by Sara Seale
“And judging by that lack of quality in you as far as I’m concerned, she jumps to conclusions which happen to be correct. I see,” he said and there was a sudden bitterness in his voice.
She looked at him helplessly. She could not at this moment further embarrass him by telling him that in that respect Belle was wrong. She could not tell him that although he did not love her she was still grateful that she could move him, even to angry passion. Not this way, not this hard Pentreath way of taking and giving nothing in return could unlock the fondness which had gathered so slowly and so timidly in her heart.
III
The sun was setting, streaking the sky with rose and gold and angry red. The stillness and the desolation was unbearable.
“I’d like to walk,” she said, wanting suddenly to escape from the confinement of the car and his nearness to her.
“Very well.”
They took the rough track which wound over Tudy Down, walking in silence for some way then, remembering his savage remarks earlier, she said:
“About Adwen—did you know he came last night?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied with grimness. “We saw you, Belle and I from the living room window. You should have remembered how strong the moonlight is, Tina.”
She sighed. She knew just how she must have looked to watching eyes.
“I suppose Belle tried to make out it was an assignation,” she said wearily.
“Curiously enough that was the exact word she used.”
“But you surely didn’t believe her?”
“When one is angry enough one is liable to believe anything. Was that very unmistakable and prolonged embrace a necessary part of persuading my cousin to go away?”
“He made it a condition, just for devilment, I think. It seemed easier to give in and get rid of him quickly. You shouldn’t blame me, Craig. All Pentreaths bargain and take what they want. It’s less trouble to give in if you have to live with them.”
“That has a bitter ring.”
“You’re a bitter family.”
They had reached the little stream where so long ago, it seemed now, he had told her that Tremawvan was to be her home, and on the instant she remembered the tenderness in his dark face when he had said so unexpectedly: Perhaps I want to build a hedge round the cuckoo... Suddenly she was weeping, turning her face up to his, uncaring that he should see her tears, uncaring any longer for his anger.
“Oh, Craig, what are we making from this foolish union?” she cried. “What can I give you that can possibly make any difference to your life?”
They stood on the broken clapper bridge which spanned the stream at its deepest point, and Craig touched her with a hand that was suddenly gentle.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “sorry to have brought you to tears with my roughness.”
“It wasn’t that,” she said. “It was the cuckoo.”
“The cuckoo?”
She pushed the hair back from her forehead with a helpless gesture.
“That day in the summer when you brought me here and you told me I could stay. You said perhaps you wanted to build a hedge round the cuckoo to hold fast to the spring.”
“And that makes you weep?”
“I suppose I’m crying for a lost assurance,” she said and rubbed away the tears with her knuckles like a child.
“Then that’s my fault,” he said quietly. “My upbringing and my way of life has hidden too well the poetry which lies in most of us. I had thought when you were only sixteen you had recognized that. It was what made me want to keep you here.”
She remembered those rare moments with him alone and the surprise she had always felt that she could talk to him so easily. Yes, she had known he was different, that despite the hard Pentreath tradition, there was poetry in him, and tenderness, too. He had, she thought, in his own way been as lonely as she.
She made a small involuntary movement towards him, but he was watching the water which flowed with noisy clamor beneath the bridge and when he turned back to her the gentleness had gone from his face.
“I was wrong to think you needed time,” he said abruptly. “We’ll be married next month. The date will depend on work at the cannery but I’ll try and arrange it for the twenty-first.”
She licked her lips.
“Why the twenty-first?” was all she could find to say.
“Because it’s the first day of spring,” he replied a shade sardonically. “This time, you see, I’m making sure of building my hedge.”
They walked in silence back to the car. The sun had gone now but the sky was still streaked with fading splashes of color and the chill wind of evening blew across the moor. Tina felt very tired. One short month and Belle would be gone and Tina sitting in her place at the foot of Craig’s table. One short month in which to remain Clementina Linden before she became just one of the Pentreath women, guarded but unloved like poor Jessie Pentreath who had built her little temple to have something of her own.
At eighteen, could one know one’s heart so surely, she wondered; was the flowering of affection so simple that one could accept lesser qualities from another? I grew up too fast, she thought, wryly, or not fast enough, and she remembered with sudden clarity that she had been grateful for that last year at school because it would enable her to slip from the adolescent to the adult world without having to cross again that confusing no-man’s land of immaturity. How wrong one could be. There was no frontier to mark the step to womanhood, only the frail bridge of awakening emotions which, without guidance, could bewilder more surely than adolescence...
Belle and Brownie had already started tea when they got back. Belle, with a quick glance at Tina’s exhausted face, reflected with pleasure that Craig must have had administered a few sharp raps, but she looked less pleased when he announced his news without preliminary and ended by requesting her to make her own plans with no delay.
