Blood-Dark Track: A Family History. Joseph O’Neill

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СКАЧАТЬ grandfather pegged one end of a net into the ground. Then he took the net’s weighted line and threw it over the water on to the opposite bank, which was thirty or so feet away; he did the same with the jackline of the other (unpegged) net. He and Brendan forded the river by stepping on a gravel isle and wading knee-deep across the remaining stretch. Once they’d crossed, Brendan unspooled and worked the first net so that it stretched across the water like a submerged tennis net. (The net could drop ten to eleven feet underwater in meshes of seven and a quarter inches.) Meanwhile my grandfather picked up the second, unpegged, net and signalled to Dan Cashman to do the same on his side of the water. Then Dan Cashman and my grandfather dragged that net through the water towards the tennis net.

      Ever since the time he was carried away by the current, Dan Cashman would only enter the water in an emergency. Dan was lucky, that time, to wash up on a fluvial island. My grandfather had to wade into the freezing water and swim over to him. He tied a rope around Dan’s waist, swam back to the bank, and hauled Dan through the water like a calf.

      In between the two nets was the Key Hole. If the salmon were anywhere, they would be there, slowly twisting where the river was ten to twelve feet deep. These were the trade secrets that my grandfather knew from his childhood: the location of the pools where the salmon congregated – the Key Hole, the Forge Hole, the Rock Pool, the Flat of Kilcascan – and the fords and the dangerous currents. He learned from his father, who acquired the knowledge and the poaching knowhow from his own father.

      The three poachers stealthily went about their work. The river was unquiet, haunted by sounds and movements that made everybody jumpy. The wind stirred a roar in the riverbank trees, somewhere waterhens chirped, downriver a startled heron flapped up; and, of course, the water itself, dark and restless shapes of trees reflected monstrously in its sheen, was always rustling. Rain snapped in the trees.

      My grandfather was not out on the river at midnight, chilled and soaked and running the risk of catastrophe, for the fun of it. He was there because Jim and Brendan had their confirmations coming up and another son, Padraig, his communion, and the boys hadn’t a stitch to wear.

      As the nets came together, salmon could be felt tugging in the meshes. Eventually the nets were dragged out. ‘Jesus, they’re heavy,’ my grandfather said. And they were, because they were crammed. A rogue shaft of moonlight shone on the netted fish. ‘Look at that,’ my grandfather said, ‘a rosary.’

      On they went, to another pool further down the river, and then another. Each time the fishing was good. By the time the catch was totally landed, thirty-three salmon were tallied. It was a record-breaking haul.

      My grandfather made a sack from his herringbone overcoat and filled it with fish. Afterwards, their smell would not leave his jacket. My grandmother would say that the cats of Cork followed him around for a month.

      ‘What happens if the bailiffs come?’ Brendan asked his father.

      My grandfather pulled out a revolver. ‘’Twould be a poor night for any bailiff that walks here tonight.’

      Although on this occasion two nets were being used, usually just the one sufficed: the poachers would suspend the net in the middle of the pool for about half an hour, waiting for the salmon to entangle themselves on the principle that salmon are never still. (It was not unknown for a dog to be thrown into the river to frighten the fish towards the net.) Sometimes a guest poacher would accompany the O’Neills and the outing would take on a social dimension. Tomás MacCurtain Junior, the IRA man and son of the Lord Mayor of Cork shot dead by the British, went poaching with my grandfather, as did Brendan’s brother-in-law, Seán O’Callaghan, after his release from seven years’ imprisonment.

      Poaching was not restricted to the Bandon. In August and September my grandfather fished for blackberries, as the late season fish were called, at Skibbereen. There, the river Ilen is tidal and the channel forty-five yards across, and two nets had to be tied end to end to cover it. The channel could not be forded: my grandfather had to swim naked with the jackline in his hand. Still naked, he would pull the nets over with the jackline and remain on the far bank for half an hour of fishing; then he’d swim back.

      The thirty-three salmon were taken to the fishmongers, who would pay anything from £2 to £5 for each fish. That was a lot of money.

      A fishmonger once tried to cross Jim O’Neill. Jim sent Brendan to Mortell’s (‘If It Swims, We Have It’) with three salmon. Mortell only paid for two, asserting that the third was a slat – a dud fish. My grandfather took issue with this and returned to Mortell’s on two or three occasions, claiming payment or the return of the salmon. ‘It’ll cost you a lot more than one salmon,’ he finally warned Mortell. Mortell shrugged and continued serving his customers. After all, what remedy did Jim, as a thief of the fish, have? But Mortell miscalculated. There and then, in a full shop, my grandfather toppled a skyscraper of egg-crates and the shop was flooded in a lake of yolk. ‘Now,’ my grandfather said, ‘you can keep your salmon.’

      But there was no problem selling the thirty-three salmon. The O’Neill boys made their sacraments dressed to kill.

      Poaching was not always this lucrative or easy. The danger and awful thrill of it lay in the ongoing battle of wits with the fishing bailiffs who patrolled the river at night. To my uncles Jim and Brendan, these nocturnal escapades from the middle of the last century are as vivid as ever, and they are still able to give detailed and amazed accounts of their close shaves and run-ins with the forces of law and order, stories of flashlights and car-chases and gunshots fired in the air – stories that nearly always end with the bailiffs foiled and flat on their faces like cartoon goons.

      Even the time uncle Jim was caught is retold as a triumph of sorts. One night in 1957, they were netting the river just west of Bandon, near the Welcome Inn – my grandfather and his sons Jim and Brendan, twenty and nineteen years old respectively. The river at that place turns like a horseshoe, with a gravel strand on the inward bank of the turn. Engines and other hitches had been thrown on to the bed of the pool to stop poaching, but my grandfather knew exactly how far down the hole the net could be dropped without snagging. Two fish were twitching on the gravel when suddenly the bailiffs’ torches were bearing down on them. Brendan, who was on the far bank, immediately bagged the fish and pulled the net out of the river. ‘Lie down or I’ll fire,’ he shouted, bluffing, and the two approaching bailiffs dived for cover.

      My grandfather ran upriver and uncle Jim went downriver, splitting the patrol. When uncle Jim got some distance away, he turned round and shouted obscenities to attract attention to himself and give the others a chance of getting away. Sure enough, the bailiffs both turned on him and, joined by a third bailiff, soon had Jim cornered in a field. When asked who he was, Jim asked them who were they to ask. ‘We’re water keepers,’ they said. ‘Well, so am I,’ said Jim. They grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and marched him away. Jim stumbled and fell. ‘I can’t see a thing,’ he complained, ‘could you shine a light?’ The bailiffs complied, and the flashlights alerted Brendan and my grandfather to their pursuers’ whereabouts.

      Uncle Jim was led past the hidden getaway car to the Welcome Inn. Phone-calls were made, and just as the bailiffs were about to take Jim back to the river for further questioning, four uniformed guards appeared. They asked Jim who he’d been poaching with. ‘Well,’ Jim (a teetotaller) said, ‘I was in the pub, addled – I was after drinking a few pints – and a fellow I knew to see asked me whether I wanted to make a few shillings. Jesus, I wouldn’t know his name at all. The third fellow,’ Jim informed the guards, ‘was a fellow we picked up in Bandon. John was his name, I believe.’

      Two of the guards rolled up their sleeves. ‘Right, you’re going to tell us what happened.’

      ‘Lads, take it away,’ СКАЧАТЬ