Brukie’s Sandy

April 1905—only seventy years ago. It might as well be two hundred or more. That’s how it seems when I look back now, like it was a darker century, a primitive time. But in 1905 that small village was edging closer to the bewildering world, thrust into change after centuries of none. Those old ways, all those old beliefs, stirred together with a pinch of God to keep the frown from the pastor’s face.

That boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he wasn’t like other boys, no. People called him simple. Or blessed of God. ‘A great lumpin’ gapus,’ my brothers used to say. He loved Kitta, he did. She was kind to him, gentle, and he worshipped her for it. Pretty Kitty—that’s what he called her.

But you know all this, lambsie, of course you do. I’ve told you before, aye. What I haven’t told you is what else that boy loved.

In another time, he would never have gone to sea, blessed of God or not. But when our men and boys started signing on to the herring, well, beggars could not be choosers and Brukie’s Sandy became a fisher boy for the few boats still going out. In the spring of that year, Granda Jeemsie couldn’t manage the Lily Maud alone. He had Brukie’s Sandy and Gammy Jock as crew, one feeble and the other lame. Sailor Finney, too, for all the good that old one would have been. With his ‘catamaracks’, so he called them, he was every bit as dweeble-eyed as Mackie’s Peter ever was. And Jeemsie, well, he was not so spry himself.

That boy, Brukie’s Sandy, he was a one for plucking the world from the sea. Driftwood, rope, slimy knots of net and weed, bonxie feathers, odd leather slippers, bits of wool, salt sacks, mittens, wax paper, eggshells, Dutchmen’s caps, syrup tins, skeleton fish, the beaks and broken wings of gulls. Once, he scooped from the swell a hank of long yellow hair with the skin still upon it. Gave them gooseflesh, it did, those hard, tough fishermen, but the boy stashed it away in his bundle like it was worth something.

And once, Jeemsie had to stop him from pulling aboard a half firkin of sodden grain wriggling with rats. ‘Ye gaakie lad!’ the old man cried. ‘What have I told ye about the long-tailed fellers on the Lily Maud!’ The kick of Jeemsie’s seaboot busted up the rotting staves and flung the lot into the foam. And that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he hung his sorry head, for he knew as well as any there were things a fisherman should never even say, let alone bring aboard a boat. But still he kept his eyes on the sea, for what it would toss up next.

So there was none surprised at how it happened. Aye, none at all.

This day in April, the day I remember, that everyone in Roanhaven would carry for all of their memory, it was dark as winter sky. The sea was eerie slow in its swell, as though gathering for something big but taking its time about it, aye. With Gammy Jock ailing in his bed, Jeemsie had put to sea the night before with a man short. Maybe he thought twice about going, but more likely he didn’t. He lived for the times on the Lily, Granda did, to be turning a seaman’s back on those left behind in Tiller Street.

They’d woken before the late dawn, worked the lines by lantern light, and when the lines were cast again the boy sat at the stern of the Lily, watching the sea, watching and waiting.

It was Sailor Finney who told Ma what happened. They didn’t know a girl of fourteen was listening at the door.

He was a one, that Brukie’s Sandy, a one with the grapplie hook, but this day the prize was just beyond his reach. Prize it was, too, the kind he always knew would come some day, if he was patient, if he kept both eyes on the sea.

A bottle.

And he saw, through the corked amber glass, that there was something inside it. A spiral of paper, a message from the sea. Imagine what faraway place it might have drifted from, what stories it might tell. Imagine!

So that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he leaned out over the stern of the Lily Maud, leaned out with the hook in his reaching hands.

Did I tell you, lambsie, that they never learned to swim, those men, those boys, of the north? It wasn’t just the promise of a slow and painful taking until your heart stopped, your blood turned white, if you fell overboard. There were things more terrifying than freezing, aye. Better to drown, it was, a fast decent droonin’, than to fight the will of the Witch when she had you in her grasp.

Made hardly a splash at all, that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, when he lost his balance, reaching with the grapplie hook for a message from the sea. He toppled from the stern of the Lily Maud in his gansey layers, his long oilie, his great hulking seaboots.

As he fell, a rope from the stern. Snagging an arm.

A lifeline.

