Part One. Over the tears of the fallen
It was peaceful, the logs crackling in the fire in an open grate, the rain splattering the windows, Billy lifted his glass from the table that huddled up to the couch that he sat upon, taking another sip of the amber nectar. He had turned the television off an hour ago as there was nothing worth watching. He just sat enjoying his quiet world, appreciating the peace that solidarity can bring. He watched the fire burning, the flame slowly consuming the logs that he had laid there earlier. He looked at the candles set in sconces upon the wall marvelling at the light and warmth that they offered as it was cold outside.
He had been out for a cigarette, as he refused to smoke in the house; an hour or two ago and even stepping over the threshold had been a chore. The old ill fitting door had a curtain over it to help with the draft that the door happily allowed to enter, heavy tapestry, it coped with the wind that plagued his world. He had donned a fleece before he pulled back the glorious burgundy curtain that lay at the end of a straight narrow hall adorned with paintings of dancers and sailing ships, lined with shallow book cases, packed to the brim with paperbacks. He opened the door and set foot outside as the wind caught him blowing what little hair he had left around his slit eyed, closed mouth, face.
He pushed the door closed behind him, making sure doubly that it was, he did not want this chill to enter his house even if it had already entered his being.
The door closed he stood in the lea of the house where the wind only whipped and scalded rather than assaulting him. It was difficult to light his cigarette, He stood his back taking the worst of the blast as he tried to get his lighter to spark and give him the, stupid, joy of smoking.
These days there was little joy to be found in smoking, no joy really, even in fuelling his habit. It was too cold, too windy and the sleet was covering him even as he tried to hide from it. He took a few draws from his cigarette, nipped it and looked for the handle that led to warmth and comfort. The Imitation brass handle was easily found despite the foulness of the night and Billy used it stepping back into the world of light and warmth.
He walked the narrow hall lined with paintings of dancers; ballerinas in pumps and tutus with exquisite grace.
Flamenco dancers in elaborate costumes, reams of lace and beautiful dresses, set between originals of sailing ships, that Dutch painters had once relied upon for a living.
He opened the door upon his living room enjoying the sudden and comfortable warmth that it released as he opened the sturdy old door that had it concealed, keeping in the warmth and out the cold.
He had buffed down that door a year or two ago, trying to make it look better as it was a huge timber monstrosity but it had been painted over so many times, that in the process he had stopped, thinking that he was stripping it of its grandeur, Its place in life. Anyway he always thought; my house may not be a palace but it is not that bad; It is warm and dry. It is comfortable, perhaps, though had you sat upon his couch you may not have considered it so. The long narrow hall led to the living room, it had two bed rooms situated on the opposing sides of the house as well as a small bathroom and kitchen, all led off of it.
We need not speak of the kitchen and bathroom as in one only cooking is done and in the other that which was once cooked passes. The living room was small but comfortable. Two chairs faced each other across the no mans land where the fireplace and fire resided. A rug, that looked to be Moroccan in style lay between them covering the wooden floor. The sofa sat directly across from the fire and it was there that most nights Billy slept despite the well appointed bedroom down the hall.
To much whiskey and not enough love had turned his habits towards introspection and that is where he lived. Billy lived in his own mind, in his own house and he lived with the memories of a love that had been taken from him by his best friend. He lived meekly, quietly and introspectively but he lived
Part Two of "Over the Tears of the Fallen"
Billy woke to the morning with a shiver, the fire was out, the morning cold and he had not planned on drinking again nor waking with a mist in his head. It was rare now that he drank realising that it was a failing of his, a serious failing. Instead of drinking, most nights, he would sit by himself, quietly on an evening, reading or watching the television and wish to be drinking. When he was drinking he could fall into bed and sleep the sleep of the dead. When sober, as he almost always was these days; he rarely slept. His mind was too active, his thoughts racing and blending, his thoughts, tumbling and imagining and so could not sleep. So even though he had drunk himself into a stupor, last night, a stupor that he loved and had slept for hours on the couch facing the fire he felt guilty.
He had promised himself that he would not be that person anymore. The fool that had lost his wife to a better man.
Under a bruised purple sky, roiling black and grey clouds tumbling one over the other like funereal acrobats, performing, in imitation of the clowns in a circus big top. The bright reds and yellows of their facial make up and garish clothing showing for a millisecond between our visions of the cirrocumulus striations and the much lower and heavily rain laced alto-stratus clouds that promise a downpour of old testament proportions.
Thor's thunderheads shoot across the sky and distant bass rumbles meld with the violence of the storm. Grey daemons scurry in the few places where colour is left to live behind this huge screen of funeral purple, dankest grey and oblivion black; chaos. Now incised with jagged bolts of electrical discharge and a whip to the wind what would scourge the skin from your body had you left an inch bare.
A storm was coming, a storm that would strip the branches from the trees, strip the roofs of the sod that held people’s homes firm to the earth, that kept us so close to the earth that we relied upon for our crops, our cattle and even the clothes upon our backs. Yet that storm was one that we had never expected, it would strip away not only our livelihood and living but our flesh from our bones if it had a chance. Yet although no one imagined it at this time, this storm was not coming from the tumbling October sky, it wasn't even coming from that grey, black, man-swallowing sea that lay so close to our homes and fields. The huge black beast that we knew could slay us each and every day with just an intake of its mighty breath and it had taken many of us from day to day and year to year, it had taken us from boats and from the shore,
Stolen children from their beds in the storm of ninety-five, and taken all within a quarter mile of the shore in two thousand and seven. Good people gone for ever to the rampaging monster as so many had before and so many will again. This storm was going to be terrible as most are, it was going to take children with no thought about the pain the parents would feel for the rest of their lives, no thought of the child's last breaths as they are dragged under. The last gasp before water enters their small lungs to cease their expansion and contraction for ever, as that last oxygen goes, the heart stops beating and the most beautiful, the brightest, those loved and those hated all cease to exist forever.
Yet that was life in a seaside town, people died, people drowned, People disappeared, that's just the way it worked. The sea snuffed out peoples lives with a practiced ease as it had taken so, so many before it was the fiercest beast when unleashed.
More will follow soon.
As promised, parts three and the start of four (part three was rather small).
The night was redolent with thunder and lightning; the skies dark and the waves thrashing the shore. The spray from the breakers carrying hundreds of feet in the whistling wind. The sound near the waves was tremendous, the crashing of the thunder barely heard above it even if through the grey skies and sheeting rain the lightning could still be seen, jagged, forked and splitting the sky with a force that simple humans such as I found both spectacular and intimidating. The wind stung your face with salt and spume, raised from the crap that we had put into our seas.
4.
We were all out that night walking the shore. The maroons had gone off earlier in the night to call the coast guard into action and later the local police were chapping on doors asking for assistance to walk the long stretches of beach that lay all along the Kintyre coast.
I found out from one the ambulance drivers that I knew that the coastguard had found an overturned fishing boat, overturned and holed. On a good night hitting the rocks was dangerous and stupid, on a night like tonight it was suicidal.
My friend told me that the coastguard had rescued one, pulled him from the sea and that he was hurt and cold but doing alright under the circumstances, but another six of the crew were missing. All had been in the sea. So, as was the way around here, and I am sure, many other fishing communities, those that were fit and able bundled themselves up against the cold and rain and wind and took to the beaches.
I was one of them.
This was a dreadful task, it had to be done but in all my year’s, man and boy, it was rare that I had seen a good outcome. The boat holed, this wind, the Kintyre Rocks, the strange under currents and rip tides on the west coast gave you little hope for survivors but against all odds here and there It had happened.
