Weekly Close Time

by John Nash, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

The Ettle District Fishery Board paid Walter Pirie four pounds ten a week to keep the river. It paid nothing extra for Sundays.

Six days a week he kept it in the ordinary way. He walked the banks above the town, looked at the rods, counted the fish entered in the keeper's book at Craigmoddie, and wrote in his own book what he had seen. From noon on Saturday until six on Monday morning the law said the salmon of the Ettle were to be let alone. The stake nets on the south sands had to stand open, with the leaders lifted off the poles, so that a fish coming in on the flood could pass up to the river without being turned into the pockets. This was the weekly close time. It had been in the Act since before Pirie's father was born.

There were four stations of stake nets on the south sands. Three belonged to the Craigmoddie estate and were fished by the estate's men, who lifted their leaders at noon on Saturday because the factor would have put them off if they did not. The fourth belonged to Duncan Gow.

Gow's station was eleven miles from Pirie's house by the coast road. It was eleven miles back.

On Saturday mornings in the season Pirie took his watch from the nail by the bed and looked at the second hand. If it stood in the first twenty seconds of the minute, he went. If it stood anywhere in the other forty, he did not.

Jean did not ask about it. On the days he went she cut him a piece and filled the flask. On the days he did not she put the kettle on for two and they went to the kirk.

He had worked it out in the back of the notebook, the first winter, on a page that was still there. Three columns. What Gow got from a weekend's fishing when nobody came: in a fair season, ten pounds of fish, sold on the Monday to the dealer from Aberdeen who did not ask what day they had come out of the water. What Gow paid when Pirie came and found the leaders down: twenty pounds at the Sheriff court, and the fish forfeit. What Gow got for lifting his leaders like an honest man: nothing, either way.

Under that, the other side. What it cost Pirie to ride out: a Sunday, twenty-two miles on a bicycle with a bad knee, and a pair of tyres a season. He had set that at a pound, which he knew was low. What he got when he found the leaders down: three pounds from the Board's fines fund, the same for every conviction, whatever the fine. What he got when he rode out and found the leaders up: the pound spent, and the ride home.

Then he had written the two plain courses and struck them both out.

If he went every Saturday, Gow would lift his leaders every Saturday. A man does not fish into a certain twenty-pound fine. Then Pirie would be riding twenty-two miles every week to look at poles. He would stop. And once he had stopped, Gow would put the leaders down.

If he never went, Gow would fish every Sunday. Nothing would stop him.

Neither course could stand. Whatever Pirie did for certain, Gow's best answer to it made Pirie want to do something else. So Pirie could not do anything for certain.

He needed a rate of going that left Gow nothing to choose between fishing and not fishing. He had found it on the second line of arithmetic. Gow fishes, and two times in three nobody comes, and he makes ten pounds. One time in three Pirie comes, and he loses twenty. Two tens and a loss of twenty come to nothing. Lifting the leaders also comes to nothing. At one in three, Gow gained nothing by fishing and nothing by not fishing, and then there was no way for Gow to take advantage of him.

The watch did the rest. Twenty seconds in sixty. The watch did not know what it had done the week before.

What surprised him, that first winter, was the other half.

He could not set how often Gow fished. Gow set it. But Gow did not set it by his own money. Nothing in Gow's own column fixed it. It was fixed by Pirie's column.

If Gow fished too seldom, Pirie's ride would not be worth the pound, and Pirie would stop riding, and Gow would fish. If Gow fished too often, the ride would be worth more than the pound, and Pirie would ride every week, and Gow would stop. The only rate at which Pirie did not care whether he rode or stayed home was the rate at which three pounds, found one time in so many, came to one pound. One time in three.

So they each did a third. Pirie rode out a third of the Saturdays because of what the fishing was worth to Gow. Gow fished a third of the Sundays because of what the ride was worth to Pirie. Each man's rate was decided by the other man's sums.

He did not tell Jean this. He did not think it was the kind of thing a person told.

Over two seasons, fifty-four weekends of netting, the watch had sent him out nineteen times. He had found Gow's leaders down on six of them. Six times in the Sheriff court. Gow had paid a hundred and twenty pounds in fines and lost the fish, and by Pirie's reckoning, from the dealer's lorry and the Monday prices, had sold something near a hundred and twenty pounds of salmon on the Sundays nobody came.

The sixth time had been in August. Sheriff Cowie heard it on a Tuesday between a poaching case and a lorry with no lights. Gow pleaded guilty, as he always did, and stood with his cap in both hands while the fiscal read Pirie's statement: the time of the tide, the four leaders down, eleven fish in the pockets, the nets seized and taken to the Board's store in the cart of a Mr Laing, carrier.

"Twenty pounds," Sheriff Cowie said. "Time to pay?"

"No, my lord."

Gow counted it onto the clerk's table in pound notes. On the steps outside he stopped beside Pirie and put his cap back on.

"You're a hard man to read, Walter."

"I'm not trying to be read."

"No," Gow said. "I'd noticed that."

The fines and the Sundays came to nothing between them. It was meant to.

In October the Board met in the Station Hotel. Pirie was not asked in. He sat in the lounge with a half of beer until the clerk, Moodie, came out with the minute book under his arm and sat down opposite.

"The Chairman has had enough of Gow," Moodie said.

Mr Farquharson of Craigmoddie had had enough of Gow for eleven years. Gow's station stood a quarter of a mile below the estate's, on the better sand. Fish that went into Gow's pockets did not go into the estate's.

