Читать книгу Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple - Francis Durbridge, Francis Durbridge - Страница 14

Torcombe was almost unique in being a Cornish village which did not figure in the handsomely illustrated Holiday Haunts annuals with which the railway companies seek to beguile the jaded city-dweller with vistas of golden beaches and laughing bathing beauties perched nonchalantly on razor-edged rocks, which must have been extremely uncomfortably even to the photographers’ models who specialized in the type of work.

True, there was a year before the war when it did achieve a bare mention as a ‘quaint village with good fishing’, but not even the word ‘quaint’ was enough to cause a notable increase in Torcombe’s population that summer, and as only one of the residents, old Mrs Tregarthy, who everyone thought was a little touched anyway, took advantage of the opportunity to advertise board and lodgings, h. and c., one minute from sea, Torcombe was thereafter left to linger in obscurity, so far as the railway companies were concerned.

The railway guide was correct, however, in saying that Torcombe had good fishing. It had, and it smelt like it, which was probably why the occasional wandering visitors who did find their way there in summer took a look, a sniff and then departed for other points of the compass. That was all right by Torcombe; the inhabitants just went on with their business of fishing.

There were a few regular enthusiasts who came every year to enjoy the excellent offshore fishing, which provided good sport. They generally stayed at the pub on the quayside, the ‘Harbour Bar’, and ‘stayed’ was often the correct word so far as the bar part of it was concerned, for Tim Austell’s home-brewed ale was something quite unique to those who, for the fifty or so other weeks of the year, knew only the suburban roadhouse concoctions.