Bella Poldark (10 page)

Ross was as glad to see Demelza back as if she too had been to London. At first he said nothing about John Treneglos's visit. They had sufficient to talk over, with Clowance's report of all that had happened in London and incidents to tell about the farm and the mine. He had thought of saying nothing at all, but he had the disagreeable feeling that the unpleasantness would surely out, and it was probably better that the account should come from him. Cuby was due tomorrow, and for once they were sitting in the library. Without Bella here hovering round the piano the room seemed rather forlorn. She heard him out and sipped her after-supper port. There was no wind tonight, and accordingly the six candles in the two candelabra burned without so much as a tremble.

'So it was true.'

'It appears so. I don't like to condemn a man in his absence, but I think there is too much evidence against him.'

'He is impossible, Ross. Imagine him going after Agneta!'

'It seemed, my dear, that you could imagine such a thing well enough because you alerted me to the risk before Christmas.'

'Well, I saw him look at her, when the hounds came this

way. That was all. Only a glance. Judas, I am getting like the old wives who sit in their doorways and speculate lewdly about their neighbours! What do you think John will do?'

'Tell Ruth, I suppose. If Agneta hasn't already told her. Fortunately, I gather from John, that there is no risk of a child.'

'Ruth will be as unpleasant as she can be. She always wanted to marry you and thought I stole you from her.'

'So you did. Though I must admit Miss Teague was not high on my list.'

'List, eh. Have you kept it in some secret drawer out of my reach? There was that Margaret Vosper, I mind. And I suppose many others.'

'Margaret, I admit. But she was strictly not in the marriage stakes. In all my life I swear I only flirted with Ruth once.'

She sighed. 'All the same. Seriously, Ross, this is a horrid situation. I wish - I wish Valentine would go away, leave the district'

'Little likelihood of that.' He looked at her. She was arranging some primroses in a dish, propping up their delicate yellow with greeny-yellow sprigs of willow which she had bought from a gypsy in Penryn on her way home. 'Do you wish Valentine would leave the district for some other reason?'

'Reason?'

'That perhaps you feel I am become too friendly with him?'

'. . . Not that. Not quite that. But I know that you lack Jeremy's companionship. He was our son, wasn't he. Our our most precious son. We have another son - one more but he is too young. You cannot make that sort of a companionship with Harry - yet. So you have turned a little more towards Valentine, who is Elizabeth's son. Whatever else, he is her son. Valentine has your look sometimes, hasn't he?'

'I don't know.'

'But he's not really like you at all. Perhaps he is -- is a harking back. Verity says he is like your father. But I don't know. It is something different from that. Elizabeth's other son, by Francis, is lovable; Geoffrey Charles is normal. Valentine is not normal!'

'I'll give you that,' Ross said. 'And I ask myself how much I am responsible for it.'

'D'you mean . . .?'

'Well, yes. Whatever the truth of it all, my continuing -- affection, call it what you will - for Elizabeth and however the suspicion first came to George -- I told you about Aunt Agatha - that suspicion has poisoned Valentine's early life. To have a father who sometimes treated him with generous affection, and then within a few days treated him as beneath contempt, even with hatred . . . Valentine has told me this, and I know from other sources that is the plain truth, it is enough to warp any child's emotional upbringing, his very nature. So that now, amidst all the charm and courtesy of his manner there is malice, wickedness, mischief-making and a perverse wish to shock, to hurt, to break anything within his reach. I don't think this is always a conscious desire - it rises from impulses he can't, or won't, control.'

'Verity said to me once - I don't think I ever told you she said that Valentine would lend anyone a smiling hand on the way to perdition.'

'Demelza.'

'Yes?'

'Come away from those flowers. You can't improve on the arrangement,, Come and sit down opposite me, so that

I can see you - we've suddenly gone into very deep waters. And we have no beer cask to foment tonight.'

She half smiled at a very old remembrance between them, sat on the chair he indicated, put a finger on the piano behind her. 'And we can't set it to music'

'I wonder how Bella--. Well, no matter. I think we ought to have this out, so far as we can.'

'I doubt we can, for Valentine will not go away.'

