Heavy Weather, by Raymond Hebden

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

In this novel, set in 1961, a young deckhand describes his first trips on a Hull fishing trawler.

Cookie Coultas worked in a galley the size of a wardrobe, and he filled most of it himself. When the Arctic Kestrel rolled, he rolled with her, humming hymns, one hand braced on the stove and the other stirring a pan of stew so thick you could have stood a marlinspike up in it.

‘Never trust a cook who’s thin,’ he told me on my first trip, slapping his stomach. ‘Means he doesn’t eat his own grub.’

He cooked for twenty men in weather that threw the plates off the table. He tied the pans down with string, sang louder when the waves hit, and once caught a falling kettle by its handle without spilling a drop, then took a bow to nobody. His bread was famous from Hull to Bear Island. His pastry was famous too, but for a different reason: one of the deckhands swore he had mended a boot with it.

He had his rules. No whistling in the galley. Never turn a loaf upside down. Never say the word ‘pig’ at sea. When I broke the third rule by accident, he went pale, threw a pinch of salt over his shoulder and refused to speak to me until supper.

But that night, when I was sick in the scuppers and too cold to eat, he brought me tea with three sugars and a slice of bread still warm from the oven, and sat with me without saying anything at all.

What impressions does the writer create of Cookie Coultas?

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.