. He arrived on the pier that morning holding a rucksack and looking exactly like a kid on his first day of school. He hadn’t spoken a word as they’d loaded the boat with provisions, and all the crew knew about him was what Slim had told them: that the lad came from a nowhere town in the Midlands with a string of jobs he’d stuck at for no more than a day or two behind him.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ scoffed Geren, in a loud enough whisper for the boy to hear, ‘just what this trip needs, a lazy kid with no balls.’
Lawrie’s cheeks pinked up and he pulled at his sleeve, looking, worryingly, as if he might start crying.
Cam watched Geren and Davy exchange conspiratorial looks. Lawrie would have to take it. It was the way things were. Teasing deckie learners was tradition and there was no way this wet-behind-the-ears lad would escape it.
‘I’m not lazy,’ Lawrie said, unable to meet anybody’s eyes. ‘I want to work.’
‘Well, you see lad, there’s work and there’s fishing.’ Geren was unable to keep the smirk from his voice. ‘You might want to work, but I can tell already, there’s no way you’ve got what it takes to fish.’
Lawrie’s face grew pinker still.
Davy laughed and muttered ‘dickhead’ under his breath.
‘Right.’ Slim interrupted them with a sharp, teacher-like clap. ‘When we get to the fishing grounds I want you lot pulling in like crazy men. We’re looking for big hauls. The market is dead and people are desperate. We’re one of the only boats out and if we fish large we’ll rake it in.’
The men started to jest and joke, but he quietened them with a raised hand.
‘Like you know, there’s weather on the way. I’m going to do all I can to skirt it, but there’s a chance it might catch us.’
Cam noticed the knuckles on Slim’s calloused hands were white with clenching.
‘They said it could hit a force ten.’
Geren whistled through his teeth. ‘When?’
‘Two days. Thursday evening. Could be Friday.’
‘Right, so we haul from when we reach the grounds and don’t stop,’ Geren said. ‘Who needs sleep anyway, right?’ Lawrie started to speak. His lips were stretched thin and pale as milk. ‘Should we be out there?’
Geren snapped his head around and scoffed loudly. ‘We don’t need to hear from you. Shut your mouth and do what you’re told.’
Lawrie looked down at the floor and swallowed.
‘Get some sleep.’ Slim ignored both men. ‘We’ll be sixteen hours before we shoot away.’
Cam trusted him to avoid the brunt of the storms. It would be rough out there in the freezing Atlantic seas, but nothing they hadn’t coped with a hundred times before. The men headed down the hatch into the bunk room. These hours were precious, an opportunity to rest; once they got hauling there’d be little time for sleep and it was gruelling work.
An all too familiar anxiety thrummed in the pit of Cam’s stomach. Heading out to sea always gave him a sense of vulnerability and, when they lost the lights of Newlyn and were surrounded on all sides by blackness and endless water, isolation. Six men, no more than specks of dust on an ocean so powerful and unpredictable, so savage, they could be swallowed up in the blink of a mermaid’s eye. Thoughts of his father were never far from his mind. He was fourteen when his dad was lost. Memories of him were murky and undefined. However hard he concentrated, any image of him was no more than a vague shape. But he remembered how excited he used to be whilst waiting for his father to return from sea, and though he had trouble picturing his face, the smell of him was easy, thick with salt and fish, oil and old sweat. There were the stories he used to tell him as well, sitting on his lap beside the wood burner, tales of the sea he recalled word for word. His father would have loved Hannah, Cam was certain of that, and he ached when he thought about the two of them remaining strangers.
‘Try and get some shut-eye, lad,’ Cam said to Lawrie who hovered at the hatch to the bunk room. ‘You’ll need your strength.’
Lawrie reluctantly climbed down the ladder, but Cam didn’t follow. There was no point trying to sleep. His mind was buzzing. Instead he went up to find Slim in the wheelhouse.
Slim was at the wheel, mouth set, eyes hooded with grim concentration as he looked out of the window into the blackness, then down at the screen, at the green illuminated lines and flickering dots which gave him the information he needed to get where he was taking them.
‘Can you smell where the fish are at?’ Cam pulled his tobacco pouch from his back pocket.
