The Angry Tide

  When Ross read it he said: ‘Well, why don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t I what?’

  ‘Come to London, of course. Caroline has a talent for pointing the obvious, when it is the obvious that others have missed.’

  Demelza picked up a bit of sealing wax which had fallen on the table. ‘When do you think to go?’

  ‘I should have gone a month since, but I lack the urgency. This is my home. However . . . if I don’t put in an appearance soon . . .’

  ‘Then would you return at Easter, or stay?’

  ‘Stay. Since I have missed the autumn sitting in its entirety, it would not become me to appear for a few weeks and then scuttle back to Cornwall.’

  Demelza considered all round it. Her brows were a straight line. ‘I couldn’t stay so long, Ross. The children.’

  ‘You could come with me and return at Easter.’

  She considered again. The suggestion had really come from Caroline, not from him. If it had come from him it would have been different.

  ‘Jeremy still has this cough. I know it’s perhaps nothing important, but I want to keep an eye on him.’

  Ross said: ‘You run the risk of my having to turn some more harlots out of my lodgings.’

  ‘And you being called whatever it was you were called.’

  ‘Yes . . . You’d risk that?’

  ‘Could I come maybe after the summer? I’d dearly like to see London. But in September or October, then the garden, the farm work, most of it is over. Then I could stay till Christmas.’

  ‘Caroline might not still be there then.’

  Demelza said: ‘I have a feeling she will.’

  II

  Ross left for London on the 28th of January. He travelled by the same route as that by which he had come home in May, a coach as far as St Blazey and then by ship from Fowey to Tilbury. With war in the Channel it was a more hazardous route, but if the wind were fair it was quicker, and he liked the motion of the sea better than the preposterous jolting of the stages.

  The house when he had gone seemed as usual as empty as a tomb. In previous years he had been away a deal with the Volunteers; this summer and autumn, especially with the preoccupation of the mine, he had been much at home. Demelza more than once regretted her decision to stay in Cornwall; but she was so uncertain of his inner feelings on the matter that she thought it better it should be as it was. Never since Hugh Armitage’s death had there been total ease between them. Love and laughter, she had discovered before this, could exist on a plane which was not at all superficial but which did not penetrate to the depths of one’s being. It had been so five years ago; it was so again now. She longed more than anything for the total submersion in each other that had occurred at other times. Only when it was withdrawn did one observe the tremendous gap that existed between that and the next stage.

  With him gone, she busied herself in the concerns of the countryside; and, Dwight being also bereft, she saw much of him. One day, having walked with Jeremy as far as Sawle Church to put flowers on the grave of Ross’s parents and to inspect the newly raised stone to Aunt Agatha, she avoided the tight, stooping breeches of Jud Paynter shining like a decaying planet in the rays of the afternoon sun, and went as far as Pally’s Shop to take tea with Drake.

  Jeremy had no interest in the forge, which was a fascination for most children, but soon found his own interest in the geese that Drake kept in the yard behind.

  ‘Going to be a farmer, is he?’ said Drake.

  ‘We don’t keep geese so they’re new to him. He has no fear of any animal. And always he draws them. His paint book is full of cows and pigs and chickens and horses.’

  ‘Maybe he’ll be a painter. Opie lived round here.’

  ‘You used to draw when you were a little boy, Drake. Do you remember? On the walls of the cottage with a crayon you had picked up.’

  ‘And got a rare cooting for it. I remember that. Will Cap’n Ross be back at Easter?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ Demelza began to talk of the rest of her brothers, the family in Illuggan, Widow Carne, their step-mother, Luke married and working in Saltash, John married with two young babies and no work at all. Bobbie, recovered from his injuries, likely to wed soon.’

  Drake said: ‘And Sam’s love have gone astray like mine.’

  ‘He’s told you, then.’

  ‘Yes. He’ve told me.’

  They were sitting in the parlour, in honour of Demelza’s visit. Demelza glanced cautiously round as she sipped her mug of tea. It was a tiny room, no bigger than a box-room, and clearly unused by Drake. The place was clean, but the curtains she had given him hung down and needed a hem, the chair from Nampara still had horsehair sticking out of the arm, the candles leaned askew like three drunken guardsmen, the cloth covering the primitive table was wrong side out.

