The Twisted Sword: A Novel of Cornwall 1815 Page 3

  She often went riding in the morning. It was not of course the same as Nampara: there was no great beach here edged with grumbling waves; the best you could do was to thread your way through the uphill narrow lanes until you got to the moors above Falmouth. Then you could canter along and occasionally gallop with lovely distant views of the cliffs and the sea. Even so – and even if it were the same water and only just round the corner, as it were, from Land’s End, facing the English Channel instead of the Atlantic Ocean – it did not look quite like the same sea. There were no beaches here to compare with the north coast beaches; the expanses of sand were shorter and often softer because the runs of the tide were not so great; and the cliffs, though jagged and formidable, were half the height. She missed the suck and sigh of the swell as it moved over the rocks behind Nampara, the hissing roar of the blow-hole when the tide was right, the smell of the sea-wrack, the misty spray, the taste of salt on the lips.

  Not that she minded. She was happily married to the man she loved; and this winter they had had splendid times together, hunting at least once a week, sometimes twice. They hunted often with Lady Harriet Warleggan. Since Stephen had put his affairs in the hands of Warleggan’s Bank he had prospered greatly.

  They had spent a good deal of money. Hunting was not cheap, and usually once a week after the hunt they supped at Cardew with Harriet Warleggan and played cards and diced afterwards. George’s estrangement from his son Valentine had robbed Harriet of the young company he usually gathered round him when he was home, so she had taken to inviting a number of Valentine’s friends, such as Anthony Trefusis and Ben Sampson and Percy and Angela Hill and Ruth Smith, to stay on after the hunt and sup and gamble until the early hours. Clowance and Stephen were of this party. George himself sometimes supped with them, but more often than not had a quiet meal in his study, or ate before them with his daughter Ursula. He never stayed for the cards. Gambling for pleasure was something he totally failed to understand.

  But he was always reasonably pleasant to Stephen and to Clowance, even though Clowance sensed a steely reserve at the back of it. Stephen was not aware of any such reservations. He believed he was on good terms with one of the most important men in Cornwall, in a small way was becoming a valuable customer of the bank and as such could look forward to a future of continuing prosperity. He acted on this assumption.

  Penryn, where Stephen and Clowance lived, was an ancient free borough at the head of the Penryn Creek; a clustering hilly town of about a thousand people. It considered itself far more dignified and mature than its larger upstart neighbour, Falmouth. A charter of privileges had been granted to its burgesses in 1236, four hundred years before Falmouth became a town at all. A fierce rivalry existed between the two, for Falmouth with its deeper harbours and its larger docks had stolen much of Penryn’s trade.

  Clowance had never lived in a town before, and she found it a strange, secretive little port. Everybody she met was, on the surface, extremely polite, some ingratiating. But she was a stranger – they were both strangers – and didn’t belong. Clowance had been too busy for twenty years enjoying life, and taking circumstances and people as they came, to bother about the oddities of class distinction. One of the reasons for her success at Bowood, the Lansdowne seat in Wiltshire, had been her unawareness of having any position in the world to maintain, her absence of pretence, her natural unaffected manner. At Nampara too she treated everyone she met as her equal, and, because everyone there knew who she was, no one had presumed on it.

  Penryn was different. They liked their people in recognizable categories, and she didn’t quite fit in anywhere. The Poldark name was hardly known as far as this, but she was obviously a lady, and her father, apart from being a mine owner, was a Member of Parliament. Stephen, they reckoned, was not quite up to her snuff – and he wasn’t even Cornish – but he was jolly, outgoing, generous and prospering. They rented this small house, one of the few overlooking the creek, stabled their horses at the Cambrons’, who ran the Pig & Tinker, and they were related to the Blameys of Flushing. They also rode to hounds, which put them on a different footing from their neighbours.

  During this winter she had thought often about her beloved brother Jeremy and wondered how he was faring in Brussels with his new and pretty wife, who had been so hard to get and had indeed been willing to reject him and fit in with her family’s plans in a most mercenary way that Clowance would not forget. Perhaps it was going to be all right now, but Clowance more than anyone knew something of Jeremy’s infatuation for this girl, his moods of utter depression, his vain attempts to seem cheerful and natural when his passion for Cuby was driving him to despair. It had been a kind of madness. Clowance hoped it was over. She thought Cuby might be a difficult person to live with, once the first excitement was past. Certainly Jeremy’s letters gave an impression, a real impression of happiness. But not until she saw him again was she prepared to be sure.

  It was raining when she clattered into the stables and the nice stable boy, Kimber, came out to take Nero. It had been raining for the best part of a week, but this morning there had been a break and the sun had slanted across the creek. The tide had been in, and the water glistened like an inserted knife among the jetties and the moored ships. Now all that was gone again, the river lost in a damp mist which cut visibility to a hundred yards. Everything seemed mysterious in it, even the familiar cobbles of this now familiar town.

  It was a short walk along the terrace to the end house. Next to the Pig & Tinker was a ship’s chandler; next to him was Mudd’s, a sailors’ resthouse of not very good repute; then a house belonging to an anchor smith; then a customs officer; then a genteel lady called Curnow who did dressmaking, and then the Carringtons.