‘Of course.’ Slim cast him a fleeting smile. ‘But I don’t think we’ll escape the weather. Like I said, I’ll try, but it’s not looking great.’
Cam rolled a cigarette and licked the edge to seal it. ‘We’ve done storms before and we’ll do them again. You’ve got your lucky knife. We’ll be fine. And, anyway,’ he said, grinning, ‘a good storm’ll sort the deckie learner out, for sure. Lad looked pretty green just now. I sent him to his bunk, but I reckon we’ve got some puking to look forward to.’
Young Lawrence Mould – as Cam predicted – started throwing up around four in the morning and didn’t stop for six solid hours. The others sat around the table in the galley clasping mugs of tea and smoking cigarettes. Each time the boy vomited into the stinking latrine behind the apology for a door, Davy and Geren sniggered. If there was one thing to sort out a cocky lad who thought fishing was an easy wage, it was a dose of seasickness. Even Cam couldn’t hold back his smile. Martin was too old to waste energy teasing kids and was seemingly oblivious to the gut-wrenching as he sat reading his paper and eating toast and jam.
Cam was thankful for the distraction, even if that distraction was the sound of Lawrie Mould heaving his guts up. He couldn’t get that prick Cardew out of his head. Images of him and Hannah sitting opposite each other – all dressed up, drinking wine, her eyes flickering in the candlelight – bombarded him. Why hadn’t she mentioned it? Was she playing around behind his back? Just thinking about that made his body rage. He thought back to their last few hours together. His lips on hers. Moving inside her. The conversation they’d had as she lay in his arms, her thigh resting on his, her fingers toying with the hair on his chest. No. It wasn’t possible. There was no way she was sleeping around. And definitely not with that dickhead. Cam would have given everything to be with her rather than stuck on a boat with a puking deckie learner and the prospect of hauling nets for the next thirty-six hours without sleep.
Another bout of violent retching interrupted Cam’s thoughts.
‘Don’t worry, Lawrie,’ Geren called through his laughter. ‘Only ten days to go!’
‘Ten days?’ came Lawrie’s plaintive moan.
Cam laughed.
‘Should have listened to your mummy when she told you to work hard at school,’ Geren shouted.
Lawrie was sick again.
‘Jesus,’ Davy said. ‘How much puke can one wanker throw up? If he was in the army we’d have beaten the crap out of him for this.’
The latrine door opened and Lawrie appeared, green as peas, wiping his hand across his mouth.
‘Ah, here he is! The seasick fisherboy!’ Geren raised his mug in a toast.
Lawrie walked hesitantly into the galley and started to sit at the table.
Geren stretched his arm out to block his way. ‘Woah! You’re not sitting anywhere near me. What if you puke on my toast?’
Perhaps it was the sickness or perhaps Lawrie was just a crazy motherfucker, but rather than nod and move away, he pushed against Geren’s arm and scowled at him. ‘I’m not going to be sick, OK?’
Martin looked up in surprise at Lawrie’s tone.
Geren blazed. He stood up, both hands on the table, and leant close to Lawrie’s face. ‘Can’t you hear properly, you twat? I said, fuck off, and when you’ve fucked off, you can fuck off some more. You little pussy.’
The atmosphere in the galley had chilled as the laughs had faded and Geren’s anger poisoned the air. Cam was about to tell Geren to take it easy, but Geren predicted it and snapped around to face him. ‘You want him sitting next to you, eh, Cam?’
Cam glanced at Lawrie, who had lost his earlier defiance, and was horrified to see tears gathered in his eyes. Cam shook his head almost imperceptibly in the hope of sending a silent plea to this lad who was no more than a child.
Don’t do it, Lawrie. For fuck’s sake don’t cry.
‘Sure, he can sit next to me.’
Cam ignored Geren who hissed through his teeth and shifted himself over, reaching for Martin’s discarded paper, pausing to wait for permission to borrow it. Martin nodded and stretched, wincing a little as he uncoiled himself. But before Lawrie had a chance to sit down, he clutched his stomach with one hand and put the other over his mouth before tearing back to the latrine. Moments later the noise of retching filled the galley.
