Witch from the Sea

Carlos’s mother had been Spanish but he had inherited scarcely anything of hers, he was clearly my father’s son. His hair was darkish brown and his eyes light hazel colour; he swaggered when he walked in a manner similar to that of our parent. He had been brought up under my father’s influence from an early age and the great aim of his life seemed to have been to grow up as exactly like him as possible. He was a great favourite with Jake. So was Jacko, the son of Jennet, my mother’s maid who had been with her for years and had shared many of my mother’s adventures. She was a lusty irrepressible woman and had had a succession of lovers. At the time it was one of the gardeners. We all knew, because for Jennet love-making was so natural that she made no secret of it. She was now in her forties and I had heard my mother tell her that she was just as lustful as she had been in her twenties. She was enormously proud of Jacko and delighted that he had been brought up in the household to follow his father’s profession. She thought there was no one quite like the Captain and was very proud that Jacko provided living evidence that he had once glanced her way. Then there was Penn—also with a look of the Captain, and his presence at the table with his mother was perhaps the most difficult to understand. Romilly Girling had come to the house when she had been destitute after her father had been killed in one of my father’s ships; and, during one of those periods of dissatisfaction with each other which had occurred in the past between my parents, my father out of pique or lust had got Romilly with child. Penn was born and was brought up in the house as Romilly had nowhere else to go and it was only later that my mother had discovered who the boy’s father was and it was inconceivable that she would turn them out of the house then. My father would never have allowed it in any case, and I think my mother liked to remind him now and then of his infidelities.

However, there we were on this day when Fennimore came to Lyon Court, all assembled at the table, the only absent one being my little sister Damask who was too young to be of the party. I think it was after her birth that my father realized that my mother would never have a boy and became reconciled to me.

Fennimore, I am sure, was too full of his own project to waste much time thinking about our household. It was clear that he wanted my father’s backing for his project. It seems from what I could gather that he was hoping for some sort of partnership.

I listened to him with pleasure. He had an unusually soft musical voice for a sailor. I could not imagine his shouting to sailors on the deck. There could not have been a man less like my father. It was amazing how I compared them all with him.

“If we had entirely neglected trading,” Fennimore was saying, “we could never have beaten the Armada. We shouldn’t have had the ships.”

“Traders!” cried my father. “Nothing to do with it. We beat the Dons because we were better seamen and we were determined not to let them set foot on our land.”

“Yes, yes, Captain Pennlyon, that’s true of course. But we had to have the ships and by good fortune we had them.”

“Now, young man, don’t you make the mistake of thinking this victory was due to luck. Good fortune, you say. Good seamanship, say I.”

“It was that, but we did have the ships,” insisted Fennimore. “Did you know that in 1560 we had but seventy-one ships trading on the seas and in 1582 we’d increased that number to one hundred and fifty? Why, in 1560, sir, our merchant navy was almost nothing … we weren’t among the maritime nations. What were we doing? Our coastal trade was insignificant. We did a little with the Baltic ports—just with the Low Countries and perhaps a little with Spain, Portugal and France … a few Mediterranean calls. That will not be so any more. We, Captain, are going to be not one of the foremost trading nations in the world but the foremost. There’s coal to be carried … coal and fish. This has been done in the past, but now that we have driven the Spaniards off the seas we have to take advantage of it.”

My father was listening now. Any method of worsting the Spaniards appealed to him.

I found it fascinating to listen to Fennimore. It was obvious that he had studied the matter; he believed in it wholeheartedly. Carlos was inclined to support him, while waiting for the cue from my father, of course. Jacko watched with bright eyes so like his mother’s; if the family was going into trade he wanted to be in it too. Penn’s eyes never left our father’s face. And watching him there, his startling blue eyes fierce at the mention of Spaniards, I was never more conscious of his intolerance and there was a great yearning in me for him to like and approve of Fennimore Landor. I realized that Fennimore in his way was as determined as my father was in his; but while one was noisily vociferous the other achieved as much impact by his quiet insistence.