Zennor in Darkness

by Helen Dunmore

  He is a little in awe of Clare’s silence. Sometimes he wishes he could go to her and tell her that he knows, he understands, he will punish the guilty. She was too innocent. She had never been anywhere, and she knew nothing. For a man of that type she must have been easy prey. Anger against Lawrence swells in him again.

  Anger against Lawrence and his German wife swells like a tide through the countryside, filling hungry lips. Now, with the third battle of Ypres floundering into mud, the couple is an offence in its very existence. The Lawrences must be watched. It is an honourable duty to spy upon them. They are not people like us. They have no place here. Young military police visit them in groups of three or four to keep each other from bamboozlement and contamination. Reports are gathered and sent to Southern Command in Salisbury. Military men, official men, take a serious interest in this case. It is swelling like a boil upon the body of this suffering country, on the fragile and exposed flank of England.

  Hundreds of thousands of men have died, thinks Francis Coyne. They’ve died hearing the sound of the guns, like John William.

  ‘Can’t you hear em? Those 5.9s? Don’t tell me you can’t hear em?’

  He would have died hearing that surf-noise of guns, wilder than any storm we have here and more pitiless. Surely he shot himself because he could not get the noise of the guns out of his head.

  Francis Coyne thinks of the football field and strong boots battering the turf. Men who had come through two years of the war, like John William. And this man, with his beard waggling and his eyes staring at you so that you felt you could not bear to look at him, sat talking to his daughter in the kitchen while John William lay in the mortuary with half his head blown off.

  Such men are dangerous. They are injurious to our peace. They do not belong here. Whatever wind blew those two to Zennor, let it blow them away again.

  Once they are gone, thinks Francis, we shall be safe. Red-beard will be forgotten and no one will measure his features against the child’s.

  Francis Coyne picks up his pen. He cannot go to this man and tell him he has injured his daughter, but the war has given him another way. She will be walking by the sea now. She mustn’t tire herself. But Hannah is a sensible girl, and she will make Clare rest. They will not be back for an hour at least.

  He has a sheet of his best cream-laid paper in front of him. Nearly the last of the stock, and he won’t be able to buy any more. No more cream-laid paper; no more May Foage. He puts the paper up to his lips and tastes its cool smoothness. But he has Clare, and he will have her child. It will be Clare’s child only, like its mother with its red hair. That other will be blotted out. He is going to disappear and it will be as if he had never been. For the first time in all these years Francis Coyne feels a tremor of Cornishness in him as he thinks of the landscape around Zennor empty of Red-beard and his German wife. A Prussian, they say she is. Poor brute, one might even feel sorry for him.

  He dips his pen, and begins to write.

  Dear Sir,

  As a resident of St Ives, and a patriotic subject of his Majesty the King, I feel it is my unpleasant duty to inform you in strictest confidence…

  He grimaces fastidiously. The language is distressingly crude. It curdles as he writes it. But he continues, and the long elegant lines of his black writing unreel across the surface of the paper to the luxurious scratching of his nib. He scarcely has to think. He signs the letter, blots it, folds it into an envelope. He leans his fist on the envelope, presses down with all his weight. Yes, the thing is abominable. But he believes it may work.

  Twenty-five

  A cool, still October morning in Zennor. It is early, not quite yet eight o’clock. Four men turn off the high road which leads from St Ives to Zennor, and tramp down the farm lane towards Higher Tregerthen. Pods of Himalayan balsam burst with sudden explosions as the men brush past them. They know their way; they have been here before. They know every inch of the Lawrences’ bare little cottage with its bits of fabric draped over furniture and its pink-washed walls. They have flipped over Frieda’s embroideries and left them lying skew-whiffed. They would not be caught dead living in a place like this themselves. They are contemptuous of the Lawrences’ meagre possessions. And yet this Lawrence is an educated man – surely it only confirms the suspicion that he must have some hidden motive for living in such an out-of-the-way place, high above the coast where a light can be seen for miles out to sea? They have rifled the cottage once, and it will open its doors to them easily this time. The man is as frail as a dandelion puff, so there is no fear of a fight there. And if need be they can put the fear of God into the German woman. A few words about the risk of internment should silence her.

