Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  Demelza was thinking over the question of how her husband had come to visit Cardew, to have seen George so soon after his accident. But too many questions might seem too much of a good thing. It would come out soon enough.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it draws Philip more into our family.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Heider,’ said Maurice, coming off his rostrum, ‘can you move over front left as you begin the duet. Your tone blends most beautifully with Jean-Pierre’s, but from the auditorium his voice is too much modified by what he has to say to register as it should.’

  Sulkily Figaro moved a couple of paces to his left and then two more as Maurice continued to wave at him.

  Heider Garcia had been later than the rest to be engaged. As Bella knew, Maurice Valéry had been looking for someone younger, but could not find just what he wanted. There was no real reason why Figaro should be a very young man, except that throughout he behaved like one.

  Garcia was an old hand, had been in the opera world for thirty years, and he played in any part that suited his high baritone voice. A relative of the two better-known Garcias, he was a little bit on the way down, and the fact that he accepted a part with a provincial and untried company was proof of this. He felt himself rather above the rest of the cast, and took little notice of Bella except when he had to act and sing with her, which on stage was frequently. There he was co-operative but greedy. He thought himself the centre of the play and tried to make sure of that by the way he sang and acted. Twice already Maurice had taken him aside and explained to him that after all this was Bella’s first appearance, she was an amateur seeking to be a professional, poor girl, she (by implication) represented no threat to him and would be eternally grateful for his help. So could he please not try – or appear to try – to crowd her out?

  Now Maurice was trying to do the same for Jean-Pierre Armande, who was quite capable if need be of looking after himself. But it was the producer’s job to produce the piece as he chose and give his necessary directions in such a way that the members of the cast did not resent them and that they did not come to quarrelling among themselves.

  ‘You are exhausting yourself to death,’ Bella said, when eating supper with him later that evening. Today’s rehearsal had seemed to go on for ever, Maurice here, there and everywhere, directing, advising, cajoling, tireless and endlessly good-tempered. ‘Mon cher, that is too loud a protest. If it is quietly spoken it is much more funny. D’ye see?’ ‘Jean-Pierre, although it is all in good fun, I want you to inhabit the character. You must try to be him. When you turn away it must be in real despair.’ ‘Etienne, it does not so much matter where they are as how they are. Here, may I show you? You are over here and you begin your song. But the récit you have before it gives you reason to expect that the ladder is still there!’

  The dress rehearsal was tomorrow, the opening night on Monday. It was hoped to give at least three performances. After an unfortunate outbreak of summer cholera in the town there had been talk of a postponement, but it was decided to go ahead. Because of this certain areas of the town were out of bounds to the cast until the performances were over.

  ‘I am not exhausted at all,’ said Maurice, looking her over. ‘On the surface, yes, I puff, I gasp, I sigh, I shout, I tear at my hair, but this is not what is happening below. Underneath that is a – a steam engine which drives me on and replenishes my surface energies in sleep.’

  ‘You should take an early night tonight,’ Bella said. ‘There is so much to do tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe. But tomorrow is another day. Now we are at last alone I want to know if you have chosen your songs.’

  ‘I think I have. It will partly depend on what you think.’

  In the second act of Il Barbiere di Siviglia a music lesson takes place. Already in the few performances of the opera which had been given it had become an acknowledged privilege of the star playing Rosina to sing whatever songs she fancied. (After all, it is a music lesson.) In England Mrs Dickons had chosen to sing two of Rossini’s own arias taken from his other operas, but elsewhere in Europe other quite unrelated love longs had been chosen.

  Maurice had told Bella he thought it a brilliant idea if she would sing in English. At her protests he had said: ‘I assure you that there is no feeling against England at all now. The war has been over five years. Napoleon is permanently exiled. I think that if the audience likes your personality – as who could fail to? – and approves of your singing, this will greatly appeal to their good humour and good taste. Have you time to come to my rooms for one hour?’

