Seascraper

The draught horse – a well-tempered gelding he’s declined to give a name for superstitious reasons – is expecting him. Its big head juts out of the stable door, awaiting his arrival with the buckets. Stable is too nice a word: it’s no more than a tin-and-breezeblock shack his grandpa made some time ago, just wide enough to house one animal and all its tack, an eyesore that abuts their cottage to the east. Their backyard is a paddock with a mesh wire fence; great dollops of manure abound in it like molehills. It’ll be his task to shovel it and spread it on the rose-beds for his ma, but that’ll keep. For now, he trowels some forage in one bucket for the horse and fills another up with water. He carries them along the bald track in the grass and puts them down inside the stable, saying, ‘Morning, boy,’ and stroking the daft creature’s neck. While it drinks and guzzles, he goes out to finish off his rollie and prepares the harness, lifting down the heavy collar from its hook in readiness. It’s always a surprise how fast the horse is satisfied and empties out the buckets: a fair-sized animal like his needs roughly thirty pints of water every day, which means a lot of circuits from the stable to the outside tap and back throughout the week. He brushes down its coat to clean away what’s left of any grit and sand, then rushes through the sequence of the harnessing, so automatic to him now that he can do the job with bleary eyes and weakened fingers. The horse is gentle and it takes the collar gladly. It’ll wait there nice and patient for him while he checks the gear’s right in the cart and eats his breakfast.

There’s a haze of bacon grease inside the kitchen when he steps back in. His ma stands at the stove, barefooted in a dressing gown that seems to shrink each time she washes it – the hem stops just below her knees, and the old cord’s not long enough to tie around her waist without it slipping. There’s only half an inch of height between them and just under sixteen years. She’s moving like a crab between the gas hob and the breadboard on the worktop, where two slabs of a loaf are lying thinly margarined. The wireless is on, but at so low a volume it’s impossible to tell what’s playing. She hears his boots smacking the floor, and says, ‘What’s making you so tardy at the moment?’

‘Didn’t think I was,’ he answers, sitting at the table where she’s not exactly set a place for him, just shoved a few days’ worth of newspapers away to form a clearing.

‘I’d say you’re half an hour behind where you’re supposed to be.’

‘I’m going by the charts. Five forty-two, low water. What’s it now?’ He checks the wall clock. ‘Bugger.’

‘Told you,’ says his ma. It’s nearing half past.

‘I’d better get this eaten, then.’

She passes him a loaded plate. The rashers are too hot, so he dips bread into the runny yolk of the fried egg. ‘All right,’ says his ma, ‘don’t wolf it.’

But he does – he throws it down as quickly as his mouth can work it over. His ma leans back against the sink and lights a ciggie, watching him through slatted eyelids: it’s as if she’s seen the neighbour’s cat stalking a bird and cannot bring herself to intervene. He sits there eating, wearing her attention for as long as he can stand it. There are certain men in town who’d die of gladness if they got a passing glance from Lillian Flett – he’ll never understand the fuss. She might’ve piled the weight on, but she’s still a very handsome woman is your ma, these fellas like to say when they come over for a drink, a compliment that stings worse every time he hears it. ‘I’ll be off to town before you’re back – I’ve somebody to see,’ she tells him. ‘And I reckon if I settle some of what we owe at Pattinson’s, he’ll let us have a few more things on tick. D’you fancy mince or cutlets?’

‘I don’t mind. As long as you put something in the meter – I’m not eating it by candlelight again.’

‘There’s plenty left.’

‘All right, then. Cutlets.’

‘Good. That’s supper taken care of.’

As she reaches round to knock some ash into the sink, she lifts one foot behind her, showing all the grubby flatness of her soles. She has a callus on the joint of her big toe. Her ankles are so swollen up they give her lower legs the shine of sausage casing. He swears he didn’t notice things like this when he was just a lad, but now the house is much too small to guarantee their privacy from one another, and his ma still carries on about the place as though he is a guileless boy who won’t mind glancing at whatever parts she leaves uncovered – when the sad fact is, his eyes are drawn to them against his will, the same way they would be towards a burning building or two drunkards brawling in a car park. ‘Ta for that,’ he says. ‘I’d better go and get the cart hitched up.’ He’s not quite finished chewing, but he stands and puts his plate beside the sink for washing.

‘Leave it there, I’ll do it,’ she says.

‘Thanks, Ma. See you later.’

‘Don’t be stopping off at Harry’s on your way back home again. It’s Thursday.’

