Bella Poldark (25 page)

'Oh?' And then: 'What did you say?''I said I would think it over.'

'And are you?'

'What, thinking it over?'

'No, going to marry him.'

'I don't know. I'm thinking it over.'

'Do you love him?'

'Not the way I did Stephen.'

They thought of this together.

"I suppose there are more ways than one of loving a man,' said Bella.

'Oh, yes. He's . . . eligible.'

'Good-looking.'

'I'm glad you think so. He - says he has money enough.'

'That's not a disadvantage. It would mean you would sell your shipping line.'

'Such as it is, yes.'

'You must be tired of it, Clowance?'

'I am not tired of my independence.'

'Ah . . . That's another matter.'

'You see . . .', the elder girl struggled with her words,

'you see, I like Philip. At first, not so. I thought he was well, certainly not for me. But as time has passed I have grown to like him very much. He is a victim of the war just as Christopher is - but in a different way. He is - very high-strung, taut - sometimes it seems almost overmastering. But I have helped him - could do more. I - at times we still bicker a little with each other, but it is quickly made up and no longer seems to matter. And his company is stimulating. I lack company in Penryn. Except for Harriet Warleggan and one or two such as she, I have few friends. And most of those have families - interests of their own . . . But at the moment I have an uncomfortable feeling

'What is that, m'love?' Unusual, the younger girl counselling the older. Bella's time in London had already matured her in a way that gave her the edge of experience over the provincial Clowance.

'I am still - partly in love with Stephen. At the end I almost - almost came to hate him. Yet he is the one I fell in love with at first sight. In a way I know now I am, sort of, remembering a fallen idol. I should forget him. But, when it comes to the physical part of marriage, should I? Should I?'

The clouding sky was miles high today. Bella thought she heard a lark. She said: 'Perhaps we have been brought up too well?'

'How do you mean? Given too much of our own way?'

'No, not that . . . Clowance, I do not wish to shock you, but if your experience was not with just one man, I mean if you had had love affairs with three or four men before your marriage, the attentions of one man, the art of love would not seem so special and you had nothing else, no one else, to compare it with.'

'I think, Bella, you do shock me!'

Bella laughed. 'Well, is it not so? Women are so gravely disadvantaged compared with men. Men have all sorts of experiences before they marry - that is not shocking, nor does it belong only to one class, it is expected of them. They think it is their right!'

Clowance smiled in return. 'That's the way of the world. Alas. Or perhaps alas. You would not have me frolicking with all sorts of young men even before I met Stephen? Should I be better equipped now to take another husband? Would I?'

Bella said: 'Yes.'

They both laughed again. Clowance said: 'So I am supposed to think you have been living a randy life in London for upwards of a year? Perhaps even with Christopher? Perhaps with someone else? Is that the cause of the delayed marriage?'

'That's clever, Clowance, but you are wrong. But there are other reasons why I am not sorry for the delay. Especially to come down here among my own family and take a few deep breaths. Sometimes one feels - do you feel? - that your own family is better than any other? You grow up to certain standards ..."

'Don't talk to me about standards! One thing I know for sure, that Philip's standards are higher than Stephen's were. I - have another man who is proposing I shall marry him, and I daresay his standards are even higher than Philip's--'

' Clowance, who -- '

'But does one marry standards? Does Christopher ever deliberately lie to you, Bella? Or would he? Stephen did many times, but, I ask you, does it matter?'

Bella patted her sister's hand. 'Yes, I think he may have lied to me. Or -- at least -- he may not have spoken, when not to speak amounts to a sort of lie. Yes, I think it does matter. But who is this other man? Do tell. Do I know him?'

Clowance shook her head. 'Lips sealed. For the time being, at least. Do not tell Mama!'

'I promise. "Cross me throat and spit to die," as Prudie used to say.'

'Because Mama's perceptions are altogether too sharp. It is so good to have you home, Bella, if only for a short time. You have grown up - so grown up. It would be good if we could stay here all together as a family for just a few months.'

'I know. I know!'

They had come back to the stile which led into the garden of Nampara. A curtain of mist hung over the Black Cliffs at the further end of Hendrawna Beach, most of it caused by spray hitting the tall rocks and drifting before the breeze. There was a heavy swell which reached far out to sea, and a couple of fishing boats from St Ann's had gone scudding back to the safety of the very unsafe harbour. Gulls were riding the swell, lifting high and low as the waves came in; occasionally they took to the air in a flurry of flapping white when a wave unexpectedly spilled its head. No one yet expected rain: that would be tomorrow. The sun was losing its brilliance and hung in the sky like a guinea behind a muslin cloth. Clowance squinted up at the weather.

