And kippers or no kippers, we didn’t have the Saturday night to ourselves at all. This was partly thanks to the Trelawny Male Voice Choir, who, along with wives and girlfriends, were celebrating in the Watersmeet (quite what they were celebrating I never found out).
Sarah and I dined in a relatively insulated alcove (“Quietest seats in the house tonight Jack,” said Morwenna as she showed us to the table), while the main party took up most of the rest of the taproom. The group (men all looking over forty and wearing blazers and ties, women commensurately aged and attired in semi-formal dresses), were loud enough, but polite, and despite Sarah and I having to shout to each other every now and again over their conversation, added to the atmosphere. As the evening wore on, I realised I had missed Sarah so much that it would take a lot more than this jolly if somewhat over exuberant group to spoil my evening.
Our meal over, I felt happy and relaxed and, coffee finished, was about to suggest to Sarah we retired when the outside door opened. Pasco, Stocker and Jackson then entered, waving to me as they walked through the room, unsteady steps up to the bar showing that this clearly wasn’t going to be their first drink of the evening. The three looked at the gathered choir men, then turned away again, Pasco loudly (and slurringly), ordering three pints of beer.
“And we’ll buy a couple of drinks for our friends in the corner,” shouted Pasco, as the men of the choir slowed their conversation. Then, without any cue I could see, almost, I felt, like birds assembling on telegraph poles in the autumn, the whole group began to sing as one.
And shall Trelawney live?
Or shall Trelawney die?
Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men,
Shall know the reason why!
“Ah, bollocks,” shouted Pasco, slamming down his glass. “Whole song’s rubbish.” The singing tailed off, and a large (in all ways) man sitting at the front table stood up.
“Who says that?”
“I do,” said Pasco. “That Trelawny story’s made up. ‘Twas taken from some other thing, a hundred years before. There never were twenty thousand Cornishmen went up there to rescue him.”
“It’s our Cornish anthem,” said the big man, pacing forwards. “Wanna make something of that?”
“Ah, do what you like,” said Pasco. “Because I’m having my best evening for a while, and I don’t need nobody spoiling it. Isn’t that right?” He looked over his shoulder at Stocker and Jackson, who were staring down at their drinks.
“He’s questioning what we do, lads, questioning Cornwall,” said the big man, and at that, several of the choir men stood up behind their leader.
“No, I’m not, I’m just questioning you,” Pasco replied, also standing up. “O’s ta clappya Kernowek?” he then shouted (in an incomprehensible tongue, the lilt of which nevertheless seemed somehow familiar to me), pointing his finger at the now clearly bemused choristers. “Na?” He continued pointing, then shrugged his shoulders and turned away. “Ke dhe ves.”
“Don’t you turn your back on me,” the big man shouted. “Now like I said, wanna make something of it?”
“Bother hitting an emmet like you, never,” said Pasco, turning round again to face his adversary.
“Calling me an emmet?” the big man yelled back, then stepped closer to Pasco. Stocker and Jackson stayed back, continuing to stare into their drinks. I watched Pasco’s bravado shrink as he saw his companions’ demeanours, and also saw Morwenna shake her head at me (presumably to say that potential trouble needed dissipating).
“Jack,” Sarah whispered in my ear. “Do something.”
“Not our fight,” I whispered back.
“But the landlady’s looking at us, see?” Morwenna was now mouthing ‘please’ at me while making stop signs with her palm against the fingertips of her other hand.
“I’ll try,” I sighed, then stood up, took a deep breath, and walked to the bar, by which time the big chorister was almost toe to toe with the much smaller Pasco.
“That’s enough, friend,” I said to the choir man, pushing in between them. “Come on, we’re all here for a good time. Why not sing another song?”
“You what?” he said, looking at me with complete surprise but nevertheless standing back a pace.
“No trouble tonight, friend. It won’t work out well for you.” I looked him directly in the eye, and he said nothing, while one of the other choristers leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.
“Let’s just relax.” I turned and spoke to Morwenna. “Can you manage a round of drinks for this lot?” She nodded. “So, friend,” I said loudly. “Drinks for you, your fellow choristers and your ladies. Compliments of the house. Just come and order at the bar. That okay?”
“Er… yes mate,” he stammered, “I reckon it is. Thank you.”
“Jack,” said Morwenna, as the big man went and explained to his friends that they could order free drinks. “You make me quite weak at the knees.”
“Well, I just…”
“And me,” said Pasco, slapping his arm around my shoulders. “Sorry, Pasco?”
“You saved me, and I was, hic,” he hiccupped, “bang out of order. But, Sangster, tonight I do have reason to celebrate.”
