‘Hi.’
Beside James stands a woman — yes, it is Mike’s sister, though she’s changed too since Natalie met her, just once, at one of Mike’s parties, perhaps six or seven years ago. She seemed very young then, an awkward, big-boned student dressed in black. She’s still dressed in black, and has been sort of squaring up to Dan, not sure how to greet him, but now gratefully follows James’ example.
‘Have you got wellies and things?’ asks Natalie, stupidly. It was Brenda who told them all what to bring. ‘The fisherman guy — Reg, Ron — he’s waiting for us on the boat.’
‘We’ll be ready in two shakes,’ says James, throwing open the back doors of the van.
‘Have you got the provisions?’ asks Brenda.
‘Vittles for both fishy- and humankind are all aboard,’ replies Mike. ‘Sandwiches still hot. We’ll sort the ramps out and see you there. You can’t miss her — name of Andromeda.’
Jupiter is the last survivor in the dawn sky as the squat, rusty Andromeda chugs along her buoyed channel, past the mud flats, the lighthouse, the old fort on its precarious sickle of land, and out into the mile-wide neck of the Solent. Though the morning is perfectly clear and still, the sea bears in a remnant of swell from the Atlantic. It glints like molten lead under the bow and then reappears astern, savagely sculpted into rearing, glassy waves that hang, slump and tumble into lanes of foam.
Dan Mock taps a question into his keypad with his left thumb, his last moveable digit: How deep. The electronic voice is drowned by the engine, but Nat reads the words and relays them to Mike, who ducks into the cab and asks Ron. ‘Eighteen metres.’ Is that all. Strange.
Dan allows his senses to feast. After the well-meant, comfortable blandness of the hospice, every authentic world-morsel is precious — the mewing retinue of gulls, the bright, tangerine glow seeping up behind the Isle of Wight, the mingled smells of diesel and marine sulphur. And bacon: Mike, Brenda and James are all attacking their butties. Dan hasn’t bitten into a rasher of bacon for at least a year. But he isn’t vexed by the others’ enjoyment — or only a little. He’s grateful to be reminded.
They round the ghostly chalk spires of the Needles just as the late autumn sun peeps over the island, narrowing the friends’ five pairs of eyes and painting their faces with a wash of gold. The engine stops, the anchor chain rattles, and a deep quiet descends. The Channel plants gentle, slapping kisses along the Andromeda’s hull.
Mike Vickers feels triumphant. The weather is perfect, Dan’s assurance that he’s comfortable and enjoying himself quite believable: the controversial outing is already a success. The small matter of inadequate insurance was resolved with a couple of fifties. There were no bites from the first drop, but does it matter whether you catch anything?
General exultation can’t help the twist of specific revulsion on his face as he pokes around in the bait bucket. Some of the squid are still half-frozen into blocks, while others — whole or in pieces — are floating loose in the grey water. Eurgh.
‘You’re getting off lightly here, old man,’ he says to Dan, whose eyes swivel from the horizon they have been surveying. He taps a reply and hits play: You always were a big girl’s blouse.
‘You’re supposed to be attracting the fish,’ Brenda teases. ‘The bait is supposed to look irresistible. Yours looks like a—’
‘Like an instrument of torture,’ supplies Natalie.
‘You need to jam that hook right through the thing’s body, and then stick the barb through the eyes like I showed you. So it’s hidden.’
‘I’ll try my method, thanks,’ replies Mike, wiping hands on his now-filthy handkerchief, taking up his rod and releasing the spool.
Again there are no bites, but as they reel in, the tip of Natalie’s rod starts to flex. They all crowd over to her side to see what creature of the deep might find itself hauled up to the light. It looks like — a very small, leopard-print shark.
‘Doggie,’ says Brenda. ‘We throw her back. Watch out — they have skin like sandpaper.’ She helps Natalie extract the hook from the poor creature, which twists and curls around her hands, weird, sleepy eyes dazzled and blinking, mouth gaping.
‘It’s bleeding.’
‘It’ll be fine. Character-building. Story to tell the grandkids.’
When Mike gets his own bite, feels the unmistakeable heft of it and begins reeling in, his mind hums with childish speculation. Alpha male catches alpha cod. Saves the day. Three cheers for Mikey. When the quarry reveals itself to be another dogfish, and a small one at that, his disbelief quickly turns to quiet, unaccountable satisfaction that he and Natalie are the two pioneers. A team.
Later, after a coffee break, and with the new baits down for just a few minutes, Brenda sweeps her rod back and begins slowly, carefully reeling. A frown of concentration that Mike remembers from long ago.
‘This is the one,’ says James, scrambling across to watch. ‘I can feel it. The White Whale.’ The first thing they see is a huge mouth, then two round, black, staring eyes.
‘May I present: dinner,’ declares Brenda. But the cod, when netted and brought aboard, is no whopper. Ron holds up his wooden rule, shakes his head and jerks a thumb towards the sea. It’s just a baby.
‘Good eating on that,’ says James wistfully, as they lean over and watch the dazed fish right itself and flop down out of sight.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Mike. ‘Plenty of time yet.’ But the morning slips by and their cavernous catch-bucket presents a mocking emptiness. Soon the favourable, sluggish waters of high tide are gone and the current drags at the lines, lifting the bait off the seabed where the elusive cod feed. Natalie keeps asking Dan if he’s had enough, and he begins to waver. Yes, soon, he taps, back aching, feet cold, maybe one last go. When the final baits are down, he taps again: Straw poll. Is it skill or is it luck?
Brenda Vickers tries her rod gently and lets out ten feet of line. As teenagers she and Austin used to dabble from Southend pier and a few other local hotspots, but she’s never fished from a boat. Her presence is a favour for Mike, and for James.
She remembers Dan, of course. When Mike explained how sick he was — that he can’t move or speak, but that mentally he’s all there — she found herself making excuses for not coming: it sounded so awkward. James talked her round, said he wanted to meet the guy again — said it might be their last chance. That’s his story. But let’s not forget the minor detail that Natalie has been bizarrely outed as James’ ex. Mike says she’s met Natalie before, but she doesn’t remember. Forgettable, perhaps. Or just one of the many mortifying nights blotted from Brenda’s memory.
Check my kibe. Check my kibe. Check my kibe.
Check my what? Dan’s eerie electronic request rings out in the silence. Brenda turns to see his rod twitching violently. Check my line. She hesitates a moment, but everyone else looks at her so she grasps the rod and lifts it from the bracket. It’s nearly wrenched out of her hands.
‘What is it, Bren?’
‘Dinner!’ says Mike. ‘Dan, you actually are the man.’
‘If you ask me,’ says Ron the skipper, with a twinkling eye, ‘I wouldn’t say that there is a cod. You might want to let out some line. Tire it out.’
The creature is swimming fast and erratically, so that one moment Brenda has to pay out line, and the next it goes slack and she reels in frantically.