Fishing For Birds
2nd Story from Runa’s Ghost Trilogy. Can be read as a stand alone piece.
Title Page
Published by sarahNet Ltd
sarahNet Ltd, Shedfield, Hampshire SO32 2JE
First Published in the United Kingdom 2014
Copyright © sarahNet Ltd
sarah@sarahnet.com
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Cover Illustration courtesy of HiFipapers
Commander Tim Wharton (OBE) carefully stowed away the framed photos alongside an expensive perfume he had bought his wife Carrie for their wedding anniversary. He slammed his car-boot shut against the torrents of water that were cascading about him and glanced back up the High Street to the Old Anchor Café that appeared to be riding out the storm. Its metal flags and bunting hung out in celebration for the New Year joined with the clamour from the yachts in the harbour. Their noise was audible even against the howling backing wind that buffeted the building’s half-timbered frame. Rain dashed above the Café’s walls, splashed up against its footings and flagged pavements before finally falling to mix with the fierce sea-spray that was sweeping in from the coast.
Gasping for breath in the sudden squalls, Tim looked past the Café to the hard beyond and the town’s little pier. The sky and sea joined forces to suck the colour out of the landscape, reducing all to a sullen monochrome. The pier ran out, a stark silhouette, above the grey sea that stormed and raved against the gravel and concrete shore. Each angry wave pulled at the driven piles that supported the wooden structure above it.
On impulse Tim pulled his coat collar high over his ears and tacked his way past the café to the black outline of the pier. He peered over its edge and saw a rip current driving the waves’ motions, compounding the sea’s rage.
God! How he missed his ships, his crew. This was a day to sail. Tim thought. —The exhilaration, the speed, the joy of living in such seas. But here he was — drawn up, beached and retired. Carrie had never understood, it never! She charted her course through warm, balmy lagoons and crystal clear waters. She could swim safely in the shallows and come back untouched by the deep open oceans, eternally untroubled. For this, he knew, he loved her. She had her own tranquillity to which he returned after sailing his own unquiet courses — when he found his own charts could not altogether be trusted.
Tim leant against the railings and, turning his head, saw for the first time three figures, their backs to the wind, at the end of the pier. Tim moved toward them, realising as he drew closer that they were fisherman, blind to the darkening weather. They were fixated on the length of line that ran from their rods to the depths below their feet.
‘Nice Day for it,’ Tim greeted a fisherman who stood slightly apart from the other two. He stared at Tim blankly and then reached into a bucket by his feet to draw out a lug worm. His hands, Tim saw, were stained yellow by the worms. The colour was unexpectedly vibrant against the Fisherman’s grey skin and immense shadowed form. The Fisherman wrapped the tiny creature in a piece of squid and then pierced a sharp hook through the worm’s tail. It writhed in his hand. The Fisherman bent down and picked up some red elastic cord and further bound the bait against the hook while the worm still stirred. He cast the line over the rail. The two men watched the tiny float bob to the surface and the line, invisible against the sky, drift away from the pier, drawn out in the tide.
‘My daughter’s wedding day today,’ the Fisherman volunteered unexpectedly. Tim waited, alert suddenly. ‘Except it’s off,’ the Fisherman continued, watching his line carefully. A pigeon strutted opportunistically down the jetty toward them, looking into the containers of bait. ‘Aye, it’s off all right. Good and proper. OFF!’ The Fisherman burst out suddenly– as though the storm had buffeted the words from him. He reeled the line in and checked the bait. It was untouched. The Fisherman recast the line and rounded on the bird. ‘Get out of it!’ The pigeon shook its wings reluctantly and flew low across the pier, out above the sea and disappeared from view.
The Fisherman turned his attention back to his rod. ‘Lived together years they did, my daughter and her lovely man!’ He was caught and drawn on by Tim’s silence, yet seemed to be talking more to the sea than any other listener. His companion fishermen ignored him; they stood colossal and immobile as statues gazing down into the waves. Tim wondered if the daughter had tried to drag her reluctant boyfriend to the altar. But the next sentence spilling up from the Fisherman knocked that idea on the head, like a priest. ‘Had it all planned, he did.’ The Fisherman still spoke more to himself as he described his daughter’s lover. “He flew her to New York, he took her shopping for a blue diamond and went down on one knee at the top of the Empire State building. She had been the hesitant one you see – but she said yes all the same. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘Nothing this romantic has ever happened to me in my life before.’ Never seen her so happy.”
Tim turned his back on the sea and leant against the rail. He studied the Fisherman’s countenance, masked as it was against the weather — turned to the waves; he had tough, sharpened features, apparently seeing nothing but the line and the float, oblivious to the storm. An impassive face; but from it, a voice like Jonah’s in the whale’s echoing storeys, fought its way out. The unconfined words poured from the Fisherman like a rising tide, clearly audible above the noise of the gale — telling his tale.
