The Main Cages (19 page)

Three steam tugs were manoeuvring just to seaward of the ship. One by one they dropped in and threw a line to their own men on board. With half an hour to go before high water, everything was in place. The tugs waited, the crowd on the clifftop waited. Fulmar cries echoed off the rocks, and the gentlest of seas ran along the ship’s rock-lodged hull.

Fifteen minutes later, a smudge of black smoke rose from the tugs’ stacks and the lines whipped up out of the water. As the tugs pulled, a deep creaking noise came from the ship’s holds – and the crowd cheered. But there was no movement. The Captain sensed in his own bones the immense stubborn weight of his ship. He looked at the tugs and thought:
this is impossible.

They pulled again. The line tightened. The tugs strained. Everyone watched for the first sign of movement – but instead there was a sudden crack and one of the lines parted. The two frayed ends sprang back and a collective gasp rose from the crowd.

Captain Henriksen checked his watch; high water had already passed. ‘These,’ he said to Mrs Henriksen, ‘are the last moments of our ship.’

‘Look – they are still trying.’

It took them a quarter of an hour to secure another line. The tugs hurried back into position. For some time, there was only the sound of their engines. The water was beginning to ebb. Then the
Constantine’s
top-masts shivered once. A low groan came from somewhere deep inside the ship and suddenly she moved. The fulmars were startled. They left the cliffs and circled their nests. The ship moved a yard, before sticking fast. The tugs pulled again, and with a prolonged scraping that made Captain Henriksen wince, the
Constantine
was dragged over the reef and dropped, bobbing into the water.

The crowd clapped and all at once everyone was congratulating Captain Henriksen. He stood with Mrs Henriksen and said, ‘Yes, yes. Very satisfactory. Thank you, thank you.’

They brought the ship into the bay. A few days later, Captain Henriksen announced that they were ready to leave for Falmouth and an extensive programme of repairs. That evening there was something of a celebration at the rectory. Sixteen people – officers of the
Constantine,
members of the Mission and the Frankses – gathered in the dining room. Parson Hooper was persuaded to bring up a case of pre-war claret from his cellar. Mrs Henriksen had ordered a goose from Ivor Dawkins at Crowdy Farm.

After dinner, Captain Henriksen pushed back his chair and stood. ‘In Finland, they say we are very famous for making toasts for no reason –’

‘Not true!’ laughed his First Officer.

‘But this evening I have to say we have good reason. This town rescued us and all our company from big danger. It has accommodated us and welcomed us as if we were its own. I particularly would like to thank the Rector whose wisdom and kindness has made dark time possible for me and for my wife and for us all. May God give to him His blessing and may God give blessing to everyone also in this little town of Polmayne.’

The next morning, at eleven, the
Constantine
hauled her anchor. She tucked in close to the lifeboat station, where a large crowd had gathered. On the ship, crew and officers lined the weather rail and raised three cheers. Amidst the crowd, Parson Hooper took off his hat and waved.

The
Constantine
hardened sheets and headed away out of the bay. Picking up a good northerly she struck along the coast for Falmouth.

Parson Hooper watched the ship’s stern shrink into the
distance. He stood there long after the others had left, spinning the rim of his hat round and round in his fingers.

From Newlyn that week, Jack wrote to Anna. He told her about the fishing (‘prices up to nearly 14/- a thousand’), his crew (‘Croyden and Charlie have stopped blaming Hammels’), and then he said to her: ‘Why not stay in Ferryman’s this autumn? You can paint and I will not be away but will be fishing out of Polmayne

On Monday, she wrote back: ‘… My sister is coming to Cornwall today. She is going to Tintagel – she always loved King Arthur. She wants me to go but I think I will stay here and paint …’.

