Chapter 1 — Hooks

Twelve was what the tin took without them catching on each other, and Aske had twelve before the sun was off the sea, which was early for him.

The frost had gone a hand into the grit overnight. He knew that without a bar because the vice’s foot had stopped rocking. The bench stood on the north side of the plant with the crate wall at its back and the wind coming round the end of the boards, and the jaws were cold enough to take skin off a wet finger, which he had learned in his first frost at the bench and had learned again this morning, because he had a dog to see to before he had a vice to see to and had not dried his hands.

The wire came off split pins. That was their word for it and he had it whole — a thing like a bent nail with two legs that held something on, from the ship’s back end, and Rask’s people had pulled a tin of them out of the after third with pliers before the first frost, for nothing, because they had no use for them and could not leave a piece of steel lying in the grass. He straightened a leg in the jaws. Cut it two joints long. Drew the point on the file, and put the barb in with the corner, back against the point, and turned the eye round the small rod, and put the bend in over the drum’s rim with his thumb, and dropped it in the fire’s edge until it went the colour, and into the can. Every one of those words was theirs. The hill had no word for a barb because the hill’s hooks had been bone and had had one, and nobody had needed to say so.

The dog lay across his boots and got up when he got up.

Rask’s man was on the inside door of the crate wall with the board across the gap, and looked at the tin as Aske went past it, and said nothing, and looked at the tin again. Aske knew what that was. The man had the child up the flat every dusk and back down every night after the change, and the child’s mother had a mother on the flat who had a line and one hook, and the man had been looking at the tin for a week.

Aske went on past him with the tin under his coat, because he had twelve and the crown was expecting twelve, and he was not going to start giving before he had got off the rise.

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The wire ran west off the rise in one long bend, and a person who walked it in frost walked on it, not beside it, because the grit either side was ruts.

Nobody had told him he could walk it and nobody had told him he could not. It was the crew’s cable and then the crew’s lighting wire, spliced, and it went a little under a kilometre down to the room, and it had been a thing you kept your boots off when it was new and a thing you walked on since the second frost, and the hill’s children walked it barefoot in the long light with their arms out, and it was the only straight thing on the coast. He could have gone along the flat instead, past Orel’s seven roofs, and been asked where he was going by six people and told all six, and then Orel would have known before he did whose hooks these were.

He went down the wire.

The turf houses lay in their staggered row a stone’s throw north of it with their doors to the south-west and three smokes going straight up, because the air was dead. Somebody was splitting something behind the second house — Jory, by the way it stopped and started. Aske did not look. The seventh house from the end was Ilde’s and had a stranger’s roll in it, and the second was Jory’s, and there was a thing his sister and Jory had that was nobody’s business and that the whole flat knew, and his mother knew, and it had never once been said in his hearing in either speech, and he was not going to be the one.

The room stood at the bottom of the bend where the grey ran up against the crescent.

Its seam was going already. That was what you saw from a distance: the roof cloth bellied, and along the ridge where two cloths met, a thread of steam that stood up in dead air the way the smokes did. The frame inside it was warm. He had never touched the copper in it and never would, because the tall one had built it and the woman with the hammer had wired it and it drew off the core on the rise behind him a kilometre back, and a thing that runs a kilometre to get to you is not a thing you put your hand on. Orel’s youngest was in the door of it with a piece of fish, and behind him two of the crescent’s men were doing something to a net on the warm floor because it was warm, and one of the crown’s women was in there too, which he had not expected, and which was nobody’s arrangement that he had heard of.

Past the room, a long throw out on the grey, stood the stone house.

The stone house was cold. There was a thread of smoke out of its ridge hole, green and thin, and that was not the same thing. The head sat on the stub inside the north wall with nothing on its lugs, and the lead was coiled on the floor inside the door where the woman with the hammer had coiled it, and the two clips were in her right pocket, buttoned, and had been there since she walked back up the wire past his vice with her hands in her pockets and her face doing nothing. Two drawing off one floor. That was the reason, in her mouth, and he had had it off her at the bench in about six words and had understood all six. The hill had the reason in four. She clipped it off us. He had heard that said on the crown by a woman who had never seen the clips, in a sentence with the strangers’ word in it, and it had gone up the mud in that shape and stayed.

