Bella Poldark

  She got up and went to the mantelshelf and put a smaller pot of primroses on it. The grey woollen dress brushed beside Ross’s chair and he put his hand on her thigh through the dress.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you are right to treat this in a lighter way than I do. Maybe it is possessiveness – jealousy – hiding behind superstitious feelings that did not ought to exist. But you have known me long enough. No one has known me longer or been closer to me, and I have these feelings sometimes. You yourself, you have accused me more oftener than I can say of being like Meggy Dawes.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder whether she ever existed.’

  ‘Yes, she did, Ross. She had yellow hair; I suppose twas dyed; and the deepest of black eyes. I sat with her a lot when I was a child, and maybe she did teach me something – or I caught something. I get feelings, sometimes, instincts I cannot always give reasons for in a reasonable way, to convince a solid, reasonable man like you—’

  ‘Ecod!’ he said. ‘Now who’s joking?’

  ‘Please . . .’ She turned to face him and smiled at him, but in a troubled way. ‘Just say that I have a feeling about Valentine that brings a chill wind. You – are fond of him, and when I see him I like him well. But – d’you know what the shrims are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He gives me the shrims.’

  One morning George Warleggan had another unexpected visitor.

  Philip Prideaux he knew pretty well because Harriet had taken a fancy to him. So they had met at Cardew and passed the time of day, and sat at the same dining table and even breathed the same air, but had hardly ever exchanged a personal word.

  George was not greatly taken with the young man. For one thing he thought Harriet made too much of him, for another he did not greatly care for war heroes. Perhaps they reminded him too much of Ross Poldark (Philip was not scarred and he did not walk with a limp, but there was something about the type). For a third, now that he was out of the Army he did not seem to pursue any useful profession. George, of course, was very familiar with the ways of the landed gentry; most of them did not work for their living, and they largely looked down – if they dared, and only a few dared – on people like himself who did.

  ‘Sir George Warleggan,’ Philip said, standing like a beanstalk in the doorway.

  ‘Captain Prideaux, come in. Pray sit down.’ But George did not rise himself.

  ‘Thank you.’ Philip nervously adjusted his eye glasses. Wearing them, he tended to have a patronizing look, as if he were looking down on the person he addressed. It was what had first prejudiced Clowance. ‘We meet, as you know, when I partake of your gracious hospitality, but this – what I came to see you about – is perhaps more a professional matter, so I thought I would call on you at your Bank.’

  ‘Do you bank with us?’ George asked, knowing very well that he did and the exact amount his visitor was overdrawn.

  ‘Yes. But it was with your chief clerk that I dealt when I called to open an account, so . . .’ Philip tailed off. ‘It was not exactly on financial matters that I called. But perhaps I should say first . . .’ He folded himself into the chair that a few months ago Valentine had occupied.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Perhaps I should say first that from the first day of September last I accepted a position with the Duchy of Cornwall. I was appointed Assistant Secretary and Keeper of the Records. I told Lady Harriet last week, but she may not have mentioned it to you.’

  ‘She did not. I am pleased to hear it.’ George speculated to himself what influence had been used, and from what source, to obtain for this young man a comfortable sinecure.

  ‘It will be part-time,’ said Philip, as if reading the other’s thoughts, ‘but this will give me the opportunity to pursue my archaeological studies when the opportunity arises.’

  ‘I’m very glad,’ said George, not looking very glad. ‘I trust the stipend will be sufficient.’

  ‘For my simple needs, yes. It will mean that I am not likely for very much longer to need the accommodation that you have so kindly extended to me under my uncle’s guarantee.’

  George nodded. ‘But you tell me this is not the reason you came to see me?’

  ‘No. As you know, sir, I am taking a keen interest in the Cornwall of the Stone and the Bronze Age, and this week past I have been concentrating on Truro and the districts of Kenwyn and Moresk, where the earliest settlements took place. I have made one or two interesting discoveries; but I will not burden you with the details. Something else has come much to my notice. It is a somewhat distasteful subject, but after giving the matter some thought I decided to come to see you about it. In short, Sir George, I am referring to the smells.’

