The Loving Spirit (29 page)

Joseph moved in his chair and blinked his eyes, peering up at the young man.

‘Why, Fred,’ he said in his old strong voice, ‘this is pleasant indeed. I’m delighted to see you. Why have you never been before? I’ve been staying here some time, you know. Everybody is very kind, I’m sure, but I wish I could go home. Will you ask them if I may go home?’ He smiled timidly like a lost child.

‘There now, Uncle. Don’t you fret. I’ll see what can be done about having you home. D’you want to return to Plyn?’

‘Yes, please, nephew.They’re all kind here, but home is best. Yes, home is best.’

Fred left him soon after this, and demanded to see the Governor of the asylum.There were many matters to be gone through before his uncle could be released, but he was determined to overcome all difficulties. In spite of Philip’s objection, there was no possible reason for confining Joseph any longer.

The family were told of the approaching release, and Ivy House was opened once again. Katherine had no objection to return and look after her father, now that it was proved he was harmless, and as gentle as a child.

So Joseph was fetched away from Sudmin Asylum one fine morning in November, and brought home to Ivy House where Katherine waited anxiously on the doorstep.

He was happy and contented to be back. He could remember nothing of his life, nothing of the first terrible years at the asylum, all he knew was that this was his home, and here he had come to rest.

He didn’t want to move anywhere, he was content to stay where he was. Sometimes he could climb his way slowly to the top of the cliffs by the Castle ruin, leaning on his daughter’s arm, and when he reached the summit he sighed, then stood with his cap in his hand, letting the soft breeze play with his white hair and beard.

He liked it on summer evenings best, just as the sun was sinking in the west, behind the beacon landmark; when the crimson patches were reflected on the water. There would be a still hush, and now and again the sound of sheep calling one another in the distant fields, or the lowing of cattle.The smoke rose from the chimneys of the grey houses, and with it an evening mist, like a gentle shroud. Children played on the quayside. Then a boat would draw into the harbour, returned from the fishing grounds, with a cloud of gulls in the wake that stretched behind like an orange ribbon.

The peace and calm of Plyn. Joseph would sigh, and hold his daughter’s arm. ‘You know, Kate girl, I’ve travelled far, an’ I’ve travelled wide, I’ve seen the riotous coast of Africa with her glittering surf an’ her tossin’ palm trees; I’ve lain becalmed in the lazy waters o’ the tropics; I’ve known the cold of Arctic nights an’ the rare white light that leaves a man dumb with wonder; I’ve gazed at the snow-capped mountains of the north; vast, Kate, lonely an’ mysterious. But ’tis a queer thing, an’ a true thing, that wherever I’ve been, an’ whatever I’ve seen, there’s nothin’ like the sweet beauty o’ Plyn harbour when the sun be setting, and the shadows fall, an’ the white gulls fill the air with their joyous clamour. It’s home, Kate, that’s all I reckon.’

 

 

In the May of 1900 Joseph became very feeble, and Katherine saw that he had not long to live. His mind wandered, and he scarcely knew what he was about. She had to dress him, and attend to his wants as though he were a child. Both Albert and Charles were away, and Fred was shortly to be married.

There was no one to whom Katherine felt she could turn, for she never spoke to Philip Coombe.

Then one day a letter arrived with the London postmark. She tore it open with eager hands, for she had recognized her brother Christopher’s writing. He wrote apparently overcome with a wave of homesickness, longing to see all their dear faces again, and especially his father’s. He asked if his father would ever forgive him? He had written so many times to them and had never received an answer, he had but poor hopes that this letter would ever reach its true destination.

Poor Christopher. Then he had heard nothing of the trouble there had been, nothing of those years at the asylum. Katherine read over the letter carefully, then after turning the matter over in her head she resolved to write to her brother without saying a word to anyone. She would write to him imploring him to come home at once, as his father was in weak health, and she feared the worst. So Katherine shut herself up in her room and composed a long letter to Christopher, giving a full account of the years since he had been gone, and then she put on her hat, and slipped to the post with it herself.

