The Main Cages

by Philip Marsden

  Mr Pawle stepped forward for the Bible Christians and said: ‘… I am not expected to be the peddler of intellectual confectionery or the retailer of sweet nothings. It is no use harping about the New Year when nothing in its opening seems worth the wishes spent on it …’

  Everyone but the ministers could see the coming squall. It dashed in across the bay in a skidding acre of dark water. When it reached the quay, they had just begun ‘While Shepherds Watch’. It toppled the music stands of the euphonium and cornet players. The cap of the band leader spun from his head and went wheeling across the quay. Major Franks made a lunge for it, dropping to his knees to try and reach it – but it fell over the edge of the harbour and into the water. He stood and brushed the dirt from his suit trousers. ‘Never was much of a slip fielder!’

  Then came the rain. It hit the company with a cheek-stinging fury. The fourth verse collapsed. The band was reduced to a series of tumbling squawks as the members ducked. When the rain turned to hail everyone ran for shelter. Major Franks escorted Mrs Kliskey. Parson Hooper tried to make an announcement but no one could hear him. Whaler Cuffe stood his ground: ‘Don’t go, please! It’s only a shower!’

  The squall lasted ten minutes. Behind it was a strip of pale blue which widened until suddenly the sunlight burst out of it, shining on the wet roofs and on the road and on drifts of hailstones. But it was too late. The stands were in disarray; sheet music was pasted to the ground or scattered among the boats of the inner harbour. Those sheltering in doorways started to find their way home.

  But not all. Some twenty or thirty remained around the quays. The wind dropped, and as dusk spread across the bay the sound of carols rose again. The band had left but the Garretts were still there; the group from Porth was still there, and when they all started to sing, many of the people came outside again to listen. This was what Hooper had intended – the parishes and congregations united in song! All around the harbour, they stood in doorways or leaned from their windows, and with the voices rising from the quay, the sun slid behind the land and the waters of the bay turned from orange to gold.

  In the third verse of ‘Awake, Awake’ the harmony broke down. The Polmayne singers sang their version and the Porth singers sang theirs. At the end Jimmy Garrett glared at the Porth men. ‘You sing it the right way when you’re with we!’

  ‘We sang it the bloody right way.’

  Then one of those Porth men stepped forward and hit Jimmy Garrett on the side of the head. Tacker tried to hold his brother back but Jimmy shook him off. He managed to place himself right in the centre of the Porth men and swing his arms in a most effective way.

  In the morning a light frost covered the town and on the cobbles of the Town Quay were scattered tiny beads of frozen blood.

  On Christmas Eve, a trading ship sailed into the bay. The Constantine was a much-admired schooner in Polmayne, an occasional visitor on her trips up and down the Channel. In the evening the crew rowed ashore. As they entered the Gaps, the vast frame of the ship’s master could be seen standing, in a high-collared reefer, in the stern. Captain Henriksen was a bushy-browed Finn, and at the bar of the Fountain Inn he announced that he and his crew would be spending the ‘festival’ at anchor in the bay.

  That day Jack had received a card from the Abrahams. The drawing was by Maurice Abraham and showed an anxious-looking turkey with a speech bubble rising from its mouth: ‘Why not have a lark this Christmas?’

  Jack did. On Boxing Day Whaler Cuffe banged his stick on the floor and announced he had been cooped for too long inside. ‘I would like to go carousing.’ Jack took him to see Benny Stone and they drank brandy and then some others came and they went to the Fountain Inn and Whaler told some improbable stories and the crew of the Constantine applauded even though they knew they were supposed to be sceptical about ‘Whaler’s fabling’.

  Polmayne shook itself down that Christmas. The children sooted their faces and went Darkey Partyin’. Jack and Whaler set off to the dance in the Freeman Reading Rooms. They carried on somewhere else and it was almost dawn when they staggered home along the front. Eliza Tucker was sweeping the steps of her store, and stopped to watch them: ‘The blind drunk leading the blind!’ They were still tipsy at lunchtime and Mrs Cuffe refused to feed them. So they went out again. That afternoon the Town Band left the Fountain Inn for Porth but they took a short cut and the flautist dropped his flute in a stream; the percussionists were found by Ivor Dawkins next morning, sleeping in one of Crowdy’s barns.

