It had seemed important at the time. Like it was the right thing to do, though the terms had been for all the fish, every one to come off the boat, the same as it was the first time. As part of the deal, one of the two men who accompanied the woman in grey had handed him a legal-looking document several pages long and asked him to sign, as soon as the other buyers had started to leave the beach. Ethan made a show of looking through the wad of papers, a document that seemed unsuited to the place it had ended up, too clean and delicate against the contrasting dirt and oil of the beach and the roughness of Ethan’s hands. He recognised the insignia of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture on the cover sheet and as he skimmed through the papers the text swam before his eyes and he found he could not coerce what was written there to reconcile itself into words and sentences he could recognise. He had rubbed his eyes a few times, with no effect on the legibility of the document, but tiredness had won out and he had proffered the contract back to the man. The man pulled a pen from his suit pocket and handed it over, indicating, with its nib, a space on the last page. Ethan was surprised to see his name already printed there, and surprised too that there was at last something on the document he could read clearly. He pressed the document up against the hull of the Great Hope and signed it, soaking some of the pages on the other side with diesel and grime from the boat. When he handed the papers back, the second man stepped forward and took a roll of cash from his pocket. He handed it over to Clem, who pocketed his share before handing the rest over to Ethan. Ethan climbed up the ladder to unload the fish.
Standing waist deep in the hold and passing the crates up to Rab, who had climbed on board to help him, Ethan had removed a couple of the pale fish from each of the crates and placed them into the one of the empty boxes down in the shadow of the hold.
When all the crates were unloaded, he came up onto the deck and saw the grey woman was still staring down towards the Great Hope from the road. In the space between the boat and the woman in grey looking on, the two men in their suits looked incongruous carrying the crates of fish and they struggled with them on the stones, watched by the villagers.
As the last of the crates had made its way up to the van, the grey woman had exchanged words with the two men. One of them held his hands out away from his suit as though he was worried he would contaminate it. The other was leaning against the van and had the ankle of one of his legs resting above the knee of his other leg and was wiping his black shoes with a handkerchief he had pulled out from his suit pocket. All three were looking down towards the boat and towards Ethan. He wondered whether they were going to return to the beach and insist on inspecting the empty hold, but after a few raised words that carried across to him, they did not return to the boat. Ethan wondered whether she suspected he had held some back, and as he was clearing the boat, he threw some nets down over the box in which he had stored the fish for Timothy.
10. Timothy
TIMOTHY IS SURPRISED when Ethan seeks him out a few days later and asks him if he will come out on the boat again. He considers it for a while. The house is disintegrating under his care and Lauren is due to arrive in less than a month.
That evening at sundown, he makes his way down to the shore, and he reaches the beach to find it busy again, this time with the crews preparing their boats, and a larger gathering than he has seen before amassed around them. As he passes between the boats that crowd the mid-tide beach, Timothy is aware of the sideways glances of those standing around. The earlier hostility he had felt is no longer there and it has been replaced by interest — intense interest and scrutiny. The villagers still avoid speaking to him as he walks by. His nods towards those whose eyes he catches are returned hurriedly, before each in turn averts their eyes.
Clem is the only person on the beach who speaks to him directly, and in a voice loud enough to be overheard.
‘Problem for most of them is they have to pass the pub to get to their boats, and most times the pub wins out,’ he says, and there is a volley of insults from the fishermen and laughter too, a sound Timothy realises he has not heard since he arrived in the village.
Clem then lowers his voice.
‘All change now though. The haul you brought in last. Regular golden hen you are.’
Timothy stares at Clem, trying to figure out the meaning of this last statement, but Clem has already moved away, heading down the beach with a stack of crates, which he passes up to one of the boys standing on the deck of the nearest boat.
Timothy spots Ethan arranging crates of nets on the deck of the Great Hope, and he watches the fisherman as he organises the crates, like he is completing a puzzle to allow the two men room enough to walk on the crowded deck. When Ethan looks up and notices Timothy, he gestures to him to come up.
Timothy is unable to interpret the look Ethan gives him as he climbs aboard the Great Hope. It’s the same look he saw on the other man’s face as when they pulled up their catch of silver fish. He steps off the ladder onto the deck and has the feeling that in some way the Great Hope is, itself, a net of sorts and, somehow, that he is starting to become caught up in its folds. The afternoon is wearing itself out and the crews make ready to leave.
‘Bremming tonight,’ says Ethan, the first words he has spoken to Timothy since he came on board. ‘Good sign.’
They leave the cove and, as they pass the rocks, Timothy understands what Ethan means. With the light fading fast, he sees, in the boat’s wake, burning phosphorescence that dances just below the surface where the water has been disturbed. He watches it in the eddies and small currents caused by the boat’s passing until it tails off, as the wake calms and the water becomes dark again. After a while, the darkness is punctuated only by the lights of the small fleet of fishing boats and the occasional brighter flash of a searchlight as one of the crew works on the foredeck. As they make their course over the water, these thin lights spread out from each other like the long fingers of a hand flexing. One of them Timothy loses in the darkness, and the others stay close to the Great Hope, and the lights of the small, silent waterborne community dance unsteadily on the sea’s surface.
11. Ethan
AFTER THE CATCH, no one, not even the other crews, had asked Ethan about his excursion beyond the container ships, as if they did not really want to know the answer. Their celebrations that night had been strained with all that was unsaid. No one wanted to talk about the fish themselves, though the catch warranted discussion, nor the circumstances in which they had come to be landed.
‘Catch is a catch,’ a few of them had said, and others around had nodded in agreement, as though that was all that needed to be said on the matter. Timothy, on the other hand, was discussed in detail. Ethan had noticed the stories about the newcomer had started to transform, to transfigure somehow into fictions of redemption, and the more beer that was drunk, the wilder the stories of his influence became. But of the Great Hope passing outside the fleet’s boundary lines, Clem was the only one who came close to asking.