by Peter Rimmer
Because of the curve of Hope Cove, she could see her daughter’s face. Justine was yards away and down to her right. The girl had walked and sat. Walked and sat. Ever since breakfast.
There was a small boat in the cove with a red sail. A man was casting a line from the grassy slope of the cove, not far from the water’s edge. Mrs Voss stood back from the window, not to be seen. The picture was framed by the large sash window. She had raised the bottom half as far as it would go. Quietly, very quietly. The cup of tea on her chest of drawers had gone cold. She caught the smell of flowers wafting up from her garden. She could hear the gardener working at the back of the house. The sea in front of her was the English Channel. The village of Salcombe was near to them, a little way to the east along the coast.
The house at Hope Cove in Devonshire had been in her family for three generations. It was the place they came to for eight weeks every summer. Never at any other time. During the rest of the year, the servants had the house to themselves.
As a girl of six, Felicity Voss remembered wanting to be a servant so she would not have to go back to Surrey and the house in Epsom at the end of the summer holiday. Always she went. Always they came back as a family the next summer.
One day Felicity hoped the house would go to Justine. She knew the girl loved their summer house. It would all depend on who she married. The girl was in love, she thought. The look she saw down below spoke of love. Twice Justine had mentioned Harry Brigandshaw. The girl was agitated. The thought of Harry Brigandshaw taking her daughter to Rhodesia made Felicity’s heart stop. Her mouth went dry. She drew back from the open window.
Her daughter got up and began to walk around the garden. The gardener came into the frame made by the window. The small boat with the red sail had moved out of sight. The fisherman had a fish on the end of his line. Consumed by fear, she remembered Justine’s words each time they spoke of Harry Brigandshaw.
“He’s going home in September. To Africa. Wonderful Africa. He’s so wonderful, Mummy. He tells me his farm is beautiful. Thousands of acres. A river down the garden from the houses. He once had a pet giraffe, but it was killed by an Englishman for its head. It was terrible. I want to go to Africa.”
“Has he asked you?” she had said.
“Oh, no. We don’t even go out. He has a girlfriend called Brett. She is on the stage. Do you know, Brett’s younger than me? She says she’s twenty-five, but she’s not. I caught her out on the year she was born. I asked her if she was born before the Boer War and she said she wasn’t. Three years after the end. I think she told Harry she was twenty-five. So it’s not my age. He likes young girls. His wife was killed by a madman. Poor Harry. I wish he would ask me out. He’s so handsome.”
“You think he might?”
“Oh, no. He loves Brett… All the others want to take me out. Never Harry. I see him lots with Brett… What was it like to be in love?”
Felicity had the idea of staying in Devonshire until the end of September. When Harry went home and was no longer a threat to her peace of mind.
“When are we going back to London, Mummy?”
“Next week, darling. On Tuesday.”
Down below the fisherman was casting his line. Justine had walked out of sight. A ship that had been on the horizon caught Felicity’s eye. The smoke was trailing the ship from the one funnel. Seagulls mocked her. Lonely in their cries. Mournful.
At that moment Felicity had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
“I’m too young for it all to be over.”
Down below, her gardener looked up to see who had spoken.
“Morning, ma’am. Lovely day.”
“Beautiful, Frank,” she called down.
She loved the spoken accent of Devonshire. He had been working in the garden all his life. He had a small cottage for life in the village. Felicity’s grandfather had bought the cottage. Frank was about her own age. One of his sons was now the garden boy. Learning to be a gardener. The house was practical as well as beautiful. All their fruit and vegetables came from their own garden. The fish came from the sea. The garden boy’s most important job at morning rise was to take out the rowing boat and catch fish. Fresh mackerel straight from the sea. He usually went out with his friends when the sea was kind. In the winter the skiffs stayed in the small boat shed at the bottom of the garden.
Justine had picked an armful of flowers and was coming back into the house.
When Felicity went downstairs, the flowers were beautifully arranged in a silver vase on the dining room table. The butterfly, a small cabbage white, flew from the vase of flowers and through the open window, out into the summer day.
Felicity walked from the house and down to the tiny beach before her daughter could see the tears in her eyes. The girl had looked so happy.
On the Monday before Felicity Voss was to take her daughter back to London with what she feared would bring the inevitable consequence of losing her, Len Merryl, Jenny Merryl’s brother, returned to England from his travels around the world, eighteen months older and wiser.
He had signed off the SS Runnymede at Liverpool at the end of its journey from Singapore. The name of the ship was grander than the old rust bucket that had brought them safely home. Only the captain knew how he had brought the four-thousand-ton, thirty-year-old ship around the Cape of Good Hope. They had anchored off Cape Town for three days in a raging southeaster, finally protected by the mass of Table Mountain from the hurricane-force wind gusting at eighty miles an hour.
On the fourth day, the waters of Table Bay were as calm as a millpond, the wind having lashed itself to a standstill during the night. Had Len known his sister was living in Rhodesia sixteen hundred miles to the north he would have considered breaking the contract with his ship. Instead, they had rested three days in Cape Town harbour before sailing on the last leg of their journey to Liverpool. They carried a cargo of raw rubber from the rubber plantations of Malaya.
