Old Boy Jackie had come with us, a familiar face, and some of the others from Gremista, but Nicol & Mair’s English coopers were impatient, bad-tempered. They were resigned to all these stranger-girls coming in but they didn’t feel the need to be cheerful about it, no indeed. They could never have cause for quarrel with our work. We knew what we were doing, aye, and were fast and clean about it. But something about us being here offended them.

Mr Samuelson, he was our supervisor, Old Bloddy, we called him. He did not like to see us knit in the times when we were waiting for a load to arrive. You birds of passage is ’ere to work, not to idle about making bloddy socks! Never mind that we were not being paid if there were no fish. One evening he sent us off to the salt boats, though it was not our job. To make yourselves useful. I stared at him, frowning. Me too? So close to where the steam drifters left at night? But he hurried me along with a jerk of his thumb.

An’ what you be waiting for, Lady Carrothead? A bloddy copperplate invitation?

It was cruel on the back, hefting barrels onto the pier and rolling them the distance to the salt store. A fresh agony for my hands, too, newly inflamed since gutting began. But my work with the barrels lasted only until the crew of an East Coast drifter came down to load the boat. The Scottish master took one look at the redhead in front of him and declared he would not leave that night. Mr Samuelson was then set straight, he learned a bloddy thing or two about ginger quinies on the watter. And from then I kept my distance, knitting or reading from newspapers discarded on the pier.

Read us somethin’ cheerful, Fish Meggie, Isobel bid me, and I ran a finger down a page of The Yarmouth Independent. The letters were always lively, especially the ones about us.

‘The Scotsman’s Reception at Yarmouth’? I read.

Ooh, aye, said Izzy, grinning.

‘Sir:—If I take my wife for a walk, along any of our main streets, during the autumn season when the Scotch visitors are with us, it is with considerable difficulty and discomfort we wend our way.’

Con-SID-erable difficulty, Kitta said, mock serious.

‘Our Scotch fishing friends and the lassies monopolise the pavements, they have no consideration for other pedestrians, and rather than give way for a lady, invariably they force the lady into the gutter in order to pass along.’

Ooh-hoo, said Izzy, those lassies are no LAY-dies!

‘The expectorations of the male sex are perfectly disgusting. They show no regard to passers, and on more than one occasion, I have personally observed the nuisance created by their filthy habits.’

SOOO disGUSTing! Kitta said, her hand over her mouth. Are ye disGUSTed, Izzy-lass?