It was a day of porcelain-blue skies. Small white clouds hung over Penwith, but out to sea it was clear. Jack walked south along the cliffs to Mousehole and beyond. On his left the water stretched to a blade-sharp horizon. What did she want? He felt again the mistrust that had haunted him since last winter. But then, what did he want? He wanted this. He wanted the sea and the blue shapes and the blue shades. He wanted it in its changingness and its grey guises, its capacity to give life and to take it away, its darknesses and depths – and he wanted Anna for the same reasons.

On Thursday morning, manoeuvring back into her berth, the
Maria V
hit the harbour wall and sheared a rudder pin. It would take until Monday to repair. The four of them cut their losses and headed for Penzance station.

It was late afternoon when they reached Polmayne. Jack rowed up at once to Ferryman’s. The tide was ebbing and it took him some time but then he reached the corner and came round it and there was the whitewashed front and the low thatch and there were the windows shuttered and there was the door with the arch of a padlock securing its latch.

She had gone – of course she had gone.

A
nna Abraham at that moment was some forty miles to the north, seeing off a gentleman visitor on the steps of a Tintagel guest house. Silver-haired and silver-tongued, Dr Sanders was talking to her in soft, encouraging tones.

It was less than twenty-four hours since she had received the telegram – COME TINTAGEL SOONEST V ILL MARIA – and now the doctor was telling her that he could find nothing physically wrong with her sister.

‘The problem is here,’ he said and tapped his temple.

Dr Sanders saw a number of such cases every year. Having spent a lifetime wrapping themselves in Arthurian tales, first-time visitors to Tintagel often lapsed into a state of ‘acute depressive torpor’. He had once written a paper on the subject for the medical press: ‘Myth and Melancholy at Arthur’s Tintagel’. The paper had done him no favours, as his conclusion was entirely unscientific: people like this were unable to cope with the earthly realisation of their dreams.

‘It’s like seasickness, Mrs Abraham. As soon as they leave Tintagel they feel better.’

So it proved for Maria. By the time they reached Bodmin Road station the next morning, she was chiding Anna.

‘It’s a man, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Nice?’

Anna nodded.

Maria looked up into the oak trees and smiled. She had never liked Maurice. And Anna’s mysterious involvement, which drew her deeper into Cornwall while she herself returned to London, went some way towards reviving her bruised sense of romance.

‘
Schastlivo!
’ she called as Anna’s train slid westwards out of the station.

Harris’s Station Bus was waiting at Truro. It was very hot inside. Anna found a seat on the shaded side. The windows were open but it was still hot. They were waiting for three men from the train, one of whom was having an argument with the station porter. The men wore flannel suits and in the end two of them dragged their argumentative friend away and ran for the bus.

‘Almost missed it!’

As the bus pulled off the men came swaying down the aisle. They flopped into the seats beside and behind Anna.

They introduced themselves. They were off-duty cavalry officers. The one next to her was called Lee, another Travers, and the other was Birkin. In a week’s time, they said, Birkin was getting married, and he and his friends were booked into a hotel for a final spree.

‘The Golden Sands – you staying there?’ Lee asked Anna.

‘No.’

‘I say, are you Spanish?’

Anna shook her head and turned to look out of the window.

‘Well, you sound Spanish. Does she sound Spanish to you, Birkin?’

‘Never been to Spain.’

‘Refugee, I suppose. Damned hot in here – can’t we open a window?’

‘They are open,’ said Travers.

‘Funny, I thought they were dark in Spain, but you’re pale. Very charming though. Isn’t she charming, Birks?’

Birkin was asleep.

In Polmayne, the bus pulled to a halt in front of the Antalya Hotel. Several people stepped out of the shade to meet it. Mrs Cuffe greeted a couple and their son. The boy’s face was half-hidden by the sail of a model yacht, and he was crying.

Three porters had come with barrows from the Golden Sands, and the cavalry officers joined them and another couple from London and they all followed the barrows along the front.

Anna set off for the shops. She was surprised to bump into Croyden Treneer. He looked at her raffia hat and her small leather valise and said, ‘He’s over there.’ He flicked his chin in the direction of Bethesda.

