‘Good Lord, deliver us by Thine agony and bloody sweat, by Thy cross and passion.’ My voice gathered its usual force. ‘By the crown of thorns piercing Thy brow . . .’ I swallowed and looked right at the minister while he glowered at me in such a manner that my knees trembled under my skirts. It was so silent that when a hearer coughed it sounded like a thunder clap. ‘Dear Jesus, when I come before Thee in the final hour, if it please Thee, Heavenly Father, pray do let me know it is truly Thyself, perhaps by a sign . . .’ I’d lost my way, of course, but there was no turning back. ‘Maybe by the nail prints in Thy hands, so that . . .’ I lost my thread and stood there, seeing the open mouths of Grace Skewes and Loveday, and a whole row of other foes who had turned their heads to gawp at me. Loveday’s mate Betsy Stoddern stared at me with bulging eyes as if it was all she could do to stop herself marching over and giving me a smack in the mouth right there and then.
‘I offer up this prayer to thee, my . . . my . . .’ I couldn’t find the right word.
‘My Saviour,’ Tegen hissed, at my side.
‘My Saviour,’ I said, and dropped onto the bench with a muttered ‘Amen’.
Murmurs of outrage passed along the front row where the bettermost sat, and then there was a coarse shout behind me. It was the voice of Nancy Spargo.
‘Praise be to God!’ she hollered, and suddenly the air was full of cries of ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen to that’. I was saved.
6
I got to the chapel, breathless after the climb from the beach, and put the basket of pebbles down. My shoulders ached and the palms of my hands were scored and red from the basket handles. The minister was on top of a ladder in his shirt sleeves, the cloth sticking to his back as he skimmed the mortar over the bricks with his trowel. Watching the play of the muscles in his broad shoulders sent me into a whoozy waking dream. But just then the huer’s shout of ‘Hevva, hevva!’ was heard up on the cliff top. I looked up and saw him standing outside his shack, waving a great bush in each hand so all would know the pilchard shoal had arrived. The little fleet of boats had been at anchor on the horizon the last four days, and now out at sea the men were shooting their nets. You could see the shoal in the distance, a dark cloud of broken water that grew till it was hundreds of yards long and, in an instant, shrunk to a small inky stain.
I left my basket and ran down to the strand. The whole village was there, from the elderly and lame to the smallest children. The copper-coloured sails were already slowly heading for shore, cork floats bobbing all along the width of the cove where the nets were slung between the boats. Already the mesh was swollen with fish, enough to feed a multitude. We waited, cheering and waving, as they inched towards the shore, the fish teeming in the nets, some leaping up and twisting in the air.
Before long, there were more than three hundred souls wading in a blaze of silver and blue on the strand, as the fish thronged and thrashed around us five deep. The fish and people seemed one and the same, the hands and forearms of the men, women and children glittering with fish scales. Boat after boat came to the shallows to empty their baskets onto the beach, not only the sacred pilchard, but ling, turbot, whiting and other barbed and whiskered monsters that you wouldn’t want to see on your dinner plate. Little children wrestled with pollocks as big as themselves. I heard the minister’s voice not far away and my pulse quickened.
‘This is a sight to behold!’ he cried. ‘What could be more ennobling, friends, than the exertion of hard physical labour.’ He came among us, throwing himself into it, rolling up his sleeves, scooping armfuls of fish and throwing them into the boxes to be carried up to the village. ‘Who would not marvel at this testament to the fertility of the sea and the wonder of God’s creation?’ he called, his dark eyes shining, his hair blowing into his face. In his zeal he was like a boy, the world all new to him, a breed apart from the men of the village, so beaten down and sly.
The very air was enchanted that day. A fine rain, no more than a soft mist, hung over us, with the sun showing through the haze. Further out at sea the clouds had broken to show the blue heavens, and a shimmering rainbow made a perfect arc over all. I saw the minister gaze about him, hands on hips, proud as Moses leading his children to the Promised Land.
‘Seeing how you labour together . . . I truly believe I’m seeing you all for the first time, how you throw in your lot with your neighbours for the good of all, putting aside petty resentments and rivalries, acknowledging your dependence on one another with open trust.’
