To the Sea Again
I want to tell you about a summer's night and a meeting which was to change our lives. But first you had better buy me a drink; I don't think I can tell it without at least one drink.
It was last year. Remember what a scorcher it was? Andy and I were sitting over there in the corner, as close to the open freezer door as we could get. There weren't many folks in that night. They were probably all lounging around on their porches, sipping cold drinks and complaining about the heat.
Andy was looking for some action: that seemed to be the be-all and end-all of his existence at the time. Seventeen years old, fit and strong and bored out of his mind with small town living.
“Come on Jim. What do you say?”
I took a long gulp of beer before replying. I know what he was asking. Take out the car, have a few beers and head over to Landford to suss out the nublies at the Trocadero.
“I don't think so Andy,” I replied, seeing the disappointment on his face. “It's too hot; that place will be like an oven. Do you really want to sweat a couple of buckets full, get ourselves a hangover and come home on our own again?”
We hadn't been having much luck with the girls lately. I think it had something to do with our air of desperation. Andy and I were what was known as 'nerds.' We didn't play football, we didn't hang around with the gangs, and, probably the worst sin, we were capable of passing exams.
So, not only were we shunned by our peers as being 'know-all dickheads,' we didn't have that spark of magic, of excitement that would allow us to get on with girls. Sometimes I felt that we had as aura around us, one that shouted 'These guys are nerds.'
Not that it worried me unduly. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got out. One more set of exams then it was bye-bye small town, and heigh-ho off to University.
Andy couldn't wait though. I think his hormones had finally woken up, and all he could talk about was women. Well, not women as such; just how he could use their bodies in a variety of sex acts.
I was about to have another try at getting him on to a different subject when it suddenly went cold. Goosebumps ran the length of my arm. I thought of something my mother always said, “Someone just walked over my grave,” when I noticed that it wasn't just happening to me. Andy was rubbing his arm and, incredibly, there was a thin film of frost on our beer glasses.
I began to speak, and that's when I caught it; the unmistakable salt-tang of the sea. It was something I'd only ever smelled once before, ten years and three hundred miles away, but I had never forgotten it. Then, as quickly as it had come, it passed on, leaving us with just the memory and the sudden condensation on our glasses. We looked at each other, and I could see the wide-eyed wonder in Andy's eyes. I looked around the room, but no-one else seemed to have noticed anything. There was old Joe fanning himself with his newspaper, and Eileen the waitress tugging her halter top away from her body. At any other time that small scene would have sent my blood racing, but at that moment I was too confused to take any notice.
And then they came in. You have to have come from a small town to realise the impact that three strangers can make in a quiet bar. Old Joe's newspaper stopped in mid-fan, and I swear that if his jaw had dropped any further it would have hit the table. Eileen was frozen with her halter pulled away from her chest and she took two steps back before she realised where she was. I didn't blame her. I felt like getting out myself.
They looked like escapees from a fancy dress party, but somehow you knew that this was no pantomime. The clothes looked worn, lived in; they didn't have that crisp newness which always characterised hired clothes. I immediately thought of actors, people off the set for a quick drink; but who made pirate movies these days? Of the three, it was the middle one who caught my attention. Imagine Errol Flynn playing a buccaneer and you have some idea of his swaggering, cocksure presence. But Errol Flynn never looked this. His left eye had gone, leaving only a blackened, charred hole to complement the sky-blue twinkle from the right, and he only had an index finger and a thumb on his right hand. I wouldn't have noticed that so soon, but he was pulling at a lump of scar tissue where his left ear had once been, and it was hard to miss. The metallic click of his sabre against his belt echoed loudly in the suddenly quiet room.
“Rum!” he shouted. “A pint of rum for three thirsty men of the sea,” and banged his fist down hard on the bar.
Nobody moved. Old Joe looked like he had been frozen to the spot, and I was trying hard to blend into the background. Somehow I didn't want these guys to register my presence.