  If the cottage ever had that virginity of lostness and secrecy which Lawrence once thought it possessed, it is gone now. The red floor is printed over with clumsy bootmarks from yesterday’s search. The searchers did not care what traces they left. They wanted the Lawrences to know that their lives had been stripped bare and pawed over. Drawers have been pulled open, small belongings tipped out and searched. Letters and manuscripts have been taken.

  The Lawrences were not at home when the men came yesterday. The first search is over, and nothing that follows it can shock them as sharply. Frieda came home humming to herself, pushed her door open absently, thinking of something else, and found her home broken open like an egg.

  But this morning they are in their cottage when the army officer, the two detectives, and the police sergeant from St Ives knock on their door. Frieda has got up first, and she is drinking her tea standing up by the fireplace. She does not want to sit down in any of the chairs, or touch her own things. She shrinks from them as if they have been contaminated. Even her clothes smell wrong, as her children do now on the rare occasions when she is able to see them and take them into her arms. They smell of the other people who have taken possession of them. Last night she could scarcely sleep in her bed for the knowledge that her sheets and blankets had been switched back by the searchers as they made their way quietly and methodically through the cottage. There was a small stain of blood on her undersheet. They would have seen it. But she will not feel humiliated: she will not. It is for them to feel shame, after what they have done. Let them tell her the cause for what they have done, if they dare.

  By eleven o’clock the second search is over and the men have gone. They have left behind the smear of the oldest message in the world: ‘We can do what we like to you, and you cannot stop us, for we have the power and you are powerless.’ She has writhed and wept under the weight of it, and her own helplessness, but now she is silent. In the solicitor’s office she learned the cost of leaving her husband for Lawrence. Now she learns that the cost of living with him still has to be paid, over and over. She will pay it.

  Lawrence fingers the official notice they have left, as if he would like to tear it up. It orders them to leave Cornwall by Monday, to live subsequently within an unprohibited area, and to report to the police. Its curt, chopped words bristle off the page at him. He smiles slightly, involuntarily, as the style of it reaches him. He could write it so much better himself.

  Yet he is white with shock. For two hours the four men have thrashed through the cottage, touching everything, emptying pails and buckets, opening cupboards, feeling in jacket pockets. They have found nothing new – the cottage is so small that they can have missed nothing during their first search yesterday. But they needed to hunt and paw again in front of the Lawrences. They needed to make the couple watch while they read letters, combed through address books, opened underclothes-drawers. For where is the point of a demonstration of power if there is no one there to be crushed by it?

  Well, they have had their satisfaction. Frieda’s face is snail-tracked with tears. He wishes she had not wept in front of them. He will not let his own rage rise in him yet. If he does, it will shake him apart.

  He looks down at the pile of papers smashed into a heap on the rosewood table. These are the ones the officials disc
arded as not worth bothering about. They had found so little to take, really, for all their frowning and leafing – a few letters from Frieda’s mother, some notes.

  ‘Shameless little article, wasn’t he – the ferrety one?’ he remarks.

  She smiles faintly. ‘Lorenzo, you know he was not at all like a ferret. A bit more like…’ She thinks. ‘A bit more like a warthog!’

  ‘Blessed if I’d know one of ’em if I saw ’em. But let him be one, if it pleases you.’

  She bends down to pick up a piece of red and gentian embroidery which has slithered off the back of the table. He riffles through the notes and letters.

  There is another knock at the door. Frieda jumps, looks at Lawrence with suddenly darkened eyes, then goes to open it in response to his almost imperceptible nod. There stands one of the little boys Frieda knows to smile to, a farm-worker’s child. He is out of breath, puffing with excitement and importance. But, on seeing Frieda, he suddenly turns shy, and thrusts out his hand with a bit of paper in it.

