The Main Cages (27 page)

‘She’s not at home!’ Toper and the others were on the Bench. ‘She went up Porth dinner time!’

‘Took the Garretts’ boat, Mr Swee!’

‘For the regatta!’

Jack carried on with his coiling. All right, so he would go to Bethesda and look out for the boat and they’d row up to Ferryman’s together later on. He pulled in the punt, loaded the maund and turned to wave to the Bench.

That was when they appeared, high over the capped and hatted line of Parliament Bench. Two green stars in a sky too bright for stars; two late and muffled thuds on the wind. From the direction of the lifeboat station came a couple of much louder reports, echoing off the town’s walls, rolling back from the headland.

Toper let out a yelp and Boy stood on the bench to look over the wall.

‘Anything?’ called Treneer.

Boy peered out towards Pendhu and the open sea beyond but could see nothing more than a speckling of white crests on the swell. He sat and shook his head.

Tick-Tock Harris was looking at his watch. He had set it the moment he heard the maroons.

‘A visitor, swimming,’ speculated Toper.

‘A yacht.’

‘False alarm.’

‘Eeee.’

Jack was already on his way.

On board the
Golden Sands,
the group of men were still standing at the bar. Parson Hooper had given up trying to join them. It was Lawrence Rose who saw the maroons through the back of the deckhouse – the brief blooms of green above Pendhu Point.

‘Help’s on its way,’ he said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Bryant.

‘Lifeboat.’

The mention of the lifeboat only alarmed Bryant even more. He could not wait any longer. He stumbled out under the awning to the wheelhouse. ‘Mr Garrett,’ he barked, ‘you will explain to me exactly what is happening!’

A flicker of contempt crossed Jimmy’s face. ‘Tack!’

Tacker had been examining the fuel intake to port and he came into the wheelhouse from the other side, wiping his
hands. ‘Damned cap’s off, Jim, must have poured in down –’

He stopped when he saw Bryant.

Jimmy said, ‘Perhaps you can take Mister here somewhere else.’

Tacker led him out to the forward deck. Mr Bryant gripped the rail to steady himself. The wind had freshened further. The bows were kicking hard against the anchor chain but the seas were still long, with long rounded tops and smaller waves which rolled over them and half-broke over their backs.

‘Well, sir,’ said Tacker.

‘Yes?’

‘Looks like the engine’s gone.’

‘What are you doing about it?’

‘Not a lot we can do, sir.’

Bryant looked at him. There must be something else, something he didn’t understand. ‘But you’ve put the anchor out. At least we are not moving …’

Tacker said nothing. Bryant knew suddenly that it wasn’t true, that they
were
still moving. And for the first time, above the mysterious constraints of the sea that he had made no progress in fathoming, he saw the plain logic of their position: they had no power and they could not stop. It was a simple enough equation, and in the heat of the late afternoon it left him with a feeling of cold terror. What could he tell the passengers?

‘Lifeboat’s on its way, sir. They’ll tow us in.’

Bryant clutched at that. ‘So it’s just a question of waiting?’

‘That’s it, sir. Be here in no time!’

Bryant went back through the deckhouse awning. A silence had settled on the passengers. Most had felt the first shadows of doubt, sensing with the passing of each minute that their situation was becoming more dangerous. And with the doubt came the need to know. They watched Mr Bryant stand to face them from the bar.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you have probably noticed that we have had a little breakdown –’

‘What, exactly?’ someone shouted.

‘It seems it might be difficult to repair –’

At once a murmur of questions rose from the benches. It grew indignant.

Bryant held out his arms: ‘Please! Please –’

‘What do you mean, difficult?’

‘Who’s in charge here?’

The woman in a yellow hat pointed to the boy on her knee: ‘He must eat by six, you know!’

‘I wish someone would just explain …’

‘Oh good God,’ Lady Rafferty scoffed. ‘A little problem and the whole world goes mad!’

‘Quite right, my dear,’ said Sir Basil, who had become somewhat subdued.