'Have you got a watch?'

'No. Not one that goes.'

'It must be an hour since we finished dinner. It wants four hours until dusk. I have a mind to visit Valentine today. What do you think?'

Bella said: 'There are a few of those bananas left that you brought with you.'

'Did you like them?'

'Yes, I did rather.'

'They come every month now to Penryn Quay. Most of them have to be cooked because they're over-ripe. But this bunch was just ripe.'

'The ape - Button, is it?'

'Butto.'

'Butto. We might take a few with us to see if he fancies them.'

As they came in sight of Place House they had a good view of the workings of Wheal Elizabeth, which almost straddled the bridle path near the house. The headgear had grown considerably this year, but there was still no sign of any fire engine or pumping gear. They were greeted respectfully by the only two miners visible above ground, edged their horses round a monstrous mound of attle, of which many tons had already been tipped or slid down the sloping cliff into the sea.

'It is not a pretty house,' said Bella, as they clattered up the short cobbled drive. All seemed quiet. A horse whinnied in the stables, and Nero snorted his response. Dismount at the stone step, tether their animals and go up the three steps to the front door. Clowance gave the bell a healthy tug. They waited. Now they could hear voices, laughter, shouts, before the footsteps in the flagged hall. The door squeaked open. A stocky man in a black coat and a striped apron looked out. Neither of them had seen him before.

'Yus?'

'I hope Mr Valentine is at home,' Clowance said. The man stared at them, then past them at their tethered horses. 'That depends.'

More footsteps in the hall. The tall, debonair figure of Valentine. But he was not very debonair today. His black lank hair was awry, and someone had spilled wine down his shirt front.

'Clowance! And B-bella! Well, damn me. Well, damn my eyes. Have you come to dinner? We h-have all but finished!'

'At four o'clock,' said Clowance, guessing at the time and smiling. 'You eat late, cousin. Perhaps we may call again--'

'Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay. Come in! Come right in! Come in and meet my friends. All right, Dawson, don't h-hold the damned door like we were in a damned fortress! Well, my grandfather's ghost, this is a surprise! We can offer you a slice or two of goose, and a pot or two of brandywine. Let me greet you!'

He kissed them both on the lips with gusto, breathing spirituous fumes, then took each by the hand and led them towards the big dining room at the back of the hall. The table was laden with half-eaten food, wine glasses, bottles, crockery; and a half-dozen people were still lolling over the remnants of the feast. The girls recognized only David Lake; Ben Carter would have known two of the women from their encounter some time ago. Two other men. And, at the head of the table, half-crouched, one huge hand clutching the arm of the chair, the other feeding an apple into his mouth, was the great ape they had come to see.

'Why do you not sit down?' Valentine invited. 'Dawson, bring the ladies a couple of extra chairs. And a drink of brandywine. Heigh-ho, me darlings!'

Bella looked at Clowance, who spread her hands slightly in a disclaiming gesture and took the seat she was offered. They were taking in the condition of the room. A tall mirror beside the window was cracked from top to bottom, with a hole halfway down as if a cannonball had shattered it. Two chairs had lost their legs and lolled in drunken partnership beside the fireplace, and some of the wallpaper had been torn.

'But you have not met Butto,' said Valentine, leaning tipsily over them. 'I am sure you will be de-delighted to meet him. Butto, these are my two beautiful cousins. My beau-beau-beautiful cousins.'

'Good day to you,' said Clowance. Butto snarled in a reasonably good-tempered way.

'We've brought you some bananas,' said Bella, opening the bag she carried. 'I wonder if he would like them.'

'Now, now,' said Valentine, suddenly sharp. 'Quiet, boy. Stay where you are. Quiet, boy. There, that's a good fellow. See what your friends have brought you. Ah, ah, don't snatch.'

A banana was passed up. A great hand, the fingers as thick as if wearing winter gloves, was thrust out to accept the gift. The red tongue showed and the great white teeth. The ape shuffled in his chair, a crest of short hair on his forehead began to twitch up and down and with great delicacy he peeled the banana and began to eat it. There was a roar of applause from round the table. 'So he's seen 'em before!' 'So he knows what they are!' 'Shows where he comes from!' The banana was gone in no time, the jaws ceased to champ and the banana skin was suddenly flung across the table, where it caught one drunken man a slap on the side of the face. Helpless laughter all round. Butto chattered and held out his hand for another. Bella slipped a second banana out and passed it up the table, while careful to conceal that she had two more.

'Do you have him down to all meals?' Clowance asked.

