The Rip Tide

Carl Bailey walked down the seafront at speed, head down against the wind, lids at half-mast to shield his eyes from the whipping salt wind. He turned a corner at Rock-A-Nore, and crossed an empty coach park. Shreds of clouds scudded across the sky, their upper reaches bathed in yellow light from the setting sun. Carl picked his way absentmindedly through a network of potholes and tyre ruts, each with its own little oil-slicked pool. The grey sky above was tinged in rainbow colours in each muddy puddle. He slipped between the net huts and into the fisherman’s yard.

Some distance away, two men were smoking thin roll-ups in silence and gazing out to sea. Three were cradling white polystyrene cups close to their chests and talking quietly. They looked up briefly as Carl walked across the yard.

In the furthest corner, an old man was sitting on a blue plastic chair repairing a nylon net. His head was craned down. Salt and pepper stubble stood out thickly on his jaw. He had a green woollen hat pushed down over his head, and wisps of white hair stuck out from under it. His stubby fingers clutched a tube of industrial adhesive, methodically applying it to the net as he fed plasticized mesh along the tear. He held a darning needle between his teeth. He didn’t look up.

‘Alright, Bill.’

He looked up. The old man had intensely blue eyes, but they were hooded against the cold and wind. They strained to see him through the cold circling drizzle.

‘Alright son.’

He returned to his work. Carl pulled his scarf tighter around his face, then leant down to brush some mud off his trainers. The old man coughed gruffly.

‘Your Dad send you down here?’

Carl shifted uncomfortably.

‘Yeah.’

The old man grunted.

‘What’d he want?’

Carl shrugged.

‘Dunno. I just went into town to pick up the welfare checks. Met up with Gary and that after.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

The old man’s fingers wove strips of plastic smoothly into the nylon mesh. His nails were cracked and nicotine-stained. He coughed again, a slow arrhythmic whine.

‘I expect he wants to know what time I’m going to be back from work.’

Carl shrugged again.

‘Something like that. Oh, and he said to tell you we’re having KFC again tonight. If that’s alright.’

‘Hah. Going to have to be, isn’t it?’

The old man spat a bolus of phlegm onto the ground, then crushed it into a puddle with the heel of his boots. He hadn’t looked up at any point during the conversation.

Carl pulled over a spare chair, tipping a small puddle that had pooled at the back of the seat onto the ground. He perched on the edge of the seat, but his arse was already soaked.

‘Ah, fuck it.’

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the old man’s hand threading plastic around the break, Carl’s hands thrust deep into the pockets of his hoody, leaning forward and watching the old man intently. He cleared his throat.

‘Oi, Grandad, have you got any Rizlas on you?’

The old man puts the net down on his lap carefully, and fished about in the pockets of his oilskin. He pulled out a packed of blue cigarette papers, and passed them wordlessly to his grandson.

‘Cheers.’

Carl pulled out a tuft of Golden Virginia and started to roll. Without looking up, he said awkwardly:

‘Uh, Dad said you’ve got to come straight home after you’re done here. No going to the pub or anything. Said you’ve got to look after yourself.’

His granddad laughed, a short, humourless bark which dissolved into a rogue cough.

‘He can fuck right off. I’m going down The Arms in half an hour. Tell him I’ll be home after that.’

‘I’ll tell him. He’s going to kick off though.’

‘That’s up to him.’

They sat in silence. The old man finished stitching, and laid the net down in a pile next to him. He scratched his jaw as he yawned.

‘Get us a cup of tea, would you Carl.’

Carl stood up and walked over to the stained plastic kettle the fishermen kept in a little lean-to under the eaves of one of the net huts. He put a tea-bag in a cup, picked up a couple of sugar cubes, off-brown and fissured where they’d been spattered with coffee, and put them in the cup. He waited for the kettle to boil, then tore the lid off a little pot of UHT milk and tipped it in. He carried it back to the old man, who accepted it without a word. Carl sat down again. The old man looked out to sea. Crenellated waves marched towards the shore in serried ranks, little breakers skipping ahead of the parent surf. Big bow waves from the last few fishing boats carved thick V-shaped cuts in the rising swell. The old man spoke.

