The Angry Tide (6 page)

Half an hour later the Reverend Mr Whitworth, having offered what contemptuous comfort he could to his ailing and contrite friend, went into the stables of the Red Lion Inn to pick up his horse; but there, feeling the impulsive need of further refreshment to sustain him before his ride home, he waved the ostler away and stooped through the gloomy passage that led to one of the parlours and ordered a pint of porter. So little light came from the latticed windows after the brightness outside that it was not for some seconds that he recognized the man
silting
at a table near him.

He at once got up and moved to the other table. 'Dr Behenna. May I join you?'

'Certainly, sir. I'm at your service.' Behenna was a man of forty-two, the principal surgeon of the town, authoritative, stocky and well dressed. Many a simple man would have trembled at the sight of these two together, for between them they encompassed all that anyone could know of the body and the soul. On the whole Behenna was the greater feared, for his denunciations and judgments were the more immediate. Hellfire was at least at one remove.

Behenna was drinking porter too, and for a few minutes their conversion was casual: neither man was accustomed to lowering his voice, and two corn merchants were at another table and well within earshot. Behenna began to inveigh against the spread of apothecaries in the town who, without any qualifications except a board over their shops, saw fit to prescribe for all and every ailment man was heir to.

'Look at this’
he said, spreading a broadsheet on the table. 'This is what they distribute and advertise, sir. "Dr Rymer's Cardiac Tincture and Analeptic Pills," "Roberts's Medicated Vegetable Water for Scrofulous Wounds. For the Evil, Leprosy, Pimpled Faces, Flushing, and all Morbid Affections," "Dr Smyth's Specific Drops for Weakness of the Natural Functions. In tin or flint bottles, according to size." What
are
we coming to, Mr Whitworth, that the surgeons of the town should be expected to suffer such quacks and medical jockeys in their midst?'

'Indeed’
said Ossie, fingering the broadsheet indifferently. 'Indeed.' The corn merchants were about to go.

'It would be a good subject
for the pulpit’ said Dr Be
henna, brushing a fleck of porter from the front of his brown velvet jacket. 'They should be denounced by the church, and in no uncertain terms. It is become a scandal.'

'Indeed’ said Mr Whitworth again. ‘I
think I could do something along that line. Not Whitsunday, when it would be inappropriate,
but within a few weeks perhaps’

'That would be very obliging of you, sir, for many of the common people -
most
of the common people - are gullible to a degree, and few can distinguish between a skilled physician who has devoted all his years to the study of human suffering and an ignorant charlatan who will sell them a bottle of coloured water
and call it the elixir of life.’

'It so happens,' Ossie said, as the corn merchants left and no one else entered, 'it so happens that I would welcome the benefit of your advice - on another matter - a matter which I did broach with you once before but to which you returne
d no altogether positive answer’

The surgeon sniffed at the top of his gold-banded cane. The end of his last sentence had been talked down by Mr Whitworth beginning his, and Dr Behenna, not accustomed to being overborne in this way, was slow to change tack.

'What subject is that?'

'My wife’
said Ossie.

There was considerable conversation going on in the main taproom, but this room was a little backwater. Indeed there was a quality of liquidity about the light, for the flawed and discoloured panes in the windows cast deceptive colourations on table and bench and chair, on mugs and glasses, on hands and clothes and facial expressions so that they were at once muted and inscrutable.

'She is unwell again?'

^‘
I think she is well enough of body, Dr Behenna, but far from well of mind. I have marked a noted deterioration in her general behaviour.'

'How, sir? In what way?’

'She has periods of profound melancholy when she will speak to no one, not even the children. Then she has spasms of savage excitement, when I tremble as to what she may do next. I have noticed a marked decline in her mental pow
ers.’

'Indeed? It's less than four weeks since I visited her. I must call again shortly.'

Ossie took a deep draught of porter. 'You know the problems that I face, as a responsible minister of the church. You know how I spoke to you at Christmas. I cannot see how the situation can go on very much longer as it is.' He dabbed his mouth with a large linen handkerchief.

