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

by Mary E. Pearce

  All these things impressed young Jim. There was nobody like his uncle Brice. And he longed impatiently for the day when he himself would be old enough to go as one of the Emmet’s crew, learning the hundred and one things that a good seaman needed to know; learning the secrets of the sea; learning that quiet self-reliance he so admired in his uncle Brice. Then, perhaps, when he was a man, he would have a boat of his own: a new one, specially built for him in Martin Laycock’s boatyard; and that would be the best thing of all because then he would really be equal with Brice, hailing him at the quayside, one skipper to another, exchanging a few words with him as each made ready to put to sea. They would move out of the harbour together, the two of them leading the rest of the fleet, and would sail away to those distant places where there was nothing to see but the sea. And then ‒ the fish had better look out for themselves!

  Isaac Kiddy was full of scorn when he heard that Jim meant to be a fisherman.

  ‘I thought you were going to be a sail-maker.’

  ‘I never said that. Twas you that said that.’

  ‘Well, and what’s wrong with it, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Edn nothing wrong with it, I just don’t belong to do it, that’s all.’

  Isaac sniffed. He took an immense pride in his craft and he felt Jim had cast a slight on it.

  ‘A sail-maker, I’ll have you know, is somebody special, a man apart. You could meet a hundred men ‒ two or three hundred, come to that ‒ and not one of them would be a sail-maker. That’ll tell you how special we are. But a fisherman! Well! My dear soul! They’re about as common as scads!’ Isaac’s scorn left Jim unmoved. He merely turned away with a shrug. His father had been a fisherman; so had his mother’s father, too; and that meant it was in his blood. Besides which, the sea was always there, and Jim had only to look at it to feel its restlessness in his heart; to feel something rising up in him, catching his breath in a little gasp; something that filled all his thoughts by day and got into his dreams at night.

  Maggie knew and understood this. She had lived all her days within sight of the sea and she knew what a powerful influence it wielded over the minds of boys and men. She knew the sea would be Jim’s life. She saw it like a picture clear in her mind. And she knew it was something she had to accept.

  Jim’s thoughts often dwelt on his dead father and sometimes, especially at bed-time, he would ask his mother questions about him. No one else in Polsinney had ever known him, for he had been a Porthgaran man and Porthgaran was a long way away, thirty or forty miles down the coast. His mother had a picture of him in a locket she wore round her neck but this picture was so small that Jim, whenever he looked at it, would click his tongue in vexation.

  ‘I wish you had a better picture than this. I can’t even tell if he’s dark or fair.’

  ‘His hair was dark brown, the same as yours.’

  ‘Was he tall?’

  ‘Tall enough.’

  ‘Strong?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Yes. Very strong.’

  ‘Was he as tall as Uncle Brice?’

  ‘I think, perhaps, not quite so tall. But very strong and quick and brave … and always very clever with his hands.’

  ‘Was he a good seaman too?’

  ‘I think he was,’ Maggie said, ‘but he was only nineteen when he died.’

  ‘I wish he hadn’t been drowned like that.’

  ‘I wish it, too.’

  ‘You must’ve been lonely, left all alone like you were. Granddad gone … Uncle David gone … You had nobody left after that.’

  ‘Yes, I did, I had you,’ Maggie said.

  ‘But I wadn born then, was I?’

  ‘No, you were just a secret then.’

  ‘You brought me with you, didn’t you, when you came to Polsinney?’ Jim said. ‘You carried me with you all the way, wrapped up in a bundle with your clothes, and nobody even knew I was there.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Willie Wearne.’

  ‘Did he indeed!’

  ‘Why, edn it true?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s true enough. Or as near the truth as makes no odds.’

  ‘Some old surprise you must’ve got when you opened the bundle and I was born.’

  ‘Oh, no, it was no surprise. I knew you were there all the time.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Because,’ Maggie said hugging him close, ‘mothers always know these things.’