“How’s that?”
“Plumb line.”
“What?”
“His plumb line,” said Stocker, while Jackson, too drunk to speak I suspected, mouthed the words, and grinned. Both men held their heads high now that the trouble had dissipated.
“This,” said Pasco, reaching into a canvas bag and pulling out a multi-coloured rope with a ring-shaped lead fishing weight tied to the end. “Now let me explain, it’ll just take a minute, I…”
“Hold on,” I said, realising this was going to need longer than a minute’s explanation. “Morwenna,” I said, while gesturing to Sarah that Pasco wanted to talk. “Could you take my wife another coffee please?”
“Course, Jack, and this coffee’s on the house as well. Now, my lover, something for you? You’ve only been drinking water all evening.”
“That’s nice of you, but no thanks, Morwenna, I’m trying to do the healthy thing tonight. Planning a day’s rambling tomorrow, on Bodmin Moor.”
“Good way to be,” she said, walking over to Sarah with the coffee and whispering something as she set the cup down on the table that made them both laugh out loud.
“Now then, Pasco,” I said, pointing to the rope with the lead weight. “What’s that when it’s at home?”
“Me plumb line. I use it to douse.”
“What, douse for water, like a diviner does?” He nodded. “I thought you needed a forked hazel twig for that.” A scene from a western where the hero found water in the desert using such a stick came into my mind.
“I don’t douse for water, I do it for roads.”
“Roads?”
“Yes, I started when I was a boy.”
“Here?”
“No, Camborne born and bred. Only started dousing round here when I got the ferryman’s job. That was twenty years ago now, mind.”
“But roads you say?”
“Yes, have you ever heard of The Old Straight Track, Jack?”
“No.”
“Ley lines?”
“No.”
“Haven’t heard of much, have you?” Pasco snorted, taking a long drink then staggering so that I had to steady him with my arm.
“Clearly not, but somehow I feel you’re going to enlighten me.”
“Well, what I do is swing my plumb line to pick up the paths of the ancient roadways of Cornwall. Sometimes in England as well.” I smiled inwardly, as I always did when hearing the locals distinguish Cornwall from England. “Those ‘Old Straight Tracks’, as some people call them,” continued Pasco, his voice shrill with enthusiasm. “Had all those feet on them, marching and so on over the years, from Roman times, perhaps before that even. And then there’s the Earth’s natural lines of energy. Leys as they call them. All these leave their mark, Sangster.”
“Mark?”
“Memory if you like. In the ground. And I can pick that memory up by using this plumb line, like so.” He held the rope up and let the weight dangle free. “Then walk and wait for it to start swinging.” He pushed the weight, which began to move in circles. “Once it swings, I know I’m on a track. After that I just keep walking until the swinging stops. Usually only stops when I get to the sea, sometimes not even then. I even found a track from Land’s End to the Scillies. Those islands must have been joined to the mainland once upon a time. I’ve mapped hundreds of miles of ancient trackway in south-west Cornwall alone.”
“And you really think this works? Can’t it be affected by wind, or if you somehow miss your footing?”
“Oh, it works alright,” said Stocker. “It’s been proven time and time again, against old records, and today’s probably Pasco’s finest hour. Tell him Pasco.”
“That’s what I was trying to do, Stocker,” said Pasco, dismissing his friend with a wave. “Now, Sangster, this part of the river’s had a crossing since the time of the Romans at least. Well documented, going from the slipway down there, by my bell, over to my cottage.”
“At least that’s what everyone thought, isn’t it, Pasco?” Stocker chimed in.
“Will you stop interrupting me,” said Pasco, pushing his glass towards Morwenna for a refill. “Now, where was I? Yes, the crossing. You see, I always got a swing on this side of the water, but never a swing by my cottage. Couldn’t find where the track came out on the other side. Made me mad it did, mapping all them trackways around the county, but not being able to map the one to me own front door.”
“I can understand you might be mad,” I grinned.
“That’s right.” He missed my grin and took a swig of beer. “But anyway, yesterday I was doing a spot of ebbing about half a mile up the river…”
“Ebbing?”
“Ebbing, Sangster,” said Stocker. “You go out across the mud in your waders and stretch a net across the creek at half ebb tide. Current makes fish swim into it, mainly sea bass at this time of year.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, if I may continue, Stocker,” snorted Pasco, “I put my hand into my bag for a line and pulled out my rogue’s yarn by mistake.”
“Rogue’s yarn?” I queried again.
“Multi-coloured rope we mostly use to tie up our boats,” said Stocker. “You make it yourself.”
“Your wife Mabel makes yours, Stocker,” said Jackson.
