Herring Girl Read online

  So now she’s on about that time, when we were bairns, when Tom told everyone that him and me were promised. Which I’m amazed she’s even remembered, for it was years ago, but just goes to show how much she thinks about him, I suppose.

  It was just after his mam passed, and his da was tooken off to jail for drunk and disorderly. Tom was staying over at ours and started on about us getting married, and taking over the boat and the nets, once Da had retired to his coble. But it was all just bairns’ blether, and to tell the truth, I think it was the boat he was mostly interested in, because the Osprey belongs to Da, see, so I was just a prize that went with her.

  Anyway, I say all this to Flo, but she’s only half mollified, for I was right soft on Tom back then, and she knows it. I thought him canny brave and funny: always first to test the ice on the boating lake come winter, and fiercest with his fists in a scrap – not like our Jimmy, who’d never say boo to a goose. Nowadays, though, I’m not so sure; for what’s brave in a lad can turn hard in a man, and that’s the way it’s seeming with Tom.

  ‘Honest to God, cross my heart, I don’t mind you walking out with him,’ I say now. ‘The only thing I would mind about is if he were to come between you and me.’ So now Flo’s saying, over her dead body, and smiling, and we start on up the steps again, but side by side this time, and linked in, so folk have to edge round us.

  Which is how it’s always been with Flo and me – like sisters, though there’s no blood tie between us. But Da says when you’ve been on a boat with a body for as long as him and Flo’s da, you become closer than blood kin. And Mam says she can’t count the number of times she passed me as a wean for a suckle with Flo’s mam, if she’d her round to do, or took Flo under her blouse for a feed. So we were raised on the milk of both our mams, and if that doesn’t make us sisters, I don’t know what does.

  But I can’t help worrying about Tom, and thinking if he carries on with his nonsense, I don’t know how Flo’d take it. She can spit nails when she’s riled, for all her placid ways, and you don’t want to be nearby.

  When we get home Mam’s got the rooms ready for the Scots lasses and pinned brown paper to the walls to save the plaster from the herring oil, because it stinks to high heaven if it soaks in. See, even if you take off your boots and oilies before you come in, you’ve still to hoy them through the house to the yard. Then there’s our skirts to think of, and shawls. However hard you try, there’s always some splatter, and you can’t be washing your clothes every day, even if you’d that many spares to change into.

  The bairns are in the kitchen munching on jammy pieces, and our Emily’s whingeing on that she doesn’t want to shift to Nana’s and Mam’s shushing her because Da’s asleep. I’ve never known him wake before his time, but that doesn’t stop Mam shushing and tiptoeing round, like he’s royalty, which he is to her, I suppose.

  She’s got a brew on, and fresh rolls in for Flo, but says our tea’ll be late because she’s still her round to do. She’s sweating and a bit breathless, like she’s been running, and her ankles are swollen again, and her varicoses bulging, which is a worry after what happened with our Emily. So I try to get her to sit down a spell before setting off, but I might be talking to the wall for all the notice she’s taking.

  Mam’s one of those folk that takes on too much, then wonders why she’s still on the go when everyone else has their feet up. With the fish round, see, she could easy leave off during the summer and stick to the smoked fish come winter when the boats are stuck in dock. But she’s got her regulars up the High Town and doesn’t like to disappoint them.

  So here’s her cutting board ready, and her weighing scales, and her slabs of halibut and cod under a clean cloth. I help lift the board onto her head and off she goes, plodding up the stairs to Saville Street and Dockwray Square where the cooks of the rich folk are waiting on her.

  Now it’s after tea and I’ve taken the two bairns along to Nana’s, and I’m wishing I’d not stayed to help settle them in, nor sat for cocoa on the step after, listening to Nana mythering on about poor old Mrs Carlton, who’s opened up her front room to sell bacon buns in the wee hours to the night crews – for if there’s a shilling to be made in this town, now’s the time to make it.

  Nana’s offered to walk me home, but that’s daft, for who’d walk her back? So I’ve pulled my scarf low on my forehead and set off, keeping close to the walls, for the lanes are thronging with rowdy lads, what with the late crews setting off, and the morning crews out for a quick bevvy, or a slow one and stotting home, and some of them never even getting there.

