The Loving Spirit (10 page)

‘Have the painter ready,’ she called to Joseph, and he waited, the rope in his hands - the other children cowering and trembling in the stern of the boat.

Then as she drew near enough, he flung it to her, calling ‘Catch, ’un’ - in a high unsteady voice. She caught it, and quickly made it fast to her own boat. Then she seized hold of the paddles once more, and towing the children’s boat astern of her, Janet pulled away from the waiting rocks to the sheltered calm waters of the harbour. It was then that Joseph Coombe fainted for the first and the last time in his life.

As they rounded the bend, she saw Thomas in the yard boat with nigh half a dozen men coming to meet them. Her husband was white to the lips.

‘What ever come over ye?’ - he called to her, trembling with fear that she or one of the children might be hurt.

‘All’s well,’ said Janet quietly - ‘there’s no harm done.’

‘I was comin’ down from the house,’ cried Thomas, ‘an’ Harry Tabbs’ little boy came runnin’ to say Joseph had cut the painter o’ Tim West’s boat, and was pullin’ out o’ the harbour with the others. I rushed down as fast as ever I could an’ launched this boat. Just as we was climbin’ in, along comes Mrs Collins with Lizzie in her arms. “I found the mite cryin’ on top by Castle ruins,” says she, “I’m fearin’ some harm’s come to her mother,” but I had no time to wait.’

Soon they were back by the yard slip and all was explained. ‘Bain’t you ashamed, Joseph?’ said his father harshly, ‘and you other wicked childrun for followin’ his advice?’

‘Leave them alone,’ said Janet swiftly, ‘they’ve had punishment enough, I reckon.’

The little party toiled up the hill towards the house. Philip was waiting in the parlour, his book
Tales of Jesus
on his knee. Kind Sarah Collins stood by, with Lizzie in her arms. ‘My poor Janet,’ she exclaimed, ‘come at once and dry yourself, my dear.’

‘Where was you, Philip?’ asked Thomas wearily.

His children were too much for him.

‘I’s been readin’ here quiet, father dear,’ said little Philip meekly.

‘You’m the only good one o’ the bunch,’ sighed Thomas, and he took Philip on his knee and gave him a piece of cake.

The other children huddled by the fire, profoundly wretched and miserable, wondering how Mr Tabbs’ boy had been able to see them escape. Father would never have known, and now he would be displeased with them for over a week.

They wouldn’t have been drowned, anyway, with mother coming to their rescue.

Mother always came in time.

And little Philip watched them calmly from his father’s knee, wiping the crumbs from his mouth. ‘Can I have ‘nother bit o’ cake, father dear?’ he asked.

Upstairs kind Sarah Collins was putting the baby to bed. In the boys’ room Janet knelt by her son’s bed, with Joseph crying in her arms, sobbing with grief.

‘I was fearin’ you’d fall,’ he choked, burying his face in her neck. ‘There’s never been nothin’ that hurt my heart afore, till I seen you climbin’ down that cliff. I shan’t never forget it - never - never - till I die, you comin’ down the bare side o’ it - with the gulls beatin’ and cryin’ in your face.’

She kissed his wet eyes, and smoothed back the hair from his face.

‘Hush, my love - no harm will ever come to mother. Remember that - I’m here to take care o’ you. You know ’twas wrong to take out the old boat, an’ your sufferin’ from watchin’ me down the cliff will learn you not to be so wild an’ reckless in your ways.’

‘I’ll never be bad again - mother. But ’tis a fever that comes on me at times, to get out in a boat an’ away - not carin’ where - just away on the sea with the wind in my face.’

He put his arms about her neck.

‘You understand. I know there’s only you can understand - the wicked roamin’ spirit of me.’

They clung to each other in the dark room.

‘When I’m grown you’ll come away, won’t you?’ he whispered. ‘We’ll have a boat of our own, and we’ll sail where the wind takes us. You know there’s nothin’ in my mind but the want o’ that, don’t you?’

‘Yes - Joseph,’ she whispered back.

‘I’m not goin’ to stay i’ the yard ’longside o’ father, with Sammie an’ Herbie,’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ to be a sailor like I’ve told you many a time. And when I’m Master o’ my ship -
Janet Coombe
’s her name - you’ll be with me - at my side facin’ the danger an’ the wonder of it. Promise you’ll come - promise?’

