The Main Cages. Philip Marsden

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

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