As time passed I drew nearer to the minister, until we worked side by side, and I might have reached out and touched him. If he caught my eye, he smiled. He didn’t turn a hair when fishwives walked along the quay barefooted, their bedraggled skirts gathered at the thigh with no thought to decency. On other years I’d have done the same, but I kept myself covered that day.
Horses and carts and pack-saddled mules led the fish from the quay up through the village lanes which ran with blood, putting me in mind of Pharaoh’s land during the massacre of the innocents. Every wall and door was gritty with salt and spattered with fish scales. Fish swill rolled down the gullies in the lanes down to the quay, making the ground slippery for the stout men who carried large boxes with pole handles at each corner, crammed to the brim with fish. They hauled the boxes up the steep hill to the cellars where we women stood waiting with arms folded. The banter between the women and the fishermen wasn’t fit for respectable ears, but the minister seemed not to mind it. The cellar doors in the courtyards were thrown open and once the fish were tipped out, children handed them to the women down below so we could lay them out in tiers.
Herring gulls scrapped noisily for spoils and gannets swooped down to where offal lay in mounds of glistening crimson and purple, with a thick cloud of flies hovering over all. Scrums of hissing cats raked the air with their claws to shoo away the birds, and darted away to skulk in a corner and gobble their trophies. The air, always warm and sticky in the cove, felt thicker than ever that day, and even the odd gust from the ocean brought a stench of fish. Out at sea the boats were already tucking another shoal within their vast nets and I wondered if the village would be mired under fish before long.
Work carried on in a frenzy until the sun had set and the lights of the fleet twinkled far out in the darkness, not to return till daylight. We womenfolk worked away in heavy shadow lit by flickering candles, our sacking aprons smeared with blood. Walls of fish mounted around us and glinted like jewels in a vault. We squabbled and joked, and now that the children were abed, our foul-mouthed chatter went beyond even that of the men, as we packed the pilchards into the walls.
A shadow fell over me. Glancing up, I saw the tall figure of the minister standing above us looking down into the cellar. I couldn’t see his face against the light of a lantern on the wall behind, but I felt his gaze upon me. What a picture I must have made, flushed from hard work, my arms, fingers and face slimed with fish juices. I brushed a stray lock from my face with the back of my wrist, but all this did was smear more fish scales into my hair.
‘Well now, is that you, Miss Blight?’ My heart thumped hard under my filthy apron. A hush fell over the smirking women, who continued to salt and pack the fish. ‘If only I could do something to help,’ he said, ‘but I fear I’d only get in your way.’
Nancy Spargo was sitting alongside me. ‘It don’t belong to a man of your station in life to come down here and get mucky with us women,’ she said, with her gap-toothed grin. ‘Besides, you has done enough for us already, parson. This great catch is all down to you. It be God’s blessing, I seem, on account of how you has brought so many of us under conviction.’
‘You has outdone King Jesus,’ I said, seizing my chance. ‘We has more fish today than at the Sermon on the Mount, and the shoal have come weeks before it were due.’
‘The shoals has been poor these last two years,’ said Nancy. ‘It be Divine Providence, for sure.’
‘You saw the rainbow, minister? That means a new Coven
ant, as it did for Noah,’ I said, growing bolder. I knew the other women were giving me looks, but I hardly cared at that moment.
‘I am pleased you know your Bible so well,’ he said. Did he think I was laughing at him?
‘I have it almost by heart.’ I closed my eyes and summoned up the first bit of Scripture that came into my head. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’
‘Blessed indeed!’ cried the minister, with heat. ‘What a day this has been! I’m beginning to see the Almighty’s design in the events of these last weeks. You were the one who hauled me out of the sea that day, were you not?’ he said to me. ‘Surely Providence has driven me onto this shoreline. I feel God’s spirit working powerfully within all of us tonight. This day I discovered the loyal and heroic natures underneath all of your rough exteriors. You are made in the Almighty’s image.’
He was interrupted right then by two men, the giant Pentecost and Davey Combelleck, who dropped a box of fish right at the minister’s feet.
