The Ephemera (20 page)

The Codsman and His Willing Shag

Old Peter had a way of looking at a pint that gave the impression that his world started and ended at those foam-flecked glass walls. A sailor he was, adrift on a murky, hand-pulled, real-ale sea. He had the look of a Crusoe about him anyway: all that wildman grey hair and beard, the chunky Arran-knit sweater, nicotine-stained around the collar. Of course, the nautical look was part of the band's image, but Peter really lived it. It was in his eyes, that impression that he was staring at a different horizon from everyone else.

Damien sipped his cider and pulled himself back into the nook, partly to avoid any awkward questions about his age and partly in case any of the guys from school—Mark McGregor and his year six crowd, who didn't bat an eye at drinking in The Dolphin even though they weren't much older than him—came in. Damien hadn't gone as far as the full beard, but the band had encouraged the bushy sideburns, and McGregor's lot hadn't been slow to notice. He didn't really care what they thought of him, but he could do without the oh-so-witty shouts of 'Oi, Supergrass.' He tugged the itchy wool of his own pristine sweater away from his neck and gulped his cider.

Peter looked up from his glass, raising a nimbus eyebrow. "You'll be wanting another in a minute," he said. It didn't seem to be a question.

This was getting really awkward.

For the next few minutes they both drank in silence, but when Peter started humming a tune, drumming his fingers on the sticky table top, Damien couldn't take it any longer.

"Rodger's sacking Steve, isn't he?"

Peter shrugged. "The lad's a fine guitar player," he said, "but he's got ideas that aren't right for Smuggler's Knot."

Damien sank back. He had known it from the look on Rodger's face when Steve had accidentally chopped a little groove into
The Eddystone Light
. Then when the group's leader had offered to help Steve load his gear into the car, and suggested none too subtly that Damien stay behind for a post-gig drink with Peter instead of Steve giving him a lift home as usual ... well it was too obvious wasn't it. Rodger. He might have been one of his dad's mates, but ...
what a prick
.

"Steve's a better musician than all of us put together," Damien said. "Where's Rodger think we're going to find another guitarist that good. Robin Hood's Bay's hardly swarming with them." Robin Hood's Bay was hardly swarming with
anything
apart from smugglers tales and misplaced tourists.

Peter appeared unaffected by Damien's outburst. "Shanty scores say
trad
. on them," he said patiently, as if explaining the bleeding obvious to a five-year-old. "So they should be played trad." He nodded at the glass in Damien's hand. "I'll get them in then, I suppose."

Well it's not like they'll serve me, is it?
thought Damien as he watched Peter at the bar, fishing coins out of a grubby purse. He checked the door too, in case any of McGregor's lot did put in an appearance. Maybe if just Heather Burnett came in it wouldn't be so bad to be spotted having a couple of pints—even with someone as terminally uncool as Peter—but the door stayed firmly shut.

While he waited, Damien became aware of a tune in his head. One of the shanties. God, they'd not played that one in ages:
The Codsman And His Willing Shag
. The first verse rolled through his mind.

A Codsman he went out to sea
And left his lovely, dawn til eve
And pine she did for company
And suitors had she many.

What had put that into his head? It was one of those bawdy ballads that went down well with rugby clubs and the like, but it had been months since they'd played to more than a handful of the Dolphin's salty regulars. This time of year with the tourists away, it was a ghost town, this place. Especially when your only means of escape was the shitty bus service or cadging a lift off your parents.

Steve was bloody lucky to have a car, but Damien was going to miss more than the lifts home: he'd miss their chats too, when even the act of driving along to a guilty indie soundtrack, and talking about Steve's acceptance to Leeds University, had felt like a vicarious taste of freedom. Rodger didn't know that Steve had been going to leave anyway, but it wouldn't have been a surprise. Everyone left here as soon as they were able. Damien himself would be learning to drive in a year's time. He couldn't wait.

He looked up at the sound of Peter singing.

But she turned her back on each dandy cock
And she waited day long on her rock
Til the Codsman sailed back home to her
Til the Codsman sailed back home.

Oh please. It was jaunty wee tune, even in Peter's bassy growl, but it was bad enough singing it as part of their set without calling attention to themselves in the pub. "Drink up," the older man said, sitting down and taking a long swig from his own glass. Damien looked warily at the new pint sitting beside the one had yet to finish. He stifled a burp. If he wasn't careful he was going to get pissed.

"Shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to leave your roots behind, son," Peter said. "You think there's so much more to be had in Scarborough or Leeds, London even? Maybe so, but a place like this,
your home town
, it's in your skin. A place like this has got things you'll not find anywhere else, no matter how far you go."

How would you know?
Damien thought, but didn't say. He liked Peter, especially as an alternative to talking to Rodger. He genuinely admired the old man's musical knowledge, but he was a fixture of the town. What did he know of the rest of the world?

"Nowhere else has rain?" Damien didn't bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Nowhere else has gloomy black slate? Slippery cobbled hills? Half-dead pubs?"

Peter grinned into his glass. "Nowhere else has traditions," he patted the accordion on the seat next to him. "Not like
our
traditions."

"Are you talking about the shanties?" Damien asked. "They're just stupid old songs."

There might have been a flicker of anger in the way that Peter smacked down his already nearly empty pint glass, but it didn't enter his rumbling drawl. "Drink up, son, I've got something to show you."

When they left the pub ten minutes later, the weather conspired with the hastily downed cider to remind Damien of what he was so anxious to leave behind. The wind slapped him with a fistful of rain just as his first lungful of cold air rushed to his head. Dizzy for a second, he leaned against the wet brick, and watched Peter arch his back and suck the squall into his puffed out chest.

"I have to get the last bus," Damien murmured, surprised at how slurred the words came out. He'd got drunk with friends tons of times, but never this fast. Even as he thought about catching the absurdly early last bus for Whitby that would drop him at his road end on the edge of town, he began to wonder if the long, bracing walk up the hill wouldn't be a better plan. He might even be nearly sober by the time his mum saw him.

"Come on." Peter led him down the steep and slick-stoned street. A gaggle of misplaced tourists hurried past them, a cloud of laughter erupting like sea spray from their midst.

You live in a small town all your life, you know it intimately. Its streets are as familiar as the rooms of your own house, its buildings, your wallpaper. The tang of brine is the smell of your mother's cooking, and the constant conversation of sea and wind and gulls, the muted, ever-present soundtrack of domestic appliances. It's always the same. You stop thinking of it as a place. You stop thinking about it at all.

There was a shut-up shop not far down the hill that had appeared surreptitiously like a patch of damp on the bathroom ceiling. Damien couldn't remember it ever being open, or what had been there before, but for years now it had been an unmovable stain on Robin Hood's Bay's decor. Its window displayed a sparse diorama of oddments. Dusty figurines of dolphins and starfish sat on a fan of garish guidebooks. There was other statuary too, dragons and goblins, perhaps a misguided attempt at snagging some of Whitby's Goth trade, sat opposite a collection of cutesy animal figures; kittens in mittens, frogs with fishing rods. It was no wonder the shop had gone bust.

It was a surprise however when Peter stopped there and pulled out a set of keys. "You wouldn't believe how cheap the rent is," he said, opening the door with his shoulder. "Course its only short term until they find a new tenant for the shop." He stepped through the darkened doorway, and Damien was only able to surmise the grin in his voice. "Been here four years now."

There was a little flat to the rear of the empty sales space. Peter and Damien squeezed down a hall and a twist of carpeted stairs until they arrived at a cramped little kitchen that clearly hadn't been decorated since the sixties. Peter laid down his instrument. Damien did that same and, while the old man left the room for a moment, took the opportunity to look around. He found he was surprised by how tidy Peter kept the place, and then he was ashamed that he'd assumed that an older man living on his own would have piles of crusty dishes in the sink and unwashed floors. There wasn't much to this kitchen, but what there was was neatly stowed. The economy of space reminded Damien of the cabin of a boat, and he wondered if, unlike the rest of the Knot, Peter did in fact have actual seafaring credentials.

Peter returned with two glasses, and a bottle which Damien eyed warily. It had no label and looked as if it had been retrieved from the depths of a dusty cupboard. Peter indicated that he should sit, and settling himself on the opposite side of the table, removed the bottle's roughly shaped cork.

"What's this?" After their short walk Damien had got over the wooziness brought on by the cider, and he wasn't especially keen to reprise the feeling right away.

