It was even colder outside our draughty hoosie. I was glad of my thick woollens and oilie, the mittens over my tied fingers. The wind howled across the bay as we joined the crowd walking down to the yards. Even though I was stumbling in and out of my boots and clutching at Kitta to keep myself upright, I couldn’t help but feel the crackling in the air. All those girls, those brave, strong quinies, with a job to do and the skills to do it.

I was not brave nor strong, and I had no skills at all, but on that cold Gremista morning I dared to think I might become like them. Someone new, someone better.

~

Kitta had been drilling me for weeks. The farlins would be in front of me, filled to the top with fish, and the sorting baskets in the middle. Gutted herrings got tossed into the baskets, according to size and whether or not they contained roe or milt. I went over and over it in my head, picturing how the sorting baskets would be arranged: fulls, large-fulls, matties, mattie-fulls, spents.

All that preparation was as nought when I stood there for the first time, gipper in hand.

The noise of hungry gulls overhead, of so many girls talking all at once. My head jangling so badly that I canna remember my name, hardly, let alone the difference between a mattie-full and a mattie, nor whether the basket for fulls is right or left. Herring and salt—fresh, wholesome smells overpowered by the reek of blood, the bitter dark of guts, blood and guts, blood and guts. Never have I seen so much, staining everything red, every surface slippery and wet. Soon it’s all I am: red, wet, salted, gutted, blood in my eyes, scales on my skin. A fish hauled from water into air and struggling to find a way to breathe …

Meggie!

I snapped to attention, looked up from the silver-bellied fish loose in my hand.

What’re ye doin’, quinie? Kitta’s hands didn’t slow for a second—in, twist, flick. Whatever is wrong with ye? Clementina’ll have a jamaica if she turns round an’ sees ye standing there like that, all gapin’.

Sorry, our Kitta, I’m sorry …

Sorry! Ye’ll be sorry if ye don’t get guttin’, true enough! C’mon now, Fish Meggie, let’s see ye live up to your name!

And I began again. Bound fingers fumbling with the gipper, splattering blood as I tried to knife out the gills and guts clean in one stroke, concentrating hard on which murlin to toss the herring into. Clumsy I was, clumsy and slow, one fish to every eight, nine, ten of Kitta’s.

But it was a beginning, and even Clementina admitted, There has to be a beginnin’ to everythin’.

~