Tom took a long pull at the scalding hot tea, burning his tongue in the process. But a miner’s lass . . . What did a landlubber know about gutting and sorting fish, mending the nets, smoking and wind-drying the fish, and a hundred other things besides? He didn’t know a fisher lass who didn’t have red swollen hands and skin as brown as a nut. They were born old. And there was Marge - white porcelain skin, hair as fair and fine as thistledown and blue eyes so light they seemed to reflect any colour she was looking at. But he loved her, and she loved him, enough to want to be with him as his wife and take on a new life that would be hell on earth at first. He’d warned her, aye, he had that to his credit at least. He hadn’t dressed it up at all.
He would have to tell his da properly, this couldn’t go on any longer. Six months he’d been seeing Marge on the sly, and the first time he had mentioned her to his da had been a week or so ago and then only in passing, while her parents didn’t even know he existed. But after what had happened that time they’d been sheltering in a cave when a sudden squall had threatened to soak them through, he had discovered he couldn’t trust himself alone with Marge. He had made sure they always stayed in the town after that afternoon, heaven though it had been. It was dangerous to be around other folk, there was always the chance someone might see them and go blabbing to her father, but once he had told his da he was going to marry Marge, he would go and see her parents. He’d had a bellyful of this skulking around.
‘. . . eh, Tom?’
‘What?’ Tom came back to the present with a start, glancing at his father who had obviously been speaking to him.
‘What’s the matter with you, lad? You’d better wake up afore we get on the boat else you’ll do neither of us no good. I was just sayin’ to the lass here that we’ll need a nice bit of coke an’ wood for the smoke house when we’re back, God willin’. The last couple of trips haven’t given us much, we’re due a good ’un.’
‘I’ll go up into the woods an’ get some oak twigs an’ such an’ all, Da. They give such a nice taste, don’t they?’ Daisy, after one quick glance at her brother, filled in the awkward pause after her father had finished speaking. What was the matter with their Tom? He hadn’t been himself lately. He had never been what you’d call a talker - not like Alf who was a born comedian - but he’d normally sit and chat with her da in the morning and last thing at night. Lately it had been all you could do to get a word out of him.
‘Aye, you do that, lass. Makes all the difference, a bit of oak.’ George’s smoke house - a narrow wooden single-storey construction situated outside next to the privy - was his pride and joy. He had built it himself when he’d got married, using bricks for the floor from a derelict cottage he’d found one day on the way to Boldon. The tiled roof with its smokeholes had come from the same source, and with its rows of wooden rods on which fish were hung to cure it was a neat little enterprise, as was the wooden frame outside on which the fishing nets were hung to dry.
The men ate their food quickly; Daisy was only halfway through her bowl of porridge when they left the cottage. She knew better than to wish them well or look out of the window at the boats leaving, but by six o’clock the beach was devoid of any apart from one which had been too badly damaged in the recent storms to go out, and on which two fishermen of about Tom’s age were already working. No fishing meant no money, and both men had young families to feed.
They paused in their work on the coble as Daisy walked past on her way to collect the milk and rabbits from the farmer’s boy. Every morning he walked the donkey as far as the first cottage in the village and there he stood, whatever the weather, from half-past six until whenever the last of the milk had been sold.
‘How’s yer granny this mornin’, lass? The wife heard she was middlin’,’ one of the men called over the rising wind.
‘A bit better.’ Daisy smiled back at their grinning faces. She liked these two and had danced at their weddings with the other bairns a few years before. Now she put her concern to them as she said, ‘The wind’s gettin’ worse, isn’t it? An’ it’s straight from the north, an’ the sea’s got choppier since the boats left. Do you think there’s goin’ to be another storm? I thought things would get better now it’s a bit milder.’
‘Aw, don’t you fret, lass.’ The man who had spoken before gestured at his boat. ‘Old Neptune did enough damage last trip to keep him happy for a time. Fair ripped the guts out of her, he did.’
Daisy nodded. It was meant to be comforting, she knew that, but looking at their boat was just the opposite. The coble was the type of vessel all the villagers used - flat-bottomed for stability, shaped to be launched direct from the beach with the tarpaulin stretched like a tent across the bow and a long tiller handle the size of an elephant’s trunk. The tillers were made of strong oak but this one had been snapped right off, and there was plenty of other damage too. And if she wasn’t much mistaken it looked as though the storm clouds were gathering more thickly with every minute that ticked by after the relative calm of the day before.
Nellie said as much when Daisy entered the cottage with the tins of milk and two rabbits, the latter gained by bartering some fine red herrings which the boy’s mother was partial to. ‘Light the lamp again, hinny, it’s grown as dark as night since you’ve bin gone. If you’re goin’ to get them oak twigs an’ the flour, I reckon you’d better be quick about it.’
Daisy was quick, but by the time she got home again just before noon the weather had turned nasty. It took her almost five minutes of standing over the fire’s glow to thaw out frozen, almost helpless hands and body, and then the tingling intensity of feeling was such that it brought tears to her eyes.
There were still the usual dirty coasters with salt-caked smoke stacks, schooners and square riggers on the horizon, but by late afternoon, when the smell of cooking was redolent in the cottage and elemental alchemy had turned slanting sheets of rain to sleet, the seething cauldron that was the ocean was deserted.
