The Angry Tide

  Osborne did not much like the sound of this: the idea of going into someone’s bed who had only recently left it shivering with the ague or influenza did not appeal to him; but she, smiling her demure secretive smile, lip trembling, eyes downcast, perceived his hesitation and told him she had changed the sheets that morning. Still a little put off, he climbed the rickety stairs after her, and it took her all her wicked wiles to make him lose himself in the wantonness of passion.

  Then for a while all was forgotten: his wife (easy), his cloth (not too difficult), Lent (scarcely more so), caution, lest she should ask for more money (quite thrown away: it was worth it); but concern in case he should pick up her miserable husband’s infection (not far below the surface). So that in a pause of reflection and semi-exhaustion, while they both lay back staring at the rain-spotted ceiling, when she chanced to sneeze he was immediately on his guard again and made decent haste to be gone. Holy Week, he said, pronouncing it as if it belonged to him, was a time of tremendous pressure, as she must well know; it imposed stresses and strains upon the parson and demands on his time and energies perhaps the most exacting of the church year. He had a sermon to prepare, notes to make on a meeting with the Wardens, all the usual services, not to mention the problems posed by Ogders’s illness at Sawle. He must go a little early; and rose and began to dress.

  She squatted on the bed, watching him out of her narrow, sandy-green eyes.

  ‘Vicar . . .’

  ‘Not now,’ he said, knowing with a conviction amounting to certainty that she was going to point out that during the storms of this week the roof had been leaking. ‘Not now, Rowella. I haven’t time. Next week . . .’

  ‘Next week . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and bent and kissed her, an unusual act of affection, as distinct from passion, that made her open her eyes a little wider. It was, in fact, a kiss of betrayal, for he knew he would not come next week. He had intended tonight to tell her of his uncertainty about the future; but he had realized with a flash of inspiration that it was better to say nothing at all. With luck he would leave tonight having given her nothing but a promise of the usual visit. Let her wait for him. It would do her good and teach her not to be greedy. If he did not turn up it would only make her need him the more. (He flattered himself that she was now caught up in their passionate meetings nearly as much as he.) It would only make her more welcoming if and when he was able to visit her next.

  He put on his waistcoat and bent to button his boots. Then, somewhat red in the face, he drew on his coat and cloak and fastened the high collar. He looked at her crouching there, pastel-coloured in the candlelight, naked, voluptuous, and the need for her crept up in him again. He quelled it, turning away from the sight of her.

  She said: ‘Goodbye, Vicar,’ and sneezed again. ‘You need not think,’ she said, ‘that I have a rheum. But if I did, it would not be surprising the way our roof now leaks. While Arthur was so ill, I had to cover the bed at times with a tarpaulin to keep off the drips. It was the storm of Saturday particularly; I know we have lost some slates.’

  ‘Next week,’ said Ossie. ‘We will discuss it all next week. I will hear all you have to say next week, and you have my promise of help.’

  ‘Thank you, Osborne. I think you would be advised to come a little later if you can, for the evenings draw out, and there will then be less risk.’

  ‘I’ll come later,’ said Ossie. ‘Wait for me. Goodbye.’

  He went downstairs, picked up his hat and crop, unlocked the door of the cottage and looked out. The moon was due to rise in half an hour, so perhaps it was an extra wise thing to have left early. Hunching himself into his cloak, he stepped out, shut the door and walked down the dark cobbled street. There was no one about.

  Even in the somewhat larger streets the town was empty of life. Stumbling here and there over a loose stone, splashing through a muddy puddle, ignoring the hands of the occasional beggar or drunk crouched in a doorway, he soon found himself back at the ostler’s yard. A boy, yawning, though it was still not late, led out his bay horse and was given sixpence. The Reverend Mr Osborne Whitworth climbed the mounting stone, swung his considerable bulk on to his horse and clattered out of the town.

