The Loving Spirit (39 page)

She went into the hall, biting her finger, looking away when they said ‘Hullo, you,’ but pleased all the same. She followed them into the lobby, and listened to their brisk voices talking to one another. She liked the eager careful way they washed their hands, turning them over and over and squelching them with soap, and then they unbuttoned their trousers and passed into the lavatory, taking no more notice of her than if she had been a cat.

Ladies were never like this, jolly and happy together, they whispered in her ear and took her quietly to a bedroom, closing the door very softly in case somebody should have noticed.

For a week the lobby was the chief interest to Jennifer, for she scarcely went out of doors at all as Mother was supposed to be ‘settling down’. And then one evening Grandmamma noticed that she disappeared from the drawing-room as soon as voices sounded in the hall. She herself was going up to speak to a servant, and as she passed along the hall, leaning heavily on her stick, she caught sight of a small figure hanging on to the door knob of the lobby, with one of the boarders brushing past her into the lavatory.

‘Jennifer.’ She started in fright, and saw the huge massive presence of Grandmamma peering at her from the staircase.

‘Jennifer, whatever are you doing in the gentlemen’s lobby?’

She flushed crimson at once, guilty as a criminal, and stole away before anything more could be said to her.

After tea Jennifer crouched with a picture book on her knee, but she never turned a page; she kept it there as a blind, listening the while to the scraps of conversation, expecting any moment that there would be a long silence and Grandmamma would say, ‘You must tell us now, Jennifer, what you were doing in the lobby.’

Bed time came and nothing had been said, nor was it mentioned the next day, or the day after - but she never went along with the men again, and if someone said casually, ‘Oh! I must have left it in the lobby,’ her heart jumped and her face and hands turned hot.

The weeks passed by, and still they remained in the boarding-house with Grandmamma, and Daddy had not come.

No one ever told her anything, she had to listen to what people said to each other, or make it up for herself. Once mother read a letter from Harold . . . ‘It seems queer to see the old home shut up. Willie sailed yesterday in great spirits, and I miss him tremendously. The yard is a most depressing sight, and both Cousin Tom and James are very cut up. It’s rotten how things have turned out for them. The old ship is still on the mud, and likely to lay there till she’s broken up. Poor Dad, I am thankful he will never know . . .’ Here mother folded the letter and put it away.

What wouldn’t he know? Why should Daddy never know? Jennifer looked at her mother sharply, but she had turned to Grandmamma and was talking about something else. Why did they never mention his name in front of her? There was some secret that they refused to tell, but they were too clever to be caught. They treated her like a baby. She was afraid to know this secret, and yet she must.

Jennifer hugged her knees and bit her nails. She was thinking out some plan whereby she could trick Grandmamma and Mother into a confession. Mother was sewing by the open window, glancing down at the hot, airless street and the buses. Grandmamma perched her spectacles on her nose and opened the evening paper.

Jennifer wandered towards her mother and pretended to play with the tassels on the curtain. She banged them backwards and forwards against the glass, knowing that this would cause irritation.

‘Jenny, stop doing that.’

She obeyed sulkily, and then pulled at her mother’s hand.

‘When are we going home?’

No answer. ‘When, Mum - when are we going home?’

The voice was a whine now, pleading, grumbling.

‘Don’t be such a nuisance, Jenny. Go and find something to do.’

‘But I want to know when we’re going home?’

‘We are not going home, child, we’re living in London now, you know that perfectly well. Stop that fidgeting. Do you want to go somewhere?’

Jennifer moved away to the middle of the room. She saw her Grandmamma fixing her with stern disapproving eyes.

There was no way of escape. Plyn was lost to her.

Soon she would know the full truth, and terrified as she was yet she had to continue in her search for it.

She moved near the door, so as to be able to run the instant she knew. Grandmamma had laid down her paper and was yawning. Now was the time to catch her.

‘Where’s my daddy?’ asked Jennifer.

No one spoke, and she felt little pricks of fear steal into her body.

Mother had on her awkward face, it was puckered and queer.

A flat patch of colour came on to Grandmamma’s cheeks.

