granddad,’ continued Edward as he pulled out an ancient wooden chair, scraping its legs across the worn red tiles before seating himself at the kitchen table opposite his younger son.
‘If he were still alive,’ murmured Jesse.
Jesse’s mother, Jan, slid the tray of pasties she’d been making into the top oven of the Aga; she banged the door shut and swung round. ‘Edward, don’t start all this again,’ she warned him, irritated.
But Edward hardly seemed to hear her. ‘I promised my dad, as he promised ’is father afore ’im, that I’d do all I could to build the business and make Behenna’s Boats the biggest fleet in Trevay.’
‘And you have, Dad,’ Jesse assured him. ‘Behenna’s is the biggest fishing fleet on the north coast of Cornwall.’
Edward nodded, but a frown marred his lined face. The pressures of running the business were very different from those of his father’s day. This year, the European Union had really become involved and laws were being passed governing fishing quotas for member states. Cornwall and Devon MPs had tabled questions in the Commons about their impact on their fishing industry. How could they all hope to keep going in this climate, when the government was impounding vessels and fining their owners? This interference, along with upstarts like Bryn Clovelly screwing them for every penny down at the fish market, were driving some fishermen to the wall.
The old ways were dying. Small fleets were struggling to remain at sea and Edward knew that it was the likes of Clovelly who represented the future. Edward’s father had fished these waters for fifty years, man and boy. Sometimes his fish would be bought by a fishmonger from somewhere as exotic as Plymouth, but Clovelly saw the swollen wallets of the flash London City boys as rich pickings; he was buying monkfish for restaurants in Chelsea and exporting scallops to New York.
‘Aye, it is. I’ve been working the boats since I was fourteen and left school. I didn’t have your education.’
Edward knew he was a good fisherman, one of the best, but being an entrepreneur, like Bryn Clovelly, was beyond him. Behenna’s Boats had provided a good living for many families up to now, but carrying on as a lone operation was looking like an increasingly risky option. Clovelly would love nothing more than to add a big share in the Behenna fleet to his portfolio and Edward was finding his offer harder and harder to resist. He knew there were men with fewer scruples than he who would bite Clovelly’s hand off for a deal such as the one he was offering.
‘I’m only staying on to do O levels,’ Jesse reminded Edward. ‘Then I’m full time working at sea on the fleet. But when I’m a bit older and I’ve saved up a bit, I’m off travelling.’
His father looked at him as if he’d just said he was off to buy a Ferrari. ‘Go travelling? Travelling? There’s more to find in your own home town than you’d ever find travelling.’
‘Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten. There’re the Hanging Gardens of Bodmin, The Pyramids of Porthleven, The Colossus of St Columb … Cleopatra’s Needle up Wadebridge. Silly me.’
Edward scowled at his son. ‘That’s enough of yorn lip, boy. You’re the next generation. Greer Clovelly is a lovely girl and the only child Bryn and his lah-di-dah wife ever managed. Poor sod, never ’ad a son. Poor me, I got two and neither of them any bleddy good.’
‘Leave off mithering the poor lad. He’s only sixteen. He’s got ideas of his own,’ Jan said.
‘I knew by his age that you were the one for me,’ Edward told her, and Jan groaned inwardly as Edward played his familiar riff. ‘As soon as I saw you, twelve and lookin’ like an angel, I said to my mate, “There’s the girl I’m gonna marry”.’
‘Yeah and, more fool me, I did marry you.’
Edward caught Jan’s hand as she walked from the Aga to the sink. ‘No regrets though, maid? No regrets?’
Jan felt the warmth of her husband’s rough and calloused hand on hers and wondered. She’d had plans to travel to the Greek Islands and sleep on the beach under the stars, like the character she’d read about in a book once. The last book she’d read. Must be more than twenty years ago. But Edward had wooed her into submission and she never did send off the passport application form that had sat on her mother’s dresser for two years after she’d married. For their honeymoon, Edward had taken her to Exeter and they’d seen a rep production of The Mousetrap. Edward had promised her that the next show they’d see would be in Paris. Almost twenty years on and they still hadn’t made that trip.
She stooped and dropped a kiss on her husband’s weatherbeaten forehead, feeling the spikes of his overgrown eyebrows tickling her chin. Edward Behenna would now be more likely to see the surface of the moon than the insides of the Folies Bergère. She smiled. ‘No regrets my ’andsome.’ She straightened up. ‘But that don’t mean to say you can dictate what Jesse’s future is going to be.’
Edward let go of her hand and turned his attention back to Jesse. ‘Greer is a lovely girl. Clever, beautiful, and comes from a good family.’
Jesse gave his father a glare. ‘I’m not marrying someone so that you can do a business deal.’
‘What are you talking about? Business deal? Who said anything about business? I’m just saying she’s a lovely girl.’ Edward looked at his son with a patient, innocent smile. Bryn Clovelly was a sharp operator. For all of his talk about a merger, Edward knew that selling a share of the business to him was a risk. However, Bryn had no boys of his own. Like Edward himself, and most vain men, Bryn was desperate for his business not to die with him. If Jesse and Greer were married, it would ensure that Behenna’s Boats was safe and Bryn would have himself a son-in-law from one of Trevay’s oldest fishing families. They were building a dynasty. But Jesse seemed to have other ideas. Edward got a hot itch on the back of his thinning scalp when he thought about selling his son’s future off to the highest bidder.
‘She may be, but I’m not marrying her. If you want to do business with old man Clovelly, do it yourself, but leave me out of it.’
‘An’ what’s the matter with lookin’ to the future?’ Edward spread his hands, fingers splayed, on the old table, his extraordinary eyebrows raised in innocence.
‘Plenty.’ Jesse dropped his head and stared at his lap.
‘Oh, now,’ cajoled his father. ‘You’re not bleating about that other girl, whatshername …’
Jesse’s mother took her hands out of the sink and wiped the suds on her apron.
‘Edward, leave him alone. Loveday Carter is a really nice girl. Jesse would be happy with her. Let the boy fall in love with whoever he wants.’
‘Her mother hasn’t got a pot to piss in, and anyway, what’s love got to do with it? He doesn’t know what love is.’ Edward was exasperated.
‘But you did, or so you say,’ Jan threw back. ‘And stopped me from having a bit of life in the bargain.’
‘Oh, you and your life.’ Jesse recognised the brewing of a row and his father didn’t disappoint him. ‘You didn’t have a life till I took you on. You’ve wanted for nothing since we married. I’m a good man. I’m not a drinker or a womaniser.’
‘And I’m supposed to be grateful for the fact that life now starts and ends at Trevay harbour sheds, am I?’
Edward stood up. ‘There’s no talking to you when you get in one of your moods like this. You sound like your mother, and she was a miserable old cow. I’m going back to work.’
‘But the pasties’ll be ready in a minute.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
In the simmering silence that remained after Edward had stomped out of the door and into the spring sunshine of Fish Lane, Jan stood for a moment in powerless frustration. Edward had set his mind on securing the future of the fishing fleet, and if that meant arranging a marriage between Jesse and Greer