“So she does, and each one’s unique. Means nobody can steal it.”
“I see,” I repeated, beginning to feel more and more enlightened.
“And you know what happened when I pulled it out, Sangster?” Pasco shouted.
I shook my head.
“It only began to swing, that’s what. Couldn’t believe it at first, but swing it did, so I walked across the mud and onto the bank, where I followed the track, up towards Tregnothnan Manor. And I can prove it.”
“He can,” said Stocker, while Jackson once again mouthed the word with a grin.
“How?”
“Well, I spoke to the parson.”
“Canon Pengelly you mean?” I remembered the canon being ferried across the river that morning.
“The same, and he granted me access to the cathedral library, and I spent most of today there. Went through all the bishop’s books and papers I did, and you know, I’d almost given up hope of finding anything when it happened. I was about to leave, and just finishing tidying up, when I dropped a book and there ’e was. Fell out on the floor, an old map of the Fal estuary, showing all the places where tracks crossed creeks. Old ferry crossings, Parson reckons. Showed our crossing going over the river at an angle from the village to the opposite bank, just where I’d picked it up with my plumb line.”
“Then this route is surely known to other people?”
“Nope. Map was folded and tucked into the binding of the book. If I hadn’t dropped that book, the map would still be there now, unseen and unknown. Printed on animal skin it was, almost fell apart in my hands. Parson said that meant it was old. Parson also said he’d never seen it before and reckoned nobody else had either. Said all the maps of the area he’d ever seen show the track going straight over to my cottage, even the very old ones.”
“Pasco the great,” said Stocker raising his glass, along with Jackson, who almost missed his mouth and continued grinning silently.
“Quiet, Stocker,” said Pasco, oblivious to the accolade. “Anyway, Sangster, Parson says he’s going to have my map framed and presented to the museum. With my name on it.”
“Well, that’s wonderful news,” I said. “Quite a find. Now I must go back to my wife if you don’t mind. We’ve an early start tomorrow.” Pasco nodded, then started coiling up his plumb line, which, after several unsuccessful fumbles, he finally managed to push back into the canvas bag. “Oh, and Pasco?”
“Yes, Sangster?”
“Just whisper to me, because they’re still sitting over there,” I said. “But what was that you said to the choir man?”
“Cornish. Asked him if he spoke it.”
“And then?”
“Told him to go away. All that singing Trelawny, and he don’t even know his Cornish, does he, Morwenna?” She said nothing. “Anyway, Sangster, Morwenna speaks better Cornish than I.” Morwenna shook her head and turned away. “There’s more to that woman than meets the eye,” Pasco went on. “Much more.”
“I’m sure, but you do speak this old language yourself?”
“Yep, and perhaps not properly, but I’m one of very few now who remember it at all. Expect Cornish’ll be extinct when my generation’s done.”
As he said this, I suddenly realised why the sound of Pasco’s words had seemed familiar. It was a day at the academy several weeks ago, when I’d bumped into a very flustered Runtle leaving one of the classrooms.
“Speaking the old language, she was,” he said to me, cheeks flushed as he rushed off down the corridor. “The old language I tell you, Mr Sangster, thought it was forgotten by youngsters till I heard her talking.” He had pointed over his shoulder, towards the classroom door. I’d then looked into the room and seen Angel Blackwood standing by the blackboard, reciting words out loud, every now and again stopping to scrawl something in chalk before carrying on speaking. I remember being struck not just at the oddness of the words, but at the speed with which she spoke and wrote on the board. Almost superhuman.
“Well, I know a young person who can speak Cornish, Pasco.”
“How d’yer know it was Cornish she was speaking?”
“Runtle, caretaker at the academy, he swore she was.”
“Ah, Runtle.”
“You know him?”
“Yes, I know that fat old tuss. Reckon it was probably French or Latin or summat else he heard. Like I said, Cornish’ll be finished before too long.”
“I do hope not,” I said to Pasco, who sniffed and shrugged. “Well anyway, goodnight then, and once again, well done finding the track.”
I went back to my table, to find Sarah quietly reading a book.
“Did you see all that?”
“Of course darling, but this book, the one I started on the train, it’s fascinating.” She held up the cover.
‘The History and Geography of the Roseland Peninsula’
“Oh, yes, fascinating. Now, if you can tear yourself away from it, I’d like to go up.”
Sarah closed the book without a word, rose from the table and we walked together to the door. As we passed the choir group, I nodded to the big man, who waved back and bid us goodnight, as did his companions.
Jack, I thought to myself. You did a good job calming that situation down. Excellent job. You’ve still got it.