'I know, Mr Whitworth. But you must appreciate what I told you then. Even supposing you were able to get Mrs Whitworth committed to an asylum, the treatment is nil. The inmates are sometimes chained. When they will not eat they
are
forcibly fed - and then not infrequently choke to death. I do not believe your wife would long survive.'

Ossie contemplated this agreeable thought for a moment. 'It is always considered, it is well understood,' he said, 'that insanity is a visitation of judgment upon the wicked. No good man, no good woman is so visited. You will remember how Christ drove out the evil spirits.'

Dr Behenna coughed. 'But there are degrees of visitation, and one hesitates to think of Mrs Whitworth as being possessed by an evil spirit.'

'I don't know what else. I don't know what else. Since Christmas, however,' said
Ossie
, ‘I
have been giving thought to another course that may be open. A compromise course. There are in fact in Cornwall one or two private madhouses where the less seriously afflicted are taken in. There is one I have been in touch with at St Neot. Such a recourse would not need the sanction of a court; Mrs Whitworth could be conveyed there privately and kept there privately - in comfort. Fed and looked after by persons competent to fulfil such duties. Taken away from the strain of life in a busy vicarage. Given the constant and full medical care that she so obviously needs.'

Behenna looked at his companion.

'I would hardly have thought such places afford - hm - quite what you say. But there it is. It w
ould cost you money, of course.’

Ossie bowed his head. 'That I would have to face.'

'And in a sense deprive you of a helpmeet, Mr Whitworth. Although I appreciate the problems that you have to face -'

'Great problems. I am a man, with all a man's natural needs. It is not good mat a man should suffer deprivations of the kind I am forced to suffer. You, of all people, must know it is detrimental to his health and well-being.'

'Possibly-'

'There can be no "possibly" about it, Dr Behenna. It is the gravest possible hazard to his physical and mental equilibrium -'

'It could so be argued. What I was about to say was that I understand Mrs Whitworth fulfils most of her household duties adequately. And this, if she were put away, you would altogether lose, You could not re-marry.'

'Certainly not. The marriage bond is sacred and indissoluble. No, no
...
I should be forced to engage a housekeeper.'

The two men looked at each other, and then Behenna bent his head to his drink.

'A housekeeper
...'

'Yes. Why not? After all, I understand that you employ one, Dr Behenna.'

The doctor put down his tankard. He wondered where Mr Whitworth had heard of his private arrangements. Of course nothing was private in a small town.

'Well, yes, I do.'

Two drunken men, arms twined, tried to get in through the door but failed. After some stumbling and argument they backed out, not encouraged by the stare of the clergyman sitting at one of the tables.

Behenna shrugged, 'Well, my dear sir, who am I to say more on
this subject? As Mrs Whitworth's husband you are entitled to have
her sent away if you wish. I doubt if anyone could object. I suppose
she has a mother living? But you have the prior right
...'

Ossie frowned, 'Dr Behenna, I am in holy orders, and therefore my position is somewhat delicate - more delicate, that is, than if I were an ordinary common member of the secular community. It is not a matter of having the agreement of her relatives that concerns me, but of obtaining the sanction of my bishop. Or if not the sanction, then
at
least the sympathy. If I took this grave step of having my wife put away; and I do not question that it
is
a grave step - she might very well be incarcerated for life - I should be reluctant to have the matter brought to his notice if the decision had been taken solely on my own initiative. The opinion of the surgeon attending on my wife would therefore be of the utmost value and importance. That is why I request it.' There was silence for a minute or two.

'Ecclesiastcs’
said Osborne, finishing his drink. 'Chapter 38, verses one and following, I believe it is. I have never used a passage from the Apocrypha as my text, but no one I am sure would object. "Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him, for the Lord hath created him." Something of that sort. It would be very suitable, in that context, to bring up the subject of the true as distinct from the false physician. Don't you think?'

