And ever let there rise to thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.
To one side stood Anna Abraham. She was alone. Her fair hair was spilling from a dark grey headscarf. Two days after the memorial service she gave up the lease of Ferryman’s Cottage, took Whaler’s repainted sea chest and left Polmayne for good.
In the weeks following the accident Parson Hooper proved himself again to be sound and resourceful. He visited the bereaved. He ensured that they were aware of the various funds available for them. He put the correct gloss on the version of events presented to reporters: ‘No, at no time was there any panic on the Golden Sands. Everyone behaved with the utmost decorum …’ It was he who arranged the memorial service, who with Major Franks launched the appeal, and who commissioned, with diocesan funds, two memorial crosses from Pascoe & Sons – one for the churchyard and one to be placed on the cliff above Hemlock Cove, overlooking the Main Cages. When the Constantine came in one evening and anchored in the bay, it was Hooper who escorted Captain Henriksen and his crew up to the cliff, who said a short prayer before the Captain knelt and laid the wreath of kaffir lilies and nerines that his wife and his men had made for the victims.
The days grew shorter. The last of the summer visitors left and around Armistice Day the pilchard fleet headed as usual up to Plymouth. The town withdrew into itself. The wound of the accident began to close up. Some people still came to the town out of curiosity, others to express their sympathy. But at the first mention of the Kenneth Lee, they were met with silence.
Parson Hooper found his days becoming emptier. He took his services and his own congregation after the accident was closer, more unified. But in the town his offers of help and support were accepted less and less often. On 20 November he was admitted to hospital with a case of ‘nervous exhaustion’. After a week, he was sent to a nursing home in Newquay. Mrs Hooper took lodgings to be near him. Soon afterwards a removal van arrived at Polmayne’s rectory and by Christmas a Reverend Perkins had arrived to replace him. It was he who was contacted by Pascoe & Sons to collect Hooper’s last Tablet, which had been commissioned on 19 November. Perkins recognised the quotation from Isaiah:
And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned, nor digged;
but there shall come up briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
All through that autumn the Golden Sands Hotel remained closed. In December the board on the front of the building was taken down. By May of the following year a new sign, smaller, had been erected at the gate: Pendhu Lodge Hotel.
In late October, Ralph Cameron’s Petrel Harmony was towed a mile south of Pendhu Point and scuttled.
One afternoon in January 1937, Joseph Johns arrived back in Polmayne. In Australia he had heard of the loss of the lifeboat, and despite the success he was having there he was overcome by nostalgia for Cornwall. It was Joseph – with the help of his grandfather Boy – who bought the Maria V. The solicitors had some difficulty tracing Jack Sweeney’s family, but when they did they were instructed to donate any proceeds from the sale of the boat to the lifeboat fund. By March 1937 the Maria V was at sea again, long-lining down at the Ray Pits, and Harry Hammels was crewing, laying out his cards to find out where the fish were.
In June, though, Hammels suddenly left Polmayne. He disappeared. Someone said he had joined a ship in Falmouth, headed for the Far East, another that he signed up as crew on a yacht in the Mediterranean.
The summer of 1937 was as busy as ever in Polmayne. The Pendhu Lodge Hotel was full. Tents filled Dalvin’s field and in August Ivor Dawkins put aside another for visitors’ use. Five new villas had been completed above the church. Another fourteen dwellings were completed and occupied at the Crates. At Pennance the water had risen high up the dam wall. At the head of the reservoir, in a few inches of clear water, could be seen the sodden ferns and the slate roof of St Pinnock’s holy well. Most of the town now had access to mains water. Installation of the sewerage was also completed.
In the middle of June, Petrel racing began. The points series was raced for the Cameron Cup.
A new parking scheme had been set up on the Town Quay. White lines were painted on the cobbles right up to the end of Parliament Bench. When Toper Walsh saw a woman take her young son behind their car and undo his trousers, he shouted: ‘And I’ll come and piss in your bloody living room!’
On 1 September, up at the Crates, Tommy Treneer died. No one but Annie Treneer had seen him for months, and when they heard he had died many who did not know him that well were surprised because they thought he had been dead for years. It was almost exactly a year after the loss of the Kenneth Lee. A large crowd turned out for his funeral. His coffin was led to the chapel wrapped in the RNLI flag and topped by his old sou’wester.
‘Polmayne’ll never be the same without Tom,’ said Toper.
‘Never,’ agreed Red Treneer.
‘Eeee,’ said Boy Johns.
EPILOGUE
On a warm day in July 1972, a Morris Traveller drove down into Polmayne. It passed the Crates and the rectory, and came round on the new road above Pritchard’s Beach. By the Antalya Hotel was a large ‘P’ sign with an arrow pointing to the space once occupied by the cottages of Cooper’s Yard. The half-timbered car came to a halt beneath a creeper-hung cliff and an elderly woman climbed out. Checking her reflection in the car window, she tied on a pale-blue headscarf and headed out to the front.
It was the first time in thirty-six years that Anna had been back. During that time she had remained living in the same house in Hampstead. In 1942 she was officially widowed when Maurice was killed in North Africa. After the war she let out the basement to a Jewish composer from Budapest; the top floor she converted for her sister Maria. She never remarried. Every couple of years she exhibited her paintings in a gallery in Cork Street. She spent two months each summer with Maria in a cottage in Salcombe, and there she did something that surprised even her: she learned to sail. She bought a small open boat named Corinthia and sometimes on calm days she sailed out past the bar and looked west into Cornwall. But in all those years she never wanted to go back.
A mild southerly was blowing in off Polmayne Bay. The Petrels were racing. On the Town Quay she watched a crowd of people queuing up to board a pleasure boat: Polmayne Belle – Afternoon Cruise to Porth – Bar and Refreshments – Tea ashore.
Beyond the quays she found the alley leading to Bethesda. Mrs Cuffe’s rooms had long been converted into separate flats, each one with its own stable door. Ceramic name-plates were fixed above them: Pendhu View, Bo’sun’s Cottage, Forbes’s Loft. Above the steps to Jack’s old rooms was one which read Harbour View.
That afternoon she walked up around Penpraze’s yard to Ferryman’s. Through the trees she heard the sound of shouting. She went no closer. She watched a man standing bare-chested in the shallows. Two children were sitting in a dinghy, splashing him with the paddles. At the slate-topped table was a woman in a floppy, wide-brimmed hat.
She took the ferry across the Glaze River and walked up through Priory Creek. As she climbed over the top, the Main Cages came into view one by one – the Curate, Maenmor and all its satellites. There, above Hemlock Cove she found the granite cross and the thirteen names beneath the inscription:
He sent from above. He took me.
He drew me out of many waters.
(2 Sam. XXII 17)
About the Author
Philip Marsden
is the author of A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia, The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), The Bronski House and The Spirit-Wrestlers: And Other Survivors of the Russian Century. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Cornwall.
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By the same Author
A FAR COUNTRY: TRAVE
LS IN ETHIOPIA
THE CROSSING PLACE: A JOURNEY AMONG
THE ARMENIANS
THE BRONSKI HOUSE
THE SPIRIT-WRESTLERS: AND OTHER SURVIVORS OF THE RUSSIAN CENTURY
Copyright
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Copyright © Philip Marsden 2002
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