Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll just take the lamb pie.’

  After he was served she began to arrange some late daisies.

  He said: ‘I imagine he supposes that you would not want me to go.’

  ‘Do you have any doubts yourself ?’

  ‘Not sure.’ He contemplated telling her what Philip had told him, but decided he could not.

  She said: ‘I can think of six reasons why you should not go and only one why you should.’

  ‘And the one?’

  ‘You feel – responsible for him. His life has been warped by George’s jealousy, which you gave George good reason to feel.’

  ‘And the six?’

  She made a dismissive gesture. ‘You must know them all as well as I do. He knows you will not be an arbiter, will take his side against George. He knows you would take anyone’s side against George.’

  He said: ‘Have patience, my love. I have to think this out for myself.’

  ‘Then think,’ she said. ‘Don’t feel.’

  In the morning she said: ‘Are you going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it not have been better, then, not to have told me, as Valentine advised?’

  ‘Yes . . . But it would not have been fair to you.’

  ‘Why is it ever fair to me to run yourself into needless trouble and danger?’

  ‘Danger?’ Ross said. ‘Those days are long past. D’you realize, my love, that in all my association with George, all through the years, we have come to blows but twice, and once also, I believe, two or three of his footmen threw me out of the window. But all that was twenty or more years ago. George is twenty years older. So am I. We snap and snarl when we meet, but nothing more. Why, at the very last meeting earlier this year I called to see him! And though we were not friendly we came to an agreement – at my suggestion!’

  ‘To get Valentine out of a hole of his own making.’

  ‘Well, yes. He, I admit, is the contact point—’

  ‘The fuse?’

  ‘There’s no reason to suppose so. Admittedly George was in bed when I saw him then, and now he is well again maybe he regrets the business association. But there can be little physical danger in our meeting, however abusive either of us may become.’

  She said: ‘I really have nothing against you helping Valentine – if you can. But – but saving Valentine’s mine from bankruptcy and him from a debtor’s prison – that’s one thing, Ross. As to who brings up Valentine’s son – that may well be touching the most sensitive spot.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘I remember once going to Trenwith when I was likely to be thrown off his land – I think it was when Drake was in trouble. I took old Tholly Tregirls with me, and he carried a musket to protect me. It kept George’s servants in their place.’

  ‘I mind it well.’

  ‘Well, this time I think I must see Valentine. There is a greater compulsion than I am at liberty to explain to you. But I am taking another friend with me today. Not for physical protection but for having a cool, collected mind. Someone, I agree, whom George does not greatly care for. But then it will all, I trust, look like a coincidental meeting.’

  Her dark eyes went up to his, questing.

  He said: ‘Dwight has agreed to come.’

  The next morning was very dark. Just after dawn there was a gleam of ochreous sun, but soon the clouds closed down on the land and the wind blew a fog in, blanketing land and sea. As the daylight strengthened the fog grew thicker, moving in in massive clouds of vapour. The only consolation was that this was not the fuliginous sootiness that Bella was likely to be suffering in London. This came straight from the sea, smelling of the sea. The candles at Nampara stayed lit until ten.

  At fifteen minutes past eleven the indistinct figures of three horsemen appeared riding up the short drive to Place House. Valentine had had a half hope that the fog might have kept his visitors away, but, peering down at them from an attic window, he recognized George, the lawyer Hector Trembath, and one of George’s creatures called Blencowe. He thought as they dismounted that they looked like three black crows, bred of the fog, birds of ill omen. George had lost a bit of weight, but his shoulders were still heavy. Sight of that bull neck took Valentine back to his childhood.

  Little Georgie was up here playing with some building bricks. ‘Keep him here for as long as they stay, Polly. Don’t let him come down until I ring.’

  ‘No, Mr Valentine.’

  ‘You have buns and biscuits if he should get hungry. I hope to be rid of them well before dinnertime.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Valentine.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘What is it, sur?’

  Belched out by the fog from over the brow of the land two more figures had appeared, mounted women in this case. Selina Warleggan and Henrietta Osworth.

