The Angry Tide

‘Have you seen Drake Carne since he returned?’

  ‘Seen him? I’d break his bones if I did!’

  ‘Always one for violence, eh? Well, one day you’ll have to see him if you both go on living round here.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare come back to his forge!’

  ‘I haven’t seen him. It is likely he’ll not want to; but if he does you shall not stop him.’

  Jacka wiped a hand across his mouth.

  ‘Not,’ said Ross, ‘that I like what he did. Nor never shall. I don’t defend him. But I don’t like what happened after, either.’

  ‘What? What happened?’

  ‘Pally’s Shop is a ruin. It will cost a deal of money to repair. Did you burn it down?’

  Jacka gulped. ‘Me? . . . Why, no! Me. Not me, Cap’n!’

  ‘Was it your new friends?’

  ‘Wha’ friends?’

  ‘The two Warleggan men I saw you with a half hour gone. One was Tom Harry. The name of the other escapes me.’

  ‘Ah . . .?’ said Jacka, sweating. ‘Oh, Harry and th’other un? Nay, I was but coming out o’ kiddley same time. Passing time o’ day, as ee might say.’

  ‘You’re a bad liar, Jacka.’

  ‘Me? Here on. There’s no cause nor excuse t’say I be a liar. We’m old friends but—’

  ‘Old friends and old shipmates in one good adventure in France. But don’t count on it too far. Arson’s a hanging matter, did you know?’

  ‘Arson?’

  ‘Setting fire to a house. That’s arson. You hang for it. By the neck. Outside Bodmin gaol. On the hill overlooking the gaol. They drive you on a cart, put the rope round your neck and then drive the cart away. It takes a little time to die.’

  The solitary candle flickered in the draught of Jacka’s breathing.

  ‘So it was your two friends, eh?’

  ‘Wha’? Two friends? They edn no friends of mine! I don’t know what they do and don’t do! Tes not my consarn.’

  ‘But it was the night Pally’s Shop was burned, wasn’t it. Were you there? Did you see it? Did you agree to help?’

  Jacka got up and then sat again, wiping away the stale beer that had come to his lips. ‘I swear on the Book I know naught ’bout un! Twas not me nor nothing to do wi’ me, and tes no manner o’ good accusing me, Cap’n. I sw-swear on the Book, Cap’n! Honest to G-God I do truly!’

  Ross looked at him for a long time. He wondered if he persisted with a flow of questions whether he could trap the man into inconsistencies and contradictions. It might be so. But if he did that tonight, Jacka would deny everything again in the morning. And how to catch those evil bullies he had seen him with tonight? Proof, proof, proof: there was nothing. And the trail was near a month old. You could act on suspicion, retaliate on suspicion, that was all. Or do nothing. Except instil a healthy fear.

  He got up. ‘I’ll see you again tomorrow. There is a lot more I want to know of it. But let me say this. You are keeping bad company. Get out of it. If they burned down the house and you helped them, they will not spare you if they are charged. You’ll stand in the dock with them, be sure. And if my brother-in-law comes back to live there, to try to re-build, he shall come back unmolested. Understand?’

  Jacka grunted and belched.

  Ross went to the door. ‘I accused you of being a violent man just now. Well, that’s a case of the pot calling the kettle. So let’s end this first meeting – and it is only the first, Jacka – with my promise that if you molest Drake Carne in any way, or are a party to his molestation, I’ll not wait for Bodmin but see you strung up at Bargus for the crows to pick. It is a nasty threat to issue to an old shipmate, but I am sure you know I mean it. Say good night to Rosina and Mrs Hoblyn for me.’

  III

  He liked riding in the dark. Grambler village was near asleep, though it was barely nine. A light flickered, surprisingly, in Jud’s cottage. He wondered if people had got tired yet of calling the old man Jud Pilchard. Someday, he thought, he would have a track made cutting through the rough gorse and heather and the little ravines so that it was not necessary to make this half circle on the way to Nampara.

