Bella Poldark (31 page)

'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? - handfed 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.'

'Am 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?'

'Not so far as I am aware. I was at constant loggerheads with my father - my titular father - who often treated me like dirt, blew hot and cold, so that I came to hate him. Now I think I rather pity him. And I pity my other father. They have made a pretty mess of their lives and have tried to drag me in ... Lately I have let them fund me out of a mess of my own making.'

'We are much alike,' said Paul.

'So you have said. I suspect there is one big difference.'

'That is?'

'I was born with an insatiable appetite for pretty women. Ever since puberty I have - this has been my great recreation. Whereas you . . . you give me the impression of not liking women.'

'I hate them.'

Valentine inspected his companion with interest. 'All of them?'

'A few I can tolerate.'

'And men?'

'I am not interested in them in the way you mean.'

'But you married?'

'Mary was for a while - different. After a short time I did not satisfy her as she would have liked, and she did not satisfy me as I would have liked. If she had given me a son it might have been - a sort of solution. Instead she went rotten on me, she became like a worm-eaten apple, tainted, diseased. She would be better dead.'

'Butto would make a good family man,' Valentine said sardonically. 'In a year or two I may take him back to Africa to see if he can find a mate.'

'I wish you luck.'

'Precisely. Now look,' said Valentine, pointing with his stick. 'That cleft is about where they found Agneta.'

Paul shaded his eyes. 'No. It was on the crest beyond that.' 'How do you know?'

'I went with Ben Carter and Constable Purdy to examine the spot the following day. Ben found the body, y'know. I can remember exactly where it was because the ground all around it had been trampled flat by sightseers.'

CLOWANCE

In the spring the English Cabinet, having survived a plot to massacre them all - when their heads were to be exhibited on pikes before the Mansion House - had prepared for the lesser embarrassment of arranging for the crowning of the most unpopular monarch in history. Yet no expense was to be spared. New jewels for the crown costing a million pounds sterling, parades, festivities, religious and secular ceremonies in many of the cathedrals of the land. (The Duke of Clarence, the next heir, expressed his opinion to a friend that if eventually he ever were to succeed to the throne there should be 'very little of this stuff and nonsense'.) Queen Caroline, vulgar, stout, rouged, dyed hair and all, had long since been packed off to Italy, where she had lived an immensely dissolute life of her own; but now she announced that she would return to England and be crowned alongside her husband. The new King was horrified. He had just taken up with a fresh mistress, and wished Caroline to be excluded from the liturgical prayers of the Church, even -- possibly -- to get a Bill of Divorcement introduced as well. However, all efforts -- and plenty were made - to discourage her were fruitless, and she landed at Dover on the fourth of June. She was dressed in a low-cut bodice of cream Belgian lace, short skirt widely swirling in azure blue, showing fat legs inside tall shiny Hessian boots. To the disappointment of the crowd she had not brought her Italian lover with her, but they did their utmost to make her welcome. Church bells rang and cheering crowds lined the route all the way to London. She might have been the Duke of Wellington fresh from his victory at Waterloo. In London the carriage horses were unharnessed, and she was pulled with great acclaim all the way to Carlton House. Amid the din and tumult of broken windows, ripped-up railings and the explosion of fireworks she was acclaimed Queen of England, whether George or the Cabinet liked it or not. It was thought by many that acclaim of the Queen by the population sprang not so much from admiration of her sterling qualities as from a desire to show their contempt and dislike for the man who until January had been the Prince Regent. Weeks of sober meetings began; the Coronation was postponed until the autumn amid endless noisy processions and demonstrations. The Queen went everywhere. During the prolonged negotiations as to her rights, or lack of them, she proceeded each day to Westminster in a coach attended by six footmen in red and gold, while she, deliberately different, wore a black curly wig almost to her shoulders, a hat with white ostrich plumes, a long black clerical cloak. The King could not go out of doors for fear of being stoned and his carriage overturned. Revolution was in the air. With the present insurgence coming so soon after the Peterloo shootings, then the Cato Street plot to murder the entire Cabinet, there was little else one could expect. Demelza, worrying about the safety of her singing daughter, was almost relieved to feel that she was out of it all and living in the comparative peace of a French country town.