He took a deep breath. 'It is true that I am drawn to Valentine. I like him in spite of his perverseness, and feel at least hope - that he will grow out of his worst faults. He is young enough yet. You're right about how much I miss Jeremy. Even though upon times we were edgy together, this was but a surface spat, meant nothing at all. I miss him every day, as you do. It is intolerable. But you are wrong in thinking I overlook Harry--'

'Not overlook, but--'

'Of course he is so young - he cannot replace Jeremy. I talk to him and he talks to me, but the gap is so wide - yet. But if you think I care too little for him, you are utterly wrong.'

'I should not need to be told, Ross, but it is good to tell me. Indeed - on the other side - I like Valentine at times. And feel sorry for him. But I am always a small matter uneasy with him. I never really d'know what he is thinking, what he feels for this family, apart from you. For the rest of the people in this house. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that he thinks you belong to him, and that the rest of your family, while acceptable enough in their way, are a little bit - what is the word? - super something--'

'Superior?'

'No, no, far from it. Superfluous, that is the word! That we are - are on the side, so to say; that he is devoted to you and that we, the rest of us -- are no part of your relationship with him.'

He mused for a moment or two, eased his painful ankle.

'Jealousy is a very strange thing, is it not? I--'

'Ross, how dare you!'

'Wait a moment: do not jump on me like that! I was not referring specially to any one of us. Certainly not to you. I was only saying that jealousy -- or in its lesser form possessiveness - inhabits us all. It is like a microbe that lives within any family, touches all human relations. Perhaps it is the least admirable of feelings, but we all have these and He tailed off, and she bit at her handkerchief to keep the words back. She wanted to say that she did not wish to possess him, not, that was, more than she had always done for so many years. She had not advised him to give up his parliamentary seat. He chose his own life and always had done. She did not wish to possess him more deeply. It was only a tragedy of the war that resulted in him paying more attention to Elizabeth's child than he did to the last of her own - the last male -- because he was too young. He said, as if half-reading her silence: 'I should much dislike it if I thought that your bereavement -- our bereavement - should in any way lead to a difference of view between us over--'

'It is not just possessiveness, Ross,' she interrupted.

'I did not say that was what you were feeling!'

'Well ... if I can explain. It is not because Valentine is inside or outside my family that I have this feeling. I am uneasy for you.'

'For me?' He half laughed in genuine surprise. 'For God's sake! Do you think he is a bad influence?'

'Yes!'

'On me? Do you suppose that a young man in his early

twenties should influence a man of my age? Shall I take to drink? - or gambling? - or smuggling? I've done 'em all. Or is it wenching you fear?'

She got up and went to the mantelshelf and put a smaller pot of primroses on it. The grey woollen dress brushed beside Ross's chair and he put his hand on her thigh through the dress.

'I suppose,' she said, 'you are right to treat this in a lighter way than I do. Maybe it is possessiveness -jealousy hiding behind superstitious feelings that did not ought to exist. But you have known me long enough. No one has known me longer or been closer to me, and I have these feelings sometimes. You yourself, you have accused me more oftener than I can say of being like Meggy Dawes.'

'I sometimes wonder whether she ever existed.'

'Yes, she did, Ross. She had yellow hair; I suppose twas dyed; and the deepest of black eyes. I sat with her a lot when I was a child, and maybe she did teach me something - or I caught something. I get feelings, sometimes, instincts I cannot always give reasons for in a reasonable way, to convince a solid, reasonable man like you--'

'Egod!' he said. 'Now who's joking?'

'Please. . .' She turned to face him and smiled at him, but in a troubled way. 'Just say that I have a feeling about Valentine that brings a chill wind. You - are fond of him, and when I see him I like him well. But - d'you know what the shrims are?'

'Yes.'

'He gives me the shrims.'

One morning George Warleggan had another unexpected visitor.

