There wasn’t a lot to sort out. He’d kept the shed going. It wasn’t the same one he was in, before we left the Island. It might have been a second cousin of it, as the saying goes. Second generation corrugated iron which of course is zinc-coated mild steel and likely to rust faster than the old bit you’re improving by laying the new sheet on top of it. So the main result of the repairs is art. Oxygen reacts with exposed metal but fails to eat into areas which still cling to their coating. I was looking at random etching. Varied resistance to weather. Colour and texture altering within each individual shed. When you stepped back to try to take in the whole park of sheds, with a few contrasting timber ones, islands in the waves of metal, you were swimming in lush imagery, SY style. Greening bitumen. Burnt-orange oxide. A bakers’ dozen shades of chocolate.
The number eleven was stencilled on a door which might have been Lifeboat blue, one time. I now know the cause of the heightened vision, heightened everything. Eat your hearts out, users of mescaline and pimpled mushrooms, the proximity of death is the thing that really alters perception.
The olman had jumped at the first chance to buy one of these sheds though we no longer lived round the corner. Hattersley looms were easier to find and cheaper to buy. A slump in the tweeds was looking permanent and looms weren’t far off ten a penny. I don’t know if he’d become more reclusive or if it was just that I was away at Uni for a good chunk of the year so I didn’t see it happen. It looked like he’d been hankering back to a community of sheds. This one had been thrown up by rows of houses. It wasn’t far from the site of the old one where me and Kenny F used to fill the bobbins.
The tiny key turned easily in the greased padlock. I’d kind of hoped it would jam and break and I could make a decent excuse to my mother. But I was in. OK, there were cobwebs but the light was now bursting through the small panes onto the loom. His tweed was a beauty. This one looked quiet and fine enough till you came nearer. The harmonic threads had some startling colours amongst them. I’d need some help to get the olman’s last cloth off his loom intact. Couldn’t trust myself to that.
My eye went to a curved wooden tray on a deal table. I know it’s called a scumaig but I don’t know an English word for it. There was a coil of cotton line resting in it. The hooks had gone brittle. Snoods were strange stuff, maybe horsehair. There was a round tobacco tin on the scrubbed wood top. You had to use a coin to lever it open. A military badge on a pad of soft cloth. A strong red on black. I knew it was a tank regiment.
I was sure I could smell the gravy. His stories always came after Sunday dinner. He’d made the big mistake of volunteering. In his own house. His best efforts at making Yorkshire pudding collapsed before the olaid’s hardest glance. He’d made it worse by saying he was a bit lost with the electric oven, really needed a petrol fire. ‘Weel you can light one oot the back next week,’ she’d said.
The ledger in the drawer didn’t have many figures in it. It was careful but brief. And then there were grids and letters, like a code. I was back in Enidbloodyblytonland, as he called it, till I realised it was his pattern book. All these single letters would amount to cloth. And now I noticed a few patches, samples, tacked to a board.
I turned over a few pages of the tall, lined book. Plain, black, board covers, without any tables of weights and measures. This was something different. Letters joined to others, arranged to make a complete design. I recognised the rhythms and listened to his voice. It came from a sloping handwriting that you somehow knew.
The Parker 61 was there too, in its box. The box of navy Quink. I remember the olaid showing me what she’d got him for Christmas. She knew it was the right thing.
This was my father’s testament. I read it first, standing up. I’ve typed it out for you.
I grew up by Loch Griomsiadair. It’s better in Gaelic because the English says Grimshader and for me it was never a grim place. It is the first sea-loch as you proceed south from Stornoway, on the east side of Lewis. There is excellent shelter to be had, up through the narrows into Loch Beag, a sheltered Tob. But first you have to be sure and leave Sgeir Linish, on the north side of the mouth, to starboard and watch for Sgeir a Chaolais. That is a reef which covers at about three-quarters flood tide but there is navigable water, to be found, on either side.