  When Bella had not been able to choose two songs, he had sent his cousin to Paris, and he had returned with some English songbooks for her to try out.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Just for an hour.’

  His rooms were on the first floor of a tall lodging house, and contained, of course, the invaluable piano. He sat on a stool beside her while she first played and then sang the pieces she had provisionally chosen.

  The first was a late sixteenth-century piece called ‘With My Love My Life Has Nestled’ by Thomas Morley. The second was Purcell’s ‘Crown the Altar, Deck the Bay’.

  ‘These are splendid,’ Maurice said. ‘May I join you?’

  He pulled up his stool beside her.

  ‘I’ll take the bass, you take the treble.’

  ‘Two hands?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘We shall get entangled.’

  ‘No matter. One, two, three.’

  They began on the Morley piece. It went well. Then they tried ‘Crown the Altar’ and here his hand tried to touch the same key as hers. They both laughed. She removed her playing an octave up, but he did the same. There was the same contact and the session ended in more laughter.

  He kissed her. He said: ‘Is this not good? Music and love? It is everything that life has to offer!’

  Her left hand played a trill. ‘Are you telling me this or asking me this?’

  He kissed her again. ‘That is what I am saying. That is what I am saying. No more, no less.’

  Her right hand played an arpeggio. ‘Love, did you say? I thought you did not believe in love?’

  ‘I do not believe in marriage, for one is married to music. But perhaps for you I could contemplate even that.’

  ‘What a sacrifice!’ she exclaimed. ‘How you impress me!’

  ‘What is this that I feel for you but love? It is not just lust. It is not just desire. It is a true – emotion. Bella, you are very wonderful to me.’

  She got up, partly to distance herself from the proximity of his person.

  ‘And how long will it last?’

  ‘Love? Last? It will be sublime, like the “Moonlight” Sonata.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘When one is young it is not then that matters. It is now!’

  ‘You argue well, Maurice.’

  ‘And persuade, I trust?’

  She turned and smiled at him. ‘It is two days to the opening performance.’

  ‘They go together!’

  ‘They may. But we have so much to do, to think of, to concentrate on.’

  ‘You said they may. Is that a promise?’

  ‘How can you promise with a may? I expect it would be very easy for me to slip into an affaire . . .’

  ‘Let me help you.’ He came over to her.

  She said: ‘I heard from Christopher last week.’

  His face changed. ‘So? At last? What does he say?’

  ‘He thinks I have left him.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘I – don’t think so.’

  ‘But you are not sure. You are not as sure as when you helped him off the floor of the Pulteney Hotel.’

  ‘I have known him for a long time.’

  ‘And you have been amorous for a long time.’

  ‘Not amorous as you would describe it. But deeply affectionate and – and more.’

  ‘Is he at home now?’

  ‘No, still in Lisbon. Or
was when his letter was written. It has taken two weeks to reach me.’

  He went back to the piano and played one or two single, thoughtful notes.

  She shrugged into her cape. ‘Dear Maurice, I think I should go. We have a long day tomorrow. On Monday it is not just my reputation that is at stake, but yours. Much more yours, for I have no reputation – on the stage – to lose . . . Little of a normal reputation too, I conjecture, among my friends and family at home.’

  ‘Then lose what is left and be free!’

  She came up to him and he swirled round, kissed her passionately, lips, neck, eyes, until she was breathless. His hands were gently undoing buttons, but she stopped him.

  ‘Maurice. We cannot be free while this opera is upon us. You cannot be free. I cannot be free. I know it is not the end of the world for either of us. But just now it seems so. You tell me this is a comic opera – that the audience is there to enjoy it – that if the soprano is squeaky they will forgive it, that if the conductor misses a beat and the chorus is ragged and Figaro forgets his lines – as he did last night – and if the Count’s guitar is tuned to the wrong pitch – as you say happened at the very first performance – yet the audience will applaud just the same at the end.’

