The Trawlerman, стр. 33
In front of them, tourists ambled eating ice cream. Curly pulled overalls and boots from the back of the truck and walked to the metal stairs that had been attached to the old stone quayside.
It was a while before Danny was ready, and when he was, he hopped down into a large tender and rowed towards them, standing up in the boat as he leaned on the oars. A chain ran between the iron post on the edge of the quay. Alex ducked under it and followed Curly down the metal ladder.
Danny was a huge man, arms like pink sausages poking out from the T-shirt that overhung his belly. Curly hopped on board and turned to hold a hand out for Alex.
‘Danny. This is Alex, who I told you about.’
Danny nodded. He was a man with a generous smile, younger than Curly, with pale ginger hair and a million freckles. He rowed them across the water, watched by tourists with ice creams.
Alex clambered up the side of the boat onto a broad empty deck with orange and green nets bundled at one end and a huge winch at the other. As soon as Curly had tied the dinghy onto the mooring, Danny started the diesel, put the engine in reverse and hauled up the anchor.
Inside the wheelhouse, Danny made a place for her to sit.
‘She’s come to see how the other half lives, Danny.’
Danny nodded nervily, said nothing as the trawler headed down past the harbour arm towards the open water.
‘Hold on,’ said Danny quietly. ‘Gets a bit bumpy, this bit.’
He was right; as they rounded the breakwater the boat lurched up one wave and then banged down onto the next.
Tomorrow she would be back at work behind a desk. The wind had raised a swell. The boat felt suddenly out of place, too heavy for the sea to hold. Always that sense that something bad was going to happen. She tried to push it aside. It was a neuro-dysfunction, Terry Neill had told her; bad things happened, but not just because she believed they would. Nothing bad would happen here.
Twenty-four
The boat started to roll the moment it left harbour. When they were clear, Danny turned the boat south-east and headed along the coast.
‘What was the weather like, that day seven years ago, when Frank disappeared?’
‘Pretty heavy weather. A good deal worse than this, wouldn’t you say, Danny?’
Danny nodded.
‘There was a north-easterly moving up the Channel, so coming back, the boat was heading right into the waves.’
‘A lot of up and down?’
‘You could call it that. Pitching.’ Curly motioned with his hands.
Another smaller boat was approaching from the bow, heading in to Folkestone as they headed out. It was stacked with lobster pots, marker buoys adorned with blue and red flags that flapped in the headwind like heraldic banners. One man stood at the wheel, another on deck, beside the wheelhouse, waving.
A few seconds later, the radio crackled. ‘Got new crew, Danny?’ a man’s voice called.
Danny flushed. A giggle escaped him.
Curly picked up the handset. ‘What’s it to you, mate?’
‘There’s someone better-looking than either of you on board.’
‘Don’t understand what you’re saying, bro. We’re all beautiful on this boat,’ Curly said.
‘Woman aboard a trawler,’ explained Curly. ‘Always gets the lads excited.’
‘I thought we were bad luck.’
‘She thinks we’re all pagans who believe in mermaids, Danny,’ said Curly.
Danny snickered.
‘Course, we’ll blame you if Danny doesn’t catch nothing, won’t we?’
She was used to seeing Curly in the bar, or on the beach, endlessly tinkering with his own boat. On land he was a man with a half-full glass. She had never seen him on the water. Out here, he seemed to become somebody much more confident. This was his element, she realised; he had come alive. She watched him, eyes fixed on the horizon as Danny steered.
Alex checked her phone for any messages from Zoë. The signal was still strong, but there was nothing. She checked in her email too to see if there were any messages from Jill – there weren’t – then went on to the local news site to see if there had been any developments in the Younis case, which there also hadn’t been.
It was a mistake, looking at a small screen as the boat rocked. She felt a sudden thickness in her chest, nausea rising.
‘OK?’ Curly was frowning at her.
‘Fine.’ She put her phone away and looked out at the horizon instead, not wanting to seem weak.
It was an hour before Danny slowed the engine and went back with Curly to prepare the nets, then Alex watched the green and orange nylon playing out from the rear of the boat as Danny pulled the boat forwards. There were three sets of nets; each needed to be dropped separately. Then the boat moved more slowly, pulling the gear along the bottom.
‘Too light yet to catch much,’ said Danny.
‘Never know. That wind last night stirred it up a bit.’
The fish would see the net coming, they explained, unless it was dark or the water murky.
The wind was warm. It was about an hour into the first trawl when she started throwing up over the side.
‘Some people get it worse than others,’ said Danny, with a sympathetic smile. ‘It’s not even that rough today. Think how much worse it would be if the wind came up.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Welcome.’
Crouched against the gunwale, she watched her sick splashing down the blue hull of the boat. She felt rotten and wished she had not come out here. It was stupid. For