“E’er starlit water greets rolling mist
And emerald tides greet smiling moon,
Thou shalt hearest Neptune’s splash:
Beware yon mermaid’s doom.”
For some people, stuff like in the films never happens. I never win competitions, and I never win prizes or the lottery (okay, I never enter or buy a ticket, but it’s not the point). I am always just seconds too late to pick up the wallet full of money that earns the honest person a reward for handing it in. And I’m never the kind of person who hears Great Uncle Tommy just died and left me loads of money.
Until Great Uncle Tommy died and left me loads of money. Really depressing and also convenient, right? But stop interrupting with your thoughts, please, they’re distracting me.
Nobody quite knows where he made his fortune. An old salty seadog, Great Uncle Tommy could spin a yarn that pulled your leg to America and back, via the Cape. It was said that one day, whilst out hauling up the lobster pots, he’d winched up a sealed, lead-lined chest containing secret documents from the Middle Ages that the Vatican was extremely interested in, and paid him off for both his silence and the mouldering scraps. Another story was that he’d found actual treasure, of the gold and silver variety, but that’s a bit blasé for stories such as my life. Others reported he was part of a drug smuggling ring, but since he never wandered round wearing a classy suit and frequenting the Maunton Sands hotel with the movie stars, I was more inclined to believe the former.
Whatever the story was, I became the beneficiary of his estate, which included Misty Cottage, the twelve metre potting boat, “Neptune’s Lady,” that he pottered around in (geddit?), an ancient Land Rover, and a little rowing boat.
Okay, to be fair, it’s not a rowing boat. I remember the summer very well when I learned what it was. My parents had died in an accident a few weeks before, and I was sitting in the little scruffy boat that made the short journey to Neptune’s Lady when the tide was in, looking at a large yacht that was moored for the night. I was suddenly aware that I was not alone. One of the old beys (that’s what they call an “old boy” here – you would probably call him an ancient mariner) was stood on the harbour edge over me. He gave me a grim, wizened smile and nodded, leaning over the railings over my head.
“Thass boat wi’ a stick, tha.”
Real sailors are scornful of yachts with a single mast, utilised by pleasure-seeking rich folk in these parts. I nodded sagely back. I replied with what Uncle Tommy often said.
“They’m bain’t be wannin’ they’s fish supperrr, be ‘em.” It meant that they were so busy messing around and playing with expensive, useless equipment, that they wouldn’t know how to catch a fish for a meal (and that’s if they even knew how to prepare it). He nodded sagely back at me.
“I’d rather have my little rowing boat here and come back to Misty Cottage for the night than stay aboard a big boat-with-a-stick like that. I’d be too scared of breaking things”. I was well known around the little village for dropping fish and anything else I was given. More than a few times, I’d gone out to sea already soaking (hopping between boats was not a skill of mine), and coming back just as soggy.
“Thass tenderrr.”
I peered up at him.
“What?” He stared at me intently and nodded towards me.
“Thass a tenderrr maid.” In Devon, people often called a young woman, “maid” or even “my lover”. It’s a simple term of endearment, and said a great deal. They mean nothing dodgy by it. But calling me tender? I’d once been called a slab of juicy cow meat, and being rather fat, I’ve always been very conscious of my weight. The village wives used to tell me it was good, as I acted like my own flotation device when I fell in the water, and proved how rich the local cream was. But calling me tender? Really!
“I beg your pardon,” I gasped.
He pointed at the boat I was sat in.
“Thass nod a bowt, thass a tenderrr, maid. Bain’t be callin’ a tender a bowt cos bain’t be wod it iz, see?”
“Oh.”
He chuckled at me, wheezing and croaking, and dropped down a sweet for me as he wandered off home for his tea, leaving me slowly rocking in the tender. How I’d never learned the name for the small vessel, spending so much of my life in that little village, I still don’t know to this day, but I was a good quarter of a century old before I did.