“Rum!” he shouted again, and this time all three of them banged on the bar. Eileen came out of her daze and moved behind the bar to serve them. They might look as weird as a five-legged dog, but business is business. Her first mistake was to try and make small talk.
“So what do you guys do?” she asked.
They looked at her as if she was something nasty they had just stepped in, and then the big guy turned his good eye on her.
“Women are fine for bedding and bearing brats, but I've yet to meet one that made a fair barkeep.”
His companions guffawed, and then the big one did it; the thing that changed the whole tack of our lives. He reached out and began to paw at Eileen's breasts.
I was out of my chair in a second, but Andy was even faster. He was already past me and well on his way across the room when I heard the metallic slide of metal on metal as a sabre was drawn from its scabbard.
“Leave her alone you bastards!” Andy shouted, and made a lunge for the big man. He lasted two seconds. That's the length of time it took for the man to release his sabre and club Andy over the head with the heavily armoured hilt. Andy fell in a limp bundle and Eileen screamed, just once, before the room fell silent.
I was in no-man's-land, caught in the space between the safety of my seat and the crumpled body on the floor. All I could do was giggle nervously as the big guy turned his one good eye on me.
“How about you, pup?” he said, and I swear there was a starry twinkle in his eye. “Do you have the same spunk as your young friend here?”
That was the pivotal moment. I knew it, and he knew it. And that was when I was found wanting.
My mouth had gone dry, and yet again I felt the goosebumps race across my arms; but it wasn't the cold this time. I willed my legs to move, willed my mouth to speak, but all I got was that same pathetic giggle.
There was a look of disappointment in the big man's eye as he turned to his companions.
“Looks like it's only the one then,” he said, and motioned to them to pick Andy up. They carried him between them as they made their way to the door. And I didn't even move, feeling nothing but the dry. cold taste of cowardice in my mouth.
That blue eye was staring at me again when I looked back to the bar.
“Are you sure you don't want to protect the virtue of this fine wench?” he said, and laughed, a deep booming thing that set the lights swinging above him. I shivered again as he ran a callused hand over Eileen's cheek, but still I didn't move.
“Ah well,” he muttered. “Maybe next time.”
He leaned over and took a bottle of whisky from the bar as he left, the evil, metallic clicking of his sabre echoing round in my skull even after the door had closed behind him.
Joe and I stared at each other for a long time, my fear reflected in his eyes, but it was the look I got from Eileen that made me move.
It wasn't so much the disgust that bothered me, it was the pity; and it was the pity that drove me away from her, away from the bar and out of the door into the night.
She was nestled in the cornfield, the yellow waves lapping at her hull, and I couldn't believe it. She was blue and silver and white, all at the same time, and the moonlight glistened in a rainbow aurora off her rigging.
A gangplank stretched down towards me, black and inviting, and her name stood out in gleaming white from her bow: “The Saucy Sue,” registered in Liverpool, 1607. Her sails were full and stretched to their limit,
although the night was so still I could hear my heart pounding. And up there above me, on the deck, I saw the two men drop Andy at their feet, and I heard their manic laughter as they disappeared out of my sight.
The big man was nowhere to be seen, and I think that's what allowed me to function; if he'd still been around then I don't think I could have made my next move. As it was I didn't really think about it; I was up the gangplank and on to the deck before my hindbrain had time to be worried. I was almost surprised to find firm, hard wood beneath my feet.
Andy was still out when I got to him, but he was breathing steadily and there was no blood. He was going to have one hell of a black eye, though.
I had just got my arms underneath his shoulders and had just begun to drag him toward the gangplank when I heard the voice at my back.
“So, m'lad. You have more spunk than I thought.”
I almost wet myself, and I just managed to get a foot under Andy's head as it fell to the deck. I turned to face the one-eyed pirate.
He was leaning on his drawn sabre, the bottle of whisky at his lips. He was now wearing a hat, a huge, plumed monstrosity of a thing that flopped above his forehead, casting his eyes in shadow. I could still see the glint in that crystal-blue eye.
“Have you come to join us?” he said, his voice a whisper as he stared at the sky. “To sail to the mountains of the moon, to clip along the Spanish Main, running just ahead of the wind, to see the great whales feed off the krill at the edge of the great ice sheets, to search for the sea serpents in the black depths of the yellow seas. Have you come to join us?”
“No,” I said, but my voice was muffled by the one from my feet. I looked down to see Andy looking straight at the pirate.
“Yes,” Andy said.
The pirate slapped his thigh and that great laugh boomed out once more. The resemblance to Errol Flynn was even more pronounced.
“Raise the anchor,” he shouted, and two men appeared from below decks to do his bidding. ”Set sail for the west. We have a long journey and two new recruits to break in.”
“No,” I said again, louder this time, and looked to Andy for support, but he was staring around the ship, eyes wide in wonder.
I grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around to face me.
”Andy. We have to get off this thing.”
He shook his head.
“No Jim. You go. This is what I want.” He pushed me away, toward the gangplank, but my body was blocked by the tall pirate.
“You both stay,” he said, and this time there was no humour in his voice. “Bosun!” he shouted. “Two deckhands to be broken in.”
There was a sudden loud creak, and I felt the boat sway under my feet as the stars started to spin in the sky. That was enough for me. I leapt from the rail, vaulting over it, feeling the pirate grab at my ankles but not strongly enough to stop me.
I fell and fell, and blackness spun around me, and I tensed myself for a hard landing before suddenly and unexpectedly I hit water and tasted that long-forgotten flavour of salt water in my mouth. I looked up and could just see the great ship fade into the black sky.
I think, at the last, I heard Andy's voice; a small thing in the distance that called just one word.
“Goodbye.”
There's not much more to tell. I was at the sea-shore, four hundred miles from home; and that in itself look a lot of explaining. I made up some story about Andy and I running away, but I'm not sure anyone actually believed me.
I fell behind in my schooling and I never did make it to University. Nowadays I mostly sit in the bar, jawing with Joe and Eileen, all of us trying to make sense of what happened that night; all of us waiting for those hot sultry nights, waiting with a mixture of trepidation and excitement for the salt tang to come back.
The First Silkie
Long ago, and far to the north where the ice meets the sea and the great white bears prowl for unwary travelers, there was an island of sea-faring folk who were renowned for their prowess in fishing.
It is said that every time they took to sea their nets bulged heavy…so heavy that they had to throw back more than twice what they were able to carry. Nothing that swam in the seas was safe, for the men were so gifted that no shoal could hide from them. Across the seas of Midgard their sails blew tight in the spray, and their songs swelled with the wind as they hunted.
So big were their catches, so bountiful were their tables that their fame at last reached as far as Valhalla, to the halls of Odin himself. And even Odin, the master hunter, was in awe of the exploits that were related at his table. But the tales were so tall, seemingly so exaggerated, that the old God would not swallow them, for he had heard many tales over his long years, and was wise enough to know that the teller was just as important as the tale itself.
So he sent his son Loki to find out if the stories were true, for Loki was a teller of tall tales himself, and would know a lie if one faced him.
“Bring me the truth of it,” Odin said, and Loki smiled sweetly, though the truth was little more than a passing stranger to the Trickster.
For long months he searched the circling sea, and many great and mighty things did he learn. And everywhere he went he heard tales of the great fishermen of the North, who had risen in greatness so far among the other seafaring folks that they might even be gods themselves.
And Loki saw this, and was enraged that mere fisherfolk might usurp the place of the mighty in the hearts of common men.
After long journeys he came to the land of the fishermen on a sunny day in summer and saw the nets bulging with the herring, the silver mounds filling the harbors and inlets for many leagues around.
And the townsfolk saw him, and took him in, and there was a great feast. Ragna, the King of the Fisherfolk, took Loki to his side at the high table, and there was much talk of fish and fishermen. The ale flowed freely, and talk grew loose.
