Flights

Razorfishing depends on the day and what’s gone before it. An Atlantic depression will bump up the High Water, way above the predicted level. Wind-driven current, from a spell of strong southerlies, will hold back the tide, preventing the ebb from going as far back as it wants to. Tides are strange things. They can be predicted up to a point but events in distant geographies exert their influence.

You need a big, spring tide – one of only a handful in the year when the ebb goes far enough back – with calm, mild weather. No rain. You’ll see the same faces at the shore. Everyone nods to a new arrival then returns to their own small area of patrol. It’s a blood sport but the red you notice, leaking into the sand, is more likely to have come from the top of your own hand, when you’ve made an eager stab.

If you do get enough razorfish, you place them in a shallow container, maybe a lasagne dish. You pour the kettle, making sure they’re all covered. They’ll open. Meanwhile you’ve the cold tap running. You rinse them. This flushes the sand out and stops them from cooking further. If you leave them in the hot water too long they’ll get tough. I’ve seen a TV chef, handsome chap, make an arse of it. Delicate things till you overdo them and then they’re about the texture of a wellington boot.

There’s a sandy gut to remove. You do this while the butter is melting in a skillet. Crushed garlic if you like it and a twist of black pepper. It’s like making omelettes. Everyone’s got to be ready to eat. You pat them dry and then just turn them in the seasoned butter. That’s it.

I say all this just so you understand that we really wanted to leave the house and get to that shore, Gabriele as much as me. If you don’t catch that hour, either side of the turn of the tide, you might as well not bother. I abandoned the dishes, unwashed in the sink, as Gabriele was hunting through the row of wellies for a pair which still fitted Anna.

The phone went. I was crashed from our kitchen into Glasgow, at the sound of my mate’s voice. I was back in touch with Kenny F. He was living in a high-rise in Maryhill, very appropriate for a scaffolder. And staying sober, a good idea in that trade. I’d bumped into Angus, in town, and he’d given me the number. I hadn’t given it long before asking the favour. Since he wasn’t a kick in the arse from the city, could he take Anna’s papers, photo and details direct to the Passport Office? The timing was tight. Delays were expected but if you got someone to go along in person…Kenny had indeed been along in person. That fucking office was Kafkaland. Something else. He’d already been an hour over his lunch break when he was given a card which said ‘Turn No. 83’. He’d tried to explain that all the papers were ready with franked photographs but the woman was harassed and told him to wait his turn. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get off the site, long enough, during the day. It might not be the best job in the world but it was a job. Only thing he could think of now was to give a few quid to a mate who wasn’t working, get him to queue.

‘I took a look, of course,’ Kenny said. ‘The photos. The wife and the kid. Isn’t your lady German? Quite tidy, by the way. I thought they were supposed to be organised, I mean with dates and stuff.’

‘Exception that proves the rule?’ I said it though I’d never understood that idea. ‘Thanks anyway, man. Thanks for trying. Hold on. Gabriele’s decision.’

She shook her head. So I asked Kenny if he could just post the whole lot to the Passport Office, registered. We’d take our chance.

What was I up to anyway, apart from international wheeling and dealing? ‘Razorfishing.’

He wished I hadn’t said that. Pity I couldn’t send him some. Put some on the plane, maybe, like they do with lobsters. Remember the raw clams off the line on Broad Bay? But it would only take a delay of an hour or two and they’d be higher than we’d ever got.

He’d just need to come up and get some. They still printed the tides in the Gazette when they remembered.

‘I’ll see if I can swing it.’

Was he coming to visit, Gabriele asked, when I put the phone down and I said, no, only promising to. He could cope with it if he kept his distance. There was no work for him here and he went crazy with boredom after a while.

Gabriele said she’d need to cancel. There was no way she could organise a passport for Anna in time. There was an international panic going on.

Anna didn’t like hanging about after we decided to get going somewhere. It took a while to get boots and hats and everything arranged but now she was kitted out and looking in despair at her mother dialling numbers. I lifted her, wellies and all, though there was a taboo on them in the living room. We went over to see what we could see, out the window. Bushes were only wavering. Nothing was bent over. Looking good, if we could get down there. Some brightness warming the equinoctial sky. It was ten minutes to Low Water but we’d have an hour the other side, if we got shifting.

