The Forgotten Story (2 page)

But from that point the account becomes vague. Even though he remembers the sensation which shortly followed the rescue, a sensation which set it apart from all other wrecks of the century, the shipwreck is still the main concern of the narrator. This much he saw; the rest he read about. At the time it was a topic on everyone's lips; but lips and ears are not eyes, which take the lasting impressions.

Turn up the newspapers of a few weeks later and you will find that much was written in them on this later sensation. But reading the faded pages, one is struck once again by a sense of inadequacy, of seeing the bare bones of the events and being not quite able to imagine the flesh which hung upon them. This person lived and that person died, this woman made a public statement to the press, that woman left the country quietly and was hardly heard of again. Like palaeontologists trying to reconstruct an extinct animal we patiently fit the pieces into place and from them build up a probable structure which will pass for the real thing. At heart, though, it is artificial, an inverted creation, reaching from the overt acts back to the unstated reasons and not growing, as life grows, from the need to the wish, from the desire to the intention, from the reason to the act.

In Sawle, therefore, the curious will find something at once to excite their interest and to frustrate it. A description of a shipwreck and the shadowy outlines of something more. The spectre of human hopes, defeated or fulfilled and now forgotten, the shadows of human conflict and affection, generosity and greed, must stalk sometimes on December nights over the remains of the wreck.

To this the newspaper, crackling as we turn its pages, can only add a faded epilogue.

But further inquiry is not as fruitless as it might appear. Still living in another part of the world are people who remember these events because they were an intimate part of them, who perhaps cannot tell you the end, for their own lives are not yet ended, but can, if you get them in the right mood, explain exactly how it all began.

On a sunny afternoon in mid-June 1898, a train drew into Falmouth Station, and among the few passengers who alighted was a boy of eleven.

He was tall for his age, reedy of build, with a shock of fair hair, good open blue eyes and a clean skin. He was dressed in a brown corduroy suit, obviously his best, and a wide new Eton collar with a bow tie. In one hand he carried a cloth cap, in the other a wicker travelling bag secured by clasps at the top and bound by a leather strap.

He stood there irresolute, blinking a moment at the stationmaster, who had taken off his silk hat to mop his damp forehead in the sun, then followed the other passengers to the ticket barrier.

Just outside the barrier, eyeing the outcoming passengers with a purposive gaze, was a tall girl of about nineteen. Occasionally she would put up a hand to steady her wide-brimmed hat against the wind. When the boy passed through the barrier she took one more glance up the platform and then stepped forward.

‘Are you Anthony?' she asked.

He stopped in some surprise, changed hands with his bag and then set it down and blushed.

‘Are you Cousin Patricia?' It was noticeable that their voices had a resemblance, his low but not yet beginning to break, hers contralto and of the same timbre.

‘I am,' she said. ‘You look surprised. Did you not expect someone would meet you? Come along. This way. The train was late.'

He followed her down towards the town and presently fell into step beside her on the pavement, darting glances about him, towards the crowded harbour and the noisy docks, and the tall chimney of me sawmill, then sidelong at his companion who now was holding her hat all the time.

‘So you're Cousin Anthony,' she said. ‘How tall you are! I was looking for a
little
boy.' When he blushed again, ‘Are you shy? Haven't you ever been on a journey by yourself before?'

‘Yes,' he said stoutly. ‘ Often.' Which wasn't quite true. He had in fact never been to a seaport of this sort before. Born and bred on Exmoor, he had not even seen the sea for four years – almost a lifetime – and that had been no more than a glimpse from the top of a high cliff and upon a grey day. Today the harbour sparkled and shone. Ships of all sizes mingled bewilderingly in its blueness, and away to the east the lovely line of St Mawes Creek glittered in the sun. But this was not why he blushed.

‘I was frightfully sorry to hear of Aunt Charlotte's death,' said the girl soberly – or at least with an attempt at soberness, for all her movements were instinct with the joy and vigour of life. She brightened up. ‘ What shall you do? Have you come to stay with us long? Joe will tell me nothing.'

