My stuff (great title, I know)

The Old Man and the Loch

‘Never give up your position. You’re knackered? Good, that’s when they come!’ his father had told him once, in true World War I spirit. These were the lessons, lessons that could be applied to anything. Wait, be patient, just don’t back down. He didn’t intend to. The maggot was still on the hook, now it was his turn to wait. Time was what he lacked the least.

That was how the true fisher distinguished himself from the amateur, he marvelled. Patience, above everything, was the key. On a good day, hours could pass without his notice. He was beyond the point of shivering at the icy breeze, or letting the painful chill in his bones bother him. His wife had called him a stubborn old fool more than once, when he had come back from one of his day trips with a touch of the flu, as seldom as that had happened. Julia, a Geordie, had lacked all appreciation for the art of catching fish, although she had never minded preparing and eating them. Even in those last few months, when she hadn’t been able to cook herself anymore, a tender salmon had still brought one of those rare, fleeting smiles to her face. God, he missed her blethering, her nagging.

No, she wouldn’t have understood this. Why sit in a tiny, old boat out in the cold all day, just waiting? There had to be better things to do with your time, surely. She had never understood. The most precious thing in the world was silence. It was one thing he had learned during his endless shifts as a porter in a student accommodation. Silence was the rarest good on this whole planet, and, above all, the most beautiful.

Silence. The only noise around was the rustling of leaves, and the cries of the many ducks, seagulls, swans, geese, and other birds he couldn’t name. A whole flock of them was flying by above his head, indistinct black dots against a heavily clouded, bluish grey sky. Their moving images were reflected in the glossy surface of the water, jittering erratically with the ripples.

He took a deep breath of the clear mountain air, the crisp edge he couldn’t get enough of, and tried to move his fingers in his gloves. They had grown stiff and hurt at the slightest movement. Carefully, he picked up the cup and poured himself some more herbal tea from the thermos flask. For a while, he simply kept the brew near his chin, smelling the tart steam that was warming up his nose. The heat started to penetrate his gloves, if ever so slightly, defrosting his hands. He smiled.

It sure was getting cold. This would probably be his last trip for the season. No, it would certainly be his last trip. It was questionable if he would be able to catch anything at all. A brown trout, in the middle of October? Not very likely. Rainbow trouts were around until the first frost set in, but he had hardly caught one here in the past few years. Damn tourists. It was because of them that he had moved his weekend visits to Wednesdays, when the loch would be a lot quieter. Not that anything depended on it, but he had made a point of keeping his routine, a remainder from the working days, his days with Julia.

It was Julia he envisioned when he thought of rainbow trouts, Julia’s smile, Julia’s frown, Julia shaking her head. He suddenly had the desire to go visit her grave, right this instant, to feel close to her, to tell her about his catch. But he didn’t have to. Out here was where she seemed more real to him than through the letters on her tombstone. And she hadn’t even really liked this place.


Now, all that he had left was their Suzie. Yes, Suzie would welcome him, Suzie would be happy about his return. He pictured her brown, lively eyes, the spark in them. She was so…alive, the only one who could get him to stop grumbling, to go out and sit in the sun, or watch the lads in the park. Suzie was there.

He took a sip of his tea and tried to straighten his back, wincing in pain. Suzie might not have thought like that, but he was clearly getting too old for this. Who knew if there would be another season for him, his arthritis always got worse over the winter. He was quick to push the thought aside. Of course there would be another spring for him, another year of sitting out here on his own, enjoying the angular landscape and the wonderful silence. (Self-deception was another thing he was getting too old for, he noticed.)

