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

by Mary E. Pearce

  Jim had known about the baby and he had wanted to bring their wedding forward because of those people in Porthgaran who, as he said, could always be relied on to count up to nine and would take delight in doing so. Maggie had merely laughed at that. ‘They will still count, whatever we do, but I don’t care what they say so long as we’re together, you and me.’ But with Jim dead it was a different matter. Her father had been disliked all his life and after his death he had been reviled, and because she could not bear the thought that her child would be born and would grow up among people filled with such bitterness, she had turned her back on the place and had set out into the unknown. Had she been foolish? Yes, perhaps. For here she was, friendless and homeless, glad to seek temporary shelter in this old ruined building, without any roof overhead and without even a door to close against marauding cattle and sheep.

  Still feeling sick and faint, and knowing a moment of hopelessness, she instinctively sought comfort by drawing out the silver locket she wore on a ribbon round her neck. She took it off and opened it and looked at the two pictures inside. One was of her mother, sad but serene, looking at her with tired eyes. The other was of Jim Kenna and although the picture was small and dim it was enough to bring to her mind his good, plain, honest face with its kindly look and crooked smile. The picture made her ache for him and after she had closed the locket she sat with it clenched tight in her hand, yielding herself to her memories, of his voice and his touch and his tenderness, and allowing herself to be overcome by the hopelessness of her longing for him.

  The longing and the hopelessness passed. She hung the locket round her neck and tucked it away inside her dress. The sickness and faintness also passed; she was feeling herself again; and as her youthful strength and courage began to reassert themselves she sat up straight, hugging her knees, and began to think about the future.

  Rachel Tallack’s warning, that if she was arrested for vagrancy she would be taken back to Porthgaran, weighed heavily on her mind and she recognized the dangers of taking to the road again in search of work on other farms. Farm-work was what she did best; it was what she was used to; but there were other kinds of work available to girls like herself and she didn’t mind what she did so long as she earned enough money to rent a lodging and buy food. In her pocket she had two shillings; enough to live on for at least a few days; but after that, if she failed to find work, she would either have to beg or go hungry.

  She rose and went to the open doorway and stood looking down at Polsinney, built hugger-mugger, the houses close-packed, tucked into the cliffside and running steeply down to the sea. The harbour itself was hidden from her but she could see where, out in the bay, the seine-boats still lay-to, their patient crews waiting and watching for the pilchard shoals to come inshore. She could also see that part of the cliff where the huer had his look-out place and she could see that a large crowd still kept the huer company. The shoals were late coming in this year but when they did at last come there would be work for scores of people down in the fish-cellars on the wharf.

  Maggie now reached a decision. She went to where she had left her bundle, took a square cotton scarf from it, and hid the bundle among the bracken. A light rain was beginning to fall and she tied the scarf over her head. She then left the old engine-house and set out over the brow of the moor to that part, well away from Boskillyer, where a second track ran down to the road. From there she took one of the alleys that led, by many a twist and turn, down to the harbour and the wharf.

  Here, too, as on the cliff, scores of people were gathered, all looking eagerly out to sea. Many of these were the women and girls who, when the great moment came, would be rushed off their feet in the cellars, receiving the hundreds of thousands of pilchards brought ashore from the seine: tipping them out on the cellar floor, arranging them neatly, row by row, one layer upon another, each layer spread with salt, until they rose shoulder-high and formed a solid wall of fish. The women would work by shifts, day and night, till every last silver pilchard was safely in cure in the bulk, and for this work they would earn good wages, sometimes as much as fourpence an hour.

  As Maggie mingled with the crowd, people turned to look at her, and one old woman, meeting her eye, tut-tut-tutted with toothless gums, pointing her long, bony chin in the direction of the bay.

  ‘They old pilchers!’ she exclaimed. ‘They dunt seem to realize that we’ve been waiting a week or more. But they will come in pretty soon, I believe, for the stones’ve been rumblen these three nights past and there’s no surer sign than that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Maggie said.

