Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘How much did you get for your catch?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Ninepence the long hundred.’

  ‘Less than yesterday, then, although they were better quality.’

  ‘There were big catches all round, that’s why. The Speedwell did better than us and the Ellereen ran us close.’

  ‘I know that. I saw for myself. I knew it would bring the prices down.’

  ‘I banked a cheque for twenty-four pounds. That’s not bad for one night’s work. Uncle Gus won’t grumble at that.’

  ‘Tommy Bray must have made twice as much, judging by what I saw of his catch.’

  ‘You don’t grudge Tommy his bit of luck? He hasn’t had much this season so far.’ Brice looked at Maggie Care. ‘Do you know my mother’s prayer when I go out for a night’s fishing? ‒ “Send them in with your blessing, Lord, but only into my son’s nets”!’

  A glimmer came into the girl’s eyes and she gave a faint smile. She had not quite forgotten how, after all, and Brice felt pleased with himself at having won this response from her.

  ‘And what,’ Rachel asked, ‘is your own prayer, my son?’

  ‘That all the dogfish in the sea should turn and devour one another, and that when only one is left it should sink to the bottom, never to rise.’

  One of his nets had been badly holed by dogfish that night. He had brought it home with him and had hung it over the farmyard wall, and as soon as breakfast had been cleared away, Rachel and Maggie went out and began repairing the torn mesh. Brice, on his way to the hayfield, paused and stood watching the girl’s quick hands skilfully plying bodkin and twine.

  ‘I can see you’ve mended nets before.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve done it all my life.’

  ‘And does the last mesh come out square at the end?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Usually.’

  Rachel turned and frowned at her son.

  ‘You are standing in our light,’ she said.

  The day’s heat had become intense. There was thunder in the air. Brice worked in his shirtsleeves, forking the hay from the windrows and building it up into pooks, each as high as his shoulder. At noon his mother and Maggie Care, having finished repairing the net, joined him in the hayfield, and they toiled together in the sun. Such was the heavy heat of the day that they worked in silence, the three of them, but once, when thunder crackled overhead, Rachel paused and looked up at the sky and said in a voice of great vexation: ‘Yes, you would break now, I suppose, just in time to spoil the hay!’

  The storm, however, was passing them by. The clouds were moving away to the west and at half past one, when Rachel went in to prepare dinner, Brice and Maggie, still in the field, could see the dark thunder-shower spending itself out at sea. The storm-clouds hung like a tattered curtain and were lit by flashes of lightning.

  ‘Crockett Lighthouse is getting that. They say if there’s any lightning about, Crockett will always bring it down.’

  ‘Can you see the lighthouse from here?’

  ‘Yes, but you have to stand on this hedge.’

  Brice climbed onto the stone-built hedge and, stooping to give the girl his hand, pulled her up to stand beside him. They could now see as far as Burra Head and its reef of rocks running out into the sea, but Crockett Lighthouse was hidden from them behind the dark curtain of rain. In a moment, however, as they watched, the rain fell further away and the lighthouse suddenly stood revealed, a dazzling white in the glare of the sun, rising, tall and graceful, from its rock at the outermost end of the reef.

  ‘I used to stand here sometimes when I was a boy, watching it being built,’ Brice said, ‘and later, when it was finished, I was allowed to stay up late to see it lit for the first time.’

  ‘We could see the light from Porthgaran, on clear nights in winter, sometimes,’ Maggie said. ‘ “That’s Crockett,” my father would say, and it always seemed like another world.’ Brice turned his head and looked at her.

  ‘I’m sorry about your father and brother. My mother told me what happened to them and I know something about it from reading the news in The Cornishman. The lifeboat couldn’t get out, I believe.’

  ‘The crew were not willing to try. They said it was too dangerous.’

  ‘Do you feel bitter about that?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Perhaps. I don’t know. There was so much bad feeling afterwards … Everyone blaming everyone else … My father’d been warned not to go out, so of course he was blamed more than anyone. The whole town was full of bitterness and there was a lot of ugly talk.’

