the ten-minute bore

Christmas-Eve was a big thing in the Blaksketts. We are at the proud tip of a long peninsula leading to nowhere. You had the Christmas lights on every year. And it’s a celebration amid the darkness and the boat-shredding Atlantic waves. We have a name for howling winds that begins with Fuck and ends in Fucker. We also have this big thing called Skelligs the Bull which is the day before the day. 23rd of December. When all your local fishermen and seamen get together and have a great big piss-up. Traditional even. But I got stuck at a table in the corner with the ten-minute bore. Even the Vikings would have turned back their longboats if they spotted him.

By rights, the ten-minute bore shouldn’t have been in The Sea Pig, because he was no fisherman. Worse than him being a chief inspector of police, he was an Englishman, which meant that he was a Protestant. Not that we were bigoted or biased. We just didn’t take to his sort. Small, grey-haired and wet-eyed, every conversation that began somewhere else ended up being about him. You’d be drowning in conversation and looking above his head for help. Fathers, sons and grandsons in the crew, your mates that had faced down the Wolf’s Lair and a coastline that made the Foze and Fastnet Rock like a trip to the zoo hand-feeding caged animals wouldn’t dare fling you a line in case they too got sucked in.

 ‘My round.’ Rob elbowed his way through the crowd. He smirked as he passed me another whisky and lager. ‘I got one for your wee friend too, Cox.’ And he giggled in my face, his big pink face and body quivering as he passed the drinks to the ten-minute bore.

‘Very decent of you,’ said the ten-minute bore smacking his lips. Placing the whisky glass and lager beside his glass of half shandy on the edge of the bar.  

‘Not at all.’ Rob swept his head around towards a group of men that held their glasses up in salute.

‘Cunts,’ I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

He’d been an assistant mechanic. He’d be in charge of the radios and radar and do a bit of navigating and stuff like that. But really there was nothing he couldn’t do on a boat.

‘Not, at all, Cox,’ Rob slapped me on the back. ‘Enjoy!’ He weaved his way through a narrow wedge of bodies at the bar, stopping for a bit in the roar of mangled conversations to have a word with each man.

  Rob was a whale of a character. In every island you have a few people you look up to because they don’t really care what you think of them. They’ll always have the sea in them. And they’ll do what they know was true. Anything stupid happening, Rob would be there. Messing you up with that big smile on his face.

The ten-minute bore took a sip of his whisky and made a face, but licked at his lips when he saw I was watching. ‘The etymology of the word coxswain is very interesting.’ And that was him off. ‘Ironically, the person in charge of a boat, particularly its navigation and steering, to give its literal meaning of boat servant since it comes from cock.’ He guffawed at his word play. I bent a bow smile to my lips. Looking over at the boys playing darts, I wondered if I could put my name down for a game, any game. I hadn’t played in years. I hadn’t played at all.

He droned on. ‘Referring to the cockboat, a type of ship’s boat, and swain, an Old English term derived from the Old Norse sveinn meaning boy or servant.’  

I knocked back my whisky. ‘How’s your Laura, getting on?’

That stopped him. ‘My Laura?’

A light-blue checked tea-towel placed on her head, kept in place by a plastic crown.  She’d been the Virgin Mary in our school plays. The shepherd-by-day, snotters running down his nose, crept closer to the crib, and gawked with open-mouthed wonder. Jesus could go and fuck himself.  I’d the staff in my hand and I saw what he was doing and I’d have whacked him over the head with it, if Mrs Boyle hadn’t tugged his striped pyjama jacket backwards. He was a bit slow after all. Not much use on the land, but put him on the sea, and like his brothers, he’d his wits about him and some he’d stored away in his rubber boots.

I’d been Josephless, tongue-tied at the disco. Laura had said yeh, to dancing, even with mistletoe above our heads that meant we had to snog—which was almost a mortal sin.

Skipper of The Morning Star, married with two kids, a boy and girl, and yet I held my breath as I waited for him to answer.

Laura laughed and shimmied in front of me, ‘I’m fine.’ A glass of wine in one hand, and a full bottle in the other. She gave me the once over. Finding me acceptable, she leaned over, her lips brushed against my unshaven cheek.

I breathed her in like a genie. Saying her name made her happen. And because she was even more gorgeous with her black hair, dark eyes and pixie face than when she went away, I became thirteen again and tongue-tied.

‘I’ll eh, need to phone Claire,’ I told her. ‘Or she’ll have the search parties out looking for me.’

She stroked my arm. Whether in consolation or commiseration, it didn’t really matter. ‘But I need to get another round in.’ I pointed at her dad. ‘What you having, Rab?’

The ten-minute bore became suddenly unmoored when talking about whose round it was, staring into his whisky glass. ‘Whatever you’re having,’ he mumbled.

Buttery Mike stumbled into Cor the Mouth, their table knocked over, drinks high and airy, before smashing to the floor. The Mouth flung a drunken punch. Fragments of the mass brawl rippled along through the stone floor and warmth of our pub. The ten-minute bore ducked down to get to his phone. And Laura grabbed and tugged my elbow, an amused look on her face, as she stopped me from going to help break it up.

‘Leave it,’ she mouthed, rolling her eyes. Clutching my hand, pulling me through the crowd of lit-up and braying men, unnoticed.