‘Janie,’ he had called her, ‘Janie,’ trembling at himself and now he was this bent, frail, middle-aged man kneeling in the pew, peering at his prayer book over his spectacles; and standing in the place where he had stood was their grown-up son, whom she had cradled in her arms.
And as she watched Samuel through a mist of foolish tears she saw, not the strong proud bridegroom, but a high gateway beyond the fields of Plyn, and running to her arms in a torn jersey a little weeping lad.
Why had Posy chosen this hymn for the wedding day? As Janet sang she saw through the window the uncared-for stones, and the tangled grass in the churchyard.
Time like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten as a dream—
Dies at the opening day.
Unconscious of the irony of their words Samuel and Posy sang before the altar, their hands clasped, their thoughts filled with hope and expectation of the life before them.They were a quiet, loving couple, never to know the sublime path of passion nor the depths of great sorrow, and Janet blessed them in her heart.
Meanwhile her other children had grown up, or were growing up, besides Samuel.
Mary was still at home with no thoughts of marriage, while Herbert, fired by Samuel’s example, was keeping company with Posy’s cousin, Elsie Hoskett. They were not married, however, until 1858, when Herbert was twenty-one.
Philip had already risen from his position of office-boy, and was now a clerk to the firm of Hogg and Williams. He was still quiet and undemonstrative, was a hard worker and respected if not particularly liked by his brother clerks.
Now Joseph was so much away Janet was glad to have a companion who resembled him a little in thought, and Lizzie was a happy, high-spirited girl, by no means slow-witted, but she was young for her age.
In time twin daughters were born to Samuel and Posy, greatly to their parents’ pride, and were named Mary and Martha. It was strange to Janet to hold her first grandchildren in her arms, and to wonder what their lives would be. Would Plyn be very changed when these two babies were old women? Would they love much and suffer much? Somehow she felt their lives would be serene and untroubled, and all would be well for them.
There were still no grey hairs in Janet’s dark head, and no wrinkles to her face, but the repeated absence of Joseph made its mark upon her, and though she was not yet fifty there was a strain upon her heart, weakening it, gleaning little by little the strength from her pulse, so that this vital part of her became weary and tired without her knowledge. Often now a dizziness came upon her when she climbed the hill to the cliffs, and she would stop half-way, wondering the reason for her pounding temples and her quick breathing. A doctor would have sounded her heart anxiously, and shaken his head with a grave face when he had done so, prescribing some medicine to calm though it could not cure; but Janet Coombe had no faith and no love for doctors, so she had little idea that month by month she was growing steadily weaker and her heart more life-weary, so that any great shock of joy or sorrow would be the end.
The one moment for which she lived was the launching of the unbuilt ship, named after her and for the day when Joseph should attain his Master’s certificate. The days that he spent in Plyn were passed at her side, every minute and every hour he could spare, but the time was all too short. He had served as second mate aboard the Francis Hope and then, to his great joy, after passing the necessary examination, he was recommended by Captain Collins, and became first mate of her sister ship, the Emily Stevens. The promised day loomed on the horizon, he wrote letters of love and enthusiasm to Janet, begging her to tell his father and his brothers that it was time that the ship was started. But Thomas and his sons were still too occupied with the list of orders on their hands, for when the moment came they wished to give their full time to the promised ship, and to put into her their best work and the best material.
Herbert was the next to marry, solid, painstaking Herbert, and though he did not copy his brother to the extent of giving twins to his wife, he certainly never lost heart in the hopes of doing so, for when he died at the age of eighty-three, he was the father of fifteen children. If Janet had been alive she would have remembered her words to Thomas on her wedding morning: ‘There’s many as will depend on us, in the years to come.’ But all this was to happen many years after, and now Herbert was a fine upstanding young fellow of twenty-one, and his wife the same age as himself.
Now that her children led their own lives, and could fend for themselves, the time began to hang heavy on Janet’s hands. Mary was only too pleased to take on the responsibility of keeping the house, and seeing to her father’s wants, and slowly Janet gave up the task to her capable daughter.
