1 JANUARY 1977, Page 40

Border incident

David Pownall

They were both, by nature, competitive men.

Most of the dreariness they were experiencing in retirement was caused by the lack of conflict and struggle. Only in fishing did some of the flavour of life return.

They had never spoken. Facing each other across the River Finn in high or low water, they had remained silent. There was plenty to look at in that stretch of country. They had no need of each other. No need they would admit. The only words were those which were directed at the big brown trout.

This monster specimen's territory was a pool in the River Finn. The rocky bed held many holes and hiding-places. From Castlederg to Ballybofey anglers spoke of this trout and told tales of the day that they had tried to catch it. , . always nearly succeeding.

William was tight:lipped about his quest. Always taciturn, his own man, he was partially ashamed of his relentless pursuit of the fish. His enemy on the other side, the long, lugubrious Liam, was less reserved.

He had attempted to talk to William via his address to the great fish.

Forthrightness in his personal relations had never been a strong point of Liam's. His failure to achieve promotion in the hierarchy of the dye works at Strabane was attributable to this factor in his personality. Why i

William had failed n equal measure in the same test—a lifetime of employment at the smoking, rainbow-encrusted tan k-housewas the opposite. He had to face every man and every situation head-on. In this posture he was the victim of frequent collision.

'Will you come to me?' Liam had crooned over the water, past the concentric ripples of the rising big-nosed brownie. For two hours in that long summer twilight he had kept talking, not wanting to stop, having started. The fish ignored him and his old rival did likewise, grey eyes fixed ahead, only moving to follow the trajectory of his fly.

'Well you're an ignorant creature,' Liam had murmured after his last long cast. 'Which hardly needs saying to a Catholic cold-blooded vertebrate like yourself.'

October.

In the last week of the season there were few fishermen left on the Finn as the weather was cold and squally. In that week it was announced that an underground aqueduct would be constructed from the River Finn to a new reservoir near Mourne Beg. The work would start after Christmas and continue for two years, it being a substantial project requiring the mining of a seven-mile tunnel. Some of the fishermen returned and tried again.

The site of the tunnel entrance was to be the pool of the big brown trout.

Rain came, then sleet. High winds streamed over Donegal from the cold Atlantic. The last fishermen packed up and went home with what small catches they had made. The Finn rose; red water came down. Flies became invisible and too light for the plunging current. Letters appeared in the newspapers from all the secretaries of all the angling associations. A public inquiry was called for and the call ignored both in Dublin and Belfast as both authorities were involved i vi the scheme. Isobars and government conspired.

It was spinning weather.

William was in a fury. He drank more: butted his way into as many arguments with his wife and few friends as he could. And whatever time he chose, with time running out, he would find his enemy on the opposite bank of the doomed pool, rod working, spinner flashing along the dark water. Side by side, the river in between, they combed the coloured flow. William lost his best barspoons. Liam lost his rubber minnow Mep,

the only one in the county. Down the swollen river came branches, detritus. When the wind dropped they could hear the boulders rumbling along the river bed. Liam chattered to himself with cold, not even trying to make himself heard.

They caught fish in equal quantities. Halfpounders. Small fry. Even the occasional salmon did not excite them. Both men wanted the big brownie. Through clenched teeth they cursed each other, the weather and the future when their river and their dream would be siphoned away to an underground home, The final weekend of the season arrived. The big trout remained uncaught.

William and Liam came face to face in Rafferty's Bar, Strabane, This time the Finn was not between them, only bare boards. That morning they had fished through the first three hours of dawn; shifting position, anxious to be as far apart as possible. Both men were tired and wind-reddened and the drink they took worked quickly. They were both in the company of friends and everyone knew of the rivalry between the two old men --so it became the fulcrum or their chat.

It had always been an inarticulate dislike. In fact William and Liam had often been aware of strange urges towards each other which were not clearly aggressive. It was a nervous, insecure, irrational business. That trouble would actually break out into physical reality had always been a fear, but a relished fear. Each fancied his chances.

Now, with drink inside them, they allowed their friends to tempt the old antagonism to the surface. It was done with good humour because the central issue was not a human thing. It was a fish; a catchable, manageable thing which lived and could die without hurtful repercussions.

William and Liam did not look at each other during the fun. Their eyes barely touched before sliding away in long glances to wall decorations or windows. Smiles they managed, and covert squaring of their shoulders inside their jackets. Their friends pursued their joke throughout the lunchtime session until the bet made its inevitable appearance and was clinched with the brightness of eye and loudness of voice which signifies a great life-challenge. The bet mattered. It mattered down to the roots of what the two men had left in this world, down'to those deep roots.

'A hundred,' William said firmly, his hand Palm-down on the table.

'A hundred it is,' Liam averred, 'and no t turning back.'

will not be turning back.'

'Then neither will I.'

After a momentary hesitation they shook hands.