I used to spend most of my time with Great Uncle Tommy in Misty Cottage when I wasn’t at school, as my parents were usually busy during term-time, and would leave me to learn about a fisherman’s way of life, and play on the little harbour beach under the watchful eye of the locals when Great Uncle Tommy was caught late out at sea before coming in on the evening tide. The first day since he died that I went to see Misty Cottage again was just after the funeral. The compete arse of a city solicitor was showing me round, as if I didn’t know those stone walls as well as dear Great Uncle Tommy himself, as if it wasn’t my actual home already, harping on about what the place was worth. He should have been an estate agent, really. If he was local, I’d have thought he was probably related to the local estate agent. In fact, it was probably his own sister that he’d married, and set up a joint business with. He did seem a bit inbred (alright, not really, but he was annoying). God knows where Great Uncle Tommy found him. Actually, the Vatican probably knows. Sorry, I digress. So, finally, he wandered off to take a call, leaving me to my grief and sorrowful delight in new ownership of the place Great Uncle Tommy had been born in, and lived his simple, fisherman’s life. It would have been horribly sad if some distant, unknown relative had been able to claim it and use it as a holiday retreat once a year. Misty Cottage had soul. Mine. She held me there as if I were chained to her timbered walls and ceilings, as if the cliff she hugged were a part of me.
I stood in the little paved garden with my back to the little stone cottage and window boxes of forlorn lobelia, looking out across the harbour. Just in the lee of the cliff, Misty Cottage was a rather cheery picture-book kind of place, like you find on boxes of Clotted Cream Fudge, but with a slate roof instead of thatch. I could see the tide-worn pier of Illfyfel, the small port village on the North Devon coast that I loved so deeply. The call of the seagulls, like a crowd of hungry football fans shouted and called to each other, a group of them fighting over some chips in a raggedy squabble just down the little road that ran parallel to the harbour. I breathed in the sharp, tangy air, the odd whiff of the lobster pots slapping me in the nostrils now and again. I grew to love that stinging smell when I was little, as it spoke of interesting creatures from the depths of the sea, the romance of stepping aboard the chugging Neptune’s Lady for a fun fishing trip to deeper waters (Great Uncle Tommy never took me potting, as it was dangerous and heavy work), and the feeling of being Home. I signed some papers, grimaced the solicitor away, unloaded my little car, parked off the road on a little snicket next to the landrover, and went in. Alone.
My family home was a mere five miles up the road in Upper Windingford, but when I was in Misty Cottage, my heart felt it was truly at home. My parents died when I was in my first year of work, after leaving university, and I took a month off to stay with Great Uncle Tommy. There was only us two left of our small family unit, and we both bore our grief silently, taking comfort simply in each others’ presence. The villagers knew us both well enough to sadly smile and nod, and leave the odd dish of supper or strawberries for us, rather than intrude on our privacy. Villages are places where everybody knows everybody’s business, but not everybody knows everybody very well – some of us like to keep ourselves to ourselves, and Great Uncle Tommy and I always did just that. Oh, we passed the time of day with people, and we knew each others’ comings and goings. But essentially, we kept our own counsel, generally fished alone, and stayed within our little stone bounds whilst others preferred to be in each others’ pockets and passionately discuss their coming and going and intimate details.
The village was always full of life somewhere. Tourists who came year after year; strangers who got lost and delighted in the picturesque place; kids home from school playing before bedtime; the three teenaged “hoodies” lurking at the foot of Neptune’s Rock at the top of Menhir Hill; fishermen coming and going from the pub or the boats; women gossiping in front of the little stores and Post Office; always, somewhere, in Illfyfel, was a sign of life. Except on certain nights.
Misty Cottage stood out of the worst of the storm winds that would rip through in winter, but provided picturesque views of the boats and the village built in five terraces up the hill. In those storms, the battering wind and raging seas would scour the grey slate cliffs and cottages, and people would often clip their waists to ropes connecting the lower buildings, in case a rogue wave should sweep them into the white-foamed roiling pit of the sea depths. In spring, the ships would be prepared for return to the water, as the stern, lashing waves made trouble for drying anti-foul and annoyed the fishwives trying to dry their washing, rather than waste electricity on tumble dryers. In summer, the sun would bake down in sweltering streams of harsh light, drying the cobbles and playing with the edges of the little ice cream parlour’s faded parasols, and warming the fingers of lapping waves. In autumn, the rich, honeyed beams of fading sun would kiss the sea making it glitter, and the cliff faces, lighting up the candy tuft and seadrift still adorning Menhir Hill as people enjoyed the last vestiges of joy before the boats were lifted out of the water for winter once more, and the men would haul in the nets for fixing.
Yes, there were always signs of life in the village. Except on certain nights.
