Portrait of a Girl (15 page)

‘
Give ’ee a lift, missus?’ he asked with a lopsided grin showing a single broken tooth. ‘Or wantin’ a pretty ring are ’ee? — or mebbee a ribbon for thy pretty hair?’

I
declined the offer of a lift, there appeared to be no room anyway, but bought a glass bauble I didn’t want just to show goodwill, and presently with a word in the old nag’s ear he was away again, and I continued walking, keeping always slightly to my left.

The
sky began to fade into twilight and bringing a greenish glow to the landscape. As the stark dark shape of Wheal Flower faded ever further behind me, I began to feel tired. How many miles I’d walked since leaving Mr Jago’s waggon, I didn’t know. But at last, to my relief, from a high point of the lane I saw far ahead of me and below, the darkening silhouettes of buildings against the paler glimmer of sea, and knew I was approaching Falmouth.

I
arrived, heavy-limbed from carrying my valise, about an hour later. Lights dotted the streets and waterside, and a lump of emotion seized me, whether for good or ill, no one could say.

I
had come home.

Wearily
I threaded my way down narrow cobbled byways leading to the harbour. I must have looked a sight indeed, when I reached The Golden Bird. But the landlord, astounded at first, welcomed me.

‘
So it’s you,’ he said, as I tried vainly to adjust my bonnet, ‘Come in, my dear, come in. This place hasn’t been the same since you left.’ He took my case, and shouted for his wife. ‘She’s back, luv, our nightingale’s back with us.’

He
didn’t know then that I couldn’t sing.

Chapter Ten

Joe Burns and his wife, Maria, were heavily disappointed when I had to admit to them then my voice had gone. I invented a story that I’d been involved in a carriage accident, hence the scars on my neck, but that shock as well contributed to my sorry state. News travels quickly, and I didn’t wish Rupert to hear in some roundabout way what had happened, or even, at the moment, of my whereabouts.

‘
I shall recover in time, I’m sure,’ I told them, with more optimism than I felt. ‘In the meantime, if I can stay here for a bit, I’d be very grateful. I have money. I can pay—’

‘
There’s no need for payment—’ Joe said quickly, but his wife interrupted, ‘Now wait a bit, Joe. If Josie’s got it to spare — only a
very
little mind you, just a token as they say — she’d probably rather. She was always the independent sort, weren’t you, love?’

‘
Yes,’ I agreed honestly. ‘I would rather give something.’

‘
Only until it’s convenient to you then,’ Joe agreed grudgingly, ‘and when you c’n sing again the boot’ll be on the other foot. There’ll be a good salary coming along.’

So
a minimum weekly sum was arranged. I had sufficient in my pocket to cover at least a month, or two. And when that was gone? If my voice never properly came back again? The thought was frightening. I knew the Burnses would never turn me adrift, but I wanted to feel secure in some way, to depend entirely on no-one — neither Joe, Maria, nor — Rupert.

Should
I ever see him again? If he really wanted to find me would he recall the Golden Bird and walk in one night as he had the first time I ever saw him, tall hat in hand, his yellow eyes searching through the crowds and lamplight for a sight of me? I was pondering the question to myself when Maria put a suggestion to me one evening.

‘
You haven’t told us the whole story, have you, girl?’ she asked. ‘About your singing, and what happened between you and that fine gentleman, Mr Verne—’

‘I
—’

She
lifted a hand. ‘No. I don’t want to pry, but it seems to me not natural you should just be staying in the background all the time, or taking a walk round the streets when there’s life here you could enjoy. After all singing isn’t everything. You’ve still got your looks, and your legs is all right, aren’t they?’

I
gave a short laugh.

‘
My legs? Why — yes, I suppose so. They weren’t broken or anything. But what makes you ask?’

She
shrugged.

‘
You c’n dance as well as sing. There’s a man, Johnny Bliss, that comes here every night now. Plays the fiddle real good. A smart one, Johnny. Been on the sea and lost a leg in a shindig with pirates. He’d play for you an’ make a handsome turn of it. Why don’t you try, girl? You’re fretting ’bout something, and that’s no good for the young. Joe’d pay you too, an’ don’t say you carry the wealth o’ the world in your pocket. You dropped your reticule in the bedroom the other afternoon when you went wandering, and it’d spilled over the floor. I picked it up for ’ee. Not much there, Josie — well, you just think about it.’

I
did, and although the prospect didn’t appeal to me at first, after my first negative reaction I began to see possibilities. Perhaps at the back of my mind, too, was the sneaking idea that such a plan might enable Rupert and me to meet again.

