A Cornish Girl

by Gloria Cook

  ‘To Falmouth,’ Laketon declared, boasting.

  ‘Why there?’ Joshua realized how hungry he was. He had not eaten a proper meal for days. All he wanted was to go home and order a decent breakfast in his room. He edged towards the bedroom door. Laketon gave him a harsh look of reprimand and he retraced his steps. Oh, how he hated the fiend.

  ‘Have you forgotten the delivery we’ve been expecting for months? I heard yesterday that the ship has just moored. There will be ferns, vines, orchids, camellias and much more.’

  Joshua’s heavily shadowed jaw fell. He had forgotten something that had once been vital to him; nowadays his mind was in a dejected fug. ‘That should be my prerogative.’

  Laketon’s eyes glowed. ‘You should have made sure that you behaved yourself, shouldn’t you?’ The look of acute dark anger made him appear demonized – the look Joshua feared so much.

  ‘Y-yes, Laketon. I shall look forward very much to seeing how you will restore everything.’

  ‘Go and get yourself restored to something of the gentleman you used to be,’ Laketon ordered coldly. ‘I’ll restore everything else. Now, I want some money.’

  In a quarter of an hour, Joshua was in his dreary, oak-panelled dressing room with his head lowered in his hands. He was exhausted and his head thumped with tension but he was wholly relieved to be away from Paradise Cottage. He couldn’t take much more of Laketon’s scheming and brutality. Once he’d had gardens the envy of all but the greatest estates in Cornwall, and the freedom to follow his heart’s desire thanks to his agreeable young wife, who had produced a child which staved off questions about his virility. Now his grounds were in ruins and only to be restored on Laketon’s decision, and Laketon would ensure he received all the glory when all was flourishing again. That would take years, years of living under his demands, of him deciding what to plant and where. Tara was probably right about Laketon destroying his plants. Laketon was malicious. He was a devil. He was dangerous and terrifying. Tara, the calming influence in his house, was desperate to leave it. As for Tara’s child, if only the girl was any other man’s but his brother’s. He felt Michael smirked over the fact and considered himself more as the squire. Michael saw to all the business of the estate now. He had no family to turn to and no friends. His life wasn’t worth living and there was no hope of it ever improving. ‘I hate you!’ he fumed at the cold-eyed image of Laketon in his mind. He burst into tears of desperation.

  Moments later he wiped the tears away with the heels of his hands. There was a way out, one that would not benefit his rotten lover at all. He would kill himself. He’d take his razor and slash his throat wide open. Michael would be the squire then. He was welcome to the beastly place. He’d order Laketon out of Poltraze. If his suicide brought the estate down, good! Michael deserved it. He could add the tragedy to his records. Tara could do as she damned well pleased.

  He strode to the bathroom, picked up the cut-throat razor laid out neatly on the shelf above the marble-topped washstand and basin. He looked into the mirror and blanched at the blotchy-skinned, wild-eyed creature staring back at him. Was that really him? He had been reduced to a crazed, unkempt gargoyle. He couldn’t bear the sight and whirled round putting the razor to his throat.

  ‘Sir! Let me do that.’ Joshua had not heard a discreet shuffle at the adjoining door nor it being opened and someone coming in.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m your new valet, sir. Aaron Hobbs. Forgive me. I did not know you were here. Mrs Nankervis engaged me. I was just looking over where I shall be waiting on you.’

  Joshua’s hand fell. His brain couldn’t take in the rapid change. He had been about to kill himself, to splash his blood all over the black and white tiles. Now he was surprised to be facing a slim young man with an ivory face framed by a veil of curly blond hair, and immaculately dressed in starched high collar and a dark suit. There was a softness in his voice and a softness in his demeanour, and rather than the grovelling look of servitude or stiff discipline of many servants, he seemed to portray genuine concern. After being with the devilish Laketon, Joshua fancied he was in the company of an angel. Instead of being distressed or embarrassed to be caught in a disgraceful state of dishevelment, he was just numb.

  ‘Shall I order hot water to be brought up for you to bathe, sir?’