  As he rode home he began to think of the reconciliation he had persuaded his wife to accept, and of her lack of violent response. It gratified him in a way few other events would have done. He hoped that with the ice now thoroughly broken – so to speak – a little reflection would bring Morwenna to a truer understanding of her foolishness, and perhaps even to a reluctant admiration for her husband’s position, eminence, strength, virility and manhood. Whatever the neurotic complaint she thought she was suffering from, she was still the mother of his son, and it was far, far healthier for her – apart from himself – that a regular human and physical relationship should be reestablished. Most women, he believed, admired him, and it greatly irked his self-esteem that he had been utterly refused by the one woman who had the distinction of bearing the name of Mrs Osborne Whitworth. As master of his household, as captain of his ship, it had gone against the grain that there should be one rebel, one person in constant if silent mutiny. Now that mutiny was quelled, and he felt so much the better for it.

  Indeed, all was going well for him. Although Luxulyan had not come his way, and although he had failed over Manaccan – the Bishop had preferred some totally unsuitable fellow from Totnes; clearly it had been a political appointment – he was now interesting George in the idea of seeing if he could get him appointed rural dean for the district. It would be a useful move forward, and though George at the moment was not being too co-operative, he felt sure a little extra pressure would bring it into his hands. He had arranged recently to have his sermons privately printed, and these, as soon as they came in, he intended to circulate widely among church dignitaries.

  The only tiny anxiety moving in him – scarcely so much as a worm in the bud, scarcely more than the stirrings of an embryonic worm – was a doubt as to exactly what might have been wrong with Arthur Solway. Weekly the man went back to the slums where his miserable family lived, and slums bred pestilence. Influenza was unpleasant but it was a temporary disease. Ague was worse. But typhus? . . . It was often occurring among these poor families . . . Or even plague, which had not reached epidemic proportions in Cornwall for fifty-odd years. But a case or two here and there – not always identified, of course – tending to be hushed up for fear of panic – they occurred, he well knew. And then, it was usually death, and a very nasty death. Rowella had sneezed twice. Wasn’t sneezing the first sign of the onset of plague?

  Skin crinkling, he rode on, trying to put the thought out of his mind. The lane from the town of Truro out to St Margaret’s followed for part of the way – up the steep hill and down the other side – the main coaching road from St Austell to Truro, the road Ross Poldark had continued on after he had alighted last May. But for the last half mile or so it was a sharp right turn and down a gentle declivity lined with trees before you got to the church and the vicarage.

  By now the old moon was riding high, and at a broader clearing where two other lanes crossed he had no difficulty in seeing a tall thin man who rose suddenly in his path. His horse shied, and Ossie felt a twinge of apprehension, for one could never be sure that some solitary footpad might not be on the prowl.

  ‘Mr Whitworth,’ said a voice. ‘Is it Mr Whitworth?’

  Confidence returning, Ossie replied: ‘That is so. Who wants me?’

  He could not see the face of the man, for he seemed to be wearing some sort of a muffler about his head. He also carried a stave in his hand.

  ‘This is what I want!’ said the man and raised his stave and swung it at the clergyman’s head.

  But the aim was poor, inhibited by the tremendous grasp with which Arthur Solway held the stick, and misdirected by his feebly nervous excitement. The blow struck Ossie across the chest, part unseating him; but he quickly regained his balance and raised his crop. From the vantage
point of his startled horse he was able to hit his attacker again and again about the head and shoulders, while Solway could only get in one more wild swing which missed Ossie and hit the bay, which reared. Ossie clung to the saddle, one stirrup lost, and decided quickly that much as this man deserved the beating he was receiving, he himself would be safer breaking off the engagement. He steadied his horse, recognizing now the man attacking him and realizing why.

  He pulled at the reins and dug in his knees. Solway, stung about the head and seeing stars from a chance knock between the eyes, but aware of the total frustration of a revenge he had been planning for seven days, took a despairing leap forward and clutched at Ossie’s cloak as it was disappearing past him.

  He held on, and Ossie, one foot out of the stirrup, was off balance as his horse lurched forward. He came toppling off like a felled oak, but the one stirrup still held, and Arthur Solway, rolling on the ground with a piece of torn cloak still in his grasp, saw Mr Whitworth dragged fifty yards by one foot. Then the well-trained bay came slowly to a halt and looked round at the figure of its master lying head down in the road.