  ‘They come on in great array,’ said Valentine. He helped himself to the brandy. ‘Maybe we shall persuade them to take Butto in part exchange.’

  ‘You was always the comic one, Mr Valentine.’

  ‘Where is Mr Lake, do you know?’

  ‘No, sur.’

  ‘Waiting for night and Blucher, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Dodie, Dodie,’ Georgie piped. ‘Is Mammy coming today?’

  ‘Don’t ee worry, my lover boy. Twill all come right for ee sooner or later. Polly!’

  ‘Sur?’

  ‘Little sir has a mind of his own and can very easy slip away. Make sure he does not.’

  ‘Surely I will, sur.’

  At the window but from behind a curtain he watched the slow arrival of the two ladies. The three men waited for them and helped them down. Valentine looked north for sign of Ross, but even the mine was invisible. The eerie beat of the pumping engine could be heard – a mite irregular, he thought. Must point this out to Trebethick.

  Knocking on the front door. Valentine had instructed them to be shown into the big parlour at the side of the house. Butto was hooting. The damned ape, Valentine thought, was as good as a guard dog.

  Valentine went slowly down the stairs, carrying the brandy bottle and the temporarily empty glass. Butto had been restless these last few weeks, thumping at the wall, pulling things uselessly to pieces. Perhaps he had reached an age when he needed a mate.

  ‘Good day to you, Father.’ They were clustered together, all standing by the tall Georgian window. Although Selina was in dark green, the general impression was still of blackness, black jackets and waistcoats, black cravats, black breeches. They might, he thought, have come for a wake.

  ‘You were not put off by the fog?’

  ‘It is sunny on the south coast,’ said George curtly. He looked at the bottle in Valentine’s hand, the empty glass, the false pleasantness of the sardonic smile. ‘You received my letter?’

  Valentine said agreeably: ‘Yes. Otherwise I should not have been expecting you, should I?’

  George’s remark had been simply intended as an opening gambit. He bristled at what he took to be the facetiousness of the reply.

  ‘Sit down,’ Valentine said, waving the bottle. ‘Selina, welcome. Pray take the chair behind you. You must know how comfortable it is. I remember, when you were carrying Georgie, you said it was a support to your back.’

  Selina, erect as a guardsman now, took the edge of the seat. ‘Where is Georgie?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere about. I’m glad to say he is very well.’

  ‘Your father will have told you—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I have come to take Georgie home.’

  Valentine smiled. ‘He is home.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Home to me.’

  ‘This is your home.’

  Valentine had pulled a bell, and one of his servants, a low-browed swart man with a broken nose, came in with a tray.

  ‘Thank you, Humphries. Put the tray down. They may help themselves.’ To his visitors: ‘It is a good brandy, brought from Ireland only last week. Dawson will be in in a momen
t with hot chocolate and biscuits if anyone should wish to be more dashing. Ah, here he is. And David Lake too. Come in, David. Pray introduce yourself to anyone who does not yet have the privilege of your acquaintance.’

  There was a general movement and nodding.

  ‘Butto is making a racket,’ David observed, rubbing his hands and looking chubby and rotund in this chill company. ‘You can hardly hear him from here.’

  ‘He wants to join in the fun,’ Valentine said. ‘He likes new people to meet. But is not always partial to strange horses.’

  ‘This house, as you will observe, Trembath, is a totally unsuitable place in which to bring up an impressionable child. This great ape—’

  ‘Yes, Sir George.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Valentine. ‘Butto is entirely harmless, and indeed dotes on your grandson. As for it being unsuitable for me to own such an animal, I’d point out that your wife, Lady Harriet, keeps two great boar hounds as domestic pets, who roam about the house and among your children as well. And our neighbour, old Hugh Bodrugan of Werry House, has his private menagerie. And think of Lord Byron – Cuby Poldark’s cousin, though she makes little of it – Byron keeps a wolf, a bear, a monkey, a parrot and a tame crow. Even your brother-in-law, the Duke of Leeds, has a passion for owls—’

  George said: ‘And do they keep open house as a brothel?’