  ‘Not just the same. And not just at the end! This is France!’

  ‘But it has all yet to happen! I think it should – should be allowed to happen before we – before we commit ourselves further.’

  Maurice decided to smile. ‘I have reason to hope?’

  ‘For the success of the opera, yes.’

  They kissed again, and there was no lack of emotion on her side.

  As they separated she said: ‘My elder sister has two men who wish to marry her. But I suspect she cares deeply for neither. It seems that I also have two men who wish to marry me. (Though one of them has reservations about marriage.) At least I have two men who are very fond of me. And I—’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Unlike Clowance, I am very, very fond of them both.’

  ‘But one of your suitors is here by your side, ma chérie. The other is in Lisbon.’

  Paul Kellow took his sister Daisy to see Butto.

  The animal was still growing, and while of a continuing amiable disposition was now so formidable of appearance that unless Valentine was present he was never let out of his kitchen compound. Even this had had to be reinforced with iron staves let into the ground, lest Butto’s huge muscular weight flung against the brick should break the sides open as if they had been hit by a cannonball.

  Daisy had been unwell ever since the Christmas party, but it was a warm balmy day with little wind to trouble her, so Paul had brought a spare horse over from Ladock and had helped her to mount it and ride the three miles to Place House.

  Daisy, as always, was in high spirits. (It was the only good symptom of her illness.) She cooed delightedly when she saw Butto, who instantly took a liking to her and, though carefully watched by Valentine, allowed himself to be rubbed around the head and ears like a friendly dog.

  Valentine, flush with money made from an illegal shipment of a cargo of tin to Rosslare, and a shade relieved, in spite of himself, that he had disposed of his mine at a sensible profit to his well-wishers in the North Cornwall Mining Company – and also at the lifting of the threat of imminent arrest – was back almost to his best, elegantly clad, shiny of hair and healthier of skin. For the last week or two he had had no guests carousing in the house, and therefore less excuse to show off Butto and get drunk in the process. Also he had engaged a couple of extra servants on the proceeds of the prospective sale of Wheal Elizabeth, and they had cleaned the house up, bought new chairs to replace broken ones and cleaned the attics of the pungent stink of Butto. What was going to happen when winter returned he was not sure; possibly some form of heating could be contrived for Butto’s present outdoor residence. Nothing should induce him to part with the ape.

  They took tea – yes, genteel tea – in the larger drawing room. The one remaining guest, David Lake, joined them.

  Daisy was much changed, Valentine thought, from the days when rumour had linked her romantically with Jeremy Poldark. His own life had been disjointed in those days – sometimes he was at Trenwith – sometimes at Cardew – sometimes in London. But he remembered her then as a fresh-faced but high-coloured girl with her sister Violet. Violet had long since faded and died, and Daisy had developed prominent cheekbones and a febrile cough, her hair was lacklustre, her shoulders more bony.

  After tea he suggested they should walk to the sea and a short way along the cliffs to see the battered wreck of a fishing vessel that had come ashore in the gale of last week and was slowly breaking up. Daisy said she could not manage it. David said: ‘I’m lazy too,’ and stared down at his increasing belly and laughed. ‘You two go if you wish. I’ll stay with Daisy, entertain her with stories of your misdemeanours.’

  So Valentine and Paul went off alone.

  They first discussed the mine. Turning the crisis to his own advantage, Valentine told the story as if he had got the better of this new company led by the inexperienced and gullible Philip Prideaux.

  At this Paul said: ‘Prideaux. He is in everything. He seems to be meddling in too many county matters.’

  ‘He has recently meddled in mine to good effect. But I owe him no thanks. He has been a figurehead and has made rather a fool of himself – as well as of his employers.’

  Paul picked a length or two of grass and sucked them. All this sloping cliff top was covered with heather and gorse. Wildlife abounded. The great black-backed gulls hung and swooped in the gentle wind, on the lookout for a baby rabbit that had strayed from its burrow. Spiders’ webs glistened in the sun.

