He still fully, had his wits about him as well, strong and tough he was, though withered now with age but an old salt. There was not a thing to know about the sea that he did not know. Smart as well, he did not claim omnipotence as he always said the sea will have its toll in return, and as far as I could see it always did, in human lives.
"You find anyone?" I asked.
"As soon as we got here", he said, "at the end of the stream", I could see the darkness in his face before he told me, "face down".
"From the boat?" Every so often here due to the vagaries of the tide a body appears from nowhere. Once from Canada and once from Spain that I remember but I bet there have been many more that I have forgotten. Looking at Hamish's eyes I suspect that he remembered every one.
"We don't know yet". Plain and non-committal.
Fresh? I knew as I asked the question that it was a terrible thing to ask. You would then have to draw the picture that you were busily trying to forget straight back into your mind. Hamish obviously did, I doubt it.
"Why?
"For fuck sake Billy do you want the details?
"I do" I said, "as I think Ramsey was wrong, he spends all his time inside these days. I admit", I continued quickly allowing no interruption, "that he is the best reader of the wind and tides that I have ever seen"
"Hamish, I looked straight into his eyes, you know you have to be out here to feel them. Ask old Ramsey. He will tell you the same. He is not a stupid man even if he does not like me".
"Billy you just said that he is better at it than you.
He is, but he's not here and I am and were he still capable of being here then he would tell you what I am telling you. The pull of the tide is too strong and so anything, swimmers and corpses will pass here, drawing them into the loch and to the point at the shipyard.
At this point a hand caught my shoulder pulling me back and away from Hamish spinning me in the mud to face another.
"Billy" the newcomer uttered with contempt, "you saying my old man is losing it".
"Nice to see you Morris" (the very last thing that would be true, I hated the bastard) "No I am saying that he is not here, if you listened to what we were saying, then you would know that, I think your old man is the best judge of the tides and weather there is living but it is difficult to do that unless you are down here at the sea".
"You know as well as I that he can't be. He can't leave that chair now and that's why I found a survivor and he was telling them to look in the wrong place".
Morris grabbed me by the front of my coat and drew me close, almost nose to nose though I stood a little shorter than he and so it was more my nose to his chin.
"No one disrespects my father" he said as I looked up at him and he down at me. I felt spittle again on my chin though it may have been the now spitting rain.
It was time, was my first thought, he was taller than me, stronger than me, tougher than me but I am just at the right height and if I stick the head on him then I will at least break his nose before he beats me to a pulp. I was so very tempted as a payback for all the times that he had bullied me in school yet it was not a path I would wish to take on such a terrible night. I hated the fellow so much that I was tempted, I was still thinking about it when I heard the call. We both turned from each other to see what the call came for.
Hamish had gone while we were facing off and I had not even heard him jumping into the narrow but fast flowing stream. No matter the problems between me and Morris I was smiling as he dragged the coughing and spluttering fellow out of the stream.
Morris grabbed a towel and silver preserver from the front seat of the land rover and strode straight into the stream to help Hamish get the guy ashore, covering him in the process.
I waited until they had the survivor in the back of one of the Landover's and was heading to the hospital before I said. "Seems like old Ramsey was right after all. "I was right too", I reminded him as he sat back in the land rover, soaked like me, but without the cuts and called for an ambulance to meet the police car. "Have they got the one I found"?
"Not yet, but apparently Bobby and Janet found him wandering just outside the shipyard, naked and took him home. They know what to do to keep him safe and comfortable, any money that he is already swathed in blankets with a mug of soup in one hand from Janet and a large whisky in the other from Bobby.
"shouldn't he be in the hospital?"
"technically yes but the place will be very busy tonight, in fact I suspect that you should also be a resident, that knee looks pretty bad, and anyway Bobby and Janet know what they are doing, they were looking after people long before we were born.
Both Bobby and Janet had been police officers in their younger years but had now retired and lived in a nice bungalow in the town. They were good people and always made visitors welcome, they were also among the first out to help on nights like this. I had no doubt that they would be caring for the guy well and both knew what to look out for if anything started to go wrong.
