Ah, was a dogfish, quinie—a greedy one, an’ all, still latched onto a coddie as we was haulin’ up the line. An’ that old gaak, fool he be, he takes on a rage an’ just grabs it without thinkin’ … And Mackie’s Peter shakes his head. There’ll be no fishing on the Lily Maud now, not for a wee while. Your da’ll just about have a jamaica when he hears.

I stare hard at the old man’s back as he raises a hand and shuffles away. The prospect of the Lily Maud beached and no fish for Ma’s creel and Da having a jamaica should have sent the cold through my bones, but when I turn back towards Tiller Street there’s a smile shining up my face. So it was a dogfish that got Granda and made him howl. A dogfish! And doesn’t that just serve him right!

~

Oh lambsie, if you could have seen it. Jeemsie Neish glowering by the fire, scumbling up for himself all the warmth from the smoking peat. It caused a gasp from every person who entered the but-and-ben. This was not part of the order of things.

He was a salty man, my Granda, with ears like whelks and brine in his eyes. Remote, like all those men from the sea. Silent on the land. You could hear their talk dwindling the further they got from the shore, as though the thing that was most alive in them, the purpose for their words, died a little with each step. By the time they reached their homes, stamping boots and discarding waterproof layers, scratching at scalps beneath thick woollen caps, they were silent. Men like that, they walked on land as though wary of the way the earth would not give with their weight. With people, now, it was different. They were used to people giving way.

There he sat, Granda Jeemsie, his leg propped up on the creepie-stool, a great clumsy presence among the knitting yarn, the pots and pans, the herbs hung up to dry. Above the mantel, like a rebuke from the grave, the small neat stitches of Grunnie Duthie: My grace is sufficient for thee.