‘Of course. I like being with you. And this crowd . . . Sometimes I wonder if Cornwall’s properly alive. Folk hide in their houses, peer out suspicious from their doors, go about life in secret. This shows the other side, shows they can enjoy themselves proper when they feel like it. It is like a beehive, isn’t it, only more colour . . . All the same, I reckon we could be putting the time to better advantage.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘Soon we shall have leisure for our better advantage, as you have just pointed out. Have patience.’
‘It is all very well for you.’
‘Why? Why should it be? Why is it different for me?’
‘Because – well, you have your family all round you – you’re living the life you’ve always lived. With your father and mother and family. I’m – on my own.’
‘It doesn’t make that much difference, Stephen. Surely you must know how quickly I want the next month to pass.’
‘Why did your mother not come today?’
‘Is it not obvious?’
‘Is she ashamed of her condition?’
‘Of course not! Has she not a right to her preferences?’
Stephen bit at his thumb. ‘I wish you was in that state.’
‘What, you’d prefer to marry me when I was with child?’
‘Not exactly. But I wish there was reason. I wish we’d made love.’
‘It is all to come.’
‘Not all, thank the Powers.’
‘No . . . not all.’
They had wandered off behind the stands to where a group of gypsies had made their encampment. The two young people were quickly surrounded by children begging and older children trying to sell them pots and pans. Stephen waved them irritably away, and presently took Clowance’s arm to steer her back the way they had come.
‘Anyway, if you was like your mother is I’d be surer of you.’
‘Still not sure of me?’
He looked at her, and his expression cleared. ‘Oh, more or less.’
‘Perhaps that way I would have been, been surer of you.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Oh no?’
‘No. Y’see, I’m a villain at heart. To have a pregnant woman at the altar rails – it would not affect me at all if I’d the mind not to wed her.’
‘I’ll remember that. How fortunate I never yielded to your advances!’
‘Is that what they call it in your set? Phew!’
‘They call it that in the novels we used to read under the bedclothes at school. In our set – as you call it – in our set they still use cruder words.’
‘Tell me.’
‘After we are married.’
The crowd was getting thicker as they approached the horses. Clowance saw Valentine over the other side of the ring, with a young man in naval uniform, but they did not see her.
‘Clowance.’
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s run away?’
‘When? Today?’
‘Aye. I don’t savour this fancy wedding that is being prepared.’
‘No fancy wedding. I have promised.’
‘But how much easier . . . We could slip away now when no one is looking, take those two nags we came on – ride away somewhere – where’s the nearest port? Falmouth. Ride away to Falmouth, take a room; there’d be a little sour-pussed landlady with a yapping dog. We’d pay her two nights in advance, lock the door in her face. Then I’d have you. You couldn’t taunt me, tease me any longer. I’d take all your clothes off, very slow, very careful . . .’
‘Stephen, stop it!’
‘What’s the matter – scared?’
‘I believe you’re half serious.’
‘More than half, I tell you!’
‘Well, don’t be. And pray change the subject.’
‘Now, now, don’t go prinkish on me or I shall slap you.’
‘D’you think we shall fight a lot when we’re married?’
‘No. Two doves cooing, that’ll be us. But if there is a fight, well . . . loving, fighting, eating, drinking, breathing deep and living to the full, that’s how folk are meant to be, isn’t it? Life’s short enough anyway; youth’s shorter. I can’t bear to sleep long of nights for fear of missing something!’
‘Agreed,’ said Clowance, taking a breath. ‘Oh, I do agree with you on that!’
A hand was plucking at her sleeve.
‘If ee plaise, miss. Yer leddyship. If ee plaise. Buy a purty necklace. Handsome stones, they be. Handsome, ’andsome, you. Very cheap. Very good. All made wi’ special strong thread, so it shall not ever snap. Not ever, yer leddyship.’
