The Main Cages (9 page)

O
n 11 November the
Maria V
left Polmayne for Plymouth. Losing the nets in Newlyn had made Jack even more determined to continue fishing. He had borrowed money and bought a set of used nets from a man in Porth. In Plymouth they began to recoup some of their losses.

By mid-December the winter pilchards came to an end and Jack asked the crew if they wanted to go back to Polmayne. None of them had anything to go for, so they agreed to stay on for the herring.

There were three of them now – Jack and Croyden and a man named Harry Hammels. Crew was hard to come by in Polmayne that autumn; six new houses were being built and the sea-wall was being extended, but Croyden told Jack: ‘There’s always Hammels.’

Indeed there was. ‘Yes, please, Misser Swee, I come Plymouth!’ Harry Hammels was something of a mystery in Polmayne. In December 1931 people first started noticing his quick, light-stepped walk along the front, his grinning presence
in the coalyard where he found a job. No one knew where he came from. His accent some thought was Spanish, some more Greek-sounding. He himself gave no clues to his past except to say that he had no nationality because all his life had been spent at sea.

Off Plymouth that December the herring were scarce. It was only a year since a group of boats had trawled Bigbury Bay and fished out the spawning stock. Day after day went past without a fish being caught. Croyden moped around the bars of Plymouth. Hammels carved from pieces of driftwood his wooden ‘warriors’ – which he then sold at the entrance to Hoe Park.

Jack had started a ‘Fishing Diary’. In an oilcloth notebook he recorded the weather, details of catches (time, place of shooting and hauling, quantities) and various anecdotes. He had also, since September, been having a lively exchange of letters with Anna Abraham. She had told him that she ‘needed news of Polmayne’; he in turn enjoyed explaining to an outsider the ups and downs of his fishing, the goings-on in the town. To begin with, he had held back on details, but she told him: ‘I want to know Every Thing, Mr Sweeney, you don’t imagine how I miss Polmayne.’ And he found himself anticipating with ever greater impatience the delivery of her replies, the particular lilt of her faulty English and her wry descriptions of the artistic milieu of Hampstead.

On 15 December, the
Maria
V struck lucky. In a single night off Start Point they caught fifty-eight cran of fish and earned a total of £160. For almost a week they successfully fished the same spot. They returned to Polmayne in funds. Hammels bought a new French penknife. Maggie Treneer allowed Croyden back into his cottage, but only on condition that he kill one of his pigs. He agreed, but each day found a different excuse to delay the slaughter.

‘We are rich,’ wrote Jack to Anna Abraham. ‘Well, richer than we were – at last we have had some good fishing. This is my second winter here in Polmayne and this morning it is
sunny and the harbour is quiet and I cannot think of anywhere in the world I would rather be …’

It was the week before Christmas. The town had settled into its midwinter hollow. On frosty mornings the sun rose above the mists of the Glaze River, made a quick dash across the sky and sank back into the sea. They were still days, windless days, and at sundown the water was covered in a rusty light and the gulls came in and settled on it and briefly the whole bay shone orange-red and twitched in the breeze. It looked like the flank of some great hibernating beast, waiting for the spring.

That Christmas, his first Christmas, Parson Hooper proposed holding an ecumenical carol service on Polmayne’s Town Quay. He wrote to his fellow ministers: ‘When better to unite the congregations of our parish than in this Christmas season?’ The United Methodist minister thought it a ‘splendid idea’, but the Bible Christians insisted that if they were to take part it should be billed ‘A Festival of Carols’, and the proposed sermons be in the form of a New Year Address.

23 December dawned grey. Soggy clouds hung over a herring-coloured sea. Parson Hooper lowered the sash of his bedroom window, looked downriver and prayed for them to clear. By midday it had worked – a westerly breeze had driven away the clouds.

On the Town Quay the three ministers stood with their backs to the sea. They each clutched a prayerbook to their chest and their robes rippled in the wind. The Town Band assembled beside them. In front, on the broad apron of the harbour, gathered a sizeable crowd. A group had come by boat from Porth and they stood apart from the others.

