In another time, he would never have gone to sea, blessed of God or not. But when our men and boys started signing on to the herring, well, beggars could not be choosers and Brukie’s Sandy became a fisher boy for the few boats still going out. In the spring of that year, Granda Jeemsie couldn’t manage the Lily Maud alone. He had Brukie’s Sandy and Gammy Jock as crew, one feeble and the other lame. Sailor Finney, too, for all the good that old one would have been. With his ‘catamaracks’, so he called them, he was every bit as dweeble-eyed as Mackie’s Peter ever was. And Jeemsie, well, he was not so spry himself.

That boy, Brukie’s Sandy, he was a one for plucking the world from the sea. Driftwood, rope, slimy knots of net and weed, bonxie feathers, odd leather slippers, bits of wool, salt sacks, mittens, wax paper, eggshells, Dutchmen’s caps, syrup tins, skeleton fish, the beaks and broken wings of gulls. Once, he scooped from the swell a hank of long yellow hair with the skin still upon it. Gave them gooseflesh, it did, those hard, tough fishermen, but the boy stashed it away in his bundle like it was worth something.

And once, Jeemsie had to stop him from pulling aboard a half firkin of sodden grain wriggling with rats. ‘Ye gaakie lad!’ the old man cried. ‘What have I told ye about the long-tailed fellers on the Lily Maud!’ The kick of Jeemsie’s seaboot busted up the rotting staves and flung the lot into the foam. And that boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he hung his sorry head, for he knew as well as any there were things a fisherman should never even say, let alone bring aboard a boat. But still he kept his eyes on the sea, for what it would toss up next.

So there was none surprised at how it happened. Aye, none at all.

This day in April, the day I remember, that everyone in Roanhaven would carry for all of their memory, it was dark as winter sky. The sea was eerie slow in its swell, as though gathering for something big but taking its time about it, aye. With Gammy Jock ailing in his bed, Jeemsie had put to sea the night before with a man short. Maybe he thought twice about going, but more likely he didn’t. He lived for the times on the Lily, Granda did, to be turning a seaman’s back on those left behind in Tiller Street.

They’d woken before the late dawn, worked the lines by lantern light, and when the lines were cast again the boy sat at the stern of the Lily, watching the sea, watching and waiting.

It was Sailor Finney who told Ma what happened. They didn’t know a girl of fourteen was listening at the door.