Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  Demelza watched a gull standing beside a pool and preening its wings in the elderly sunlight.

  ‘All my life now I shall feel in debt to him. But it is not because of that in any manner at all that prompts me to ask you if you – if you like him?’

  ‘Like him? Most assuredly. During my brother’s bankruptcy he has been a real friend to me – to us all.’

  The gull cocked a suspicious eye at the tethered horses and waddled off.

  Demelza stared out at the sea.

  ‘D’you know – have you noticed how beautiful a swell is when it is moving into the shore on a great beach like this? Often I watch it from the house. The surface of the sea is quite unbroken, and it seems to move more slowly than the wave under it. There’s a sort of back-turning of the surface, you see, which makes a great camel-shaped ridge far out and stretches itself smaller and sharper as it comes in, until the fine edge can stand no more and bursts into a lovely white froth of spray.’

  ‘I often watched it at Caerhays,’ Cuby said, ‘though it is never so fine on the south coast.’ She picked up a handful of fine sand and let it trickle through her fingers. ‘Do you not like him?’

  ‘Philip? Oh yes. Very much.’

  ‘Well, it seems Clowance is very happy with Lord Edward. She certainly deserves better than Stephen Carrington!’

  Demelza persevered. ‘Forgive me, tis not – it is not proper that I should ask this. But you will understand that I ask it out of love.’

  Cuby’s dark-fringed hazel eyes were narrowed in the sun. ‘You mean, am I – more than fond of Philip? It – it could be, were circumstances different.’

  Neither spoke for a while. Cuby said: ‘I was remembering only the other day the fifteenth of June five years ago. We were in Brussels, Jeremy and I, spending the evening together. Jeremy had returned the tickets he had been able to get for the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, and we supped quite alone in our favourite little restaurant on the corner of the square. Although it was an anxious time, it was also a happy one – happy for us because we were so – so wrapped up in each other. We discussed the coming baby, although I was then only four months forward, and I said I would prefer a girl, and he said, well, if we have to wait till Christmas perhaps we shall call her Noelle. It was all light-hearted, but all heavy-hearted too. He – he tried to reassure me by telling me how inaccurate the British musket was. It was a wonder, he said, how it ever shot anyone. Then we went back to our apartment – you remember it? – and lay together in the dusk, still talking, still loving, until there was a tap on the door, and it was Jeremy’s orderly with a message from Sir William de Lancey, the Quartermaster General, ordering Jeremy to rejoin his company and to leave at once for – for I think it was Braine-le-Comte. That night. That moment.

  ‘I helped him pack and dress. There were lonely horns blowing somewhere outside, and the shrill fifes. We talked as he got ready to leave. We had planned a little supper party for the following week. He promised – he promised to be back in good time for that, “after our little skirmish”. My heart was full. But even so, I did not believe I should never see him again. I did not! I did not! It was against nature! It was against our youth! Oh, we should breathe such a happy sigh of relief when he came home! It had been quite a fight, but . . . it was all over now. Now we could go on with our supper party, happy to be together again, happy it was all over, at least for the time being. When – when he left I put my head against the door and wept. But it was with tears of sadness and anxiety, not the deadly tears of bereavement. I knew in my soul he would come back. But he never did. He never, never, never did . . . I still recall the press of his lips when he left that night . . .’

  Demelza had put her hand to her heart. ‘Stop. You’ve said enough. I should not have asked you—’

  Cuby smiled at her through her tears. ‘Perhaps you should. Perhaps, as usual, you see more than most of us. Perhaps you see that I am lonely. Noelle is a comfort and a joy, yet it seems to me as she nears her fifth birthday I am becoming more lonely, not less. At first it is like – like living with low horizons, but each year the horizons get wider, and now life seems to stretch ahead in a great empty desert. Do I sound sorry for myself ?’

  Demelza brushed her hand across her eyes. ‘At least tis good that we can talk.’

