Page 85 of By Marsh and By Moor
“My brother-in-law’s here,” she called.
Jed turned back to Solomon.Neither of them moved.
Dimly, Jed saw himself rising to his feet, walking down to the little harbour, perhaps never seeing Solomon again.He couldn’t do it.He couldn’t bear to turn away now, leaving things like this between them: affairs unsettled, words unspoken.If he left, he’d be walking away with an open wound in his chest.
Solomon’s gaze was on him, fear in its depths.
“Come with me to Ledcombe?”Jed said.
Solomon swallowed, his throat moving slowly up and down.“You mean, just to speed me on my way to Barnstaple, or—”
“Come with me to see my sister?If you will?I wouldn’t mind having someone by my side.And then, maybe, we should talk about… everything.”
The fishing smack glided into the tiny harbour at the mouth of the river Led.Jed stood at the bow, looking landward.Above the houses that clustered along the river, steep wooded slopes rose to the moorland hills and ridges that Jed and Solomon had walked over together, months before.
Jed glanced sideways at Solomon, leaning on the bulwark beside him.Solomon returned his glance with a cautious smile.During the journey by boat along the coast, it had felt like they were living through a temporary lull of their own making in a longer running storm: relieved to be together, but conscious of how much they still had to talk about.
“Make fast the lines,” called Mrs May’s brother-in-law, and soon Jed and Solomon were ashore, thanking the men who had brought them here.
A favourable wind had carried them swiftly along the coast, and it was now early evening.The little harbour was sleepy and calm under the long shadows cast by a pale evening sun.Two fishermen were scrubbing down the deck on a boat moored nearby.Another sat on the pier, mending a net.This latter was a middle-aged man with a thatch of thick, sandy hair.He and Jed had sung together in the village choir and shared many a drink in the harbourfront alehouse.
For a second, Jed couldn’t remember the man’s name.Then it came back.
“Isaac,” he called in greeting.
The man gaped at him for a long moment.“Jed?Jed Trevithick?”
“It’s Trevithick’s son,” someone else exclaimed, and the other men left their nets and came over.
“He used to be the village carrier,” one man could be heard explaining to a little boy.
They crowded around him, looking at him with sympathy and curiosity.
But as soon as they realised the newly arrived boat had come from Minehead, another more urgent matter caught their attention.They had already heard a rumour that the press gang had left Minehead—news spread fast along the coast—and they were anxious to learn the truth of it.
Solomon told them everything he knew, with the men of Mr May’s crew leaning over the side of their boat and putting in a word of their own here and there.
The Ledcombe men had plenty to say.“Thank Heaven!—We’ve been living on our nerves since February—I can hardly credit it—I thought they’d never leave, the bastards.”
Jed listened but said nothing.A chasm seemed to separate him from the other men.He looked across the river mouth to the stony little beach where he’d been pressed, so long ago.He’d been expecting to be overjoyed, but just now he only felt overwhelmed.
Isaac stepped over to join him.“You’ll be looking for somewhere to stay, I expect?There’s an empty cottage behind the churchyard since my old grandfather passed.”
Jed blinked.He had not yet thought about that sort of detail.
“Are you setting up in business again?”another man asked.“We en’t had a proper carrier here since you left—only the fellow as comes through from Minehead on Tuesdays.”
Jed nodded, but didn’t allow himself to be drawn into conversation.He only had one thing on his mind: to see Carrie.He touched Solomon’s elbow.“We’d better go, or we’ll arrive while they’re at supper.”
When he’d first come here after escaping from his ship, he hadn’t seen much of the village.But now, coming up from the harbour, they walked through the heart of it.Everything was just as it had been: the medieval church with its crumbling belfry, the Dissenters’ wooden meeting house, the odd-shaped village green where the young women gathered to get away from their mothers, the smith taking an evening nap on the bench outside his forge.Jed felt as if he’d been away for decades, and that surely everything must have changed in his absence.But it hadn’t.
“You want me to wait outside?”Solomon asked, after they’d climbed the headland and were approaching the Squire’s house.
“No, come in with me.”
Jed marched up to the front door.The maid who answered was the same woman who had brought them tea on their last visit.Her eyes widened when she recognised Jed.
“I’m here to see Mrs Penwick,” Jed announced, and she showed them into the same parlour as before.
