The Main Cages (31 page)

Inside the church, it was packed. Those who could not get in stood in hats and raincoats on the verges above the creek. They lined the path that led down from the lych-gate. They stood with their backs to the shiny-leaved camellias, beneath the dripping myrtle trees and magnolias. They had come from as far afield as Falmouth and Fowey and St Ives. They took off their hats in the rain and held them as the families passed.

The first four rows of the church had white name-cards spaced along them. Major Franks escorted the Lord Lieutenant to the front pew. Behind him were the District and Divisional Inspectors of Lifeboats, the Chief Inspector and District Officers of Coastguards, the Secretary and Officers of the Polmayne Lifeboat Committee and two police constables. Captain Maddocks from Porth was there in his old naval uniform and beside him sat Captain Williams. Behind them were members of the launch crew and the LSA Company and their families and behind them fifteen rows reserved for the bereaved.

Toper Walsh had arrived long before the service. For two hours he had been sitting alone beneath the window of St Anthony and St Francis. The multi-coloured light fell on his bare head and on his shoulders. Since the accident and the loss of his only son, Double, Toper had hardly left his house.

In a dark suit, and still limping, Lawrence Rose came in with Mrs Cameron. She had taken the train down from Newbury. Despite her late husband’s decade of Petrel racing, it was only the second time she had been to Polmayne.

The Tylers arrived at the same time as the Stephenses. A grim-faced silence hung between them. Many thought that the weight of shared grief would bring the two families
together but the only ones who could have initiated a reconciliation were those who had died at sea.

Coxswain Tyler’s widow had a place reserved in the front pews and she was taken up the aisle on the arm of the only survivor, her nephew Dougie Tyler.

Mrs Cuffe arrived on her own, in the best coat she had had dyed black for Whaler’s funeral in July. She was joined by Annie Treneer and Frank and Agnes Treneer and Croyden’s widow Maggie and other members of the family.

Tommy Treneer came last. He was helped down the steps by a sidesman. Under his arm was his old Coxswain’s cap, and his three RNLI service medals hung from his jacket. At the font he shook off the assistance of the sidesman and meandered down the aisle. Everyone watched his progress. Two or three times he stopped and put a hand on a pew-end. He looked unsure where he was. In the end Major Franks stood and led him to his seat.

It was ten past eleven when the Bishop of Truro and Parson Hooper and the Methodist ministers came out of the vestry and took their places on the chancel steps. The congregation rustled to its feet. The Bishop held up his arms:
‘I am the Resurrection and the Light.
’

After the first hymn, Major Franks read Psalm 139: ‘…
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me
 …’

Parson Hooper climbed slowly into the pulpit. He trembled as he began his address. He described the debt that he and many others felt towards those who had died: ‘I for one had never understood, never really understood, the supreme Christian duty of lifeboatmen. It is gallantry beyond words – to go out into the merciless sea when all others are heading for home, to rescue from the jaws of death men and women who are often complete strangers.’

He bent his head and his hands gripped the rim of the pulpit. Some in the congregation thought he had finished and
there was a creaking of pews as they shifted in their seats. But he looked up again. The ones sitting beneath him could see the tears in his eyes.

‘I watched those men … I watched them as they brought us aboard the ship. I watched their faces as they escorted us from one boat to the other. I watched them as they went back into the maelstrom to collect the others – and I honestly believe that had they known what was to befall them they would still have gone. They would not have hesitated for an instant. Let us always remember their sacrifice. We must never forget.’

The service ended with ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’. Outside the church, the rain had eased. Mr Evans the schoolmaster had been standing on the steps beneath the tower conducting those unable to get in.

Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed hour keep …

As the verses progressed, those who had been sheltering from the showers came forward and sang together and their rising voices joined with those inside the church to ring out across the river.

From rock and tempest, fire and foe

Protect them wheresoe’er they go …

The clouds thinned and a burst of vagrant sun swept over the church roof, across the water and up along the back of Pendhu Point and the just-ploughed fields of Ivor Dawkins.

And ever let there rise to thee

Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

To one side stood Anna Abraham. She was alone. Her fair hair was spilling from a dark grey headscarf. Two days after
the memorial service she gave up the lease of Ferryman’s Cottage, took Whaler’s repainted sea chest and left Polmayne for good.

In the weeks following the accident Parson Hooper proved himself again to be sound and resourceful. He visited the bereaved. He ensured that they were aware of the various funds available for them. He put the correct gloss on the version of events presented to reporters: ‘No, at no time was there any panic on the
Golden Sands.
Everyone behaved with the utmost decorum …’ It was he who arranged the memorial service, who with Major Franks launched the appeal, and who commissioned, with diocesan funds, two memorial crosses from Pascoe & Sons – one for the churchyard and one to be placed on the cliff above Hemlock Cove, overlooking the Main Cages. When the
Constantine
came in one evening and anchored in the bay, it was Hooper who escorted Captain Henriksen and his crew up to the cliff, who said a short prayer before the Captain knelt and laid the wreath of kaffir lilies and nerines that his wife and his men had made for the victims.

The days grew shorter. The last of the summer visitors left and around Armistice Day the pilchard fleet headed as usual up to Plymouth. The town withdrew into itself. The wound of the accident began to close up. Some people still came to the town out of curiosity, others to express their sympathy. But at the first mention of the
Kenneth Lee,
they were met with silence.