  ‘Why, what’s that?’ asks Lawrence.

  Frieda looks at it. In pencil, on the outside of the letter, someone has written in neat, ticked-off letters: ‘Am returning this as a private communication.’

  ‘Must be one of our letters,’ says Lawrence. ‘What’s he up to, sending it back?’ And he frowns, suspecting another trap. ‘Did an army man give this to you?’ he asks the child, but the boy backs out of the doorway, giving only a sudden, violent nod before he pelts off down the lane.

  ‘What can he mean, a “private communication”?’ puzzles Frieda. ‘He has only just taken it from my drawer. He must know that it is private! He did not let that stop him before. They have taken all my mother’s letters.’

  Lawrence takes the letter from her and unfolds the paper. The large, strongly curved, slightly childish lines are instantly familiar. They have read over this letter many times, and discussed it late into the night. But they have not yet answered it, for they are waiting for replies from friends in London who may be interested in Clare’s work. The letter is from Clare, and it is addressed to Lawrence:

  There is something I must tell you which you may have heard already in Zennor or in St Ives. We both know how news travels here. And how lies travel too. So I thought I would write to you and tell you that this time it is not lies, or gossip, but the truth. I am expecting a child. I shall continue to live with my father, and I am hoping to make my living as you do, by my own work. Already I have met a woman in a gallery who thinks she can sell my things. I draw every day – I should like to show you. My own drawings, not flowers any more. I enclose a sketch so that you can see. Perhaps, if you have any friends who would like to have their portraits drawn, you might mention me to them? I believe you liked my work.

  Perhaps I should not write to you and tell you this. But I had never met anyone like you before. And you knew John William.

  Tell Frieda I would like to see her, if she still wants to see me. I want to draw her properly: she is beautiful.

  Yours truly

  Clare Coyne

  He pinches the stilted little letter along its crease. Stilted, but with a rush of confidence in the middle of it: ‘My own drawings, not flowers any more.’

  ‘Did they take the sketch?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I have it. I put it into the frame, behind the one she drew of you, so that it would not crease. You had not fastened the back of the frame.’

  Lawrence lifts the picture off the wall, removes the back of the frame, eases out the two drawings.

  ‘Be careful! They are stuck together – they will tear,’ says Frieda.

  ‘It’s the damp,’ says Lawrence, unpeeling the top sketch with skilful fingers. ‘There’s no damage. Lucky it’s not charcoal.’

  He spreads the two portraits on the table, side by side. The two faces look at one another. ‘David Herbert Lawrence, by Clare Coyne.’ ‘Francis Coyne, by Clare Coyne.’

  ‘The portrait of her father is very good,’ observes Frieda.

  High forehead, finely moulded temples, dark receding hair. The eyes are deeply set and the eyelids curve down, half hiding the eyes. Shy, or remote? But this face has its own fierceness. It would not be entirely out of place in the von Richthofen album, thinks Frieda. The hooded eyes stare at the portrait of her husband, but they seem not to see it or to take note of it.

  The portrait of Lawrence is less confident. It is only a few months since Clare drew it, but how much she has improved since then, to judge by the recent sketch of her father. Frieda bends over her husband’s pencilled face. The eyes meet hers. Their startling directness is a promise which can surely never quite be fulfilled? But he is not really looking at her. This is how he looked at Clare as she drew him. The rest of the face is not quite as good, though she has caught a likeness. Who could ever capture that vitality? As soon as you think you have grasped it, it moves on. Frieda looks up from the drawing to the living man.

  ‘We have not answered her letter,’ says Lawrence.

  ‘No,’ laments Frieda, as if this is the last, unbearable disappointment of these bitter two days. ‘And now we shall not see her. We shall never see her again.’

  But Lawrence rereads Clare’s letter, his face alight with amused sympathy.

