The Loving Spirit (38 page)

He rose and went out of the room. She struggled to free herself from the table, calling to him to come back to her, but he never heard.

Then her mother carried her upstairs and undressed her without a word, tumbling her clothes off her and forgetting to fold them up, tucking her so tightly in her bed that she felt imprisoned.

The house seemed still and ghostly without the customary voice below; no star shone through the chink tonight, and the wind shuddered in the ivy branches. She cried softly to herself, her thumb in her mouth, the salt tears running down her cheeks.

Suddenly came a sound that she was never to forget, the sound of three rockets fired into the night.

As the last echo died away Jennifer held out her arms and screamed: ‘Daddy - don’t go from me, don’t go from me.’

She ran out on to the passage in her white nightgown, distressed, tormented - frightened, she who had never known fear before. The house was ringing with voices and questions. Now her mother was running upstairs and seizing her in her arms. She was being dressed, she was fumbling with her gaiters, her thick coat was buttoned to her throat and a heavy shawl wound about her mouth.

Harold was swinging a lantern in his hands, he picked her up and handed the lantern to his mother. They ran down to the quay, they moved amongst a throng of people, calling, questioning, their voices carried away by the wind. And Jennifer pulled at her mother’s skirt, ‘Where’s Daddy - where’s Daddy?’ but nobody answered her; once more they were running up the hill, to the high cliffs where dark figures moved amongst one another in the mist. The wind blew at her, the rain stung her eyes.

Now they were sweeping down the hill, now time disappeared in a hopeless confusion of horror, and now all that remained in the depths of a child’s memory was the parlour in the early morning, the floor wet and muddied from the footsteps of many people; Mother, her face weird and twisted to one side stretching out her hand to Harold, and Jennifer herself peering round the corner of the door, looking beyond them to something that was covered by a blanket on the stiff horsehair sofa. . . .

 

 

The
Janet Coombe
lay at the entrance to Polmear Creek. The tide had deserted her, and she leaned pitifully on one side, half buried in this bed of mud and slime. Her bottom timbers had been torn from her by the jagged rocks at the harbour mouth, and the water gushed from her side, rust-coloured, like the blood from a living thing.

No longer was she part of the wind and the sea, no longer would she answer the call and pass away upon the surface of the water, free and triumphant. Adventure would claim her no more, nor beauty, nor the white skies; the singing gales would be a memory now. Gone was the stinging foam and the kissing spray, gone was the rattle of shrouds, the thud of canvas, the songs and the laughter of men.

Here her spars drooped listless and forlorn, her sails hung like rags upon the bent yards, and she herself was no more the pride and glory of Plyn but a shunned wreck, stricken and forsaken. A gull cried mournfully above her decks, and spreading his wings he took himself away to the high hills and the sun.

In the bows of the ship the figurehead of Janet gazed towards Plyn. She saw Jennifer, part of herself and belonging to her; she saw Jennifer, lonely for the first time.

2

 

 

‘
C
oombes’ had gone into liquidation, and today the sale had taken place at the yard. The shipwright’s hammer would be heard no longer, it was the auctioneer who took command and a representative of the firm of Hogg and Williams. The place was filled with inquisitive folk who had come to watch the sale, and also the faces of strangers, men from Plymouth and elsewhere, shopkeepers and managers knowing nothing of the Coombe family but all bent on the same mission, to secure payment of the debts due to them.

 

 

Bertha Coombe sat before the fire in her parlour, her two sons standing on either side.

They scarcely noticed Jennifer in the corner of the room, white-faced and silent; anyway she was too small, she would not understand.

‘It’s a bare pittance, Mum,’ Harold was saying, ‘just enough to keep you and Jenny until she is big enough to earn her own living. I always imagined Dad had scraped together more than that, but it appears he drew from this pile to help the business down at the yard. All gone west now, of course.’

‘There’s no need to worry, though,’ said Willie, ‘I can spare some of my pay, and Harold too for that matter.’

