Barefoot on the Cobbles

by Janet Few

  ‘Been fishing this bay since he was no more than a tacker, Frank. He knows what’s what.’

  ‘If anyone can hold firm in a storm it’s Frank. He’ll be waiting it out ’til the tide turns.’

  Soon there was nothing left to say, the same, oft repeated, platitudes no longer gave comfort and the crowd fell silent. Mark began to fidget, too embarrassed to speak to young Wilf Badcock, who was one of his greatest friends. He understood now why people had mumbled and failed to meet his eye in the days since Daisy died. Some of his classmates had lost fathers or brothers in the war but this was different, lacking in that heroic veneer that somehow made communicating with the bereaved easier.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Mark to his brothers, as he began the climb up from the quay, to tell his mother and sisters the news that was no news.

  The family’s own Daisy-induced heartache was subsumed by this latest ordeal that had been unleashed on the tight-knit community. Leonard and Bertie remained on the shoreline, knowing that it served no purpose but somehow feeling that returning home would be a sign that they had bowed to the inevitable. They needed to see their father step safely back on dry land. After an eternity of watching, eyes squinting through the rain that was now lashing across the bay, the cry went up.

  ‘She’s coming in,’ and the Elinor Roget turned from a mirage to a certainty.

  The wave of anticipation rolled from the end of the harbour wall to the quayside and on to envelop those who had decided that the Look-out, high on the cliff, was the better vantage point. Cottage doors opened, shawls were donned and the waiting crowd swelled. Whispered conversations started up, half smiles were exchanged. There was a communal stiffening of shoulders as the villagers braced themselves for the lifeboat’s return. Hopes were raised as the Elinor Roget entered the harbour but as the crew became distinguishable, the gloomy countenances and hunched shoulders of the weary men told their own story. An unearthly wail, scarcely human, went up from Rose Harding, as her father and brothers climbed out of the boat. Normally, they wouldn’t all be part of the same lifeboat crew, the village liked to spread its risk and its grief but this had been different. Captain Jenn enveloped his sister in his arms and lowered his face to her hair to hide his despair.

  ‘Go back Jim,’ sobbed Rose to her brother. ‘You must go back, I can’t do without Will. He must be out there somewhere.’

  Her plea was taken up by others on the quayside. ‘We still have light for another hour, we must go back out. We can’t give up.’

  The unspoken thought that it could be them, their husband, their son, added vehemence to their entreaties. Tom Pengilly turned ruefully to his exhausted crew and shrugged his shoulders. The older men were clearly past setting out to sea again. Albert was in his fifties and Captain Jenn’s father older still. With no sign of the Annie Salome, or the two men, Tom had made the common-sense decision to return to land. To his mind he had already put the lives of his crew in more danger than was wise, spurred on by the thought that they sought brothers-in-law and friends. The weather was dirty and the sea looming; deep down, Tom knew there was little chance of finding Frank or Will alive. He knew too that those who were begging for the lifeboat to go back out to sea were desperate, that they needed to feel that something was being done, however futile. Albert had sunk to the quayside, his head between his knees and old Mr Jenn could barely stand. Tom resigned himself to the inescapable truth and quickly assessed the remainder of his crew.

  ‘I’ll need four new men,’ he sighed.

  Sid Abbott, Dick Cruse, Richard Foley and Steve Headon were the first to step forward and join the younger crewmen, who were already shaking off exhaustion and returning to their stations on the boat.

  Albert protested that he could go back out, he must go back out, he was good for a few more hours yet. Tom Pengilly understood but was resolute; Albert was amongst those who had done their share. Fatigue finally won the battle with resentment in Albert’s mind and he shrugged his acceptance. He turned to his eldest son.

  ‘Is ma down?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve not seen her,’ Leonard replied. ‘Mark went to tell her you was out.’

