‘Indeed you must have.’
‘I believe the women of London are the most beautiful in the world.’
‘Tis quite likely they are.’
‘What have you been doing while I have been away?’
‘What have I been doing?’ Demelza stared at him in indignation at the change of subject. ‘Seeing to your mine and your affairs, of course; trying to bring up your children in the way they should go! Doing all the ordinary things of living and breathing and – and looking to the farm and the rest! And – and waiting for your letters and answering ’em! Living just as I have always lived – but without you! That’s all I’ve been doing.’
‘And how often has Hugh Bodrugan tried to creep in your bed while I’ve been away?’
Demelza burst into tears.
She made for the door. ‘Leave me go! Let me alone!’ she cried as he barred the way.
He held her forearms and she looked as if she was going to spit in his face.
He said: ‘It was meant as a joke.’
‘Twas a poor joke!’
‘I know. We can no longer joke, can we, because it is all too tender and raw between us. God help me, there was a time, and not so long ago, when every tiff between us ended in laughter. That is all lost.’
She said: ‘Yes, that’s all lost.’
He held her for a few moments more, and then stooped to kiss her. She turned her head so that his lips only found her hair. ‘Leave me alone,’ she whispered. ‘You’re a stranger. I don’t know you any more.’
He said: ‘Perhaps the fact that we fight shows that we still have something to lose.’
‘A marriage without warmth, without trust – a trust that we’ve both betrayed; what good is that?’
‘You don’t ask me how I have disposed of my spare time in London, what women I have had.’
She wiped her eyes with her hand. ‘Perhaps I’ve no right to.’
‘Well, after all you’re still my wife. And since you are my wife I’ll tell you. In the early months on different occasions I invited two women into my rooms. But before they had even undressed I sickened of them and turned them out. They left shouting derisory curses at my head. One accused me of impotence, the other called me a trike.’
‘What is that?’
‘No matter.’
‘I can look it up in the dictionary.’
‘It won’t be in the dictionary.’
‘I can guess,’ said Demelza.
There was a pause, while he released her arms but continued to prevent her moving away from him.
She said: ‘Those were harlots.’
‘Yes. But high class ones. Very select.’
‘And what of the real ladies, the beautiful ladies?’
‘They were – in circulation. But I found none to my taste.’
‘You tasted them?’
‘Only by the eye. And that generally at a distance.’
‘It seems you’ve been a monk.’
‘Only because you are more beautiful than all of them.’
‘Oh, Ross,’ she said weakly, ‘I do so hate you! I hate you for lying to me! Say if you wish that you want me to be a wife to you again. That I will be. But don’t – pretend.’
‘If I were to pretend you might take it for the truth – but because it’s the truth you disbelieve me, eh, is that it?’
She shrugged but did not speak.
He said: ‘Oh, in a picture gallery I cannot say that three out of five men would not pick a different picture from mine. It is not just looks, it is what’s behind ’em; it’s the familiarity of knowing someone intimately and yet wanting them all over again; it’s the total commitment of personality; it’s the ultimate spark between two people that lights the flame . . . But who knows whether it will warm them or burn them up?’ He stopped and frowned at her. ‘I had no idea when I came home how we were to meet. I have no idea at this moment whether we shall ever laugh together again – in that way. I want you, I want you, but there’s anger and jealousy in it still, and they die hard. I can’t say more. I can’t promise that tomorrow it will be like this between us or like that. Nor can you, I’m sure. You’re right in saying I’m a stranger. But I’m a stranger who knows every inch of your skin. We have to go on from there – in a sense to start again.’
II
Ross was up at four next morning. He left Demelza, her breath ticking gently like a metronome, went out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Day was breaking outside, but the dark hadn’t yet left the house; it skulked in corners waiting to trip you up.
He went out and stood under the shadowy lilac tree listening to the sleepy chirp of the finches and the sparrows. Somewhere up the lane a blackbird was in full song among the nut trees, but about the house they had been slow to wake. The air was white and pure and soft and he inhaled it like ether. Then he slid round the house while a cow lowed at him and a pig grunted, climbed the stile and was on the beach, sand soft and churning at first, then hard where the tide had been.
It was not yet far out. The waves were small but explosive, bursting into little flurries of self-importance as they turned. He threw off his robe, kicked his slippers away and went in. The sea was like a surgeon, icy and probing: although it was mid-May his body froze before it responded to the stimulus. So for five minutes, and then he was out again, breathless but glowing, as if his flesh was made new. He wrapped himself in his robe as the rim of the sun peered slanting over the sandhills and set fire to the first chimney top of Nampara.
Reminiscent mood – he had swum like this after his night with the woman Margaret following the ball in Truro, and the day before he first met Demelza. He had swum then as if to rid himself of some miasma attaching to the night. Not so this time. No expense of spirit in a waste of shame. A trivial event, of course, for God’s sake: he had resumed intercourse with his wife, for God’s sake. Fit subject for ribald dialogue in one of the fashionable plays in London.
