Brian Jacques - The Ribbajack

But the dilemma is, how to catch it? The fish is sure to swim off if he makes a sudden move. Roddy Mooney is a grand man for making up his mind quickly in angling situations. He decides the prize can only be taken with a gaff. Now if you’re ignorant as to what a gaff is, I’ll further your education. A gaff is a huge, sharp steel hook, bigger than those you see at the butcher’s with meat hanging from them. The gaff is lashed tight, with stout cord, to a pole. Gaffing is a most unsporting and, in some regions, illegal way of catching fish in freshwater. Gaffs are generally used by poachers to hook fish, mainly salmon, as they leap up to climb waterfalls and weirs. It is a cruel thing, because the gaff usually strikes the fish right through its body. The fish wriggles in agony until the angler dispatches it by striking its head with a heavy object. You have to be skilful and swift with a gaff or you lose the catch.

But Roddy Mooney has to have the big fish. So, keeping still as possible, he reaches behind with one hand, inch by inch. Locating the gaff where it has been lying on the grass behind him (Little Mickey had been using it to dig for worms), Roddy finds the leather strip he has knotted through a hole in the handle. Sliding the strip about his wrist, he takes a good grip of the pole. The fishtail is still waving invitingly, almost touching his boot soles. The All Ireland Champion begins raising the gaff with painstaking care. One strike, that is all Roddy knows he would get the chance of. Slowly, slowly, like a snail climbing a wall, he raises the gaff, until his arm is fully stretched. The wicked steel point of the hook is perfectly balanced, ready to strike.

Roddy Mooney strikes like lightning. However, whatever is under the water strikes back like greased lightning, which is much faster, probably because of the grease. The gaff is seized hard by its curved hook, and Roddy gets hauled, hat over hobnails, into the river. You understand, he has no option but to go, as the gaff is looped around his wrist. Now, you can believe this or believe it not, but it is no big fish which yanks the All Ireland Champion into the drink.

Beneath the water, everything looks like an enchanted world. Moonlight shining through the river gives the entire scene an unearthly glow. In the soft, pearly green radiance, waterweeds and fronds sway gently seaward with the current. But Roddy ignores the charming vista completely. His attention is captured by the girl who is holding his gaff hook, and a fine big specimen of fishy maidenhood she is, to be sure. From tail to navel, her lower half is covered in silver scales, which I suppose most underwater folk take for granted. She has thick greenblack hair, which covers her upper half modestly down to the fishy bits. From top to waist, she resembles a human being, except for her hands, which have webbed fingers and long curving nails. The smile she gives Roddy near frightens the life out of him. I say that because she has no lips to speak of, merely a wide gash of a mouth, which curves downwards. Her teeth are gleaming white and sharply pointed—there are lots of them, far more than you or I have. Now isn’t that odd, but even stranger are the two gills on the sides of her jawline that keep opening and closing like they have a life of their own. Her eyes are solid jade green marbles with just a black slit at the centre of each one, showing no white whatsoever.

Roddy feels an urgent desire to be back home in the neat little cottage with his ma. He tries pushing himself upward to the surface, but the fishgirl tugs on the gaff, pulling him back down. She reaches for Roddy’s hat, which is covered with colourful flies and strapped beneath his chin. He puts out a hand to stop her. She knocks the hand away and lets out an almighty shriek of protest.

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkeeeeeekkkk!”

Like a red-hot darning needle, the sound goes through Roddy’s eardrums. He opens his mouth in shock, letting the water rush in. Poor ould Roddy, I hear you say, but that is only the start of his troubles. The fishgirl shoves him flat on the riverbed and sits on him!

She pulls the hat from his head and begins unhooking the flies from its brim. Pinned beneath her, Roddy shuts his mouth tight, and bubbles stream from his nostrils. Evidently, this causes the fishmaid some grand amusement. Switching her attention from the hat, she jiggles up and down on Roddy’s stomach, shrieking with laughter at the bubbles that are streaming from her captive’s nose.

After a while, Roddy’s mouth pops open, his last remaining gasp of air bursting forth. Burrloop!

The fishgirl loses interest in him and starts looping the coloured flies into her long tresses. They look rather weird, but pretty nevertheless.

Just then another fishy female comes on the scene. She is much bigger and older than the girl—in fact, it is her mammy. She deals the daughter a whopping blow with her powerful tail, sending her flying, or should I say floating. Grabbing Roddy in her strong webbed hands, she whooshes him straight to the surface. With a single mighty heave, she flings him high up onto the bank, as though he is no more than a wet dishcloth. The unconscious All Ireland Champion lands with a grand swishing flop, facedown, with his head hanging over the bank.

Streaking back down to the bottom, the big fishwife begins giving her daughter a good ould scolding. The young one bares her teeth, hissing and shrieking as she argues back with her mammy, the way that some fishmaids do. Now, to the layman, the entire argument might sound like a load of submarine caterwauling. But to a student of underwater jargon, the gist of the noises goes roughly like this:

“Arrah, ye daft little shrimp. What’ve I told ye about fishin’ for leggy ones? They’re nought but trouble!” says the mammy.

Then her daughter replies, “Sure, ’twas him that was tryin’ to catch me. Did ye not see all those funny little bubbles comin’ from the leggy one?”

The mother gives her another tailwhack.

“Ye destructive little sardine, have ye not got the sense of a barnacle? You’d probably like to have destroyed that leggy one. Aye, he’ll not be the same again, if he lives. Ah, well, I suppose we’ll have to be goin’ back to the ocean now. Selfish little haddock, ye’ve ruined our river holiday completely. An’ ye can get those things out of your hair, faith, ’tis tatty enough without all that nonsense!”

At this, the fishmaid gives an impertinent pout, just like one or two young madams we might know.

“It’s not fair, Mammy, sure I was havin’ a grand ould time up here in the river. I’m not wantin’ to go back to the ocean.”

The mammy isn’t about to be putting up with teenage tantrums, though, wise fishwife that she is. “If ye had the brains of an oyster, you’d know we won’t get a moment’s peace here when they find the leggy one. There’ll be leggies here in their droves by tomorrow, splashin’ about, hurlin’ rocks and probin’ ’round with great poles. They’ll muddy the water up until our gills are filthy. ’Tis always the same, so come now, move your tail, we’ve got to go.”

Well, away they go downstream, with the young fishgirl still complaining. “But Mammy, that big fat dolphin will be after me again. I can’t stand the great gobeen, forever squeakin’ and smilin’ that big stupid grin of his.”

Like all good mothers, the mammy gets the last word in. “Listen, Miss Picky-fins, ye could do a lot worse than that nice dolphin. He comes from a respectable family, an’ he’s very intelligent, too. So get along with ye before I skelp the scales from your tail!”

So, it is the Sunday morning of the following week that I must move on to, are ye listening? Father Carney has finished the mass, and like the saintly man he is, he goes off to visit his sick parishioners. His first call is at the neat little cottage of the Widow Mooney. The reverent man accepts a cup of tea and visits the poor woman and her son, the former All Ireland Fishing Champion. With a rug about his legs, Roddy sits in an armchair, staring out into space, his face all pinched and thin, the skin white as a corpse. He has heard and seen nothing since that fateful night, living in a sort of permanent coma.