That eating business was a right bugger’s muddle and I didn’t want Martin getting weirder as he grew up so I took him out fishing to toughen him up. The boat was an inshore trawler, thirty-two feet in length, and we’d been fishing off Holehaven for a couple of generations, ten miles upriver towards Foulness or downriver in the Mucking. We were after sprats in the winter and sole in the spring, pulling up the nets on a winch made from old car axles, gutting the catch on board and selling half of it to housewives on the wharf before packing the rest off to Billingsgate.
We set off before dawn. I told Martin he would have to help with the nets, gut the fish and keep a watchful eye on the weather. I showed him how to navigate through the buoys, avoiding the sandbanks and the treacherous currents, always aware of our position and the direction of the wind. I asked him to work out our course from the charts and how to navigate by moon and star. He asked all sorts of questions: who had drawn up these charts, how depths could be measured, who placed the buoys and installed the lights?
I kept my hands on the wheel and told him stories: of my own old dad working the smacks, keeping the fish alive and storing them in wooden tanks in the estuary ready for market; of the boat facing a wall of water which I thought she could never mount; of the beauty of cockle banks and phosphorescence at night.
The boat had a fair old history. Dad had even got it to Dunkirk and, despite being attacked by the enemy from the air, he had still got men out: forty-three of them, and from the inner harbour no less.
I thought Martin would be interested in the war and how the soldiers had been saved but instead he asked if I’d ever taken his mother fishing and what she thought of it all.
He asked about her childhood on Canvey and what the island had been like when we were young. I told him how Lily had grown up on a farm and could remember when it was all fields and water, just as it must have been when the Dutch first came and reclaimed it from the sea. There wasn’t even a bridge then, just a ferry at high tide and stepping-stones at low. I said how I’d courted her, bringing her wildflowers I’d gathered from the hedgerows: penny-cress, ragged-robin and shepherd’s-purse. I even told Martin how I thought she liked George more than me.
‘Uncle George?’
‘He was a handsome man, old George, but she was too young for him and he couldn’t wait. So I knew if I had a bit of patience I could win her over in the end.’
‘Was she beautiful?’
‘Of course. Carnival Queen, she was. Streets all lined with people in Dutch costumes waving and cheering. That was the year before I joined up. Long time ago now …’
‘I wish she was here, Dad …’
‘I don’t think she’d like it very much. She never did like this boat, I’ll tell you that. I think she was scared of it.’
There wasn’t much of a wind, a light north-westerly, but it was getting colder and I was glad Martin had remembered his gloves. Normally his mother had to remind him about them. At least he was getting a bit more responsible now she’d gone.
I winched up the nets and the fish splayed down on to the deck.
‘You can sort and gut them for me, Martin. You know how to do that, don’t you?’
‘Can I have bandages?’
‘What?’
‘Some of the women have bandages on their fingers. Then if they cut themselves it doesn’t matter.’
‘But you’re not a woman, are you, son? If you don’t have bandages then you’ll learn not to cut yourself.’
Martin pulled the fish away from the netting with his gloves on but took them off for the gutting. ‘It’s freezing,’ he said.
Cirrus clouds, a cold front approaching. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken him out. He was too young, but I wanted him to see what it meant to go out and earn money for a family. I wanted him to be proud of me and love me as much as he loved his mother even though you can’t force these things.
‘Do you think you’ll ever marry again, Dad?’
‘And why do you ask?’
‘Will Uncle George ever get better?’
I could see what he was getting at. ‘I’m quite happy as I am,’ I said. ‘It’s you I should be worried about.’
‘I’m all right, Dad.’
‘You tired?’
‘No,’ he said but I knew he didn’t mean it. Then he shivered. ‘Why do you do this, Dad?’
‘If I don’t fish I get restless,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful even though I didn’t see why I had to justify myself. My old dad expected respect and he got it, but now it looked like I had to earn it.
‘I have to go out,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I don’t think I’ve got any blood. It’s all just salt water.’
‘Do you ever jump in and have a swim about?’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, Martin,’ I said.
‘Can you swim?’
‘Your nan thought public swimming pools were dangerous …’
‘Why?’
‘Polio. She thought you could catch it bad in public places. That’s why we never had any library books. Mam was frightened of the germs. Only time she took one out she put it in the oven to bake the infection away.’
‘So …’
‘No, Martin, I can’t swim. But at least I get to drown quicker …’
We turned and headed back. I pointed out the curving sea walls of Canvey and their sand-banked breaches, the open throats of the rivers and the creeks with boats waiting to cast off. The first oil tanker of the day steamed past on its way to Coryton.
We docked by the landing jetty at Holehaven and unloaded our catch into crates of ice. Some of the women were waiting with the fish merchants, their wicker baskets at the ready. I remembered helping my own dad between the wars, putting the boxes in a barrow and pushing it right across the island to the station at Benfleet. Martin used the same barrow to earn a bit of extra money taking holidaymakers’ luggage from the bus stop down to the camp at Thorney Bay – sixpence a bag, he charged.
‘If I don’t watch out you’ll soon be earning more than me,’ I said.
Once we’d tidied up the boat we went to the pub for a pint. Martin had hot Vimto and a full English to get some warmth into him. I asked him if he could imagine being a fisherman himself and taking over from me, keep his dad going in his old age.
‘Is that why you brought me?’
‘I only asked because I wanted to see what you thought you were going to do with your life.’
‘I’m going to stop water,’ he said.
‘And how are you going to do that, son?’
‘I don’t know. But I will. I’m going to stop it all.’
Just when I thought I was getting through to him he came out with a remark like that. God knows what he meant.