Jennifer twisted the handle of the door. She waited a moment, and then frightened at her own daring she spoke boldly, rudely.

‘I believe Daddy’s dead,’ she said.

And when they made no attempt to scold her or reprove her, but gazed at her with strained, embarrassed eyes, she knew by the silence that this was the truth at last.

4

 

 

T
he shipbuilding yard of Thomas Coombe and Sons was empty of timber and gear. There was no longer the clanging of the hammer, nor the high-pitched song of the saw. Ships must go elsewhere to be refitted and re-classed, yachtsmen must wander farther up the harbour in search of a designer for their craft. The shed in the corner of the yard was taken over by the engineer in need of premises; he set up his garage on the spot where the
Janet Coombe
was built. Greasy young mechanics in stained overalls lounged about the place with spanners in their hands, a Ford lorry shunted in and out of the yard gates, filling the air with petrol fumes and oil, air that once had been laden with the bitter tang of pitch, barked ropes, and tar. The loft building had not been sold, the big wide loft where Thomas Coombe and his sons had chipped and chiselled at their models. His namesake and grandson Thomas, together with his Cousin James, still clung to this place as a last remnant of their departed trade, but they used it no longer as a workshop and as a dwelling of inspiration, but as a boat store, humble and insignificant. Motor boats were housed here during the winter, and occasional small sailing craft used for pleasure in the summer. Pulling boats and dinghies could be left here for a small charge.

His father dead, his mother and sister gone to London, the yard sold, and his brother away at sea, Harold Coombe had no wish to remain a school-teacher in Plyn.

The house was sold successfully, lock, stock, and barrel, and it was hurtful to pass his old home every day on the way to the school and see other people at the doors, other children at the windows. After some months of hard thinking and consideration he resigned his position at the school, having first made certain of a post in London.

His last night in Plyn, Harold told his plans to his father’s best friend and favourite cousin, the farmer Fred Stevens. Fred was forty-two now, and had stood staunchly by Christopher during the case of Coombes
versus
Hogg and Williams.

‘I don’t want to give up teaching, Cousin Fred,’ said Harold. ‘It may not lead to great things, but it’s a fine job for all that and I’m proud of it.’

‘D’you think you can stick the drudgery of it, working yourself to the bone with scarce a prospect of advancement, and in London too - crowded out with youngsters like yourself? ’

‘I’m going to have a shot at it anyway. It’ll be a wrench leaving Plyn, but after all I was born in London, and lived there till I was nine. I shan’t feel really strange. Then there’s Mum and Jenny. Poor little kid, it’s been rather tough luck on her. Not much fun for her in that boarding-house, along with my old grandmother.’

Fred Stevens whistled in disgust. ‘I wish your mother hadn’t run off in such a hurry. She and Jenny could have come here, and welcome. Norah was only saying so to me the other evening. It would have done John good to have a small companion. Only children stand in danger of being spoilt, what?’

‘Not John,’ laughed Harold. ‘The lad has got his head screwed on the right way. I’ve had him under me in school and I know. He doesn’t say much, but he thinks all the same. Good boy that.’

‘Think so?’ The father smiled.

‘Yes - I think John will turn out all right.’

Soon after Harold rose to go.

‘I’d better be clearing off now, Cousin Fred, though I hate to say good-bye. Think of me this time tomorrow night in London. I’ll be wishing myself back again in Plyn before long. I’ll try and persuade my mother to come down for holidays if I can, though it’ll be a struggle. D’you think in a year or two she’ll be fed up with town, and long for the country again?’

‘You never know with women,’ smiled Fred. ‘Anyway, she can always send Jenny down here if the child is looking poorly and needs a change. Norah will take great care of her. And John can put on his best company manners, can’t you, John?’

‘Where is the boy? John?’

A head looked in at the window.

‘Come and say good-bye to Harold. He’s off to London tomorrow.’

The boy climbed in over the sill. John Stevens was eleven, and tall for his age, with long legs that didn’t know what to do with themselves. His eyes were blue like his father’s, and his fair hair toppled over his face.

‘Sorry you’re going,’ he said abruptly.

