She stood up and moved away. Once before they had stood too close by a fire. ‘Of course it is true. This casual . . . acquaintance should never have begun. I am afraid I allowed Geoffrey Charles to get out of hand.’
‘Mebbe you allowed me to – to get out of hand.’
‘Yes,’ she said indistinctly, ‘Yes, I did. It was not at all proper. Please forgive me for having allowed it to happen, and now go.’
There was a long silence between them. She thought, if he doesn’t go, if he doesn’t go soon . . .
He said: ‘Morwenna, I’ll go if you’ll look at me when you tell me.’ He had come up behind her again.
She looked out on the courtyard of the house. The grass was now cut, the edges tidy, the old pump removed and a modern marble statue put in its place, but she saw none of this. Another impediment was at present added to her shortness of sight.
‘These months,’ said Drake. ‘These months I’ve thought of naught else. Working, eating, praying, sleeping, ye’ve never been absent. You’re everything in the world. Day and night. Sun and moon. Wi’out you tis nothing, nothing.’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you should go.’
‘Tell me, then. Look at me and tell me to go.’
‘I have told you.’
‘But not looking at me, so that I can see the truth in your eyes.’
‘The truth . . . Oh, what is that? I am just saying that you should leave me.’
‘And I cann’t believe the words till I know what’s in your heart.’
She half choked. ‘The heart, Drake? Do you suppose that this has anything to do with the heart? That is not the way the world works. But because we are in the world – of it – we have to keep to its – its rules and laws. If you don’t know that already, you must learn.’
‘That’s not what I’m waiting t’learn.’
‘It is all I can tell you.’
‘No . . . That’s not all, Morwenna. Just – just look at me. Just show me your heart and tell me to go.’
She hesitated and then turned, her eyes blind with tears.
‘Don’t go, Drake . . . At least, not just yet. Oh, Drake . . . please don’t go.’
Chapter Six
By the spring most of the larger houses were distributing corn, but their own supplies were scarcely more than enough for their own needs. Nor was it available to buy, even to people with the money to pay for it, for with the European ports closed against them, the ships could not import the grain. In London the death rate was higher than in any year since the Great Plague of 130 years ago. Many were ill in Sawle and Grambler of a strange digestive complaint that could have derived from an exclusive diet of underbaked barley bread and weak tea. Typhus still spread a little but something seemed to hold its hand, as if waiting for the better weather.
Undeterred by all the distress and by other calls on their time, Sam and Drake Carne and a dozen other men, in such little spare daylight as they had, had begun to clear a site at Wheal Maiden. Every day Ross regretted that he had encouraged them, but every day he had to admit a grudging admiration of their determination. A roster was kept and each man worked his specified number of hours. Sometimes passing by he heard them singing hymns as they worked. Sometimes the women worked. Sam had even succeeded in recruiting a few of the destitute miners from Wheal Leisure to give him a hand. Payment was in Heaven, except for the occasional cup of tea.
One day Ross had gone to see Caroline, who was now supporting six French émigrés at Killewarren, and Demelza had been trying to sow some hollyhock seeds, to replace those which had not survived the winter. Sir John Trevaunance had advised her that these were best started in boxes of sandy soil and planted out later. She was not far from the lilac tree beside the front door when she saw a man coming down the valley on a pony which was several sizes too small for him. As he clattered across the stream he took off a battered hat and raised it to her. She saw that his other hand – the hand which held the reins – was an iron hook.
‘Morning, Mrs. Morning, Ma’am.’ He was not quite sure of her position. ‘Be you Mrs Poldark?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Cap’n’s wife?’
She nodded. He smiled, showing a mouthful of decayed teeth, and stepped down. It was no more than a step. He was a very big man, middle-aged, hawk-faced despite a flattened nose. He had probably been handsome once, before the great disfiguring scar.
‘Be the Young Cap’n in?’
‘Do you mean Captain Ross Paldark? No, he’s from home.’
‘Ah . . . Well I’m glad to meet ye, ma’am. Me name’s Bartholomew Tregirls. The Cap’n will’ve spoke of me.’