A wizened child of uncertain age – perhaps ten, perhaps fourteen – a girl probably, held in her thin dirty hand two necklaces made of some sort of blue stone, which no doubt had been picked up round the coast and crudely polished. There were a half-dozen stones to each necklace, drilled, and threaded with coarse twine. Clowance did not know if the girl had attached herself to them recently or followed them from the gypsy camp.
‘Get off!’ said Stephen. ‘Be off wi’ ye!’ And raised a hand to strike the child. She shrank away behind Clowance but did not retreat, keeping her glance first on the young lady for a sign of weakness, then on the young man for risk of attack.
Once, about a year ago, Demelza had told Clowance frankly of her first encounter with Ross, starving, cursing, ragged and bug-ridden, and although at the time Clowance’s youthful imagination had not been quite up to the task of picturing her beautiful mother in such a scene, now, a year later, it occurred to her suddenly like a knife in the side, that this must have been – or might just have been – the way her mother had looked at Redruth Fair thirty years ago.
She glanced up protestingly at Stephen, who, for Heaven’s sake and according to his own story, had been even worse circumstanced only twenty years since, and should by rights have all the sympathy in the world.
‘How much are your necklaces, child?’ she asked.
‘Six shillun, miss. Six shillun. Or five to you, yer leddy-ship. Five shillun and the best stones ye could ever find. An’ special strong thread that’ll never snap.’ The litany of praise went on, while Stephen glowered and Clowance considered.
‘Tis rubbish,’ said Stephen. ‘Ye’d find as good in the attle of any mine! Come away, m’dear, and leave the little gypsy rat go back to her hole.’
‘Three shillings?’ said Clowance.
‘Four.’
Clowance hesitated and seemed about to turn away.
‘Nay, three,’ said the child. ‘I’ll tak three.’
So the necklace was bought.
‘Do not put it near your neck,’ said Stephen. ‘Else you’ll get scrofula. Off wi’ you! Go on now! Back to your den!’
The child took the coins, bit them and then thrust them into some pocket in the depths of her grimy tunic. Then she suddenly spat on the ground and made a mark in the spittle with her finger. She looked at Stephen with small red-rimmed eyes.
‘Ye’ll never live to be old, mister. I’m telling ee. Ye’ll never live to be old.’
IV
They had picnicked and wined excellently in the wagonette, with a lot of chatter and laughter, much of it contributed by Augustus Bettesworth, who seemed even more than usually boisterous, and by Jeremy who, released temporarily from the glooms of his passion, sparkled in front of the object of that gloom and made her laugh. Valentine Warleggan had come in second on Larkspur in the 2.45, and Jeremy and Cuby had lost their wager to a dragoon from St Austell, whose horse had won by a neck. About 3.15, with three more races still to go, an auction of some of the winning horses was held behind the first stand, and most of the party, having no interest in the next race, drifted across to watch the bidding.
Although clouds were building up again in the west, the sun was still brilliant and the heat that of high summer.
Jeremy said to Cuby: ‘Do you want to buy a horse?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Nor do I. Are you in
terested?’
‘Oh yes. I love horses.’
‘It will be very hot in the crowd. One will be jostled. Your frock might be trodden on. And the mud is not yet dry.’
She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Why are we all going, then?’
‘We need not. We could just walk.’
She considered this. It was a challenge. ‘Where to?’
‘You know, I suppose, we are near the river here.’
‘Fairly. But the ground must slope sharply. Here we are on top of the hill.’
‘Those woods lead down. About a mile perhaps. Even if we didn’t go so far, we could stroll. It would be pleasanter.’
‘And muddier.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Not muddier?’
‘The tracks will be soft, perhaps. Damp leaves, perhaps. But mud is here only because of the carts and the horses.’
Cuby glanced across at Augustus who was talking flirtatiously with Elizabeth Boscawen. Clemency was with Nicholas Carveth.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘then let us go for a stroll.’