She longed for Joseph more than ever now, to be with him continually, to forsake him never. She was nearly fifty and she had seen nothing of the world. Her old wild spirit, undaunted and fearless, claimed its rightful place beside Joseph.They were born to share danger and joy together, the sea that held so strong a hold on him, had woven its spell about her too, and though she was a woman and middle-aged she dreamt not of a warm fireside and an easy chair, but of a lifting deck and a straining mast, grey seas beneath a wind-swept sky. There, where sky and sea mingle, and where no land beckons, she felt her youth and her strength would return to her, but to live without Joseph in Plyn meant a desolation of soul and body, and at times when her weak heart betrayed her failing strength, she felt the supreme courage ebbing from her.
Every time he left her he took something of her life’s blood away with him. Joseph had no other wish in his mind but to gain his Master’s certificate, and then all the regulations in the world would not stay him from bearing her away.
‘You believe in me, don’t you?’ he said to her. ‘You know that I’ll reach the top soon, and that nothing can stay my course? I reckon I can figure out what my father felt in his heart when he led you to the house he’d made for you, but even that pride of his will be as dust compared to what I’ll feel and tell you, when you step aboard my ship and call it home.’
‘Joseph, my love,’ said she, ‘when that moment comes it’ll be a gull as flies with you, an’ no human.’
‘The ship will be your ship, and her ways your ways,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be in command an’ I’ll obey your wishes. There’ll be no star for me to bid good night to then, no lonely watches with the moon for company.The winds’ll blow because of you an’ the seas laugh for joy, I guess, when they see your figure at my side upon the deck, an’ your hair a’ tossin’ out behind you like a veil, an’ the stars in heaven shamed by the light o’ your eyes.’
‘But Joseph, I’m old, I’m nearly fifty, why do you say these things to me?’
‘You old?’ He laughed and held her close. ‘It’s not now that I’m goin’ to start tellin’ you the pictures in my mind, but later - when we’m on the ship and Plyn lies far back like a forgotten dream, then I’ll hae you remember the words about bein’ old, so see.’
Why were they so bound together, she and this son of hers? Would she ever know, would she ever come to a full understanding of the reason for things? Life was strange, mixing folk wrong and leaving them to shift for themselves as best they may. Joseph was twenty-five now. There was scarcely a girl in Plyn who was not in love with him by now, and told him of it too, to his very face. He laughed and loved them, and left them, in an incredibly short space of time, and his affairs were as many as his escapades as a boy. Janet made no attempt to stop him, she knew that such things were as necessary to him as the food he ate and the air he breathed. He told her of his adventures in foreign ports, and all she did was to laugh and bid him teach the girls of Plyn what he had learnt. His brothers were sober married men, who heard with shocked astonishment of Joseph’s evil ways, but it was little he cared for their opinion. As for the good folk of Plyn they pursed up their lips when sailor Joe was mentioned, and locked their daughters in their bedrooms after nine o’clock. Such precautions were no hindrance t
o Janet’s son though, and if he saw a pretty face that stirred him, he’d find a way to it, for all the locked doors in the world. Parents would heave a sigh of relief when he had sailed away again, and their worry at an end. It was no use to attack his mother on the subject. She stood up for him, the shameless woman, and saw no harm in what he did. Once Mrs Salt had stopped her in the street, but it never happened again.
‘Now listen here, Mrs Coombe,’ said the angry woman, ‘I’m not goin’ to have your Joe get my Lilly into trouble, d’ye hear?’
‘Ah - I hears you, Mrs Salt,’ replied Janet, her chin in the air, and her hands on her hips.
‘Well, then, Mrs Coombe, if your boy goes gallivantin’ with my gal after dark, and doesn’ bring her back till past eleven, it’s not at the moon they’ve been lookin’.’