‘Not on my f— toe, Davey!’ shouted Pentecost. ‘You do that one more time and I’ll stick my cock in your ear and f— some sense into you.’ The women cackled. I looked up to see how the minister had taken it, but he had gone.
At the crack of dawn the next day, we threw open the cellar doors in the courtyard and climbed down the ladder to get back to work. The cellar was an airless tomb, with walls of fish packed in row after row, their heads poking out and their red-rimmed eyes gazing at us. At first the stink of the fish almost made me faint, but I got used to it soon enough. We women worked alongside one another, elbow to elbow, salting and bulking, half mazed with lack of sleep, watching the wall slowly rise before us until we could no longer see over the top. We were of every age from Cissie Olds, who was barely in her sixteenth, to the Widow Chegwidden, who must have been in her sixtieth at least. Our boots splashed about in the slurry that drained off to the pit in the middle of the cellar. A fine moist dust came off the fish which cloyed your throat and made some poor women breathless. Overhead, dark clouds raced across a sky that was tender, promising rain before the afternoon. For now, I welcomed the gusts of cool air on my face.
‘I don’t like standing on my feet all day like this,’ moaned Martha Tregaskis. ‘My corns be killing me.’ She took a good glug from the pot of Jamaican rum from the recent wreck that was being passed down the line. ‘All we’ve got at home is parsnip wine and I never could abide that swill,’ Martha said, belching. ‘This be more to my liking.’
Martha was a dreadful slattern, and more than partial to a drop of hard liquor. It showed in her blotchy skin. Few would blame her for it, though, as she was married to the giant, Pentecost, that big bully. Her left eye was ringed with a fading yellow bruise.
‘Corns be a sign of foul weather,’ said the Widow Chegwidden. There was always a soothing air about her, with her lulling voice and rosy cheeks, and her hair pure and white as lambs’ wool against the black cloth of her dress. ‘I know a sure remedy, my dear,’ she said. ‘Gather nine bramble leaves and place them in spring water, and afterwards pass them over the soles of your feet. If that should fail, rub a piece of meat flesh on them, then bury the flesh and let it rot and by that time the corns will have gone.’
Martha offered the rum to the widow, but she shook her head. I was next in line and took a good swig before handing it to Cissie Olds, who stood between me and Tegen in the line. I was fond of Cissie and knew that she looked up to me. I watched her, wiping sweat from her face with her forearm, and I thought her too young and comely for such filthy work, with her fair hair and blue eyes. Her hands were red and raw, already seasoned by hard labour. When it was Tegen’s turn with the bottle she shook her head and passed the pot on to Martha Tregaskis, who took a big glug.
‘This Methody talk about Perfect Love in the ever after is all very well,’ said Sarah Keigwin, ‘but a bit of a flesh-and-blood love right now wouldn’t go amiss. I don’t know what to do about my Matthew. I can’t very well come out and say it to his face and shame him to it, and he’s blind to every hint, or else he be past caring for me.’ Spirituous liquor freed up some women’s tongues, I’d noticed.
‘A woman have rights or else what be the point of conjugating with men at all?’ said Martha. ‘If you ask me, a man is no more than a stand-by on dark nights, however much they lord it over we and stank on us. And if they can’t even make a stand of a night, what use are they to the female race?’ There was uproar at this, all of us stepping back to roar with laugher along with their mates. All of us except Tegen, that is. She was getting my back up that morning, with her prim and proper ways.
‘Talking of men, what do you ladies say to this new preacher?’ said Martha, who’d got hold of the rum pot again. She had a sly look on her face. ‘I reckon it be a fine thing for us women to have our own haven to go to of a night. After all, our men go to the public, like pigs to the trough. And the preacher be some handsome, don’t he?’ She elbowed another woman in the ribs as she said it, and there was more cackling.
‘It gets a body out of the house, I suppose, although I’m not so keen on all the parson’s strictures,’ said Sarah. ‘He says the men dursn’t put out to fish on the Sabbath. Surely, he don’t expect us to leave the whole pilcher shoal to they Newlyn skate? How would we feed our children through the long winter, I ask you?’