Whaler Cuffe gripped Jack’s arm as he followed his stick along the cobbles. ‘Here, Jack … or there – what’s up there?’ They tried several places before finding the right one, where
the sound of the band and the singing would be exactly in balance.

At 2.30, Parson Hooper stood on Parliament Bench and spread his arms. The low winter sun shone on his face and gave it a look of glowing innocence. The crowd fell silent beneath him.

‘We are gathered together in the sight of the Lord to celebrate the coming of His Son. Lord, you bestowed on us the great gift of Your Only Son and sent him into the world for our sins. We will begin by singing “Once in Royal David’s City”.’

After that was Thomas Merrit’s ’Lo He Comes, the Infant Stranger’ and then Major Franks read from St John’s gospel. They sang ‘Hark the Glad Sound’ and with each carol the singing grew stronger.

Parson Hooper climbed up again on Parliament Bench to make the first address. As he began to speak a few clouds drifted in over his head.

‘Last week,’ he announced, ‘I discovered in my study the unpublished tract of my late predecessor, the Reverend Winchester. It is a most interesting document and contains a passage on the coming of the New Year. He likens us at the beginning of each year to the captain of a ship sailing under sealed orders. Those orders tell him the course to steer, but he is commanded not to open them until he reaches a certain latitude. In 1936 we have every reason to suppose that even if we are sailing blind, our orders will be favourable. The world has pulled itself out of its recent mire and we are all stronger for it! So enjoy what you have. I have been in Polmayne only a short time but already I look around me and see an enchanted place and think of it – and we who live here – as somehow blessed …’

The United Methodist minister, the Reverend Brendan Jones, followed. ‘When we wish each other “Happy New Year”, what do we mean? It is not so much a wish as a right of each and every one of you. We have no sympathy with
those who frown upon pleasure. We do not hold that the world is worse because it laughs …’

Mr Pawle stepped forward for the Bible Christians and said: ‘… I am not expected to be the peddler of intellectual confectionery or the retailer of sweet nothings. It is no use harping about the New Year when nothing in its opening seems worth the wishes spent on it …’

Everyone but the ministers could see the coming squall. It dashed in across the bay in a skidding acre of dark water. When it reached the quay, they had just begun ‘While Shepherds Watch’. It toppled the music stands of the euphonium and cornet players. The cap of the band leader spun from his head and went wheeling across the quay. Major Franks made a lunge for it, dropping to his knees to try and reach it – but it fell over the edge of the harbour and into the water. He stood and brushed the dirt from his suit trousers. ‘Never was much of a slip fielder!’

Then came the rain. It hit the company with a cheek-stinging fury. The fourth verse collapsed. The band was reduced to a series of tumbling squawks as the members ducked. When the rain turned to hail everyone ran for shelter. Major Franks escorted Mrs Kliskey. Parson Hooper tried to make an announcement but no one could hear him. Whaler Cuffe stood his ground: ‘Don’t go, please! It’s only a shower!’

The squall lasted ten minutes. Behind it was a strip of pale blue which widened until suddenly the sunlight burst out of it, shining on the wet roofs and on the road and on drifts of hailstones. But it was too late. The stands were in disarray; sheet music was pasted to the ground or scattered among the boats of the inner harbour. Those sheltering in doorways started to find their way home.

But not all. Some twenty or thirty remained around the quays. The wind dropped, and as dusk spread across the bay the sound of carols rose again. The band had left but the Garretts were still there; the group from Porth was still there, and when they all started to sing, many of the people came
outside again to listen. This was what Hooper had intended – the parishes and congregations united in song! All around the harbour, they stood in doorways or leaned from their windows, and with the voices rising from the quay, the sun slid behind the land and the waters of the bay turned from orange to gold.

In the third verse of ‘Awake, Awake’ the harmony broke down. The Polmayne singers sang their version and the Porth singers sang theirs. At the end Jimmy Garrett glared at the Porth men. ‘You sing it the right way when you’re with we!’

