The Angry Tide

by Winston Graham

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it won’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I spoke.’

  ‘No matter. I’ve stopped grieving already, and am just getting excited. After just one day. And I don’t think that’s a nice way for human nature to operate either!’

  They broke their fast early next morning, crossed the Tamar by the ferry at Torpoint and dined in Plymouth. Tea was at Ivybridge and they slept at Ashburton, having covered almost exactly the same mileage as the day before, though this all by coach. Everybody was very tired, and Demelza could hardly keep awake over supper.

  ‘You see why I travel sometimes by sea,’ Ross said. ‘But it improves a little from now on. The roads are better and the hills fewer.’

  The coach held eight inside. Sometimes it was uncomfortably crowded, sometimes half empty, as passengers left and joined. The only other making the full trip to London were Mr and Mrs Carne from Falmouth, he being that banker Ross had threatened to go to with his friends if the Basset, Rogers bank would not accommodate Harris Pascoe. Mr Carne had heard of Ross’s becoming himself a partner and talked banking a good deal of the time, most of it over Ross’s head. To divert him, Ross told him that his wife’s name had been Carne before she married; but they seemed to be unable to establish any relationship.

  The third night they slept at Bridgwater, having dined at Cullompton and taken tea at Taunton. Demelza realized now what Caroline meant when she said that Cornwall was a barren land. Here there were great trees, great belts of woodland everywhere, trees that made even the wooded parts of south Cornwall look puny and dwarf. The fields were so rich, the colorations of the soil always changing but always lush. There were more birds, more butterflies, more bees. And unfortunately more flies and wasps. She had never seen so many. It was a warm September, and apart from the jogging of the coach the heat was oppressive, for if a window were lowered somebody always complained of the draught. To make matters worse, one of the horses went lame on a stage on the fourth day and they were very late arriving in Marlborough.

  The fifth day had to be a dawn start nevertheless, for they were due in London that evening. The road now was the best they had been on, the day was cooler but bright and sunny, and they reached Maidenhead for dinner after a spanking run. The food was good here: a neck of boiled veal and a roast fowl and a rather heavy but seductive wine; Demelza dozed away the afternoon and traversed the dreaded Hounslow Heath without even noticing it. Ross told her that the only highwaymen to be seen were the unsuccessful ones hanging from the gibbets as a warning to the rest.

  Great bustle in Hounslow – the hub of the western exits from London; the innkeeper told them that five hundred coaches passed through daily and that upwards of eight hundred horses were regularly maintained here. Ross had never heard this before. As always, he learned more on a journey with Demelza than when travelling alone.

  So the last ten miles to the city of which recently she had heard and thought so much. The last afternoon before leaving she had paid one of her regular visits to the Paynters to give Prudie a little money for herself, and Prudie had been appalled at the thought of such a journey and of what waited at the other end. ‘They d’say tis much bigger ’n Truro,’ she had muttered.

  The first thing to be seen of the town bigger than Truro was the smoke. It lay low down on the horizon like a dirty fog.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Ross. ‘That’s only the lime kilns and the brickworks. It will be better beyond.’

  The coach entered an area as desolate as any mining district in Cornwall. Amid the smoking brickfields thin sheep browsed and pigs rooted, trying to find something green among the poisoned vegetation. Enormous dumps of refuse bordered the road, some of them also smouldering like half-extinct volcanoes, others sprawling in miniature foothills, where the waste and the refuse were being picked over by beggars and ragged children with scrofulous faces.

  Houses met them and closed round them, sprawling, jumbled, leaning as if about to fall down. Some had, and men were at work rebuilding them. More fields, then a broader, cleaner part, with a few good buildings merging into older, more harshly cobbled streets, with dives and alleys leading off, in which children and slatternly women and mangy cats roamed. By now dusk was coming on but the evening was very warm and in one street women were sitting out of doors on stools in their linsey-woolsey petticoats and worsted stockings, their leather stays half laced and black with dirt. Some were occupied stitching coarse cloth, but many did nothing but sit and yawn. They shouted obscenely as the coach passed and aimed bad oranges at the coachman. Bundles, supposedly human, lay drunk or dead, and children ran after the coach screaming. At last they reached a well-paved area, but this had higher paved ridges traversing the streets where pedestrians might cross, so that the coach bumped and lurched as it went over them.