  ‘That’s why you came away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Brice got down from the hedge and turned to give Maggie his hand, but she leapt lightly down without his help. She took her rake and went back to work, drawing the last strands of hay from the grass and spreading them over the top of the pook. Brice also took his rake but only to stand leaning on it, watching her as she worked.

  ‘Didn’t you have any friends in Porthgaran? And didn’t they try to stop you?’

  ‘Nobody could have stopped me. I’d made up my mind. I felt I had to get right away … I didn’t know where, I left that to chance … And as it was haymaking time I knew I was bound to get work.’

  ‘Chance brought you here to us. Do you think you will stay for good?’

  ‘That depends on Mrs Tallack and whether she chooses to keep me on.’

  ‘I hope she will,’ Brice said. ‘There’s always a lot to do on the farm, small though it is, and the nights are very lonely for her, especially in wintertime. It would ease my mind a lot if only she had company at such times.’

  The girl was looking at him with a frown. Something seemed to be troubling her and he tried to guess what it was.

  ‘Am I looking too far ahead?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But you must have some plans for your future. You surely don’t want to spend your life wandering from place to place?’

  ‘No, I should want to be settled,’ she said, ‘but I’m only here on a month’s trial and ‒ a lot can happen in a month.’

  ‘Perhaps you have already heard that my mother is a difficult person to please?’

  ‘Yes. She told me so herself.’

  ‘Well, it’s perfectly true, I suppose, but she could be a good friend to anyone who won her respect.’

  ‘And to those who don’t?’

  ‘Then,’ Brice said, ‘she is quite the reverse.’

  The girl turned away from him and he watched her removing the strands of hay that had wound themselves round the teeth of her rake. He was about to speak again; there were many things he wanted to know; but at that moment Rachel appeared, calling to them that dinner was ready, and they put up their rakes and went indoors.

  By half past four that afternoon all the hay had been safely pooked and Brice was well pleased with the day’s work. Now the thunderstorms could do their worst, but if by good luck they still kept off, that hay could be carted next day, he thought.

  At six o’clock he was in the yard, dressed in sea-boots and short canvas smock, getting ready to go down to the boat. He went to collect the pilchard net that was hanging spread out over the wall and began gathering it together, folding it carefully into festoons. While he was doing this Maggie came out of the cowshed and he called her over to give him a hand. He could quite well have managed alone but it was easier with two and it made an excuse for talking to her. She was on her way out to the moor to fetch the cows in for milking but she leant her stick against the wall and began helping to fold the net.

  ‘There are other cows up there besides ours,’ Brice said. ‘How will you know which to bring?’

  ‘I helped to milk them this morning. I think I know which ones are which.’

  ‘Well, watch out for yourself or they’ll lead you a dance. They’re often frisky in the evening after grazing out there all day.’

  In a few moments more the net was folded and hung from the wall in a neat double truss. He got his shoulder under it, and th
e girl eased it away from the wall, freeing the mesh where it caught on the stones. He stood upright, taking the weight, and hunched his shoulder two or three times until the net lay comfortably, an equal burden before and behind. His mother came out of the house with the linen bag containing his crowst: pasties, raw onions, apples, cheese, and half a loaf of crusty bread: enough, he said, to last the whole week.

  ‘You say that every night, my son, but the bag’s always empty when you bring it home.’

  With the heavy net over one shoulder and his bag of crowst over the other, Brice went swinging out of the yard and along the road that led to the village. Before turning down the hill he paused and looked back and saw the girl, Maggie Care, steadily climbing the narrow path up over the edge of the moor. Clumsily, because of his burden, he put up a hand and waved to her, but she was intent on her task, searching the slopes of the moor for the cows, and apparently did not see him. Disappointed, he turned away.