  Solway, sobbing for breath and for life, climbed slowly to his knees, to his feet, stood there swaying. His head was cut and his hair was sticky with blood. His shoulders were stinging with the blows and bruises he had received. And now there was silence. The clearing was silent, and so was the wood. The only sound in the distance was the discordant scream of a white owl, making its commentary on the night’s affairs.

  Arthur Solway was so unused to violence that the aftermath of it choked him; he thought he was going to die. It seemed minutes before the blood stopped thumping through his head and he was able to see, to breathe again. Then more time before he could persuade his legs to move, to take him step by slow limping step in the direction of his adversary.

  Careful not to startle the bay, he circled round until he could approach Mr Whitworth closely. The stirrup still held, but Mr Whitworth’s foot was at a peculiar angle. The moonlight showed up Ossie’s face. It was as dark almost as the ground he was lying on. His mouth was open and his tongue was prominent. His eyes were open too. But they did not see the sky.

  Arthur Solway had just enough strength to resist the waves of faintness coming over him. He turned and, staggering, fled from the field of battle.

  Chapter Six

  I

  The vicar of St Margaret’s was found just after midnight by the faithful Harry and another servant, who, compelled to wait up until he returned, had at last gone out to look for him. Mr Whitworth was still hanging by one foot from the stirrup. His horse, aware of some disability in his master, had scarcely strayed a yard. The grass within his reach was well cropped; grass only a few feet away was not touched.

  The death of Mr Whitworth in such dramatic circumstances was the sensation of the hour. Mr Whitworth was known as an excellent horseman – did he not ride to hounds? – and his horse as a most reliable and docile beast, so foul play was at once suspected. Rogues and footpads were known to live in the woods and on the moors a mile or so away. But there was no actual evidence to suggest murder. The body had several cuts and bruises, but these were not out of keeping with such an accident as appeared to have occurred. A piece was torn off the cloak, but it might well have been caught on a passing tree. And a purse containing five sovereigns was still about the waist of the dead man. If he had not been robbed, what possible reason was there for his being killed?

  And while the clergy as a whole drank as much as their neighbours, Osborne Whitworth was known to be moderate in this respect. A fox leaping across the road – or perhaps the bay had stepped on an adder – a moment’s panic. Osborne, off his guard, might have lost a stirrup and then been hit by an overhanging branch. Lady Whitworth, his mother, at once ordered the horse to be destroyed.

  The one suspicious feature was the presence in the clearing of a stout wooden stave, which might have been used as an offensive weapon. It was well fashioned and of such good chestnut that its owner would not be likely to have thrown it away. But no one came forward either to claim it or to say they had seen it before. Two parties went through the woods as soon as it was light and picked up an old man who was living in the shelter of a fallen tree. But he was of feeble intellect and in so poor a physical condition that it would have been hard to suspect him of killing a hare. There was a gypsy encampment at Tresillian, but they swore their innocence, and five guineas in a dead man’s purse did more to convince the constables than all their indignant alibis.

  There was always the possibility of some wandering highwayman who, happening upon the young clergyman, had struck him down and then fled without searching the body. But it scarcely carried conviction. When the coroner’s inquest took place the verdict seemed certain to be death from misadventure.

  Formal sorrow was widespread, for Osborne, though not a saintly man, had performed the duties expected of him and had done a good deal to build up the life of the church. It was universally felt that he had been destined for higher things.

  None more so than his mother, who at once came to stay at the vicarage and took charge of a disintegrating household. The vicar’s widow was completely stunned and quite unable to deal with the problems and decisions that beset her. Although Lady Whitworth frequently jogged her attention and reminded her of her various duties, Morwenna remained in an impenetrable stupor. Her beautiful eyes had often, when she was not wearing her glasses, worn the dazed look of the short-sighted; now they were like windows over which a curtain had been drawn. It was the shock, Lady Whitworth explained to the many callers, but privately she had never had much opinion of her daughter-in-law and considered her lazy and her present attitude likely to be assumed to escape responsibility. Fortunately Ossie’s servants were all very capable, and Miss Cane took charge not only of young John Conan but also of the two girls.