  ‘She will be all right,’ he says. ‘See, even now she thinks ahead. She thinks that we may be useful to her. And we can write to her from London. She might come to see us there – you know she told me she had visited London before. I am sure I shall hear something from Lady Cynthia. She has so many rich friends – some of ’em must want their portraits done. Or their children’s – such women always “adore” their children.’

  Frieda pulls a quick face at Lady Cynthia’s name.

  ‘Let her help you first!’ she exclaims. ‘You have so many friends, yet you cannot get your own books published!’

  It is too true. He will have to pack up thick wads of the novel which he may never publish. And yet it is good: he knows it. But they will stop this new novel too. They will put their censor’s boot down on it, just as they did on The Rainbow. He looks around the room. It is empty for him now. They have two days to pack up their things and get out of Cornwall. But he has not the heart for preserving this small temporary home so that they can start again and re-create it in yet another cheap cottage found for them by friends. Perhaps one day they will come back to the only home they’ve found and paid for themselves. The war cannot go on for ever. Let the piano and the rosewood table stay here, and Frieda’s bits and pieces. There are onions and leeks left in the soil, and winter cabbages. Let them stand there until the salt or the frost rots them. Or the Hockings will come up from the farm and harvest them. They will be sorry to lose his company, the stories in the kitchen, Stanley’s French lessons and piano lessons, the jokes, the political discussions while they picked over the peas or skinned pickling onions. But regret will not stop William Henry from eating the vegetables Lawrence has planted. His dark, wary face is the face of a survivor whose family has held on to their land through centuries of storms. And why not? So much waste, everywhere. Why shouldn’t something be saved?

  The marigolds will seed themselves and the white foxglove will come out again at the bottom of the wall, like a ghost in the summer light, and there will be fine flowers on the hydrangea. He has been feeding the soil around it with spent tea-leaves all year. How many times he’s stepped out into the earth-scented, pearl-coloured evenings and tipped the tea-pot out around its roots. It takes time to build up the soil. Stanley carted up five loads of manure from the farm midden, for the vegetable gardens.

  But he will not think of that – not now. It would drive him mad. This is the place where he once thought he would build his ideal community: his Rananim. There will never be Rananim at Zennor now. He thinks of the Murrys, leaving a few weeks after they arrived. He had such blazing hopes for life together here, the four of them. And yet – he smiles without meaning to, without knowing he was going to smile. How funny they had
looked, Jack and Katherine packing up their cart with their things, Katherine so meticulous, so dark and neat, with her face set mute and purposeful towards the south, away from the Lawrences. There was no changing her mind. And now he and Frieda are to be kicked out of Cornwall. He would like to shake off this country entirely and go westward to America, but the authorities will not let him. They will not endorse his passport. Again, they give the excuse of war.

  Now he and Frieda must go. Another cart full of furniture, another couple of bedraggled wanderers balancing perilously on top of their possessions. Back up the spine of Cornwall towards the seething madness of London with its newsboys in the streets, its Zeppelin raids, its crowds of feverish soldiers on leave spilling out of the pubs and theatres. If only they would all kneel down on the London pavements as John William had knelt on the white Zennor road, and cry out for the dead men who were walking at their shoulders.

  ‘Perhaps Clare will bring her baby here, when we are gone,’ says Frieda suddenly. ‘We have paid the rent until next summer. It is good for babies to sunbathe. She could put him in the garden to kick in the sun on a blanket. The air is so pure here. I have never tasted air like it.’

  She has gone into the scullery and is wrapping cups in newspaper. He glances at her face quickly, suspiciously. Is she thinking of her own children again? But no, that look of mingled grief and inwardness is absent.

  ‘Not she,’ says Lawrence. ‘What would there be for Clare in Zennor? She has her own life.’

  ‘And her own place,’ says Frieda. She has moved back to the main room and is folding up the table-cloth. And he, usually so deft and handy, does nothing to help her. He just stands there.

  ‘I used to think, when we got here,’ continues Frieda. ‘When we looked out of our window on a clear night, it was like a door into heaven. So many stars! Nothing but stars between us and the sea.’