This is the approach from seaward, of course. You will probably be driving, over the cattle grid, up the other side of the hill. From there, the village looks across to Ranais. You must turn the corner before you can look out to the open Minch at the road end.
We were never far from boats. We were brought out and the marks were pointed out to us and named, from the beginning. After a few trips they were with you forever. On that northern side, between the two dangers I mentioned earlier, there is a conspicuous rock. It is known as The Sail and that is exactly what it looks like, even from a distance out, in good visibility. It is not like the tan sail of a working boat but a new sail as delivered before treatment, or one for a yacht: white with a hint of yellow and green in it. Perhaps the colour is derived from the lichens growing on it but when you sight that rock from the sea, there appears to be a tint in the white.
If you hold that mark open on Gob A Chuilg, the headland on the south side of the mouth of Loch Griomsiadair, you have a back bearing, also known as a stern transit. This will take you out as far as The Carranoch – a pinnacle where the fish take shelter. When I was a boy we never had to come further than the mouth of the loch to catch all the haddock, whiting, codling and gurnard, the whole village could eat. Going to The Carranoch was more of an adventure, seeking larger fish and other species. Cod, ling, large mature coalfish and, if you anchored, conger eels.
It was a matter of honour to know which was a haddock and which a whiting before they surfaced. The haddock thumped at the mussel and thumped again on the line and if you had two, one on each hook at each end of the wire dorgh, you had quite a pull. The whiting mouthed at the bait and you sometimes thought you’d lost it. Then you’d feel the weight of it again and it would come swirling up.
The men went out late for herring but I was too young to be considered for that – they were not back till the early morning. One night, though, I joined the old boys.
All the able-bodied men, my father amongst them, were away fighting a war we now know had little to do with them or us: ‘The Imperialists’ War’ or ‘The Industrialists’ War’. My own father, like so many from our Island, had been in the Naval Reserve – that was money coming into the house after all, so he’d been called up right away. I can only remember a fearsome moustache, the smell of pipe tobacco and a laugh that had the momentum of a following sea. He was always making jokes. He was probably making jokes aboard whichever warship or auxiliary he was serving on. But the herring did not know that he was away, along with most of the able men. The word was that the shoals were coming in from the Minch, to the entrance of our sea-loch, the same as usual, late summer.
You could tell something was brewing from the amount of smoke going up into the air, down at the narrows. The village boat was being tarred but I heard my mother say there was as much smoke coming from the bogey-roll as the tar barrel. The older men had got together over the boat and I don’t think there was one of them under sixty years of age, though I’ve heard some say that none were under seventy: the boat of the old men. To me, then, anyone over fifteen years of age was old.
My mother could be quite a hard woman at times but a delegation came up to seek official permission.
The spokesman took a step forward.
‘We are a man short for the boat,’ he said. ‘Your boy is strong for his age. He has a keen eye on him. We will look after him well but it might be a late night. We could do with him, on the tiller.’
‘And what are you going to take the herring with?’ my mother asked.
‘Well, the boy said his father’s nets were…’
‘Yes, I’m sure he did. But have you had a look at them yet?’
So they filed out after my mother to the barn. The nets had been put away properly but unless they are treated with preservative, they fall rotten. When you treated the nets, you treated the sail and cordage.
‘Well, I cannot see how you think you will keep a herring in those.’ Her scrubbed hand went through the black cotton.
The bodaich Ghriomsiadair were crestfallen but she took pity on them. My mother led them back through the house. She reached behind the wally dugs on the mantel shelf. (Some peddlar must have made his fortune because there is a pair like that in every other house in the island.) She brought a couple of small packets out. The old boys were looking at each other. They did not know what to make of this.
My mother took out some very small new hooks, ones with a glint to them.
‘In the Shetlands,’ she said, ‘they take herring on these. At Baltasound, at the gutting and packing, I saw them rig lines like that. A dandy, they called it. My husband was going to try them.’