It was a treacherous coastline at the best of times and tonight could not even be compared to the best of times in fact it could easily have echoed the Dickens idea of the very worst of times.
The waves were high and even though there was no sun and very little moonlight or starlight, the clouds thick and grey and gathered together like huge bulbous granite mountains that dropped their wrath on the sea and beach in the form of rain and sleet, hailstones and snow. Those grey monstrosities, pretend granite, were oblivious of your or others plight, they had simply their own job of pulverizing stone and sand but left you with a faded, jaded hope of for survivors.
Yet all you could really see was the white spume of the breakers and the waves upon the rocks that bordered the shingle shore of the sea loch. The Island of Davaar, a huge volcanic cap and island, formed during the last ice age, that towered into the air and dominated the view on a reasonable day, could not even be seen.
The volcanic cap of the island of Davaar sheltered the small sea loch that Campbeltown lay at the head of. It shelters the bay and the deep water loch that is known the world over. Normally for the making of Whisky and most know the song, Campbeltown loch I wish you were whisky.
Campbeltown itself may be important in historical terms and to its current residents but it is nothing more than a small west coast town in Scotland with little to offer other than golf, fishing, good arable land and beauty.
It is here that all begins, Rob and the people along the coast go looking for survivors.
Part five of "And the Sea shall give up its Dead". "Over the tears of the Fallen".
The locals walked in small groups, huddled together, chatting together, commiserating together, all had been here before, most knew what was coming, death and dismay and untold weeping, when it was possible to hear the others speaking with a hood covering your head and the wind howling at the edges of it you may well have heard the words, dead, drowned, holed, capsized, if you could hear anything over the howling of the wind and crash of the waves on the shore. While these groups milled around their small battery operated torches vainly trying to pierce the night, I headed towards the quay at the shipyard.
I was still young at that time and clambering over even slippery seaweed covered rocks in near blackness was still within my abilities even if dangerous to even the most dextrous and able of people.
The tide was out and there was a fair drop to it in southern Argyll, where unless it is a neap tide then twenty to twenty-six feet was the average tidal span, and with long, boulder strewn, shingle shores in the area those we walked in daylight were difficult navigatesafely but it would have been easy to see a body but at night with no moon or stars visible it was almost impossible.
Any large stone could have been a curled body, any rock actually a head. I switched off my flashlight and continued towards the old shipyard quay in the darkness. I had walked this stretch of shore every day of my life and knew it well though I also knew that there was a good chance that I was risking a twisted ankle or even broken leg. I had learned many a year before that the human eye still has the hunter’s instinct, perhaps left over from the time we were killer apes, perhaps as a survival instinct against predaatory species, I knew not the truth of it but I believed the evidence.
I did not know about the anthropology of that instinct but knew that it existed, I knew that in the dark you are more likely to see movement than anything else. I had cut the light to allow my vision to become accustomed to the dark and kept my eyes wide to allow available light to reach them, relying on my knowledge of the beach to find my way. I believed that if it were bodies we were looking for then the police would not have called us out, they must think that there is a hope for survivors and I hoped that they were right. It was something that rarely happened, for the sea is a treacherous mistress and one that is jealous, coveting its lovers and wishing to claim them for herself, so few made it to shore, most giving in to her cold embrace.
The boat, whichever it was, must have gone down a short distance from the shore, I had realised, as they; the police and coastguard, the lifeboat crew thought that some may have been able to swim ashore. The authorities would not call all of the locals out to walk the beach looking for corpses so there must be some hope for survivors. I had been in the sea, I have known what those lost here will have known and would not wish such a fate upon an enemy but I did not know what boat had gone down, many were also friends. I made my way down the loch, eyes open and registering, so if I could see movement, I would check it out.
Part 6 of "Over the tears of the fallen"
Anyone that knows anything about sea fishing will tell you how important the tides are. Everything depends on them; where you are, where you fish, where you are in relation to the shore or islands or safe haven, everything depends upon the tides; your survival depends upon knowing the tides. Even as a lowly lobster-man, I knew them better than the back of my hand as it would be very rare that the back of my hand could mean the difference between life and death to me, the tides and my knowledge of them and the weather, pretty much dictated wither I lived or died.
I did not have the best life that anyone had ever known, not for such as I were riches, comfort and travelling the world, yet it was not a bad life no matter what you may think and I knew it well. I knew the sounds of the sea even through the crashing of the waves, even through the salt stinging my eyes and I knew that now the tide had turned and if someone was still alive or even floating on his back then he would come ashore near the old shipyard pier.
This pier, one of many in loch was at the entrance to the bulbous sea loch at the end of which lay Campbeltown. I could not see a thing other than different shades of darkness yet I knew this shore and knew that at this time of year the current would drag ant survivors in this direction. Boulders moved with the force of the waves and rocks tumbled and crashed beneath the overwhelming power of the sea That was simply the sea doing it's work. Added to all that there was sea weed, rain soaked and treacherous, making each foot fall badly, making each misstep a chance of a breakage or fracture. I did consider giving up a number of times as one foot or the other slid from a rock and sent me crashing down. I could feel the warm blood coursing down from my right knee stinging with the salt and mingling with the overwhelming moisture produced by the sea and the rain. My foot had slipped off of the side of a rock and I had crashed down onto the other to try and stop myself from falling. I had not hurt myself really but I had opened a rather large gash on my knee and it was bleeding. Nothing to worry about really other than the thought that I would really need to clean it well when I finally got home.
The town was old, it had been there in some form or another pretty much forever and so it did not have the sewerage systems that many new towns or modern towns do and so there was much seepage into the sea. A deep wound untreated will fester but one with sewerage in it left untreated will be gangrenous in no time. It was an annoyance rather than anything else. The other times I had slipped and fell had caused no real damage other than skinned hands and knuckles and a split lip. The split lip bothered me more than the other things as I was still young then and hoping to make a girls acquaintance at some point or another and they would not notice skinned hands but would a rather ugly split lip.
Over the tears of the fallen, Part 6.
I was growing closer to the pier; Slipping and slithering over the seaweed covered rocks, it really was not that far away a few hundred yards at most but in that weather, in the dark, it felt like miles. I was tired, well I was never not tired, but I was even more tired than usual but I knew that they needed me, I knew the tides, I knew the sea.
And as I grew closer to the old shipyard pier, standing, as an anomaly, concrete and Iron, set against the sea loch with heather and gorse covered hills behind. Argyll itself is strange in that way, all that is modern, all that is new seems silly against the grand backdrop of the Argyll central massif.
I saw movement, grey against grey and so I could not be sure what it was but I was once a hunter and so knew to look for movement rather than signs and we humans are still predators and so detect the movement of prey easily.
Half of the old ramshackle pier, metal built, stone filled, stood out of the water now so you could pass underneath it but on the other side I knew there was a deep water channel where they could launch the boats. It was close to my house and I knew it well. I had fished off of it when I was younger for mackerel, sea bass and red mullet and had caught many from its peir. I wondered if any of the searchers had come this way perhaps knowing the sea as I did but they were the people from the bungalows, the insurance salesmen, the carpenters, the policemen, the civil servents. And I saw no wee groups that knew the sea such as I did and many others hereabouts. I saw few that think as those of the sea would, rather I saw, a flash of pale flesh as something moved between the beams of the old peir. It was nothing more than a glimpse but I saw a human. I am as sure of it today as I was then. I sped up giving myself a few more bruises in the process and found myself under the pier at the deepwater channel with nothing to be seen. I headed down to the water as I had definitely seen something yet there was nothing I could descry in the gloom and so despite my misgivings removed my flashlight from my pocket and used it to scan the surface of the water. Nothing floated there yet I wondered if someone had made it to shore as it was definitely human skin I had seen in the movement and the small break in the cloud that gave a very little light.
Over the Tears of the Fallen Part Seven.
No kids would have been skinny dipping on such a night. I had never seen nor imagined such a thing as the loch was very deep in places and so even in the hottest days of summer it was dreadfully cold, the sun never penetrating the depths. The loch held on the south side a huge jetty that was ran by the NATO alliance, the water so deep that trident and hunter killer submarines could enter the loch, re-fuel and take on supplies without surfacing. As a child I walked home from school on the far side of the loch every night and in the winter you could see the lights on the hillside at the other side of the loch. They were bright even in the dark nights and heavy mists that living near the sea brought.
I suppose it is ironic that were you to look at the pattern they described upon the hillside was that of an bomb. I do hope and remember thinking so then, that if they were trying to hide the base from the Russians, this was during the days of the cold war after all, that lighting the hillside in the shape of a bomb seemed a bit of a giveaway.
I could imagine, as a child, the Russian spies, after many years of oppression, indoctrination and training being sent to Kintyre to reconnoitre the US Air Base and NATO base and report back to the kremlin, “ah comrade, you will know the bourgeoisie westerners base as they light it up in the shape of a bomb.
The United Sates air force base is only five miles away at Machrihanish, on the coastal plain just North of Campbeltown. One day when young and collecting the money from milk deliveries on my bicycle and friend and I leaned against the fence of the airbase and watched the original stealth bombers taking off. If two kids collecting milk money could see them then the Russian spies perhaps had an easier job than I imagine.
It was September now and in the north September offers little of warmth and on this horrible day I do not doubt that the sea would have been slightly warmer than the land yet It would still have been very cold.
Any sailor that can swim, and many cannot, for fear of prolonging their suffering when all goes awry, knows that the first thing that you have to do no matter how cold it is, is remove your clothes as all they do is weigh you down, unless you happen to have a neoprene t-shirt on at the time. And so having seen some skin I scanned the water for it. This was the deep water channel from which they launched thirty-five foot to eighty-five-foot fishing trawlers from a few years ago and so it had to be deep and so the water was nothing other than black. Any sign of a swimmer, naked or close to it, would be easily seen unless they were dark skinned and none in the fishing fleet here was to my knowledge.
Over The Tears Of the Fallen Part Eight.
I have no idea just how deep the water is at the shipyard jetty it is but the hull on a deep water trawler is deep and for it to ship, the water had to be very deep at this point, so deep perhaps that I could not dive that far. Also the water was dark even during a light day, filled with risen sea weed and dirt specs and this was not a light day but rather a black and murderous night but I had seen skin reflected in the moonlight, I was sure of it and since I would wish that it is something that someone would do for me were I in such a predicament I stripped, the cold and rain lashed me in an instant freezing my skin. My flashlight was waterproof, an old fantasy of finding a shipwreck full of Spanish gold. I never had found the shipwreck, well, actually I had found a few but none of them Spanish and not a one with any gold on board, the most that you found were charts debris and dead fishermen.
Had the poor soul stumbled from the water just to fall into it again? The weariness that overtakes you after a long swim is depthless and saps all the strength from even the strongest men and women, when it is also cold and the sea temperature falls then the weariness becomes overwhelming. I had heard tales told of those who had survived at sea, suffering the cold, waves and tides just to give up and drown a few yards from the shore. I actually knew someone this had happened to, a lobsterman like myself, his boat had holed against an unseen rock not far from the shore and he had to abandon it. He was a strong swimmer back then, fit and able and was only a few hundred yards from shore, but there are perilous rip tides just past the rocks at Peninver village, he had been dozing and the tide had changed and so he went into the water but even with his strength and ability, against a rip tide and with the sea nearly freezing in January he barely made it. The beach has a gentle slope there and you can simply walk up it from almost a quarter of a mile out, but he kept swimming against the tide, the cold leeching all the strength from his body, he had no idea where he even was, he could have been swimming in the wrong direction, for all he knew. He gave up when he was only a few yards from the shore in only three feet of water, had it not been for an old lady walking her dog on the beach who waded in and dragged him out I would never have heard his story. He spent nearly four months in hospital recovering, he lost two fingers and one toe to the cold and could easily have died yet barely a week after the insurance company had paid out for the boat I met him launching his new boat and heading back out to drop creels again. His new boat was named the Iris Munroe, with thanks to the lady that had saved him.
Normally It is easier to swim in the sea than in a pool as you can rest, floating on your back, the salt making the sea more buoyant but not on this night, on your back you would have been tossed like a corn in a popcorn bag. And so you would have just have had to head to shore. The tide was on their side, if they could swim well and it was not yet so cold that hypothermia would have set in quickly though in the firth of Clyde, which is simply an offshoot of the Atlantic Ocean sheltered by the Kintyre peninsula then it really was possible for someone to survive.
I plunged into the channel below the pier, not allowing the cold to affect me and dived a meter below the surface trying to use my flashlight to see into the depths. Those that sell you those flashlights tell you that they are water proof but it went out with no notice little more than a meter of depth.
I steeled myself and angled to kick, pushing myself deeper into the freezing water
I went down farther. My ears are not so good with pressure and I knew I would have a headache if I went down farther but it was just by the shore and so could not be that deep. It was not even as deep as I had imagined as it must have been somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five feet when I felt the gravel between my fingers. I already knew that I was going to have a headache tomorrow. I tried searching and my lungs were much better in those days, I was a good swimmer yet no matter how good a swimmer you are you must still return to the surface for air. I had seen nothing but I had not given up and so I tread water for a few seconds taking deep breaths then I blew out imbibing a few shallow ones before I descended again. I pushed myself down with my arms kicking with my legs to give me depth. And again down there I saw a flicker of human skin but it seemed to be mobile and sinuous. I though perhaps it was a conger eel, white as they stay hidden yet it had nothing like that rather seeming a human form swimming away from me. I doubted my perception in the almost complete blackness yet when I looked up, salt water in my eyes, down perhaps twenty feet I saw something break the surface pulling what looked to be legs behind it over the side of the pier.
Over the Tears of the fallen part nine. Being the fist part of "And The sea Shall Give up its dead".
I barely made the surface as my lungs screamed for air, barely, but I did. I made it without even a splutter, though with many gasps, and lying on my back trying to calm myself still it took a few minutes to regulate my breathing.
I used my already wet jeans to dry the worst of the water from me and dressed. I sat on a rock for a little while to recover my breath and think on what I had seen. The fellow had obviously stumbled back into the deepwater channel after gaining shore. This would be easily done it being so dark, their eyes clouded with the salt water and the slipway being exactly what it is called; slippery. I was the same and had to keep rubbing my own to keep some clarity of vision, the teardrops from the salt and the silt in the water almost blinding me. Yet the one that had survived had obviously found the strength from somewhere and had made the pier. Either that or my eyes had been playing tricks on me. I did not know at the time which was the truth but was soon going to find out.
I knew I had to be careful as the tide came in quite rapidly on the west coast and though there was no particularly high tide expected, I could still be caught on the rocks before I made the shingle beach. But I need not have worried as the clouds broke for a few minutes, no more than ten but with some light I was able to cover far more ground safely and made the shingle beach way ahead of the oncoming tide.