‘
But I’ve no dancing clothes with me now,’ I told Maria when she next broached the matter. ‘I’ve only the clothes I came in, a few undergarments and a spare dress — it’s much too sophisticated.’

‘H
’m. Yes. You’re certainly quite a young madam to look at these days,’ Maria said thoughtfully. ‘But I’ve a Japanese shawl tucked away upstairs, and when you went there were slippers left behind, and a flowery skirt. They earrings, and a few flash beads — oh, we could fit you up all right.’

Eventually
I agreed, and when I tried the bright garments on the following afternoon a little of the lost magic of former days returned. I longed and longed to sing as well as pirouetting only to Johnny Bliss’s fiddle, but my voice, though clear enough by then for talking, was just a harsh croak when I attempted any melody. I found Johnny amusing. He was a wiry ginger-haired little man, half Cornish, half Irish, with a whimsical one-sided smile, and bright eyes filled with mischievous humour.

An
hour before the bar opened we had, as he called it, ‘a try-out’, and for the first time in months I felt an uplift of spirits. There was no command to move gracefully or with dignity — no sharp reminder that I must control myself as befitting the part I was playing — no — ‘Now return and make your entrance again’ as there’d been time after time at Signor Luigi’s. I was free —
free
to sway and gesture and kick my heels uninhibited by restrictions or etiquette. With my hair loose, and to Johnny’s winks and elfin manner of playing and half dancing, I could be for however brief a time, myself. And it was invigorating.

Joe
and Maria watching the rehearsal, were delighted. ‘You must come on tonight, girl,’ Joe said. ‘Word will soon get around then. We’ll be the best known tavern in all Falmouth.’

And
so it was.

Keeping
my thoughts firmly away from Rupert or Tregonnis, I was able to put all my conscious capacity for life and enjoyment into dancing. I became, as days passed, a popular feature at the inn, and by degrees even the lingering hope and possibility that Rupert might appear one night, died into a mere shadow.

Then,
one evening, at the very end of the performance I felt suddenly faint. No one noticed — not even Maria, who was helping Joe at the bar. I managed to retire after blowing a kiss to the blurred faces crowding the tap room, and somehow made my way upstairs. Once there I lay on my bed and waited for the unpleasant feeling to pass. My face and hands were dripping by then with cold sweat, and there was a sickening pain under the pressure of my corsets. Presently I felt better, but by then a suspicion was growing in my mind that I’d never even considered before.

Suppose
I was with child?

Could
it possibly be? But of course it could. When two people loved — or
had
loved as Rupert and I had — any sensible person would know better than to be shocked by the suggestion.

Elation,
mingled with fear and a sense of unreality seized me. I couldn’t visualise the future. I didn’t try.

But
that night I had a dream.

I
was standing on a lonely hill — black as a moonless night under a cold sky. There was no wind, no sound at all; the air was icy cold — the ground hard and lifeless like that of a dead land. I tried to move, but at first my limbs were fixed and motionless; then slowly my head lifted, and the summit of the hill clarified into the shapes of three grotesque hooded figures, who slowly, menacingly, dragged themselves from the earth towards me.

Magnetised
by horror, my unwilling feet moved upwards. Black arms, like the wings of great crows reached to the sky, then slowly, rhythmically descended, gaunt clawlike hands gropingly thrust to my neck. I caught a glimpse of hungry ravaged faces with twisted lips — teeth bared, approaching in a strange haunted rhythm. And in a flash recognition swept through me in blinding terror.

Lady
Verne! — Lady Verne!

For
a second I was rooted again to the foul earth. It seemed as though my feet were sucked into a sickening mire of evil. Then, suddenly, sight failed. I tottered backwards and fell — fell into the well of darkness swirling round me in a suffocating cloud.

I
screamed then, screamed and screamed, until no longer even sound registered. I knew no more until I woke up, bathed in perspiration, with my heart pounding heavily against my ribs, and my whole body shaking.

As
surroundings of my room at the inn came into focus, the door opened and Maria entered, her face full of concern in the flickering light of the candle.

‘
Sakes alive!’ she exclaimed. ‘Whatever’s the matter, girl? Enough to waken the dead it was — that
noise
! — thought you were being murdered for sure. What was it, girl? What’s the matter?’ She bent down, studying me anxiously.

‘
I had a nightmare,’ I answered. ‘A dream. It was awful. I’m so sorry.’