‘So it is.’ There’s little chance of him forgetting. It’s her night for playing rummy at the church hall with the ladies she’s too stubborn to call friends – she’ll not be home till past eleven. The house will be his own, at last. He’ll go and fetch his instrument from where he’s got it hidden in the stable, wrapped up in the ratty saddlecloth he never uses. He can spend some time beside the fire with his guitar, perfecting his arrangements of the tunes he’s learned. Then he can wander over to the folk club at the Fisher’s Rest and pay his tanner, have a listen to whichever group or singer is performing – maybe he’ll sign up to play, if he can summon up the spirit. ‘I’ll come straight from the badger’s. With a good few bob in hand, if things go right,’ he tells her.

‘Aye, God willing.’

‘See you in a bit, then.’

‘See you, son.’

He collects his flask and pecks her cheek on the way out. In the back room, he puts on his oilskins. It’ll soon be rain-hat weather, but he stuffs it in his pocket and decides on Pop’s old cap instead: his lucky charm. He takes the big tarpaulin with him, too, still bundled in a roll with string, as he was taught to keep it, dry and orderly. The horse seems happy staying in its shelter, but it doesn’t get to choose – they’re more alike than they appear.

By the reins, he leads it up the path to where he’s set the cart for hitching. Half a dozen empty whiskets are collected in the back, which he’ll be very pleased to fill, and both the nets are folded in a fashion it won’t trouble him to disentangle later on. He finds room for the tarp, as well. The horse stands good and still for him as he makes sure the cart’s two shafts are snug inside their loops and everything is hitched up tight. He settles in his seat, a few feet off the ground behind the animal, and takes the reins in hand again. ‘Walk on, boy.’ He clucks his tongue. They roll out of the yard and through the gate.

At this hour, it doesn’t take too long to reach the landing at the beach. Fifteen minutes, riding on a curve until the unpaved track behind his cottage joins with the straight line of Marshbank Road, when there’s a sudden clamour as the horse’s shoes clip on the tarmac, a soft rubber whoosh from the cart’s tyres, and all the disparate houses start to bunch together on both sides, with shopfronts on the corner of each block presenting wares that tempt him into yearning for the things he can’t afford: good leather boots, a proper shaving brush, a nice wool suit, thick books with gleaming covers, new LPs.

In his grandpa’s day, the shankers all rode out in a procession: twelve carts clopping down the promenade, their horses making such a din it could be heard above the ring of church bells. All those fellas have retired or moved away, and some are in the ground at St Columba’s graveyard. He’s the only shanker left in town who’s steadfast to the old ways. There’s more profit to be made by using motor rigs and shrimping further down the coast near Broughton. Motor rigs can trawl a pair of ten-foot nets in deeper waters than he’d ever risk a horse in, catching four or five times more than he can manage. There aren’t so many sinkpits to be wary of up there. The beach is sheltered by the dunes. The rigs have custom-fitted boilers on their decks so they can cook the shrimp on board and skirt around food safety regulations, too. His ma – great schemer that she is – thinks he should get a bank loan to upgrade his operation: buy a scrapyard lorry chassis and an engine, add the shed and boiler with a bit of help from a mechanic. But he doesn’t have that sort of motivation. He’s no empire builder. He’s accustomed to Pop’s methods and he won’t relinquish them so easily. Those ugly rigs are prone to rust, and, if you’re asking him, they’d be a waste of money – neither boat nor building, more like someone’s outside privy put on roller skates and given a big, panting motor. No, he’d sooner give up shanking altogether than succumb to using one of those.

The promenade is always free of traffic early in the morning. Wind is hurrying the sand along the gullies of the road. In summertime, Longferry is a town where people seem to go on purpose. There’ll be day-trippers parading arm in arm here, come July, great lines of coaches parked up in the lay-bys spilling hordes of pensioners in sandals, giddy children dripping ice cream from their knuckles. This is when the shanking season’s over and the shrimp are left to breed. It’s someone else’s playground then, and he can take or leave it. But in early March, it’s just another dismal place that folk can pass through on their way to somewhere more appealing, and the beach is where they stop to let their dogs run round.

He brings the cart down to the landing ramp and rides on a diagonal. To the north, the long legs of the pier, aglow with lanterns; to the south, the shores of Broughton and a stretch of grassy dunes receding into marsh. If he hadn’t traded in his watch, he’d check how long until the water starts to rise again, but it’s not hard to reckon it by sight when you’re accustomed to the job.

For now, the sea is just a faint grey runnel, two and something miles away. He rides on undulating sand that gives beneath the wheels as readily as butter. Biting wind and mizzle on his face. There’s no one else to talk to but his horse, who cannot answer back, and wouldn’t say a thing worth hearing if it could. Great whorls of steam rise from its flanks as it goes trudging on, the rattle of the harness making accidental music. He keeps his eyes trained on its shoulders, heedful of the slightest change in its behaviour or its gait. There isn’t any sureness to the ground hereafter and no promise that a hoof will not land false somewhere and drop. A draught horse could be seventeen or eighteen hands and it might still find trouble in the channels of Longferry. There are sinkpits all across the beach, if you go far enough to reach them. They can drag your horse down by the fetlocks till it cannot move, and if no one is there with you to pull it free, you’ll have to cut the straps and leave it there to drown. It happened to his grandpa half a dozen times in nearly sixty years of shanking. There’s no sense in getting soft about a horse when you’ve been raised on tales like that.

