‘She’s not well again?’
‘Oh, it is the same cough as always, and a light fever. But I do believe she coddles herself – and Mama is bad with her too; having lost one stepchild, she is fearful for another. But the night air is so light and mild I believe it could do no harm.’
‘As for St George – O
St George he was a knight – O
Of all the kings in Christendom
King George he is the right – O
And send us peace in merry England
Every day and night – O…’
As the singers came up they surrounded the bonfire, the torches wobbling and uncertain. The voices petered out in coughs and giggles, the singers having become selfconscious in the presence of the gentry. Ross made a sign to Sam, who stepped forward and said his prayer.
‘O Lord Jesus Christ, the True Light. Who dost enlighten every man that cometh into the world, do Thou bless this bonfire which in our gladness we light to honour the Nativity of St John the Baptist; and grant to us, being lighted by Thy grace and fired with Thy love, that we may come to Thee. Whom that Holy Forerunner did announce beforehand as the Saviour of the world. Who livest and reignest with the Father in Heaven, ever one God, world without end. Amen.’
Caroline Enys had been persuaded much against her will by Demelza to be the Lady of the Flowers. When Sam had finished his prayer, Ross gave a nod and Music Thomas and Sephus Billing plunged their torches into the green pyramid. A dozen others followed suit, with yells of delight that seemed to come from further back in time than the Christian prayer that had just been uttered. Sam hunched his shoulders in discomfort, and was glad of Rosina’s consoling hand on his arm.
Just before the flames reached the tin barrels, Caroline stepped forward and threw a bunch of flowers and herbs into the fire. It contained a collection of good herbs and bad, the good in this instance being St John’s wort, elder, oak, clover and foxglove; the bad were ivy, nettle, bramble, dock and corn cockle. Caroline had sworn that no power on earth would induce her to speak the bizarre Cornish words, but the one power on earth that could do so, Demelza, had contrived to worm its way round her protests and she had reluctantly learned them, though she had only the vaguest idea what they meant.
‘Otta kelmys yn-kemysks
Blesyow, may fons-y cowl leskys,
Ha’n da, ha’n drok.
Re dartho an da myl egyn,
Glan re bo dyswres pup dregyn,
Yn tan, yn mok!’
There had been silence while she spoke, but the moment she stepped back – and none too soon, for the flames were suddenly out of hand – there was a scream of satisfaction from the spectators and they began to dance around the fire, the wild flaring light making demons of them all. A little drinking had been going on beforehand.
Jeremy drew in a sharp breath and frowned into the lurching scalding light. One person just withdrawing into the shadows of the old mine looked so much like … He put out a hand to draw Clowance’s attention, but Clowance was talking animatedly to Ben, and in time her brother withheld his hand …
Many of the girls in their best summer smocks had joined in the dance, and thirty or forty people held hands swirling round the bonfire. Once more Jeremy saw the man, but the third time he was no longer there. A phantom spirit appearing, as Ben said, at the location where he would eventually die?
After a while Ross touched his arm: ‘The fire is sinking…’
Fireworks were a sophisticated touch the villagers had not expected, and for the next twenty minutes Jeremy and Ben and Paul Kellow and Horrie Treneglos set off rockets and squibs and serpents and gerbs and crackers to the gasps and screams and laughter of the watchers. In the middle of it the bonfire collapsed and sent up its own cascade of sparks into the quiet evening air.
Jeremy and Paul had also manufactured some of their own fireworks. In metal saucers they had contrived a mixture of chlorate of potash, nitrate of strontia, sulphur and lampblack, which produced a brilliant light that bathed the whole scene in demonic red. After these had died down, to a long sigh and a burst of applause, another group of saucers was lit containing chlorate of potash, chloride of lead, nitrate of baryta, sulphur and resin, and the night became as brilliantly green.
‘How marvellous you are!’ Daisy said to Jeremy. ‘What are they called?’
‘They are supposed to be Bengal lights, but don’t quite approximate, I believe.’
‘Paul says you are a genius. He has told me about all your experimentations at Harvey’s Foundry.’
‘Paul is up the pole. But it’s still a secret what we do! He should not have told you!’