‘I’m sorry too, John, but things have turned out so and it’s no use grumbling.’ The boy nodded.

‘Think you’ll ever come back?’

‘I mean to. I should feel rotten if I thought I was never going to see any of you again, all the family, and Plyn - and everything.’

‘Of course he’ll come back, he and Willie. In a couple of years’ time you’ll have made your fortune and be settling down here in retirement,’ laughed Fred cheerfully. ‘Willie’ll be running some gigantic liner in here for his own amusement. How’s he getting on with this wireless business, Harold?’

‘Very well, Cousin Fred, and he seems dead keen. I don’t follow it myself at all.’

‘No more do I, but they say it’s going to be darned useful. Well, good-bye, my boy, and good luck to you.We won’t forget you in Plyn. Come back to us before long, and don’t let London spoil you. Give my love to your mother.’

‘Good-bye, Cousin Fred, and - thanks terribly for all you’ve done for us. Neither Willie nor I will ever forget - good-bye John, see you again some time, eh?’

‘Sure.’

Then Harold walked through the Yard and was gone by the farm gates. Young John looked after him and frowned.

‘What are you thinking, son?’ asked Fred.

‘He won’t come back,’ said the boy slowly.

‘How d’you mean, he won’t come back? Of course he will. He may stick London for a couple of years, but he’ll be home in Plyn soon after.’

‘No,’ said John. ‘I reckon it sounds soft what I said, but when I get feelings like that they’re generally right. Remember what I told you about Uncle Christopher? You laughed at the time, but I just kind of knew in myself.’

‘Now listen, my son, you’re becoming a regular little prophet of despair. Cut all that stuff out of your head, it’s silly, see? It’s unhealthy and morbid, and your mother and I don’t like it. See?’

‘Sure.’ The boy ran away whistling and vaulted a stile. He fumbled in his pocket for his catapult, and took careful aim at a pheasant that was flying low over the cut stubbles of wheat. He missed it, of course. Then he strolled through the fields to a point of high ground that overlooked the harbour and Polmear Creek. Through the trees he could see the spars of the wrecked
Janet Coombe
, while below him to his right the evening mists gathered round the tower of Lanoc Church.

John Stevens stuck his hands in his pockets, and watched the scene through half-closed eyes.

‘I can’t help these feelings that come to me,’ he thought. ‘I know I’ll never see Harold nor Willie again, like I know that the ship in the creek won’t be broken till they take the figurehead away. Father and mother don’t believe me, but one day somebody will understand.’

Then he heard a shout from some boys in the fields beyond, and he waved to them, laughing, and ran away down the hill forgetting his thoughts.

Harold was throwing his things into his trunk. He straightened his back and sighed, and looked out upon the harbour water through his lodging window.

‘I’ll come back,’ he whispered. ‘Mother’ll get fed up with London, and in a year or two we’ll all be living here again, Willie, and Jenny, and I. Dad belonged here, and his father, and his grandfather. We belong too, we can’t keep away, no more than Willie can stay from the sea. We’ll come back to you, Plyn - in a year or two.’

Already he planned in his mind the happy years ahead, years of fulfilment and content; but he reckoned without knowledge and with only the bare substance of a dream.

In a year or two, he said, and it was then the autumn of 1912 . . .

5

 

 

G
radually Jennifer became used to living in London at the boarding-house. She began to feel as though she had always looked out upon those stretches of slate roofs and chimney-pots. The buses rumbled past her bedroom window, and from the distance came the whistle of the Metropolitan trains and the throb of the traffic moving citywards.

Bertha Coombe had easily slipped back into the ways she had known as a girl.

Unconsciously she remembered the early days of her married life, when she and her husband had lived upon the bounty of Mrs Parkins, such as it was, and how quiet and humble he had been, aware of his weakness and of his failure to support her and the boys.This was the man her mother had known, ignorant of the change that hard work and Plyn had made in him, and slowly she too began to regard him in this past light, taking her mother’s attitude that she had been something of a saint to have stayed by him all those years. She still cried over his photograph and clung to her widow’s weeds, but she talked of him now as ‘poor Christopher’, and shook her head sadly when his name was mentioned.