It held him there, held him for a time, struggling and kicking against the dragging weight of his boots. His face just clearing the waves. Gasping and gaping, he was, and swallowing the sea.

The sea, the sea, the Witch who must be appeased. For all that the world was changing, wrenching Roanhaven from its own little world, still the old ways held with those well stricken in years. And so it was that Jeemsie Neish, my granda, like those who came before him, believed it unnatural, believed it wrong, to get between the sea and the drowning. Because the sea must have its prey. Because, if cheated, it would take another in its place. Because anyone who interfered would be cursed and bring ruin on all. Aye, this was the order of things. So when that boy cried out and Sailor Finney went soft and grabbed the second grapplie hook to save him, Jeemsie Neish yanked it from the old man’s hands and flung it away. ‘The sea must have her nummer!’ he roared at the old gaak, who knew as well as any, who knew better.

And then Jeemsie Neish stood at the stern of the Lily Maud. He stood by and did nothing.

That boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he took his time drowning, as is the way of the young and the strong. He held on, held on. Until the freeze in his fingers. Until the weight of the sodden gansey and oilie. Until the drag of his boots. Until the sea in his lungs. He just held on, crying for the Lord to save him.

And Jeemsie Neish stood by and watched that boy drown.

~

‘Accidental death at sea.’ That’s what the newspaper over in Gadlehead said, and no-one in Roanhaven would say otherwise. They may have listened to whispers, the madman rantings of Sailor Finney. They may have suspected, they may have guessed. But never would they have spoken of it outside the village.

Didn’t mean they condoned what Granda did, no. There wasn’t one among them would have said that. And none could wipe the horror from their eyes when they looked on Jeemsie Neish, when they looked on any of us, his family. It was 1905, for the love of God, and they did not think themselves barbarians, did they? But they turned their backs on it, aye, they would not face what had been let to pass. It was knitted into the pattern of who they were, see, as much as it was into Jeemsie. To come right out and confront him, condemn him—well, that would be to condemn their old ones, all they themselves had come from.

It has taken a lifetime for me to see that the more afraid people are of the darkness, the further into it they will flee.

I don’t know whether that boy could ever have been saved. Two old men and a grapplie hook? No match for the icy North Sea. For the Witch. Mostly likely they would have been pulled in to be drowned themselves. But I’ll tell you this: I made a promise to myself that night I heard Ma crying for Brukie’s Sandy. I swore that if ever God put chance in my way, I would make up for the wrong Granda Jeemsie had done. I would never turn from saving another to save myself. I would not stand by and do nothing.

~

There it is, lambsie, there it is. The past in all its shame. Writing has been a heavy, wearying thing. I think it may be true you will not thank me. And maybe I will change my mind, after all, and tear the pages from this book, spare you the terrible burden of knowing your family’s shame.

But something has gnawed at me for the longest time to make this record of what happened. Maybe to honour that boy who sang silly songs and lolloped over the sands with my little dog, who showed me and Kitta his precious bundle from the sea. Who loved my sister. Aye, maybe that. And maybe because it’s only now, now that I have grown old like Jeemsie himself was old, with eyes no longer black nor white, that I can imagine another view of it, a view from Granda’s eyes. Could it be he believed himself to be doing the right thing? The only thing? The thing to protect the Lily, the family, the village, not just his wretched self, from the Witch and her curse? Was it torment to stand there, doing nothing? Did it haunt him the rest of his days? Could such a thing be true of Granda Jeemsie?

I don’t know, lambsie. I just don’t know.

And maybe I have needed to write of this to make my own peace with that shift in the world when everything changed. I look at the pattern of my life, lambsie, with its yarns of many colours—the blue stripes of my mother’s apron, the blue of the sea that took me from that place, the other blue of your granda’s eyes, the glittering greys of a herring’s back, the purple silk that loops around my Kitta, the random greens, pinks, golds that gather Clementina and Stivvy, Steven and your mother, too, into the story. The snaking silver thread that stitches it all together and joins me to you, my beautiful granddaughter. It comes from what happened on the Lily Maud, that shift in the world.

As I sit here with your mountain postcard propped up against all these bottles of pills, hoping I will see you again, it comforts me a little to think of all I have written in these books, the life that I have made from the life given to me. And to see that from the greatest shame have come these things, the greatest joys.