'How pretty you are, cousin. I had almost forgot. You are always hiding yourself in Penryn . . . No, Butto only comes down on special occasions -- don't you, boy? -- when I have parties. Like this. Butto is the life and soul of any party, as you can well see. Do you know I am teaching him to smoke!'

'Do try again, Val,' shouted David Lake. 'It fair kills me to watch him!'

'No, he's getting too excited. I shall take him upstairs in a few minutes. You have two more bs?' Valentine whispered to Bella. 'Keep them back. They will be ideal for enticing him to bed. I am running short on fresh fruit at the moment.'

'Val gave him a cigar last month, the first one: I was here,' David Lake shouted. 'Val showed him how to do it puff, puff, with a spill - then asked Butto to do the same. Butto looked at the cigar - one of our best - then put it in his mouth and ate it! I wet myself laughing!'

'As you can see,' Valentine said, 'he's getting the hang of it -just by watching me, but he is a small matter afraid of the burning spill. I must try to get something less flickery. Maybe I could light it myself and pass it over!'

Another man staggered into the room. He was instantly recognizable as Paul Kellow, but it was not quite the Paul the girls knew. Whatever the problems facing him, he had always seemed in perfect control of himself and confident of his ability to deal with any situation that arose. Now he was comprehensively drunk. He lurched into the room, clutching at a chair and a sideboard to remain upright, negotiated his way to an empty chair at the end and hiccuped noisily.

'By God! I have lost most of my entrails!' He gazed blearily up the table and said: 'I wish I had the capcapacity--'. He stopped when he saw the two new arrivals. 'Clowance, Isabelly-Rose, where - where in purple hell have you come from?'

'They came to dinner,' said Valentine, 'but mistook the time.'

'Isabelly-Rose!' screamed one of the girls, who reminded Bella of Letty Hazel. 'You are a perfect shriek, Paul, are you not?'

Valentine's attention was drawn to Butto, who had slipped out of his own chair and was on the prowl. One banana skin still dangled from his jaws.

'Do you still keep him in the house?' Clowance asked Valentine incredulously.

'No, it was only for the first weeks. When I bought him, sweetheart, I did not know what his full size was going to be. He was no use upstairs in the attics. D'you remember the panelled ones?'

'No.'

'Well, he removed the panels. He pulled them screeching out of the wall with his own fingernails.'

'How do the servants cope with this?'

'Oh, most of the old ones have left. I have new ones, like Dawson. They are tough, not scary-kids like the old - and they know what to expect.'

'And is Butto not dangerous?'

'Lord bless you, sweetheart, he wouldn't hurt a - a fly. Least unless the fly annoyed him.'

'So you must be careful not to annoy him?'

'He knows I'm his friend. And he knows I'm his master. It is all a tremendous lark.'

'Do you ever hear from Selina?'

'Only if she is short of money.'

'Do you send her some?'

'No. She should come back to live here.'

'I do not suppose, do you, that she would like to see the house being used as it is.'

'If she came back she could change it'

'Do you want her back?'

Valentine stared blearily at his cousin. 'Blood and bones, what do you think? I've had a long-time fancy for her, as you well know. She should accept my terms!'

'And they are reasonable?'

'I think so. I do not sleep with Butto, as you well may imagine! I have these whores in from Truro and Falmouth, but them I could easily dispense with. I never brought any here when she was here! I was not dog-faithful to her, as also you must well know. But what man is? She imp-imp imposed impossible terms. I have a right to my son. He should be brought up here, instead of being dragged about the London suburbs at his mother's whim!'

At that moment Butto jumped on the table and walked bow-legged down it, the table creaking under his great weight, crockery and silver flying. He came to a crouching stop and squatted opposite Bella. He patted his mouth with the back of his hand in what looked like a polite yawn and grumbled encouragingly.

'Ah, ah,' said Valentine, 'he has spotted where the bananas come from! Let me have them, Bella. This calls for a little delicate nigoshiashun!'

When Clowance got home again to Penryn she felt the change more than she liked to admit. Ever since Stephen's death she had been lonely, but a toughness and resilience in her nature had enabled her to keep the loneliness at bay. It was just not good enough, she thought, that five years after his death she should miss him more than ever before.

But in a different way. Perhaps, she told herself scornfully, what she was really missing was the loving companionship of a man. (Any man?) Possibly the two proposals of marriage within a month of each other had pointed the issue and thrust her feelings into a new and uneasy depression.

