‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Oh, beg pardon, miss – we was followin’, closely followin’ two men – two rascals – two miscreants . . .’ It was the shorter of the gaugers, devoid of breath.
The woman said: ‘Is it two you are pursuing or six?’
‘Two, ma’am. Er – Miss Trevanion. See ’em come this way, did ee?’
‘I have seen no two men come this way, Parsons. What do you want them for?’
‘Brandy-running, miss – assault on an officer in discharge of ’is duty, miss – failing to stop when called upon to do so. Possession – illegal possession – of a French lugger.’
‘Dear soul,’ said the girl, for she was young, ‘these are serious charges, Parsons. I hope you will find all six of the men.’
‘Two, miss,’ said the taller man, peering through the gate. ‘Tis not impossible that when we find these men they will be sent to trial on a capital charge.’
‘I hope so,’ said the girl.
There was a pause. The shorter man coughed and seemed about to move on. The tall one said: ‘Would we ’ave your permission, miss, to come in and search your grounds?’
The woman looked out at the horizon. ‘I do not believe my brother would like that.’
‘No, miss? It’s just that . . .’
‘Is it just that you do not believe my word that I have not seen two men fleeing from justice?’
‘Not exactly but – ’
‘Parsons, what is this man’s name? I do not think I know him.’
‘Tis not that, miss,’ said the tall man awkwardly. ‘But we followed these yur men right to the edge of your beach an’ I cann’t think as ’ow they’ve gone elsewhere but somewhere into your grounds. Could well be as ye’ve not seen ’em but they be hid here whether or no an’ just the same.’
‘Parsons,’ said the girl. ‘You are in charge?’
‘Yes, Miss Trevanion.’
‘Then pray allow me to do this my own way. Go you with this fellow to look on the beach or anywhere else you please to look so long as you do not trespass on our property. In the meantime I will inform our steward who will instruct various of our servants to search the grounds thoroughly. If in half an hour you have found no one, pray come back. By that time the search will be completed, and if two such wicked men as you describe have been found I promise they shall be delivered to you. Is that satisfactory?’
There was a further pause. Clearly it was not satisfactory, certainly not to the tall gauger; but there was nothing more he or his leader could do. They nodded and touched their foreheads – for both had lost their hats in the pursuit – and turned away. The slow tramp of their feet was soon lost in the damp sandy ground outside the gate. The woman leaned on the gate watching them go. At length she turned.
‘Well, boy?’ she said.
Chapter Four
I
Ross left London with Clowance and the Enyses on the 7th February and they reached home on the evening of the 12th. Demelza was expecting him, for a letter written after the ball had reached her telling her of their plans. All the same, travel was so imprecise that she could not be sure of the time – or even the day – until the horses came clattering over the cobbles.
Demelza wondered if there would come a time when, obese, warty, and dulled by age, she would fail to react to the sight of her husband standing in the doorway, when her hands would not tingle and her stomach not turn over. If so, it hadn’t arrived quite yet. There he was, tall as ever, and gaunter for his hard mission, a little greyer, paler of face from the Portuguese influenza, staring at her unsmiling staring at her, while Gimlett took in the baggage and Jeremy helped Clowance down.
‘Well, Ross . . . I was hoping it would be tonight.’
‘You had my letter?’
‘Oh yes, I got it.’
She took a few steps towards him and he a few towards her. He took her hands, kissed her on the cheek, then almost casually on the mouth. She kissed him back.
‘All well?’ he asked.
‘Yes . . . All well.’ He looked round, reaffirming his memory of familiar things.
‘We’d have been earlier, but the coach broke an axle at Grampound. We were delayed two hours.’
For a few moments they were strangers.
‘Isabella-Rose?’
‘Asleep.’
‘She’s well?’
‘Yes. You’ll find her grown.’
‘So’s Clowance. Grown up, anyway. I couldn’t believe at that ball.’
‘Did she look nice?’
‘Lovely. You – didn’t want to go to London with her?’
‘I was afraid we might miss each other – you going one way, me the other.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’m sorry to have been away so long.’
‘Yes. It’s been a long time.’
He released her. Jeremy and Clowance hadn’t yet come in. He wondered if it was tact.
‘Have you supped?’ she asked.
‘A little. It will do.’
‘It need not. Clowance is sure to want something.’
‘All right then. It will be a change to eat your food again.’
‘I hope not a poor one.’
‘You ought to know that.’
There was a pause. She smiled brightly. ‘Well, I’ll tell Jane, then.’
‘There’s not that much hurry.’
She stopped. He came up behind her, put his face against her cheek and sniffed her, took a deep breath.
‘Ross, I . . .’
‘Don’t speak,’ he said, and just held her.
Supper was quite talkative but at first it was only Jeremy and Clowance who chattered, chiefly Jeremy, airily, with news of the mine and the farm, as if nothing else much was of importance. Effie, their middle sow, had had nine piglets last week; Carrie, the old one, was due any day. On Monday they had turned the end of the corn rick and found scores of mice. With his dislike of killing he had quickly absented himself, but Bella, the little horror, had stayed all through and seemed to enjoy it. They should have finished ploughing by now but both Moses Vigus and Dick Cobbledick had been laid low with influenza and Ern Lobb with a quinsy.