  So to the Thames. The windows of the coach, which had been tight closed to keep out the smells, were opened to let in better air. The river seemed to have a thousand small boats on it. People being ferried here and there. Ten-oared barges. Sailing ships tacked and luffed, in some amazing fashion not colliding with each other. A forest of masts further down, and a great dome. ‘St Paul’s,’ Ross said.

  As they crossed a bridge the lights were going on. Linkboys were rushing around lighting the three- and four-branched lamps which hung from posts in the streets. It became a sudden fairyland. All the squalor and the dirt and the stenches were swallowed up by the evening dark and the opaque light cast on the streets from these crystal globes. The coach bumped and rattled through fine streets now, but hardly able to get along for the press of traffic. They jolted briefly between a coffin on an open cart and a gilded carriage in which sat a solitary woman with an ostrich-feathered head-dress. A brewer’s dray, with great barrels swaying and a half dozen ragged boys clinging, followed soldiers marching, while a group of extravagantly dressed riders tried to edge their mounts through the throng.

  The coach stopped for a long time to allow Mr and Mrs Carne to alight. There were polite expressions of gratification on all sides at the pleasure experienced in each other’s company over five days, the Carnes’ bags were unloaded and at last the coach was off again, edging its way slowly on to a wide street called the Strand. They came once more to a stop.

  ‘We are here,’ said Ross. ‘At last. Just down this street, if you can walk after so long a-sitting. The coachman will bring our bags down.’

  III

  The rooms were nice and spacious, better than Demelza had expected after the cramped inns in which they had slept, and Mrs Parkins, a handsome, bespectacled woman, did everything to oblige.

  They had done seventy-five miles on the last day and in spite of their abounding good health they were ready for bed and slept late next morning. Used to the boisterous arrival of her children each day soon after dawn, Demelza was startled and appalled to raise her head off the pillow and to see by the marble clock on the mantelshelf that it was nearly ten. Ross was part dressed and washing.

  ‘Judas! Why didn’t you wake me, Ross?’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t alarm yourself. Mrs Parkins is used to serving breakfast at ten. I seldom rise early myself in London.’

  ‘No wonder you look tired when you come home.’

  ‘Tired for sleeping late?’

  ‘And bedding late, I suspect. It is the wrong hours to sleep.’

  ‘Do you want your nightdress?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Come and fetch it, then.’

  ‘No.’

  He began to shave.

  ‘What is that, Ross?’

  ‘What? Oh, this. It is an improved washstand. Did you not see one at Tehidy? But this one has compartments for soap balls and razors. You will be able to admire it when you get up.’

  ‘Does Mrs Parkin bring the water?’

  ‘A maid does. There is a tap in the house.’

  ‘A tap? You mean like a barrel?’

  ‘Yes. But water runs through wooden pipes from cisterns higher in the tow
n, so you can draw what you will.’

  ‘Can you drink it?’

  ‘I have done, and come to no harm. No doubt you found last night that there is always a bucket of water too in the Jericho down the passage. As well as one of sand. It’s the best indoor system I have come across.’

  ‘Last night I was too tired to take much notice of anything.’

  ‘When I undressed you,’ he said, ‘you felt like a long-legged, cool kitten, slightly damp with sweat.’

  ‘It sounds some awful.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t, if you can recollect that much.’

  ‘I can recollect that much.’

  There was a pause while she yawned and ran fingers through her hair.

  ‘A gentleman would fetch my nightdress,’ she said.

  ‘It depends on the gentleman.’

  ‘I told you before. You’ve been keeping bad company in London.’

  ‘Not till last night.’

  He finished shaving in silence and tipped the water away into the other bucket. She was sitting up now, a sheet under her arms.

