The Forgotten Story (5 page)

Anthony was of the same opinion. He rushed upstairs for his cap and joined his uncle on the quay. Joe was pulling in a small dinghy by its painter, and Aunt Madge with folded arms was watching.

‘Currents,' she observed didactically. ‘No experience. Tide is going out. You should send over …'

‘Fiddlesticks,' said Joe, breathing heavily with the effort. ‘Anybody can row. And
I
haven't forgotten how. Here, boy, down this ladder and jump in.'

Swelling with responability, Anthony climbed down the iron ladder attached to the quay and got into the boat. After a moment Joe joined him.

‘Cold wind on the water,' said Mrs Veal to the doorpost. ‘ No coat …'

This remark was ignored until they drew jerkily away from the land; then Joe said:

‘Women. They coddle you. Your aunt wants to make a baby of me. See that she doesn't make one of you.'

It occurred to Anthony, straggling, with the oars; that his aunt had taken no noticeable step in that direction so far. So he just smiled, showing his good regular teeth, and nodded. When they were about a hundred yards out Uncle Joe pointed over the boy's shoulder.

‘See that barquentine. No, there, letting go her heads'ls. That's where you're to row me.'

Anthony caught a crab in his effort to do two things at the same time, and operations were suspended while Joe gave him one or two lessons. Anthony thought how thin and old and dry his uncle looked in the morning light. After each sentence his moustache clamped down like a trap door from which nothing more must be allowed to escape. His small eyes were like gimlets in the sun, glinting as they turned to stare about the bay.

The ship indicated was well out in the roadstead, almost halfway across to St Mawes. She had only recently arrived, and between her and them there were all manner of craft. Anthony was in a fever of concern lest he should run into or be run down by one of these vessels.

‘You stick to your rowing, boy; I'll tell you what to do,' said Joe, pulling his hat lower over his eyes. ‘Don't pull your guts out; take it slow and steady. He-eave-o-o-o. He-eave-o-o-o. That's it.'

Joe was in a better mood than he had previously seen him, more human and approachable out here than when crouched like a terrier over the till. None of the Veals, except Patricia once, had offered the boy any word of sympathy on the loss of his mother, and barely consciously the boy resented it. Joe at least, who knew her, might have said something. Instead of that he had asked about the money, nothing more. Not even a word on Anthony's prospects of joining his father. The prospects might be discussed, but Anthony was of no account in them, no more than a mere chattel.

‘Where did you get that funny pipe, Uncle Joe?' he asked, as Veal took the object from his pocket and began to fill it.

‘Funny? There's nothing funny about it except to the ignorant. Many a man smokes a pipe like this out East.'

‘Oh,' said Anthony, and was silent for some time. He was already hot and breathless. ‘Have yon been out East a lot, Uncle Joe?'

‘Java. Twenty-two years. Starboard a bit, boy. Right arm.
Right
arm. Me and your aunt were out there twenty-one years and eight months, on and off.'

‘Aunt Christine?'

‘Yes. Your mother's sister. That's where she got the worm that killed her. Once you've got it, it's hard to be rid of it. Starboard again. Now ship your oar.
Right
oar.'

They glided close beside an old barge which was moored in their path. Anthony expected the sides to grate.

They were well out now in the dancing water and could feel the thrust of the strong breeze. The sun was brilliant this morning without warmth. All about them were the sailing ships which another decade would see abandoned for ever. Four-masted barques with nitrate from America. Grain ships from Australia. Brigs loading with pilchards for the Italian ports. Schooners carrying salt to the Newfoundland cod banks. Away in the distance was the St Anthony lighthouse, white against the grey-green of the cliffs.

‘But we always come back, we Veals.' said Uncle Joe suddenly, wiping his moustache this way and that with the stem of his pipe. ‘There's been a Veal in Falmouth, boy, ever since there was a Falmouth. An' we're proud of it, see? A Veal was steward to the first Killigrew. Up in that ancient old house by the docks. His daughter had a natural son by William Killigrew. We trace direct back to him.'

Anthony wondered what a natural son was, since hitherto he had thought that all children were natural.

