Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘I shan’t be going out tonight. I don’t want to risk being late. Ralph will be skipper for tonight and Joe Tambling is going along to make up the crew.’

  ‘Everything’s settled, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brice said. ‘I’ll be here at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking out how it will be when Maggie becomes my wife,’ Gus said. ‘She’ll be your aunt-by-marriage, of course, but she won’t expect you to call her that. As for her child, when he comes, he will be your cousin, I suppose.’

  ‘He?’ Brice said, with a little smile.

  ‘Yes, she’ve set her heart on a son, to be called Jim after his father.’

  ‘Well, I hope that Maggie’s son and I will be more than just cousins-by-marriage,’ Brice said. ‘I hope, perhaps, when the time comes, I’ll be asked to be one of his godparents.’

  How this idea had come to him and how it had found expression so glibly he could not have explained to anyone; and afterwards, as he walked home, he wondered if he had been guilty of a piece of blatant hypocrisy. But on the whole he was pleased with himself because, by making this gesture of his, he was putting on a face that the world at large would have trouble in reading. People might surmise as much as they liked, but no one would ever really know what his feelings had been for Maggie Care, nor would they know what his feelings were at seeing her marry his uncle Gus.

  There was much comfort in this; he commended himself on his cleverness; and then he realized, with wry self-scorn, that these precious feelings of his were a mystery even to himself.

  The wedding day was misty and warm, typical of September month, with a smell of dying leaves in the air.

  Brice, as he wheeled his uncle Gus up Bryant’s Hill and into the church, found him unusually subdued and perceived with a twinge of sympathy that he was nervous and unsure of himself. But he also perceived, on entering the church, that the sight of Maggie, serene, self-possessed, instantly set his uncle at ease and that in the look that passed between them there was complete understanding and trust.

  There were very few people at the wedding and this was as Gus and Maggie wished. Mr and Mrs Kiddy were there, with the younger sail-maker, Percy Tremearne, and Martha Cledra was there, as Maggie’s friend. And behind them were gathered those villagers, numbering two or three score, who, having nothing better to do that day, the tenth of September, 1869, had come together into the church to see Gus Tallack put his ring on Maggie Care’s finger and to hear them pronounced man and wife.

  The ceremony was so simple that many people thought it austere. No hymns were sung; no music was played; and when the couple left the church, there was no sound of wedding-bells. Martha Cledra threw some rice, and a small girl, waiting at the lych-gate, put a bunch of poppies into Maggie’s hands, but these were the only festivities. There was not to be any wedding breakfast and Brice, pushing his uncle’s wheelchair, was the only person to accompany the bride and bridegroom home. Even he did not go inside; he excused himself on the grounds that he had to go down to the quay and see that all was well with the boat; and so, within an hour of being married, Gus and Maggie were alone in their home.

  ‘Well, here we are, then, man and wife.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie said. She looked at him.

  ‘No regrets?’

  ‘No. None.’

  ‘I hope it will always be like that.’

  ‘I hope so, too. On your side, I mean, as well as my own.’

  ‘We’re talking like strangers, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘But time will cure that, I suppose. ‒ Such time as I have left to me.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that.’

  ‘No. Very well. But it’s something we’ve got to face all the same.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said. ‘Well, we shall see.’

  That afternoon, at three o’clock, Frank Rogers the solicitor came, and Gus made his will. Maggie, as his wife, was already his heir, but he intended to make quite sure that no doubt could ever exist regarding his intentions. So the will was made and Isaac Kiddy and Percy Tremearne were called down from the sail-loft to witness Gus’s signature. They each got a glass of rum for their pains and so did Mr Rogers, and the three of them drank the couple’s health. None of it took very long, for the will was simplicity itself, and everything Gus possessed was left to Maggie.

  Gus, with his new responsibilities, was anxious that his property should bring in the maximum profit, and soon he was talking of opening up the barking-house and putting it into business again. The problem was to find a man who would run it honestly and efficiently, and as soon as Isaac Kiddy got wind of the plan he wanted the job for his son Eugene.