She
went to the ewer, poured some water into the basin, and returned with a cloth to wipe my forehead. ‘There, there,’ she murmured soothingly, ‘You’ll be all right presently. Just take it easy. Something you had to eat, maybe?’

I
shook my head. ‘It was the Three Maidens and her — her. It was—’ I broke off, knowing the fear was still on me, and that in any case Maria wouldn’t know what I was talking about — I hardly knew myself.

‘
Three maidens? Who are they then? Now you tell me what it’s all about. Seems to me you’ve bin seein’ strange sights since you went off with that fine gentleman. I never did approve of it in the first place, and I said so to Joe.
Italians
!’ she gave a sceptical short laugh. ‘You wasn’ bred for furriners and their carryings on, girl. Now you just rest quiet, and there’ll be no more dancing, and remembering wicked goings on. If you’re no better later I’ll have the apothecary to see you.’

My
head ached badly all day, and when night came I had a fever. Dr Prynne, Solomon Prynne, who was not only regarded as a fine medical man, but a clever ‘wizard’ as well, came to examine me and provided some pills and herbal remedies which he said would be of great assistance in easing the pain.

‘
Then, later, we shall have to see,’ he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and I started to laugh, thinking how much like a goat he looked, with his wispy beard and tufts of hair sticking upwards on either side of his wide forehead.

Maria
looked at me aghast. ‘It isn’t funny, Josie,’ she said. ‘Dr Prynne’s doing his best to help you. What the joke is I cannot for the life of me see.’

‘
No — no,’ I apologised weakly. ‘I’m sorry.’

The
‘goat’ patted my hand reassuringly, took a small glass from his case, poured something into it from a bottle, and bid me take it. I swallowed it chokingly, not caring at the moment what it did to me — whether I lived or died seemed suddenly quite unimportant.

Minutes
later the two of them walked quietly from the room, Dr Prynne’s boots making a squeaky creaking sound, just like the whinnying of the goat he so resembled.

On
such a thought my senses began to relax, taking fear with it, until I drifted into peaceful slumber.

How
long I slept I didn’t realise. At times I roused, and recalled being fed from a spoon and given more of the pills and draught. Days must have passed in this semi-conscious state, or maybe weeks, I had no manner of judging. But one morning, magically, I felt better.

I
remembered everything. Not all at once, but piece by piece, putting facts together like the pieces of a puzzle.

‘
How long have I been ill?’ I asked Maria when she came in with my morning gruel.

‘
A week or two, but you’re better now. Oh how pleased Joe will be too. It’s been worrying for us, girl. But Dr Prynne — he said you’d be all right in the end. Some sort of shock, he said, and then that strange fever following! Later you’ll have to tell us properly what’s been happening. It’s only fair, love.’

‘
Yes. Yes, I know. But—’

‘
Not yet. Oh, there’s no hurry. You just take things easy and do a bit each day not much mind you, but—’

‘
I’ve got money,’ I said, as I’d told her before. ‘Not a lot, I suppose, perhaps not sufficient to repay what you’ve done for me. But I can work, can’t I? — I could help in the tap-room perhaps — the bar; if I don’t—’

‘
Tut-tut!’ she exclaimed, ‘no more silly talk. You’re our nightingale — our own Golden Bird whether you c’n sing or not. Tomorrow’s tomorrow, remember, and today’s today. So we’ll remember that shall we, and just get on with the present.’

And
that is just what we did. By the time I’d recovered sufficiently to take proper walks about the harbour and help Joe and Maria run the inn, autumn was already turning the leaves of the trees to yellow, and evenings closed in bringing salty grey mists from the sea. I neither saw nor heard anything of Rupert, but one day, overcome by the sudden nauseous feeling for no reason whatever — or so I thought — a very tangible fact registered that was bound to affect my whole life.

What
I’d guessed before was true.

I
was going to have a child.

*

For two months I waited, saying nothing to anyone about my condition, being careful to hide any fits of nausea I felt, and not worrying unduly about the future; indeed, a strange kind of placidity enveloped me. Whatever trials, challenges, and maybe disappointment in life awaited me, at least my love for Rupert had not been entirely in vain; something of him already thrived within me — something no one could take away. Even my sleep became comparatively peaceful. Following the horror of the dreadful nightmare the scene changed. In my dreams I wandered through an unreal but generally pleasant vista of meadowlands and ethereal waving grasses, with a young boy, a child, holding my hand. When I woke I never recalled his face clearly, and seldom felt any fear or real anxiety, although just occasionally a sadness lingered, like the sadness of trying to recapture an old forgotten tune.