The Forgotten Story

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Authors: Winston Graham
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one felt, as much by clothes as by flesh – seemed to dominate the kitchen without stamping the impress of a personality upon it. The weak, husky voice was what Anthony chiefly remembered when she was not before him, its habit of breaking off before its objective was reached, its capacity when angry of endless reiteration without being raised a semi-tone.
    But he sympathised with Uncle Joe for having married her even though she was so unattractive; for she was a real commercial asset. With her to do the cooking, Patricia to charm the clientele with her pretty ways, and Joe himself to drive his hard bargains at the door, the supremacy of the restaurant was secure.
    The only times Anthony was really uncomfortable were on the Friday and Saturday evenings. These nights might have improved since the law case, but they were still rowdy enough. The boy had few thoughts on the ethics of the matter, but he didn’t like Patricia being in contact with a crowd of singing roisterers and he always felt a sensation of relief when Saturday drew to a close without having given rise to another mêlée.
    This business of Friday and Saturday evenings was the only one on which Uncle Perry condescended to compromise his amateur status. When the fun got fast and merry he was usually somewhere in the middle of it with his laughing buccaneer face and Spanish-black hair. Sometimes he would be persuaded to sing, and he had a fine repertoire of comic songs with an occasional bawdy number thrown in. He would stand under the figurehead of the Mary Lee Melford , which had sunk off Maenporth, smile his attractive wayward smile, and sing his songs accompanied by the lame accordionist, while the crowded room roared the choruses.
    One night by way of a change he chose the ‘ Song of Tregeagle,’ and Anthony knew for certain the identity of the nocturnal carouser who still periodically disturbed his sleep.
‘They heard the Black Hunter! and dread shook each
    mind;
Hearts sank that had never known fear;
They heard the Black Hunter’s dread voice in the
    wind!
They heard his cursed hell-hounds run yelping behind!
And his steed thundered loud on the ear.’
    The boy came to know much of Falmouth during these weeks, for he was constantly out and about, rowing Joe to a ship in the bay, accompanying Pat on shopping expeditions among the huddled narrow streets and courtyards, shopping on his own for Aunt Madge, roving round the town with Uncle Perry when Uncle Perry couldn’t get his favourite baccy at the usual shop.
    He came to appreciate and understand the pulsing life of the port. News would come through that one of the big nitrate ships was becalmed off the Sollies, and at once rival pilot cutters set off to race to meet her. Then one by one over a period of weeks the great grain ships arrived in the bay, standing well out in the calm sea, sails furled at last after a world passage of anything up to half a year’s duration. Sometimes there were fifteen to twenty of them at once, awaiting their orders; then one by one as they received them they would slip away in the night, off to Queenstown or Liverpool or Clydebank or the Thames. The crews from these ships did not come ashore, but many of the masters and mates crowded into Smoky Joe’s and sat there over their food talking of storm and stress which scarcely seemed believable with the quiet sea lapping the old stone wall outside; of scudding down the roaring forties, of heat and boredom in the doldrums, of rounding Cape Horn in the black of the night and losing men swept from the frozen yards, by the giant seas.
    Sometimes there were as many as two hundred head of sail in the roadstead and the bay, and among them all almost the only steam belonged to the Irish coastline boats. During busy periods keen-eyed old men sat in Woodhouse Terrace, the highest in the town, and scanned the horizon with powerful telescopes. As soon as a sail was sighted word went secretly down

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