  Albert accepted Polly’s uncharacteristic absence as he had had to accept many other unusual aspects of her behaviour lately. He went to hang his lifejacket in the station but despite being wet and weary, he showed no sign of wanting to return home. Leonard wondered if it was from a genuine desire to continue the vigil, or if it was a welcome opportunity to escape from Polly’s unpredictability. His few brief hours at home had already shown Leonard that his mother was not coping with the loss of another child. All thoughts of seeing Annie that afternoon had gone and Leonard decided that he should stay with his father, at least until the lifeboat returned.

  Hope died with the dusk, the lifeboat’s second journey proved as fruitless as its first. Mrs Badcock and Mrs Harding were led away by their friends. Merelda Badcock’s silent, trance-like stare a contrast to Rose’s racking sobs. Did this put a new perspective on Daisy’s death? Leonard wondered. She left grieving parents and siblings certainly but no spouse or child had depended on her for their bread and board. Leonard knew Daisy had died of the influenza but no one had told him more. His father had fetched her on the train, he knew that too but how had she felt? Had she been scared? Had she known that she was going to die? As he headed for home, Leonard tried to understand his parents’ silences and the furtive glances of the neighbours. He could not help feeling that there was something that he was not being told, something ethereal, beyond his grasp.

  ***

  Overnight, the wind dropped but the skies were still clad in iron-grey clouds. The community was drained. Drained of energy. Drained of emotion. Brave faces were to the fore and some semblance of normal routine was followed but no one felt like working. In the past, Polly would have been one of the first to offer help and comfort to the grieving families but she seemed listless, almost unconcerned, unaware. It was left to other neighbours to provide pasties, or to offer to mind silent children whilst their mothers mourned.

  Albert and Leonard walked towards the harbour, still undecided whether or not to put out to sea. Leonard wondered why his father had been so insistent that Bertie did not accompany them. They had almost reached the Red Lion when Albert pulled his son to one side.

  ‘You need to know,’ he said. ‘You’re a man now. I didn’t want to say before with the young ’uns about and all that business yesterday. There’s naught to worry about. ’Tis all sorted but there was a bit of bother over Daisy. Folks said things they shouldn’t have. Your ma was upset. Your ma and me, we errr,’ Albert paused and cleared his throat, ‘we had to go up in front of the coroner before they’d give us the death certificate. Some such fuss that never should have been. I don’t know no sense to it.’

  Leonard was unsure how to respond.

  ‘But there’s nothing to worry about now?’ he ventured, struggling to picture his parents in court.

  No wonder it had all been so odd since he came home. He had sensed that it was more than just Daisy succumbing to the influenza, which the papers said was taking so many lives.

  ‘Coroner’s done the certificate now,’ said Albert. ‘All done and dusted.’

  Leonard took his father’s statement at face value and turned his thoughts to the tragedy of the previous day. This morning, the lifeboat had launched again but all knew that this was now a search for bodies and a boat and not in the hope of returning the men to their families.

  The news came that afternoon, as Leonard was tidying the cellar and anticipating finally meeting Annie on what was her birthday. The Annie Salome had been found on the pebble ridge at Westward Ho!. With not a scratch on the boat, it was hard to comprehend how the men had lost their lives. The empty nets had washed up some hundred yards further on. Whatever awful incident had occurred in that tiny open boat, on that forsaken sea, it was before the men had hauled in a catch. Apart from a single conger eel, there was no fish in the boat. All the famil
ies could do now was to wait and hope that the tide would return the bodies to the shore, so they could lay their menfolk to rest. It would be ten days or so before this was likely. An image of that new grave in All Saints’ churchyard flashed into Leonard’s mind. In spring there would be snowdrops, daffodils, renewal. In time there would be a headstone. His father had said that the estate and the chapel might help with the cost; so that Daisy would have a permanent memorial, as Nelson did. If Leonard wanted, he could sit in solitude at the graveside, or at least acknowledge his siblings if he walked that way. The Hardings and the Badcocks may not be so fortunate. If they could not find the bodies there could be no closure, no funeral, no place to mourn.

