Memories of a Fish Man

We trudged over misshapen pebbles, shingle stubbing our toes and gnarling at the soles of our feet. The sky was dry and cloudless—bleached blue. The ground was slippery, and lumpy to walk on.

The girl said it would be fun, the best adventure ever. ‘You’ll see!’ she promised.

And the boy, her brother, grinned. ‘Like pirates!’ he said.

‘Captain Hook!’ she said.

‘Ahoy me hearties!’ They both laughed, so I laughed too, just to join in.

We turned the curve of the bay and there it was: a rusty-brown wreck jutting out of the shingle. Not a creaking wooden ship, not what I’d pictured. No tattered sails flapping in the breeze. Not here.

I buried my disappointment as the others marched ahead, older and wiser than me.

The girl turned round, smiled but bit her lip. I remember that, and her rosy cheeks, and how my head filled with the sound of feet crunching over shifting pebbles and the whisper of distant waves. They were a little ahead of me. Then the sun hid, went off somewhere and the rusting hulk of the dead ship towered above my head. We three stood looking up at it, drenched in its chilly shadow.

The boy went in first. He bent down and crawled through a jagged hole, a gap between rusting metal and beach. The girl followed him, but I waited, listened to the waves pushing pebbles and rattling rocks, glanced back to the curve of the bay where our picnic baskets and nattering mothers were out of sight. I watched the dark grey and cold blue shingle shape-shift in the shadow of the boat—drawing patterns and smiles. Creatures. Serpents. Monster faces. But they were too scary so I crept through the hole too, just like the girl and boy.

That’s when the world changed. Smelled of salt and fish. Smelled of the fish man who came on Tuesdays in his fish van. Who stroked my hair with his fishy fingers and smiled his shark grin while my mother rummaged in her purse searching for the right change.

All I could see was black swimming on darkness.

‘Come on!’ The girl’s voice was distant, airy—as if it had been eaten by the waves that smashed and rusted and rotted the ship.

The boy’s steps clanked above me, his words echoing through metal. ‘It’s better higher up!’

So I reached up, stretched out my arm towards a crack of wishy-washy light and felt the dark swirl between my fingers.

The girl’s voice: ‘She’s too small!’

The boy’s, more distant, groaning about babies, wishing me not there.

Water lapped at my toes. Waves trickled through the rusty walls.

A white hand stretched down to me, catching the light from a gash in the ship’s carcass. Cold to the touch.

‘Come on!’ said the girl, ‘Or you’ll get stuck.’

I stood on tiptoes but the sea came in to trick me. To play. Crawled in just as we had, pushing itself through the hole, surprising me, and pulling me over. My squeal yelped upwards, escaping out through the wreck. I smelt the fish man, remembered his shark grin.

‘Stop mucking about!’ said the girl. ‘The tide’s coming in!’ But her voice was blown away on the wind, carried out to sea. And I imagined that I too would be taken with the girl’s voice. Or the fish man would come and find me there.

‘Let me deal with her!’ said the boy, his face blocking out the sliver of wishy-washy light. His eyes were grey sockets and he said I’d better listen or I’d be sorry. ‘The tide’s coming in. Understand? You’d better not drown, or we’ll all get in trouble.’

‘Not much further now,’ said the girl, clutching my hand as we turned the curve of the bay. ‘Please stop crying!’

The shingle was lumpy to walk on. It gnarled at my feet, jabbed my soles, stubbed my toes. The boy said I’d better not tell—or else. The girl scowled at him.

Our mothers stopped talking to ask where on earth we’d been.

The girl said, ‘Playing!’

The boy said, ‘Yeah! Was fun!’

The mothers looked at me. The girl and the boy looked at me, smiling shark grins like the fish man.

I knew not to tell, so I said, ‘Ahoy me hearties!’

Which made everyone laugh. So I laughed too, just to join in.