“King Ragna,” Loki said, rising from his seat at the table. “You are truly a great hunter. Surely Odin himself would not take so much in his nets.”
Now Ragna, who cared little for the ways of the gods, grew boastful,
“No disrespect to your father lad, but he is a land hunter. No one is better on the water than I. I can catch anything that swims,” he said.
Now Ragna’s daughter, Myrna, was a great beauty and Loki had his eye on her throughout the feast. So when Ragna made his boast, Loki laid his trap, for he had seen a way to take the girl, yet still explain himself back in Valhalla.
“I have a wager for you, King Ragna,” the god said. “On the morrow we will take to the boats, and I will show you what I wish you to catch. If you succeed, I will promise to tell Odin himself that Ragna is the King of all Fisherfolk.”
“And if I fail?”
“If you fail, I take the hand of your daughter Myrna, in marriage,” the god said.
Now Ragna saw this as a wager where he could not lose, and the King and the god shook hands on the deal.
On the morrow they took to the water in the boats, and all the menfolk of the people went with them.
Loki took them to the south, to land’s they had never before fished, in seas they had never before sailed. And great was the bounty in the waters, where the shoals of herring stretched for miles and the whales dived in their hundreds.
“And what is it you wish us to catch, my lord,” Ragna said to Loki. And Loki smiled, for he had a secret.
“I have a special catch for you this day, King Ragna.” And suddenly, all around their boats, the heads of seals bobbed in the water, their plaintive cries echoing across the water.
“But these are no sport,” the King said.
“Nevertheless, these are your wager,” Loki replied.
So the fisherfolk went to it with gusto. They sang as they hauled the catches in, and soon their nets were full to the busting with the screaming seals. But their songs soon turned to wails, for as their catch left the water the seals began to change, into wives, and daughters, into mother
and sister, the womenfolk of the fishermen, now all gasping for air.
“Like fish out of water,” Loki said and laughed.
King Ragna ordered the catch put back, but he was too late, and the bodies of the dead floated around them. All save one, a single seal that sang a plaintive song of loss and sorrow as the men in the boats wept.
“It seems you have lost the wager King Ragna. It seems I have to tell Odin I am a better fisherman than you, for look…I have got myself a sea wife, your daughter, Myrna.”
And Ragna, in his rage, lifted Loki from the deck, but the god merely laughed and changed his form to a huge black crow, whose cawing laugh echoed long after it had flown in to the north.
And Loki returned to Odin, and told a tale of how the fisherfolk had thought them selves above even Odin himself, and how he, Loki, had tricked them. But he did not tell of the deaths of the womenfolk, and although Odin knew there was a lie in the tale, he could not separate the bigger lie from the smaller one, and in time the affairs of Asgard took precedence over the affairs of men.
Far away in Midgard, Ragna made a new home, there where his daughter swam and sang. And great was the sorrow of the people, for without the womenfolk they grew old and died, and none followed them.
And it came to pass that King Ragna became an old, bent, man, and he was the last of his people. And with his dying breath he called down a curse on the sons of Loki…that they would come when one of Myrna’s blood called, that they would be father and protector of Myrna’s children, that they would be cursed to serve the very line that Loki had tried to erase.
And high in his halls, great Odin heard, and now he knew of Loki’s perfidy. So he sent to Myrna a song, a lay that would entice the sons of Loki. And even as King Ragna’s eyes were closing for the last time, he heard the song, and saw, on the beach, a seal turn into a man, a man called to be the first, first of the sea-husbands.
From Between
By the time I arrived at Eillan Eighe I was wet, miserable, and dearly missing my warm apartments back in the college. But Roger had called for me, and although we had not met for several years the bonds between us were still taut, and I could do naught but answer when his telegram arrived.
I regretted it at that point of course, standing in the Western Highlands on a wet mud track in the gathering gloom, with rain beating on my head and cold water seeping into my ten guinea brogues.
But just as I was about to turn and head back for the dry waiting room in the railway station I turned a corner, and the glen opened up ahead of me. And there, little more than a mile distant, sat the squat cubic keep that was Roger's ancestral home, Eillan Eighe.
