Entrance to the Harbour

by Peters, Sue

  He did not appear at dinner time. Jo knew he went to feed the birds in the pens, she saw him set off with a bucket of raw fish, but he did not ask her to accompany him. She

  would have liked to see Flippers again—mutinously she thought of the guillemot by name. Common sense told her that Dan was right about not naming the seabirds he rescued, but a rebel spark of resentment demanded she defy him.

  He did not mention where he had been when they met at breakfast the next morning. Talk around the table became general, and Hannah joined in and broached the subject of going into St Mendoc.

  `I could do with one or two things,’ she decided. ‘It seems a pity to serve that nice lobster without proper dressing. And I reckon that pound you’ve got is burning a hole in your pocket, isn’t it?’ she smiled indulgently at Chris.

  `Can we go with you?’ The boy lost interest in his toast and marmalade. ‘You promised,’ he reminded Dan eagerly. It was amazing how a new day blew away the cobwebs from the day before, for a child, Jo thought wistfully. Beyond a polite ‘Good morning’, Dan had not addressed a remark directly to her, and she envied Chris his cheerful unconcern as he turned guilelessly to the owner of the Kittiwake, certain of a kindly reception.

  `So I did.’ Dan broke off his talk about mechanical matters with Lance to smile at the boy. ‘So I did,’ he agreed. `Will nine o’clock be all right for you, Hannah)’ Considerate as always of the older woman’s wishes, he turned and waited courteously for her agreement before continuing. `Nine it is, then, outside the front door Hannah will sit in front.’ He bent a firm eye on Chris. ‘You can sit in the back with Jo. What about you, Lance? Didn’t you want to come in to the boatyard and check how the Gull is coming along?’

  `Yes, there’s a couple of points I want to talk over with the foreman before they go any further.’

  The Gull, Jo knew, was a brand new trawler being built at the boatyard in St Mendoc. She had looked forward to seeing it, she had never seen a boat being built before, and this addition to the Penderick fleet would provide her with a unique opportunity. She felt glad Lance was coming with them, she could go with him to the boatyard without the necessity of asking Dan.

  `Gosh, I didn’t know it was this rough !’ Chris staggered laughing against his sister as they emerged on the front of the house and met a blast of wind that had not been so evident at the back.

  `I heard it blowing during the night.’ Jo knotted her silk scarf more securely under her chin.

  The wind started to rise just before dawn.’ Dan joined them on the gravel sweep. ‘You wouldn’t find the rowboat so much fun today,’ he told Chris. ‘If you look between the trees there, you can see the spray from the breakers on the end of Penderick Head.’ He pointed and Chris and Jo watched as a white sheet of spray broke like a fountain, showing up against the dark trees.

  `Is that what I heard booming during the night?’ Jo forgot her antagonism and turned to Dan, as interested as Chris.

  `That would be it. Did it disturb you?’ His tone was casually friendly, following her lead. ‘You’ll have to get used to it, we can’t stop the sound of the sea.’

  She would not be at Penderick House long enough to get used to it, Jo thought, but she did not say so out loud. It looked as if Dan was prepared to call a truce, and she was glad enough of the easier atmosphere between them while she was under his roof.

  `The wind’s making the tide run.’ Hannah cast a knowledgeable eye on the shore as the car climbed away from the house and took the road to St Mendoc.

  `That means don’t go to the beach today,’ Dan said evenly, addressing Jo and Chris over his shoulder from the driving seat, and there was unmistakable command in his

  voice. ‘Do remember what I’ve said,’ he urged, ‘and keep away from the shore while the wind’s as strong as it is now. When the tide’s being driven like this it comes in faster than a man can run, and if you get caught in the undertow there’s nothing could save you. Did you hear what I said?’ His voice sharpened, demanding their compliance.

  `We did, and we won’t go near the shore. Either of us,’ Jo promised. Dimly she perceived his sense of responsibility to herself and Chris while they were his guests, and the anxiety her foolhardiness had caused him yesterday.

