Then she stole away up the road and through the fields, to the tower of a church she could see rising above the slope of the hill.
Jennifer came to Lanoc.
She wandered among the graves searching for the one she loved. For some time she looked about her in vain, and lastly she arrived next a thorn hedge and an elm tree, and here were many stones bearing the Coombe name, some plain and recent, others ivy-covered, worn with age.
Here was Herbert Coombe and his wife, here was Mary Coombe, Samuel and his wife Posy; there was someone named Elizabeth Stevens and her husband Nicholas, there were sons and grandchildren of these people. Close to the hedge was a stone that seemed older than the others, it was sunk a little, and the ivy so clustered about the writing that Jennifer had to break some of it away to see the blurred and faded name.
‘Janet Coombe of Plyn, born April 1811, died September 1863, and also Thomas Coombe, husband of the above, born December 1805, died September 1882. Sweet Rest At Last.’
There was no stone older than this, and she wondered if these were the first Coombes, the founders of the family. A little away to the left were two single graves, near to one another. Here lay Susan Collins Coombe, dearly beloved wife of Joseph Coombe, and the other grave, smaller, unkept, was also his wife’s,‘Annie, wife of Joseph Coombe, died 1890, aged twenty-four years.’ Joseph himself was not here.Was it he who had been her grandfather, and whom her mother had spoken of as selfish and cruel? Poor Annie, aged twenty-four—
Then at last she found that for which she had been seeking, apart, on a rising slope of ground, with the letters cut clear and strong against the white stone.‘Christopher Coombe, son of Joseph and Susan Collins Coombe, who gave up his life fearlessly on the night of 5 April 1912, aged forty-six years.’
Jennifer knelt down and smoothed away some of the tangled grass, she found an empty pot amidst some rubbish by the side of the hedge, and this she filled with water from a tap next the church, and placed inside it the daffodils she had brought for him.
Then she stood up, and looked upon the little group of graves, these last resting-places of her people, so quiet and peaceful in the still churchyard, unmolested save for the blossom that fell from the trees in the farther orchard.
And Jennifer turned, knowing them free from trouble and distress, and went home through the fields to Plyn.
Half-way down the hill she asked a passing boy the exact whereabouts of Ivy House, but he shook his head and said there was no such house in Plyn. She insisted, however, saying she had lived there before the war, and he called to a woman across the road, ‘D’you know anything of Ivy House, Mrs Tamlin? The young lady says she lived there, but I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Oh! that’s Seaview she’ll be meaning,’ answered the woman. ‘It was called Ivy House once some years ago, I believe.’
‘No ivy on it now, miss,’ grinned the boy. ‘It’s a fine new-looking place. Mr and Mrs Watson are the present owners. Look, that’s it, away yonder, standing in its own garden.’
Jennifer walked uncertainly towards the square, middle sized house, surrounded by a trim box hedge.
There was a green gate, and a trim path leading to the front door. This door was also painted a bright green. The roof was obviously new, the old grey slates were gone, and shining black ones in their place. No ivy now on the face of the house, but to relieve the bare appearance the owners had stuck a couple of pillars of eastern origin beneath the lower windows. Where the wash-house had been they had built a small conservatory, and facing the garden, leading from the original parlour, the path had been constructed into an attempt at a verandah.
A woman was lying in an orange hammock, with a Pekingese dog in her lap, and an elderly man was stooping over a flower bed, snipping at something with a pair of scissors.
He rose and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
‘I think it would be wise if we spread a little lime here, my dear,’ he called to the woman, and seeing Jennifer staring at him over the hedge he frowned and turned his back. The dog began to yap excitedly.
‘Quiet, Boo-Boo,’ cried the man, and then said in a tone, unnecessarily loud, ‘He’s a good little watch dog all the same. He knows when strangers are about.’
Jennifer turned and ran down the hill, her eyes burning and her heart throbbing while she was aware of something sticking in her throat which she could not control.
Seaview. But that was only a phase of time to those new people, they could not alter the truth. They imagined that the place belonged to them, to change it as they willed, but somewhere there was no hammock, no yapping dog, only a little girl waving to her daddy, swinging backwards and forwards on the garden gate.