  ‘Wouldn’t answer for Byron, but—’. Valentine stopped and looked round the room. ‘Let’s see, who is living here, David? You know the composition of the household as well as I do. Tell Sir George.’

  David put up a plump hand and began to count the occupants on his fingers. ‘There’s you, Valentine. And me. (I like it too much to want to leave.) There’s Polly Stevens. There’s Georgie. And there’s the servants. Does Dawson sleep in? That’s five, then: old Mrs Craddock, two tweenies, one parlourmaid, Humphries and Dawson. No, six. Ten, all told.’

  ‘Any whores?’

  ‘No, alas. You gave ’em up about July. Mind you, we had a crashing good time while it lasted. But we turned over another leaf, didn’t we, old chap? Or you did. Said you found it boring.’

  ‘So it was,’ Valentine agreed. He emptied the brandy bottle into his glass and put the bottle beside two other empty ones on the mantelpiece waiting to be refilled. ‘Sex is an odd sort of a kind of a thing. I expect you’ve all noticed it. All you men have. Including you, Father.’

  George glanced straight ahead of him, tapped one of his leggings with his crop, as if he might have liked to lay it about his son.

  ‘In the sexual act,’ Valentine said, ‘gaining is all. I’ve thought this – and said this – often before, so there is nothing original in the thought. I had congress with my wife many times before we were married, in fact long before her elderly husband slipped his wind. In those days there was an element of the forbidden, an element of risk in our conjoining. That adds a dash of pepper to the dish. Even now there is a trace of reluctance in her attitude, whether real or feigned, I don’t know, which makes her specially attractive to me. Also because she resembles my mother. Would you not say so, Sir George?’

  Again George did not speak. Trembath had taken out a pocketbook and was making notes.

  ‘When she walked out on me, carrying away with her my little boy, I hoped she would come back because truly, y’know, she was the woman I always wanted for my wife. As for those girls we invited in from Truro and Redruth – and some even from as far afield as St Austell – their open mouths and open legs were scant attraction. It seemed to me that all they offered was acres of quiescent flesh. God, how in the end they all bored me!’

  George said: ‘I do not know if you are drunk or not, but this lewd dissertation can only come from the mouth of a rake and a libertine, who, patently, is totally unsuitable to act as the father of a child not yet two years of age—’

  ‘I am not acting as the father,’ Valentine interrupted. ‘I am the father! There is no disputed parentage in this case!’

  George breathed through his nose. ‘You are constantly offensive. I can very well understand that your wife, a well-brought-up and respectable woman, should no longer wish to share your house or to share your child—’

  There was a tap on the door, and Humphries came up and whispered something to Valentine.

  ‘Of course,’ said Valentine. ‘What a happy coincidence! Send him in.’

  ‘Very good, sur.’ He went back to the door and opened it wider. ‘Sir Ross Poldark,’ he said as the tall man entered. Humphries went out and shut the door behind him quickly, as if he had left a stick of gunpowder behind.

  Chapter Seven

  The trouble with Butto was not so much that he wanted a mate – though no doubt he would soon have felt the need if he knew such a creature existed – as that he was short of exercise, and of things to interest and engage his mind. Since his earlier escapes and since his master had devised a safety pen for him from which he could not set himself free, he had been given a few devices to occupy him: a swing, which he had quickly pulled to pieces; an old cannon ball, which did not fit the muzzle of the even older cannon brought over from a disused fort near St Ann’s; the ten-foot trunks of two oak trees on which he could sharpen his teeth and his claws; a rill of water, which emerged mysteriously out of an impenetrable gap in the brick wall and disappeared as mysteriously into a crack on the further side. He could not make sufficient use of this last, though it was convenient if he felt thirsty or needed a splash.