  ‘If your son is anything like you,’ Gus said, ‘I don’t want him near the place.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Isaac said.

  ‘I’m talking about that suit of sails you’re making for Matt Crowle,’ Gus said, ‘that should’ve been ready two weeks ago and aren’t finished even now.’

  ‘Twadn me that promised those sails would be ready by October fifteenth. Twas you that went and promised that. I do my best. I can’t do no more. And I’ve only got one pair of hands, you know.’

  ‘No, you haven’t, you’ve got two! ‒ Your own and Percy Tremearne’s!’ Gus said. ‘And if two grown men who call themselves sail-makers can’t get a suit of sails cut and stitched inside a month there must be something wrong with them!’ Isaac began making excuses but Gus cut him short.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m willing to do. You get those sails finished by the end of this week and your boy Eugene can have the job of running the barking-house for me.’

  This promise worked like a charm. The sails were complete within another twenty-four hours and Isaac duly reported to Gus.

  ‘Can I tell boy Eugene he’ve got the job?’

  ‘I promised you, didn’t I?’ Gus said. ‘But just you let me tell you this. ‒ Things’ve got to be different from now on. No more kiddling about, coming and going just as you please, but a full day’s work every day, and sails got ready on the dot. And another thing I expect to see is that sail-loft kept tidy and clean. If it isn’t ‒ just you look out!’

  Eugene Kiddy arrived the next day and quietly, without any fuss, took possession of the barking-house. Gus had already got in a load of cutch and soon the acrid smell of it as it boiled and bubbled in the vat, with the Maid Molly’s nets steeping in it, was wafting all around the harbour and up into the terraced town, pungent evidence of the fact that Gus Tallack’s barking-house was working in full swing again.

  There was no lack of customers because fishermen who, in the past eighteen months, had been obliged to take their nets to be barked in St Glozey, now returned to Gus Tallack and put their names on his waiting-list. Soon the barking-house and yard were full of noise and activity, just as they had been in the old days, and Gus, sitting out in his wheelchair, with men of his own kind to talk to and plenty of business to occupy his mind, found himself closely in touch again with the stirring, bustling life of the sea.

  All this he felt he owed to Maggie, because she had given him a sense of purpose, and the will to see that this business of his was working to its proper capacity. He was doing it all for her sake, so that she and her child should lack for nothing when he was dead and in the grave, but what he was doing for Maggie’s sake brought rewards for himself as well. He had taken on a new lease of life and although he knew that its days were numbered, there was work and device enough in them to make them rich and meaningful.

  Maggie also was content, for she and Gus got on well together, and when, early in the morning of the twelfth of January, her baby was safely delivered to her, after a labour lasting ten hours, she felt that God had been good to her and was making amends for what lay in the past. For her baby was a fine healthy boy and when she held him in her arms and smelt the soft warm smell of him she knew that he, more than anything else, would ease and allay the aching void that his father’s death had left in her heart.

  News that
she had given birth to a son reached Brice on the quay that morning and when he was on his way home he met Annie Tambling, the midwife, coming away from his uncle’s house.

  ‘Ess, tes a boy, sure nuff, brave and handsome as any I’ve seen. Weighed eight pounds if he weighed an ounce and was screamen fit to burst his lungs almost before I’d turned him up.’

  ‘Is Mrs Tallack all right?’

  ‘Ess, for sure. No trouble at all. Did what I telled her, good as gold, and never so much as yelled wunst. As for your uncle Gus, well, he’s about as bucked with it all as though he’d fathered the cheeld himself.’ Mrs Tambling squinted at Brice. ‘Going in to see them, are you?’

  ‘Not right now,’ Brice said. ‘I think I’d better wait a while.’ On getting home he found that his mother, too, had heard the news.

  ‘So your uncle’s wife has got a son? A bastard child with a borrowed name! And in time he will come into property that should by rights have been yours.’

  Brice walked past her into the house.

