The Loving Cup Read online

  ‘Um.’ Paul nodded his head. ‘If you make a gross profit of £8 a hogshead . . . You’ve your crews to pay and feed – but still . . . It looks handsome enough. What do you think, Jeremy?’

  ‘I think it is likely to take more than three months to sail, say, to Genoa and back. And shall you expect to come home in ballast?’

  ‘I had thought to bring back salt and wine.’

  ‘Both contraband,’ said Paul. ‘You said you were turning over a new leaf.’

  ‘So I am, so I am. No one in Cornwall even pretends to disapprove of contraband, as you call it. Even Captain Poldark, even Dr Enys, they were both engaged in it once upon a time.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Well, yes, I suppose it is “turning over a new leaf” for a man wanted for two hanging offences.’

  Stephen said harshly: ‘Never forget, Paul, that you’re wanted for one of ’em, and maybe the first one as well. Accessory’s the word they use!’

  ‘Now, now,’ Jeremy said quietly. ‘Remember: “when thieves fall out . . .”’

  After a moment Paul said: ‘Oh, we’re not falling out that bad. A little jesting, eh? I’m grateful to Stephen for what he did in Plymouth Dock. Else I might be a pressed man in the navy.’

  Jeremy took a candle and went to put his sack back under the tarpaulin at the distant end of the shaft. He returned with a small metal cup. It had been in one of the bags they had taken from the strong boxes and was of silver, but tiny, little more than three inches broad, with its two handles, by two and a half inches high. Engraved round the rim were the words: Amor gignit amorem.

  ‘And what shall we do with this?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Melt it down,’ said Paul.

  ‘It is so light,’ Jeremy said, ‘it would hardly pay for the firing.’

  ‘Throw it in the sea,’ said Stephen.

  ‘It would seem a pity. But I expect you’re right.’

  Stephen said. ‘You’re not touching your share, Jeremy. I can see that.’

  ‘Have no fear. I will in due course.’

  ‘Come in as my partner. I’m having a fishing vessel built too. A small drifter type of about sixty ton. I put the order in last week. This war cannot last for ever; nor can the conditions we can make use of this year. I say, make the most of ’em. Then when it’s over, trading by sea won’t end. It will expand. Folk who’ve two or three vessels in commission can use those conditions too. And legitimate if need be. If I buy the Chasse Marée I shall be stretched tight for money. Yours would come in very handy. We could start an exporting line: Carrington and Poldark. Carrington & Co. if you don’t fancy it being publicly known. Why not sail to Italy with me this autumn? It will be an adventure, more surely than just going to the Scillies.’

  ‘I’ll think on it,’ said Jeremy.

  II

  Later the same day Geoffrey Charles was walking beside the old pond of Trenwith when he saw a small procession wending its way up the weed-grown drive. In the lead by a few paces on an elderly mare was a thin dark man; behind him on two ponies a dark woman in a long grey linen riding cloak and a girl of about twelve, hair in pig-tails, bare legs showing under a dimity skirt.

  Geoffrey Charles had been linking his wife, but he lifted both hands to squint into the sun – then he let out a whoop.

  ‘My love, forgive me, it is Drake!’

  He leapt across a narrow angle of the pool, splashed through a few feet of shallow mud and ran towards the convoy. As he neared it, the dark man saw him, called to his ladies and slid out of the saddle.

  The men met equidistant from their respective wives. They stopped a few feet apart, then grasped hands. After a moment Geoffrey Charles took the other by the biceps, laughed, and kissed him on both cheeks.

  ‘Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake!’ he said, his voice breaking and tears in his eyes. ‘So-o . . . After all these years! I can scarcely believe it!’

  ‘Geoffrey Charles! I can scarce believe it neither! Indeed I can hardly think tis you, though, you’re looking brave an’ happy. My dear, you sent for me!’

  ‘Indeed.’ They broke from their affectionate clasp and Geoffrey Charles took a dozen giant strides to help the lady as she dismounted. ‘Morwenna. Ma foi! Ma petite!’ He took her in his arms and gave her a smacking kiss which knocked her glasses askew. ‘And how is my governess? Blooming, it seems! What pleasure to see you again! And Loveday . . .’ He went to the second pony and kissed the girl as he lifted her down. ‘My dear, you have grown so much – grown so much!’