  His uncle Gus had been a fisherman, too, before illness had struck him down, and his old white oilskins hung in the cupboard even now, after all these years.

  ‘I know I shan’t wear them again,’ he would say, ‘but I like to see them hanging there, to remind me of the old days.’

  On cold dark evenings in wintertime Jim would often sit for hours listening to his uncle Gus yarning about the old days. It seemed there was never any end to the tales his uncle Gus could tell: of the great catches taken sometimes, that had filled the Emmet’s holds to the coamings and overflowed onto the deck; of terrible storms ridden out to a sea-anchor made of oars and spars with sails wrapped round them and of how, during one of these storms, the foremast had been snapped off; of how, once, a steamship had passed over the drifting nets and carried them all clean away; of the great whales the old man had seen, breaking the surface of the sea and blowing water up in a spout forty or fifty feet high.

  Jim never tired of his uncle’s tales. They were so full of marvellous things. And he would sit very quiet and still, pretending not to hear the clock when it struck the hour for his bed-time, but knowing only too well that in another minute or two his mother would draw attention to it.

  ‘I’m not tired. Honestly. Can’t I have another half hour?’

  He would open his eyes very wide to show how untired he was but although his mother laughed at this she rarely gave in to him.

  ‘Off you go. No arguments. I’ll be up in ten minutes to hear your prayers.’

  Sometimes when the fierce south westerly gales came blowing in from the sea, the cottage would shudder most dreadfully, for it was built on the very edge of the old sea wall itself and had its back to the foreshore.

  ‘Ho! We’re in for it good and proper tonight!’ Uncle Gus would say at these times. ‘Just hark at it thumping against that wall! We’d better put an anchor down!’

  That was just a joke, of course; the little house was as strong as a rock; but in the morning, after the gale, coral, seashells and seaweed would be found strewn all over the yard and perhaps even big stones from the shore, evidence of the sea’s angry power as it hurled itself over the sea wall. Sometimes, especially in winter, the gales would last many days and nights, keeping the fishermen fretting at home, thus bringing hardship and poverty. And sometimes, worse than this, a gale would blow up very suddenly, while the fishing fleet was at sea.

  Jim, from an early age, knew just what the sea could do when it was whipped up into a fury. The knowledge was inescapable and came to him in a great many ways. He saw it in the eyes of the old men when they stood on the quay in the grey dawn, watching for boats that were overdue. He heard it in old Mrs Lewin’s voice as she wept for her grandson, Billy Joe, swept overboard from the Jenefer on a dark December night in 1877. Even when the sea was flat and calm there could be death and danger in it and once, on a fine September day in 1878, a Polsinney gig, overloaded with mackerel, capsized and sank in St Glozey Bay, drowning all three of her crew.

  Jim knew about these things and the knowledge of them got into his bones. You could never turn your back on the sea. You had to watch it all the time. His uncle Brice always said that. ‘Rough or calm, lion or lamb, you can never take the sea for granted,’ he said, and Jim never forgot those words.

  Still, the sea had this fascination, somehow. The idea of it got a hold on you. Boys and men felt it the same and the danger was all a part of it. It was something you had to face; any seaman would tell you that; and most of them, in saying it, would give a little careless shrug. There
were other sufferings, too, and fishermen’s hands and wrists were scarred where saltwater boils had festered and burst and where the cuffs of their oilskins, wet with the sea and razor-sharp, had cut the flesh until it bled. They made nothing of these things. They would show you their scars and laugh at them. They said it was all in the night’s work.

  The only thing that embittered them was when bad weather kept them at home for days on end. There was no laughter among them then. They were angry and sick at heart because their livelihood was gone and their wives and children went hungry. Brice was all right; he had the farm; and often, when the weather was bad, he would be down on the seashore, loading seaweed into a cart to spread as manure on the fields at Boskillyer.

  Sometimes Brice would persuade his crew that a little money could be made by loading seaweed into the Emmet’s punt and taking it up the River Shill to sell to farmers on riverside farms. On these occasions Jim went, too, and it was a great adventure for him to row up the silent, sheltered river to these mysterious places inland. But the men got no joy from it. They felt they were demeaning themselves.