Both of those were true. He walked between them most days.

It was a thing the older ones had made — Orel, the man with the cap, the tall one, the woman with the hammer, his mother — a line here and a room there and a house out on the grey with a dead thing in its wall — and it was done, and he walked through it the way the children walked the wire, with the tin under his coat.

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The crescent’s fire was up at the cut with four of them at it, and Pryor saw him first.

“There he is. The bank.” Pryor had a smoked fish in his fist and held it up at the children on the turf side of the cut, Isk and the boy off Dalla’s door and two smaller. “Haol.”

Isk went over sideways. The small ones went over on top of him. The boy off Dalla’s door stood there and said it back at Pryor, the right way, slowly, twice, with the end on, and Pryor said it back to him wrong with his face straight and took a bite, and the boy gave up and went over too.

That was Aske’s. It had been the first thing he had ever owned — a fish held up on the lip in the first days and haol said at it, and two of them had said it back wrong, and he had left it wrong. It had been the only thing on that beach that was his. Since then it had gone through the whole crew and come out the far side as their word for any fish at all, and for the run, and for a thing in a pot, and he had heard the man with the cap say it about a basket. He had never fixed it. He could have fixed it in one breath at any fire on either side, and the hill would have had one less thing to fall over about, and he had not, and the children still went over every time, and he watched them go over now with the tin against his ribs and wanted to.

“You’ve got a tin,” Pryor said.

“I’ve got a tin.”

“What’s in it.”

“Hooks.”

“How many.”

Aske told him twelve, in theirs, and watched Pryor’s face do the sum that Pryor’s face did, which was the sum of how many were for the crescent, and it came out at none and Pryor knew it came out at none and grinned anyway.

“We’ve got a rod,” Pryor said. “One rod, two boats, four men and a book. The book’s better than the rod. The rod’s got one hook on it and Lister lost the spare in the autumn, and don’t ask him about it. What d’you want for one? I’ve got a joke. It’s a good one. Sarratt’s heard it.”

“I’ve heard it,” Sarratt said, from the fire, without looking up.

“He’s heard it.”

The tall one was on the crescent side of the cut with two pails.

Noor had been down to the channel and broken the ice on it for the pails, by the state of his sleeves, and he stood with the pails at his feet and looked at the tin under Aske’s coat and did not ask. He never asked. He did the thing with his hands that he had with Tovi, that they had made between them in the first frosts and kept — the flat palm, the two fingers hooked — and it meant hook and it meant is there one, and he did it once, small, at his belt, so the others would not see it, and waited.

Aske took the tin out. Ten for the crown, then. Eleven. He got one out and held it across the cut on his palm, and Noor took it off the palm with two fingers and looked at the barb against the light and put it inside his coat.

“That’s a good one,” Noor said. In theirs.

“It’s the same as the others.”

“Then they’re all good.”

Pryor said something about the tall one’s face being worth two of his jokes any day, and Aske went over the cut and up the mud with eleven, and Isk got up off the turf and went with him as far as the pen and asked what a bank was, and Aske said it was a thing they had where they came from where you kept fish, and Isk said that was a rack, and Aske said it was a rack.

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Dalla’s fire was inside her door and there was fish on it.

His mother did not ask him where he had slept. Nobody on the crown asked him that; they had stopped asking somewhere round the second long light, when the answer stopped changing. Merle asked it, and Dalla had answered Merle for him once — he’ll come up when the pen goes — and the pen had gone and he had not, and she had never said the sentence again. She got the fish off the fire with a stick and put it on the flat stone and put the stone in front of him and put her hand out for the tin.

Tovi came past the door with the dog behind her and a coil of the new line over her shoulder, and stopped, and looked in.

“You’re up.”

“I’m up.”

Tovi went on to her own door. That was all of that, and it was more than he got most nights, and it was the thing she did — the crown counted him on the crown, and the rise counted him on the rise, and his sister counted him on nobody’s and had done since the night she held four fingers up at him across the grey, and he could not have said which of the three he minded.

