by Nicola Upson
‘I’m sorry,’ Josephine said quietly. ‘For what you’ve been through, and for arguing with you last night. You’re right – it’s none of my business. It was stupid and naive of me to interfere.’
‘You meant well, Miss Tey – and don’t think I don’t agree with some of the things you said. But it’s difficult for anyone who hasn’t been through it to understand. Of course women shouldn’t put up with that – but somehow we all do. You get used to the bruises, but not the humiliation – and it’s the humiliation that keeps you quiet. Men understand that.’
‘What happened to your husband?’ Josephine asked gently, trying not to look sorry for her: the one thing for which she would not be forgiven here was pity.
‘He disappeared,’ she said, and then, noticing Josephine’s expression, ‘but there’s no mystery about it – I know what happened, or most of it, at least. Charlie – that’s him – used to be clever enough not to touch my face, but one day he forgot himself and Jago saw me before I could get rid of the bruise. I denied it, but he knew his own brother. He was so angry, and that frightened me more than Charlie ever had, I think – seeing how upset he was. He swore he was going to teach him a lesson, and he must have done because I never saw Charlie again. He came to fetch his things from our cottage one day when I was out, and that was that.’ She shook her head at the memory of it. ‘You’d think Jago would have stuck with his own family, wouldn’t you, but he didn’t; he chose to drive his own flesh and blood out of the village rather than ignore what he knew was wrong. I obviously married the wrong brother, didn’t I?’ She attempted a laugh. ‘Jago told everyone that Charlie had gone up country to look for work. Nobody believed him but they all pretended to, like people do when they’d rather not know the truth. It’s never been spoken of since.’
‘Does William…’
‘Oh no, Miss,’ the Snipe said before Josephine could finish. ‘Nor Archie and the girls. It all happened before I came to them, and I haven’t looked back since – never needed to. They’re my family now. I’d be grateful…’
It was Josephine’s turn to interrupt. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘I suppose you’re wondering if anyone will do the same for Beth?’ Mrs Snipe asked, and Josephine nodded. ‘I doubt it. Jacks is very different from my Charlie – there’s nothing weak about him, and there’s not many that’d take him on, let alone win. And Jago’s far too old now to be throwing his weight about.’ Josephine remembered how fit and strong the undertaker had seemed when he arrived at the cricket match earlier, and privately questioned Mrs Snipe’s judgement on that point, although she had no doubt that it would take something more personal than sympathy for Beth Jacks to make him act again as he had all those years ago. ‘Now you go through, while there’s still some food left,’ the Snipe said, getting up brightly as if nothing more serious than supper had been spoken of. ‘And don’t worry about Morwenna – Jacks is a brute, but she’s the one person he wouldn’t hurt.’
That wasn’t what Josephine had meant, of course, but she smiled and took her cue to leave. She walked slowly across to the library, deep in thought. Had it ever occurred to Mrs Snipe that her brother-in-law might have done something more serious to Charlie than scare him, she wondered, or did she simply choose to ignore the possibility? And was Jago capable of frightening Harry to death – literally frightening him to death – if he had threatened Christopher or hurt Morwenna, of whom Jago was by all accounts so fond? Somehow, after what she had just heard, Josephine thought that he might be.
Kestrel Jacks took his gun and crept as quietly as possible through the line of fir trees. Normally, he wouldn’t have stood a chance at this hour but the moon was on his side, shining down on the old, sunken rabbit earth which lay just ahead of him. He made sure he was within shot of it, and settled down to wait, feeling lucky. After ten minutes or so, he saw a movement in the grass to his left and fired instantly into the middle of a family of stoats. One broke off to the left, and he killed it with his second barrel, but the rest disappeared back underground. He cut a long elder stick with the knife that had been his father’s, and knelt down, holding the gun fully cocked in his left hand. The stick rattled in the earth as far down as he could reach, and another desperate creature bolted from the hole, only to be cut down at once. Satisfied, Jacks stood up and walked over to the spot where he had made his first shot. It was better than he expected. Five stoats – one adult and four big youngsters – lay still on the ground, making a total of six dead with three shots. Not a bad night’s work, he thought, as he headed for home.
His satisfaction faded as he walked back through the woods to his cottage, where his wife would be waiting. He could hardly bear to be at home these days, so deeply did she disgust him. The more she tried to fade into the background, the more he noticed her; the more submissive she became, the greater was his need to dominate; and the more she tried to be what he wanted, the more he wanted her to be someone else. He should never have married her – he knew that now – but he had needed a wife, and thought that someone as insignificant as Beth Porter would keep herself out of his way. He had reckoned without her gratitude, though: she was older than him, and had long since given up hope of leading anything other than a single life, and he discovered too late that her expectations of happiness were all the stronger for having been so long out of reach. At first he simply ignored her, but the contrast between her feeble devotion and Morwenna’s arrogant disdain gnawed away at him, seeming to mock everything he did until he could bear it no longer. The first time he hit Beth, the rage had come upon him with such intensity that he had no control over what he was doing, and it was almost as if the violence belonged to someone else; gradually, he learned how to make it his own, and he now managed his domestic life with the same cold efficiency that he applied to his work.