Gabriele came off the phone. The girl who’d dealt with the booking was out to lunch. Someone else took a note. She didn’t have the details. Best to call back later.

We drove to the shore at Holm. These excavations struck you again, even though you knew they were there. I said how the sight was not as hard to take as the first time we saw all the earth-moving equipment getting stuck into the quiet bay. Now there was some sign of the road being restored, with huge boulders being shoved to the sides to shore it up against tides that might advance further than they’d been known to come before.

I caught Gabriele looking again at the small house, last one before the water, down a croft. It was now renovated to make a holiday home. She said she’d risk it, a few metres increase from global warming, to have that outlook.

We turned our backs on the roadworks. We saw Holm as we’d known it. From here, the airport, across Branahuie Bay, looked as sleepy as it used to. You didn’t see the new constructions.

Slight and variable wind hadn’t held the ebb back. A huge expanse of Branahuie was exposed. The piles of the fuel jetty now looked stronger than ever, driven in regularly, at set angles, out to the deeper water. A road of concrete went out on the structure to about halfway along. Soon it would carry the fuel lines.

Then Nato would at last have the ability to protect itself in the Atlantic Gap, from here to Iceland. Well, not quite. There was still the final phase, which was the most expensive. Installation of the missile stores and shelters. But for now, the runway extension was proving very useful for civilian flights. The construction of this fuel jetty was too far ahead to stop but could have its uses. The local word was that it would go right out to reach the mackerel in summer, codling in winter.

These Reds hadn’t played by the rules at all. Move and counter-move have to be kind of predictable, fair’s fair. You don’t invest all these billions into an outreach of bloody, former herringville, SY, just for the planned enemy to fall apart at its own seams. The stitching holding the Soviet empire was failing – like the pale orange lines on my Levi’s jacket.

So the Expansion of Runway, Extension of Facilities would benefit a few Bolshy Heb civilians and their visiting tourists. And the Nato fuel jetty would be about as useful as the World War Two Nissan huts, refusing to rust away. At least they’d had their day, sheltering the horseshide and fleece-clad flyers who’d ventured up in flying boats and seaplanes.

I felt a small weight hit my shoulder. Anna had gone off to sleep in the backpack. She’d be out for an hour now. She’d be safe enough in the child-seat in the car. We’d have it in sight, all the time.

A few figures were well spaced along the shallows. Some strolled gently, water to the ankles of their boots, plastic bags held behind their backs. Others trod backwards along the wet sand, looking for a spout raised by the pressure of their boots.

‘Cartier-Bresson would have a lot of fun here,’ Gabriele said. I’d seen some of the photos her father had taken. The ones she used to take, herself. I could also now see the photo that would not get taken.

The breeze was colder than it looked, from the car. We worked together and became involved. Gabriele did the backward bit. You forget how daft it is whenever there’s a spout. Everybody around is quietly doing likewise. Our mood was recovering from the tension of the phone calls. I followed her and stooped fast when there was a show in the wet sand.

I’d glance my finger on a shell and be too slow. Then I’d feel one pulse, releasing the jet of water that would send it fast, deeper into the sand than you could follow. But my finger managing to nudge it against the side of its track. Gabriele would loosen the sand around it with the long trowel, until I had a safe grip. With patience, it was ours. Pull too fast and you left the meat in the sand.

Someone near me said they were deep today. I knew this cove. He had a small trawler and was having a day off. The prawns were there but the market was quiet. ‘Not worth bothering, this week. Blame it on the Gulf.’

‘Aye, it’s some of that bloody plant up there we’d need to dig down to them, the day. JCB-assisted razorfishing.’

And the three of us glanced to the excavators, which had started again after the lunch break.

Gabriele and me looked to each other, both of us sensing the Caterpillar tracks too near our car. Digger shovels too high, up over it. We went, both of us, without saying anything. Anna was still dead to the world. But our peace of mind was gone.