  ‘Strangely,’ Cuby said, ‘life with Jeremy has quite spoiled me for life as a Trevanion. I am fond enough of my mother; I love Clemency; I tolerate John and Augustus. But I am no longer part of the family. I am an alien to their standards. It may do me good to marry again, if the opportunity comes my way, but I do not think it will.’

  ‘It could,’ Demelza said.

  ‘To Philip? He had eyes for no one but Clowance. Still has!’

  ‘He could be lonely too.’

  ‘Is loneliness a good foundation for a marriage?’

  ‘Sometimes; affection can grow. Forgive me, I have said enough. Far too much, I reckon. You are right – loneliness is not enough, especially for one so young as you are. I must take care of my own garden.’

  Cuby patted her mother-in-law’s hand. ‘He is quite the hero in this week’s paper. There will be many pretty girls waiting to swoon at his touch.’

  ‘I have seen him looking at you,’ said Demelza.

  ‘So he should,’ said Cuby, ‘but he sees, as everyone sees, a sad widow with an orphan child.’

  ‘You must not think of yourself like that. If you think like that you will look like that. You say you are not a Trevanion any more. Well, you are a Poldark.’

  ‘I am still sister of a notorious bankrupt and widow of a brave but penniless soldier. Come, my dearest mother-in-law, let us remount and gallop home. Perhaps that will rid us of our sick fancies.’

  Chapter Five

  Christopher arrived to collect Bella on the twentieth of November, and they started for London on the following day.

  Clowance had sent a warm invitation to Bella to stay in Lansdowne House. Left to make her own decision, Bella had tactfully and affectionately and sweetly refused. She said eventually to Demelza: ‘Lord Edward has given me this chance. I cannot, simply cannot, accept anything more. I must, must stand on my own feet.’ To Demelza’s reply that ‘only the jealous will care’, she had replied: ‘I know. I cannot help it, Mama. I am so sorry.’

  Christopher had said that without some sort of marriage ceremony, which at present Bella had ruled out, they could not occupy together the new house in Green Lane; so, feeling that all their earlier promises to each other were being held in abeyance, he had let the house furnished on a lease of six months. (He was lying. He had sold the house because he needed the money for something else.)

  In the end, after thinking of and discarding Mrs Parkin’s lodgings in George Street, she had decided to go back to stay with Mrs Pelham. A long and affectionate and apologetic letter had done the trick, and Mrs Pelham, privately glad of the renewed companionship, had agreed to take her for the next two months.

  So all was as before. Or almost as before. She went to see Frederick McArdle, who was a black-browed, hard-faced Ulsterman with big hands and clumsy movements, and a high reputation in the theatre.

  She also met Joseph Glossop, the present owner of the theatre, who was stout and astute and scrupulously polite. His politeness did not prevent him from eyeing Bella with professional interest, and he was present when McArdle asked her to recite a speech from Act 3 Scene 2, where Juliet hears that Romeo has killed Tybalt, beginning ‘O serpent heart hid with a flow’ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?’

  Helpfully Mr Glossop offered her the pre-marked text, but Bella for two weeks had been soaking herself in Mrs Hemple’s school copy and was able to speak it unprompted. When it came to an end, she stopped. ‘It is the nurse now. Do you wish me to go on?’

  After a brief pause, each man waiting for the other, McArdle said: ‘Nay, nay, that is well said. Now, please, just a little passage from Balthasar. “I brought my master news of Juliet’s death.” Act 5 Sc
ene 3. Just a few lines!’

  Bella obliged, slightly roughening her voice to speak it.

  ‘Ver-ry satisfactory. We will be starting with a read through next Monday. I will see Captain Havergal is in-formed.’

  When Christopher came to Hatton Garden that evening he said that McArdle had sent a special message by his grandson to the Rothschild Bank saying that he would be prepared to engage Miss Poldark as a standby to Charlotte Bancroft and to take the part of Balthasar in the play itself. For this they were prepared to pay £4 a performance, increased to £15 if by any chance she had to go on for Mrs Bancroft.

  Christopher said: ‘You have taken the first step, my sweetheart. It is not a king’s ransom, but it is a start.’