‘I hope you’m right, Mrs Salt. If your gal goes out with my Joe and only looks at the moon, well, that girl’s a fool in my opinion, an’ aint worth her Salt - beggin’ your pardon for the play o’ the words.’
‘Well, I never did,’ said the furious mother. ‘Ye bad shameless woman. To urge your boy to seduct my innocent gal.’
‘If seducin’ is the word you mean, Mrs Salt, you can save your breath,’ laughed Janet. ‘If your Lilly goes up to woods with my Joe, ’tisn’t for the first time, I reckon.Your little pitcher has been to the well before, an’ you can mind that, my dear. Good-day to ye, Mrs Salt.’
And away walked Janet with her head in the air, for all the world like her son himself.
Nobody ever got the better of her when she had made up her mind to outface them. Besides she knew that there was not a girl in Plyn who did not wait her opportunity to throw herself at Joseph’s head. ‘Seducin’ indeed,’ she thought. ‘It takes two to play at that game, an’ there’s not a girl yet been brought to trouble which didn’t know full well what she was about. There’s no more preventin’ young folks hungerin’ after one another when they’re left to themselves on a dark hillside, than ye can stop the gulls from matin’ down to Lannywhet Cove i’ the spring o’ the year.’ So reasoned Janet Coombe of Plyn in Cornwall in the year 1860. She knew that human nature was stronger than convention, and that no tight lips and sermons in the world could gainsay a man when he went with a girl. These things were as simple and as natural to her as they were to the sheep and the cattle in the fields. It was a tide of something that swept all before it, a power from which there was no escaping.
When Janet looked upon Joseph her son, and saw his flushed cheek, the damp curl on his brow, and a restless gleam in his eye, she took herself back to an evening on a Plymouth boat, when the land lay dim on the quarter and the sea and the sky were wild, and she stood in the bows of the vessel with Thomas her husband who murmured her name ‘Janie’, low and hushed. She remembered the touch of Thomas’s hand, and how she had turned to him on the swaying deck, with the song of the wind and the water in her ears, and bade him love her.
Joseph stood at her side because of this, and the same blood that ran in her veins that night belonged to him now, and would pass to his children, and his children’s children.
‘I will die,’ thought Janet, ‘and Joseph too. But because o’ the beauty of a night at sea our flesh an’ blood will not pass away - but part of us will breathe this same air that we have breathed, and walk where we have trodden.’
14
The ship was to be built at last. The dream was to be realized. The little model placed so proudly on the mantelshelf of the parlour at Ivy House was to find a magnification of itself, take shape and form down at the yard, and instead of a toy would be a living vessel made for the rough seas and the forbidding gales, a thing to carry cargo and human lives in her keeping. Joseph was home, and Janet beside him, when the first timber was brought down the river from Truan woods. Great giant trees they were, whose trunks had withstood the storms of centuries, and whose branches had swayed in the wind before Janet’s father opened his eyes upon the world.
The Coombe brothers took the great boat belonging to the yard and chose their well-seasoned timber, and then back again down the river to the harbour with the trees in tow.
Two years the ship took in the building, and into her was put the best work of Thomas and his two sons, Samuel and Herbert. Every day the sound of their hammers rose to the ears of Janet, sitting above at Ivy House.
Her children were grown up and married; Lizzie the youngest girl was twenty now and would soon be thinking of a wedding day.
Both Samuel and Herbert had families of their own. Philip, though barely twenty-three, was raised to the position of second clerk in his shipbroking firm, and he was still unmarried. Mary, too, remained at home. But they were all grown up, with their own interests, and Janet realized that she was past fifty.
All she lived for now was to see her ship launched and Joseph as its master. The years would roll away from her as if they had never been, and she would stand at the deck with Joseph at her side.
Scarce a day passed during these two years but that she visited the yard, and watched the progress of the vessel. Slowly the ship took form, first a mere gaunt skeleton which was fashioned bit by bit from the bare framework.