‘Straight as a die,' said Uncle Joe. ‘Sons of sons all the way. Not many families can say that. And we've outlasted the Killigrews. They're dead and gone. That house and land should all be ours if right was right.'

Across the water in the centre of old Falmouth a church was ringing its bells. The sound floated to them, gentle and iterative and sweet.

‘We're the last Veals,' said Joe. His pipe had gone out and his eyes for a moment were still, because they were focused on nothing.

‘Uncle Perry and me. We're the last Veals. And he's not married and I've no male issue. So that's the end of us, too.'

Anthony rowed on. His mind went back to Patricia and her marriage. But he held his tongue. After that for some time there was no conversation between them.

As they at last neared the barquentine a dinghy approached them from the direction of the ship and a tall, well-set young man raised his blue cap very respectfully to Joe and called a courteous greeting as he passed. Joe responded with a brief nod.

‘Who's that, Uncle Joe?'

‘That's Ned Pawlyn, mate of
The Grey Cat
. No doubt he's off ashore to take Patricia out.'

The boy struggled again with curiosity and this time was defeated.

‘Patricia's married, isn't she?' he asked.

Uncle Joe's face went hard and narrow. He stared at a passing barge.

‘Nobody's business if she is.'

Anthony's face could not take on any more colour; instead it paled about the mouth.

‘No … I'm sorry.'

‘Nor is she by rights,' said Joe after a moment. ‘Not if the law was as it should be. She married wi'out any consent. That should be enough to get it annulled. What did she want, marrying at her age. I'd nought against her having a good time. But her place is at home, as she rightly realises now. Her place is with me, helping me. Who told you, anyhow?'

‘It was – just mentioned,' said Anthony, catching a crab.

‘Well, it's no business of anybody's except hers and mine.'

The dinghy had gone right off its course and he had difficulty in pulling it back. ‘I'm sorry if I shouldn't ought to have said anything, Uncle Joe. But why did she marry him if you didn't want her to and she didn't love him?'

Uncle Joe took out his pipe and pointed it at the boy. ‘ Questions. Questions. Too young to ask so many questions. Perhaps you're going to be a lawyer. Pah!' He spat over the side. ‘Scum of the earth are lawyers. Wriggle here and wriggle there. Keep clear of them, I tell you.'

‘Yes, Uncle Joe.'

‘Why did she marry? you say. Because she's a woman and goes by opposites, that's why. But to you she's your cousin Patricia, nothing more and nothing less. See, boy?'

‘Yes, Uncle Joe.'

Veal's little eyes travelled past Anthony to the bulk that was looming ahead. ‘Now ship your oars. Gently does it. Don't wet my feet! There, that'll do. Now go up in the bows and ease her off as she touches.'

They spent three hours on board and had a meal before returning. Anthony was surprised to find his uncle treated with extreme deference. Even the captain, a square hard man with mutton-chop whiskers, called him ‘sir'.

Anthony played about the deck, pretending himself already at sea. He talked to the crew and watched the ships and tried to find out what every piece of rope was for and leaned over the side seeing what sort of a splash he could make with his spittle in the water below. The time passed like a flash; he had never enjoyed himself more despite the blisters on his hands.

Only for dinner was he invited to the captain's quarters, and the three of them ate together. Much of the conversation was of nautical matters he could not understand. Uncle Joe had quite recovered his good humour and joked with the captain, whose name was Stevens, about getting his nephew a berth in the ship as cabin boy. Joe ate very little indeed but drank a good deal of whisky. Anthony noticed how clumsily he held his knife and fork even before he touched the whisky.

Then before they left wines were brought up and several kinds tasted. The ship had just arrived from Lisbon with a cargo of port and was unloading here. When that was completed, Joe said, she was to take on a general cargo for Liverpool.

Some semblance of the truth was dawning on Anthony. The full significance of the matter was suddenly illuminated by a nautical magazine which lay open on the desk. Written across the top by some newsagent or supplier were the words,
The Grey Cat. J. Veal, Blue Water Line.

He rowed his uncle home with increasing blisters on his palms and a proportionately increased respect for the old man.