  ‘I can’t wait for it to begin,’ Bella said. ‘Will you come to the first performance, Aunt?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Mrs Pelham. ‘I have never been to the Coburg. It is quite respectable, Christopher?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. More so than some of the fashionable theatres, which are overrun with prostitutes. The neighbourhood is poor, but it is being reclaimed by the Waterloo Bridge Company. Clearly it is to their interest to develop the area, as it collects the tolls.’

  ‘One thing I noticed as I came out,’ Bella said. ‘There was a poster advertising coming productions, and one was called Two Lovers of Verona. That is in December too.’

  ‘That is our production,’ he said. ‘Owing to an obsolete law, only two theatres are allowed to put on Shakespeare: Drury Lane and Covent Garden. They therefore have the pick of actors and possible productions. There is a strong and bitter feeling among all the other theatres – the new ones like the Royal Coburg and the Surrey and the Olympic and the old ones like the Haymarket and King’s – that this law cannot last much longer. It will be overthrown by public feeling; but until that happens these other theatres have to find a way round the Patent Law. So sometimes they evade it by setting a Shakespeare play to music, sometimes by altering the title and a few lines here and there.’

  ‘It did not say Two Lovers of Verona was by Shakespeare.’

  ‘It will say so on the programme. Everybody knows the truth.’

  ‘You have been to this theatre, Christopher?’ Mrs Pelham asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. I took Bella twice last year. Edward Fitzmaurice, as you know, is a patron.’

  ‘I thought it was a lovely theatre,’ Bella said. ‘Much more modern than – some of the others.’

  She had been going to say ‘than the theatre in Rouen’, but thought it better not to refer to the Théâtre Jeanne d’Arc in the present company.

  ‘I go seldom to the theatre these days,’ Mrs Pelham said. ‘There is so very little put on but spectacles and performing animals and battle scenes. I don’t think it is because I am old that I feel there is this change for the worse.’

  ‘The public is changing,’ Christopher said. ‘The two Patent Theatres are now so big that they must appeal to a huge audience nightly. Many of the new middle classes don’t have much taste but they have the money, and there are not enough of the old aristocracy to fill the great theatres without them. That is why Edward Fitzmaurice and those like him are helping the smaller theatres by putting money into them. A lot of the stuff now on at the Coburg and elsewhere is melodrama – trivial rubbish, but they are trying hard to improve. Glossop has poached McArdle from Drury Lane for this production and probably will entice one or two more of his actors from the patent theatres.’

  ‘One thing, Christopher,’ Bella said. ‘You must teach me to walk.’

  ‘Walk?’

  ‘Like a man. And sit like one. Have the – the mannerisms of one. After all, we have two good weeks.’

  ‘Oh, gladly,’ said Christopher. ‘You are a quick mimic.’

  ‘I suppose it is in the tradition,’ said Mrs Pelham. ‘The best tradition. But it seems all a trifle improper to me.’

  George said: ‘Well, I cannot accept this situation. Though I hold you largely to blame for the dilemmas in which you find yourself. You should have taken better care of the child!’

  ‘How was it possible?’ Selina burst out. ‘I only have two servants! I can only afford two on what you pay me! Henrietta took him for a walk and they were in waiting!’

  ‘Have you been to Place since then?’

  ‘Of course! At first I did not know what had happened. Then I rode over with Henrietta on the Thursday morning. He would not let me see him!’

  ‘Valentine would not let you see young George? What did he say?’

  ‘That if I came back to Place and resumed my place as a wife I could resume my place as a mother!’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ Harriet asked.

  Selina gave her a look of pure hatred. ‘Would you?’

  Harriet made a gesture. ‘It’s a point. You are not me. I did not marry the man. Presumably when you did you were in love with him. Or what passes for love. You found him attractive. He went against his father’s strongest wishes in marrying you. So at one time you cared for each other—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ George said, in annoyance, ‘it is no good quarrelling. This matter should be viewed all round. Did you go into Place House?’

  ‘As far as the front rooms.’

  ‘How did you find them? Was there – any sign of debauchery – of wild living?’