  She stood in the rain looking out to sea and the old woman eyed her up and down.

  Brice, on getting home to Boskillyer, missed Maggie immediately and asked where she was.

  ‘The girl has gone,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Gone? Where? On an errand, d’you mean?’

  ‘No, she’s gone for good, my son, and please do not fly out at me until you’ve heard what I have to say.’

  ‘Do you mean you’ve sent her away?’ Brice asked in a tight voice. ‘Because if you have I must warn you ‒’

  ‘That precious girl of yours,’ Rachel said, ‘is three or four months gone with child, and I counsel you to think on that before you begin speaking to me in a way you may well regret.’ She made no attempt to mince her words for she fully intended to shock him, and even when she saw from the look on his face that she had succeeded all too well, she gave no sign of the pity she felt, for he had a hard lesson to learn and the sooner he learnt it the better, she thought.

  ‘I knew from the start there was something not quite right about her. I felt it in my very bones. For one thing it isn’t natural for a young girl to have so little to say for herself and if you remember I said so to you ‒’

  ‘How did you find out?’ Brice asked.

  ‘I used my eyes,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Did she admit it?’

  ‘Of course she did. She could hardly do anything else.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Brice said. His face was still stiff and numb with shock but he had great powers of self-control and was beginning to use them. ‘Who was the man responsible?’

  ‘He was one of her father’s crew. He was drowned with the rest. She was to have married him next month, it seems.’ There was a silence in the room. Brice took a deep and difficult breath.

  ‘Poor girl,’ he said at last. ‘To lose not only her father and brother but the man she was going to marry as well …’

  ‘Yes, poor girl indeed,’ Rachel said, ‘but what I can’t quite forget is her slyness in coming here to me, persuading me to take her in, and all the time practising such deceit.’

  ‘You lost no time in turning her out.’

  ‘I gave her until the end of the week. It was she who chose to leave straight away.’

  ‘Where has she gone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t she say what she meant to do?’

  ‘No, she did not,’ Rachel said. ‘All I can tell you is that she went the same way as she came ‒ up the track and over the moor.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘About two hours.’

  ‘Then I’d better go after her.’

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Rachel said. ‘Are you such a poor witless fool that you hanker after her even now?’

  Brice, with a gesture, turned away, impatiently scorning his mother’s suggestion. His feelings were still too tender, too raw, for him to discuss them openly, but no, Maggie was nothing to him now that he knew the truth about her, for he saw with terrible clarity that the girl he had come so close to loving had never really existed at all.

  The real Maggie Care was someone quite different; a girl with a past life of her own that he knew nothing about; a girl who, when he had looked at her with a young man’s innocent desire, had carried this secret thing in her, this seed of knowledge in her womb, implanted there by another man. He felt no anger against her ‒ at l
east he told himself he did not ‒ for never by a single word or glance had she ever encouraged his interest in her, so how could she be held to blame? There was no question of that. Only he himself was to blame, for his blind, simple-minded trustfulness.

  Yet even while he assured himself that no blame could attach to her, he could not prevent some bitterness from creeping into his thoughts of her. Her secret, now it was out, had altered his feelings utterly. He thought of her clear grey eyes, looking at him so steadily, and he thought of how, unsuspected by him, this knowledge had lain hidden in her; this thing that set her completely apart and made her just a stranger to him; and gradually, as he dwelt on it, his heart began to close against her.

  But he could not help pitying her, for she was all alone in the world, victim of a terrible tragedy, and, turning back to his mother, he said:

  ‘The girl is in trouble. She needs help. Something must be done for her.’

  ‘You’ll never catch up with her now,’ Rachel said. ‘There are three roads out at Nawmenvennor. She could have taken any one of them. And what if you did catch up with her? What would you do then?’

  ‘Bring her back here, I suppose.’