That day Jennifer helped her aunts with the shop, but she was scarcely needed, for the business was simple and easy, and they were both well accustomed to the work for all their sixty-nine years of age.
In the evening Jennifer begged them to tell her something of the old days in Plyn, of her father as a boy, of her grandfather, and of the worries and cares that had been part of their life.
One by one Jennifer conjured up the scenes of the past, she saw the men and women whose name she bore live out their little lives, knowing sorrow, joy, suffering, and despair, loving and hating one another, and so pass away out of the scheme of things, realities no more, nothing but the grey tomb-stones in Lanoc Churchyard.
Janet - Joseph - Christopher - Jennifer, all bound together in some strange and thwarted love for one another, handing down this strain of restlessness and suffering, this intolerable longing for beauty and freedom; all searching for the nameless things, the untrodden ways, but finding peace only in Plyn and in each other; each one torn apart from his beloved by the physical separation of death, yet remaining part of them for ever, bound by countless links that none could break, uniting in one another the living presence of a wise and loving spirit.
‘It seems to me, then, that Uncle Philip set himself against my grandfather from the first, and because he hated him he carried the bitterness on into the next generation - Daddy, too, had to suffer.’ Jennifer was filled with anger and loathing for this old man who had brought such ruin and misery to her family.
‘I’d like to make him suffer now,’ she said. ‘I’d like to bring fear to him as he has done to others. We don’t know anything about death; why should he be allowed to go free now, just because he’s so old, and nobody has the pluck to stand up to him? I believe that’s the truth of the whole matter. No one has the pluck.’
‘Oh! your Cousin Fred stood up to him, an’ bravely too,’ interrupted Aunt Martha. ‘When he was a young man it was he took your grandfer’ from Sudmin, and it was he spoke him to his face in the office hard by after your dad died, full seventeen years later. Fred was a good friend to Christopher an’ Uncle Joseph.’
‘I wish I could thank him, but wasn’t it he who was killed in the war?’
‘Yes - poor man. Which year was it, Mary? - 1917, I’m thinkin’. He left a widow an’ boy, but Norah didn’t long survive him.The boy though - well - there’s a regular Coombe if you like. He’s our celebrity in Plyn these days.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ smiled Martha, ‘we’m proud o’ John. John’s the talk of all folk now.’
‘Why, what does he do?’ asked Jennifer. ‘I seem to remember playing once with a boy called John, but he was older than me.’
‘That ‘ud be John all right, when he was up to the farm with his family. I mind your dad would take you there visitin’ at times. Well, John’s a great lad, a splendid lad. He tried to get to France in a little boat during the war, only a young chap he was, bare seventeen, but not a fear in his heart, bless him. Off he started at dead o’ night, in an old tub scarce seaworthy it appeared, but luckily he was found off Plymouth somewheres, an’ sent back home with a caution.’
‘Oh! what a shame!’ said Jennifer. ‘Then he never got to the war?’
‘No, my dear, he didn’t, he was under age you see. Well, then his
poor mother died - such a to-do, there was John left with the farm on his hands, an’ a tidy sum of money in the bargain.
‘So what d’you think he does, Jenny?’ cried Martha excitedly, her cheeks flushing with pride.
Jennifer shook her head, smiling at the two old women.
‘I’m sure I can’t guess.’
‘He sets brother Tom an’ Cousin Jim up in the yard again which hadn’t been used since the trouble o’ the licadation, an’ he himself goes off over the country to learn his trade, findin’ out this, an’ improvin’ on that, and back he comes four years ago with every trick at his fingers’ ends, an’ since then he’s done nothin’ but build yachts, build yachts - from winter till summer, with orders comin’ through to him from all over the place, an’ Plyn in quite a ferment over the whole business. Why - look through the window, my dear, to the right of the harbour, see that huge ship there, stretchin’ to Polmear Point, see them buildin’s an’ sheds, those cranes, an’ the tops of masts - well, that’s John’s yard, Jenny - built beyond the original Coombes’ Yard, but ten times as big. There now, did you ever see anythin’ like it?’
