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

by Mary E. Pearce

  ‘Yes, and it’s what I’ve prayed for,’ she said. ‘A boy needs a man he can turn to, especially as he begins to grow up, and Jim thinks the world of you.’

  ‘That’s an honour I share with Brice.’

  ‘Brice has been very good to him, too.’

  ‘Naturally. He’s your son.’

  ‘It could have been very hard for Jim, having no father of his own, but he has you and he has Brice, and he’s really a lucky little boy.’

  ‘Maggie ‒’ Gus began to say.

  ‘Yes? What?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid of the future at all?’

  ‘I thought we’d already settled it that the future could take care of itself.’

  ‘It’s bound to be hard for you, you know, whatever you say about having faith. You’re a young girl. I’m an old man. There are bound to be problems, you must surely see that.’

  ‘We shall face them together, as they come.’

  ‘You’ve certainly got your share of faith! But yes, you are talking sense, of course. The future is hidden from all of us and nothing we say will change it one jot. Tes God who determines these things and if I’m to live another few years ‒’

  ‘We shall give thanks for it. ‒ Both of us.’

  ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘So be it, then,’ he said, quietly.

  Almost as soon as Brice entered the room, on the following Saturday evening, Gus was pouring him a drink.

  ‘This is a drop of Jamaica’s best that I bought specially to celebrate with.’

  ‘Celebrate?’ Brice said. ‘Is it a special occasion, then?’

  He caught Maggie’s glance and she smiled at him.

  ‘He’s been celebrating for days ‒ ever since he saw Dr Sam.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brice said. He understood.

  ‘It seems I’m not dying after all,’ Gus said in a loud voice, as Brice pulled out a chair and sat down, facing him across the table. ‘At least, no more than anyone else … I might even live my allotted span … That’s how the good doctor put it to me … And he was man enough to admit that his verdict was all wrong last time.’

  ‘Why, that’s wonderful news,’ Brice said, ‘and makes it a special occasion indeed.’

  ‘Will you drink to it, then?’

  ‘Yes, with all my heart,’ Brice said, and touched the old man’s glass with his own. ‘Long life to you and all happiness ‒ and I know the crew will say the same.’

  He drank, half emptying his glass, and set it down on the table. Gus reached out to refill it but Brice covered it with his hand, and Gus, refilling his own glass, eyed him with a humorous, sidelong glance. Maggie now came to the table, bringing the Emmet’s account book, and Gus touched her on the arm.

  ‘That’s something you’ll never see ‒ Brice the worse for drink,’ he said. ‘I think tes a great pity, myself. It would make him more human. Approachable.’

  ‘I’m human enough, surely?’ Brice said.

  Gus disagreed. He shook his head.

  ‘Tes the sins of the flesh that make a man human,’ he said, ‘and what do you know about them?’

  ‘As much as anyone else, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ Gus exclaimed. He looked at Brice with rounded eyes. ‘Are you going to tell us about them?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I think not.’

  ‘That’s just the trouble with you. Always close-reefed. Trimmed by the head. Hatches securely battened down. But you needn’t be shy with us, you know. I’m a man of the world myself and Maggie, although she sits there looking so very prim, is only flesh and blood after all. She’s no stranger to the sins of the flesh ‒’ Gus broke off. He had shocked himself. He stared for a moment into space.

  ‘What in God’s name am I saying?’ he said, and, looking into his glass, he added: ‘Seems I’ve had more than my full allowance.’

  He slammed the glass down on the table and forced himself to meet Maggie’s gaze. But she, though her cheeks were warmly flushed, merely looked at him with glimmering amusement.

  ‘Yes, I think perhaps you have. It’s the rum talking, not you.’

  ‘The rum has got too much to say for itself!’

  ‘It was only speaking the truth even so.’

  ‘I’m damned if I touch another drop! Tes turning me into a drunken sot!’

  But he was sober enough now. He had shocked himself into sobriety. His glance flickered towards Brice but Brice, no less than Maggie, it seemed, was inclined to be tolerant and amused.

  ‘You young people, sitting there, letting an old man make a fool of himself!’ Gus turned towards Maggie again. ‘Tes all your fault!’ he said to her. ‘You are old beyond your years, my girl, and you’ve got no right to sit there so calm, making me feel so small as a worm.’

