Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

‘No, he’s getting too excited. I shall take him upstairs in a few minutes. You have two more b——s?’ Valentine whispered to Bella. ‘Keep them back. They will be ideal for enticing him to bed. I am running short on fresh fruit at the moment.’

  ‘Val gave him a cigar last month, the first one: I was here,’ David Lake shouted. ‘Val showed him how to do it – puff, puff, with a spill – then asked Butto to do the same. Butto looked at the cigar – one of our best – then put it in his mouth and ate it! I wet myself laughing!’

  ‘As you can see,’ Valentine said, ‘he’s getting the hang of it – just by watching me, but he is a small matter afraid of the burning spill. I must try to get something less flickery. Maybe I could light it myself and pass it over!’

  Another man staggered into the room. He was instantly recognizable as Paul Kellow, but it was not quite the Paul the girls knew. Whatever the problems facing him, he had always seemed in perfect control of himself and confident of his ability to deal with any situation that arose. Now he was comprehensively drunk. He lurched into the room, clutching at a chair and a sideboard to remain upright, negotiated his way to an empty chair at the end and hiccuped noisily.

  ‘By God! I have lost most of my entrails!’ He gazed blearily up the table and said: ‘I wish I had the cap-capacity—’. He stopped when he saw the two new arrivals. ‘Clowance, Isabelly-Rose, where – where in purple hell have you come from?’

  ‘They came to dinner,’ said Valentine, ‘but mistook the time.’

  ‘Isabelly-Rose!’ screamed one of the girls, who reminded Bella of Letty Hazel. ‘You are a perfect shriek, Paul, are you not?’

  Valentine’s attention was drawn to Butto, who had slipped out of his own chair and was on the prowl. One banana skin still dangled from his jaws.

  ‘Do you still keep him in the house?’ Clowance asked Valentine incredulously.

  ‘No, it was only for the first weeks. When I bought him, sweetheart, I did not know what his full size was going to be. He was no use upstairs in the attics. D’you remember the panelled ones?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, he removed the panels. He pulled them screeching out of the wall with his own fingernails.’

  ‘How do the servants cope with this?’

  ‘Oh, most of the old ones have left. I have new ones, like Dawson. They are tough, not scary-kids like the old – and they know what to expect.’

  ‘And is Butto not dangerous?’

  ‘Lord bless you, sweetheart, he wouldn’t hurt a – a fly. Least unless the fly annoyed him.’

  ‘So you must be careful not to annoy him?’

  ‘He knows I’m his friend. And he knows I’m his master. It is all a tremendous lark.’

  ‘Do you ever hear from Selina?’

  ‘Only if she is short of money.’

  ‘Do you send her some?’

  ‘No. She should come back to live here.’

  ‘I do not suppose, do you, that she would like to see the house being used as it is.’

  ‘If she came back she could change it.’

  ‘Do you want her back?’

  Valentine stared blearily at his cousin. ‘Blood and bones, what do you think? I’ve had a long-time fancy for her, as you well know. She should accept my terms!’

  ‘And they are reasonable?’

  ‘I think so. I do not sleep with Butto, as you well may imagine! I have these whores in from Truro and Falmouth, but them I could easily dispense with. I never brought any here when she was here! I was not dog-faithful to her, as also you must well know. But what man is? She imp-imp-imposed impossible terms. I have a right to my son. He should be brought up here, instead of being dragged about the London suburbs at his mother’s whim!’

  At that moment Butto jumped on the table and walked bow-legged down it, the table creaking under his great weight, crockery and silver flying. He came to a crouching stop and squatted opposite Bella. He patted his mouth with the back of his hand in what looked like a polite yawn and grumbled encouragingly.

  ‘Ah, ah,’ said Valentine, ‘he has spotted where the bananas come from! Let me have them, Bella. This calls for a little delicate nigoshiashun!’

