But it didn’t seem right—no, it did not—and what I felt in my spine that night is what I saw in Kitta’s face when she vowed to see the world and never to marry.

And I made a promise, too, lambsie, a promise to myself. Maybe I would marry, maybe not—I thought to keep my choices many. But my promise was this: I would carry no man on my back.

3

The year I turned eleven, the world began to change. Now that I look back on it, I know there were big things happening all over and everywhere. That man in America started up his motor vehicle empire. The war in Africa had just come to an end, with many a man and boy losing his life. Two brothers flew up into the sky in a fantastical machine, and flew down, too, which was more the wonder. And in the freezing north some silly explorer pushed off in a little boat to sail the Northwest Passage. That was World Progress in 1903, lambsie, a year that had its share of madmen.

None of that touched us in Roanhaven. And what Progress there was to speak of in Gadlehead town I couldn’t say, either, because we didn’t take much interest in the Gadle’s world except for the market where Da took his catch. Or if the town happened to reach across to us in the village—which it was soon to do, with the curers and their wallets and their arling books. I’ll tell you about them by and by.

In Tiller Street, Progress caught us by the scruff of the neck in 1903. For some years, fewer of the men had been fishing the home coast with longlines, returning with loads of mackerel and ling after days at sea. The way of their fathers and grandfathers was a dying thing. Herring now was King, making its stamp on towns and villages all along the north-east coast. Roanhaven had started to change, too. Our men began the wrenching business of beaching family vessels on the boatie shore and hiring themselves to the new steam drifters from Gadlehead’s fleet; no-one from the village could afford to buy a drifter. Da held out longer than most, hoping the deepsea fish would take hold in the markets again. But the Age of the Silver Darlings had come, and fishermen, if they were to remain fishermen, had no choice but to tie their fate to the herring. Grudgingly, Da and Sailor Wattie said that come spring they and the boys would join the fleets doing the circuit from the Western Isles up to the Shetlands, down along the home coast and further south to East Anglia. For nine months of the year they would follow the shoals.