Zennor in Darkness

by Helen Dunmore

  And then, suddenly, twenty-two days late and I’m peeling the potatoes and I know I’m pregnant. There’s no need to think and guess any more. My breasts haven’t ever felt like this before, so sore that I wince when I put my clothes on in the mornings. I don’t want to eat anything until I’ve drunk cup after cup of boiling hot weak tea. And the sight of Father’s egg makes me leave the table, pretending I’ve got to fetch something from the scullery or the larder. And most of all the way nothing feels close or real any more. Not Nan, not Father, not Hannah. Even John William is behind me, outside the circle, tapping on my shoulder but I don’t turn round to him.

  I’m surprised by how cold and practical I feel inside. No one would think it who has seen me jumping off that table, but I know exactly what I am doing. I know it can’t work that easily. I have to do it, but I don’t have to hope that it will work. If it was so easy to shake a baby out of the womb, there wouldn’t be a single girl brought to shame anywhere. They say the Baptists put a black hood on a girl who has fallen, and make her stand before the deacons to be banished from the congregation. But no one is going to touch me. And when I’ve finished jumping off the table, I’ll go up and lie on my bed and curl my arms around myself and shut out all the light, and hold myself so tight that I feel the blood bumping in the big vein in my arm. Bump, bump, bump, bump. The sound of it is fast and perfect, as if my blood knows exactly what it is doing.

  I know what I am going to tell them. I will not let them send me away, though Father will want to. He will want to pretend that I am married, one of those hasty war marriages, and send me up to Coyne. My aunt and uncle might even believe him, because they think we have such strange ways down here that it would be quite possible for me to get married with no announcement, no presents and no ceremony.

  But I will not go there. I will not creep off with John William’s baby like an ant rolling a crumb which is too big for it into its hole. The baby belongs here. It is more Treveal than I am. It is nearly pure Treveal. Nan will see that as soon as she looks at it. She will see and she’ll say nothing, just as I’ll say nothing. I won’t have to explain anything to Nan. She loved John William.

  I will tell Hannah, and she will say to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Arthur that John William and I were secretly engaged, and we meant to marry. It happens. Even in the newspaper you can read about war babies now. There are so many they can’t hush it up any more. I will say that we were going to marry. Aunt Sarah will scream and snivel, and the uncles will bluster, and Father will look white and thin and appalled, and I will not care for any of them. I will not let them upset me, for now I have to think of my baby. Mine and John William’s. It is more important than any of them.

  If I have to, I can do anything. Mr Lawrence pays five pounds a year for his cottage. And what do they spend beside that? He earns everything they live on by his writing. Frieda told me she has not a penny of her own. They don’t get their money from investments which are always going down. They don’t need to keep up appearances: they scrub their own floors, and the doorstep too. It doesn’t matter what people see. And they have friends who live the same way: writers and painters. They get little cottages and they do their own work and they get their furniture from places like Benny’s Sale Rooms. And they have children too, some of them. One of their friends is going to have a child, and she’s writing a book too.

  And in the end Father will say nothing. He will want something of John William to live. He will outface them all by not even seeming to notice what they think, just as he must have done over marrying Mother; or if he doesn’t, I shall make him. He will never turn me out of this house. ‘All those young men dead, leaving nothing behind them.’ That is what he said, when he came back from the camp where they killed John William. And let no one dare say to me that they did not kill him; let no one dare say to me that he wanted to die. They made it impossible for him to want to live any more. It may have been his hand that pointed the gun, but who forced it there? They owe John William his child.

  I don’t think about that night when we were together now. I think about when we were little, before any of this happened, when people meant something different if they said the word ‘war’. I think about John William and Hannah and me, and our games, and the way the tide came in and we ran and screamed and kicked down our own sandcastles rather than let the water break them. I think about the way we would cling on to one another when the waves were rough and we swam in the breakers, and then how we’d huddle together when we got out and the wind was cold and we would hop about drying ourselves on my flannel petticoat. We all had to share it, because I was the only one who had flannel petticoats. Nan thought my chest might be weak, like my mother’s. And we would giggle when John William’s penis went stiff as we dried it, and he would look proud. I wonder if people ever saw us? If they did, they left us alone. We were always hungry. What did Nan give us? Jam sandwiches, and sometimes it was meat-paste for a treat. We would share them out, every bit, then John William would run and get water for us to drink from the well, because he had his tin water-bottle.

