The Main Cages (20 page)

Mr Bryant pointed over the heads of the guests, over the lawn and the shingle beach to the water. It stretched grey and soupy into the gloom.

‘The sea! It is the sea that pulls us here as powerfully as a nail to a magnet. One has only to think of the many ways in which it provides for us – feeding us with its fish, cooling us when we bathe, exercising our bodies, soothing us when we hear it on the rocks at night. From cradle to grave it provides for us all in a dozen different ways.’

‘Hear, hear.’ Sir Basil was finding it hard to concentrate in the heat. But it helped to bob his head up and down in agreement.

‘Get on with it, for God’s sake!’ muttered Cameron.

‘No doubt Sir Basil here will remember a comedian we had up our way before the war – Tommy Thomas?’

Sir Basil nodded.

‘You will remember then his routine of a publican whose refrain was always, “If the guests is happy, then we’s is happy” – at which he would grin and jangle the change in his pocket.’ Mr Bryant chuckled.

Sir Basil dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘“If the guests is happy, then we’s is happy.” Well, that is our motto at the Golden Sands and that is why I have taken on an enterprise which I am sure will yield great dividends not just for visitors to the hotel but for the entire town!’

Mr Bryant and Sir Basil and their party then made their way down the terrace steps, down the hotel’s well-watered lawn towards the beach and the newly-built jetty.

They heard it before they saw it – the shrill
poop-poop
of a foghorn in the slate-grey dusk. Around the point came the
Golden Sands:
golden-yellow sides, sky-blue funnel with yellow hoops.

Mr Bryant stood with the Raffertys by the jetty. ‘There she is!’

‘Splendid!’ Sir Basil clapped; a few others clapped too.

Lady Rafferty was fanning herself with a mother-of-pearl fan. ‘Is that it?’

On board Jimmy Garrett stood at the still-unfinished bar, silently dispensing drinks. Tacker darted back and forth, pointing out the new features.

The cavalry officers stood at the bar and Travers said, ‘I like this boat, don’t you, Lee?’

‘I like it too. What about you, Birks?’

Birkin was waving his empty glass at Jimmy. ‘Barman!’

Jimmy ignored him.

In all, more than eighty people made their way along the jetty that evening and on board the
Golden Sands.
Mr Bryant gave the Raffertys a detailed tour of the boat. ‘Ladies’ convenience here. Covered seating here at the back for thirty people …’

‘Marvellous!’ Sir Basil asked lots of questions. Lady Rafferty asked none. Behind the wheelhouse was the new lifeboat and a rather complicated piece of plumbing. ‘And what’s this?’ asked Sir Basil.

‘That is, er … Tacker!’

Tacker came out from under the awning and said, ‘Fuel intake, sir. Had to reroute him, sir.’

‘It’s the fuel intake, Sir Basil. It’s where they take in the fuel.’

‘Oh really! I can’t stand another minute of this.’ Lady Rafferty told Mrs Bryant to take her back to the hotel.

From far out to sea came the first growl of thunder.

A
nna Abraham lay on her back. She kicked at the water and the splashing echoed in the creek. She gazed up at the cave-grey ceiling of cloud above her. The whole sky looked ready to drop on her head. How long could it stay up?

It was she who had woken first. In the heavy heat of early evening she rose and put on her bathing suit and came down to swim. When Jack heard her, he pushed open the upstairs window and leaned on the sill.

‘Come into the water!’ she called.

‘I have a better plan!’

They went rowing. They rowed upstream, around the bend above the cottage where the river opened out into a broad lagoon. It was mid-tide. Oak-woods bordered the river, the trees’ boughs hung down over a steep foreshore. The water was as flat as a table. Anna had never been up here. She followed the strokes of the paddles and watched the crease of the bow-wave spread out towards the shore.

At the top of the lagoon, the river divided.

‘Which way?’ asked Jack. ‘Main river, or the side creek?’

‘Er … Side creek.’

The creek’s edges dovetailed into the dusk. Jack made three strong strokes and let the boat glide into it.

‘What’s it called, Jack?’

‘Gooth – Gooth Creek.’

They drifted up between the oak-lined slopes. The tide pushed them on. A curlew screeched, slewed off over the trees. As they rounded the first bluff Anna saw the boats. They had become the same grey as the rocks and mud. There were dozens, scattered along both banks. Among them were several larger ones – their spars had been stripped and only the bare hulls remained, lying side-on and half-submerged.

‘What are they?’

‘Seine boats, fishing boats.’

For generations, he explained, boats had been laid up here by the people of Porth and Polmayne. In the war, many were brought up here and remained when their owners failed to return.

‘In the town, they say that someone’s “gone to Gooth” when they’re too old or too ill to go out.’

‘Ugh!’ said Anna.

‘You want to go back?’

She nodded. But at the main river she said, ‘What happens up the stream. No more boats?’

‘No more boats.’

They pressed on, on into the heavy grey evening. One or two slender canes broke the water’s surface. The river swung to right and left, narrowed a little, but the woods on each side never thinned. Where streams came into the creek, the woods receded and gave way to beds of blond reeds. They came to a place where the river widened, and Jack shipped the paddles. He stood and the boat rocked from side to side.

‘Careful!’ said Anna.

He made his way towards her and stretched his legs out
along the boat. She twisted round and hung her feet over the side. Her head rested on his stomach.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I have made a decision.’

‘Yes?’

‘You said stay here in the autumn and, well, I think I will stay.’

He kissed the top of her head. ‘Good.’

‘On one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You do not let any more beard grow on your chin.’

They lay for a long time in the stern and listened to the splash of jumping mullet. Then from over the oak-woods, over the hill, came the sound of thunder.

