The Four Swans (29 page)

`But I must. You’re unwell. You’re unwell, Dwight. You must have felt very unwell today or I shouldn’t have found you in.’ `It will pass. It has passed.’

`Maybe. I have my doubts. Give over, Horace; your tongue is rough.’ She pushed her tawny hair back out of his reach. `So, my dear, I am prepared to be a demanding wife in some ways but not in others. I demand you cut down your work. I demand that on occasion, just once in a while, you spend a whole day with me, doing what I want you to do. But for the moment I demand nothing more, even though the more to which I refer is what I would wish for most…’

`And I.’

‘Well, prove it.’

`I will’

`No.’ She put her hand against his lips. `Not tonight. Fulfil my other demands first. For out of them will come what I believe will be something better for us both.’

They sat there together on the faded Kashan rug. They were holding hands, but somehow Horace had insinuated his obese body between them so that he was wedged into a position where he divided them and could not lightly be moved.

For the moment the tight little storm was over. They were both exhausted by it, Dwight, because it was his nature, much the more so. And because he had so much less nervous energy to begin. Caroline was aware of victory, but of how carefully she must guard it; for she knew the thin streak of determination - or obstinacy - that ran through his character. She was sorry she had not been more downright before. But, because of his narrow return from death and subsequent illness, his preoccupations were hard to combat. It was not going to be an easy marriage. It never had been yet over the few months it had so far run. But she was determined to win it. Her determination - or obstinacy - must be no less than his. Their love was not in question. What was in question was what they would make of it.

So Ossie Whitworth received a letter from Dr Enys telling him that for reasons of indifferent health he was compelled to restrict his practice to areas nearer his home, and therefore he would not be available, unless there were some sudden deterioration in Mrs Whitworth’s health, to be called in for further attendance. He told Mr Whitworth that in his view Mrs Whitworth was now greatly recovered from the illness following her pregnancy. A strengthening rather than a lowering diet was still to be favoured; and everything should be done to ensure that Mrs Whitworth followed a simple and quiet life and avoid shock to her nervous system. If this course were pursued, he felt, there would be nothing further to fear. He was, with respect, their humble and obedient servant,
etc.

Ossie grunted when he had read the letter and tossed it across the tea table for Morwenna to read. `So you see, his Lordship has tired of us, so now we must go back to Dr Behenna.’

`Oh, dear P Morwenna exclaimed,’ still reading. `What a shame He was so kind. Like a kind friend. One felt one could talk to him.’

`As quite obviously you did, my dear.. More than would be considered seemly by most women to another man. A man, I mean, other than her husband.’

`He was my doctor, Ossie. I don’t think I ever discussed anything with him that was not pertinent to my illness:

`Opinion will differ on that. Well, now you are well again and putting on weight and looking quite buxom, no doubt you’ll be able to resume your full duties as the vicar’s wife in this parish.’

`I’m already trying to. I have been busy all day about your affairs. I’m sure you don’t wish me to list them, for you listed them yourself this morning. It has been a happy day for me that I’ve been able to do so much, and although I’m now tired it is a pleasant tiredness, not at all like the old fatigue. I look forward to another such day tomorrow.’

Ossie grunted. `I’m playing whist tonight at the Carharracks, so I shall be late home. Tell Alfred to wait up for me.’ He took his watch out of the pocket of his fancy waistcoat and looked at it. `That girl’s late. What is she doing out so long?’

Morwenna took off her spectacles. `Rowella? She’s been gone barely an hour and it’s broad daylight. She could scarce come to any harm.’

‘It’s not physical harm I mean so much as moral harm,’ Ossie said. `I know she has gone to that library for books. You both spend half your days over them. Too much reading is demoralizing, especially of that kind. It leads to dreams, unworthy dreams. One loses touch with the reality of a godly life. You know I never preach to you, Morwenna. Tain’t in me to be Methody or sanctimonious. We should all do our best in the world as we find it. But we cannot continue to do our best if we try, through books, to lead other people’s lives. It’s enervating, unhealthy for you both.’ He finished his tea and rose. `I’ll be in my study for an hour.’