‘Does Clowance know?’
‘No.’
‘So now I am party to this special secret! Delicious! Have no fear: it shall go no further.’
‘I think, my child, it will soon have to go further, but for the moment, if you don’t mind…’
‘Of course, Paul is fascinated, with my father opening his new stage to Penzance. He thinks there is a future for a steam engine replacing the horses. Do you?’
‘In ten years why not?’ Jeremy was loath to discuss it with her here.
‘Are you going to be an inventor?’
Jeremy screwed up his eyes, staring at the dancers again. ‘Oh, phoo. I’m practical. Not an inventor. I try to see the future – pinch other people’s best notions.’
‘Would you take me sometime?’
‘Where?’
‘Fishing…’
‘You mean – our fishing.’
‘Of course…’
‘Well, I…’
‘Since I knew, I have asked Paul several times but he says no, it is not for women. I wonder why? Your mother has told me she went a ride on that engine in London – what was it called? I do not think women should be disentitled to take an interest in the latest mechanical notion.’
Jeremy looked into her eyes. She passed the tip of her tongue across her lips and smiled at him.
He said: ‘There’s precious little as yet to see at Hayle.’
‘What is there?’
‘Just nuts and bolts.’
‘No, tell me.’
‘A boiler. A few wheels. A piston or two. A frame made in the shape of a bed. A tall funnel which eventually will emit steam: puff, puff, puff, puff.’
‘How quaint!’
‘Yes: it is Trevithick’s idea – I told you I pinched ’em. Instead of condensing the steam one thrusts it out, dispenses with it.’
‘But is the carriage not all yet joined together, assembled?’
‘No. Nor will be for a while. For the time being it is all on the shelf while we discuss a more conventional engine.’
‘But could I still come?’
‘If you wish. But I am now visiting the foundry officially to talk of such an engine. No need to fish. The only obstacle now is a twenty-mile ride.’
‘I shall look forward to that,’ she said. ‘And don’t think I can’t ride just as fast as you.’
‘Oh, I know, I know. I’ve seen you and Clowance riding hell-for-leather on the sands. It is a wonder you’ve not come a cropper in a water pit.’
Ben and Clowance came up to them. ‘Tis time for the last procession afore supper. Come on!’
The villagers round the fire were linking hands, and Music Thomas and Sephus Billing were crying ‘An eye! An eye!’ Ben and Clowance pulled Jeremy and Daisy towards the end of the chain, the three Trenegloses closely following. The procession moved off, away from the hot deep glow of the fire, threading among the trees, out to Wheal Maiden, back around the Wesleyan Meeting House, down the hill towards the lights of Wheal Grace where the engine was still about its lonely clanging and sighing, the engine house silhouetted against the candescent night sky. Down, down they went, to Nampara House and on to the beach, thrusting through the thistles and the tall tree mallows, still shouting ‘An eye! An eye!’ Across the beach almost to the cliffs under Wheal Leisure; there, the arbitrary choice of the two leaders coinciding, the
procession turned in a sharp semi-circle and began to jog back towards where the bonfire smoked on the hill.
Past Nampara, across the stream, up the wooded lane, leaving Wheal Grace on their left. At the top of the lane, a few hundred yards from the food and the ale and the smouldering bonfire, the two leaders stopped and formed an arch – an ‘eye’ – by joining hands above their heads; and under this arch, or through this eye the procession of sixty-odd people had to pass. Once they were through, they scattered like starlings, all making for the trestle tables and the waiting matrons.
The Enyses had a glass of ale and a saffron bun with the Poldarks before leaving with their two little girls and the nurse. Before they left, Caroline said to Demelza: ‘I have bad news. My aunt Sarah has at last conquered her lifelong inclination to faint at the thought of coming to see me in this savage county. She has written to say she will be with us in two or three weeks’ time. But, my dear, it is an entourage! Not only is she bringing a footman and a maid but Colonel Hector Webb to dance attendance! Clowance met Colonel Webb while she was staying with us. My aunt, though now visibly ageing, cannot bear to be without a courtier.’
