‘Where was you, Philip?’ asked Thomas wearily.
His children were too much for him.
‘I’s been readin’ here quiet, father dear,’ said little Philip meekly.
‘You’m the only good one o’ the bunch,’ sighed Thomas, and he took Philip on his knee and gave him a piece of cake.
The other children huddled by the fire, profoundly wretched and miserable, wondering how Mr Tabbs’ boy had been able to see them escape. Father would never have known, and now he would be displeased with them for over a week.
They wouldn’t have been drowned, anyway, with mother coming to their rescue.
Mother always came in time.
And little Philip watched them calmly from his father’s knee, wiping the crumbs from his mouth. ‘Can I have ‘nother bit o’ cake, father dear?’ he asked.
Upstairs kind Sarah Collins was putting the baby to bed. In the boys’ room Janet knelt by her son’s bed, with Joseph crying in her arms, sobbing with grief.
‘I was fearin’ you’d fall,’ he choked, burying his face in her neck. ‘There’s never been nothin’ that hurt my heart afore, till I seen you climbin’ down that cliff. I shan’t never forget it - never - never - till I die, you comin’ down the bare side o’ it - with the gulls beatin’ and cryin’ in your face.’
She kissed his wet eyes, and smoothed back the hair from his face.
‘Hush, my love - no harm will ever come to mother. Remember that - I’m here to take care o’ you. You know ’twas wrong to take out the old boat, an’ your sufferin’ from watchin’ me down the cliff will learn you not to be so wild an’ reckless in your ways.’
‘I’ll never be bad again - mother. But ’tis a fever that comes on me at times, to get out in a boat an’ away - not carin’ where - just away on the sea with the wind in my face.’
He put his arms about her neck.
‘You understand. I know there’s only you can understand - the wicked roamin’ spirit of me.’
They clung to each other in the dark room.
‘When I’m grown you’ll come away, won’t you?’ he whispered. ‘We’ll have a boat of our own, and we’ll sail where the wind takes us. You know there’s nothin’ in my mind but the want o’ that, don’t you?’
‘Yes - Joseph,’ she whispered back.
‘I’m not goin’ to stay i’ the yard ’longside o’ father, with Sammie an’ Herbie,’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ to be a sailor like I’ve told you many a time. And when I’m Master o’ my ship - Janet Coombe’s her name - you’ll be with me - at my side facin’ the danger an’ the wonder of it. Promise you’ll come - promise?’
He took her chin in his hands.
She closed her eyes.
‘I promise.’
‘Do you know my ship will be the fleetest ship in Plyn - an’ in the bows of her, flauntin’ the world with her eyes an’ her mouth, there’ll be your figurehead.’
Janet knelt with him pressed close against her.
Into both their minds came the vision of a ship with her white sails spread. Joseph laughing with the wind in his face, and in the bows of the vessel, her hands clasped to her breast and her head thrown back - the figurehead of Janet.
‘Will you be proud?’ whispered the boy.
She raised her head and looked into his eyes.
10
If it were possible it seemed that the incident of the helpless boat and the last-minute rescue bound Janet and Joseph even more closely together. It was not only the tie of flesh and blood that made them part of one another, nor even the knowledge that their minds and their bodies were cast in the same mould; it was like a union of spirit defying time and eternity - something that had existed between them before birth, before their physical conception of each other. Janet continued to be a devoted faithful wife to Thomas, and a kind and careful mother to her other children, but with Joseph there was an understanding and a love that held the rare strange quality of immortality. Frequently she read his thoughts and his wishes before he had expressed them; a shadow scarce passed before his face but that she knew the reason. His joys were her joys, and she shared with him his childish sorrows. He was her second self, he was to do all the things which had been denied her because of her sex. He loved the sea and the ships with the same passion that she did, and because he would be a man he would become a sailor, and she would see through his eyes all those dreams she had imagined when she was alone.
Now she knew she would never be alone again; separation from Joseph would not take him from her. He knew this too; no words passed between them to speak of these things; a smile in passing, a touch of her hand, a glance at him across the table and he was aware of the flood of warmth that came to him from her and he rejoiced in his soul, accepting her gift to him.
