Chapter Six: The Boat Builders Daughter

From Letters To My Mother. At one point, I went to the big windows and watched for the trawlers coming home; racing to beat the tide, the evening light, the gulls squabbling above them...

When I start a story for you, I am often following a whisper of a memory. The tail of a story caught in the corner of my mind, like a shadow. As I squint my eyes and dig around further in my memory, I will often find a few more threads to pull, reeling memories in like fishes slowly surfacing from the deep sea.

Is it the same with you?

There is a theory that once you find a memory, then take it out and look at it, your brain restores it to a separate location in your mind. Your mind with its myriad of tentacles and hidden pathways and slowly sleeping neurons. I re-file my memories in Letters to my Mother - right here, right here with you.

The memory I caught the other night was of a sloop in full sail - fore and aft with her jib up proud, catching the wind and soaring across the bay towards home. The image is from the convent typing room window high up on the hill overlooking the sea. The window is like a modern-day film screen, the sea whipping in teals and blues and diamonds as the sailing boat moves at speed from screen left to screen right then gone up the channel. I had been waiting for them to return and the leap of adrenaline when I finally saw the sailing boat fly across the horizon is a memory locked in solidly.

If you have been following Letters To My Mother, you will know by now that I was born into a large family living in a big, rambling house by the sea - just above high tide. And that this storyteller is reader-supported, so feel free to support me in my endeavors by subscribing with me here.

It was the spring of my 14th year when the long, low-slung sailing boat motored slowly into the estuary for the first time.

As I wheeled past on my bike after school that afternoon, counting which boats were in and who was still at sea, I saw a bright white sailing boat that I had never seen before. It was not far off high tide by then, and the wharf was packed with fishing boats of differing sizes and shapes unloading their catches. Sometimes there were so many fishing vessels in at the same time that they moored up alongside each other stacked parallel with the wharf. To get to one boat, a person might have to cross over two other boats.

The sailing boat was moored alongside two trawlers, her sails stowed, her lacquered wooden deck clean and clear, and her naked mast rocking gently. Halyards calling. This beautiful boat had lines like a dolphin, low and sleek.

It was unusual to see a sailing boat moored with the trawlers, so I stopped to admire her and maybe find out where she had come from. My sister, having no interest in boats, rode ahead as I rested my foot on the pylon above the cleats that the boats tied to and sat on my bike in my school uniform watching the boats and the sea. I looked across the water to my dad's workshop; his truck was parked beside it, and the big doors were open. There was a dinghy tied to his little jetty.

I stood there with my bike, across the channel from my dad's boat building workshop watching. The trawlers slopped in the water at my feet, moored a good four feet below me, rising with the tide. They were large heavy steel boats built solely for hauling fish out of the sea. They were built to be practical, to haul in and kill fish for sale. They were built of heavy steel with long-ago paint jobs. The wheelhouses sat proud and battered, and the decks was a precise mass of nets, bins, and winches. Not safe and not pretty. The boats were destructive and merciless. The trawl was a heavy piece of metal that pulled a balloon of a net out behind it; this all dragged along the bottom of our seabed. The men and boats around me stank of diesel and fish blood in the sun as they worked, nodding to me - the boat builders daughter - loading their catch into trucks, cleaning and tidying the decks.

This was my backyard. This was my home.

Now that my sister and I were both in high school, we would ride along the shore in sparkling, lightly salted mornings or through rain and dark, grim clouds. There was no other way to get to school, but we just had good coats, and got on with it. Instead of riding across the bridge and around to the right of the hill to town to intermediate school, now we were in high school we would ride around the hill to the left, past the trawlers, cut a hard right, and ride at speed through the wool sheds. Then we would pop out at the base of the hill and continue left around the hill to Mrs. Mooney's house (do you remember her from last week?), where we would leave our bikes and hoist our heavy packs full of books onto our backs and walk up the hill to the convent school which perched right at the top of the hill with a view out to sea.

In the afternoon, we did this trek in reverse. It was on one of those afternoon bike rides home that I saw the sailing boat. Seeing this long, gentle, beautiful sailing boat next to these rugged, blunt fishing boats was like seeing a kitten lay down next to a bulldozer.

I did not know that this sloop had carried a crew of young men into our midst until our dad brought them all home for dinner that night. Four young men in stringy shorts with long, uncut hair and shirts unbuttoned in the warm. People were always coming in for dinner at our house so it was not a surprise. Our table sat 16, and Dad made full use of it. Later, he told me that it would be like feeding goldfish to the gulls to let these boys loose amongst the fishermen, so he brought them home.

By the time I wheeled my bike up our driveway, Mum had given them towels and soap and showed them to the outdoor shower. I washed my hands and changed out of my school uniform and began work in the kitchen. Mum had already begun to tire, so it was my job to make a meal for 8 stretch to 12. The young men straggled back into the house, all tanned and light, laughing and irreverent, totally confident, their long hair dripping from the showers, their tawny, sinewy long deeply tanned limbs quick and sharp.

