Demelza’s eyes were warm. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘Kind . . . You see. There you go.’
‘Well, are you not? I think so. But Francis, ’tisn’t so easy as you think. I have to compare against your wife, who’s so lovely – an’ has breeding as well. And not only that. She was Ross’s first love. How do you compete with perfection?’
‘I don’t believe Ross is so silly. I think . . .’ He stopped. ‘I believe that a greater regard for yourself, a greater personal independence on your part . . . Now I sound disloyal to Ross – but it’s true. If you look on his feeling for Elizabeth as something unreal, and by exposing to it your own warm blood and your own good sense . . . How can she stand against those?’
‘But Elizabeth is – far from lacking in warm blood herself.’
Francis again did not reply for a minute or two. ‘It’s not my wish to speak against Elizabeth now; but whatever she lacks or has, she lacks perfection. Every human being does. Indeed, knowing you even so little – and noticing the effect you have on other men – I should have thought you quite capable of holding Ross at your side when you want to, if you’re so minded.’
She glinted a half smile at him. ‘I may not say you’re kind, so I’ll say thank you.’
‘I can’t answer for another man – and yet I’m pretty sure . . . Get rid of the notion that someone has done you a favour by taking you into our family.’
She stood quite still, thoughtful, young, made a wry mouth. ‘I will think over it all, Francis. I believe it will make company for me for the rest of the afternoon.’
‘Think over the first part too.’
‘No. Not that.’
‘Yes, that.’ He bent and kissed her cheek. ‘For we can none of us separate ourselves from the consequences of our behaviour. I have been trying to for long enough.’
It was beginning to rain again as Francis walked back to the mine. The reaction from clearing his unquiet mind to Demelza had left him more at peace with himself than for a long time. He had spoken on impulse, but the impulse had been part of a long-standing desire to tell her, to put himself straight not only with her but with his own conscience. Her reception of the news, its natural healthiness, had made him feel better about it all. Her attitude and Ross’s, he felt, excused him nothing, but it made possible a continuance of their friendship with a new honesty on his side.
He went into the changing-shed of the mine and picked up a few of his belongings. He had come this far almost without thinking. His horse was in the Nampara stables, he had had no intention of going down the mine again. But the shed was empty; and when he got inside, the thought came to him that the last thing he wanted was to go home.
His own house depressed him; Elizabeth depressed him. He knew that this happier mood would go quick enough; for the moment he could not bear to part with it. He began to slip on the old drill trousers and the woollen coat.
There were few people about in the rain. In the engine house one of the Curnow brothers was tending the great pump as it sucked and slithered. He touched his cap to Francis as he came in, and moved round to meet him, ducking under the great beam as it swung easily down.
‘Going ’low by yourself, sur? Thur’s Ned Bottrell outside could go along of ee.’
‘No, I’m all right. I shall do no more blasting but shall pick over the stuff that has come down.’
A minute later Francis was climbing down the ladder of the main shaft. This shaft had originally been the lode from which the mine had begun; so it did not go straight down but at a sharp inclination as the lode had run and as it had been mined. At the third platform and the two-hundred-and-fortieth rung he stepped off into the thirty-fathom level. All this part of the mine was now deserted. The rest of the workers were below.
On his way to the piece of ground they had been blasting this morning, he squeezed through narrow clefts where there was barely room for his pick, scrambled across heaps of rubble with echoing caverns as high as cathedral transepts, skirted great pits falling away into the depths of the earth, climbed up and up where the old miners had followed a lode on its underlie; finally he reached the underground shaft or little wind as it was called – with the ruins of the old windlass still beside it – and slithered down the shaft, as if down the chimney of a house, to the big narrow slit of a gunnies where they had been this morning.
Francis saw that the water at the bottom had gone down a foot since they left, the result of their blasting, but it was evidently not yet finding its way to the sump of the mine.
The air was close and bad here, and his only light, from the hempen candle in his hat, flickered smokily over the scene. He worked for half an hour cleaning the rocks from the mouth of the tunnel, but no more water seemed to be entering it. Not only the air but the water was warm, and after a while he swung himself up into another excavation about six feet above water level. He found that, instead of being shallow as it appeared from below, it turned sharply and increased in height so that he was able to stand upright.
Interested, he followed it for about a hundred feet, scraping here and there at the slimy walls, moving on until he came to a place where the old men had found the lode again and had left an arch of it to support their tunnel. Here they had worked downwards, in what was known as a winze, and here also it seemed this morning’s gunpowder had had some effects, for the rocks were dripping and he could hardly keep his feet as he picked his way round the edge to another tunnel opposite.
This tunnel meandered on for a matter of a hundred yards; but then the air began to get fouler, and he turned back. As he did so, a flicker of his candle found some answering glimmer in the rock. He bent and rubbed with his finger. Here was the coppery green of metal-bearing ground.
The old men had missed it or had passed on. It might well be that their reasons were adequate. There had been other such places. One could not be sure of anything till one had picked away a few pieces, weighed them in the hand, examined in a better light the quality of the ore.