When his father and his brothers and sisters were in the room, when they were sitting at their meals around the table, Joseph was disturbed and thrilled by his feeling of a conspirator. His mother sat with the teacups in front of her, her hand raised, her elbow crooked so that the stuff of the dress she wore folded in a thousand pleats, her fingers clasped round the handle of the teapot. Lizzie, the youngest child, sat by her side, a pale delicate little girl with something of Janet in her face, and Samuel the eldest boy on her right. Joseph would place himself where he could see the light of the lamp swing upon Janet’s head, like a halo of gold above her dark hair.
He looked around him, his father talking, biting his food slowly and thoughtfully, Samuel and Mary discussing some question the teacher had brought up in school, Philip sneaking something from Herbert’s plate while Herbert listened to Samuel with an open mouth.
Joseph smiled to himself. ‘They none of ’em know, they don’t understand,’ and then he would watch Janet’s head as she lowered it for an instant to attend to Lizzie. He willed her instinctively to look up, and in a second she would raise her eyes and glance across at him, meeting his eyes, sending a light through him that gripped him in its power, soft, compelling, stronger than life.
‘Are you wantin’ more tea, Joseph?’ - and he would hold out his cup, trying to touch her hands with his fingers - ‘Please, mother.’
Then they smiled at each other, over the top of the teacup, recklessly, blindly, as if they held a secret and defied humanity. He noted with a sting of pride the change of her voice when she spoke his name.
To his father the tone of it was kind and tender, to his brothers and Mary warm and cheerful, with something gentler in it, perhaps, for little Lizzie, but for himself there was a note that was his alone by right, something between a whisper and a caress, as though she was kneeling in the dark beside him, holding him to her. ‘Joseph’ - she would say - ‘Joseph.’
Often in the daytime when the household work was finished and done, and Thomas was still down at his business in the yard, Janet would allow Mary and Sam to go out in charge of the younger children, bidding them take special care of Lizzie who must not tire herself; and then when the house was silent and still she would straighten her hair before the little mirror in her bedroom, and search for her shawl and bonnet. She would hear someone tiptoe to the door, and knowing who it was a warmth would come to her heart, but she would hum some line of a song and fiddle with her things, pretending she had not heard.
Suddenly she would feel her elbows gripped behind her, and a head laid against her back - and then her elbows released, and two arms would creep under hers and feel their way upwards. She would laugh and free herself, then feel his hair with her hands and lay her face against his cheek.
‘Why baint you gone with the others?’ she whispered.
‘Why be you puttin’ on your out-door clothes?’ he whispered back.
‘You don’t know anythin’,’ she would say. ‘As it happens I’m goin’ to pay a visit to Mrs Hocken, who is poorly they tell me, an’ she’s expectin’ me to cheer her, poor soul.’
‘I’m terrible sorry Mrs Hocken’ll be disappointed,’ said Joseph carelessly, ‘’cos it happens you?
??re not goin’.’
‘No? - an’ why not, son?’
‘You know without tellin’ you’m comin’ out with me,’ he answered.
‘No - I’m not,’ she pretended.
‘Yes - you be,’ said Joseph.
And they would steal quietly from the house for fear the others had not gone, and then avoiding the main street of Plyn, they would climb a narrow path that ran behind the houses, to the cliffs and the Castle ruins. They would sit there watching the sea, she with her back against the wall, her legs tucked under her, and he lying full length upon the grass, his chin in his hands, chewing a piece of straw the while, and ever and anon turning his eyes from the horizon to look at her face.
She told him of her childhood, and her longing to be a man, and the wild desires that used to come over her, like the cattle and the sheep in the hills at odd seasons, to break pasture and leave the quiet peaceful life for adventure and unknown things. He held her hand and understood, for these desires were his also, and one day he was certain that they would realize them together.
‘Go on speakin’,’ he would implore her. ‘Never stop tellin’ me your wishes an’ your thoughts - and the stories of your feelin’s as a girl. It’s as if I’d always known about ’em, and was rememberin’.’
