The Main Cages Read online

  In the hot sun, Mr Bryant’s hairless head was shining with sweat. He paused for a moment and surveyed his audience.

  ‘Several years ago Mrs Bryant and I came here for the first time. I speak for her too when I say I could not have conceived of a more splendid place. Our hope now is that our pleasure will be shared by all our guests. A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled!’

  He turned to his wife. ‘My dear –’

  Mrs Bryant took a pair of scissors and cut the cord that was wrapped around Lady Banville’s waist. Above the ground-floor windows a stretch of sailcloth fell away from the façade. Behind it was a board painted gold and white and broadcasting its little lie to all who entered Polmayne Bay by sea: ‘GOLDEN SANDS HOTEL’.

  Jimmy Garrett was lying on his bed. He was thinking. His forearm lay across his face. The Polmayne Queen was out of action. Her pump had perished the previous week. The propeller shaft needed repacking. She was taking in water at the stem and along the deck and there was no money left for repairs. The wreck of the Constantine had helped; if not for that, she would have been out barely a dozen times since May. Even so he had failed to plug his debts. Jimmy was wondering if it was time to sell her. He hadn’t bought or sold a boat in a long time and he was ready to trade the Queen. But for what?

  Tacker sat across the room from his brother on a stool. He was whittling a piece of washed-up timber, and curls of wood lay all around his feet.

  ‘Could talk to Bryant,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s Bryant?’

  ‘The new hotel.’

  Jimmy grunted.

  ‘Give him a share, Jim. We could give him a share in the boat.’

  Jimmy lay unmoving, still thinking. After a few minutes he hauled himself up, swung his bad leg round and scratched the great orb of his bald head. ‘So where’s he to, this Bryant?’

  The hotel’s oak-panelled office was practically empty. There was only a desk and some packing cases. Mr Bryant leaned back against the desk and folded his arms. ‘Well, gentlemen?’

  ‘We got a proposal, Mr Bryant.’ Jimmy spoke softly but without directing his gaze away from Bryant. ‘You’d know our steamer the Polmayne Queen.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Well, we was thinking maybe the hotel could take her on for some of her trips.’

  Mr Bryant remained silent.

  ‘She’s a lovely boat for excursions, sir!’ said Tacker.

  ‘Excursions?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Tin’t the same in a bus, taking visitors everywhere in a bus now’ days sir, tin’t the same, not like being on the water –’

  ‘What are you saying, gentlemen?’

  ‘We’re offering you a share in the boat,’ said Jimmy. ‘We would run it and we could still have our passengers from the quay, but any time you want the boat, you have her.’

  ‘You could have her, sir!’ added Tacker. ‘We’d take her to a nice spot for your visitors, let ’em have a nice picnic and we’d run her for you, keep her serviced and trim …’

  Bryant looked at Jimmy and Tacker in turn. He smiled. ‘So, when can you show me this boat of yours?’

  CHAPTER 18

  Polmayne had never been busier than that August. Fifty-six white tents were now ranked in Dawkins’s fields – more than three times as many as in 1935 – and within a week of opening the Golden Sands Hotel had filled every one of its sand-coloured rooms.

  The Constantine had much to do with it. Every time the newspapers ran a story about the ship’s precarious position and the progress of her salvage, another wave of visitors swept into town asking where to find the ‘famous stranded barque’ before she broke up.

  But it was also the weather. June had been fine – high clouds and long warm days. For a while in July, fog muzzled the headlands and on St Swithun’s day – the day before the Constantine struck – it thickened into heavy rain. Parson Hooper was very pleased. The freshly-cleared gardens were already looking parched. ‘St Swithun’s Day if thou dost rain/for forty days it will remain,’ he recited at Evensong.

  The next two days were damp and foggy and the gardeners among Parson Hooper’s congregation, who made up the largest part, gladdened to his words. But then the skies cleared, steam rose from the newly-tarmaced roads and the crowds returned to the beaches in even greater numbers.

  Parliament Bench did not like it. ‘Goes on like this and the whole bloody world’ll be here.’

  ‘Tin’t right, so many people all in one place.’