In the middle of this inconsequential talk Jeremy broke off, glanced from one to the other and then fell silent.
‘And you met Geoffrey Charles, Father?’
Ross told them.
It was the beginning of new conversation in which Ross did most of the talking – about the Battle of Bussaco, about Lisbon, about his return and the crisis of the King’s madness. All was listened to, commented on as a family – just like old times. The only thing missing was personal conversation, communication between Ross and Demelza. It was as if they were still frozen, embarrassed in each other’s presence. It would take time to go.
Once – just once – Ross looked in a different way at Demelza and she thought: do our children know, are they speculating what will happen when we go upstairs? Do I know myself? Is it the same with him as it always was?
Later, much later, almost in the middle of the night, when it was all right between them and when they were both still awake, she said:
‘These absences try me some hard, Ross. They do really. I have slept in this bed so many nights, so long so lonely. I have felt what it must be like to be a widow.’
‘And then the bad penny turns up again after all . . . Oh, I know. Don’t mistake but that I feel the same . . . At least, there are the pleasures of reunion. Tonight . . .’
‘Oh, I know too. I have been so happy tonight. But is there not a risk – just a risk – that someday absence may not make the heart grow fonder?’
Ross said: ‘Unless it affects us now, let’s meet that problem when it comes . . .’
There was still a candle guttering in the room. It would burn perhaps ten minutes more if the end of the wick didn’t fall over into the hot wax.
Ross said: ‘Life is all balance, counterbalance, contrast, isn’t it. If that sounds sententious I’m sorry, b
ut it happens to be true. By an action voluntarily taken one gains or loses so much, and no one can weigh out all the profit or loss. When I was wounded at the James River in 1783 and they got me into hospital, such as it was, and the surgeon, such as he was, decided not to saw off my foot for the first day or two, he put me on a lowering diet. No food at all, bleedings, purges, a thin watered wine to drink. After five days when no fever had developed he decided I was not going to mortify and could begin to eat again. They brought me first a boiled egg. It was nectar . . . Like no other I’d ever tasted. You see, the very deprivation . . .
‘I think I see what you mean,’ said Demelza. ‘You mean tonight I’m your boiled egg.’
A shaking of the bed indicated that Ross was laughing.
‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘you’re my chicken.’ He put his fingers through her hair. ‘All fluffy and smooth and round . . .’
‘If I hatched out when I think I hatched out, I’m an old hen by now and my comb has gone dark for lack of proper husbandry.’
‘Well, it shall not for a while now, I promise; I swear, we shall cleave and be of one flesh – ’
‘Very uncomfortable.’
He picked up her hand. ‘Am I a morbid man?’
‘Yes, often.’
‘Why should one feel morbid, sad, at such a reunion as this?’
‘Because it has been too good?’
‘In a manner, yes. Perhaps the human mind isn’t adapted to complete contentment. Had tonight been partial in some way, as it so easily might have been, as at first – one didn’t know . . .’
‘You felt that?’
‘Earlier, yes. But then . . .’
‘But then it wasn’t.’
‘It wasn’t. So – perversely – one feels a choke of melancholy.’
‘Let’s be melancholy, then.’
He stirred beside her. ‘When I was staying with George Canning I picked up a book of poems – a man called Herbert – I’ve remembered one bit: “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky . . .”’ He watched the flickering candle. ‘There’s been nothing cool and calm about us tonight, but I think there’s been both the earth and the sky . . .’
She said lightly, covering the emotion: ‘Dear life, I believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘Oh no, there must be others . . .’
‘There have been others. I keep them all in a special box in my memory, and when I’m feeling neglected I take them out and think them over.’ She stopped and was quiet.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘What you say’s true, though, isn’t it. It’s not natural – what has been happening between us tonight. It should have cooled off into something else by now. But instead I feel just the same about you as the first time you took me to bed in this room. D’you remember, I was wearing your mother’s frock.’
‘You seduced me.’
‘It didn’t feel like it by the time it was over. You lit an extra candle.’
‘I meant to know you better by morning.’
She was silent again. ‘So perhaps it is right to be melancholy . . . That happened twenty-four years ago. Now we have grown children and should know better than to be making love like lovers after all this time. I am prone to bad spells – ’
‘And I have a lame ankle – ’
‘How has it been?’
‘Neither better nor worse. And your headaches?’
‘I was praying to St Peter that you didn’t return last week.’
‘Well, he answered, didn’t he. So there’s a good two and a half weeks ahead before we need worry again.’
‘After tonight you should be exhausted.’
‘I am . . . But do you not think I also have memories when I am away?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Don’t you think I remember the night we came back from the pilchard catch in Sawle? Then it was different. That was the night I fell in love with you. Instead of just the physical thing . . . Without emotion there’s nothing, is there. Nothing worth recalling. A shabby exercise. Thank God it’s never been that between us since.’
‘Let us thank God we are not as other people are.’
‘You been reading your Bible?’
‘I remember the Pharisees.’