“No wonder they call this place the Cape of Storms,” Ben Willard had said when they got off the ship in Cape Town. “Without the old mountain, the Runnymede would have been a goner. All of us down in Davy Jones’s locker. Be sure, Len, you have a good captain before signing on for a voyage… You want to go find a whore?”
Len had said no thank you, the memories of Cousin Mildred still vivid in his mind.
“I wonder if she’s all right?” he had said.
“Who, mate?”
“My cousin Mildred. Had a kid by a bloke killed in the war.”
“You in the war, Len? Never talked none on the ship.”
“Tail end. Never saw no action.”
“Merchant navy kept me out of the army. Sometimes in the North Atlantic with all them Jerry submarines we all wished we were in France. Oil tankers. I was on oil tankers. One torpedo up your arse and you all go to heaven on a fireball… Mind you, better than jumpin’. Then you just freeze to death in the bleedin’ water. If we don’t go for whores can we get drunk? Know a place in Long Street with a pretty barmaid, dark but who cares. Said her people were brought over by the Dutch from Malaya in the last century. Or the one before. Hope she’s still there. Real nice. Wish I could remember her name… Girl in every port… Come on, Len. This bar’s only full of drunks.”
Three weeks later the two had parted company on the docks of Liverpool with little chance of meeting again. Len remembered her name. Teresa. She was Cape Malayan. A Christian or she couldn’t work with alcohol, she said. Muslims didn’t drink. Len had asked why and received a shrug for an answer. Teresa was quite beautiful. She had smiled at Len every time he bought a round of drinks.
Len had not remembered leaving her bar or how he got back to his ship. They had sailed the next day. Len still carried a picture of her face in his mind.
He was not looking forward to seeing his mother or his two brothers. If he had had somewhere else to go to in Liverpool, he would not have gone home. After signing off the Runnymede he had seven pounds and change in
his pocket. Along with his money went the sad thought he had no idea what to do next. Other than being a shrimp fisherman like his brothers on ten per cent of the catch.
With his ship’s duffel bag over his shoulder caught in his right hand by the rope, he boarded the local train that went through the Mersey Tunnel, down the Wirral of Cheshire and dropped him off at Neston. It was still early on the Monday morning. Washday.
When Len reached the row of ten semi-detached houses where he was born the washing lines were all billowing wet washing. There was a good wind from the sea whipping up the white sheets pegged to the washing lines. Only Mrs Trollope had not put out the weekly washing. From Mrs Bowman to Mrs Green, Mrs Snell to his mother, all Len could see of the backyard gardens was washing. When he reached his mother’s back door by ducking under the washing line, he could smell the soap on the air.
“Blimey, it’s Len. What you doin’ here?” said his mother.
With an inward sigh, Len realised he was home.
“Hello, Mum. How you been?”
“Lousy, no thanks to you.” His mother always complained. Jenny had said it was the only thing their mother enjoyed. Complaining. Being miserable. Probably making everyone around her miserable. It had been just the same before their father had been killed in the war. Their mother liked to wallow in self-pity. The deaths of two sons and a husband in the army had given her a lifelong licence to wallow in her own misery.
Len wanted to escape. His old pair of boots was still in the room he had once shared with two of his brothers. Only Jenny among the children had had a room to herself. To Len’s surprise, his room did not look lived in. The window had not been opened for some time. There was a pervading smell of mould. The beds were made but, when he put his hand inside, the sheets felt damp. He had pulled the sheets from one bed and hung them over the window which opened inwards, stopping them from blowing off. In winter, gales from the sea lashed the houses. The boots were still covered in the grease that kept them waterproof and stopped them cracking. He put them on.
With his old catapult in his pocket, Len went downstairs and said he was going for a walk. The shrimp boats were out and his mother was still washing some of the vicar’s clothes. The ones on the line belonged to his brothers. Neither had found a wife while he was away. Everything in the house was much the same. Except for his mother’s hair. Her arms, dipping into the washtub and running the clothes over the washboard, were still the size of hams. Her face was still blotched red from the salt wind from the sea. Her fingers were red from chilblains that would swell and hurt her in the winter. It was the hair that shocked Len. In the time he had been away her hair had gone white. It made his mother look ten years older. He wondered if there was anything in her life that gave her real pleasure.
He had never thought of his mother before. Only himself.
There was a lunch box on the scrubbed white kitchen table. Between the washing, while he was upstairs, his mother had taken the time to make him lunch. He wished he could love her.
“Thanks, Mum… Where are they?”
“Fishin’.”
“You all right, Mum?”
“Do I look all right?”
Len did not reply. With the lunch box under his arm and the sun shining, he went out the back of the house and ducked under the washing line.
“Morning, Mrs Snell. Not going to rain?” The woman was leaning over the short fence.
“That you, Len? Filled out, you ’ave.”
“Thank you, Mrs Snell.”
Outside the garden gate, Len stopped to look across the mudflats. The tide was out. The hills of Wales on either side of the flats made by the River Dee looked nearer than he remembered.