  ‘So we’re two of a kind,’ said Drake.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Yet now and again he sees fit to advance the cause of matrimony to me.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘You have not spoken to him, then?’

  ‘About you? No, Drake.’

  ‘With Rosina Hoblyn. Who else?’

  Demelza said: ‘Have you been seeing something of her?’

  ‘Twice more, that’s all. I walked her home once from church, and once I was going down to the Guernseys and stopped by her door.’

  ‘She’s a good girl. She’d do you well.’

  ‘Maybe . . . Oh, yes, I’m sure. I mean nothing against her.’

  Jeremy was shouting outside, and Demelza went to the foot-square window that looked over the back yard. But he was only exchanging some information with one of the young Trewinnards, who was bringing in a reluctant goat.

  ‘Her father don’t know what to make of me,’ said Drake. ‘One moment he d’smile as if I’m an old friend, the next he d’glower as if he think I’d steal his daughter without the parson’s aid.’

  ‘You must take no notice of Jacka, Drake. He’s always had a curious temper. Ross knows how to handle him, but I truly believe he’s a bully. For sure he bullies his womenfolk.’

  Drake refilled her mug and then his own. Demelza, who did not like goat’s milk, accepted a little out of politeness.

  ‘So you think I should wed her, sister . . .’

  ‘I cannot tell you what you must do, Drake.’

  ‘But it has been in your mind ever since last May. Edn that true?’

  She smiled. ‘Ross warns me I must not interfere in the lives of other folk. It is dangerous, he says.’

  ‘But if I wed Rosina it would pleasure you not a little?’

  ‘How much do you like her?’

  ‘I like her very much.’

  ‘And does she, you?’

  ‘I think.’

  ‘But it isn’t love.’

  ‘Not on my side it isn’t love. Leastwise not what I recollect – of love.’

  Demelza stared at him. ‘I know how that is, Drake. I know how that is . . . But – that is lost. No one can bring it back in the way it was then . . . I – just want you to be happy – not sitting here lonely and alone. Did you enjoy our Christmas dinner?’

  He said: ‘Yes. Twas handsome.’

  ‘Well, then, for a little while then, especially after dinner with the children, you were gay. The way I remember you the first two years you were here. I’d like you to be that way more often, and tis unlikely to happen if you only have Aunt Nelly Trevail to see for you.’ She hastened on as he was about to speak. ‘I have a taking for Rosina, I must admit as much. She is – different from the other girls, bal girls and farm workers – more thoughtful – cleverer. She’s pretty, she’s quiet, she would move up with you in the fine business you are making for yourself here. She would be a nice – sister-in-law.’

  Drake said: ‘Yes, I see all that.’

  ‘So now please think no more of it, Drake.’ She smiled as he looked up. ‘No man should marry a girl just because she’s suitable, still less
because she’d make someone a nice sister-in-law. It is your life, brother. And marriages, once undertaken, are not to be dissolved. Only . . . I want you to be happy, not lonely and alone. It would be good to have someone to work with and someone to work for. I don’t want you to get set in loneliness. And sometimes – love grows.’

  He got up and went to the smaller window, peered out. ‘Did it with you, Demelza? I’ve often thought but never wished to ask.’

  The question brought a tightness to her breast. ‘No. It was with me always. But not with Ross. It grew with Ross – over the years. He did not love me when he married me. But it grew so over the years.’

  III

  The cold set in soon after Ross had gone. Snowstorms swept England, and Demelza waited in anxiety for a letter telling her he had arrived safe. There was little snow in Cornwall but bitter frosts inland and even on some days on the coasts. The drier weather was a welcome help to the labouring engine of Wheal Grace. It was the 19th of February before she heard from Ross. His ship had berthed just ahead of the storms, but many roads, he said, were blocked and impassable, and London looked like a fairy city with the Thames frozen over and all the buildings encrusted in ice and snow.