Even in the best of weather, it’s infuriating graft. He knows that he’ll be out here on his own for a few hours, drudging with the seagulls in his ears and shitting on him from above, repeating the same motions as the countless days before. It bores him worse than it exhausts him. Now and then, he’ll let his mind stray, whistling out a tune or coming up with different verses for ‘The Jolly Waggoner’, but when he’s less attentive to the job, mistakes can happen: like a decent catch escaping from his nets because he didn’t tie the dadding lines up tight. That’s just the sort of thing that costs you time and money, gets you scolded by your ma when you return with nothing for the coffers, and she won’t be shy reminding you of how you failed her. If your concentration goes out here, you’re at the mercy of the unexpected. Habit’s all you can rely on.

Now he’s out a mile from where he started, give or take, and he can see it up ahead – the sea’s white lip, another mile away. The sight of it is more familiar than the wisps of his own breath upon the air. It never used to foul his mood this much, the cold, the loneliness, the graft, but that was long before he harboured any aspirations for himself besides what he was raised to want. He used to think it was enough to fill the whiskets up with shrimp each morning and accept the cash for them by afternoon. Providing is surviving – that’s what Pop would tell him, and what else should any man desire? Perhaps a wife, if he could find one that’d have him. Roof above his head. Big pantry cupboards stocked to keep his loved ones fed. A special drop of brandy now and then, and evenings in the pub. Well, surely he could do no better with his life than that? Except, these past few years, he’s come to understand: he settled for too little. Everything he puts his mind to when he isn’t on the beach – rehearsing songs on his guitar and rearranging them – that’s when he feels most alive, that’s when he’s at his best. If you were to put him in a league of great cart shankers, he’d be rooted to the bottom. Not a soul will ever look at him and think, My God, that fella catches shrimp so well, it takes my breath away – he’s very sure of that. But soon he’ll muster up the nerve to walk on to that little wooden stage inside the Fisher’s Rest, and he’s got confidence they’ll put their pints aside and listen when he sings. They might just clap and cheer and tell him afterwards: We never knew you had it in you, lad.

The horse’s backside sways in front of him. He lights a rollie, smokes it down as they trek onwards for another mile, and by the time they reach the water’s edge it’s nubby in his fingertips. He whoas the horse and tugs the reins. ‘Wait on, boy. We’ll set our nets and get this over with.’ He climbs down to the shining sand, feeling its wet patter underneath his soles. The sea has left it dimpled, but the beach here is untouched; the only footprints are his own. He slides the boomer in the gap behind the horse’s hindquarters – it’s just a wooden spar that ranges out to hold the nets – and fixes down the latches. He hooks the nets on, spreads them on the shore to set them, making certain that the dadding lines are cinched up tightly at their heads. Before he gets back in the cart, he feeds the horse a wedge of carrot for its troubles, rubs its nose. ‘All right, finish up, we’ve work to do. You’ll get another when we’re done.’

He settles in the cart again and clucks his tongue until the horse is wading in the sea, knee-deep. As far as he can tell, they’ve got about two hours before the water rises. He might coax four decent passes from the horse – at best, four stints of trawling in the shallows, roughly thirty minutes at a go. He’ll let it rest out of the water while he sorts the catch. There’s always lumps of coal and twists of kelp to riddle out and toss aside. A lot of tiny crabs and jellyfish and baby plaice: no good to anyone. Sometimes, there are stingerts that’ll spike him through his gloves: he hates those buggers most of all. The nice brown shrimp are all he’s looking for. The grown-ups, not the young ’uns – he’ll be sifting those away and putting them straight back – but as many of the good ’uns that’ll dance into his nets he’ll take up to the badger’s yard and trade for market price.

The first pass is straightforward, though it doesn’t garner much reward – just under half a whisket, and the rest is debris and unwanted fare. On the second pass, the rain begins to thicken, slapping on the horse’s back. He pours some coffee in the big lid of his flask and slurps it down. His fingers are already numb with cold inside his gloves, and it’s a struggle to release the dadding lines when he brings out the nets. The horse is rarely prone to shivering, but now it’s standing with its tail tucked in, which worries him. Pop used to feel around a horse’s kidneys if he ever got to doubting it was warm enough – he goes to stroke its back and finds there’s such a radiating heat he doesn’t want to take his hands away. He gives it one more carrot wedge and rubs its nose to pep it up a bit.

