Then Sean finally says the two most welcome words: ‘Coffee break.’
I put the last little oysters that haven’t grown into their bag and look up. I catch my breath. The sea has crept up even further.
‘Then we’ll move into the sheds,’ Sean shouts. ‘This lot will have to stay back after school and learn to grow,’ he smiles, pushing back his hood and looking at the baby oysters. Droplets of water run off his wet hair, which has sprung into spirals.
I hand him the bags and he lowers them gently into the shallow water. Waves are hitting his legs and I jump back with each one. He doesn’t, of course. When the last one is in he points to the cottage.
Inside, the warmth from the little pot-bellied stove is lovely and welcoming. I stand and let the water roll off me. Sean has a coffee and I have hot water with a slice of lemon, having had the last tea bag that morning. We sit at the scrubbed pine table, me at the end so I don’t have to look out to sea.
‘With the inspection coming up we need to get everything scrubbed. By the end of the week the spring tide will be over. Then we’ll start cleaning, every bit of equipment, everything. I’ll be working in town in the day so I’ll organise jobs for you to do and be back in the evenings, unless I’m in town with Nancy.’ He tips back his mug and slugs his coffee. ‘Right, to the sheds.’ He stands up.
I finish my drink and stand up too, showing him I’m ready to work. He hands me my coat. It’s wet and cold, as are my dungarees when I pull them back on. There are puddles of water all over the floor. I pull out my woollen hat from my pocket. It’s cold and wet, much like I feel.
Chapter Nine
‘You stand here and put one oyster in each of these little compartments on the belt.’ He points to the conveyor belt in front of me. At least here, in the shed, it’s not raining. Just wet, cold and dark.
‘And this is where we wash and grade them.’ He turns on a noisy generator and then a water pump at the bottom of a conveyor belt. More water!
‘This machine will weigh them and sort them into size, ready for market, or if they’re not big enough, they go back in the water. Look out for dead ones, open ones. We should hear a dead one coming through, they make a knocking noise, or you can smell them. But you’ll learn all that in time. Ready?’ He has his hand over a red button.
I nod, without a clue as to how I’m going to spot a dead one that makes a knocking noise, or smell one. It’s all smelly to me. The conveyor belt suddenly judders into life. Outside the rain is getting even heavier, the day even darker, if possible. Sean presses the on switch of an old battered radio. Beside it there is a large blackboard on the wall with what looks like a plan of the trestle tables on it. The crackly sound of RTE 2 plays out. Then he picks up a bag of oysters. There’s a rush of shells being tipped into the washer, and suddenly knobbly, seaweed-covered oysters begin to appear through the plastic flap at the end of the conveyor belt on their way to me. When the belt is full he stops it moving.
‘Like this!’ He shows me, picking up oysters, quickly checking to see if they’re open, and putting them intothe sections on the conveyor belt. I follow his lead, soon developing a two-handed technique. I’m moving through them swiftly and feeling confident when suddenly a fast-moving creature makes me jump back with my hands in the air.
‘Just a crab. You’ll see a lot of them. Just pick them up and put them in the bucket,’ he shouts over the noise in the shed. I know it’s a crab. I just don’t think I’ve ever had to handle one up close and personal before. Sean scoops it up and drops it into a bucket beside me as if it’s as easy as flicking away a fly. It scuttles round inside the bucket. I’m irritated at myself and at him. This is very different for someone who’s grown up in the city. I’d like to see him negotiate the knock-down-price aisle in Morrison’s at 5 p.m. or city-centre rush hour in a Ford Ka.
I go back to putting the oysters in their compartments as Sean loads on some more. I don’t have to wait long for the next crab to come along. It’s only small and I decide to just do it, but they’re fast, wriggly, and hard to pick up when you’re wearing big rubber gloves. It runs this way and that and I bite my bottom lip and grab it. I want to drop it straight away, but I don’t. I plop it in the bucket and feel chuffed to bits with myself. I picked up a crab! I’m grinning like an idiot and turn to Sean, but he’s deep in his own thoughts and I feel like he’s popped my party balloon.