  `Better still, stay with Hannah,’ Dan insisted. ‘I know you’ll both be all right, then.’

  `I’m not a child !’ She bridled at his suggestion that she needed an escort.

  `You behaved like one yesterday,’ he shot back at her grimly, and she flushed furiously. Did he have to remind her, and in front of Hannah and Lance, too?

  `That field’s a menace,’ Hannah put in unexpectedly. ‘It attracts all sorts of people when it’s in bloom. Oh, the locals know enough to stay away and let the daffs be,’ she acknowledged, ‘but you’re not the first stranger to be caught in that manner,’ she comforted Jo. ‘Up to now all that it’s given the poor souls has been a bad fright, but these rock falls that the frost and the rain started over the last few months, they’ve made it impossible for anyone to get back once they’ve jumped down. It was difficult before, but it could be done. Melanie’s been down there, and not all the talking to by her father made any difference. It’ll take a life one day, that field will, and then perhaps someone will do something,’ she finished grimly.

  `I’ll speak to the Council about it,’ Dan promised, his tone quieter now. ‘With a bit more sunshine like yesterday it’ll bring the visitors down early, and there were still a lot of flowers in the field in tight bud. If the place is securely fenced off as a temporary measure, it’ll keep people away

  until something permanent can be done.’

  `It seems a pity to destroy the flowers.’ Jo mourned their possible loss. From the sea they had been like a light on the dark cliffs.

  `They’re not worth someone’s life,’ Dan retorted sharply. `It was only by pure coincidence I knew where to look for you yesterday. If you hadn’t waved to us no one would have had a clue where to look for you.’

  `Well, you’ll know where we are today,’ Hannah cut across the suddenly tight atmosphere. ‘In the bookshop—at the grocers—’

  `And at the hotel for a coffee afterwards,’ said Lance. `Don’t forget,’ he warned them, ‘as near to eleven as you can make it. The cream cakes they serve with their coffee are lovely.’ Craftily he ensured that Chris would not forget, and would see to it that the women were not allowed to, either. ‘Where are you going first, Dan?’ he asked his brother.

  `To get that engine bit. I can go to the Council afterwards,’ Dan answered. ‘I’m tired of having to nurse the Kittiwake over every patch of rough water. I tried to turn a piece myself, but I couldn’t get it to work smoothly, and I didn’t want to risk it.’

  Was that why he had been up before dawn and knew when it first started to blow? Jo wondered. Or perhaps where he had been the previous evening? She felt suddenly a lot more cheerful. She had taken it for granted he had been with Tessa.

  `I’ll go and see the foreman at the boatyard.’ Lance snapped the lock on the car as they disembarked in St Mendoc’s main street. ‘What about you, Jo?’

  `Chris and I will—why, whatever’s that?’ Jo came to an abrupt halt and raised startled eyes to the clock tower that loomed above them, incongruous in the middle of the narrow main street.

  `We shan’t be going anywhere for a bit,’ Dan told his brother grimly. ‘Have the car keys, Hannah,’ he handed them over. ‘It’ll save you from having to carry your shopping with you. We’ll come back as soon as we can, and you can wait for us at the hotel. Treat yourself to a lunch if we’re over late.’ He smiled at her, and briefly placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, Lance,’ he called, and together the two men ran. Other figures—blue jerseyed, rubber-booted figures—ran too, all from different directions, from places that Jo had not noticed contained people. Their silent, purposeful running struck a strange terror in Jo’s heart, heightened by the sudden banshee wailing coming from the clock tower.

&
nbsp; `That’s the siren,’ Hannah said quietly, and something in her tone made the sense of dread worse. ‘It sounds ,a warning to the crew of the lifeboat that they’re needed,’ she explained.

  `The lifeboat?’ Chris’s face lit up with excitement. ‘Ooh, can we see it go out?’

