Demelza

by Winston Graham

  “Not just yet, dear,” said Elizabeth.

  Verity muttered an excuse and left them.

  Slowly she climbed the broad spacious stairs and glanced with new eyes about her as she did so. She walked down the square low passage with its fine Tudor Gothic windows looking out on the small green central square, with its climbing roses, its fountain that never played and its solidly paved path. Everything about the house was solid, well shaped, built to please and built to last. She prayed it would never have to go.

  In her own room she avoided looking at herself in the mirror lest she should see there what had been noticeable to Aunt Agatha’s sharp old eyes.

  The window looked out on the yew hedge and the herb garden. In the bitterness of four years prior, she had looked that way. She had found some comfort there in all the big crises of her life.

  She did not know if that was a big crisis or not. Perhaps, looking back, it would not seem so. Grambler was closing, that alone meant a wholesale change in the life of the district. Grambler was closing.

  But why not be honest? That was not her crisis. It touched her money, but living the sort of life she did, money had always been remote from her. It touched her people then. Yes, acutely; it concerned all the people she knew and liked, not only in that house, but also in the district. It would affect the choir she taught and make ten times harder her work to help the poor. That morning, that morning, they had been her people. What, then, had changed?

  Why wasn’t she more upset for them? Why was she not as miserable as she ought to be? Why not? Why not?

  The answer was plain if she had the courage to own it.

  She pressed her hot face against the glass of the window and listened to the beating of her heart.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jud and Prudie had to leave. On that Ross was adamant. In many ways an easygoing man, he would have tolerated much for the sake of loyalty. Jud’s drunkenness he had long been used to, but Jud’s disloyal slander could not be swallowed at any price. Besides, there was the child to be thought of. They could never be trusted with her again.

  He had them before him next morning and gave them a week to get out. Prudie looked tearful, Jud sullen. Jud thought he had talked Ross around before and in a week could talk him around again. In that he was mistaken. It was only when he discovered it that he became really alarmed. Two days before they were due to go, Demelza, taking pity on Prudie, suggested that she might be able to persuade Ross to keep her, if she would separate from Jud, but at the last Prudie was faithful and chose to go.

  So in due time they left, burdened up with all sorts of lumber and belongings. They had found a tumble-down shack, half cottage, half shed, which was the first house in Grambler at that end of the straggling village. It was dismal and derelict, but the rent was nothing and it was next to a gin shop, which would be convenient.

  Their leaving was a tremendous upheaval, and when they had gone, Nampara seemed a strange house; one was constantly listening for the flop of Prudie’s slippers or the harsh tenor of Jud’s grievances. They had been sloppy, idle, incompetent servants, but they had grown into the marrow of life, and everyone felt the loss. Demelza was glad they had not gone far, for her friendship with Prudie was of too long a standing to break in a few days.

  In their place Ross took a married pair named John and Jane Gimlett, a plump couple in their early forties. Five or six years before, they had come to Grambler from north Cornwall to find work in the then still-prosperous west and he had set up as a journeyman shoemaker. But it had not gone well and they had both been working at a tin stamp for over a year. They seemed tremendously eager, willing, competent, clean, good-tempered, and respectful—all things the opposite of Jud and Prudie. Only time would show how it would last.

  Two days after the drunken fracas, Ross had some further trouble with his small staff.

  “Where’s Jinny this morning?”

  “She’s left,” answered Demelza moodily.

  “Left?

  “Last night. I intended to have telled you, but you were so late back. I can’t make head or tail of it.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she’d be happier looking after her three children. It was no good me saying all her mother’s family would soon be out of work, for she just closed her lips tight and said she wanted to leave.”

  “Oh,” said Ross, stirring his coffee.

  “It is all to do with that trouble on Thursday afternoon,” said Demelza. “Maybe if I knew what it was about I could do something. I mean, she wasn’t drunk. Why should she leave?”

  “I have a notion,” said Ross.

  “I don’t see why I should be the only one left in the dark, Ross. If you know, then you did ought to tell me.”

  Ross said, “You remember when I took Jinny to Bodmin, I said there’d be talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there is talk, and Jud was repeating it when I got home. And there are all sorts of poisonous brews being added from the past. That is another reason why Jud must go—apart from Julia.”

  “Oh,” said Demelza, “I see.”

  After a moment, Ross said, “Perhaps Jinny does not know Jud is leaving. When—”

  “Yes, she does. Prudie told her yesterday.”

  “Well, I will go and see Zacky, that’s if you want her back.”

  “Of course I want her back.”

  “I have to see Zacky anyway. I have something to offer him.”

  “Well, that’ll cheer up Mrs. Zacky. I’ve never seen her downcast before. What’s it to be?”

  “In our venture in copper buying we want an agent, a man unknown in the trade who will act for us and take the limelight. I think I can get Zacky the appointment. He’s no ordinary miner, you know.”

  “What of Mark Daniel?”

  “What about him?”

  “You remember I said Keren had asked me if you’d anything good for him?”