Roger himself welcomed me at the door.
“Come in man,” he said. He helped me out of my sodden overcoat, and showed me into a hall dominated by a huge fireplace and a roaring log fire.
He sat me down in an armchair and placed a tumbler full of whisky in my hand.
I was so relieved to finally get some heat into my bones that it was several minutes before I realised that my friend was not the man I remembered him to be.
We'd first met before the war, at Oxford. We made a strange pair, him tall and ruddy and full of rude health, and me, short, pale and permanently marked by a childhood pox that had almost claimed me. But we found common interest in the wonders of modern science, and had sat up late into the night on many occasions wondering at the implications of the work of Rutherford, Bohr and Einstein.
Then the war came, and we came to see the dark side of man's invention. Roger was never the same after returning from the Somme. He would not talk of it, but one look into his eyes told me everything I needed to know of the horrors that plagued his dreams.
The rigours of battle not withstanding, he had seemed on his way back to some kind of health when I'd last seen him in our club in Piccadilly in '21.
But no longer.
When I looked over to where he sat by the piano, he seemed less the country gentleman, and more like some gothic aesthete, a romantic poet suffering for his art. He was so pale, so wan that his veins showed blue at hands and forehead, and his hair, once black and vibrant, hung in lank grey strands at the nape of his neck. His eyes looked like two black coals sunk in snow, and his hands trembled as they reached for a whisky glass.
“Dear God man,” I said. “Whatever is the matter with you?”
He managed to raise a small smile, and for a second, my old friend was there.
“Bad day at the office old boy. I'm glad you've come. I need you.”
I rose and went to him. I took his hand and checked his pulse. It was thin, thready, running like a train.
“You don't need me. You need a doctor.”
“Not now,” he said. “Not when I'm so close.”
“The only thing you're close to is death's door.”
He smiled once more, and swallowed a large dose of whisky, which immediately brought some colour to his cheeks.
“Not when the water of life is so readily available.”
He moved quickly to the piano, surprising me with his speed.
“I will show you why I asked for you to come.”
He started to play. I immediately noticed that his style was clumsy and forced, but the piano was in good tune, and the height of the hall gave the acoustics a resonance and depth that hid a multitude of playing sins. What Roger lacked in style, he more than made up for in vigour, and the room rang as he pounded out a succession of minor chords.
Sweat poured from his brow, and his breath became short and shallow, but still he pounded.
I moved to put a stop to the insanity... just as an answering pounding arose from below.
I felt it first through the soles of my feet, but soon my whole frame shook, vibrating in time with the rhythm. My head swam, and it seemed as if the very walls of the keep melted and ran. The fireplace receded into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness where nothing existed save the dark and the pounding beat from below.
Shapes moved in the dark, wispy shadows with no substance, shadows that capered and whirled as the dance grew ever more frenetic.
I tasted salt water in my mouth, and was buffeted, as if by a strong, surging tide, but as the beat grew ever stronger I cared little. I gave myself to it, lost in the dance, lost in the dark.
I know not how long I wandered, there in the space between. I forgot myself, forgot my friend, in a blackness where only rhythm mattered.
And I do believe I would be there yet if Roger had not come to the end of his endurance.
I snapped out of my reverie at the same moment as Roger, exhausted, slumped over the piano. The rhythm from below died and faded, and the room once more filled back in around me, leaving me weak and disoriented. I only came full back to my senses when Roger slid off the piano stool and fell, insensate, on the stone floor.
I took time to take a long slug from his whisky glass to fortify myself before I bent to lift him. He was out cold, and it took all of my strength to get him into the armchair by the fire. By the time I got him seated upright with a rug around him, he had started to snore gently.
Exhausted, I helped myself to more of the whisky and sat myself in the chair on the other side of the grate. For a while I kept close watch on my friend, but sleep was waiting for me, and I gave myself to it with no small relief.
There were no dreams.