Demelza (3 page)

'We will breakfast together,' Choake said, more cheerful at the thought of food. 'We will just go up and set everyone's mind at rest; then we will breakfast. What have you for breakfast?'

Verity got up. Her cloak fell away and showed the plain grey dimity frock, the bottom eight inches embroidered with mud and rain. But it was at her face that Ross looked. She wore a full, uplifted, startled expression, as if she had seen a vision.

'What is it?'

'Ross, I thought I heard…'

They all listened.

'Oh,' said Ross harshly, 'there are children in the kitchen. There are children in the still-room and children for all I know in the clothes closet. Every age and size.'

Verity said: 'Ssh!'

Choake fumbled for his bag. All his movements were clumsy and he made a great deal of noise.

'That is not a grown child!' Verity said suddenly. 'That is not a grown child!'

They listened again.

'We must go to our patient,' said Choake, suddenly ill at ease and faintly sly. 'We shall be ready for breakfast when we come down.'

He opened the door. The others followed him, but at the foot of the stairs they all stopped.

Prudie was on the top step. She was still wearing her night shift, with a coat over it, and her great figure bulged like an overfull sack. She bent to look at them, her long pink face bulbous and shining.

'We've done it!' she shouted in her organ voice. 'Tes a gurl. We've gotten a gurl for ee. 'Andsomest little mite ever I saw. We've knocked her face about a small bit, but her's as lusty as a little nebby colt. Hearer screeching!'

After a moment's silence Choake cleared his throat portentously and put his foot on the bottom step. But Ross pushed him aside and went up the stairs first.

HAD JULIA KNOWN the difference she would have thought it a strange countryside into which she had been born.

For hours a blight had stalked across it. So much salt was in the terrible wind that nothing escaped. The young green leaves of the trees turned black and withered, and when a breeze moved them they rattled like dry biscuits. Even the dandelions and the nettles went black. The hay was damaged and the potato crop, and the young peas and beans shrivelled and died. The rosebuds never opened, and the stream was choked with the debris of a murdered spring.

But inside Nampara, in the little world made up of four walls and bright curtains and whispering voices, life was triumphant.

Having taken a good look at her baby, Demelza decided that the infant was complete and wonderful to behold, once her poor bruised little face righted itself. No one seemed to know how long this would take - Ross thought privately that there might be lasting marks - but Demelza, of a more sanguine temperament, looked at the bruises and then looked out at the ravaged landscape and decided that nature in her own good time would work wonders on both. They should postpone the christening until the end of July. She had ideas about the christening. Elizabeth had had a party for Geoffrey Charles's christening. Demelza had not been there, for that was four years ago come November, when she was less than nothing in the eyes of the Poldark family; but she had never forgotten Prudie's tales of the fine people invited, the great bunches of flowers brought from Truro, the feast spread, the wine and the speeches. Now that she had made her own debut, however modestly, into such society, there was no reason why they should not give a party for their child, as good or even better.

She decided to have two parties if Ross could be talked into it. She put this to him four weeks after Julia was born, as they were taking tea together on the lawn before the front door of Nampara, while Julia slept soundly in the shade of the lilac tree.

Ross looked at her with his quizzing, teasing glance. 'Two parties? We've not had twins.'

Demelza's dark eyes met his for a moment, then stared into the dregs of her cup.

'No, but there's your people and there's my people, Ross. The gentlefolk and the other folk. It wouldn't do to mix 'em, no more than you can't mix cream and - and onions. But they're both nice enough by themselves.'

'I'm partial to onions,' Ross said, 'but cream cloys. Let us have a party for the country people: the Zacky Martins, the Nanfans, the Daniels. They're worth far more than the overfed squires and their genteel ladies.'

Demelza threw a piece of bread to the ungainly dog squatting near. 'Garrick's no better looking for his fight wi' Mr Treneglos's bull,' she said. 'I'm certain sure he's got some teeth left, but he d'swallow his food like a sea gull and expect his stomach to do the chewing.'

Garrick wagged his two-inch stump at this notice.

'Here,' said Demelza, 'let me see.'