  ‘It’s not nice in the mornings, Ross.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Nakedness.’

  ‘Opinions differ.’

  ‘No, you don’t look nice in the daylight . . .’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No, I mean I don’t. We don’t. One doesn’t.’

  ‘Well, make up your mind.’ He was putting on his shirt now.

  ‘One doesn’t look nice in the daylight,’ Demelza said. ‘At least, not as nice as one hopes one looks at night, by candle.’

  ‘I think two look better than one,’ Ross said. ‘Always have.’

  A knife-grinder outside was shouting and ringing his bell, and someone was ringing a competing bell and offering to repair broken chairs.

  ‘I thought this was a quiet street,’ Demelza said.

  ‘So it is, compared to most. You’ll be late for breakfast if you don’t bestir yourself. Not that it’s much to miss. Milky tea with thick bread and butter. I intended to have brought some jam.’

  Cautiously she eased herself out of bed, pulling at the sheet so that it came with her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her and advanced on her with mischief in mind as part of her back and legs became exposed. She dodged quickly but one corner of the sheet held firm and tripped her. She went to the floor with a thump. He knelt beside her as she rolled herself defiantly into a cocoon, the sheet ripping as he did so. He caught her and held her, laughing.

  ‘No, Ross! Don’t!’

  ‘I’m m-married to a m-m-mummy,’ he said, laughing uncontrollably. ‘An Eg-egyptian mummy. They look – look just like you, only they haven’t got so much h-h-hair! . . .’

  She glared at him from among her mane. She was so tight-wrapped around that she could not even get a hand free to hit him. Her hair lay in a tangle about her face. Then she saw the funny side and began to laugh too. She laughed up at him with all her heart and soul. He lay on top of her and laughed and laughed. Their bodies shook the floor.

  Presently it had to come to an end and they lay exhausted. He put up a weak hand to clear her hair away from her face. His tears were on her cheeks. Then he kissed her. Then the strength came back to his hands and he began to unwind her.

  At this point there was a knock on the door. Ross got up and opened it.

  ‘Please, sir,’ it was one of the maids. ‘If you please, sir, Mrs Parkins says to say breakfast be ready and waiting.’

  ‘Tell Mrs Parkins,’ said Ross, ‘that we shall be down in an hour.’

  Chapter Three

  I

  A first five days in London of unalloyed happiness. The city was a treasure trove into which Demelza dipped unceasingly, not put off by the squalid and the degrading, though often offended by it. At the bottom of George Street was one of the many landing-stages marked by twin striped poles where you could get a ferryman in red and blue breeches and a red cap to take you anywhere. It was sixpence each to Westminster and the same to St Paul’s, where the great church seemed more monstrous in size and more impressive even than the Abbey, though it was disfigured by the conglomerate of sordid, tumbledown houses girdling it, by butchers’ shops where stinking offal was thrown into the street, and by the omnipresent stench of the Fleet Ditch.

  The weather was still fine and sunny, and one day they took chairs to Paddington and then walked east towards Islington, with the hills to the north and all the city straggling southward. They went to Vauxhall Gardens and to Ranelagh, and called on Caroline at her aunt’s house in Hatton Garden. Dwight was expected on the morrow, and Caroline was full of the reception that was to be held at Mrs Tracey’s on the evening of the twenty-fourth. Seeing her so engaged, Ross wondered whether she would ever altogether settle as the wife of a remote country doctor. Yet he remembered coming to this house years ago, when Caroline and Dwight had apparently broken up for ever, and how wan and listless she had been. And there was the time of Dwight’s imprisonment when she had seemed only to live from day to day. She needed Dwight, there seemed no doubt. But she also needed a stimulus in her life, a social round, or a mission of some sort.