Dalla had the tin open on her knee and was counting with her thumb.

“Eleven.”

“Twelve. One’s at the line.”

“Which of them.”

“The tall one.”

Dalla put the lid on. She did it the way she put a lid on a pot, with the flat of her hand, and left her hand on it.

“A hook’s not a fish,” his mother said.

He waited. She said things sideways and then said the thing, and he had eaten at this fire long enough to know the second part was coming and to eat while it did.

“Orel gives me two off his boat at the run for one of these. Two. He gives the man at Ilde’s the same for the same, and he’d give the tall one one for nothing because the tall one asks with his hands and Orel’s soft on hands. That’s two fish off my trestle at the run you’ve just handed over a cut to a man who can’t even say what it is. Nobody up here’s eaten a hook.” Dalla took her hand off the lid. “Eat that. The dog’s had the end of it.”

The dog had had the end of it. Aske ate the rest with his fingers by the fire and his mother went on with the rack cord in her lap, and neither of them said anything more about hooks, and it was the first time in his life she had put a price on a thing he had made, and it was two fish, and he had not known until she said it that he had been waiting for somebody to.

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He went back down the mud in the dark with the dog going ahead.

The room’s seam was a pale line at the bottom of the grey and there were voices in it, the flat’s and theirs, and he went past the door without stopping and onto the wire and up the bend with his hands in his coat. The frost was down. The turf houses had their doors shut and their smokes standing, and at the fourth house Rask’s man came out of the dark going the other way with the child buttoned inside his coat to the eyes, and stopped, because the wire was a stride wide and they were both on it.

“Aske.”

“Yes.”

The man had the child’s head under his chin and did not say anything for a moment. He was one of the sixteen and had the wall all night and this walk twice inside it, and Aske had never heard him say six words together at any fire.

“Her mother’s got a line,” the man said. “One hook on it. She lost one in the channel.”

Aske got the tin out. Ten.

The man took it off his palm with the hand that was not holding the child and put it in his breast pocket, and buttoned the pocket, and went on down the flat with the child, and Aske went on up the wire with the dog, and neither of them said the thing they said, which was as well, because there was nothing on that flat you said it to.

The rise’s fire was in its twelve stones with about twenty round it and the pot off, and Aske sat down at the edge of it where a man can get up without anybody having to move, and somebody passed him a plate with the end of the pot on it, and he ate that as well, because it was there, and the dog lay across his boots, and the man with the cap was at the rail with his back to all of it, counting.

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Chen counted the room the way he counted everything else, in people lying down.

Fourteen. He had had that figure since the shift system in the first frost — fourteen lying on that floor and twenty-two sitting against the frame with their knees up, and four turns in the night to get everybody through it — and the floor had not changed and the people had, and the copper in the frame was the last warm thing on the coast that was not a fire. The other element had gone dark at his order with Marta’s hands, and stood dark a long throw past the room in a house the hill had built, and every person at this fire knew it, and he was not going to pretend at his own fire that they did not.

So he said it in the open.

“The room’s fourteen lying. Irina’s six, and two to walk them, three nights in seven — that’s the sick off the plate half the frost, which is half more than they’ve had. Dev’s people, two nights, eight at a time, and the wall stood off a warm floor for once. The flat’s got the other two, and the children stay where they are on all seven, because a child lying down is half a man and I’m not walking a child out of a warm room into a frost to make a number come out.” Chen had his cap on. “That’s the coast’s one room and that’s how it’s shared. Nobody’s got it by right. That’s the whole of it.”

The fire heard it.

Belova was on her drum end at the north side with her boots on for once and her bag against her hip, and she let the fire have it a moment before she took it.

“The sick don’t keep a rota, Ravi.”

“Three nights is what there is.”

“I know what there is. I’m telling you what they are. A man with his ears going doesn’t get better on the nights it’s his turn and worse on the nights it isn’t. He gets worse on the plate. You’ve given me three nights off a cold floor and I’ll take them, and on the other four I’ll have the same six on that steel with a draught coming up through a joint your Chief’s given me cord for and no time to pack, and one of them will be Lister by the thaw, and I’ll have said so here.”