  `Yes, if you’re quick. They don’t waste time once the warning’s gone. You can see it well enough from the end of the street.’ She took hold of the boy’s hand, evidently taking Dan’s caution seriously in case the child should run down to the shore, forgetting in the excitement of the moment the promise the man extracted from them, ‘Hold my hand, and help me along,’ she suggested tactfully. ‘My legs aren’t as spry as they used to be.’ Just the same she more than kept up with Chris, and Jo felt herself panting as she hurried along beside the two.

  `I wish that awful noise would stop.’ The insistent summons of the siren wailed on and on, and Jo put frenzied palms to her ears to try and blot it out. Added to the crash of the waves against the sea wall ahead of them, that had been muted by the windows of the car, the violence of the noise hurled a symphony of desperation over the tiny fishing community that brought the people out into the street, hurrying in the same direction as themselves, to stand on the street corner and watch the lifeboat launched. A poster flapped, partly torn off the billboard by the wind, and Jo looked at it indifferently. At any other time it would have caught her eager interest. It advertised a cottage for sale in St Mendoc. But not now.

  She cast a glance at the faces around her—all women—and found in them the same as she saw in Hannah’s face, a tense waiting, watchful, alert, and yet curiously resigned. No one spoke. Jo had experienced something similar once before, years ago, when she and her father had been in a mining village at the end of a lecture tour, and been the unhappy witnesses of a pit disaster. The same stoicism was there; the same frozen acceptance of what was, that allowed of neither hope nor despair, but watched quietly until the outcome should become known.

  `They’re away !’

  Chris’s call broke the silence, and a small murmur rose from the women. One or two men, all elderly, joined the fringes of the little knot of people. One had on a white apron, and carried a knife and steel in his hand, marking him as the local butcher. He must have been in the act of sharpening his tool when the warning sounded.

  Slowly at first, then with gathering speed, the lifeboat ran down the slips, the men in it anonymous in their dark oilskins. Jo closed her eyes. It looked too small to survive in the wild water that broke in huge white combers on the beach. For a second it disappeared, and she felt as if her heart had stopped.

  `Dan, oh, Dan!’ Her cry came from her heart, but it did not pass her lips. All the resentment; all the antagonism fled as if they had never been. The Kittiwake was big beside the lifeboat, and even Dan’s strength was not proof against the power of the water.

  Tor those in peril on the sea …’

  The lines of the familiar hymn came to her with a force of meaning they had never held before, and standing there on the street corner, buffeted by the wind, and half deafened by the noise from the waves, she watched the tiny pencil line that was the lifeboat lift and ride the waves, and slowly work its way against them out to sea. Her hand sought Hannah’s, inpulsively reaching out for comfort, and she prayed.

  She was not alone among that silent crowd to do the same, she knew. Other women—perhaps the slight, raven-haired girl, heavy with child, who stood next to her, yet silently apart—had her man on the lifeboat as well. Only Dan did not belong to Jo. She had not the right to call him her own, to watch for his return, and fly to his arms with heady relief that he was home.

  `How do they stand it?’ she whispered, her own control cracking under the unnatural silence, and the strain.

  `It’s their life.’ Hannah’s keen ears caught her words. ‘It was mine too, once.’

  Hannah’s husband had been a fisherman, a skipper on one of the Penderick trawlers Julian told Jo the story one evening, the very lack of emphasis in his gentle voice adding horror to the dreadful reality of what he said.

  `They foundered off the Claw Rocks. The boat holed, and sank with all hands. That’s what made my father put the light on the end of Penderick Head, and we’ve maintained it ever since.’

  `Come on, there’ll be nothing to see now until the boat comes back.’ Hannah kept a firm hold of Chris as the lifeboat rounded the end of the headland and dropped out of sight. ‘We might as well go and get our shopping done,’ she insisted, ‘and then we’ll be in time to meet them for coffee at the hotel before we go home.’ For a brief moment her glance locked with that of the dark-haired girl beside Jo.

