‘It’s Eliza Dunn. She’s pregnant.’
‘That should come as no surprise to anyone. What has it to do with Annie and me?’
‘People around here believe you’re the one responsible,’ Polly blurted out.
‘Me!’ Perys could not hide his astonishment. ‘But . . . you know that’s not true, Polly. It was you who told me of what she had been up to - and with whom - long before I first came to Heligan.’
‘I know, sir. I told Annie so, but it seems . . .’
She hesitated and Perys prompted, ‘It seems what, Polly?’
Reluctantly, Polly said, ‘Annie heard that Eliza had been spreading a rumour that you were the father of her baby. She was going to go down to Mevagissey to stop Eliza telling such lies, but then her pa told her they probably weren’t lies, because . . .’ She faltered once more before saying, in a rush, ‘He’d seen you and Eliza kissing.’
‘He’d seen what? When is this supposed to have happened, Polly?’
‘On your last day here. The same day you, me, Martin and Annie all walked back from Tregassick. Annie’s pa also said he thought you’d given Eliza some money.’
Memories of the meeting with Eliza came back to Perys. He was horrified, but it was important to set the record straight with Polly, at least.
‘Annie’s father jumped to some very wrong conclusions, Polly. It’s true I did meet with Eliza. I also gave her something she had asked me to get for her - she asked for it on the day she waylaid me, when Martin saw us together. As for the kiss . . . She kissed me, Polly. I think it was a thank you kiss, and it surprised me as much as it must have surprised Annie’s father. As for her saying I am the father of the child she’s expecting, it’s a blatant lie, and one I will have Eliza put a stop to right away.’ Angrily, he turned away, but almost immediately swung back to confront the servant girl once more. ‘Do you believe I have told you the truth, Polly?’
She hesitated for only a moment. ‘Yes. Yes, I do. I told Annie so. I also told her what you once said to me, that you’d never ever do anything to hurt her.’
‘And what did she say to that, Polly?’
‘She said that only made it worse. I think she wanted to believe you, but she knew her father wouldn’t lie to her about something like that.’
‘No, Polly, I don’t think he would either, but he read far more into what he thought he saw than what actually happened. I’ll go and have a word with him once I have spoken to Eliza.’
Chapter 32
When Perys set off from Heligan on his motor-cycle he was feeling angrier than he could ever remember. It was not a blind, hot fury, but cold, controlled anger, focused upon one person - Eliza Dunn.
Arriving at the path that led to Heligan Mill, he left his motor-cycle in the same place as before. Then, remembering the last time he was here, he checked the hay-filled barn where Eliza had enjoyed a liaison with the Heligan gamekeeper.
There was no one there today. Perys guessed that the gamekeeper and other of Eliza’s lovers would be keeping their distance lest any breath of scandal should link them with her present condition.
Leaving the barn he saw Eliza approaching along the path from the mill. As she neared, her pregnant state was quite evident.
She had been looking down at the path as she walked, seemingly deep in thought. She did not look up until she neared the barn.
Seeing Perys she at first appeared startled. Recovering quickly, she smiled disarmingly at him. ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise! Is this a chance meeting, or do you have something particular in mind?’ As she spoke she glanced meaningfully towards the hay barn.
Perys thought she looked desperately tired, but was not in a mood to feel sorry for her. ‘Don’t play games with me, Eliza. You have done quite enough of that. I am here to speak to you about the rumours you have been spreading about me and your baby.’
‘I haven’t spread no rumours,’ Eliza said, defensively. ‘If people want to talk about me then that’s their business. I’m just not bothered.’
‘Then you had better start bothering yourself and ensure that everyone in Mevagissey and beyond knows that I am not the father of the baby you’re carrying. What’s more, you’ll inform them that I have never had anything to do with you.’
‘I don’t see why I should!’ Eliza spoke defiantly. ‘I’m not asking anything of you. Anyway, if what I hear is right, you’ll soon be away from here for good, so it won’t matter what they say about you.’ Suddenly and shrewdly, she added, for is it because the rumours are upsetting someone else? Annie Bray, perhaps?’