Dr Behenna twisted one of the brass buttons on his coat. 'Your wife has never shown any
positive
signs of violence, has she?'

'She has repeatedly threatened the life of our son, I told you. Isn't that enough?'

'It is certainly a very grave sign. Though su
ch threats could well be empty,’

'How can one tell?' said Ossie. 'Does one have to wait until the dastardly crime has been
committed'?
And upon an innocent, defenceless child? I never have a moment's peace.'

Behenna finished his own drink.
'I
understand how you feel, Mr Whitworth. I'll come and
see
Mrs Whitworth again. Would Tuesday be convenient?'

News reached Cornwall that week of a raid that had been carried out on Bruges. Locks, it was reported, had been totally destroyed in the port, the canal and basin drained dry, buildings had been blown up, invasion barges destroyed. Weak behind her defensive moat, England could still make the effective gesture of defiance. The young cleric, Sydney Smith, declared that he now considered war between the English and the French no longer a temporary quarrel but the expression of a natural antipathy between the races such as existed between the weasel and the rat. He did not specify which in his view was which.

In February the Directory had instructed General Buonaparte to inspect the invasion fleet with the hope that he might lead it against Eng
land, but, having observed Hoche
's failure of the year before, and, being aware of what had happened to the combined fleets of Spain and Holland when they met the British last year, Buonaparte had turned it down as too much of a gambler's throw. Instead he had gone south again, no one in England for a while knew where. But just before Ross left London, news had come in that the General was in Marseilles assembling a fleet and an army.

Now, a secret report reached England that a great fleet had left Marseilles with the General on board, that the fleet consisted of 180 ships and that it carried 1,000 guns, 700 horses, and 17,000 of France's best troops. It so happened that the recently promoted and recently knighted Admiral Nelson was in command of a fleet which had been sent to the Mediterranean last autumn even though invasion fears were then at their height, a bold, indeed rash, move which had been opposed by the admirals but decided on by Lord Spencer at the Admiralty, who overruled them. It could now be a fortunate decision, always supposing that the two forces should encounter each other somewhere in the wide reaches of the Mediterranean. A frigate had been dispatched to tell the admiral of the enemy's move.

This information, while it allayed some immediate fears of invasion in Cornwall, did not remove them; for Hoche was still somewhere about, and France had the forces to mount two expeditions at the same time. While he was in London Ross had been to observe the preparations to meet an invader in Sussex and Kent. If the French landed drastic measures would at once be taken there to remove or destroy anything they might capture. Ross felt that in Cornwall not enough preparations of this sort had been made and set himself to put this point of view to the local Volunteers and Vigilantes.

In June a council of another sort was held - this in the Warleggan family. Nicholas, George's father, had been in indifferent health for some time and spent more and more time at his country seat. As a consequence the management and direction of Warleggan interests had fall
en wholly to George. His uncle C
ary was immersed in day to day administration and took a greater active part in the affairs of the business: George usually decided policy.

It was a grey, warm, damp day when Truro, lying among its rivers and its mists, was at its most enervating, that Nicholas chose to limp into the main office of the bank and try to pick up the reins he had dropped a year ago. George gave him an account of what had been happening while Cary, sweating thinly under his skullcap, provided details and extra figures if Nicholas wanted them.

Presently Nicholas, staring at the great ledger in front of him, said: 'You've been making heavy personal drawings, George. Eighteen thousand pounds in the last three weeks. May we know what enterprise you are favouring?'

George smiled: 'Not so much an enterprise, Father, as an investment for the future. My future.'

Cary hunched his shiny coat round himself and said: 'Very dubious investment, Nicholas. Very dubious indeed. An investment in self-aggrandisement, if one may venture to put it that way.'

George looked at his uncle dispassionately, as if seeing him without any sense of blood relationship. 'I have been buying property, Father. In St Michael. A few houses. A few farms. A posting house.'

'Derelict,' said Cary. 'Tumbledown.'

'Not altogether.'

