Edward had put two of his damp cold fingers on her neck. She thumped him on the chest. He took a step backwards but pulled her with him. He kissed her where her neck was wet and she ruffled his hair, pulling it gently.
He said: ‘My wish is to be with you always.’
Bella said: ‘My voice . . .’
‘Do not think of that yet, my lover,’ Demelza said. ‘Just be grateful that you are on the mend.’
‘It still hurts to cough.’
‘Don’t talk if you do not wish to.’
‘I wish to – a little. I have hardly said anything since I came home!’
‘That was not your fault.’
‘I wanted to ask you: did you send Papa to Rouen to bring me home?’
‘It was not like that. We talked about it and talked about it and then your father said: “I would like to see this opera. It’s not every man who has a daughter who, before she is twenty, is playing the lead in a professional musical production in a foreign country.” He said: “Why do we not go?” ’
‘He asked you to go?’
‘Yes. And I would dearly have liked to come with him, but I – I am at sea with the language and I felt we must not look like jealous parents come to seize you and return with you to lock you up in Cornwall.’
Bella gave a wry smile. ‘I must write to Mrs Pelham so soon as ever I can.’
‘You must. But your father did write to her so soon as you were home.’
Bella said: ‘Mama, you had this terrible disease – when Julia died – was your voice husky when you recovered?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘But ever since I can remember your voice is clear in speaking but has a little huskiness when you sing.’
‘Has it? Maybe so. But my voice is as nothing compared to yours. Nothing at all. I don’t believe you should think one thing would follow on the other like that.’
‘How long was it before you were yourself again?’
‘Oh, I have forgot. Anyway, it was not at all the same. I had lost Julia. And your father was in danger of arrest for something he did not do. That would make anyone slow to mend!’
Bella settled down into her bed. ‘I am a small matter anxious. Where is Papa today?’
‘He has gone Padstow to see Cuby. It seems that John Trevanion is in deep water and has fled the country.’
‘Oh yes, you did tell me yesterday, but I wasn’t greatly attending.’
Prideaux Place was a long castellated mansion situated just above the town of Padstow, with an extensive view over its own deer park to the sea. When Ross reached it and turned his horse up the short drive he found the house en fête. Or as near that degree of jollity as its owner, the Reverend Charles Prideaux-Brune, would sanction. It was the twenty-first birthday of his second daughter, Dorothea, and apart from the Trevanions there were six other guests.
Charles Prideaux-Brune was a man in his early fifties, strongly built, with an incipient paunch, a stern expression but a kindly twinkle in his eye. Dorothea was tiny, slight of figure, pretty in a discreet way, played the piano, the violin, the oboe. She had a number of suitors, two of them present today, but Frances, her mother, was keeping them at bay until she made up her own mind.
Ross had come to see Cuby, privately to counsel and console her, but this cheerful conversational company was not suited to personal exchanges and advice. Noelle, a chubby little girl of four and a half, galloped quickly up and shouted for a kiss. Ross obliged and shook hands with his hosts, whom he knew only slightly, apologizing for his unannounced arrival and explaining that he had heard Cuby was here and wished to see her on a personal matter.
As he was speaking Philip Prideaux, whom Ross had seen only the day before at the mine, came down the stairs, adjusting his glasses and smiling a welcome. Then out of another door, a billiard cue in her hand, Harriet Warleggan.
The Prideaux-Brunes insisted that Ross must stay to supper and spend the night. Ross smilingly dissented and then allowed himself to be persuaded when it became clear that George was not here. He knew that Philip and Harriet were old friends.
Most of them strolled on the terrace in the balmy evening light before supper was taken. Ross was a little put out by the presence of Mrs Bettesworth, Cuby’s mother, a lady he had had some dealings with since Jeremy’s death, but someone whom he never personally could bring himself to like. It was probably true that she had suffered a great deal coping with a spendthrift husband and then a spendthrift son; it could not have been a happy life attending race meetings at which their horses always seemed to come in fourth, or being dunned by creditors outside your back door while your son talked to the builders and planned some grandiose addition to a mansion which was already too big for them to keep up. But Ross found it hard to warm towards someone who had so strongly supported, indeed, perhaps was the stronger party in urging her pretty daughter to marry into the Warleggan fortune for the sake of the preservation of the family name and the family seat. Whenever Ross saw her she had a faintly injured expression, as if the world and life had dealt with her too harshly.
He did not have an opportunity until Mrs Bettesworth, pleading a headache, had retired early to bed, to get Cuby on her own. (The kind, gentle Clemency had taken Noelle, protesting, in her wake.)
‘Cuby,’ he said, ‘tell me how it is.’
She looked up at him with her velvety eyes, pulled a face of disquiet.
‘John has gone and will not be back until he can clear some of his debt. And that is not very likely. He is, I believe, going to Brussels. We all put together what money we had, to give him a chance of escape and of a few weeks of subsistence there. Perhaps you will pardon me for using some of the allowance you so kindly give me—’
Ross pursed his lips. ‘What little I give you—’
‘It is not little, my dear—’
‘What little I give you is for your maintenance and to help Noelle. But the gift has no conditions. When there is an emergency . . .’
