The Four Swans

by Winston Graham

  Were these reasons, except the first, any better than more excuses? From the moment he set eyes on her he had wanted her, and now he had had her. Perhaps it would cure him. Perhaps now that he had brought her down to the level of other women he would be able to go away and forget. There was an old saying that all women were the same when the candle was blown out. He had had many other women, he had implied; now she was one of them. Now he could turn his idealism on some other girl. Perhaps her giving herself to him would in the end be a good thing, clearing his mind of his desire, enabling him to come to terms with himself, and to forget.

  She wished she could believe this. Or she almost wished it. No woman really wants to feel that by giving herself to a man she has expended her attraction in his eyes. But that likelihood now seemed less probable than it had done yesterday. While Ross was asleep this afternoon, sleeping off some of the frustrations and unease of the sinister night, the same tall groom had arrived again, clattering over the cobbles at the front door – alone, thank God, but all the same openly delivering a message to her that Ross might well have asked to see. Admittedly the covering note was formal enough, a polite letter thanking her for her hospitality of Tuesday and expressing a hope that she and Ross would dine again at Tregothnan before he returned home. But folded inside it was another poem, and who knew whether she would have had the sleight of hand to get it into her pocket without its being seen?

  The metre had changed, but not the style.

  Hallowed by sea and sand

  Beauty was in my hand.

  In taking her I came

  Moth to the whitest flame,

  Body caressed and turned

  Wings of desire unburned.

  Lips to my lips unfold

  Tale of our love is told.

  Yet there can be no end,

  In love our lives extend,

  And if this day be all

  Proud is my heart’s recall

  Proud is my funeral pall.

  It didn’t seem to have altered his attitude as yet, or to have ‘cured’ him of anything at all. Then had it cured her? But cured her of what? A compulsive sensuous impulse to lie with another man for once in her life? A perverse desire to be unfaithful to the man she loved? A wish to give happiness, if it was in her power, to someone sorely threatened? A sudden moral lapse, lying in the warm sand with the salt water drying on her body?

  The odd and slightly disconcerting thing was that she was not quite sure that she had anything to be cured of. She felt no less in love with Ross than before – perhaps, perversely, a little more so. She felt no different – or very little different – towards Hugh Armitage. She was taken with him, warmed by his love and returning some of it. The experience, the physical experience, if one could separate it even in one’s thoughts from the heart-stopping tension and sweet excitement of the day, had not in essence varied from what she had known before. She did not feel that she was becoming in any real way a light woman. She did not see it as a happening that was likely to recur. It was just a trifle disconcerting that she did not feel very much changed in any way as a result of it.

  That was not to say that she had spent a happy two days since. At times the discomfort and apprehension she felt might well have been mistaken for bitter remorse for wrong-doing. Unfortunately the remorse was something of which she had to remind herself rather than a sensation welling up naturally from her conscience. The true discomfort grew out of something different. At the moment, what had happened on Tuesday was an event in isolation, unconnected with the past, unattached to the future. But if Ross knew of it, even got to suspect it, then the anonymity of the experience would be shattered, the isolation broken into, and her life with him might be laid waste.

  It was not an agreeable thought, and, standing at the window with little shivers going through her body in the warm night, she did not much like herself. It seemed to her that if she had committed adultery it was for the wrong reasons, and if she was sorry she had committed it, it was again for the wrong reasons.

  On the Tuesday it had been after one when they left the beach. They had rowed straight back.

  He had said in the boat: ‘You have not asked me to dinner but I’ll not stay. If Ross should return I should feel embarrassed, and in truth all I want now for a long time is to be alone.’

  ‘Your groom will be tired of waiting.’

  ‘I have been tired of waiting . . . When can I see you again?’

  ‘Not, I believe, for a long time.’

  ‘A long time will be too long for me.’

  ‘When are you going home?’

  ‘To Dorset? I don’t know. My uncle believes there is an election coming shortly and thinks to invite me to stand for Truro.’

  ‘But your – oh, I suppose he doesn’t know?’

