It snowed till eleven, then stopped, but was snowing again before they went to bed, and by morning three inches had fallen and the sun was out. The garden had been turned into a dazzling feathery forest. Icicles hung and glittered from window-sills and gates. The valley and all the mine buildings were smothered in fine snow which blew to powder in an icy breeze. But did not melt. So near the tempering sea, snow, rare anyhow, almost always disappeared or began to disappear the day it fell. Not so now. When he went out with John Gimlett to see to the cows, Ross realized that all was not over yet, for clouds were assembling again, elbowing each other, leaden yellow across the north-west dome of the sky.
The christening was to be at eleven. Ross tested the ground and found it not too slippery, so they decided to proceed with it. Caroline was prevailed on to let her groom walk ahead of her holding the bridle; next came John Gimlett holding the bridle of old sure-footed Darkie, which carried Demelza with Clowance; then Ross on a skittish and temperamental Judith, with Jeremy in front of him; and following on foot a string of servants and friends: Jane Gimlett, Jinny and Whitehead Scobie, a brood of Daniells and Martins and, inevitably, hoping for something, Viguses. Others joined in on the way or were waiting at the church: Captain Henshawe and his wife, the Carne brothers, the Nanfans, the Choakes, and of course, a little late and a little drunk, the Paynters. Scuffling through the snow, shivering in the biting wind, they assembled in the icy church and the Rev. Mr Odgers, looking as pinched and shrivelled as one of his vegetables that had been left out all night, stuttered through the service.
The godparents were Caroline, Verity, for whom Demelza stood proxy, and Sam Carne. The last named had caused some argument among the parents. ‘Damn me,’ Ross had protested. ‘He’s no doubt a worthy young man, and being your brother is the more to be commended, but I don’t want to turn the child into a Methody!’ ‘No, Ross, no more don’t I. But I think Verity is like to be far away and Caroline, even if she weds Dwight and stays on at Killewarren, is not, as she admits herself, of a religious turn of mind – while Samuel is.’ ‘By God, he is! One is never for a moment allowed to forget it!’ ‘But that is just the way Methodists talk, Ross. I think he is a good man nevertheless, and he is much beholden to us. I think if anything happened to us he would devote his life to her.’ ‘God forbid,’ said Ross. ‘What hazards parents sometimes prepare for their children!’
Nevertheless he gave way, as he had more or less given way on the matter of allowing a new preaching house to be built out of the ruins of Wheal Grace; that is to say, he had told Demelza it could be built but not yet permitted her to tell her brothers. He thought it could all well wait until the spring, when problems of mere survival would not be so acute. In the meantime the old meeting house at Grambler had been forcibly closed this month, and such furnishings as it still possessed – benches, a small lectern, two lamps, two bibles, some hymn sheets and some wall texts – were sharing Will Nanfan’s barn with his cow, his sheep and his chickens.
At the end of the service Mr Odgers, having had to break a crust of ice on the font to damp his fingers, quietly put his prayer book down and fainted right away, overcome by the cold. His wife screamed that he was dead, that she was a poor miserable deserted widow with seven children still to feed; but a few minutes of Dr Choake’s ministrations together with, and more importantly, a flask of brandy that Ross was carrying, brought life and tears to the eyes of the little man, and presently he was able to limp away on the arm of his sorrowing and lamenting wife.
Jud Paynter, who was in one of his awkward moods, saw an ill-omen in this and chewed it over between his gums and his two teeth in spite of all Prudie’s efforts to muzzle him.
‘Tedn right,’ he said. ‘Tedn proper. Givin’ a cheeil a name like that! Clarence is fur a boy, not a cheeil. Tedn sense. Tedn ’uman. Theare’s a bad omen to ’n, I tell ee.’
‘Giss along, you great lug,’ Prudie hissed, shoving him to be quiet with her elbow. ‘Clowance, not Clarence. Skeet out yer ear’ole.’
‘I’m earin’ just so much as you! An’ tis all wrong! All wrong, I tell ee! For there’s the passon flat on ’is tiddies to prove ’n. Clarence indeed! What they’m thinkin’ of . . . Poor little quab. She’ll scarce see the new year in, I reckon.’
‘You’ll not see the new year in nor yet the old year out if you don’t shut that gurt opening in yer face,’ Prudie hissed, dragging him towards the church door.