Suddenly, he became aware of something else – warmth. Warmth on his back. He turned his head, only to perceive a sort of rip between the clouds, or rather, the sea of undistinguishable clouds. A few rays of sun had made their way through the thick, grey mass, only to dye the colourless water brown, making it translucid. The ripples on the surface were beginning to glitter like hundreds, thousands of little silver threads, moving about inconsistently. For a moment, Hunchback Hill was bathed in broken rays of light, which pointed out the sharp contrast between the wet grass, the patches of light brown earth in between, and the hard, rocky edges. Why was it called Hunchback Hill, anyway? It didn’t look like a hunchback to him, more like an almost even ridge with a sudden, sharp drop, a steep slope at the end. Funny how he noticed that after all his years of coming here.

It was incredibly beautiful. An Asian tourist was eagerly taking pictures with his camera from the bank. His bairn was getting way too close to the water’s edge for his taste. Couldn’t parents watch their children these days? It annoyed him that he had to share his moment of beauty with a stranger, a visitor who stole moments like this for the family photo album. No camera could ever replace an actual memory.

The sun was quick to vanish again, the tourist lost his interest, and he was alone once more, feeling colder than before. It would rain later. He shifted on the wooden board, his spine uncomfortably slack. It was about time some fish swallowed that bait. It wasn’t fair to Suzie to leave her alone for that long, she would get worried and agitated, all by herself with nothing to do, and him gone somewhere, who knew where.

The familiar feeling of restlessness had begun to creep up inside him, that spiteful itch to just pack up his things and leave. Enough silent enjoyment, enough mind clearing, enough peace. The truth was, it was freezing. The truth was, it would rain. The truth was, he was getting old. ‘Face it’ his father had told him. ‘Don’t push it away, look it straight in the eye, like you would an enemy.’

The truth was, he couldn’t give up. The loch had never beaten him, and it wasn’t about to start now. Defeat lay elsewhere; in this life, you had to be stern. He still had his catch, even if there was no one to smirk and shake his head about it anymore. He could catch a fish, he could crop his Eden, be a master of the beasts. If he wanted a trout, he would get one, that much was for sure.

Through patience. Patience, not anger, he reminded himself. Suzie would forgive him. He imagined the nutty, mild taste of the white flesh, a constant through the ages. His father, holding up a trout with a broad grin on his face. Everything about him had seemed so broad then, not shrunken as later. He had looked incredibly small at the end. Was he the same way? His mother, perfectly organised, squeezing a lemon in the kitchen, satisfied with the quality of the meat. This was the picture he held on to, had to hold on to, to block out the boozy breath, the belt, the crying at night. Or maybe the latter were an image, a label, just like the former. After all these years, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

But that moment, that one moment on a Saturday afternoon –it had to have been a Saturday, good Christians didn’t go angling on Sundays- that he held to be as true as Julia’s smile. That broad grin and his father’s explanation – ‘I didn’t catch it’.

He was literally pulled back into reality by a firm tug. Even now, patience was the clue. He picked up the rod and wound up the line smoothly, careful not to cause any yanking against the heavy weight. The medium-sized fish was fidgeting desperately, fighting for its life, its gills moving heavily as soon as it left the water. You could almost feel sorry for the poor thing. It was a male, he could tell. He- no, it, never let it become a ‘he’- was a beauty. He decided to make it quick, pulling the line closer, when he noticed something odd, a tiny rip, not even bleeding, showing a bit of rosy flesh near the eye: The barb had pierced its cheek. His hands were unable to remove the hook from the slick, cold animal, it only seemed to worsen the injury. Without hesitation, he took out his angling blade and cut off the head with a fast, determined motion. Even now, the body kept jerking for a moment. Finally able to release the hook, he was quick to throw the head back into the loch, as far away as possible. The seagulls launched themselves at the meat, fighting over it, picking each other in a struggle for survival.

He turned away and looked back at the headless, glossy body, the greenish skin with the black dots and the red stripe along the middle.

‘Suzie!’ He whistled, and his answer came from the bank, a joyful, unmistakable yapping. A dark shadow was moving among the trunks, a shadow he knew all too well. She had waited patiently, just like him, just as always. ‘Good girl.’

He smiled. It was a rainbow trout.

Jam it back in, in the dark.