  “Ye-es. But this would not do, Demelza. We need a man who can read and write and can handle sums of money in a civilized fashion. And one who has a certain knowledge of the world. Zacky’s is the minimum that could be acceptable. Besides, we need a man we can trust completely. We must have absolute secrecy. Anything less might be fatal. Of course I would trust Mark with my life…but he is not quite the free agent that he was. I feel that, however steady a man is, if he has an unstable wife to whom he is devoted, then there is a corrosion at work on his own foundations.”

  Demelza said, “I don’t know what Keren would say if she heard that. ’Twould never occur to her that she might be a drag on Mark.”

  “Well, she’ll not hear it, so set your mind at rest.”

  • • •

  Keren at the moment was up a ladder. For two days it had rained, and the weather had found its way through Mark’s thatching. It had come into the kitchen and then into the bedroom, and the previous night there had been drips of water falling on their feet.

  Keren was furious. Of course Mark had spent the best part of his leisure up that ladder in the rain, but it was her view that in the two months of their married life, he should have spent much more time making the house weatherproof. Instead, every wet day he had worked on the inside of the house and every fine day he had been in the garden.

  He had done wonders there, had carried away many tons of stone and with them had built a wall surrounding the plot of land. The wall stretched right around, a monument to one man’s tireless energy, and inside the wall, the land was being dug and raked and weeded and made ready for next season’s crops. And in a corner by the house Mark had built a lean-to shed leading into a small walled compound where later he hoped to keep pigs.

  Marriage was a disappointment. Mark’s lovemaking, though sincere, was rough and unromantic and devoid of finesse, and Mark’s conversation when he was not making love scarcely existed.
Then there were the long hours he was away at the mine, and the weekly change of cores, so that one week he was getting his breakfast at five, and another week he was coming home to sleep at six thirty waking her up but refusing to be wakened when she got up herself. Even that core when he went down at two in the afternoon left her with the whole evening alone. It had been the most exciting one in the early days, for he used to come home just before eleven and strip and wash himself and shave and then they’d get into bed together. But the novelty of that had worn off and usually she found an excuse to avoid his clumsy caresses. It was all so different from the part she had played in The Miller’s Bride.

  He had just gone, hurrying away to be there in time, and she was left with nine hours to kill. He had had no time to move the ladder so she thought she would try to mend the thatch herself. She was of the opinion that adaptability was enough to solve all problems. She found where he had been working, and picked her way across the damp thatch. It was fine that morning, but there was the promise of more rain. She would like to see his face if he came home in a drenching downpour and found the house quite dry within.

  From where she sat, she had a clear view of Dr. Enys’s turreted house, and she was sorry that the trees about it did not lose their leaves in winter. Three times since that meeting at Nampara she had caught glimpses of him, but they had not exchanged a word. She sometimes thought she would lose the use of her tongue, for few of the neighbors from Mellin came over, and when they did, they were not encouraged by their reception. The only person Keren had made a friend of was little Charlie Baragwanath, who usually called in on his way back from work.

  For some time Keren had been having doubts of her own wisdom in leaving the traveling company for that buried-alive existence. She tried sometimes to remember the hardships and discouragements of that life, just to reassure herself, but distance was blurring the view. Even the money she had hoped to find there was not all it seemed. Mark had some money and was generous with it in a way, but the habits of a lifetime could not change in a week. He would give her money to spend as a lump sum, but he did not like to see money spent as a regular thing, to see it frittered. He had made it plain to Keren that his purse had a limit, and once his purse was empty only the severest pinching and saving would fill it again.

  Not perhaps even that with Grambler going.

  She leaned out to tuck in a piece of thatch and bind it, and as she did so her foothold grew uncertain. Quite gently she began to slide down the roof.

  • • •

  “Well,” said Zacky, rubbing his bristle, “it is more’n kind of you. I’ll not pretend but that I’d like to try it. Mother’ll be fair delighted to think there will be money coming in without a break. But I couldn’t take that much money, not to start. Give me what I been earning from my pitch, that’s fair and proper.”

  “As an employee of the company,” Ross said, “you’ll take what you’re given. I’ll see you have good notice when you’ll be wanted. It may mean a few absences from your pitch during the last week or so.”

  “That’s no matter. The zest is out of it anyway. I don’t know what half o’ them will do this winter.”

  “And now,” said Ross, “I should like a word with Jinny.”

  Zacky looked constrained. “She’s inside with Mother. I don’t know what’s got her, but she seem set in her own way. We can’t reason with her same as we belonged to when she was a maid. Jinny! Jinny! Come out for a breath. There’s a gentleman to see you.”

  A long pause followed. Finally the door of the cottage opened and Jinny stood there but did not come out.

  Ross went over to her. Zacky did not follow but scraped his chin with the ball of his thumb and watched them.

  “Captain Poldark,” Jinny said, dropping him a slight curtsy but not raising her eyes.

  He did not beat about the bush. “I know why you have left us, Jinny, and sympathize with your feelings. But to give way to them is to conform to rules set down by the evil-minded. Through Jud Paynter and his drunkenness they were able to leave a nasty smear across my house and across your reputation. For that he has been gotten rid of. It would be a mistake for you to give life to the story by taking notice of it. I should like you to come as usual tomorrow.”

