Sea Song
Fishermen are born to tell stories. Time spent in solitude as endless hours slip by, alone with thoughts and imagination leave the mind free to construct. Hours spent watching the ripple and refection of surface water can encourage a dream- like interpretation of events. When the hours spent in the rest of the world become spare, unwanted moments; stories are apt to be told.
Fishermen are known to exaggerate but sometimes, even the wildest claims can have some fragments of fact littered throughout them. Fisherman can tell the truth and as everyone knows, truth – real truth can, at times, and in the right company seem more outlandish than any invented claim could ever be.
The stone walled pub is decorated with photographs depicting smiling and grim faced generations of quayside hunters and their cold eyed quarry.
Winter is making preparations for an entrance and the windows are occasionally rattled in their slats by the wind rolling off the Irish Sea, telling stories of its own. Rain hammers at the glass and in a couple of places, plastic buckets collect falling drops from fragile places amongst the ceiling beams. The landlord has hung the buckets beneath the offending areas and occasionally checks their progress.
“Every winter is the same,” he says. He isn’t really talking to anyone but his voice carries across the pub regardless. He wears a green brewery sponsored polo shirt and his beard is washed through with the colours of autumn. “I’ll be glad to see the back of it.” Someone at the bar notes that things will get worse before they get better, as though the observation may be a fresh one.
Small boats pitch and sway on the early afternoon sea. Darkness will hide their shapes soon as it sweeps in and promotes exaggeration around the tables and pumps.
This is a working bar, men are scattered around the place reading newspapers, loading pipes or rolling cigarettes. I have never seen so much woollen wear, so many waterproofs or so many beards beneath one roof.
Stories can become legends in a setting such as this. These men have lived much of their lives in the company of the sea. They think no more of it perhaps than if they had earned their living in any other way but it is obvious that they respect the sea and know what it is, what it can do.
“The days are going to get much harder,” says one of them. His elbows lean against the bar top and like the landlord, his words seem to be directed outwards, rather than targeted.
As an outsider, I am conscious that my beard has not been earned honestly and marks me out as a fraud. I leave my face in the pages of my rugby league paper, but my eyes keep landing on the same paragraph and I abandon it in favour of atmospheric relaxation.
The afternoon advances around us and shadows find the corners, further increasing my feeling that I have happened upon an alien part of life quite outside of my usual experience. The entire scene is one of folklore in the making and big men are ordering food, settling in for the night ahead. They dunk doorstep slices of white bread into simple ceramic bowls of broth or stew. Some eat fish. The beer flows steadily and the hushed quiet of earlier gradually makes way for conversational reminisces of events from their working lives and the working lives of their fathers, uncles, grandfathers and brothers. Death never feels too far away in these stories, even when left unspoken, there is a tacit understanding of consequence and sacrifice.
I find my eyes pulled toward the framed photographs again. I feel sure that some of these great beards are present in the memories and conversations. I can almost imagine them stepping down from the frames, ordering a tankard and finding standing room at the bar or pipe smoking around the fireside. I am starting to feel comfortable, less an outsider and more a witness to something special.
I order broth, bread and beer and settle myself again by the window. I peer out into the falling, spreading darkness and squint through the black rain for signs of light and life. There is no signal on my mobile, no chance of homely intrusion but I feel fine about that. My imagination shows me trawlers and vast nets, calloused hands and weather marked faces. I find myself immersed in the conversations breaking out around me as more men come inside to escape the bleak quayside.
When my broth arrives, it is powerfully hot and heavy with stringy beef and potatoes. The bread is soft centred with great walls of brown crust that can make the gums bleed.
The food is delivered by a young girl, nineteen or so, thick hair untied and falling in yellow syrup like clusters down one shoulder and over a breast. I think she must be the landlord’s daughter or in any case, known to the family. This is a small place; a man could not stay lost for long in a place like this.
In the morning, I have to leave and drive to a large town inland. I have to discuss insurance and policy small print. I have to think about margins and losses. It strikes me that the men around me understand loss in a way that insurance underwriters could never feel. I know I will forget this place within weeks, just one more road stop interruption.
“Just passing through?” says the girl. She smiles warmly and I notice she is freckled and for some reason the observation makes me wish I could stay longer; the road can be lonely.
“I am,” I say. “Just here tonight. Early start in the morning.”
“You’ll sleep after the broth. It’ll keep you warm too.” I smile back and tear off a section of bread. I wonder how she keeps warm at night but it is nothing more than a brief mental flirtation of a newly single mind.
By the time I have finished eating the pub is standing room only and the continuous hum of voices is mingled with occasional laughter.
I take myself to the bar and order another pint of bitter. I linger for a moment hoping to ingratiate myself into a conversation. I want to ask questions but I feel like a small boy curious about one of the wars but not confident enough to talk to granddad.