‘I think this was an emergency. The bailiffs have taken possession of the house, and some of the furniture has been seized. My mother has laid claim to it, and I hope to go with her on Wednesday to put a stop to such seizures. The servants have all gone, most of them unpaid, the horses and the carriage, even the gardening implements . . .’
‘Philip Prideaux told me you were thinking you might have enough to move into a small house somewhere – was it near Bodmin?’
‘We went to see it this morning. It has three bedrooms, good water, two nice living rooms, a tiny kitchen, stables. We can manage.’
‘Your mother would go with you?’
‘I think she would have to.’
‘Well, keep in touch with me, please. It might be worth my seeing this house; to look over it; even perhaps take a builder who could go over it for possible faults.’
‘That would be very helpful. But I do not like to take up your time. With Bella being so ill, and Clowance and her new fiancé, you will be busy.’
‘I see too little of you both.’
‘It is my fault; but I have been trying to help my brother keep his head above water.’
Still later he saw Harriet and Philip standing on the terrace deep in conversation. He exchanged a few words with Charles Prideaux-Brune and then, as his host was called away, he saw the other two coming in off the terrace.
Harriet was in a pale lemon-yellow dress ruched at the throat and cuffs. As Philip Prideaux turned away, she looked at Ross ironically.
‘Well, Ross, glad to learn your daughter is on the mend.’
‘Thank you. It’s early days yet, but so far so good.’
‘And Clowance is to marry Lord Edward?’
‘It seems so.’
‘Never met him . . . I tried to make a match for her with Philip Prideaux, but did not know she had other arrows in her quiver.’
They had drifted out onto the terrace again. The last blue streaks of the evening were still showing light over the sea. A cool air wafted acr
oss. The trembling stars were growing brighter.
‘Nor, I believe, did Clowance. Although Edward had asked her to marry him before she married Stephen Carrington . . . How is George?’
‘A little grumpy. He’s half well, but prefers not to seek social pleasures yet . . . I hear Caerhays is for sale.’
‘I had not heard that, but it is only, I suppose, a question of time. Does George want it?’
‘Not now. All those plans, as you know, fell through years ago.’
‘I hear he has brought Selina and the child back to Cornwall.’
‘Yes, they are near Tehidy. Some farm.’
‘Anyway, he went along with me – or you persuaded him to go along with me in the formation of the North Coast Mining Company. Does that mean he is hoping to bring Selina and Valentine together again?’
‘No, I think one of the conditions he has made is that Selina should not take little Georgie back to his father.’
‘Strange.’
‘Not very. I believe George does not want his grandson to come under the influence of his sardonic, dissipated father.’ Harriet pulled her dress more closely around her.
‘Are you cold?’
‘No . . . Nothing.’
Ross put his arm round her shoulders. They were not quite like anyone else’s shoulders he had ever touched, stronger, broader, but still very feminine.
They stood in silence. A shooting star slid across the sky. Two small boats were heading in for Padstow harbour.
He said: ‘I have never been able to understand why you came to marry George.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you were not available.’
‘I was trying to be serious.’
‘How do you know I am not serious?’
He waved his free hand. ‘Try again!’
She was silent. ‘Can’t you guess?’
‘No.’
‘It must be perfectly obvious to you. I was a moderately attractive widow with no money to speak of.’
‘You were a very attractive widow, and there are many rich men in the world.’
‘I did not descry them.’
‘So you married him for his money?’
‘So everyone thinks. And everyone would be right – or partly right.’
‘And the other part?’
‘You would not believe me.’
‘I am open to persuasion.’
A white bird flew silently across the arch of one of the windows behind them. Its shadow fluttered over the part-lighted terrace.
‘Is that an omen?’
‘That owl? Possibly.’
‘A warning. That in this life it is better to live by absolutes, not to live by subtle dealings that no one can understand. Of course I married George for his money.’
‘And?’
‘And I was physically attracted – sexually attracted to him too . . . not by his looks – though he is not all that bad looking if you take a detached view. Shall we say I am a self-willed woman and relish a challenge. Shall we say that I was sexually attracted to him by the transparent ugliness of his moral character.’
There was a step on the terrace, and they automatically detached themselves from each other by a degree of inches. But it was only a footman.
‘Beg pardon, sir – er – my lady. I thought just to keep the moths out.’
‘We’ll go in,’ Ross said, and then added: ‘a perverse assessment.’
‘I told you we should live by absolutes.’
‘George and I always have,’ Ross said. ‘With dubious results.’
‘Have you and George ever shaken hands?’
‘George and I? I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
As they separated Harriet said: ‘Sometime it might be worth the experiment.’
Chapter Six
The following day was very hot, and the faint easterly breeze which rose and fell turned the sandhills even paler. If the breeze strengthened it would presage the end of the fine weather.