She said, yes, yes, Ross had, but privately she could not remember much. An old companion of some sort who had sold them the pony . . .
Tholly soon enlightened her. Close friend of the old captain, Cap’n Joshua, friend and companion of Cap’n Ross when he was but a tacker; many’s the wild time they’d had together: line fishing, wrestling, rum-running, chasing the girls, gambling; all innocent, mind, but wild, wild in a sort of way. Towering over her – and she was not short – he told her this, while his ice-grey, canny eyes summed her up in a half-respectful, half-impudent fashion. Probably he had heard of her origins and was trying to discover from the expressions on her face whether Ross had married a saucy piece who would give as good as she got and would be out for a lark herself, or an ambitious climber who would be so careful of her new position that she would try to freeze his reminiscences to death.
Demelza nodded and smiled and said, yes, and no, and indeed, and fancy; while she made her own assessment. Then she invited him in to take tea. He was pleased at this, if not by the beverage offered, and followed her in and sat like a bear in the parlour, looked at askance by Jane Gimlett who brought in the tea. But he was still not quite sure where he stood, because his hostess did not quite fit into either of the expected patterns.
For her part Demelza summed him up as a dangerous man – because he looked to her like a man whose regard for person, law or property was conditioned only by his personal need. He looked a pirate.
Tregirls hitched up his green breeches, took up the cup and its saucer, and looked at them as if they were curiosities from another world and he wasn’t sure whether to bite them. Then he took a gulp of the contents.
‘I warned Cap’n Ross as I might come around these parts again, these parts being me own parts as you might say; born and bred in St Ann’s; and I’ve two children in the neighbourhood, I thought t’see something of ’em now I’m off of the sea for good. Lobb, my eldest, and Emma, my youngest. Not as there ain’t others about too, but I don’t acknowledge they.’ He set the cup down with a clack.
‘Ross will be that sorry to have missed you,’ Demelza said.
‘Oh, I’ll call ’gain, if you’ll allow. I’m not to be far away, and tis more or less permanent, I conject. I’m staying with Sally Chill-Off.’
‘With who?’
‘You know, her as keeps the kiddley in Sawle. Don’t say you don’t know the Widow Tregothnan.’
‘Oh, yes . . . we used to have – perhaps you remember Jud Paynter?’
‘Jud? That I do. Walks like a gelded bulldog—’
‘Well, he is there most nights when he has the money. I wonder you have not seen him.’
‘I only been there three days, mistress. Jud!’ Tholly leaned back and stretched out one leg. ‘That bring back the memories. My grandfather’s ghost, it do! And Prudie! Great lump of caff she were. Like a house. They played the old Cap’n up, I tell ye. The worms not got her neither?’
‘Not neither,’ said Demelza, sipping her tea.
‘I’ll never know where Jud picked her up. Came back one day wi’ she riding on a pony. The old Cap’n took her in. More’n I’d’ve done. Great cab of a woman.’ A hint of old strife moved in his voice.
‘She’s no smaller,’ said Demelza.
Tregirls hunched his shoulders and coughed. He said: ‘I got tissick. It come on
sudden and as sudden go.’ As he shifted in his seat, a thin bag round his waist rattled, and he grimaced and grinned. ‘Know what that be, ma’am? Bones of me arm and hand. Carry ’em everywhere, even in the bed. I been at sea eight year – two year a prisoner of the French – fightin’ here, fightin’ there. Killed more than I can count. And not a splinter, not a scratch. But this – ye see this?’ He indicated the puckered scar. ‘Done by a jealous father, just over the hill. And this—’ He held up the iron hook. ‘Crushed by a gangway, in port. Just coming alongside and they ran the gangway out, and my arm were in the way. Dangling it was when they pulled me clear. Surgeon had it off in a twink. Saw, saw through the bone; then the tar barrel. No time even to be properly drunk. Makes me sweat o’nights even now.’
‘It makes me sweat too,’ said Demelza politely.
Tregirls threw back his head and laughed. ‘Well, thank ye, mistress, for the kind thought. And why do I keep ’em? Ye don’t ask me what most folk ask me, why do I keep ’em?’
