The Main Cages by Philip Marsden

net, the squashy globes of buffs, the causeway withies of broken crab-pots. They made quick work of the potato plants in the town’s pieces and crawled in through the lips of the postboxes to chew at the stamps on newly-posted letters.
    On the fifteenth, Parson Hooper drove into Truro for the diocesan meeting. The Bishop took him to one side and told him that he had carefully considered his application to become Dean but that on reflection they wanted someone a little younger. The post was to be taken by Hooper’s own Curate. Parson Hooper went to Pascoe’s and commissioned a new Tablet:
    When the Light of the World stood before them
    They cried: Not this man but Barabbas.
    Arthur Treneer died. Agnes Thomas died. Betty Johns did not die as everyone thought she would but rose from her bed to sing ‘The Lark in the Morn’ at her grandson’s wedding.
    There were two weddings that May. The Jenkins wedding took place in the Anglican church of St Cuby and the Johns wedding was in the Methodist chapel. Both were followed by receptions at the Antalya Hotel.
    On 20 May, Tick-Tock Harris brought a copy of the
Illustrated London News
to the Bench. ‘…
the forward funnel,
’ he read, ‘
is seventy feet in height from the boat deck. The diameter of each funnel is thirty foot and would permit three modern locomotives to pass through it
 …’
    Toper frowned. ‘I don’t see it.’
    ‘Don’t see what, Tope?’
    ‘Don’t see why ’ee’d want bloody trains on a ship.’
    Towards the end of the third week of May, the French freighter
Charbonnier
was driven onto Pendhu Point. The
Kenneth Lee
rescued all hands. They managed to salvage the ship but not before much of its cargo of tinned food had been lost. The cupboards of Porth and Polmayne became filled with ‘Charbon’ tins – but because the labels had been washed off no one ever knew whether when they opened one they’d find tinned salmon or cling peaches.
    At the Antalya, visitors reported that the hotel was not the same this year. Mr Hicks, they said, was behaving ‘immoderately’.
    The Garretts had a good fortnight with the
Polmayne Queen,
but on a trip to Falmouth the water intake blocked and the engine overheated. They returned to port safely but for a week the boat was out of action.
    A new member of the Petrel fleet was launched with a small ceremony at Penpraze’s yard. She was painted canary yellow, commissioned by an art historian from Berkshire and named
Hope.
Petrel racing began on 23 May.
    That afternoon Boy Johns’s grandson Joseph leaned on the harbour wall not watching the sleek and heeling Petrels in the bay, but reading his monthly magazine:
    LADS! The best life for town and country lads (16 to 21 years old) is upon Australia’s big and prosperous farms. Greatly reduced steamship passages, only £3 payable before sailing. Apply for illustrated pamphlet to the Assistant Superintendent of Immigration for New South Wales and Victoria, 3 Melbourne Place, Strand, WC.
    At the monthly Parish Council meeting it was reported that Cornwall’s Public Health and Housing Committee had approved a grant for the building of a reservoir to ease Polmayne’swater shortages. The site chosen was Pennance. Major Franks said that ‘it would cause a gross violation of natural beauty’. Parson Hooper pointed out that it would threaten St Pinnock’s holy well: ‘Have we not seen enough sacrilege of late?’ The only alternative site would cost a further £30,000. The dam, Hooper was assured, would be well below the spring. Despite the rain the water engineer reported to the Sanitary Inspector that in the previous three weeks Polmayne’s reserves had been reduced by six thousand gallons. Work was due to start at Pennance the following month.
    It was rain that prevented the Tea Treat of the Bible Christian boys. As a special concession they were allowed to go on the Wesleyan Tea Treat the following week – although not to process near the Wesleyan banners nor to