"The Board is to petition for a new bylaw," Moodie said. "Forty pounds for a close-time offence. Double. Sheriff Cowie is agreeable. He is tired of the sight of him."

Pirie took the notebook from his coat and opened it at the back. Ten over ten and forty. He wrote it out.

"One in five," he said.

"What is?"

"How often I'll go out."

Moodie put his hand flat on the minute book. "Less?"

"Less."

"Walter. The Board is doubling the fine so that you will catch the man."

"The Board is doubling the fine so that I need not go so often," Pirie said. "Gow will fish exactly as often as he does now."

Moodie looked at him for a while.

"Why?"

"Because how often he fishes is settled by what it costs me to go and what I get when I find him. The Board has not changed either of those."

"And the forty pounds?"

"The forty pounds settles how often I go. It makes the fishing dearer for Gow. So I needn't come as often to hold him where he is."

Moodie was a careful man. He had kept the Board's books for twenty years without a shilling out. He read the three columns upside down, and then he turned the notebook round and read them right way up.

"Then what would stop him?"

"Nothing stops him. You can bring him down."

"Bring him down with what?"

"Make it cheaper for me to go. Or make it pay me more when I find him." Pirie closed the notebook. "A motor-bicycle."

Moodie did not laugh. He took out his pencil and wrote motor-bicycle on the back of the agenda, and under it bailiff, and under that a question mark.

In March, the week before the season opened, Pirie met Gow on the sands.

It was a weekday. Gow was on the ladder at the third pole, making good a leader the winter had torn, and his son was below him with the cart. Pirie stood at the foot of the ladder. He had no business there, and they both knew it.

"You'll have heard about the forty pounds," Gow said.

"I have."

"Farquharson." Gow drove a staple. "Here is what I was going to say to you, Walter. I lift my leaders every Saturday noon. Every one. You bide at home on the Sundays. You keep your knee and I keep my forty pounds, and we're both the better of it."

"We would be."

"Well, then."

"And the first Sunday I bide at home?"

Gow came down two rungs and looked at him.

"You'd have the leaders down by the second," Pirie said.

Gow wiped his hands on his thighs. "Aye," he said. "Likely I would."

"And if I knew that, I'd be out on the second. And you'd know I'd be out. So you'd lift. So I'd stop." Pirie shook his head. "There's nowhere in that for either of us to stand."

"It would be better, though."

"It would be better. It won't hold."

The boy with the cart had stopped pretending not to listen. Gow sent him to the far pole for the mallet.

"How do you choose them?" Gow said. "Your Sundays. I've tried to see it. It's not the tides. It's not the weather. It's not the kirk. My wife thought it was your wife's mother coming."

Pirie took out his watch and held it on his palm so that Gow could see the face.

"If the second hand is in the first part of the minute when I look, I come. If it's in the rest, I don't."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

Gow looked at the watch a long time. The sea was a mile out and turning. There were oystercatchers along the tideline.

"You've just told me," Gow said.

"I have."

"And it's no use to me."

"No," Pirie said. "It's no use to you. It's no use to me either. I don't know what it'll say on Saturday."

Gow went back up the ladder. After a while he said, from the top, not looking down, "How much of the minute is the first part?"

"It was a third."

"And now?"

"A fifth."

Gow drove another staple. "So I'm to be looked at less, and fined more."

"Yes."

"And I'll fish the same."

"Yes."

"God help us," Gow said, "the Board has done a clever thing."

In April the Board's minutes came to Pirie in the post, as they always did, typed by Moodie's girl on the long paper. Item seven was the new bylaw, confirmed by the Secretary of State. Item nine read:

The Clerk reported a suggestion from the Bailiff that the Board provide a motor-bicycle for the patrol of the south sands. After discussion the matter was not proceeded with.

Pirie read it twice at the kitchen table and put it in the drawer with the others.

"What did they say?" Jean said.

"They said no."

"To what?"

"To Duncan Gow fishing less."

She did not ask what he meant. She was bottling rhubarb, and the kitchen smelled of it. He went through the rest of the minutes. Farquharson's men had taken four hundred and twelve fish on the south sands the season before. Gow's station was not in the returns. Gow's station was never in the returns.

The season opened. On the first Saturday he took the watch from the nail.

He had filed a small mark on the rim of the glass at twelve seconds, the week before, with the edge of Jean's nail file. It had taken him an evening and he had nearly cracked the glass. Now the first part of the minute ran from the top to the mark, and the rest of the minute went on round.

The second hand was at forty-one.

He stood by the window in his shirt with the watch in his hand. Out past the chimneys the firth was grey and flat and the tide would be making on the south sands in an hour, and in an hour and a half it would be over the foot of Gow's poles, and he did not know whether the leaders were up or down. He could not know. He was not supposed to. He had arranged it so.

It was a good morning for a ride. The knee was quiet. He thought about the eleven miles, and the bicycle in the shed with the tyres he had put on in the winter, and Gow on the ladder saying it would be better, though.

If he went now, having looked, it would not be one in five. Gow would not know it this Sunday. He would know it by August, in the Monday prices, and lift oftener, and the rides would find poles, and each pole would cost a pound. It would all come back round to where it was.

Jean came in with the kettle.

"Two?" she said.

"Two."

He hung the watch back on its nail. The second hand went round past the mark at twelve, and round again, and did not stop there.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, prīdiē Kalendās Octōbrēs (30 September 2026), ā Iōhanne Nash per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

John Nash, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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