`I wished sometime,’ Morwenna said, `to discuss Sarah and Anne’s schooling. While I’ve been ill Rowella has had her hands full and has not been able to devote as much time to them as we wished. I think they’ve come to no hurt, but Sarah is a trifle saucy. Rowella has been such a help to me, and with the baby, that I would gladly enlist her in those duties only.’

`Another time,’ he said restively. `We’ll discuss it some other time.’

When he had left the room Morwenna reflected idly that her sister’s name had a peculiar effect on Ossie. Sometimes he seemed actively hostile towards her and referred to her as `that girl’, so that Morwenna feared he might decide she was not fulfilling her duties and send her home. At others he seemed jocular and friendly, and he was polite enough on the rare occasions when he directly addressed her. But they hadn’t ever quite settled down together as a brother-in-law and a young sister-in-law should. Morwenna put on her glasses again and read Dwight’s letter. His withdrawal was a great loss to her, the loss of a real friend, and somehow there were few enough about.

She wandered out into the garden and down to her favourite place by the river, but the river was out, the mud smelt dank and stale, and Leda and her three friends were not there. Morwenna dropped the pieces of bread and cake on the bank where they could reach them, if the water-hens and the other birds had not grabbed them up before the swans returned. This was where she had once thought to plunge and suffocate in the mud to avoid the obligations of married life. It was still a possibility, but a brief message Geoffrey Charles had recently brought her; though without hope, had given her a new heart.

As for Rowella, Morwenna valued her company and help, but they too hardly ever got to talk in the intimate casual way of sisters in daily contact about a house. Had it been Garlanda, Morwenna knew there would have been constant warm unrestrained chatter to help the day along. Whatever happened, Rowella was always herself, dry and cool of speech, critical of eye, able and willing but never ‘warm’. Perhaps it was something lacking in her nature.

As he sat in his study, drafting out yet another letter to Conan Godolphin about the still vacant living of Sawle-with-Grambler, Ossie Whitworth could have given his wife some interesting, sidelights on Rowella Chynoweth’s nature. Indeed at this moment he could not quite bring his whole concentration to the letter because he was waiting to hear Rowella Chynoweth’s footstep. Her footstep.

It was all very disturbing to him. He was not by choice a praying man - except, that is, for public prayers, a commission for which he had been sensibly ordained. He did not pray a lot in private; but over the matter of his sister-in-law he had once or twice asked for guidance. And noticeably had not received it.

He sometimes thought himself in a very poor way, as for instance now, and as for instance often when he knew the girl was about and listened for her footstep. It was a very peculiar thing. No other woman had affected him so before. Not even his wife when he lusted after her so earnestly before the wedding. When Rowella was in the house it was as if he could hear her breathing. Perhaps it was only that he knew what happened when she breathed that so occupied his mind. At times, at the most disconcerting times, his visual memory of her swam before his eyes and made him hesitate and stumble in his thoughts.

In her long slim ill-fitting gowns she, padded about the house, and her body, now that he knew what was there, flaunted itself at him through the flimsy disguising material. And of course her feet, which were so marvellously cool and slim in his hands, the skin so fine, the shape and bones so slender, so marvellously, seductively slender. Her manner about the house was impeccable never by any flicker of her sly, close-set eyes did she betray anything in public of what might have happened the night before when they were alone.

Sometimes he wondered if she were a witch, a witch sent specially into the world fully fledged in all things evil while still a child. For she understood more about captivating a man, of inflaming a man, than either his first or second wife had ever dreamed of. She seemed to know more even than the light women of Oxford or those by the quay of this little town. She was of course so much fresher than they were and so damnably more provocative. The attitudes she took up on the bed when he had clumsily half undressed her were wildly wicked. She would spit at him, contorting her face and arching her body like a cat, she would offer herself and her startling breasts and then refuse him, she would sulk or bite or grin or scowl and, when at last she let him take her, all the elements that preceded the possession became a part of it, so that he discovered sensations he had never known before.

