The Main Cages (12 page)

During May the
Maria V
had spent more time at sea than in harbour. They left the bay on countless rain-washed mornings, on sultry windless mornings, on mornings when the low cloud was still pierced by moon-shards. They returned at dusk, in the early morning, at midday. Sometimes they would be gone for thirty-six hours. The ling and conger were plentiful, the prices good. Around the quays word spread again that Jack Sweeney was lucky and that the
Maria V
was a lucky boat.

He himself barely noticed anything that month but the sea. The rhythms of his days were sea rhythms. He had no land life; his gaze was filled with the waves and their rise and fall, with gannets travelling against grey skies; he watched
cloud-ranges swell on the horizon and the rain on the boat’s fresh paint form into droplets and vibrate with the engine. He heard the water sliding beneath the boat, the slosh of beam seas against it, the creak of the mizzen and the
chug-chug
of the Kelvin. He knew the slow dozing afternoons and the hot noons and the coming ashore late, after midnight, knowing they would be leaving again early the next day. He knew his own concentrations at hauling and at shooting, the precision when the spring tides ran at their quickest, and he watched the line in Croyden’s hand tighten and was ready to throttle back as soon as it snagged.

Two or three times that month the weather came in. The wind went round to the east. It freshened and the white-topped seas ran long and high past Pendhu Point and it was not possible to go out. On these days Jack Sweeney was overwhelmed by a frustration that he could no longer keep at bay with the intricacies of his knotwork, nor with the more pressing tasks of the net loft, nor with the hours sitting with Whaler Cuffe outside his wooden shed but only with long walks that had no direction when they began but invariably led either to St Pinnock’s holy well at Pennance, or across the Glaze River to Priory Creek and up over the top to Pendhu Point. There above Williams’s coastguard hut he sat in the sheep-cropped grass and watched the motionless shapes of the Main Cages.

When they fished, the land was always to the north. Sometimes it dissolved in the haze and at night it was marked only by the loom of the Lizard light sweeping the sky and sometimes by the light of St Anthony Head. At other times they motored down to the Ray Pits and for half a day or more saw nothing but the wide circle of sea and then it came back into view, that thin, dust-grey coast. Jack preferred the mornings when they were setting out, with the open sea before them, pushing south.

That was May.

In early June, the bait became harder to find. They prepared
to go to Plymouth. They brought the
Maria V
in through the Gaps and gathered supplies on the East Quay: four drums of fuel, several maunds of spare line, two new dans, a mass of cobles, four bags of Croyden’s new potatoes, three pounds of butter and a box of unlabelled Charbon tins which Hammels said he had learned to identify: ‘Put ’em in a bucket of water and if one sink quick, he’s salmon, sink slow he’s peach. He sink very quick and he’s no good.’

On the last evening, Jack closed up the net loft and came out onto the front with a canvas bag of tools over his shoulder. The bay was quiet; patches of wind drifted across its surface. They would have a clear run to Plymouth. As he passed Monk’s Tea Rooms, he spotted a familiar-looking couple coming towards him. It was the Abrahams.

‘Look – it’s Jack Sweeney!’ called Maurice, and came over and shook Jack by the hand.

Anna was two steps behind him. ‘Hello,’ she said with a half smile. She was wearing her sky-blue headscarf.

‘Well!’ Maurice rubbed his hands. ‘How’s the fishing?’

‘It’s going well.’

‘Off somewhere?’

‘Down to Plymouth tomorrow morning, for a few weeks. It’s the turbot season.’

‘Well, we should still be here when you get back, shouldn’t we, my dear?’

Anna nodded.

‘Come and see us!’

Jack told them he would do that. He watched them head along towards the Antalya Hotel. Maurice took off his hat at the door and smoothed down his hair and as she went in Anna looked behind her at Jack. She did not wave.

Jack liked the turbot. He liked its predictability, the way that it fed precisely at dawn. He liked the way that when a female was caught and pulled to the surface, the male would often
be with her, swimming alongside. Before they brought her on board, Hammels would lean over and hook the male with the gaff and grin as he hauled him in: ‘Two for one with lady turbot!’