The second catch is dire. He fears it’s going to be another of those awful mornings when the haul will be so meagre that his ma will send him out again come evening time. Two low tides a day means two good opportunities for earning, after all. It wouldn’t be the first night of his life he’s had to do it, working under lanternlight, in fog that’s sidled in from nowhere, or in gusts of pea-sized hailstones – he’s endured a lot of dismal weather just to satisfy his ma. She keeps a tally book of what she owes to folk in town, which bills remain outstanding every month, and somehow she can spread his money out so thinly that their debts are never settled but the bailiffs don’t come knocking. One day, when the shrimp are gone, she’ll have to overlook her pride and go on National Assistance. They’ll be straddling the line of desperation come the summer.

On the third pass, there’s a stronger pall of rain and he’s compelled to put his oilskin hat on. Pop’s cloth cap is drenched. There’s nothing but the dregs of tepid coffee in his flask to drink. He cranes his arm into the back for the tarpaulin and unfurls it to protect the gear inside the cart. The horse is showing him no sign it’s spooked enough to give up trawling yet. ‘We’ve seen much worse than this, boy, haven’t we?’ he calls, repeating one of Pop’s refrains as though the horse would know the difference, and they keep on going. Little waves are shouldering the cart’s tyres, spitting upwards at his face. The sea is patterned by the rain like honeycomb. He’s trying to make the best of it, but he can tell the horse is getting more reluctant. Soon, it gives a nervous snicker and refuses to go on another stride. He tugs the reins and clucks his tongue, but nothing happens. ‘Walk on, boy, walk on now.’ The horse rebuffs him. ‘What’s got you so het up?’ He climbs down from the cart into the water, standing shin-deep in the swell. Then he wades round to gather in its bridle. ‘Shush now, what’s the bother, eh? It’s just a bit of weather.’ He gives its nose another stroke to soothe it, but the horse is panting at him, still resisting. Trodden on a rock, perhaps. It’s looking miserable, and he can’t say he blames the creature for it neither. ‘Let’s be having you,’ he says, and draws the horse out of the water by the reins. Once it’s on the firmer land again, it seems much happier. He inspects its legs and undercarriage. ‘Reckon you’ve just had enough of doing my bidding for the day, you lazy pony.’

He stands there with his hands upon his hips, deciding what to do. Rain attacks his head, descends his peak, and makes a muddle of his thoughts. He wipes his brow and gazes at the sky. It’s bleak, as though a lightning storm is coming, which they say a horse can sense. ‘All right, fine. We’re finished. But you know I’ll have to work you twice as hard when we come out again.’ The horse appears impartial to the news. It has no better plans. ‘Let’s bring you in, and we can get packed up.’

He leads it further inland by the bridle, slow and steady. When they’re far enough upon the shore, he turns to get the nets – it’s so reflexive, how he moves upon this beach. He’s been making these same motions since he was thirteen, as weedy as a lad can be, in Pop’s enormous oilskin trousers, tied around the waist with rope to keep them up. The pattern is ingrained so deep in him he almost doesn’t register the sight before his eyes. Hang on.

His nets lay sprawled upon the beach like two collapsed balloons – the first one, on the windward side, is clogged with some dark lump. A hefty clot of shrimp and kelp and little fish are captured with it, too. He ambles over, hunkers down to get a proper view. ‘No wonder you were getting in a twist,’ he tells the horse. ‘You’re dragging up scrap iron.’ It’s a mercy that the nets aren’t torn to shreds. But when he lifts the object out, it’s not the rubbish he’s expecting: it’s a rusty metal box, about the size of Ma’s good family Bible, with fasteners at both ends like on a Kilner jar. The rain sounds dull and fat upon the lid. There’s some strange mass inside that slides each time he tilts it.

Now the horse is getting twitchy, wanting to be dried and fed. ‘All right, settle down, I’m coming.’ He finds a place to stow the box inside the cart and tucks the tarp around it, then he hurries back to empty out the catch. The leeward net is fuller than he’s seen it in a while. His fingers move as fast as he can make them work upon the riddle, throwing out the dross and saving all the plump brown shrimp. Despite the great palaver, it’s a decent haul. He’s got two whiskets filled up by the end, which is an average day at sea; if he were greedy or more desperate, he would keep the horse out for another pass, but he’s quite glad for what he’s got and eager to be out the rain. He pats the horse’s shoulder. ‘That’ll save another trip tonight. Good on you, boy.’ He gathers up the nets and folds them in the back, pulls in the boomer. The briny water and the rain have made his nose run something awful. As he turns the cart for home, he snorts a jelly disc of phlegm into his throat and spits it at the wind. It tastes like varnish smells.