'We could gather a very nice picking of the country folk,' said Ross. 'Verity would come too. She is just as fond of them as we are - or would be if she were let. You could even ask your father if it pleased you. No doubt he's forgiven me for throwing him in the stream.'

'I thought twould be nice to ask father and brothers as well,' Demelza said, 'on the second day. I thought we could have that on the twenty-third of July, Sawle Feast, so that the miners would have the day off anyhow.'

Ross smiled to himself. It was pleasant sitting here in the sun, and he did not mind her wheedling. Indeed he took an objective interest in what would be her next move.

'Yes, he's teeth enough to make a show,' she said. 'It is plain laziness, naught else. Would all your fine friends be too fine to be asked to dinner with a miner's daughter?'

'If you open his mouth much wider,' said Ross, 'You'll fall in.'

'No, I shall't; I'm too fat; I'm getting a rare fudgy face; my new stays will scarcely lace. John Treneglos, I reckon, wouldn't say no to an invitation. And even maybe his slant-eyed wife would come if you was here for bait. And George Warleggan - you d'say his grandfather was a smith, so he's no call to be proud even if he is so rich. And Francis... I like Cousin Francis. And Aunt Agatha wi' her white whiskers and her better most wig. And Elizabeth and little Geoffrey Charles. We should be a rare boiling. And then,' said Demelza slyly, 'maybe you could ask some of your friends you go visiting at George Warleggan's.'

A cool breeze stirred between them. It lifted a frill of Demelza's dress, flapped it idly and let it fall.

'Gamblers all,' said Ross. 'You would not want gamblers at a christening. And twice meeting at a card table is not a close acquaintance.'

She loosed Garrick's slavering jaws and moved her hands to wipe them down the side of her dress. Then she remembered and bent to rub them on the grass. Garrick licked her cheek and a dark curl fell over one eye. The trouble with arguing with women, Ross thought, was that one was diverted from the point by their beauty. Demelza was not less lovely for being temporarily more matronly. He remembered how his first love Elizabeth had looked after Geoffrey Charles was born, like an exquisite camellia, delicate and spotless and slightly flushed.

'You can have your two christenings if you want them,' he said. For a moment, absurdly, Demelza looked a little troubled. Used to her sudden changes of mood, he watched her quizzically, and then she said in a small voice: 'Oh, Ross. You're that good to me.'

He laughed. 'Don't weep for it.'

'No, but you are; you are.' She got up and kissed him. 'Sometimes,' she said slowly, 'I think I'm a grand lady, and then I remember I'm really only…'

'You're Demelza,' he said, kissing her in return. 'God broke the mould.'

'No, he didn't. There's another one in the cot.' She looked at him keenly. 'Did you really mean all those pretty things you said before Julia was born? Did you, Ross?'

'I've forgotten what I said.'

She broke away from him and went skipping across the lawn in her smart dress. Presently she was back. 'Ross, let's go and bathe.'

'What nonsense. And you but a week out of bed.'

'Then let me put my feet in the water. We can go to the beach and walk in the surf. It is quiet today.'

He gave her a pat. 'Julia would suffer for your cold feet.'

'I hadn't thought of that.' She subsided in her chair.

'But,' he said, 'there is dry sand enough to walk on.'

She was up in a moment. 'I will go'n tell Jinny to keep an eye on Julia.'

When she came back they walked to the edge of the garden where the soil was already half sand. They crossed a patch of wasteland, threading between thistles and tree mallows, and he lifted her over the crumbling stone wall. They ploughed through soft sand and were on Hendrawna Beach.

It was a soft summery day with white regiments of cloud mustered on the horizon. The sea was quiet, and the small wavelets turning their heads near the edge left behind them on the green surface a delicate arabesque of white.

They walked arm in arm, and he thought how quickly they had refound their old companionship.

Out in the sea were two or three herring boats from Padstow and one from Sawle. They thought it Pally Rogers's boat and waved, but he took no notice, being more concerned with fish than friendship.

She said: 'I think it would be a good thing if Verity came to both our parties. She needs the change and new notions to interest her.'

'I hope you don't intend to have the child held over the font two days together.'

