Emcee

I always got on OK with Emcee. Marek Cybulski, to give the cove his full name. He was in the class above us at school but he repeated French and History so I got a yarn with him, now and again. His olman was in the Air Force and met a blone from Lewis. His number was up.

When other guys were trying to lose their cherry and I was looking for a pattern to this world, Emcee took me down the bottom of Kenneth Street. I mean all the way down, just before it joins Scotland Street and slides its way downhill, to Bayhead. You passed the copshop, next door to the Lodge, on your right, and then went up a wee close behind the priest’s house. There was a painted wooden building.

You won’t see it now. It burned down – no foul play suspected – and they built a proper church, with laminated timber beams and all that. There’s some interesting church architecture on Lewis but most of it’s out of town. Like the place on the Peninsula. Amazing modernist building in the middle of peat banks and bungalows. They say one of the elders had a cousin in the States who was an architect and wanted to do something for the old community. The plans might have come buckshee but it put the breakaway group on the map, all right. All these splits in the church have been good for the Island building industry. Unless these guys are doing it buckshee, too. In return for a pass through the pearly gates. I don’t think so.

The long, wooden hut, now replaced, was the official Catholic church. I’d been there once, with another mate, but that was just to a discussion evening. I went to a mass with Marek. It was a bit fancy for me but they were all friendly enough, after all the ritual. Can’t be any more strange than what happens up the road. On the square. Honest, I’ve never been in any further than the bar. I only know what that guy Pierre told me, in War and Peace. I got asked along a couple of times, but that was much later, when I became a proper Coastguard. I don’t think you qualified, being an auxiliary out on the cliffs or in the boat team.

The thing was, I got asked back home for scoff. It was amazing. Marek’s olman was doing the cooking. That’s a thing you never saw, on Lewis, unless you were on a fishing boat. I still remember the Sunday dinner. Wee bits of dark rye bread with dried salami, strings still attached. Then there was pork. The crackling was cracking and there was something sweet and something spicy there. There was cabbage, still crisp, with fennel seeds through it. Baked onions, stuffed with cloves.

I wanted to ask about wine becoming blood. I wanted to ask about the aircraft stationed on the Island during the war. But Marek’s olman looked to his smiling wife and talked about the foxtrots they used to do, to the brass band.

A few years went by and I was on the bones of the bachoochie, not long out of Uni. I bumped into Emcee and he said, ‘Hi Caulay, what’s fresh?’ He told me they could do with a KP in the Crown. I was up for it, as long as they’d let me off whenever there was a shout for the coast-rescue team. He was the main man on the pans and I was washing them. It’s true what they say. He used every flicking one of them, every time, lunch or dinner.

I was in the Crown for about a year. All the seasons. Summer was shit, watching other guys chug by, out to the fishing. March was good, out of the wind that came from the Baltic. I felt good, putting your cold hands into water that was as hot as you could bear. Then there was the grub. Most of it was pretty plain stuff, roasts and stews and fries but Marek would do a special now and again. Word was getting around, it was the thing to go for, but if there was any of it left, that’s what I always went for, when we took the staff lunch, job done.

This day, he put me on the spot. The sous-chef didn’t turn up so I was giving a hand, stirring sauces and stuff. Then it came to our own grub and Marek says, ‘Surprise me, Westview boy.’ Flick’s sakes, the same cove would be doing potato pancakes baked crisp with artichokes in a white sauce and all that.

‘See what’s left in the box,’ he said. That was the mixed box of fish, sent over from the other end of the hoil. That time most of the hotels just bought boxes of frozen prawns and boxes of fillets, ready to deep-fry. Marek was up on the game. He was doing brill and megrim and serving up fish that looked like fish.

I was in luck. A few red gurnard pouted at me, spiny amongst the slimy stuff. The heads of monks, with their angling tackle and their wicked teeth. Marek would have kept them for the stock of his seafood soup. But he wasn’t getting these guys intact.

‘All right, you’re on, but nothing fancy. Dangler’s style.’

The new fibreglass sea angling club boat had a Calor Gas cooker with two burners and a grill for toast. Sometimes we knocked a mackerel or two on the head and threw them to the frying pan.

There was always a great wee knife handy. I put a new edge to it and attacked the heads. The cheeks take a bit of prodding out but soon I had enough. Gurnard are amazing looking things, armour plated, but I knew how to hold them so the spines in the back of the gills didn’t catch you when you were watching for the ones on the dorsal. The blade found the backbones and followed them till it whistled out at the tails. ‘Never mind that salad oil shit,’ I heard myself saying. I just wanted light oil without any taste in itself. There was parsley, dill and chives, from Marek’s window-boxes, out the back. I had these all finely chopped in the lemon butter.

You want to just sear the naked side then turn it to let the skin side fry itself till it’s just about crisp but you can still see the red. Turn it to serve that way up. Meanwhile you’ve turned the monks’ cheeks for a minute, in the oil. Let the herb butter trickle over them but aside from the red gurnard. That’s the dish, simple as that. It got me the sous-chef job.

The pace was good when we got going and I learned a lot. Scariest day was when I made the borscht for our lunch. I’d made it when I was at Uni because it fed a few folk for a few bob and it looked good in the bowl. Marek tuned it up for me. You’ve to sauté the grated beetroot and waxy tatties long enough and slow enough. And like everything else, the stock’s the secret. And that wee bit of lemon to cut the sweetness of the veg.

I went back with Marek a couple of times to catch his olman’s yarn. The food was something else and once I did taste the borscht he’d been brought up on. That made me realise I was only half a cook and I’d never be able to put the hours in to get really good. See the intensity of that shade of broth and the surprise of its flavours on your tongue. But I never did ask the question I was thinking. I couldn’t find the words to ask either Marek or the ex-airman if they really did believe that the wine became actual blood.