Free The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory

were to meet him, by some absurd coincidence, in the harbour car park in Caernarfon? I was used to wearing a jacket and tie for school: here I was, parking a smelly van on the quayside, stepping out in tattered jeans and Wellington boots, in such an ancient pullover that big holes had appeared under both arms in spite of Ann’s repeated attention, in a waterproof spotted with fish scales and containing in one pocket the corpse of a forgotten flatfish; to crown the effect of such scruffy clothing, on opening up the back of the van, a dangerous, black villain of a bird would spring out, a cross between a raven and a pelican but most closely resembling a vampire bat (redolent of fish). And the hunt for food: taking the bird with its leash and collar, filling a bag with fresh fish, while other people stood stupidly in a supermarket queue. My beard had improved, I thought: instead of being closely razored under my chin and on my cheeks, I had left it to crawl over my throat and disappear below my ears. The fingernails, which were once so immaculately filed and cleaned, were now neglected. With a frown, I remembered that I had hardly added to my notes for the book during the past week, something I should return to when the business of Christmas and the New Year was over. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the raffish company of the cormorant.
    Leaving the boxes of shopping in the van, once more I walked the bird from the castle, over the bridge and down to the beach. It was high tide. There was a choppy sea driving into the Straits, tossing its white crests a hundred yards from the shore and spitting spray when the waves ran against the wooden piles of the jetty. The wind forced the seas along, threw the taste of salt into my beard. I licked my lips and fastened my jacket. It was a raw afternoon. The beach was deserted and the sea wall was empty of pedestrians and cyclists. Nevertheless, Archie braced itself in the breeze, allowing its wings to fall partly open and flutter. The bird seemed as eager as ever to get into the water, so I checked the knot around its ankle and fitted the collar. My hands were a little blue already. I nudged the cormorant away with my boot, unwinding all the rope until it lay around my feet in the grey boulders. Then I jammed my hands deep into pockets, my shoulders hunched against the cold. To me, the sea looked utterly uninviting: it was whipped to a brown cream, it was angry, unhealthy, the white spume scratched from the surface and spent in the bitterness of the afternoon. But Archie set off. The line uncoiled itself. The cormorant looked lower in the water than usual, lost sometimes in the chop and spray. Splendid . . . the specialist hunter unperturbed by the conditions, a pitiless mercenary sent into the field. There was something so icily efficient about the bird, cutting through the waves on a day when the gulls and the crows had sought the shelter of the castle walls. It went down, disappeared from sight. The rope paid out.
    ‘Good boy, Archie. Do your stuff . .
    I turned away from the water, to have my back to the wind. There was nobody walking, it was too cold. The wind tugged at my trouser legs and blew up the hair on the back of my head.
    ‘Bloody hell . .
    I was thinking of the cosy cottage living-room, the log fire, the scent of the Christmas tree and the wood smoke. There would not be much fishing today, however much Archie was enjoying it. Just a few dabs, enough to thicken up yesterday’s soup, and some eels for the hunter. I turned to the sea again, squinting into the wind. I could not see the bird.
    ‘Come on, come on, it’s freezing out here . .
    But I knew it would be murky below the surface, a maelstrom of mud and sand, an underwater haboob. At any moment, Archie would reappear, after an unsuccessful chase. Maybe today there would be no dabs. I would at least have exercised the bird, it would have to eat cat food when we got home. No sign of Archie. The rope was slack about my feet. I