Two days later a wire came for Katherine. Luckily Joseph was in the parlour and did not see the boy coming up the garden path, and the wire was from Christopher saying he would take the train on the Saturday and be with them.

On Friday evening, 28 May, Katherine left her father safely seated in the garden of Ivy House, and made her way down into the town to tell her Aunts Mary and Martha that Christopher would arrive the following day.

It was drawing on for evening, and the sun was setting, lighting the roofs of the houses of Plyn and the hills above, and smoothing a wide orange path over the sea that lost itself on the horizon. Joseph moved restlessly in his chair, and pushed aside his rug. He did not wish to sit there any more, he was cramped and stiff.

He turned his face towards the setting sun, and felt the gentle warmth of it strike his dim eyes, while his hair was blown by the west wind. He could hear the cries of the gulls and the dull lapping of the harbour water. Beyond this was the sea, grey, silent, colourless save for that orange band, like a last trailing whisper of the setting sun.

And the longing rose in Joseph to look upon the sea once more, to touch the water with his hands, to be borne by the waves to some far-distant resting place where the wind blew everlastingly, and the white surf thundered. He yearned to taste the salt upon his lips, to hear the sighing murmur in his ears, and following the sun track, he would come upon the ship that waited for him. Somewhere, beyond the land, beyond that line where sea and sky mingled, the
Janet Coombe
lifted her face to the heavens; alone amidst the silence of the ocean she tossed and plunged, glorious and free, her two masts pointing to the stars.

Joseph rose from his chair, casting it away. He went from the garden; he left the house standing empty and forlorn, with the golden light on the windows.

His eyes could tell him nothing, but his senses led him to the shipbuilding yard, quiet and deserted till morning. A boat was moored to the ladder at the bottom of the slip. For thirty, forty, fifty years a boat had been fastened there from custom, night after night. Joseph remembered this; like a ray of light at the back of his mind, the memory had opened itself to him. He lowered himself slowly, heavily, into the boat, and untied the painter with stiff, fumbling hands. Then he grasped the paddles in his hands and pulled away to the harbour mouth. The tip of the sun hovered above the rim of the distant hill for a moment - flickered, whispered, and was gone. The pathway shivered in the lost light, and the red glittering patches faded into mist, and were sunk, swallowed in the hands of the gathering dusk.

Joseph was a little lad again, a child in a boat for the first time, grasping the heavy oar while his mother guided his straining wrists.

Joseph was a boy, a laughing, reckless boy, who pulled a quick, impatient stroke, and smiled into the eyes of Janet, seated in the stern.

Joseph was a young man, filled with the zest and wonder of life, craving adventure, scorning danger, drunk with the glory of wind and sea.

Joseph was the master of his ship, eager to reach her decks again and forget the empty days on shore, wanting no more but the rattle of shrouds and the hiss of a gale in close-reefed sails.

Joseph was a husband, showing off his skill to Susan, marvelling with open mouth, her baby in her arms.

Joseph was a father, and Christopher tugging at his knee with scared brown eyes and sun-kissed hair, pointing at the angry waves that loomed ahead.

Joseph was a lover, watching the loveliness of Annie, who, ashamed of the light, hid her eyes with her hands to make herself more secret.

Joseph was an old man, weary of living, calling for release, seeking salvation on the lonely waters where his beloved waited.

Joseph was none of these things, he was a spirit who had cast aside his chains and triumphed over matter, he was a soul who had climbed from the depths of darkness and despair to the high and splendid hills.

 

 

Night fell upon the ocean, and the winds and the sea rose in unison. The storm clouds gathered and battled in the darkness. The lightning flashed in the rain-streaked heavens, and the waves shouted.

And a sea, larger than his fellows, rose above the surface and flung itself upon the boat.