  ‘You could hardly expect it, could you! This was eleven o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Were there any other women about?’

  ‘Not that I saw. Perhaps they were still sleeping off the night’s drinking.’

  ‘Who is looking after Georgie?’

  ‘A local woman, Polly Stevens.’

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘I know her as someone in the village. Valentine informed me that she had been his nurse when he was a child.’

  ‘Oh, Polly Stevens. Odgers that was. My wife – my first wife engaged her. So she is a – well, a respectable woman, reasonably reliable. You will understand, Selina, if this comes to a court case, the defence will argue that a father has the prior right to his son. If it could be proved that his father’s habit of life was disorderly, that he consorted with harlots, that the house was not fit for a child to be brought up in, then custody might just be granted to the wife. But an ecclesiastical court will take a very lenient view of a man who is being deprived of help and companionship because his wife has left him and will not return. There might well be a counter-petition brought by Valentine for the restitution of his conjugal rights.’

  Selina looked more cat-like than ever, and her breast rose and fell. ‘That would be utterly disgraceful!’

  ‘Disgraceful it might seem to you. But the law sees the situation with dispassionate eyes.’

  After a pause Harriet yawned. ‘Go back to him. He did not keep a disorderly house when you were there.’

  ‘Be quiet, Harriet,’ George snapped. ‘Selina has put herself under my protection. I am trying to see all round it. By stealing his son back Valentine holds the advantage.’

  George’s statement had pleased Selina. She said: ‘We could take him back in the same way.’

  George looked up. ‘I am not prepared to break the law. I never have on my own behalf, so . . .’

  ‘You will not do it on mine! But is it breaking the law? This is a family dispute!’

  ‘You might try financial pressure,’ suggested Harriet.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ George demanded.

  ‘Because, my dear, it is your custom to see everything through a distorting spyglass – the glass having a mercantile handle and a financial frame.’

  This took a little digesting. George was not sure whether his wife meant to be amusing or offensive, but he was not pleased at Harriet’s outspokenness in front of another woman.

  However, Selina cared nothing for the metaphor. ‘Does he owe you money?’

  ‘No.’ George had clammed up.

  ‘Philip was telling me that Valentine has made a fortunate strike in his mine,’ Harriet said
, ‘but don’t you own that mine?’

  ‘The Bank does. A share of it. As you know.’

  ‘What is the share?’

  ‘Why do you not ask Philip? He knows everything.’

  ‘Not everything. Nor have I ever asked him about the composition of this new company. He simply remarked about the find of – of tin, is it – as a reason for his late arrival yesterday.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ George said, ‘Warleggan’s Bank owns forty-nine per cent of the shares in Wheal Elizabeth.’

  ‘So,’ Selina said, ‘you could threaten, if he does not give up Georgie, that you could close the mine.’

  George said carefully: ‘I have not yet – the Bank has not yet received a report from Trebethick, the mine manager. Prideaux is an amateur, a figurehead put there for a purpose. I would need a full evaluation before even threatening to cut down a promising venture.’

  Harriet got up. ‘I must go and see to the hounds. My advice to you, Selina, is to return to Valentine. Once you are in the house there could be really little difficulty in leaving again with Georgie under your arm when the opportunity arises.’

  Letter from Isabella-Rose Poldark.

  Dearest Papa and Mama,

  Well, here I am, comfortably settled down in Hatton Garden, daily travelling across the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge and attending at the Royal Coburg Theatre. Incidentally, I asked Mr Glossop how the theatre came by its name, and he told me it is under the patronage of His Serene Highness Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the husband of our English Princess Charlotte of Wales, who would have been heir to the throne had she lived. I do not think from what has been said that either Prince or Princess went out of their way to make a lot of their patronage, but it does provide a good name for a theatre, and the use of the word ‘Royal’ gives it special prestige.

  The casting is now complete and is as follows:

  Me – Balthasar, Romeo’s servant. There does not seem much to guide me as to how he has been played in the past, but if Romeo is only about twenty I shall expect to look young too.