When the deep, swirling sea fog rolled in, saturating the air and ground with mystic portents and whispered secrets, Misty Cottage became Other-Wordly. When the clouded mists of grey-pearl veils descended, silence and limitless Nothing extended beyond Misty Cottage’s little pink-and-white-daisied wooden gate, and one must beware of the Faerie Folk and Sirens’ call. Cut off from the view of the other dwellings, Misty Cottage was a gateway into Other Realms. There was an old legend whisperingly sung on dark, late October nights to children who were wont to wander off:
“E’er starlit water greets rolling mist
And emerald tides greet smiling moon,
Thou shalt hearest Neptune’s splash:
Beware yon mermaid’s doom.”
Stories were told of children who were taken by Neptune to do his bidding in underwater palaces. The Faerie Folk who lurked around Neptune’s Rock, an ancient standing stone atop Menhir Hill, the headland forming the right hand side of the harbour, were said to creep down into the village and pluck naughty children from their warm, cosy beds. Mermaids were said to call to the sailors and drive them onto the rocks with a chilling laugh. Sirens sang a beckoning to pull unwary shipmates to a dark, watery doom just beyond the depths of the deep harbour’s limits. The little beach near the mouth of the harbour was called Wreck Beach. There are approximately eighty-six Smuggler’s Coves on this stretch of coastline alone, and Wreck Beach is owned with pride by the villagers, simply for being different, although it was used for smuggling in earlier centuries.
But it remains a graveyard for hundreds of men who sought shelter in a raging storm, only to find the ripping tide caught them in a freak, monstrous eddy that splintered the planks of the prow and the ship sank almost instantly. After a storm, during which it was said you could hear the wails and screams of the poor lost souls foundering, coins, odd pieces of metal, and shards of glass and pottery can still be found there. But it was also said that the ship was not a victim of an accident, but rather, the mermaids were angry at the captain’s resistance to his men diving off the ship so that the mermaids could claim them as their own, and that they caused Neptune to hurl his force at the ship, Orchis, sinking her and all who had been aboard.
Of course, it’s all a bunch of bollocks. I mean, Neptune? Faerie Folk? Mermaids? If they existed, we’d have pictures of them, and either have them in zoos, government labs (obviously their presence would be leaked), or be tailing their fishy lives in the trashy celebrity magazines. And if it’s true about why the Orchis sank, how would we even know that? They all died!
But fisherfolk are incredibly superstitious, and you must allow them that. It doesn’t mean you have to take them seriously, but they would rather do you some little harm (like punch you or leave you standing on the quayside alone as they go out to sea) than allow you on board with a banana, wearing green, or the mention of rabbits. A woman on a ship was also very unlucky, but Great Uncle Tommy always said Neptune wouldn’t want anybody as clumsy as me, so I was okay.
I must confess to you, though, I do have my own superstition. Well, okay, two. One is that I always, always have gingerbread cookies with me when I go fishing. I love their smiles. Sometimes I feel very down, and so whenever I need a smile, I look at a cookie, and it smiles for me. And as I fish, I take a cookie out, and break off a piece. I throw it into the water, and hope that Neptune will send me a lovely big fat fishy for my tea in return. The other superstition I have is that I have to talk to my worms that I use for bait, so they know who’s boss, and then I ask them nicely to bring me a nice fishy if Neptune won’t. Between us all, we usually did okay. I never caught monsters, but then I never wanted to. I just wanted to catch my tea. They are silly superstitions, but I always thought, what is life worth, if not with more joy in it? The world needs more joy, and if I can find it, I embrace it.
Having said that, I really am very antisocial, and grumpy when it comes to sharing fishing space or personal details (I’m suffering your delightful presence, because who doesn’t want people to be interested in them, truthfully?). In summer, our little village is swamped with what we call “grockles”, meaning tourists. The Cornish call them “emmits”, which means ants, because they swarm like ants do. There is no escaping the screaming parents as their kids get too close to the water’s edge, or because they are moaning for another ice cream, or the clogged lanes of our access roads like blocked arteries of somebody who has eaten too much clotted cream all his life, the cars snaking silvery up the cliff sides and forcing locals to park in Hayswain Head field at the top of the headland, just to get home for lunch. And worst, a load of ignorant men flailing 6oz gripper leads around and pretending they know how to do a pendulum cast, when all they really achieve is the severe threat of killing someone or severely maiming them. Oh, and the delightful fluff-chuckers, who prance about with great strings of hooked feathers pretending they know how to feather for mackerel. Call me grumpy, but really? Okay, I’m grumpy. But really?!
