The Forgotten Story
Page 1
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Contents
Winston Graham
Prologue
Book 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Book 2
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Epilogue
Winston Graham
The Forgotten Story
Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark’ novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.
Aside from the Poldark series, Graham’s most successful work was Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham’s other books were filmed, including The Walking Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.
On a stretch of yellow sand on a beach of north Cornwall, just below Sawle cliffs, there lie the remains of a shipwreck.
Every tide submerges it; seas have dashed over it, men have come and gone, but something still survives: a few spars deeply overgrown with seaweed and mussels round which venturesome children sometimes play. Indeed, at dead low tide when a heavy ground swell has sucked away the sand it is possible to make out the way the vessel struck, broadside on, and to see the backbone and the iron ribs lying exposed among pools and dripping a little in the sun.
There are still some who remember the wreck and will tell you the date she came in, a handsome ship, on the ninth of December, 1898. But these have been years of flux in the village of Sawle; successive wars and depressions have seen rapid changes, and few are left to tell the tale. Even those who remain and remember find that no one is interested in something that happened in Victorian times. Their own children could not tell you anything: they are far too deeply involved in today to bother about the past. Although the information is still to be had for the asking, they do not ask and will not listen.
So with the instability of unaired memory, the facts themselves are harder to come by with each year that passes. You may learn the vessel’s name – that she was registered at Falmouth, that she was carrying a mixed cargo and bound, some say, for Liverpool, that some of her crew were saved, though whether all or how many it is hard to recollect. Some will nod and draw at their pipes and tell you that there were passengers aboard, but of course they do not remember names or details.
For this information you may if you are curious turn up the files of the local paper and find a photograph of the ship and the bare bones of the story, just as the tide will ever and again draw back the sand from the bare bones of the wreck, like a wicked child pulling away a cover and saying with secret gloating: ‘See what I did!’
But there is no flesh upon the bones, and for this it is better to rely upon what is still to be gathered in Sawle. There the men who remember will tell you that on the evening of December the eighth, 1898, a strong wind blew up round the coast and that before the night was far advanced the wind had reached the force of a heavy gale. In the morning, almost as the late dawn broke amid the scream of the wind, a farmer called Hoskin, out on the cliffs on business to do with his cattle, glanced out over the grey scud of the sea and saw, only just visible on the low horizon among the shifting mists of the morning, a sailing vessel driving before the gale.
One minute she was there, the next she was invisible again, her sails blown to shreds, her decks swept by the hurrying seas. But Hoskin had seen enough and, dog at heels, hurried across two fields, climbed a stone wall into a lane, and ran down the steep hill to where the sometime mining and fishing village slept in the fold of the hills with the wind roaring among its cottages and ruined chimney stacks.
Rousing the rocket crew was a matter of minutes, but by the time they had struggled up with their apparatus in the teeth of the wind upon the lower cliffs which guarded the entrance to Sawle she had already struck.
A boy named Coad saw her come in. One moment she was leaping and plunging like a horse among terriers, the next she had sharply stopped and was heeling over as if about to capsize. From the extremity of the swing she partly righted herself, and the great waves, unable to move her, began instead to smash into her exposed side, sending up fans of sea and spray.
Hardly able to see or speak for the wind, the rocket crew dragged their gear to the nearest point on the cliffs, pushed it to the edge and fired their first rocket, carrying its thin lifeline over the broken sea towards the wreck.
Normally the distance would have been amply spanned, but so strong was the wind that the rocket fell into the sea some distance short The crew wiped the spray from their faces and tried again. By now in the growing light it was possible to see figures clinging to the deck of the ship.
There was little time to spare if the rescuers were to be useful, and they fired two more rockets before deciding to wait upon some slackening of the wind. But the gale, though often rising to new heights, seldom dropped below a constant pitch of fury, and although they chose the best moment of the morning the line again fell short.
Helpless now, while others from the village came on the scene, they watched the ship settle in the water. All around them the rocks were grey with flying scud, and now and then a back-wash from a returning wave would sweep the slanting deck. Almost everything had been carried away – but the tiny figures still clung there mutely appealing for help.
Then one of these figures was seen to crawl away from the poop and work his way towards the bows.
‘Thur’s a fool thinks he’s going to swim ashore,’ said the lead
er of the rocket crew. ‘ Fire another rocket, Joe; try an’ stop ’ im; he’ll not go to save ’imself that way.’