For a fortnight at Plymouth the fishing was good. But during the third week the bait started to thin. They tried off the Eddystone, and to the south of Rame Head. Often they were late shooting the line, or could not use its whole length. The catches fell away and Croyden became short-tempered.

One sunny afternoon, Hammels returned from hawking his wooden warriors in town. Croyden was re-caulking the deck.

‘Look, Croy! Look what I buy!’ Hammels held up a pack of cards.

‘Get those damned cards away from me.’

‘I show you a trick.’

‘Piss off.’

‘No, Croy – you like this trick. This one help us.’

He cleared a space on the deck and laid out the four aces in a quadrant. ‘North – south – east – west. Where knave of hearts falls, that is where wind blows.’

Croyden carried on pressing in the oakum.

‘Ha!’ cried Hammels.

Croyden glanced at the cards and saw the knave lying on the southerly ace. The boats at their moorings were pointing out towards the sound – south.

‘I do again, Croy!’

This time Croyden paid more attention. The jack of hearts again fell to the south.

‘Just luck,’ said Croyden – but he followed Hammels’s hands as he laid out the cards again.

‘What’s this?’

‘This – Bolt Head. This – Start Point. Here Eddystone and Bigbury. Where knave of spade lands, there is fish for bait!’

Croyden shook his head, but he watched as Hammels dealt out the cards. The jack of spades fell on Bigbury.

‘Never be there in these tides,’ scoffed Croyden.

That night they fished off the Eddystone. Two boats went out into Bigbury and later they saw them burning their flambeaux; they had bait to spare.

So the following night the
Maria V
joined a large part of the fleet in Bigbury Bay, but it was those at the Eddystone who were lucky. Hammels claimed that was where his cards had indicated.

The next evening, Croyden asked casually, ‘What do they cards say?’

Harry shuffled the cards. He grinned at Croyden and carried on shuffling them a long time.

‘Get on with it!’

Harry flicked out the cards one by one on the deck. Again the knave fell on Bigbury.

They tried Bigbury Bay. It was a clear night and the moon was a couple of days off full. Shortly before midnight they drew a couple of the nets but there was nothing. Two hours later, the same. They drew them all and shifted up to the Eddystone where they had some luck but by then it was too late. They shot half the line without much conviction and hauled it empty. Dawn was a slit of pale sky astern as they motored back along the coast to Polmayne. They had been just over three weeks at Plymouth. They had each cleared about £10.

I
t was mid-morning when Jack moored his punt and headed back along the front. On the road outside Bethesda, he found Toper Walsh shovelling sand over the cobbles.

‘Why the sand, Tope?’

‘Whaler’s gone poorly!’

During the three weeks Jack had been in Plymouth, a strange illness had crept into Polmayne. It was characterised by vomiting and a series of long, thin rashes on the arms and legs. Agnes Thomas said that it was called Reed Fever and that men were particularly vulnerable. Because that was clear, and because the rashes really did look like little reeds, everyone began to talk of it as the Reeds. Where it came from no one knew, but on Parliament Bench they were quick to point out that it appeared at the same time as the visitors.

Dr White said there was no such disease as Reed Fever and that the illness was caused by a bacillus. Everyone still called it the Reeds.

Whaler’s bout had passed after forty-eight hours but in its
wake it had left a series of complaints that he referred to simply as the ‘old trouble’. Mrs Cuffe rearranged her guests and he came in from his summer shed. He lay in bed drinking cups of lukewarm water and refusing all offers of help. Mrs Cuffe had asked Toper to spread sand outside to deaden the sound of traffic.

‘Can’t do nothin’ more for him, Jack,’ she said.

‘Can I see him?’

‘He won’t see no one.’

The following day Jack spent on board the
Maria V.
He repaired some damage to the wheelhouse door. He spotted in some chipped paintwork. In the afternoon he rowed up to Penpraze’s yard for some new shackles and as he came in towards the yard he saw someone sketching on the wharf. It was Mrs Abraham. Sitting cross-legged, she was looking up and down from her pad to the half-painted hull of an oyster boat. The light was in her hair, and she kept pushing its loose strands back behind her ear. She did not notice him until the bows of the punt bumped into the wharf beneath her.

‘Oh! You gave me a start!’

Standing in the boat, Jack propped his elbows on the wharf and looked at the drawing. She held it out at arm’s length and cocked her head. ‘Tell me, Mr Sweeney, why are boats so difficult?’

‘Perhaps you must understand them to paint them.’ There was a faint hostility in his voice.

‘Plenty have managed it!’ she said defiantly. ‘It’s only practice.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘How was your fishing?’

‘Not good.’

The punt shifted beneath Jack and he looked down and straightened it with his feet. ‘Mrs Abraham, will you explain to me why did you not want my letters?’

She put down the pad. ‘I don’t know –’

‘You said “write and tell me everything”, and then you said “don’t write at all”. What am I to believe?’

‘I was thinking we could just write letters, but – it became more difficult –’

Just then Maurice appeared at the front of Penpraze’s shed, tapping his wrist. ‘Come on! We’re already late.’

Anna stood and clutched the pad to her chest. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. Do you forgive me?’

He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Yes.’

But she had already gone.

Each evening when Jack came in he asked Mrs Cuffe about Whaler, and each evening she said: ‘He’s no worse and no better.’

It was already high season in Polmayne. Groups of visitors flowed back and forth along the front, lingered on the quays and filled the beaches. In Mrs Cuffe’s dining room, she had to lay on an extra table. One Sunday morning at breakfast she came up to Jack and told him, ‘He says he’ll see you.’

Jack climbed the stairs. He followed a narrow corridor to a room papered in a pattern of faded red cockerels. On one wall was a picture of a woman stranded on a sea-ringed rock and clinging to the base of a cross; the picture was captioned ‘Rock of Ages’. The blinds were down and Whaler was lying in bed with his eyes closed.

‘That you, Jack?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sit down.’ He struggled to pull himself up, but did not open his eyes. After ten minutes Jack stood to leave.

‘You off now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come again, won’t you. I like to talk to someone.’

The next day Jack found him in better spirits. He was sitting upright, gazing at the open window. ‘Good, good, you’ve come!’

Jack sat on a stool and leaned against the wall.

‘What is happening out there?’

Jack told him the town was full of visitors, and everyone was grumbling about water and it being so dry.

‘I know, I know. She tells me.’

They talked about Jack’s fishing and then Whaler said: ‘Did I never tell you about Floyd?’

‘No.’

‘Well’ – he shifted himself against the pillow – ‘Thing we always liked about Floyd was that he could only count as far as five. He never got the hang of it – 3–4–5 … he’d say, then he’d stop and go into kind of a daze.

‘Anyway, one time Floyd’s standing quayside. Portugal, I think it was – maybe Spain. And there’s a thunderstorm and Floyd’s struck on the cheek by a slab a’ lightning! So we all look down at him on the quay and he’s not moving. We carry on looking but he doesn’t move a muscle. “He’s bloody dead!” shouts someone and we all think – Christ, poor old Floyd. But then he jumps up and looks around and he’s right as rain – ’cept for a burn mark, here on his cheek.’

Whaler started to laugh. ‘But you know what? That lightning’s cured him. He’s so quick now none of us can keep up with him. And the sums! He can do any sum he likes!’

Jack went to see Whaler whenever he could. There were good days and bad days. On the bad days he’d lie and listen to Jack and he would ask him about his childhood in Dorset and sometimes when Jack was speaking he would interrupt him and ask: ‘Tell me, what’s it look like?’, or ‘What’s she wearing?’, and would not allow him to continue until he had it all fixed in his mind’s eye. On the good days he would sit up and tell Jack about the emeralds he’d seen in Colombia, a crocodile farm in Swaziland, pearl-divers in India, and a man in Panama who sold him the seeds of a ‘miracle tree’.