  Early in the month Mr Odgers was taken ill with a severe chill and fainted twice, so there were no services at Sawle Church on the first three Sundays in Lent. On the third of these, which was the 24th of February, a sudden clearance of the weather and a mild open day brought out a fair congregation, who went in or stood about outside for a while chatting sociably in the unexpected sunshine like survivors after a disaster, and waited to see if the preacher would turn up.

  The preacher did not turn up. Nor did Ossie, who had been informed of his curate’s illness, so after twenty minutes or so the congregation began to disperse.

  Among them was Drake Carne, and among them was Rosina Hoblyn, with her younger married sister, Parthesia, who was great with another child by her somewhat doltish husband, Art Mullet. Drake went across to Rosina, and they walked home together.

  They stopped beside one of the ruined walls of Grambler. In the nine years since the big mine had ceased to be, wind and weather had taken toll of the subsidiary sheds, the casual buildings that grow around the heart of a bal; but the two main engine-houses pointed their chimneys at the powder-blue sky with more arrogance and certainty of tenure than the spire of Sawle Church just over the hill. It was still a barren land here, there having been so much mineral waste brought up through the previous half century that only a little hardy grass yet sprouted among the rubble and the stones.

  Drake said: ‘Rosina, I d’wish to tell you something. Have you the time – five, ten minutes to spare – twill take that long, to try t’explain.’

  Rosina said: ‘Yes, Drake.’ The reply was quite simple, unequivocal. If she knew what was coming she made no pretence of being reluctant to hear it.

  He stood there, tall and pale, the old mischievous fun long gone from his expression, but some turn of lip and eye that suggested it was not in his nature to be sad. She was small beside him; wearing her best, her only best, the same yellow muslin dress and the black boots, but, it being winter, a snuff-brown cloak and a darker bonnet with yellow ribbons.

  He said, ‘If I ask you to hark to me, Rosina, you must know why.’

  ‘Yes, Drake,’ she said again.

  ‘Tis because I hae a taking for ee that I wish t’explain what is deepest in my mind and – and in my heart . . .’

  So he told her of Morwenna, when she was governess to Geoffrey Charles, of his first meeting with her when she and Geoffrey Charles had surprised him and Sam carrying the oak post through the wood on Warleggan land. Of the strange courtship, carried on always in the presence of the boy, unnoticed by him and almost, for a while, unnoticed by themselves, growing by slow and secret stages all through the summer and the dark quiet autumn of four and a half years ago, of the wild and bitter early months of ’95, when Mr and Mrs Warleggan’s plans had come between them, and of the final break of any hope at all, first by his false arrest for having stolen Geoffrey Charles’s Bible, and then by the arranged marriage between Morwenna and the young vicar of St Margaret’s, Truro.

  ‘Maybe,’ he ended, ‘twas ill-wished from the start. She was – a dean’s daughter – she was educated, could read ’n write better ’n I ever shall. Maybe she never were for me; but that could make no manner of difference at the time. Love her I did, and – and love her I always shall. Tis a hard thing to say to you, that I well d’know, but I can’t abear to say what I wish to say next without first telling you all the truth, just as tis writ in my soul . . .’

  ‘Yes, Drake,’ Rosina said for the third time. She had lowered her head, so that her bonnet hid her expression; but her voice told him that there was no doubt in her mind as to what he was going to say next and what she would reply.

  ‘But Morwenna be lost to me for ever. We’ve never spoken, not for three and a half year, and I seen her but once. Tis over and done, and I have a life to live, and folk tell me – and I come to believe – that I d’need a wife. Now that you know it all, now that you know what I feel and what I don’t feel – maybe never shall feel – yet liking you and wanting your company . . . a friend, a helpmeet, a wife, in due time perhaps a mother . . . I have a home, a trade . . . that’s what I want you to think over . . . and in due time you’ll give me your answer.’

  The wall had been broken here, many of the stones carried away to build two cottages. Rosina put her hand on the wall, a small, firm, capable hand.

  ‘Drake, I’ll give the answer now, if ee do not think tis forward of me to know my own mind so soon. I’ll marry you and try to make you happy again. What you d’say – I knew some of it from gossip, but I’m glad to hear it from your own lips. You’re a brave, honest man, Drake, and I respect you and love you, and I trust and b’lieve our – our lives will be good and true and honest, and I hope . . . I hope . . . oh, I can’t find the words . . .’

