Wreckers Must Breathe (2 page)

I went on with the ache of a great beauty and a great peace in my heart. The other world that was mirrored like a monstrous nightmare in the pages of the newspapers seemed even more unreal. Being a dramatic critic, I think I had become infected with a characteristic which I have often noticed in actors—I was unable to apprehend reality. Probably because their brains and senses are so accustomed to reacting to stimuli which are imaginatively but not factually true, actors envisage the situation more vividly than the next man, but once envisaged, it is done with. They have difficulty in accepting it as actual, irrevocable. There is an instinctive feeling that at the appointed hour the curtain will come down and one can go home to supper. I think I suffered now from this limitation—or if you like this blessed ability. However grim the drama, I felt there must still be an alternative world outside it. Thus I alternated between moods of blank despair and moods of refreshing, almost gay normality.

Twenty minutes' walking brought me to the Devil's Frying Pan. I skirted that huge circular inlet with its archway of grass-grown rock to the sea and, passing through a farmyard, obtained my first glimpse of Cadgwith. They say it is the only real fishing village left in Cornwall. Certainly the little fleet of blue boats drawn up side by side on the beach and the wheeling screaming gulls dominate the huddle of white thatched cottages. The noise of the gulls is incessant and the boats and the smell of fish testify to the industry of the villagers. And yet the place looked sleepy.

I went down the steep road to the village itself. There were cars drawn up by the shingle. One, backed close against the lifeboat, had a string of mackerel tied to its bonnet. Opposite the cars, on an old spar which did service as a bench, fishermen were sitting, smoking. I went on to the pub. The place was dark and thick with tobacco smoke and there was the airless warmth that men love who lead an open-air life. On the wall was a painting of the village. It was by a local artist, I discovered later, but it missed something. It took me some time to realize what it was. The village dominated the boats. If I had been painting the village, I should have done it so that it reeked of fish.

I ordered a bitter and sat down next to a big man in a fisherman's jersey. He had a small beard and this increased the Slav effect of his high cheekbones and small nose. A heated discussion was in progress. I caught the word spongecakes several times. An old fisherman was thumping the table angrily, but I could make no sense of what the whole room was arguing about. I asked the man with the beard. ‘Oh, they've bet him five bob he can't eat a dozen spongecakes straight off. You know, the old game—it looks easy, but after you've had about four your mouth gets so dry you can barely swallow.'

‘I tell you it's easy,' the old man roared, and the whole room laughed knowingly.

At that moment a young fellow in dungarees came in. His plimsoles were sopping wet and his hair curled with salt water. He went straight over to two lads seated at a table in the corner drinking from pint glass tankards. ‘What luck?' they asked.

For answer he tossed a telegram on to the table. ‘I'm afraid you'll have to count me out tomorrow. I've got to join my ship at Devonport. I'm leaving right away.'

Their conversation was drowned in a sudden flood of talk. ‘It's been the same hall of the bloody day,' the old man who had wanted to eat the spongecakes said. ‘The visitors hare going back and some of hour lads have been called up for the naval reserve.'

‘Did ye see the fleet going down the Channel?' somebody asked.

‘They've been going down the whole ruddy day,' said a young round-faced man. ‘I seen 'em from my boat. They bin going down all day, 'aven't they, Mr Morgan?' he asked the coastguard, who was sitting smoking quietly with his back against the bar and his white-rimmed hat on the back of his head.

He nodded. ‘That's right, Jim—all day.'

‘Did ye see how many there was, Joe?'

‘Ar, I didn't count,' replied the coastguard, his voice quiet but firm.

War had invaded the snug friendliness of the bar. The older men began to talk of the last one. The man next to me said, ‘I counted upwards of fifty. That'll fix Italy all right.'

I felt somehow annoyed that talk of war had obtruded even into the warm seclusion of this pub. ‘To hell with the war,' I said. ‘I'm trying to enjoy a holiday.'

‘What's wrong with a war?' he demanded with a twinkle in his grey eyes. ‘A war would see us nicely through the winter. It's either that or steamboating.'

I looked at him. Behind the twinkle in his eyes was a certain seriousness.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘it must hit you pretty bad coming two years in succession and right on the holiday season.'