In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that in the dry and warmth with a whisky to buoy the fellow's spirits that he probably was in no hurry to get home.
"I forgot to tell you that because you were so annoyed with me". I took a step back; I was annoyed with you?
"Well", and Hamish smiled with that big smile he had "perhaps it was the other way around".
Neither of us could be too happy as that was two alive out of five. So many times there were none saved, two was a bit of a result but I hope that there may be more. "Hamish. I was right about the old pier at the shipyard. Send the other car there, please".
His smile grew, "this is Campbeltown remember, limited resources and so only two land rovers here as there are only two this side of Lochgilphead" which is the next town up the Kintyre peninsula from Campbeltown but still fifty miles away, "we have vans and cars and they can get to the shipyard". "We got another two he said and the smile split his face in two".
Hamish was one of those lucky guys that had a great smile full of white teeth, something that was pretty rare in Scotland at least at that time and even better than that he was tall and slim. Covered in freckles and a little pale but an all-round good guy as well. When we were at school even the bullies left him alone preferring to pick on easier game, like me.
"Alive"?
"Well I was not going to announce that we had another two corpses, to the likes of you". The smile remained as this was really a result, four out of five. "Can you tell them to go to the shipyard pier" I asked, knowing that he could.
"Already done, the two, one fished from the water passing the shipyard pier by the MacPhersons in their rib. Even in seas like this the sheer power of a rib allowed it to be operated. Hell the lifeboat station used them and even the coastguard. "The swimmer was being dragged by the tide past the pier but they picked him up, the other had barely made shore just where you said and was helped out of the water by old Ralph". Next to the Ramsey's, The Shaw's knew the water better than anyone has for an age.
Many of the family had died over the years as the result of fishing accidents and the name was devastated by the seas toll, so many lost to the sea.
Yet old Ralph had taken his skiff out. He no longer had a fishing boat, he was too old to do it by himself and most of his family had perished below the waves and so, with no one to leave the business to he had sold his boat and retired. Yet he had pulled the guy in by himself and would no doubt at his advanced age be considered a hero for doing so. I expected to read of him in the local papers this week and in the nationals, or at least the Scottish nationals next week.
An old fisherman in Scotland saving the life of a floundering fisherman is not news in Westminster where our politicians believe that they are doing something far more important in governing the country than an old fisherman is doing when trying to save a life.
To me and the people of Argyll as well as to those in the many villages on Scotland's coasts and to those that live in fishing villages the world over, the saving of a life was great news indeed.
To me, someone that risks their life day after day for their whole life and then, retired, has every reason and excuse to just sit by the fire enjoying their retirement from public life and enjoying the fruits of their labour, is a worthy person, deserving of their ease. When that man, in their dotage and later years pulls himself from his warm armchair and decides, when another is in peril, to cast off their idyllic retirement, don again their boots and sou'westers and again risk their own life to save another's; That man to me is a hero.
Far more of a hero than those that sit in their offices with their big black cars and enjoy liquid business lunches while deciding how many fish of what species can be caught by whom. Sure the politicians had their own worries, would their chauffeur's body odour be smelling from working too hard. Would they have time for only two glasses of champagne before their four course lunch.
Would the poor fools that voted them in still be alive tomorrow to keep them in the privilege that they expected to be?
The politicians, the wealthy and the mighty were born to it and just did not understand the travails of those crushed below their heel. They will not have noticed the heroism of Ralph; to them he would just be an old dodgy geezer. Perhaps they would realise in some way his efforts his valiant efforts. Perhaps if they thought it would gain them votes?
I wrote that night for the first time in ages, printed off the letters and sent them to all the main newspapers and well...
Old Ralph had proved himself to be a hero again just as he had been through his whole life.
He deserved a mention or two in the papers and many thanks from the locals.
He had my thanks and adulation even if he did not know it yet.
"The last of them"? I asked?
"No sign, the lifeboat has moved closer to the shore as the tide has been coming in".
"Fuckin Lifeboat" I said. I felt guilty even as I said it and Hamish looked at me with a look that could be called nothing other than regret.