‘Clarence!’ said Jud, disappearing reluctantly. ‘Gor damme, tis fit to sink ee, what folks’ll do to their own kith an’ kine. Leave me be, you dirty ole sprousen! . . .’ His compliments faded.
The rest of the company had seen fit to ignore this muttered disturbance. Demelza was wrapping a warm shawl more tightly round her precious new daughter, Caroline was wondering how she might dispose of the musty prayer book she had been lent, Zacky Martin was blowing on his fingers, and Polly Choake was trying to see her reflection in a brass memorial plate. Ross went to meet Dr Choake, who had just seen Odgers off by the vestry door.
‘Tell me, Choake, how is my aunt? My great-aunt, that is. Have you been to see her recently?’
Choake looked at Ross suspiciously from under hairy eyebrows. ‘Miss Poldark? Miss Agatha Poldark? We attended upon her in the middle of this month. We found her little changed. Of course our condition is one of age rather than of gouty disease. Effete matter riots in the sanguinaceous system and oppresses the vital members. We eat but little, we move but little. Yet the living spark remains.’
‘Who is attending on her? Is she not almost alone in the house now?’
Choake began to draw on his grey woollen gloves. ‘I could not say. On our last visit the Chynoweths had not left. But Miss Poldark has a proficient maid who understands the rudiments of nursing. If there were any change we should be sent for.’
At the door of the church Ross looked up at the sky. The dying sun had now been overtaken by its funeral pall of cloud; and since they went inside the whole scene had become appallingly cold and depressing. An idle, absent-minded flake was already drifting down from a sky which looked loaded with snow.
He said to Demelza: ‘Can you take the children home? If there be any risk of slipping, tell Gimlett to carry Clowance. I am worried about Agatha alone in that house and have a mind to call while I am so near. It may be a day or so before it is possible again.’
‘I would like you to see her,’ Demelza said. ‘But I would not like you to see her today. I do not want to mend your bruises and broken teeth on another Christmas Day.’
‘Oh, little risk of that. And there were no teeth broke, only loosened . . . George is from home, and servants could not deter me.’
‘I believe the Harry brothers are still there. They know you – have fought with you before.’
‘They cannot deny me sight of my aunt.’
Demelza grimaced her doubts. ‘I don’t know . . .’ Then she had an idea. ‘But why do you not take Caroline? She is welcome at the house. And they could hardly refuse you entry if she were there.’
‘You hear, Caroline?’ Ross said. ‘Would you not prefer to go straight back to a roaring fire?’
‘Since Demelza permits it, I would rather be your roaring guardian.’
‘Well, then.’ He put his hand round Demelza’s arm, squeezing it gently and looking down at his tiny daughter, who had borne her ordeal with little complaint. ‘Give such good people as come back with you a strong tot of rum and some of your splendid cake. We shall be home to dinner.’
‘Your breath,’ said Demelza, ‘looks like the engine at Wheal Grace. I never recollect it so cold, and I am afraid for Clowance. Help me up, Ross, and let us go.’
Trenwith House looked empty and lifeless as Ross went up the three steps and pulled at the bell. The whole countryside was a leaden monochrome. A thin column of smoke rose into the air from a back chimney of the house and was dissipated by the breeze. Two choughs stood on the roof of an outhouse, and a seagull planed across the clouds looking f
or food.
A red-faced maid Ross did not know came to the door and reluctantly allowed them into the hall, then fled to find a senior servant. There was no fire in the hall. Except for the protection from the wind, it was scarcely less icy here than outside. Caroline drew her fur cloak around her and shivered.
‘It is not quite the scene I saw here when Elizabeth’s boy was christened.’
Ross did not answer. As always this place was full of memories, one laid upon another, yet each one individually separate and vivid – and now void.
A woman came in wiping her hands down a dirty apron. She was fat, and everything about her was short, especially her legs. She was more like a big dwarf than a small woman. Half obsequious, half resentful, she said her name was Lucy Pipe and she was Miss Poldark’s maid and what could she do for them? Ross told her.
‘There now. I dare say now. But d’you see Miss Poldark be sleepin’ and be not to be disturbed. I dare say twould be mortal bad for she to be woke up now—’
‘You dare say what you please,’ Ross interrupted. ‘Will you lead the way or shall we go alone?’