‘We ought to go back,’ said Anna.

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s wait here, let’s wait for the rain.’

At six o’clock the first large drops fell on Polmayne. They fell on the roofs and in the courtyards and they spotted the tarmac of the front and the cobbles on the quay. They brought with them a sweet, vegetable smell. Those on Parliament Bench upturned their palms and Toper Walsh gave a small cheer and Boy Johns went ‘Eeee!’ In Basset’s Yard, Mrs Stephens tilted her face to the skies and said, ‘Thank the Lord!’ Even Mrs Cuffe at Bethesda gave half a smile as she cleared the feeds to her water butt.

Then it stopped. The heat of the cobbles shrunk the drops to nothing and only the dust and the smell were left. On the Bench they shook their heads and leaned on their elbows again. They cursed the clouds and scowled at the Porth boat, the
Andrew Eliot,
which was now pushing in through the Gaps.

Every year, on the night before the regatta, the Porth Male Voice Choir performed in Polmayne. It was meant as a conciliatory gesture between the two towns but it rarely was. Fifteen men in green jackets trotted up the steps and nodded
at the Bench and made their way up to the Freeman Reading Rooms. There they agreed to shed their jackets and sang in white shirts and ties and the audience of visitors joined in the choruses. Six people had left before they finished, faint with heat. Afterwards the men took their green jackets and made their way to the Fountain Inn.

Since early evening, a large crowd had been gathering outside the Fountain, escaping the heat of the tap room for the open air. Those who wished to talk found they had to raise their voices to make themselves heard, and what with the heat and the talking they returned more often to the tap room, and each time they did they managed to talk even louder.

Only the Porth singers did not talk. They stood in a circle, glasses in hand, and every so often one of them would start singing and then the others would join in.

Up at the Golden Sands Hotel the reception was over. It was almost dark by the time Jimmy and Tacker Garrett saw off the last of the guests and brought the
Golden Sands
back to her moorings. When they reached the Fountain Inn, Tacker added his voice to the Porth singers. Those who didn’t want to sing but wanted to talk found that they had to raise their voices even higher. And from the Fountain Inn the talking and singing spilled out of the alley and down to the quays. In the breathless air, it joined the talk of those on the front and spread back into the side-alleys and up over the net lofts and into the lanes to merge with the voices of those who were talking inside. As night drew its curtains across the day it seemed as if the whole town was one vast room and everyone in it was a part of the same inescapable hubbub. No one slept. Those men with the Reeds turned this way and that in bed, rising to open the window because of the heat, then rising again to close it because of the noise.

A host of long-buried resentments came to the surface that Friday evening. For months Mr Hicks had watched the numbers in the Antalya restaurant fall away, losing custom to the new hotel. His dining room was almost empty. His
chef was playing cards with the kitchen staff. When a couple of new guests told him that they too would be ‘trying out the Golden Sands’s cooking’, he collected their bags and threw them onto the street. ‘You want to dine at the Golden Sands, you can bloody well stay there!’

The Town Quay was full of people walking up and down. Having walked up and down, many of them leaned on the wall. Toper Walsh was watching a very fat boy eating a cold sausage.

‘Christ, what they children get fed now’ days! They never bloody stop eating.’

‘Why shouldn’t he eat a sausage?’

‘You never had a sausage, Tope?’ asked Tick-Tock Harris.

‘Course I ’ad a sausage! Course I have. Anyway, Tick, you ain’t even from ’ere.’

In Rope Walk Maggie Treneer discovered from Croyden that his piece had become a desert. ‘How in the name of God do you expect to feed us this winter?’

Having no answer, Croyden took his brown beret and left the house for the Fountain. There he found his brother Charlie and Double and Edwin Pentreath and the Tylers and they stood in a circle. Double said he was going up to the new reservoir at Pennance in the morning. There was water there, he said, and Ivor Dawkins had lent them his water-cart but they needed hands to help. They all told him they would go and then Charlie said, ‘I tell ’ee, all this talk of water’s making me thirsty.’ And he rejoined the crowd queuing in the tap room.

Up at the Crates, Old Mrs Treneer and the Moyles and a few others were standing outside the new houses when a blood-coloured glow appeared behind Pendhu. They had not even noticed that the thunderclouds had gone and now here was the moon, fat and pitted beside the church tower. ‘What a beauty!’ cooed Mrs Moyle.

‘A peach!’ said Mrs Treneer.

Inside, in the middle of his empty room, Tommy Treneer
sat rocking on his stool. He was cursing the stiletto of light which had cut through the gap in the curtains. ‘Gone to Gooth,’ they all said of Tommy in the town, but because he never went out he had no idea. He scratched his bare arm and the flakes of dried skin drifted down in the moonlight and he muttered about ‘damn labbetts and larrs’.

By eleven the day’s heat had gone. In the fields of Pendhu the corn shocks stretched fingers of moon-shadow across the stubble. When the Fountain Inn closed, the singing continued. Those in the alley followed the green jackets of the Porth choir, still singing, down to the Town Quay where the
Andrew Eliot
was being brought into the steps. The singing turned to jostling as they stood on the quay and the Garretts glared at the choir and for the first time the Porth men stopped singing and hurried down the steps to the
Andrew Eliot.
As she backed out through the Gaps and slid onto the rug of silvery light in the bay, the singing resumed. It rose in pitch until the taunt in it was audible not only to those still on the quays but to all those who lay unsleeping in their beds, trying to shut out the remaining murmur of the streets and the rose-red light of that harvest moon.

‘Fare-well Polmayne – Fare-well, fa-are-arewell …’