‘Why do you keep them?’
‘Ah, tis too late now to ask that question! But I’ll tell ye, whether or no.’ He hunched his shoulders against the next cough. ‘I’m not a praying man, not by no means. I says “God bless” when I wakes up and “Amen” when I lies down, that be all. But I reckon there’s somethin’ to it, and I reckon at the Last Trump, I’ll be in me grave, and they’ll jerk me out like I was a stranded fish, and what’ll I do if all me bones is not complete? Think you I want to go up to Heaven – or even down to Hell – with a hook for a hand? No, ma’am, not me, ma’am; so I carries the bones along wherever I goes, and I reckon they’ll be buried with me. When will Cap’n Ross be home?’
‘Not until after dinner.’
He got slowly up, bending his head like a man used to low ceilings. His whole frame seemed to dominate the room. ‘Thank ye, ma’am. Tell the young Cap’n I’ll be back, mebbe tomorrow, mebbe in a day or two.’
‘I will.’
She followed him to the door, where he blinked in the watery sunlight. His pouch rattled again. ‘Twas done less’n two year gone, but the bones’ve cleaned up like they was new. Stank a bit at first, but that’s all gone. Like to see them, would you?’
‘Next time,’ Demelza said.
He grinned at her, showing his ravaged teeth. ‘That were a fine horse I sold you.’
‘Pony.’
‘Well, call it what ye will, Cap’n Poldark got it dirt cheap. Would ye be having a fancy to buy a bull-pup? Finest pedigree. Finest for bull baiting. Three months old. Or a ferret? You need one.’
‘I’ll ask Captain Poldark,’ she said.
He strode over his small, ill-kept pony, put on his hat, took it off again to her, and then kicked the animal with one heel and they began to proceed slowly up the valley.
Demelza watched him until he was out of sight. Then she went in. Jane Gimlett was clearing the tea.
‘Who were that, ma’am?’ she said. ‘If tis not rude t’ask.’
‘A sort of a ghost,’ said Demelza. ‘I think . . . A sort of a ghost.’
Ross said: ‘My ivers.’ An expression she had only heard Prudie use before. ‘What did he want?’
‘To see you. Chiefly, I believe. Perhaps also to see me.’
‘You?’
‘Well, yes. To see what the Young Cap’n had married.’
He laughed. ‘Likely enough. I do not suppose he went away with a negative impression.’
‘I don’t know rightly what that means, Ross.’
‘Well, are you ever negative?’
‘I felt a small matter so this morning.’
‘Did you like him?’
She said quietly: ‘My husband’s friends are mine.’
‘That was not what I asked.’
‘You see? I am being negative.’
‘Not a bit. You’re being evasive, which is quite different.’
She thought about it. ‘Ross, last year two people came out of my past. This year, if one comes out of yours . . .’
‘Let’s hope he is not going to be as much trouble to us as Sam and Drake! . . . But it is typical of him that he has found a berth with Sally Chill-Off. I wondered, when I saw him last and he said he wanted to come home . . . But to find a warm widow who has been a widow too long, and one with a beer shop where he can make himself doubly useful – that is the perfect solution!’
‘And he is breeding bull-pups and ferrets and who knows what else besides.’
‘I believe you do not like him after all,’ Ross said, teasing her.
‘I do not think I altogether like having old bones rattled in my face to see if I will shiver.’
‘It is his way.’
‘With women?’
‘Perhaps. He has had many, and that as often as not blunts a man’s perceptions for women, for particular women, for the exceptional woman anyway. What did you talk of, when you had exhausted such raillery?’
‘His children. He has not seen them for I don’t know how many years.’
‘I do. It is thirteen. They were brought up in the poorhouse.’
‘He said his daughter worked for the surgeon.’