The first performance of il Barbiere di Siviglia in the new French production took place at the Theatre Jeanne d'Arc four days after Queen Caroline made her triumphant return to England, on Monday the eighth of June 1820. In spite of the summer cholera the production had gone ahead and in the end every seat was taken, and there was a noisy crowd standing in the pit. Maurice ingeniously had allowed some of the street mendicants to get hold of a few of the very appealing tunes, so that they became known, though not too well known, and would be recognized by the audience and welcomed. Bella, as Rosina, played the young, pretty and flirtatious girl, rich in her own right, who is the ward of Dr Bartolo and has fallen in love with a travelling nobleman called Count Almaviva. Bartolo, intent on marrying his ward himself and anxious to lay his hands on her money, does all he can to prevent the match. Then along comes the strident Figaro, the barber, who only helps to confuse things but somehow eventually furthers the lovers' search for wedded bliss. Plot and counterplot, disguise and deception, concealment and surprise, are all interspersed by platoons of soldiers and itinerant singers, much fine singing, with acting designed to create laughter, until it all ends in frustration for Dr Bartolo and happiness for the lovers. Although she appeared and lightly used her voice in scene one of the first act, most of Bella's activity was to come and go on the balcony, to take part in recitative and to be demure, flirtatious and distressed by turns. It was not until the second act, and the opera forty minutes advanced, that her testing time came. Then she had to sing 'Una voce poco fa' ('A little voice I heard just now'), and this she shortly had to follow with 'Io sono docile' ('With mild and docile air'), though it is clear by then that she is anything but docile. Maurice had said: 'You have been preceded by several powerful male voices: tenor, baritone, bass; this is now your turn. By contrast your voice may seem to you too light to impress. Do not regard it so! The audience will have had just a taste of your quality in the first scene. Now begin softly and sweetly Do not give them your full voice too soon. Remember the part you are playing: reflective, romantic; then later you can become positively vicious - oh the bravura of that later part! It will be magnificent!'

The audience, though there was an undercurrent of unrest, had been well behaved through the first scenes, and when Figaro appeared they were totally enraptured. Bella had been warned by Maurice that Garcia would come doubly alive on the night, and it was so. 'There are some who rehearse well and some who do not. Heider does not; but wait for the night.'

The duet between the Count and Figaro also went well, and then when the curtain came down all was bustle to change the scenery. The first scene had been in the street outside Dr Bartolo's house. Now this facade was split in two and pushed on rollers, part to the left, part to the right, to give sufficient space for his drawing room, nicely furnished and with, prominently displayed, the all-important piano, to be pushed forward to fill the gap. The stage manager, Edmond Largo, was in charge, but all the same Maurice slipped up for two minutes to congratulate everyone on progress so far. He kissed Bella briefly and climbed down the steps to rejoin his orchestra. The audience was getting restive at having to wait so long. As it was, the curtain went up before three of the soldiers who were doubling as stagehands could disappear out of sight. This was greeted by wolf whistles from the pit. And soon it was time for Bella. Maurice caught her eye and smiled. She launched into her piece, which was written in high bel canto style, beginning almost andante, then gradually convincing herself that she is badly done to, finally launching into this tirade of defiance. Halfway through she noticed that one of the candle lamps illuminating the stage was smoking. Somehow the sight of it brought to her mind the party at Trenwith - not the latest one, but the one seven years ago when she had sung 'The Barley Mow' and 'Ripe Sparrergrass'. This time, instead of singing to groups of friends clustered in the great hall at Trenwith, she was in a foreign country looking down on a sea of faces, some listening attentively, some staring mouths agape, some scratching, some whispering, some (women) almost hostile. (And the candle, just above her head, still smoking.)

She had a moment of stage fright, her voice faltered for two bars, then picked up again; then she was into the trills and brilliant bravura of the final section. When she finished and the music died away, there was a silence, then a few sporadic claps, then a grumbling noise which she just recognized as applause. She saw Maurice signalling to her, and she began to bow. Three, four, five times, then Maurice raised his baton, the last noise subsided, and the opera was resumed. Now there was much laughter at the conniving of Figaro and Almaviva and at the clever antics of old Dr Bartolo, a lovely duet between Almaviva and Rosina, and then a descent into sheer farce with the arrival of the soldiers (one of whom composedly brought a pair of short steps, stood on them and snuffed the candle). So at last the long first act was over, and a twenty-minute break to rest and recoup. There could have been a further change of scene, but the action all took place inside Bartolo's house, so a few shifts of the furniture would suffice.

'Merveilleux!' whispered Maurice to Bella. 'Better than I had ventured to hope. Those extra rehearsals were immensely worthwhile.'

'Merde!' said Bella. 'Je me suis trompee clans ma chanson. I had caught sight of the candle and--'

'Unimportant!' said Maurice. 'Scarce anyone noticed it. That is the whole truth. Did you not hear the applause?'

