could say this story has been a lifelong fascination for me, an obsession almost. I have certainly been working on it, on and off, for most of my life. I simply could not get it out of my head, which in a way, I suppose, is not surprising. It is my grandma’s story – much of it told, as you will discover, in her own words, as she dictated it to me. So, in that sense, it is my story too, my family’s story.
Grandma made us who we are – with a little help from Grandpa, it should be said. I am who I am because of her, because of him. I have done what I’ve done, been who I’ve been, lived where I’ve lived, written what I’ve written, because of them. So I have written it for them, and also because it happens to be the most unlikely and unbelievable story I have ever heard.
IT WAS MACKEREL THEY WERE looking for that day, because it was Friday. Mary always liked to cook mackerel for their supper on Fridays, but Alfie and Jim, his father, both knew she wouldn’t do it, and they wouldn’t have it, unless they brought her back enough mackerel to make a proper meal for all four of them. Alfie and his father had prodigious appetites, which his mother loved both to grumble about and to satisfy.
“I swear the two of you got hollow legs,” Mary would say in open admiration, as she watched them wolfing down their mackerel yet again – three of them each she liked to put on their plates, if the catch had been good enough.
There was Uncle Billy to feed too. He lived in the boat shed on Green Bay on his own, because he liked it that way. It was just across the field from Veronica Farmhouse, where they lived, a stone’s throw away. Mary would bring him his supper every evening, but, unlike Alfie, he would as like as not complain if it was mackerel again. “I like crab,” he’d say. But then if Mary brought him crab it was, “Where’s my mackerel?”
He could be contrary, could Uncle Billy. But then Uncle Billy was contrary in many ways. He was different from other people, different from anyone. As Mary often said, that was what made him special.
The fish were hard to find that morning. It helped keep spirits up in the boat to talk about supper, to think about it, about how Mary would cook the mackerel for them that evening: dipped in egg, rolled in oats, then seasoned with salt and pepper. She fried it always in butter. The smell of it would be wafting through the farmhouse and they’d be sitting down at the kitchen table, ready and waiting, mouths watering, savouring the sound and smell of the fish sizzling in the pan.
“Course, after she finds out what you and me have gone and done, Alfie,” Jim said, straining hard at the oars, “we could be on bread and water for a week. She will not be a happy woman, son, not happy at all. She’ll have my guts for garters, yours too.”
“We should go in closer to St Helen’s, Father,” Alfie said, his mind on the mackerel, not his mother’s retribution. “There’s fish there almost always, just off the beach. Caught half a dozen last time we were there, didn’t we?”
“Don’t like going near the place,” Jim said. “Never have. But maybe you’re right, maybe we should give it a go. Wish the wind would get up, and we could do a bit of sailing. All this rowing’s half killing me. Here, Alfie. Your turn.” They changed places.
As Alfie took up the oars, he found himself thinking of supper again, of the sound and the smell of frying mackerel, and then of how hard it was to remember smells and describe them, how sounds and sights were much easier to recall somehow. Once the mackerel was on the plate in front of them, they always had to wait until grace was said. Father and he were inclined to say grace rather too hurriedly for his mother’s liking. She took her time over it. For her, grace was a meant prayer, and different each mealtime, not simply a ritual to be rushed through. She would have liked a proper and respectful pause after the Amen, but Alfie and his father would be at their mackerel at once, like gannets. There would be strong, sweet tea and freshly baked bread to go with it, and bread-and-butter pudding, if they were lucky. It was always the feast of the week.
It was already late afternoon and Jim was very aware that they had precious little to show for nearly an entire day’s fishing. Now that he wasn’t rowing, the wind was already chilling him to the bone. He pulled his collar up. It was cold for May, more like March, Jim thought. He looked at his son bending rhythmically, easily, to the oars, and envied him his strength and suppleness, but at the same time took a father’s pride in it too. He had been that young once, that strong.
He looked down at his hands, scarred, calloused and cracked as they were now, ingrained with years of fishing and years of farming his potatoes and his flowers. He baited the line again, his fingers working instinctively, automatically. He was thankful he could not feel them. They were numb to the cold and salt of seawater, numb to the wind. Some of those old cracks in his finger joints had opened up again and would otherwise be paining him dreadfully by now. It was good to be numb, he thought, and just as well. He was wondering why it was that his ears hurt, why they too hadn’t gone numb? He wished they would.
Jim smiled inside himself as he remembered how the day had begun, at breakfast. It had been Alfie’s idea in the first place. He didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to come fishing instead. He’d tried this on before, often, and rarely with any success. It didn’t stop him trying again. “Tell Mother you need me,” Alfie had said, “that you can’t do without me. She’ll listen to you. I won’t be no trouble, Father. Promise.”
Jim knew he wouldn’t be any trouble. The boy sailed a boat well, rowed strongly, knew the waters and fished with a will, with that wholehearted enthusiasm and confidence borne of youth, always so sure he would catch something. The fish seemed to like him too. It was noticeable that Jim often did better when Alfie was in the boat. With the fishing as disappointing as it had been recently in the waters around Scilly, Jim would go out fishing these days more in hope than expectation. Catches had been poor for all the fishermen in recent times, not just him. Anyway, Alfie would be company out there, good company. So he agreed to do what he could to persuade Mary to let Alfie miss school for a day, and come fishing with him.
But all pleading, all reasoning, proved to be quite useless, as Jim had warned Alfie it might be. Mary was adamant that Alfie had to go to school, that he’d missed far too much already, that he was always trying to find ways of not going. Any excuse would do: working out on the farm, or going fishing with his father. Enough was enough. When Mary insisted with that certain tone in her voice, Jim knew there was very little point in arguing, that she was immovable. He persisted only because he wanted Alfie to know he really wanted him out there in the boat with him, and to demonstrate his solidarity. When Alfie saw the argument wasn’t going his way, he joined in, trying anything he could think of that might change her mind.
“What does one day off school matter, Mother, one day?”
“We always catch more fish when there’s the two of us.”
“And anyway, out in an open boat it’s always safer with two – I heard you say so.”
“And I hate Beastly Beagley at school. Everyone knows he can’t teach for toffee. He’s a waste of space, and school’s nothing but a waste of time.”
“You let me stay home, Mother, and, after I’ve been fishing with Father, I’ll come back and clean out the henhouse for you, and fetch back a cartload of seaweed to fertilise the lower field, whatever you want.”
“What I want, Alfie, is for you to go to school,” Mary said firmly. It was quite futile. She wasn’t going to give in. There was nothing more to be said, nothing more to be done. So Alfie had trudged off reluctantly to school with Mary’s words ringing in his ears. “There’s more to life than boats and fishing, Alfie! Never heard of a fish teaching anyone to read or write! And your writing ain’t nothing to write home about neither, if you ask me!”
When he’d gone, she’d turned to Jim. “I’ll need nine good mackerel for