She was to be carvel-built with a square stern, and the length of her was ninety-seven feet. Her main breadth was twenty-two feet, and her depth, a little over twelve feet.Thomas and his sons reckoned that when she was finished she would be about a hundred and sixty tons gross. She was to be rigged as a two-masted top-sail schooner. A great moment it was when the framework of her was finished, and she stood with her mighty ribs waiting to be planked. Then every man in the yard was summoned to the work, and Plyn resounded with the ceaseless hammer and crash as the nails were driven into the sturdy planks.
Janet stood over them, a smile on her lips, a hand on her hips, a tall, lithe figure for all her fifty years. Should any man down his tools, it was: ‘Were ye weak when your mother cradled ye, my lad, to give way so soon?’ and the fellow would glance up ashamed and meet her keen unwavering eye. There was no standing against her, and no one cared to, for that matter, for she had a way with her that it was impossible to resist.
Unknown to Plyn and herself, however, the strength of her heart declined day by day. As the ship, her namesake, took shape and became a thing of strength, so did Janet’s body weaken and her pulse slacken.
She could scarce drag herself to the top of the hill now without a faintness coming upon her, without strange black shadows dancing before her eyes. She took no notice of this; she imagined it just the natural change in her life because she was past fifty.
It would not be long now before the ship was launched from the slip, and Joseph was her master.
When he returned in the late spring of 1863 he was startled at the change in her that none but himself could perceive. There were no silvered hairs, no lines, but a general appearance of frailty as though the strength in her had departed; her skin was stretched white over her cheek bones, and the blue veins showed clearly on her temples. He was frightened and uncertain what to do with her.The thought of possibly losing her he banished from his mind like an evil nightmare, and to make up for it he unwittingly tired her with his love, never leaving her a moment, and thus so much happiness was exhausting to her, pulling her down still further. Instead of calming her and soothing her, his presence acted like a drug that fortifies for the instant, creating an impression of renewed vigour and strength, but leaves its patient weaker than before.
She gave herself up to the enjoyment of Joseph with every ounce of power left to her. He enveloped her with his love and devotion until she became dazed and overwrought: it was too strong for her, but she had arrived at the state when she could no longer exist without it. He was at Plyn for some time now, until he had passed his examination at Plymouth, after which he hoped to take command of the new ship to be launched in the summer. The strain of these weeks was almost more than Janet could bear, and when he set off for Plymouth to sit for his examination she waited in a fever for
his return.They passed the days in silent agony until the result should be known to them.
At last one morning there arrived an important-looking document, and Joseph made straight to Janet’s side so that they should see it together. They unfolded the stiff parchment, stamped with the red seal of the Board of Trade.
‘WHEREAS it has been reported to us that you have been found duly qualified to fulfil the duties of Master in the Merchant Service, we do hereby in pursuance of the Merchant Shipping Act 1854 grant you this Certificate of Competency. Given under the Seal of the Board of Trade this ninth day of August, 1863.’
Janet held out her arms to him with a cry - he had passed. Joseph, her son, not yet twenty-nine, was a Master in the Merchant Service, the equal of middle-aged men like Captain Collins. There were great rejoicings that day at Ivy House. Janet seated at the head of the table with Joseph on her right hand, and gathered about her the grown-up sons and daughters, and her grandchildren, Samuel’s two daughters and his young son, and Herbert’s little boy. The next event would be the launching of the ship. Thomas and his sons, including Joseph, held a private consultation when Janet was not present, to decide the all-important matter of the ship’s figure-head.
They agreed that it must be taken after Janet herself, but it seemed there was no one in Plyn who was skilled enough to undertake such a task. So a well-known carver in Bristol was commissioned to build the figurehead, and a likeness of Janet as a young woman was sent to him.
The father and his sons rejoiced in their secret, for Janet would know nothing of it until the day of the launching, as the figurehead would be bolted on to the ship’s head the evening before.
The last weeks in August had come, the last nails were driven into the planks. The decks were laid and the hull painted. Her masts would be stepped when she was in the water, and there she would be rigged and fitted out for sea.