  So I am not going to Coyne, and I am not going to disappear up to London so that no one will know me, and I will not bring shame on the Coynes and the Treveals. I am staying here. Later, I shall go to Zennor again, to talk to Frieda and Mr Lawrence. I shall write and tell them first. They do what no one approves of, but they survive. They have made a life for themselves. And it is not their fault that John William died. I shall talk to Hannah in the morning, and then I shall tell Father. Let him ask what questions he wants: I know the answers I shall give. And some of the questions I shall never answer.

  Twenty-three

  Francis Coyne wakes to the drum of rain out on the roof. His room is dark, with only a trace of grey light leaking over the top of the blind. The gutter rushes with water. He remembers that it needs repairing, and that he had put it off early in spring because he had not enough money to pay the bill. The water will run down the side of the house and damp will spread across the inside wall. He sighs, turns over in bed and swims down into a drowse again. No sound of Clare moving yet. She is getting up late these mornings. She yawns, and rubs bleary eyes, and drinks tea endlessly, and eats nothing. He asks her what is the matter, is she ill, and she says there is nothing wrong. She is just tired. His heart tightens briefly in fear: for years he has watched over her for signs of the consumption which ate away her mother’s lungs and turned her into a dry skeleton with red-splashed cheeks who put up her arms to him at the last and asked him to hold her. ‘I can’t feel myself, Francis. I don’t know where I am.’

  But Clare is not getting thinner. There are splotches of shadow under her eyes, but her cheeks are rounder if anything, and there is a new fullness under her jaw. Francis Coyne humps the bedclothes tight round him and pulls the counterpane over his ears to block out the scream of the gulls.

  He is back at Coyne. He is thirteen, a tall, gangling boy with a tutor who is too old for him. He is growing so fast that his wrists bulge from his cuffs and his knuckles are always skinned and he hunches himself awkwardly when he sits down. He never seems quite to know how much of him there is to be folded away. His features have grown too big for his face and they are topped incongruously by a cloud of fine, soft, downy hair, child’s hair still, which will not lie down over his collar no matter how much he stabs at it with his sponge in the mornings. He looks down when he is spoken to and people say he is growing sullen. As soon as his lessons are over, he is off across the fields to shoot in Pesthouse Wood. He shoots rabbits, mostly. His brother Benedict, who inclines towards the Franciscan, shudders when he sees his own Francis come home mud-clotted and blood-streaked, with a couple of bundles of limp fur dangling from a belt the keeper has given him. He skins his rabbits too, quickly and skilfully, but the family will not eat them. The scullery-maid tucks them under her cloak and runs with them down to her mother’s cottage in the village. He looks down so he will not have to meet her timid, grateful eyes.

 
The water-supply at Coyne is erratic: the well does not give enough water for the house, and washing-day is becoming a nightmare. A new well is to be sunk. A man is coming from far away, down in Cornwall, to find the site. There have been arguments about it, and Father McLennan has been consulted in case water-divining should be against the teachings of the Church. But Father McLennan is a practical man, who has to live at Coyne and bath in an inch of muddy water. He will bless the new well: God wishes us to use all His gifts.

  The diviner comes from a family of diviners. It has been their everyday job for generations. They travel around Cornwall and Devon, up to Dorset and Somerset, around the outlying farms and homesteads where the well has dried or the spring is tainted. The family’s reputation goes before them, and in remote parts their coming is as good as a festival. They marry among themselves, it’s said, or else they pick a girl who carries the gift.