  ‘What?’ Joshua blinked, his mind clicking in a daze before it returned to working order. ‘A bath? Yes, of course.’ He could hardly cut his throat now. The thought was so ludicrous it made him want to smile, to laugh, but he was sure he’d go into hysterics. Yes, he’d allow himself to be scrubbed, shaved and smartened up and then commit suicide, go out looking like a gentleman, and by some poison or pills; less messy and more dignified.

  He wondered if a smile had creased his face, for the valet smiled at him, a small smile and a pleasant one, and Joshua saw how pretty his new servant was. A smile from anyone else would have been offensive. It was out of place, but for some reason he didn’t mind. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Hobbs, sir. Aaron Hobbs. Shall I take the razor, sir?’

  ‘Well, Hobbs,’ Joshua said, handing over the instrument that had nearly carved a wide gash in his neck, ‘I’ve been rather out of sorts, as you can see. Are you experienced in your post?’

  ‘I was three years with the recently deceased Lord Hampton of Bath, and before that with Mr Maurice Astley of London.’ Hobbs gave him a long particular look.

  ‘Lord Hampton. Maurice Astley?’ Joshua knew of these men and the particular clubs – molly houses – they had frequented. They had not been accepted in conventional society. Hobbs would be very acceptable as his new valet. Suddenly life seemed worth taking a new chance at. Thoughts of suicide left him for now. His bathroom was one of the pleasanter rooms in the house. It was functional, with no ornamental excesses. He would unwind a little and allow this young man to pamper him. ‘I shall require a hearty breakfast after this, Hobbs. I’ll eat in my chamber.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell me more about yourself, Hobbs.’

  ‘The Kivell woman’s got no right to be burying that old witch tomorrow!’ Dinah Greep thumped cheap pottery plates down on the table. ‘She should’ve waited till Sunday, like the rest of us do for a funeral. She hasn’t worked since the old woman died. Rest of us have had to work extra hard to get the quota done.’

  ‘If you’re so worried about the work, maid, then you should stop your complaining and just get on with the job,’ Jeb, her brother, sighed, shaking his head and casting his eyes down on the stone-flagged kitchen floor. He had worked early morning core at the Carn Croft Mine, and until ten minutes ago had been seeing to his smallholding, complete with goats and two pigs, at the back of the cottage. A devout Bible Christian, he was to go soon to prepare the chapel for a prayer and worship meeting. He was tired from the physical work but his weariness came from having to endure his sister’s constant jealous sarcasm and mischief-making. It seemed no amount of patience and praying could bring about a softer, repenting side in Dinah. He never got to sit for a few minutes in peace at the hearth, where he was now, cradling his sleeping baby daughter. ‘And you shouldn’t be so uncharitable. Sarah had a terrible shock finding Tabbie dead like that.’

  ‘Trust you to take her side! You’re even going to the funeral. Anyone’d think you still had feelings for her,’ Dinah spat, seeming more and more like a cross between a newt and a shrew.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Jeb raised his voice, waking the baby of one month and making her cry, and alarming his year-old son, sitting on his wife’s lap and slurping down milky sops. Miriam Greep reached for the baby, but Jeb held on to her. ‘It’s all right, my love, I can manage.’ He shushed the baby back to sleep then put her down in the cradle. Thank God, Miriam took no notice of Dinah’s jibes. She was everything his sister was not, patient, hard-working, generous and a good Christian. Like him, Miriam would prefer to have the little whitewashed cottage, rented, like most houses in Merye
n, from the Poltraze estate, to themselves, but she never grumbled about it. Unlike Dinah, who resented Miriam’s presence in what had been their late father’s home. His father used to say that if Dinah could, she would put two sticks to fight. Jealous that her unfortunate looks and spiteful ways discouraged the young men from seeking her as a wife, it could be believed Dinah would be happy to cause a rift in his happy marriage.