Then my mother sent me for a dorgh – that is a bent wire a bit like a coat hanger with lead fixed at the centre. It keeps the two hooks separate so they cannot get into a fankle. She fixed these fine hooks to light gut, more like stuff you would use for trout, making a rig with three of them suspended on each side.
‘Yes, we saw them going out in these narrow boats, with tackle like that,’ she told the old men. ‘If you all make up a line like this one, you might take herring if there are herring to be caught. You need not bother starting in full light and you can stop right away when it falls dark.’
Well, to be told how to fish by a woman was something but a woman from another village instructing them in a technique from another group of Islands – that was something else, again. And when that other village was on the West side (my mother was a Siarach) and that other group of islands was Shetland – the home of pagan Vikings – that was pretty close to the limit. I was desperate in case the whole expedition was cancelled there and then but our village needed that fishing.
So we set out. The boat was sound enough and she took in very little water. She had been hauled up and tied down where the spring tides could reach her and keep her timbers from drying out too much. The first thing was to clear the narrows, going out into the calm loch under the sweeps. I had to take a wee go at the pipe. I cannot say I enjoyed it much. Then I got my lesson.
That was my place, at the tiller but I had to look to catch the eye of one man – I suppose you could say he was the skipper though we never called him that.
This was my lesson. First, if I was worried about anything I just had to catch his eye and he would keep me right.
‘Aye.’
‘Second, this is the starboard side. That is the port. You will need to give her starboard helm to go port, port helm for starboard. Do you have that?’
‘I do.’
They tested me when we were still under oars. I had the hang of it.
Did I know Sgeir a Chaolais? I nodded. Sgeir Linish? I nodded again. Well, when we were under sail we had to give these an even wider berth, in case our way through the water was not as direct as we thought it was. But there was a good keel under this boat. I would learn to trust it. Did I know the transit on The Sail?
‘The what?’
‘How to line up the marks.’
‘The Sail on the point.’
‘Well, that should do you for now.’
Then I got the nod to put her nose into the wind. Where was it coming from? ‘Southerly.’
‘Aye, now just you hold her there,’ I was told, ‘and the boys will soon have the lugsail up.’
They had done that before, I could see. It was still pretty smooth. I was so involved in watching how one was fastening something while another was hauling, that I lost the eye of the man guiding me and was slow to take her off the wind. But we found momentum again all right and I got a look, as much as to say they wouldn’t hold that one against me.
The old boat really got going then. I was amazed at the way we made under sail. I was to take her as close to the wind as I could without losing power. I was guided into steering her upwind till there was a small shake at the front edge of the sail. Then the skipper on the sheet took in the slack and when I eased her off the wind we heeled a bit. The breeze was on our starboard side, so the sail was out the other way. Nobody said anything but these boys were easing their weight on to the windward gunnel as neat as dancers.
The sheet was never tied. If that was released, the strain would come off. And the halyard too, the rope that held the sail high on its bending spar, just a few turns. No knots, so it could be let go in a hurry. The friction would be sufficient to hold it.
We were now further out to sea than I had ever been before. Someone asked, were we making for Sutherland, but one old fellow knew exactly where we were going. To the herring. He talked me through tacking the boat. I had just to take her all the way through the wind, quite smart but nothing sudden. The sail would be dipped round to the other side of the mast and the sheet shifted from one hole in the top plank, across to its opposite number.
I could tell they were happy with the manoeuvre, pleased with themselves for not losing their touch. The whole boat was smiling. And we were fair shifting, beating into it, with the wind on our port side, now. The sea hadn’t built up yet. Our course was taking us closer to the land again but further down the east coast of Lewis.
How that man knew they were under our keel, I could not even guess. It might have been his sense of smell, sight, taste or sound – or all of them. Perhaps he just knew where they usually shoaled at that time of year. I had seen the porpoises in the loch but these were dolphins around us, leaping like salmon. Maybe it was their excitement that provided the sign.
