His condition varied mysteriously: on good days, with the aid of two sticks, he could walk about the house and yard and could even climb the steps to the sail-loft; but on bad days, and they were more frequent now, he had barely enough strength to crawl out of bed and put on his clothes and get himself into the chair on wheels that the Polzeale blacksmith had made for him.
Gus had been a powerful man and indeed his great shoulders and chest gave an impression of strength even now, so that, sitting hunched in his wheelchair, he looked not unlike a latterday Samson held and constrained by invisible bonds. He had a round head of unruly grey curls and a grey curly beard, trimmed short, that encroached high on his thick-fleshed cheeks. But whereas Samson had been blind, Gus had a pair of dark brown eyes that looked out hungrily on the world, missing nothing, and often burnt with the rage he felt at his own weakness and helplessness.
As always in fine weather he sat outside in the yard. From there he could look out to sea and, with the aid of his spyglass, could watch whatever vessels passed. To the right he could watch the big ships that sometimes put in at Polzeale, hidden beyond Struan Point; to the left he could see across the harbour to the sands of Porthvole and Pellow’s Reach, completing the eastern curve of the bay, and, above Volley Head, the four little grey-and-white villages of St Inna, St Idric, St Jean and St Owe, with the green slopes of Goonwelter behind.
‘My mother sent you some eggs,’ Brice said, ‘and asked me to say she hoped you were well.’
Gus cocked a bushy eyebrow at him.
‘Either you are a damned liar or your mother’s a damned hypocrite!’
‘Here are the eggs, anyway. At least they are honest enough.’
‘Be damned to the eggs!’ his uncle said. ‘And to the rest of the things she sends! She only keeps on the right side of me cos of getting my property when I’m gone. She wishes me dead, the old catfish, and the sooner the better, that’s what she thinks.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Oh yes it is. I know that mother of yours, by God! She was in here a few days ago and had the cheek to tell me that since I am failing in health and can’t run my business properly I ought to hand it over to you and let you run it for me!’
‘She had no right to say that. She certainly wasn’t speaking for me and I have absolutely no wish ‒’
‘Tes all the same if you have or not! The sail-loft and the barking-house are nothing whatever to do with you, at least not while I’m still alive, and I pretty damn quickly told her so!’
‘Then I hope that will be the end of it.’
Brice drew up a wooden box and sat down beside his uncle. The old man took a pinch of snuff.
‘So Rachel’s got a new dairymaid? Some poor wretch of a girl that she can bully and put through the hoop! She’ve come from Porthgaran, I hear, and been tramping the roads looking for work. According to the rumours flying about, her father and brother were fishermen and were lost at sea a month or two back.’
‘Rumour has told the truth for once.’
‘She’s all alone in the world, then? Well, that’ll soon be changed, I daresay. She looks a fine docy maid from the little I’ve seen of her, driving past, and if she’ve come in search of a husband, she’ll soon pin one down for herself, no doubt.’
‘Why should you think that of her?’
‘I never saw a maid yet that wasn’t anxious to get married.’
‘Maggie is different from most other girls.’
‘Then maybe you’ve got ideas yourself?’
‘She’s only been with us four or five days.’
‘Long enough for you to find out that she’s different from other girls.’
Brice smiled but was not to be drawn and after a while his uncle Gus, although plainly curious, began talking of other things: chiefly of the affairs of the boat and the prospects for the rest of the pilchard season, based on the catches so far.
‘You’ve had a good week this week. Shares worked out thirty shillings a man. Your crew have already been for theirs. You’ll find your own on the table indoors. Go in and help yourself and while you’re there put these damned eggs away and bring out the rum and glasses.’
