by Gloria Cook
‘It’s a secret gift.’ Sarah beamed, proudly patting the crisp cotton bonnet which was the colour of forget-me-nots. Her shiny black hair streamed down below it and her brown eyes gleamed.
Amy had never seen her looking so beautiful. It was good to see her carefree at last. Amy wondered if Sarah had fibbed about Jed Greep – the hardships of her life had made Sarah reluctant to reveal all about her situation. Looking her over, Amy noticed she was wearing new shoes, of strong leather with reinforced toecaps; a necessity for safety during her arduous work, but one Sarah normally was without. Earlier in the year, the Hichens family had been awarded a little Poor Relief, but it would be another year before the Board could be approached again. Obviously, Sarah had a benefactor. Occasionally a chapelgoer or a wealthy individual made such gestures. ‘Do you mean an anonymous gift, Sarah?’
‘Yes. There’s been more than one. I didn’t tell you at first because I was afraid I’d put a jinx on it.’ Sarah rubbed her hands together like an excited little girl. ‘Someone’s been leaving parcels outside the back door. There’s been food and clothes for all of us, and things for the house. Can’t tell you what a difference it makes.’ The more she went on the more she glowed a healthy pink. Sarah hoped Amy would think it was merely with the delight over her good fortune, but it was because she was sure she knew who was behind it all. Titus Kivell. Jed Greep would never be able to afford such things to impress her on his wages. The first parcel had been left the day after Titus had delivered her safely off the downs. Something inside her told her it was unwise to keep the offerings – if it was Titus, what might he demand in return? But they were things that were needed badly, and she couldn’t bring herself to deny her ailing mother and Tamsyn and Arthur. She had lied at the mine about the changes, saying she had received a sudden monetary gift from a kind relative. The only family she had were the ones at home in the small shabby cottage next the Nankervis Arms and her old aunt, Molly Pentewan.
‘I’m really pleased for you, Sarah. It’s good to see you happy. Will you stay and eat with me?’
‘Thanks, but I’d better get along. I’m going to sit Mother outside so she can get some fresh air. We won’t be seeing much more good weather, now autumn’s not far off.’ Sarah was suddenly wistful. ‘Amy, perhaps when your baby brother or sister arrives, and if Aunt Molly will mind Mother and the little ones, we might get a chance like all the other girls and go to Redruth market one Saturday afternoon. Be nice to dress up and parade about like they do, wouldn’t it?’
‘Show ourselves off to the young men, you mean? So you are feeling differently in that direction?’
Sarah shrugged. Since her meeting with Titus youths like Jed Greep seemed even more unexciting. ‘Not really, but it would be good, just once, to do what others take for granted. What about you? Reverend Longfellow’s quite young. Not a year above thirty-five. He’s quite presentable. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And the baker’s boy and others, for that matter.’
‘I’ll have too much to do looking after my mother and the new baby,’ Amy replied, as serious as a scholar. She affected gaiety. ‘The squire’s putting on an ox roast in the field behind the church as part of the celebration for the wedding. I’m sure we could manage to slip along to that together. It’ll be something to look forward to, seeing Tara married.’
‘It’ll be exciting for the little ones anyway. Have you heard from Miss Tara lately?’
‘No. She must be very busy. I don’t expect there’ll ever be the chance for all of us to meet again like we used to.’ Putting ham and hard-boiled eggs on the plates for the midday meal, Amy glanced out of the window. ‘Oh, his lordship’s out there, ready and waiting for his dinner to be brought to him.’
Sarah came to her side and saw Sol where he was perched comfortably on the flat top of the stone wall. ‘He’s very good-looking, isn’t he? The bal-maidens reckon he’s the most handsome man hereabouts. Some of them envy you.’
‘There’s nothing to envy,’ Amy said stiffly.
‘Apart from the strangeness of him being here, isn’t it rather nice having him all to yourself?’ Sarah giggled, for the first time behaving with jollity and being a bit silly like her young workmates.