Davy collapsed with laughter and Geren gave a derisive shake of his head. ‘Jesus, what a fucking tuss.’
‘Maybe you could give him a break for an hour,’ Cam said carefully. The tension in the galley was wearing him down; it was bad enough having to leave Hannah without having to listen to these grown men squabbling like kids.
Geren snorted and knocked back the dregs of his coffee. ‘You’re joking, right? I’m not letting a little prick like that off the hook. I mean, Jesus. He thinks he’s got what it takes to be a fisherman? My Gem would be more use than him and she’s seven months pregnant. And, anyway,’ he said, with the sullen voice of a tantruming child, ‘he came at me. You saw that look he threw me. Who the fuck does he think he is? Snotty little dickhead.’
Cam glanced at Geren. ‘I just think you could take it easy for a bit,’ he whispered softly, so Lawrie Mould wouldn’t hear.
Geren turned on him. ‘Take it easy? What the fuck are you on about? You remember being a deckie learner, Cam? Anybody take it easy with you?’
Cam sighed. ‘Look. I get it. The lad won’t make a fisherman. But he’s here now and we’ve got to live like sardines for the next two weeks and you lot ribbing him all the hours until he cries isn’t going to make that any easier.’
Geren and Cam’s eyes locked. Cam’s body stiffened and his hands instinctively balled on the table. Geren clocked the movement and a questioning look passed over his face like a cloud. ‘So you’re taking that little tuss’s side over mine?’
Cam hesitated. There was a furnace burning in Geren and he didn’t want a fight with him, not because of some kid who’d likely never step foot on a trawler again. He relaxed his shoulders and shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. Just thought you could let him quit throwing up first.’
Geren reached for the pot and topped up his mug. ‘Love has turned you soft, mate.’
Cam wondered if it had. He wouldn’t usually give a shit about Geren giving a deckie learner a hard time. He was about to smile when Geren added: ‘Or is it the sex? I bet that one’s a beast in the sack. She’s got that look about her.’
Davy smirked and flared Cam’s anger.
‘You know what, Geren?’ Cam slammed his fist down. ‘You can be a prize fucking dick sometimes.’
He pushed away from the table and stormed out of the galley and on to the deck. As the boat rocked and pitched he splayed his legs enough to brace himself and rolled a cigarette then cupped his hand against the wind to light it. As he inhaled he caught sight of Lawrie Mould sitting on his haunches against the rail of the gunwale, head bowed, hands clasped around the back of his neck.
Cam drew on his cigarette and regarded the pathetic figure of the crouched boy with disdain. He shouldn’t have told Geren to back off him. There was no place at sea for a man who couldn’t stand up for himself. Nobody had given Geren or Cam or Slim an easy ride when they started out. The ribbing was a rite of passage. Fishermen had to be brave and tough, have the mettle to survive in the harshest conditions, but they also had to get on with people, know how to fit in and work as a team. It was those same men who gave the new kids hell who taught them all they needed to know to survive the sea. If they wanted to make it as fishermen, the youngsters had to respect the experience of the crew. They had to watch, listen, and learn from them. If they didn’t, mistakes would be made, and mistakes could be fatal.
Cam finished his cigarette and threw the end over the side then walked across the deck. He pulled his tobacco out of his back pocket and held it out towards the boy. The lad was no doubt too sick to smoke it, but it was a peace offering of sorts. Lawrie glanced up and they held each other’s stare for a moment or two. The boy looked even younger out here. Did his mother have any idea what her son had let himself in for? Perhaps she didn’t care.
‘You’re here to learn, lad. You got that? Slim and Geren. Martin. Davy. Me. We know what we’re doing and we’re some of the best at sea. If you want to learn you need to start listening. Quit puking and lose the attitude. It’s not doing you any favours. You’ve got a chance to do something with your life. Don’t blow it. Understand?’
Lawrie glanced at the tobacco and reached out to take it. Cam held on. Lawrie hesitated then gave a nod and Cam released his grip.
‘Thanks,’ the boy whispered.
‘And don’t be a dickhead, OK?’