‘Then of course, the children. Her entire class!’ Tim perceived that the daughter must be a teacher. The Fisherman’s next sentence confirmed this. ‘Her entire class and the teaching assistant, so overjoyed at the wedding plans, so excited at leaving Miss. Rose Dixon at Christmas and finding Mrs Rose Hayes in the New Year’s classroom. Who’s going to tell them? How to explain? Every last child made cards and planted hyacinth bulbs ready to flower by today. And they have! The house is full of their scent. Heady, sickly. Can’t bear ‘em, can’t look at them. I’d put them on the compost, but she won’t have it.’
She must have some nerve, thought Tim, she must have decided that romance and hyacinths weren’t enough to sustain a marriage. Brave Girl!
But the Fisherman forestalled him. The wind whipped his words from him and they seemed to shout themselves in Tim’s ears.
‘So yesterday, he tells her he’s made a mistake. He doesn’t love her as he thought and the marriage is off. OFF!’
With a ferocious movement, the Fisherman pulled in his line and scowled at the empty hook. He reached into his container for more bait. This time he fixed two worms on the line, further staining his fingers yellow and crimson from their skin and blood. He pulled off a piece of squid, wrapped it around them and tied them together with the scarlet cord. The Fisherman interpreted Tim’s enquiring glance correctly. ‘It’s mackerel I’m after — they are drawn to colour and red in particular. Like sharks! Ha-ha! HE needs eating. HE needs ripping apart and used as bait for the sea to tear at. Aye, I’d do it too! God help me.’ The Fisherman sunk into a terrible silence.
As would I — thought Tim outraged — a swift lesson in a cabined space and cast him to the deep! Let the sharks see red, let the sharks have him – what a poor keeper of a man. A catch not worth landing.
The Fisherman put his rod behind his back, across his shoulder and threw the line savagely into the storm. The wind caught the thread and carried it far out from the pier, where it was lost to sight.
Tim cast about for something to say. He felt that things like this didn’t happen in his day. Marry or burn wasn’t that it? He was suddenly conscious of the New Year’s cold, a horror of a new term starting, an unbearable sympathy in the staff room and the curious, questioning eyes of the children
‘Where is your daughter now?’ asked Tim suddenly, ‘back home with you? She must be in a bad way.’
The Fisherman stared at Tim as if he had gone mad, as if Tim were raving on the pier. The Fisherman’s eyes were blank with amazement. Then comprehension dawned. ‘Oh no!’ the Fisherman blurted out. ‘Oh, No! Nothing so simple — she’s still with him. He told her he loved her enough to live with her, just not enough to marry her. He wants to carry on as they were before.’
Tim shut his eyes against this news. Not even a lucky escape then he thought.
When he opened them he saw the line was jumping and bucking against the sea. A terrific thrashing could be heard beneath the pier and over the sound of the wind. Rain ran hissing across the wooden planks. The Fisherman leapt to his line whilst the other fishermen watched, abandoning their own rods in the excitement. ‘Pull it in, pull it in,’ they yelled. The Fisherman cursed and heaved. The reel failed him and he pulled the line up hand over fist.
The fishermen let out a terrible collective groan when they saw the catch. A pigeon lay hopelessly entangled by the tackle, one wing beating frenetically, while the other was strapped to its body by the Fisherman’s line
‘Argh – The Buggers! The Bloody birds! Flying through the rods, wasting our time and no sign of a fish! How many hours have we stood here?’ The two fishermen beat their clenched hands against the frantic air. Still muttering, they turned back to their places and began to pack up in disgust.
The Fisherman squatted down on the pier’s floor boards and unwrapped the pigeon with surprising kindness while it glared at him with blazing orange eyes. Finally the bird lay exhausted in his hands, as the red and yellow fingers passed over and over, drawing the line like a cat’s cradle around and above it. Tim stooped down beside him and heard the Fisherman say softly,
‘They can’t see these modern lines, poor creatures, they fly blindly in. They will dangle for hours sometimes, if you don’t watch, constant like.’ Finally the Fisherman rose to his feet. Tim saw his massive shape immeasurable against the stormy seas. The Fisherman held the unbound bird in his two hands and threw it high into the sky. There was an agonising pause and then, stretching out its wings, the pigeon flew stiffly over the pier and returned to the safety of land.
The Fisherman too began to pack away his bait and dismantle his rods. His story vomited up, discarded as ambergris on the small and almost abandoned shore. He paid no further attention to Tim — seemingly oblivious to his presence.
Without a word, Tim stood and began to make his way back to the High Street that was now flooded with water. On the horizon he caught a glimpse of the café, its flags and bunting like shrouds collapsing under the skyline, as Tim navigated his way towards it — seeking secure harbours and home.
The End.