Another rocket hissed and sputtered away from the cliffs. One or two of the men made gestures at the ship, but before any more could be done the figure in the bows of the ship had slipped over the side. A wave hit the vessel and everything upon it was hidden from view in an explosion of white and green water; the mist and spray from this was blown across to the watchers and some minutes passed before one of them shouted and pointed with a gnarled finger at the sea some distance from the wreck.
A head could be seen bobbing and disappearing on the bubbling crest of a great wave. They caught sight of the swimmer again two minutes later. He was being swept towards Angader Rock, which barred the entrance to Sawle Cove. But he was not seen again. Men do not live in Cornish seas when a gale is calling the tune. The watchers cursed in broken snatches and strained their eyes towards the wreck.
Then one shouted: ‘Try Sawle Point. Can’t we get the gear down thur; the wind’ll be abeam of us.’
With sweat mingling on their foreheads with the spray, they hauled their tackle away from the cliffs, dragged it round the edge of Trelasky Cove and with a clumsy impatient care began to half-haul, half-lower it towards the edge of Sawle Point.
The seas were breaking over this, but as the point lay almost due west of the ship they would no longer be firing into the wind but across it. Slipping and sliding in their haste, hobnailed boots sparking on the rock, they set up their gear and prepared to fire their next rocket.
From here the ship lay pointing north-east with her stern towards them; the angle of her deck was acute, her masts reaching towards a gleam of yellow sunlight among the racing clouds. Her mizzen mast was at a greater angle than the other two.
They fired the first rocket well out to sea and away from the ship, and there was a moment’s silence and then a cracked cheer as the line was seen to have been blown full across the poop. All along the cliffs people waved and opened their mouths in sounds which were lost as soon as uttered.
One of the figures on the ship snatched at the line as it passed him and quickly made it fast.
Now began the task of paying out by means of this thin rocket line first the whip, which was an endless rope much thicker than the line and had to be secured to the main mast, then the hawser, and finally the breeches buoy.
You may still hear all this from the lips of a man who saw it. You will be told that just for a moment when the mizzen mast collapsed it looked as if the breeches buoy would be carried away, with only two of the crew rescued. You will be told what happened when the survivors came ashore, of the efforts of the Sawle people to provide them with dry clothing and food, of how some of them were accommodated at the Tavern Inn and others in the cottages near.
But from that point the account becomes vague. Even though he remembers the sensation which shortly followed the rescue, a sensation which set it apart from all other wrecks of the century, the shipwreck is still the main concern of the narrator. This much he saw; the rest he read about. At the time it was a topic on everyone’s lips; but lips and ears are not eyes, which take the lasting impressions.
Turn up the newspapers of a few weeks later and you will find that much was written in them on this later sensation. But reading the faded pages, one is struck once again by a sense of inadequacy, of seeing the bare bones of the events and being not quite able to imagine the flesh which hung upon them. This person lived and that person died, this woman made a public statement to the press, that woman left the country quietly and was hardly heard of again. Like palaeontologists trying to reconstruct an extinct animal we patiently fit the pieces into place and from them build up a probable structure which will pass for the real thing. At heart, though, it is artificial, an inverted creation, reaching from the overt acts back to the unstated reasons and not growing, as life grows, from the need to the wish, from the desire to the intention, from the reason to the act.
In Sawle, therefore, the curious will find something at once to excite their interest and to frustrate it. A description of a shipwreck and the shadowy outlines of something more. The spectre of human hopes, defeated or fulfilled and now forgotten, the shadows of human conflict and affection, generosity and greed, must stalk sometimes on December nights over the remains of the wreck.
To this the newspaper, crackling as we turn its pages, can only add a faded epilogue.
But further inquiry is not as fruitless as it might appear. Still living in another part of the world are people who remember these events because they were an intimate part of them, who perhaps cannot tell you the end, for their own lives are not yet ended, but can, if you get them in the right mood, explain exactly how it all began.
Book 1
Chapter One
On a sunny afternoon in mid-June 1898, a train drew into Falmouth Station, and among the few passengers who alighted was a boy of eleven.
He was tall for his age, reedy of build, with a shock of fair hair, good open blue eyes and a clean skin. He was dressed in a brown corduroy suit, obviously his best, and a wide new Eton collar with a bow tie. In one hand he carried a cloth cap, in the other a wicker travelling bag secured by clasps at the top and bound by a leather strap.