‘Lumpy old sea out there. Reminds me of the sea around Rockall.’

Carl looked up with interest.

‘Where’s Rockall?’

‘North Atlantic. Island in the middle of nowhere, long way off the north Irish coast. Blasted little rock streaked with gullshit. Was beam-trawling for north Atlantic prawns south of Iceland. Got blown off course. Well off course.’

A few of the younger fishermen drifted over. Some pulled up chairs. Others leant against bulkheads or propped themselves against the net huts. Bill’s stories were legendary around the fishing yards. Bill had been, variously, a midshipman in the merchant navy, a gunner in XXI Corps in the Second World War serving in Tunisia and Morocco, and later in the war, a naval intelligence officer in Italy. He’d been a harbourmaster in the Shetlands, captain of a string of purse-seiners working the shipping lanes everywhere from the Bay of Biscay to the Bosporus, a deckhand on an Alaskan crab boat, and finally, a commercial fisherman in Hastings fishing the few remaining cod in the English Channel.

‘... Course, that was when I was up in the fjords. We’d sheltered for the night in Lysefjord, on account of the weather. We’d been line-trawling for halibut up in the Arctic Circle – rich waters up there, at spawning season the water’s so thick with them you could walk across their backs – when the weather blew up. Sky all full of snow, blasting left and right, up your jumper, down your trousers, freezing the snot in your nose. Night was falling - black as your hat it was - waves with teeth like bananas, nothing on the barometer but the makers name... anyway, the local lads steered us into this fjord and of course I didn’t know what a fjord was, but the wind died down and we dropped anchor and it must have been a thousand odd fathoms before it hit bottom, even in this bolthole... but when I woke up the following morning, well, the sky was shot full of birds, lads, millions of huge dark geese honking and crisscrossing the blue sky in perfect lines like aerial roads and all around me were cliffs, cliffs, but not like the ones at Beachy Head or Dover or St Ives, these were huge grey towering things rising up like giants on either side of the boat and at the far end of this watery gorge was this colossal blue shelf of ice, creaking and groaning in the sun. I could not believe my eyes.’

The old man shook his head slowly. Someone passed him a cigarette, which he accepted with a nod. He patted his pockets absentmindedly until someone passed him a lighter too. He lit it and inhaled, then breathed out with satisfaction in a great cobalt plume.

‘And the breakfasts, boys! Cod fried in butter and black bread, all washed down with double aquavits and Russian vodka, black coffee and Turkish cigarettes! Standing on the prow with all these red-headed sons of Norway and a steaming mug of coffee with a healthy measure of whisky upended into it – for the cold you understand - watching shelves of ice tear themselves away from the glacier and crash into the sea. Calving, it was called, and you could see why, ‘cos they rolled and dipped and sank under the waves like whale calves playing around a mother.’

Most of the yard had crowded round the old man now, who was getting more and more animated, his big hands, dotted with liver spots, dancing in arabesques in the air as he simulated the dip and swell of young icebergs being birthed in a distant subarctic valley. He stopped, and sat quietly. He looked speculatively at his lap, and wiped away a stream of mud and water that had fallen across his knee. He continued.

‘And it all felt so old, lads. The rock and the geese and the Norwegian lads themselves, Vikings to look at them... puts me in mind of when I was in Marseille after the war.’

He sniffed thoughtfully.