He asked her to describe her figure and her face.
‘Are you changed much since then, was you thin an’ wispy, like little Liz will be?’
‘Yes - something like Liz maybe, but never weak in health. More like you, Joseph.’
He bit hard on his straw, kicking his heels with pride.
‘I reckon there’s more beauty to you than anyone in Plyn, now at this minute, but all the same, I’d dearly loved to have seen you then, slight an’ frail, not much bigger’n Mary.’
She looked down at his head and tried to remember the vision of him on the hill - tired, middle-aged, with his weary, haggard eyes; and there now at her feet was this boy, with his dark hair and his wild care-free spirit.
His path was mapped out ahead of him, hard maybe - narrow and tortuous in places, but she would be beside him.
They sat together, silent and thoughtful. He untied the strings of her bonnet, and taking it off, he laid it on her lap.
‘I want to watch the wind playin’ with your hair,’ he said slyly; but she knew what he was about, and drew away from him, for in two seconds he would have drawn away the pins as well, and brought her hair tumbling about her shoulders.
‘Why do you act so?’ she sighed happily, not angry, but content with his ways.
‘I don’t know.’ He lay on his side and ran his finger along her arm. ‘When I go to sea, I’ll buy you jewels an’ clothin’ from foreign parts, lace too, and scent. I’ll conceal ’em from the Customs, act as a smuggler, an’ bring ’em to your room i’ the dark o’ the night. We’ll wrap the garments about you, an’ I’ll clasp the jewels round your throat an’ wrist. The scent shall go beside your eyebrows an’ your ears, and maybe, a tiny drop i’ the hollow of your hand.’
‘What more will ye bring, Joseph?’
‘Baint ye content with that, you graspin’ angel? We’ll not be tellin’ anyone o’ course. ‘Twill be a close secret for you an’ me, when the rest of folk’s in bed an’ asleep.’
‘Where will ye sail to, son?’
‘I reckon as I’ll be crossin’ the world, from “China to Peru” like they say in the poetry book at school. I’ll see great cities, thronged with folk dressed rich an’ grand, with dark queer-coloured skins.There’ll be palaces and kings, there’ll be mountains reachin’ to the sky, an’ forests that stretch from country to country, silent save for the song o’ birds an’ the grave rustlin’ leaves. But best of all is the sea itself, with never a sight o’ land for days, an’ the big waves breakin’ astern of you. Wind like a slap on your cheek, an’ a sting from the rain.’
‘Will you love this most?’
‘More than anythin’, exceptin’ you waitin’ for me on the top o’ Plyn hill. Even afore we left the Lizard, I’d know you would be there. No cities, no oceans, there’d be nothin’ like the sight of you, here, by the Castle ruins. You’d come alone, without father, without Sam or the others - you alone, for me.’
‘You wouldn’t be sorry to be back?’ she asked, knowing his answer.
‘What d’you think?’
He was silent a while, then spoke again, chewing his straw. ‘I’ve in my mind’s eye the model of my ship. I can picture the shear of her, an’ the long graceful lines. Her sails spread to the wind. She’d run like a devil if I let her, laughin’ with the joy of escape, but a touch of my hand an’ she’d understand, obeyin’ my will, recognizin’ I was her master an’ lovin’ me for it.’
He leant over and watched Janet with narrow eyes, sweeping the whole of her.
‘What is it, Joseph?’ she asked, conscious of his gaze.
He laughed, and spitting out his straw upon the ground, he reached for her hand.
‘Women are like ships,’ he said.
11
As the children grew older, so did the little town of Plyn thrive and flourish.
Already it was changed from the Plyn that Janet had known as a girl, and as she had seen it as a whole from the top of the hill on her wedding morning. The old quiet air of peace and calm seemed to have departed, it was no longer a small village nestling at the foot of the hill, with the water from the harbour coming nearly as far as the cottage doors at high tide. In the old days the harbour had often been empty save for the old fishing luggers belonging to the folk of Plyn, and when the men came back from their fishing or down from their work in the fields, they would lean over the wall by the slip of Coombe’s yard, and gossip over their pipes, the nets spread out to dry on the cobbled stones, and naught to watch save the gulls diving for fish in the water, and the smoke curling from their cottage chimneys, with the women-folk at their doors.