  15

  January 1919

  In the wake of the loss of the Annie Salome, Clovelly folk rallied to protect their own. The women fussed round the new widows, baked them cakes, proffered sugary tea, exchanged sympathetic smiles in the street. They were not only driven by altruism. The support that they offered to the bereaved was a talisman, a way of somehow protecting their own families from tragedy. In the mind of every fisherman’s wife, lurking frighteningly close to the surface, was the thought that on another day, in another storm, it could be their husbands who did not return, their children who were left fatherless.

  Polly remained aloof, trammelled by her own sorrow. She was no longer the recipient of the villagers’ compassion. They had moved on; this latest catastrophe had eclipsed Daisy’s passing. In the early days of the new year, the new peace, men began returning home. They had escaped from the battlefield, yet they could not evade the memories of what they’d endured. Although there were stark gaps left at tables by those who were gone forever, families adjusted, made room for the haunted men who had survived and began to look forward. For Polly, there was no eager anticipation of a peacetime future; neither did Polly look back. She lived day to day, performing the necessary tasks in a listless fashion, largely ignoring her younger children unless they addressed her directly, which gradually they ceased to do. Albert fretted about her. In the weeks since Daisy’s death she had not cried, had not raged as she had when they lost Nelson. Instead, she had withdrawn from reality, devoid of all emotion, an impenetrable husk, unreachable and empty.

  Busy with the remnants of the herring season, Albert found it easier to resume a semblance of a normal life. Just before Christmas, a notice had appeared in the papers, saying that Mr Sanders had been cleared of all blame in the matter of Daisy’s death. Albert had absorbed this news with equanimity. As far as he understood, the issuing of the death certificate had drawn an indelible line under the upheaval of the inquest. They would hear no more of it, they could put the events of the preceding weeks behind them and instead, devote their energies to coping with the latest village tragedy.

  ***

  Sharp hail stones clattered on the blemished glass of Polly’s kitchen window. The continuing gales had kept Albert and Bertie indoors. Leonard, bored with inactivity, announced that he was going to see if he could help Annie in the tea-rooms. The younger children, wrapped against the winter weather, set off up the hill to Wrinkleberry for the second day of the school term. The deep chimes of the clock on the mantleshelf above the flickering fire sounded nine times. A dark knocking on the door echoed back.

  ‘Who be that at this time?’ grumbled Albert, as he crossed the room in response.

  Outside stood Police Sergeant Ashby from Bucks Cross. The rain ran down his black oiled cape and puddled at his feet. Droplets clung to his drooping moustache. Albert blanched, unsure why the officer would be calling. Neither man spoke; the silence stretched uncomfortably between them. After several slow seconds, Albert shuddered, suddenly aware that something was required of him and reluctantly, he ushered Ashby in. Catching sight of their visitor, Bertie, with a young man’s distrust of authority, backed out of the room. Polly scarcely glanced up in acknowledgement. Ashby removed his dripping cloak and unbidden, hung it on a wooden peg just inside the door, next to fishermen’s waterproofs and Polly’s shawl. Unhurriedly, the policeman took off his helmet and lay it on the scrubbed table. Ashby was an impressively built man, even bare-headed he towered over Albert. He addressed Polly first.

  ‘I am arresting you for the manslaughter of your daughter. Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge? You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say, may be given in evidence.’

  Polly was unable to raise her gaze above the middle of the policeman’s chest. Her mind was captivated by insignificant details, the shiny buttons that marched down Ashby’s tunic, the red weal on his neck, left by the chin strap of his helmet. Everything about the man’s attire seemed too small for his formidable frame. His collar was tight, the leather belt with its metal clasp, was stretched across his ample stomach, even his boots were taut and misshapen by the bunions that were a legacy of past years on the beat. The officer was evidently waiting for her to respond in some way. There was only one thing that she could say.

  ‘I am innocent,’ the three words were softly spoken.

  Ashby turned to Albert and repeated the same caution. Albert was quicker to reply.

  ‘Of course I am innocent,’ he said heatedly. ‘I don’t know no sense to all this. We’ve got the certificate now. I thought that that was an end to it.’

  ‘Your attendance is required at the court in Bideford,’ Ashby was saying. ‘Likely it won’t take long. They’re bound to adjourn the proceedings in order to call witnesses and so that you can get legal representation.’