Then from the second row of benches, from beside Mrs Franks, came the unwavering voice of the Master. ‘Perhaps you could explain to us, Mr Bryant, what was the flare above the headland?’

Bryant was relieved to be asked. ‘A boat is on its way from Polmayne. If we should need assistance they will be on hand. Please bear with us – everything is being done to ensure our swift return. And Madam,’ he smiled at the woman in the yellow hat, ‘you may rest assured that the young man will get his supper!’

At once the chattering rose again from the benches. Bryant sensed the collective relief that now filled the deckhouse. He had done his job. He went up to the Raffertys. ‘I must apologise – these things can’t be helped.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Sir Basil.

‘Piffle,’ muttered Lady Rafferty.

Anna too did not believe Bryant. She knew he was telling them only part of the truth. But she still had the strange feeling that she could step away from it at any time.

Opposite her, Parson Hooper clapped his hands. ‘Now, children, what about a story? Would you like that, children, a nice story?’

In the front row of benches Birkin stirred. He grunted, licked his lips, and transferred his head from Lee’s shoulder to Travers’s.

‘Mr Bryant,’ the Master spoke again. ‘By my estimate we’ll be on those rocks before they get a boat to us from Polmayne.’

Everyone fell silent.

Bryant straightened up. ‘I can assure you, sir, that there will be assistance here very soon.’

‘… so, when they were in Egypt’ – Parson Hooper was faltering – ‘the Lord sent many plagues. Do you know what they were, children, what strange plagues there were?’

The children looked at the vicar and saw only his nervousness, and they looked to their parents and saw it there too, and soon it was spreading among the benches like a contagion.

Jimmy was alone in the wheelhouse. He was standing with the weight on his good leg and he was making calculations. Both hands held the wheel and his face was impassive. What was their speed through the water? Next to nothing – but not quite nothing, judging by the helm. The wind was giving them a little westward way. And over the ground? A knot perhaps, no more. How much more ebb would there be, and which way was it taking them? West, of course, but was there any north in it as it approached the rocks, or was it yet working round to the south? South, he thought, and was playing the helm for every inch of south he could get. Less than half a mile separated them from the Curate rock, maybe a third. And what was that in time now – twenty, twenty-five minutes?

Two minutes had passed since the maroons went up. If they had a good launch the lifeboat should be away in another ten. It would take them a quarter of an hour to reach the
Golden Sands.
More, perhaps, with wind and tide against them. So – twenty-five minutes.

For the first time Jimmy considered his own lifeboat. It had broken free on the way over, but it was still all right.
Ten, fifteen people at a time – three or four trips – but who was to say they could land anywhere in this sea? No, they were better off here, on board the
Golden Sands.

Even so, he leaned out of the wheelhouse and told Tacker to see that the lifeboat was ready. They might need it in a hurry. Glancing aft, he saw the rocks shadowy against the sun, closer than he’d thought. He went back to the wheel and tried again to use what little way they had to head them south. But something had changed. The wind had veered. A tiny shift, but enough. All the effort with the helm had worked against him. The wind was now pushing them back onto the Curate rock, and he realised that if he had left it, if he had not played the helm, they would have gone clear of the Curate, clear too of the other rocks and drifting into open sea.

Then he saw the ship.

It was not a bad launch. Harris stopped his watch when he saw the boat and said, ‘Eleven minutes and twenty-five seconds!’

Coxswain Tyler had been with his sister. He had been sitting in the sun outside her house at the Crates, and Job and the cart were on the newly-seeded verge before him.

‘They’ve gone again.’ His sister was in the kitchen, and her account of their mother’s feet came through the open window. ‘Swelled up like turnips. Grandma was the same, her legs was just as bad, remember?’

Tyler felt the day’s warmth in the concrete step beneath him, felt the fatigue from his own exertions, and he was only half-listening, kicking at the loose gravel with his boot. ‘Mmm –’

Just for a moment when the maroons went up, he paused on the step. Job flinched at the noise and shuffled his hooves. By the time Tyler’s sister came to the window, she saw only her brother’s back as he ran down the road.