When Anthony, sore and breathless and hot, at last brought the small boat back to its mooring and they had walked precariously over the mud by way of a broken wooden landing jetty, they found Mrs Veal standing with arms folded at the side door, just as if she had not moved since they left.

‘We're not drowned, you see,' said Smoky Joe, wiping his eyes, which were watering a good deal.

‘Caught a chill, I'll be bound,' she observed from a small mouth above the unmoving mass of her figure. ‘And things waiting for you … Attention.' She waved a hand.

‘What things?' Joe was at once irritable.

‘Pat's hubby here again.'

‘Don't call him that! Don't you know his name?' Joe walked into the kitchen and pulled off his scarf; he sank into a chair as if he had been doing the rowing. ‘Did you send him about his business?'

‘In the lower restaurant now.'

‘Who let him in?'

‘He came by the back. You can't expect me …'

‘I'll soon get rid of him. Where's Pat?'

‘Out with … I forget his …'

‘Ned Pawlyn. She's always off with him. What does the man want? Fetch me a glass of whisky, Madge.'

‘Milk you should have.'

‘Whisky, I said.'

Aunt Madge waved a hand helplessly and moved to a cupboard in the wall.

‘More than that. Three fingers. Don't drown it. Hah!'

While Joe drank it Anthony reflected that in a queer way he had become quite fond of his uncle since they set out. The old man's bark was worse than his bite. And the boy warmed towards him because of his hostility for Patricia's husband.

Joe Veal stared at the empty glass, said ‘Hah!' again, then rose to go downstairs.

At a discreet distance Anthony followed.

Thomas Wilberforce Harris sat tilting a chair and reading
Punch
in the empty café. He was a young man of medium height, smartly dressed in black. On the table beside him was a silk hat and a gold-mounted stick. He was dark, with a strong nose, a strong neck and full brown eyes which gave the impression of seeing more than surface tilings. He was not good looking but his face had personality. He looked as if he might be both self-confident and self-doubting.

When he saw who it was who had entered he put
Punch
carefully beside his hat, untilted his chair and got up.

Joe strode across to him like an angry dog.

‘What do you want?' he demanded.

Harris glanced behind Joe Veal to see if anyone else had followed him in.

‘Can you let me have a meal?' he said quietly.

‘Restaurant's closed,' snapped Joe. ‘ It's Sunday and against the law.'

‘There's no law against providing food for one's son-in-law.'

This remark was evidently looked upon by Joe as the height of provocation. ‘You're no son-in-law of mine!'

‘Well, the law, for which you have so much respect, says so.'

‘I'm not interested in that. By a trumpery trick you persuaded Pat to go through a marriage ceremony …'

The young man's eyes, which had been cool and reserved, flickered with a spark of anger.

‘There was no trickery unless Pat practised it in pretending that she loved me. The marriage was entered into of her own free will.'

Joe eyed him up and down with contempt. ‘No doubt you know the law. I'll give you credit for that. Well, she's changed her mind. She was too young to know it then, easily influenced. But she knows it now and there's no use your coming here with your patronising airs.'

‘I want to see her first,' said Harris.

‘Well, you can't because she's out. Nor will she be back until dark. And you can't sit there. We're going to clean the place.'

‘Well, I'm not particular. I can wait in the kitchen.'

Joe was about to deny him the right to do this when the sound of voices could be heard coming through the shop. Anthony ducked behind a curtain as Patricia appeared, peeling off her lavender gloves and laughing up at the big young sailor closely following her. There was silence in the restaurant as the voices passed the door and went into the kitchen.

‘See here,' said Joe. ‘Are you looking for trouble?'

Harris said: ‘No. Only for my wife.'

‘Because,' said Joe, ‘there'll be trouble if you don't get out.'

In the distance Mrs Veal's monotonous voice could be heard talking to the young couple.

‘Confound the woman!' said Joe.

Harris was looking at the little man with intent eyes. He seemed to be trying to sound the depth of his hostility.

‘You gave me some very good turbot one time when I was here,' he said. ‘With lobster sauce. There's a body about turbot that I like.'