“Where are you staying tonight?” asks the landlord.
“I’m checked in at one of the guest houses on the sea front.”
“Which one?”
“Eden Cove.”
“If this rain holds, you’ll be as well getting a taxi. Filthy night.”
I nod in agreement and I want to respond, to keep the conversation alive but his attention is taken by another customer and the pumps. I’m not good with small talk and yet it’s what I am used to.
I’m about to retreat to my table when he returns, placing pint pots on a shelf at the front of the bar.
“You here on holiday?” he asks.
“I wish I was. No, I’m heading off in the morning. Business.”
“Everyone has to make a living.”
“Is there much work locally?”
“Not really. Guest houses, shops and the sea. It hasn’t changed here in generations.”
“I like that. The tradition of it, I mean.”
“The sea’s a hard life. None harder, if you ask me.”
It occurs to me that the same conversation probably takes place in towns populated with miners and ship builders. I doubt insurance ever gets a mention.
One of the men at the bar turns his head toward me, as if noticing me for the first time.
“What do you do for a living?” he says and raises his glass to his lips, eyes staying with me. I never tell people what I do. I am like an accountant or an estate agent, viewed as a greedy parasite because of my profession.
“Nothing interesting,” I say and he loses interest on cue.
It is around nine pm and I am reading an article about the Widnes Vikings when I notice pockets of men stood in front of windows, straining to see. I hear a voice above the general hum, “we should all see this,” it says and a couple of men are quick to the door, unperturbed by the elements or the darkness beyond.
I gather my coat and wrestle with the zip. I want to see whatever it is that has caught their interest and pulls them out into the cold and the wet. Someone holds the door open for me and I follow his raincoat into the sleet. Bullets of ice sting my face and bounce from the lenses of my glasses. I can feel the stuff collect in my hair and beard like large frozen particles of dandruff. In the near distance, I can make out a huge shadow of a shape, indistinct and looming against a half hearted moonlight. I can hear the waves crashing in around it, lapping at the sides of the thing, unable to shift it. I think a large ship must have run aground but the shape is perfectly upright, it does not list to one side and I can feel a rising certainty that this is not a regular event. More men follow now, as we head for the shore, torches are aimed at the bulk and I spot the girl from the pub, hugging her arms around her, fighting against the night chill and marine wind. The torch beams scatter and dip with the rhythm of footfalls, firing battery light off in many directions.
My eyes are adjusting to the darkness and as I hear the crash and spread of pebbles beneath me, slipping here and there as I broaden my strides, I notice the amber beam of the light house off shore, slicing through the night and I realise in that moment the sense of comfort and protection these solitary beacons have provided for generations.
Despite the conditions, word has travelled regarding the spectacle. I begin to pick out children’s voices, hurried and excited carried past me on great sudden gusts of wind, audible flotsam of the human tide gathering around me.
I come to a stop less than twenty feet from the giant. The glistening surface of its impossibly huge rounded head glints beneath the moon. There is an ethereal quality to the atmosphere and all around me people are gasping and then releasing air on sight of the creature.
“A whale,” says a little girl a few paces to my left with lovely simplicity. Children are able to give voice to magic because they are still able to believe in it. Stood directly in front of the whale and given a two or three foot space all around him by the onlookers, is a boy of around ten years old. He is stroking the creature with his hands, leaning to the side to make eye contact and talking softly to it. In the area around him a hush has settled and his words, soothing and confident are plainly heard.
“It’s alright to go now girl. I only wanted to meet you, to see if you were real. I’m so glad you came. I used to think I had only imagined you.” The boy is wearing waders and waterproofs and seems oblivious to his audience. He is short for his age and a little overweight but there is a startling calm about him. In this quarter light, illuminated by splashes of lamp that fall across him, he seems to have an ancient quality that I cannot fathom. It is nothing more than a feeling in my gut and the romance in the moment but I find myself unable to understand the impression.
“You have to go now. It is too dangerous for you to stay.”
The whale lets out a low rumble that shakes the shells and the pebbles beneath us. And here is the thing and I know it sounds more far-fetched than any angler’s tale and my imagination is stretched to believe it. The boy kisses the creature close to her eye and gives her a gentle push. The whale actually slides backwards, as though carried on some immense trailer and slowly slides back into the black water.
The crowd is silent at first and then erupts into cheers and applause. I know I have witnessed something impossible and yet I have seen it happen.
I walk back to the pub, not wanting the spell to break. Most people are silent but the children chatter excitedly and are already accepting what they have just seen.
Back in the bar, the beards are wagging and talking about the magic of the ocean, about things they have seen themselves that cannot be explained. One man swears that he has seen a real mermaid and I feel almost ready to believe him.
Then a deep voice cuts through the rest; wanting the final word.
“I’ve caught bigger than that myself,” he says.
