The Main Cages

CHAPTER 4

The following week the town gathered together again, this time for the Jubilee of King George V. On a breezy afternoon, they made their way to the recreation ground. At one end of the field was a low stage, topped by bunting and flanked by a pair of poles. On each of the poles was a trumpet-shaped speaker through which a Broadcasting Apparatus, loaned by Mr Bradley, relayed a crackling version of the ceremony in London.

Major Franks stood on the stage and began by addressing the town’s children. ‘My dear little friends! You have more opportunities for enjoying yourselves than any generation before you. You are living in a wonderful age, you must always endeavour to make the most of this privilege …’

That afternoon’s endeavour was sports. Not a child over two was denied the joys of competition. Each one was placed on the starting line and instructed to run, skip or hop towards a flickering white tape. They were given eggs and spoons and sacks. They had their knees tied together for three-legged races, were upended for wheelbarrow races. They were arranged into relay teams and given a stick. There were chariot races, sprints, sixty-yard slow cycling and a snake race.

All afternoon the cheers rose from the recreation ground. Spirits were high. It was that brief moment between the beginning of fine weather and the coming of the visitors.

Mrs Kliskey of Dormullion was there in her bath chair to hand out the prizes. Two spaniels sat at her feet, their collars wrapped in red, white and blue ribbon. Jack had brought Whaler Cuffe. At three o’clock various people assembled on the stage and the elderly Reverend Winchester was helped to his feet by Mrs Winchester.

‘What’s happening now, Jack?’ asked Whaler.

‘Speech,’ he whispered.

‘Good! Who is it?’ Whaler enjoyed speeches.

‘Winchester.’

‘Oh.’

‘On this auspicious day,’ mumbled Winchester, ‘we thank God for our King’s service to the Empire. We ourselves should never be ashamed of being his servants. For service never degrades. All honest, useful work is a means of glorifying God –’

‘Piff!’ grunted Whaler.

‘Time was when artisans were proud to hang the implements of their craft on the walls of cathedrals. Some foolish people used to be ashamed of certain kinds of manual work, but to the true Christian, work brings dignity –’

‘What does he know of work?’ hissed Whaler. A murmur of conversation began to rise from the crowd.

‘Our King is a devout man who recognises full well his dependence on God. He has been an example of reverent and unaffected devotion. There is in him nor in his Queen no cant or hypocrisy, which is an enemy to the cause of true religion. Loyalty is an easy thing when such a king is on the throne and when

The Reverend Winchester turned the page. But it was the wrong one. He turned the next page, and the next. Major Franks took the chance to nod to Mr Bradley and once again Polmayne’s celebrations were bolstered by sounds from London’s streets. Already the crowd was moving away from the stage to a row of trestle tables where several tea-urns had been set up by the ladies of the Jubilee Committee. The Reverend Winchester looked confused. Mrs Winchester took his arm and said: ‘Come along, dear. Tea.’

The following day, the Garrett brothers brought the freshly-painted Polmayne Queen into Polmayne’s inner harbour. Her funnel was painted custard yellow, her topsides strawberry red, and like a stick of angelica a cove-line of green ran along her side. On the Bench they said, ‘Looks more like a bloody fairground ride ’n a boat.’

At Penpraze’s yard they were preparing the Petrels. One by one they brought the pencil-thin yachts into the shed. Their canvas covers were peeled back to reveal the honey-coloured varnish of their combing, their gently raked decks, the immaculate curves of their hulls. A team of three men rubbed down the topsides and filled every tiny blemish. Then they closed the big shed doors, damped down the dusty floor and in absolute silence applied coat after coat of gloss paint until it shone like enamel.

On the third Saturday in May the first visitors arrived. Whaler took his chiming clock and cane and crossed the yard to his lean-to. Mrs Cuffe and the other landladies gathered outside the Antalya Hotel to wait for the arrival of their paying guests. Shortly after four, the rumble of an engine came from the direction of Pritchard’s Beach and Harris’s Station Bus rolled to a halt. Soon two dozen people were spilling from it, stretching their shoulders in the sun, collecting their bags and turning their faces to the south for the first real smell of the sea.

It was shortly before dawn, mid-May. Croyden Treneer leaned on the Maria V’s gunwale, watching the dan buoy. Charlie Treneer, his younger brother, was holding a T-hook aft of him. Bran Johns was between them. Jack Sweeney was half in and half out of the wheelhouse. The fishing lights were strung above the deck. Pushing up his beret, Croyden scratched his forehead and nodded to Jack: ‘Knock her in!’

The bows edged forward. Croyden leaned over to make a grab for the buoy. Pulling it aboard, they flicked on the motor jenny and started to haul the line. Fishing aboard the Maria V had begun.

