‘Which should have ended in his fall,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘But he hypnotizes the French. They worship him – so when he calls for more cadres to fill his decimated regiments, they come in their thousands: old men; boys of sixteen.’
‘Not always willingly, I’m told,’ said Harriet. ‘They have no choice. The levée en masse in France is complete.’
‘Nothing of which detracts from Napoleon’s greatness,’ said George. ‘He bestrides the world like no other man. Our own politicians, our own generals, the petty kings and emperors who oppose him, are pigmies by comparison.’
‘Perhaps you’d be surprised,’ Geoffrey Charles said, ‘at the admiration and respect he inspires in the soldiers who oppose him – our soldiers particularly. But that does not – or should not – remove the necessity to bring him down. While he exists as Emperor of France there can be no peace, no security, no hope of a lasting settlement that will leave other nations free.’
‘I believe his Russian defeat has been a salutary lesson to him,’ said George. ‘He will be more amenable now. If Castlereagh has his wits about him we can achieve a peace with honour without the necessity of more fighting.’
‘Do you intend to return to your regiment soon?’ Harriet asked.
‘As soon as possible,’ said Geoffrey Charles, with a tight little smile. ‘If you have been so long on the hunt you want to be in at the kill.’
After a pause: ‘And Amadora?’
‘Will come back to Spain with me. But all that is weeks ahead.’
‘Those are miserable poor old hacks you are riding. Do their knees not knock together as they carry you? . . . Let me lend you something with better blood. As you observe, we are not lacking. Are we, George?’
‘No,’ said George.
‘Thank you, ma’am; you’re very kind. We hired them from the Greenbank stables. But I am sure we can manage . . .’
‘Why should you? A man shall take them back tomorrow. You may borrow two better mounts for the duration of your stay.’
‘T’ank you,’ said Amadora, beaming. ‘We have in Spain also good horses too.’
‘I know. Don’t I know! Anyway, my nags are eating their heads off at this time of year. It would be an obligement if you took ’em off my hands.’
‘Sawle Church and churchyard,’ said George, ‘is in a very bad state. You would think that Ross Poldark would make some effort to support it, financially and otherwise; but no. It is not a question of Christian doctrine, it is a question of social obligation. When I was at Trenwith – and indeed when your father was at Trenwith – we accepted a trust, a responsibility. No longer so. When I was last over there your mother’s grave was vastly overgrown and—’
‘And my father’s?’
The question was sharp. When a woman marries twice and then dies, shall she be buried with her first husband, even though her second husband pays for and supervises the funeral? It was a sore point with Geoffrey Charles that his father had been buried in the family vault, his mother given quite a separate entombment thirty yards away.
George, choosing not to pick up the challenge, said: ‘And your father’s, of course. I could wish that you might settle at Trenwith, so that there was again a patron to oversee the benefice. At present the Nampara Poldarks totally neglect it. And Odgers – their nominee, incidentally – is now so far gone in senility that by rights he should be removed.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘I’m told when he goes up for his sermon now his wife ties one of his legs to the pulpit so that he can’t wander away until he has read his piece.’
‘Reminds me of my bachelor uncle,’ said Harriet. ‘When he went to church he always took his tame jackal to sit beside him in his pew and wake him when the sermon was over. Misfortunately the jackal would go to sleep too and its snore was much to be wondered at. Sometimes the preacher could scarcely go on.’
‘I did not know you could tame a jackal,’ said Geoffrey Charles.
‘Tame pretty near anything if you have the patience. I once had a bear cub but he died . . . My cousin owns a snake.’ She lifted a dark eyebrow at George and gave her low husky laugh. ‘So you see, George, how much more trying my little friends might be.’
‘I am well used to your little friends by now,’ said George. ‘Mrs Poldark, will you take tea?’