  Chapter Two

  On her second morning at the farm, and every morning afterwards, Maggie went out on the milk-round alone. It was a chore Rachel detested and she was only too glad to have it taken off her hands. And unlike all her previous girls, who had taken the whole morning over it, Maggie always completed the round as quickly as Rachel did herself.

  ‘I will say this for you, my girl. ‒ You don’t waste time gossiping.’

  Every morning, at the end of the round, Maggie drove onto the fish-quay and if the night’s catch had been a good one, Brice would have a basket of pilchards ready to put into the float. As his luck was well in at this time, Rachel was soon telling him that no more pilchards were needed at home. She had salted down some twelve hundred fish and that should certainly be enough to see them through the winter months.

  ‘Will it be enough now that Maggie is with us?’

  ‘Winter is a long way off. Maggie may not be here by then. But yes, twelve hundred will be plenty, even for three of us.’

  Brice and his mother were alone in the house. Maggie was out feeding the hens.

  ‘You haven’t made up your mind, then, whether you will be keeping her on?’

  ‘The girl is here on a month’s trial. I shall make up my mind when that month is up.’

  Rachel would not commit herself. The habit of caution was too strong. She wanted to know a good deal more about this stranger, Maggie Care, before she finally made up her mind, and this was proving a difficult thing. Most young girls of nineteen revealed themselves in no time at all; their thoughts, their ambitions, their vanities, came out, whether they wished it or not, in their lively prattle as they worked; but Maggie Care never prattled, never gave away her thoughts, and Rachel, at the end of a week, knew no more about her than she had done at the very beginning.

  Brice, when his mother said this to him, was inclined to be impatient:

  ‘You always complained that the other girls wasted too much time with their talk. If Maggie doesn’t talk so much it’s because she’s getting on with her work.’

  ‘Something goes on in that head of hers and I should like to know what it is.’

  ‘Only five or six weeks ago her father and brother were drowned at sea. I would have thought it was plain enough that her mind is still full of that.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Perhaps you’re right.’

  Certainly the girl was willing to work and whatever task she undertook she proved herself very capable. Rachel was a stickler for cleanliness and everything had to be done just so, but even she could find no fault with the way Maggie scrubbed a floor or blackleaded the Cornish slab or beat the mats on the garden wall. Rachel was an excellent cook but Maggie had a hand equally light when making pastry or bread and she had a way with under-roast that Rachel found better than her own. Altogether it seemed, sometimes, as though the girl was too good to be true.

  It was the same out in the fields. Whatever she did was done well. The hay had been carted and ricked now and Brice had begun singling the mangolds in the half-acre strip behind the barn. Sometimes Maggie helped him there and he saw with what clean, confident strokes she hoed the weeds out of the rows and how, if she came on a deep-rooted dock, she would stoop and pull it out by hand. Nothing was too much trouble to her. She took more pains than he did himself.

  Once when he turned to look at her he saw that she had put down her hoe and was searching for something on the ground; making her way back down the field, bent double, arms outstretched, hands turning over the weeds that she had left scattered between the rows. She had lost the small silver locket that had hung on a ribbon round her neck and there was distress in her face as she searched through the weeds.

  Brice went to help her look for it and saw it almost immediately, glinting two or three rows away, half covered in dry-crumbled earth. He picked it up and gave it to her and her hand closed over it gratefully, and such was the look in her eyes that he felt quite ridiculously pleased because, although it was only luck, he had been the one to find this thing which plainly was very precious to her. She tied a new knot in the ribbon and hung it round her neck again, tucking the locket inside her dress.

  ‘It used to belong to my mother,’ she said. ‘I’ve worn it ever since she died.’

  ‘She was very dear to you?’

  ‘Yes, she was dear to all of us. If only she had been alive when my father was told the boat was unsafe, she would have made him give it up. But he wouldn’t listen to anyone else. He sailed that boat for another two years and in the end six lives were lost.’

  ‘You find it hard to forgive him for that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And yet you grieve for him all the same.’

  ‘I grieve for him because he’s dead but I can’t pretend I was fond of him.’