In the first week they caught over a thousand stone of fish – ray, ling, conger and skate. They threw back a good deal of small conger but in all they grossed £146. For the next three weeks they fished ground to the south of the Lizard. The bait was patchy at times, and in late May they lost almost a week to the weather, but when they did go out they never came back with less than a couple of hundred stone.

Jack himself settled into the rhythm of long-lining – the chug of the Kelvin as they headed south to the grounds, the softer note as they paid out the line, the netting, the hauling, the baiting, the relentless wear on gear and boat. He was constantly tired. He woke tired, rowed tired to the Maria V, motored out of the bay tired, felt morning drag him from the night’s swamp still dripping with fatigue and drop him back there before they were home. When the weather came in the Maria V stayed on her moorings and Jack filled the time splicing spare warps, making monkeys’ fists, doing odd jobs on board. He learned that if there was anything more tiring than fishing, it was idleness.

But the catches when they did go out were good. Croyden directed the fishing, decided where to go and when. Bran and Charlie followed their given roles and, so long as the fish were there, all was well on board the Maria V.

Regular summer visitors to Polmayne spent their first day or so checking the town for damage – as though they themselves had lent it out for the winter. In May of 1935 they saw the newly-occupied properties of the Crates; they counted the five new villas above the church, the group of half-built bungalows above the Antalya Hotel. They recorded the gap left by various toppled trees and the thatch replaced by slate on the roof of Major Franks’s harbourside house. ‘It’ll be ruined!’ they said that May as every May. ‘They’ll wreck the town.’ (The mysterious trenches that had appeared did not worry them as they were told that these were for ‘something ornamental’, probably beds of Jubilee flowers.)

But after a few days the visitors tended to forget all about the changes and settle instead into the indolence that arose from the far greater number of things that had not changed: the granite curve of the twin quays, the smell of escallonia in the mid-morning sun and the swish of evening waves on the pebbles of Pritchard’s Beach.

The trenches, it turned out, were not for flowers. On the last day of the month, a public meeting was convened in the Freeman Reading Rooms. A Mr Perkins was going to explain all about the wonders of electricity. For years there had been generators in Polmayne – Dormullion had one, so did Pendhu Lodge and the Reading Rooms – but now mains electricity was coming, and for many it was not a moment too soon. Not that the electric itself held much attraction; it was just that in Porth the cables were already laid, and no one in Polmayne could accept that Porth might get it first.

There were those however who saw only ill in the invention: ‘I’ll not have that damned spark in my house. Supposing he spills out night-time and burns ’ee?’

Whaler Cuffe asked Jack to get him to the meeting good and early. They were the first to arrive. Whaler unbuttoned his coat and told Jack a story about a holy man he’d met in China who had shown him a perpetual candle made from the tallow of a pregnant yak.

Major Franks and Mrs Franks arrived and sat in the front row. They were joined by Mrs Kliskey, Dr and Mrs White and the Winchesters. Before them was a table covered in green baize and behind it Mr Perkins.

Mr Perkins was from Redruth. He had a well-clipped moustache and a heavy green suit of Harris tweed. On the table before him were a lightbulb, two smoked-glass lampshades (orange and brown), a plug and a length of flex.

Major Franks checked his watch and signalled to Mr Perkins to start. Rising to his feet, Mr Perkins pushed each object on the table forward an inch, and looked up.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you all for coming out on such an evening to hear what I hope will be an – er – illuminating experience.’ Sunlight seeped in behind the curtains of the hall. Mr Perkins was used to making his speech in the winter.

‘I have here before me a number of objects with which many of you will be familiar. Others may look at them and say to themselves: “My goodness me, what manner of device have we here then?” But I can assure you that in years to come these articles will become as indispensable to you and your daily life as the very roof over your heads.

‘And I am offering them to you now free of charge. They are free to all those who decide to welcome the miracle of mains electricity into their homes.’ Mr Perkins gripped one of his lapels. He fixed his gaze on the rafters two-thirds of the way down the room.

‘A great tide is sweeping the county, ladies and gentlemen – a tide which now laps at the fringes of Polmayne. We who live at this time should count ourselves lucky to witness such glad improvements.’

‘Hear, hear,’ whispered Whaler.

‘I myself have no doubt that when history looks back at our century it will be amazed. It will say to itself: how did they manage to live then? It will look to the moment when life for all classes was immeasurably improved by this’ – he held up the length of flex – ‘the advent of electric current.’

Tentative applause spread back from the front row. The Reverend Winchester stood and pulled out the unused section of his Jubilee speech.

