The Last Geomancer

Scene 4: Jack Leaves His Family

From the woods of California to the banks of Ohio
I’ve always worked each day God sent as best I’m able
While both me and the crops they failed
Those damn wolves came to my door
I just couldn’t put no food upon the table
Time to step up, boy, and be a man

So they stuck you ‘neath a helmet and put a shovel in your hand
Sayin’ it’s time to step up, boy, your family needs ya
And though we struggled hard to save
They say our money turned no good
And that there’s not gonna be enough to feed ya
And they’ll say it never happened ’cause they can

So they rob us of our livin, kick us down with shiny shoes
God knows we’ve paid for our dreamin
And now they’re tryin to tell us that they’ll own us til the end
Someone better pray that luck means justice
I’ll be no forgotten man
– Solas, “No Forgotten Man”

Late morning, Penzance Harbour had little traffic. The fishing fleet, such as it was, left before dawn. Outbound traffic sailed with the morning tide, inbound riding the reversal shortly after. Most of the ships in port were tied off at the quay at this point, cargo as much going on as coming off. The bustle along the dockside, men and wagons and oxen surging to and fro, mirrored the motion of the waves rolling in off the ocean. The single-funnel ferry coming over from Forcette, a converted fishing boat squared off and squat more like a tugboat than a passenger carrier, tossed slightly as it breasted the swells, making its way down the other side of the quay to the pedestrian tie-offs. Jack and his sister rode the movement with long ease, having been out to sea as soon as they could swim, going out with Peran and his son Kenver after their own Da had been lost. Lowenna, however, kept a handkerchief firmly pressed to her mouth and her eyes on the horizon, staring out over the railing as if her life depended on reconciling her eyes and ears to what sort of motion was going on. Certainly her stomach and dignity depended on it.

The morning had been almost deathly quiet. Nobody spoke other than to say “Or’n pardon” as they got themselves up, dressed for going out, finished off what was left in the house for breakfast. They’d been tapering off the last few days, trying to run out what they had stored so as to leave nowt to draw mice nor bugs. Lowenna spoke with her sister last week. She and Jennifer would be staying with Mellyn and her husband Selyf for the next little while. The bakery hadn’t promised to hold Jennifer’s position. She’d be looking for work the next day, her first in Penzance. The landlord had shown one tiny spark of compassion in his flinty heart and let them off for the month’s rent while they were gone, but they had to be back or close out the flat above the cobbler’s first week of the month after. Lowenna had brought the cookie jar, taking up most of the room in her purse. Even with the luck drained out of it, it was still her savings.

The court appearance had been mercifully brief. Jack stood up in front of the judge, and said, yes, sir, and no, sir, and I am so very sorry, sir, and been told to pay his fines, go forth, and waste no more beer nor break no glasses. He’d seen the same judge eight days later, getting his emigration papers signed. The judge asked if he was still paying his fines, and Jack had said, yes, sir, again, and added “all the rest of or’n life”.

Then there had been the visit to the doctor, and two weeks later another visit to ensure he’d not developed anything in the meantime. And another paper to be signed. And the meeting in Truro with the solicitor from the Tiparra Mining Company, his mother there to witness to his identity at a bank office. That had been several papers, a contract, a garnishment against his future wages to pay for the advance, and a paper to take to the steamship company and to the Crown offices saying he was guaranteed of work and would be no burden to the public upon or after his arrival. The solicitor, a small, narrow man with a precisely trimmed set of French mustachios, who spoke with a pinched Glaswegian accent, warned him sternly about that. If he didn’t work out in the pit, the Company would be free to reassign him to whatever work it could find to put him to. There’d been an implication of work much less pleasant than crawling through a seam after copper ore.

And all through the last few weeks, they’d talked about the Issue. There was no other topic, really. It consumed their lives. Mum had cried, rather a lot in the first few days, then less as time went on. Jack still heard her sniffling in her bedroom at night sometimes. Jennifer had been hot and cold by turns, tearing into him one moment, distant and silent the next, and twice breaking down and admitting she loved her idiot brother and crying on his neck. There had been a bottle of gin involved the first time, there was that. After some discussion, they agreed that a tot or two apiece was medicinal, and at the end of the first week they stopped by the pub and picked up a growler, just a small one. She’d had no such excuse the second time, though, that was just all of a sudden when they were doing the cleaning-up last Saturday. They’d bought a loaf of that day’s bread and some butter, and made toast over the stove and ate it with soft-fried eggs to dip it in. Jennifer had realized that would be the last time they ever did that, as they would need to clean out the larder, such as it was, after that night, to prepare for going across to Penzance on the Wednesday after.