'Yes, but I--'

'It is very well, Rosebud. Continue, je t'en prie. All is very well'

He was gone with a flash of ruffled tawny hair. The second act was ready to begin, but disturbances in the pit held the curtain for half a minute. Then Maurice, not waiting for complete silence, struck up. Much of the extra farce that Maurice had planned was squeezed into this act, but before that came 'the music lesson' about which there had been so much discussion. Figaro, in trying to help the match, has persuaded the tall, ungainly, deep-voiced music teacher, Don Basilio, to pretend to be indisposed, and has replaced him with Count Almaviva disguised as Basilio's assistant. He and Rosina begin the lesson under the stern eye of Dr Bartolo, and Rosina, having recognized her lover under his disguise, is beside herself with joy, and proceeds to sing love songs with Almaviva at the piano. The second act, as Maurice had said, was rather short, and he had seized on a precedent set in St Petersburg of having the prima donna sing pieces not of Rossini's composition but of her own choosing. There had been three songs then; he had decided on two, following the rondo

'L'iriutile precauzione' which sends Bartolo into a doze. Bella began with the Morley song. This simple tune, with no demands upon the singer except sweetness and rotundness of tone at which Bella had learned to excel, had five verses, and was listened to in silence. When it ended there was light applause. Bella found that the backs of her knees were sweating. For the story's sake there had to be a bit of acting, when Bartolo roused himself from sleep and then was lulled off again. A second English song? Was it wise? Few people here would understand the words. She had a moment to reflect while Bartolo woke a second time, proclaimed his affection for the old tunes and launched into 'Quando mi sei vicina', which received noisy applause. Then, ogling Almaviva, Bella began her second piece, 'Crown the Altar, Deck the Bay'. The audience liked the song, they appreciated Bella's pure youthful rendering of it, but they had not, she felt, quite taken to her. Halfway through, a single voice from the pit shouted, 'A bas les Anglais!' There was laughter then whispers, but they soon subsided as she negotiated the difficult finale. Much applause, some genuine, some sympathetic. She looked out, bowing, over the sea of faces. It was not quite the applause Figaro had got, or even Almaviva. In spite of Maurice's reassurance, she knew that her minor hesitancy followed by a few seconds of dry-up had not gone unmarked. Most of the audience was unsophisticated and knew very little about opera, but not all. Some of the people in the boxes were keen judges and went to the opera in Paris, which was not so far away. It was not a serious black mark in their minds, but it was a black mark all the same. 'Una voce poco fa' was her first great chance. She had stumbled. Other lovely arias and duets had come and gone. But this scene was her second big chance, her opportunity to register in the minds and affections of this audience. And it was such a perfectly lovely part. She bowed and bowed again. Maurice was waiting. He was waiting to continue the opera according to Rossini. His baton was in a horizontal position, halfway to being raised. There was a combative side to Bella. In a sense she was not just competing for the approval of the audience, she was competing against the men with whom she was singing. Apart from Berta, she was almost the only woman. A devil of temptation grew in her. A devil of temptation. She looked at Maurice, who half-smiled back at her. His baton came up an inch. Bella went to the piano, where Count Almaviva in his thin disguise was waiting for the music to restart. She said: 'Jean-Pierre . . . Would you permit me?'

He gaped at her, but she had no time to lose. She edged onto his stool and edged him quickly off it. As he stood up she spread her hands over the piano keys. She was going to give another encore. She began to play. Shades of a time nearly five years ago when, on a shaky old spinet, surrounded and breathed down upon by a score of lusty and probably lustful Polish soldiers, she had played this same tune. She began to sing.

'Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive. Contre nous de la tyrannie, L'etendard sanglant est leve.'

It could have gone badly wrong. It had become the song, the patron song, of the revolutionaries, and later of the Bonapartists. It had been the song of war which had now become the national anthem. It might have raised anger, derisive laughter, hoots of contempt, even a scandalized resentment at its introduction into Italian opera. But it did not.

Halfway through the first chorus of 'Aux armes, citoyens'

one or two voices from the pit joined in. By the time she began the second verse the whole audience was singing.

Amour sacre de la Patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs. Liberte, liberte cherie, Combats avec tes defenseurs; Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire Accoure a tes males accents; Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Some of the violins had now joined in, and Maurice was gently keeping time with a half-raised baton. When it came to the end of the second chorus there was pandemonium. Whistles, cheers, stamping, a sea of faces. Bella took her tenth bow; Maurice raised his baton, then lowered it again as the applause would not stop. At last it began to dry, and the opera was resumed.

When it was over and the cast was taking a final curtain call they were joined by Maurice Valery. He split the line, one hand in Bella's, the other in Figaro's. As they bowed and smiled he hissed: 'Serpent! Sorceress! Vixen! Tigress! Angel! Witch! Tomboy! Sweetheart! Je t'adore!' As they bowed he kissed her hand. 'To es adorable! I love you! No other woman could have had such effronterie, such flair! Je m'enflamme. You could have destroyed us, but you made us!'