Yet it hadn’t quite turned out as expected. What would one have expected? In spite of his brave words, perhaps the casual. Or more likely the fiercely resentful, a claiming of a right long since in abeyance and nearly lost. But in the event it had never progressed beyond the tender. Somehow a much-derided emotion had got in the way and turned it all to kindness. Whatever happened now, however they met today, or tomorrow, in whatever form constraint or hurt or injury or resentment reared its head, he must remember that. As she would, he knew. If only one could altogether exorcise the ghosts.
When he got back to the house all were still sleeping, though the Gimletts and the rest of the servants would soon be astir. His children slept on. Demelza slept on. He dressed and went out again. The sun was still shining but clouds were marching like rioting miners out of the western sky. He walked up to Wheal Grace. The engine was tirelessly working, pumping up the water that for ever accumulated in the sump. Two tin stamps clanged. He had intended having a chat with whichever of the Curnow brothers was in charge of the engine but at the last moment changed his direction and walked towards Grambler. He felt full of energy and the sort of elation that came rarely now. All this was total contrast with the noisy, sooty streets of London. But perhaps contrast was a necessary part of appreciation.
Henshawe, the grass captain of Wheal Grace, lived at the far end of the poverty-stricken straggle of cottages and hovels that made up Grambler village, and was up and about, as Ross knew he would be.
‘Why, Cap’n Ross. I’d no idea you’d be back so soon. Going back to the mine, are you? I’ll walk with you so far as her, if you’ve the mind. But how about a dish of tea first?’
So it was nearly six before they left, and the cores were changing as they reached the mine. Those miners who knew him well clustered round him, talking and joking and asking questions and telling him local gossip; but he noticed an element of reserve that had not been there before. Apart from that independence of mind natural to Cornishmen, who were not accustomed to bowing low to their squires in the way of up-country folk,
was the fact that many of these men had been his companions in boyhood. Joshua, his father, unlike Charles, Francis’s father, had drawn no barriers when Ross was young, so the boys had gone line-fishing together, had wrestled, had picnicked, had played wild games in the sandhills, had later sailed over to France in company to bring back brandy and rum. Even after Ross returned from America, a scarred and limping veteran of twenty-four, it had always been an easy relationship, the differences of station acknowledged but largely ignored. Now there was a change, and he realized why. By accepting Viscount Falmouth’s invitation and being elected for one of the seats in Truro he had ‘gone up’ in the world. He wasn’t just a J.P. who sat on a bench and solved local problems and dispensed local justice: he was a member of Parliament, and Parliament, for better or worse, made new laws for the land. They probably thought privately that there weren’t many laws necessary except the laws of God.
He had not yet broken his fast and was hungry, but it seemed the right moment to get a hat and a candle and go down with the new core. That, if anything, would reestablish the old camaraderie; besides, Henshawe’s news was not of the best and he wanted to see everything for himself.
But it had to be postponed. The others were filing down, taking it in turn to step on to the ladder that would take them two hundred feet below ground, where they would spend eight hours of the bright day, and he was waiting for Henshawe, when a lighter footstep made him turn. It was Demelza, with Jeremy and Clowance.
‘Captain Poldark,’ she said. ‘I have two friends for you.’
Then he was engulfed.
III
‘I did not know whether to tell you or not,’ said Demelza. ‘Captain Henshawe came and told me, and as he does not write very easy I thought perhaps I must pass it on.’
It was nearly dinner-time and they were sitting together on the old wall beside the stile, looking on to Hendrawna Beach. The day had turned cold, and Demelza was wearing a cloak. The children were on the beach, but they were far away at the water’s edge and Betsy Maria was looking after them.
‘I don’t think from a first look it is quite as bad as Henshawe supposes. It’s true the south lode – the one we found first – which has brought up such riches – is wearing unexpected thin. It took everyone by surprise for it began in great depth and there was no reason to suppose it would not be so uniform over most of its breadth. But it is not so. Nor is the quality so good as it was. But with care there is still a year or more’s yield, even if there is no “on lode” development. But the north lode – virtually a floor – is yet barely in full development. Or seems so. After being so deceived in one perhaps one should qualify one’s assessment of the other. But there is – must be – ample for a number of years, and that is surely all any mine venturer can hope for.’
‘Perhaps it was wrong to bring you back, then.’
‘I didn’t return solely for that reason. Nor even principally. I was – fatigued of London. You’ve no idea, Demelza, unless you have experienced it, the constant noise, the bustle, the smells, the chatter, the clamour, the lack of air. Even one day, even half a day such as I have now had, makes me feel a new man, made over again.’
‘I’m glad.’
It being new moon, the tide was now far out, so far that the firm sand stretched for great distances, intangibly bordered by a smear of surf. Betsy Maria and the two children were token figures, not identifiable.
Demelza said: ‘It is a long time since you have talked to me as you have done last night and this morning. Perhaps it is all the speeches you have been making in Parliament.’
‘Speeches. Huh.’
‘But tell me about it. What is it all like? Your lodgings have been comfortable? You didn’t write so just to deceive me?’
‘No, they were good rooms. Mrs Parkins is a tailor’s widow. George Street is off the Strand, near the Adelphi Buildings, and quiet after the noise of the main streets. Eighteen shillings a week I paid – did I tell you? – carpeted and furnished. Mainly I ate at the coffee houses and such. But Mrs Parkins made me a meal when I asked. It’s a way from Westminster, but there were always ferries at the foot of the steps to take me there.’