These old boys and myself, we all sent the dorgh over, I could not say with how much faith. The light was just starting to fade. It was a strange feeling. You know when you take a mackerel, the line goes everywhere. A spray comes off the line. Well the herring are not at all like that. They rise to feed on the plankton and must go for the glint on these bare hooks, mouthing softer than whiting. You feel only a shimmer.
The old boys were wondering if there was fish there or not. They were hauling at speed and shaking them off. It was maybe just my curiosity at work but I was pulling very gently, hand over hand and there they were: five herring for six hooks. Then everyone was into them.
You think you have already seen a herring. If that fish has come from a trawl, you have not really seen a herring yet. If you have seen one that fell from a drift-net, you have come close to what I witnessed that night. You might think they are silver but that night I could see purple, brown, grey and other colours on the broad scales of the sgadan as they fell into our black boat. I do not know names for these colours, in Gaelic or English.
One thing was sure, the Minch was thick with fish. We had to ditch some of our ballast of round boulders, over the side. We cast out more, as the weight of fish amassed. We only knew the light had gone when the fish stopped taking.
There was more than the whole village could eat. It was later in the year you wanted them for salting. The old boys knew there would be a hell of a price in Stornoway, with the wartime shortage. What about the boy? Someone said what they were all thinking. But I said I’d be fine. It was a fair night.
We were drunk with it, including myself, left on the tiller as Bhalaich Ghriomsiadair set course for harbour. The Stornoway fleet were a long way off. The word was, they were working out off The Butt, these nights. We would be the first to land.
I was told that you did not run with the wind up your backside. You kept it on your quarter so the sail could not back. Even so, the boys put one reef in the sail, showing me the seaman’s way with the slipknot. So nothing would jam. Where is she coming from now? And I could tell the wind had backed a touch to the east. Not good for fishing but we had all the catch we could carry and a fair breeze to take us to the Market.
We were creaming in, on the surf out from the beacon off Arnish light. I could feel real weight in the tiller now and I had to lean against it to keep her steady. I can still hear the voice of the man who was directing us.
‘Here is a trick for you. Harden her up a bit as you hear one coming. That’s it. Now relax your grip completely when the wave has a hold of us and we will just ride with it. Tighten up again, ready for the next one.’
He had a wee word for us all before we took her in, alongside. There would be none of this dropping the sail and dragging her in on the sweeps. The village boys would take her in under sail.
I only had to keep watching for that eye and we would be fine. So she turned into the wind for the few souls on the pier to see us arrive, first at the market, our larch kissing the greenheart. The iron traveller slid down the mast. It was gliding on the linseed oil we’d been rubbing in, only a day before.
We landed these fish and they sold themselves. There was blood in their gills and pearls in their scales. Wads of money started appearing. The share-out would come later. We had to take a dram, only the one, from a clay piggy that was not supposed to be for sale. The boy, that was me, could take a sip. ‘Hold it down now,’ they said. ‘Don’t you go looking green about your own gills.’
Now the way they said it, afterwards, was this: you learn a thing and you think that is that. But it is not. You think you know a thing but you have to find it out again. Then when you grow old, surely you have made all your mistakes and that is finally that.
But all these men were boys like me. The signs were there for anyone to see. The sixty and seventy-foot Zulus and Fifies were coming in when we were going out. The big fishing ships were well reefed-down and that is a sight you did not see often, when they were racing to land their catch. A big tide was still ebbing so you got a confused sea, just off the beacon.
‘The ebb is good for us,’ they said. ‘The wind is well in the east now so we will have no need to beat against it so hard on the way home. It will not take us long. We will grab the chance before she veers back to the south.’
We were still making good way with two reefs in but the motion was not good, banging right on our beam. Then I could sense another shift but she wasn’t veering, she was backing further. Even a bit of north in her.