He stood there irresolute, blinking a moment at the stationmaster, who had taken off his silk hat to mop his damp forehead in the sun, then followed the other passengers to the ticket barrier.
Just outside the barrier, eyeing the outcoming passengers with a purposive gaze, was a tall girl of about nineteen. Occasionally she would put up a hand to steady her wide-brimmed hat against the wind. When the boy passed through the barrier she took one more glance up the platform and then stepped forward.
‘Are you Anthony?’ she asked.
He stopped in some surprise, changed hands with his bag and then set it down and blushed.
‘Are you Cousin Patricia?’ It was noticeable that their voices had a resemblance, his low but not yet beginning to break, hers contralto and of the same timbre.
‘I am,’ she said. ‘You look surprised. Did you not expect someone would meet you? Come along. This way. The train was late.’
He followed her down towards the town and presently fell into step beside her on the pavement, darting glances about him, towards the crowded harbour and the noisy docks, and the tall chimney of me sawmill, then sidelong at his companion who now was holding her hat all the time.
‘So you’re Cousin Anthony,’ she said. ‘How tall you are! I was looking for a little boy.’ When he blushed again, ‘Are you shy? Haven’t you ever been on a journey by yourself before?’
‘Yes,’ he said stoutly. ‘ Often.’ Which wasn’t quite true. He had in fact never been to a seaport of this sort before. Born and bred on Exmoor, he had not even seen the sea for four years – almost a lifetime – and that had been no more than a glimpse from the top of a high cliff and upon a grey day. Today the harbour sparkled and shone. Ships of all sizes mingled bewilderingly in its blueness, and away to the east the lovely line of St Mawes Creek glittered in the sun. But this was not why he blushed.
‘I was frightfully sorry to hear of Aunt Charlotte’s death,’ said the girl soberly – or at least with an attempt at soberness, for all her movements were instinct with the joy and vigour of life. She brightened up. ‘ What shall you do? Have you come to stay with us long? Joe will tell me nothing.’
‘Joe?’
‘Dad. Your Uncle Joe. Everyone calls him Joe. He’s frightfully close about things.’
‘Oh,’ said Anthony. ‘No. That is, I don’t rightly know yet. Father wrote to Uncle Joe. He says it just means me staying here till he can make a home in Canada. Of course, I’d go out straight away, but father says where he is now isn’t fit for children.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Prospecting. He’s been out two years, you know. Mother and me were going out as soon as he could make a home. Now, of course … it’s all different.’
They walked on in silence. The memory of his dire misfortune cast a black shadow over Anthony’s mind for some moments. Even yet he could not accustom his mind to the change. He still felt that his mother existed in this world, that she had gone away for a few weeks and would soon be back; already his mind was stored up with things he wanted to say to her, little questions he wished to ask, matters which had cropped up since her going and which seemed to need her personal attention. He felt mature and lonely. Nothing would ever be the same.
‘Well,’ said Patricia, lifting her skirt to step fastidiously across a littering of old cabbage stalks which someone had carelessly tipped, ‘there’s plenty to do here. Boating and fishing and helping in the house. I suppose you know we run a restaurant?’
Anthony nodded.
‘There’s always plenty going on at Joe’s. Mind you, it’s mainly an evening business; but there’s always plenty to do during the day. If you can lend a hand you’ll never need to feel in the way, even if your father won’t have you for another couple of years. There’s plenty of fun too. Look down there; that’s Johnson’s; our chief rival.’
Anthony peered down a narrow, dirty street leading to a quay. In doorways ill-clad urchins sat and played, but he could not make out anything which looked like a restaurant. The glance served to bring his attention back to his present surroundings, and especially to the girl at his side. Youth has the resilience of a young birch tree: you may bend it till its head touches the earth, but in a minute it will spring erect again, head to the sun and no thought of contact with the soil.
Anthony had been startled at the first sight of his cousin. She was wearing a high-necked white lace blouse with a fine white drill skirt and a wide-brimmed hat turned up at the side and trimmed with broad green velvet ribbon. In one green-gloved hand she carried a parasol. She was very pretty, with curly chestnut hair swept up from the ears, large expressive brown eyes and the complexion of an early peach. She was tall and slender and walked with a grace which was curiously interrupted at intervals by a sudden lifting upon the toes like a barely suppressed skip. She talked vivaciously to him – treating him as an equal – and bent her head graciously from time to time in acknowledgment of a greeting from some passing friend.