  Drake Carne said: ‘In wisdom and in stature and in God’s esteem.’ But he said it with a little smile that took the starch out of it.

  ‘You still pursue that outlandish Methodism?’

  ‘After a fashion. But we take it in small doses – not like Sam.’

  ‘All things should be taken in small doses,’ said Geoffrey Charles, ‘except friendship and love. Come, Amadora, don’t hang back, come and meet my dear friends. Drake, Morwenna, this is my wife, my dearly loved and honoured wife, whom I have brought to Cornwall specially to meet you.’

  They shook hands, Drake bowing over the hand, Loveday dropping a curtsy. All was conversation, laughter, chatter as they walked the horses slowly towards the front door. Drake had put on weight; one could not see the bones of his shoulder blades through his jacket any more; his hair had thinned but was still raven black; his face had more colour, but perhaps that was just the zest of the arrival. Morwenna seemed unchanged; short-sighted, shy, withdrawn, just as he remembered her seven years ago when he called in at Looe, just as he remembered her when she first came as his governess nineteen years ago. Loveday had the fine skin and dark hair of both her parents, but was of an age when child charm had gone and the looks of adolescence were yet a little way off.

  At the front door Geoffrey Charles produced a whistle. Its shrilling brought a young man trotting round from the back, who raised his eyebrows and grinned at Drake.

  ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ said Drake. ‘Tis young Tredinnick! But gracious knows whether tis Jack or Paul.’

  ‘Jack, sur. Paul’s still wi’ your brother, sur.’

  ‘I do not have servants as such,’ Geoffrey Charles explained, ‘as yet; I have helpers to whom I pay what they consider a reasonable fee. Jack is here to help.’

  ‘Aye, sur; that we all do, sur. Glad to see ee, Mr Carne. An’ Mrs Carne too. And Miss Carne, I s’pose.’

  ‘Please to come in,’ said Amadora, to Morwenna. ‘Geoffrey Charles have so often spoke. This is the way. But you have known this house. You shall remember it well.’

  ‘I am so happy for you, Mrs Poldark,’ Morwenna said. ‘For you both.’ She looked round the small entrance hall as she entered it. She gave a little shiver.

  ‘You feel cold? When you shall have ridden so far?’

  ‘No, no. Far from cold,’ said Morwenna. ‘Very far from cold.’

  III

  They ate together in the winter parlour, which the young Poldarks were at present using as a dining room; the first night in the great hall had been for fun, for love, for excitement, for the sexual challenge; after that, when they came down to earth, it was too big for two.

  Everyone on best behaviour, everyone so obviously wanting to do and say the right thing, Geoffrey Charles more hearty than natural, Morwenna, never a conversationalist, making a tremendous effort to join in, only Loveday excusably silent. Morwenna had wanted to get up and help Maud Tredinnick, Jack’s wife, who waited at table; Amadora concerned for the cooking of the food, which was being done by Ann Bottrell, Ned Bottrell’s wife from Grambler; but to each stirring at the table Geoffrey Charles was adamant. They should sit and wait properly and it should be done. And it was done. And the wine going down with the food was gradually relaxing nerves, easing tensions, making the genuine goodwill flow more naturally.

  ‘We shall give a big party,’ Geoffrey Charles said. ‘A very big party. I had thought at first it should be a housewarming, when everyone should come to wel
come us home. Until we saw “the home”. Then it became quite clear that if we did not wish to run the risk of some guest disappearing through the floorboards or a nervous lady finding a rat anxious to share her fruit syllabub, we should have to wait. So now it may become a house-cooling party – held perhaps a week before we leave. Or a middle-of-the-stay party when we have not grown tired of you all or outlasted our welcome. How long can you remain, Drake?’

  ‘Here? Oh, I dunno. Did you wish for us to stay very long?’

  ‘So long as you can. So long as you are happy here. You know how much I would have liked you both – you all – to make this your permanent home, to have cared for it while we were away, to have shared it with us when we eventually return for good. That is all now a cloud-cuckoo dream, I suppose? You are firmly rooted in Looe? . . .’

