Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

Some men hated the night tides, the lack of sleep, the effort of making conversation with a captain who wanted to practise his English in the early hours of the morning. But James had practised the art of being pleasant until it came naturally. He could be almost asleep on his feet, but still he would look at the photos of the skipper’s wife and children back home, discuss the relative merits of the goods displayed in the Argos catalogue with a seaman who was astounded by the variety reproduced on the cheap, shiny paper, gratefully accept a mug of tea although the milk was sweet and thick and came out of a tin.

Tonight he spoke Russian. The skipper’s English wasn’t bad, but James’s Russian was better, and he was glad of the necessity to concentrate. It stopped him thinking of the glossy sign outside the pilot office. The shadowy figure on the dock. Drowned men returned to life. James had enlisted in Emma’s evening class to learn a few basic phrases: ten degrees port, Captain, twenty degrees starboard. So there would be no misunderstanding when he gave directions and he wouldn’t be dependent on someone else to translate. He’d done Spanish the term before for the same reason. But then he’d seen Emma and he’d stayed in the class all year,

working harder than he’d ever done at school, eager to impress. He had an A level to show for it. And a wife and child.

There was no room for error bringing a ship out of Goole. The River Ouse was narrow there, with concrete sides like a canal. It was tight for a boat of this size. For a containership it seemed impossible on the approach and seamen who’d never visited the port before were horrified. What is this place you bring me to? This is not possible. No, there is some mistake. James enjoyed the delicacy of the work. It was a challenge, a test of his skill.

The ship moved slowly away from the dock, which was spotlit like a movie set. Black and white. The silhouettes of the cranes and warehouses two dimensional as if they’d been built from hardboard. The river widened and the wind became fresher. The rain stopped and the visibility improved suddenly, so he could make out each bank, marked by pinpricks of light: street lamps, headlights, the lit-up windows of insomniacs and feeding mothers.

A boy with a mouthful of decaying teeth brought him more tea and a meal, a greasy stew with livid orange carrots and grey potatoes, which tasted better than it looked. He would have eaten it anyway. It seemed a long time since lunch with his in-laws at Springhead, and it would have been bad manners to turn the food away.

At the mouth of the estuary the wind increased again into sudden gusts which whipped the river into little pointed waves and sent spray over the deck. In the daylight it would be possible from here to see the spire of St. Mary Magdalene church in Elvet, the track along the shore, where sometimes James took the baby in his pram. To walk and remember. It was six o’clock. Morning. Matthew would soon be waking. The coxswain on duty at the Point would have been warned that James would need collecting in the launch.

That thought, or rather the coincidence of thoughts Mary Magdalene and the coxswain of the launch -forced a connection of memory, and James realized that the man who’d been sitting in front of them in church the day before had been Michael Long. James hadn’t recognized him at the time. He’d been a bluff, rather aggressive man when James had worked with him, impervious, it had seemed, to James’s charm. Of course he’d been in the church to mourn his daughter. Suicide. A terrible accusation. James shivered although where he stood at the helm he was protected from the weather and the small room was warm, almost stuffy. He wasn’t given to fancies but suddenly he was aware of the depth of water below the hold of the ship, wondered what it must be like to drown.

They were rounding the Point. James could see the jetty all lit up, the fretwork of black metal, and the VTS tower where the pilot master would be sitting. The waves were longer and deeper here and the ship was starting to roll. Soon they would be in open water.

“Make a lee, Captain,” James said calmly. His work was almost over.

The ship swung slowly, so the long side of the hull faced into the wind. The launch was on its way. The crackling voice of the coxswain reported its progress. James went onto deck to watch its approach at first it was a flicker of light which disappeared with each wave. The Russian captain stood beside him and slapped his back as if they were best friends.

“Good work, sir,” he said in English. “It is always a pleasure to work with you, Pilot.”

He slipped a bottle of vodka into James’s bag and waved the latest Argos catalogue in salute. James smiled his thanks, as if vodka was his favourite drink in the world. The launch was circling the Russian boat, so it came alongside sheltered from the wind. James climbed down the pilot ladder with his bag over one shoulder, checked that the launch was in position and jumped aboard.

The coxswain was a woman called Wendy, slight and dark and determined to do well. Michael Long hadn’t liked that, James remembered. Being replaced by a woman had been the final straw. She turned to see that he was safely in his seat, opened the throttle and they started back to the Point.

“Good passage down, Mr. Bennett?” she shouted above the engine noise.

“A bit murky over the Whittons,” he said. “All right once the ebb got away.”

It was eight o’clock and light now. Faint sunshine penetrated the cloud. On the south bank of the river refineries and chimneys glowed silver through the mist, looking in outline like a great city. Venice perhaps, or St. Petersburg. James had the cold, empty feeling which comes from having too little sleep. After the swaying of the ship, his first couple of steps along the jetty seemed unnatural, as if the boards had lifted and hit the soles of his feet a beat too soon. He saw there was no pool car waiting for him to drive back to Hull,

thought that if he had to get a taxi, at least there’d be a chance of sleep.

Wendy seemed to guess what was going through his mind.

“Bert will be here soon. There’s a tanker due for Immingham. He says if you hang on you can take his car back. Go on in. You look as if you could use a coffee.”

“I could use a couple of hours’ sleep.” But it wasn’t a real complaint.

The steward in the pilot office made him a hot drink and a bacon sandwich. There was a Calor gas stove which hissed and smelled and immediately after eating James must have dozed, because when Bert did arrive it was light outside.

James emerged into a day-time world of children’s voices and a woman in one of the lifeboat houses hanging washing on the line. It was an odd community here on the Point. Half a dozen families, cut off from the mainland, only attached by a thin strip of sand, mud and concrete which could be breached by the next high tide. And most of their life was spent waiting. The coxswains of the pilot launches waited for the tide and the crew of the sole permanently manned lifeboat station in the country waited for a collision, for someone stranded on a sandbank. Their only activity would come out of someone else’s tragedy.

Still dazed from the Calor fumes and fuzzy with sleep, James stood for a moment to clear his head. His muscles felt stiff and clumsy. He walked past the VTS tower to the rise in the land where he’d get a view of the open sea. On this side of the Point there was a thicket of bramble and sea buckthorn, overrun by rabbits. A long beach ran north towards the mainland coast. The mist had cleared suddenly while he’d been sleeping and the light had the clear, sharp quality which comes before rain. The tanker waiting offshore seemed ridiculously close and the launch which was already circling towards it had the bright detail of a plastic toy.