And here it was, that Wednesday. The time had gone by. The day had arrived. And if Lowenna took her eye off the water for even a second, she would lose her composure and her breakfast at one go. Jennifer and Jack stood by her, maintaining a careful silence as if a single word might shatter the moment like glass, all the way across from Forcette, up until close to the quay. The skipper throttled back, idled the screw, the engine slowing to an occasional desultory chuff as the ferry glided in toward the dockside.

Jack stepped away, glad for something to bloody do. “I’ve got this one,” he called to the sailor to aft, leaning down for a coil of line. He got a nod in return. The skipper had been a friend of his Da, had offered Mum a free ride to Penzance if Jack lent a hand. Check the coil, make sure it’s loose, and heave the line out across the water to the shoreman waiting by the midship piling. The man caught the line readily, slung it around the piling, and made it fast as the ferry drew alongside.

Jennifer picked up a conical wicker basket from the deck by where Jack had been standing, hefting it by the leather straps attached to either side of the semicircular lid, the second set of straps that would allow it to be carried as a backpack dangling loose. Her and Lowenna’s things were still in the ferry’s cabin, Selyf had said he’d run down to the ferry and fetch them when they arrived. When Jack reached for the basket, she shook her head.

“As much as I’ve run you down,” she said, mouth set in a tight line, “least I can do is carry this for you.” She slung the basket round to carry it over her shoulder by the top straps. “Come on, Jack. Let’s get you to the station.”

The two of them turned to find Lowenna standing at the top of the gangplank, staring down its length at the quay.

“I can’t do this, Jack.” Her voice quavered with choked-back tears.

“Mum –” he began.

She rounded on him so fast he flinched back, uncertain if she were about to hug him or strike him. “I’ve already lost Dei. I cannot lose both my husband and my son.” Her voice rose a bit at the end. A nearby sailor glanced her way, decided quick she didn’t need his help and found something else to do at the bow.

“Mum.” Jack leaned into the syllable, got her attention, brought her eyes up off the deck and to his face. “I won’t be gone, just far away.”

“You might as well be!” Lowenna cried, and now she raised her fists, struck at his chest, collapsed against him in a welter of tears. “You’ll be the other side of the world and I’ll never see my boy again!”

Jack awkwardly tried to put his arms around her, console her, do something, anything. Jennifer put down the basket with a decisive thump.

“Mum,” she said, not unkindly but with reproof in her tone. “You know you can’t stop it. This has to happen.”

Her mother’s response was drowned in a wave of tears, and only an anguished moan escaped.

The skipper poked his head round the deckhouse to see what the delay was, started to call to them. Jack shook his head, sharply, and the man gave a quick nod, and removed himself from a family moment.

“Mum,” Jennifer tried again. She laid a hand on Lowenna’s shoulder, held it there until the shaking died down a bit. “Comes a time a boy has to be a man, Mum. He’s got to earn his bread himself, do what he can to support his family. Mum, it’s time you let go, and let Jack be a man.”

Jack stared at her open-mouthed. Lowenna clutched at Jack’s shirt, sniffled, snorted a bit. She and Jennifer both snickered a little at the noise she made, and that broke the tension. Lowenna raised her head, let go, wiped at her streaming eyes.

“Been years on I’ve had to look up at you,” she told Jack. “Where that height all came from we never knew. But you’re not my little boy any more, then, are you.”

Jack held his silence. It didn’t seem like a question.

“Heft that back up, Jennifer,” she told her daughter, with a nod to the basket. “We’ve got to see this man to the station.” And with that, she turned about, and strode off resolutely down the gangplank, not a single glance back. Jack did his best to straighten his now soggy shirt, and followed. Jennifer brought up the rear, swinging the basket back into place over her shoulder. She flinched a little as her feet hit the quay, though, and left the ferry and its link back to Forcette behind.

“Have you got both changes of your work clothes, Jack?” Lowenna asked, still not looking at him, keeping her focus on the street they were climbing up from the port to the railway.

“Yes, Mum,” Jack replied, keeping his voice low and unchallenging.

“The pants I mended, Jennifer shouldn’t have fussed at you about that, it could happen to anyone, right?”

“Yes, Mum,” Jennifer replied, a little ahead of Jack’s echo.