“Are you turning me out?” she asked, wondering what had prompted him to settle so definitely on an early date for the marriage which she had begun to think would not come off.
“Hardly,” he replied with polite coolness. “It was under, stood that you remained until Tina was married, but I’m sure you will agree that after that event your presence here would be a little superfluous.”
“But Brownie will stop on?”
“Naturally. Tremawvan’s been her home for thirty years.”
“How nice for Tina,” said Belle spitefully, “I suppose she hasn’t even been consulted.”
“I scarcely thought the point arose,” said Craig coldly, and Tina, looking across at Brownie, caught her breath quickly.
For the first time since she had known her she saw alarm in the bright little eyes, and the small brown face puckered in a moment of acute distress. Tina jumped up and flung her arms round the bent shoulders.
“Of course it doesn’t arise,” she cried. “Why, Brownie’s part of Tremawvan. It wouldn’t be the same without her.”
Brownie sat up straight with the sudden dignity she could assume at times.
“No, Belle’s right for once in a way,” she said, pushing Tina’s hands away. “Tina should have been consulted, and I for one would think no less of a young bride who wants her home to herself.”
Disregarding her stepmother’s mocking gaze, and Craig’s impenetrable blue stare, Tina knelt beside Brownie’s chair and took the swollen hands in hers.
“You’d stay for me—if I asked you very humbly, wouldn’t you, Brownie?” she said.
Brownie’s hands suddenly trembled in hers.
“I’ve had Pentreath charity all my life,” she answered. “A time comes to repay debts.”
“You and me—we’ve both had Pentreath charity,” said Tina softly. She had forgotten Craig and only this shrivelled, elderly woman with the trembling hands was real in the room for her. “I can only repay my debt if you stay and help me, Brownie. This is your home far more than mine and I—well, I should hate it without you.”
Brownie took
the girl’s face between her hands for a moment and her eyes held tenderness.
“You’re a good child, Tina,” she said. “A good child ... I’ll talk to Craig later.”
“W-ell!” drawled Belle. “What a touching scene! I hope you’re flattered, Craig, that you’re being married for your charity. Me, I should want a little more.”
“You always have wanted a little more than your due, haven’t you, Belle?” he returned suavely, but the blue of his eyes held a sudden icy anger as he rose, leaving his tea unfinished, and went out of the room.
They were all thankful when the day came to an end. Belle had been waspish at dinner, letting fall little pleasantries designed to embarrass Craig if she could, and Tina, almost certainly. Brownie, who seemed her usual self again, spoke her mind freely on the subject of manners and Craig at the head of the table was silent and abstracted. As they left the dining room Tina thought with longing of her solitary bedroom with its sprigged paper and faded hangings. Was it only this morning that she had arranged her belongings in threes as a hostage to fortune?
“And look where it’s got me!” she remarked aloud, disgustedly, and Craig raised his eyebrows.
“Look where what’s got you?” he inquired.
Belle and Brownie were already in the living room and she had not heard him across the hall behind her.
“Nothing—at least, only something silly. I arranged all my things in three when I got up this morning—as a kind of charm,” she said.
“And the charm didn’t work? Is that what you meant?” He was approachable again, quizzical and gently mocking as she used to remember him and all at once she could talk to him naturally.
“It worked the wrong way,” she said obscurely. “You see, Craig, when I was a child, three was my lucky number. I used to take chances with it—sort of determine my fate by it. So, you see, I was sure Adwen would come on the third’ night because there were three more statues left and that’s why I was watching to warn him before you caught him.”
“I see, Not a very logical piece of reasoning, I hardly feel.” His lips twitched slightly but his eyes were grave.
“Well, you made sure of warning him all right, but your actions might have led to the damaging of the precious skin you were so anxious to protect.”
She stamped her foot with impatience, no longer afraid of him.
“Oh, Craig, you are stupid!” she cried. “I wasn’t bothering about Adwen’s skin. It was the trouble you might get yourself into that was worrying me. I’m sorry I interfered, anyway. He was only going to paint the cupids red, white and blue and I wish I’d let him. They would have looked very funny.”
He laughed then, and taking her by the wrist, drew her into the book room. Once there, he held her firmly between his hands and looked into her eyes.
“Have I made a fool of myself?” he asked with unexpected humor.
She laughed.
“Oh, Craig, I wouldn’t ever know with a Pentreath!” she said. “They don’t behave like other people.”
“I’m not collective, a sort of composite whole of the family bad traits,” he answered a little dryly. “I think you’ve come to confuse me with Belle and Adwen and my father and even those pirate ancestors you insist on saddling me with.”
“Perhaps I do,” she admitted, “but it’s understandable. You have the Pentreath anger and that always confuses me. It’s so sudden, so without reason while it lasts. You—you even kissed me in anger.”