  ‘Smells?’

  ‘Smells, Sir George. Stenches. Living here, one cannot fail to be aware of them. If you opened this window—’, Prideaux gestured towards the barred window beside his chair, ‘the smells from the street below would make this room scarcely habitable.’

  ‘Perhaps in your soldiering you have become too accustomed to the open air,’ said George sarcastically. ‘It is a condition common to all towns.’

  ‘Yet, sir, Truro is uniquely positioned. It is built in a valley, on a confluence of several streams and with a great river at its feet. Streams run down, three in all, the Allen, the Kenwyn, and another still smaller. As you know, they all flow down the sides of the streets in open leats, and you would expect them to be full of beautiful clean spring water brought down from the hills. Instead they are virtually used as open drains, so that any filth, animal or human, is thrown into them, they choke up and spill over onto the streets; the refuse accumulates and dries and stinks to high heaven.’

  George’s stare was contemplative. ‘Why are you coming to me? I am not the Mayor of this town.’

  ‘No, sir, but you are one of the Capital Burgesses, the only one I know by name and—’

  ‘You may not be aware that there is a town body called the Improvements Commission, which attends to these matters.’

  Prideaux took off his glasses and rubbed them on a silk kerchief. ‘I am told, sir, that they meet but rarely, and when they are called upon to meet hardly any of them bother to turn up. I thought . . .’

  ‘Yes, what did you think, Captain Prideaux?’

  ‘I thought that as you are one of the most eminent inhabitants of this town – perhaps the most eminent, and I am sure among the most enlightened – you might be persuaded to instigate some action. Why, even the corner of St Mary’s Churchyard is piled high with animal and human excrement—’

  ‘Carried there by salaried scavengers, who collect the waste in the streets and eventually sell it to the farms as fertilizer. Do you know that last year over two hundred cartloads of such animal waste was sold by auction for nine shillings a load? You do not know the economics of a small town, Captain Prideaux.’

  It dawned upon Philip Prideaux that he was not winning this battle. But he had not charged at Waterloo for nothing.

  ‘It may be, Sir George, that you do not think you can help in this matter; but I was hoping, if not for help, at least for your advice.’

  ‘Are you a resident of this town?’

  ‘I am at present staying with my cousins at Prideaux Place.’

  ‘Then I would advise you to forget all about Truro and see if you can do any better with the town of Padstow. It is an imperfect world.’

  Philip stirred restlessly at the rebuke. ‘There are, I am told, sir, about thirty public wells in Truro; from them most of the people in this town draw their drinking water. Many of these wells are very shallow and polluted. The Forbra Hunt keeps its hounds – thirty or forty couple of them – at Carvedras, and these are mucked out into the leats. The Ferris Tannery has diverted a part of one of the streams into its pits, so that it has become a scene of indescribable putrefaction. Privies empty into the same watercourses, wool merchants wash their fleeces, pigs root everywhere; in the bad streets children defecate openly—’

  ‘You make me wonder
,’ said George, ‘how any of us survive.’

  ‘Some do not, Sir George. In some of the worst districts of the town: Goodwives Lane, Calenick Street, the old opes in Pydar Street, cholera, the pox, typhus, measles, scarlet fever—’

  ‘Is this part of your new-gained appointment? I did not know that the Duchy of Cornwall—’

  ‘No, no, sir, not at all. I approached you entirely as a private person.’

  ‘Is this even archaeology? Are you studying hygiene too?’

  Philip affixed his spectacles to his nose again. ‘I’m sorry, I feel I have been wasting your time, sir. I should not have come. But at a party on Wednesday I met a Dr Daniel Behenna, and we had a considerable conversation—’

  ‘Ha! Behenna! He’s getting too big for his boots—’

  ‘I should regret it if you thought he had urged me to come and see you. Not at all. I was the first to comment on the stench in the town, and he gave me some of the information I have since tried to verify. I did not think to call to see you until I had done this.’

  ‘Does my wife know you have come?’