  The unusual sharpness in Jeb’s reprimand brought Dinah up with a start and she carried on with her job quietly. She had passed a nasty comment only a moment before, hinting that Miriam should have laid the table and not herself. Miriam had not long walked back in the freezing weather from the mine. She was in for more than a ticking off this time, but she didn’t care. Jeb was too mild-mannered to worry her. He was soft, and so pathetically honest that if he found lost property he returned it to the owner – what good was that to the family? And as for charity, he helped out so many people it sometimes made them short here. ‘You can’t outgive the Lord, who sees all things done in secret,’ he’d say, and Miriam, the idiot, would nod and say, ‘It’s the truth. He sees that we always get by.’ They might be happy to scrape through life but she wanted a lot more. She’d turn a deaf ear to what her brother had to say now, which, no doubt, would be full of Bible quotations. It made her sick the way prayers were said for everything and over everything, and the way she had to be dragged to chapel every Sunday without fail. It was a wonder her brother put his shirt on without asking God’s permission first.

  ‘If one more nasty word comes out of your mouth, Dinah Greep, I swear I’ll put you out of this house.’ Jeb’s tone was as inflexible and deliberate as his expression.

  ‘What? You can’t do that. You wouldn’t.’ Dinah laughed in his face. She had brought her brother to real anger at last. She would enjoy this quarrel. She’d provoke him to shout at her. Make his scrawny daughter and snivelling son bawl their heads off. What fun if she got him so mazed he even swore. She stifled a giggle. From then on she’d be able to accuse him of unchristian behaviour and make him feel guilty.

  ‘Dinah, you go too far.’ Freckle-faced Miriam was placid and pliable, something Dinah wilfully exploited, but she wasn’t going to have Jeb mocked in this manner. She put her now-sleepy little boy to lie down beside his sister, and then stood at Jeb’s side with her arms folded to show she meant business.

  ‘What are you both going to do?’ Dinah smirked, swaying her bony hips. ‘Call on a thunderbolt from heaven to strike me down?’ Now for a full-blown row, she’d bring up every last thing she could think of to make sure her brother’s voice would be heard shouting halfway across the village.

  ‘I don’t have to do that, Dinah,’ Jeb replied in a cold quiet tone. ‘You’re in great danger of doing that yourself. You’re bitter and hateful, yet you foolishly wonder why you have no friends and the young men run a mile rather than return one of your flirting smiles. You’re jealous of the slightest joy anyone else has. The only reason you have such a loathing of Sarah is because she’s pretty, and even though her marriage turned out so badly for her, at least she’d got herself a husband. I know you’ve been teased for your plain looks and that’s awful, but you’re the one who’s made yourself ugly and undesirable. Now you’ve got all bitter and twisted because Sarah has gained some respect. She was once shunned because she had principles, believing she should have loyalty for her husband. The reason you’re shunned because no one wants your company and it’s entirely your own fault. People only speak to you or do your bidding because you bully them into it. You’re your own worst enemy, Dinah, and you always will be unless you wake up and see yourself for what you really are.

  ‘I won’t have my children growing up near you while you’re like this. You’re their aunt but you don’t take the least bit of interest in them. In fact Miriam and I are afraid to leave you in the house alone with them, afraid you’ll neglect them. My job is to provide for my family and to protect them, and Miriam’s job is to nurture our children in a godly atmosphere. Either you change your wicked ways, maid, or out you go. You have my word on it. The choice is yours. Well, what’s it to be?’

  All the way through the chastisement Dinah had scowled more and more at the couple. Damn their self-righteous hides! ‘You’re only angry with me because I said something against your precious Sarah. You can’t never turn me out. Father made you promise on his deathbed to look after me.’

  ‘Not exactly. What he actually said was that I should do my best for you. Well, I’ve done that and you’ve pushed me to the limits. Father said what he did because he sadly knew what you’re like. You broke his heart, and Mother’s before his, but you’re not going to do that to anyone here. There’s not a soul who would blame me if I showed you the door. Most wouldn’t have put up with you for as long as I and Miriam have. I’m not kicking you out, Dinah. What I’m saying is that if you want to remain under this roof, you must still your spiteful tongue for good and mend your ways. And that goes at the mine as well. Torment the other bal-maidens, issue one more insult to anyone and you won’t be welcome here again. You can be a part of this family or you can go your own way. You’ve been warned. I’ll repeat what I said. The choice is yours. What’s it to be, Dinah? Shall I pack your bags for you?’

  She was beaten. The shock of her brother’s firmness, the humiliation of it all and the fear of ending up in the workhouse or begging or having to sell herself on the streets reduced her to tears. ‘N-no.’