  As he climbed the rising ground towards Wheal Maiden a badger ran across the road and Sheridan side-stepped in alarm. The saddle-bag clinked. Jacka’s eyes had strayed to it, lying on the table between them, before Ross’s accusations had driven everything else out of his head. A lot of money to be carrying through the night – a splendid haul for some cut-purse if he but knew.

  A patter of feet beside him and Sheridan side-stepped again. Ross gripped his whip, but it was two young people he had disturbed lying in the gorse; they were off, hurrying, not to be recognized.

  How could Ossie’s horse have thrown him? Give the man his due, he was more at home in the saddle than in his pulpit. A man dead in the road, hanging by one stirrup. A house burned down. A bank and an honourable man broken. All this had happened while he was beating about in the English Channel on his way home. Now he had to try to repair the unrepairable. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men . . .

  Past the mine which had temporarily destroyed his own mine and which did not yet show any promise of making up for it. Life was such a gamble, and the safest, sturdiest man existed on such a tightrope of circumstance that the merest vibration could throw him. We lived, belonged, felt solidly based, important in the world – and then, flick, and we were nothing.

  Lights in Nampara tonight. Demelza was waiting by the parlour door. She looked at him and he smiled and threw his hat and cloak down. She helped him pull his boots off. But she didn’t ask anything.

  ‘I’ve waited supper,’ she said. ‘It’s hot, so give me five minutes.’

  ‘Of course.’ But when it came he did not eat much.

  ‘Not hungry?’ she said.

  ‘Just tired. Tired of talking, tired of arguing, tired of inquiring, tired of riding.’

  ‘Eat a bit more.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I just want you.’

  IV

  To acknowledge his appreciation of their work and their co-operation Ross gave the mine folk a day’s holiday on the Thursday. A flag – an old one of dubious deprivation once belonging to Joshua Poldark – was hoisted to the top of the headgear, and at midday those miners who were underground came up and no more went down. They joined the queue outside the office, where Captain Henshawe kept the accounts. Ross stood beside Henshawe and spoke to each man as he was paid and gave him an extra two shillings ‘for his patience’. He told them that Pascoe’s Bank had closed its doors but might re-open, and that in any event the mine was safe. It would mean ‘hand to mouth’ for the next few months, but there was no cause for alarm. So long as everyone pulled together.

  The holiday took the miners by surprise, but they soon got into their stride. A mass of sixpences was collected and two men set off in a cart to buy a barrel of beer from Sally Tregothnan; since the day was fine it seemed more fitty that everyone should carouse together at Nampara than disperse to various beer shops. A few men broke up some old pit props – of which there were a lot lying about since the accident, too sodden to be trusted again below but dried out now in the winter air – and built a huge bonfire, which crackled and spat dispiritedly for a time but presently caught and roared up into the sky. Some of the tributers started making fireworks out of the gunpowder, and blew up old kegs and boxes. It was not a safe exercise, but Ross did not interfere: these men were all old hands in the use of explosives, and if they could be trusted with their own lives below, they could be trusted now. It greatly amused the women and children, who shrieked with terror and laughter, as splinters of wood fell in flakes and strips around them. Later they had a feast, roasted a pig on the fire and potatoes in the embers.

  While this was going on the sun came out and splashed the scene with colour: dotted blues and greens and browns on a slope of the valley about the flame and smoke of the fire; coarse, hard-working faces, young ones yet unscarred, greasy hands, raised mugs, banter
and laughter, the flirtings of youth and the croak of old age; a rare companionate time.

  Ross said: ‘Our combe is badly scarred. Rubble and refuse and pits and sheds. Every month more of the vegetation is going.’

  Demelza said: ‘We can none of us live without it.’

  ‘Neither of your brothers is here.’

  ‘No. Sam went home to fetch Drake but has not come back.’

  ‘I can understand Drake not wanting to mix, yet.’

  ‘Perhaps I should go see him.’

  ‘No. Leave him be. Sam’s the one to deal with it. I think Drake has to work this out for himself. And it will take time.’

  ‘Will you be away again tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a half dozen more people I must see. Then it must wait on Basset’s return.’

  ‘Do you know when?’

  ‘They expect him Saturday.’