‘They are upsetting me, so I suggest you start denying them right away.’
‘And if I don’t?’ Eliza demanded. ‘What will you do about it? Go round telling everyone you’ve nothing to do with this . . . ?’ Patting her bulging stomach, she said, scornfully, ‘That’s what they’d expect you to say - they’ll be even more convinced it’s yours.’
‘I won’t go around denying anything,’ declared Perys. ‘I shall first of all go to speak to the wife of the Heligan gamekeeper and tell her what I witnessed between you and her husband the last time I was here. Then I shall write to my cousin Edward and tell him what I know.’
Eliza paled. The gamekeeper’s wife was a large, loud woman, prone to violence, especially against her husband. But her real fear was that Perys would give Edward grounds to absolve himself of any responsibility for the child she was expecting.
Suddenly, her eyes opened wide with fear, but it had nothing to do with the threats Perys had just made. Following her gaze, Perys swung around and saw a giant of a young man hurrying towards them. He was quite obviously angry and his anger appeared to be directed at Perys.
‘What are you doing here with Eliza?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t you caused her enough grief?’
‘It’s all right, Esau, he’s not bothering me,’ Eliza spoke hurriedly, in an attempt to calm him.
‘You would say that, Eliza. You don’t like getting anyone into trouble, but he’s got to learn to leave you alone.’
Perys realised from Esau’s manner and speech that the other man was simple, but Perys had met with Eliza for a purpose. Before parting from her he intended that she should be in no doubt about the seriousness of his threat.
‘Esau . . . is that your name? Look, be a good chap and leave us for a few minutes until I have finished talking to Eliza, then you can be the first to hear what she has to say.’
‘Oh no, I’m not going to leave you alone with her.’
Perys sighed. ‘Please tell him, Eliza.’
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Eliza’s eyes filled with tears. It had an immediate effect upon Esau. Rounding on Perys, he said, angrily, ‘Now your bullying has made her cry. I told you- ’
He swung a punch at Perys that would have pole-axed a bullock, but Perys ducked and it went harmlessly over his head.
‘That’s enough, Esau, I have no quarrel with you.’
Instead of replying, Esau swung another wild punch. This time Perys only just succeeded in avoiding it.
‘Don’t push me too hard, Esau. Stop right there-’
Another punch was thrown, and this time it brushed Perys’s ear in passing. He decided it was time to end the fight before one of Esau’s great fists found its target. Stepping inside Esau’s next wild swing, Perys landed two heavy punches to the big man’s stomach. As he folded forward, Perys landed an uppercut that caused the man to stagger backwards and sit down heavily upon the path.
Eliza’s scream galvanised Esau into life. Scrambling to his feet, he lunged at Perys once more.
The big man took two punches to the jaw, one of which caused him to bite his lip, which immediately began to bleed profusely. Then he was on the ground again and Perys appealed to Eliza.
‘Tell him! Tell him the baby has nothing to do with me, before he gets badly hurt.’
Eliza acted swiftly. Dropping down beside Esau, she wrapped her arms about him, saying, ‘No more, Esau. The baby is nothing to do
with him. I swear he’s never had anything to do with me. Never ever.’
Her words seemed to have the desired effect. Esau made no move to rise. Instead, he put a hand up to his mouth. When he took it away he looked stupidly at the blood staining his fingers.
‘Oh, my poor love!’ Producing a handkerchief, Eliza held it to Esau’s mouth. Looking up at Perys, she said, ‘You can go now. I’ll do what you ask.’
‘If you’d said so earlier none of this would have been necessary.’ Nodding his head in the direction of the bleeding man, he added, ‘Take good care of him, Eliza, there can’t be many men around Mevagissey willing to fight for you.’
* * *
Perys waited for nightfall before going to Tregassick Farm. He wanted to be certain of finding Walter Bray at home.
He arrived while husband and wife were eating their evening meal. Harriet tried to use this as an excuse for not inviting him inside the farmhouse, but Perys insisted that what he had to say would not wait until the next day.