  Tick-Tock Harris produced Picture Post photographs of the summer hordes in Nice and Blackpool. He said it was like that everywhere. No one was convinced.

  ‘They pictures are just made up,’ explained Toper.

  ‘Eeee,’ agreed Boy Johns.

  ‘It won’t last,’ warned Red Treneer. ‘You mark my words.’

  ‘Weather’s bound to break.’

  But Red was not talking about the weather. For him there were darker clouds just over the horizon. Since the Spanish coup on 20 July he had been collecting for the Republicans and had raised a good deal of money. He was careful not to say it was for the Republicans, but simply for the ‘Spanish Cause’. In that way he managed to raise funds from Franco’s sympathisers too – and they tended to give much more money.

  Then the water started to run out. At seven o’clock on the morning of 27 July, Mrs Cuffe carried her two buckets into Bethesda’s yard, cranked the cow’s-tail handle and watched the spout produce a trickle of green-brown sludge. Then nothing.

  Work had started on the new reservoir at Pennance but it would need the winter’s rain to fill it. The extra visitors were helping to drain the existing supplies. Mrs Cuffe took to joining the queue at the pump below the Fountain Inn.

  At the Parish Council meeting at the end of July, water was the main topic. Two camps emerged – those who thought that visitors should be told to stay away until there was water, and those who claimed the town now depended as much on the visitors as on water. Chairman of the Council, Major Franks, produced the Sanitary Inspector’s report.

  ‘He proposes, gentlemen, that we boil drinking water. According to this report, it seems that our friend the Reed Fever may have popped out just as the water table dropped.’

  So that confirmed it. The visitors were to blame for the Reeds.

  Captain Henriksen sat across from Parson Hooper. His frame filled the leather chair that he had occupied, every evening, since the day the Constantine had foundered. As the weeks passed so his bulk sunk deeper into that leather chair. He became more and more silent, more and more convinced that his ship would never float again. Visits from insurers, salvors’ reports, letters and valuations filled his days; he could no longer read weather reports in case they told of the shift of wind to west or south that would destroy his ship. He had arranged for a barge to empty her holds. They offloaded twelve hundred tons of grain – less than a quarter of the cargo. The rest was sodden.

  Captain Henriksen told Parson Hooper it was a terrible thing to witness the slow death of a ship. ‘It is like my own flesh falling off me.’

  ‘Nonsense, Captain! Du courage!’

  Parson Hooper remained busy. The captain’s sinking spirits required his daily counsel. Each morning he went down to the far corner of the churchyard and joined six of the Constantine’s crew who were clearing the last jungly recess of the churchyard. Two or three afternoons a week, at Mr Bryant’s request, he took tea on the terrace of the Golden Sands Hotel and led discussions with the hotel guests. Then a sailor from the Constantine fell for one of the Johns girls. He said he wanted to marry her. The Johns family were against it as she was already engaged to Joe Stephens. Captain Henriksen did what he could but it was Hooper who persuaded them not to run away as they threatened to do, but to wait.

  On 10 August he drove into Truro and collected the Tablet which he had written when the Constantine had struck (Ye who seek out landfall on this earth of ours,/Or shelter from the tempest …) and commissioned a new one with T.E. Brown’s pi
ece of gardeners’ doggerel:

  A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

  Rose plot,

  Fringed pool,

  Fern ’d grot –

  The veriest school

  Of peace …

  Later that week, over a game of chess, Captain Henriksen announced to him that the salvors had managed to make a full repair of the Constantine’s bows. In the next couple of days, they would put more pumps aboard.

  ‘One week, Rector, two maybe – then to sea again!’

  Parson Hooper felt a sudden breath of cold air.

  In Newlyn, Jack Sweeney had grown a beard. In months gone by Croyden used to tease him for turning up at dawn with his cheeks smooth, because shaving was something that happened only on Saturday evening. But for Jack now everything had changed and the beard was a way to mark it.

  Croyden still teased him: ‘Makes ’ee look like a bloody Spaniard.’ Hammels, who was completely hairless on his chin, was curious about it, and liked to inspect it when Jack was sleeping.

