The Loving Cup Read online

  Jeremy was lucky enough to find Music at the first call, and Music who, unknown to Mr Pope, was betraying all the conventional signs of being normal by having fallen hopelessly in love with Katie Carter, was delighted to be given the excuse to seek his beloved out and pass on the message that Mrs Pope had sent. Then he accompanied Jeremy, with his lolloping twine-toed walk, to succour his mistress.

  Unknown also to Jeremy, indeed unknown to anyone but the surgeon, Music Thomas had been several times to see Dr Enys on the subject of his own disabilities. Though he could only with great difficulty tell the time, and never knew what a month was, he was quite capable of living a fairly normal life, if other people would allow him. Unfortunately he was the butt of small boys, who whistled and gestured after him, and he was aware that he didn’t really ‘count’ where women were concerned and that particularly he didn’t count where Katie Carter was concerned, that clumsy, black-haired, long-faced girl on whom his mind and his heart had settled fond hopes. He meant nothing to her; he was a joke, a chorister with the wrong voice, a young stupid who was always making mistakes and getting into scrapes, some of them true, some of them apocryphal, invented by witty, scabrous tongues. ‘’Eard the latest ’bout Music, ’ave ee?’ In order to impress Katie, in order to be thought a serious young man worthy of being her suitor, he wanted to shed this reputation, this sort of false renown.

  It was this tall gangling stable boy who helped Mrs Pope home; and Jeremy went on his way.

  He took the cliff pathway, skirting Trenwith land – a dangerous route in the twilight for one who did not know the way, for the fences put up long ago by the Warleggans had rotted or been stolen for firewood, and here and there the cliff had fallen, taking part of the path with it. Little detours to skirt the sudden precipices were easy to miss in the dusk. But he knew his way all too well. It was a way he had walked so often this year.

  Down into the depths of Sawle village, with a few sickly lanterns and candles gleaming here and there; broken and boarded windows, half doors patched with driftwood; the stink of stale fish and sewage and the skeletal clang and clatter of the stamps. Poverty clung round the Guernseys like sediment at the bottom of a pond; there had been no change, no improvement since Jeremy was a boy; but as one climbed the cobbled rutted way up to Stippy-Stappy Lane, so the small respectabilities grew, past the Carters’ shop and up the hill towards Sawle Church. Then past the church with its inebriate spire and through Grambler village, which was just a row of cottages on either side of a miry lane, put up when Grambler mine was working, but now, though all inhabited, mainly in a high state of disrepair. The Coads lived here, and the Rowes, the Bottrells, the Prouts, the Billingses, the Thomases, and next to the Thomases, last cottage in the village, the semi-hovel where Jud and Prudie eked out their last days.

  There was a light in their cottage, and Jeremy stepped delicately past, not at all anxious to be recognized and called in, when a hand touched his arm.

  ‘Well, me old lad. Well met, eh?’

  Even in the dark the tawny hair showed; anyway no one could mistake the voice.

  ‘Stephen! For God’s sake! What are you doing here?’

  Teeth showed in the dark. ‘The bad penny, eh? Or should it be the bad guinea?’

  ‘You never wrote. I didn’t know what to expect—’

  ‘You must have expected me back soon or late. And I was never one much for the letter.’

  ‘When did you come?’

  ‘Landed at Padstow yesterday. Borrowed a nag from there.’

  Belatedly they shook hands. Old friends, old comrades, old companions in crime.

  ‘Anything happened here?’ Stephen Carrington asked.

  ‘No. Not in that way.’

  ‘No questions asked?’

  ‘Why should there be?’

  ‘How’s Paul?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘Being careful, is he?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  From the Paynters’ cottage came the crash and rattle of pans and Jud’s complaining voice.

  ‘Are you walking home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll come a way with you.’

  They went off, tramping together in the dark.

  Jeremy said: ‘Did you find your privateer?’