Brice went into the kitchen and picked up the pile of coins his uncle had put ready for him. Among the clutter of odds and ends that covered the bare boards of the table lay the remains of his uncle’s supper: half a loaf, already stale, and a piece of dark, greasy cheese; and when he put the eggs into the larder he saw that the shelves were almost bare. The kitchen was dirty and comfortless and looked as though it had not been touched since his visit the previous Saturday. The stove was stuffed full of rubbish and the hearth underneath was so choked with ash that it fell out over the fender onto the stone flags of the floor. He found the rum and two glasses and returned to his uncle in the yard.
‘Has Mrs Kiddy been in today?’
‘No, she’ve got a bone in her leg.’
‘She promised to cook you a meal every day but that slab can’t have been lit for days.’
‘Seems you’ve been having a good look round.’
‘She’s supposed to come in and keep the place clean ‒’
‘I know what she’s supposed to do!’ the old man exclaimed, flying into a rage. ‘The place is a pigsty! I know that! D’you think I don’t know what the place is like?’
With an effort he tried to control himself but his temper, once roused, was hard to put down.
‘Tes just the same in the sail-loft! Dirt and rubbish everywhere and Isaac Kiddy so bone idle he never comes in till half past eight, sometimes nearer nine o’clock. They take advantage, all of them, but what am I supposed to do? I can’t make the beggars work when I’m stuck in this chair like a sack of beans!’
Brice poured out two glasses of rum and put one into his uncle’s hand.
‘Would it be a good idea if I had a word with Isaac Kiddy?’
‘No, damme, it would not!’ This suggestion made matters worse. ‘You may be skipper of the boat but you’re not skipper here yet, by God! You’ll have to wait till I’m dead for that!’ The old man glared at Brice. His lips were parted in a little snarl. He took a deep breath, trembling, and swallowed his rum at a single draught. Gradually he calmed down and after a while, when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, although it still had an edge to it.
‘You won’t have to wait much longer,’ he said. ‘This damned disease, whatever it is, is beginning to get a hold on me and two or three years should see me out. Dr Sam has made that plain. I asked him and he told me straight.’
Brice knew that this was true. He had spoken to Dr Sam himself. The wasting disease, which began in the spine, attacked the muscles and the nerves, causing progressive atrophy. Almost nothing was known of its cause and there was no hope of a cure. All Dr Sam could say was that the wasting would spread throughout the system and that when in time it reached the lungs it would inevitably bring death.
‘Dr Sam could be wrong,’ Brice said.
‘Don’t talk widdle. It makes me tired. At least your mother spares me that. She never makes any bones but that I’m a dying man and Isaac Kiddy is the same. They’re all as bad, the whole boiling of’m, and take as much account of me as if I was dead already!’
The old man refilled his glass and sat staring into it. Then he looked out to sea.
‘I try to be a good loser,’ he said. ‘Tes all in the luck of the draw, after all, and if God’ve singled me out like this, well, he’s in the position to have the last word. But I wish he’d chosen something quick. There’ve been plenty of times in my life when I’ve had to ride out a gale in the Emmet, with great seas coming over her, higher than the top of her mast, when God could’ve finished me off like that!’
Gus gave a snap of his hard, horny, misshapen fingers.
‘But instead he cuts me down from behind … Takes all my strength, inch by inch, and leaves me so helpless as a worm …’ He turned his head and looked at Brice and there was a kind of childlik
e puzzlement in his eyes as he said: ‘Now why should God do a thing like that? ‒ I can’t make it out at all. He must have some reason for cutting me down and maybe if I knew what it was … I’d be better able to say “Amen”.’
There was a pause. Gus sat slumped in his chair, the evening sun full in his face and a faint breeze stirring his hair where it curled from under his seaman’s cap. On the old quay below the cottage some boys were fishing with a handline and there was a sudden commotion among them as they landed a handsome mackerel. A few gulls gathered, screaming; trod the air for a moment or two; then wheeled away overhead; over the cottage and sail-loft and sheds and down onto the foreshore beyond.