  ‘You will not pick a quarrel with me,’ Maggie said, ‘even if you try all night.’

  ‘No, nor with me,’ Brice said.

  Gus suddenly gave a laugh and, leaning forward across the table, drew the Emmet’s account book to him.

  ‘We may as well talk business, then, and see if we can fall out over that!’

  Chapter Six

  Jim, when he was not with Gus, was sure to be in the sail-loft, watching Isaac and Percy at work. He loved the big spacious room with its many windows and fanlights and he loved to see the way the sun, coming in at all angles, slanted in so many criss-cross shafts and made little pools of light and warmth here and there on the bare-boarded floor. The sail-loft floor seemed to stretch for miles; it was twenty paces from end to end and eighteen from side to side; and those were a man’s paces, not a boy’s.

  Isaac, with a piece of chalk, drew his sail-plans on this floor. He was always full of importance whenever he came from the boat-yard, after measuring-up a new boat, and Jim, sitting crouched on his haunches nearby, would have to keep very quiet and still while Isaac, after consulting his notes, drew the appropriate mast-length on the bare boards of the floor. Isaac used a measure for this but when it came to drawing the sails he did it all by eye alone. He would stand deep in thought for a while, squinting this way and that, and then, bent two-double as he himself said, he would lick his piece of chalk and, moving backwards with short, shuffling steps, would draw the clean, faultless lines of the sail. Jim never ceased to marvel at this. The miracle of it was fresh every time.

  ‘How do you know exactly what size the sails’ve got to be?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve seen the boat, of course,’ Isaac said. ‘I’ve measured her and I’ve measured her masts and I’d be a poor sort of sail-maker if I couldn’t schemey the shape and size of the sails that John Ellis d’want on her.’

  At the end of the sail-loft, on deep wooden shelves, the bolts of new canvas were stored, and when the sail-plan had been drawn out, Percy would fetch one of these bolts and lay it down at Isaac’s feet and Isaac, with a little kick, would send it unrolling across the floor. Jim liked to see the canvas brought out, so clean and new, a bluish-white, and to see it go rolling out like this, rippling across the sail-loft floor. He liked the peculiar smell of it and the feel of it, so thick and strong, and best of all he liked to watch as Isaac, with his big sharp scissors, went snip-snip-snip so courageously, cutting out the first ‘cloth’ of the sail.

  ‘Supposing you was to cut it wrong?’

  ‘Ess, you’d like to see that, I believe.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Aw, ess, you would. That’s why you’re geeking at me so close.’

  ‘Did you ever cut it wrong?’

  ‘No, I never did, not wunst. I’m a sail-maker, not a fool, and I don’t belong to cut it wrong. But if I was to cut it wrong, that’d be your fault for prattling at me.’

  Isaac at first did not approve of the little boy’s presence in the loft and he grumbled about it to Percy Tremearne. ‘Is this a sail-loft?’ he would say. ‘Or, is it a blamed nursery?’ And Percy Tremearne said once, ‘Maybe the old man d’send him up here
to keep an eye on the two of us.’

  But one day when Isaac was cutting out a sail it happened that the lower point of his scissors kept catching in a rough bit of floor and Jim, who was crouching nearby, put out a hand and lifted the cloth so that it could be cut more easily. Isaac was impressed by this, for Jim was not quite five at the time, and, turning to Percy Tremearne, he said:

  ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘Ess, I did. He d’knaw like a ’uman, sure nuff.’

  ‘Seemingly this tacker of ours is just about brave and smart enough to be a sail-maker when he grows up.’

  Isaac was friendly to Jim after that. ‘So long as you’re good, you can stay,’ he said. And often the little boy made himself useful, rubbing out old sail-plans, perhaps, or crawling under a great stretch of canvas in search of a thimble Isaac had lost.

