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By Root 916 0

raking the forest of masts cluttering the outer harbor. The rising tide had lifted the big whalers upright out of the mud to stand proud, naked masts tall and straight as though aching to be clothed with canvas to taste the wind. They had barely returned from the north, names easily read. The Jenny, Hope, Delight, Volunteer, Loyal Club, and Providence. While supping at the Dolphin he had heard the season had been poor. The fourteen ships to sail had brought only twenty-seven whales home between them. The Greenlanders who manned the three ships, which had come home clean, without a catch, faced a bleak winter, their wages based on performance. Around the whalers were clusters of fishing cobbles, fastened bow to bow so one could almost walk the breadth of the harbor across their gear-cluttered decks.

Jackie wished he was at home in Scarborough, out among the herring shoals with his friends in the Gin, but here he was in Whitby, idle and restless, his mother’s representative to his sick uncle’s bedside. Still casting an eye at the whalers, he wandered past a group of fishermen mending nets. Solid men dressed in stained smocks and heavy seaboots, pipes clamped between yellowed teeth, were dark eyed and watchful under the peaks of their caps. A glance told them he was a foreigner so they bent to their work. Jackie looked away as a girl came toward him. Her scarf could not contain a halo of wild chestnut hair framing her cheeky face. She moved in a long-legged gait, hips swinging beneath billowing skirts. Clutching a basket of bread, her arm drew a loose blouse taut across her breasts. She wore threadbare clothes like a princess, head up proud as she skipped barefoot. For an instant their eyes met, hers coal black, teasing, before she looked away. He turned as she passed, captivated by the hint of firm buttocks beneath the homespun frock.

One of the fishermen chuckled. “You’ll be Bob Rudd’s nephew out of Scarboro’? I thought as much. If you was taken in by Dorry Aim, you had to be.”

“Dorry Aim?”

“Aye lad. Take your mind off her. She’d take you ’tween her thighs and crack you like a nut. She’d leave pieces of you all over t’deck.”

“That’s no way to speak about a girl…”

The fisherman’s booming laugh cut him off. “Then you don’t know Dorry!” He laughed again, but seeing Jackie’s face was red with anger, he changed the subject. “Anyway, how’s old Bob getting on?”

“Faring badly, I think,” he answered, his mind full of the girl.

The fisherman pulled at his pipe then spat a stream of ochre juice into the harbor. When he looked up he grimaced. “Comes to us all, lad. Don’t you fret none, old Bob had him a fair life.” He glanced back at his weaving fingers. “And a fair life is all you can ask.”

Jackie waved and turned away, ambling slowly along the staithe, trying to make sense of the fisherman’s comments about his uncle and the girl, Dorry Aim. He looked up at the cottages ranging along the cliff, red pantile roofs spattered by gull droppings. Above stood St. Mary’s church with the ruin of Whitby Abbey as a backdrop. It wasn’t that much different to Scarborough’s harbor with the dominating castle really, but it wasn’t home.

Bob Rudd’s cottage was in Church Street, tiny and whitewashed, right next to the alley called Arguments Yard which ran down to the staithe side. Fastened into the wall beside the Rudd’s front door was a harpoon, a reminder of Bob’s younger days as a Greenlander when he could strike a whale with the best of them before frostbite had robbed him of three fingers from his throwing hand. Jackie touched the rusting metal as he came to the door. Before he could lift the latch, his Aunt Winnie opened it and the doctor emerged, black bag in hand.

“Remember Mrs. Rudd. Keep him well wrapped up.” He looked down at the delicate shawl-clad woman. “Well, I’ll bid you good-bye.” He added a nod to Jackie before walking away, glancing down all the while to ensure he didn’t step on any displaced cobbles in the uneven street.

Winnie raised a smile. “You’re back. Been walking, Jackie?”

“Aye, I’ve been down to the harbor.”