  What he enjoyed most was the companionship of Valentine. They had a vague and uncanny understanding of each other, and Butto had learned how to drink wine out of a mug, to smoke a fat cigar, to remember that one end of the cigar was hotter than the other and that they were not good to eat. He had especially enjoyed those times when his master had had noisy company to supper; he enjoyed being the centre of attention and having white animals with fuzzy hair and long thin arms and shrill voices who laughed at his antics.

  Of late these times had ceased and he could only remember them vaguely. Nor did he seem to see his master as often. The days were darkening and cooling and the extension of his territory had hardly compensated. The place under the earth was warmer and more comfortable, and he had made his den in the corner where the least light came in, piling up the straw and the bracken and the blankets to form a bed raised almost two feet off the ground, soft and mossy and homely. There he was quite content. But there was little to do but pick one’s toes and scratch and wait for the next meal.

  Meals, of course, were the events of the day. Sometimes his master, especially if he had some special treat in store, would tease him by calling to him through the door without opening it, and there would ensue a conversation between the man, talking to him in a language in which the word ‘Butto’ was constantly repeated, and the ape, responding with squeaks and grunts and immense roars of impatience and feigned anger until the door was opened and the feast brought in.

  Today was disturbing because for the first time for a long time there were many new animals around, stamping and neighing just like the times when he had sat at table with the noisy ones, and peeled yellow fruit and tried to eat the plates as well as the food that was on them.

  He thought he was missing something this morning. He wondered what he had done wrong. He had a grievance, and went out into the compound and hooted to be let out. The fog swirled around and muffled his protests. After a few minutes he gave up and snuffled and snarled his way down the steps to his lair. The day was so dark that he thought it might be all spent, and he sat on his bed and chewed a piece of one of his blankets in frustration.

  Coughing and whistling, he began to waddle around his cell. There was an old cupboard down here that he had pulled to pieces, and he grabbed up one of the shelves and split it with his fingers into long staves. Behind the cupboard there was the metal door that Butto had tried conclusion with before. He put his flattened nose to the edges of the door, where a faint light showed, and sniffed, at the same time tracing the edge of
the door with his fingernails. He leaned against the door. It gave a tiny creak but did not move.

  He shoved the door with his great shoulders. It did not yield. There was a smell of food reaching his nostrils. He took the handle of the door and gripped it. With a screech it came away in his hand. He pushed again. Just the same tiny creak. He took a couple of steps backwards and leapt at the door with all his enormous weight. The door flew back on its hinges, and he stumbled through.

  Darkness here, but a light above at the top of some steps. Not a yellow light, but pale light. And there was the sound of someone moving about. Another passage on this level, very dark. A smell that he recognized as belonging to that red drink like blood that he was given at the parties. Go down this way.

  The passage led to a square cellar, from which dull light was also issuing from a grid. The light showed casks. He went up to one and found a tap, but though he tried to turn it, it made nothing more available to him. He licked a spot or two of red off his fingers, recognized it, snuffled, padded on. Another room black as pitch, rubble under his feet. Pick a piece of it. Taste. Nasty. Piles of it. A grid here too. He backed down, blew through his lips. Blowing the taste away. It was so dark he lost his way, found more stairs. At the top a door. Go up; door on latch, lift catch. Butto looked in. Light here. This was the big room where the people all came to feed. Fog blanketed windows. Table with things on, but not food. Fire smouldering. Butto had cracked that mirror. Box of cigars. He took one out, smelt it, tried the taste, threw it away. Then he thought he remembered how it was done. He scrabbled another out of the box clumsily, broke it in two, got a third and put it in his mouth. Nothing happened. He tried to pick up a piece of the black earth in the fire, the way the man did, but it was too hot to hold and he dropped it in the grate. He sat back on his haunches and scratched his head. Something was wrong. Then with the cigar in his mouth he bent his head towards the fire, let the end make contact with a piece of earth where the black earth was gleaming, and saw the gleam catch onto the edge of the cigar. He took a breath and coughed. But a second breath was better. He drew in smoke. Tasted good. He sat back on his haunches again and enjoyed the triumph of doing what he had done at the big feasts in the house, copying his master. But now he had done it on his own.