  Even when Jim began going to school, he always found time every day to call in at the sail-loft, and he would always try to be there when he knew that a new suit of sails was ready to be taken down to the barking-house. There was great excitement in this and he would be allowed in to watch. He enjoyed the smell of the boiling cutch, even though the fumes stung his eyes, and he liked to watch as the new white sails were lowered into the dark brown liquor seething and bubbling in the vat. The sails would have to be steeped for hours and Eugene, with his short wooden ‘oar’, would swirl them round every so often to make sure they were well ‘roused’.

  ‘How dunt ee take off your smock, young Jim, and dip it in the cutch?’ he would say. ‘That’d last you a lifetime, then, and it’d keep the weather out.’

  This was a favourite joke of Eugene’s because Jim wore a short canvas smock exactly like those the fishermen wore and many fishermen did indeed dip their smocks into the cutch at the same time that they dipped their nets. But Jim preferred his smock as it was. His mother had made it and it was blue, just like the one Uncle Brice always wore.

  ‘No! Shent do it!’ he would say, whenever Eugene made his joke. ‘My smock is weatherproof as it is.’

  Uncle Brice never barked his smock and that was good enough for Jim.

  As he grew older his world opened out, for his mother and his uncle Gus, although they imposed certain rules on him, allowed him to come and go as he pleased. They gave him his freedom; they trusted him; and because he felt that their rules were fair, Jim never betrayed that trust.

  Released from school in the afternoon he would rush with the other boys to the shore and only when hunger gnawed at him did he think of setting foot indoors. There was always so much to do, always so many things to see, all round the little harbour town, that the days were over all too soon. Even the long midsummer days were never really long enough and always when he went to bed his mind would be seething with those things he had meant to do and had not yet done but would certainly do after school next day.

  His world was full of activity. There was always something going on. The harbour, the fish-quay, the rocky shore, lured him from his own home and kept him away for hours on end. But Maggie never fussed over him. She had seen to it that he could swim; that he knew and understood the tides; and that he could handle whatever small boat he managed to beg the use of from some special ‘friend’ on the quay. He learnt these things early in life and the water had no terrors for him. He was sturdy and strong and sure of himself and when he went stepping from boat to boat, in the harbour pool at high tide, his feet, whether booted or bare, would move so quickly and confidently that a boat scarcely had time to rock before he was out of it into the next.

  Sometimes, if he and his friends could borrow a boat, they would go rowing out of the harbour and make their way along the shore, whiffing for mackerel. Mackerel were very easy to catch; they would even snap at unbaited hooks; but it was a triumph all the same for a small boy of seven or eight to go home at the end of the afternoon with a string of them in either hand.

  ‘Bless my soul!’ Uncle Gus would say. ‘That’s a brave lot of mackerel you’ve got there. We shall all feast like kings at teatime today!’

  And for Jim this was perfectly true because no fish was so good to eat as the fish you had actually caught yourself, and mackerel, whether fried in flour or marinated in vinegar with a bay-leaf and a few peppercorns, was indeed a dish for a king.

  ‘There are twelve fish here,’ his mother would say. ‘We shall never eat them all ourselves.’

  And Jim would know the pleasure and pride of calling on old Mrs Emily Newpin or some other solitary neighbour with a gift of two or three fish.

  ‘My mother asked could you do with these?’

  ‘My dear soul and body! I should just think I could! But where’ve they come from, I’d like to know? You surely never catched them yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Jim would say, and then he would give a little shrug. ‘You know how tis with mackerel. You always catch more than you can eat.’

  ‘Your mother’s a good kind neighbour to me and you’re my bestmost boy in the world. And if you just wait there a minute I’ll fetch you a slice of my new saffron cake.’

  Almost everyone in Polsinney was young Jim’s friend; the older people, especially, always had a kind word for him; but there was one exception and that was Mrs Rachel Tallack. She, if he passed her in the village, always pretended not to see him, and her face, so deliberately turned away, was always set in harsh lines.

  ‘Why dunt Mrs Tallack like us?’ Jim asked his mother one day. ‘Is it something to do with the time when you was her servant up at the farm?’

  ‘Yes, it is partly that,’ Maggie said. ‘Certainly that’s when it all began. And then she didn’t like it, you see, because I married your uncle Gus.’

  ‘Why didn’t she?’

  ‘Well, because ‒’ Maggie began, but here she was interrupted by Gus.