‘Has he really done all that in four years? He must have worked like a navvy. What’s that mast tipping up behind the crane?’
‘Why, that’s the new 100-ton sailing cruiser he’s havin’ built. There’s two of John’s boats racin’ at Cowes this year he tells me, two smaller ones built in his second year. They belongs to some gentlemen over to Falmouth. They’ll be comin’ here for the Regatta in August for sure.’
‘So I suppose they’ve gained back all their losses, and are making more money now than they ever did in the old days.’
‘That’s right, my dear, that’s right. An’ brother Tom lives in a fine big cottage now, with a fair sized garden, and Jim next door with his married daughter. They’re elderly men now, of course, like ourselves, but they still work - why, I’ve never seen such workers as they, did you, Mary?’
‘No - I declare, but then it’s all John’s doing. He’s the one. Ah! Jenny, if only your dad could ha’ lived to see this, my dear.’
‘He would be proud and happy, wouldn’t he?’ asked Jennifer. ‘Just to know that everything had come all right. He wouldn’t mind the changes do you think?’
‘O’ course not, he’d be surprised no doubt, but ’tis a change for the better as everyone can see.’
‘What does Uncle Philip say to all this?’
‘Turns up his nose, you may be sure, an’ ignores the whole proceedin’s. If he’d been younger no doubt he’d ha’ worked against it, puttin’ in his evil spoke.’
‘I think I shall go and see my fine Uncle Philip,’ said Jennifer frowning. ‘I’m not afraid of him.’
‘Why, deary me, you’d never do that, would you? Mercy on us, he’d eat you alive.’
‘I’d be willing to risk that!’
‘There now, well, really. I wouldn’t advise it, would you, Martha?’
‘No, indeed, I wouldn’t.’
‘He’s a fierce, irritable old gentleman, my dear, he only sees his head clerk I believe, an’ those who has interviews on business. Why, Maggie Bate was workin’ there till she left last week to be married.Typin’ an’ that, you know. She was proper scared of him, an’ he’d never as much as spoken to her. It’s difficult to get people to work for him. Has anyone taken Maggie’s place, Martha?’
‘No - not as I know.’
‘Typing?’ said Jennifer. ‘Do you suppose they’re looking for anybody else?’
‘I couldn’t say, but I should think it were possible. Few girls are willin’, I dare say, with the scanty pay they get.’
‘Well, I’ve got to get some sort of a job in Plyn, haven’t I? Why shouldn’t I try for this one?’
‘Can you use a typewriter machine, Jenny?’
‘Rather. I’ve just finished a secretarial course in London.’
‘There now! - did you ever! Mercy on us, how the girl has grown up. I shouldn’t go to your Uncle Philip all the same, my dear. I doubt if you’d care for sittin’ all day in that nasty office, an’ him maybe disagreeable.’
‘No, Jenny, don’t you go.’
‘Oh! but I want to - I want to have a shot at it. I can always try something else if it’s hateful. Perhaps I could speak to the head clerk, there’d be no need to come in contact with the old man at all. Not until later . . . Listen - it will be rather exciting. What’s the name of the place?’
‘Hogg an’ Williams, on the quay. But you’d better not do it, Jenny?’
‘Oh! yes, I shall. You see.’
The following morning Jennifer set out, and turned to the square red-brick building on the little cobbled quay. Above the door were the faded letters, untouched by paint, ‘Hogg and Williams.’
She pushed open the door and went inside. An office boy stepped through a swing door on the right, and inquired her business.
‘I want to see the head clerk, please,’ she said.
‘Mr Thornton? What is it you require?’
‘I wanted to know if there is a vacancy for a typist, in place of - of a Miss Bate I think.’
‘Oh! well, wait a minute, will you?’
The boy came back in a minute with the head clerk, Mr Thornton.