It was then our skipper put his hand over my own. He nodded back towards Holm Point and I could see dark low clouds. We all knew there would be a blast in these but we were not going to try to fight it. It was too late to turn back to harbour. We were well out the door now. I was to hold my course and they would drop the sail altogether.
Nothing was being rushed but the whole rig came down as gently as before. A blast of hail hit us with the wind: the edge of the front. You will often get that with the anvil clouds.
‘There will be more to come, a bhalaich,’ said himself. ‘But we can take it, with your help. We are in a real seaboat here. This is what they use in the Pentland Firth and they have worse conditions there than anything we might meet tonight.’
Even so, the smallest scrap of cloth we could show was too much for what was happening on the Minch. So we had just to run, on the bare pole, as they said: steering as before. There was still no hope of coming through the wind to fight back to Stornoway. They left me on the tiller.
I do not know if it was because my muscles were young and they needed me there or if they were keeping me occupied so I would not be too scared. If these old boys were scared, they did not show it. There was a lot less spoken but it was still all calm in the boat itself. And I still had to catch the eye of himself, with the rest of them slumped all around the boat, snatching some rest.
My arms were heavy but you found a way of wrapping yourself around the tiller so you were a part of it. The veins were up in my own arm, like the grain of the wood. The cold was something that bit at you. Hail is more fierce in the late summer because you are not prepared for it. The spray that just comes over the tops of the waves is very nearly a pure white. The old boys warned me not to bother looking back. There was no use in seeing these big green ones coming from a distance. I would hear and feel them soon enough. I knew what to do now.
We were surfing on but that old stick of a mast was our sail.
‘We’ve nothing to worry about,’ the old boys said. ‘We have the whole Minch to play with.’
So we were just responding with the tiller while we still had way, when you felt the surge. He said I was doing just fine.
You have to be slower or faster than the wave to keep steerage. If the speeds are equal you have no power in the helm. It was that night I learned that the same transit that takes you out away from home, will take you back in again, if you can find it.
When the squalls were down a bit, I got the message to scan that skyline, coming towards us, up out of the dark.
‘Can I borrow your eyes, now?’ himself asked. We had run past our entrance. They reckoned we were well out abeam Loch Erisort. Better that way, further off the land. But I had it, The Sail and then the Gob. None of them could make out the marks but they trusted my younger eyes and sent the smallest, reefed-down sail up the traveller.
That took us in. There is a huge relief in recognising what you already know: a course well clear of the reefs, nothing fancy, and we were at the narrows. Bhalaich Ghriomsiadair had been sighted. Some figures were running along the skyline. Then, with the old boys awake and drawing on their last reserve, we rowed to the muddy shingle. The whole village was out to meet us.
My own sense of relief was over when I saw my mother to the fore but a hand went on my shoulder. Now they had trusted me and it was my turn to trust them. This was something they could do for me.
The man whose eye had taken us through everything, waded ashore first. If he was exhausted, he did not show it. He went directly to my mother and had a quiet word. I could not tell you now what was said. When I came ashore I had first to do as the youngest aboard always did – turn his back as the fry of herring that had been held back from sale was shared into piles. There were five shares, to include the one for the boat. My job was to call out the names, while my back was turned.
‘Who is having this one?’
‘Murchadh.’
‘This one?’
‘Iain Mhor.’
‘And this?’
‘Aonghas Dubh.’
‘And this one?’
‘That must be my own, if I’m getting one.’
‘Oh you’re getting one all right,’ Murchadh said.
‘Well, the last one must be for the boat,’ I said.
Then we did the same with the folding money. That was also counted into five equal shares.
Mine was a full share. But the fifth wasn’t given to the owner of the boat. No-one could say who owned it anyway and the only expenses were a bucket of tar, some peats to melt that and a brush or two. No, but the fifth share was given in full to my mother: the herring-girl who had seen how it was done in the Shetlands. My own mother remembered it all, for the boat of the old men.