He took her chin in his hands.

She closed her eyes.

‘I promise.’

‘Do you know my ship will be the fleetest ship in Plyn - an’ in the bows of her, flauntin’ the world with her eyes an’ her mouth, there’ll be your figurehead.’

Janet knelt with him pressed close against her.

Into both their minds came the vision of a ship with her white sails spread. Joseph laughing with the wind in his face, and in the bows of the vessel, her hands clasped to her breast and her head thrown back - the figurehead of Janet.

‘Will you be proud?’ whispered the boy.

She raised her head and looked into his eyes.

10

 

 

I
f it were possible it seemed that the incident of the helpless boat and the last-minute rescue bound Janet and Joseph even more closely together. It was not only the tie of flesh and blood that made them part of one another, nor even the knowledge that their minds and their bodies were cast in the same mould; it was like a union of spirit defying time and eternity - something that had existed between them before birth, before their physical conception of each other. Janet continued to be a devoted faithful wife to Thomas, and a kind and careful mother to her other children, but with Joseph there was an understanding and a love that held the rare strange quality of immortality. Frequently she read his thoughts and his wishes before he had expressed them; a shadow scarce passed before his face but that she knew the reason. His joys were her joys, and she shared with him his childish sorrows. He was her second self, he was to do all the things which had been denied her because of her sex. He loved the sea and the ships with the same passion that she did, and because he would be a man he would become a sailor, and she would see through his eyes all those dreams she had imagined when she was alone.

Now she knew she would never be alone again; separation from Joseph would not take him from her. He knew this too; no words passed between them to speak of these things; a smile in passing, a touch of her hand, a glance at him across the table and he was aware of the flood of warmth that came to him from her and he rejoiced in his soul, accepting her gift to him.

When his father and his brothers and sisters were in the room, when they were sitting at their meals around the table, Joseph was disturbed and thrilled by his feeling of a conspirator. His mother sat with the teacups in front of her, her hand raised, her elbow crooked so that the stuff of the dress she wore folded in a thousand pleats, her fingers clasped round the handle of the teapot. Lizzie, the youngest child, sat by her side, a pale delicate little girl with something of Janet in her face, and Samuel the eldest boy on her right. Joseph would place himself where he could see the light of the lamp swing upon Janet’s head, like a halo of gold above her dark hair.

He looked around him, his father talking, biting his food slowly and thoughtfully, Samuel and Mary discussing some question the teacher had brought up in school, Philip sneaking something from Herbert’s plate while Herbert listened to Samuel with an open mouth.

Joseph smiled to himself. ‘They none of ’em know, they don’t understand,’ and then he would watch Janet’s head as she lowered it for an instant to attend to Lizzie. He willed her instinctively to look up, and in a second she would raise her eyes and glance across at him, meeting his eyes, sending a light through him that gripped him in its power, soft, compelling, stronger than life.

‘Are you wantin’ more tea, Joseph?’ - and he would hold out his cup, trying to touch her hands with his fingers - ‘Please, mother.’

Then they smiled at each other, over the top of the teacup, recklessly, blindly, as if they held a secret and defied humanity. He noted with a sting of pride the change of her voice when she spoke his name.

To his father the tone of it was kind and tender, to his brothers and Mary warm and cheerful, with something gentler in it, perhaps, for little Lizzie, but for himself there was a note that was his alone by right, something between a whisper and a caress, as though she was kneeling in the dark beside him, holding him to her. ‘Joseph’ - she would say - ‘Joseph.’

Often in the daytime when the household work was finished and done, and Thomas was still down at his business in the yard, Janet would allow Mary and Sam to go out in charge of the younger children, bidding them take special care of Lizzie who must not tire herself; and then when the house was silent and still she would straighten her hair before the little mirror in her bedroom, and search for her shawl and bonnet. She would hear someone tiptoe to the door, and knowing who it was a warmth would come to her heart, but she would hum some line of a song and fiddle with her things, pretending she had not heard.

Suddenly she would feel her elbows gripped behind her, and a head laid against her back - and then her elbows released, and two arms would creep under hers and feel their way upwards. She would laugh and free herself, then feel his hair with her hands and lay her face against his cheek.

‘Why baint you gone with the others?’ she whispered.