‘I hear you are inquiring about the vacancy,’ he began. ‘As a matter of fact, we have a lot of work on hand and are rather anxious to fill the post. But if you don’t mind my saying so you seem very young, and we can only use a person of experience. ’
‘That’s me,’ said Jennifer. ‘Typing, shorthand, and the rest of it. I’d be very obliged if you’d give me a trial at least.’
‘I’d like to be fair, of course,’ he answered smiling. ‘Your name, by the way?’
‘Coombe - Jennifer Coombe.’
‘Oh!’ He looked rather taken aback. ‘Are you any relation to Mr Coombe?’
‘I may be some distant connexion,’ said Jennifer carelessly. ‘It’s a common enough name in Cornwall, isn’t it?’
‘Quite so - quite so. The old gentleman has many relatives of course, but I think he sees none of them. He is very retiring, you understand.’
Two days later Jennifer came face to face at last with her Uncle Philip.
It happened that she had overstayed her time in order to finish a heap of letters. Her companions, the other clerks, left the office at five o’clock as usual and Jennifer imagined she was alone in the building save for the caretaker, who lived on the premises. She finished her letters at a quarter to six, and was about to leave when she noticed the door of her uncle’s room, the private room, was half open.
Curiosity proved too much for the great-granddaughter of Janet Coombe, she walked along the passage and pushed open the door, and then stood, a little surprised at the figure that met her eyes.
Seated at his desk was an old man, his pale face heavily lined and wrinkled, his body bent and crouched with age but pitifully thin like the skeleton of a human being, his hands clasped together seemed the trembling claws of a bird, and the extreme pallor of his face and the white sparse hair stood out strongly against the drab black of his clothes.
Was this Uncle Philip? Was this weary, crumbling old man her father’s enemy?
‘Philip Coombe,’ she said softly. He looked up, and saw standing in the doorway of his office the figure of a girl, her hands clasped to her breast, her chin tilted in the air, her dark hair brushed away from her face and her brown eyes fixed upon him.
He made no answer, he caught at the sides of his chair with his trembling hands, and stared back at this vision which had come to him out of the buried past. There were no more years, no time, no grim and satisfying death; this was Janet herself who stood before him, Janet who flamed in the bows of her vessel, Janet as he had seen her in his dreams as a boy, Janet who had preferred Joseph to himself.
And Philip looked upon the figure shrouded by the shadows in the doorway.
‘Why have you come?’ he said. ‘Is this Joseph’s revenge, long
waited for and planned?’
‘Why do you speak of Joseph,’ asked Jennifer, ‘have you forgotten Christopher his son?’
‘I had no quarrel with the son,’ cried Philip, ‘he deserved all that came to him. Am I to be held responsible for the poorer members of my wretched family, for the failures?’
Jennifer saw the sneer on her uncle’s face, and was angry.
‘You call Christopher Coombe a failure, do you? A failure because he lived simply, spending his time with the people in the cottages, the labourers in the farms, the fishermen. He was a failure because he was loved by people, loved, respected, and mourned. And you - you call yourself a success? What have you ever done for anybody in the world? You’re hated by everyone in Plyn, you’re only left alone because you’re an old man, useless and feeble, too helpless to be of value.’
Philip leaned forward in his chair, breathing heavily, his eyes narrowed.
‘Who are you, in God’s name?’
Jennifer smiled.To think that people had been afraid of this trembling old man. He didn’t even seem to know who she was.
‘Who do you think I am?’ she asked contemptuously. ‘A ghost, someone out of your past? Look at you, shaking with fear in case I touch you.’
He rose unsteadily, leaning on his stick, and walked slowly towards her, peering into her face.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘Who are you?’
She threw back her head and laughed as Janet had done, as Joseph had done, as Christopher had laughed before her.
‘I’m Jennifer Coombe,’ she said. ‘I’m the daughter of Christopher your failure.’
He looked at her strangely, still uncertain, still wandering in his mind.
‘Jennifer - I knew no Jennifer. Did Christopher have a daughter?’
She nodded, puzzled, struck by his behaviour.
‘Yes,’ she told him, ‘I am Jennifer. I’ve been working in your office for two days. I had some curiosity to see the man who ruined my father and my grandfather.’