  ‘You are talking like a fool. Can’t you see what will happen if you bring that girl back here? As soon as people find out about her condition they will say the child is yours.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Brice said. ‘Maggie has only been here a month and if as you say she’s three months with child ‒’

  ‘People will forget the facts,’ Rachel said, ‘if the fable has more spice to it.’

  Brice stood irresolute. He knew what his mother said was true. And because he was rather a puritan, at least where his own conduct was concerned, the thought that people would point at him, linking him with the girl’s trouble, was more than enough to give him pause. And Rachel, seeing she had scored a hit, made haste to drive it home.

  ‘If she’s never seen here again, nothing will be known about the child, and no harm will be done,’ she said. ‘People here will soon forget her and that will be better for all of us.’

  ‘What on earth will become of her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told her she should go back to Porthgaran and let her own parish take care of her. She said she wouldn’t but who knows? ‒ Perhaps after all she changed her mind. Anyway, whatever happens, she will no doubt fall on her feet. That sort of girl always does.’

  ‘That sort of girl? What sort is that?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Whatever you may think of her, Maggie is certainly no slut.’

  ‘No, well, I grant you that. But she was a ship that passed in the night and if you take my advice, my son, you will put her out of your mind. She has no claim on either of us.’

  ‘Not even the claim of humanity?’

  But his mother was right after all. Maggie had already gone on her way and the matter was best left as it was. And although he was still troubled by guilt when he thought of her tramping the roads he could not help feeling some relief that he would not have to see her again.

  Rachel, reading all this in his face, remained silent, giving him time, and after a while, when he spoke again, she saw by his altered expression that she had nothing more to fear.

  ‘When people ask why Maggie has left us,’ he said, ‘what do you think we ought to say?’

  Rachel shrugged.

  ‘Other girls have come and gone and this one has done the same. There’s nothing strange about that.’

  ‘You won’t tell them about her trouble?’

  ‘No, now that she’s left the district, there’s no need for anyone here to know.’

  The following morning, however, when Rachel went on her milk-round, she soon heard that Maggie Care was still in Polsinney, for the girl had been seen the previous day, loitering down on the wharf, apparently hoping for work in the cellars. Rachel was furiously angry at this and when her customers, all agog, asked why Maggie had left Boskillyer, she answered at once with the bald truth.

  ‘Maggie Care is with child. She’s three or four months gone with it. A girl of that sort can only spell trouble and I was obliged to dismiss her.’

  She felt no compunction in spreading this news, since the girl, by lingering in Polsinney, had only brought it on herself. The truth would emerge soon enough, anyway, and Rachel quickly made up her mind that her account of it should be heard first.

  Brice, when he berthed at the quay that morning, heard the gossip immediately from the quayside loafer, Dicky Limpet, who came aboard cadging for fish.

  ‘So that girl you had up at the farm have got herself into trouble, then, and your mother have turned her out of the house?’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Brice asked sharply.

  ‘Why, tedn no secret, surely, cos Alice Cox told me she had it from Mrs Tallack herself, and Gladdy Jacka told me she’d seen the girl and asked her straight out and the girl said yes, it was true, sure nuff.’

  ‘Seen her?’ Brice said. ‘You mean she’s still here?

  ‘Ess, for sure. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No, I thought she’d gone away.’

  ‘My dear life, no, she’m here bold as brass. Any number of people have seen her walking about the place, and Gladdy Jacka spoke to her only half-hour ago, I believe.’

  Brice gave Dicky a string of fish and bundled him out of the boat but the crew had already overheard. Most of them kept a discreet silence but Ralph Ellis came to Brice and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Twadn you, by any chance, that got the girl into trouble, was it?’

  ‘No. It was not.’

  ‘I was only asking, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve had your answer,’ Brice said, ‘perhaps you’ll get on with clearing these nets.’

  He was not surprised, on going home, to find his mother full of the news and in a thoroughly bad temper about it.