The RNLI risk their lives day upon day, week upon week and year upon year for no real reward other than the saving of life's from the sea. I was more annoyed with the fact that they had listened to old Ramsey rather than me and felt guilty even as I voiced the words.
After all who could blame them as I was not the sea master that old Ramsey was, not even close. Yet the tides developed and adapted with the weather and the sun, the tides and the distance the moon was from the earth all that science that Ramsey never knew and I did. Sure science could not explain everything about the movements of the ocean the tides and the weather, many of your choices were best guess, educated guess, yes, but still a guess. but that was simply because we do not know everything yet, one day, long after my death, we shall.
Old Ramsey used to tell stories of his feats, and he was a smart man, He had never gone to college or university I am not sure that he had even finished school, but he been at sea since a young boy and had learned to read and write there.
He knew the workings of the solar system and of the stars as he had to for navigation especially in times where things once tended to breakdown all the time but he was a sailor of note.
Why?
Because he knew his stuff, he knew the tides, he knew what would be difficult, he knew what would be easy and he knew that as far as the sea goes that nothing is ever easy. Even when you know the sea, it will play you false.
I stayed with Hamish that night. His wife and young child in bed and he fed me a little malt, we never found the other one, we never even found the body. Graham Bannatyne his name was, the one that was missing, yet even days later he was never found. I spent some time down at the police station because of my directions, telling them where the bodies would be. I actually wondered at one point if they had assumed that I as "Poseidon lord of the sea", had taken my mighty hand and had thrown the occupants of the boat into the sea.
Strangely I am not the god of the sea rather just a fellow that has worked the sea since I was a boy and so had a passing knowledge of the tides.
The Story teller
*
You must be asking yourself by now why am I the one that's telling this tale, after all I was just a fisherman like so many others. Sure I have a good knowledge of the tides, know the shore and know the land around the sea, know where the fish are, the tides and when the wind was likely to change and all that is true.
Why? you should ask yourself, is it not a writer, an historian, an academic of some sort or even a journalist that is writing this tale, why is it a fisherman?
Well the answer to that question is easy, it is because no historian, journalist, writer or anyone of value knew what happened later that year, no one had even an inkling of all the things that were going on, even though we had the odd journalist or fifty around for the next week or three, in fact it was becoming difficult to walk down main street without bumping into a few of them.
Campbeltown Main street was normally quiet, except in the summer months when there would be some tourists come to see the sights, some golfers down to play the links course at Machrihanish where you would have to drive well to keep your score down. Sometimes they would play the shorter course that was more difficult at Dunaverty where accuracy was required rather than strength.
People were also visiting for the music festival which was washed out by torrential rain almost as often as it was on.
Once Campbeltown had been a tourist resort and a place like Dunoon or Ayr, where families would go on their holidays from Glasgow but that boom had all but died out with the package holiday to Spain, Greece or Turkey in the late seventies and early eighties and it had never truly recovered. Of course there were stalwarts, people who liked the countryside, enjoyed the golf, liked camping and those that were short of money and had tried it for a week and were lucky enough to get good weather and so tried it again and again.
Campbeltown on a warm day in the sunshine was, and is, a great place to be, there is much to do if you like outside sports and activities.
There is great fishing, in small hill lochs and fast flowing spate rivers and golf, beautiful walks, lovely villages and beaches, many sites of historical interest all around, but in the gloom of winter it is just another small west coast town. Prettier than some I suppose but little different.
Back when our story takes place it was more vibrant, the population higher and it was doing well.
The shipyard had only recently closed but the NATO base was still operational, The US Airbase at Machrihanish was busy, there was a clothing factory and a frozen fish plant, the economy of the town was not booming but was buoyant and it was a lovely place to stay.
I suppose you are still asking yourself why a fisherman is writing this tale and what he would really know about the events. Well therein lies the tale.
I was there as you know when those people were pulled from the loch and though there was a life lost there are so many tales I could tell you of fishing boats going down and not a survivor to be found. Often even the bodies of those lost or fallen were never found, but we saved four out of five that night and though still sombre from the loss of one, in a way it was a celebration.