  Drake looked at Morwenna, who did not speak.

  ‘At present we live in Looe, Geoffrey Charles. It has become our home . . . But that does not mean we cannot see much of you, or of Trenwith, if that be your wish. It is a long trip; we left at four this morning; but if Captain Poldark do approve – I mean the other Captain Poldark – then it should not be impossible to have one home and one – one second home, where you and Mrs Poldark will ever be.’

  ‘Of course.’ Geoffrey Charles, since he could not reach Drake across the table, patted Morwenna’s hand. ‘It is understood. It has always been a dream of mine . . . you know that . . . You will stay now?’

  Morwenna smiled at him. ‘Just as long as you want – as long as you both want.’

  ‘We should have been here the sooner,’ said Drake, ‘did we not have this sudden order for a new mackerel driver, which come in almost the same day as the letter from you telling us of the great news that you were home. This have delayed me, as twas a rush order, and the young man ordering her wishes for to see her launched in less than two month, which will be a test an’ a trial. But I stayed to see the templates completed an’ the frames marked and sawn. There’s two-three weeks’ work now before they shall think of needing me.’

  ‘Well, let us enjoy these two or three weeks to begin,’ said Geoffrey Charles. He smiled and ran a finger along the thin line of his moustache. ‘It’s strange: when I knew you last you were becoming an expert wheelwright. Now that has changed and instead you are a builder of boats.’

  ‘Thanks to the other Cap’n Poldark – Ross. D’ye know after all this time tis quite an effort on my part to call him Ross.’

  ‘Then we’re in the same case, for although he is really my second cousin I have always called him Uncle, and it needs an effort every time I open my mouth to him to correct myself!’

  ‘So I think I must tell ’im about the new boat I’m having built for this young man. Was not Clowance engaged to marry a young man called Stephen Carrington? This man is called Stephen Carrington who have come to me in Looe to order the new vessel. I wonder if tis one and the same?’

  Chapter Eight

  I

  Returning from another equally early foray the following morning, Jeremy found his mother already abroad. As he crossed the plank bridge to the house she was coming out of the front door with a bucket of water.

  The light had flooded the land long before the sun was up, and the sea, where wisps of mist clung to it, looked like milk in a pan being heated to make cream. The wind would come later, but at the moment there was none.

  ‘You’re up early, my lover,’ she said.

  ‘The same might be said of you, mother. Are you watering your flowers?’

  ‘No.’ She looked into the bucket. ‘While it is dewy is the time to catch the snails. If you drop them into salt they die quite easy.’

  ‘Is Father up?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In the yard. We’re starting the Long Field today.’

  ‘Ah. A good crop?’ That he should have to ask, he thought.

  ‘It is a trifle thin the higher you go, but all the lower part is handsome.’

  ‘So another pair of hands would not come amiss?’

  ‘I don’t need to answer that.’

  ‘Well, first I’ll go up and take a look at Leisure, see all is well there. What time do we break our fast?’

  ‘In half an hour.’

  ‘Then let me try my hand at some slug-murder. I see you have gloves. I don’t mind snails, but slugs are uneasy in the fingers.’

  ‘You take the snails, then.’

  ‘I can’t see any!’

  ‘You will if you look.’

  Mother and son crouched first about the hollyhocks. Jeremy, peering like a short-sighted man, felt something crunch under his foot in the long grass and discovered he had caught his first snail. They laughed at this.

  ‘The only way I can see ’em is by treading on ’em!’ Jeremy said.

  ‘I’ll get you your grandfather’s spectacles,’ Demelza said.

  ‘Didn’t know he ever had a pair.’

  ‘They’re in the long drawer in the parlour, right at the back. I tried them last year when my eyes were funny when Harry was coming, but they didn’t help.’

  ‘I didn’t know your eyes were funny, as well as everything else.’

  ‘Well, they aren’t now,’ said Demelza disgustedly unpeeling a yellow and brown slug from the side of a loose stone. ‘And what d’you mean, as well as everything else!’

  ‘Well, you were really quite ill, Mama, even though you may become indignant at the idea now.’

  ‘I suspect I found my family too much for me!’