In the kitchen, Walter was still eating when Perys entered. Declining Harriet's half-hearted offer of a cup of tea, he said, ‘No, thank you - and please, finish your meal, Mrs Bray. I am sorry to have interrupted you in such a fashion, but it concerns a matter that is very important to me-’
Harriet sat down at the kitchen table and began picking at her meal in a desultory fashion, Perys ignored the chair pulled out for him by Walter. Instead, he stood where they could both look at him while they ate.
‘When I was staying at Heligan in the summer you made me very welcome here. I became very fond of you. I also became more than just fond of Annie - and I told her so. To be perfectly honest with you, she is the reason I have returned to Heligan. It was a great shock to me when I came to Tregassick yesterday and learned that Annie had an understanding with someone else and had gone off to stay with his family. I was also puzzled, Mrs Bray. You made it quite obvious that I was no longer welcome at your farm and I couldn’t understand why.’
Harriet offered a mild protest, but Perys ignored it.
‘When Polly explained what it was you believed about me, I realised why you had behaved in such a way. But you are wrong, you know.’
When neither the farmer nor his wife replied and avoided looking directly at him, Perys said, ‘I went to Mevagissey today and confronted Eliza with what was being said about me. Unfortunately, someone named Esau came upon the scene to take Eliza’s part. I was forced to knock him down. I am sorry about that, but there was nothing else I could do at the time.’
Walter stopped with a fork poised halfway between plate and mouth. ‘You knocked down Esau? Esau Tamblyn? Why, he’s nigh on twice your size.’
‘He’s twice the size of most men I know,’ Perys agreed, ‘but what I did served its purpose. In order to prevent him from taking matters any farther, Eliza admitted to him that I have nothing at all to do with the baby she’s carrying. I hope that by now she will have said the same thing to a great many more of her neighbours in Mevagissey. The baby she is having is nothing at all to do with me. Indeed, I hardly know the girl.’
Harriet threw a quick glance at her husband and, correctly interpreting the significance of the look, Perys said, ‘Now I have made certain Eliza puts the record straight in the village, I wanted to come here to do the same - and to explain what it was you thought you saw, Mr Bray.’
Looking ill-at-ease, Walter said, ‘It wasn’t what I thought I saw, Master Perys. I was up in the field by the path to Heligan Mill when you kissed young Eliza Dunn.’
‘You did not see me kissing Eliza. What you saw was Eliza kissing me - and there is a difference. A big difference. She had stopped me in the driveway to Heligan a few days before and asked if I would get something for her, something that could only be got from the house. That was the day Martin saw us talking. I did what she asked and when you saw me I had just handed it to her. I suppose that kissing me was her way of saying thank you. Whatever the reason, it surprised me just as much as it must have shocked you.’
Walter was an honest man. When he thought about what Perys had just said, he knew the young man was telling the truth about who kissed who.
‘If I got the wrong impression, I can only say I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘But what with that and Eliza going about telling everyone about you and her . . .’
‘Eliza will be going about putting everyone right as quickly as she can,’ Perys said, tight-lipped. ‘The most important thing to me is that you know the truth - you, Mrs Bray and Annie. Especially Annie. I have had nothing to do with Eliza, nor would I. Had she not asked me for a favour I doubt if I would ever have met the girl again after speaking to her in the Heligan driveway. And believe me, I sincerely wish I never had.’
Satisfied he had put the record straight with Walter and Harriet, Perys still had another matter he wished to resolve.
‘Do you know when Annie will be returning to Tregassick?’
‘No,’ Harriet said. ‘It could be a week or so, or it might not be until Christmas.’
Her reply was not what Perys had wanted to hear, but he had one more question to ask - and it was the one most important of all to him.
‘Do you really believe she will marry this farmer’s son?’
Perys had convinced the farmer and his wife that he was not responsible for Eliza’s condition and had not lied to either them or Annie, but he still belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic land-owning family. Such young men did not contemplate marriage with daughters of small time tenant farmers. It was Walter who replied to this question.