  She looked up and met his glance.

  “’Twill be better not, sur. If such stories be about, gracious knows where they’ll end.”

  “They’ll end where they begun, in the gutters.”

  She was so terribly embarrassed that he was sorry for her. He left her there and returned to Zacky, who had been joined by his wife.

  “Leave ’er be for a while, sur,” said Mrs. Martin. “She’ll come around. I’ll not be long, Zacky. I just be going over to Reath Cottage. Bobbie’s been in to say Keren Mark Daniel’s met with a accident.”

  “What has she done?”

  “Slided off the roof. Breaked her arm an’ what not. I thought I’d just go’n see if I can be of ’elp. Not as I’ve a great taking for the maid, but it is only neighborly to make sartin, as Mark’s down the bal.”

  “Is she alone?” Ross asked. “I’ll come with you if she needs any attention.”

  “No, sur. Bobbie says Dr. Enys is there.”

  • • •

  He had been there twenty minutes. By great good fortune, he had heard her shouting and had been the first on the scene.

  After the first shock of the fall, she had half fainted for some minutes, and when she came around, she had nearly fainted again each time she moved her arm.

  So she had sat there for an eternity, her head throbbing and her mouth dry with sickness. And then he had heard her cries and climbed across the ditch and come over to her.

  After that, although there was pain and distress there was also comfort and happiness. He had carried her inside and put her on the bed, and his quick professional hands exploring her body were to her like the hands of a lover new-welcomed and at home.

  He said, “You’ve fractured the bone. Your ankle will be well enough with rest. Now I must set your arm. It will hurt, but I’ll be as quick as possible.”

  “Go on,” she said, looking at him.

  He had a roll of bandage in his pocket and found two splints among Mark’s carpenterings. Then he gave her a drink of brandy and set her arm. She bit her teeth together and never made a sound. Tears came into her eyes, and when he had finished, they rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them away.

  “That was very brave of you,” he said. “Take another drink of this.”

  She took it because it was in his flask, and began to feel better. Footsteps sent him to the door and he told Bobbie Martin to go for his mother. It had taken less than a month to teach him that if anyone in the district needed a good turn they sent for Mrs. Zacky, whose twelve children never impeded her instinct for mothering the neighborhood.

  Then he sat on the bed and bathed her other elbow and bathed her ankle and tied it up. It was sheer bliss to her and her eyes would have let him see it if he had not kept his own on the business in hand. All that done, he talked to her in a tone that had become steadily more dry and profession in the past ten minutes, suggesting that she should call her husband out of the mine.

  But she was set against it, and when Mrs. Zacky’s flat face and spectacles showed in the doorway, she greeted her so sweetly that Mrs. Zacky thought the district had summed up Mark’s wife too quick and too drastic.

  Dwight Enys stayed a little longer, his handsome face sober but youthful, telling Mrs. Zacky what to do. Then he took Keren’s hand and said he would call again in the morning.

  Keren said in a soft contralto, “Thank you, Dr. Enys. I didn’t know anyone could be so kind.”

  He flushed slightly. “Cruel to be kind. But you took it all well. The arm will give you pain tonight. Do, please, stay in bed. If you get up you may raise a fever, and then it will be perhaps a long job.”


  “I’m sure I shall be all right,” Keren said. “I’ll do anything you say.”

  “Very well. Good day to you. Good day, Mrs. Martin.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Grambler was to close on the twelfth of November, and the day came still and misty with a humid air and a threat of rain. Unhealthy weather, Dr. Choake said, which raised up all the putrid vapors. They had run the engine that long to finish the coal in stock.

  There were three pumps to the mine. Two engines—both modernized but both left hopelessly out of date by Watt’s invention of the separate condenser—and a great water wheel of thirty feet diameter, worked by the Mellingey Stream.

  At noon a small party of men gathered in the big central engine house. Present were Francis Poldark; Captain Henshawe; the “grass” captain, Dunstan; Dr. Choake; the two chief engine men, Brown and Trewinnard; the purser; and a few other officials. They stood there and coughed and avoided each other’s eyes, and Francis took out his watch.

  Up and down went the great bob, to the rattle of the chains, the roar of the furnace, and the suck and splash of water with its dull inrush through the leather valves. From the house the mine spread away like a great beast, unsightly, unordered; wooden sheds, stone huts, thatched air shafts, water wheels, washing floors, horse whims, mounds of refuse and stone and cinders, the accumulations, additions, and wastages of years. And here and there, running away down little valleys like tributaries of the mine, were the cottages of Grambler village.

  Francis looked at his watch.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said, raising his voice, “the time has come for the closure of our mine. We have worked together many years, but the times have beaten us. Someday perhaps this mine will be restarted and we shall all meet here again. And if we have not that good fortune our sons may enjoy it in our stead. It is now twelve noon.”

  He reached up to the lever that controlled the steam in its passage from the giant boiler of the engine, and pulled it down. The great engine bob paused in its stroke, hesitated, lumbered to a stop. Meanwhile the engine man had moved around and opened a valve, and there was a sigh of escaping steam as it rose white in the still, misty air, hovered, and seemed reluctant to disperse.