He was back! She cut through the alley just as the boy with the model yacht came rushing out past her. She knocked on Jack’s door.

Nothing. She knocked again. Had she misunderstood Croyden? Had he meant that Jack was still in Newlyn? He wasn’t due back for another two weeks at least. Maybe Croyden had come back earlier, the Reeds …

The door opened. Jack stepped out of the shadows.

‘I thought you were in Newlyn!’ She stepped up and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

‘And I thought you’d left for good.’

Parson Hooper was driving the dog-cart back from Truro. On the hill below Pennance, Harris’s Station Bus rattled past
him and Job jumped forward and Hooper had to grip the reins to stop him bolting. But then the bus was gone and Job resumed his walk. In the close and thundery heat the sound of his hooves made the parson drowsy and his hat nodded down towards his chest. The reins fell into his lap. In the back of the dog-cart was last month’s Tablet:
A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!/Rose plot,/Fringed pool,/Fern’d grot …

Without the crew of the
Constantine,
without Captain Henriksen, Parson Hooper had slipped back into his early-summer mood. Polmayne had become an alien and friendless place. He had not even taken any lines for a new Tablet. Never in all the years of his ministry had he felt so isolated.

‘We’re not wanted here,’ he had told Mrs Hooper. ‘Do you know what the fishermen do if they see me on the way to their boats? Do you know?’

‘No, dear.’

‘They turn round and go home. I am bad luck.
Bad luck!
Imagine what that feels like.’

Anna and Jack rowed up to Ferryman’s. It was hot and close and Anna pulled up her sleeve and trailed an arm in the water. The clouds were heavy overhead. Anna started to sing. She sang in Russian and then stumbled over the words. ‘I forgot this song until now. It was one my grandmother sang us.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘If I remember – it is the story of a Cossack and he steals a noble lady from her husband and her big house and he takes her away in his boat. Then later she becomes a bandit also and one day in a war or something she comes to raid the estate of her husband. I don’t remember exactly what happens then – I think he shoots her and then he shoots the Cossack, or maybe the Cossack shoots him or maybe she shoots the husband and herself – anyway they all end up dead! It’s quite a sad song.’

They came round the bend in the river and the boat eased up the shingle and Anna threw her shoes ashore and went on ahead to unlock the cottage. She stood for a moment on the slate floor. She closed her eyes and let the coolness seep up her calves. When Jack came in, he took her hand and without a word led her across the room and up the stairs. On the narrow iron bed, he sat her down and knelt before her. The shutters were still closed and in the shadows her face glowed in the heat. He wondered why, when he had tried so often, he had failed to remember her features, failed to remember the exact curve of her lips and her long nose and her smiling eyes.

‘Don’t go.’ He gripped her hand. ‘Don’t leave here.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’

On the terrace of the Golden Sands Hotel, Mr Bryant called for silence. Beside him stood Mrs Bryant and the Raffertys and Lady Banville with her pout and her painted
décolletage.

The afternoon had dragged into evening. Thick grey cloud hung over the town; already it felt like dusk. Veils of midges followed the guests as they milled around the hotel lawn. Everyone was short-tempered.

Mr Bryant had arranged another reception, this time for the commissioning of the newly-refurbished
Golden Sands.
Dozens of visitors were added to the fifty-odd guests staying in the hotel. Parson and Mrs Hooper were there. The cavalry officers were there; they had been asleep and their flannel suits were creased. The knot of Petrel skippers were discussing next day’s Porth regatta when Mr Bryant clapped his hands.

‘Dear God!’ hissed Ralph Cameron. ‘Not another of his damned speeches!’

‘Ladies and gentlemen! Thank you all for coming this evening.’ He paused. ‘When Mrs Bryant and I first came to Polmayne, we were drawn here for one reason and one reason only. Indeed it is the same reason you are here – all of you.

Those who are visitors or guests or have chosen to live here, or to bring your children here or sail your yachts. Indeed, it is the same reason this very town exists and has existed since dim antiquity.’