  As Clowance reached her house Miss Curnow came out. ‘Oh, Mrs Carrington, a young man called to see you about an hour gone. I did not know when you would be home.’

  ‘Did he give his name?’ Clowance asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t think t’ask. But he said he would come back.’

  Miss Curnow had very small screwed-up eyes. Whether it was from doing too much sewing in a poor light or whether they evidenced some specially penetrating talent of inquisitiveness was hard to tell. Clowance favoured the second explanation.

  She thanked her neighbour and went in. Theirs was a house with a more than pleasant view, but it was very small. There were four rooms downstairs and four rooms up, but they were all tiny. Nor was there any space at the front of the houses, but each house had a little back garden and earth privy. In the Carrington garden was a pump, which was the only water supply for the seven houses, so it meant that there was not much privacy in the back garden. Clowance had spent most of her time on the interior of the house, utilizing her half-forgotten training in sewing and millinery to make brilliant orange curtains for all the windows to frame the lace.

  She felt certain that her neighbours thought them outrageously bright; however, Stephen loved them and that was the important point.

  He had said not to wait dinner for him so she had made a pasty for herself. She heated it up in the little cloam oven which was still warm from the early morning cooking, and then, having taken off her riding jacket and boots, sat down to eat it on her own in the front room, cutting the pasty in half and pouring milk into the half she was eating.

  She had just finished when she saw a young man walking down the cobbled street. She felt instinctively that he was the young man Miss Curnow had referred to, and now understood the extra quizzicality in the woman’s eyes – the sort of look that anticipates discomfiture – because the visitor was almost in rags, and was lightly bearded, which in these days did not so much imply a matter of choice as having no money to pay the barber.

  Sure enough the young man stopped in front of their door and knocked. Clowance picked up the remains of her dinner, bore it away, dug her feet into a pair of pattens and opened the door.

  He was probably not more than twenty – tall, broad-shouldered, blond-haired with str
ong features and vividly clear blue eyes. His body looked lean but not over-thin; it was his clothes which were so shabby: a faded shirt which had once probably been royal blue, with a rent at the shoulder and one sleeve short by four inches, a good blue woollen jerkin, newer than the rest, slate-blue coarse drill trousers, much patched with sailcloth and tied at the ankles; and down-at-heel canvas shoes that showed his bare feet.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘be Mr Stephen Carrington in?’ A hoarse voice; West Country accent, but not badly spoken.

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s not. I am expecting him shortly.’

  A pause. ‘Are you Mrs Carrington, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned and glanced up and down the street as if looking for the man he’d called to see.

  Clowance said: ‘Is it about one of his vessels?’

  ‘Well … only in a manner of speaking…’ The young man bit at his thumb-nail and eyed Clowance. ‘I’ve just come ashore, y’see. We berthed at dawn. Annabelle. Ye see her over there, the brig.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see.’

  ‘From Liverpool. Though she’s Bristol owned. We’re carr’ing candles, soap and brushes, rope and twine.’

  Clowance looked past him farther down the hill. This way a precipitous cobbled alley led to the harbour.

  ‘I think my husband’s just coming,’ she said. ‘I can see his head.’ And then: ‘From Bristol you say? Did you know him when he was living there?’

  The young man flushed as he turned to stare the way she was pointing. ‘Well yes, ma’am, in a manner of speaking – though not for some years, like. You see, I’m his son.’

  II

  Stephen said: ‘Dear heart, I told you I should not have come to you unshriven. I tried hard just before we was wed, and then again after, but you said leave the past to bury itself; and I was a coward and let it lie. A coward. I make no bones about it now. But just think how I was fixed. I had lost you once already. I’d been without you for more’n the twelvemonth. I was dringed up, not knowing what to do. If I told you that I had been married before, however long ago it all was, and however it had happened, I might well have lost you again. Wouldn’t I?’

  They were lying together in their bed that night, two candles guttering in the air from an inch-open window. Clowance did not reply to his question. She found it hard to assess her feelings and impossible to convey them to him.

  ‘Or if you did not turn me down … If you had the mind to be forgiving, your parents would not have been. Your father asked me once if I had a wife in every port, and I lied to him. He would not have excused that, not ever.’

  After a moment she said: ‘So you had to deceive me, too.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve said why. D’you think if I’d told you about Marion before, you wouldn’t have felt compelled to tell your father and mother? Ye are so open and honest. Truly, truly honest. That’s the sort of family you’ve always lived with; I’ve always admired your family for that and wished I’d been brought up similar. But I wasn’t. Life isn’t like that where I come from, m’dear.’

  Clowance stared up at the low ceiling. ‘And after we were married?’

  ‘I was too happy. I reckon I was too happy. And once it was done, I thought, it was done. If I’d done wrong, there was no way of putting it right then. By telling you I might ease me conscience – but at what cost! Making you unhappy. Spoiling our time together. Making a sort of stain where there’d been no stain. So I let sleeping dogs lie…’

  ‘Until now…’

  ‘Yes, dear heart, until now.’