  ‘What hope do you have, Ross?’

  ‘Not the greatest.’

  Chapter Twelve

  I

  As Ross rode up to the gates of Tehidy on the following Monday he thought: sometimes before I have tried my tact and other persuasions, and not often with success. Once before magistrates, trying to save a young miner from prison and – as it turned out – death. Complete failure, due to ignorance both of tactics and tact. Once I pleaded for my own life – much against my own wishes, having been bullied into it by my counsel, Mr Clymer – and, presumably, succeeded. Once I went to see my dear friend George Warleggan on behalf of this same Drake Carne who is always getting into trouble, and by a fair mixture of persuasion and threat – chiefly threat – succeeded in getting him to drop a charge of theft. Once – and not so long ago – I came to see a man I am now about to visit, Francis Basset, Baron de Dunstanville of Tehidy, and suggested he should help to commute the death sentence on a rioting miner to transportation – and signally failed to move him.

  Since then his relations with Basset had been noticeably cool. They had not been assisted either by his having turned down Basset’s invitation to stand as his nominee for Parliament, and then, little more than a year later, accepted Viscount Falmouth’s nomination for precisely the same seat. It suggested, quite wrongly, that Ross did not care for the thought of having the newly created lord, de Dunstanville, as his patron and preferred the senior peer, Lord Falmouth. It might even suggest a personal antipathy. Which was not the case either. But Ross had gagged at the thought of trying to explain his own infinitely complicated motives to another man, especially one to whom such an explanation might look like an excuse and an apology.

  In any case, how could you state one of the principal ingredients, the simple fact that one year you were happy with your wife and contented in Cornwall; the next you were not?

  As the great Palladian mansion came into view with its noble porticoed front and its four sentinel pavilions, he decided that if for any reason Basset should be busy or seem preoccupied with other things he would pay his respects, make an appointment, and ride away. What was to be discussed was too important to everyone to be aired at the wrong time. But his lordship was in: his lordship would see him: his lordship had caught a slight cold on the journey and seemed not unwilling to have a visitor to pass an idle hour.

  They discussed the unseasonal weather, the backwardness of all vegetables and crops, the pleasure with which, these first few days of May, one at last felt a balmy touch in the air. They talked of the siege of Acre and wondered if Sydney Smith would inspire the Turks to hold out; whether, with the balance of power in Europe at last beginning to swing against France, that man Buonaparte would be content to remain bottled up in Egypt or whether, if he failed at Acre, he would try to slip through the blockade and return to France.

  There seemed to be no particular signs of coldness or disaccord on Basset’s part. Perhaps he was a big enough man to disregard small slights. He told Ross in friendly fashion of a lawsuit he was in with the Hon. C. B. Agar over mining rights, and another suit likely to come up with Lord Devoran on the rights of a water-course. He was always involved in some minor litigation or other. He also said money was now available for the re-opening of the great Dolcoath Mine, which would not only profit him as mineral lord but also give work to eight or nine hundred miners. The project had been almost cancelled in March with the price of copper threatening to fall below £100 a ton, but now that it had rallied the great day could not be far off. By the bye, would Captain Poldark be present next week when the opening ceremony for the new Cornwall General Infirmary took place?

  Ross said he would have that pleasure, and added that it was an agreeable change to be able to talk of happenings in the world, both near and distant, in a modestly optimistic tone. The war. Conditions in the county. Summer on the way. He had, however, been deeply disturbed on his return to Cornwall to discover that Pascoe’s Bank in Truro had failed.

  Lord de Dunstanville sneezed. ‘Unfortunate, yes. You were not here either, then? Unfortunate. But I’m told on good authority that the depositors will lose little in the end. I presume you are quite substantially involved, Poldark?’

  ‘Yes. But it is not for that I am so much concerned. It is rather that Harris Pascoe is ruined, and, unless he can be re-established, Truro will lose one of its most prominent and upright citizens, and one of the major influences for good in the town.’