  ‘Most particularly the one that was just arriving, no doubt. How is he?’

  ‘Fretful in the night. But he’s forgotten it now.’

  They went on undisturbed for a few minutes. Then they moved over to the pansies. Jeremy said: ‘I had a letter a couple of weeks ago from some man interested in steam cars – a doctor somebody. Difficult to tell if he’s just a crank. He suggested we should meet in Truro one Wednesday. I haven’t replied.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t make up my mind.’

  ‘Is there anything to lose?’

  Jeremy laughed. ‘An afternoon. To tell the truth I cannot work up a great deal of interest in the subject these days.’

  Demelza sat on her haunches and looked at him. ‘Or any other subject?’

  ‘True enough, I suppose.’

  ‘What happened last Christmas?’

  ‘Christmas?’

  ‘About then. About the time Harry was born.’

  He turned the flower of a pansy. ‘Something has eaten this one.’

  ‘A caterpillar, it look more like . . . Yes, there it is. Such a little one, too.’

  He said: ‘You see too much, Mother.’

  ‘It isn’t only caterpillars.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But will not tell?’

  ‘Cannot tell. Don’t let it worry you.’

  ‘It does. When my eldest son suddenly seems to – to go adrift. Is it still to do with Cuby?’

  He flushed. ‘Earlier, yes. I became very disgusted with the way my life was leading, and out of the disgust grew – other things. Now . . . I think I am just going through a bad patch. Give me a little time.’

  ‘You don’t even care so much for Wheal Leisure now, do you.’

  ‘Not as much as I did.’ He changed his tone. ‘But don’t ee fetch on so. Tis no more ’n a touch of the spiritual mulligrubs.’ He patted her on the bottom. ‘All will be well.’

  ‘Not that way.’

  ‘Well, look what you were like when you were carrying Harry! We’ve just spoken of it.’

  ‘But you’re not carrying Harry, my lover. What are you carrying?’

  There was a plop as he at last found a snail and dropped it in the water.

  He said: ‘Even in spite of everything, I can talk to you better than anyone else. I wonder why.’

  ‘I can’t think.’

  ‘Wasn’t Father lucky!’

  ‘Oh, ho, thank you. But for long he part-yearned for someone else.’
>
  ‘I know. Very stupid of him.’

  ‘Oh, she was nice. Nicer than in those days I ever cared to think.’

  ‘Well, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Yes, it’s all over. The heartache and the happiness . . .’

  ‘Oh, Mother, don’t say that!’

  She examined another stone, but it was clean. ‘I don’t mean it that much, that way. Perhaps what I was really trying to say was that . . .’

  ‘That all things pass? Yes. But don’t you need too much detachment – an unhealthy detachment – to come to that conclusion? Looking down from above at the poor little creatures wriggling, and thinking, “I’m no longer one of them!” Or looking back from a distance and thinking, “I was one of them!”’

  Demelza peered into the bucket. ‘There are one or two creatures wriggling in there that I don’t like the look of . . . Jeremy, why don’t you reply to that doctor Somebody and see what he has to say? At the worst, as you point out, it’s a wasted afternoon.’

  ‘I might suffer,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s a crank and thinks pistons grow in the centre of flowers.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘They probably would for you. Is it time for breakfast yet?’

  ‘The slugs think so.’

  ‘All right. All right. I’ll stay a bit longer.’

  II

  It was a close stuffy day on the Wednesday, with occasional damp flurries scarcely wetting the cobbles in Truro. The town was crowded for the market: cows and sheep filled the streets, lowing and bleating. Herdsmen gossiped at corners; drovers poked at their flocks; beggars standing in the gutters, beside or almost in the rivulets, had hardly room to plead their poverty. The Red Lion was full of noisy drinkers.

  News from Europe had just come in – that Wellington, after his great victory at Vittoria, was on the move again, was investing San Sebastian for the second time and was likely to take it by storm. His troops were poised all along the Pyrenees, ready to invade France. Ross remembered the day when George Canning in the House had predicted that there would come a time when a British army would look down into France from the Pyrenees. He had been greeted with derisive laughter from many members then. Well, it had taken almost five years.