“And your Sunday church clothes, the nice shirt and the dark trousers? Hopefully there’ll be a proper Methodist minister aboard the ship and not a papist.”

“Yes, Mum,” Jack replied on his own this time. “And Da’s old fishing knife, the one he put aside for me when the skipper gave him a new one for Christmas.”

Lowenna laughed nervously, as if uncertain if she could without going into hysterics. “Kevin apologized that that was Dei’s entire Christmas bonus. Your father knew the catch had been poor for a while. He said it was for you when you were old enough to handle it right. Was your uncle Peran, though, said to give’orn to you for your eleventh, Peran who showed you how to hone it and use it properly.”

Not liking where this was going, and seeing a route to maybe safer ground, Jack touched the flat black cap holding down a shock of thick black hair that the comb hadn’t been able to tame that morning. “And I’m wearing the fisherman’s cap Peran gave me as a going away gift two years back. He’s doing fine in Australia, Mum, or he wouldn’t have asked me to come.”

Seeing where that was going and where she’d been, Lowenna refocused on the basket’s contents. “And your sweater’s in there, too, right? It’s too warm to wear it now, but you’ll want it once you’re to sea.”

“And he’s got the smoked fish,” Jennifer put in, panting a little lugging her burden up the hill, “and the last of the hard cheese, and bread, and a bag with yesterday’s leftover rolls from the bakery.”

“Remember your family, Jack.” Lowenna slowed a little as they rounded the corner and the Penzance train station came into view. She turned to face him. “Remember the land that bore you. Find folk that speak the language, and keep it fresh in your mind, it’s a tie back to home. Trust Peran. Don’t trust Kenver.”

“Mum!” Jennifer stared at her in shock. “He’s your kin!”

“Yes, and that’s how I know him that well,” Lowenna told her, shaking her head. “He’s always been jealous of the attention Peran paid to Jack and you. Boy wasn’t ever satisfied with the life he had, or what his father had to offer, but he wasn’t happy you were good with it.”

“Dog and manger,” Jennifer retorted. She took a couple of steps toward the station. “I wouldn’t have thought it.”

“Some people are good at keeping things hid,” Lowenna said, falling in next to her. “Jack?”

He fell in at her other side wordlessly.

“You need to be better at it.” Lowenna took his arm, holding a little more tightly than maybe she needed to. “Be careful who you let get close. It’s a long way to your uncle, and you’ve got to get there on your own.”

And then they were at the steps up into the station building proper. Jennifer put down the basket, pulled Jack round her mum for a hug.

“You know I only gave you such a hard way to go because I love you, right?” she asked of his chest, not looking up. “Somebody had to toughen you up, thicken your skin. Mum wasn’t going to do it.”

“Sometimes it’s better to be just and righteous than to be tough,” Lowenna put in, joining the hug. “Jack’s got his heart on his sleeve, and that’s fine. He’ll get hurt easier but he’ll also reach out to other folks what need a hand more readily.”

Jennifer relented, but as Lowenna stepped back to give jack room to get moving, went up on tiptoe for just a moment, and spoke quietly right next to Jack’s ear. “You shouldn’t trust too easy, Jack. People are bad, and you’re bad at spotting them.”

“I’ll be fine,” Jack replied, more for himself than for her, picking up the basket and putting his arms through the backpack straps. “How much trouble can I get into stuck on a ship for three months?”

Lowenna’s eyes went wide, and she began reciting a charm against bad luck. A sudden gust of wind took Jack’s cap off before she could finish the first line, sending him chasing after it a step or two and breaking her line of thought.

“At least you had the sense to braid a fairy lock in your hair,” she observed, the tiny braid having flopped down over his forehead when the cap’s removal let it escape. Jack, having caught the cap before the wind could take it over the sea wall, tucked the braid back up and jammed the cap down tighter.

“You’re not careful enough,” Jennifer said emphatically.

“I promise I’ll put more effort into it,” Jack told her. A blast on a steam whistle cut off anything else that could have been said. When it subsided, Lowenna gave a sharp nod.

“That’s the first call for boarding.” She gave Jack another quick hug. “You be good.”

“And if you can’t,” Jennifer said archly, “at least be good at it.”

“Jennifer!” Lowenna scolded. The argument over propriety gave Jack the chance to escape up the three brick stairs and into the Penzance station of the West Cornwall Railway..

“Write!” Lowenna called after him as the doors closed between them.