Wrecker. Noel O’Reilly

you hear that?’ the doctor said to the foreigner. ‘Impertinent creature!’

      I rushed back from the Widow Chegwidden’s with more herbs for the foreigner, running straight up the stairs. But when I went into the room I found the bed was empty, only the old creased sheet on the bed, the clothes I’d freshly laundered gone from the chair. The house was quiet and still, abandoned. I ran back down the stairs so quick I almost tumbled, saving myself with my hand on the damp wall.

      I shook Mamm to wake her up. ‘Where is he, the foreigner?’

      ‘The foreigner? Oh, my pet, I told him he shouldn’t be up, he’s still bad.’ She tried to push herself out of her chair.

      ‘Did they come and take him away?’

      ‘Oh no, he came down stairs and took himself off.’

      ‘Where is he, Mamm? Which way did he go?’

      ‘He wants to try his strength, he says. “You sure you be strong enough?” I said. “Rest up another day. Let me fit you a cup of tea.” But no, he says. Can you believe that – no to a cup of tea? Why, tisn’t in a man’s nature to go without tea!’

      ‘Which way, Mamm?’

      ‘Down the lane, I should think. He dursn’t try going uphill in his state.’

      I ran across the courtyard, through the alley and onto Downlong Row. It was fearful close, that morning, with lazy clouds of flies hovering over the fish slurry in the gulley down the lane. I was glad to get to the quay where some little breeze blew off the sea, and that’s where I caught up with the foreigner. He leant against a granite mooring post covered in slimy green moss. His face shone with sweat, and his breathing was fast and shallow. He looked up at me and I was sorry I hadn’t tidied up my hair before rushing out. I put the pin in my mouth for a moment, while I pushed the tangled locks into place as best I could.

      ‘You are better?’ I asked, cross with him for running off like that in his state.

      I glanced up at the quay and saw the giant Pentecost having a smoke with Jake Spargo, Ethan Carbis and Davey Combelleck. Knowing they were watching me, I kept clear of the foreigner and leant against the next post along from him, my arms folded.

      ‘I’m glad we have met,’ the foreigner said. ‘I wanted to speak with you. I owe you a profound debt of gratitude that I can’t hope to ever repay. I believe it was you who hauled me out of the sea. You cannot have achieved my rescue without putting yourself at considerable risk. I will not forget that. But you needn’t let me keep you from your work.’

      ‘Where was you heading when you nearly drowned yourself?’ I said.

      ‘I was coming here. I wanted to see this benighted cove with my own eyes. Porthmorvoren has achieved considerable notoriety of late.’

      ‘Porthmorvoren?’

      ‘This is Porthmorvoren, is it not? Or have I washed ashore in another village by mistake?’

      ‘You can call it that, if you please.’

      ‘Don’t you call it that?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘Then I really am in the wrong village.’

      ‘You be in the right place. This be Porthmorvoren, right enough, though I ain’t heard no soul hereabouts call it that in years.’

      ‘You must call your village something?’

      ‘Hereabouts. That’s all the name we need.’

      ‘I see. And every place else is thereabouts, I suppose. Or uplong?’

      ‘Uplong, that be about right,’ I said. ‘Scarcely another village lies between here and the Land’s End.’

      ‘It’s the ends of the earth, then. It truly is,’ he said. ‘A place where demons lurk in the currents of the harbour, where the inhabitants continue to trust in savage pagan nostrums such as plucked birds strung up in sick rooms.’ He looked at me closely, so I turned away. ‘And, above all, this is the home of the dreaded Porthmorvoren Cannibal.’

      ‘Cannibal! What say you?’

      ‘Have newspapers still to reach this shore? All of Penwith is talking about the depraved fiend who chewed off a lady’s ears to steal her earrings.’

      A hot, prickly flush came over me. I knew what this man would have to say if he’d known I’d filched the boots from this very same woman as she lay dead on the strand. To hide my face, I took off across the shingle. I picked up a pebble, looking it over as if to make sure it was smooth and flat. Then I leant back and sent the stone skimming across the water. It bounced half a dozen times before it sank. I wiped my hands on my apron, and went and leant against another post, further away this time.

      ‘You’re worried about those men,’ he said, glancing up at them. I said naught. ‘Good Samaritan that you are, you took it upon yourself to help me. But it concerns me that this good deed could be misunderstood by your neighbours.’

      ‘The doctor said you be one of they Methodies?’

      ‘I am a Methodist minister, indeed.’ His chin fell, and his legs looked like they might go from under him. I moved to help him but remembered the men up on the quay and held back.

      ‘’Twill take more than a Methody to stop the men round here from drinking and cock fighting and stanking on their wives,’ I said, low enough that Pentecost and his mates wouldn’t hear. ‘We had a Methody here once before, but he ran off. I weren’t no more nor a child. He wanted to build a chapel but left it half-finished at the top of the hill. The air in these parts don’t suit all constitutions.’

      The foreigner pushed himself away from the post and squinted up the hill. ‘A chapel, you say? I should like to see that.’

      ‘You’re weak still, and the lane is steep.’

      ‘Calvary hill was steep too, no doubt,’ he muttered to himself. He turned to me. ‘Can I trouble you to show me the way to the chapel? Perhaps the air in this cove will suit my constitution better than it did the previous minister’s.’

5

      I knew the foreigner would be back. He came roundabout Lady Day, when the green catkins dangled from the branches and the magnolia blooms opened to bask in the sunlight. A season when even a foreigner was capable of finding the winding livestock track on the moor that leads to the cove. The mating season was upon us, and the gulls mounted each other on the harbour walls. Likewise, the women of Porthmorvoren fussed about the tall dark stranger in their midst. Work began anew on the chapel after more than ten years, and the sounds of hammering and sawing filled the air. Boatloads of bricks were brought into the harbour, and women carried baskets of pebbles up from the strand for the mortar.

      Since the first minister had taken sick and fled the cove ten years ago, the bettermost and a few others had kept the faith, but most had gone back to their old ways. Before he went, the old minister had got Aunt Madgie to set up a Sunday school and that was when I learnt to read. The school came to an end, but we still had a Bible in our home and I’d spent many a summer evening reading the wondrous tales in those pages.

      Now we were to have a new minister. Meetings were held in Grace Skewes’ house, and the bettermost were paying towards the works on the chapel. I had no part to play in any of this. It seemed that even though Gideon owed his life to me, I was cast out into darkness. But what was I to do? We Blights could hardly pay towards his chapel – we had barely enough money to feed ourselves. And what else had I to offer?

      The first prayer meeting was held one night in an abandoned storeroom down by the quay. That night, when I set off down the lane, Tegen chased me and tried to hold