The Loving Spirit (47 page)

He turned frowning to his work, a pencil in his mouth, his hair ruffled. He reached for a textbook at his side. He read a couple of pages but the words jumped up and down before his eyes. He looked out of the window and saw the blue sky and the glittering harbour. He heard the gulls crying on the Castle rocks.

‘Oh! - hell,’ said John, and threw his book across the room.

Two minutes later he was walking up the path that led to the fields, and Polmear creek.

 

 

Jennifer pulled her boat close to the ladder and made fast the painter. The tide was on the ebb, but they were only neaps and she would not find it aground when she was ready to return. She put her hands on the shaking rope ladder, and swung herself over the bulwarks on to the sloping deck. She looked around her curiously. This was the first visit she had ever paid to the schooner, and she had already been in Plyn over two months.

The glass on the skylight roof was smashed, and scattered about the deck. The winch was broken, pieces of broken spars and odds and ends of tattered gear lay unheeded in the scuppers. Part of the shrouds were gone, and the top of the mizzen mast had been carried away.

Some things remained strangely intact, the hoops around the masts, the wooden belaying pins in their sockets, the pumps.

Jennifer peered down into the dingy fo’c’sle, the notice clear cut on the bulkhead ‘Certified to accommodate 6 seamen’. There were three cots still hanging, an old saucepan lay on the floor, and tucked away in one of the cots were the coverless pages of a magazine. Men had lived here, slept here, the little space had rung with their laughter and their song. Now all were gone, forgotten, dead perhaps. A drip of moisture from the deck above fell upon her hand. The atmosphere was chill and queer. As she turned to climb the ladder, she saw the photograph of a woman pinned upon the wall. A cutting from a newspaper of the year 1907. Someone had scratched a heart beneath it with his knife, and pierced it with an arrow.

On the deck she looked into the tiny galley; the oven was still there, and two empty bottles. One cracked plate remained in the rack.

The wheel stood as it had done thirteen years before when Dick Coombe had helped bring her into harbour, and Jennifer was standing on the very place where Christopher had fallen, his back crushed by the falling spar.

She made her way down the companion-way into the cabin.

First she came to the mate’s hole, a space no bigger than a small cupboard, and from thence into the main cabin, or cuddy, a room about six or seven foot square, a swinging table in the centre, a built-in bench, and lockers on either side.

A sliding door led to the master’s sleeping cabin, a cupboard scarce two feet larger than the mate’s, but with the addition of a wash basin. Here Christopher had sobbed himself to sleep as a lad, on his first sea voyage from Bristol, while Joseph his father tramped the deck above, bewildered and embittered by his son’s distress. Jennifer sat down at the table, her chin in her hands. A clock was still nailed to the bulkhead, the hands had stopped at twenty-four minutes past nine. The lamp still swung in its gimbals, the brass dim and discoloured.There was a calendar of 1912 hanging beneath it. The cabin smelt damp, rotten; through the floor boards the water crept at high spring tides.

The drawer in the table was filled with charts, yellow now with age, and dirty and well thumbed. Joseph had sat here once, and spread the charts upon the table. He had marked them with his seal - ‘Joseph Coombe, Master.’

Jennifer rose, haunted and wretched. She opened the lockers and found them filled with indiscriminate objects. There were some old books, paper, sodden with the damp, and a man’s cap.

She passed into the captain’s cabin and rummaged around in his lockers. Here she found a bent tooth-brush, a collar stud, and one sock, in the corner of a drawer a small worn prayer-book. On the fly-leaf was written ‘To Dick, from his loving father Samuel Coombe, May 1878.’

The highest locker Jennifer found she could not open. She pushed and pulled, but it stuck firmly, and then finally after one determined wrench, it opened. She soon saw the reason for it. Inside was a large wooden box of some depth. She lifted this out, and carried it into the cuddy, placing it upon the table. On raising the lid and looking inside she found it to be full of papers, documents, and bundles of old letters.