  When Clowance got home again to Penryn she felt the change more than she liked to admit. Ever since Stephen’s death she had been lonely, but a toughness and resilience in her nature had enabled her to keep the loneliness at bay. It was just not good enough, she thought, that five years after his death she should miss him more than ever before.

  But in a different way. Perhaps, she told herself scornfully, what she was really missing was the loving companionship of a man. (Any man?) Possibly the two proposals of marriage within a month of each other had pointed the issue and thrust her feelings into a new and uneasy depression.

  Edward Fitzmaurice had written:

  My dear Mrs Carrington, Dear Clowance,

  I have decided to write to you and put a proposal before you.

  I have started this letter four times and each time it has finished in the fire. So in the end I have come to the conclusion that only the bluntest and most matter-of-fact proposal will do. Be assured that there is nothing matter-of-fact or calculating in my feelings for you.

  I love you.

  Do you recall when you were staying at Bowood, when I had asked you to marry me, you told me that from the first moment when you saw Stephen Carrington no other man would do. Well, may I state that, from the moment I met you in the Pulteney Hotel at the Duchess of Gordon’s Ball, no other woman but you could give me happiness?

  If I have not said this explicitly before it is because in your presence I stumble over words and cannot assemble my thoughts. I think, I hope, that you must have sensed part of this. My attentions cannot have gone unnoticed.

  When you married I felt all ways lost – there was nothing left to hope for. I deeply grieved when I heard your husband had died, but I made no move, anxious not to fret you with ill-judged sympathy, and also careful not to open up the wounds within myself. I had a very wretched year after you refused me.

  But that chance, that happy chance of a meeting with you when you were with Mrs Pelham and others at the opera, tore away the curtain that I had tried to draw over my mind when I thought all was lost. Sight of you reaffirmed in my mind all the memories of you that I had tried to forget. After that I took the liberty of asking you and Lady Poldark to visit Bowood again. So far you have not accepted and so far you have not refused. (Unless you are too tender and do not like to give offence.)

  This year we have not corresponded, and this is not of itself an invitation to visit us again. It is a plain and unadorned proposal of marriage. This letter need not immediately be answered. I pray that you will read it over and over, and then, and only then, say yea or nay.

  I am aware that if by some marvellous chance you should answer ‘yea’ I would always rank in your eyes as second to Stephen Carrington in your heart and in your esteem. To try to make up a little for that, may I state what else I could offer by way of a compensation, which I know would be minimal?

  I am thirty-three, unmarried and completely unattached. After one or two light flirtations in my very early twenties, no woman can claim any lien on me, nor have the right to remind me of responsiblities. Compared to my brother, who unexpectedly came in for so very much, I am a poor man. But poor is a relative term; I have more than a competence. I have the house on my brother’s estate that I showed you when you came to Bowood. I have a roomy apartment in Lansdowne House at the south-west corner of Berkeley Square: four resident servants there and four in Wiltshire. My brother has other substantial properties in England, and a shooting lodge in Scotland to which I sometimes repair on August the twelfth. I am a Member of Parliament, but unlike my brother I have not yet been in government. I dance – badly, as you know – I ride fairly well, I play whist and poker and backgammon, but none of them to excess, and I gamble with what loose change I have on me. I am a regular theatre and opera-goer. In my place in Wiltshire I plant t
rees. In politics I am mildly radical, and rejoiced in the abolition of slavery, only regretting that the law is still so often flouted.

  (I do not suppose any of this is of the slightest interest to you, but I have to say it.)

  Like my brother I took no active part in the war that killed your brother and which engaged so much of your admirable father’s time. (I took much longer than Burke to realize what a tyrant Napoleon had become.)

  So much for me. Now on to you, dear Clowance. What sort of a life would you lead if you made my cup fill with happiness and married me?

  We would live as frugally (within limits) or as extravagantly (within limits) as you chose. You could live mainly in Wiltshire or mainly in London, according to your choice. Something you said once was that you were not happy with your horse’s stabling in Penryn. Nero – that is his name. We have ample stabling in Bowood and you could have four or six horses if you wished for galloping over the green downs of Wiltshire. You would have almost as much of your own preferences as you wanted – you know all the important members of my family, and I am certain they would rival each other in trying to spoil you.

