(Loosely based on Grimm’s The Fisherman & His Wife)
Although life by the sea might appear to be idyllic, it is not without its problems of season and poverty, and there was once a poor fisherman who lived with his long suffering wife in a caravan on the cliff tops that rise up from Cornwall’s craggy southern coastline. Apart from a few casual jobs that he managed to get during the summer season, when Britain’s residential masses poured out of their suburban homes to spend two weeks basking in the melange of weather systems that blow in across the great western seas, he spent most of the year fishing from beaches and rocky breakwaters, eking out a meagre living by selling sea bass to local restaurants and pubs.
Towards the end of another summer of variable weather, with the seasonal work drying up, the fisherman went down to his favourite spot on the beach and cast out his lines, settling down in a rocky hollow to wait for the bounty of the oceans to come his way. He spent a happy hour musing on the vagaries of fortune and on his wife’s incessant drive to better her lot by putting up new net curtains and buying things in the end of season sales, before, all of a sudden, the line went taught and his float was dragged under the waves and out of sight.
The fisherman played out the reel, letting the fish take enough line so that it wouldn’t break and then he hauled and spun for all he was worth. It was, quite possibly, the biggest fish he had ever landed and was sure to be worth a pretty penny. He worked as diligently and as carefully as he could so as not to lose his prize. Eventually, after much travail and having expended a great deal of energy and sweat, the fisherman finally caught sight of the great fish he hoped to land. He was stunned to see that holding on to his line for dear life was a soaked, bedraggled and half drowned man in sailing gear. The fisherman planted his rod into the sand, wedged it fast with some rocks and waded out into the surf to rescue the poor unfortunate from the heavy swell and from a wind that whipped the spray up and around his ears.
“Please…help…me”, gurgled the waterlogged tourist as he finally managed to grab hold of the fisherman’s coat sleeves, and without a moment’s hesitation the fisherman dragged the man to safety on the beach. Having checked that there were no broken bones, the fisherman dashed up to an ice cream kiosk at the head of the beach, borrowed a mobile phone and called for an ambulance. Then he went back to the stricken man and tended to him with great care until the rescue services arrived.
As the half-drowned man was placed onto a stretcher he placed a soggy but readable card into the fisherman’s trembling hand and whispered, “My name is on the card. I’m in catering and if ever you should need anything at all just call me. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. You’ve saved my life”.
The local paper took pictures of their resident hero and by the time that the fisherman got home to his caravan, his wife had heard all about her brave husband’s stirring deeds that afternoon on the radio. She pressed him to tell her everything, which he did, including the part where the poor unfortunate man had promised to remember them if they ever needed help.
“Did you ask him for anything?” said the fisherman’s wife.
“No, not at the time, I didn’t think it was right”, replied her husband, “and anyway, I wouldn’t know what to ask for”.
“Typical bloody man”, said his wife, as she looked the now dry business card over for the umpteenth time. “You can start by calling this number and asking him if he could help us to get a proper little cottage in the village. This caravan stinks and it leaks and winter’s coming on”.
The fisherman walked the half-mile to the nearest telephone box and called the number on the card. The phone rang a few times and was answered by the businessman’s wife, who, on hearing that it was the fisherman who was calling, immediately promised him that she and her husband would sort this small thing out.
“After all”, she said, “everyone should have somewhere warm and dry to live and it’s such a small thing to do to repay your bravery and your kindness”.
Within a month the paperwork was done, the local council searches were completed and contracts were signed. Well before the final onset of winter’s driving rains and howling gales, the fisherman and his wife were snugly settled into their new cottage home, complete with brand new furniture, a proper telephone line and a lovely new kitchen. The cottage even had a pretty little courtyard garden with a greenhouse in one corner so that the fisherman could supplement the family diet by growing a few vegetables and fruits in the spring.
The fisherman remarked to his wife as he carried her over the threshold of their first real house, “Well, love, this is where true happiness begins”.
She looked at him quizzically for a moment before replying, “We’ll see”.
That winter was full of beating winds and horizontal rain. The seas towered above the bunkered land in their grey majesty, and the couple, blessed for the first time with central heating, lived as well as they had ever done.