  When he did call at his uncle’s cottage, one wet afternoon, on his way to the boat, Maggie was sitting in the kitchen and it happened that she had been suckling her child. Brice would have withdrawn at once but his uncle motioned him into the room.

  ‘Maggie won’t mind you stepping in. Women don’t fuss about such things. They’ve got more sense than us men.’

  It seemed that this was perfectly true, for Maggie’s glance was quite composed and she showed no signs of prudishness. She sat in a low nursing-chair, close beside the kitchen table, and the light of the lamp, in its pink-frosted globe, fell on her baby’s warm flushed face as he lay in her arms, almost asleep. The small mouth had become slack; the shadowy eyelids were slowly closing, and one tiny hand, with fingers curled, lay in the opening of the dress, in the soft warm hollow between her breasts.

  ‘So this is Jim?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maggie said.

  ‘You wanted a son.’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  Brice, though he stood in front of her, was still awkwardly keeping his distance, and his uncle Gus remarked on it.

  ‘You needn’t be afraid of going close. Neither she nor the child will bite you.’

  ‘Well,’ Brice said, and looked down at himself. His dark red oilskins were wet with rain and a puddle was forming on the floor. He had taken his sou’wester off and it hung, dripping, from his hand. ‘As you see, I’m not really fit.’ But he moved forward a pace or two and, leaning down from his great height, looked closely at the sleeping babe and touched it gently on the arm. ‘I can’t stay long. I’m due at the boat. But I felt it was time I called on you to offer my good wishes and see young Jim Tallack for myself.’

  ‘And what do you think of him?’ Gus asked.

  Brice stood up straight again.

  ‘Mrs Tambling called him a brave handsome cheeld and it seems to me she was right,’ he said.

  The baby stirred in Maggie’s arms and she bent over him, holding him close, shifting sideways in her chair so that his face was screened from the light. For a moment she was completely absorbed and Brice saw and understood how it was that the bond between a mother and child, forged in such moments of closeness and warmth, came to be the strongest in the world. He saw that Maggie’s whole life was centred on her baby son and that nothing else mattered to her; he saw, too, that motherhood had made her more gently beautiful; and by the sudden twist in his heart as he turned away from her and her child he knew he was still in love with her.

  ‘Going already?’ Gus said.

  ‘Yes. I must.’

  ‘You’ve got a wet night’s work ahead of you.’

  ‘At least there’s a good wind,’ Brice said. ‘It’s been too still the past few nights and the herring haven’t been coming to us but maybe tonight our luck will change.’

  Outside in the wind and the rain he pulled his sou’wester onto his head and turned his collar up to his ears. The afternoon was as black as pitch and the rain fell like rods of glass, slantways on the north-west wind blowing down from Mump Head. Most of the drifters had already gone but a few were just pulling away and he saw their lights gleaming fuzzily as they made towards the harbour mouth. Only the Emmet remained at the quayside and the crew were waiting impatiently, bowed figures in gleaming oilskins, under sails that hung like wet rags.

  ‘God! What a night!’ Ralph Ellis said as Brice jumped down into the boat. ‘Tes what you get for grumblen all week about it being too damned fine!’

  Chapter Five

  Gus’s prediction proved correct and Maggie, from the day she married him, found herself treated with respect. Tongues still wagged, inevitably, for Maggie’s history was such that it would bear telling and re-telling for many a long day to come. But whatever people said behind her back, to her face they were all civility, such was the standing endowed upon her by her marriage to Gus. She was his wife; her child bore his name; and these indisputable facts were enough to make her position secure.

  Only Rachel remained hostile and this too worked in Maggie’s favour, for whereas Rachel had always looked down on the ordinary people of Polsinney, Maggie was friendly with everyone.

  ‘At least she dunt give herself airs,’ the villagers said among themselves. ‘And she could do if she had a mind that way cos tes her husband, edn it, you, that’ve got his own bit of property and she’ll get it all when the old chap dies. Rachel Tallack edn nothing at all for all she d’look down her nose at we and if old Gus’ve put a slight on her I reckon tes only what she deserve.’