‘Light, ladies and gentlemen, is symbolical of knowledge and guidance and hope. As we survey the years to 1910 we thank God for –’

Major Franks stood and started clapping. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree that Mr Perkins has made a most convincing case for electric current. If you’d like to come up, I believe Mr Perkins will be happy to answer your questions.’

Mr Winchester sat down.

One or two people stepped up and looked at the props on the table. They asked Mr Perkins: ‘How’s it made?’ and ‘What’s it look like?’ Jack signed up for Bethesda and on Whaler’s instructions collected a brown shade.

Later that evening, with the careful placing of several slates, Dee Walsh managed to divert the stream below the holy well. The water crossed the road and poured into the cable trench in Chapel Street. He kicked over the hazard fences, threw in some rocks and pissed over the whole lot. He had nothing against electricity. But the trenches were being dug by Truro men and if there were trenches to be dug in Polmayne it should be Polmayne men that dug them. It put the work back by a few days and the corporation agreed to recruit a number of local men for the job. Walsh was not among them.

CHAPTER 5

One evening in early June a giant anvil of white cloud rose into the sky beyond Pendhu Point. The light sharpened. Every grass-tussock glowed on the headland. In each of the town’s barometers, the mercury dipped, then dipped further.

The next day dawned muddy yellow. The wind blew hard from the south-west and shafts of sunlight broke low out of the running clouds. The sea was very disturbed. Two warning cones were hoisted on the East Quay and in the inner harbour the punts twisted and tugged at their warps. No boats went out.

Throughout the morning the wind freshened. Shreds of thatch were torn from the roofs and spiralled up into the gloom. Along the front, one or two figures passed each other in silence, bent against the wind, clutching their collars together. No one was sitting on the Bench, but Toper Walsh was on the Town Quay, telling whoever was around that the weather had ‘gone a bit dirty’.

At two o’clock Croyden Treneer opened Jack’s door and called up the stairs: ‘Mizzen’s loose, Jack!’

Jack cursed. He pulled on his coat and his boots and ran out along the Town Quay. Even Toper had now gone home. Shielding his eyes, he looked across to the Maria V and could see the boom swinging back and forth in the gale. Dammit! It was only a matter of time before it did some damage.

The wind was on his beam as he rowed and he had to follow a long arc out across the bay. He reached the boat and secured the boom. The timber was scarred and the lacing at one point had worn through. He made it all fast and checked the halyards and the stays and the bolt on the wheelhouse door and went up in the bows to look at the mooring.

It was now blowing very hard. The water ahead was streaked with spume. The mooring buoy was jerking at the chain, but secure. From the slopes ashore came the roaring of the wind in the pines. He stood blinking into the rain, then turned his back to it and looked astern. He felt safe with the force of the weather and everything stowed and fastened and his boat braced against the gale. The gusts howled in the rigging. It was difficult now to look into the wind. He would not attempt to row back to the quays. He would drop down on the wind and leave his boat in the quiet of the river.

As he pulled in his punt, he became aware of two figures on the rocks several hundred yards downwind. They were a man and a woman. The man was wearing a big double-breasted jacket and carrying a small box on a string. With his other hand he was waving his hat. They were both soaked.

Jack rowed down to them and they climbed aboard. ‘Thank God!’ The man had to shout over the noise of the wind. ‘No ferry! Thought we’d be spending the night there!’

The woman was wearing a sky-blue headscarf. Her hair kept spilling from it and eventually she gave up, pulling off the scarf. ‘I don’t know – how does it blow so quickly?’ The rain ran down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. But she was laughing.

Three, four, five … Tommy Treneer was sitting in Cooper’s Yard. He had been sitting there for half a day now and he was counting the rows of cobbles between him and the rising water. That one stopped seven short of his feet and pulled back. Through the arch he could see the inner harbour and each wave coming through the Gaps and spreading out inside and up onto the road. There was still more than an hour until high water.

The first of the boats had long since risen into view and he had been watching the rogue seas among them. He knew the yard would flood because it was just three days since new moon and now this south-westerly would drive the spring tides in even higher. Knowing the yard was going to flood gave Tommy a satisfaction of sorts when it did, when he looked through the arch and saw the first waves rise and flop their water onto the road.

The others had all left. The cottages around Cooper’s Yard were empty. It was now some days since the Stephenses and Mrs Moyle and the other Treneers had gone ‘up the Crates’. For weeks before they had been packing up, but Tommy would have no part of it. He spent the time on Parliament Bench, or wandering the town, or in the lifeboat station. Sometimes he sat on his stool outside the cottage and showed a contemptuous indifference to all the activity around him. ‘Sorry about Tom,’ Mrs Treneer apologised for him. ‘Just he’s gone back-along.’