'No, no, that would be the first day. The high folk would see that. The low folk will not mind if they are given plenty t'eat. An' they can finish up what's left from the day before.'

'Why do we not also have a children's party,' said Ross, 'to finish up on the third day what has been left on the second?'

She looked at him and broke out laughing. 'You mock me, Ross. Always you d'mock me.'

'It's an inverted form of reverence. Didn't you know that?'

'But quite serious, do you not think it would be a good genteel notion to have such a gathering?'

'Quite serious,' he said, 'I'm disposed to gratify your whims. Isn't that enough?'

'Then I wish you would gratis me in another. I'm that worried over Verity.'

'What is wrong with her?'

'Ross, she was not meant to be an old maid. She has so much in her warm-like and fond. You know that. Well, it isn't the life for her, tending Trenwith, looking to the farm and the house and caring for Elizabeth and Francis and Elizabeth's baby and old Aunt Agatha, and caring for the servants and ordering the supplies and teaching the old choir at Sawle Church and busying about helping the mine folk. That isn't what she did ought to be doing.'

'It is precisely what she enjoys doing.'

'Yes, if it was on her own, like, yes. If she was wed and with a home of her own it would make all the difference. Last September month when she was here wi' us at Nampara she looked betterer in no time, but now she's yellow as a saddle and that thin. How old is she, Ross?'

'Twenty-nine.'

'Well, it is high time something was done.'

Ross paused and threw a stone at two quarrelling sea gulls. Not far ahead, on the cliff top, were the buildings of Wheal Leisure, open now as a result of years of contriving on his part, open and employing fifty-six men and showing a profit.

'You have walked far enough,' he said. 'Back now.'

Obediently she turned. The tide was coming in, eating quietly away at the sand. Every so often a wave would make a larger encroachment and then retreat, leaving a thin fringe of soapy scum to mark its limits.

He said amusedly: 'Nine months ago you would not have Verity at any price. You thought her an ogre. When I wanted you to meet, you went as stiff as a pit prop. But since you met you have never ceased to pester me to find her a husband. Short of going to one of the old witches of Summercourt Fair and buying her a love potion, I know of no way of satisfying you!'

'There's still Captain Blamey,' said Demelza.

He made a gesture of irritation.

'That too I've heard. And am growing a little tired of. Leave well alone, my dear.'

'I shall never be wise, Ross,' she said after a moment. 'I don't even think I wish to be wise.'

'I don't want you to be,' he said, as he lifted her over the wall.

The following day Verity came. She had caught a bad chill from her wetting of a month ago, but now was well again. She cooed over the baby, said she was like them both and like neither of them, heard of Demelza's schemes for the christening and endorsed them without hesitation, tried valiantly to answer one or two questions Demelza had been afraid to ask Dr Choake, and brought out a fine lace christening gown she had made for the child.

Demelza kissed her and thanked her, and then sat looking at her with such dark serious eyes that Verity broke into one of her rare laughs and asked what was to do.

'Oh, nothing. Will you take some tea?'

'If it is time.'

Demelza pulled at the tassel by the fireplace. 'I do naught but drink all day long since Julia came. And I reckon tea's better than gin.'

The red-haired, fair-skinned Jinny came in.

'Oh, Jinny,' Demelza said awkwardly. 'Would you make us a dish of tea. Nice an' strong. An' make the water to boil before you put it on the leaves.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I can't believe that's me,' said Demelza when she had gone.

Verity smiled. 'Now tell me what's troubling you.'

'You are, Verity.'

'I? Dear, dear. Say at once how I have offended.'

'Not offended. But if…Oh, it is me that will give the offence…'

'Until I know the subject I can't advise you on that.'

'Verity,' Demelza said. 'Ross told me once, after I'd been plaguing him for hours, told me about that you'd once been fond of somebody.'

Verity did not move but the smile on her face became less soft, its curves slightly changed.

'I'm sorry that should trouble you,' she said after a moment.

Demelza was now too far on to mind her words. 'What's testing me is whether it was right that you should've been kept apart, like.'

A faint colour was moving in Verity's sallow cheeks. She's gone old-maidish and drawn-in, Demelza thought, just like when I first saw her; such a difference, like two people living in the same body.