  ‘Re-established? Is there any possibility of that? I’m afraid I’m a little out of touch with local affairs; but Tresidder King called to see me yesterday, and I had the impression that our bank was taking over the assets and making itself responsible for the liabilities of Pascoe’s Bank, and therefore any attempt to revive that bank had long since failed.’

  ‘So far as I can tell, no attempt was made.’

  ‘Then I don’t see what prospect there is of its being re-established now, after several weeks have passed.’

  ‘A number of its old clients would greatly favour that, my lord.’

  ‘Sufficient to provide finance?’

  ‘That I don’t yet know.’

  Basset dabbed his nose. ‘I should greatly doubt if the money could be found at this time. In any event – in any event, the day of the small bank, the personal bank, is coming to its close. I appreciate Pascoe is a man of great integrity, but for years – you know for years – his bank has been insufficiently financed. It has wavered more than once. If it had not been for the help we gave it two years ago it would have fallen then.’

  ‘And why would it have fallen then?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You must know, my lord.’

  For the first time Basset began to look a little irritated. I must be careful, Ross thought.

  He said: ‘Two years ago the banking system of England stood in danger and Pascoe’s was only one of many in trouble. It would have survived well enough if it had not been for pressure exerted on it by Warleggan’s Bank at the wrong moment, throwing all Pascoe notes on the market, cutting off normal credit co-operation, ceasing to discount bills that were to come through Pascoe’s hands, etc. You, my lord, I believe, returned from London just in time to save the situation.’

  The little man nodded. ‘Yes, that is so.’

  ‘On that occasion a credit of six thousand pounds saved Pascoe’s. This time about the same sum would have saved it again.’

  ‘This is rather my point, Poldark. One cannot – or one should not have to – go on supporting another bank in this way. It should—’

  ‘Even when the pressures are false ones?’

  ‘False? Well, I don’t know about that! This man Pearce, whom personally I only knew by sight, had got himself deeply into trouble and had involved Pascoe in it. That doesn’t seem—’

  ‘Pearce was an honest man most of his life, but ran into debt late on by incautious speculation. What impulses moved in him we shall never know now . . . He took money from trusts: in some cases he was the only trustee surviving, in other cases Pascoe, a very old friend, relied on him too far. But Pascoe could meet all
the claims, and wished to. The total was less than eight thousand. There was no need for the general public to take alarm. And would not have done, I believe, but for these, my lord.’

  He took the anonymous letter out of his pocket and handed it over. Basset put on a very small pair of spectacles, the lenses of which were smaller than his eyes. Outside blackbirds and thrushes were fluting. They had had little to call about yet, and so were carrying it on into the middle of the day.

  Basset said: ‘Monstrous. How many—’

  ‘Fifty,’ said Ross. Careful, I must not interrupt him so much.

  ‘Um . . .’ Basset scratched at his greying hair. ‘And this business about his daughter?’

  ‘Warleggan’s closed suddenly upon her husband who, to my shame, is a relative of mine and should be kicked from here to Plymouth.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . yes, well.’

  ‘I’m told, my lord, that you have held the Warleggans in poor favour ever since you returned from London two years ago and found them on the point of forcing Pascoe out of business.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Or don’t wish to. Well, yes, there’s some truth in it. We all have our ethics in business, and I have little fancy for sharp practices.’

  ‘Still less so now than then, I hope.’

  There was a long silence. Basset sniffed and blew his nose. ‘Where I slept on Thursday night last was infernally draughty. It’s very difficult at times. If one stays at an inn one has no hesitation about complaining of the poor quality of the bed curtains. But when spending the night with a friend . . .’

  ‘Yes, my lord, it’s difficult. But it’s better than the trip I had by sea.’

  ‘Tell me of it.’

  Ross told him of it. Basset invited him to dinner. Ross accepted. The other man seemed disinclined to discuss the matter of Pascoe’s Bank further at this stage. It was clear that he wanted time to think. Ross almost suggested that he might come back another day, but decided not. To let Basset have too long to think might give him an opportunity of having Mr Tresidder King to see him again, and although Ross had never met the gentleman he distrusted him. Of course, there might still be the dusty answer, the ‘I must consult my partners’ escape. But it was worth waiting.