  Francis does not go to the woods with his gun on the day the diviner is due to arrive. He is more curious than he wants to admit, so he fiddles with cleaning a gun-barrel, then lounges around the paddocks with his bitch Maisie fawning before him. There is a little crowd gathered by the time the diviner’s cart arrives. It has a broad blue stripe painted on it, and the pony is a tough little cob which drops its head and starts to tear at the rich grass with its yellow teeth as soon as the cart comes to a halt. Francis does not go forward with the others. He hangs back, watching the diviner. He is not going to gape like Adie there with her mouth open. The diviner is a strongly built man with a tanned, outdoor face. He does not look at all magical. Before he starts his work he has to come into the house and eat and drink: it is part of the ritual. He must eat the food of the house. It’s the custom, though very likely it has only grown into a custom because any man is naturally hungry and thirsty after a dawn start and a cross-country journey from the last farm. And he has come a long way, he says. Since June he has been in three counties. The scullery-maid and the garden-boy marvel: they have never been more than eight miles from Coyne.

  When the diviner comes out of the kitchen, wiping his mouth after his bread and cheese and pickles and his pint of cider, Francis is still waiting. Maisie whines at his heel, shivering, for she is afraid of the diviner’s dog. The little group walks down the drive to the soft, spongy grass at the side of the first paddock, where the washing-lines are hung on Mondays. It is quite hidden from the house. The grass is bright green and succulent here, and in winter it keeps its colour and quakes under your boots. The diviner stops. He walks around, quartering the area of grass, stops again. Seems to listen, to smell the air. He touches the grass briefly, and stands up again, hitching his trousers. He nods to Francis, to the servants, to Benedict, who is watching with his face pursed in disapproval. The girls are there too, fluttering, excited and half afraid. The diviner stumps off to his cart.

  Francis thought he would have a wand, a light, flexible twig which would yield to each tiny twitch of the finger so that it could be said to be moving with the flow of the water. He frowns in surprise when he sees the diviner returning with a strong, forked, polished-looking branch. It looks used and ancient. Black sweat from generations of hands has put that sheen on it. It is not the only fork he has, the scullery-maid whispers. He has three others, but he has set his dog to watch over them. And the teeth on the animal – you durst never go near the cart. That band of blue paint is magic too, to watch over his wands.

  The diviner shoves his hat farther back on his head, rolls up his sleeves and steps lightly over the grass as if he were walking over the body of some huge animal – a whale, perhaps, cast up and sleeping. He treads his path back over the way he walked before. Then without any show he stops and holds out the rod of hazel, a fork in each fist. Nothing. He steps on. Francis watches, eyes narrowed now, waiting for the trickery. As if an arm has reached up from the ground and grabbed it, the hazel rod jolts down. The muscles in the man’s forearms bulge.

  ‘Iss strong here,’ he comments.

  He is workman-like. It might be the weight of any common thing he is judging. Yet he moves as if he is aware of something infinitely stronger than himself, just under the ground. He moves again, tests. The rod jerks less powerfully. He steps back, presenting the little patch of bright green grass to them all.

  ‘This yer’s the place,’ he remarks.

  Francis finds he has moved to the front of the little crowd. The diviner catches his eye as he straightens with the rod in his hand.

  ‘Like ter feel it?’ he asks.

  Francis is astonished. He was sure the diviner would keep his magic to himself, but he goes forward.

  ‘Will I be able?’

  The diviner ignores the question. He places Francis’s hands on the forks of the hazel branch, and turns his body round a little. There is force in the diviner’s hands. I wouldn’t want to have to fight him, thinks Francis. He angles the boy so that he is standing by the place where the water was strongest. Francis balances the hazel branch nervously.

  ‘Not like that. Yer got ter get a grip on im. The water’s strong when it comes. It’ll tear that wand out a yer ands.’

  For a moment it feels to Francis as if he is trying to turn a key in a lock which doesn’t fit. Nothing happens but the grate and click of a false turn. The door remains blank, immovable. Then he grips the rod more tightly and moves forward a little. There is a pulse through the length of it. It twists violently and is nearly pulled out of his hands. He is breathless. He finds he has jumped back in fear and in wonder. He had thought it would be a little twitch, something gossamer, something you could fool yourself about and pretend you had felt when you had not felt anything. Not this real thing, as dangerous as the kick of a horse.

  The diviner’s weather-seamed face has creaked into a smile.

  ‘Yer felt it, then?’

  Francis nods.