  The fishing was very poor. By the time the Maria V arrived in Newlyn the early shoals had begun to thin. Jack wrote to Anna:

  Everyone blames everyone else in Newlyn. The fishermen blame the buyers for the prices, the buyers blame Mussolini and Abyssinia and the shopkeepers blame everyone because the boats from St Ives and the East coast have gone back. Now the fish have stopped coming and Croyden and Charlie Treneer blame poor old Hammels for it. If that’s not enough there’s Penzance council to blame for condemning the houses of Fore St and St Peter’s Hill. They want to knock them down and put everyone in new houses. Why can’t these people just be left alone?

  The next day, he wrote again – this time a hurried note.

  We’re coming back! Just for a day or two. We’ll take the early train on Saturday. It’s Polmayne’s Regatta & Carnival and Charlie Treneer says he wants his half crown for crewing Petrels – plus winnings and he usually wins. Croyden says he must find water for his piece and I said I’d help him. He has guessed of course my real reason for wanting to be in Polmayne.

  That Friday afternoon, at the Golden Sands Hotel, a shiny new Lincoln Zephyr crunched down the gravel drive and came to a halt at the porch. Mr Bryant hurried out of the hotel to open the car door.

  ‘Lady Rafferty … Sir Basil.’

  Sir Basil Rafferty was a large man with the slightly startled look of a tortoise. He was also the hotel’s principal backer. Like Bryant, he had done well in Birmingham out of the Depression and like Bryant he had no experience of the sea – the turf was his passion. When he was invited to invest in the hotel, he agreed not because he believed in seaside hotels but because he believed in Bryant.

  ‘Sounds worth a punt!’

  After tea, Mr Bryant took Sir Basil up to Penpraze’s yard where the Polmayne Queen was leaning against a quay.

  ‘For the guests’ entertainment,’ he explained. ‘Picked it up cheap.’

  ‘Splendid!’ said Sir Basil.

  ‘We relaunch tomorrow for the regatta.’

  Mr Bryant had told the Garretts that he would take on their boat under a number of conditions. The sides must be repainted golden-yellow, with the bulwarks white. The porthole casements should be picked out in red, the funnels be sky blue with two four-inch yellow hoops towards their top, the woodwork on board be glossed white with some features, such as the wheelhouse, picked out in yellow. The canvas awning would be replaced by a wooden canopy (painted yellow) just aft of the wheelhouse, making a ‘saloon’ with a simple bar for refreshments. The engine – a four-stroke from Bergius of Glasgow – must be fully serviced and a lifeboat be installed.

  ‘Hospitality and safety,’ explained Mr Bryant to the Garretts, ‘the twin principles of the hotelier!’

  He had also told them he wanted it all ready for Polmayne regatta on the fifteenth.

  ‘Can’t do that, sir!’ said Tacker.

  ‘If you need extra men, I will pay for them. But I want it ready.’

  Tacker looked to Jimmy and Jimmy shrugged, then nodded.

  Last, Mr Bryant had insisted on them painting over the places where the name Polmayne Queen appeared.

  ‘Good, good!’ said Bryant when he saw the boat gleaming bright yellow in the evening sun. ‘Look!’ he exclaimed, showing Sir Basil where the new name had been applied in gold leaf on the bows – Golden Sands – with a gold cove-line running back down the length of the hull.

  ‘Ah!’ Sir Basil nodded approvingly.

  Tacker Garrett popped his head up over the side. ‘Hello, sir!’

  ‘All ready for tomorrow, Tacker?’

  ‘Well, sir!’

  Jimmy stood up beside his brother, wiping his hand on a rag. ‘Had a little setback.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This lifeboat you wanted needs new davits and we had to reroute the fuel pipe round them and we couldn’t get –’

  ‘But it will be ready for tomorrow?’

  Jimmy shook his head.

  Mr Bryant’s success as a developer was based on knowing enough about construction to argue with his builders – ‘If you want them to jump, learn to say “jump” in their language’ – but with boats he was lost.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jimmy. ‘Be finished in time for Porth regatta.’

  ‘Porth regatta’s a lovely day out!’ echoed Tacker.

  ‘When is that?’