‘We’d come into harbour after a convoy run – we were shipping Indian rubber into France from the East – and it must have been early evening. July, it was. 1947. Beautiful light they get down that way, all oranges and lemon yellows and violets. Like a painting. Anyway, I was leaning over the side having a smoke, watching these swarthy fellas play bowls on the quay. Clack, the balls went. You know that lovely hollow ivory sound of snooker balls hitting each other? Like that. Anyway, I’m watching them play, and this French lad comes over – from the Camargue, he was – leans over the rail, and says to me, “You know, they’ve been playing Boules on that quay for two thousand years. At least. Pétanque, it is called. Tiens! Why, when slaves from Numidia and Carthage were unloading petra oleum - rock oil, petrol, gasoline, you know? - from Tyre and dates from Palestine and legionnaires patrolled the shore, their caligae slapping on the stones, French men would have played this very same game. Think of that. It was called Massila then. This harbour – he cast his arms across the shining blue water – would have been thronged with triremes, quinqueremes, perhaps a few antique hemiolia in the shadow of the great Roman warships, a Phonecian barque here and there...”

The old man laughed to himself.

‘Odd lad, he was. Bit high-flown for a sailor, but there we are. Hah, we got into some trouble down in Trieste though! Got us a spot of shore leave, me and Guy – that was his name – and we hit the sauce pretty hard. Can’t say I remember much of the night – weeks at sea does that to you, and we got our hands on a few carafes of rough country wine and a bottle of grappa – but I ended up with this beautiful girl in my arms on a bench looking out to sea, all dark hair and almond eyes and olive skin, like satin. Soft as the softest thing you ever saw. Touched. I was majestically drunk. Could not have been happier. No idea what happened to Guy. Met her at a bar in the old town and took her out for dinner. She was from Emilia-Romagna... she showed me how to eat the local prawns. Gamberoni, they were called. You eat them col’bacchio, with a kiss – pinch the head off and suck the meat from the shell, coated in oil and lemon and pepper. So I did.’

He imitated eating a prawn, pinching the lid off the adhesive to mimic the prawn’s head.

‘Like this?’

‘Si. Molto bravo.’

The old man smiled slowly, a gentle grin spreading across his face despite the howling wind.

‘She’d gone when I woke up. On a bench I was, overlooking the port. I remember... the smell of rosemary, and oregano, and sorrel. Lavender. Little pink buds of capers spidering down the stone wall behind me. And a sour reek of wine and my own warm sweat. Then a shadow blocked out the sun. Which was fine with me, on account of the heat. I was sweating up a storm and it was ten in the morning. A carabinieri stood in front of me, tall fellow with a great dark moustache obscuring his lips. He said “Buona Notte?” in a slow sad voice, and helped me to my feet. I was unsteady as hell. Wove my way back to the boat and got an almight ticking off from the Captain. So did Guy. He’d turned up just before me. He’d stayed with a pretty young thing – wooed her with that Gallic charm - and there he was in her bed, hot white sunlight streaming through the window and her asleep across his chest when her husband came in. Mon dieu! Leapt out of the room stark bollock naked clutching his uniform! Got changed in an alleyway with a bunch of kids throwing stones at him and a group of old ladies heckling him as they put out their washing! Ah, but nobody heckles like the old, eh?’

He chuckled to himself. The other men laughed dutifully.

‘I remember... Tunisia.’

The old man’s face darkened, and the cold wind settled on his face. His jaw tightened in the wind.

‘We were bogged down on a shelf of rock on the far side of a gorge. I was with the XXI, serving under Major Lionel Travers. Monty and his boys were just up the road in Algiers, with Rommel hot on their tails. We’d been entrenched for weeks.’

He drew a line across an outstretched palm to illustrate the gunnery emplacement.

‘So we’re here, and Jerry’s here. Monty’s over here, and the Americans are here. We’d been being shelled for days, and my mate Tom had had his cheek slit open by a sliver of rock from an exploding shell and was sent home on an MD, so it was just me and a few other fellas. One of them – I forget his name – told me something I can’t forget. He said that on this very spot, this horrible burning plateau, painfully hot in the day and freezing at night, had marched the armies of a hundred countries. Egyptian battalions, Greek phalanxes, legions of Romans, all had trodden the same ancient, dead, empty ground before us. We were nothing new, he said. And, from the top of a hill, he showed me Trajan’s memorial. It was just an arch, with funny inscriptions cut into the sandstone, fading into nothing.’