‘Joe?'

‘Dad. Your Uncle Joe. Everyone calls him Joe. He's frightfully close about things.'

‘Oh,' said Anthony. ‘No. That is, I don't rightly know yet. Father wrote to Uncle Joe. He says it just means me staying here till he can make a home in Canada. Of course, I'd go out straight away, but father says where he is now isn't fit for children.'

‘What's he doing?'

‘Prospecting. He's been out two years, you know. Mother and me were going out as soon as he could make a home. Now, of course … it's all different.'

‘Yes,' said Patricia, nodding sympathetically. ‘ Well, you must stay here and make your home with us.'

They walked on in silence. The memory of his dire misfortune cast a black shadow over Anthony's mind for some moments. Even yet he could not accustom his mind to the change. He still felt that his mother existed in this world, that she had gone away for a few weeks and would soon be back; already his mind was stored up with things he wanted to say to her, little questions he wished to ask, matters which had cropped up since her going and which seemed to need her personal attention. He felt mature and lonely. Nothing would ever be the same.

‘Well,' said Patricia, lifting her skirt to step fastidiously across a littering of old cabbage stalks which someone had carelessly tipped, ‘there's plenty to do here. Boating and fishing and helping in the house. I suppose you know we run a restaurant?'

Anthony nodded.

‘There's always plenty going on at Joe's. Mind you, it's mainly an evening business; but there's always plenty to do during the day. If you can lend a hand you'll never need to feel in the way, even if your father won't have you for another couple of years. There's plenty of fun too. Look down there; that's Johnson's; our chief rival.'

Anthony peered down a narrow, dirty street leading to a quay. In doorways ill-clad urchins sat and played, but he could not make out anything which looked like a restaurant. The glance served to bring his attention back to his present surroundings, and especially to the girl at his side. Youth has the resilience of a young birch tree: you may bend it till its head touches the earth, but in a minute it will spring erect again, head to the sun and no thought of contact with the soil.

Anthony had been startled at the first sight of his cousin. She was wearing a high-necked white lace blouse with a fine white drill skirt and a wide-brimmed hat turned up at the side and trimmed with broad green velvet ribbon. In one green-gloved hand she carried a parasol. She was very pretty, with curly chestnut hair swept up from the ears, large expressive brown eyes and the complexion of an early peach. She was tall and slender and walked with a grace which was curiously interrupted at intervals by a sudden lifting upon the toes like a barely suppressed skip. She talked vivaciously to him – treating him as an equal – and bent her head graciously from time to time in acknowledgment of a greeting from some passing friend.

He noticed that many of the sailors, even those who did not know her, looked at her from across the street or glanced round as they passed. For sailors were prominent in this strange, exciting little town; dark men and lascars, Dutchmen and French. The whole town was different from any he had been in before: it was foreign and smelt of fish and seaweed and strong tobacco. It smelt of all sorts of things he had not smelt before; as they walked along amid the sun and shadow with the dust playing in whorls between the ramshackle houses his nostrils were assailed now with the odour of untended refuse from a squalid courtyard, now with the sudden strong smell of salt air and the sea. That fresh wind was like a purifier pushing through the slits of streets straight from the Channel and distant lands.

‘I wonder if you'll ever have a stepmother?' said Patricia. ‘I have, you know. Dad married again last year. My mother died two years ago, nearly.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Anthony.

‘Yes, it's never the same. Good afternoon, Mrs Penrose; breezy, isn't it? She's all right in her way – Aunt Madge, I mean – she looks after Dad, but not like Mother did. Dad doesn't love her: he married her because she was a good cook.'

For the second time Anthony felt faintly shocked. Patricia's outspokenness was something new to him and as fresh as the wind. A large fat seaman with some tattered gold braid round his cuffs stepped off the pavement to make way for them and beamed at the girl. Anthony stared away from the sea up, up a seemingly endless flight of stone steps climbing the hillside, with grey slate cottages running in uneven terraces from them. But Patricia's way was not up the steps. She still went on, along the endless winding main street which skirted the whole western part of the harbour. The wind was less boisterous here and the sun more strong, but she did not raise her parasol. He wondered if it was carried only for ornament, since the handle was so long and the silk cover really so small.