Parson Hooper found his days becoming emptier. He took his services and his own congregation after the accident was closer, more unified. But in the town his offers of help and support were accepted less and less often. On 20 November he was admitted to hospital with a case of ‘nervous exhaustion’. After a week, he was sent to a nursing home in Newquay. Mrs Hooper took lodgings to be near him. Soon afterwards a removal van arrived at Polmayne’s rectory and
by Christmas a Reverend Perkins had arrived to replace him. It was he who was contacted by Pascoe & Sons to collect Hooper’s last Tablet, which had been commissioned on 19 November. Perkins recognised the quotation from Isaiah:

And I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned, nor digged;

but there shall come up briers and thorns;

I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

All through that autumn the Golden Sands Hotel remained closed. In December the board on the front of the building was taken down. By May of the following year a new sign, smaller, had been erected at the gate: Pendhu Lodge Hotel.

In late October, Ralph Cameron’s Petrel
Harmony
was towed a mile south of Pendhu Point and scuttled.

One afternoon in January 1937, Joseph Johns arrived back in Polmayne. In Australia he had heard of the loss of the lifeboat, and despite the success he was having there he was overcome by nostalgia for Cornwall. It was Joseph – with the help of his grandfather Boy – who bought the
Maria V.
The solicitors had some difficulty tracing Jack Sweeney’s family, but when they did they were instructed to donate any proceeds from the sale of the boat to the lifeboat fund. By March 1937 the
Maria V
was at sea again, long-lining down at the Ray Pits, and Harry Hammels was crewing, laying out his cards to find out where the fish were.

In June, though, Hammels suddenly left Polmayne. He disappeared. Someone said he had joined a ship in Falmouth, headed for the Far East, another that he signed up as crew on a yacht in the Mediterranean.

The summer of 1937 was as busy as ever in Polmayne. The Pendhu Lodge Hotel was full. Tents filled Dalvin’s field and in August Ivor Dawkins put aside another for visitors’ use. Five new villas had been completed above the church. Another
fourteen dwellings were completed and occupied at the Crates. At Pennance the water had risen high up the dam wall. At the head of the reservoir, in a few inches of clear water, could be seen the sodden ferns and the slate roof of St Pinnock’s holy well. Most of the town now had access to mains water. Installation of the sewerage was also completed.

In the middle of June, Petrel racing began. The points series was raced for the Cameron Cup.

A new parking scheme had been set up on the Town Quay. White lines were painted on the cobbles right up to the end of Parliament Bench. When Toper Walsh saw a woman take her young son behind their car and undo his trousers, he shouted: ‘And I’ll come and piss in your bloody living room!’

On 1 September, up at the Crates, Tommy Treneer died. No one but Annie Treneer had seen him for months, and when they heard he had died many who did not know him that well were surprised because they thought he had been dead for years. It was almost exactly a year after the loss of the
Kenneth Lee.
A large crowd turned out for his funeral. His coffin was led to the chapel wrapped in the RNLI flag and topped by his old sou’wester.

‘Polmayne’ll never be the same without Tom,’ said Toper.

‘Never,’ agreed Red Treneer.

‘Eeee,’ said Boy Johns.

O
n a warm day in July 1972, a Morris Traveller drove down into Polmayne. It passed the Crates and the rectory, and came round on the new road above Pritchard’s Beach. By the Antalya Hotel was a large ‘P’ sign with an arrow pointing to the space once occupied by the cottages of Cooper’s Yard. The half-timbered car came to a halt beneath a creeper-hung cliff and an elderly woman climbed out. Checking her reflection in the car window, she tied on a pale-blue headscarf and headed out to the front.

It was the first time in thirty-six years that Anna had been back. During that time she had remained living in the same house in Hampstead. In 1942 she was officially widowed when Maurice was killed in North Africa. After the war she let out the basement to a Jewish composer from Budapest; the top floor she converted for her sister Maria. She never remarried. Every couple of years she exhibited her paintings in a gallery in Cork Street. She spent two months each summer with Maria in a cottage in Salcombe, and there she did something
that surprised even her: she learned to sail. She bought a small open boat named
Corinthia
and sometimes on calm days she sailed out past the bar and looked west into Cornwall. But in all those years she never wanted to go back.

A mild southerly was blowing in off Polmayne Bay. The Petrels were racing. On the Town Quay she watched a crowd of people queuing up to board a pleasure boat:
Polmayne Belle
–
Afternoon Cruise to Porth
–
Bar and Refreshments
–
Tea ashore.

Beyond the quays she found the alley leading to Bethesda. Mrs Cuffe’s rooms had long been converted into separate flats, each one with its own stable door. Ceramic name-plates were fixed above them:
Pendhu View, Bo’sun’s Cottage, Forbes’s Loft.
Above the steps to Jack’s old rooms was one which read
Harbour View.

That afternoon she walked up around Penpraze’s yard to Ferryman’s. Through the trees she heard the sound of shouting. She went no closer. She watched a man standing bare-chested in the shallows. Two children were sitting in a dinghy, splashing him with the paddles. At the slate-topped table was a woman in a floppy, wide-brimmed hat.

She took the ferry across the Glaze River and walked up through Priory Creek. As she climbed over the top, the Main Cages came into view one by one – the Curate, Maenmor and all its satellites. There, above Hemlock Cove she found the granite cross and the thirteen names beneath the inscription:

He sent from above. He took me.
He drew me out of many waters.

(2 Sam. XXII 17)