  ‘Three shillings!’ Ralph Ellis exclaimed, when Brice shared out the money they had earnt from one day’s work of this sort. ‘My family will get some fat on that!’

  But poor though the reward might be, it was that or nothing, Uncle Brice said, when the weather turned bad and kept them at home.

  Every morning, summer or winter, Jim would be on the fish quay to see the drifters coming in, and often, as he grew older, he would go aboard the Emmet and make himself useful there, helping to clear the last fish from the nets or counting them into the baskets. He was always reluctant to leave; he loved to be part of the busy scene enacted at the quayside in the early morning; but always there came a moment when Uncle Brice took out his watch and held it up for Jim to see.

  ‘Time you went home to breakfast now, otherwise you’ll be late for school.’

  ‘Aw, there’s plenty of time yet!’

  ‘I shall count up to ten,’ Brice would say, ‘and if you aren’t out of this boat by then ‒’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Try it and see!’

  Jim, with an air of unconcern, would linger to the very last, but always, by the count of ten, he was out of the boat and on the quay. There, he would spin round on his heel, giving a little excited laugh, but he never tried anything with Brice; not with the crew looking on; there was something in Brice’s blue eyes that somehow kept you up to the mark.

  On Saturdays he was allowed to stay until the fish had all been sold and the boat had been thoroughly cleaned out. One Saturday morning in late summer, at the height of the pilchard season, Rachel Tallack, driving the milk-float, came onto the crowded quay to collect a basket of fish that Brice had put ready for her. It happened that Jim was standing nearby and when Brice beckoned to him, he went forward immediately and helped to lift the basket of fish into the float, beside the churns. Rachel, as always, ignored him, even though he was standing so close that he could have reached out and touched her skirts. She merely glanced down at the fish and made some remark on their quality.

  ‘This is Jim,’ Brice said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘He’s been helping us in the boat.’

  ‘I know quite well who he is,’ Rachel said, and before Brice could say any more she was already moving away, pulling on the nearside rein to bring the pony sharply round.

  Brice and Jim went back to the boat, where the crew were busy with buckets and brooms, cleaning out the fish-hold. Neither the man nor the boy spoke of the incident, for there was an understanding between them that Mrs Tallack should not be discussed, but Brice, on getting home, spoke to his mother reprovingly.

  ‘What’s past is past,’ he said. ‘Jim’s only a boy, just eight years old. Surely you could find something to say to him?’

  ‘That boy is his mother’s son and for his sake she’s robbed you of your rights.’

  ‘Maggie has robbed me of nothing.’

  ‘Well, she will do in time,’ Rachel said, ‘and the only comfort to me is that she thought your uncle was going to die and it must be a sore disappointment to her that the awkward, obstinate old fool is lingering on as long as he is.’

  ‘That’s not true and you know it,’ Brice said. ‘Anyone in Polsinney will tell you that it’s Maggie who’s kept Uncle Gus alive.’

  ‘More fool she, then,’ Rachel said.

  All seamen were heroes to Jim, and Brice, being skipper of the Emmet, was the biggest hero of them all. His name was always on Jim’s lips and everything he said or did was reported in detail at home.

  ‘Uncle Brice says we’re in for a cold snap ‒ the gulls are flying inland,’ he would say, or, ‘There won’t be no mackerel catched for a while ‒ Uncle Brice says they go down deep when the weather’s as cold as this.’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ Gus said. ‘Any fisherman knows that.’

  ‘The herring season starts next week. Uncle Brice is going to try the Bitts. He says that’s always a good place to start. Better than Coggle’s Deep, he says.’

  ‘They’re all good places ‒ when the fish are there,’ Gus said with a little growl, and afterwards, when Jim was in bed, he said to Maggie: ‘The way that boy talks sometimes, you’d think my nephew Brice was maker of all heaven and earth.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Maggie said, with a smile, ‘but you surely aren’t jealous of him, I hope?’