‘I don’t know,’ Brice said. He could not think of anything to say to this stricken man who was trying to wrest some meaning from the cumbered life that was left to him. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘Of course you don’t! Nobody does!’ Gus, coming out of his mood of abstraction, dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. ‘Take no heed of my ramblings. Let’s talk about something else. Did you know that Martin Laycock is building a new boat for George Newpin? He came to see me to order the sails …’
When Brice got home to the farm, his mother was busy in the yard, filling her pails and churns at the pump to cool them ready for the evening milking. Brice took over working the pump and when he had finished he said to her: ‘I hear you’ve been telling Uncle Gus how to run his own business. That’s why you had words when you saw him last.’
‘I tried to give him some good advice and he threw it in my face,’ Rachel said. ‘That business is going to rack and ruin. The barking-house has been closed for months ‒ goodness knows how much money is lost by that ‒ and the sail-loft will soon go the same way if half the tales I hear are true. Your uncle has lost his grip on things and if he had an ounce of sense he’d hand the business over to you. With your good schooling and your good brain you’re wasted as a fisherman and I’ve said so from the very first.’
‘I don’t want to take over the business. I’m quite happy as I am.’
‘You’ll have to take over when your uncle dies, unless you decide to sell it up, and the way things are going at present there soon won’t be anything left to sell. The cottage and sheds will tumble down if something isn’t done soon ‒’
Rachel broke off and became silent, for Maggie had come out of the byre and was crossing the yard to the gate, on her way to the moor to bring in the cows, and Rachel did not want her to hear this private discussion of family affairs. Brice also remained silent, giving the girl a little salute, but when she had gone out of the gate he turned again to his mother and said:
‘We have no right, either of us, to interfere in my uncle’s affairs. He’s always been very good to me and whatever your feelings may be I have nothing but respect for him. The sail-loft and the barking-sheds are his property ‒ his alone ‒ and what he chooses to do with them is no concern of ours while he lives.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Rachel said. ‘You’re his only living relation and the property’s bound to come to you and although you may take a high moral tone you can’t pretend you don’t care what is happening to your inheritance.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ Brice said, ‘but if you try to interfere you’ll only antagonize Uncle Gus and no good will come of that.’
The good practical sense of this was plainly indisputable and Brice saw from his mother’s face that he had succeeded in silencing her. He turned away feeling satisfied. The discussion had been disagreeable to him and he was glad it was at an end. He could now turn his mind to other things.
‘I think I’ll go after Maggie and give her a hand with the cows.’
‘There’s no need for that. She can manage alone.’
‘I think I’ll go up all the same.’
He strode away out of the yard and Rachel stood frowning after him. The other girls who had worked on the farm had never attracted his interest at all and she had always been thankful for it. But this girl, Maggie Care, had only to walk past him and he could not wait to follow her. Rachel gave an angry sigh. It was a problem she had not foreseen.
During the first week in August Brice cut the three acres of dredge-corn in the field furthest from the house. His mother and Maggie bound up the sheaves and set them up into shocks and the wheat and barley, ripening together, whispered in the warm dry wind. Everywhere, on the neighbouring farms, harvest was well under way and the bustle of it filled the air. Reaping-machines churred all day long and the voices of the reapers could be heard calling from one field to the next.
Down in Polsinney itself there was bustle of another kind, for it was now the time of year when the pilchard shoals, making their way down the Channel, were expected to come close inshore, and this was when the seine-fishers expected to reap their own harvest. The seine-crews had been put into pay and the boats lay out in the bay day and night, each to its own allotted stem, while the huers up on the cliff at Porthvole took it in turns to watch for the shoals which, when they came close enough, would betray their presence to a keen eye by the darkening and thickening of the waters and a turbulence on the sea’s surface.
The seine owners, in smart frock coats and stovepipe hats, were up on the cliff day after day, but so far the shoals had proved shy. Brice strolled up one afternoon and lingered for a while with the crowd of people who, in a state of high expectation, kept the huer company, all staring out to sea. John Lanyon, who owned the New Venture Seine, offered Brice a large cigar and spoke to him in a jocular way that only half hid his fretted nerves.