  So it fell out that quite soon Maggie came to be liked for herself. The villagers accepted her and looked on her as one of themselves. And in time it also came about that even the more exalted members of the community raised their hats when meeting her, for it was seen that Gus Tallack was a man of growing consequence, and people like the Halls and the Lanyons treated his wife accordingly.

  For Gus, up until this time, the sail-loft and barking-house had never been anything more than a second string to his bow; something he had been glad to fall back on when illness had forced him to give up the sea. But now all that was changed; he had acquired a taste for commerce; and in a small way, without taking risks, he was expanding his business interests.

  For one thing, when he had money to spare, he bought a share in the Nonesuch Seine, and out of the handsome profits he got when the seining season proved good that year, he bought a shed at Steeple Lumbtown, installed two net-making looms in it, and engaged two women to make nets. All this was done for Maggie’s sake, to make her future more secure, and right from the start he encouraged her to take an interest in his affairs because, as he said to her, ‘You’ll have to run things when I’m gone.’

  Rachel, on hearing of Gus’s new business ventures, spoke of them bitterly to Brice.

  ‘Oh, that girl has done well for herself, marrying that uncle of yours! There’s no fool like an old fool and it seems he can’t do enough for her.’

  ‘The gain is not all on Maggie’s side. Uncle Gus benefits too. It’s given him something to live for and he’s more cheerful now than he has been for years. Maggie is a good wife to him and no one can say otherwise.’

  ‘Wife!’ Rachel said scornfully. ‘And what sort of marriage is it when he is nearly three times her age and everyone knows he’s a dying man?’

  ‘Whatever sort of marriage it is, it seems to be working pretty well, and if Uncle Gus is a dying man, at least his last years will be happy ones.’

  Brice, calling on Gus every week to discuss the boat’s business affairs, had plenty of opportunity to observe the improvement Maggie had wrought. The old man now had a comfortable home where everything was cheerful and bright and where, at every hour of the day, he was considered and waited on. He ate proper meals, at regular times, and instead of spending his evenings alone, brooding on his helplessness, he now had Maggie’s company and would yarn to her by the hour. It seemed they had plenty to talk about and in spite of the difference in their ages, the
re was a close understanding between them, based on mutual need and trust. All these things had made their mark; the old man was in good spirits these days; and Brice felt sure that because of this his health had improved accordingly.

  At first, when the boat’s business was discussed, Maggie took no part in it but kept herself in the background, out of consideration for Brice. That was in the early days and Gus said nothing about it then because all Maggie’s thoughts at that time were centred on her unborn child and she was everlastingly busy with some piece of knitting or needlework. But later, some few weeks after baby Jim’s birth, Gus firmly insisted that Maggie should join him and Brice at the table and go through the Emmet’s accounts with them.

  ‘The boat will be yours one of these days and tes only right you should know what’s what. You needn’t worry about Brice. He quite understands how things’ll be.’

  So every Saturday now, when Brice called, Maggie sat in on these discussions and heard Gus go through the weekly ‘log’. She heard what each night’s catch had been and what it had earnt in hard coin; she heard that so far the herring season had been slow in getting under way; and she heard that the Emmet’s pumps would soon need repair. Sometimes she had some comment to make and always Gus would pass her the ‘log’ so that she could check his figures.

  ‘Maggie’s got a better head for reckoning than I ever had in my life,’ he said. ‘Her mother was a schoolmistress ‒ did you know that ‒ so brains must run in the family.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brice said, ‘I did know that.’

  ‘Damme! What am I thinking of? I’d forgotten, just for the moment, that Maggie was up at the farm with you. You must’ve got to know her pretty well in that time and I doubt if I can tell you much that you haven’t already found out for yourself.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that, but we’re not exactly strangers, it’s true.’

  Brice gave his answer clumsily; he knew that the taunt was intentional; and later on that same evening the old man followed it up with a few more pointed remarks. The business discussion had been completed; Brice had received his weekly ‘share’; and Maggie, as was her custom, brought out the rum and two glasses and set them down in front of Gus.