And so, in summer, I would get up at the crack of dawn (if you said that in Upper Windingford, some smartarse would tell you that you couldn’t have got up at the crack of Dawn, because she’d spent the night in their bed), and go fishing early, so that I could avoid the pier-side questions of “Caught anything yet?”, “Are you here with your husband?”, “Can I have some of your bait?” and “Do you really like fishing? You’re a woman!” It was also not safe to take the tender out, past the flying feathers, hooks and leads, as the mouth of the deep harbour was fairly narrow and a renegade grockle casting out to sea could still sideswipe me if they released the line too early.
Two days after Great Uncle Tommy’s funeral, having handed in my notice from work (they were a bunch of knobheads anyway, and the healthy accounts left to me told me that I could take my time before deciding what I wanted to do), I decided to go fishing. I had to, really.
The night was an early summer one, and the previous week’s storm had left the water full of weed, with a beautiful emerald hue, rich and velvety in the sunlight, and causing fisherfolk to haul up great clumps of kelp on the end of their stripped hooks from the pier. In the late evening light, the sea fog had been spotted, and even then, as I stood in the sitting room, it was crawling its way into the harbour mouth.
Misty Cottage was feeling… odd. It had always been filled with trinkets and treasures, shells and corals, pieces of driftwood and etchings, carvings and old, rich tapestry work from Great Uncle Tommy’s travels as a young man, and the travels of not only his dad, his granddad, and his great granddad, but whoever had come before them. The walls were lined with many shelves in the two rooms downstairs, with funny little boat pieces and wheels on the kitchen walls and up the twisty, crooked stairs. The two bedrooms were relatively plain, but the bathroom was filled with model boats and corals and great strings of scallops and pearly shells. It was ever so pretty. And a complete bugger to clean.
But for all the feeling of home that Misty Cottage usually held for me, and the memories and echoes of evenings hanging tense in the air, there was something… “lost” about it now. It was like something tangible hovering in the air, almost, but not, like smoke. Like the thick, rolling fog was creeping under the doors. It was as if somebody was about to walk into the sitting room, but were waiting, sniggering around the corner at my growing fear and discomfort, or peering at me from down the chimney flue. Like the Faerie Folk had sent their mischievous sprites skittering down the hill from Neptune’s Rock to spy on me and sneak up, ready to pluck at my fishing trousers and t-shirt, and pull my hair. I shuddered.
There is a thing called “The Fear”, or “The Heebie-Jeebies”. If you have ever experienced it, you know what I mean. It’s inexplicable, but suddenly, your heart starts pounding, your eyes start scanning all around, and you have to get out of wherever you are really fast. But you can’t explain why. It is a common feeling around fisherfolk, moor hikers, and woodland walkers. It Just Happens. It’s Fight or Flight, but nothing has appeared for you to fight, and you have no choice but to run. And run I did, into the kitchen to grab my packet of ragworm from the fridge, the hall to grab my spinning rod and tackle bag, and then right out of the front door.
Slamming it behind me, I scuttled down to the railings looking over the harbour, with a quick glance up the little path to Menhir Hill just beyond Misty Cottage, in case anything was looking at me with glowing eyes. I stood and watched for a moment, as we fisherfolk do. We stand, we observe the weather, we choose our target, we set up, we fish. I stood, I felt the warm, thick air getting more and more humid as the rolling fog crept towards me, now beyond the harbour mouth and kissing the sides of the potting boats, sliding between the pier pilings, and bringing its briny presence right to my feet. I could see the endless dome of the star-studded indigo heavens above me, an almost half-moon like a tipsy smiley face reassuring me. The cold starlight was winking into the warmer deep green waters, until the fog swept around me and over me, and hid the glorious sight from my eyes in a comforting hug, hiding me from whatever glowing, impish eyes may have been watching me from Menhir Hill. This was a night when nobody left their homes except the brave or the foolish, for fear of being snatched away and never heard of again.
But like I said, that’s all a bunch of bollocks. I just wanted to go fishing, and shake off The Fear. It was halfway through a neap tide, the smallest tides of the month, and it was just before slack low tide (slack is when the sea decides it wants to come back in or go out, and kind of sits around for a bit before it knows). I could row out to the sandy holding pool before the rocky gulley just past Wreck Beach, where the weed wouldn’t bother me so much, and then fish the tide up to high, if I wanted. The turn of the tide was when the flatfish would be waking up and the pelagic fish coming in to feed, so it was ideal for me. I decided I wanted a plaice, a pollack, and if I was lucky, a bass. They didn’t like moonlight, but with the mist hiding it, I may be able to bag one.