‘We sang it the bloody right way.’

Then one of those Porth men stepped forward and hit Jimmy Garrett on the side of the head. Tacker tried to hold his brother back but Jimmy shook him off. He managed to place himself right in the centre of the Porth men and swing his arms in a most effective way.

In the morning a light frost covered the town and on the cobbles of the Town Quay were scattered tiny beads of frozen blood.

On Christmas Eve, a trading ship sailed into the bay. The
Constantine
was a much-admired schooner in Polmayne, an occasional visitor on her trips up and down the Channel. In the evening the crew rowed ashore. As they entered the Gaps, the vast frame of the ship’s master could be seen standing, in a high-collared reefer, in the stern. Captain Henriksen was a bushy-browed Finn, and at the bar of the Fountain Inn he announced that he and his crew would be spending the ‘festival’ at anchor in the bay.

That day Jack had received a card from the Abrahams. The drawing was by Maurice Abraham and showed an anxious-looking turkey with a speech bubble rising from its mouth: ‘
Why not have a lark this Christmas?
’

Jack did. On Boxing Day Whaler Cuffe banged his stick on the floor and announced he had been cooped for too long
inside. ‘I would like to go carousing.’ Jack took him to see Benny Stone and they drank brandy and then some others came and they went to the Fountain Inn and Whaler told some improbable stories and the crew of the
Constantine
applauded even though they knew they were supposed to be sceptical about ‘Whaler’s fabling’.

Polmayne shook itself down that Christmas. The children sooted their faces and went Darkey Partyin’. Jack and Whaler set off to the dance in the Freeman Reading Rooms. They carried on somewhere else and it was almost dawn when they staggered home along the front. Eliza Tucker was sweeping the steps of her store, and stopped to watch them: ‘The blind drunk leading the blind!’ They were still tipsy at lunchtime and Mrs Cuffe refused to feed them. So they went out again. That afternoon the Town Band left the Fountain Inn for Porth but they took a short cut and the flautist dropped his flute in a stream; the percussionists were found by Ivor Dawkins next morning, sleeping in one of Crowdy’s barns.

In the New Year, Jack wrote to Anna Abraham. ‘Polmayne was very colourful at Christmas. I would never have believed it possible. When are you coming down here? The town misses you.’ He read the letter back and then added: ‘And I miss you too!’

The weeks of January dragged by. There was no fishing. No letter came from Anna Abraham. The
Constantine
left on the tenth. In the third week of the month, Croyden went to collect Three for slaughter. Halfway up to Crowdy Farm he turned back and took Five instead. The next day all the flags in Polmayne flew at half-mast. From the bells of St Cuby’s church rang a mourning peal and those given to wearing ties picked a dark one that day. At Sandringham the King had died, and Mrs Franks cancelled the Conservative Association’s annual dance. But to many in Polmayne the King’s death meant little until months later when it became known that
Britannia,
his beloved J-class yacht, was towed out to sea and scuppered.

At the end of January, Jack at last received a reply from Anna Abraham:

Dear Mr Sweeney,

I would be grateful if you write me no more letters. I hope you understand.

Yours, Anna Abraham

I
n early February came a week of relentless rain. The Glaze River flowed muddy brown into the bay and up at Pennance the ground below the holy well became a shallow lake. Jack Sweeney was more impatient than ever. It was still early in the season but when the weather cleared he told the others that the
Maria V
would start fishing. All they had to do was load the gear and service the Kelvin. Croyden was happy to begin; Hammels did not mind either way.

They fished every possible hour. They went out on nights when others stayed in and returned long after dawn. They shot sometimes three, four times a night. Once or twice, in mounting seas, they had to haul in a hurry and race back to harbour; on other occasions with the fish tumbling onto the deck, Jack saw the crazed look come over Croyden. But it no longer worried him. In fact, he saw it as something of an asset – and he was beginning to understand it.