Bertha fumbled for her handkerchief. ‘I always was against him belonging to that horrible lifeboat,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘That terrible funeral, and that awful windy little churchyard . . .’ She blew her nose and glanced at Jennifer, who was watching her with scared eyes.

‘Run and find your pinny, Jenny, or you’ll spoil your new black dress.’

The child obeyed without a word, and as she ran upstairs she made a little picture in her mind of the damp cold churchyard. Clutching at the banisters she saw her daddy’s old mackintosh hanging on a peg in the hall; it moved slowly, caught by a draught from the open door of the parlour, and she was afraid - she knew not why.

Once more she crouched in the corner of the room and listened to the conversation, catching the sense of it now and again, and then going off into dreams of her own.

And the voices went on talking.

‘. . . every day I spend in Plyn makes me more and more miserable.You had better see to things here, Harold, for I really don’t feel strong enough. Of course Jenny and I can go and live with mamma in London . . .’

Where were they going? What was going to happen? She sat tight in her corner, fearful lest they should see her and send her from the room.

‘That seems the best way out of the whole business.’ Words, words - grown-up people’s mouths moving rapidly, tall figures standing by the mantelpiece rattling money in their pockets, Mother in her armchair deciding what was to be done.

 

 

When she woke up in the mornings she would look towards the bed to see if he had returned during the night. But her mother lay alone, her face upturned to the ceiling and her eyes closed. There was no one lying there beside her with his hair rumpled and his head buried in the pillow.

The threat of London drew nearer, now it was the day after tomorrow, now it was tomorrow. The house had a strange unreal appearance.The carpets were up, and some of the furniture gone. Where the pictures had hung on the walls there was a large brown stain, and a row of little black nails.

The trunks stood in the bedroom filled already with their clothes, and wisps of tissue paper lay strewn about the floor. The wardrobe and the chest of drawers gaped open, empty; in the corner of the room there was a small heap of things that mother had thrown away, a broken photo frame, an old glove, some pins, and a faded red rosette off one of Jennifer’s shoes. These things looked dusty and forlorn. Jennifer turned away from them with a shudder and tiptoed from the room that had grown too large suddenly and too bare.

They had a queer supper that last evening, they had eggs and bacon, and potted meat with their bread because the jam was finished. Jennifer felt sick, and she had a cold ache inside her she could not explain. Only the thought of wearing her new boots in the morning prevented her from crying.

The Day had come. Mother got up early, about six o’clock, and started cramming the last things in the trunk.

Harold and Willie kept running up and down the stairs. ‘What about the keys?’ someone shouted from the hall.

Jennifer crept from room to room seeking some measure of consolation. It seemed to her that the doors and windows gazed at her reproachfully, the tumbled bed she would never sleep in again had been stripped bare, and was now a strange thing made of little grey wires with knobs.

There was an old pin in a crack on the floor, and underneath the washstand lay her dirty sand shoes which mother had told her she could leave behind. In the soap dish was a half-finished tube of tooth paste.

‘. . . Move out of the way, Jenny. We shall never get off at this rate. No, you can’t take that collection of rubbish with you . . . Harold - Harold - will you come up and strap the hold-all . . .?’

Jennifer pattered after them in her new boots, but somehow they felt different from what they had done in the shop. They were a little tight, pinching her. Suddenly she turned white, and the tears welled into her eyes.

‘Mother,’ she whimpered, ‘Mother, I don’t feel very well.’

The basin was fetched and she was sick.

‘I don’t want to go,’ she screamed - ‘I don’t want to go.’

Mother kissed her, but the kisses were wet through the veil, and the gloved hand could not comfort her.

Harold and Willie stood helplessly by the door. ‘I say - time’s getting on. The bus’ll be here in five minutes.’

Mother was dragging on Jennifer’s frieze coat, she was cramming the tight velour hat on to her head, snapping the elastic under her chin. ‘Oh! I don’t want to go, oh! please, I don’t want to go.’

But she was dragged downstairs, her teddy bear in her arms, and it seemed that the hall was full of people shaking hands with mother and there were jabbering voices talking too loudly.