‘Well, it wasn't so bad last year—it came later.' There was a trace of a brogue in his voice, but otherwise it was devoid of any local accent. ‘Even then,' he said, finishing his beer, ‘I had to do six voyages. It'll be worse this year. You can't make enough out of fishing nowadays to carry you through the winter. And the Government doesn't give any help, sir—though they want us badly enough when it comes to war.'

‘Can't you do any fishing in the winter?' I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘We go out when we can, but mostly the sea is pretty big outside. And then we've got all our gear to make. We're running two hundred pots a boat here, as well as nets. And there's not so much fish as there used to be. They change their grounds. Something to do with the Gulf Stream, I suppose. I tell you, sir, this is a dying industry. There's only three thousand of us left on these coasts now.'

I said, ‘Yes, I know. Down at Mullion, for instance, all the young men are going off to work in the towns.'

‘Ar, but you won't find that here. We're not afraid of work. The young 'uns, they're not afraid of work either. Now, in the summer, we're out at five with the pots. And then when I come in, I'm taking parties out for the rest of the day. Sometimes I take out three parties a day. That's pretty long hours.'

I nodded and ordered two beers. He took out a pouch and rolled a cigarette. ‘Have one?' he asked. We lit up and sat drinking in silence for a while. It gave me an opportunity of studying him. He was a man of tremendous physique. He was over six feet with broad shoulders and a deep chest. The beard completed the picture. With his Slav features and shock of dark brown hair he looked a real buccaneer.

His eyes met mine. ‘You're thinking that all I need is the gold earrings,' he said unexpectedly.

I felt extremely awkward until I saw the twinkle in his eyes. Then I suddenly laughed. ‘Well, as a matter of fact,' I said, ‘that's just what I was thinking.'

‘Well, you must remember that some of the Armada was wrecked on these coasts. There's Spanish blood in most of us. There's Irish too. When the fishing industry was at its height down here girls would come from Ireland to do the packing.' He turned to the bar and tossed a florin on to it. ‘Two halves of six,' he ordered.

‘No, I'm paying for this,' I said.

‘You're not,' he replied. ‘It's already ordered.'

‘Think of the winter,' I said. ‘I'm on holiday. It doesn't matter to me what I spend.'

He grinned. ‘You're drinking with me,' he said. ‘We're an independent lot of folk down here. We don't sponge on visitors if we like them. Our independence is all we've got. We each have our own boat. And though you can come out mackerel fishing with us and we'll take your money for it, we'll not take you out if we don't like you.'

‘Anyway,' I said glancing at my watch, ‘I ought to be starting back. I shall be late for my supper as it is. I walked over from Church Cove.'

‘Church Cove,' he said, as he placed a stein of beer in front of me. ‘I'll run you back in the boat.'

‘That's very kind of you. But it won't take me long to walk it and you certainly don't want another trip in your boat when you've been out in it all day.'

‘I would. It's a lovely evening. I'd like a quiet run along the coast. The boat's out at her moorings. It won't take me ten minutes.'

I thanked him again and drank my beer. ‘Why did you call this a half of six?' I asked. ‘What beer is it?'

‘It's Devenish's. There are three grades—fourpence, sixpence, and eightpence a pint. If you came here in the autumn you'd only be offered four.'

I nodded. ‘Do you like steamboating?'

‘Oh, it's not so bad. It would be all right if I could take Cadgwith along with me. I hate leaving this place. I did six voyages to the West Indies last winter. You can always pick up a berth at Falmouth. This time I think I'll try a tanker on the Aden route. If there's a war, of course, we'll be needed for the minesweepers or on coastal patrol.'

I offered him another beer, but he refused and we left the pub. It was not until we were walking down the village street in the pale evening light that I fully realized the size of the man. He was like a great bear with his rolling gait and shaggy head, and the similarity was even more marked when he had put on his big sea boots, for they gave him an ungainly shambling walk.