Joseph threw back his head and laughed, as the planks were torn and tossed into the sky.

Then he spread out his hands, and the waters covered him.

Book Three

Christopher Coombe (1888-1912)

 

 

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be;
I’ll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading;
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

E. BRONTË

1

 

 

W
hen Christopher Coombe left Plyn on his first voyage, that August day in the year 1888, it was with a dogged determination to succeed. He would skipper the
Janet Coombe
as his father had done before him, and as his cousin was doing now, and if a young man had courage, coupled with brains and skill, it would not take so very many years either.

So decided Christopher, Joseph’s son, at the age of twenty-two, as the ship was towed from Plyn harbour by the puffing tug-boat, and then when well clear of the land she made sail for St John’s, Newfoundland, far away across the grim Atlantic.

It was in strange company that Christopher now found himself.There were four other seamen besides himself and the cook in the fo’c’sle, while the skipper and the mate of course berthed aft.

The crew of a small schooner were something different to the crowd on board a big clipper ship, where a man could remain unmolested if he wished, as long as he was smart enough to his work, but in the cramped quarters of a vessel in the fish or fruit trade there was no getting away from your companions, and precious little time for repose, with the constant cry of ‘All hands!’ when up it was on deck to struggle with the bellying canvas, your nails torn and your eyes blinded by rain, and a kick in the pants for your pains if you bungled the job. Soaked to the skin, with an empty stomach and aching limbs, dizzy with seasickness, poor Christopher would stumble up from the fo’c’sle with the others, to find a pitch-black night and a screaming wind, the topsail carried away, and a new one to be bent. It seemed to him that they were battling with half a gale, as the ship plunged heavily into the trough of the sea, as he lost his way in the confusion on deck, and his feet as well, rolling into the lee-scuppers with a thud that nearly cracked his head in two. But no, this was apparently no more than a rattling fine wind, and hopes were expressed that it would continue thus across the Atlantic.

Sick, giddy, the young man clung to the nearest shroud, until someone yelled in his ear to climb aloft and make shift about it.

What was he expected to do when every rope felt alike, hard, damp, and swinging? How could he fight at these tight sodden knots with his fingers numb and his nails torn? Somehow he scrambled up the narrow slippery ratlines, knowing that the faintest slip would send him into that black churning sea, and then fought his way along the yard, with some wretched idea of helping the two hands who had arrived there before him, and who shouted incomprehensible directions that failed to register in his dazed mind. If this was a fair wind, what in heaven’s name was a gale?

Poor Christopher, he was soon to know, for they were scarcely five days from the Lizard when the weather changed, and it was over twenty-five days before the ship made the port of St John’s, having beat against head winds most of the way, and been obliged to steer a more northerly course to avoid the full force of these. One of the crew told the new hand that this was a poor passage, but at least the masts and rigging were free from ice, which was a constant occurrence during the winter months.And this was only September.These wretched thirty days had done nothing to help Joseph’s son in his love for the sea. He was noticeably thinner from the poor food and the lack of regular sleep, while his skin was an agony to him from the unaccustomed exposure.

Too proud to admit his sufferings, the young man wrote a scrappy sort of letter home, giving a bare account of the voyage, and mentioning little of his reactions to it, beyond saying he was as well as could be expected, after such a gruelling passage.

The
Janet Coombe
did not remain long in St John’s before she was away again, with her cargo of fish, bound for the Mediterranean. The next two months were hard and bitter ones for the young seaman. After unloading at Oporto they proceeded once more across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, instead of making directly to St Michaels for fruit, as had been expected. This second journey the ship was in ballast, and though the winds were favourable enough and they only got a couple of days’ bad dusting in the Bay, yet the absence of a stiff cargo caused very much pitching and tossing, and Christopher, try as he did, could not conquer his weak stomach. He found little sympathy among the hands for’ard, and cousin Dick the skipper had more serious matters to occupy his mind than to consider the feelings of this raw youngster.