The Harbour Girl by Val Wood Read Free Book Online

Not only that her mother was considering marrying again, but also that she had been at a ceilidh when Mary would have thought her dancing days were over.
    ‘Did you two know?’ she asked Nell and Nola.
    They hummed and hawed. ‘We guessed,’ they said in unison.
    ‘So you don’t have to worry about me any more,’ Fiona added, ‘for I know that you do. And the wee bairns can come and stay with us sometimes.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Nola whispered as they bedded down for the night. ‘We’ll report back to you on how she is. We’ll still be coming with the fleet, and the three of us can be a crew.’
    But it means I shan’t see her again, Mary thought the next morning as she checked the previous day’s barrels and topped up those that had settled. The only time I get to see my mother is when she comes for the herring season; I can’t afford to visit her in Scotland, any more than I can send the children. She felt happy for her mother, but sad for herself as the last link with her homeland seemed to be dissolving.
    When Tom reached twelve he told his mother he would rather be a boat builder than a fisherman. He had been out on a few fishing trips and been very sick. The skipper who had offered him a place with his crew had expressed his doubts to Mary.
    ‘If he’s sick when the weather’s calm,’ he explained, ‘he’ll be a liability when it’s rough. I don’t want to disappoint the lad – I know he’d set his heart on following in his father’s sea boots, so to speak – but I think you should talk to him about it.’
    She asked Tom plainly what he wanted to do.
    ‘I’m sick as a dog, Ma,’ he said. ‘Last time I went out we got as far as the Dogger Bank and I thought I was going to die! I’d rather build boats than sail in ’em.’
    ‘You’d still have to go out in them to try them out, surely.’
    ‘Aye, I would, to make sure they were seaworthy, but not so often, not like fishing for a living and staying out at sea for a week or more.’
    It turned out that Tom had already been to a boatyard to ask if he could do any work after school and had been given odd jobs of clearing up and polishing brasses. He had been complimented on his ability and it was suggested that his mother went in to see the owner.
    ‘You’re not mad at me, are you, Ma?’ he asked. ‘Not disappointed that I won’t be a fisherman like my da?’
    She ruffled his hair. ‘Not a bit.’ She smiled. ‘It’ll be one worry less if I know you’re safe on dry land.’
    For Jeannie’s ninth birthday Mary had given her a pair of scissors and a mending needle and then a lesson in how to pick up the broken strands of torn net and loop and knot the new twine to repair the hole. At first Jeannie had found it difficult and the net heavy but eventually she mastered it; her mother had been pleased with her progress and the fact that Jeannie would have some means of earning money when she was old enough. Then, as she had promised, when Jeannie was ten she taught her how to gut fish. ‘The secret is a very sharp knife,’ she told her daughter as she showed her how to bind up her fingers. ‘But that can slice fingers as well as fish bellies, so you have to be very careful.’
    Mary’s mother had married her Mr Duncan and Mary had received a postcard from him, saying that he hoped he would meet her one day and that she and the children were always welcome to visit them, at which Mary had sighed, knowing that she never would.
    Nell and Nola had come the following year for the herring, but they hadn’t seen Fiona since her marriage and so had nothing to report.
    ‘Wish someone would come along and tek care of me,’ the unmarried Nell had complained when they returned to Fraserburgh. ‘I’d have him like a shot.’
    ‘But you don’t want to wait until you’re forty,’ Nola had said, ‘so out on the town we’ll go tonight and find a couple of Scottish fisher lads.’
    Which they did, and married them, but they still came to