‘But Mrs Pelham is a delightful person,’ Demelza said. ‘I shall be happy to meet her again.’
‘Well, make no mistake, you shall. We shall rely on you and Ross to help us entertain this delightful (I agree) but relentlessly urban lady. I do not suppose she has been west of Basingstoke in her life … But stay – I trust this will not clash with your visit to Bowood. When is that?’
‘Late July. But nothing is decided yet, Caroline. I don’t even know if Clowance really wants to go. And, of course, if she did, we have no one to send with her. We sadly lack close relatives.’
‘I assumed you would go yourself.’
‘I should be away for more than three weeks! What would Ross do?’
‘What no doubt he does when separated from you for as many months on end. But has Clowance not given you any indication of her feelings about this?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then ask her. It is a mother’s privilege.’
‘Don’t tease. How – even if she agreed to go – how could I go into a great house like that remembering I am nothing but a miner’s daughter?’
‘My dear, you have braved many social ordeals. Unless you arrive at the door wearing a metal hat with a candle stuck in it, I do not suppose they would readily guess, do you?’
‘You think it amusing, Caroline, but it is not at all amusing. There are all sort of pitfalls I might tumble into. And I should dearly hate Clowance to feel embarrassed for me.’
‘You are far more likely to feel embarrassed for Clowance, who has a distinct habit of calling a spade a spade! Seriously, you must get to know her true feelings. Then if she likes to go, you must take her.’
Demelza said: ‘Could you not take her, Caroline?’
The crowds at the trestle tables were long and noisy. Some young men were competing with others in leaping over the fire.
Caroline said: ‘Mrs Pelham would make it impossible. But in any case if Clowance goes, then it’s right – right for you as well as for her – that you should be the one to go with her.’
‘But you enjoy these things!’
‘So would you if you went. And I promise, I’ll lend you Enid.’
‘Enid? Your maid?
‘Yes. Who else? You could not possibly go without one. You like her and she likes you. I’m sure she’d be happy to go.
‘Caroline, you know I cannot pretend to like being waited on hand and foot, and sitting about and doing needle-point and – and taking a turn in the park and talking prettily about Mr Scott’s latest novel! Now we are so much more comfortably circumstanced ourselves, I believe Ross would sometimes have me more genteel; but I am as I was born and it is too late to change.’
‘I’m relieved to know it,’ said Caroline.
II
The evening was almost over. The great spread of cakes and buns had been swept clean, the ale casks emptied, the trestles and the tables stacked against an old mine wall until they could be carried down in the light of day. The fire, occasionally replenished by spitting fir branches or a spar of driftwood, had died down till it was a mass of charred embers. Most of the potatoes had been roasted (three-quarters hauled impatiently out too soon and eaten, with many a gasp and cry at their heat, half raw). The old people and the children and the gentry had gone to bed. But a few of the young, of those in their teens and early twenties, stayed squatting on their haunches around the ruins of the fire with the last few potatoes. And others wandered arm in arm in the gathering dark: lovers, courting couples, or a man and a girl responding to a momentary attraction. Not of course among the more respectable, not among the Methodists, and not of course any whose movements had not been closely observed by one or other of the elders, with a nod and whisper and sly nudge. It would be about the village tomorrow that Nellie Bunt was no better than she should be, or that Will Parsons was stepping out at last, or that if Katie Carter thought she was going to do any good for herself with Music Thomas she should think again.
Among those resolute to see the new day in were Jeremy’s and Clowance’s friends. Jeremy after a few pints of ale had a sudden sickening resurgence of the memory of his last meeting with Cuby and would willingly have tramped off to bed, but the others, laughing and joking, jollied him along. Horrie Treneglos had taken up Daisy’s suggestion, and after a while they found themselves outside the lychgate of Sawle Church. They sat outside for a while on the grass telling each other ghost stories and generally getting themselves into a mood more suitable for All Hallows than Midsummer Day. From where they squatted the square leaning tower of the church was scarcely visible against the darkness settled upon the land, but seawards the short night was indigo and cobalt, the stars faint and withdrawn.