‘He have already forbid the reading of improper psalms,’ said Martha. ‘I’d never heard of such a thing before he mentioned it. Soon as I got home, I looked up the verses in our Bible.’ We all chortled at this. ‘What do you think of him, Mary?’ she said. She was slurring her words after downing all that rum. ‘You and Tegen must’ve seen a lot of him when he was laid up in your cottage that time.’ Tegen flushed – after we’d put the minister up in our cottage, she’d been too ashamed to show her face in the lane for days afterwards. Martha was still blithering on, the drunken fool. ‘I suppose you know they’re a-talking about you in the village, Mary? Loveday Skewes be giving the wink of it to folk that you has set your sights on the minister.’
‘It’s yarns. Nothing but muck and stink,’ I said, without letting up in my work.
‘Loveday’s just riled because the minister got Mary to line out the hymns instead of her,’ said Cissie, smiling at me.
‘My Matthew told me Johnenry got into a fight the other night, to defend your name, Mary,’ said Sarah. That got them mumbling all down the line.
‘He was defending his own name, more like,’ I said.
‘A good man, Johnenry. And nice-looking too,’ said Martha.
‘Mark my words, Loveday will soon get her claws in him again,’ said Sarah. ‘Speak of the devil, I heard that Loveday’s to be made Sunday school teacher.’
My hands stopped bulking pilchards, and I took a step back. Thinking of Loveday Skewes being the minister’s favourite and simpering around him filled me with a black rage. That doltish jade was in no manner worthy of the man. In my fury, the women around me faded away and I was alone in the world. When I came round, though, I got back to work as if nothing had happened.
‘Maybe you can push Loveday aside and become teacher in her place, like you did when she was leading the hymns,’ said Sarah, eyeing me to see how I took it.
‘What say you?’ said Martha, looking down along the row of women. ‘Can you see Mary as a teacher? The very idea!’
I looked at Martha. ‘And why not?’ I said. That wiped the grin off her drunken face. ‘Why shouldn’t I be teacher?’
‘I were only thinking about they boys?’ said Martha. ‘You might go and teach they the wrong things.’ She sniggered, but the other women saw the temper was up in me and kept quiet. ‘Next thing we know, Mary’ll be wanting to read the sermon, like a man,’ said Martha, undaunted.
I heard a mild and steady voice behind me. ‘There were women priests once. A long time ago now, of course.’ I turned to find the Widow Chegwidden, sucking on her pipe. The air around her was spiked with coltsfoot, a kn
own balm for lungs rasping from fish fumes. ‘We are only shadows of the women of those far-off times,’ said the widow. ‘Weak, silly creatures, easily stanked on by our masters.’
‘I wouldn’t mind giving a sermon if I had the chance,’ I said, slapping a pilchard down hard on the wall. ‘I’d ask the men in this village how they’d like it if I had a bellyful in the public and took a piss against the wall outside. Or what they’d think if I put out in a boat, and sailed wherever I pleased, while they had to stay at home and keep house. If I ever get my hands on the tiller, I know what I’ll do. I’ll sail to Penzance and buy a rack of new dresses.’ Some of the women cheered, and others jeered. Cissie gave me a hug.
We all got back to work again. After a spell, Tegen leant behind Cissy’s back and spoke to me, almost in a whisper. ‘You should take a little more of a care over yourself.’
‘For why?’ I said, not caring who heard it.
‘You know why. Think about Mamm and me, just this once.’
‘Think about you? For once? You be forgetting all the times I stood up for you over the years. It ain’t my fault I’ve got a timid little mouse for a sister, always fretting about what the neighbours think, always running into her little mouse hole to hide from the world.’
The women were quiet for a time, their hands busy salting and bulking while hungry gulls screeched overhead. After a moment the Widow Chegwidden spoke, in her kindly way.
‘Might I offer you a word of counsel, Mary? Perhaps the blood of the women of old is running in your veins and, like them, you can move between the sea and the land at will. Who knows what powers you may have? But you must take care, my dear. You must learn how to balance in rough waters the way a fish does.’
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