  I know your addiction for Cornwall, though I have seen it only once – when I came down on a gloomy mission – gloomy because you were not there – for Lady Mount Edgecumbe’s funeral.

  We could not live in Cornwall, but you could visit your parents just as many times a year as you do now. I could come with you when you wanted me, or stay behind if I thought you happier alone. I do not think the society life of London much appeals to you, and I agree it is often affected and starchy. Its hysterical sense of values – or lack of values – is something I find hard to stomach.

  Of course, I am to some degree used to that society; but I assure you that you would not be expected to live by its values. We as a family do not, and no one would expect you to.

  It is a big decision for you to make, I know. You are not drawn to me by a magnetic sense of love, as you were to Stephen. It is a big step from which, once taken, there is no drawing back. (A friend of mine recently divorced his wife; it took him two years, an Act of Parliament, and ten thousand pounds!)

  It is not a step to be taken lightly. I know that you would not ever take it – or me – lightly.

  If you find me physically repulsive or you do not like me, then pray return a ‘nay’, and there it shall rest. If that is not the case then I beseech you to give it the long and serious consideration of your loving heart.

  Edward

  Chapter Five

  Late one summer evening a girl called Jane Heligan was walking back to her home in Marazanvose from the direction of Trispen, where she had been to see her sister, who had just given birth to her second child. Jane Heligan was nineteen, daughter of a miner who had scraped together a few pence to send his younger daughter to a dame school, where she had learned laboriously to read and write. She worked on a farm on Zelah Hill, sometimes read a piece of scripture in Chapel and generally earned rather less than she would as a bal-maiden at Wheal Leisure. She did not worry about this as she was of a happy disposition and looked forward to marrying soon and being able to teach her letters to her children.

  There was no proper path from Trispen, so you had to climb hedges, skirt fields and at one point ford the River Allen, which here was little more than a rill as it trickled across the moorland on its way to the town of Truro.

  She had just passed St Allen Church, with its scatter of cottages and its inner necklace of tombstones, and was taking the cart track towards Boswellick when a figure stepped out in front of her and barred her way. The late moon had not risen and it was very dark, but with eyes accustomed to that dark she could see it was wearing a black hat and a long black cloak.

  She stopped.

  He said: ‘My pretty,’ and showed her a long knife that he carried.

  She screamed.

  He stretched out a black-gloved hand and clamped it over her face, at the same time pulling her round with his other arm and pinioning her, with the knife glinting.

  She was a very strong girl and grasped the arm with the knife. Then she kicked wildly and caught him on the knee cap. So she wrenched herself free and went screaming back towards the hamlet of St Allen. He followed her more than half the way before giving up the chase as the first still-lit cottage window appeared.

  In mid-May Isabella-Rose Poldark wrote to her mother.

  Dearest, darling Mama,

  I hope this finds you in the best of health and spirits. Although it is little more than a week since I returned it already seems like a month since I saw you. Thank you for a perfect holiday.

  I have a little shock for you. I hope and trust it will not upset or worry you, for I truly know there is no need for fret or worry or concern. Tomorrow morning I am leaving for France.

  Do you remember Monsieur Maurice Valéry? We all met, you’ll recall, in Mrs Pelham’s house: he was there with Mme Jodie de la Blache, when you were in London to choose a school for me. Almost as soon as I was back in London this time, he called at the school and invited Dr Fredericks to choose three of his most promising pupils to accompany him back to France, where he is director of the Théâtre Nationale in Rouen and where he is shortly going to produce a new Italian opera called Il Barbiere di Siviglia in a special new French translation. He asked Dr Fredericks to choose two of his pupils, but specially insisted that the third should be me!

  He was only in England for a few days, and it was essential that he should take the three singers back with him. Dr Fredericks made his choice, and I had rather quickly to make up my mind. So I said yes.