  The lamp-lighter’s done his rounds, but them are just puddles of light really, and leave a thousand and odd nooks for a lad to unbutton and do his business, or linger with a lassie of a certain kind; and he’ll have his long coat on, even though the night’s warm, and his back to the lane, and I don’t want to think what’s going on behind that coat.

  Now here’s a big beardy lad stotting out of the darkness, stinking of whisky, and asking my name, then lunging at me before I can answer. He’s grabbed my arm, his fingers are digging in. I’m twisting around and trying to wriggle free, but he’s so strong I’ve to kick him before he leaves go.

  So now I’m fairly running, and faces and bodies are blurring past in the dark between the lamp posts, and here’s two more rowdy sailors piling out of the Black Swan and one’s got ahold of my skirt and the other’s tugging at my shawl, so I’m scared they’re about to strip me off there and then – and they’re laughing fit to burst, the both of them, that wild sort of laughing lads do when they’ve had a skinful, stotting against the wall.

  I can see their eyes gleaming in the lamplight, and the wet on their teeth. They’re so far gone they don’t care if I’m a decent lass or a loose one, and they’re trying to push me down an alley, so I’m screaming and kicking out, and I can see one’s got his gipping knife in the brim of him cap, so I’m thinking no, please God—

  Oh – there’s wet on my cami, my blouse – it’s blood, my hand’s covered. Where’s it coming from? I never felt the knife go in—

  ‌Chapter Ten

  2007

  Ben sits up and hugs his knees. He can’t stop shivering, violent shudders that shake his whole body. The doctor takes off her cardigan and drapes it round his shoulders, then heaves the pouffe closer and squats down next to him on it. Her cardie smells of tabs and coffee, which is comforting, as though she has her arms around him, because no one ever puts their arms round him these days, not ever.

  ‘Scary stuff, eh?’ she says.

  ‘I forgot to do my emergency sign.’ They’d agreed that he’d wiggle the fingers of his right hand if he wanted to stop.

  ‘Sometimes it happens like that, Ben. You can jump forwards without warning to a different episode in someone’s life. That’s why you came out of the trance so suddenly. There’s probably something there that you’re not ready to look at quite yet.’

  ‘Something really bad happened to Annie, didn’t it?’ he asks in a small voice.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ Her eyes are on him, warm and brown, really on him, like she really cares.

  ‘Something to do with one of those men – God, there were so many rough men around, like everywhere, all over the girls.’

  ‘So you remember all that. Good.’

  ‘And everyone’s got a knife, like everyone. And they’re so sharp, like you wouldn’t believe.’ He’s still shivering, teeth clattering together.

  ‘Are you all right? Shall I turn on the fire?’ She does it anyway and a smell of burning dust starts to waft through the room, as if the fire hasn’t been on for years. ‘Don’t try to get up yet. One shouldn’t underestimate the power of these experiences.’

  Ben closes his eyes and sinks back against the cushions. He can hear the doctor bustling around, clomping upstairs in her green boots, then down again a bit later with a blanket, which she tucks around him like his mam did when he was little. The blanket’s got little mirrors sewn on it and
smells of that perfume you get in Indian shops.

  ‘When she’d stuck me full of needles,’ the doctor’s saying, ‘my acupuncturist always used to wrap me in warm towels, then turn up the heater and leave me to cook like a joint of lamb. Which is precisely what I plan to do with you.’

  Ben tries a smile. He can’t imagine her with needles sticking out of her. He can’t imagine her without her boots and gloves on either. He opens his eyes, then closes them again. She’s moving around as though he’s not there: shuffling papers together, writing something, rewinding the tape. Then he hears the front door opening and the outside noises get clearer: the seagulls squabbling and that ice-cream van in the distance, some little birds twittering in the bushes. Then there’s a faint smell of French cigarettes.

  He wakes to find her back on the pouffe. His forehead feels chilly, as though she’s had a hand there stroking his hair back, but they’re both folded in her lap when he opens his eyes. There are two glasses of Coke on the table.

  ‘It’s one-thirty,’ she says. ‘Do you think you should contact your father to let him know you’ll be late?’