  ‘Am I to take it you’ll repent your ways?’ Jeb wanted to be absolutely sure he had won the day.

  Dinah nodded wretchedly.

  ‘Then you can start by giving me and Miriam an apology.’

  She had gone too far, so Miriam had said. Now her brother had. Bastard! He was demanding she grovel to him. She had no choice but to obey and to live a hellish life of watching every last word that came out of her mouth. So he and everyone else thought her ugly and horrible? Well, no one was going to put her down and keep her there. It wasn’t her fault that God hadn’t given her a lovely face. It wasn’t fair at all. Everyone, even God, was cruel to her. Sarah rotten Kivell had all the beauty, but after allowing herself to be used as a whore, she did nothing with it. She could easily get herself another husband. She would never know the humiliation of being undesirable. Dinah quelled her tears and lifted her chin. She’d say sorry to her beastly brother and his sickly sweet wife, and after that, God had better help them and their brats too. And, just for good measure, Sarah Kivell too.

  Seven

  It was another day at work but it was different from any other, it was the day after Tabbie’s funeral and Sarah was feeling all alone in the world. The vicar had been against Tabbie being buried in the churchyard, but thankfully Tabbie had put her papers together and Sarah had produced her baptism certificate to show the self-righteous misery that she had the right to be buried in sanctified ground.

  Sarah was up on the high exposed ground of the Carn Croft Mine and had been toiling away for nearly an hour. As she was young and strong she had one of the hardest jobs for the women and girls in the ore-breaking sheds. Bucking involved standing in line at a long table and using a long-handled flat hammer to crush the ore, already broken into birds’-eye sizes, into small granules. The continuous blows sent shock waves up through her hand and arm, and at the end of each shift she went home with an aching back and shoulders, and inevitably a headache. She could tolerate the hard labour, with its dangers of flying shards, and the harsh dirty conditions, under a roof but with no sides to the shed, but she hated all the noise. But today she didn’t take in the hammering of each stage of the ore dressing, the rhythmic thumps as the steam pump in the engine house raised gallons of dirty water each minute, the clanking of heavy chains on the whims, or the trundling of huge barrows laden with lumps of ore brought up from the depths. Her mind was centred on the grief of suddenly losing her dear friend, and how she intended to be gone from here for good after Christmas. During croust time today she would give in
a month’s notice.

  She cried in pain as a splinter of ore flying off the bucking iron of the girl next to her burrowed through a flap of her gook and pierced her neck. Putting her fingers up to pull out the splinter she realized Dinah Greep was next to her. Absorbed in her musings she hadn’t been aware of Dinah changing places with the other girl. She must have caused her this pain on purpose. She never made cutting remarks to her directly now but had been taunting her by saying things loudly to others. Sarah glared at her.

  Dinah exclaimed, ‘Oh, sorry, Sarah!’ putting a hand of regret to her flat chest.

  The sarcastic bitch, never mind though. Sarah wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of biting back at the derision. Tabbie had left a will and she had bequeathed to her all her possessions, many of high value, and the amazing sum of twenty pounds. Dinah really would have something to be jealous about if she knew. Sarah dabbed at the blood with a clean scrap of cloth then turned away to resume her work.

  Dinah tapped on her arm, pulled her round a little and shouted above the clamour, ‘No, I really am sorry. I’ll tell you why at croust.’

  Sarah sighed. What was the little witch up to now? She’d avoid her like the pestilence during the mid-morning break.

  Dinah left Sarah be. To convince everyone she was a changed girl, and that she had been truly ‘saved’, as she’d pretended to be at last evening’s chapel meeting, she needed to show a repentant attitude towards this damned woman. She grinned to herself. While Sarah had cleaned up her neck she’d noticed the silver and topaz pendant hanging there. It looked an expensive piece. Everyone knew she had taken nothing from her marriage. Old Tabbie Sawle had been rumoured to have treasures hidden in her shack, she must have given the jewellery to Sarah. What else might be in the shack? Other stuff of value? Money? Dinah was in urgent need of money. She’d already drawn subsist on this month’s fifteen-shillings wages.