He laughed. ‘You cannot work this thing with two people.’
‘I didn’t mean at the same time,’ Orla replied. ‘I meant, when one person gets tired the other person can have a turn.’
‘I will not get tired,’ he answered.
‘O-K,’ she said. ‘We will see.’
‘Trust me,’ Jacques said. ‘I have done this more times than you have.’
‘OK,’ Orla said. ‘Then I will just stand and watch.’
‘No,’ Jacques said. ‘You will take photographs when we see what we have caught.’
It took a while for Jacques to make any real headway with the turning device. It was like watching someone really have to go to town in a bid to open a giant bottle of wine, or corkscrewing like he was boring for oil. She had taken photos, although unfortunately, due to the layers and thick coat he was wearing, she could only imagine the work his muscles were having to do rather than seeing them in the flesh, but shehadimagined…
‘Orla, come here. I am through the ice and now we will find the rope and pull it up and see what we have caught.’ Hisenthusiasm was evident in his tone and she stepped up to the hole and looked down into it. It currently looked like a wishy-washy Slush Puppie, a grey-blue mash.
He had thick gloves on now and he plunged his hands into the ice. Orla waited, camera phone poised in hope. As the seconds ticked by, she worried for her phone’s battery.
‘There is something,’ Jacques declared. ‘But I think it is stuck.’
‘How annoying,’ Orla replied. ‘Looks like you and Gerard will have to rely on Delphine’s store for tonight’s food.’
‘No,’ Jacques said, on his belly now, one hand still down the hole. ‘This is where you can help. Take hold of the spear.’
With a euphemism ringing around in her head, she grabbed the wood with a metal spike, pulling it out of the snow.
‘Do I need to jab the fish?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You just need to make the hole bigger with it. If the fish we have caught is too big it will not come out of the hole I have made.’
‘OK so I need to jab at that instead?’
‘Notatthe hole, just around it, very carefully.’
With Jacques’s warning about ‘carefully’ weighing on her mind, she began to probe the ice, silently wondering if she was going to permeate the whole layer underneath them and lead to a full-on icequake.
‘It is OK,’ Jacques said. ‘Do not worry about the ice.’
‘I’m British, Jacques. We are brought up with tales of ice breaking the second you set a toe on it and about swans attacking and breaking arms.’
‘You have swans that live on the ice?’
‘No,’ she replied with a laugh. ‘Just over-anxious parents worried about everything.’ She poked at the ice a little harder. ‘Like this?’
‘Yes, that is good. A bit more. OK, let me try and move the rope.’ He stretched down into the water again and put more of an effort into it. ‘OK, it is coming, one more press with the spear to make this open up.’
Orla swallowed as her mind went other places again.Concentrate. ‘I hope this is going to be worth it.’
‘I think it will be worth it. Trust me.’
She pressed at the ice whichwasgetting easier to manipulate and Jacques got up on his knees, dragging at the string.
‘OK, here it comes,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and I think it is big.’