It took him exactly seven and a half minutes to reach the house. The launch crew were well ahead. Second Cox Brad
Harris was already there, and as he spoke to him Tyler was pushing his arm into his lifejacket. He came out of the office doing up the straps just as Croyden and the Stephenses and Double and the others arrived from the allotments. Jack had arrived with them, and several other irregulars and some runners.

‘Where’s Red to?’ Tyler called.

‘Up Porth – crewing!’

‘Joe?’

‘He’s there too.’

‘Bloody Stephenses!’

‘I’m here,’ said Edwin Stephens.

Tyler ignored him. ‘Brian?’

‘Got the Reeds. So’s Thomas.’

Tyler shook his head. He crossed the floor and took down the lifejackets. He pushed one at Croyden, one at Jack and one at his own nephew Dougie Tyler. Grudgingly he tossed the last two at Edwin Stephens and his son. Standing beside the ladder he slapped the shoulder of each man as he climbed on board: ‘… five, six, seven …’

Tyler was last aboard, and he gave the signal. The
Kenneth Lee
started its slide and hit the easterly swell and they all ducked as the spray rose over them. Tyler knocked her into gear and she was already rising to meet the next sea.

First they saw the curve of distant smoke from her stack, then a flash of her white bridge in the sun. She was rising and falling with the swells. A tramp steamer off Kidda Head, three miles away and on a heading to clear the Lizard, sou’sou’west. Jimmy retrieved two red flares from the shelf above the wheel. He left the wheelhouse and shouldered his way past Red Stephens and lit them one after the other. They shot up and shone briefly some fifty feet above the water. He returned to the helm and watched the steamer’s undulating course. Three miles at ten knots – fifteen, twenty minutes, but with
the wind with them and the tide …. She was now abeam of them. She disappeared in a trough and her bows emerged and they all waited to see if they were coming round. They were not. She was keeping her course.

‘What’s the service, Ty?’ Croyden was in the bows and he shouted aft, over the noise of the engine. Jack was with him up for’ard, and down the benches each side were the Stephenses and Double and the others. Their faces were red and glowing from the day at Pennance. They stared ahead or at their feet and waited for Tyler to reply.

‘
Golden Sands.
Disabled upwind of the Cages.’

Jack did not at once equate the
Golden Sands
with the Garretts’ boat, the boat he knew as the
Polmayne Queen.
He thought of the hotel first, then he thought of the boat and the Garretts – and then he thought of Anna.

Upwind of the Cages.

Of Jack’s four call-outs, three had been false alarms. There had been the
Constantine,
but with the half-dozen exercises he had taken part in, this place, this squatting beneath the lifeboat’s foredeck with the smell of damp and linseed from the lifejackets, was not one he associated with danger.

It’ll be a false alarm. If the engine had gone, they’d fix it. How many times had something gone on the
Maria V’
s Kelvin and they’d idled for a while and sorted it out? They would come round Pendhu and there would be that new yellow of the Garretts’ boat and she’d be on her way back, the sun shining on her bows as she surged forward with each of the following seas.

O
n the for’ard deck of the
Golden Sands,
all eyes were on the steamer. Red and Tacker and Joseph Stephens were preparing the lifeboat. They had pulled back the cover and were checking the davits, but had stopped while they watched the steamer. Charlie Treneer and Lawrence Rose and Ralph Cameron watched too. They could see her profile with the bridge amidships and her gantries and the smoke blowing sideways. She was abeam of them and in her far-off rise and fall each of them tried to see the first shift in her course.

‘Any more o’ they flares, Tack?’

Tacker dashed to the wheelhouse. Jimmy was standing, eyes ahead, hands firm on the wheel. He did not stir as Tacker fumbled in the locker by his legs. ‘Christ, Jim – there’s some bloody damp in ’ere!’