‘Why be you puttin’ on your out-door clothes?’ he whispered back.

‘You don’t know anythin’,’ she would say. ‘As it happens I’m goin’ to pay a visit to Mrs Hocken, who is poorly they tell me, an’ she’s expectin’ me to cheer her, poor soul.’

‘I’m terrible sorry Mrs Hocken’ll be disappointed,’ said Joseph carelessly, ‘’cos it happens you’re not goin’.’

‘No? - an’ why not, son?’

‘You know without tellin’ you’m comin’ out with me,’ he answered.

‘No - I’m not,’ she pretended.

‘Yes - you be,’ said Joseph.

And they would steal quietly from the house for fear the others had not gone, and then avoiding the main street of Plyn, they would climb a narrow path that ran behind the houses, to the cliffs and the Castle ruins. They would sit there watching the sea, she with her back against the wall, her legs tucked under her, and he lying full length upon the grass, his chin in his hands, chewing a piece of straw the while, and ever and anon turning his eyes from the horizon to look at her face.

She told him of her childhood, and her longing to be a man, and the wild desires that used to come over her, like the cattle and the sheep in the hills at odd seasons, to break pasture and leave the quiet peaceful life for adventure and unknown things. He held her hand and understood, for these desires were his also, and one day he was certain that they would realize them together.

‘Go on speakin’,’ he would implore her. ‘Never stop tellin’ me your wishes an’ your thoughts - and the stories of your feelin’s as a girl. It’s as if I’d always known about ’em, and was rememberin’.’

He asked her to describe her figure and her face.

‘Are you changed much since then, was you thin an’ wispy, like little Liz will be?’

‘Yes - something like Liz maybe, but never weak in health. More like you, Joseph.’

He bit hard on his straw, kicking his heels with pride.

‘I reckon there’s more beauty to you than anyone in Plyn, now at this minute, but all the same, I’d dearly loved to have seen you then, slight an’ frail, not much bigger’n Mary.’

She looked down at his head and tried to remember the vision of him on the hill - tired, middle-aged, with his weary, haggard eyes; and there now at her feet was this boy, with his dark hair and his wild care-free spirit.

His path was mapped out ahead of him, hard maybe - narrow and tortuous in places, but she would be beside him.

They sat together, silent and thoughtful. He untied the strings of her bonnet, and taking it off, he laid it on her lap.

‘I want to watch the wind playin’ with your hair,’ he said slyly; but she knew what he was about, and drew away from him, for in two seconds he would have drawn away the pins as well, and brought her hair tumbling about her shoulders.

‘Why do you act so?’ she sighed happily, not angry, but content with his ways.

‘I don’t know.’ He lay on his side and ran his finger along her arm. ‘When I go to sea, I’ll buy you jewels an’ clothin’ from foreign parts, lace too, and scent. I’ll conceal ’em from the Customs, act as a smuggler, an’ bring ’em to your room i’ the dark o’ the night. We’ll wrap the garments about you, an’ I’ll clasp the jewels round your throat an’ wrist. The scent shall go beside your eyebrows an’ your ears, and maybe, a tiny drop i’ the hollow of your hand.’

‘What more will ye bring, Joseph?’

‘Baint ye content with that, you graspin’ angel? We’ll not be tellin’ anyone o’ course. ‘Twill be a close secret for you an’ me, when the rest of folk’s in bed an’ asleep.’

‘Where will ye sail to, son?’

‘I reckon as I’ll be crossin’ the world, from “China to Peru” like they say in the poetry book at school. I’ll see great cities, thronged with folk dressed rich an’ grand, with dark queer-coloured skins.There’ll be palaces and kings, there’ll be mountains reachin’ to the sky, an’ forests that stretch from country to country, silent save for the song o’ birds an’ the grave rustlin’ leaves. But best of all is the sea itself, with never a sight o’ land for days, an’ the big waves breakin’ astern of you. Wind like a slap on your cheek, an’ a sting from the rain.’

‘Will you love this most?’

‘More than anythin’, exceptin’ you waitin’ for me on the top o’ Plyn hill. Even afore we left the Lizard, I’d know you would be there. No cities, no oceans, there’d be nothin’ like the sight of you, here, by the Castle ruins. You’d come alone, without father, without Sam or the others - you alone, for me.’