‘Well, tis not for me to stand in your way, sur, but—’
Ross went slowly up the stairs, examining the portraits as he went and wondering what had happened to those no longer considered worthy of wall room. At Nampara they were notably short of ancestors. Perhaps Elizabeth would part with some of them . . .
At the door of the bedroom Lucy Pipe inserted herself in front of Ross. Her breath smelt of spirits, and her skin, on closer viewing, was erupting with a skin affection. The roots of her thick black hair were choked with dandruff.
‘There now. Let me see now sur. I’ll go see Miss Poldark, see if she be asleep. I’ll go see. Ah? I’ll go see.’
She disappeared inside. Ross leaned against the wall and exchanged glances with Caroline, who was tapping her riding whip into her other gloved hand. After a few moments Caroline said: ‘Oh, I know her sort, she will be tidying up. Let us go in.’
As they entered the woman was pushing an unemptied chamber pan under the bed, while Aunt Agatha, a lace cap awry on top of a wig that was awry, was clutching at the bed curtains and muttering feeble curses. A black cat, half grown, stretched itself on her bed. In spite of her age her eyesight had remained remarkably good, and she recognized her visitor.
‘Why, Ross, ain’t it? Why, damme, boy.’ She scowled at the straightening figure of her maid and aimed a feeble blow at her backside. ‘Damme, ye should’ve telt me who twas! Skulking away like that! Real skulk she be . . . Why, Ross, come to wish me the Christmas wishes, eh? God bless ee, boy!’
Ross put his cheek against the whiskery cheek of the old woman. He felt he was touching something out of a lost age, an age already dead but for her. Essentially a warm man but seldom a sentimental one, he felt a tug of emotion at kissing this stinking old woman, because here was the one contact that remained with a lost childhood. Both his parents long dead, his uncle and aunt dead, Francis dead, Verity seldom seen, here was the only one who remembered with him that time of stability, of thoughtless youth, of prosperity, of an unchanging family inheritance and tradition, the one link that remained between him and this house and all it had once meant to him.
Aunt Agatha pushed him sharply away and said: ‘Now, this be not your wife, Ross. Where’s my little bud? Where’s my little blossom? Don’t ee be telling me as you’re following your father! Leastwise Joshua stopped his whoring while Grace were alive!’
So Caroline had to be introduced and explained away at the top of his voice while Lucy Pipe folded a towel and clattered dirty crockery in a corner and the cat eyed the intruders jealously and the captive blackbird twittered in its cage. Now that he had time Ross could take in the untidiness of the room, the foul smell, the dirt, the curtain with a ring off, the miserable fire.
It was surprising how much Aunt Agatha could still take in if you bawled directly into her ear. It was simply that no one could really take the trouble of getting to close quarters with her. It was of course something of an ordeal. Now she learned for the first time of Ross’s new daughter, of the prosperity of his mine, of the alterations planned at Nampara, of Dwight’s captivity in France, of Ray Penvenen’s death.
In the middle of this Ross glanced at his tall companion who had perched on the edge of a chair and was examining distastefully some nostrums on the table beside her. ‘I am sorry for this, Caroline. The air in here is very sour. Why do you not sit downstairs?’
She shrugged. ‘You forget, my dear. I am no stranger to the sick room. Your old aunt is little more noisome than my old uncle was.’
They had been talking five more minutes and Agatha was launched on a stream of complaints when Ross came to a decision which had been formulating in his mind ever since he came into this neglected room. He stayed the old woman with a hand on her skeletal arm. She looked up, munching on toothless jaws, eyes alert, the inevitable tear trickling down the ravines of her right cheek.
‘Agatha,’ Ross said. ‘You can hear me well?’
‘Yes, boy. There’s little I can’t hear when folk speak plain.’
‘Then let me speak plain. You shall come home with us. Our house is not so grand as this, but you will be with your own people. Come to live with us. We have a comfortable room. Bring this maid if you so wish: we can accommodate her as well. You are old and it is not right you should be among strangers.’
Lucy Pipe folded the last towel and noisily poured some water out of a pitcher into a bowl, splashing the water on the threadbare carpet. Then she filled a kettle and shoved it on the sulky fire.