Philip Prideaux he knew pretty well because Harriet had taken a fancy to him. So they had met at Cardew and passed the time of day, and sat at the same dining table and even breathed the same air, but had hardly ever exchanged a personal word. George was not greatly taken with the young man. For one thing he thought Harriet made too much of him, for another he did not greatly care for war heroes. Perhaps they reminded him too much of Ross Poldark (Philip was not scarred and he did not walk with a limp, but there was something about the type). For a third, now that he was out of the Army he did not seem to pursue any useful profession. George, of course, was very familiar with the ways of the landed gentry; most of them did not work for their living, and they largely looked down - if they dared, and only a few dared -- on people like himself who did.

'Sir George Warleggan,' Philip said, standing like a beanstalk in the doorway.

'Captain Prideaux, come in. Pray sit down.' But George did not rise himself.

'Thank you.' Philip nervously adjusted his eye glasses. Wearing them, he tended to have a patronizing look, as if he were looking down on the person he addressed. It was what had first prejudiced Clowance. 'We meet, as you know, when I partake of your gracious hospitality, but this - what I came to see you about - is perhaps more a professional matter, so I thought I would call on you at your Bank.'

'Do you bank with us?' George asked, knowing very well that he did and the exact amount his visitor was overdrawn.

'Yes. But it was with your chief clerk that I dealt when I called to open an account, so ..." Philip tailed off. 'It was not exactly on financial matters that I called. But perhaps I

should say first. . .' He folded himself into the chair that a few months ago Valentine had occupied.

'Go on.'

'Perhaps I should say first that from the first day of September last I accepted a position with the Duchy of Cornwall. I was appointed Assistant Secretary and Keeper of the Records. I told Lady Harriet last week, but she may not have mentioned it to you.'

'She did not. I am pleased to hear it.' George speculated to himself what influence had been used, and from what source, to obtain for this young man a comfortable sinecure.

'It will be part-time,' said Philip, as if reading the other's thoughts, 'but this will give me the opportunity to pursue my archaeological studies when the opportunity arises.'

'I'm very glad,' said George, not looking very glad. 'I trust the stipend will be sufficient.'

'For my simple needs, yes. It will mean that I am not likely for very much longer to need the accommodation that you have so kindly extended to me under my uncle's guarantee.'

George nodded. 'But you tell me this is not the reason you came to see me?'

'No. As you know, sir, I am taking a keen interest in the Cornwall of the Stone and the Bronze Age, and this week past I have been concentrating on Truro and the districts of Kenwyn and Moresk, where the earliest settlements took place. I have made one or two interesting discoveries; but I will not burden you with the details. Something else has come much to my notice. It is a somewhat distasteful subject, but after giving the matter some thought I decided to come to see you about it. In short, Sir George, I am referring to the smells.'

'Smells?'

'Smells, Sir George. Stenches. Living here, one cannot fail to be aware of them. If you opened this window--', Prideaux gestured towards the barred window beside his chair, 'the smells from the street below would make this room scarcely habitable.'

'Perhaps in your soldiering you have become too accustomed to the open air,' said George sarcastically. 'It is a condition common to all towns.'

'Yet, sir, Truro is uniquely positioned. It is built in a valley, on a confluence of several streams and with a great river at its feet. Streams run down, three in all, the Allen, the Kenwyn, and another still smaller. As you know, they all flow down the sides of the streets in open leats, and you would expect them to be full of beautiful clean spring water brought down from the hills. Instead they are virtually used as open drains, so that any filth, animal or human, is thrown into them, they choke up and spill over onto the streets; the refuse accumulates and dries and stinks to high heaven.'

George's stare was contemplative. 'Why are you coming to me? I am not the Mayor of this town.'

'No, sir, but you are one of the Capital Burgesses, the only one I know by name and--'

'You may not be aware that there is a town body called the Improvements Commission, which attends to these matters.'

Prideaux took off his glasses and rubbed them on a silk kerchief. 'I am told, sir, that they meet but rarely, and when they are called upon to meet hardly any of them bother to turn up. I thought. . .'

'Yes, what did you think, Captain Prideaux?'

'I thought that,-as you are one of the most eminent

inhabitants of this town - perhaps the most eminent, and I am sure among the most enlightened -- you might be persuaded to instigate some action. Why, even the corner of St Mary's Churchyard is piled high with animal and human excrement--'