‘I very much hope so. They’re made for each other. Our Annie has been brought up the way a farmer’s wife should. They’ve got our blessing and his folk feel the same way.’
Watching from the farmhouse doorway as the dejected figure walked to where he had left his motor-cycle, Harriet said, ‘I feel sorry for the lad, Walter. He’s a nice young man.’
‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ Walter agreed, ‘but the future of our Annie will be more secure with Jimmy Rowe.’
Chapter 33
At the Rowe farm, a letter from her mother reached Annie the day after Jimmy had left for France. Aware that Perys was at Heligan, Annie had decided to stay on at the farm with her childhood friend for a while longer. She did not feel able to cope with meeting Perys again just yet.
The letter threw her into a state of confusion. Harriet Bray had received very little schooling, and although the letter had been a laborious task for her, it did not make it clear to Annie what was happening at Tregassick.
It did, however, inform her that Perys had called at the farm and that Eliza had now admitted that she and Perys had never been lovers.
In view of what her father claimed to have seen, Annie was extremely confused. She was also distressed. Jimmy Rowe had left the previous day to rejoin his regiment, the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, and was expected to embark for France almost immediately. Before his departure, it was evident that he firmly believed he and Annie had an unspoken agreement about a future together. Jimmy’s parents thought so too. They spoke openly of having Annie return to stay at the Rowe farm in the event of Jimmy coming home on leave at any time.
Jimmy’s mother had also pointed out an empty farm cottage as being a place where the parents would one day live when Jimmy took over the running of the farm and he and Annie occupied the farmhouse.
Annie was not happy with such an assumption of her future role as the wife of Jimmy. She knew she should have put the record straight immediately, but was reluctant to cause Jimmy distress on the eve of his departure to war. There would be a more suitable opportunity to enlighten him on his return.
The letter from her mother only added to her confusion. Although it failed to make anything entirely clear, Annie believed her mother was equally uncertain about the present course of events. Had it not been so, she would have made no mention of Perys’s visit to Tregassick, or Eliza’s denial that he was the father of her unborn child. Such news
could have waited until Annie’s return.
Having said her farewells to the Rowe family, Annie walked to the nearby small harbour town of Fowey with the intention of travelling as far as St Austell on the motor-bus service that had recently begun to operate between the two towns.
However, once in Fowey, she recognised a fishing boat unloading at the town quay as being from Mevagissey. She knew a couple of the men on board and was able to take passage on the boat for a much quicker journey to the fishing village.
On the way she chatted with the crewmen and elicited the surprising news that Eliza Dunn and Esau Tamblyn were likely to be married before her baby was born.
‘Does that mean that he’s the father?’ Annie asked, incredulously.
‘It means he thinks he is,’ said the skipper of the fishing boat, ‘but then, so do many others. The difference between them is that only poor Esau is simple enough to want to marry her.’
‘I wonder if she’ll go through with it?’ Annie pondered aloud. ‘I was quite sure she was after a grander catch than a simple fisherman.’
‘Well, they do say that needs must when the Devil drives,’ the fisherman said. ‘Eliza won’t be the first to marry when she’s carrying someone else’s child.’ He suddenly chuckled, ‘There’ll be a lot of local men who’ll breathe a sigh of relief when Esau and Eliza walk out of church together.’
* * *
Annie’s return to Tregassick took her father by surprise. He had come in to the house from the cold of the farmyard to warm himself with a cup of tea before returning to his chores.
After Annie had kissed and hugged both parents and told them of her means of transport, Walter said, ‘You must have smelled the tea, girl. Sit yourself down and get warm. There’s a fresh wind blowing - you would have been frozen on a fishing boat from Fowey.’
‘No, I sat under cover most of the time, while Jack Henna told me what has been going on in Mevagissey. Most of the news concerned Eliza Dunn.’
Walter and Harriet exchanged glances and Harriet said, ‘That’s hardly surprising. She’s been the subject of a lot of talk up here, too.’
The Lost Years Page 16