‘You drifter chaps are no friends of ours. You break up the shoals and drive them away. I shall be on the rocks myself if the season’s as bad as it was last year.’
Brice refused the proffered cigar and stood staring out at the bay.
‘The shoals will come in. They always do. And so long as they come in on your stem all you need worry about is your warps.’
This was a sly joke on his part for twice during the previous season a shoal, enclosed by the New Venture Seine, had been lost because the rope had parted while the beachmen were hauling it up the shore.
‘It won’t happen this time. I’ve made sure of that.’
Lanyon now began to ask how things were on the farm. He was Brice’s landlord and liked to show a friendly concern.
‘I hear you’ve got a new dairymaid. A mystery girl from down the coast that your mother took in off the road. That was a Christian act on her part.’
‘It has been amply repaid,’ Brice said, ‘for Maggie is a good worker.’
‘Your mother is pleased, then?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘And what is your own opinion of her? Is she as comely as they say?’
‘No doubt you’ll meet her one of these days,’ Brice said, ‘then you’ll be able to judge for yourself.’
He turned and walked home along the cliff.
The hot dry weather continued and soon the dredge-corn was carted and ricked. The seine-boats still lay out in the bay and the huers still kept watch on the cliff, but so far no shoals had come inshore. Once a shoal was seen in the distance but it veered away off Burra Head and the groan that arose from the disappointed watchers could be heard in the fields at Boskillyer.
But although the seiners were so far unlucky, the drifters were enjoying a good season. Because of the calm, easy weather Brice was able to fish every night and catches were consistently good. His uncle, paying his share one Saturday evening, did so with a teasing remark.
‘If you are thinking of getting married, at least you needn’t plead poverty.’
‘You are in a great hurry, suddenly, to get me married off,’ Brice said, ‘yet you’ve been a bachelor all your life.’
‘Rumour tells me you’re keen on the girl.’
‘Does it indeed!’
‘Why, isn’t it true?’
‘I think myself,’ Brice said, ‘that people should mind their own business.’
‘The day t
hey begin doing that,’ Gus said, ‘it will be the end of the world.’ He looked thoughtfully at Brice and said: ‘Of course, I can quite understand that you’ve got to mind your “p”s and “q”s, courting right under your mother’s nose. She won’t exactly be over the moon to see you marry her servant-girl.’
‘Maggie’s no ordinary servant-girl and I’m sure my mother would say so herself.’
‘You think she’ll give it her blessing, then?’
‘I hope she will.’
‘And what if she won’t?’
Brice considered carefully.
‘I shall be very sorry,’ he said, ‘but my mother doesn’t rule my life.’
‘I’m glad to hear it!’ his uncle said. ‘But it’s not for want of trying, eh?’
Brice, as he walked home that evening, was full of a young man’s irritation at knowing that he and Maggie Care were the subject of gossip in the village. His feeling for her was still new to him, a secret thing, shut away in his heart, and it was an unpleasant shock to find that onlookers with busy tongues had already been at work bringing out into the open something he had thought safe and secure.
And now, in talking to his uncle Gus, he had been led into making an admission before he was properly ready for it, and this caused him some disquiet. Still, however, it couldn’t be helped, and he could only hope that his uncle Gus would at least respect his confidence. As for the rest, his uncle was right: such talk was inevitable and he would just have to accept it; but it irritated him all the same and he knew he would have to be on his guard.
Every morning, coming up from the boat, as soon as he reached the top of Cliff Hill and turned onto the level road, he would look for Maggie in the fields. He would call to her over the hedge and she would glance up and give him a wave. Once he brought home an enormous hake and held it up for her to see. ‘Did you ever see such a monster?’ he said. ‘Its father must have been a shark!’ And once he brought home a string of whiting because she had said it was her favourite fish.
Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall Page 4