The fishermen had grown irascible with inactivity and empty wallets. Three of the crew of The Annamae sat at a corner table beneath the dartboard. The table was littered with empty crisp packets, sodden beer mats, and an overflowing ashtray. Davy Garnett was turning his glass in quarter revolutions, a cigarette held loosely between his lips, watching the surface of his beer waver. When it stilled he turned it again. Cam sat with half an eye on the clock above the bar. Each maddening minute passed like an hour. Geren sat between them, muttering and fidgeting, tapping his feet and drumming his fingers manically like he used to do in detention, a cigarette wedged between his knuckles.
‘Fuck this,’ he said suddenly and jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. ‘I’ve got eight fucking quid left. Eight.’ He crossed his arms and kicked out at the table leg. ‘Fuck sitting here like a bunch of cunts.’
Davy didn’t look up from his glass but sniggered softly. He was medium height but strong; sinewy rather than muscular. His dark hair was shaved, grade two, a hangover from his days in the army. Cam knew he kept it that way because it made him look hard. He had an earring, a small gold hoop, which he’d got after Geren pierced his ear with a fishing hook on a twelve-hour bender. At twenty-three he was two years younger than Cam. Their dads had been best friends who’d fished together for over twenty years until Cam’s dad drowned when their trawler went down. Cam wouldn’t have had much to do with Davy Garnett if circumstance hadn’t intervened, but when Cam’s mother met an insurance salesman from Leeds who promised her a three-bed new-build with a neat garden and no late night calls from the lifeguard, she turned her back on Cornwall, and with it her sixteen-year-old son who wasn’t welcome in Leeds. Martin and his wife Sheila had taken Cam in and he found himself sharing a room with Davy who, it turned out, wasn’t particularly happy about the arrangement. The boys had sparred, which was unsurprising. Davy couldn’t help but be jealous. Cam was gentle and helped around the house, didn’t expect anything, and tried his best not to get on the wrong sides of Martin and Sheila who, it seemed to Davy, gave him special treatment. Davy on the other hand was prone to mood swings and never seemed content, always wanting more. More friends, more popularity, more attention. He left home at seventeen in a pique of rage when Martin asked if he wanted a job on the trawler.
‘Fuck that,’ he’d said, shortly before packing his bags. ‘I’m not wasting my life on fish.’
He joined the army, but returned two and a half years later. It was obvious there’d been some sort of dismissal. He wouldn’t talk about it, certainly not with Cam, and if Martin and Sheila knew what happened they didn’t let on. A few weeks after he got back, Martin persuaded Slim to give Davy a chance on The Annamae.
‘Cam!’ Geren kicked the table leg again. ‘Did you hear me? I’m sick of us sitting here like useless cunts.’
‘I heard.’
‘Well?’
Cam smiled. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to say,’ Geren said pointedly, ‘fuck this too.’
‘Fine.’ Cam reached for his drink. ‘Fuck this too.’
Geren muttered and kicked the table a third time, hard enough to cause the glasses to rattle against each other as they wobbled.
Cam drained what was left in his glass and looked at his friend. ‘You know you’re being a dick, right?’ Cam put the empty glass back on the table. ‘Anyway, shouldn’t you be home with Gemma?’
‘She sent me here. Told me to get out of the house because I was irritating the shit out of her.’
‘Really? I find that hard to believe.’
‘Yup. Her exact words.’ Geren groaned with frustration. ‘I need to get out there. The baby’s coming in March. Have you seen how much their crap costs?’
Cam laughed. ‘I imagine you’ll be waist-deep in it for free, mate.’
He glanced at the clock again. It had hardly changed. Three thirty-four. He was meeting her at five and time had never moved so slowly. His head was full of her, her laugh, the softness of her hair, her perfume mixed with the smell of warm bread which hung on her after work, the way she looked at him when he spoke, as if burrowing right into him to make a nest. As he thought about her, his body twitched involuntarily. He didn’t understand what he was feeling. She consumed every part of him. It unnerved him.
‘Jesus fuck, Cam. What’s with the clock?’
Cam reached for his pouch of tobacco from the detritus on the table.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Geren stifled a laugh. ‘Don’t tell me. It’s your bird, isn’t it? You’re waiting to get your end away!’
‘Piss off.’
Geren laughed. ‘Pool?’ He gestured at the table which had just come free.
Cam checked the time again – an hour to go – and nodded.
‘I reckon you don’t give a shit if we don’t get out to sea.’ Geren bent for the triangle and started to fill it with balls from the pockets. ‘I mean, who’d work when you’ve got a new bit of skirt to lift?’
Davy sniggered.
Cam took hold of a cue and chalked the end. ‘And when was the last time you got laid, Davy Garnett?’
Geren laughed.
Davy shot Cam a glare. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Your bird isn’t all that.’
Cam raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘As if a girl like her would ever look at a little git like you.’
‘You reckon? I heard she’ll drop her knickers for any bastard.’
‘Whatever,’ Cam said under his breath. He turned his back on him and placed the cue ball on the worn-through spot on the faded baize. Davy could be a proper dickhead when he wanted to be, but Cam didn’t give a shit what he thought, and had learnt to ignore his bleating years ago.
‘Sounding a bit jealous there, Davy lad.’ Geren lit a cigarette and squinted as the smoke rose. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. You won’t be a virgin forever.’
Davy turned puce. ‘I’m not a—’
But his protestations were drowned out by laughter from Geren, Cam, and a number of men nearby. Davy slouched back on his chair, face cloudy, arms folded like a sulky child.
Cam signalled for his friend to play first.
Geren took a drag on his cigarette and placed it on the ashtray before bending and looking down the cue to line up his shot. He drew his arm back and played his shot. ‘Anyway, this little bird only has eyes for our Cameron Stewart. True love for sure.’ He tilted his head and winked at Cam in a rare moment of warmth.
Geren could be a dick – he wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea – but he was the best friend Cam had. When Cam’s dad drowned, Geren had been there in a way nobody else had and Cam would never forget that. Beneath the bullshit he was loyal and honest, and the best fishermen Cam knew, a natural who lived and breathed for the sea and had no fear of it. Unlike Cam, he fished because he loved it. Cam had never thought to do anything else. Like most of those from local families, fishing was in Cam’s blood so he never questioned it. He always knew he’d be a fisherman like the generations before him. The Stewarts originated from Scotland. It was Cam’s great-grandfather who brought them to Cornwall, when he’d returned from the war-ravaged battlefields of France and found the fishing industry in Peterhead in decline. The Cornish were desperate for crew to keep up with a thriving pilchard industry, so he packed his bags and headed south, found a spot on a boat, met a girl from Penzance, and stayed.