I turned on my head torch, climbed down the iron ladder to my tender that was moored there (many times I’d fallen in, but thankfully not that night), and tied the massively long safety rope to the ladder. It filled most of the little boat when it was coiled, and weighed it down, but I needed it. Any local going out at night in this cove in a small vessel would do the same. You tie the rope to the ladder at one end, and your tender at the other, and if anything happens and you lose your oars or capsize, you use the rope to pull you back to safety. If the worst should happen, and the boat is empty, the fishermen would pull it back in the morning and raise the alarm. I set up my rod and tackle, with a size 2 circle hook and watch lead, and lay them down ready for baiting up. And then I began to row out into the mist.
Through the harbour I went, pausing to pat Neptune’s Lady as I went past. I hadn’t decided what to do with her yet, sell her, or offer her to the local schools for day trips. I thought maybe there would be some of the local children who would like to think about learning to fish out at sea. It was surprising how many never fished, even from the shore. But I digress again. It’s a fisherfolk thing.
As I rowed out into the deep silence, past the whisper of timbers barely creaking in the sleeping boats, the air thick and eerily warm, I thought how wonderful it was to be out in such peace. The orange lights of Illfyfel, stacked secretly before me on the lower reaches of Hayswain Head, and the green navigation light on the end of the little pier glowed gloomily at me, lost in another dimension somewhere to my right, with the open sea somewhere out there behind me, and Menhir Hill looming unseen to my left. I passed Wreck Beach, the jutting rocks that framed it nudged one of my oars as I swept past a little closer than I intended, and I reached the end of my tether. No, really. I knew when I reached the end of the safety rope tied to my tender and the ladder, that’s where I was going to fish. I dropped down my anchor weight (a big, smooth, round rock hugged by a web of rope, so it couldn’t get snagged and force me to cut it to release myself).
With a clear tender floor, I baited up my hook with an oozing lugworm, and asked him nicely to bring me a fishy. Then I lowered him in. Turning off my head torch so I didn’t scare the fish, and tucking the rod snugly under my arm, I pulled out my box of gingerbread men that I keep in my tackle bag with a drink. I chose one, and asked him nicely to find Neptune and ask him to give me a lovely present. Then I dropped his top half into the deep green waters, and sat back to wait.
It was right on slack tide, so I knew it could be a while before the fish stirred. I also knew that with all the weed in the water from the storm previously, the crabs would be out in force to “bait-rape” my hook, and so I had let the watch lead find the sandy seabed, and the hook would rest about a foot above it, held clear of the weight line by a small plastic boom. It’s very technical, this fishing lark, you know.
I felt the sudden tiny tugs of movement on the line. Aha! The Tiddlers must be out in force tonight! Too small to swallow the hook, too many not to strip the bait. I sat there, in that warm, enveloping mist, feeling their tugs and pulls. I re-baited a few times, and towards the end of slack tide, all went quiet. I checked my bait again, only to find the worm still there and glooping. This was a very good sign. When the little fishies disappear, it’s because there’s something to worry about. The bigger fish were moving in, and I needed to wait.
And wait I did! After twenty minutes sat there, and not a touch, I threw out another piece of gingerbread man. That usually does the trick. About a minute later, I felt a double smack against the bait! A bass, when it comes for its prey, will slice the victim with its razor-sharp gill raker, and smack it with its tail to stun it as it goes past. Then it will circle round, charge, and engulf it in its cavernous maw, and if you don’t strike on that third hit to rip the hook through their tough mouth, you will lose the whole fish. But bass are very flighty, and they can also just sort of “sit” on it, mouthing it and anything, even a little crab scuttling past, could make them drop it and leave faster than a slutty bloke who’s just been told his casual girlfriend is pregnant. And if you do manage to get the hook through its mouth (I mean the bass, I’ve finished talking about the bloke now, this is not “How To Catch A Man”), you have to keep the line tight and “play” the fish, letting it exhaust itself, but never, ever letting the line go slack. If you manage to pull that fish into a small boat before you tire it out and whack it over the head, you’re going to be in serious trouble of either getting slashed and spiked, or worse, falling in headfirst.
Actually, this does sound a bit like “How To Catch A Man.” Or so I’m told. How would I know? I never went out to meet people my own age, and I never kept in touch with anybody I went to school with, although we lived in the same town. I never had a boyfriend, or sex (oh, stop sniggering), I just always assumed that kind of thing would never be part of my life.