It was a sign for them to move, and after refusing further refreshment they took leave of George, who pleaded pressure of work, and followed Harriet, Ursula, and the two hounds back to the stables. There Harriet insisted on lending Geoffrey Charles a horse called Bargrave – ‘we bought him in a sale; your cousin Ross bid against us, but we got him; he has good quarters and makes nothing of these muddy lanes’ – and a pale sorrel mare of much slighter build for Amadora – ‘you’ll find Glow hasn’t quite the stamina but she is fleet over short distances and has the gentlest mouth.’
The rain had almost ceased as they rode away; it was a barely visible dampness just freckling their faces. Amadora laughed at the pleasure of it, and indeed at the pleasure of the morning’s visit. They chatted in Spanish all the way down the drive and she said: ‘I do not see Sir George as such a wicked man.’
Geoffrey Charles said: ‘In his life I know him to have done a number of wicked things; things I find it difficult not to recall when I meet him; but I have no means of assessing evil and no special wish to judge him. He is older – for one thing . . . Also . . . the causes – at least some of the causes – are no longer there. It really all centred round my mother.’
‘How is that?’
‘Oh, mon Dieu, how can one say it all in a few breaths? Ross Poldark, my cousin – the other Captain Poldark, whom you may meet tomorrow – although happily married to his wife, Demelza, loved my mother first.’
‘A triangle eterno – perhaps?’
‘More of a quadrangle, if you gather my drift.’
They clopped on for a few moments in silence. They were now descending the hill towards the main turnpike road.
‘Ross and George had been at loggerheads for some time: over a copper-smelting scheme, over matters relating to my father, over charges of riot and assault which nearly brought Ross to the gallows . . . My mother’s marriage to George caused the already deep division to become an abyss.’
The track was again narrow and they went temporarily in single file.
Amadora said: ‘England is so green. I have never seen so much green. It is so rich, so lush, so exuberante.’
‘Wait till you cross the spine. On the other coast – my coast – it is quite different.’
They reached the turnpike road, but instead of turning right or left upon it, Geoffrey Charles led the way up the opposite hill. It was a steep and awkward climb by the narrowest of tracks much overgrown with fern and bramble. In twenty minutes they had reached the top and reined in breathless, looking back the way they had come.
‘So green,’ said Amadora again.
‘In a moment we shall join the track to Redruth, which at least is well worn. Then we shall fork right for St Day. But this is the worst of the route. Are you tired, my little?’
‘Tired?’ she said. ‘What is tired?’
They went on.
‘And?’ said Amadora.
‘And?’
‘Did not all this you have talked about occur when you were most young?’
‘Yes. Oh yes. Too young to understand at the time. But I have learned of it since – picked up a pretty fact here and there . . .’
‘Your governess, you told me – Malvena – there was much trouble over her?’
‘Morwenna. That was later, when I was ten . . .’ He flexed his injured hand. ‘She and I became great friends. That did not matter, but one day we met Drake Carne – Demelza’s brother – and he and Morwenna became great friends; more than friends. They came to love each other deeply. The only let was that Drake did not come of the same class as Morwenna – and, being related to a Poldark made him specially hated by George. George arranged an imposed marriag
e for Morwenna, to an odious clergyman called Osborne Whitworth.’ Geoffrey Charles gave an angry shrug of the shoulders. ‘All that time . . . it is best forgotten. But when I remember it . . .’
Amadora took a firmer grip of her reins. ‘But you have told me that now – that some years ago this Drake and this Morwenna became married. How is that?’
‘Whitworth – the parson – was killed by footpads, or fell from his horse with some sort of a stroke. Anyway he died. And after a while Drake and Morwenna married. At the time I was fifteen and away at school. Of course he wrote to me. So did Morwenna. But even so one had to read between the lines, to learn more of the truth from other people.’
‘What is that truth?’
‘Soon after they were married a small boat building yard that Ross owns in Looe lost its manager when a man called Blewitt – who was part owner with Ross, and part manager – died. Ross offered the position to Drake, who took it, and they moved there in the following December. They have one daughter, thanks be . . . Now do you see what I mean? All the foliage is going.’