  In the New Year, Jack wrote to Anna Abraham. ‘Polmayne was very colourful at Christmas. I would never have believed it possible. When are you coming down here? The town misses you.’ He read the letter back and then added: ‘And I miss you too!’

  The weeks of January dragged by. There was no fishing. No letter came from Anna Abraham. The Constantine left on the tenth. In the third week of the month, Croyden went to collect Three for slaughter. Halfway up to Crowdy Farm he turned back and took Five instead. The next day all the flags in Polmayne flew at half-mast. From the bells of St Cuby’s church rang a mourning peal and those given to wearing ties picked a dark one that day. At Sandringham the King had died, and Mrs Franks cancelled the Conservative Association’s annual dance. But to many in Polmayne the King’s death meant little until months later when it became known that Britannia, his beloved J-class yacht, was towed out to sea and scuppered.

  At the end of January, Jack at last received a reply from Anna Abraham:

  Dear Mr Sweeney,

  I would be grateful if you write me no more letters. I hope you understand.

  Yours, Anna Abraham

  CHAPTER 10

  In early February came a week of relentless rain. The Glaze River flowed muddy brown into the bay and up at Pennance the ground below the holy well became a shallow lake. Jack Sweeney was more impatient than ever. It was still early in the season but when the weather cleared he told the others that the Maria V would start fishing. All they had to do was load the gear and service the Kelvin. Croyden was happy to begin; Hammels did not mind either way.

  They fished every possible hour. They went out on nights when others stayed in and returned long after dawn. They shot sometimes three, four times a night. Once or twice, in mounting seas, they had to haul in a hurry and race back to harbour; on other occasions with the fish tumbling onto the deck, Jack saw the crazed look come over Croyden. But it no longer worried him. In fact, he saw it as something of an asset – and he was beginning to understand it.

  Then the pilchard market collapsed. Mussolini’s Abyssinian adventure had meant an embargo on Italian goods; the Italians responded in kind and ships filled with Cornish pilchards – food for the Lenten fast – were being turned back.

  The Maria V was forced to tie up, and Jack kicked his heels around Polmayne. It was still too early for the long-line. On several mornings he rowed out to the Maria V. He replaced a series of worn cleats, some old blocks. He sanded down and painted the countless bumps and scrapes on the gunwale. He cleaned and oiled everything that moved and many things that did not. He took to eating on board, then to sleeping. He learned that each and every state of weather and tide tapped out a different rhythm on the boat’s creaking timbers. He knew when he woke what sort of day it would be simply from the boat’s motion.

  One day he was awake at dawn and there was no noise from the timbers and no motion but only the faintest trickle of water past the hull. The tide was flooding and the sun was coming through the forehatch and he rose and rowed up the river, past Penpraze’s to Ferryman’s Cottage. He drifted for a moment off the shingle bar before rowing on. He followed the river up through its unpeopled narrows to a place where it opened out into a large wood-fringed pool. He had never been here before. It was now nearly the top of the tide and the water was absolutely still. He rowed on into it, breaking its glassy surface. The river divided and he chose the southern branch, the smaller one. Several herons took flight as he entered the creek. The bare branches of scrub oak
touched the water and as he rowed further he saw them – the first of the boats. Their rotting hulls lay half-submerged, their bows pointing up the banks and in beneath the trees. Weed and moss hung from their sodden sides. Last year’s leaves lay matted on those which still had decks. Many were little more than frames, their shapes discernible only from the bare ribs that pushed up out of the water. The older the boats were the more they took on the colours and consistency of the creek. Jack started to count them. At forty-five he stopped. He drifted on, his paddles raised, and there were more boats – seiners, schooners, luggers, barges and punts – until the tide turned and began to pull him back.

  ‘Gooth,’ Croyden told him later. ‘Gooth Creek – where they all end sooner or later. Good Heart’s there, they all are, all the seiners and every other bloody boat that’s ever worked these waters.’

  In early March, the Maria V began to fish the ground some fifty miles into the English Channel. One night, Jack was unhooking a large ray and was stabbed in the hand by a spine so suddenly that he slipped and fell on the deck. He was astonished at the pain. Back in Polmayne Dr White told him there was nothing to do but wait for the venom to work itself out and the swelling to go down. It might be weeks.