At the edge of the field a gate led into the wood. Jeremy unlatched the gate and they went in. The ground was damp and he glanced anxiously at his capture but she did not complain. His light-hearted approach of today had succeeded beyond all his expectations. Aware that this was a holiday occasion, and particularly aware that at the moment they had both drunk numerous glasses of canary wine, he was not at all sure that this apparent progress really was advancing his suit – not when it came down to the cold light of day. Yet merely to be with her gave him new life and hope. And, whatever the softening circumstances, it was very unlikely she would have agreed to come with him in this way if she did not find pleasure in it too.
She lowered her sunshade as they went further in and down. ‘When is your sister to marry?’
‘At the end of next month. Would you come to the wedding?’
‘I think not. That would be too formal an acknowledgement that I was going against my brother’s wishes. Jeremy—’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I was breaking our agreement. Nothing serious shall henceforth be said.’
She stopped to examine one of her boots, pulled three large damp leaves off the heel. ‘I wish nothing serious ever had to be said. How agreeable if we could just meet people in so unserious a manner!’
‘Perhaps we can.’
‘How?’ she replied. ‘It is impossible! In any event pleasantries would soon wear thin. It was beginning just then. Let us enjoy today.’
They walked on. There was an empty quiet in the wood, except for the thin rilling of water in a ditch. All the birds seemed to have fallen silent.
She said: ‘Tell me about your experiments with the steam engine.’
‘Oh, those. They are not prospering.’ He spoke of his meeting with Trevithick, his semi-abandonment of the project.
‘But you should not!’ she said. ‘If every inventor despaired when something went amiss, how little would ever be discovered.’
‘I’m not an inventor. I am a user and perhaps developer of other people’s inventions.’
‘Even so.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose you are right. I should continue. Of course recently I have lacked—’
‘Go on.’
‘You may guess what I have lacked, which proves again how right you are to say that pleasantries soon wear thin.’
There were giant cow parsnips here, flowered and gone to seed, a thicket of gaunt stalks holding up Japanese heads. She flicked at one and broke the stem with her parasol.
He said: ‘Let me tell you of our new mine. It is open now and the engine I designed is working and working well. I have never told you of this?’
‘No. Last year it was projected.’
‘But you are interested?’
‘Of course I am interested! Just because . . .’
He told her. After a while she began to chat of her own life, of Augustus’s holiday with them from his work in London, of Clemency’s misunderstanding with her music teacher, of a visit from her aunt and of the spaniel that nipped her ankle. Jeremy told her of Clowance and about Stephen. The most ordinary information, the lightest of communication between them, assumed instant importance.
They went down and down, unheeding. Then Cuby slipped on a fallen branch half buried in the ground and damp with lichen. He caught her arm and she steadied herself. She looked at the slanting light and said: ‘Mercy, we must go back!’
‘You can see the river from here.’
‘I know, but we must turn back nevertheless. I would not wish John to join our party and find me wanting.’
They began to retrace their steps. Jeremy retained her arm in a light, un-familiar fashion and did not find himself rebuffed. They climbed back alongside the rill of water, pushing among sycamore saplings whose huge damp leaves glowed in the shafts of sun.
After a bit they paused for breath and Cuby leaned back against a tree behind her. He put a hand on her other arm, smiled at her cheerfully. They stood for some seconds before he kissed her, and then it seemed as if her mouth came up to meet his own. The heightened sensation of face to face and lip to lip created emotions that made the rest of the day trivial and without point.
After a pause to take in scant breath Jeremy allowed his fingers to stroke the curve of her cheek.
‘That was,’ he said, and swallowed and tried again; ‘that was not at all disagreeable. All things considered, it was – not at all disagreeable.’
He stopped, aware of the flicker of surprise in her at the lightness of his tone.
‘D’ye know that poem?’ he said. ‘“Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, youth’s a stuff will not endure.”’
Her face looked as if it was going to go dull on him, but after a hesitation the sparkle came back, and she smiled – though there was a hint of wryness in the smile.
‘Jeremy, I have told you, it is time we went.’