I was left to the tide while Gabriele drove back with Anna. This business of the flights was worrying her anyway. She’d have to sort it out.

I knew something was up when she returned to collect me. Anna was bright again, so I sat in the back by her car seat.

‘Get on OK, then?’ I said to the front.

‘Not really. There’s a problem. No refunds. Mutti always pays for the flights but we can’t ask her for that if I don’t get to Germany. It’s a lot of money.’

By this time I should have guessed that Gabriele was in her own dilemma. It was an increased state of alert. A car on the A9 this time of year was a more dangerous way to travel, even with a war on. Fear isn’t all that rational, though – and we couldn’t say it then – how it wouldn’t have bothered us so much, somehow, if we were all going together, as a family, sharing our fate. But we’d used my leave. I had shifts to do and that was that.

It wasn’t the best time to travel but she’d felt she had to do her best to get to Bonn this time in case it was the last time she’d see her mother. A big birthday. Michel had got in touch with the aunt and the cousins. But she’d left it too late to arrange to have Anna placed on her passport. The olaid would have helped me out but Gabriele was still breastfeeding. Not an option.

So I shifted into the driving seat when we got home, though Anna wasn’t keen on letting me go away again. I left them and went down to the travel agents. These daft company clothes. I waited to speak to the right woman.

They had a special number for the Passport Office. There would be someone there, till about five. Not much time. Yes, they were through.

Not by post. A personal visit. Wait, what? Oh, that was unfortunate. Maybe the person who came had not made it clear the party was due to travel in two weeks. If someone else could come and quote this reference…

I said thanks but I’d need to make one more phone call. They nodded to the one on the desk. Kenny F was back in the flat. Early start, early finish. No overtime. Fixing some scran to make up for the missed lunch. OK, I felt guilty. Not guilty enough to stop me asking the question: had he posted the stuff?

‘No.’

‘That’s the right answer, cove.’

My long-suffering comrade agreed as absolutely the final favour to go back to Kafkaland tomorrow lunchtime and quote this reference. It would work. And re lunches, what about a side of smoked wild fish, guaranteed illegal, posted, vacuum-sealed. Forget all that crap, chemical stuff at Glasgow Airport.

‘Done.’

I felt proud. The great Lewisian network. They were shaking their heads at the travel agents’ desk but not too bothered. The booking for Gabriele and Anna held. Mission accomplished. It was like going back to the elation of three-card-brag, played blind, with Kenny and me as a team on a Friday night. Go home early, skint, or get plastered. Nothing in between.

Gabriele didn’t look so pleased with the news. I thought she was still doubting that this passport thing was going to happen in time. But it wasn’t that. Mixed feelings about the visit. She didn’t want to have to explain why she wasn’t talking German to Anna. I refrained from saying how I still didn’t understand that one myself.

A registered envelope arrived in the post, in time. So Gabriele had Anna’s daft big passport, bound in black, to put beside her own more demure green one. I drove them to the airport, glancing across to Holm, on the way. The tides were not too huge now but still significant. It was Low Water and the ebb had left our own desert right out to the piles of the Nato pier.

I waited till the propellers were turning. Casablanca moment. Anna would be getting the royal treatment. Loving it. After all the arrangements, I was ready to get my head down.

Had a bit of a tidy up first. Breakfast dishes. Quick hoover. Things turn over when you’re doing jobs like that. I thought of a prawn fisherman with his boat tied up all week, due to poor markets. The conversation. Blame it on the Gulf. No-one wanting to hang around restaurants in big hotels. There had been a scare. There was always a scare. If it wasn’t Saddam, it was the other guys.

I found my oblivion. I didn’t always manage a doss before the first night-shift but I was wrecked. At least there should be a break from teething now. For me, anyway. Not for Anna and Gabriele.

I woke up hot. I was seeing a shape cross a sky which was like sand. A desert landscape and the long razor-shell hurtling above it. Vapour trailing from an end but the detail of the shell amazingly clear. So clear that I could see the layers of growth, the swirls. As well as the rivets, holding the shell together. The rivets that were popping, the shell falling apart, quietly, as it continued at speed.