The fisherman thought the world was a beautiful, a perfect place, until early on a bright spring morning his wife turned to him and said, “You can’t swing a cat in this place. It’s really getting me down, and as for the garden, well, it’s no more than a yard. It reminds me of the sort of place my grandmother used to live in. What we need, especially if we’re going to have a family, is a nice three bedroom semi-detached house with a proper garden. Call your mate and tell him I’m in the family way and we need something bigger”.
“Darling, darling”, exclaimed the fisherman, “that’s wonderful news, I had no idea. But do you really think I should ask our friend again. I mean, he was very kind but we can’t keep asking for more. The cottage is snug and warm and we’ve got two bedrooms, couldn’t we make do here?”
“Rubbish!”, said his wife. “You saved his life and he can’t put a price on that. Pick up the phone and ask him”.
Reluctantly the fisherman telephoned the businessman again and this time he got straight through. He explained that his wife was expecting and that, although they appreciated his kind gesture, the cottage was really a bit small for a growing family. He apologised but asked nonetheless for a three bedroom semi-detached house with a garden and a swing.
“Of course”, said the businessman. “I understand. I’ve got a couple of kids myself and I know how it is, never enough space for the nappies and the toys, and your wife will be getting anxious about her little nestlings. Leave it with me. After all you did, how could I possibly refuse?”
To make things run as smoothly as he could, the businessman bought the cottage from the couple, which, given that they never had a mortgage in the first place, meant that they pocketed a tidy little sum. Then he made them a gift of a beautifully decorated, modern semi detached house on a quiet new estate in a local seaside town. The house had the latest in modern kitchen appliances, a brand new corner bathroom suite, fitted wardrobes in all three bedrooms, and a lovely garden in which the businessman had a swing, a climbing frame and a sand pit installed. Within a month, and with late spring in full bud, the couple took possession of their brand new home, invested some of their newly acquired cash in a sporty little hatchback car, and paid for a family membership at a local country club and gymnasium.
Strangely, the fisherman’s wife did not suffer from morning sickness, nor did she eat for two, gain weight or find cute little knitted bootees of any interest whatsoever. It turned out that she had misread the results of the pregnancy testing kit, and although disappointed, she told her husband that they should keep practising in the bedroom of a Sunday morning. In the meantime she spent a great deal of her time at the country club and gymnasium, toning her muscles, keeping her figure in trim and joining a number of other upwardly mobile wives for coffee mornings, hair appointments and tennis lessons.
Towards the end of summer, on a balmy Sunday afternoon with the barbecue embers glowing in a corner of the garden, the fisherman raised a glass of sparkling Chablis to his wife and said, “Darling, what a life. There’s money in the bank, we’ve got a lovely house, and I’ve finally been able to afford the best fishing rods that money can buy. We couldn’t be happier, could we?”
His wife lay back on her sun lounger, shut her eyes and murmured, “No dear, probably not”.
The next morning the fisherman’s wife woke up early. She had not slept very well, her head being full of ideas and schemes, and so, as the sunlight streamed in through the bedroom window, she nudged her husband awake with her elbow. “Come on, wake up, I’ve got something to say”.
He turned over slowly and opened one eye, feeling that slight dullness around the edge of his thought processes that suggested that maybe he had supped one glass too many the night before. Once he was able to focus he realised that his wife had that look on her face that signified trouble, not of the ‘You Bastard’ variety, but of the ‘I think we should’ variety. He sat bolt upright in bed and waited.
“Now that I’ve finally got your attention”, she said, “I want to discuss our present living arrangements. Ever since we joined the country club, I’ve had to put up with the airs and bloody graces of all those other women. I don’t mind that you don’t go to work, in fact I like it, but how will we ever afford one of those big, new, detached five bedroom houses with automatic gates like the ones at Seaview Park? How will we ever be able to afford brand new cabriolets and a swimming pool?”
“Are you saying you want me to get a job?” asked her husband after a moment or two casting his line out amongst his early morning thoughts.
“No, dear, I’m not. I think it would be much better if we asked our mutual friend for bit more help. I mean, if he buys this house from us and gives us a lovely new executive home, we’ll be able to put one over on those bitches at the club, won’t we. We’ll be the only ones out of all of them who have independent means”.
“You’ve got to be joking”, replied her appalled husband. “I can’t ask him for another house. It’s just wrong. No, I won’t do it”.
Breakfast was a frosty affair and the fisherman decided that this was one of those times when absence would definitely make the heart grow fonder. He packed up his rods and his brand new multi-compartment bait box, loaded them into the back of the car and spent the rest of the day sitting on the beach waiting for the fish to start biting and for his wife to stop snapping. He didn’t get home until dusk had fallen and was very surprised to find a beautiful candlelit dinner waiting for him, a dinner that was suffused with the sound of romantic strings and a look in his wife’s eyes that meant that he would be getting very little sleep that night.
Unfortunately, the mood was broken when, over a large cognac, his wife revealed that she had phoned their mutual friend, had told him about her husband’s terminal illness and had persuaded him to make her poor spouse’s final year or two truly comfortable. The fisherman was disgusted with his wife’s behaviour, until, with the screaming and shouting turning into the inevitable sobbing and sniffing that always closed down their arguments, she explained just how much their current house was worth and what that meant in terms of their future lifestyle.
Before the autumn leaves started to fall, the happy couple had moved once again, this time to the gated residential community called Seaview Park, which stood in beautifully landscaped surroundings on the fringe of the lovely, picturesque Cornish village of Fowey. They also spent just enough of their newly banked cash to park two matching cabriolets on their substantial, shingled driveway.
The only dark cloud on their horizon was a note from their benefactor that had been pinned to a bottle of champagne that awaited them on the day of their arrival in their new home, offering his sincerest condolences on the sad news about the fisherman’s health and saying that he would consider it an honour if they would invite him to the funeral, long may that day be postponed.
Apart from the discomfort caused by the occasional call from their friend to enquire on the fisherman’s health, the couple thoroughly enjoyed their new life embedded in one of the higher strata of the aspirational middle class cliff face. Without a mortgage to worry about, the funds that they had received from the sale of their previous, modest abode provided them with a solid foundation on which to base their daily activities. The fisherman still caught sea bass when time permitted and he still sold them on, although usually to a higher class of establishment nowadays. His wife embellished her life considerably with good quality clothes and jewellery, buffing up her ego and fluffing her aura so much that she became a leading light in the social whirl at the country club. She even took up golf to while away the hours when her husband was otherwise engaged with lines, reels and lures.
The fisherman’s was a happy soul and he thanked his lucky stars for the gift that they had made to him of a strong and purposeful wife. Even in those far off days in the caravan, she had known how to manage their affairs, limited though they may have been back then, and he was quite content to leave the day to day nitty-gritty of bills and services in her capable hands. As long as he had enough cash in his pocket to put petrol in his rather sparkly cabriolet and to fund his passion for angling, he simply didn’t have a care in the world, and so things progressed for nearly two years until his wife made an announcement over breakfast one morning.
“Have you seen the local paper this week?” she asked.
“No, not yet”, replied her husband.
“There’s an interesting feature on the front page. Our mutual friend is opening a fish processing factory just down the road in St Austell, which might come in handy now that we’ve run out of cash”.
“I beg your pardon”, said the fisherman. “What do you mean, we’ve run out of cash?”
“All gone”, said his wife. “I don’t know how you expect us to manage with all of that expensive fishing gear you keep buying. Anyway, I was thinking, maybe we should ask him to give you a job. Factory Manager would do nicely”.
“But I don’t know anything about fish factories. Catching the odd bass is one thing, but I’ve never managed anything other than my own time, and besides, he’s hardly going to take me on in my current state of health, is he!”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Tell him a faith healer or something has cured you. It’s a miracle, heavens be praised!”
“I really don’t want a job…”
His wife looked at him sternly, crossing her arms and assuming a position where her body language needed no translations. “Ask him…”
Reluctantly and with a heavy heart, the fisherman telephoned the businessman and they arranged to meet to discuss the possibility of the fisherman joining this new business venture. The truth of the matter, however, was that the businessman wanted to see for himself just how marvellous his saviour’s recovery had been. According to the man’s wife he had been knocking on death’s door for months now and it was quite amazing to think that he was fit and well once again.