As the company spilled out into the street in the late afternoon there were cumulus clouds piling up in the west and the sun was masked.

On that Monday evening, in the quiet hour as the day turned, Liam and William sat opposite each other on the banks of the Finn and watched the water. It was less turbulent now and clearing, but still only good for spinning. They were both hoping for a sign from the fish; some movement in a tranquil sidewater or a leap. Around them the country was mellowing, changing from rich summer greens to more muted colours. Leaves floated over still surfaces and eddies, sending false messages and alarms. It was a difficult river to read under these conditions.

William struggled with ripple, white water, swirl and the glass of calm runs, trying to interpret the random motions.

What broke that flow? What brought about that turbulence?

Kingfisher? Water-rat ? Declining dragonfly? Or him?

In a long, smooth glide the trout rose with its signal. Waves radiated from the spot in Pure geometry and were then bent by the river's flow, sagging, breaking, dispersing. William groaned softly in the back of his throat and cast his lure to the other side of the fading circles, drawing it across.

No check, no stop. The lure flowed through the warped letter 0, revolving sadly.

Liam's dry laugh crossed the river.

When William looked up, amazed at his opponent's audacity, he saw Liam standing with his rod at his side. Over his long face was a lop-sided smile.

'Well, you'll need God to guide you if you keep casting like that,' he called. 'You dropped it in the water with too much of a splash. Now avoid the splash if you can. Any undue disturbance will frighten him out of his normal residence. We don't want him shifting downstream now, do we?'

William gripped his rod and checked the swinging lure with his free hand, letting the treble hooks stick into his palm in his astonished rage.

'Are you talking to me?' he managed to choke. 'To me ? To me ?'

'lam,' Liam replied, switching his gaze to a nearby tree and directing his words at that so they, boomeranging, curved round the trunk and approached William from the rear.

'You can shut up then!' William roared.

'Now you're nervous of losing a hundred pounds,' chuckled Liam via a flock of starlings and an incipient moon. 'Refrain from shouting so close to the water. His honour down there will pick up the vibrations.'

William lunged forward, entering the river, his face beetroot-red. As he waded across, staggering over the slippery stones in the bed, Liam retreated and delivered his tormenting comments from further up the bank.

Pausing with the water up to his hips, William realised that he had been deliberately provoked.

Tactics.

As old as the hills.

Turning his back on the chanting Protestant he waded back to his side and resumed fishing.

They forgot food.

They forgot rest.

Salm° truttu fad° with his red and silver, blue and brown beauty became the sole object of their desire.

Liam spoke to him through rock and treeroot, sky and earth, light and dark. The Finn became his torrent of words, a home for the great trout.

William faced the ghost he could not see, only sense, and bade him come up fighting.

• They entered the last night of the last day of the season, still empty-handed except for fish of no consequence, all of which had been hurled back.

From a deep hole in a tributary stream a mile away the great brownie peered, seeing no light above, only the swarming silk undetside of the water which was gently in motion, well protected by a jaw of rocks against the quickening current. The fish had moved there a week ago, tired of the endless assaults on its territory. Its food, the smaller fish, had been caught or scooted away up or downstream to escape the derrick-lines of rods, the constant combing and cunning. In the stony, single-minded nature of the great fish there had appeared a contentment which was akin to peace.

In the last hour before midnight the gale struck the valley of the Finn with a full accompaniment of sound. The low hills deflected little of the roaring sea-wind and the rain hammered down in long columns, nails.

Exhausted, almost sightless, William and Liam clung onto the bank, refusing to leave until the time was up. When they cast it was into darkness and they lost lure after lure, broke line after line.

'Come out and fight you bastard!' William shouted into the face of the storm, there being no other living thing to butt and abuse. 'Take that, take that ..

His rod cut the turbulent air, swish lost, tip invisible.

'God how you try my patience,' Liam wept, his cracking muscles heaving the lure forward again on another blasted parabola. 'I'll be the death of you.'

On the other side William stiffened, raised his rod, sighed. Cursing he relaxed his reel, thinking he was snagged again.

The rod bent, trembled. What was on the other end was not fixed. It was running, fighting. With a hoarse cry of delight he sank the rod-butt into his abdomen and heaved upwards, overjoyed at the great threshing weight on the other end. He had it ! Keeping the tension on the line he advanced into the water, sensing the power of the fish. He prayed that it was not a salmon. It must be the big brown. Immense surges of strength hit the drum of his reel, dragging William further into the river. It was not tiring. Step by step he went in, seeking the flash in the dark storm.

Liam talked and talked to the only thing he could see.

The line flying from his bent rod.

Will you come to me?' he sang, up to his waist in the water. 'I've got you now.'

The storm lulled. The clOuds parted and an Irish moon poured down its light.

In the middle of the River Finn, lure locked with lure, the old deceivers faced each other, trying to guess which one might find the strength to smile first.