I enjoyed the short run back to Church Cove. For one thing, it gave me my first glimpse of the coast from the sea. For another, I got to know my friend better, and the more I knew of him the more I liked him—and the more I was intrigued. In that short run we covered a multitude of subjects—international situation, bird life on Spitzbergen, stocks and shares, Bloomsbury, Cadgwith. My impression of him was of a rolling stone that always and inevitably returned homesick to Cadgwith. But though he had obviously gathered no moss—he lived in a little hut on the slopes above Cadgwith—he had certainly gathered a wide knowledge of life, and that knowledge showed in his eyes, which were shrewd and constantly twinkling with the humour that bubbled beneath the stolid exterior of the man. His nature was Irish and his features Slav, and the mixture was something new to me.

Once I expressed surprise, for he told me that War Loan had risen 7⁄8 to 893⁄8 on the previous day and suggested that, since the Stock Exchange was apparently taking quite an optimistic view of the situation, war did not seem likely.

I could not help it. I said, ‘What do you know of stocks and shares?'

He grinned at my surprise. ‘I could tell you the prices of quite a number of the leaders,' he said. ‘I always read the City page of the paper.'

‘Well, it's the first time I ever heard of a fisherman reading the City page of a paper,' I said. ‘Whatever do you read it for?'

‘I'm in a capitalist country, running a luxury business. Stock and share prices are the barometer of my summer earnings. When prices were going up in 1935 and 1936, I did pretty well. Since then there's been a slump and I have to go steamboating in the winter.' He looked at me with that twinkle in his eyes. ‘I read a lot of things you probably wouldn't expect a fisherman to read. There's a free library over to Lizard Town. You can even get plays there. I used to be very fond of plays when I was in London.'

I explained that plays were my life and asked him what he had done in London. ‘I was in a shipping office for a time,' he said. ‘But I soon got bored with that and turned to stevedoring. I was with the River Police for a time. You know, you meet people down here, quite important people, on holiday. And they say you're wasting your time in Cadgwith. It's not difficult to get the offer of a job in London or to pull strings when you're there. But London is no life for a man. After a few months, Cadgwith calls to me again, and I come back.'

That I suppose was why he spoke so well. Talking to me, his voice had no trace of the sluggish Cornwall accent. Yet I had noticed that the local accent came readily enough to his lips when he spoke to the villagers.

Interspersed with our conversation, he pointed out interesting parts of the coastline as we went along. He showed me the seaward entrance to the Devil's Frying Pan with its magnificent arch of rock. He also pointed out Dollar Ogo to me. The cave did not look particularly impressive from the outside, but he told me that students from the 'varsity had come down and explored it for five hundred yards. ‘They had to swim most of the way,' he said, ‘pushing biscuit tins with lighted candles in front of them.'

‘How far can you get up it by boat?' I asked. I was thinking that it would give me such an excellent opportunity of examining the various rock formations. Geology was one of my hobbies. But his reply was, ‘Not very far.'

When we arrived at Church Cove, I said, ‘I must come out mackerel fishing with you some time.'

‘Any time you like, sir,' he said as he carried me pick-a-back ashore. ‘Any of the boys will tell you where I am.'

‘Who shall I ask for?' I enquired.

‘Ask for Big Logan,' he replied, as he shoved the boat off and scrambled on board. ‘That's what they all call me.'

‘After the Logan Rock?' I asked with a grin.

He looked at me quite seriously and nodded. ‘Quite right, sir,' he said. ‘After the Logan Rock.'

That was the last I saw of Big Logan for a whole week. When I got back to the cottage I found a letter waiting for me. It was from my editor. He was not recalling me, but he wanted me to do a series of articles on how the international situation was affecting the country.

Kerris came in to see me after supper. He had seen that the letter was from my paper and he wanted to know whether I was leaving or not. I explained the position and said that I might be away a night or two, it depended how far afield I found it necessary to go for material. ‘By the way,' I said, ‘do you know Big Logan of Cadgwith?'

‘Surely,' he said. ‘Why?'

‘He brought me back here from Cadgwith this evening by boat. Nice fellow, isn't he?'

‘Ar, very nice fellow to speak to,' was his reply. ‘To speak to, mind you.' He looked at me for a moment and the temptation to gossip was too much for him. ‘But no good,' he said, shaking his head. ‘Not worth that plate. Comes of a good family, too—his mother was a lady at one of the big houses over to Helford.'