Living Silver 



bound by the usual promises of abstemious parsimony common to 

 the stricter adherents of Calvin. They were also forbidden to read 

 newspapers or listen to radio. A visit to a cinema would have been 

 considered as not the least of the deadly sins. Fornication itself 

 was more tolerable to their sense of decency. A new interpret- 

 ation, no matter how paranoiac it might be, of such a sentence of 

 Divine Scripture as: 'At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam 

 fell sick', was regarded as a major scientific discovery. The 

 discoveries of science, on the other hand, were dismissed as 

 heresy. Even Sandy's sense of humour was powerless against the 

 piety of his children. It led them to dismiss him as the son of the 

 devil and to treat him with the undisguised hatred inevitably assoc- 

 iated with devotees of any religion of love. The eldest of his sons 

 had, however, given Tadeusz a bride. 



This girl, Anne, proved her lascivious idolatry by marrying a 

 papist pagan. Her father would have dismissed her forever from 

 his sight, etc., had his womenfolk not worked on him for three 

 years to arrange the reconciliation that was the real reason for 

 Tadeusz's present visit. As a reconciliation it had been unexpect- 

 edly successful. The men had soon developed a mutual respect 

 for one another until Bill had finally invited Tadeusz to join him 

 on one of his fishing trips. For the past two weeks, then, the Pole 

 had been sailing with his wife's father and brothers on the Good 

 Samaritan and he had liked it. 



Jan had heard of seine-netting before this, but he had never 

 heard any good of it. Trawlermen had as much respect for seiners 

 as gamekeepers for poachers. They regarded them, that is, as an 

 efficient and dangerous nuisance that ought to be outlawed - by 

 Act of Parliament, as they would often say. The old men who 

 acted as night-watchmen when the fleet was in port would blame 

 the decline of the fishing industry entirely upon the seine boats. 

 'When I was your age, lad, I could catch a good haddock with a 

 hook and a bit of twine from the pier. It would be a gey man 

 could do the like today. And why? It's them wee boats that does 

 it, them seine-netters, taken up a' the wee fish afore they can grow 



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