I was no worse for wear really apart from a few skins here and there and the gash in my knee that I would clean thoroughly when I arrived home, well those things and a case of the shivers. I found the first group of searchers close by and asked if they had seen a policeman, to whom I would pass on my news but they had not. In fact, I think by the look of them that they hardly left the spot where they had arrived at the beach not that I could really blame them as the rocks and shingle were very dangerous to walk upon in this light. Farther along were a man and woman striding back from farther along the shore. I did not recognise them at first due to the long coats, waterproof trousers and hoods, until a voice shouted Billy? I saw them change direction and head towards me. I still had no idea who they were yet they obviously knew me but then I had nothing on my head but my hair and my face was bare, theirs were all in shadow. As soon as we closed the man held out his hand for me to shake, I took it and held it giving it a quick shake as was the custom in these parts. I still did not know who it was, his voice was distorted by the wind and the ever roaring sea. I could tell it was a man and woman just from their heights and general shapes along with the fashions they were wearing.
No man would wear a lilac, windcheater and few women that I knew would own rigger boots.
They were, even more than I, prepared for the weather. The fellow reached up and undid the clasp under his chin of his dry-za- bone and the wind caught his hood and whipped it back and away from his face. “Oh it’s you Bobby”, I said. I couldn’t tell who it was under all that coat.
Bobby’s shock of near black hair blew wildly in the wind and his ruddy cheeks were visible even in the little light available. “Janet” I nodded to her and she then removed her own hood, if it was not his wife that he was out searching with I was going to be very embarrassed.
I smiled at them as they did to me as I had not seen them for a while but they were just smiles of recognition, it does not do to be to happy on a night like this and they knew that as well as I. Both were locals and I had known them for many a year boy and man. Though if they even considered me a man at that time I have no idea. They were friends of my mother and father and I had always liked the pair of them. “Anything”? I asked with a grim look upon my face. “Aye” Janet said, “there’s a body up at MacCringans point though the police had found it before we got here”.
“Ah that’s a shame I said. I went down to the shipyard pier”.
Along the shore? Bobby asked with a grimace on his face. In this light”? I realised then that the other place the bodies could have washed in was MacCringans point. I knew that just as well as Bobby did yet had not thought of it. I smiled “well one survived anyway”. The smile was grim and pained but in so many of these cases there were no survivors. The fact that there was one meant there may well be others and I had not seen the lifeboat return to shore they may well have picked up many more.
I told them of the fellow getting onto the pier.
Janet looked me up and down. “You’re bleeding she said, you had better get that cleaned you know how dirty this loch can be at times”. “I know I have iodine in the house, I’ll clean it out later. Janet and Bobby both sharply took their breath, iodine, was great and it worked well but it stung like a jellyfish and left a brown scar that stayed for years. “Don’t worry I said I will see to it but I need to go and find the police first to tell them of the survivor”. “Aye” Bobby said, “you go do that and we will head up by the pier and see if we can find him and we’ll take him home, if we can’t, perhaps someone else has taken him in. I nodded and started to walk away heading towards MacCringans point, when I heard Bobby’s shout from behind me. Get the police to call me. And I will give them an update.
It was nearly a mile to the point over sodden grass and mud, sheep shit and the occasional small stream that you have to jump. I just walked through them I was soaked anyway. I slipped a couple of times in the mud and at one point very nearly left my boot behind it was mired so deeply that it was all I could do to pull my foot out and not leave the boot behind.
Over the Tears of the Fallen (Part ten)
When I reached MacCringans point it was lit up like a Christmas tree. There were two police land rovers there. I remember being surprised even then that even a land rover was able to make it down the track. They were obviously better with the terrain than I imagined. There was no road to the point just a deeply rutted stone and sand track down to the beach that I imagined a tractor would have difficulty following I never imagined that a car could make it. I was wrong. The land rover closest to me had a police man standing beside it and so I headed for him. They had a high powered spotlight upon it and were scanning the sea. The blue lights were flashing though the siren was silenced. The other land rover sat perhaps thirty yards farther up the stream had a bar across the top it and had blue and red lights flashing continuously. I assumed that it was a traffic car, rather than the usual panda cars and that it had been drafted in just for the search. They were right that this was a place for swimmers to make to, even at sea, in the waves, you would at least have an inkling of all that colour.
I strode up to the police man and took his shoulder. He jumped, he had obviously not heard me over the noise from the sea despite the squelching of my boots and the flapping of my coat.
He had not seen me as he was too busy, of course, scanning the sea. As I was walking up to him I was thinking thank goodness for the police. A thought that was normally far from my mind as I spent more time cursing them than praising them especially when they found me drunk and insensible somewhere and threw me in the calls for the night.
I need to rethink my loathing of the police, I thought to myself as I saw him jump, so much was he concentrating on finding survivors despite his own discomfort, after all who could have been comfortable on a night such as this.
He turned quickly. “Can I help you sir? The sir faded away to nothing as he saw who it was. He continued, “what the fuck, are you trying to scare me to death? “I’ve got better things to do than talk to you. Do you know what happened tonight?
His face was in shadow from the thick black police parka, lined with black and white luminous strips that covered him from the top of his head down to nearly his knees, despite the fact that he was very tall. The hood covered his face which could barely be seen and looked rather demonic in the flashing red and blue lights from the land rovers. He reminded me in that second of a film I had seen about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy and the lurid make up he wore as Pogo “The Killer Clown”
That was simply the light, the shadows and lights panting that picture, I knew Hamish well and ever since we were young boys.
In actuality he was a handsome fellow, tall and slim with a slight build, a full head of sandy blond hair tending towards curls. He had a wide jaw and piercing blue eyes, a short sharp nose but in this light all was garish and I suspect I looked far more of a fright than he.
“Look Hamish, I didn’t even know it was you”.
“Well you fucking well know now, now piss off as there might still be someone left alive and I have to get on with my job”. “There is”, I said.
“What”?
“There is”, I said again, “someone else alive and this is not a joke, just look at me”.
Hamish paused and stopped searching the ocean for a few seconds though his eyes kept straying back to the ocean. This time he took in the soaking wet clothes the blood on my hands and knees and the fact I was sober.
“What the fuck happened to you, you been fighting again”?
“Don’t be daft I had hardly got home after drying the creels when the maroons went off”. “I know this kind of weather and watched the news and waited. I was ready when the car came round”
He nodded, “I went out with all the good folk and started walking the beach”.
“How’d it take you so long to get here then and why are you in such a state? He asked nodding to my soaking clothes and bloodied Jeans.
“I judged the tides and thought the old pier at the shipyard, was the most likely place for the bodies to come ashore. The wind was blowing right and next to this it’s the most likely place for a body to be found.
For the first time, Hamish turned away fully from the searchlight and the sea in front of him. The look of fury on his face I had rarely seen before and I had known him almost my whole life. “We don’t want to find anymore fucking bodies” he shouted in my face, spittle flying. I felt it on my forehead and chin but did not even wipe it off as I knew he was near his breaking point.
This was not an everyday occurrence, in the summer it rarely happened except occasionally with inept yachters and though you felt sorry for them you still knew that they were there for the fun of it.
"Over the Tears of the Fallen", Part Eleven
Fishermen faced the sea for the food upon their tables, for the good of their families, because they had to and it was never really fun or a joy to do but rather just another form of employment.
I make it sound dreadful there and it is not, many face hazards in their jobs, nurses, miners, engineers and even teachers these days and all can face death in some form or another. Yet we felt ourselves more at risk than most mainly because of our master; the Sea. Never has there been a fickler beast in the history of mankind, be it real or legendary, than the sea. Even the gods of the earth like Vulcan using his forge and creating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, even though devastating cannot match Neptune for the loss of life that our mother, the sea, takes as its toll for its bounty.