  He would have liked to touch her, try to caress her as she lay quietly beside him, her breast rising and falling only just perceptibly. He knew what she was like; he knew every inch of her; he knew what she was like naked; and he knew his ability to rouse her. But with a restraint that he was only just learning he made no move at all.

  She said: ‘Tell me about Marion.’

  He was silent and then let out a long sigh. ‘We were both seventeen. She was the daughter of a farrier. ’Twas a boy and girl thing, light and easy, laughing and joking as a boy and girl will; but there was no more laughing when I got her with child. D’you know about the bastardy laws?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘If a girl conceives a child and accuses a young man of being the father and he won’t marry her they put him in prison. There’s many a good man languishing in prison because of such a law. Well I’d been in prison once and that was enough. We were married. Jason was born the following year. We never properly lived together. Her father was mad at me for spoiling his daughter’s chances. She went on living at home. Jason lived with them. I’d visit from time to time, but after the child was born Marion turned against me so I saw little of them indeed. Then I left the district and went into service with Sir Edward Hope. Course I was bound to make the payments and that kept me desperate short of money. Then…’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘When Jason was about ten his mother caught the smallpox and died. I left Sir Edward Hope’s service and went to sea. I – didn’t keep up any more payments. I never saw Jason since he was five until he turned up like a – like…’

  ‘A bad penny?’

  ‘Today. God, I was taken aback! I couldn’t believe ’twas him. Look you, m’dear, it has been almost as much a shock to me as it has been to you. Holy Mary, I was dumbstruck!’

  ‘I left you alone,’ Clowance said. ‘I thought you’d better prefer it. So I don’t know what he wants. Is it just to meet you again?’

  ‘No. Some b—, somebody told him I was doing well in Cornwall, so he wants to become a part of it. Somehow. He wants some sort of a job. He’s already been to sea, so with your permission I’ll take him on one of my ships; push him up the ladder a bit, get him better paid. I don’t know yet how much he knows of sailing. He’s only eighteen … I know, I know, he looks older – that beard – but he’s only eighteen and he can’t expect too much yet awhile. But at least he might be better paid…’

  ‘With my permission?’ Clowance said.

  ‘Yes, m’dear. It is up to you. You may not wish to have a – a – my son round and about. ’Twould be only natural never to wish to set eyes on him again. So you must tell me how you feel.’

  Clowance considered the matter. ‘I do not think I feel very happy about it at all, Stephen. Though perhaps not for just the reasons you suppose. But I do not believe we should take my sadness – my disappointment out on your son. Surely nothing that has happened is his fault, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Stephen uneasily. ‘No.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘you are right in supposing that I do not wish to see a great deal of him, each day and every day; for he will remind me of unhappy things. But surely you owe him something, do you not? You have not been exactly an attentive father, so you can surely do no more than he asks and help him now.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Stephen. ‘Just so. I’m glad you feel that way, m’dear.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Clowance, ‘I was rather surprised when you came into the kitchen and told me he was gone. Was it necessary that he should be sent to spend the night at Mudd’s, which we all know is ill-kept and of doubtful repute? He could well have lain here.’

  ‘There again I thought you might not like it. But I’m sure he is well able to see for himself. I gave him money for a bed, and will take care tomorrow that he has better clothes. But I assure you, m’dear, that you need hardly set eyes on him again.’

  ‘But he will exist,’ said Clowance.

  ‘Yes … he will exist. He will be a constant reminder in my eyes that I have done you wrong.’

  It was very quiet outside. A light from somewhere, like a bonfire, reflected briefly flickering on the curtains. Then a gull cried in the night.

  Clowance thought, he still doesn’t quite understand what he has done wrong. If you love someone you love them as they are, totally, virtues and blemishes the same; that’s what I learned during my twelve months’ separation from him. So
if he had told me he had once been married and had a son, would that have been so bad? Would I not have taken it, just as I know he once stabbed a man to death at Plymouth Dock, just as I know that he lied to get himself out of that situation when Andrew Blamey recognized him, just as I know he had girls in Sawle or Grambler before we married, just as I suspect he had an affair with poor Violet Kellow. Being married, as a very young man, hardly more than a boy, was that worse, or even as bad?

  What was bad was not telling her, lying by omission, reasoning that with luck it would never come to light. What was bad was the lack of confidence in her, the lack of confidentiality. When people were in love they should tell everything to each other. And about other things he had talked so much.

  Stephen said: ‘Are you still awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This has come – him coming – has come on a special bad day.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I had a surprise for ye. A nice surprise. Something that I reckon should make you very happy. Now … Well, now I don’t think anything will make you very happy. Not tonight. Not tomorrow neither, I expect. Yet I feel I must tell ye. For it is something I have been busy about all day. For you. Chiefly for you.’

  Clowance said: ‘I don’t know, Stephen. Happiness – is not in this. I can’t pretend it is. But if there’s something good to say—’

  ‘I think there’s something good to say. D’ye know Farmer Chudleigh?’

  ‘Only by name. He has the fields above the town, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Aye. Well I went to see him this morning and we spent three hours together, and the upshot is that I have been able to buy me a field of three acres where his land abuts upon the bridle path leading to St Gluvias. And there I propose to build us a house!’