‘Yes, she’s a kitchen maid at Choake’s. She’s like him, tall and bold and good-looking. The rumour is that she has had one man after another; but I suppose she must somehow continue to keep it circumspect, as Polly Choake would not have her in the house if it were done too blatant. The boy is like his mother, small and quiet, married, with a brood of children; he works a tin stamp in Sawle Combe. When he left the poor house he was apprenticed to Jose, the farmer; but when he was seventeen he was convicted with another lad of stealing apples from Mr Trencrom’s orchard and sent to Bodmin for a month’s hard labour. But working on the treadmill ruptured him and so he has not been good for heavy work—’
‘Ruptured him?’
‘Yes. It is necessary on the wheel, you know, to take fifty steps a minute, and three hours a day, which is the usual, imposes a strain. It is not an uncommon thing to happen. But Lobb Tregirls has always since looked a man with a grudge against life, and I cannot see him welcoming his father back after so many years of neglect.’
A screech owl was squealing by the stream in the evening rain. Ross said: ‘Did Tregirls say he had been a prisoner of the French? I wonder if he speaks the language.’
‘He only tried his own on me – which in a way, Ross, was sufficient. But why do you ask?’
‘This venture.’
‘Ah . . . what has been decided?’
‘How did you know anything had been?’
‘By the length of time you were there. And by your face when you came home.’
He laughed briefly. ‘More by the second than the first, I would suppose. Talk is cheap, and there has been enough of it these last months.’
‘But now it is to mean something?’
‘It would seem so. The Government has agreed to finance the expedition and to provide it with transports and a covering force of British warships. The French when landed will be under Comte Joseph de Puisaye as we expected. We do not know exactly when as yet but it will be during the light weather and when there is a best chance of calm seas.’
‘But why do you ask about Tregirls?’
‘Well, when the expedition lands, if it is successful, a few English may go ashore.’
‘I trust – I hope you are not going to become involved.’
He loosened his stock, pulling at it with a finger against his neck.
‘In all honesty, love, I had no thought to be. Not personally. Certainly not at first . . .’
‘You have a wife and two children.’
‘Yes, oh, yes. I am not unmindful. But let me repeat – there is no English army going, nor any intention of sending one. Five or six thousand French will land, with naval support, and some marines to strengthen them in the early stages. Then great quantities of munitions will be put ashore to supply the Royalists who will flock to join the invaders. If the landing establishes itsel
f then some English may be of help in maintaining supplies, establishing a commissariat ashore, or maintaining communications with England. But this is not what might influence me in a choice. Quimper, where Dwight is interned, is only perhaps two score miles from where the landing is likely to be made. When the Royalist army takes Quimper Dwight will be released. It would be of value to him – perhaps more than value – if some of his own people were on hand at the time.’
Demelza put a paper quill in the fire and from it began to light the candles. In the kitchen Jeremy was crying, but for once the sound did not send her hurrying out.
‘And if the landing fail?’
‘If it fails it will not be likely to fail before Quimper is reached. Believe me, it is vital that that prison be sprung.’
‘You do not think even if they are left alone that the prisoners will be – what is the word?’
‘Repatriated. Yes, it may be. Those who are left alive.’
Light grew reluctantly. Demelza went to pull the curtains, and he helped her with them. This year even the birds had been reluctant to begin their song. In the wet, chill evening light, the lights of the engine house up the valley were remote and unreal. She pulled the last curtain.
Ross said: ‘Have you warned Drake about his friendship with Miss Chynoweth?’
‘No. Objections don’t often stop love affairs, Ross.’
‘I know. But I believe George and Elizabeth are due back this week. I am anxious that there should be no renewal of the quarrel between the houses.’
‘I will ask Sam,’ she said. ‘This week I’ll ask him if they are still seeing each other.’
Betsy Maria Martin came in to light the candles but, finding this done, prepared to withdraw. ‘What is amiss with Master Jeremy?’ Demelza asked.
‘If ee plaise, ma’am. He wouldn’ eat ’is bread’n milk, and Mrs Gimlett were tryin’ to best him and he woudn’ be bested, so he duffs ’is spoon in the bowl and splutters milk all ’bout the kitchen, so Mrs Gimlett, she gives he a tap wi’ ’er hand and he didn’ like’n.’
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ said Demelza. ‘Thank you, Betsy.’
The little girl left.
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