“We want to find survivors, not bodies”. He looked as though he wanted to punch me. “We don’t want to find any more bodies”. “Not one more”, shouted with real hate into my face as he hated himself for what he had found, he hated himself more for what he would then have to do; tell the families of the dead.
I must have paled before him, though how he could tell in this light I don’t know, as he calmed slightly, seemed to regain control of himself, though I had the impression that great violence lay behind his eyes in his fervour (how our emotions affect us).
He seemed to take a deep breath and calm himself, when he next spoke he was clearer and without the venom of the earlier outburst, “and did you find any”?
“Yes”.
“Alive?
I nodded and started to smile, “Alive”
Hamish seemed to wonder if this was a joke by a friend, a last misery to put upon him. Something to break him down completely but then realised that Billy was not the one to do this. If there was anyone as thoughtful as Hamish himself, it was Billy. I saw him summing me up in his eyes and facial expressions all in a few seconds. He dissected me, thought all of his thoughts about me, how I acted, my silly practical jokes, my strange philosophies, my stoic ways, my Spartan outlook and my romanticism, my love of poetry and realised that is something that even irreverent I; would not make a joke of.
“You found a survivor”? He said it with such hope that I may have lied if I had not, to please him but luckily I did not. “Yes”. Was all I could say though I felt things far more deeply than just a yes sufficed to describe.
I realised just how good a man my old friend was, how much he felt all these things and I knew now his dark moods, which were only occasional but deep.
He Cared. This was not the act that many put on about caring as they thought it expected. This was true caring. True empathy for those that he would have to tell the worst possible news.
Not a fear for himself over such a distasteful task but rather a fear of what this news would do to loved ones and relatives. Even though he had been my friend for years and I cared deeply for him I do think that up until this moment I had ever known why. I now did, and I loved him.
“I judged that the tides would take them (I hesitated to again say, the bodies) to the old pier at the shipyard”, I said, I glanced down at my hands and knees, no light to see the damage but they felt pretty sore and I could feel the blood running down my leg from the gashed knee, “who told you to look here?” I asked Hamish “Old Ramsey?”
He nodded. “who was it that you found?”
“I have no idea”, I said, “I never saved him, just went in after him, he crawled out by himself, Bobby and Janet are away looking for him up at Trench Point they said they would take him home and let the family know.
Hamish smiled, “the next time, my friend, save the guy, it would do you no harm to be a hero for once”.
I would always follow old Ramsey’s thoughts over mine, he knew the seas, the tides and the winds better than anyone. The only reason he was still alive at such an old age. Few of us made it to that great age in fact, quite a number, never made it out of their thirties never mind into their eighties.
He still fully, had his wits about him as well, strong and tough he was, though withered now with age but an old salt. There was not a thing to know about the sea that he did not know. Smart as well, he did not claim omnipotence as he always said the sea will have its toll in return, and as far as I could see it always did, in human lives.
“You find anyone?” I asked.
“As soon as we got here”, he said, “at the end of the stream”, I could see the darkness in his face before he told me, “face down”.
“From the boat?” Every so often here due to the vagaries of the tide a body appears from nowhere. Once from Canada and once from Spain that I remember but I bet there have been many more that I have forgotten. Looking at Hamish’s eyes I suspect that he remembered every one.
“We don’t know yet”. Plain and non-committal.
Fresh? I knew as I asked the question that it was a terrible thing to ask. You would then have to draw the picture that you were busily trying to forget straight back into your mind. Hamish obviously did, I doubt it.
“Why?
“For fuck sake Billy do you want the details?
“I do” I said, “as I think Ramsey was wrong, he spends all his time inside these days. I admit”, I continued quickly allowing no interruption, “that he is the best reader of the wind and tides that I have ever seen”
“Hamish, I looked straight into his eyes, you know you have to be out here to feel them. Ask old Ramsey. He will tell you the same. He is not a stupid man even if he does not like me”.
“Billy you just said that he is better at it than you.
He is, but he’s not here and I am and were he still capable of being here then he would tell you what I am telling you. The pull of the tide is too strong and so anything, swimmers and corpses will pass here, drawing them into the loch and to the point at the shipyard.
At this point a hand caught my shoulder pulling me back and away from Hamish spinning me in the mud to face another.
“Billy” the newcomer uttered with contempt, “you saying my old man is losing it”.
“Nice to see you Morris” (the very last thing that would be true, I hated the bastard) “No I am saying that he is not here, if you listened to what we were saying, then you would know that, I think your old man is the best judge of the tides and weather there is living but it is difficult to do that unless you are down here at the sea”.
“You know as well as I that he can’t be. He can’t leave that chair now and that’s why I found a survivor and he was telling them to look in the wrong place”.
Morris grabbed me by the front of my coat and drew me close, almost nose to nose though I stood a little shorter than he and so it was more my nose to his chin.
“No one disrespects my father” he said as I looked up at him and he down at me. I felt spittle again on my chin though it may have been the now spitting rain.
It was time, was my first thought, he was taller than me, stronger than me, tougher than me but I am just at the right height and if I stick the head on him then I will at least break his nose before he beats me to a pulp. I was so very tempted as a payback for all the times that he had bullied me in school yet it was not a path I would wish to take on such a terrible night. I hated the fellow so much that I was tempted, I was still thinking about it when I heard the call. We both turned from each other to see what the call came for.
Hamish had gone while we were facing off and I had not even heard him jumping into the narrow but fast flowing stream. No matter the problems between me and Morris I was smiling as he dragged the coughing and spluttering fellow out of the stream.
Morris grabbed a towel and silver preserver from the front seat of the land rover and strode straight into the stream to help Hamish get the guy ashore, covering him in the process.
I waited until they had the survivor in the back of one of the Landover’s and was heading to the hospital before I said. “Seems like old Ramsey was right after all. “I was right too”, I reminded him as he sat back in the land rover, soaked like me, but without the cuts and called for an ambulance to meet the police car. “Have they got the one I found”?
“Not yet, but apparently Bobby and Janet found him wandering just outside the shipyard, naked and took him home. They know what to do to keep him safe and comfortable, any money that he is already swathed in blankets with a mug of soup in one hand from Janet and a large whisky in the other from Bobby.
“shouldn’t he be in the hospital?”
“technically yes but the place will be very busy tonight, in fact I suspect that you should also be a resident, that knee looks pretty bad, and anyway Bobby and Janet know what they are doing, they were looking after people long before we were born.
Both Bobby and Janet had been police officers in their younger years but had now retired and lived in a nice bungalow in the town. They were good people and always made visitors welcome, they were also among the first out to help on nights like this. I had no doubt that they would be caring for the guy well and both knew what to look out for if anything started to go wrong.
In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that in the dry and warmth with a whisky to buoy the fellow’s spirits that he probably was in no hurry to get home.
“I forgot to tell you that because you were so annoyed with me”. I took a step back; I was annoyed with you?
“Well”, and Hamish smiled with that big smile he had “perhaps it was the other way around”.
Neither of us could be too happy as that was two alive out of five. So many times there were none saved, two was a bit of a result but I hope that there may be more. “Hamish. I was right about the old pier at the shipyard. Send the other car there, please”.
His smile grew, “this is Campbeltown remember, limited resources and so only two land rovers here as there are only two this side of Lochgilphead” which is the next town up the Kintyre peninsula from Campbeltown but still fifty miles away, “we have vans and cars and they can get to the shipyard”. “We got another two he said and the smile split his face in two”.