That I had a hand in our success was good, and I still remember the pride I felt when I had called the tides right and that allowed another two to be saved, yet still one was lost at sea. Yet Again.
A few of us know what happened to the other of the five,
The one lost at sea, the one whose body was never recovered. He was not lost at sea as the papers said, he was not lost at sea as we told the journalists and commentators, in fact he was found just as easily as the other four but not for a few days yet.
So why am I telling the story? There a number of reasons, I am the only one left alive, apart from two others, that knows the whole story. I am the only one left that will still speak of it and remembers it with some linear memories. I am the only one left that dares to tell the truth.
More, I may be a fisherman but I read. I have always read and always will until my mind gives up completely.
I read long and often, books of all sorts, shapes and sizes, all genres, those considered sophisticated and those considered pulp; most appealed to me.
I enjoyed reading so much that I had dabbled at writing myself but was never really good enough. I could hold the strains of a story together, keep the characters in my mind, their ideas and motivations but never could I form anything more than a short tale that would keep people moved, engrossed and swept away with the tale in the way that many other writers could.
I will not try to tell you of my short tales for they have no relevance to the story here but thought that I would add a short description, of the reason, I read in the form of a short story I wrote many years ago.
The Bookshop
*
It is still one of my favourite places in the world, a good bookshop. I am originally from a small west coast town in Scotland with few shops and few people but we had a book shop. "Martin's" it was called, stone painted black on the outside, with shiny anti-fouling paint that they used on the underside of the many fishing boats in the harbour. Three windows; two facing the sea another into an alley that led to the reeking public toilets. The windows were full of sheet music for bag pipe and accordion, tin whistle and flute all unsold and fading in the occasional sun that broke through the glass.
The music was interspersed with the odd novel or history book mainly written by people that lived locally like Angus MacVicar and the almost legendary Naomi Mitchieson who was by then ninety and lived near Carradale.
A village fifteen miles away got to by a tar and chip single track road with passing spaces, that wound across cliffs and through forests dotted with the occasional smoke spilling cottage.
Yet it was not the outside of the book shop but the inside that fascinated me, for upon opening the old hardwood door with a half window, with a half pulled roller blind, that was so heavy as a child you could hardly push it to enter. Painted black with the same shiny paint that adorned the outside it opened upon a treasure trove. The shop was barely fifteen feet long and only twelve wide a quarter of this taken up by the oak counter and the two ladies behind it; Mrs Martin a grey haired harridan with bow legs and a brown tweed skirt over sensible flat lace up shoes and below a sweater of brown wool.
Sometimes her daughter would be with her and sometimes another lady that I never knew the name of but was obviously not from the same stock being dark haired, slim and pretty even though she was twenty years my senior.
All inside was polished wood, oak most likely, with a spiral staircase that wound up to the second floor that had a small chain curving across it that said "Staff Only" in rather authoritarian lettering.
The downstairs when you took away the room for the counter and the staircase was only perhaps eight feet in width and barely five in depth accommodating perhaps four or five shoppers at most at a time and then in a crush. For me it was the feel of the place; bursting with knowledge that was new to me at the time being little more than a child. The colours of the book spines and covers against the unrelenting oak, the smell of dampness and must from the books that covered every available surface, piled even upon the steps of the spiral staircase. In that small and almost insignificant bookshop I learned and read and read more, often I had to wait two months to get the book I wanted and so I read something that I did not wish to read in between as I was hooked by then and I have been a book junkie ever since.
This, best of vices, gave me a hundred lives that I have lived over and above my own. I have enjoyed every one, been terrified in every one, been amazed in every one and when that terrible, vile and fulfilling ocean finally takes the last of me I will have lived a thousand lives through all that I have read. So it comes to me to tell the tale of what happened after the rescue. For the one that was missing was not gone for ever as we, me, Morris and Hamish as well as the coastguard and his family had imagined.
Instead he was cozened and coddled by the cold ocean and brought like a child back to shore.