  For her evenings out Demelza had brought the evening gown that she had had made for her in those early days of her married life, and the other frock she had bought for Caroline’s own wedding three years ago, and which she had scarcely worn. Caroline gently shook her head. It might be the perfect thing for Cornwall still, but it wouldn’t do for the London season in 1799. Fashions had changed. Everything was of the simplest, finest, slightest. (‘So I notice,’ Demelza said.) Waists were high, almost under the armpit, both for day and for evening. Neck and bust were much exposed but could be hidden or part hidden in a veil of chiffon. Ostrich feathers in the hair, or a few pearls. Demelza said, how interesting, and why do so many people wear spectacles in London? Perhaps they live more in artificial light, said Caroline; but then of course it is rather the fashion. I think, Demelza said, folk would walk on crutches in London if someone said it was the fashion. I have no doubt you’re right, said Caroline. In any case, said Demelza, there would be no time for anything to be made for me by tomorrow evening; but aside from that we could not afford, I should not wish to afford, London prices.

  ‘I’ll take you to my shop, Phillips & ffossick. Mrs Phillips has a number of gowns half made that can be altered and finished in four-and-twenty hours. As for payment, it can go on my account. I pay yearly, and you can reimburse me if and when you have the fancy.’

  ‘It seems to cost even to breathe in London,’ Demelza said.

  ‘Well, what is money for but to spend? We’ll ask Ross, but only after we’ve spent it.’

  ‘I hope I can understand what your Mrs Phillips says,’ said Demelza, weakening. ‘I often don’t follow what the ordinary people say. It is almost like a foreign language.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. You’ll find Mrs Phillips excessively genteel.’

  ‘That also,’ Demelza said, ‘I do not so much fancy.’

  But she went, like the moth to the flame. Shades of long ago when Verity had first taken her into Mistress Trelask’s . . . The homely little seamstress’s shop in Truro with a bell that tinged when you entered and you nearly fell down the two dark steps. This was a salon, though not large; just well-bred and discreet. You sat in a place like a drawing-room, with silk drapes and lawn curtains and lush gilt chairs; and a woman who looked like a countess who had fallen on hard times brought out a succession of gowns, each one presented and considered separately before being hidden away again before the drawing-room could begin to look untidy.

  After rejecting three on the grounds of indecency she took to one of a fetching peach-coloured satin, which not only happened to be an opaque material but of a fractionally more discreet design. Before price could be discussed it was arranged that the gown should be finished and delivered to No. 6 George Street ‘at this hour tomorrow’, and that the account should in due course be presented to Mrs Enys.
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  ‘I feel like a wanton,’ Demelza said as they came out into the noisy street.

  ‘That’s just what you must try to look like,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s the ambition of all respectable women.’

  ‘And the wantons try to look respectable?’

  ‘Well, not that always neither. Now I must fly, for there’s much still to do, and Dwight should be with me this evening. Get this chair . . . I’ll see you into it and then we’ll meet tomorrow in the forenoon.’

  The 24th of September was a Tuesday, and day broke with a light rain falling. Demelza looked out to see umbrellas passing up and down the street below and to see the patten woman bringing back the shoes she had been cleaning overnight. But by eleven the clouds had split open and a hazy sun, much obscured by drifting smoke, peered through. The cobbles were soon drying. Caroline and Dwight and Demelza saw the royal procession from seats in Whitehall, the gold coaches, the bands, the regiments, the prancing life-guards. Because of the successes of both the army and the navy a new wave of patriotism was sweeping Britain, and the old king was cheered the length of the street.

  The reception at Portland Place was to start at nine, and there was some talk that the Prince of Wales himself might be there. Ross had ordered a coach for nine-fifteen, which to Demelza’s idea was far too late but he would not alter it. She began to get ready at eight, and eventually slipped into her new gown at a quarter before nine.

  When Ross turned round and saw it he said: ‘That is very pretty. But where is the gown?’

  ‘This is it! This is what I have bought!’

  ‘That’s a petticoat.’

  ‘Oh, Ross, you are provoking! You know well it is nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Would you wish me to go in my shirt and underbreeches?’

  ‘No, no, you must not tease! I need confidence, not – not . . .’

  ‘Port will give you that.’

  She grimaced at him. ‘And this is for my hair,’ she said, showing him the feather.

  ‘Well, I don’t know what your father would say if he could see you.’