A Poor Man's House

by Stephen Sydney Reynolds

"Coo'h!" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "'Tis a crib here! Nort 't all doing. Not like 't used tu be. I mind when yu cude haul in a seine so full as.... Might pick up a shilling or tu t'night shrimping, if they damn visitors an' bloody tradesmen an't been an' turned the whole o' Broken Rocks up an' down. I tells 'em o'it!"

"Shrimps or prawns, d'you mean?"

"Why, prawns! Us calls it shrimping hereabout. You knows that. There's prawns there if yu knows where to look, but not like 't used to be. On'y they fules don' know where to look. An' they don' see Jake at it, an' I never tells 'em what I gets nor what I sells at; an' so they says I don' never du nort. I'd like to see they hae tu work waist-deep in water every night for a week when they'm sixty-five. An' in the winter tu!—If yu'm minded to come t'night, yu be up my house 'bout 'leven o'clock, an' I'll fetch me nets from under cliff if they b——y b——rs o' boys an't been there disturbin' of 'em."

Uncle Jake's cottage looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea—his staple foods—on the round table beside him, and his prawn-nets on the flagstones at his feet. Three cats glided about among the legs of the table and chairs, on the lookout to steal. Using the gentle violence that cats love from those they trust, Uncle Jake flung them one by one to the other side of the room. They returned, purring, to snatch at the none too fresh berry [eggs] of spider-crab with which the nets were being baited.

The shallow small-meshed setting-nets are about two feet in diameter at the top. Stretched taut from side to side of the rim are two doubled strings or thirts—which cross at right angles directly above the centre of the net, and into which, near the middle, the four pieces of bait are ingeniously and simply fixed by little sliders on the thirts themselves. The whole apparatus hangs level from a yard or more of stout line, at the upper end of which is a small stick, a stumpy fishing rod, so to speak, often painted white so that it may be easily found as it lies on the dark rocks. Uncle Jake's net-sticks, however, are anything but white. Capable almost of finding them with his eyes shut, he would sooner lose his nets altogether than let whitened sticks point out to other people the pools which he alone knows.

We put the nets into a couple of sacks and shouldered them. A long light pole was placed into my hand. "Don't yu never leave your pole behind. Yu'll want it, sure 'nuff, afore this night's over."

So we set out. One by one the cats who were following, left us to go back home. We did not walk towards the sea. On the contrary we went inland, through some roads with demure sleeping villas on either side. "If they bloody poachers," Uncle Jake explained, "see'd us going straight towards the sea, they'd follow. I knows 'em! They takes away the livelihood o' the likes o' us an' sells it. Sells it—an' says 'tis sport! I leads 'em a dance sometimes. I goes along a narrow ledge that's jest under water, wi' ten or twelve feet depth on either side. On they comes a'ter me. 'Uncle Jake knows where to go,' they says. And in they goes—not knowing the place like I du—head over heels an' a swim for it! O Lor'! they don' like it when I tells 'em they better go home an' tumble into dry clothes. Yu shude hear the language they spits out o' their mouths 'long wi' the salt water. Horrible, tu be sure!"

SETTING-NETS

Broken Rocks, a playground for children by day, look wild and strange on a night when clouds are driving across the moon, when the cliffs fade into darkness high above the beach, and everything not black is grey, except where the white surf beats upon the outermost ledge. Then Broken Rocks have personality. A sinister spirit rises out of them with the heave of the sea. It is as if some black mood, some great monotony of strife, were closing in around one. On the sea wall, in the sunshine, I used to wonder why Uncle Jake calls Broken Rocks a terr'ble place. Now I do not. He works there by night.

We peered out from the beach underneath the cliffs. Nobody had forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. "Us'll make a start there," he said, pointing to a ledge between which and ourselves was a wide sheet of water. "Yu follow me an' feel for a foothold wi' your pole. Don't yu step afore yu've felt."