“You’ve said so here.”

“Then it’s said.”

Rask had the weed barrow at the rack and put it down.

“Sixteen stood that wall, sir. Since the front. Sixteen to a rack in two rows and the board across the gap. I’ve not asked for the room. I’m saying who’s been standing where.”

“I know who’s been standing where.”

“Then eight at a time’s half a wall on a warm floor and half on a cold one.”

Chen looked at him.

He had the word for this. He had had it since he was a junior officer with a division and a book, and it had held on a station and on a ship and on this grey under a woman who was in the ground sixty paces north of the crescent, and he had not used it at this fire since the morning he had stood at the head of three boards and said hers. He knew what it cost. It cost the thing he was standing on.

“Petty Officer Rask.”

The rack stopped. Feld, at the far end of it with a fish in each hand, stopped with them.

“Two nights in seven, eight at a time, and the wall stood off a warm floor by the eight that had it. Say it back.”

“Two nights, eight at a time.” Rask’s face did not move. “Sir.”

“Right.”

Ionescu got up off the drum end.

She had been on it since the light went with the reading book shut on her knee and her coat buttoned, because the drum end was where she sat, and she got up without a word and put the book inside her coat and went along the crate wall and into the cloth, and Chen gave her the night. The set could wait. It was the cold, and she was the only hands on the lugs on this coast, and a person who is the only hands on a thing is entitled to go in out of a frost without saying why.

Aske was at the vice on the north side with his dog across his boots, doing nothing, with a file in his hand that was not moving.

“Aske.”

The boy looked round.

“Take that down to Orel. Tonight. Three nights the sick, two Dev’s people, two the flat, and the children stay. Tell him it’s the coast’s room and not mine.”

Aske said the last part back to him, in theirs, flat, and got up with the dog and went down off the rise onto the wire in the dark, and Chen watched him go and thought that it was a fair thing, said in the open, with the sick named first, and that the flat had two nights in a room it had never been promised any of, and that a man who counted it out at his own fire in front of forty had put it out of the reach of anybody’s right, including his own.

The children were in the room now. The flat’s three, and two more he had not counted, on the warm side of a frame he had ordered the twin of dark. He had that as well.

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The cart went down at dusk the next day with the six on it, and its wheel went into the rut at the gap in front of everybody.

It was the barrow’s rut. Rask’s people had run the weed barrow in and out of the crate wall’s gap for a month and it had cut two grooves in the grit that were soft in the autumn and were iron now, and the bath cart’s near wheel found the outside groove with the whole weight of six people and Belova’s bag on it and dropped in to the hub. The bed went over a hand. The six went over with it. A man at the front end went against the man beside him and the man beside him said a thing about the plate that got a laugh off the whole gap, and a can went off the tail and rolled, and Belova had the tailboard in both hands before it was finished moving.

“Leave him. Don’t lift him. Lift the cart.”

Four of Rask’s got the wheel out of the groove by the spokes. It came up with a noise out of the felloe that nobody said anything about and everybody heard. Haddad went round to the bad side and put his hand flat on the rim and walked it a pace and took his hand off.

“That’s a spoke sprung.”

“Will it get to the room.”

“It’ll get to the room. I’d not turn it in a hurry.”

Chen had had his hand on the bed the whole time and took it off. Forty on the rise had stopped for it. The second cart had a wheel already that was two drums and Sarratt’s afternoons, and this was the other one, and it had six men on it who had been on a cold floor four nights in seven for a week, and it had been his three nights that put them on it, and the whole gap had watched the wheel go in.

“Walk it down. Somebody at the bad wheel all the way.”

Haddad took the bad wheel. Belova went ahead of the shafts with the bag, and Rask’s four got on the ropes, and the cart went out of the gap and onto the top of the bend with the six on it holding the sides, and the man who had said the thing about the plate said another thing about the ride, and the cart went on down the wire at a walk with the bad wheel ticking against Haddad’s palm every turn.

Chen stood at the gap with his cap on until it was a sound, and then went back in to the count.