  ‘Not yet. In any event, if the election occurred this summer I could still no doubt deceive the electors. And I suspect there have been blind Members of Parliament before this.’

  ‘Do not say that.’

  ‘Well, it will have to be said sooner or later.’

  ‘Are spectacles no use to you? I’m still not sure how much you can see?’

  ‘Today I have seen enough.’

  ‘Hugh, please, we should talk no more like this . . . I need not ask you when we get ashore to talk no more like this.’

  ‘You need not ask me, Demelza. My lovely one, no hurt shall come to you from anything I say. I assure you.’

  So they had landed, and the impassive groom, who had been sitting in the shade of the rocks, came to help them gravely in, and, the boat stowed in the cave, they had walked up the narrow valley to the house talking of seals and other casual things, and he had refused to come in but had stood chatting in the doorway until the two horses were led round, and they had mounted and clattered off up the valley. Hugh had not waved as he left, but he had turned and stared at her for a long moment, as if trying to memorize what he might not see again.

  She turned from the bedroom window and looked about her at the familiar room. The teak beams running lengthwise of the ceiling, the new green velvet curtain over the door, the window seat with its pink grogram hanging; the wardrobe door ajar and a corner of the frock, the green frock, peering out like a guilty secret; Ross’s dark head and regular breathing. My lovely one, no hurt shall come to you from anything I say. But what of the things you write? In the sort of company in which Hugh was brought up, possibly letters were brought on a platter to the breakfast table by a manservant and everyone was too well bred to ask even whom a communication was from, let alone expect to see its contents. In Nampara household, on the other hand, such was the amity and friendship between them, that Ross always tossed any letters he received across to her to read after, and she, on the rare occasions when she had one, automatically did the same. However folded within another letter, the last poem was dangerous indeed. Body caressed and turned, Wings of desire unburned. Lips to my lips unfold. Judas! No wonder she shivered in the warm night!

  The bit of paper should have been torn up at once. It was like a little heap of gunpowder waiting for a chance spark. But sometimes caution can go too far, and she couldn’t quite force herself to destroy it. However little or much the incident might come to mean in future years, the poem meant something. It meant something to her and she could not lose it. So instead she had slipped it with the other poems she had received into a little wash-leather bag that she had found in the old library long years ago. It was safe enough there, she felt, for no one touched the drawer it was in except herself.

  She came back to the bed. She wondered for a moment if perhaps she had been dismissing Hugh’s romantic persuasions too lightly. What had he said? By giving love you do not diminish it. Love only adds to itself, it never destroys. Tenderness is not like money; the more you give to one the more you have for others. Perhaps there was hard common sense in this as well as poetry. Certainly there was, if one could overcome loyalty and possessiveness and jealousy and trust. But how could one? Wha
t if Ross had been sleeping with Elizabeth? What if his story about aiding in the arrest of the miners were an untruth and he had spent the night in Elizabeth’s arms? How would she feel then? That Ross’s love had grown for her because he had been intimate with another woman’s body? Love only adds to itself, it never destroys. Tenderness is not like money. But neither is trust, Hugh, neither is trust. Neither is loyalty. You can give those away and they are gone for ever, Hugh. Though only a part of love, they are a vital part, gathered, stored, built up over the years, like something growing round love, protecting it, warming it, adding another strength to it and another savour. Give those away and they are gone for ever . . .

  She drew back the thin sheet and slid in beside Ross, very cautiously so as not to wake him. She lay on her back for a moment, wide eyed, silent breathed, staring at the half-dark ceiling. Then Ross moved, as if conscious that she had been away and had come back. He did not put his arm around her but his hand came to rest on hers while he slept.

  Chapter Two

  I

  The thirty-five rioters tried locally were let off lightly; it was widely known that the magistrates were concerned more with the ringleaders than with those who had been misled. The fifteen others were due to appear in court at Bodmin. Among the fifteen were several who were friends of Sam’s and Drake’s from the Illuggan area. They dicussed this one evening as they walked down to Sawle together to inspect the first pilchard catch.