It was bemusing and horrible, and usually he hated her. It was the fact that he had to lower himself so much that he most resented. He was brought to the level of a fifteen-year-old boy, asking, pleading arguing, cajoling. And then in the middle of some particularly abandoned moment she would call him `vicar’, as if jibing at him, challenging him, daring him to consider his dignity.

Yet sometimes he thought he loved her. In spite of her lack of looks, she had terrible charm, and sometimes after their love she would stroke his brow and seem to be trying to mend his self-esteem. He had never had a woman stroke his brow, and he liked it. Of course his attitude to women before had always been that they were there for a purpose; they existed for his pleasure and not for their own. He had never before seen a woman get pleasure out of it - and it made him all the more suspicious of this tigress he had discovered masquerading as a kitten. She was not natural. In his more moral moments he knew that she was evil through and through. There were enough examples of such women in the Book from which he preached every week. There were even more examples of evil men, but he tried not to think of them.

He realized also, even if Rowella did not, the pitfalls that lay ahead if he did not break off the attachment. It had been begun partly because of his deprivation of a normal relationship with his wife. If he had any sense he now knew that he, should make some excuse and have Rowella sent home. Now that Morwenna was about so much more there was a greater risk of discovery, and, apart from everything else, that would ensue, he much disliked the thought of his wife having any sort of moral excuse for her fastidiousness towards him. Even if that did not happen, there always was the risk of a servant suspecting something and starting a rumour in the parish. While Sawle lay in the balance he particularly wanted to avoid this. But against all those sensible and cautious thoughts, heavy in the balance, one factor weighted down the other side: Rowella. There was nobody like her. There never had been. There never would be again.

So Rowella perhaps would be sent home next week. Or the week after. She was only fifteen; a child. Although a dean’s daughter, she appeared to suffer no qualms of conscience at committing fornication, nor even at the compounded sin of lying with her sister’s husband. It was his duty to instruct her in the sin. It was his duty to show her the wrong of what she was doing, apart altogether from his own wrong. Someday soon they would talk together. Soberly and properly, not wildly and improperly, and then she would agree to go home.

Outside in the hall Ossie heard the padding footstep that he had been listening for. Rowella was home. She read too many books. Perhaps she had learned something of her total wantonness from the books she read. In the evenings she should play whist or picquet instead of having her head in a book. One day perhaps he could teach her. But no, that was risky. Nothing must, be done to suggest he was singling her out for any special attention. If they were careful, very careful, it might be quite a while yet before he had to send her home.

II

Jud Paynter was a man whose grievances against life had become a part of the lore of the parish. Beginning as a miner, he had been befriended by Ross’s father, and had come to live at Nampara with his putative wife, Prudie. He had been part of an era when Joshua Poldark was running wild. Joshua’s other chief companion had been Tholly Tregirls; but Tholly had always been much more the daredevil. Even in those days Jud had been the reluctant adventurer, pessimistic of every outcome, sure that the world was against him.

When Ross returned from America, after his father’s death he had retained the Paynters for a year or two, but had found them too unreliable and they had been ejected and found a broken-down shack at the north end of Grambler village. After that for quite a while Jud had worked for Mr Trencrom and `the trade’, but he was too often in his cups and too often talkative in his cups to please the more cautious members of that profession who remembered the night of February ‘93 when their landing had been surprised by the preventive men and several of their friends transported or imprisoned as a result.

So one day Mr Trencrom, wheezing, and daily more closely resembling Caroline’s pug dog, had called at the little cottage and paid his retainer off. Shortly after this, a fortunate chance had killed the gravedigger at Sawle Church and Jud had been appointed to the vacant see.

It was work that suited his age and his temperament. Now in his middle sixties, labour was something he had tried to avoid all his life, but he did not so much mind a little if he could do it in his own time. When asked to dig a grave he usually had a couple of days’ notice and it was in the open air, which he preferred; he could turn a couple of spades and stop for a smoke, and the employment, while earning him a few pence, gave him the excuse to get away from Prudie.