Amy paused to consider her answer, while trying not to find Sol an arresting sight. He was wearing a well-tailored shirt. There was a neatness about him, the sort that spoke of a man used to being attended by doting women. No doubt he’d leave the empty tray on the wall for her to collect. She suppressed a gasp when he produced a book and began to read. None of the Kivells had ever taken advantage of the lessons given in the Sunday schoolroom in the evenings by Reverend Longfellow. She’d assumed Sol to be someone who would scorn formal learning. ‘Well, if that Kivell there is anything to go by, then I’ll say they keep you guessing, so they’re not exactly boring.’
‘And not as fierce and as dangerous as they seem?’ Sarah said, gazing into space. ‘That’s reassuring.’
Halfway through the afternoon, with her father expected home soon, Amy took to wondering what Sol was actually doing in the workshop. Morton didn’t like her or Sylvia interrupting him, but he’d be furious with her for not checking up on Sol. She carried out a mug of tea to him as the perfect excuse. On her approach there was silence. No sawing, no use of a plane. Was he lazing the time away? He wasn’t inside but he had been busy for there was the strong smell of wood dust. The fine particles floating in the dry air pointed to the job of sanding. A mahogany bookcase, with a curved head, and pendant finials between the stepped curved feet, was standing ready on the covered floor for varnishing. The piece was precision crafted. This quality of work would do no harm to her father’s business.
Where was Sol? Putting the tea down, Amy went outside and peered round the corner of the workshop. He was a short distance away on the moor, smoking, throwing sticks for the dogs.
On a sudden thought, she went quickly to his work-bench. As she had hoped, his jacket was hanging up on a hook nearby and she rifled through his pockets for her scarf. There was a folded handkerchief, tobacco and papers and some coins. Impressed by the silk lining of the jacket, she pushed her hand into the inside breast pocket.
‘Didn’t take you for a pickpocket.’
‘Oh!’ She whirled round, her face on fire, her heart thudding at having been caught out, annoyed to be made to feel guilty. ‘I only want back what is rightfully mine.’
Sol came so close there was no possibility of her easing herself away from him. She was hemmed in against the whitewashed wall. ‘Your pretty yellow and red scarf is at Burnt Oak. If you want it you only have to go there to get it.’
She gave him a look of scorn. What a cheek! ‘Why have you kept it?’
‘It pleases me.’ He wasn’t sure why himself, except that he’d like his grandmother to meet this girl. There was a sweetness about Amy, an alluring fragility, but she was also a fighter.
Part of her wanted to see more of his community and his mysterious relatives. Until recently, the only ones usually to be seen were the men who patronized the inns and the occasional woman, in distinctive finely trimmed, home-dyed clothes, who’d ventured to the shops. ‘If I was to go to your home, would you tell me more about Toby? I’d like to learn about the time you rescued him. Would I be safe?’
‘You can learn all you want about the times Toby spent with us.’ Then, with a patently slow trawl down over her body with his coal-dark eyes and lowering his voice to a husky tone, he went on, ‘And you’ll be as safe as you want to be.’
As his eyes came back to her face, Amy found it necessary to turn away. His gaze was unacceptably familiar, and unsettling in a way she couldn’t define. She was disturbed by him yet drawn to him and she didn’t like this range of feelings. ‘You said us, as if that includes your family. You often speak as if you’re all one entity. You must be very close.’ She’d noticed the affection when he spoke of his grandmother, Tempest Kivell. Amy was curious about her. Tempest Kivell was spoken of in the village in whispe
rs. She was rumoured to be able to read thoughts, to see spirits and make predictions. She was a witch, some said, on former witches’ land. A shiver ran down Amy’s spine. Did Tempest Kivell know she was thinking about her at this moment? ‘We’ve found it necessary over the years to stand firmly together or fall apart.’ Leaning against the square trestle, used for various fitting jobs, in the middle of the floor, Sol drank his tea. ‘You’ve no kinsmen close by. Why is that? No, don’t tell me. I think I know. It’s because they all hate Morton. He turned his back on his own family and alienated all of your mother’s.’
‘Anyone in Meryen could have told you that. That’s not quite right, all my mother’s family are dead.’ Amy was uncomfortable with the knowledge that it was only because of her mother’s charitable heart that visitors had dropped into Chy-Henver. Now, because of Morton’s dalliance with the Kivells, only Sarah was ever likely to darken the doorstep again. ‘Why are you here? It’s not because you want a job, that’s a ridiculous notion. Have my mother and I anything to fear?’