The room was very quiet. It had the slightly musty smell of old bindings and the varnish which covered the pitchpine shelves, a smell reminiscent of the schoolroom. She looked up at Craig, blinking a little nervously as she spoke, and he let her go abruptly as he answered:
“Better that than not kissing you at all, perhaps.”
She wandered round the shelves, pulling out volumes at random, anxious to occupy her hands, and he stood with his back to the fire watching her.
“Will Brownie stay?” she asked.
“Of course. She has no other home but this. She came to keep my mother company when I was four years old, and has remained ever since.”
She turned the pages of a book unseeing, remembering Jessie Pentreath who had been unhappy. Would Brownie, she wondered a little sadly, prove company for yet another Tremawvan wife whose husband could not love her?
He had come up behind her and taken the book from her hand before she was aware of him, and he read aloud from the page of which she had been quite unobservant:
“See with eyes shut.
Look seldom behind thee.
In secret of selfship
Free thee, not bind thee...”
“Worth remembering, Tina,” he said. “The secret of happiness, perhaps. It was nice of you to make Brownie feel she was wanted. Do you expect me to do something for Belle when she leaves?”
His abruptness was typical of his alternating moods and no longer disconcerted her.
“No,” she replied.
“But she has hopes, hasn’t she? Aren’t you even going to try and persuade me to be generous?”
“No,” she said again. “I don’t think you owe her anything. We have both, Belle and I, had far more than the accident of kinship demands.”
“For which you’re obliging,” he said curtly. “As Belle pointed out it’s scarcely flattering to be married for one’s charity.”
“You told me at the time that marrying you was as good a way as any other of discharging a debt,” she reminded him. “You said it might lessen my sense of obligation.”
So I did, but you needed persuading, if I remember. Wasn’t there also some odd talk about getting my money’s worth?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think you have yet, have you, Craig?”
His smile was a little grim and he thrust the volume back on the shelf with a sharp, impatient movement.
“I’ve made a beginning,” he said and suddenly pulling her into his arms, bent his black head to hers. He kissed her with the same hard urgency he had displayed earlier, but now the savage anger was absent and because she could not remain passive under his lips she stretched up her hands to his shoulders and offered him what acceptance she knew.
“Well!” he observed, holding her away from him. “This is better than I hoped for so early on. I can see my restraint of the past weeks was rather misplaced.”
His voice was sardonic, and his eyes a little mocking, reminding her unhappily of Adwen, who gave only passion and expected little in return.
“I’d like to go to bed now, if you don’t mind,” she said, weariness suddenly in every line of her young body.
There was a little pause while he watched her and the room returned to familiarity again with its musty smell, and its ticking clocks and the lamp which threw a curious shadow across Craig’s face.
“Of course,” he replied with a strange expression. “It was thoughtless of me to keep you up. Good night.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
IT seemed to Tina that all Pentreath decisions were adamant and never suffered the delay or postponement to circumstances of other people’s. The date was fixed for the first day of spring as Craig said it would be, the exact time he proposed to be away from the cannery carefully checked and agreed upon, the number of guests to be asked to the wedding and their precise claims to Tremawvan hospitality. Even Tina’s wedding dress was decided on by Craig.
“But I thought,” she said, bewildered, “we would be married quite quietly. Men usually hate a fussy wedding.”
“There’s no occasion for it to be fussy,” he replied. “But white will be expected by the workers, and our guests, mostly consist of them. Get something young and filmy, like that gauzy affair Brownie made for your Speech Day. I always liked it.”
“But where shall I get it?” she asked, but did not add and who will pay for it? It would, she supposed, be Craig again, and it seemed to her a little shameful that a man should have to buy his bride’s wedding gown.
<
br /> “Consult Belle, for heaven’s sake! She can send to London if necessary,” he replied impatiently.
But in the end Brownie made it for her.
“If he likes the style of the white then tulle is the thing,” she said. “And that’s better made up at home with no skimping of material and the work properly hand done. We’ll send to Truro for patterns.”
Belle thought the idea typical of her stepdaughter’s lack of ambition, but Tina felt happier. The cost would be reasonable and the pleasure given to Brownie very real.
So soon it seemed, it was March and less than three short weeks stretched ahead, dwindling to the day when her life began again. Three times that would have happened since Belle had married her father, Tina thought with surprise. Three times she had been thrust over a gap in time, forward when Belle took her from school, backward when Craig sent her back and now forward again into these realms of maturity which neither growing up nor her sudden engagement had prepared her for. The mystic number ... she reflected as she thought these things out in Jessie Pentreath’s ruined temple. Was it an omen that since fate had sent the dark stranger to alter her life, the third phase would somehow prove the best? She did not look for more than kindly tolerance in her relations with a husband, but she solemnly made three circuits round the magnolia tree to make sure even of that.
Craig caught her doing it.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
She felt a little foolish at being observed at such a childish practice, but she answered seriously:
