Chapter Seven. Fishing
The next morning, after a simple breakfast, we tidied the boat. Then we were ready to leave. Harris offered to steer. I wasn't happy with this idea. I thought I should have a rest, not Harris. I didn't think that we shared the work very well. I was sure I was doing more than the other two. I always think this.
You mustn't get the wrong idea: I like work. I could look at it all day. I collect work; my study at home is full of it. I take care of it too. I've had some for years. But I don't like to have too much work; other people need some too. George says I shouldn't worry; I have much less than I think.
Everyone on a boat thinks they do more work than the others. Harris thought so and George too.
‘Have you ever seen George do any work?' Harris asked me.
‘No, I can't say that I have,' I agreed. ‘Certainly not on this trip.'
‘How do you know?' George answered him. ‘You've slept most of the time. Isn't that right, J.?'
It was true. Harris certainly slept a lot.
‘Ha! I've done more work than J. anyway!' Harris said.
‘It's impossible to do less,' George answered. After all my hard work!
Harris and George finally agreed to row to Reading.
Older boatmen like to help young fellows. So they sit and relax, sometimes even sleep, while the younger men practise rowing. They tell them stories too, like ‘last year we rowed twice as far in half the time'. When we were younger we believed all the stories we were told. Today's young men are different: they laugh in your face.
We chatted about boats.
‘I'd like to try punting,' George said. It isn't easy to do it well. I remember a friend who had an accident. I was with him. It was his first time but he learnt quickly. He stood at one end of the boat and pushed the pole into the water, then walked to the other end and pushed it in again. He began to think it was easy and became less careful. He started looking at the view and, unfortunately, walked off the end of the boat. There he was, at the top of the pole. It was slowly sinking into the water. I couldn't help him because we didn't have a second pole. It was really quite funny to watch. When the pole went under completely, he swam to the riverbank and climbed out. I laughed. But I soon stopped. I was on a boat in the middle of the river without a pole!
I was quite angry with my friend now. People really should think before they walk off the end of a boat! The boat was going down the river. I could do nothing to stop it. I saw two old men fishing in front of me. They saw me too.
‘Move out of the way! You're going to hit us!' they shouted.
‘I can't! I haven't got a pole!' I shouted back. They were quick.
‘Alright, don't worry! We'll get you.' And, fortunately, they did. They gave me a pole too.
The first time I went punting was with three friends. I went to the river early to practise before they arrived. But all the boats were taken so I sat down to wait. I was surprised to see a man on a boat with the same jacket and hat as me. It was his first time too, clearly. He didn't know what to do. Every time he pushed the pole into the water something different happened. Sometimes the boat went one direction, sometimes another. Sometimes it went round and round. The man became quite angry. People stopped and watched.
Then my friends arrived on the other side of the river. They saw him and started to watch too. Soon they began laughing and shouting things at him. I didn't think it was very polite to shout at a stranger like that. Then I understood. They couldn't see his face and thought he was me! I decided to go behind a tree and watch the show.
They called him all kinds of names and tried to be funny. They were really enjoying themselves! And then he turned round and they saw he wasn't me. Oh, their faces! They changed immediately! I laughed now.
‘We're sorry,' they said. ‘We thought you were a friend.'
‘Something like that happened to me once at the sea,' Harris said. ‘I was swimming. A man jumped on me and held me under the water. He was a big strong fellow and I thought I was drowning. Then he let me go. He was laughing like a fool when I came up but he soon stopped. He thought I was a friend of his too, you see.'
We met some friends at Reading lock. They had a steam-launch. They agreed to pull us up the river for a few miles. This was much more pleasant than rowing. I think it's the best way to travel. The only
problem was the number of small boats that were in our path. I was quite angry with them. We couldn't go fast. You can shout at them, but do they move? No! They stay in the middle of the river. I think we should run them down.
My friends left us about ten miles past Reading, not far from Streatley.
