"Are you still here?" asked Harbour Master Gamble, approaching the trio with clipboard in hand. "Well, I mean, I can see you're still here, at least, I think I can, it could, of course, be an illusion, or a vision or a dream, supposing, that is, that I'm still asleep, which I'm not, at least, I don't think I am, but I could be wrong, but it was just a figure of speech."
"Aye," answered Skipper Bruce.
"Deck Hand Chris still hasn't arrived," said First Mate Glen, hoping that it wasn't because he had eaten the lemon which Deck Hand Chris has been intending to use to clean the wheelhouse. That had, he knew, annoyed him somewhat.
The crew of the Pride of Lamond had taken the previous week away from the high seas for a period of relaxation. They had, after all, been working very hard. Skipper Bruce had gone skiing with Oak Hall, Cabin Boy Matt had gone on an "adrenaline bursting" tour of local authority museums and First Mate Glen had gone and got himself engaged, but nobody was sure what had happened to Deck Hand Chris. He had, so they thought, been intending to go to the Glastonbury festival, where he was due to give a live whistling performance on centre stage, but he had yet to return.
"So, you still haven't told us how you proposed," Cabin Boy Matt said to First Mate Glen.
"Haven't I?" asked First Mate Glen. "Well, er, I didn't exactly propose to her."
"What do you mean?" asked Cabin Boy Matt.
"Well, she sort of proposed to me," First Mate Glen chuckled nervously. "She got angry that I hadn't asked her yet and so I asked her and she said no because she'd forced me into it and didn't really want to and wouldn't have done if she hadn't said anything and got angry that I wasn't willing to risk upsetting her by not asking her there and then, then she proposed to me and I said yes and then she got angry that she was having to be the man in our relationship, so, er, yeah, I'm really happy."
Skipper Bruce and Cabin Boy Matt stood in silence for a few moments, unsure of what to say.
"So, er, how's the nounless Bible going?" asked First Mate Glen to cover the awkward silence.
"I'm stuck on chapter six of Exodus," replied Cabin Boy Matt.
"Ah, right, shame," replied First Mate Glen.
As the men idolly chatted they watched a lone male saunter slowly down the hill towards them. He had long, greasy hair, wore sandals on his grubby feet, carried a jute bag and wore a green tee shirt with a picture of a wind turbine on it.
"I'd recognise that whistle anywhere," said First Mate Glen.
"So would I," replied Cabin Boy Matt. "It's either Deck Hand Chris or the bloke who used to do next door's garden. It can't be the gardener because he's dead, but I don't reckon it's Deck Hand Chris neither looking like that."
At that moment, the lone figure looked up. His face was filthy and he needed a shave, but his lop-sided grin identified him immediately. It was Deck Hand Chris.
"By 'eck, you need a bloody 'air cut," exclaimed Cabin Boy Matt.
"What happened to you?" asked First Mate Glen, equally astounded.
Deck Hand Chris took a small jar of parsley from his pocket, tipped some into a strip of recycled paper, rolled it into a thin tube and put it between his lips before lighting it with a match.
"I've seen the light," he said, sucking on his herbal cigarette. "We can't continue to live the way we do. At Glastonbury I met some people who told me all about the damage we do to our planet. They knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was once a lecturer at the University of East Anglia who used to have a colleague who said that evidence one of her undergrads had unearthed but who for data protection reasons couldn't reveal the source of the said evidence showed that human activity, especially our production of carbon through energy use, is causing all the ice in the world to melt and that as a result we're all going to die and, more importantly, all the animals will also die, throwing earth's delicate ecosystems off balance, which will cause all the flowers to die. We can't let that happen, can we?" He took the herbal cigarette from between his teeth and held it in the air between two fingers. "We need to stop using fossil fuels, for the sake of the flowers. Renewable energy is the only way. We should also become vegetarians, animals take up too much energy to prove sustainable."
"He's gone green," muttered First Mate Glen.
"He's making me bloody green with them cigarettes," Cabin Boy Matt complained.
"Never mind this," said Skipper Bruce, "let's go catch some fash!"
"No, you don't understand," said Deck Hand Chris. "I can't come with you, I need to save the world, for the flowers. Skipper, buy back my portion of the Pride of Lamond so that I can invest it in a new offshore wind farm."
"What?" asked Skipper Bruce, shocked. "I can't afford that!"
"I know you can't, but you don't have a choice, I don't want to be part of this consortium any more. You'll have to buy me out."
"But I can't," Skipper Bruce stammered, shaking, "you'll bankrupt me."
"You can, I've thought about it," said Deck Hand Chris. "If you happened to be washed overboard, you'd receive a massive payout from your life insurance which should cover my share and then some."
"You want to kill him?" asked First Mate Glen, flabbergasted.
Deck Hand Chris just shrugged. "It's not really my problem."
* * *
Early the next morning, before any other vessels had left the port, the Pride of Lamond's engine started with a belch of black smoke which made Deck Hand Chris shudder. Hours earlier, in the pitch darkness, the crew had loaded their trawler with supplies to last two months. The hold was full of Campo Largo beans, Irn Bru, Homepride Pasta Bake Sauce, coos coos and garlic bread. Skipper Bruce stared glumly forward as he guided the boat onto the open seas. Once St Andrews was out of sight, he hugged the coast, eyeing the shoreline carefully until he spotted a beach which was remote enough for him to live there unnoticed but with sufficient shelter for him to survive.
"That looks like a good spot,"said First Mate Glen, sullenly.
Skipper Bruce turned the wheel and the Pride of Lamond approached the beach. He got as close as he dare to the rocks before flinging the cases of food into the water.
"OK, lads," he said, sadness in his eyes. "Go out away from here. Wait for a storm and then radio that I've been lost overboard. Throw over my life jacket. Once the life insurance money comes in, Deck Hand Chris can take his share and go. The rest of you, keep on catching fash. I'll come back when it's all blown over and as though it were some sort of miraculous recovery."
With that Skipper Bruce scrambled over the side of the Pride of Lamond and lowered himself gingerly into the cold North Sea. First Mate Glen took the wheel and directed the vessel away from the beach as Cabin Boy Matt watched Skipper Bruce make his way to the shore. Deck Hand Chris, a smile on his face, descended to the kitchen to make a cup of lemon grass tea.
* * *
St Andrews greeted the death of Skipper Bruce with great sadness. The Free Church held a memorial service at which all the psalms were sung to Fat Boy Slim tunes and The Lady's Head offered two-for-one carb feasts in homage to the much loved Skipper. St Andrews Museum put on an exhibition of the Skipper's life, complete with plastic lobsters and a badly constructed and oddly sized model of the Pride of Lamond, which Cabin Boy Matt had made from hundreds of cereal boxes he had collected but not used during his student days. It was supposed to have been made to scale, but Cabin Boy Matt's numeracy was non-existent and, while the boat was supposed to have been on a 1:5 scale, the wheelhouse had ended up only half the size of the original.
The insurance company were unwilling, at first, to pay out given that, in the absence of a body, the Skipper's death could not be proven. During this time First Mate Glen and Cabin Boy Matt continued to fish while Deck Hand Chris stayed at home growing his hair, smoking thyme and decorating jute bags. After many months and a number of covert trips to replenish Skipper Bruce's stocks, the money from the insurance company arrived. Deck Hand Chris took his share and left St Andrews.
To be continued...