  They turned and walked back along the field. Brice picked up her hoe and gave it to her and she stood for a moment looking at him. For once she seemed inclined to talk.

  ‘My father was rather a hard man and my brother tried to be like him. They had no friends in Porthgaran and nobody ever came to the house … except the rest of the crew, of course, and even with them there were arguments. My father was always quarrelsome and after my mother died it got worse. He thought the whole world had a down on him and in a way I suppose he was right.’

  Brice was impressed by her honesty. Nothing was as simple as it seemed. At first he had been rather shocked, hearing her deny having loved her father, but he quickly began to understand that this lack of love in her father’s lifetime only added another burden to the grief she felt for him now he was dead.

  She was only nineteen. There had been little happiness in her life and she faced the future all alone with a terrible tragedy fresh in her mind. He could see by her eyes how it haunted her and he found himself filled with a fervent hope that the future would bring enough happiness to make up to her for the past. He tried, not very lucidly, to say something of this to her, and she took him up on it straight away.

  ‘I don’t know about happiness but the future is there, certainly, and something has got to be made of it.’ She spoke with a touch of youthful defiance and a certain light came into her eyes which, just for a fleeting instant, drove the shadow right away. ‘I intend to make a new life for myself … Start again, from the very beginning … And whatever the future brings me, be sure I shall make the most of it.’

  She and Brice were standing quite close, grey eyes looking straight into blue. Then, abruptly, she turned away and, finding her place in the row, resumed her work of singling the mangolds. Brice went back to his own place and they worked in silence, three rows apart, moving steadily down the field. But secretly, every now and then, he would turn and glance at her, wondering about this new life of hers which, in spite of everything, she looked to with such faith and confidence. God willing, he told himself, he would play some part in that future of hers, though exactly what that part might be he was not yet willing to consider, even in his innermost mind.

  The affairs of the Emmet, in common with those of m
ost other fishing boats in Polsinney, were organized on a system of shares. Every day, when Brice had sold his catch on the quay, he would bank the cheque with Thomas Kemp, landlord of The Brittany Inn, and Thomas would then send the cash to Brice’s uncle, Gus Tallack, who, as owner of the boat, kept a rough and ready ‘log’ of its profits and losses. On Saturday Gus divided the week’s takings into eight equal shares: two for the boat, two for the nets, and four to be split between skipper and crew; and at intervals, during the afternoon, each man would call to collect his share.

  There was no fishing on Saturday night because in Polsinney, as elsewhere throughout Cornwall, the sabbath was very strictly observed. On Saturday evening, therefore, after working in the fields, Brice would wash and put on clean clothes and would stroll down to his uncle’s cottage, to collect his share of the week’s takings and stay for an hour or two gossiping with the old man.

  ‘I’m going down to see Uncle Gus,’ he said, seeking his mother in the dairy. ‘I thought perhaps I could take him some eggs, unless you intend calling on him after church tomorrow morning, in which case you could take them yourself.’

  ‘No, indeed I do not!’ Rachel said. ‘I called on him last Monday, on my way back from market, and only got shouted at for my pains. He gets more cantankerous every day and the state he’s let that cottage get into is too disgraceful for words.’

  ‘He is a sick man,’ Brice said.

  ‘All the more reason, I would have thought, for him to take heed of good advice.’

  ‘What advice?’

  ‘Oh, never mind! I should have known better than waste my breath on him. But I’m certainly not going again to be shouted at and abused.’

  ‘In that case I’ll take the eggs myself.’

  Brice stood waiting obstinately and after a moment Rachel gave in. She put a few eggs into a basket and handed it over with an ill grace.

  ‘I hope for your sake that he’s in a better temper today than he was last Monday afternoon.’

  Gus Tallack was fifty-two: a tall man and solidly built: almost as tall as Brice himself when he stood upright and straightened his back; but this he was rarely able to do because of the obscure wasting disease which, two and a half years before, had struck him down out of the blue, leaving him partially paralysed.