Then the rooks would rise like a cloud from the trees above Squire Trelawney’s house, and circle in the air, calling to one another.
When Janet was first wed she and Thomas would stroll in the fields above Plyn on summer evenings, and watch the orange patterns that the sun made in the water. No sound came from the harbour then; maybe from time to time the soft splash of an oar, as someone pulled his boat away from the seaweed, and made his way along the narrow pill that led to Polmear.
They would watch the dark form of his boat slowly dissolve into the shadows and the gathering twilight. The sun would lighten the farthest hill with a touch of flame for one instant, leaving a glow upon Plyn that caught the glass of the cottage windows, and shone bravely upon the slate roofs - then the sun would sink beyond the tall beacon, that stood on the high sheer cliffs above Pennybinny Sands. The colour lingered yet on the water, and beside them in the fields the last rays touched with gold the sheaves of riotous corn. Silence fell upon Plyn, with now out of the dusk a voice from the cobbled square calling a name, or the bark of a dog from the farm in Polmear Valley. If it was Sunday the bells from Lanoc Church called the folk of Plyn to evensong, and the people would walk along the footpath that led over the fields to the Church above Polmear. Before supper the younger ones, lovers, or newly wed like Janet and Thomas, would climb the steep hill to the Castle ruins, and wait for the moon to rise, white and ghostly, making a magic channel of the water, that crept away to the horizon like a narrow pointing finger.
Such was the peace and the silence of Plyn, lost by itself, far from the clamour and cries of a city. Then little by little the changes came. The importance of the china clay was discovered and the mines were started. Rough jetties were built where the river and harbour meet, and the clay was brought there.
Ships came to Plyn in numbers to load with the clay, and often now the harbour was a forest of masts, awaiting their turn at the jetty.
The people of Plyn were delighted with the growth of the town - trade would make them prosperous and rich. Only the old folk grumbled, disliking the change.
?
??What be us wantin’ with ships an’ clay?’ they muttered.
‘There’s nothin’ now but hammer and crash i’ the harbour, from mornin’ till night. Why can’t they leave Plyn alone?’
New houses were built up the hill, straighter and more severe than the old cottages at the water’s edge, and they had plain gaunt windows hung with lace curtains. The quaint latticed windows of the cottages were considered old-fashioned and rough, and instead of the roofs being tiled with the soft grey slate, they were black and shiny. Queen Victoria was now on the throne, and in the parlours of the Plyn houses her likeness would hang, with that of the Prince Consort at her side.
Plyn was no longer a lazy, sleepy harbour, but a busy port, with the noise of ships and the loading of clay. The ship-building yard of Thomas Coombe was important in Plyn. Large vessels were launched from the slip now, ships of over a hundred tons, schooners, barquentines, and the like.
Thomas was now forty-eight, little changed in character, but his work had told on him; his shoulders were bent, and there were tired lines beneath his eyes. He thought only of the business, and the name he had made for himself in Plyn. He was devoted to his wife and his family, but the business came first. They still lived in Ivy House. Nothing had been altered here, the large warm kitchen was the same, where they all sat around the table and had their meals.
Mary had helped her mother make new curtains for the parlour, and in the corner of the room was a harmonium which she had learnt to play.
Samuel had joined his father down at the yard, and proved as honest and clever a workman as Thomas had been at his age. He was indeed his father’s right-hand man, and Herbert too, ever eager to copy his brother, was learning the trade beside him. Soon perhaps the board above the yard would bear their names as well - ‘Thomas Coombe and Sons’. That was the dream always present in the minds of Samuel and Herbert.
Mary remained at home in Ivy House, cheerful and willing, desiring nothing better than to remain there all her life and look after the needs of her father and brothers.