I look back on this now, and it was as though we lived in a different time from the sailing boat crew. It was as if they had sailed through a portal in the sea to dazzle us with their sudden appearance. We were a little fishing town with willowy, wiry-haired convent girls in black shoes and socks, small children trailing their lunch boxes along the beach to school, and hard-working men. Mothers were at home cleaning and cooking, and meat, newspapers, and milk were delivered. Dad was home for lunch every day, and someone new sat at the table every night. Mail was delivered twice a day by a person with a whistle. It was a gentle luxurious life in its frugal simplicity.

Mum went out to sit with them, very tired now. My sisters and brothers sat amongst them too, and they all chatted. Soon, Dad came in, and the big room was filled with laughter, drinks, and guitars. Everyone played the guitar in NZ. Mine always sat in the corner and one of the men had picked it up.

I continued with the meal, cooking, basting, and slicing. I set the big table and took the little ones down for their baths while the roast potatoes crisped.

At one point, I went to the big windows and watched for the trawlers to come home through the evening light. They would appear in the bay one after the other with gulls squabbling around them. Some were riding low with a good catch. I counted the last of them back in and gave a nod to Dad when I saw The Cornishman. She was a favorite of ours, and Dad and I had put in a new prop the week before.

Fishing is rough, hard, mean, and dangerous work for rough, hard men. Every weekend and every holiday, I worked for Dad in his boat-building workshop. The fishermen had become used to a young girl being there, and Dad had given up on telling them that his daughter was in the workshop, so no swearing. I just heard it all from under my welding helmet or behind my goggles cutting steel. They would let fly with dreadful language, then swing about and apologize, only to swing back to the conversation do it all over again, the girl forgotten.

We knew all the local fishing boats; Dad had done repairs on most of them. He could recognize a boat from its cut-out outline on the horizon steaming straight in. I was not that good yet. I needed them to come broadside to recognise them.

I worked on the dinner, heaping huge dishes with mutton, potatoes, and vegetables from the garden. I called everyone across to eat and dished up the little ones, cutting their food small and pushing in their chairs while my loud family laughingly showed their guests to the table. "You sit here, and you sit here," Dad said, with my little sisters racing to fill their glasses. My Mum was silent but smiling; her voice already worn out.

Dad had built this large room a few years ago, and it was over 2000 square feet of open plan. The kitchen, living room, and dining table were all in one room that was set up high on stilts overlooking the sea, giving it wonderful acoustics and a magnificent view. A staircase connected it to the old part of the house with its large bedrooms and long corridors.

There were huge windows facing the sea, and as I worked, I watched for the last boat to come in on the last of the high tide. It was a small one-man boat, and the skipper was the same age as Dad’s apprentice. All he ever wanted to do with his life was fish, and he was handsome. I particularly remember his boots; they looked too big for his lanky, skinny frame.

I shook my head at Dad and said, "Manny's not in yet. Though I might have missed him when I was downstairs." Dad said, "I'll check the call-up after." A burst of laughter hit the table as the others chatted down the end. I handed Dad the cauliflower in rich cheese sauce, and we all began to eat. I had a bit of a crush on Manny, and though I had spoken to him only once in my life, he came in and out of the workshop often (my head was always down which is why I always recognized his boots), I always kept up with his comings and goings. Trying not to look interested when I asked Dad or his workers if they had seen him.

Because he was young and alone on his first little boat, he never went into deep water. He hung close to the bay where the other boats could watch out for him. That was how it was with fishermen.

After dinner, the others wandered off as they were liable to do when there were dishes to be done. But to my surprise, two of the younger sailors came in to help me clean up. I was so shy that they had to coax me into their conversations and soon told me about the islands they had visited and how they had come down for Dad to fix something or other. They had heard that I was a top-notch welder and asked if I wished I could run away with them to sea!

I smiled and said I could not go on the sea; I would vomit for days. They hooted at that but were kind, and one of them grabbed my guitar and created a song about The Boat Builder's Daughter, who could not go to sea. I threw the tea towel at him and laughed out loud for the first time that night.

I was at school the next day when Dad got the news that they had found Manny's boat drifting off Napier Beach. He had been caught in the winch. He had the faintest heartbeat when they found him but died out there on the sea. The old fisherman who had found him called it in and held his hand as they waited for help.

The young, laughing men and their sleepy-dancing sailing boat were gone when I rode back past the moorings that afternoon. Dad was waiting at the bridge to tell me about Manny.

When I saw their sloop return three or maybe even maybe four weeks later (I can't remember now), Manny stood beside me in the convent typing room window. The war man slouched in Sister's desk chair, Brother Aloysius down the hall. Dad knew of the ghosts who trailed me, but there was nothing we could do. Ghosts leave when they are ready, and they were not bad company.

I watched out the typing room window the sailing boat in full sail gliding across the bay, and I knew I would never belong with those glorious, carefree explorers. They would never be my world. I would always be here fighting to beat the very industry that fed my family. To fight for the sea. I knew this. Even then.

But standing in the window of the typing room, hearing the bashing of keys behind me, the murmur of Sister's voice, and feeling Manny's endless last breath at my shoulder, I watched this gazelle of a boat, her sails catching all the light, like the sea chariot of a god or an archangel. All bright and fierce joy rolled into one, and I wished with all my heart that it was me standing at the helm, whipped by that divine watercolor of a sea. Me and my spirit crew sailing hard for harbor.

I know for sure that Manny wished for this too.