He walked down the leafy lane and began to enjoy his first day back in England. He had missed the smells and sounds of the English countryside. They were friendly. Never threatening.
An hour later, well away from the village of Neston, Len climbed over a farmer’s gate and walked across his field. The cows took no notice of him.
Under a tall oak on the cropped grass, Len sat and opened his lunch box. Inside were slices of buttered bread and a large chunk of Cheshire cheese. In the corner was a pot of fresh shrimps. He was starving hungry and chewed off the cheese and bread separately. He was so hungry he even ate the shrimps in their shells. They tasted good, salty, cooked as he knew in seawater. Around him, the insects droned through the summer day.
The bull from across the field came and had a look at him. Len lay where he was with his back to the oak tree. The bull went off again. A fine bull with black testicles ranging through the top of the grass where it had not yet been eaten down. Len closed his eyes and fell asleep without a worry in the world.
When he woke Len felt the instant joy at being alone. On the Runnymede, they were always on top of each other. Growing up, there had been too many of them in a small house. As a boy, he had got away into the fields to avoid the constant sibling bickering. They had all kept on picking at each other. Fraying his nerves. Len needed peace in his life and a place he could think on his own.
The afternoon sun had now moved, peering at him under the tree. The warmth of the sun had brought him awake. He never wore a watch. By the angle of the sun, it was six o’clock. He had slept in peace for a long time.
The cows and the bull had gone from the field. Len wondered if the farmer had seen him asleep under the tree and let him be. The gate to the field must have been opened and shut to let the animals out. Len liked the idea of being looked at in his sleep and left alone. You could do things like that in England, he told himself.
If he had something to do and somewhere to stay he would like to live in England. Not in London. Never again in London. Len liked the fields and the smell of the sea.
He hoped when his brothers came home they would not argue with him. Tim and John had always been close. It was lucky neither of them had been killed in the war. They had both been too young. Which was why they were not yet married. Lying on his back looking at a grey squirrel looking at him from the tree above, Len wondered why people always argued with each other. The squirrel was flicking its tail with anger at the danger. Not sure what to do. All around Len, birds were calling from the trees and woods.
There was a good thick wood on one side of the field that Len remembered. Len thought of firing his catapult at the squirrel and then asked himself why he wanted to hurt the poor thing. He concluded that down inside he was as nasty as the rest of them. Which made him think of Cousin Mildred but he didn’t know why. He made a mental note to ask his mother if she knew what had happened to Cousin Mildred and her little boy.
Instead of shooting at the squirrel with his catapult, Len got up and began shooting last year’s acorns out into the field. He knew that if the cows had still been there, he would have aimed at them. The farmer would have chased him away. He was as nasty as the rest of them.
He walked across to the woods but was unable to go far inside. The brambles were thick. There were nettles on the edge of the wood that stung his right hand. He found a dock leaf and rubbed it into the nettle sting. Len thought it made a difference.
If he had had a shotgun, he would have killed the rabbit that sat in the field just outside the line of nettles. The rabbit lifted its tail to him and hopped away. Len liked rabbit stew. It was one of his favourites.
He went back to the oak tree and picked up the empty lunch box. To have left it behind would have caused an argument at the time. He owed his mother more than an argument for his lunch.
It was past seven o’clock by the sun and Len began to wend his way home. He was not in a hurry despite being hungry.
He wondered what Ben Willard was now doing with himself. Which made him think of Teresa, the Cape Malay in the bar in Long Street. Cape Town felt a long, long way away. Teresa was still very pretty in his mind. He thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He wished he could remember leaving her bar. He hoped he had said something nice to her.
Drinki
ng was silly. It was nice at the time but he could never remember what happened after the fifth drink. Once in Colombo, he and Ben got into a fight with the crew of another ship. The ship was French. He remembered that. The fight had sobered him up. They were all too drunk to do any real damage to each other. In the end, they were arm in arm and getting drunk again.
He had liked that evening and the bar. The next day the Runnymede had sailed away from the island of Ceylon and all he could remember of the place was a fight in a bar.
He had done better in Singapore while looking for a ship. But not a great deal. Most of his money from signing off the Matilda, his previous ship from Hong Kong, had been spent in the Singapore bars by the time he signed on with the Runnymede.
The original idea had been to learn something from his travels. He had lost his virginity in Singapore to a Chinese girl he could not remember. Afterwards, he was glad she had been clean.
The shrimp boats were coming up the River Dee like swans with their wings behind them when they came into land on the water. He had seen the swans on the River Thames when he lived in Lambeth with the Italian. The wings were the shrimp nets held back on long arms that were as long as the shrimp boats. The nets pointed back and one of them had a big hole in the middle that would need mending. He could clearly see the hole, even at the distance of half a mile.
The boats were fitted with outboard motors and Len could smell the petrol fumes coming in on the wind. From where he was far away he could not recognise his brothers. He hoped there were lots of shrimp on board. The more shrimp the less the Merryl family argued with each other.
They would not be home for another hour as they had to unload the catch which went to the factory for shelling and putting in the pots to be sealed by boiled butterfat and sent down to London to market.