They had to some extent paired off. Ben was in his seventh heaven, having companioned Clowance all night; and she had been warmer towards him than ever before, in a way that suggested a greater awareness of him as a man. Jeremy was with Daisy, and Daisy was making progress. The hurt and the ale and the long sadness were twisting his attentions towards this vivacious girl who he could see was offering herself to him if he would but make the first move. Horrie Treneglos was with Letitia Pope, the plain one, but he didn’t seem to mind. Paul Kellow was with Maud, the pretty one. Paul, with his air of being so much one of the landed gentry – which he was not – had bribed the groom handsomely to wait at the gates of Trevaunance House ‘to escort his charges home’. Agneta Treneglos was with the son of her father’s bailiff. The two younger brothers had disappeared with two of the village girls.
Nobody knew the time but nobody cared. Paul was enjoying himself making Maud’s flesh creep, and to that end edged her into the churchyard, where they sat on a grassy grave and he whispered a horrible story to her. She pushed him away but, after laughter, claimed that she had not been made afraid by the story, only that his lips moving against her cheek tickled her. The others wanted to hear the story and presently they were sitting on other gravestones, chatting and whispering together.
Ben said to Clowance: ‘I don’t really b’lieve these here old tales about rottin’ corpses coming to life. I’m not that convinced there’s even going to be another world after we d’die, but if there be, twill be well removed from this. I don’t reckon graves will ever open.’
‘You’re an unbeliever, Ben. Yet it was you, was it not, who told that on Midsummer Eve the souls of everyone will leave their bodies and wander to the places where they are going to die?’
‘I told of it. Tis not to say I believe ‘n. Any more than Miss Daisy’s story of apparitions entering the church porch showing who’s to die during the year. Old wives’ tales, I d’truly b’lieve. Do you think aught of them?’
Clowance said: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’
‘What do that mean?’
‘It’s from a play I learned at school, Ben
. The girls all got it off and misquoted it disgracefully.’
After a pause he said: ‘I’ve never asked; did you like your time in London?’
‘Well enough. But there is no air to breathe. And too many people to breathe it. And too many houses, too many shops, too many carts and wagons and horses and – oh, everything.’
‘Should you like to live there?’
‘It is all so strange,’ Clowance said. ‘Folk do not really drink milk in London – it is used in tea and coffee and the like but in such small quantities. The milkmaids come early in the morning. They carry a yoke to fit their shoulders and ring at every door with their measures of milk and cream. But even though you are wakened you do not get up early; no one seems to stir until ten, and even then there is little movement in the house. It is three or four in the afternoon before the gentlefolk bestir themselves in earnest – and then it goes on until the early hours of the next morning.’
‘Tis turning night into day,’ said Ben.
‘Well, yes, when there is any day. I was there in the coldest time, of course, and all the fires going created a great cloud over everything. Sometimes at midday you can hardly see to the end of the street, and if the sun chances to come through it is yellow like a transparent guinea. Soot floats in the air and your clothes are all dirty in no time.’
‘I think you’re better at Nampara,’ Ben said.
Clowance yawned. ‘I’m not sure what I think – except that I am sleepy, that’s what I think. Soon I’ll be snoring like an owl. Yet I won’t go to bed till dawn. How long do you think?’
‘Maybe an hour,’ said Ben with pleasure. ‘Maybe two before sun up. But it is at its darkest now.’
Jeremy was sitting crosslegged on another distant mound, listening to Daisy who was giving a light-hearted account of a party she had been to in Redruth where all the guests had dressed up as animals. Jeremy and Daisy were separated from the rest of the group by a tall rectangular headstone erected in the year of Trafalgar to the memory of Sir John Trevaunance; they were in fact nearest to the overgrown path which led to the church. The darkness and the isolation and the enchantment of the moment were taking hold of the young man. Daisy was in white, with a trailing lawn mantle over a light wool dress, which gave her an ethereal quality. Even in the dark her brilliant eyes picked up some gleam, her face a slender oval, her voice light and pretty and full of fun. So much better-looking than Cuby. So much more versatile, vivacious, animated. To hell with Cuby!
The Stranger from the Sea: A Novel of Cornwall, 1810-1811 Page 31