They were in the bus now, and Jennifer tightly packed between Willie and mother.

The driver started his engine. ‘Good-bye . . . good-bye . . .’ She watched Ivy House left behind, empty and alone. From the open bedroom window the curtain was waving foolishly in the wind.

3

 

 

T
he earliest recollection of London to Jennifer Coombe was the call of bugles blowing from the barracks at the end of the street. They were the first things that woke her in the mornings, and the last things she heard before she fell asleep at night. In her mind they struck a note of incessant reminder that Plyn was far away, and that the sound of the sea would come to her no more. The bugles rang into her dreams, and she would wake with a start, and open her eyes upon the unfamiliar room with its massive wardrobe and its heavy curtains, and the chink of light that came to her from the window showed rows of slate roofs and thick chimney-pots stretching far into the distance.

Then there would be a sound on the landing outside, and the clang of a water-can in the passage. A knock on the door. Ethel the servant entered the room. She stumped across the floor with heavy footsteps, and drew aside the curtains with a crash. It seemed odd to Jennifer to be waited on, and she would have made friends with Ethel but for the fact of the brown mole on her chin. She slipped out of bed quietly and began to dress herself.

The gong would sound for prayers. Mother and Jennifer had to go downstairs and into the dining-room, and kneel at different chairs while the members of the boarding-house stole into the room. From her stool in the corner Jennifer could watch them coming downstairs, through a chink in the open door. She noticed that as soon as they reached the dining-room they put on different faces, something happened to their lips and their nostrils seemed pinched. Then there would be a rustle in the hall, and Jennifer cringed a little to herself, knowing that Grandmamma was just outside the door. Slowly she came into the room swaying from side to side, her great breasts heaving beneath her black dress, her white hair piled high on her head like a huge nest. As she moved she grunted to herself, and it took her nearly three minutes before she was seated in her chair, her bad foot on a cushion, and the Bible open before her.

Jennifer listened for the snap of her glasses, worn on a jumping piece of chain, and then the terrible voice boomed out - ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven,’ and a little chorus of voices followed her lead, anxious to do well.

The boarders gathered round the table for breakfast. She watched them over the rim of her cup, but if any of them met her eyes and spoke to her, she turned away and hung her head pretending she had not heard.

‘Seeing so many new faces has made the child shy,’ apologized her mother, ‘she is generally such a talkative little creature. ’And Jennifer clung to this weapon of shyness as a defence; she found that if she closed her mouth tight and gazed at the floor nobody took any notice of her and she was free to think by herself.

Only Grandmamma guessed that this was a trick. She knew that Grandmamma was watching her all the time. Once she had seen Jennifer take a piece of meat from her mouth and hide it under her spoon, and from that moment her eyes were upon her all the time, prying into her thoughts. ‘Bertha, love,’ said the terrible voice, ‘I fear that the child is faddy about her food.’

‘Why, no, Mamma, we have never had any trouble with her eating. You like the nice meat, don’t you, Jenny?’

‘Yes,’ she mumbled, and sat quite still with her cheeks bulging, chewing the fat over and over, knowing in her heart that Grandmamma was not deceived.

‘May I get down, please?’ and then she slipped from the table and ran out of the room, pulling the last greasy bit of fat out of her mouth and hiding it in the pot of ferns that nobody ever remembered to dust, which stood by the entrance to the lobby. This lobby was the place where the gentlemen boarders washed their hands, and hung their coats, and left their wet umbrellas turned upside down if it was raining. The lobby was at the end of the little passage by the head of the stairs leading to the basement. Jennifer liked the lobby. It had a familiar feeling of security, the tweed coat on the hook smelt of Daddy, and the mackintoshes were old and used as his had been. The men left their cigarettes here sometimes, squashed on the floor.

Jennifer would wait for them to come out of the dining-room, and once they were in the lobby they smiled and laughed as though they were pleased to be free.They never patted her, or said silly things, they treated her as one of themselves. They were away from the house all day, and only came back in the evenings. It made some sort of interest to lean from the window and watch them mount the steps, and fumble in their pockets for keys.