She herself spent those days going through the cottage room by room, packing the trunk with the clothes she no longer wore, the lace and embroidery she had been given for her trousseau, her Bible wrapped in untouched silk and her well-used copy of Old Moore’s Almanack. She took down the framed picture in their bedroom of Moses viewing the Promised Land. Croyden and Charlie came to collect the bed, the wardrobe and the boxes and they too took no notice of their father as he sat and scowled in the yard.

Mrs Treneer had now been a week at the Crates and she liked it. She liked the flat’s new smell and the blood-red linoleum floors and the sunlight it received for most of the day. She tried to convince Tommy to join her. ‘It’s lovely up there, Tom. We got a tap.’

‘I’d sooner die here,’ he told her.

Now they had all gone and he sat on his stool in the gale. Dusk had come early. He did not look at the empty buildings above him; he ignored their lampless windows. He saw only the grey-black shape of the water that formed a channel beneath the arch. He looked beyond it to the flooded road and out into the inner harbour and through the Gaps to the open sea. All his life he had been gazing at the sea and now it was here and he was alone with it. It had reached his boots and crept in under the door behind. The yard was submerged. He sat there muttering and scratching his forearm and scowling and still there was another half-hour until high water.

In the morning, small clouds drifted in the pale blue sky. The sun sparkled on the water. A barnacled bottle crate, stamped with ‘ST AUSTELL BREWERY’ and containing the snapped-off leg of a china doll was jammed in under the steps of Eliza Tucker’s general store. In the churchyard the roots of an old Monterey pine had prised open a newly-dug grave as it fell. The Reverend Winchester stood over it, horrified.

The good news was that a large section of sea-wall had collapsed beyond Pritchard’s Beach and it would keep four men busy for at least a month.

In Cooper’s Yard a thin layer of sediment lay over the cobbles. Pools of water remained on the slate flags inside; a brown line three inches up the wall marked the height of the flood. There was the soft smell of sewage.

Croyden found his father in the old kitchen. He was sitting on his stool, scratching his forearm. He looked up at Croyden with watery eyes. He stood slowly, and without a word brushed past his son and made his way up the hill to the Crates.

‘Maria Five!’

Jack and Croyden were bringing the Maria V in through the Gaps, and on the end of the East Quay Jack recognised the man he had rescued from the rocks. He was waving.

‘Ahoy there! Maria Five!’

Beside him was the woman in the sky-blue headscarf. Jack nudged the boat in against the quay wall, and as Croyden took a line ashore the man came up and thrust his hand over the gunwale towards Jack.

‘Abraham,’ he said. ‘Maurice Abraham. And my wife, Anna.’ He looked up and down the boat’s length. ‘Look, Mr er –’

‘Jack Sweeney.’

‘Mr Sweeney. I was wondering, could you take me out next time you go? I wouldn’t get in your way – just need a corner to sketch. I’m an artist, you see.’

Jack told him to be there tomorrow morning at five-thirty.

Croyden watched them both go, merging back into the quayside crowd. He shook his head. ‘Damn boxies.’

CHAPTER 6

Above Penpraze’s yard and above the withy beds, the Glaze River narrowed and there was the old crossing-point for the ferry. In years gone by, the ferry allowed smallholders to get over the river and take the twice-weekly boat to Truro market from Polmayne’s quays. Porth’s sea-captains, en route to ships in Falmouth, also relied on it. Until some years before 1914 a man named Crimea Trestain ran the ferry in a boat which, every Easter, he lovingly upturned on the shingle bar outside his cottage and painted pale pink.

‘Colour ’a maid’s ass,’ he explained. ‘Room aboard for eight men, six women, three sows – or a parson.’

No one knew how old Crimea was. It was not clear whether he’d been born on the day the Crimean War broke out or the day it ended, or some other day entirely. Nor in the end could anyone remember whether it was him that gave out first or the boat, but by the Great War a new ferry – much less regular – had replaced it downstream. Crimea and Mrs Trestain disappeared up ‘Bodmin way’, the boat was laid up in Gooth Creek and the lease of Ferryman’s Cottage was bought by an artist from London. The artist was Preston Connors.

Through Connors, the town of Polmayne and Ferryman’s Cottage began to acquire a certain status among painters and writers in London. A new strain of incomers sought out lodgings there. They spent their days perched on clifftops or sauntering thoughtfully through the creekside woods. In the evenings they crammed into the main room of Ferryman’s Cottage or gathered on the shingle beach outside. They had al fresco meals and made impromptu music. They talked. All were stirred by the remoteness of the place, and by the immanent beauty of the river and the woods above it. After his first stay in Polmayne the watercolourist Russell Flower wrote to his host: ‘You have found a wonderful place, dear Connors. The mystical buttress of Pendhu Point opens up mineshafts of perception in man …’