  ‘No, sir. I believe she has been out with the hounds most of this week. But although you live mainly at Cardew, you have this excellent house in town, and it simply occurred to me that I could perhaps solicit your advice.’

  George regarded the young man thoughtfully. He supposed the fellow was worth knowing. He had never met the head of the family, the Reverend Charles Prideaux-Brune, who was, he believed, something of a recluse. And they were connected with the Glynns of Glynn, and the Sawles of Penrice.

  ‘Sometimes,’ George said, ‘towns grow rapidly. Truro has. Towns and cities in any event are never planned before they come into being, they multiply and add to themselves in a piecemeal way. Enough foresight is never shown. Nor perhaps ever enough public spirit. Poor people particularly breed too fast. Disease is nature’s way of limiting the population. It is not possible to put the world to rights. Perhaps it is not always even desirable—’

  ‘Surely it is desirable to try.’

  George scowled.

  ‘In this world it is not enough just to be an idealist.’

  ‘Then a practical idealist.’

  ‘You have come to instruct me.’

  ‘Far from it, Sir George. I will leave you now. And thank you for your time.’

  Captain Prideaux got up, enormously tall and erect, enormously rigid.

  As he got to the door he said: ‘May I as a favour request that you should not tell Lady Harriet of my visit.’

  ‘If you say so—’

  ‘I fancy sometimes she laughs at me.’

  For the first time a small stirring of empathy moved in the rich banker.

  ‘She laughs at everyone.’

  When he left the bank Philip Prideaux was full of a sense of frustration, so intense that it was almost overwhelming. He wanted to kick something, to break something. By now he knew the symptoms. A surgeon in the West Indies had told a court martial he was subject to ‘brain storms’ – that surgeon’s views had resulted in an acquittal for him on the one occasion when his frustrations had become insupportable. Since then he had been able to stamp down these terrifying impulses. He hoped and believed they would decrease with time as the visions of the carnage at Waterloo faded.

  He turned in at the Fighting Cocks Inn, which was down an alley near the bank, and ordered a large cognac. He drank it off almost at a gulp and could feel the strong spirit burning as it went down. He ordered another.

  ‘Captain Prideaux, isn’t it?’

  A sallow, good-looking young man, expensively but quietly dressed, lank black tidily trimmed hair, a velvet cloak held in place by a gold chain.

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘You don’t remember me?’

  Philip put on his glasses and hoped his fingers did not noticeably tremble. ‘I – er – recall we have met, but just at the moment my mind was far away and . . .’

  ‘Paul Kellow. We met at a party at Cardew. Lady Harriet gave a card party.’

  ‘Of course, of course. How d’you do.’

  ‘Bring your drink to this table. We seem to share the same taste in liquor and I have a bottle of it, not yet half sunk.’

  They moved through the low-timbered bar and sat down, Philip awkwardly, seeming to fold his legs and his neck at the same time. He did not welcome this meeting, but he had no wish to offend.

  Paul refilled his own glass and then topped up Philip’s. ‘Seen the Gazette this morning?’

  ‘No. I haven’t seen a newspaper for a day or two.’

  ‘You still staying with the Warleggans?’

  ‘Dear me, no. I am living most of the time with my cousins in Padstow. But last night I lay at the Red Lion.’

  ‘Not much in it,’ said Paul, pushing the broadsheet across. ‘You don’t ask me where I live.’

  ‘I assume you are a resident in Cornwall and have a home in this district. Was your wife not with you at Cardew?’

  ‘She was.’

  They eyed each other. The brandy was doing Philip good. But when the bottle was pushed towards him again he fumbled with his eye glasses and shook his head.

  ‘Where do you live, Mr Kellow?’

  ‘Tregony. My wife is a Temple.’

  ‘I do not know Cornwall very well, in despite of being part Cornish. I was at school in Devon, where my father lives, but then went straight into the Army and have spent half my life abroad.’

  ‘Do you know the Poldarks?’

  ‘But slightly. The Captain Poldark who died. Was he not in the Oxfordshires? And Major Geoffrey Charles Poldark, who lives in the family home on the north coast.’