Hamish was one of those lucky guys that had a great smile full of white teeth, something that was pretty rare in Scotland at least at that time and even better than that he was tall and slim. Covered in freckles and a little pale but an all-round good guy as well. When we were at school even the bullies left him alone preferring to pick on easier game, like me.
“Alive”?
Over the tears of the fallen 12
“Well I was not going to announce that we had another two corpses, to the likes of you”. The smile remained as this was really a result, four out of five. “Can you tell them to go to the shipyard pier” I asked, knowing that he could.
“Already done, the two, one fished from the water passing the shipyard pier by the MacPhersons in their rib. Even in seas like this the sheer power of a rib allowed it to be operated. Hell the lifeboat station used them and even the coastguard. “The swimmer was being dragged by the tide past the pier but they picked him up, the other had barely made shore just where you said and was helped out of the water by old Ralph”. Next to the Ramsey’s, The Shaw’s knew the water better than anyone has for an age.
Many of the family had died over the years as the result of fishing accidents and the name was devastated by the seas toll, so many lost to the sea.
Yet old Ralph had taken his skiff out. He no longer had a fishing boat, he was too old to do it by himself and most of his family had perished below the waves and so, with no one to leave the business to he had sold his boat and retired. Yet he had pulled the guy in by himself and would no doubt at his advanced age be considered a hero for doing so. I expected to read of him in the local papers this week and in the nationals, or at least the Scottish nationals next week.
An old fisherman in Scotland saving the life of a floundering fisherman is not news in Westminster where our politicians believe that they are doing something far more important in governing the country than an old fisherman is doing when trying to save a life.
To me and the people of Argyll as well as to those in the many villages on Scotland’s coasts and to those that live in fishing villages the world over, the saving of a life was great news indeed.
To me, someone that risks their life day after day for their whole life and then, retired, has every reason and excuse to just sit by the fire enjoying their retirement from public life and enjoying the fruits of their labour, is a worthy person, deserving of their ease. When that man, in their dotage and later years pulls himself from his warm armchair and decides, when another is in peril, to cast off their idyllic retirement, don again their boots and sou’westers and again risk their own life to save another’s; That man to me is a hero.
Far more of a hero than those that sit in their offices with their big black cars and enjoy liquid business lunches while deciding how many fish of what species can be caught by whom. Sure the politicians had their own worries, would their chauffeur’s body odour be smelling from working too hard. Would they have time for only two glasses of champagne before their four course lunch.
Would the poor fools that voted them in still be alive tomorrow to keep them in the privilege that they expected to be?
The politicians, the wealthy and the mighty were born to it and just did not understand the travails of those crushed below their heel. They will not have noticed the heroism of Ralph; to them he would just be an old dodgy geezer. Perhaps they would realise in some way his efforts his valiant efforts. Perhaps if they thought it would gain them votes?
I wrote that night for the first time in ages, printed off the letters and sent them to all the main newspapers and well…
Old Ralph had proved himself to be a hero again just as he had been through his whole life.
He deserved a mention or two in the papers and many thanks from the locals.
He had my thanks and adulation even if he did not know it yet.
“The last of them”? I asked?
“No sign, the lifeboat has moved closer to the shore as the tide has been coming in”.
“Fuckin Lifeboat” I said. I felt guilty even as I said it and Hamish looked at me with a look that could be called nothing other than regret.
The RNLI risk their lives day upon day, week upon week and year upon year for no real reward other than the saving of life’s from the sea. I was more annoyed with the fact that they had listened to old Ramsey rather than me and felt guilty even as I voiced the words.
After all who could blame them as I was not the sea master that old Ramsey was, not even close. Yet the tides developed and adapted with the weather and the sun, the tides and the distance the moon was from the earth all that science that Ramsey never knew and I did. Sure science could not explain everything about the movements of the ocean the tides and the weather, many of your choices were best guess, educated guess, yes, but still a guess. but that was simply because we do not know everything yet, one day, long after my death, we shall.
Old Ramsey used to tell stories of his feats, and he was a smart man, He had never gone to college or university I am not sure that he had even finished school, but he been at sea since a young boy and had learned to read and write there.
He knew the workings of the solar system and of the stars as he had to for navigation especially in times where things once tended to breakdown all the time but he was a sailor of note.
Why?
Because he knew his stuff, he knew the tides, he knew what would be difficult, he knew what would be easy and he knew that as far as the sea goes that nothing is ever easy. Even when you know the sea, it will play you false.
I stayed with Hamish that night. His wife and young child in bed and he fed me a little malt, we never found the other one, we never even found the body. Graham Bannatyne his name was, the one that was missing, yet even days later he was never found. I spent some time down at the police station because of my directions, telling them where the bodies would be. I actually wondered at one point if they had assumed that I as “Poseidon lord of the sea”, had taken my mighty hand and had thrown the occupants of the boat into the sea.
Strangely I am not the god of the sea rather just a fellow that has worked the sea since I was a boy and so had a passing knowledge of the tides.
An Aside - The next part.
The Story teller
*
You must be asking yourself by now why am I the one that’s telling this tale, after all I was just a fisherman like so many others. Sure I have a good knowledge of the tides, know the shore and know the land around the sea, know where the fish are, the tides and when the wind was likely to change and all that is true.
Why? you should ask yourself, is it not a writer, an historian, an academic of some sort or even a journalist that is writing this tale, why is it a fisherman?
Well the answer to that question is easy, it is because no historian, journalist, writer or anyone of value knew what happened later that year, no one had even an inkling of all the things that were going on, even though we had the odd journalist or fifty around for the next week or three, in fact it was becoming difficult to walk down main street without bumping into a few of them.
Campbeltown Main street was normally quiet, except in the summer months when there would be some tourists come to see the sights, some golfers down to play the links course at Machrihanish where you would have to drive well to keep your score down. Sometimes they would play the shorter course that was more difficult at Dunaverty where accuracy was required rather than strength.
People were also visiting for the music festival which was washed out by torrential rain almost as often as it was on.
Once Campbeltown had been a tourist resort and a place like Dunoon or Ayr, where families would go on their holidays from Glasgow but that boom had all but died out with the package holiday to Spain, Greece or Turkey in the late seventies and early eighties and it had never truly recovered. Of course there were stalwarts, people who liked the countryside, enjoyed the golf, liked camping and those that were short of money and had tried it for a week and were lucky enough to get good weather and so tried it again and again.
Campbeltown on a warm day in the sunshine was, and is, a great place to be, there is much to do if you like outside sports and activities.
There is great fishing, in small hill lochs and fast flowing spate rivers and golf, beautiful walks, lovely villages and beaches, many sites of historical interest all around, but in the gloom of winter it is just another small west coast town. Prettier than some I suppose but little different.
Back when our story takes place it was more vibrant, the population higher and it was doing well.
The shipyard had only recently closed but the NATO base was still operational, The US Airbase at Machrihanish was busy, there was a clothing factory and a frozen fish plant, the economy of the town was not booming but was buoyant and it was a lovely place to stay.
I suppose you are still asking yourself why a fisherman is writing this tale and what he would really know about the events. Well therein lies the tale.
I was there as you know when those people were pulled from the loch and though there was a life lost there are so many tales I could tell you of fishing boats going down and not a survivor to be found. Often even the bodies of those lost or fallen were never found, but we saved four out of five that night and though still sombre from the loss of one, in a way it was a celebration.
That I had a hand in our success was good, and I still remember the pride I felt when I had called the tides right and that allowed another two to be saved, yet still one was lost at sea. Yet Again.