Agatha’s face twitched and she munched away for a minute more. Then she grasped Ross’s hand. ‘Nay, my son, that I couldn’t do . . . That what you said? That what you meant – come live wi’ you at Nampara?’
‘That is what I meant.’
‘Nay, boy. Lord damn me if tis not brave and fine to think on it, but, nay, I could not. An’ would not. Nay, Ross, boy. I’ve lived in this house ever since I noozled the nepple, an’ that’s ninety and nine year, and no one shall put me out till my pass comes. Cheil, girl, woman and old body . . . I been here nigh on a century, and no whipper-snapper and upstart from Truro shall fooch me forth! Why, what would my father say!’
‘It is good to have courage,’ Ross shouted. ‘But it is also good to understand the changes that time has brought! You are alone – the last Poldark here – dependent on undependable servants. Look at this woman, this lazy slattern – no doubt she tends you in her way, but she does not care, she has no concern for you—’
‘There now, sur. Tis not fitty nor proper to say no such thing—’
‘Hold your tongue, woman, or I’ll nip it out . . . Agatha, think before you so quickly decide. I cannot come here when George is at home for he protects the house with his bullies. Elizabeth, no doubt, cares for you, but there is no one else. If you will not decide to live with us permanently, give us the pleasure of coming for Christmas – and stay until George and Elizabeth return. Do you not lack for company here? Are you not very much alone?’
‘Oh, aye. Oh, aye, alone . . .’ Her claw patted his sleeve. ‘But at my age, wherever you live, you be alone . . .’
‘Alone, I grant. But need you be lonely also?’
‘Nay. Tis true.’ She nodded. ‘Ever since your uncle went – an’ more since Francis was took – I been lonely. They don’t talk to me, Ross. No one do talk to me. Alone. All on my own. But not so much alone as I shall be in a year or two.’ She gave a gulp of self-pity which ended in a cackle of laughter. ‘Till then I mean to stay where I belong to be. Miss Poldark of Trenwith. Though I be sick and weary and all scrump with the cold, I mean to stay till my hundredth birthday next year. And to torment George, Ross. I real torment him. He hate me dearly and I hate him, and tis a rare pleasure to get him all riffled up with anger like a ram’s cat. Why, if I left this house I’d not live the month. Not even wi’ all your care – and your docy little bud to tend me. Nay,
God bless ye, boy. And God bless ye, ye thin rake of a gel. Back to your childer, and leave me be!’
They stayed another ten minutes, and Agatha had a drawer opened and brought to her, and took out a small painted cameo, which was to be given to little Clowance; but she would not be moved from her decision. Acknowledging her to be probably right but exasperated nevertheless by her obstinacy, Ross turned suddenly at his most venomous on Lucy Pipe.
‘You, slut. You’re paid, housed, fed: see to it you discharge your duties! A word from me to Mrs Warleggan will have you turned out of the house. And I’ll do it – for I’ll come by surprise again, as this time. When I come I want this room clean – d’you hear, clean! – that curtain mended, the glass shining, Miss Poldark’s ornaments and possessions disinterred from these layers of dust. I want a good bright fire – no sulky coal and no sulky maids, else out you go! No unemptied night trays thrust under the bed; the close stool properly cleaned, Miss Poldark’s night rail washed, and all other linen! D’you hear me!’
‘Yes, sur,’ said Lucy Pipe, obsequious and resentful with the same glance. ‘I dare say as I can do what you d’say, but oft times—’
‘Save your breath. And get off your fat rump and work!’ Ross looked at Caroline. ‘Shall we leave?’
After a last Christmas kiss they went, out into the cold and draughty corridor, back the way they had come. Both were relieved to be out, to be breathing an air not tainted with putrefaction. They did not speak, but when they reached the hall Ross said: ‘Wait. There is one more thing . . .’
Caroline followed him through two doors and along a narrow corridor to another door, which he flung open. They were looking down into the kitchen. In the big dark room two lanterns were already burning, and a great fire raged in the hearth. There were some Christmas decorations, and about the kitchen five servants lolled in various postures. At sight of him they stopped a song they were half through, and three of them – the three women – got to their feet, uncertain who he was but aware that he represented some authority they were not expecting.
The Black Moon Page 20