  ‘There were two or three propositions I carefully considered.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘They weren’t right. And the money wasn’t really enough.’

  Jeremy did not speak.

  ‘Have you taken any of it yourself yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a fool, old son. We agreed to split by a third.’

  ‘I’ll take it in due course.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I know – I know. We were all in a bit of a stank to begin with. But by now things must have quieted down.’

  The sky was lightening where a moon was due to rise.

  ‘How is Clowance?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Is she wed yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That fellow Guildford will be no good to her. She’ll wipe her feet on him. She needs a firm hand.’

  ‘Such as yours?’

  ‘Oh, well, let’s not go into that yet a while.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘With Ned and Emma Hartnell. They have agreed to put me up for a few days.’

  ‘Is that all you are staying?’

  ‘Not in Cornwall. I’ve new ideas for Cornwall. But mebbe it will not be in this district.’

  ‘Privateering?’

  ‘No. Pilchards.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell ye about it sometime.’

  Jeremy laughed humourlessly. ‘It’s a far cry from fighting the French at sea to catching fish on the Cornish coast.’

  ‘Mebbe you think so. But one could be as profitable as the other. And not without risk neither.’

  ‘You rouse my curiosity, Stephen.’

  ‘Hold hard for a few days and I may satisfy it.’

  As they neared the old trees around Wheal Maiden the moon was just glimmering over the top of the sandhills. A geometry of bats were drawing their eccentric triangles against the sky.

  There was a light in the Meeting House. ‘Your uncle still belongs to that lot, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The leader of it. You’ll never separate him from his religion. He’s a rare good man.’

  Stephen grunted. ‘And how’s Wheal Leisure?’

  ‘Production up. Some of those medieval galleries have been interesting; and we’ve profitably explored the north sett. You have money due from the last dividend.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Sixty pounds.’

  Stephen grunted again.

  ‘It’s more than a 50 per cent return on your investment,’ Jeremy said sharply.

  ‘Oh, aye. I don’t complain. Far from it, me old lad. It will all help in this new project I have. I wish twas ten times as much!’

  ‘I am sure no one would object; but at least the mine is paying, and it has only been in operation fifteen months.’

  ‘And Ben Carter?’ Stephen said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s back as underground captain, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He would be, so soon as I was out of the way.’ Stephen stopped. ‘This is as far as I shall come, Jeremy.’

  Jeremy said: ‘I should ask you in but Clowance is home, and it would not be fair to her just for me to turn up with you.’

  Stephen said: ‘D’ye know, but for Ben Carter I’d be married to Clowance now. D’ye realize that?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘No suppose so about it. If he hadn’t picked that quarrel . . .’

  ‘Come, Stephen, you don’t expect me to believe it was that way round.’

  ‘Well . . . whichever way round it was, he was the one who came between us. Faults I have a-plenty, but harbouring old grievances I never thought was a failing of mine. All th
e same, I’ll kill him one day. That’s a promise.’

  ‘We’d lose a good underground captain,’ Jeremy said, trying to lighten the tone.

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’ Stephen stirred the ground with his foot. ‘You can joke. But let me ask you this. Suppose you’d ever been betrothed to marry your Cuby – or whatever she is called. Suppose the wedding day had been set. Suppose someone came between you and her. However the quarrel happened, supposing one man came between you. How would you feel about him?’

  Jeremy looked into his own life.

  ‘Well?’ said Stephen, peering into his face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jeremy, not wanting to be drawn about his own affairs. ‘But you’ve got to remember Ben Carter will never be your rival. He could never marry Clowance. Clowance is just fond of him. If you’d had any sense you’d never have flared up the way you did. I know it’s easy to talk—’

  ‘Yes, it’s easy to talk. But when you’re in love you’re easily jealous, and things come out. You say things . . . But, Holy Mary, I said but little! She took it all as if twas mortal hurt . . .’