During the telephone call the businessman decided not to remark on the fact that he had seen the fisherman sitting on the beach with his rods and his lines on more than one occasion during his recent trips down to the south coast to seal the deal on his new factory with the local council planning authorities. He also decided that it would be better to deal with the matter of his friend’s phantom offspring face to face.
On the businessman’s next trip down to review progress on the building of his new factory, the two men met for a pie and a pint in the local village pub. After exchanging some pleasantries and reliving that fateful afternoon once again, entertaining all of the drinkers in the place for a good half hour, the two men got down to business.
“So”, said the businessman, “you’re interested in working for me at the factory?”
“Oh, absolutely”, replied the fisherman. “My wife thought that with my extensive experience around fish you should make me your factory manager. She wants…I want fifty-thousand a year and six weeks holiday, plus healthcare and gym membership for me and my family”.
“Very reasonable for someone qualified to take on that sort of responsibility. When can you start?”
“A month or two, after the summer, probably”, replied the fisherman nervously.
It all seemed to be going too easily and although they appeared to be getting on famously, there was something in the businessman’s eyes that seemed to take all of the warmth and cheer out of the day. At the end of the meal the two men said their goodbyes to the landlord and headed for the car park, the businessman promising to drop his friend a line shortly to confirm the details discussed.
As his friend and benefactor walked over to a luxuriously large red saloon, the fisherman stood quite still in the middle of the car park and stared open mouthed at the space where he had parked his car. It was gone. He rushed over to his friend’s car and tapped on the smoked glass windows, gesticulating wildly at the vacant spot where his lovely sparkling convertible had been standing.
“Gone…stolen…car”, he stammered.
“Oh, don’t worry about that”, said the businessman. “Hop in and I’ll run you home. We can sort everything out there. It’s always happening these days, especially with popular models like yours”.
The fisherman sat in stunned silence as they drove towards his fine executive home at Seaview Park. He was shocked and hurt, feeling decidedly violated and dirty and angry. He was also deeply impressed by the sheer opulence on display inside his friend’s sumptuous motor car and in between fits of pique about the riff-raff who walked today’s streets, he wondered whether he could get a car like this as a perk of his new job.
They drove up the hill that led to the big electric gates at the entrance to Seaview Park just in time to see a large removals lorry pulling out of the estate followed by a ranting, screaming harridan dragging behind her a couple of suitcases and an old and battered fishing rod. In the background two large looking gentlemen in suits checked a clipboard list, closed the front door to one of the houses and put the keys into a black leather briefcase.
The businessman stopped his car, told the fisherman to wait and with the help of the two suited gentlemen, he put the screaming woman’s suitcases in the boot and opened one of the rear passenger doors for her so that she could get in.
“You bast…”, was all that she managed to yell at him before one of the suited gentlemen clamped his hand firmly over her mouth and bundled her onto the back seat. The two minders then climbed in and sat on top of her, remaining seated upon the squirming woman all the way to their final destination. The fisherman stared alternately at the businessman, at his very big and burly associates and then down at his prostrate but still struggling wife.
After twenty minutes of driving, during which the fisherman’s wife gradually lost the will to fight and bawl, the car pulled up at the head of the cliffs that rose up above the beach where the fisherman, his wife and their mutual friend had first bumped into one another. The newly homeless couple were manhandled out of the car without a further word being said by anyone and left standing on the loose stones and thinly grassed topsoil at the top of the cliff where they had once lived a spare and shabby life in a caravan. The businessman put a sealed envelope into the fisherman’s hands, climbed into his car and drove out of their lives forever more.
The envelope contained a short note, which the fisherman gave to his wife to read.
Dear…
You and your wife are thieving bastards. You lied about everything. When you’ve saved enough of your unemployment benefit, sue me. Now you’ve got what you really deserved all along.
Sincerely,
Your one time drowning friend.
In the bottom of the envelope was a set of keys to a brand new second hand caravan that was parked on top of the cliffs in exactly the same spot where the fisherman and his wife had lived before they had met their no longer mutual friend.