Hammond Innes: Dead and Alive

As soon as she opened the door I was certain I should not have come. The little farmhouse, cream-washed against the green of the valley side and the grey granite outcrops, looked just as I had known it before. There was the same sound of running water in the rock below the rotten planks of the water wheel. There was the same smell of dung and new-mown grass. And there were spring flowers bright in the lichen-covered wall. The warmth of the setting sun swept time aside and memory took me by the hand and we came back tired and happy after a day in the sun and the sea. There would be chicken and fresh peas and new potatoes and a great bowl of Cornish cream to be eaten with whortleberry jam.

And then Mrs Penruddock opened the door and I knew I had been a fool to come back to Trevedra. The lines of her face and the greying hair told me of the passage of the years and I remembered that Jenny would never walk with me again through the purple and gold of the slopes above the granite cliffs.

It was loneliness that held my hand as I entered that house, so packed full of memories. The dim hall was just the same — but the hat-stand was bare. It was our room that I was shown into. I went over to the window and gazed down the Rocky Valley to the sea. The land was warm in the dying sun. And I felt a desperate urgency to pick up my suitcase and run out of Trevedra — run without stopping until I was in the train and on my way back to London.

Sarah — we’d always called her Sarah — touched my arm. ‘How is she?’ I sensed by the sympathy in her voice that she knew.

‘She’s dead,’ I told her bleakly.

She didn’t say anything. That somehow made it harder. And I felt an awful desire to put my head in her arms and cry.

Instead I said, ‘We weren’t married when we came here. We said we were. But we weren’t.’ I said it brutally, unsteadily — I wanted to dam her sympathy at all costs.

But all she said was, ‘I knew that. But you were in love. That’s as good when the world is going mad and you haven’t much time.’ The sun had gone down now and the valley was darkening with the chill of the night. A fresh breeze, tangled with the sea, blew in through the window. ‘Did you ever get married, Mr David?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said, and turned away from the window. ‘No, we never got married. She married an R.A.F. officer while I was out in the Mediterranean.’.

I started to unpack. I had to do something.

She said, ‘I understand how you feel, dear. Mr Penruddock died just two years ago. His ship went down off Anzio. It’s hard to forget — this house is too full of memories.’

I searched despondently for the right thing to say. But when I looked up, she had gone. The white of the bed that Jenny had slept in showed emptily in the gloom.

For supper that night there were lamb cutlets and fresh peas and new potatoes. But there was no whortleberry jam and only a small bowl of cream to go with the gooseberry tart. The room was warm with the lamplight and a blazing log fire. When she had cleared away Sarah came in and sat in the big cross-patched armchair and her knitting needles clicked rhythmically as I sat and smoked and stared into the flames.

I asked her who ran the farm now. ‘My younger son,’ she said. ‘He’s over to my daughter’s at Bude tonight. There’s a big sale tomorrow. We could do with some calves. My eldest is still abroad. He took a regular commission. He’s in China now.’

‘And your husband?’ I asked. ‘Why did he go to sea?’

She put down her needles and looked into the fire. ‘It was after Dunkirk,’ she said, and her voice was soft. ‘He was a sailor, not a farmer, you know. We were married in Penzance just after the last war. I was nurse to Mr Cavanna’s children — he had the mines out to Redruth. My husband and I met when he was on survivor’s leave. His ship was torpedoed off the Lizard. He was first mate in those days. But by the end of the war he had his Master’s certificate and his own ship. He was a farmer’s son, but he’d run away to sea. He’d got it in his blood.

‘But then, after the war, cargoes became difficult and at length his ship was laid up with the others. And he came to me then and said, “Sarah, we must go back to the land. You’d like that, with your own house and all, wouldn’t you?” The youngest of Mr Cavanna’s children was away to school then, so we came up to Tintagel and bought this farm. Let me see now, that was in 1924. It was good land and close to the sea — and though the sea was in his blood he never wanted to go back.

‘That is, not until Dunkirk. He was at the wireless all day. After that he couldn’t work, but wandered day after day along the cliffs. I knew what was in his mind. And I said, “When are you going to Plymouth?”

‘That made it easier for him. He had been worrying about me and the farm. George had been in the Territorials and was in Egypt. But Mervin was already working on the farm. He was sixteen. Mr Penruddock showed him everything, and he was away a week later. They made him a first mate on an old tramp called the William Pitt. A year later he was master of one of the new Liberty ships and was away to North Africa, landing supplies for the First Army. His ship was hit at Salerno the following year. And then two months later it went down off Anzio. They say it was a glider bomb. She was loaded with petrol and ammunition.’ She sighed and began to knit again. ‘There were no survivors. The Admiralty sent me a telegram. It arrived when I was milking the cows and I remember the poor beasts were very uncomfortable because I couldn’t go on, but went up on to the cliffs, which I hadn’t done since he’d left.

‘And then a nice young man, whose family live over by Bridgwater, came and told me all about it. He was about your age and very awkward, poor lamb. He’d been the skipper of a landing craft that had been unloading my husband’s ship.’

Strange how the threads cross and recross on the loom of life. ‘His ship was the Black Prince, wasn’t it?’ I said. She paused at her knitting and looked at me over her glasses. ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

‘I was at Anzio, too,’ I told her. ‘I had one of the landing craft. We were quite close to the Black Prince when it happened — near enough for my eyebrows to be singed by the heat, and our paintwork to be blistered. It was quite instantaneous, you know,’ I added hastily.

She nodded slowly. Her gaze had wondered back to the fire. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know. I’m glad it was sudden, like that. I’ve seen men back here — there’s young Billy Arken over to Boscastle, both legs gone and his side and face all shattered. Better to die quickly when the time comes. But it’s hard on the ones left behind.’

The click of the needles filled the silence of the room again. A log slipped in the grate — a momentary flame and a shower of sparks.

‘Why did you come back here, Mr David?’ she asked. ‘You should have known better. Memories are for the old. You’re still a young man.’

I sucked at my pipe. Hell! Why had I come back?

‘I’m not quite sure,’ I told her. ‘But I think I know. I think it is because I have lost my roots in England and I am trying to find them again.’

‘Was there no other girl?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but — ‘ The fire flared and the gilt hands of the grandfather clock in the corner glinted. ‘No, there wasn’t — I know that now. Jenny was an impulsive creature. She was like a child with those lovely-laughing eyes and mass of untidy hair. She bubbled with the joy of life. It was like a fountain that made every moment with her exciting. We hadn’t known each other long when we came here. That was in July, and in August I was called up because I was in the Reserve.