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘Two weeks!’ Bryant shook his head. He looked across the river, clenching and unclenching his fists. Turning his gaze back to Jimmy, he said, ‘You let me down again, Mr Garrett, and I’ll have you. You’ll be begging for a crust. Good day.’

  Jimmy watched the two men go, tiptoeing back through the mud in their polished leather shoes.

  CHAPTER 19

  The sun rose behind a bank of grey-brown cloud. Beneath it the sea lay sludgy and still. Along the front, Mrs Cuffe took her buckets to the pump, looking at the cloud and hoping it would thicken into rain.

  In Dawkins’s fields, families woke in their tents to see that the light diffusing through the canvas was not bright and buttery but dull. When they crawled outside they looked to the sky for signs that the cloud might thin.

  At six-thirty, Lawrence Rose rowed out to his banana-yellow Petrel Grace. The splash of his paddles was the only sound in the stillness of the bay. He climbed on board and hoisted the twenty-six signal flags to dress her overall. As he rowed back towards the Gaps he concentrated less on the bank of grey-brown cloud than on the looking-glass surface of the water and the limp flags reflected in it.

  ‘Not a breath!’ he called to Toper Walsh.

  Toper was sweeping the quay. ‘What’s ’ee expect? It’s regatta day!’

  At seven o’clock a breeze began to tug at the bunting which ran in multi-coloured swells around the harbour. It made a faint clicking in the fronds of the roadside cordylines and rippled the curtains of open windows. Over the next few hours it freshened. The clouds disappeared and by eleven o’clock, when the Falmouth working boats and the cruisers and the Petrels from Porth began to assemble in the bay, it had become a steady southerly. The signal flags fluttered from Grace’s mast. The blue bay sparkled in the mid-morning sun, and by common consent it turned out to be Polmayne’s best regatta since before the war.

  At eleven Croyden and Jack and Charlie arrived back in Polmayne on Harris’s station bus. They left the bus in front of the Antalya and climbed the hill to Rope Walk. Croyden’s daughters were outside with their mother, preparing for the carnival. The two older ones were staining pieces of sailcloth with coal-dust.

  ‘Look, Father!’ they held up the shrouds and made whooshing noises. ‘We’re the West Wind!’

  Croyden smiled. ‘Very good. And what’s ’ee?’ He nodded to Betty, his four-year-old. She was standing in a yellow dress while her mother knelt down to pin up the hem. ‘I’m the sun.’ She raised her arms and waved them around. ‘That’s the sun’s rays.’

  ‘Keep still!’ Maggie
took a pin from her mouth and half-turned to Croyden. ‘Any luck?’

  He toed the dust and shook his head. ‘No rain here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Charlie went to find Ralph Cameron and enlist as crew. Croyden and Jack each took two earthenware bussas and made their way on up the hill to Croyden’s piece. The nearest spring to the allotments had long since dried up. A cattle-trodden patch of crusty mud stood in its place. They carried the bussas on into the next field. The spring there was the same. Above the Glaze River the sun was rising to its midday height and away from the wind it was hot. They followed a dusty track down past the tents and reached a granite trough which was full of greenish water; a little bulb of water was rising from the spring above it.

  ‘That’s better!’ said Croyden. They filled the bussas. As they re-crossed the fields a figure came running down the grass towards them. It was Bran Johns.

  ‘Mr Dawkins’ – he was out of breath – ‘Mr Dawkins says … he’ll set his dogs on anyone takes as much as a drop …’

  Croyden looked at him. He raised the bussa to his lips and drank. He wiped his lips, then drank again. ‘You tell your Mr Dawkins he can bugger off.’

  At ten minutes to two, Major Franks fired the first gun. The bay was already full of a mass of white and tan sails. There was the flapping of jibs and shouting, and the thud of running back-stays being thrown. Jousting bowsprits sped towards each other. Gybing booms swung across the decks. Spectators along the front and on the terrace of the Golden Sands were amazed (and a little disappointed) that there were no collisions. Sir Basil Rafferty watched it all through his field glasses, trying to work out who on earth was racing with whom.

  The various cruiser classes were first off. They were followed by the crabbers and the working boats, and all through the afternoon the crowds thickened on shore in anticipation of the main race – the Petrels.