  ‘We’ve talked of this too often,’ said Jeremy wearily. ‘Clowance has strong, deep loyalties. Anyway, the quarrel happened. As I’ve said to you before, it has always seemed to me – a sign of a deeper complaint. Things must have been going wrong between you before, though maybe you did not notice it. And she hasn’t come round. I think you’d best forget her.’

  ‘Some chance.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’

  The two young men stood silently for a few moments longer, each considering his own ill-treatment at the hands of fate.

  Stephen said: ‘Well, I’d best be going.’

  ‘I’ll see you sometime.’

  ‘Is the – stuff where it was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can meet at the Gatehouse, then. Tomorrow about noon?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m to go with my family to St Day Show Fair. I have not been very sociable of late, and I especially promised my mother I should go.’

  Stephen thought this out. ‘Very well. So be it. Perhaps tis better this way. I’ll meet you at the end of the month. Saturday week at noon at the Gatehouse, eh?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘By then I shall know for certain whether me present idea for – for a new type of investment will look promising enough to follow. Maybe I shall interest you.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Stephen Carrington said impatiently: ‘You cannot keep your share of the stuff lying there for ever.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘All the risks we took: were they for nothing?’

  Jeremy smiled into the dark. ‘On the whole I believe for nothing worth while, Stephen. But I admit it is a personal view come to after the event. Do not let it depress you.’

  Chapter Three

  I

  Both Sir George and Lady Harriet Warleggan were home when the young Poldarks called on the Saturday forenoon.

  It was a disagreeable day. Seeing the pellucid sunset of last night and the clear moon that rode through the hours of darkness, it would have been a perceptive sailor or shepherd who could have foreseen the grey dawn, the steady south-westerly wind and the intermittent rain that came with it.

  In fact Lady Harriet was in one of her customary place – the stables – when a maid arrived to tell her of the visit, and she tramped through the kitchens, kicked off her muddy boots, and, accompanied by her two great hounds, came in stockinged feet into the larger withdrawing room where George, himself disturbed from an interview with Tankard about the rotten borough of St Michael, was sitting opposite the two young people, sipping sherry and looking cold and unwelcoming.

  It was not really surprising, for Geoffrey Charles accepted his allowance of £500 a year without a sign of gratitude or obligation, and never wrote. The only correspondence which took place was with Valentine.

  But the arrival of a step-step-mother, as it were, did help to break the ice. So did the dogs, which, though well behaved, were so enormous that they provided light relief and a topic for conversation.

  Harriet had a talent for taking a situation as it came without regard to history, ancient or modern. She neither knew nor cared what other people were feeling, and every circumstance was treated strictly on its merits. Also, having discovered the nationality of the little dark girl, she immediately began to chat to her in broken Spanish. It seemed that when she was seven years of age she had spent a year in Madrid, in the home of a grandee who was connected by marriage to the Osbornes. Amadora was enchanted, and soon lost that element of defensive shyness with which she was accustomed to greet new situations or Geoffrey Charles’s old friends.

  George said evenly: ‘I have no keys. They are with the Harrys. All you have to do is go over and call at the lodge. They will give them to you at once. You will find the place neglected. The Harrys were always rogues.’

  ‘I wonder you kept them on.’

  George shrugged.

  ‘After your mother died I could find little interest in the place.’

  And little interest in preserving it for Francis’s son, thought Geoffrey Charles. ‘I have not seen my home since Grandfather died, which must be seven years, or nearly so. Is it still furnished?’

  ‘Partly. Many of the new pieces I had taken there were later brought here. You’ll observe that bureau. Such original furniture as was not disposed of remains. Is that a permanent injury to your hand?’

  Geoffrey Charles looked down. ‘Who knows? It only happened in April of last year. So it may yet improve. But in fact, excepting that I find it impossible to open the fingers wide, it is little inconvenience. The trigger finger is not impaired.’