  Valentine went on talking, speculating aloud, observing that it was only just over the next hill that Agneta’s body had been found, describing some of Butto’s latest antics, how he had caught one of the maids by an apron string and pulled and pulled until she let him have the apron and ran screaming into the kitchen. She left the next day, walking back to Camborne whence she had come only the week before.

  ‘You’ll not find many maids will stay here,’ Paul said.

  ‘We are down to two. But men will do well enough if paid well enough.’ Seeing Paul’s lowering face Valentine said: ‘Daisy likes my ape. She is in very good spirits today. Maybe you will stop and sup with us?’

  Paul picked another strand of grass. ‘Daisy is dying, just like Violet and Dorrie. But she is of tougher stuff than they were. She’ll take some killing.’

  Valentine tutted. ‘Too bad to have that in the family. Your mother and father are pretty well for their age?’

  ‘My father is a drunken sot. Over the years I have found means to help him. Various means, legal and illegal. He has drunk the money I have made for him . . . My mother is a crouching, creaking old biddy who feels the world has treated her rough. So it has! But she does not have the courage to hit back. She creeps about as if she is afraid a thunderbolt may fall on her. I at least . . .’

  ‘You at least?’

  ‘Did you know – I think I have told you – that when I married Mary she was a healthy young woman of twenty. Now she is scrofulous like the rest. I suppose I am accursed too. But I have had ways of hitting back!’

  ‘Stephen Carrington in his cups one night hinted at something of the sort.’

  ‘The fracas in Plymouth Dock when Stephen killed the man from the press gang? Yes . . . Later, a matter of – of shall we call it a robbery? Your half-brother – cousin, what you will – he was in that. On the proceeds he was able to buy a commission in the Army and live a high life in Brussels. Stephen financed his shipping firm in Penryn. I – what did I do? – hand-fed my father who, so soon as he had any spare capital, poured it down his throat!’

  There was scarcely any sound but the humming of flies and bees. The sea was a metal-blue slate on which two fishing boats scrawled a lazy arc.

  ‘Down there,’ said Valentine, pointing. ‘It has
nearly all gone. You can just see the bows. The Tresawna from St Ives. The crew climbed out onto the rocks and when the tide went out they were able to walk round to Trevellas Porth.’

  ‘Mary – my wife – has now lost all her hair,’ said Paul, his expression muted. ‘She is being fitted for a wig.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘This has all happened since Christmas?’

  ‘The disease progresses in fits and starts.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  They walked on.

  Paul said: ‘D’you ever think those screaming gulls sound like women being tortured? Please! Please!’

  ‘Is there some point in your telling me all this, Paul?’

  ‘All what? About the diseases of my womenfolk?’

  ‘And your earlier adventures. I cannot cry for you. We are all masters of our own fate. Or is that too tedious a concept for you?’

  ‘I do not accept the fate that a cruel God has designed for me. I perceive that you are of the same breed.’

  ‘I rather think I am more closely related to Butto. I like to thump my chest and snarl. But within I’m really a peaceable soul.’

  ‘Well, it seems to be fairly common knowledge that you employ a fishing drifter to ferry forbidden goods across to France, and bring back tea and silks and brandies and the like.’

  ‘Au contraire, my dear chap. I follow a perfectly commonplace trade with my little brig between Padstow and Rosslare. There is nothing illegal about that.’

  Paul smiled thinly. ‘Well, no one supposes I am doing anything illegal in my commonplace life. If there is a God – or if there is only the Devil – He may know different. I am delighted to shake my fist in His face and spit in it too.’ He followed the words with the action, his face temporarily ugly with anger and resentment.

  ‘If you don’t believe in God, why are you so angry with Him?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I hardly ever think about it. My mother used to make me go to church, to say my prayers. When she died giving birth I stopped all that.’

  ‘And you try to revenge yourself on Him?’