The fisherman

I’ve been trying to tell the story of the fisherman for years.
It’s a true story.
I know.
I was there.
I’d just got out of rehab, hitched back to my parents house in north Wales; a spooky journey ending in a mad drive in a police van; I had asked in a police station for a cell for the night; they were unable to lock me up but they could take me on a booze fuelled race through the night, Led Zeppelin squirting from the door panels, dropping me at my parent’s house.
Down on the killing floor.
My sister let me in, gave me a sofa for the night, told me to go with the morning sun on my back…
I hitchhiked south vowing to stop only when I reached the sea.
A photographer (I cannot remember his name. I later thanked him by having him do my wedding) gave me the final lift to Dartmouth, took me to a pub.
Introduced me to Pat who offered me a job on the condition that I could row.
I spent the night in a B&B, did a rowing test the following morning with Pat, got the job and got introduced to peter; owner of a Spanish schooner moored in the river, he gave me a berth for 5 pounds a week. I fucked a lot of girls on that bowsprit net.
Okay I’m settled.
　　
This story is about Pat.

Every morning without fail Pat would leave his parents house and walk down to his boat on the quay, cast off, start his motor and look at the sky…and smile.
He would motor (I with him sometimes) the two miles up river to his fishing place. …….turn off the motor and drift into shore. Let the joy begin.
The morning tastes of oysters and samphire.
The water is still; like glass. He uses his oars for the last few yards, sip and plat as they turn the meaty water like spaded sods.
He beaches the boat dumps his motor on the foreshore and sets to work. I or someone like me would hold one end of a net while Pat would row like fuck out into the river trailing the net in a manic lazy arc bringing it back ashore some way downstream.
He drags his end of the net this way and, once met, we pull it in together. A few grey mullet, a sea trout or two but no salmon. Pat looks at the sky and smiles.
A fox quarters the shore. A heron waits. Eddies skitter across the water like war-wounds.
Pat does not under any circumstances want to catch a salmon.
If he catches one today he will naturally want to catch two tomorrow. He will become the victim of ambition (he might as well go up to London) so he is happy to catch none.
A fishing boat steams seaward…
The idiot, he caught one. The biggest fucking salmon you’ve ever seen… He rows back to town, sells his salmon to the fishmonger, goes home, packs his bag and leaves.
Becomes a pirate…another story.