  ‘He’s off on the boat till Thursday. So it’s only Nana and she won’t be bothered.’ He pushes the blanket off and sits up. Her cardie’s still round him, which is embarrassing, so he takes it off and folds it. There’s a man’s white hanky poking out of the pocket. The other glass of Coke is for her. It’s really cold, enough to hurt your teeth, and they both sip for a bit, looking at the red lights flickering on the fake coal of the electric fire.

  ‘Annie really likes that Flo,’ he says. ‘I hope nothing happens to her.’ His finger draws a zigzag in the condensation on his glass. ‘But that’s daft, because she’s probably dead now anyway, isn’t she? So something must have happened to her, even if it’s only dying of old age.’ He pictures Flo’s face, her pink cheeks, the dusting of freckles on her nose. ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’

  The doctor smiles sadly. ‘It’s extremely unlikely. From what you were saying, I’d estimate that we entered Annie’s life, as it were, at around the turn of the century. Which would make Flo well over 100 today – around 125 in fact, assuming she was in her late teens when we met her.’

  ‘So they’re all dead. Annie and Flo, Jimmy, that Tom bloke.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘God, that’s so weird,’ he says. ‘To be there with them, talking to them, smelling them, even though they’re all dead.’

  ‘The process is not unlike time travel, I always think, though without the trouble of constructing a Tardis.’

  He can’t imagine her watching Dr Who, but there’s a telly on a carved table in the corner: a clumpy black cube that must be a hundred years old, probably only gets one channel.

  There’s a quiet knock on the door, three quick raps like a code.

  ‘It’s OK, Laura,’ the doctor calls out. ‘We’re finished in here.’

  Laura bursts in like a holiday ad, with red strappy high-heels and matching capris, Gucci sunglasses pushed up on her head. ‘Hey, what have you been doing to my pal?’ she says, frowning at the blanket, the pouffe, the fire flickering away.

  ‘It was rather a powerful session, wasn’t it Ben?’

  ‘Threw a wobbly did you?’ Laura plumps down two carrier bags. ‘Well I’ve got just the thing to set you right. Oxtail soup from your bona fide oxen – bet you’ve never had that before. And my famous walnut bread made with real walls.’

  ‘Laura!’ hisses the doctor through her teeth. ‘I’m sorry Ben,’ she says. ‘I can’t let you stay to lunch. It’s not considered ethical for a therapist to socialize with her clients.’

  Laura turns on her. ‘You can’t turf the lad out in the street.’

  ‘He’s a client, Laura, not an asylum seeker.’

  ‘Client schmient. I’m doing the cooking, so he’s my guest por manjare. If it makes you feel better, you can stop in here with yours. Come on Ben, let’s get this lot into that kitchen.’

  ‘No, I’ll go. It’s all right,’ he says, getting up and edging towards the door.

  ‘Mary?’ Laura squares up to the doctor until she’s towering over her, all high heels and big hair, and the doctor just caves in, just like that, as though she knows it’s hopeless.

  ‘It would be good to keep an eye on him for a bit longer,’ she goes.

  ‘Bene!’ Laura hands Ben a carrier and heads for the hall. ‘Follow me, duckie, but avert your eyes from the avocado suite in that bathroom.’ She gives a fake shudder. ‘It’s like a shrine to the seventies in there. Mirror tiles, Ascot heater, the lot. She should charge an entry fee and open it as a heritage site.’

  The kitchen’s really dim, because it’s at the back of the house, with wood-effect lino on the floor, and a set of heavy brown spotlights that light up different parts of the room when Laura switches them on. One is pointing at a massive chrome coffee machine and another at an ancient little gas cooker on legs.

  ‘She never chucks anything out, that’s the trouble,’ Laura’s saying. ‘If something works, she’ll hang on to it until it conks out. Place is like a museum, but what can you do? I took her to Ikea once and she came away with a bag of tea lights and a paperweight.’

  She’s bustling round the kitchen as though she knows it inside out: lighting the oven, emptying the rubbish and shaking out a new bin liner. ‘Someone gave her a huge roll of that parquet lino, so that’s this room frozen in time for the foreseeable future. And don’t get me started on all those tins of maroon paint she’s got stashed in the attic.’

