The Fisherman’s Wife

bradán, (1) 1. Salmon. 2. ~ fearna, sturgeon. 3. Figuratively: ~ beatha, life, life-essence. Do bhradán beatha a chur amach, to die (as of shock, sorrow, etc.).

bradán, (2) 1. Cushion (of flesh); swelling under skin. Tá an ~ ag léim ann, his muscles are twitching. … 3. Metallurgy: Ridge (of spade, etc.).

Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, Ó Dónaill

A light mist had settled over the port.

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The fisherman sat in the passenger lounge of the Holyhead-to-Dublin ferry and looked out across the water.

It had been as good a visit to London as any; a good final visit. By his age, he had developed a sense for when things were the last, and he knew that this was such a time.

Leslie and Brendan had been as welcoming as ever. They were getting on in years too, now; it was strange to see one’s own ageing reflected in the faces of others. Brendan, although he was the younger brother by several years, was on his way to frail in a way that the fisherman was not, despite decades spent on the sea. Compare that to a cushy London job – yet he felt no joy at this final triumph. He would be the first in the ground of the two of them.

What was the use in diagnosis? He was old; his body had carried him far and would not carry him much further. His bones were too attuned to oncoming storm fronts. His fingers shook when down at the shop or when serving himself tea at home, although when hauling nets they were still firm. At night, he coughed and coughed over the sink, his heart beating erratically under his palm like a flailing fish on the line.

He had declined treatment. No sense, he felt, in drawing out the demise at his age. He was sure that any number of sins over the years hadn’t helped – nights spent down at the pub, smoking, when he could afford it.

Spring, it had been, new love like new flowers bursting forth. How beautiful, the spring light illuminating the veins of bright green leaves, the spring light streaming through her hair

Strange, then, that his brother should seem so much frailer. He had Leslie to look after him.

Leslie knew how he felt and had felt. Brendan had never suspected any hard feelings. He was right not to, by now; like driftwood after years of oceanic batterings, the harsh edges of resentment were smoothed away.

Spring, it had been, new love like new flowers bursting forth. How beautiful, the spring light illuminating the veins of bright green leaves, the spring light streaming through her hair. He hadn’t known the right words to say, but he’d been a fine partner at any céilí and good with the bodhrán. Long summer days, lying side-by-side looking at the sky from long grasses, 10p ice creams on the pier.

They had been unusual, both early 20s and still unmarried when they met. He’d dreamt of marriage rings and children and a little homely cottage.

By winter she was out of love. So he had thought at the time, with all the torment of first heartbreak. With age, he had recognised it as the same unyielding practicality that had driven him out of bed and on to the sea for decades of cold winter mornings. A hard life, being a fisherman’s wife – and little chance of prosperity, or travel, or even change from one year to the next, to ease the burden. His hands were too calloused from the rasp of the nets, his face already beginning to be weathered by the elements, and he brought with him at all times a stench of fish that he knew he had himself ceased to notice.

That year’s summer sunlight brought with it Brendan, back from London. Brendan, with his degree in commerce and his job at a bank – much to the interest and jealousy of the neighbours. A job at a bank – albeit, back then, grunt work – a flat in London, what more could any girl want? When he left at the end of summer, Leslie went with him.

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The ferry had cast off. It moved smoothly through the water. The lounge around him was quiet and pleasantly decorated. It was strange, being a passenger on a boat, although not unpleasant – pay someone else to do all the work for a change. And far better than travelling in a cramped, noisy airplane. It had been kind of them to drive him all the way to Holyhead. A prolongation of the departure.

Leslie had known that this would be his final visit, he thought; nothing had been said. To his mind, the old had precious few rights as it was – not even youth’s ability to pass hours upon hours in unconscious sleep – so going to the grave with things left unsaid, was, surely, one of the few rights remaining. Of course, those left behind might have their own regrets, then; but as far as he was concerned, they – she – could go to their graves with those left unsaid too. The young certainly did not want to have to bear them. On and on, through all of time: small cycles of loves and loss, returning back unperceived to their source.

It was the way of things. To speak would cause devastation for the living; worse if one’s body had the indignity to not die, having revealed its heart, and instead lived on in swampy purgatory for years.

He had loved; once, deeply and truly, and no more. His generation was not like these new lovers, like Leslie and Brendan’s children, who had seemed to flit about from relationship to relationship like tiny fish in an ornamental pond at some fancy hotel. Not like the noble salmon, returning year after year to their birthplace. Of course, they were farming them now, weren’t they, in vats out at sea; not much noble in that. Three of them, there were (the children, not salmon), all hale and hearty, who had grown from babes in arms to adults in seasons that went by far too quickly.

He had spoken to the town solicitor some weeks before. “Getting on in years,” he had told her, “and best to be making sure that everything’s in the right order.” The solicitor had not been as delighted by this forethought as he thought it merited – perhaps mourning the loss of future fees from a contested will. Some to the lads at the fish yard, some to Leslie, Brendan, his nephews and niece: not that it was all that much, in total. Perhaps it was just as well that the undertakers would have to take up their spades before he had to think about applying for a State pension.

He contemplated how his funeral would be: no different, he expected, from any other of the many he’d attended over the years. The priest was on the young side at 50-something, but a good man. The fisherman’s own faith had long been worn away, but he greeted the priest as affably as he did anyone when he passed him in the street – after all, it was likely he who would say his funeral Mass. It mattered little, in the end, what psalms were recited or hymns sung; he hoped there were some tears (Leslie) but not excessive ones, and he hoped that the sandwiches at the reception were pleasant.

What did it matter, the sea, the earth? He pictured the cold steel of a spade’s ridge cutting into soft, dark soil. Worm fodder

With age he had taken to thinking that people had children so that they’d have someone to bury them. Useful to have a de facto executor of the will; if they were on good terms, then the will the child executes is of things willed to them. Another sort of self-fulfilling cycle.

Where would he be buried? He had thought at times of the merits of being cast directly into the sea, or of having his ashes scattered; but there might be legal troubles with the former, and he was not so fond of fire – and the fish had had enough of him in life, hadn’t they?

What did it matter, the sea, the earth? He pictured the cold steel of a spade’s ridge cutting into soft, dark soil. Worm fodder. Unto dust and all that stuff they’d been told back in the day. And perhaps one day some enterprising young schoolboy would dig up the worms and use them as bait.

The light reflected on the buildings on the shore. Dublin town. In his mind, he travelled the journey home: the train, the bus, back to a harsher coast. There would be things to be done: the keys to retrieve from his neighbour, the clothes to wash, the floors to clean, the sitting room to dust.

A great depth of longing overcame him then. He thought of how dark the house would be when he returned, how cold the hallway, he thought of 70-odd years of an empty bed beside him.

He pressed a hand to his chest; his heart pained him. The sunlight glinted on the waves, gleaming on the silver and steel buildings of Dublin Bay, painful to look at in its brightness and clarity.