And even on a night like this, even with the moonlight reflected in a young boy’s eyes as he pushes a whale back into the mouth of the sea, some fishermen’s stories are hard to believe.
Fishermen are known to exaggerate but sometimes, even the wildest claims can have some fragments of fact littered throughout them. Fisherman can tell the truth and as everyone knows, truth – real truth can, at times, and in the right company seem more outlandish than any invented claim could ever be.
The stone walled pub is decorated with photographs depicting smiling and grim faced generations of quayside hunters and their cold eyed quarry.
Winter is making preparations for an entrance and the windows are occasionally rattled in their slats by the wind rolling off the Irish Sea, telling stories of its own. Rain hammers at the glass and in a couple of places, plastic buckets collect falling drops from fragile places amongst the ceiling beams. The landlord has hung the buckets beneath the offending areas and occasionally checks their progress.
“Every winter is the same,” he says. He isn’t really talking to anyone but his voice carries across the pub regardless. He wears a green brewery sponsored polo shirt and his beard is washed through with the colours of autumn. “I’ll be glad to see the back of it.” Someone at the bar notes that things will get worse before they get better, as though the observation may be a fresh one.
Small boats pitch and sway on the early afternoon sea. Darkness will hide their shapes soon as it sweeps in and promotes exaggeration around the tables and pumps.
This is a working bar, men are scattered around the place reading newspapers, loading pipes or rolling cigarettes. I have never seen so much woollen wear, so many waterproofs or so many beards beneath one roof.
Stories can become legends in a setting such as this. These men have lived much of their lives in the company of the sea. They think no more of it perhaps than if they had earned their living in any other way but it is obvious that they respect the sea and know what it is, what it can do.
“The days are going to get much harder,” says one of them. His elbows lean against the bar top and like the landlord, his words seem to be directed outwards, rather than targeted.
As an outsider, I am conscious that my beard has not been earned honestly and marks me out as a fraud. I leave my face in the pages of my rugby league paper, but my eyes keep landing on the same paragraph and I abandon it in favour of atmospheric relaxation.
The afternoon advances around us and shadows find the corners, further increasing my feeling that I have happened upon an alien part of life quite outside of my usual experience. The entire scene is one of folklore in the making and big men are ordering food, settling in for the night ahead. They dunk doorstep slices of white bread into simple ceramic bowls of broth or stew. Some eat fish. The beer flows steadily and the hushed quiet of earlier gradually makes way for conversational reminisces of events from their working lives and the working lives of their fathers, uncles, grandfathers and brothers. Death never feels too far away in these stories, even when left unspoken, there is a tacit understanding of consequence and sacrifice.
I find my eyes pulled toward the framed photographs again. I feel sure that some of these great beards are present in the memories and conversations. I can almost imagine them stepping down from the frames, ordering a tankard and finding standing room at the bar or pipe smoking around the fireside. I am starting to feel comfortable, less an outsider and more a witness to something special.
I order broth, bread and beer and settle myself again by the window. I peer out into the falling, spreading darkness and squint through the black rain for signs of light and life. There is no signal on my mobile, no chance of homely intrusion but I feel fine about that. My imagination shows me trawlers and vast nets, calloused hands and weather marked faces. I find myself immersed in the conversations breaking out around me as more men come inside to escape the bleak quayside.
When my broth arrives, it is powerfully hot and heavy with stringy beef and potatoes. The bread is soft centred with great walls of brown crust that can make the gums bleed.
The food is delivered by a young girl, nineteen or so, thick hair untied and falling in yellow syrup like clusters down one shoulder and over a breast. I think she must be the landlord’s daughter or in any case, known to the family. This is a small place; a man could not stay lost for long in a place like this.
In the morning, I have to leave and drive to a large town inland. I have to discuss insurance and policy small print. I have to think about margins and losses. It strikes me that the men around me understand loss in a way that insurance underwriters could never feel. I know I will forget this place within weeks, just one more road stop interruption.
“Just passing through?” says the girl. She smiles warmly and I notice she is freckled and for some reason the observation makes me wish I could stay longer; the road can be lonely.
“I am,” I say. “Just here tonight. Early start in the morning.”
“You’ll sleep after the broth. It’ll keep you warm too.” I smile back and tear off a section of bread. I wonder how she keeps warm at night but it is nothing more than a brief mental flirtation of a newly single mind.
By the time I have finished eating the pub is standing room only and the continuous hum of voices is mingled with occasional laughter.
I take myself to the bar and order another pint of bitter. I linger for a moment hoping to ingratiate myself into a conversation. I want to ask questions but I feel like a small boy curious about one of the wars but not confident enough to talk to granddad.
“Where are you staying tonight?” asks the landlord.
“I’m checked in at one of the guest houses on the sea front.”
“Which one?”
“Eden Cove.”
“If this rain holds, you’ll be as well getting a taxi. Filthy night.”
I nod in agreement and I want to respond, to keep the conversation alive but his attention is taken by another customer and the pumps. I’m not good with small talk and yet it’s what I am used to.
I’m about to retreat to my table when he returns, placing pint pots on a shelf at the front of the bar.
“You here on holiday?” he asks.
“I wish I was. No, I’m heading off in the morning. Business.”
“Everyone has to make a living.”
“Is there much work locally?”
“Not really. Guest houses, shops and the sea. It hasn’t changed here in generations.”
“I like that. The tradition of it, I mean.”
“The sea’s a hard life. None harder, if you ask me.”
It occurs to me that the same conversation probably takes place in towns populated with miners and ship builders. I doubt insurance ever gets a mention.
One of the men at the bar turns his head toward me, as if noticing me for the first time.
“What do you do for a living?” he says and raises his glass to his lips, eyes staying with me. I never tell people what I do. I am like an accountant or an estate agent, viewed as a greedy parasite because of my profession.
“Nothing interesting,” I say and he loses interest on cue.
It is around nine pm and I am reading an article about the Widnes Vikings when I notice pockets of men stood in front of windows, straining to see. I hear a voice above the general hum, “we should all see this,” it says and a couple of men are quick to the door, unperturbed by the elements or the darkness beyond.
I gather my coat and wrestle with the zip. I want to see whatever it is that has caught their interest and pulls them out into the cold and the wet. Someone holds the door open for me and I follow his raincoat into the sleet. Bullets of ice sting my face and bounce from the lenses of my glasses. I can feel the stuff collect in my hair and beard like large frozen particles of dandruff. In the near distance, I can make out a huge shadow of a shape, indistinct and looming against a half hearted moonlight. I can hear the waves crashing in around it, lapping at the sides of the thing, unable to shift it. I think a large ship must have run aground but the shape is perfectly upright, it does not list to one side and I can feel a rising certainty that this is not a regular event. More men follow now, as we head for the shore, torches are aimed at the bulk and I spot the girl from the pub, hugging her arms around her, fighting against the night chill and marine wind. The torch beams scatter and dip with the rhythm of footfalls, firing battery light off in many directions.
My eyes are adjusting to the darkness and as I hear the crash and spread of pebbles beneath me, slipping here and there as I broaden my strides, I notice the amber beam of the light house off shore, slicing through the night and I realise in that moment the sense of comfort and protection these solitary beacons have provided for generations.
Despite the conditions, word has travelled regarding the spectacle. I begin to pick out children’s voices, hurried and excited carried past me on great sudden gusts of wind, audible flotsam of the human tide gathering around me.
I come to a stop less than twenty feet from the giant. The glistening surface of its impossibly huge rounded head glints beneath the moon. There is an ethereal quality to the atmosphere and all around me people are gasping and then releasing air on sight of the creature.
“A whale,” says a little girl a few paces to my left with lovely simplicity. Children are able to give voice to magic because they are still able to believe in it. Stood directly in front of the whale and given a two or three foot space all around him by the onlookers, is a boy of around ten years old. He is stroking the creature with his hands, leaning to the side to make eye contact and talking softly to it. In the area around him a hush has settled and his words, soothing and confident are plainly heard.
“It’s alright to go now girl. I only wanted to meet you, to see if you were real. I’m so glad you came. I used to think I had only imagined you.” The boy is wearing waders and waterproofs and seems oblivious to his audience. He is short for his age and a little overweight but there is a startling calm about him. In this quarter light, illuminated by splashes of lamp that fall across him, he seems to have an ancient quality that I cannot fathom. It is nothing more than a feeling in my gut and the romance in the moment but I find myself unable to understand the impression.
“You have to go now. It is too dangerous for you to stay.”
The whale lets out a low rumble that shakes the shells and the pebbles beneath us. And here is the thing and I know it sounds more far-fetched than any angler’s tale and my imagination is stretched to believe it. The boy kisses the creature close to her eye and gives her a gentle push. The whale actually slides backwards, as though carried on some immense trailer and slowly slides back into the black water.
The crowd is silent at first and then erupts into cheers and applause. I know I have witnessed something impossible and yet I have seen it happen.
I walk back to the pub, not wanting the spell to break. Most people are silent but the children chatter excitedly and are already accepting what they have just seen.
Back in the bar, the beards are wagging and talking about the magic of the ocean, about things they have seen themselves that cannot be explained. One man swears that he has seen a real mermaid and I feel almost ready to believe him.
Then a deep voice cuts through the rest; wanting the final word.
“I’ve caught bigger than that myself,” he says.
And even on a night like this, even with the moonlight reflected in a young boy’s eyes as he pushes a whale back into the mouth of the sea, some fishermen’s stories are hard to believe.