  The body was in the house and upstairs, mountainous it seemed, swollen with death, tumescent, black, behind drawn curtains, with a candle at the head and the foot and one person always watching. A special silk-lined coffin had been ordered. The funeral would be on Easter Monday, when a very large turn-out was expected. Lady Whitworth, carrying all sails like a first-rater going into battle, wrote urgent letters about the countryside, not only to her many friends, but to all the clergy she knew, telling them she expected them to be present.

  Elizabeth came early on the Friday, saw Morwenna, saw Lady Whitworth, sympathized with them both. Only she perhaps perceived the brimming emotion under Morwenna’s dazed exterior, guessed that the girl was near to some sort of a breakdown, a crisis of nerves. She tried to get her alone, but always someone was calling or Lady Whitworth was bustling in and out.

  The following morning Elizabeth happened to drop in to the library to change some books, and was startled at Arthur Solway’s appearance. He explained that he had had a severe fever last week and had thought it gone, but now it was in part returned. He constantly wiped the sweat from his brow, his glasses steamed up as if he were poring over a boiling kettle; his hands trembled on the books. And it was the first time she had ever seen him in a wig.

  Elizabeth said: ‘How is Rowella?’

  ‘Oh . . . well, thank you, ma’am. She did not catch it. Indeed I – I – I – I doubt if it is the – the – catching sort. She – she – she is well.’

  ‘This tragedy – Morwenna’s husband – I know the sisters have been estranged for a time, but will you tell Rowella that I think she should go to see Morwenna now. It would be the time for a reconciliation.’

  Arthur dropped three books and took a long time picking them up. When he did so he had to stop and rub the lenses of his spectacles again. ‘Oh, she can’t do that, ma’am. She – she – she can’t.’

  Elizabeth looked surprised. ‘Do you mean she will not want to? Perhaps if I called I could persuade her.’

  ‘No – no, you couldn’t do that, ma’am. Rowella is – away.’ His hand jerked convulsively and almost knocked the books off th
e desk again.

  ‘Away? Rowella? She didn’t tell me. Where has she gone?’

  ‘To – to – to . . .’ He stopped and swallowed. ‘To her – to stay with her cousin, my cousin, I should say, in . . . in Penryn. When I was better, after I seemed better, she felt the need for a change. So she is there, will be there for a week or more. Over Easter, you understand, ma’am. Through Easter week. I thought she would enjoy the ch-change. My cousin is a farmer and has a nice farm looking – looking down the estuary. I thought it would be a – a change.’

  ‘Indeed, yes. I’m glad. But she didn’t tell me. Please ask her to let me know when she returns. And I trust you will be better.’

  Arthur wiped his hand across his forehead and tried to smile. ‘Thank you, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Indeed I’m r-r-recovering now. Tomorrow I shall stay in and rest and then I shall be well enough.’

  ‘Shall you come to the funeral? It is to be Monday.’

  Arthur’s smile became more ghastly. ‘Certainly I shall – shall try.’

  When Elizabeth’s slim, white-clad beauty had moved out of his sight Arthur went rapidly into a corner and took a gulp of brandy. He had to stick it out today. He had to put in this appearance just in case anyone should suspect. It was unlikely anyone but Rowella would suspect, and Rowella already knew. He could not imagine what had got into him on Thursday night; for, returning in a ghastly state from his encounter with Ossie, his rage had overmastered his weakness and had burst all over again when he got home. So Rowella lay in bed with split lips, a black eye and a swollen jaw; and her body was black and blue where he had beaten her.

  It was a terrific thing to do, and he knew he was a terrible man, and at present he was in horror at himself and at the possible consequences. His nerves jangled and at every moment his tongue seemed about to betray him. But far, far in the future, if he survived undetected and one day could lay his head on the pillow without fear of the consequences of his act, there was going to come to him a little secret male satisfaction from this crime. Already the seeds were being sown. Each morning and each night he carried to Rowella and, though she would not speak to him, he fussed over her, putting ointment on her bruises, salve on her lips. And each night when he returned home he brought with him a little bunch of flowers which he placed in a pot beside her bed.