One by one she laid them on the seat beside her. There were bills of sale here, bills of lading, documents relating to the ship’s cargo, to the freights at various ports, accounts of passages, a few rough pages from the ship’s log.

Here was Joseph Coombe’s Master’s Certificate, the piece of parchment that had given him and Janet the happiest and proudest moment of their lives. Here was a faded photograph taken in 1879 of Joseph and Susan with their four children, Christopher, Albert, Charles, and Katherine.

There were letters of Joseph’s and of Dick’s, about the ship’s record passages, there were bits and pieces of detail making in one stupendous whole the sketchy outline of the
Janet Coombe
’s history.

As Jennifer wandered amongst these forgotten things she saw again, in the reading of them, the proud sway of a ship upon a lifting sea, she heard the singing canvas and the straining masts, she heard the shouts and tramping of men upon the deck, she saw the figure of Joseph, his dark hair and beard wet with the spray, his voice crying some order - and carried away by the wind.

She heard the scream of a gale and the thunder of the sea. She saw Joseph throw back his head and laugh.

Then she looked around her in the cabin, she heard the drip of the moisture from the deck, she saw the broken glass and rusted nails upon the sodden floor - mournful - mournful.

Beneath all the letters, at the bottom of the box, was a small bundle tied with a piece of worn tape. Something in the handwriting clutched at Jenny’s heart. She had seen that writing before. It was in books of her mother’s. The writing was Christopher’s. The envelopes were addressed to Joseph Coombe. She turned them over and found the seal unbroken. They had never been read.

She felt she had the right to read these letters that had come like this out of the past.

Now for the first time in her life Jennifer learned the truth of Christopher’s early days in London.The last letter was dated 22 November 1890, never read, never answered. Condemned to lie in this box for over thirty-five years until his daughter found it.

The tears were running down Jennifer’s face now, she rocked herself backwards and forwards in distress.

‘Oh! my darling,’ she said, ‘my darling.’

She had not heard the footstep on the deck, nor the soft creaking of the ladder, and as she raised her eyes from the pile of letters on her lap she saw that someone was standing in the cabin doorway, looking at her. For a moment neither of them spoke. Jennifer, too startled to move at first, saw Christopher with his long legs and fair ruffled hair - like a vision this flashed before her and was gone, and instead was a young man she had never seen before.

John had ploughed over the dry mud to the schooner, he had noticed a small boat on the starboard quarter fastened to the ladder, floating in a foot of water.

‘Trespassers,’ he thought, and climbing aboard had made his way down to the cabin. There he stopped, his eyes narrowing, his heart thumping, for surely there was Janet Coombe herself kneeling against the table, her hands clasped, her dark hair brushed away from her face.

Then the vision was gone, and he saw this stranger was only a young girl with the tears running down her face.

‘Hullo,’ said John.

‘Hullo,’ said Jennifer, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘You’ve been crying about something?’

‘Yes.’ He stepped forward and noticed the box on the table.

‘How did you manage to get that drawer open?’

‘I wrenched it until it came of its own accord.’

‘I thought I’d jammed it too tight ever to be moved.’

‘Did you put the box in there, then?’

‘Yes - about half a dozen years ago. Before then it used to lie on this bench you’re sitting on. I was afraid it might get damaged, or that some curious fool would come across it. I see now it wasn’t safe even in the drawer.’

‘Do you mean I’m a curious fool?’

‘I don’t know anything about you. Have you put the letters back?’

‘Most of them. I’m going to keep these.’

‘Which ones are they? Do you mean to say you’ve been and broken the seal? Isn’t that rather a filthy thing to go and do? I put them at the bottom on purpose. They belong to someone who is dead - who died over twenty-five years ago.’

‘I know that.’

‘You do, do you? You make a habit of reading dead people’s letters?’

Jennifer turned away, the tears in her eyes.

‘I never want to do it again - there’s so much unhappiness, so much that is pitiful, that I’d rather not know the truth.’

‘Was it these letters that you were crying over when I came in just now?’

‘Yes.’

He came and sat on the bench beside her.

‘Why should they make you cry?’