Harris thought that I should row. I didn't see why but I finally agreed. A few minutes later, George saw something floating in the water. It was a dead woman. She was probably quite young really but her face was old. Poor people are often old before their time. Some men on the riverbank saw the body too. They came down to the water to get it out it. We learnt her story later. She killed herself. She was a poor woman who came to a sad end.
We stopped at Streatley; it's a pretty place. The weather was good so we decided to have lunch in a pub there. Montmorency was very pleased to be off the boat. In the end, we stayed at Streatley for another two days.
We gave a woman our clothes to wash. George's idea about washing them in the river was a bad mistake. It was impossible to wear them afterwards. It's true to say that the river was cleaner than our clothes. We paid the woman three times the normal price because it took three days to wash them.
Streatley is a good place for fishing. There are a lot of fish in the river here. You can see them easily but you can't catch them. They are too clever.
I'm not a good fisherman. I tried in the past and was quite pleased with myself. But I didn't have the most important thing: imagination.
Yes, you need real imagination. It's easy to tell a lie: anyone can do it. But it's hard to tell one well, with details that people believe immediately. Only a good fisherman can do that.
He sits quietly while the young men talk about the fish they've caught. Then he says: ‘I have a story but I won't tell it. Nobody will believe it.' Then he waits a little and begins his story. At the end everyone believes him.
I knew a young man who didn't like telling lies. So he decided only to add an extra twenty-five percent to the number of fish he caught.
‘If I catch forty fish, I'll say I have caught fifty. But no more. Lies are bad,' he told me. But he had a problem: he never caught more than three fish. So it was impossible to add twenty-five percent. He tried thirty-three percent instead and then decided it was easier to double the number.
But he wasn't happy. None of the other fishermen believed he only doubled the number. So why do it? He finally found the answer. He started with the number ten and added ten more for each fish he caught.
It was a good plan. People even talked about all fishermen using this way of counting fish. But the older men weren't happy about it. They thought twenty was a better number.
If you're on the river and have time, go to a little village pub and listen to the fishermen's stories.
On the second evening George, Montmorency and I went for a walk and stopped at a pub on the way back. An old fisherman was sitting at a table, smoking a pipe. We talked with him a little about the weather.
We looked round the room and saw a large fish. It was in a glass box on the wall above the fire. The old man saw us looking at it.
‘Ah! That's a fine fish, that one,' he said. I agreed.
‘How much does it weigh, do you think?' George asked.
‘Eighteen pounds' the old man said. ‘I caught it nearly sixteen years ago. Near the bridge, it was.' He then told us the story, said goodnight and left.
We were still looking at the fish when another man came in. For fun, we asked about the fish.
‘I caught that fellow nearly five years ago,' he said.
‘Really?' George said.
‘Yes. It wasn't easy, I can tell you. It weighed twenty-six pounds.' He told us his story, said goodnight and left too.
Then a man came in and sat quietly in the corner. He didn't speak. George turned round to him.
‘Excuse me, we're strangers here. Could you possibly tell us how you caught that fish?' The man was surprised.
‘How did you know that I caught it?' he asked.
‘Oh, we were sure of it!' George answered. The man was pleased. So he told us his story and the fish now weighed thirty-four pounds! Then he said goodnight and left too.
The landlord came in then. We told him all the fishermen's stories and we laughed together.
‘Do you think a man catches a fish like that and gives it to someone else?' he asked. ‘Of course he doesn't! No, I caught it myself.' Then he told us the true story. It started like this: ‘I was a boy at the time. Still at school, but I didn't go to school that day. No, I decided to go fishing.
And I was lucky, really lucky.' A customer came into the other room and he went to serve him.
George was really interested in the fish and wanted to go closer. He took a chair, put it against the wall and stood on it. He was looking at the fish when he fell. He grabbed the glass case and it fell too. Crash! I ran to help him.
‘Are you alright, George?' I asked. ‘I hope you haven't hurt the fish,' I added.
‘Me too!' he said and looked down.
‘Oh no! Look at it!' he said. I looked. There was glass everywhere. And fish everywhere! At least a thousand pieces of it! It wasn't a real fish at all!