Jacks opened the back gate and walked up the long, narrow garden to the house. There was a light on in the kitchen and, through the window, he could see his wife pouring some water from the kettle into the sink, turning her face away from the rising steam. She turned round quickly when she heard him at the door, and her expression surprised him; he was used to fear, but this was more like guilt. He saw her glance involuntarily towards the small, square table in the centre of the room, and the look on her face was immediately explained. She opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to realise that lies were pointless; she had not had time to wash away all evidence of her visitor, and he knew what the two cups meant, placed one on either side of the familiar Bible. How dare she invite someone into their home and talk about their marriage behind his back? He didn’t have to try too hard to guess the identity of the caller, either: he had seen pity in the curate’s eyes whenever he looked at Beth in church, but he never dreamed that Shoebridge would be stupid enough to try to do something about it. The anger came back, as sudden and uncontrollable as it had been in those early days, and his wife seemed to recognise the difference. The terror in her eyes only enraged him more.
He was across the room before she could move, and grabbed her hair with one hand and her jaw with the other. The deep cut on her lip, which had not had a chance to heal, opened again with his touch, and he smelt the sharp, metallic scent of blood as he put his face close to hers. ‘Confessing on my behalf, were you?’ he asked, and pulled her away from the sink, kicking her legs from under her so that she fell backwards on to the floor. He knelt above her and she started to fumble with his belt, hoping to divert this new violence by re-enacting past humiliations, but he pushed her hands away in disgust. Reaching across to the table, he tore some pages from the Bible and shoved them hard into her mouth. As she choked on the paper, struggling to breathe, he turned her over and pressed her face into the cold, rough flagstones. If he didn’t have to look at her, he could almost believe that she was Morwenna.
Chapter Nine
Archie turned the Norton away from the main road, taking a narrow, winding lane which followed the soft undulations of the countryside and enjoying a fr
eedom which he could never find in London. His home county might be famed for its seas, but it was these quiet, inland gems that he most loved her for: the peace of the lake; the rolling hills which formed a backdrop to the village, with Breage Church resting gently on the horizon; the sunrise across the fields on the way to Camborne – all these were ordinary miracles of which he could never tire. He pulled in to a farm gate for a moment and looked out over countryside which was a hundred shades of green, from darkest gorse to pale, sunlit grass. Cornish granite hedges criss-crossed his view, dividing the landscape into small, irregular sections and giving cows and sheep much-needed protection from the wind. To his right, a flock of lapwings rose as one from a ploughed field and he watched as their slow, flapping wing-beats took them leisurely further inland. For work and for pleasure, he had visited some of the finest rural areas that England had to offer, but nothing resonated more intensely with him than scenes such as this – partly, no doubt, because he was born here, but partly because the unrelenting drama of the sea made this mild-tempered, forgiving countryside all the more precious.
He kicked the motorbike into life again and moved off, through the village of St Buryan and steeply down into St Levan, then past the headquarters of the Eastern Telegraph Company and on towards the coast. The Minack Theatre – named after the enormous rock on which it sat – lay just a few miles short of Land’s End and a few feet above the Atlantic, enjoying all the excitement and danger that such a location offered. Archie parked at the makeshift entrance near Minack House and made his way down the steep slope of a cliff. Almost immediately, he had his first glimpse of the white, shell-strewn sands of Porthcurno to the east and, with a few minutes to spare before his two o’clock rehearsal, he paused again to savour the view. The bay was a brilliant blue in the afternoon sunlight, with the majestic cliffs of Porthgwarra and Nanjivey stretching out to the west. As dramatic as the scenery was, though, this wild and lonely cliff was the last place in the world where anyone would expect to find a man-made stage. It must have taken extraordinary imagination and vision even to conceive of the idea, he thought, let alone to make it happen, but Rowena Cade had decided that come hell or high water – and both usually did, at least once a summer – she would have a theatre in her back garden.
As he continued down the cliff, and Miss Cade’s vision became his, he thought again how surprisingly natural the whole thing seemed once you got used to the idea. The stage was a beautiful stretch of greensward, bordered on either side by granite outcrops which formed natural wings, and, along the cliff edge, by recently constructed balustrades and walls with a solid stone throne on a dais as centrepiece. The natural curve of the slope had been carefully tiered and turfed to provide the seating, giving the audience a perfect view of the play of the moment as well as uninterrupted sightlines across some of the finest cliff scenery in Cornwall.
‘Archie! Over here.’ He looked to his right and acknowledged Lettice’s wave. She and Ronnie were both on their knees on the grass, in apparent supplication to the robed figure who stood above them on a stool. It was impossible for him to tell who it was because of the heavy cowl that draped the monk’s face, but it amused him to see his cousins in any sort of pious position, and he couldn’t resist making the most of it.
‘I thought the rest of the world knelt to you as far as theatre was concerned,’ he said mischievously. ‘Surely you’re not losing your touch?’
Ronnie, her mouth full of pins, was unable to offer any of her usual tart retorts, but Lettice smiled good-naturedly. ‘Actually, you’re not as far off as you may think,’ she said. ‘We could do with a bit of divine assistance, as it happens, and I’m never too proud to beg.’
