Nets

High tide

In the slow creep that evening makes towards true dark, Pierre sits on the harbour wall.  His boat bobs in front of him and it’s as ready to go out to sea as he is.  There’s that frisson in the air.  A glitter in the water; even (he likes to think) an expectancy in the sardine shoals themselves that tonight is the night they’re going to be caught in his nets.

Pierre is going to leave the safety of the harbour wall, its concrete embrace, and sail out to sea in his little boat.  Pierre, the saint’s namesake, who took the only trade his name allowed.

It’s the routine he likes the most.  The inexorable movement forward, the dropping of the nets and the waiting.  He always fishes alone and at night, and while the sardine amass to eat the plankton, the nets encircle them.  After the fish are gathered in the large purse the nets form, he pours them out onto the deck and then shovels them into the waiting barrels of brine. 

On some nights, before he puts the lids on the barrels, he can see the silver sliver of the fishes catching in the moonlight.  On moonless nights, the slap slap of their tails add pleasing bass notes to the dangerous music of the wind and sea.

Ebb tide

And people leave and sometimes they get lost and that, Pierre thinks, is the nature of people.  His wife got lost some years back in Nantes.  At least, she told him she was never coming back to their shitty, little house, on their shitty, little street, in their shitty, little town. The secret he’d never been able to reveal to anyone, himself included, was her going was only a relief.

His daughter had left soon after, moving forward into a future that had little space for him.  Sure, she visited; but still even a man as emotionally simple as Pierre knew what duty looked like.  When she did visit, she brought her daughter - his darling Carine - with her.

Pierre remembers Carine soon after she’d learned to walk teetering up the jetty towards the green harbour marker at its end.  The sea was coming in on both sides of the jetty and the little girl weaved precariously from one side to the other.  Pierre had wanted to sweep her up in his arms, to hold her against the possible sweep of the water; but his daughter had said no.  She’ll be fine, she’s got to learn.  But this was a loss Pierre had not been prepared to take and he’d picked her up and put her on his shoulders, Carine crying and struggling against her loss of liberty.  To soothe her, he’d pretended he was a horse, trotting and neighing as he bounced her along.

That evening, over dinner, Pierre had considered how very human it was to dress one intent and action as another – in this case, fear as a comedy horse.  Pierre had no such problem with the sea.  It wasn’t duplicitous.  He knew it hid things.

Flood tide

The town square is set for the fete de la sardine.  The trestle tables have been unfolded, the band with its miserable looking singer is tuning up and the stalls selling grilled sardines are fanning out their oily, moreish smoke.  Pierre has arranged to meet his friend, Antoine, but Antoine has cancelled at the last minute, so Pierre has come anyway.  He’s hungry and he hasn’t got much of anything else to do.  Besides, it’s a strange, but satisfying feeling to be walking amongst strangers.

It’s a damp evening, somewhere between rain and sea fret, and Pierre imagines the satisfaction the seagulls must be feeling at having the beach to themselves.   When the boy comes up to him, Pierre doesn’t immediately recognise him, although he should as he’s watched him enough.  He knows every expression on his face, the length of his limbs, the tee-shirt he wears every other day, his easy stride as he leaves the house across from his in the mornings.

Pierre thinks he’s always been careful as he’s watched and it is only watching after all.  He’d never do anything, he just appreciates the boy’s beauty.  It’s not beauty he’s seeing now though as the boy approaches him with a couple of other boys Pierre hasn’t seen before.  “I know what you are”, the boy sneers in his face.  “Dirty paedo.  Do you think I haven’t seen you looking?”

There seems no response he can make, no explanation he can give that will make sense to the boy and his crowing friends, so Pierre heads home.  High in the grey sky of the square, the fete’s bunting of silver foil fish whip and crack in the wind.  Pierre is thinking about Saint Peter and his inverse cross - of the man thousands of years before who felt he didn’t have the right to be crucified in the same way as his master.  In the deep laughter lines around Pierre’s mouth and eyes, a crust of sea salt hangs like tears.

Low tide

Back at the house, the clutter of his grandmother’s faience is crowding Pierre out. He’d promised her he’d keep it all and he’s been true to his word.  It hangs, garish and undusted, all round his kitchen and living room. He knows every piece of it – the teapot, the bowls for chocolate, the cream jug, the side plates.

It’s not a fishing day, but the refuge of the sea calls to the water in him.  He’s relived the boy’s words all night, over and over.  But he thinks the boy’s wrong, or at least unfair, on one thing.  How can he claim to know what Pierre is when Pierre doesn’t even know himself?

As his boat leaves the danger of the harbour, Pierre is thinking about the tree he used to climb with his brother when they were children.  It was a huge pine tree, twisted and dying in parts.  They’d scramble up it to get to the best bough, the victor smugly waiting there for the runner up.  And Pierre wonders whether he was happy in those moments.  In a particular moment then?  In another moment?

At Pierre’s house, the policeman knocks at the door, straightening his badge to assert his authority or validity.  While he waits for a response, he steps backwards, inadvertently appreciating the smell of sweet pine and wood smoke in the air.

Out at sea, Pierre watches the seagulls hovering in the sky and he thinks nothing at all seems any more real to him than the invisible air currents on which the seagulls trust their lives.

*