  ‘I thought we’d seen the last of that girl but oh, no, not a bit of it! ‒ She’s chosen to stay on in the district to be the bane of both our lives. The whole place is buzzing with gossip from Churchtown down to the quay.’

  ‘And you have been adding to it, I hear.’

  ‘I only added the truth, my son. Surely you don’t blame me for that?’

  ‘No, I don’t blame you,’ Brice said. ‘You’ve spread the truth about Maggie’s child to protect me and I’m grateful for it. What you said yesterday, about people twisting things round, has already come to pass. I had my first taste of it from Ralph Ellis this morning and no doubt there will be more before I’m many days older. But at least, thanks to you, people know the truth, and until the gossip has died down we shall just have to bear it as best we can.’

  Having thus spoken Brice went to wash and Rachel, brooding over his words, was able to find some comfort in them. It seemed that twenty-four hours of reflection had done Brice a great deal of good. His tone, when speaking of Maggie Care, had had a coldness and hardness in it and although he now knew where she was, he no longer talked of helping her. It seemed he had cut her out of his heart and that at least, Rachel thought, was something to be thankful for.

  Chapter Three

  The huers had been keeping watch for ten days; so had the crews of the seine-boats lying-to out in the bay; and now at last, on the afternoon of the tenth day, a shoal was sighted off Volley Head: a red-brown shadow darkening the sea, coming on and on and on, over the sandbar and into the bay, closer and closer inshore until the movement of the water could be plainly and unmistakably seen, breaking the surface of the water and chopping it up into sharp-pointed waves.

  The huer’s great cry rang out, shouted through his long tin trumpet, ‘Hevva! Hevva! Hevva! Hevva!’, and was at once echoed by the crowd gathered beside him on the cliff. People now appeared from everywhere and came running down the streets of Polsinney, swarming onto the jetties and wharves, climbing onto the coopers’ sheds, and spreading over the beach at Porthvole. And the cry went up on all sides, ‘He
vva! Hevva!’, again and again, until the whole harbour rang with it.

  The shoal came into that part of the bay allotted to the Nonesuch Seine and the Nonesuch owners, Mark Hall and his son, stood on the cliff beside the huer who, with a furze bush in either hand, was signalling to the boat in the bay, directing it into position. The seine crew bent to their oars; the boat went cutting through the water and came up close beside the shoal; and the huer gave the signal to stand. Now there was a hush on the watching crowds. A stillness lay over all the bay. Then the huer, using his trumpet, gave the order: ‘Shoot the seine!’

  Again the boat began to move, its steersman watching the huer’s signals, and as it moved the net was paid out, splashing down into the sea. Round and round came the seine-boat and when the shoal was almost enclosed the follower moved into position ready to shoot the stop-net that would close up the opening of the seine. While this was being done the lurker-boat stood by and there was a great deal of splashing and noise as the lurker crew, with their long oars, beat at the water again and again to prevent the writhing silver fish from escaping through the opening. At last the shoal was fully enclosed and the team of hauliers on the beach began hauling in the warps, drawing the seine, with its millions of fish alive in it, into the shallower waters inshore. Soon the warps had been secured. The hauliers raised their caps and cheered and the cheer was echoed by the crowd. Mark Hall shook hands with his son and the two of them hurried down to the beach. The seiners were working the tuck-net now and as the fish were raised to the surface the ravening gulls gathered there in a desperate frenzy of movement and noise.

  The sky was darkly overcast and there was more rain in the offing. Maggie, with her scarf over her head, moved among the crowd on the wharf, watching the dipper-boats putting out to bring the pilchards in from the seine. Behind her, Mark Hall’s cellar was already alive with people bustling about with buckets of salt, making ready to receive the fish as soon as they should be brought ashore. Many of the cellar-girls stood outside, sleeves rolled up, ready for work, laughing and chatting in small groups, excited at the taking of the season’s first shoal, and as Maggie moved among them they watched her with inquisitive eyes. It was three days since she had left Boskillyer and by now, as she well knew, her story was common property.