  George eyed his step-son. It was difficult to relate this tall thin tight-faced man with the genteel, delicate, over-plump, over-mothered boy he had disciplined so many years ago. In the early days George had tried. Indeed, before he married Elizabeth, before even Francis died, he had tried hard to please the boy, bought him presents, attempted to please the mother by pleasing the child. Even after their marriage he had done his very best with Geoffrey Charles, wanting to befriend him, until the quarrel over Drake Carne, Demelza Poldark’s brother, had written off any friendship between them for ever.

  Now at this meeting after so long a gap, the less said the better. They had nothing more in common, except the old elvan and granite house of Trenwith. The one important interest they had once deeply shared had died nearly fourteen years ago, leaving a five-day-old baby behind.

  George said: ‘Well, the war has taken a favourable turn at last. Your Wellington should feel better pleased with himself now.’

  ‘I believe he is. Though he is never one for self-satisfaction. Is the Armistice still in operation?’

  ‘Yes. And will be I suspect so long as it suits Napoleon to rebuild his armies after last winter’s defeat in Russia.’

  Geoffrey Charles said: ‘For almost two weeks now I have been without up-to-date news. If the Armistice continues with Austria and the rest, it means that Wellington’s Peninsular Army is the only one at present in the field against France.’

  ‘Exactly what many people are thinking. As you say, there is little cause for self-satisfaction.’

  Silence fell between the men while the women chatted on. Even in this brief interchange there was something in George’s turn of phrase or tone of voice that rubbed Geoffrey Charles the wrong way. George had always been a critic of Wellington; Wellington had very briefly occupied one of George’s parliamentary seats and had left it without a thank you; George never forgot slights; Geoffrey Charles knew all this and knew also that George had always criticized the decision to send British troops to Portugal and Spain.

  ‘Well,’ he said, uncrossing his long thin legs, ‘I think we should go. It will take us a couple of hours, I suppose . . . Amadora . . .’

  ‘Go?’ said Lady Harriet. ‘Before you have been dined? I’ll not bear it. Otherwise I shall suppose you have no fancy for your new s
tep-mother.’

  ‘Oh, far from it, ma’am! The contrary! But when we reach our house we shall have much to do before dark—’

  ‘So you shall go with candles. I cannot conject what Amadora’s mother would think if she learned that we had turned her away.’ Harriet got up. ‘Down, you blasted brutes; there is no occasion for excitement!’ She glanced at her husband, who was trying not to glower. ‘Dinner shall be early to accommodate them. But for half an hour first, Captain and Mrs Geoffrey Charles, you shall see my livestock.’

  II

  They dined with a modest lack of disaccord. Geoffrey Charles thought that on the whole his step-father had done well for himself, though he could not see Lady Harriet fitting into the compatible but slightly subordinate role his own mother had filled. There would be ructions in plenty here. She was an attractive woman, more beautiful than pretty but not quite either. And young. Only a few years, he’d swear, older than himself. She had an eye for a young man, he could tell that. Would George be able to satisfy her, to keep her, to prevent her from straying? If she felt like it, there would surely be no stopping her. George looked older; lines were indented in his cheeks, his hair iron-grey, thinning.

  Present at the table too was Ursula, now a strapping girl of nearly fourteen, with a fat neck and thighs so sturdy that they made bulges in her skirts; but none of it flabby, all hard flesh, ready to stand her in good stead in life. Geoffrey Charles could scarcely believe that his own slender, delicate, patrician mother had borne her. And a girl of few words, curtsying awkwardly to Amadora, allowing her cheek to be brushed by Geoffrey Charles, but firmly intent on the main purpose of the hour: food.

  Valentine, George explained, was not yet come from Cambridge. He was expected next Wednesday, if he could be bothered to take the coach and did not squander his money in London. He had not been home at Easter at all, having spent the vacation with Lord Ridley, a new friend of his – said George smugly – in Norfolk. So his last visit was Christmas. When, Harriet volunteered, he had turned the house upside down. Then they had all been quite mad with delight at the news of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.