  Jack languished at home. Mrs Cuffe said he had it coming to him. ‘Going out in all weathers. It’s a blessing, you know. Might ’a been something bad.’

  Whaler told him about being bitten by a ‘snake-fish’ in the Bay of Bengal and hallucinating for four days.

  Unable to row, unable even to do his knots, Jack took to walking. He crossed the river and wandered down to the sands of Hemlock Cove. He followed the path out beyond Penpraze’s and watched the cropping of the withies. He went inland, up the valley to Pennance where beneath the still leafless beech trees he drank from St Pinnock’s holy well and thought of Alice. One afternoon he was ambling down Rectory Lane when Parson Hooper came up behind him in a pony and trap. Jack stepped back to let him pass but instead Hooper pulled to a halt and greeted him: ‘Good afternoon, sir!’

  The sun was behind Hooper’s head and Jack raised one arm to shield his eyes. ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Mr Swinton, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sweeney. Jack Sweeney.’

  ‘Of course, of course! Mr Sweeney.’ Hooper lingered there, looking down the lane and smiling.

  ‘And you’re a fisherman, isn’t that right?’

  Jack nodded, and showed him his bandaged hand. ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Oh.’ In his own elation the vicar was unable to find the correct register for misfortune. ‘Oh dear … Er, tell me, Mr Sweeney, can you keep a secret?’

  Jack followed him to the lych-gate and Hooper climbed out of the trap and the two of them carried on down the Tablet-lined path to the church. Inside, the air was cool and chalky. At the end of the north aisle, the pews had been pulled back. They were covered in dust sheets. Another dust sheet hung over the wall and Parson Hooper drew it back.

  ‘There!’

  A large patch of plaster had fallen away, revealing a section of older, darker plaster behind it. But when Jack stepped closer he saw that it wasn’t just plaster. It was a painting. It showed an open boat on a stormy sea. In the boat were a number of crouching figures. Standing on the water beside the boat was a benevolent-looking Christ, and between him and the boat, in the distance, Jack recognised the two jagged summits of Maenmor.

  ‘Came in yesterday morning and half the wall had fallen off. Apparently it’s very rare indeed.’ Parson Hooper beamed. ‘The Bishop is writing to a man in Oxford about it!’

  Hooper had just been in Truro and the Bishop had also asked him if he would like to be considered for the post of Dean of the cathedral. He had gone at once to Pascoe & Sons and given them a stanza for an exuberant new Tablet:

  How beautiful it is to be alive,

  To live – to love – to work for God! –

  Till He sends His messanger

  Kind death – to call us home!

  That month, word reached Polmayne that the station’s first motor lifeboat had undergone sea trials and was ready for delivery. The old one, the pulling-and-sailing Emily Grace, had been in service since 1912. She was bought by a man from Skegness for use as a pleasure craft.

  The new boat was a Liverpool type with 129 airtight cases made of white deal. She had a six-cylinder engine capable of delivering thirty-five horsepower, with a self-contained reduction and reverse gear and a propeller speed of nine hundred revolutions per minute. She weighed about seven tons, was built at Cowes and cost £3424 – a sum that was met by the bequest of a long-term visitor to Polmayne, Kenneth Lee. It was his name that was painted in gold lettering on the lifeboat’s bows.

  Coxswain Tyler asked Croyden to help him bring her down from Cowes. With the Maria V unable to go out, Croyden had been busying himself up at his piece, avoiding Maggie, planting shallots and sprouts in the saturated soil, wheeling up barrows of seaweed. He had also bought a new pig. But the chance of several days at sea, on five shillings a day, was too good to miss. He went to Bethesda and asked Jack to join them.

  It took four days to hop back down the coast – Weymouth, Salcombe, Fowey – and in the spare hours of those passages they examined every inch of the new boat. By the time they reached Polmayne Jack knew her as well as his own Maria V. When his hand was better and it came to the sea trials and exercises it was only natural that Jack should help. In early April, Tyler officially invited him to be an auxiliary member of the Kenneth Lee’s crew and for the first time in weeks he forgot about leaving the town.