‘I think it’s called praying, dear, when God’s at the other end of the call,’ Ronnie said as she placed the last of the pins in the hem of the habit. ‘Although I’ve never been too sure of the difference.’ She patted the monk’s thigh in a less than sacred fashion. ‘There you go, Brother – all done. Take that off again and we’ll get it sewn up for you. It’s not the place to trip over your skirt.’
The monk removed its hood and Archie was surprised to see that the brother in question was a woman – the costume had made it impossible to tell. He recognised her vaguely as one of the young farmers’ wives from the estate, and she smiled at him shyly before slipping behind one of the rocks to change.
He sat down on the grass next to Lettice and Ronnie and lifted his face to the sun. ‘I’m not looking forward to getting into one of those,’ he said. ‘Don’t monks have a summer wardrobe?’
‘You don’t have a wardrobe at all at the moment,’ said Lettice, unscrewing the top of a thermos flask and pouring three cups of strong-looking tea. ‘That’s what I meant about divine assistance – we haven’t got a costume for you.’
‘I thought you said Nathaniel’s would fit with a few minor adjustments?’
‘It would have done – you’re only slightly broader than him – but he can’t find it anywhere. Says he’s sure he left it in the vestry after the fitting but now it’s nowhere to be seen. It must have been put into the laundry by mistake.’
‘But he’s a curate, for God’s sake,’ Archie said, bewildered. ‘Surely you’re not telling me that he can’t lay his hands on a cassock?’
‘Oh, Archie – don’t be silly,’ said Lettice, a little impatiently. ‘You can’t just wear any old thing – it’s got to fit in with the scheme of the play.’
‘Quite right,’ Ronnie said, tongue in cheek. ‘Just think of what the critics would say – not to mention the Anglican’s Weekly.’ She received a glare of reproach from her sister, and added: ‘Lettice has a point, though. You’re the narrator and you’re on stage all the time, holding the thing together, so you’ve got to look the part.’
‘And we’ve still got time to run you something up from scratch if we get on with it now,’ Lettice said, reminding Archie of the spirit which had taken his cousins to the top of a very slippery profession. ‘When Janet’s hem is done, everyone else will be sorted. You’ll have to do the dress rehearsal in your own clothes, but come up to Minack House when it’s finished and we’ll have something for you. Rowena’s put her work room at our disposal.’
As the girls went off up the cliff, laden with everything they needed to perform the impossible, Archie finished his tea and watched the bustle of activity on stage. Jago Snipe had arrived now and was setting about the unenviable task of unloading scenery from his van at the top of the cliff. He watched as the undertaker carried the simple refectory benches which Archie had seen in his workshop down the narrow path to the stage, putting them in place one by one under Morveth’s direction. He was a strong man, more than used to lifting heavy wood, and he made the shifting of the scenery look easy, but there was a poignancy to his solitary task – a task which he seemed to be pursuing with a fierce concentration, as if it could take his mind off the fact that his son was supposed to be helping him. Where was Christopher, Archie wondered? He had been sincere in his reassurances to Jago the day before: a lot of missing-person cases had come his way in the course of his career and, while some of them had ended in tragedy, many had concluded with nothing more serious than an embarrassed son or daughter returning home, hungry and contrite. From what Archie had seen of him, Christopher was not the sort of boy who had either the courage or the selfishness to stay away for long, but he had been brought up to respect life and death and, if Jacks was to be believed, Archie wasn’t surprised that guilt over his part in the last morning of Harry’s life – as childish and out of character as it had been – would sit heavily on his conscience.
A steady trail of people made its way down the cliff, indicating that the bus laid on by Poltroon’s, the local garage, to transport villagers and estate workers to and from the Minack had completed its first journey. The early arrivals were those involved in the production, either as cast or crew, and Archie was surprised to see that Joseph Caplin and Kestrel Jacks – neither of whom he would have had down
as aspiring entertainers – were among the crowd. Clearly William’s powers of persuasion were not confined to family, he thought wryly as he got up to join everyone.
‘You can have half an hour to settle in, and then I want you all back here in your costumes ready to start,’ Morveth was saying, and he was amused to note that she had not lost her touch: most of the villagers – himself included – had been taught by Morveth Wearne at one stage or another, and they filed off now as dutifully as they had ten, twenty or thirty years ago in the playground.
‘This brings back a few memories,’ he said, and she smiled warmly at him.
‘As far as I remember, drama was never your favourite subject, so it’s nice of you to help us out now.’
The ‘us’ wasn’t intentional, he knew, but the idea that he was an outsider doing a favour struck him all the more forcefully for the casual way in which it had been expressed, and he was irrationally irritated by it. ‘It’s the least I can do while I’m at home,’ he said, unable to avoid placing a slight emphasis on the final word, ‘and some would say I’ve chosen drama for a profession.’
Morveth did not flinch at the rebuke, and seemed amused rather than embarrassed by his offence. ‘Then come home more often, Archie,’ she said, with that quiet way of defusing any antagonism which had served her so well in teaching. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that resting is part of the job?’