They had broken through the rough tangled trees and come to moorland, with goats pasturing, a water wheel turning in a stream and activating noisy iron rods, a few hovels on the sky-line, mules with panniers being driven along a cross lane. A strong wind blew the clouds low.
‘Ah,’ said Amadora, ‘it is a little more like Spain.’
‘But without the sun.’
‘Without the sun. But you do see it a veces? There is sun last night.’
They jogged on.
Geoffrey Charles said: ‘The Reverend Osborne Whitworth had been so grossly offensive to his wife that Morwenna swore when he died that she could never marry again – not even Drake. The physical act of love had been turned for her into something obscene. It was only after much persuasion, and after he had undertaken not to expect her to become his wife in a physical sense, that she eventually consented. Yet – a year and a half after their move to Looe a daughter was born . . . I was anxious when I went to see them . . . Do you follow me, or do I speak too fast?’
‘No, I follow.’
‘I found them both very happy with each other and devoted to their child. Morwenna – Drake said – was still subject to nightmares, and after such a nightmare she was out of sorts for a week or more and could not bear that he should touch her. But the nightmares were becoming less frequent; and anyway, always, Drake said, there now were the times in between.’
Pigs were rooting outside a thatched cottage which leaned drunkenly towards a triangular field in which a woman and three children worked.
‘That is byertiful,’ said Amadora.
Geoffrey Charles laughed. ‘It depends how you look at it. You see there were two cottages, but the other has fallen down. Do you understand the word picturesque?’
‘Of course. Pintoresco. But byertiful too.’
The woman and the children had stopped work at the sound of voices and stared curiously. Geoffrey Charles raised a hand but none of them waved back.
Now they were entering a most desolate scene, in which there was no trace of vegetation left: all was given up to mining. The few cottages were squalid; naked or semi-naked children played among the attle thrown up from the excavations; green pools of slime let off an odour that was partly diluted by the smell of sulphur and smoke drifting before the breeze. Miners and muleteers in smock frocks moved about; thin and pale-faced older children were at work on the dressing floors, stirring the tin round and round in the water with their bare feet. It seemed that everybody was digging the ground, or had already dug it. There were oval pits, part full of water. In excavations only big enough and deep enough to hold a coffin a spade or two appeared and disappeared, and sometimes a felt hat was to be seen. There were seven or eight mine chimneys smoking, and as many dead, some of them already in ruin.
‘What is those things?’ Amadora asked, pointing to the circular thatched huts which were dotted about.
‘They are whyms.’
‘Wims? What is wims?’
‘Whyms. They each cover a windlass, which lowers a bucket down that particular shaft. The bucket can bring up either water or ore.’
Amadora reined in to stare at one of these huts, and at the two mules which moved in constant slow motion round and round the building, pulling a bar. An impish child sat on one mule driving them on with a stick. He made an obscene gesture at the well-dressed people staring at him.
They rode on.
‘Take heart,’ said Geoffrey Charles, seeing his wife’s face; ‘it is not all like this.’
‘It shall be going to clear – see,’ said the girl. ‘Over there.’
Like a sliding cover the cloud bank was slipping up from the horizon, revealing a sliver of bright light.
‘We must see them soon,’ Geoffrey Charles said.
‘Who?’
‘Drake and Morwenna. I must write to ask them to Trenwith. Or we could ride over and see them.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Thirty miles. Maybe less. But we should have to spend the night.’
They descended a valley, where trees suddenly grew again in green bird-haunted clumps, passed a fine house, only just removed from the attle and the waste.
‘Thomas Wilson lives there,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘He is the mineral lord for this area, and so takes a dish from what is raised on those mines you have just passed.’
‘Dish? Plato? Again strange. Dish is what you eat off, no?’