  ‘Because she’s a jealous old crabpot, that’s why, and have had her nose pushed out of joint. You needn’t fret over her, young Jim. Just leave her to stew in her own sour juice.’

  ‘Uncle Brice doesn’t hate us so why should she?’

  ‘You’d better ask him that yourself.’

  But Jim never broached the subject with Brice. He sensed that such questions would bring a rebuff. Besides, when he was with Uncle Brice, there were better things to talk about.

  The sea and all things connected with it were the very breath of life to Jim, as to the other Polsinney boys, and together they talked of nothing else. In late summer, when the seining season came round, they would be out on the cliff at Porthvole, watching for the pilchard shoals which, from early August onwards, came closer and closer inshore. At the sighting of a shoal, when the huer’s great trumpeted cry, ‘Hevva! Hevva!’, rang round the harbour, the whole of Polsinney went mad and the madness could last for days and weeks. The bay would be dotted with seine-boats and when a shoal was successfully netted the beach and the wharves and the fish-cellars swarmed with such activity that the noise of it could be heard for miles.

  The work went on all day and all night and Polsinney was gripped as if by a fever. Pilchards were its meed and creed. For these small silver fish could be eaten fresh out of the sea; could be salted down for the winter; could be shipped in their millions to other countries, thus bringing the seine owners rich revenue; and, in addition, would provide the oil that lit the lamps in humble homes. ‘Meat, money and light, all in one night,’ the old Cornish saying went, and this was why, at this time of year, everyone, whether rich or poor, whether they took an active part or were watching for the fun of it, was infected by the happy madness of this great pilchard jubilee.

  The seining season was at its height in August and early September; in the following month it dwindled away and in November came to an end; the seine-boats were laid up again in Scadder Cove and the seine-nets were put into store. But the drift fishermen went to sea all the year round and when the pilchard season was over they would go after the herring; and for Jim, as for most young boys, there was no excitement so great, nor any sight so beautiful as
when the luggers pushed away from the quay, in late afternoon or early evening, according to the state of the tide, and, their sails first flapping and rippling, then growing taut as they drew the wind, sailed out through the harbour entrance and went tacking across the bay, making for those fishing grounds that lay far out of sight of land. The harbour would be very quiet then and there would be a sense of loss but in the morning, on the flood tide, the boats would come sailing in again, each with its following of gulls, and this was a sight that never failed to bring a boy’s heart into his mouth and set him dancing on his feet.

  Jim, if he could manage it, was always out and about first thing, to see the fishing fleet return. However cold and dark the morning, he would not miss it for the world, and would stand with his little bunch of cronies, elbowing them, competing with them, eager to identify each boat as she came stealthily in from the dark and passed under the lamp on the quay-head. The Speedwell; the Ellereen; the Rose Allan; the Boy Dick; the Emmet and the Trelawney: these were always amongst the first, for their skippers were first-rate seamen and could get the best out of their boats; and this was a very important thing, for the first boats got berths at the quay, where the fish merchants were waiting for them, while the latecomers had to come in on the beach and would thus miss the best prices.

  You could always tell when a boat had an extra good catch of fish in her by the way she sat low in the water and by the large number of gulls escorting her in, and as soon as Jim sighted the Emmet he would be on tenterhooks, reading the signs. Had she a good catch of herring in her? No need to ask. Of course she had! Everyone in Polsinney said that if there were any fish about Brice Tallack was sure to find them. He was a ‘lucky’ fisherman. Other skippers would follow him. But it was not only a question of luck. There was more to it than that. Brice was shrewd, energetic, alert. He knew the fishing grounds as well as though he carried a chart of them in his head and he had that extra bit of good judgment that told him which were the best grounds to try.

  He was a good man with a boat: one of the best, William Nancarrow said; and this reputation Brice had among the older fishermen was a matter of great pride to Jim. He would try to look unconcerned as the Emmet slid in beside the quay. He would turn and kick at a stone and pretend it meant nothing at all. For in this, as in everything else, he took his cue from Brice himself. His uncle Brice never showed off, but was always quiet and businesslike, getting on with the work in hand; and although he could give and take a joke as well as any other man, he was never boastful or blustering.