  ‘You don’t know Sir Ross Poldark, who also lives on the north coast?’

  ‘No. I’ve heard much of him.’

  ‘You know his daughter, I believe?’

  ‘Mrs – er – Carrington? Er – yes.’

  ‘Stephen Carrington, that was her husband. I was his best friend.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Killed in a riding accident. We were the greatest friends. And Jeremy Poldark. The one who was killed at Hougoumont. We did many things together. A great threesome. Broke the law a few times, I tell you. You ever broken the law, Philip?’

  It occurred to Prideaux to think that this was not perhaps the first bottle of brandy that had been drunk.

  ‘Once at least.’

  ‘Miss them both. Both great friends. Both great men. I miss them both. Of course that was all before I married. Bit of a rake, I was. Bit of a blade, you know.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Jeremy was in love with my sister, Daisy. Going to marry her. It was all fixed up. Then he met Cuby Trevanion and everything was changed.’

  ‘That’s very sad. At least – you are, I trust, happy in your own married life.’

  Paul laughed. It was not a mirthful sound. ‘Perhaps we’re all accursed. Do you think we are all accursed, Captain Prideaux-Brune?’

  ‘My name is Prideaux. It is only my cousin who has the hyphenated name. Why do you consider yourself accursed, Mr Kellow?’

  ‘Because my new wife . . . Could I – should I call her new after a marriage already lasting nearly three years? – Because my wife, whom both I and my father-in-law were expecting to produce for us a son and heir – for whom perhaps we might have arranged a hyphenated surname – such as Temple-Kellow – how does that sound?’ Paul finished his brandy and poured another. ‘Come along, man, stop fiddling with your specs and take your drink like a captain of the Dragoon Guards, which I believe you once were . . .’

  Philip allowed his glass to be filled and stared at his slender but saturnine companion. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘My wife complains of a pain in her hip and a swelling there, so in the end I send for a sawbones, one Daniel Behenna, who has the reputation of being an acceptable member of his useless profession. He tells me that this twenty-two-year-old woman is suffering from a scrofulous tumour, which will ha
ve to be excised!’

  Philip had now taken off the offending eye glasses and laid them on the table. The small tense crisis in his own emotional life having subsided, he was able to pay more attention to this casual friend.

  ‘I am – grieved to hear it. I do not know precisely what a scrofulous tumour is, but any form of illness in one’s wife . . . Have you consulted any other surgeon or physician?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘By chance I met Dr Behenna at a soirée the other night. He is clearly a responsible man. There must be others.’

  ‘There are many others – all quacks like him.’

  ‘Many people have boils on their legs, or abscesses. Did he give you to suppose it was likely to be a serious operation?’

  ‘Everything is serious with Behenna,’ said Paul. ‘It is his nature to be pompous. But I have omitted to point out to you that two out of three of my sisters have died of pulmonary phthisis, so it is not unnatural that I should take this seriously.’

  ‘Scrofula,’ said Philip, ‘is that not the King’s Evil?’

  ‘It is Cornwall’s evil! Those who do not cough have putrefying glands. I tell you, I’ve had enough of it!’

  There was a long silence. The bar was almost empty, but a noisy quarrel was taking place in the street outside.

  ‘I must go,’ said Philip. ‘It’s a lengthy ride, and I promised to be back for supper.’

  ‘Don’t let me detain you.’

  ‘Enys,’ said Paul. ‘Dr Dwight Enys. He is perhaps the best of a bad bunch. And he attended on my second sister until she died. If I could persuade him to come as far as Tregony . . .’

  Philip picked up his spectacles but slipped them into his pocket.

  ‘I wish you well, my friend. It’s an unhappy time for you. I hope this doctor you speak of will help. Will you be in touch with Lady Harriet or Mrs Carrington? Pray let me know through them how your wife fares.’

  ‘Here,’ said Paul, as Prideaux was about to leave, and thrust the Royal Cornwall Gazette towards him. ‘Take this and read what there is to read. I see another young woman has been murdered.’