  ‘Of course I’m blamed well jealous of him!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a young man, healthy and strong, and got two good legs he can walk with, and because he can do a man’s work, the kind I’d still be doing myself if I wasn’t stuck in this damned chair.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s natural you should feel like that.’

  ‘Still, there tis, and can’t be helped.’ Gus turned back to his bible again. He was re-reading the Book of Job. ‘I daresay, if the truth were known, Brice is a lot more jealous of me than I am of him, and with very good reason, too,’ he said.

  For a brief season in spring or summer Brice and two or three of his crew would go crabbing in the Emmet’s punt and sometimes Jim was allowed to go too. He would take his turn at sculling, and was glad of a chance to display his skill, but he always took great care that no trace of pride should show in his face. When, one day, without hesitation, he took the punt through the narrow gap between Ennis Rock and Scully Point, he pretended not to notice the smile that passed between Brice and the other two men, or to hear the quiet remark that Jacky Johns made to Clem Pascoe later.

  ‘He’s a born seaman, edna, you? I wouldn mind a son like he in exchange for the three maids I’ve got at home.’ Sometimes, in the school holidays, Jim was even allowed to go out in the Emmet, and these were special occasions indeed. A whole night at sea, like a grown man, right out beyond the Oracle Rocks in search of the great pilchard shoals as they came sweeping madly down the Channel.

  Jim was turned nine by now. He had good sea legs and was never sick. If there was a swell he exulted in it; his head remained clear; his stomach steadfast. But that was only half of it; the bad part came when you reached home; because, as soon as you stepped ashore, the solid ground would not stay still! The land went lurching from under you and landmarks heaved this way and that, tilting and swaying drunkenly, so that you felt giddy and sick. Your legs went like jelly under you and you had to hold on to something firm to keep yourself from tumbling over.

  The feeling passed off after a while but it could return unexpectedly as Jim found when he got home and was washing himself in the scullery. The instant he bent over the sink, it swung away from under him, and there was a terrible sickly blackness reeling and rolling inside his head. He gritted his teeth and clung to the sink, staring at the water in the bowl until it became steady again. Washing himself was no easy task but in time he learnt the trick of it and did it without bending too low and without properly closing his eyes.

  It was som
e comfort to Jim to know that even grown men suffered the same reeling sensation after long hours on a heavy sea and this he discovered quite by chance. One morning he and a few other boys were passing Scrouler Tonkin’s cottage when Scrouler, just home from a night’s fishing in the John Cocking, was about to wash himself, stripped to the waist, at a tub on a stool in the back yard. The yard door stood open wide and Scrouler, bending over the tub, clinging to it with both hands, was bellowing to his wife indoors.

  ‘Emmeline! Come and hold this plaguey tub so’s I can get myself washed in it! Tes swingen like the pit of hell!’

  The eavesdropping boys were in transports and soon passed the story on at school, which meant that poor Scrouler, for months afterwards, had only to walk down the streets of Polsinney to be followed by a group of children crying: ‘Emmeline! Come and hold this tub! Tes swingen like the pit of hell!’

  Scrouler never lived it down; the joke became common property, enjoyed by young and old alike; and in Polsinney the chances were that it would follow him to the grave.

  ‘Do you ever feel queer, Uncle Brice, When you first step ashore?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Everyone does,’ Brice said. ‘At least, if there’s been any kind of sea. But you get used to it in time and then you no longer notice it.’

  ‘Scrouler Tonkin still notices it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brice said, solemnly, ‘Scrouler’s a bit on the delicate side.’

  Jim hugged himself at this because Scrouler was six and a half feet tall and almost as powerful a wrestler as the champion Hitch Penter himself. But, as Uncle Brice said, it was not always your big strong man that had the strongest stomach at sea. That was a gift bestowed chancelike and if you were one of the lucky ones, the gift was worth more to you than gold.