‘And where you meet – in Parliament?’
‘A hybrid, born of a chapel for a father and a bear-pit for a mother. You go to the chamber, you approach it, through Westminster Hall, which is a fine lofty building, but the chamber itself is much like Sawle Church, except that the benches face each other instead of the pulpit and are banked so that each may see over the one below. At times it is insufferably crowded, at others near empty. The business usually starts at three and can go on till midnight. But the business itself is most of the time so parochial that one wonders it could not have been settled locally. A bill is introduced, say, for creating a new road through the village of Deptford. The next is for dividing the parish of St James in the city of Bristol and building a church. The next is for draining low ground in some parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire. What, I frequently asked myself, was I doing in such a place and what could I contribute half so well as minding my own affairs in the parish of Sawle?’
Demelza looked sidelong at her husband. ‘But there are important things too, surely?’
‘There are important debates, yes. Pitt had introduced a tax on incomes to counter what he calls shameful evasions and scandalous frauds. It is to be 2/- in the pound on incomes of over £200, and he hopes to raise £10 million towards the war. But he spoke at inordinate length.’
‘Did you vote for it?’
‘No. I think it is too great an invasion of privacy.’
‘And the slave debate?’
‘What of it?’
‘Mr Wilberforce introduced one, didn’t he, in April?’
‘His motion was narrowly defeated. By eighty-seven votes to eighty-three.’
‘And you spoke in it?’
Ross turned and stared. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I think,’ Demelza said, shading her eyes, ‘that we should go and meet the children. Otherwise they will be late for dinner.’
Ross said: ‘I hardly spoke in it. It was an intervention that lasted barely five minutes and was unpopular with both sides of opinion.’
‘It didn’t read so.’
‘It was not in the Mercury.’
‘No. But in another paper.’
‘What other paper?’
‘I did not see the name. Unwin Trevaunance cut the piece out and sent it to Sir John and Sir John gave it to me.’
Ross rose. ‘Shall I call the children?’
‘No, the wind is in your face. Let’s walk out.’
They tramped over the rough grass and stones and were on the beach.
‘Why was it not well received, Ross? Reading it, it said just what I believe you think, and I could hear you saying it.’
‘I met Wilberforce twice in February,’ Ross said. ‘He is a likeable, warm, religious man, but strangely blinkered. You know the saying that charity begins at home. Well, not with him. Quite the reverse. Charity with him begins overseas. He will work up in a fine rage about the condition of the slaves and the slave ships – as who would not? – but can see little in the condition of his own countrymen to take exception to. He and not a few of his followers are supporters of the Game Laws; he favours all Pitt’s measures to curb freedom of speech, and wishes to keep the wages of the poor down. I got up that day,’ Ross said, frowning at the sea, ‘with no prepared speech, which was lunacy, but you must know that when one man has finished speaking a number of others rise and it is for the Speaker – who is like a chairman – to choose whom he fancies. Maybe he picked me because I was new in the House. I was taken aback. It is a strange experience, for it is like speaking from the body of a church, with all the congregation lolling and sprawling and gossiping all about you. You are adrift in a sea of faces and hats and top-boots and hunched shoulders . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘I am going on – as I did that day. I have to tell yo
u that I did not stumble or stutter, for the challenge instead of overawing me – as it should have done by rights – annoyed me. But I had come to my feet to support – of course – Wilberforce’s Bill. As Canning had. As Pitt had. As any man with any compassion in his bowels would do. The arguments against were – abominable in the ingenuity of their twisted reasoning.’
‘As you said.’
‘As I said. But, after speaking three or four minutes I – I felt it necessary to jolt all those men, all of them, if I could with a realization of the evils that existed under their very noses. It was not, I said . . . But you have read it.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was not as a committed Christian that I spoke – for everyone in the House no doubt would claim to be that – perhaps particularly those who spoke against the Motion, since the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel itself owns slaves in the Barbadoes. I spoke, I said, solely as a witness of man’s inhumanity to man. This manifested itself in its worst form in the abominable slave trade but existed also in lesser but no less evil forms on the doorstep of every one of us in the House that day. There were, I said, in England one hundred and sixty crimes for which a man might be hanged; yet by the laws introduced over the last two decades many a man was now so poor that he could not live except by crime – if feeding his belly and his starving family was still to be considered such an offence. Grievous as it was, intolerable as it was, that human beings black or white, should be bought and sold in slavery, was the House aware that new slaveries were springing up in England; that, for instance, children employed in the mills of the north of England were dying in their hundreds of overwork while their parents, denied work of any sort, contrived to live off the tiny earnings that their children brought home?’
‘That is better than it said in the paper,’ Demelza said. ‘And then?’
‘Rightly I was called to order – for I was veering right away from the subject of the debate – and thereafter soon sat down. I have not spoken with Wilberforce since, but he has given me a couple of cold nods, so I do not think my intervention was looked on with the greatest favour.’
The Angry Tide Page 4