‘You need not be afraid of me, Amy,’ Sol said, drifting away in his thoughts for a moment.
She believed him, but she was suddenly nervous. His answer had implied there might be another to be afraid of. Titus, it could be no other.
‘You should know, Amy, that I won’t be coming here for much longer.’ He felt he owed her and her mother this explanation. ‘I’m planning to go off and find my own way in the world, you see.’
She didn’t feel reassured, as she would have been this morning, by the news. She nodded and left the workshop with a troubled heart. It wouldn’t be wise, but as soon as her mother had delivered the baby, and before Sol went away, she would seek an opportunity to go to Burnt Oak and try to discover what hold Titus Kivell had over her father.
Ten
Long before dawn put in an appearance on her wedding day, Tara got out of bed and went to the window. There was an autumnal chill and she shivered in her nightgown but she was too numb to reach for a shawl. She was experiencing odd flashes of panic, for apart from her hope that Joshua would prove to be a sympathetic husband, she was feeling dead inside and she welcomed the cold to help her feel alive and that somehow, somewhere, she actually mattered. Everything seemed unreal. Formless. She was just going through the motions of what she was being told she must do, and her existence was verging on becoming an unending nightmare. Things were happening too fast, every decision had been made without her involvement, and she felt a spectator rather than a participant in her own preparations.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. Panic turned her insides to pulp and her legs to water – she was still here at Poltraze, trapped in this dark, brooding, musty old house. The mist rising up above the trees made them murky and seem closer than they really were, and like ominously cloaked guards keeping her prisoner. With all her passion she wished herself back in the quiet little house in Penzance. There, she had felt she was shrivelling up inside but it seemed utterly preferable to what now lay ahead, which was to do only what was expected of her, to do only what she was told.
She’d had no say in what her wedding dress was to be like. She was getting a billowing confection covered with an outrageous froth of lace and garlands of artificial red rosebuds on the skirt. It had a low décolletage and ribbons all the way down the wrist-length sleeves. All that, and a ridiculously long train! Michael’s daughters, Cecily and Jemima, a five-and-four-year-old pair of deceptively looking blonde cherubs, were to be her bridesmaids. The matter of what they were to wear – their dresses too were overstated nonsense – and the flowers they’d all carry had created friction between their mother and her Aunt Estelle. Nothing had been resolved until, thankfully, Joshua had intervened, forcefully and masterfully, and declared the girls would have posies of pink and white rosebuds from his greenhouse, and specimens of iris and lily would make up the bride’s bouquet. Tara might as well consist of fresh air – not that there was much fresh air to be found inside Poltraze. If it hadn’t already been old and stale, for the windows were never opened for fear of contracting some contagious disease, and cholera was rumoured to be stalking the locality again, the older women’s bitchy quarrels would have turned it sour.
She returned to her bed and curled up under the covers. This was the last time she would use this bed. Tonight she would sleep with Joshua. Fear once again wrapped around her. Atkins had hinted that the intimate duties of a wife were terrible, something to be endured. ‘Whatever happens, just close your eyes and keep remembering it won’t go on for ever.’ Tara decided that Atkins, as an old maid, knew little or nothing about sex.
Aunt Estelle had not mentioned the wedding night. Tentatively, Tara had asked, ‘I will be all right, won’t I?’
Estelle had thought she was fretting about the marriage service and had drilled into her how she must keep her head up and stomach in, hold her bouquet just so, put on a bright but demure smile, and not to let the Nankervises down. Now she and Tara had become respectable again, Estelle had written to her brother in Yorkshire and he had agreed to travel down and give Tara away. Tara had seen little of her rotund Uncle George, who looked prosperous in a pompous way and smelled of some strong liniment. It was anathema to her to have to submit to being escorted up the aisle by a relative who until a short time ago wouldn’t have lifted a finger to keep her out of the gutter.
She closed her eyes and tried to get a few minutes’ sleep but it was useless. She held back her tears. If she started to cry she wouldn’t be able to stop, on what she believed was going to be one of the worst days of her life.
