MORNING SERIAL
A MESSAGE from the skies. He always went fishing if he saw a rainbow.
Perhaps that’s why he decided to sail the Seven Seas to find out about these things and that’s where all his stories came from. He always used seven nets knotted together with a bowline when he was fishing. Each net was 70ft long, a total length of 490ft of net, and he always set his nets in seven fathoms of water, at a depth of 42ft where the herrings spawned.
To please the memory of his grandfather he made new nets all the time, just like he had made, in groups of seven that he knew he would never use, but it helped to pass the time. They were stored in the shed. That was why as he worked the sheet-bend knots with his net-needle he had come to the conclusion that he had to pass on the stories. He was thinking all this while the boy was watching him.
He must be a visitor down with his family for the school holidays. Should he say something to him, anything? But it was as if he had forgotten how to talk.
The boy broke the awkward silence.
“Is that your boat, mister?” He tried to respond but he couldn’t speak the words. Instead he just nodded, dropped the sign and hurried back inside. Through the window he watched the boy scratching his head and looking back, puzzled, as he retreated to the beach.
He should have said something to the boy, but it was so hard. He felt ashamed. Next time he would try harder, if there was a next time. Perhaps the boy wouldn’t come back. He should have put up the sign. It was lying upside down in the garden. He would rescue it…
There, it was now safe inside propped again under the window wall. He wiped off the smear of mud, sat back and looked at it. He read the words on the sign in his mind, painted in shaky blue letters on a pale background. The blue was the same colour as the blue on the boat outside before it faded and on the CRAN box by the fire. It was the paint left over from when his father was alive. He remembered his father cleaning brushes, and his cracked hands, the smell of turpentine.
> The Herring Man by Cyril James Morris is published by Parthian at £7.99
> www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW