Living Silver 



warning than a sudden sharp fall in the glass — and these flukes 

 were never anticipated by his characters. A good North Sea skip- 

 per could not have been caught thus red-handed on his home 

 grounds. And it certainly wasn't the BBC that made the difference. 

 Fishermen did listen to the forecasts but usually they smiled as 

 they did so. 'You'd have been all right sonny if you'd said that 

 yesterday but the weather's changed since then. Maybe you'll 

 catch up with it sometime.' And, indeed, the weather forecasts 

 were usually outdated by the time the trawlers got them. The 

 trawl boards would be in, the net wrapped up in the scuppers and 

 the ship's stem would be standing fiercely into a heavy sea before 

 London would get round to issuing a gale warning. Normally, in 

 fact, the weather forecast was the weather being experienced. It 

 was no more than a description, somewhat different from mono- 

 syllabic word-painting by men in oilskins. The weather forecasts 

 then, had a certain aesthetic value. 



Weather, yes, it was important, as important as the men, as the 

 ship herself, and yet, for Jan, there was another and deeper rhythm 

 to these bleak northern seas. This was inward to him. He felt it 

 sometimes at night, like just now when the cold green sea was 

 beating within his heart. It was the sea itself, the distance and the 

 nearness of it, the tides that clothed its beaches in foam, waves 

 that grew white and shaggy, waves that flickered down in sunlight 

 to a gentle curved enamel. They were always there, the waves 

 and the tides, and he always felt close to them. This rhythm ling- 

 ered after the trip was over. It was like the prosody of a dream. 



And the rhythm too of the journey, the sultry slowness of the 

 trip out, steaming in the fo'c'sle, kippering, himself and the rest 

 of the crew, being pickled, remembering; and then this soft-shoe 

 shuffle home when the ship moved so quickly that he could never 

 clearly remember any incident of the voyage. Eight knots at the 

 most, not really quickly, but she was moving with a sly solemnity 

 that hid from him the passage of time. If he tried to recall a return 

 trip, all he could ever remember was the date when they left the 

 grounds and the date when they landed. In between there was a 



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