  The older eyes were full of compassion, the young ones full of sudden tears. Jo longed to help her, but it was not her world. To this girl she was a mere bystander, and she dared not let her own anguish show, not even to Hannah.

  `Let’s go and get your book, and then we can help Hannah carry the groceries back to the car.’ Activity helped. It stopped her from thinking, stopped her from hearing Julian’s voice repeat the words of Hannah’s story.

  The boat holed, and sank with all hands …’

  Choosing his bird book temporarily diverted Chris’s attention, and he tucked it under his coat unrebuked when he found it raining as they came outside.

  `We’ll drop the groceries in the car and go and have our coffee. There’s an observation lounge at the hotel that looks right out over the bay, it gives you a much better view than from the street,’ Hannah successfully fended off any reluctance on Chris’s part. ‘Do you know what the boat’s gone out to?’ she asked the waiter who brought their refreshments.

  `They say it’s a cabin cruiser in trouble off the Claw,’ the man replied. ‘Why not take your cake and lemonade into the observation lounge, sonny?’ he suggested. ‘You might be able to follow the course of the lifeboat from there.’

  `It’s ghoulish,’ Jo protested, but the man, who looked as if he might have a family of his own, shook his head with a smile.

  `At that age they only see the drama and excitement. I expect he’s planning to be a lifeboatman when he grows up,’ he said indulgently. ‘Next week he’ll probably want to be an astronaut.’ There was a touch of envy in his voice.

  `Drink your coffee, Miss Jo.’ Without asking, Hannah spooned sugar into Jo’s cup as well as her own. Worritin’ won’t help them,’ she said sensibly. ‘It didn’t help my man, and it won’t help yours.’

  `How did you know?’ Jo stared at her numbly.

  `Bless you, it’s as plain as a pikestaff to them as is fond of you, child,’ Hannah returned softly. ‘And I’m that,’ she admitted, ‘though I’ve not known you for long. You’re the daughter I never had.’ Her faded eyes gazed back at the lost years. ‘The boys have been like sons to me, I was lucky to have them, but I always wanted a girl …’

  `Oh, Hannah, what can I do?’ Now Hannah knew her secret, there was no point in pretending.

  `There’s nothing you can do, except wait,’ her companion shook her head sadly. ‘The Penderick men do their own choosing. Mr Dan will make up his mind in his own good time.’ Unerringly she knew it was Dan, and not Julian or Lance.

  `I can’t stop loving him.’ Tears choked Jo’s voice. ‘And I don’t even know if it would work out. I don’t know if I could stand the strain. Today …’

  `That’s something only you can decide,’ Hannah said sagely.

  `Is it always like this?’

  `It’s always like this with men of the sea.’ The fisherman’s widow offered no false comfort. ‘The men put out to sea and the women wait on the shore. It’s always been like that, and it always will.’

  `I didn’t know Dan and Lance were lifeboatmen.’

  `All the younger men hereabouts serve the boat. Amos did, and Roddy will when it comes his turn.’

  Jo stared at her uncomprehending.

  `And the women let them go?’

  `That way, the women serve too.’

  `Should
I have the strength?’ Jo whispered. She had asked herself that once before.

  `If you haven’t, you’re best away from it,’ Hannah told her quietly. ‘There’s some things have to be accepted to be borne. If you can’t accept his way of life, leave him alone, or it’ll end in misery for both of you. I’ve seen it happen

  before, and I wouldn’t want it to happen to you. Or to Mr Dan.’

  `I want to be a lifeboatman,’ Chris announced, rejoining them. `Roddy’n me’ll take over when Dan and Lance are too old,’ he decided seriously.

  `Dan needn’t go,’ Jo began tentatively. ‘You said he needn’t fish for a living.’

  `The sea’s his life, not his living,’ Hannah corrected her. `Part him from his boats, and it’d be like taking his sight away. The lifeboat for him is just a natural extension of the Kittiwake. The one helps to keep the other, in fact.’