A few of us know what happened to the other of the five,
The one lost at sea, the one whose body was never recovered. He was not lost at sea as the papers said, he was not lost at sea as we told the journalists and commentators, in fact he was found just as easily as the other four but not for a few days yet.
So why am I telling the story? There a number of reasons, I am the only one left alive, apart from two others, that knows the whole story. I am the only one left that will still speak of it and remembers it with some linear memories. I am the only one left that dares to tell the truth.
More, I may be a fisherman but I read. I have always read and always will until my mind gives up completely.
I read long and often, books of all sorts, shapes and sizes, all genres, those considered sophisticated and those considered pulp; most appealed to me.
I enjoyed reading so much that I had dabbled at writing myself but was never really good enough. I could hold the strains of a story together, keep the characters in my mind, their ideas and motivations but never could I form anything more than a short tale that would keep people moved, engrossed and swept away with the tale in the way that many other writers could.
I will not try to tell you of my short tales for they have no relevance to the story here but thought that I would add a short description, of the reason, I read in the form of a short story I wrote many years ago.
Over the Tears of the Fallen Part Twelve.
“Well I was not going to announce that we had another two corpses, to the likes of you”. The smile remained as this was really a result, four out of five. “Can you tell them to go to the shipyard pier” I asked, knowing that he could.
“Already done, the two, one fished from the water passing the shipyard pier by the MacPhersons in their rib. Even in seas like this the sheer power of a rib allowed it to be operated. Hell the lifeboat station used them and even the coastguard. “The swimmer was being dragged by the tide past the pier but they picked him up, the other had barely made shore just where you said and was helped out of the water by old Ralph”. Next to the Ramsey’s, The Shaw’s knew the water better than anyone has for an age.
Many of the family had died over the years as the result of fishing accidents and the name was devastated by the seas toll, so many lost to the sea.
Yet old Ralph had taken his skiff out. He no longer had a fishing boat, he was too old to do it by himself and most of his family had perished below the waves and so, with no one to leave the business to he had sold his boat and retired. Yet he had pulled the guy in by himself and would no doubt at his advanced age be considered a hero for doing so. I expected to read of him in the local papers this week and in the nationals, or at least the Scottish nationals next week.
An old fisherman in Scotland saving the life of a floundering fisherman is not news in Westminster where our politicians believe that they are doing something far more important in governing the country than an old fisherman is doing when trying to save a life.
To me and the people of Argyll as well as to those in the many villages on Scotland’s coasts and to those that live in fishing villages the world over, the saving of a life was great news indeed.
To me, someone that risks their life day after day for their whole life and then, retired, has every reason and excuse to just sit by the fire enjoying their retirement from public life and enjoying the fruits of their labour, is a worthy person, deserving of their ease. When that man, in their dotage and later years pulls himself from his warm armchair and decides, when another is in peril, to cast off their idyllic retirement, don again their boots and sou’westers and again risk their own life to save another’s; That man to me is a hero.
Far more of a hero than those that sit in their offices with their big black cars and enjoy liquid business lunches while deciding how many fish of what species can be caught by whom. Sure the politicians had their own worries, would their chauffeur’s body odour be smelling from working too hard. Would they have time for only two glasses of champagne before their four course lunch.
Would the poor fools that voted them in still be alive tomorrow to keep them in the privilege that they expected to be?
The politicians, the wealthy and the mighty were born to it and just did not understand the travails of those crushed below their heel. They will not have noticed the heroism of Ralph; to them he would just be an old dodgy geezer. Perhaps they would realise in some way his efforts his valiant efforts. Perhaps if they thought it would gain them votes?
I wrote that night for the first time in ages, printed off the letters and sent them to all the main newspapers and well…
Old Ralph had proved himself to be a hero again just as he had been through his whole life.
He deserved a mention or two in the papers and many thanks from the locals.
He had my thanks and adulation even if he did not know it yet.
“The last of them”? I asked?
“No sign, the lifeboat has moved closer to the shore as the tide has been coming in”.
“Fuckin Lifeboat” I said. I felt guilty even as I said it and Hamish looked at me with a look that could be called nothing other than regret.
The RNLI risk their lives day upon day, week upon week and year upon year for no real reward other than the saving of life’s from the sea. I was more annoyed with the fact that they had listened to old Ramsey rather than me and felt guilty even as I voiced the words.
After all who could blame them as I was not the sea master that old Ramsey was, not even close. Yet the tides developed and adapted with the weather and the sun, the tides and the distance the moon was from the earth all that science that Ramsey never knew and I did. Sure science could not explain everything about the movements of the ocean the tides and the weather, many of your choices were best guess, educated guess, yes, but still a guess. but that was simply because we do not know everything yet, one day, long after my death, we shall.
Old Ramsey used to tell stories of his feats, and he was a smart man, He had never gone to college or university I am not sure that he had even finished school, but he been at sea since a young boy and had learned to read and write there.
He knew the workings of the solar system and of the stars as he had to for navigation especially in times where things once tended to breakdown all the time but he was a sailor of note.
Why?
Because he knew his stuff, he knew the tides, he knew what would be difficult, he knew what would be easy and he knew that as far as the sea goes that nothing is ever easy. Even when you know the sea, it will play you false.
I stayed with Hamish that night. His wife and young child in bed and he fed me a little malt, we never found the other one, we never even found the body. Graham Bannatyne his name was, the one that was missing, yet even days later he was never found. I spent some time down at the police station because of my directions, telling them where the bodies would be. I actually wondered at one point if they had assumed that I as “Poseidon lord of the sea”, had taken my mighty hand and had thrown the occupants of the boat into the sea.
Strangely I am not the god of the sea rather just a fellow that has worked the sea since I was a boy and so had a passing knowledge of the tides.
The Story teller
*
You must be asking yourself by now why am I the one that’s telling this tale, after all I was just a fisherman like so many others. Sure I have a good knowledge of the tides, know the shore and know the land around the sea, know where the fish are, the tides and when the wind was likely to change and all that is true.
Why? you should ask yourself, is it not a writer, an historian, an academic of some sort or even a journalist that is writing this tale, why is it a fisherman?
Well the answer to that question is easy, it is because no historian, journalist, writer or anyone of value knew what happened later that year, no one had even an inkling of all the things that were going on, even though we had the odd journalist or fifty around for the next week or three, in fact it was becoming difficult to walk down main street without bumping into a few of them.
Campbeltown Main street was normally quiet, except in the summer months when there would be some tourists come to see the sights, some golfers down to play the links course at Machrihanish where you would have to drive well to keep your score down. Sometimes they would play the shorter course that was more difficult at Dunaverty where accuracy was required rather than strength.
People were also visiting for the music festival which was washed out by torrential rain almost as often as it was on.
Once Campbeltown had been a tourist resort and a place like Dunoon or Ayr, where families would go on their holidays from Glasgow but that boom had all but died out with the package holiday to Spain, Greece or Turkey in the late seventies and early eighties and it had never truly recovered. Of course there were stalwarts, people who liked the countryside, enjoyed the golf, liked camping and those that were short of money and had tried it for a week and were lucky enough to get good weather and so tried it again and again.
Campbeltown on a warm day in the sunshine was, and is, a great place to be, there is much to do if you like outside sports and activities.
There is great fishing, in small hill lochs and fast flowing spate rivers and golf, beautiful walks, lovely villages and beaches, many sites of historical interest all around, but in the gloom of winter it is just another small west coast town. Prettier than some I suppose but little different.