  He took her hand and held it for a few moments. There was a man tending cows in a field, and a group of old people talking in the distance, so he did not make any more explicit gesture. They had said all that was needed – indeed, by the standards of village life, where proposals and acceptances often scarcely exceeded a dozen words on either side, it was garrulous. But in this engagement there were things better not left unsaid. It was formal, a little stiff yet, and both were superficially calm.

  Rosina said: Twould be best, Drake, if you was to come down wi’ me now and tell Mother and Father.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Drake. ‘I suspect that’d be for the best.’

  Only then, when they turned to move together towards Sawle, did Rosina give a little inadvertent skip which betrayed the excitement and pleasure she was feeling underneath.

  IV

  Jacka said: ‘Har! So that’s how the land lies, eh?’ and glared at Drake as if he’d discovered him in some disreputable circumstances.

  Mrs Hoblyn said: ‘There, now! There, now! Well, Rosie! Well, Drake! Dear of ’n!’

  Art Mullet said: ‘Proper job. Proper job.’

  Parthesia said: ‘When’s it to be? Oo, not yet! Not till I’ve ’ad this,’ and thumped her belly.

  ‘What with Lent not half through,’ Drake said, ‘I thought Easter Sunday. Twill give good time for the banns to be called. But I’ve scarce give it a thought. Perhaps Rosina . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Rosina. ‘That’d be well. That’d be fine and well.’

  ‘How long off’s Easter Sunday?’ said Jacka suspiciously, seeing some trap.

  ‘The twenty-fourth March,’ said Drake. ‘Five weeks today.’

  ‘There, now!’ said Mrs Hoblyn. ‘Isn’t that handsome, you. Twill give us fair time to prepare. Twill give Rosie time to make ready. She’s so fitty wi’ her hands, Drake, you’d not believe it. There, now, Jacka, have you not a good word to say?’

  ‘So long as there’s no need t’hurry,’ said Jacka.

  ‘There, now, how coul
d you!’

  ‘Well, knowing how twas with her sister—’

  ‘Hey on!’ said Art. ‘There’s no call to be duffy ‘bout that. One way with th’other, that’s no way to talk.’

  Rosina smiled at Drake. ‘I’ll walk back with ee, Drake. Just so far as the top o’ the hill.’

  V

  Very soon the weather turned foul again. The normally early Cornish spring showed nothing of itself, and the vegetable world was at a standstill. Demelza forced herself to take the children out walking every day whatever the conditions: it was a fad Dwight had that the open air was good for people and not deleterious, and that unkind spring it seemed to be borne out. Scarlet fever was raging in the towns, and a number of cases turned up in Sawle.

  As soon as she heard the news Demelza went across to see Drake, taking a protesting Jeremy again – it was still just too far for Clowance’s fat legs – and kissed Drake and wished him well. He seemed gravely pleased at her pleasure, and happier in himself. The barrier against his friendship with another woman had been broken, and he talked freely with her of his plans. Sam, too, was happy, he said, and foresaw his brother’s full return to the Society along with a wife who was half-saved already. They both laughed at this joke, for half-saved in the Cornish dialect meant weak in the head.

  Two more letters from Ross, the second to say he had accepted a commission that August to train with a group of the Militia, somewhere in Kent. It would mean his being away all the month, but because of that, in agreement with Lord Falmouth, he would not see the Parliamentary session out and hoped to be home in April. He had seen Caroline, as Dwight would no doubt have told her, and Caroline seemed superficially well but determined not to come home until she had shaken what she called ‘the demons’ out of her. Ross added that at Caroline’s he had met ‘that fellow whom I first met in the garden of Trenwith last summer, Monk Adderley by name. He tells me George is hoping to be back into politics by the next session. Happily the Commons is the sort of place where the avoidance of one’s friends is not difficult.’

  Ross was not the best letter-writer in the world. His warmth, of which Demelza knew so much, came out in personal contact. When he was with you he could suddenly say the sort of things to melt any woman’s heart – or on another occasion to freeze it. His letters by contrast were informative but detached. The physical distance between them was measurable.