  Just after Easter, the new lifeboat was brought into the quays for her dedication. The senior crew stood on board in oilskins, lifejackets and red dress-hats, sweating beneath the hot April sun. Swells of bunting ran above the heads of the crowd. The Coverack and Falmouth lifeboats – the Three Brothers and the BASP – had come in too and their crews stood on the Town Quay, along with Porth’s Volunteer LSA Company and Captain Williams, Pendhu’s Auxiliary Coastguard.

  At 3 p.m., two maroons were fired from the station and Major Franks, as Chairman of the Polmayne Branch Committee of the RNLI, formally took delivery of the Kenneth Lee. While the spectators sang ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ Major Franks, the Bishop of Truro, Parson Hooper and his Curate were rowed aboard for the dedication.

  Parson Hooper was having a good day. How fortunate that while the post of Dean was open, the Bishop should have had the chance to come to his parish! He had given him lunch at the rectory, shown him the wall painting and for a good two hours managed to avoid mentioning the question of his candidacy.

  On board the lifeboat, Coxswain Tyler gave them a brief tour. He showed them the engines, and the end-box, and the watertight containers, and the shelter. It was all very cramped and somehow Hooper’s Curate got in front of him so that when Tyler and the Bishop and the Curate crouched down to see the engines, Parson Hooper was left standing above them, craning his neck to try to glimpse it all.

  After inspecting the boat, the Bishop stood at the helm and read out the dedication. Those on the quay could hear his voice but not his words.

  ‘Eternal father, Thou walkest upon the wings of the wind. Thou makest the clouds thy chariot. Thou rulest the raging of the sea. Thou speakest and it is still. Vouchsafe thy blessing, we beseech Thee, to this lifeboat Kenneth Lee which we now present to Thee. Grant that it may come to the succour of those in distress upon the sea. We commend to Thee also the men of her crew. We thank Thee for the lives they have saved and we pray that they may go forth to the rescue not trusting only in their own strength, but in Thy spirit …”

  Parson Hooper was standing by the shelter. Behind him he could hear someone muttering. It was Croyden Treneer. ‘Whose clever idea was it to bring they damned priests aboard?’

  The Maria V resumed fishing. They were long-lining down at the Ray Pits and it was going well. Consistently they landed five or six hundred stone. One Saturday they dashed back through a sudden northerly gale with a
hold full of fish and the seas breaking over the bows. They took turns at the pump; for a time it was touch and go. They were exhausted even before the gale; that week they had notched up more than ninety hours at sea and when they came ashore Jack hobbled back along the front to Bethesda and fell asleep fully clothed. He woke at midnight, pulled off his boots, then slept another ten hours.

  The following week the fishing was just as good. ‘No stopping now, Jack!’ grinned Hammels. Even Croyden was satisfied, but they were all tired, pursued by a relentless fatigue that Jack suddenly felt unable to resist.

  ‘What about a couple of days off?’ he suggested to Croyden. ‘Do us all good.’

  Croyden was horrified. ‘Rest when they’s scarce and rest when it blows – but stay in harbour when you can fish and they’ll never come back.’

  Then an odd thing happened. One morning they came in after a long night on the water and put away the boat and rowed into the Gaps and Jack walked back to Bethesda and he did not feel tired. He did not feel tired the next evening when they left the harbour, nor the next. During the coming weeks he found himself filled with a physical ease he had never known before. Either, he thought, I am so used to this fatigue that I no longer notice it – or I have overcome it.

  When in late April an easterly kept them in harbour for a couple of days, he did not mind. On a fine, breezy afternoon he walked up to Pennance. He leaned against the wall of St Pinnock’s well and tore off a leaf of fresh alexander and pressed it to his nose. He saw the first green glow of growth on the beech branches and watched the drift of the clouds on their westward course. It had been a tough winter but now summer was coming and the world looked bright again.

  He took the river route back. At Penpraze’s yard the shed doors were open and he called ‘Hello!’ to Peter Penpraze who was sanding down one of the Petrels. The Polmayne Queen was propped against the yard’s quay wall and the Garretts were painting the transom. Jack cut through the graveyard. Parson Hooper was outside the church, sitting on a bench; he was leaning on his elbows and looking at the ground.