  It is a wonderful opportunity, for Rouen is the third city in France, and only a day’s ride from Paris. This is the first time this opera, which is by a man called Rossini, has been shown in France and if it is a success it may well go on to Paris.

  But now is the hardest part! Tomorrow morning at six of the clock I shall steal out of Hatton Garden and take coach with the others for Portsmouth – without telling dearest Mrs Pelham! Mama, what was I to do? I am certain sure that Mrs Pelham would understand this big opportunity which has just come up, and I am certain sure I could persuade her into allowing me to go. But what I am also certain sure – for I have had many opportunities to observe it – is that she takes her ‘guardianship’ seriously, and she would not, indeed could not, agree to allowing me to go without your consent – and how were we to obtain this in time?

  Of course I shall leave her a letter even longer than this, and I hope and believe she will forgive me. I am positive that she will come to forgive me this grave discourtesy if you are able to let her know that I would have had your consent.

  Do not worry. I shall be with others, chiefly the two whom Dr Fredericks has chosen. We are all singers, travelling together. There will be many rehearsals, and then about six performances in a week, then I shall come home. Christopher is not expecting to return from Lisbon until the end of May. Of course I have written to him, and I hope he will be as happy for the future as I am.

  Do not worry about money. I have a little saved, and we are promised payment for our time even during rehearsals! Please tell Clowance and Papa and Aunt Caroline and Uncle Dwight. I leave it to you if you wish to tell others, but generally I should prefer you not to say too much until after the first performance!

  Mama, cross your fingers for me and wish me God speed!

  Your devoted

  Bella

  It was not in Bella’s nature to be a liar, but there had been a few occasions in her life when to adjust the truth had been a great convenience. Things had moved so rapidly during the last two months in her relationship with Christopher, with Maurice Valéry, and with her feelings about her prospects in her profession.

  It was not quite as she had told her mother. She was travelling alone with Valéry, and the other two girls whom Maurice had somewhat reluctantly been persuaded by her to invite were to follow in a day or so. There was no guarantee that they would be in the opera – that
would be decided during early rehearsals. But their chief purpose was to give an extra air of decorum to Bella’s trip. In fact it had all the slightly sinister, heavily romantic air of an elopement, as she stole out of a side door of Mrs Pelham’s house, deliberately left unlocked the night before, and in the chill air of a six o’clock dawn, carrying a small bag came out into Hatton Garden, and there was Maurice, head bared, to kiss her fingertips and help her into the green plush carriage he had waiting. They sat each in a corner of the carriage, almost unspeaking as it rattled off over the cobbles on its way to the Lamb & Flag on Cheapside, where they were to take the coach for Portsmouth. Maurice had said in his letter that the larger coach and longer sea voyage to Dieppe were an easier way than to sail Dover to Calais and have the long jolting journey to Rouen across the side roads of France.

  Bella had taken some other liberties in her letter to her mother. Valéry had not arrived suddenly at the school looking for singers for his opera; Bella had written to him as soon as she knew Christopher was going to Lisbon, accepting Maurice’s offer to her, first made at the Pulteney Hotel party and later repeated twice in letters to her. He was now in England solely in answer to her last letter and solely to pick her up and return in triumph with her to Rouen. She had also implied to her mother that Christopher had been informed of her trip. That was not true. He knew nothing of it, but she told herself it was better, and safer, to wait until she was installed in Rouen and fully embarked on the rehearsals for the opera before writing to him. He was not likely to be pleased. He might indeed be furious. But it seemed probable that she would be safely back in England and able to present him with a fait accompli by the time a fitful wind brought him across Biscay and up the chops of the Channel on his return from Portugal.

  She still loved him, she thought. He had grown into her life. And he was Christopher. But besides being the director of a minor theatre in France and passionate about music, Maurice Valéry was a very pretty young man.

  ‘What are you smiling at, ma chérie?’ Valéry asked her, as the coach began to leave the last suburbs of London behind.