  There’s a cat flap in the maroon door, but no sign of a cat, and the maroon window looks out on a concrete yard with an old bike propped against the wheelie bin, a carrier bag tied over the saddle.

  ‘I swear she’d live on boiled eggs if I wasn’t here,’ says Laura. ‘She gets so caught up in her work she forgets to shop. Or if she shops, she forgets to cook. I’m forever finding mince past its sell-by at the bottom of the fridge. Be a love and fill the kettle, will you? Now where’s that broom? I can’t stand a crumb underfoot when I’m cooking.’

  ‘Do you come in every day?’ Ben asks.

  Laura chuckles. ‘Like Meals on Wheels you mean? No, I just like to visit, and a boiled egg with a Ryvita’s not my idea of bona manjare.’ She’s opening Tupperware and tipping soup into a pan. ‘It started when she got pneumonia – years back when I was still having sessions. I turned up for my appointment on the Monday and she was in a right state: hacking cough, dressing-gown over her clobber, didn’t know what day it was. So I got the doctor round and slept on the sofa till she was back on her batts.

  ‘Why didn’t she call someone?’

  ‘Kept thinking it would get better, I suppose – and when you spend your life helping other people, you get out of the habit of asking for yourself.’

  Ben switches on the kettle and looks around for tea bags. ‘It must have been weird being the one looking after her, like swapping places.’

  ‘Weird wasn’t the word, duckie. She was that red hot with fever she got delirious. So she’d be half asleep but with her eyes open and shouting her head off. What with me and my nightmares, we were a right pair.’

  ‘What was she shouting?’

  ‘I couldn’t make out all of it. You know what it’s like when someone’s talking in their sleep and it’s mostly mumbles and grunts? But then she’d sort of focus, like when you find a channel on the radio in the middle of a load of interference. And she was on a boat, in a storm it seemed like, shouting instructions about nets and ropes. Though what do I know? Never set so much as a toe on a boat in my life, unless you count that pedalo in Benidorm.’

  ‘Was it another life coming through?’

  ‘Well that was her first thought, obviously – once she’d recovered, I mean. Especially seeing as she’s so scared of the sea. She thought maybe she’d been a fisherman who’d drowned. Scads of lads were lost at sea in the old days, see. It was even more dangerous than mining, and that’s saying som
ething.’ She peers through the window up at the sky. ‘There’s quite a bit of blue up there. So you choose: shall we eat outside or in?’

  ‘Out, please,’ says Ben.

  ‘Put some crocks on that tray then,’ she says, checking the bread warming in the oven. ‘So then we thought maybe she’d just been dreaming. Because it was smack bang in the middle of my therapy that she fell sick, so she’d been hearing about my past life traumas on and off for weeks.’

  Ben opens a cupboard. ‘What shall I get out?’ he asks, eyeing the uneven stacks doubtfully.

  ‘Three of everything – cups, saucers, bowls, plates. Don’t worry about matching. She’s been collecting odds and sods of that willow pattern from antique shops for years, so it’s all from different sets. And it’s proper tea she likes, not tea bags: a spoon each and one for the pot. The caddy’s over there by the tea pot and there’s a strainer in the drawer.’

  ‘Were you a fisherman too?’ Ben asks.

  ‘Born and bred, and a right moody bastard I was too – he was, I should say. Me, I’m pure as the driven snow.’ She winks at him. ‘He was in that many scrapes. Drinking, brawling, going on the pull; battering that poor old wife of his. He should have croaked long before he did, but he had nine lives, that Tom. Eventually died inhaling vomit after a drinking binge – at least that’s what we think. Because of course he wouldn’t have been conscious when it happened. Last thing he remembered was slapping some poor lass round the head – see, I told you he was a mean bastard – and slumping on the bedroom floor.’

  ‘Wow,’ is all Ben can think of to say to that. And he hopes, really hopes, that his Annie – because that’s how he thinks of her now, as his Annie, not him but part of him – won’t have ended up with someone like that.

  There’s a folding table in the porch and they set it up in front of the bench. The doctor’s already out there, in her gloves in the blazing sunshine, sucking on one of her weird-smelling French tabs and talking to that old artist bloke Dad knows, who’s hovering by the gate.