  The pilchard season had been poor for five years or more, and this early catch raised everyone’s hopes that the hot summer and the warmer water would bring a bounty to the coast. The nets had been hauled in early that morning, but work was still going on sorting and packing, and the brothers, like most of the people around, were hoping to pick up some cheap fish. It was an hour yet from sunset. Crowds filled the beach, watching, helping, gossiping.

  It was the custom when the catch was hauled ashore in baskets which had been filled from the nets, to tip the fish into wheelbarrows and run them up the slope to the cellar, which was in fact a large shed, not a cellar at all, and there women picked the fish over, sorting them and sizing them. Broken or damaged fish were thrown to one side to be sold cheap to those who wanted to buy, and any surplus was dumped and mixed with refuse salt and sold to the farmers for seven or eight shillings the cartload to be used as manure on the fields.

  The good fish were arranged in layers on the floor of the cellar by other women, working quickly but with exactness, each fish being laid head to head and each layer being sprinkled with salt before the next layer was begun. Three people worked as a team – one woman to sort and carry the fish and one to pack them, with a young girl or boy to fetch the salt and make himself generally useful. Such a team working together could sort and stack seven or eight thousand fish in a day’s daylight.

  By the time the Carnes arrived much of this had been done, and the heads of the fish presented a regular serried barrier five feet high across the length of the cellar. So carefully were they arranged, in spite of obvious variations in size, that it would have been possible to count them. This of course was the beginning of the work. The fish would stay here a month while the oil drained out of them and was caught and preserved. Then the fish would be taken up and washed and pressed into hogsheads, about 2500 to a barrel, and allowed another eight days for the last of the oil to drain away through a bung before being headed up. Apart from the labour, the cost for salt and other materials ran to about thirteen or fourteen shillings a hogshead, and in mid-September such a hogshead, weighing nearly five hundredweight, would sell for upwards of forty shillings. That was in normal times. In normal times a quarter of the total catch was exported to the Mediterranean. Now with the Mediterranean closed to English ships no one quite knew what would happen.

  But it was a profit of a sort and food in plenty off the fish that did not reach the standard requirements. Among the crowd were many destitute people who waited for the end of the day. At dusk, when all was finished, the fishermen would give the last few hundred damaged fish away.

  Sam noticed with satisfaction that Mary Tregirls and one of her children were working on stacking the pilchards. She would have money in her pocket now and would be able to lift the whole family, including the resentful Lobb, a little farther up from the pit of poverty in which he had last seen them.

  Drake had gone over and was buying a sack of broken fish from one of the fishermen. With the bargaining went a great deal of banter, and Sam was pleased to see Drake laughing and joking as he had not done for a long time. Since his visit to Mrs Warleggan in Truro the persecutions had altogether ceased. No one disturbed him at his work, no one harried his customers, no one broke his fences down. It was a blessed relief. Against all Sam’s expectations, the visit had served its purpose. Only the stream remained diverted by the farmer above him, and in this dry weather he was very short of water. But Sam had advised Drake to do nothing more. By careful husbanding of the well water, by the use and re-use of it, he could make do. A man was entitled to divert a stream.

  With the last sun firing lances over the edge of the cliffs, the brothers turned up the valley for home, each carrying a sack. All around them people were murmuring and chatting, laughing and talking. Others were coming up and down the lane, most of them burdened in some way. Then Sam saw four people clattering down past the last of the better cottages, and the way was so narrow that it was impossible to avoid them. Tholly Tregirls, Emma Tregirls, Sally Tregothnan – or ‘Chill-Off’ – and Tom Harry. Tom Harry and Tholly carried jars of rum.

  When they saw Sam and Drake Tom Harry said something that made them all laugh. The brothers would have passed on but Tholly stopped them with his hook held out.

  ‘Ah, Peter, now, just the man I want. Just the man I need. Reckon ye’re a fine upstanding lad, and would do well for what I have in mind.’

  ‘Sam,’ said Sam.