  The knot of panic that had been building in Albert’s body crescendoed and crashed with the policeman’s words. Every deep-buried fear surfaced, every nightmare was made manifest. As for Polly, she retreated once more into the past. Her thoughts hovering and alighting somewhere in the depths of those halcyon times before the horrors began.

  ***

  As Ashby had predicted, the hearing had been brief. Mr Carnegie, who was presiding at the Bideford County Sessions on the day of Albert and Polly’s first appearance, had declared that they were charged with manslaughter by neglect. Ashby’s superior, Superintendent Shutler, explained that the matter had been put before the Public Prosecutor, who had ordered proceedings to be brought.

  Then Carnegie had announced, ‘There are some twenty witnesses to be called. We are not ready to go on with the case today and the defendants will, I understand, be legally represented. It is only fair that they should have time to prepare their case.’

  When asked, Albert and Polly had again protested their innocence. Then the hearing was over, yet, in so many ways, the worry and the dread had barely begun.

  For Polly, all conscious thought was suspended during the week before the case resumed. The days of purgatory were punctuated by flustered preparations of which Polly was barely aware. At Mrs Hamlyn’s instigation and through the efforts of Mr Caird, Mr Lefroy was engaged to put Albert and Polly’s case. He came to the cottage to discuss their defence but Albert was confused and Polly incoherent. The solicitor left, despairing, with very little that he could put forward in their favour.

  ***

  Polly sat stiffly in Dymond and Sons’ mail brake, next to an ashen-faced Albert. The early morning journey from Clovelly seemed interminable. There were no words to say. Neither looked back as they left the track to the village and turned left on to the main Bideford road. Familiar sights slipped by. The smithy at Bucks Cross, the lane leading to Peppercombe, Hoops Inn cradled in the bend of the road at the bottom of a sharp incline, Handy Cross, Catshole Lane. Nervously, Albert wondered how long it might be before he would see these comforting landmarks again. The road grew busier as they reached the outskirts of the town. They caught a glimpse of the workhouse as they passed the end of Meddon Street; Polly shivered involuntarily. Then there was the old cemetery, the school, and the site of the house where it was said the witches used to live. Polly was not the only parent who had threatened her recalcitrant small children with tales of how Goody Lloyd would cast a spel
l on them if they did not behave. Temperance Lloyd and her co-accused had been hanged outside Exeter jail. Reminders of capital punishment were hardly reassuring.

  Yellow, snow-laden skies threatened to the west. As they descended Bridge Street, the river below them was mercurial, its molten surface gleaming as the sun struggled to break through. Polly glanced up to the villas at Chudleigh, on the far side of the Torridge. It was inconceivable that it was nigh on thirty years since an eager girl, whom Polly no longer recognised as her younger self, had set off from Peppercombe to work there. So much had happened in the years between. Love and loss. War and worry. Joy too there had been and simple pleasures; the cries of her newborn children, the blooming of the hollyhocks round her door and the clasp of Alb’s hand as they left Bethesda Baptist Chapel in Gunstone Street as man and wife.

  Polly went cautiously through the open door of the imposing red-bricked building on the corner of Bridge Street. Albert was beside her, yet they had never been more achingly apart. As she entered the courtroom, the smell of beeswax on the highly polished wood assailed her and the gas lamps hissed and flickered. Sitting in judgement were the magistrates, with their intimidating air of officialdom; Mr Duncan in the chair with Mr Cock and Mr Fulford flanking him. Mr Warlow was there to speak for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Polly supposed that she should fear him, regard him as her enemy perhaps but she was numbed beyond feeling. She looked up to the spectators’ gallery and gasped. Crowded together, filling every available space allowed to them, were people that she knew. Abbotts, Jenns, Foleys, Perhams, Dunns and so many more. Clovelly folk had turned out in force, some motivated by a salacious curiosity, others sympathetic to the plight of their neighbours. As she stepped forward, it appeared to Polly that everyone’s attention was upon her. She scanned the faces, unequal to the struggle of distinguishing friend from foe.