‘A dish is what you eat off. But in this country there is another meaning to it. It means a share. A portion. The mineral lord takes a fraction – perhaps one ninth – of the value of the ore raised.’
‘So he is rich?’
‘If the mines prosper, yes.’
‘But there is no such dish at your house – Trenwith?’
‘At one time there was. The Poldarks owned a large share of the mine too – it was called Grambler – but twenty-odd years ago it failed; and so we have been poor ever since.’
‘But can you not begin other mines, like your cousin, the Captain Ross Poldark? Does he not open one mine upon another?’
‘He has only tried three, and has been lucky with two of them. Unhappily on Trenwith land we have only Grambler, which would cost a fortune to unwater – that is to drain. For it was always a wet mine and needed pumping at an early level. No one has been successful with any new working in the vicinity; though one or two attempts have been made. My father attempted by gambling to recoup his losses and so to prospect for new lodes; but alas this only led him further into debt.’
‘Qué lástima! Well, well, who knows? Perhaps we shall try again when this war will be over.’
The moorland now was not so desolate; they dipped into valleys through narrow tracks and between high hedges whose brambles and thorns plucked at their hats and cloaks.
‘We are skirting Killewarren,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘Where the Enyses live. He is a doctor, a surgeon, greatly respected and liked. It is said, such is his repute, that he was called to London to see the old King when he first lost his reason.’
‘I am in difficult,’ said Amadora. ‘How to remember these names.’
‘Don’t try. They will come to you quick enough when you meet them.’
‘The King he lose his reason?’
‘Oh, yes. And that was years ago. He is still alive, but sadly lacking.’
‘Then how shall this fat man be King?’
‘He is not. He is Prince Regent, and will remain so until his father dies. But he is king in all but name.’
‘Sadly lacking,’ said Amadora. ‘That is new. Sadly lacking. I like. It has a pretty sound.’
‘You have a pretty sound, mi boniato.’
‘When you call me that I know you shall be a tease.’
Geoffrey Charles laughed and tried to pat her hand, but her mare lurched away from him. He said in Spanish: ‘I can only tell you, my little, what joy it gives me to see you riding with me in m
y own country, in my own county, towards my own home.’
III
Geoffrey Charles avoided the well known landmarks, coming in by the cross-roads at Bargus and so missing Sawle Church. It pleased his fancy that no one who knew him should see him arrive, though he did not deceive himself that it would remain a secret for long.
He made no attempt to call at the lodge, in the expectation that the place would not be locked – it never had been in the old days. When they came in sight of the house Amadora gave a little gasp of pleasure.
‘Qué hermoso! You did not tell me so much! Qué magnífico! Y gracioso!’
‘Wait,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘It is still lovely from a distance, but . . .’
They reined up outside the front door, and he helped her to dismount, holding her a long time in his arms before he let her down. By now the sky had lifted its lid but the sun was not yet out and the front of the house was in shadow. He turned the ring of the door and pushed. The door groaned open upon the small and unimpressive entrance hall. He strode through it and opened the right hand door which led to the great hall. This room, with its minstrel gallery and its enormous table, was illuminated by the one window in which it was said there were 576 separate panes of glass. The time to see the room at its best was when the sun was slanting in, but even now the effect was highly impressive. Geoffrey Charles hoped she did not hear the rustling and scampering at the end of the room as she threw herself into his arms with delight.
Hand in hand they explored their home. Geoffrey de Trenwith, who had designed it, or at least superintended its building, had directed his money and his craftsmen towards the several splendid reception rooms; of the fifteen bedrooms most were dark-panelled and poky, and even the four best were not large by modern standards. The living Geoffrey showed his new wife the little turret room up the stairs which had been his when he was a boy, and was delighted to find a number of his own childish sketches still on the walls. The bed was covered with a dust-sheet which was drawn up and wrinkled as if someone had quite recently left an impression on the bed; there were blankets on the floor, one of them badly gnawed; the light slanted through half drawn curtains.
The Loving Cup Page 4