‘There’s a lot to be said for the Pharisees.’ Ross held her hand up to the side of his face.
After a few moments she said: ‘Are you listening for something?’
He gurgled with laughter. ‘You see – you deflate me. Yes – I am listening for something – the beat of your heart.’
‘That’s not the best place to listen.’
He bent slowly and put his head under her left breast. ‘It’s still there.’ He released her hand and took her breast in his fingers.
‘The candle’s going out,’ she said.
‘I know. Does it matter?’
‘Nothing matters but you,’ she said.
II
Much later still when the moon had risen and was lighting the sky with a false dawn he said:
‘I’ve so much to tell you.’
‘Tell me. I don’t intend to sleep at all tonight.’
‘Before I met Geoffrey Charles . . .’
‘Well . . . ?’
‘I came across an old friend, an old flame of yours. Captain McNeil.’
‘Judas! That all seems so long ago. Was he well?’
‘Yes, and a colonel by now.’
‘Geoffrey Charles . . . You didn’t say much about him tonight.’
‘I didn’t want Jeremy to feel I was praising or admiring him too much . . . He’s lost a little piece off his face. But he looks no worse for it.’
‘Do you care for Geoffrey Charles more than you do for Jeremy?’
‘Of course not. It’s quite different.’
‘But you and Geoffrey Charles seem to have an affinity . . .’
‘We often seem to think the same, to feel the same.’
‘And Jeremy?’
‘Well, Jeremy’s so much younger.’
She waited for Ross to say more but he did not. In spite of his assurances she could sense the things unsaid, the little reserve.
‘And Clowance?’ Ross said. ‘I hear she has been in some travail about a young man.’
‘Who told you?’
‘She did. On the way home. The night we spent in Marlborough. I gave her a little more wine and she came up to my room and sat on my bed.’
‘Perhaps she told you more than she told me.’
‘I doubt it. Clowance is nothing if not honest – with us both.’
‘I think she’s involved, Ross. Sometimes then it’s not possible to be truthful with other people because you don’t know what is the truth yourself.’
‘She said she’d talked to you and you had advised her to go away for a few weeks.’
‘I put it to her, like. She agreed. I think she was afraid – I know I was – that it would go too far too soon.’
‘You don’t like him?’
Demelza stirred. ‘Not that. Not as positive as that . . . Maybe I have a peasant’s suspicion of a “foreigner”.’
‘What a strange way of describing yourself! Is this a new humility?’
For once she didn’t rise to the bait. ‘He came – out of the sea, almost dead; Jeremy and Paul and Ben picked him up. He said first he was in his own ship when it was struck by a storm. Later he said that wasn’t the truth; he was gunner on a privateer that had been caught between two French frigates and sunk, the captain killed. He – ’
‘That does not sound like the truth either,’ said Ross.
‘Why not?’
‘French frigates don’t sink privateers. They capture ’em and take them into a port as a prize. The French captains are not going to be such fools as to lose their prize money.’
‘. . . Even if they were fought to the end?’
‘Nobody fights to the end. Not since Grenville.’
A seagul
l, awakened by the moon, was crying his abandoned cry, as if hope were lost for ever.
Demelza put her head against Ross’s arm. ‘You’ve gone thin. Was it the influenza? It has been widespread down here.’
‘A few pounds. Nothing. Your cooking will soon give me back my belly.’
‘Which you never had. You always fret your weight away.’
‘Fret? I might fret if I thought Clowance had fallen in love with a rogue.’
‘I don’t think he’s that. I’m almost sure not. Howsoever, perhaps we shall not need to be anxious.’
‘Why not?’
‘He has disappeared – almost as sudden as he came. He said the privateer he was on had captured a small prize and left it in the Scillies, and he asked Jeremy and Paul and Ben to take him there in Nampara Girl. So they did – and Paul and Ben came back in Nampara Girl, while Jeremy helped Stephen Carrington bring in his prize. But they made for Mevagissey because Stephen wanted to sell it there, but there was a storm and they came in at a cove in, I believe, Veryan Bay. There they were embayed – is that the word? – for a day, and then Stephen Carrington sent Jeremy off overland alone and he sailed away in the prize. No one has heard or seen anything of him since.’
‘Does Clowance know?’
‘I reckon Jeremy will have told her by now.’
‘So perhaps she went away to good effect.’
‘Maybe. Of course, he might turn up again any time.’
Sleep now was coming to their eyelids.
Ross said: ‘Clowance made quite a conquest in London.’
‘In London? Who?’
‘Lord Edward Fitzmaurice. Brother of Lord Lansdowne, a very rich and talented peer. I think the younger man is talented too, though perhaps not so much in politics.’
‘So what occurred?’
‘They met at a party given by the Duchess of Gordon. He seemed to take a fancy to Clowance and invited her to tea to meet his family.’
‘And then?’
‘She declined.’
‘Oh. Wasn’t that a pity?’
‘Caroline thought so. Indeed she carried on in such an alarming way when she knew, saying it was simply not socially acceptable to refuse such an invitation, that Clowance was quite subdued into believing her. Of course I don’t think it true! Caroline was up to her old games.’