He needed his pick, which he had left in the big gunnies. A quarter of an hour’s work here . . . If it looked like ore-bearing rock of any promise, he would carry a half-dozen specimen lumps up to grass.
Luck if after all this time . . . While Ross was away and he down here alone! Silly to speculate, to imagine; it had happened before, the expectation and the disappointment.
He stumbled back as far as the winze and stopped to gain a breath or two of better air and to wipe the sweat off his face. Very hot. If this could be, it would give him not only a fresh entitlement to Ross’s friendship but to his own self-respect.
He moved cautiously round the edge of the winze; and as he did so, his boots suddenly slipped on the slimy surface. He twisted sharply to save himself, slithered down the slope, bumping his head and shoulders, trying to clutch, to distribute weight. Then in horror he fell, into water, plunging into it, coughing, choking, smothering in foul water; to breathe, to suffocate; he came up in pitch-darkness, treading water, floundering in search of some rock to save him.
He’d never been a swimmer; his best a dozen strokes. His clothes kept him up, spreading out like a tent; then the water seeped in; they began to clog, to drag. His flailing hands found the wall and he clutched at it.
Although he’d fallen clear, he’d thought to find the wall so sloping that he could crawl out. Not so. He kicked with his toes to get footholds that instantly slipped, clawed with fingernails, barked his knees, hit his face against the rock. He’d slid down the slope into another underground shaft. The fall had been short, but he’d no true idea how far the water was from the top of the shaft.
Cough foul water out. Heavy boots dragging down, drowning in futile darkness, deep in the earth away from the comfort and the voices of men. His fingers found a hold . . . Slowly, with infinite effort, he pulled his body a few inches out of the water.
While his fingers held, he could think: might be a ladder still in the wall strong enough to bear him. For that, when he’
d recovered, he must gather the courage to flounder round the shaft. It was bigger than the other one but could still only be small; enough for a ladder and a bucket they usually said.
What might have been triumph had suddenly become disaster. Two years ago in Bodmin he had put a pistol against his head and pulled the trigger. It had not gone off because the powder was damp. Then he had wanted to die. Death now would be the crowning irony.
He had been trying to kick his boots off; his fingers aching, change hands; one boot off. Lighter, lighter; this old woollen coat. He had stopped coughing; lungs free at least. To shout? As well shout in your coffin with the sexton planting the flowers.
A surprise for you, Ross. Feel this piece. Not just killas, is it? And here’s some crushed under the hammer. I thought I’d do it while you were away. At least it’s a justification at last of your faith in me. Henshawe can’t believe his eyes . . .
The other boot off. Struggle out of the coat. Hot down here. Like a rat in a bucket. He’d watched one once, but had had to go away before it died. Persistent things, clinging to life. More persistent than he.
This was the moment to try to swim round. Why had he never been confident in the water? As much as he could do to force himself to let go.
Round he went, kicking out ineffectually with his legs but keeping just afloat. Quite big, probably seven feet across; perhaps not a shaft but just a plot, used when ore was being mined quicker than it could be got to the surface.
No ladder, and no certainty he could find the fingerhold again. Panic gripped; a great shout that went echoing round and round in the confined space. Noise was comforting, as light would have been comforting.
He missed the fingerhold but instead found a nail. There had been a ladder, but it was gone. Try to find a foothold in some niche below; none . . . Nor anything to reach above. A rusty six-inch nail was a better fingerhold than the one lost. Could hold on quite a long time. And it might be a long time.
Trying to keep the fear in hand, to fight away the loneliness and the darkness, begin to work it out. Down about four. The mine worked three cores, the next changing at ten. If it was five now, that might mean nearly five more hours before anyone saw his clothes in the changing-shed or remarked on them or began to ask. Ross had gone to Truro, could not be back till late. Demelza – what reason would she have? His horse in the Nampara stables. Any time she might notice this herself or later Gimlett would say . . . But hours perhaps before they did anything.
His own home. Elizabeth anxious? Not until seven.
Any reckoning in hours. And even if there was an alarm, the search would take time. His mind travelled back along the twisting dark tunnels to the main shaft – all the way he had come, all the great mass of rock that lay between him and the daylight and the air. The atmosphere in this pit was choking and foul. Hours of patience, hours of strain lay ahead. His fingers would give way, he would drown long before help came.
Fear his greatest enemy. Darkness the other traitor. Light had left the world. Nothing shone, no shine, no sleek water, no metal or stone. He’d still little idea how far below the rim of the pit he was; but the grim thought came that if they had not blasted this morning and allowed some of the water to drain, this pit might have been full and left him no harder task than clawing a way back up the greasy winze.
He changed hands for the twentieth time and as he did so the nail moved. Fear grip your throat, begin to shout, at the top of your voice, over and over again. Help, help, help, I am lost in the very deeps of the earth. Not eight feet underground but two hundred; blind already but not deaf, shuddering in the warm water, fingers burning last grip loosening; one nail, one rusty nail.
He tried to make himself let go, to splash around again in the darkness; he might have missed something last time, some better handhold; but he no longer had the courage to try; he might never find this place again.