‘Of course it is time we went! We must hurry away. But don’t you agree that we are behaving according to the rules we set ourselves today?’
‘Well, I’m not sure.’
‘Why are you not sure? We are not being serious, are we?’
‘It is not so much that . . .’
‘Did you not ever play kissing games as a little girl?’
‘Of course. But this—’ She stopped, hoist with her own petard.
He bent to kiss her again.
‘Stop it!’
‘But why?’
‘You know why!’
‘No, I do not.’
‘Well . . .’ She tried to move away from the tree. ‘It is time we were back.’
‘Of course it is time we were back. Was I not just saying so?’
Because she did not offer him her mouth, he kissed her forehead, her hair, her eyes, her cheeks, the very edge of her lips. She jerked her head away.
‘Jeremy! I have told you!’
‘What have you told me? Am I not behaving in an unserious manner?’
‘You are behaving in an unseemly manner!’
‘But is it not fun? Is it not what we came into the world for? Should we not seek happiness on this superficial level while we can?’
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! There: now let us go!’
He gently edged away from her.
‘So we shall go back now. I am at your service.’
She moved from the tree, brushing at a few green marks on her velvet frock. ‘I shall have leaves all over me.’
‘No, no. Just one or two.’ Respectfully he picked them off her back and skirt.
She drew a deep breath. ‘You really are quite ridiculous.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But you’ll agree I am not allowing sincerity to break in.’
‘I am coming to believe, Jeremy, that your only purpose in this world is to torment me!’
‘My only purpose in the world is to please you! To accept and honour your wishes in everything.’
She considered him, the ova
l of her face in shadow but clear like a cameo against the darker frame of her hair.
‘Then let us go.’
They proceeded a little way. Bracken, creeping everywhere, clutched at them with fingernails as they passed. Two magpies began to chatter harshly, breaking the bird silence. Cuby bowed towards them.
‘One for sorrow, two for mirth,’ said Jeremy.
‘I say, one for sorrow, two for joy.’
‘Equally suitable.’
‘You know I came with you,’ said Cuby, ‘ – have come with you, just for the walk.’
‘That is the agreement.’
‘You having – me having – that embrace that you forced upon me – meant nothing more than . . .’
‘Than an embrace. What could it mean? Were we not friends who had quarrelled? After a quarrel is it not proper for friends to kiss and make up?’
There was the sound of children shouting in the distance, but it was another world. The green damp wood still surrounded them in sunlit silence.
‘Indeed,’ said Jeremy, ‘I am relieved that it is all over between us.’
‘All over?’
‘I mean the quarrel is over. Now we may meet as loving friends.’
‘Well . . . yes.’
‘Dear Cuby,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t be doubtful. I am going to make no claims on you except—’
‘But you do! You have done!’
‘Except – let me finish – the claim to be considered your loving friend – right up to the time of your marriage. Even after your marriage, if your husband will permit.’
‘I have no husband yet in view!’
‘That is something I cannot comment on,’ said Jeremy, continuing his double-edged remarks.
Laughter and annoyance seemed to be struggling with each other in her face. Eventually, to hide other emotions, she looked down at her parasol.
‘Very well,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Let it be so.’
Chapter Five
I
Ross had bought a new pony for Isabella-Rose and he had his eye on a horse for himself which had won the second race of the day.
Few of the entries measured up to what would be considered a racehorse up-country. Most of them had been locally bred and, like their breeders, were a bit heavy in the beam for real speed. But Ross had been impressed by the way Bargrave – that was his strange name – had come back at the end of a mile and thrust his great hoofs into the soft and tiring turf and overhauled his rivals. There must be blood in him to do that. He was a four-year-old, so there was a good and honest life ahead. Pity if he had to be sold for a carriage horse, which would mean a further life of three more years at the outside. Ross had no ambition to burn up the countryside by taking fearsome gallops, but he liked and admired courage and willingness, and he thought Bargrave had both.
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