A plump little lady passed them and carefully averted her head.

‘Is there anyone else lives with you?' Anthony ventured. ‘I mean, I haven't any other cousins, have I?'

‘No. There's Joe and Aunt Madge and me. Then there's Joe's brother, Uncle Perry. He came home from America last year. He's made money and is looking round for somewhere to retire; but he hasn't found anywhere yet. Then there's Fanny, the scullery maid … oh, and one or two others who're about, but they don't live in. Are you tired? Shall I give you a hand with that case?'

‘Thanks, no,' said Anthony, overcome by the thought.

She did not in fact press for the honour. ‘Well, we're nearly there. Just up this hill and down the other side.'

They climbed a short rise where the street became so narrow that the two sides seemed about to meet; the crooked bow windows of an antique shop peered fastidiously down upon two conger eels for sale on the marble slab opposite; then the street dropped again, and Patricia turned off down a short and precipitous side-way which stopped abruptly upon the brink of the harbour.

Here, above the door of the last building on the right, there was an old and weather-beaten signboard, sorely in need of a coat of paint. On this signboard was the simple legend: JOE VEAL'S.

You entered Smoky Joe's – as the café was universally called by its clientele – through a narrow shop door, and immediately encountered Smoky Joe himself. Indeed it was not physically possible to dine in the café, whether upstairs or down, without first coming into contact with the proprietor; for it was his unvarying custom to sit brandishing a carving knife and fork on the opposite side of the counter as you entered the narrow shop; and so belligerent was his look that no one had ever dared to pass closely by him without first learning what there was to eat and then ordering on the spot the meal he wanted.

Spread on this counter were the viands which made up the choice. At one end there might be a roast turkey or a couple of chickens, with a huge leg of lamb and a piece of sirloin on succeeding dishes. Further down there was a choice of three or four kinds of pudding or tart steaming over an elaborate gas-ring.

The decision made, one could, if one wished, linger to see the portion cut off; one paid up, and the dishes were set aside to be taken into the kitchen where they were piled with vegetables and presently delivered to the customer wherever he had taken his seat.

The system was a good one. Bad debts were never incurred, complaints seldom; and so succulent was the aspect and smell of the dishes on the counter when one entered that scarcely anyone was ever put off by the gruff and grudging manner of the Tyrant with the carving knife.

In appearance Joe was short and thin with a pale slate-grey complexion and eyes like a small black terrier. His heavy black moustache drooped over a mouth which was at once obstinate and astute. In the shop he always wore a dark alpaca coat the length of a frock coat and a high wrap-round collar with scarcely any tie.

Anthony saw nothing of this on the afternoon of his arrival, for he was ushered down some steps and by a back door into a big low kitchen, where a thin red-faced girl not much older than himself was trying half-heartedly to tidy up the disorder, and a big woman with a distasteful expression was making pastry.

Aunt Madge was a disappointment. This lovely creature who had escorted him all the way from the station, talking cheerfully to him as if they were old friends, had warmed and brightened his heart. He had forgotten his tiredness, his loneliness, the fact that he was thirsty and hot. He had been uplifted in her company. Aunt Madge restored his perspective.

‘Late,' she said. ‘Have you been. Round the sea front, I thought. Pat, you should have … Fanny needed help. Take him to his bedroom. A cup of tea presently.'

Anthony found himself following Patricia up the stairs with an impression that he had not yet really met Aunt Madge at all. In the kitchen there had been a large rather over-dressed woman, a fleshy rather than a fat woman in early middle age, with fair hair going grey, with a pince-nez straddling a short nose, and a discontented mouth built upon a pedestal of chins. But he did not think she would recognise him again. Being introduced to her was like making an appointment with somebody who forgot to turn up.