Time passed. Try to count. Sixty minutes make one hour. He reckoned three hours had passed. Must be after eight now. Someone must come soon. They would of course come straight to the place where they had been blasting this morning. A drip of water somewhere, and this his ears again and again magnified into rescuing footsteps. To keep his sanity he counted up to two hundred and then shouted and began again. But he was getting lightheaded. And the strain on his arms. Cramp seized him often, his legs were leaden, already swollen and dead. Sometimes he forgot numbers and talked with people who came close to him in the water. His father, gouty and eruptive and purple. ‘Francis, Francis. Where are you, boy?’ Aunt Agatha, not as she now was but younger and severe, dandling him on her knee. He was running across the sands of Hendrawna with Ross after him, their feet glinting in the sun.
He began to count again; and then suddenly heard a crash of splintering wood and looked up and saw Ross kneeling at the edge of the shaft reaching down a hand to help him out. Ross said sourly: ‘My God, why can’t you learn to swim!’ and Francis reached up a despairing hand to grasp the help. Their fingers seemed to touch, and then a foul swirl of liquid closed over Francis’s mouth and nose and he kicked and struggled to get to the surface again: he had lost grip of the nail, had nearly lost life in his dream of salvation, only death had wakened him; only death; in time the automatic responses of the body. So it would be every time, every time until the last.
Try to reassure yourself. This time tomorrow . . . In a few weeks you will be able to laugh about this experience. Or be dead . . . This time tomorrow between comfortable sheets, recovering. Or a swollen corpse covered with a sheet in the great hall of Trenwith waiting an early burial.
His breath was going. That was the worst. If he shouted now, he had to suck at the air for half a minute afterward to recover. By now it was well after ten. Somebody must come soon. He could not disappear without trace and cause no comment! Curnow had seen him come down. They would grow anxious. They would think. What were their brains for! Henshawe was often at the mine between five and six. Often he joined Ross and Francis to see how the work was going. Not today. Not of course today.
Francis let out a higher-pitched shout, much nearer a scream. He stopped, gasping at the air. The nail turned in his painful clutch. Any further movement and it would come out.
‘Help, help!’ he shouted. ‘Help, help!’ a dozen times, and a dozen times more. It went on and on and on, until the volume decreased and the breath in was as noisy as the breath out. Tears were running down his cheeks.
There’s reason for me to live now! Oh, God, I don’t want to die . . .
At about this time Elizabeth closed the book in which she had been teaching Geoffrey Charles to read.
‘It’s time for your supper, my darling. Papa will be home soon, and you know he likes you to be in bed by seven.’
‘Just this bit, Mummy.’
‘No. You’ve had more than your share today.’
‘Can I go out and play until Papa comes?’
‘No, darling. You can play until your supper’s ready. Don’t be far away when I call you . . . And put on your cap!’
Geoffrey Charles galloped from the room, and Elizabeth looked up at the clock. It was nearly half past six.
Chapter Seven
Ross was back just before eight. He found Demelza upstairs repairing for the fifth time the curtains over the north windows of their bedroom. She hadn’t heard him come.
‘Why, Ross! You’re earlier than I expected. Have you supped?’
‘Sufficiently. What are you doing?’
‘A little tear that Jeremy made this morning. He dearly likes something to cling to for support.’
‘Soon you’ll have made new curtains with your stitches.’ ‘Not quite so bad. What was in your letter?’ He sat in a chair and began to pull at his boots; then as she came over, he let her pull them off instead. It was a relic of their old days which for some reason she liked to preserve. While she was doing it, he told her what the letter said. ‘And it was true, about the mortgage, I mean?’ He nodded. ‘True enough. When I borrowed t
he money, my first concern was to get it; I didn’t greatly care how. It was Pearce when I went to him who first spoke of a second mortgage. The next day he produced the money and I signed the paper for it . . . I accepted this as a form of mortgage, though in fact it was a promissory note. I suppose I knew, but I paid no heed to it at the time. Nor should I have needed to if Pearce had kept possession of it, as any friend and honest man would. I went to visit him. D’you think me a bully, Demelza?’
‘Were you rough with Mr Pearce?’
‘I didn’t put a finger on him, but I suppose I was rough in manner; I thumped his table and broke the lid of his snuffbox. He quivered like a jelly, all fat and no backbone; but the damage is done. The bill has been passed on as Pascoe said, and Cary Warleggan now possesses it. So we have to face that.’
‘You didn’t go to see him?’
‘I called at his house, but he was away. I think it was the truth, for the blinds were down.’
‘And what now, Ross?’
‘The Warleggans can do nothing until November. Then they can give me a month to redeem the note. In December I must find fourteen hundred pounds or default.’
She put his boots beside the chair but remained kneeling, her elbows on his knees, looking not at him but into space.
‘Can we borrow no money elsewhere?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What shall you do?’
‘There are seven weeks before the notice can be given. I have Pascoe to thank for that. And four more after that before it takes effect.’
She did not much like the look on his face, and she wriggled her knees round and got up.
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