‘Come away from that window, lass. You’re givin’ me the willies hoverin’ about like a lost soul. The boats might well have put in up the coast till the storm’s over. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
No, and it wouldn’t be the first time that the fishermen, desperate to land a catch, had hung on too long either. Times were changing for some folk what with the unions and all, but for her da and Tom and Alf there was nothing like that. Her da and a few more of the old fishermen could remember tales passed down to them by their great-grandas, which had come through
their
great-grandas and so on. Stories about the disease-ridden hovels built into the banksides of the Wear and Tyne, which were considered fit rat holes for fishermen. These labyrinths of stairs and dark passageways with a public house at every corner had also been frequented by the press gangs, and it was the fishermen who had suffered the most at the hands of those infamous ruffians. And who had cared enough to lift a finger? No one. Even now, according to her da, there still wasn’t a band of people considered so expendable as ordinary fishermen. When they went to work they could simply disappear; as dangerous as life in the pits was, the death toll on the seas was twice as high.
Daisy said nothing, but as she turned to face the room again her face must have spoken for itself because Nellie’s voice was dry when she said, ‘Aye, well, mebbe I might talk out of me backside at times, hinny, but the only thing that’s sustained me for the last seventy-six years is takin’ it a day at a time. No use frettin’ until you know you’ve got somethin’ to fret about, now then. As me old mam used to say: Spit in the eye of the devil an’ likely he’ll be blind enough to leave you alone.’
Daisy nodded, walking across to the bed and taking her grandmother’s wrinkled hand which was resting on top of the grey blankets, the veins tumescent. She wished she could be as calm as her granny, oh, she did, but she just couldn’t. She wished her da and Tom, and Alf too, hadn’t gone out today. And whatever her granny said, she had listened to the men talk well enough to know how many times they cheated death. At the end of a hard winter, like now, they took extra chances. There wasn’t a fisherwoman alive who didn’t know that.
‘Shall I light the candle early, Gran?’
Nellie gazed into her granddaughter’s enormous eyes with their thick smoky lashes, and what she saw there caused her to say softly, ‘Aye, you do that, me bairn. You do that. An’ we’ll have a nice sup tea with one of them drop scones an’ a bit of Enid’s crab apple jelly, shall we? While we’re waitin’ for ’em to get back like?’
Daisy smiled and nodded, but once the tallow candle was lit and the ill-tempered wind lashed the sleet into vicious sabre-like squalls against the windows with its ever-increasing fury, she found she couldn’t eat a thing.
George was tired, bone-gnawingly tired, and the icy chafing water which had been working on his flesh for hours had opened the crust on the salt water boil on his thigh which had been giving him gyp for days. A needle spray stung his face as it had been doing all night, but at least now, in the wild light of dawn, the silent angry wastes of the North Sea didn’t hold the terrors they had in the pitch blackness.
He couldn’t see any of the other boats, although when the storm had hit he knew none of them had begun to make their way home. It had been the inexplicable conviction that a big shoal was nearby that had done it, and he still maintained it had been there. But they’d stayed out too long, damn it. In this sort of sea even the big ships went down, and the cobles were matchsticks in comparison. Aye, they should have cut their losses long before they had.
George glanced across to where Tom was standing, his son’s face rigid and tight. It had been that way since their row the day before. Silly young so-an’-so. George ground his teeth irritably. What had the lad expected him to do when he had told him he was set on marrying a bit lass - a
miner’s
lass - who didn’t know one end of a gutting knife from the other? Fall on his neck and offer his blessing? Say it didn’t matter? Well, it did matter, and he had never been one for beating about the bush as Tom well knew. By, to think a son of his could be so damn’ stupid! No good could come out of such a union, it was doomed from the start. But it hadn’t happened yet, had it, and if he had his way he’d make damn’ sure this was one wedding which never took place. He’d rather be struck down this minute than have to watch his own flesh and blood being led by the nose by some bit miner’s daughter.
Another wave, which seemed as high as a house, smashed into the bow, sweeping the small craft on to nowhere at a furious rate. Each time they crested a wave and slid down the far side, icy water swirled knee-deep into the bottom of the boat but at least they could see what they were up against now, thank God, thought George, crossing himself with one hand as he steered with the other.
Tom caught the gesture, his mouth curling at what he saw as hypocrisy, the harshness of his judgement mainly the result of yesterday’s quarrel. Normally his father’s ability to shape the Almighty into a comfortable concept he felt easy with - one which didn’t include church on a Sunday or unnecessary religious fervour, but which definitely included the Creator taking an interest in George’s personal affairs - didn’t bother Tom at all. Today, however, his feelings were still raw from the bitter exchange which had flared up once he had mentioned Marge. Well, one thing was for sure, he didn’t intend to keep coming cap in hand to his da, Tom told himself aggressively. He’d tried the reasonable approach and if his da wouldn’t meet him halfway that was his lookout.
The grey water washing aboard reduced his limbs to salty numbness, but inside Tom was still boiling. His fingers were raw and split from where they had dug into the net earlier but he couldn’t feel them; for the time being the lacerating pain was deadened by the anaesthetising effects of the freezing water. Not so the hurt within.
He would see about renting his own place once he was back, aye, he would, Tom thought angrily. Old Ken Upton’s cottage would be coming up soon now his widow was going to live with her sister in Fulwell, and if Alf would be willing to have him on his boat he’d join up with him.
Another welter of white lather from the towering waves sprayed the boat as it continued to smash heavily into the next foam-topped ridge and then the next. Tom heard his father’s voice, reedy against the din of the storm, call to him to take the tiller. He lurched over to him, noticing as he did so that the older man’s face was grey with exhaustion and he looked spent. His da wasn’t as young as he used to be. As the thought hit home it had the effect of cauterising the bitter aftermath of their hot words, even to the extent that Tom thought, much as George had done earlier, What the hell did I expect him to say anyway? He was never going to understand; how could he when I don’t understand it meself? But I’ll be blowed if I’m goin’ to lose me da over this. It’ll work out. When he meets Marge he’ll understand why I love her, aye, he will. She will win him over.