Back when our story takes place it was more vibrant, the population higher and it was doing well.
The shipyard had only recently closed but the NATO base was still operational, The US Airbase at Machrihanish was busy, there was a clothing factory and a frozen fish plant, the economy of the town was not booming but was buoyant and it was a lovely place to stay.
I suppose you are still asking yourself why a fisherman is writing this tale and what he would really know about the events. Well therein lies the tale.
I was there as you know when those people were pulled from the loch and though there was a life lost there are so many tales I could tell you of fishing boats going down and not a survivor to be found. Often even the bodies of those lost or fallen were never found, but we saved four out of five that night and though still sombre from the loss of one, in a way it was a celebration.
That I had a hand in our success was good, and I still remember the pride I felt when I had called the tides right and that allowed another two to be saved, yet still one was lost at sea. Yet Again.
A few of us know what happened to the other of the five,
The one lost at sea, the one whose body was never recovered. He was not lost at sea as the papers said, he was not lost at sea as we told the journalists and commentators, in fact he was found just as easily as the other four but not for a few days yet.
So why am I telling the story? There a number of reasons, I am the only one left alive, apart from two others, that knows the whole story. I am the only one left that will still speak of it and remembers it with some linear memories. I am the only one left that dares to tell the truth.
More, I may be a fisherman but I read. I have always read and always will until my mind gives up completely.
I read long and often, books of all sorts, shapes and sizes, all genres, those considered sophisticated and those considered pulp; most appealed to me.
I enjoyed reading so much that I had dabbled at writing myself but was never really good enough. I could hold the strains of a story together, keep the characters in my mind, their ideas and motivations but never could I form anything more than a short tale that would keep people moved, engrossed and swept away with the tale in the way that many other writers could.
will not try to tell you of my short tales for they have no relevance to the story here but thought that I would add a short description, of the reason, I read in the form of a short story I wrote many years ago.
The Bookshop.
*
It is still one of my favourite places in the world, a good bookshop. I am originally from a small west coast town in Scotland with few shops and few people but we had a book shop. “Martin’s” it was called, stone painted black on the outside, with shiny anti-fouling paint that they used on the underside of the many fishing boats in the harbour. Three windows; two facing the sea another into an alley that led to the reeking public toilets. The windows were full of sheet music for bag pipe and accordion, tin whistle and flute all unsold and fading in the occasional sun that broke through the glass.
The music was interspersed with the odd novel or history book mainly written by people that lived locally like Angus MacVicar and the almost legendary Naomi Mitchieson who was by then ninety and lived near Carradale.
A village fifteen miles away got to by a tar and chip single track road with passing spaces, that wound across cliffs and through forests dotted with the occasional smoke spilling cottage.
Yet it was not the outside of the book shop but the inside that fascinated me, for upon opening the old hardwood door with a half window, with a half pulled roller blind, that was so heavy as a child you could hardly push it to enter. Painted black with the same shiny paint that adorned the outside it opened upon a treasure trove. The shop was barely fifteen feet long and only twelve wide a quarter of this taken up by the oak counter and the two ladies behind it; Mrs Martin a grey haired harridan with bow legs and a brown tweed skirt over sensible flat lace up shoes and below a sweater of brown wool.
Sometimes her daughter would be with her and sometimes another lady that I never knew the name of but was obviously not from the same stock being dark haired, slim and pretty even though she was twenty years my senior.
All inside was polished wood, oak most likely, with a spiral staircase that wound up to the second floor that had a small chain curving across it that said “Staff Only” in rather authoritarian lettering.
The downstairs when you took away the room for the counter and the staircase was only perhaps eight feet in width and barely five in depth accommodating perhaps four or five shoppers at most at a time and then in a crush. For me it was the feel of the place; bursting with knowledge that was new to me at the time being little more than a child. The colours of the book spines and covers against the unrelenting oak, the smell of dampness and must from the books that covered every available surface, piled even upon the steps of the spiral staircase. In that small and almost insignificant bookshop I learned and read and read more, often I had to wait two months to get the book I wanted and so I read something that I did not wish to read in between as I was hooked by then and I have been a book junkie ever since.
This, best of vices, gave me a hundred lives that I have lived over and above my own. I have enjoyed every one, been terrified in every one, been amazed in every one and when that terrible, vile and fulfilling ocean finally takes the last of me I will have lived a thousand lives through all that I have read. So it comes to me to tell the tale of what happened after the rescue. For the one that was missing was not gone for ever as we, me, Morris and Hamish as well as the coastguard and his family had imagined.
Instead he was cozened and coddled by the cold ocean and brought like a child back to shore.
Those Returning
The waves deposited him naked and white upon the shore at Kilcousland beach, which lay about two and a half miles from Campbeltown on the road to Peninver.
His body looked as though it had been bleached by the salt in the sea when I saw it, lying upon the rich golden beach.
Kilcousland beach is formed of both golden sand and a shingle shore, few went there in even the warmest days of summer as it faced directly onto the wide Atlantic Ocean with nothing sheltering it and so there could be a chill wind from the sea on even the best of days.
It was a beautiful beach, that nestled between two rocky outcrops and faced directly onto the Kilbrannen sound and Davaar island and the deep grey Atlantic beyond.
*
Farther out where the Kilbrannen sound deepens into the wide, dark channels of the firth of Clyde before it enters the Irish Sea, a light begins to burn many fathoms down.
It could well have been a diver welding as there are many communications channels that pass under the Irish sea as well as a gas pipeline and probably many other things unknown to me. It could have been a submarine as at that time, the trident nuclear submarine fleet refuelled at the NATO base in Campbeltown but it was not. It seemed like a magnesium flare bursting into life in slow motion, first an intense glare that builds slowing into the brightest of white lights and then maintains its brilliance as it burns but this light lasted only for seconds before blackness returned again.
Normally there was little to be seen at this depth, the sun barely penetrated these deeps even in summer and this was most certainly not summer. Had anyone seen this phenomenon they could probably have come up with a reasonable explanation for it but no one did except for the creature it birthed and it hated the light and the moment of its coming into existence.
It felt all around itself rather than viewed as Its eyesight was not good, it was born of darkness and depth where no light penetrated, it had no shape, no form but somehow immediately knew where it was. It did not know how or why it knew this but it did. The sea was deep here and the ocean floor reasonably uniform, little, grew other than the hardiest of sea weeds.
The sea felt strange, thicker than when the creature last lived, the salt had not changed but something indefinable had, changed beyond measure. The ocean floor was littered with debris of all sorts, even here in the deeps and the creature knew it was these things that had made the sea feel different, it did not know the word toxic but if had it may well have used it. It felt around itself and was pleased to feel that life had not changed, the sea still teemed with life, small creatures that scuttled and moved with the tide seeking food or light or warmth, fish, bottom feeders and the odd predator.
It felt a change in the ocean floor nearby and felt around it realising it was boat, long wrecked and sunken, the hull, what was left of it, covered in sea lice and barnacles. The insides filled with small creatures, crabs and crustacean’s, and then it felt it, a larger creature, a predator, big and strong a creature it could work with, a creature it could control.
It watched as the creature uncurled from hiding to snatch a large Haddock from the sea near its nest. Its speed and power were tremendous, its huge jaws clamped down upon the large haddock in seconds and in a similar time it had again retreated to its nest to consume and await its next victim. The Congers of old had been mighty beasts but few compared with this giant.
The creature had no quantifying method for length or girth and so simply knew that it was large and fearsome, it had taken and consumed a large haddock in a matter of seconds.
It reached out and took control of the beast.