Edward Fitzmaurice had written:

My dear Mrs Carrington, Dear Clowance,

I have decided to write to you and put a proposal before you. I have started this letter four times and each time it has finished in the fire. So in the end I have come to the conclusion that only the bluntest and most matter-of-fact proposal will do. Be assured that there is nothing matter-of-fact or calculating in my feelings for you. I love you. Do you recall when you were staving at Bowood, when I had asked you to marry me, you told me that from the first moment when you saw Stephen Carrington no other man would do. Well, may I state that, from the moment I met you in the Pulteney Hotel at the Duchess of Gordon's Ball, no other woman but you could give me happiness? If I have not said this explicitly before it is because in your presence I stumble over words and cannot assemble my thoughts. I think, I hope, that you must have sensed part of this. My attentions cannot have gone unnoticed. When you married I felt all ways lost -- there was nothing left to hope for. I deeply grieved when I heard your husband had died, but I made no move, anxious not to fret you with ill-judged sympathy, and also careful not to open up the wounds within myself. I had a very wretched year after you refused me. But that chance, that happy chance of a meeting with you when you were with Mrs Pelham and others at the opera, tore away the curtain that I had tried to draw over my mind when I thought all was lost. Sight of you reaffirmed in my mind all the memories of you that I had tried to forget. After that I took the liberty of asking you and Lady Poldark to visit Bowood again.

So far you have not accepted and so far you have not refused. (Unless you are too tender and do not like to give offence.) This year we have not corresponded, and this is not of itself an invitation to visit us again. It is a plain and unadorned proposal of marriage. This letter need not immediately be answered. I pray that you will read it over and over, and then, and only then, say yea or nay. I am aware that if by some marvellous chance you should answer 'yea' I would always rank in your eyes as second to Stephen Carrington in your heart and in your esteem. To try to make up a little for that, may I state what else I could offer by way of a compensation, which I know would be minimal? I am thirty-three, unmarried and completely unattached. After one or two light flirtations in my very early twenties, no woman can claim any lien on me, nor have the right to remind me of responsibilities Compared to my brother, who unexpectedly came in for so very much, I am a poor man. But poor is a relative term; I have more than a competence. I have the house on my brother's estate that I showed you when you came to Bowood. I have a roomy apartment in Lansdowne House at the south-west corner of Berkeley Square: four resident servants there and four in Wiltshire.

My brother has other substantial properties in England, and a shooting lodge in Scotland to which I sometimes repair on August the twelfth. I am a Member of Parliament, but unlike my brother I have not yet been in government. I dance -- badly, as you know - I ride fairly well, I play whist and poker and backgammon, but none of them to excess, and I gamble with what loose change I have on me. I am a regular theatre and opera-goer. In my place in Wiltshire I plant trees. In politics I am mildly radical, and rejoiced in the abolition of slavery, only regretting that the law is still so often flouted. (I do not suppose any of this is of the slightest interest to you, but I have to say it.) Like my brother I took no active part in the war that killed your brother and which engaged so much of your admirable father's time. (I took much longer than Burke to realize what a tyrant Napoleon had become.

So much for me. Now on to you, dear Clowance. What sort of a life would you lead if you made my cup fill with happiness and married me? We would live as frugally (within limits) or as extravagantly (within limits) as you chose. You could live mainly in Wiltshire or mainly in London, according to your choice. Something you said once was that you were not happy with your horse's stabling in Penryn. Nero - that is his name. We have ample stabling in Bowood and you could have four or six horses if you wished for galloping over the green downs of Wiltshire. You would have almost as much of your own preferences as you wanted - you know all the important members of my family, and I am certain they would rival each other in trying to spoil you. I know your addiction for Cornwall, though I have seen it only once - when I came down on a gloomy mission - gloomy because you were not there - for Lady Mount Edgecumbe's funeral. We could not live in Cornwall, but you could visit your parents just as many times a year as you do now. I could come with you when you wanted me, or stay behind if I thought you happier alone. I do not think the society life of London much appeals to you, and I agree it is often affected and starchy. Its hysterical sense of values - or lack of values - is something I find hard to stomach. Of course, I am to some degree used to that society; but I assure you that you would not be expected to live by its values. We as a family do not, and no one would expect you to. It is a big decision for you to make, I know. You are not drawn to me by a magnetic sense of love, as you were to Stephen. It is a big step from which, once taken, there is no drawing back. (A friend of mine recently divorced his wife; it took him two years, an Act of Parliament, and ten thousand pounds!) It is not a step to be taken lightly. I know that you would not ever take it - or me - lightly. If you find me physically repulsive or you do not like me, then pray return a 'nay', and there it shall rest. If that is not the case then I beseech you to give it the long and serious consideration of your loving heart.