  ‘Sam. There now, I’ve a memory like an addle-pipe. Put it in one end it comes out the other—’

  ‘Drake Carne,’ said Tom Harry, lurching up to Drake. ‘What’s gone amiss wi’ your face, eh? Something scat your eyebrow, ’as it?’ He looked at Emma for her approval, and she laughed, but it was not a free laugh. The sun scorched her hair with copper lights.

  Behind the four were a half dozen other men, including Jack a Hoblyn, Paul Daniel and his cousin Ned Bottrell and one of the Curnow brothers. They had all been at Sally’s and had decided to come and look at the pilchard scene before dark fell.

  ‘Closed up!’ shouted Widow Tregothnan to a woman looking out of a window. ‘Shut up, see! Taking an hour off, see. Turned all these lob-lollies out afore they fell out!’ She laughed heartily.

  ‘Peter, now,’ said Tholly. ‘Sam, curse it. Sam, me boy. I’m in charge of the games at Sawle Feast, come Thursday week. You done some wrastling. Reckon ye could be a useful ’traction. Prize money! I’m organizing prize money ’n all. We got six lads taking part, and some from over St Ann’s and the Breague brothers from Marasanvose. Does your baby brother wrastle, eh?’

  ‘If so be as you mean me,’ Drake said. ‘The answer’s no.’

  ‘Only good at running away, aren’t ee, boy?’ Tom Harry said. ‘Only sometimes you get catched and then ye get a cooting!’

  ‘Leave off,’ said Emma. ‘Leave off, you stupid great lootal!’ And she gave Tom a shove. ‘How’s my old preacher?’ she said to Sam. ‘Been prayin’ much of late?’

  ‘Every day,’ said Sam. ‘For you. And for all men. But specially for you.’

  Sally Chill-Off laughed loudly again at this. She was a buxom, good-tempered woman of forty-five, and she had struck up a friendship with Emma. They were the same type. This had led to Emma being more in the company of her father, and she had learned to tolerate him.

  ‘’Ere, what d’ye mean?’ Tom Harry said, pushing his face forward at Sam. ‘Prayin’ for she? I’ll ’ave no snivelling prating Methody mooting away at his prayin’ for no girl of mine! Look see here—’


  ‘Give over!’ said Emma again, pulling at him this time. She had had a drink or two and was as boisterous as Sally. ‘I’m no girl of no one’s – yet – and ye’d best mind it. Don’t be so piffy, Tom. Tis a fine eve and we’re going down see pilchards. Got a fine sackful, ’ave ee, Sam? Let’s see.’

  Sam opened his sack and various people peered in, laughing and jostling each other.

  Ned Bottrell said: ‘Char Nanfan got some this noon, but I b’lieve they’re not so good as they. Do ee wrestle, Sam?’

  Ned was the soberest and the steadiest of the group. He was a newly-saved member of Sam’s flock and Sam had been much gratified by his conversion.

  ‘Nay, not for these pretty many years,’ Sam said. ‘Scarce ever since—’

  ‘Go on,’ said Paul Daniel. ‘I reckon I seen you once when I was over Blackwater. I mind that tow head of yourn. Brave ye were too. He wrestle, don’t ’e, Drake?’

  ‘Wager he’ve forgotten how,’ said Emma, her eyes catching the light. ‘All this praying for lost souls like me. Make a man tired, don’t it, Sam?’

  ‘What I had in mind,’ shouted Tholly over the general noise. ‘What I had in mind—’ He was seized with a fit of coughing, during which he hunched his square shoulders and hawked horribly.

  ‘There, there, my dear,’ Sally Tregothnan said, slapping him cheerfully. ‘There, there, my old lover-cock, spit’n out. You gulge your drink too fast, that’s all that’s wrong—’

  ‘We put Tholly to organize the games,’ Ned Bottrell said to Sam. ‘He were champion wrestler once, afore he lost his arm. We reckon t’ave a fine spread. Tis for church, ye know. There’s nought to say we should not rejoice, is there?’