‘I don’t know who you are - or why I should answer you. You called me a curious fool just now, let’s leave it at that.’

‘I’m sorry - that was rude of me. But you see, this ship belongs to me: I was furious that anyone who was a stranger, who didn’t understand, should come aboard at all.’

‘I do understand.’

‘These papers have given you some idea, I suppose. The ship is bound up with the lives of dead people, men and women who loved one another - and now there’s nothing left. It was very wrong of you to open the sealed letters.’

‘How can it be wrong when they are mine?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Those letters were written by my father to my grandfather. ’

‘Then you are Jennifer?’

‘Yes - I’m Jennifer. Are you John?’

‘I’m John.’

‘Do you want a handkerchief, Jennifer? I’ve got one here you can use. It’s fairly clean.’

‘Thanks.’ She took his handkerchief and blew her nose, then wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

‘Now you look better. I’ve been rather beastly to you. I’m terribly sorry.’

‘It’s all right. How were you to know who I was.’

‘I don’t know - I might have guessed. So you’re living with Philip Coombe? How do you get on with him? You seem to be the only person who has ever managed him.’

‘I think people have been frightened of him so long that it’s become a sort of legend. He isn’t frightening at all. He’s just a wretched old man who is afraid to die.’

John made no answer to this. He fumbled about in his pocket.

‘Do you mind a pipe?’

‘No.’

For a minute he busied himself in filling and lighting it. Then he spoke again.

‘Listen, Jennifer. Don’t think any more about those letters. It was all long ago, wasn’t it? You’re upset because you feel your father was never forgiven. I can remember him here in Plyn. I was only a small boy at the time, but he gave me the impression of being the happiest, gentlest creature in the world, utterly content and at peace. Really at peace. He didn’t worry about his father Joseph. He knew that everything was all right. I liked him tremendously, he was my own father’s greatest friend.’

Jennifer touched his arm.

‘You can read these letters if you like. Read them with me now.’ He glanced at her sideways.

‘Can I? That’s rather sweet of you, Jennifer.’

She spread them out in front of her and they sat with their shoulders touching, their chins cupped in their hands.

When they had finished Jennifer put them away without a word.

‘How did the box come here?’ she asked afterwards.

‘It belonged to your grandfather. It was always kept here. Then when Dick Coombe became skipper he used it too. Those letters of your father must have been slipped in when Joseph Coombe went to Sudmin.’

‘Daddy must have written other letters, I wonder what happened to them.’

‘Destroyed, I suppose.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Do you want to keep the box?’

‘No - let’s leave it here, where it’s always been.’

He got up and taking the box he put it away in the drawer. Then he came back, and looked down at her curiously, his hands in his pockets.

‘So you and I are cousins, Jennifer?’

‘Vaguely - but several times removed.’

‘No - not so damned removed.’

Jennifer laughed.

‘Come on deck - I want to show you something,’ he told her. They climbed up the ladder and walked forward to the fo’c’sle head.

‘Give me your hand,’ said John. He pulled her up beside him by the bowsprit. They both leaned over the bows of the ship. ‘You haven’t met Janet Coombe, have you?’

‘No,’ said Jennifer.

‘There she is, below you.’

Jennifer looked upon the figurehead in the white dress, the old-fashioned hat, the dark hair pushed away from the pale face, the eyes gazing seaward, the chin in the air.

‘Oh!’ cried Jennifer,‘I wish I’d known her, I wish she wasn’t dead.’

‘She isn’t dead.’

‘Isn’t she?’

‘No - she knows we’re here, both of us.’

‘I believe she does.’

They smiled at one another.

‘Jennifer, do you realize anything?’

‘Realize what?’

‘Do you realize you’re exactly like her?’

‘Like the figurehead?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed. ‘Am I really?’

‘H’m. How odd,’ he broke off suddenly, and leaned against the bulwark, his chin in his hands.

Jennifer went and stood next to him. ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Wondering what made me come out to the ship today.’

‘I’m glad you came,’ she told him. ‘After all, we ought to know each other, being cousins.’