Amy and Sarah, with Tamsyn and Arthur in front of them, joined the crowds on the opposite side of the road of the church to watch the wedding. Most onlookers were Methodists and had only turned up out of nosiness and to take advantage of the ox roast that was to be had immediately after the ceremony. There were grumbles about the squire’s orders to the local constables to keep everyone except the guests outside of the heavy iron lychgate, and allow no one to peep over the surrounding stone and natural hedgerows.
‘Squire’s got no right to exclude anyone from a house of God,’ a male onlooker complained.
‘Squire’s too hard,’ another bawled out, bravely ignoring a constable, who was a smallholder, and was armed with a cosh and sported an aggressive scowl. ‘I pity that poor young maid marrying into that family. What have they ever done for any of we round here? We don’t even get a fowl or a blanket at Christmastide. If I was a betting man I’d wager this ox will be a poor beast. Other gentry folk look after their tenants. The Nankervises are a heartless lot, to their eternal shame.’
Amy was vexed that the order meant she had no access to Toby’s grave and would have to wait to place on it the flowers she had brought.
Traps and carriages began to arrive. There were oohs and aahs over the attire of the alighting guests, and some snickering over the ones considered to be ‘dressed to death’. The chatter turned to a sour note when the woman whom the villagers loathed and referred to as Mrs Phoebe turned up. Girls from Meryen who had been taken on as maids at the big house had fallen foul of her pedantic ways and cruel dismissals without being given a character. Some observers remarked that her daughters were like, ‘dear little angels, bless ’em’. A heavy, purposeful silence reigned when the squire and his reunited wife came shortly afterwards. Estelle, haughty and stunning in shades of green, flounced up the four long granite steps, through the lychgate, then along the narrow churchyard path, newly cleared of weeds, as if she and her husband were the two most important people in the world.
‘Pride cometh before a fall,’ Godley Greep intoned, and there was a unanimous murmur of agreement, and the hope it would come true in this case.
A little cheering broke out when the groom and his brother, the best man, pulled up in a beribboned landau. Wreathed in smiles, Joshua waved regally to the people. Michael managed a brief condescending smile.
The bride arrived traditionally late in the Nankervis coa
ch. The crowd clapped and called out best wishes, and speculated on who the gentleman, ‘with a face like a trout’s backside’, was. ‘Don’t seem happy to be here, does he?’ Godley Greep ruminated.
‘Who do you think he is?’ Sarah, in her new bonnet and a new blue and yellow dress, spoke into Amy’s ear to be heard above the hubbub. ‘Her dress is a bit too much, don’t you think?’
‘It must be her uncle from Yorkshire,’ Amy replied in Sarah’s inclined ear. ‘And yes, there must be enough material in that dress to clothe every little girl in the village. Poor Tara.’ Poor Tara indeed. She had dreadful relatives and now she was to get dreadful in-laws. Thank goodness her bridegroom appeared to be a thoughtful man.
Tara was heartened to see Amy and gave her a friendly wave.
‘God bless you, Miss Tara. Good luck,’ Amy called out.
Tara recognized the girl beside Amy. Amy had written about Sarah and her growing beauty. Of herself and Sarah, Tara pondered, as her uncle pulled her along to her fate, which one of them faced the worse future? She, to be constantly overruled by her aunt and stifled at Poltraze, or Sarah, enduring a multitude of hardships?
Tara played her part in the church to perfection, without faltering a word of her vows, giving a mistimed step, or a reduction of appropriate smiles. I’d make an excellent actress, she thought, as she signed the register in the little vestry, I’ve given nearly as good a performance of being sincere as most of these people whose name I now bear.
When all the guests had gone and with the churchyard empty, Amy made a lone journey to the small mound of earth where Toby lay. When the ground had settled he was to have a headstone, a fine one, for Morton, in the hope that Sylvia would come round to him, had declared nothing would be stinted in giving his son a fitting memorial. Sylvia had been well enough to visit the grave. She’d allowed Sol, to Morton’s muted disapproval, to bring a trap over from Burnt Oak and drive her there and back.