  ‘Iss not the water yer feeling – iss what the water’s carryin.’

  ‘How far down is it?’

  The diviner shrugs. ‘Thirty foot. An there’s enough water down there ter wash an army clean.’

  Francis turns in his bed again. He remembers how the new water tasted, once they had bored the well. It was full of iron, and you could not leave white clothes to soak in it or they would be stained with orange. The taste of metal in it made your mouth pucker, if it was the first thing you drank in the morning. Next day the cart with its blue stripe had gone. The dog looked over the side of it, still showing his teeth.

  But still no sound of Clare. What can ail her? Suddenly anxious, he hauls himself out of the bed’s warm frowst and ties on his dressing-gown. The house is much too quiet, apart from the lick and spatter of rain. He will make her a cup of tea and take it into her.

  He treads lightly along the landing, not wanting to disturb her. But by her door he pauses. A tiny sound. Is it a moan? Is she crying? Or ill, hurt? Her thick door is firmly closed, and he can hear nothing more. But he lingers. Should he leave her be? No, he will just look in and see that she is all right. She has not been herself since her cousin’s death.

  He opens the door to a pale flood of rainy light. He blinks. The curtains are pulled back, the window is open, and chill air sucks out the curtains as the draught from the door reaches them. Clare turns at the sound of the door opening. She is standing naked by her wash-stand, with the ewer in her hand, pouring a thin stream of water into her bowl. The window squeaks as the wind blows it. That is the moaning sound he heard.

  He has not seen his daughter naked since she was a child. Why does he not back out, babble apologies and shut the door? She stands quite still, her level grey eyes finding his. She has ceased to pour out the water. Surely she must be cold, standing there? She is a blur, blue-veined, branched, a spreading map of flesh. Her head looks small because she has twisted up her hair and knotted it tight. Or else it looks small because her body is so vast. It seems to fill the room with its own light. The sight of it goes through him like electricity, like the jolt of the hazel branch in his hand. His d
aughter’s white body is alive with something deep inside it. The heaviness under her jaw, the startling blueness of veins over her breasts, the swelling knot of them around her dark-tipped nipples, the blurring lines of her stomach: his daughter is pregnant.

  She continues to meet his eyes without shielding her body. She puts down the ewer.

  ‘Shut the window, Clare, you will get cold,’ he says, and goes out of her room.

  I will not think. I will not think. I will not try to understand it. There is water underneath us wherever we walk. We walk on the crust of it. We jump and balance. How old she looked. She is older than I ever imagined. My daughter.

  Does she know? Does she understand what is happening to her? Is she afraid?

  I left her unprotected. We have left all our children unprotected, to scramble their way out of shell-holes, or crawl across no-man’s-land with blood in their mouths.

  When I looked at her naked body, I was afraid that she would arouse me. But she did not. I felt something immense for her, something deep inside me, alive. I could not move for pity of her.

  Her cousin killed himself. He blew his head off because this world had become a place of horror to him. That must never happen to Clare.

  Twenty-four

  Three girls walk gently on the cliff-path. There is not room for them all to walk abreast, so two walk ahead and one a little behind. They are going so slowly that they can still talk quite comfortably between the three of them. Sometimes the red-haired and the fair-haired girls form a couple, sometimes the red-head and the dark girl. They talk over their shoulders to the one behind, but their talk is quiet, as if they do not want to disturb the peace they are walking through. At the moment Peggy is ahead, scuffing up dry earth into dust with her light canvas boots. For the whole summer has been hot, and even now in early September the sun is low but warm. There are vipers on these hills. More have been seen this summer than ever before, and they have been brought into the St Ives pubs hanging crushed and limp from the end of sticks. Clare walks on the inside, carefully, for here the path narrows and the cliff falls away sheer only a foot or so from their feet. She has seen no adders, but there are butterflies everywhere. She has never seen so many butterflies sunning themselves on this path. Their wings flirt up at the vibration of the girls’ boots. They tilt off into the hazy sunshine, over a drop of a hundred feet to the water, or brushing among yellow-tipped bracken. Far below, bladder wrack and oar-weed stir with the tide in water which is so clear you cannot tell its depth.