Demelza had been feeling unwell but was rather better today. She had had a sore throat, but had tried to ignore it. Ever since Julia died, all through the years, she had suffered from what she called the ‘Meggy Dawes’ symptoms. If Jeremy had a toothache, some of her own teeth ached in sympathy; if Clowance had a stomach upset, she felt sick too; if Henry took a feverish chill, she sweated likewise. The present symptoms were altogether more serious because Bella was gravely ill, and she, Demelza, had been ill of this complaint thirty years ago. This present sore throat might be a ‘Meggy Dawes’ copycat symptom, or it might be the real thing. There was no way of being sure. Of course she never told Ross any of this, nor even Dwight either. (Years ago Ross had discovered that this miner’s daughter had nervous tensions that exceeded his own.)
So it was a profound relief to be able to swallow this morning without discomfort.
It was a more profound relief to see Bella sitting on a chair by the window, warming her body in the sun.
Demelza decided to celebrate by taking a dip in the sea. Ross was still not back, but Clowance and Edward could be invited to accompany her, and Sophie and Meliora Enys and Henry, all of whom had just come over from Killewarren. Long years ago Demelza had designed a brief tunic for herself and her children which resembled a Greek chiton, being sparse, just decent, and easy to slip into and out of. The men wore cotton drawers, and Edward had been loaned a pair belonging to Ross.
The tide was half in, and the six of them walked abreast across the hot sand. Unusually in Cornwall the air was so warm that the plunge into the cooler sea was not so much a challenge as a delight. None of the Poldark family, except Ross, was a strong swimmer, this because the sea was usually so rough it was not safe to go out of one’s depth. Today it was possible to float on one’s back barely ten feet from the sand. The baby waves came into being only a few yards out and were scarcely born before they collapsed into a gentle froth. Edward and Clowance went out and out. Demelza kept herself afloat with a quiet breast stroke, cocking an occasional eye far out at the engaged couple, whose heads were together, and then the other way inshore to where the youngsters frolicked.
On this came Ross, who had had a long hot ride from Padstow and had hurried indoors to see Bella, and then had torn off his clothes, throwing them across the bedroom floor, pulled on his short costume and dashed out to join them.
This, thought Demelza, when she saw him, is one of the little peaks of my life. From the intense anxieties of three days ago, now I am high, high. Bella is on the mend – visibly on the mend today. Clowance and Edward have stopped fencing politely with each other, Henry will soon be back home, Ross is here splashing beside me. Hallelujah!
Amid cascades of water flung at them by the Enys girls, with Harry as the ringleader, Ross told Demelza of his meetings at Prideaux Place and of Cuby’s plight. He told her he was going with Mrs Bettesworth and Philip Prideaux to meet a group of the more important creditors in Bodmin the next Wednesday to see what could be done to have the bailiffs withdrawn or at least their depredations kept in check. Afterwards they were going to inspect the house near Bodmin which the Trevanions might be able to rent. Philip, it seemed, was bearing no grudge against them because of Clowance and was being very helpful.
Further out, Edward was diving under water trying to catch some flounders. Once or twice he came up with one, but sure enough they wriggled out of his grasp. Clowance laughed until she swallowed some sea water and choked. Edward tried to pat her on the back, and in the course of it they were semi-naked in each other’s arms. By weaving their legs gently about they were able to keep afloat.
‘I never – want to leave – Cornwall,’ he said. ‘You’ve introduced me to Heaven.’
‘It isn’t – always – like this,’ she gasped. ‘Often it rains for ever. And usually it blows for ever.’
‘I can endure that,’ he said, ‘if I can – have you for ever.’
‘Well . . . I promised, didn’t I?’
‘Rash woman. There’s no way out fo
r you now.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’ll get tired of me – and then reflect, well at least the weather was nice.’
‘Can we try?’
‘What?’
‘Marriage.’
She felt his body stirring against hers. ‘I’m considering it.’
‘To have and to hold, to love and to cherish?’
‘I’m out of my depth,’ she said. ‘If I don’t say yes you might push me under.’
‘I’m out of my depth too,’ he said.
All the normal activities of Nampara had come to a stop while Bella was ill. Now, as it became clear that she was on the mend and that her impressive vitality was returning with every hour that passed, the routine of life was resumed. Apart from her weekly visit to the Paynters, Demelza often called on the Kellows, mainly to see Daisy, who was chronically but, it seemed, not terminally ill. As her brother had said harshly to Valentine, she was going to take a long time dying.
Clowance went riding with Edward after dinner, so, leaving Bella in the safe charge of Jane Gimlett, Demelza walked over alone to Fernmore.
As she neared the house she glanced up at the sky and saw they had had the best of the day for their bathing. The weather at last was on the change. The wind had not freshened as she had expected, but minute by minute it was becoming a different world. The sun had withdrawn behind a filament of high cloud which looked ominous.
Fernmore, in spite of some claims to gentility, had never really, even in Dr Choake’s day, been anything but a large farmhouse. She wondered how it had come to be built, for no land which could optimistically be described as farmland went with it. She must ask Ross sometime.
Dr Choake’s day was long over: the eight servants he had employed had diminished to two, and they recently had left and not been replaced. Mrs Kellow did what housework she could, and Daisy lent a hand when she was able. The garden in front of the house had become a wilderness, some curtains were ragged and there were roof slates missing.
When she reached the door it was opened by Paul, and when she showed her surprise, he said: ‘I am looking after the invalid for a day or two. My parents are taking a holiday.’