"Taste of home." Oblivious to Damien's nervousness, Peter poured a small measure into the glasses. The liquid could have been water, except that it had the palest of greenish tinges to it. Or was it bluish? In the electric light it was impossible to tell. "It's called
scouridge
. Taste-wise, the closest thing to it, you might say, would be an Islay whisky, but it's much better than that." He picked up one of the glasses and nudged the other towards Damien.

Damien didn't know where Islay was, or how its flavour might differ from normal Scotch, but his one taste of his dad's Bells last New Year hadn't enamoured him to the drink. He remembered: it had been Rodger that had brought the bottle to Damien's parents' house, and Peter had turned down the offered glass with a barely concealed disregard that had pissed Rodger off. Now, while he liked the idea of Dad's friends treating him at last like an adult, and he didn't want to offend Peter the same way, he didn't have an awful lot of experience with spirits, and he'd already had two pints. Then again, there was barely a quarter of an inch of the stuff in the tumbler. He should be able to swallow that down for politeness' sake. He picked up the glass and a powerful smell hit him, a complex aroma that reminded him of a dozen things all at once: wet shingle and kelp and winkle shells and sea grasses and scurrying white feathers and flying his kite in the blustering wind up on the cliffs, and...

Damien put his glass down in surprise.

Peter was watching him. "Familiar, isn't it?" he said. "You see? You do know your home. I told you, it's in your skin. Same as the shanties, son. They might not look like much more than a bit of fun and fancy on the surface, but many of them are based on old stories. Take our Codsman for example, now."

Damien almost laughed out loud.
The Codsman
was as silly as they came, a ridiculous fabrication about a jilted fisherman's wife who waited and waited for her husband to return, spurning the advances of the other men of the town. The professions of these men had apparently been chosen by the
double entendres
they offered.

Well the tailor came to press his suit
And to offer her his needle
But her dress was flattened by the wind
And his ardour by her thimble

Damien shook his head. He'd learned in History how facts got stretched and inflated by posterity. "Come on," he said, "if
The Codsman
is based on a true story, it's nothing more than a woman whose husband ran away. All that stuff about the butcher and the baker and the lampwick was just added to make it funny."

Peter shrugged. "You think so?"

"Sure. It's not even that great a song. Even we don't play it very often."

"It's not the catchiest of tunes, I'll grant you that, son." Peter seemed to be hiding a smile in his beard. "But the audiences do like to join in with the chorus."

"Only because they get to shout the word 'cock' in a public place."

Peter actually did laugh at this, and Damien tried not to feel that he was the subject of his amusement. Maybe Peter spotted this, because he raised his glass of scouridge. "Drink up, Damien," he said, and tossed the pale alcohol back.

Damien brought the glass up to his lips. That smell again, the slipping of shale, the feel of wet rock and limpets under his bare feet. He took a sip. It was cold, slightly oily, but tasted of nothing. The drink was all aroma. Damien pinched his nose and drained his glass.
Easy
.

A second later cold fire uncoiled in his belly, reached up into his throat. Damien suppressed the urge to gag, but after another second it had withdrawn, settling choppily in his stomach.

"All right?" Peter was already pouring them both another shot.

Damien nodded, not trusting his ability to speak while his tongue still tingled with the medicinal tang. His mouth felt like a shoreline cave, recently sluiced by the high tide. He bet that, for all their cool and their boasting, none of McGregor's clique ever drank anything like scouridge. In fact, for all their talk, they likely hadn't actually drunk in the Dolphin more than a handful of times. Right now McGregor and Heather and the rest were probably in someone's bedroom passing round a bottle of vodka.

"Place like this," Peter said, "a place built with discretion in mind, is good at keeping its secrets, son."

"You mean all the smuggler stuff?" Like any kid who went to school in these parts Damien knew all about it. That the village had reputedly been scraped out of the cliff face in such an inaccessible location because it afforded excellent opportunities to avoid the local excise men. That the town was said to be riddled with passages that allowed travel between houses without using the public streets. And true enough, he had heard that some of the older houses had cemented-over trap doors in kitchen floors and bricked-up doorways in cellars. But all of that had been investigated and documented—the gift shops were well stocked with thin volumes by amateur historians. It wasn't what you'd call secret.