We stand side by side at the conveyor belt for what seems like hours. It probably has been hours in actual fact. Sean works hard and I’m determined to keep pace with him, no matter how much my back is aching.
‘Last bag!’ Sean finally shouts, and I look up to see him smiling as he tips the last bag of oysters into the washer and they begin to make their way up the conveyor belt.
When the noise from the machine finally stops it seems like I’ve taken root. My feet are like blocks of ice. ‘Just going to put these back into the water, then we’llhose down and call it a day,’ Sean says, picking up the bags and heading out of the shed. Relief floods through me. I’m exhausted, my hands are stiff, and I’m cold, really cold. Then a thought suddenly strikes me. For just those few hours, I haven’t thought about Brian at all.
The final hosing down seems to be like pouring water onto water. Little runaway crabs that have found their way into the corners of the shed are caught, and then the generator, radio and lights are switched off and the doors pulled shut.
‘OK, now for a tour of our other residences,’ he says, pulling off his gloves as we step out into the wind and drizzle. We walk towards the fields behind the cottage.
‘This is Fre— Ah, shite!’ He throws down his gloves and puts his hands on his hips.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. All I can see is a field surrounded by what looks like a precarious stone wall.
‘That is where the donkeys, Freddie and Mercury,usuallylive,’ Sean says with a sigh. ‘Looks like they’ve gone again!’ He turns back to the sheds and goes into the nearest one. He comes out carrying a bucket.
‘Here, grab this and shake it.’ He hands over a bucket of pony nuts, picks up two head collars and lead ropes and puts them over his shoulder. We head out on to the lane, him calling and me shaking.
‘Freddie, he’s always breaking out,’ he tells me in between shakes of the bucket. I’m half-walking, half-running to keep up with his long strides. ‘Think he’s in love,’ he says without a smile. ‘Must’ve snuck past us when we were in the sheds. Ah, there they are.’ We’ve gone a long way down the lane. Two donkeys are standing in the road. One, brown and black, has his head over a gate, nose to nose with a little white donkey. The other grey donkey is looking away, like a gooseberry. Sean strides up to them, slipping the two head collars off hisshoulder. He begins to put one on the canoodling donkey and throws me the other.
‘Here, stick this on Mercury.’ I catch the head collar and try to work out which way up it should go. I keep looking over at Sean who’s trying to stop Freddie slipping his clutches. Freddie is dodging left and right, trying to make a break for it. Mercury is standing there obligingly while I try and put a head collar on him upside down. He’s nibbling at the pony nuts in my bucket. Finally I get it on; again I feel chuffed to bits by my achievement, but Sean is too busy in a tug of war with Freddie, trying to persuade him to leave his lady love.
‘Shake the bucket, he might follow.’ Sean nods up the lane and I turn Mercury and to my surprise he falls into step beside me. Behind me, Sean is pushing and pulling, cajoling and swearing as Freddie refuses to budge. He drops the lead rope in frustration.
‘Shake the bucket!’ he shouts. I’m walking backwards and give it a really good shake. Suddenly Freddie decides it’s dinner time and chases up the road towards me. Sean’s chasing Freddie and I’m running with Mercury and in no time at all we’re back at the farm and Freddie and Mercury are back in their field. Sean secures the gate, really tightly this time. I hold my knees, trying to catch my breath. When I stand up Freddie has his head over the gate and Sean is rubbing him along his long ears. ‘You have to watch for that. They’re master escapologists. I’ve tried all sorts to keep them in, but nothing seems to work,’ is all he says. I’m still catching my breath.
‘And these are the girls,’ he points towards the hen house in the next field and beyond that a gaggle of white geese. ‘They have to be put away before the fox comes round looking for his dinner.’ Sean vaults over the gate. The light is fading and the hens follow him to their shed, climbing up a ladder and into their bedroom where he shuts them in for the night. He does the same with thegeese but they don’t seem quite so obliging and he has to herd them, arms spread out to get them into their pen. An obliging donkey I may have been able to handle, but these look like a different kettle of fish altogether.
‘You’ll be OK to feed them in the morning?’