'But this very large sum
...?'

George said: 'Last year, because of a stupid and contrived agreement between two of our so-called nobility, I lost my seat in Parliament. This you well know, my dear Father, since you fought with me
to the end, allowed
our friend Poldark to take my se
at. Well that
is done. Unless we arrange to shoot him on the highway we cannot unseat him. But I
see
no reason to be deprived of a place in Parliament for any length of ti
me. I enjoyed the experience. Se
ats
are
for sale. I am buying one.'

'Not a seat,' said Cary.
'A borough. You can get a se
at for two or three thousand pounds. Trying to buy a borough will cost you five or ten times that before you're finished.'

'Agreed,' said George. 'But who has a seat for sale just after an election? Life is short: I don't wish to wait.
With a borough - if I get it - I
have control. I can also dispense patronage: a parsonage for one, a customs appointment for another, a profitable contract for a third. One comes to possess influence and power of a new kind.'

'St Michael is scot and lot, isn't it?' Nicholas remarked. 'From what I know of them they're very difficult boroughs to control - and expensive. The costs do not finish when you buy the property, George, they go on and on, People - the voters, such as they are -
tend to form themselves into groups and sell themselves to the highest bidder.'

'I'm a rich man,' said George. ‘I
can afford to indulge myself. This fellow Barwell, who made a fortune in India; he too is prepared to pay for his indulgences. My fortune came from nowhere but the county in which I was born; and I intend to represent that county. There is no more to be said, dear Father, there is no more to be said.'

'Nor is there,' said Nicho
las, frowning at the accounts. ‘I
do not for a moment deny your right to spend this money as you please. Indeed I'm in favour of your attempt to get back into Parliament. So long as you know the pitfalls
...'
'I think so. Sir Christopher Hawkins has made them clear.' 'He's selling the properties to you?' 'In part. In other cases he's negotiating the sale.' Cary said: 'D'you know that lampoon about Hawkins and his home? It was going the rounds a year or so ago.

"A large park without any deer,

A large cellar without any beer,

A large house without any cheer,

Sir Christopher Hawkins lives here."

Cary sniggered.

'Nevertheless we'd do well to keep him as our friend,' said Nicholas. 'Ha
ving quarrelled with the Boscawe
ns - irrevocably, I fear -and being
on less amiable terms than hithe
rto with Basset, Hawkins is a necessary ally in high places.'

'I'm bearing that very much in mind,' said George.

Further conversation was prevented for a time by a fit of coughing that attacked Nicholas. Cary watched his brother with an eye like a cockerel.

'Have you tried snail tea?' he asked. 'When I had the influenza some bad last winter a year gone and my chest was raw as a brush, it had a soothing effect. That and camphor behind the ears.'

George fetched his father a glass of wine, which he sipped. 'Upon my soul,' Nicholas said,
'I
never was troubled in all my life with an affection of
the
bronchia until the time I came to Trenwith, George, when Valentine
was born. I caught a chill in th
at draughty bedroom you gave mc, and I truly believe that old witch of a woman, Agatha Poldark, cast some spell upon me there that will not disperse.'

'Agath
a cast an evil spell on us all,’
said George sourly. 'Even Valentine. If another child is ever born to us I shall make certain the confinement takes place cither here or a
t Carde
w.'

Nicholas wiped his eyes with
a red bandana handkerchief. 'Is there something of it in the wind?'

'That was not what I said.'

'All the same, boy, one child is scarce enough to make sure of the inheritance. Twould be better -'
'
I
was enough,' George said shortl
y,
'Talking of inheritance,' said Cary, playing with the feather of his pen. 'You both know, I reckon, that Nat
Pearce
's illness has developed a putrid tendency a
nd the surgeon gives him no more
'n a few weeks to live?
¹

Nicholas shook his head and sighed. 'Old Nat
. Is that so? Why he's barely three
years older than I am. I've known him since I was twenty or so. His father was a lawyer before him but died young and Nat inherited the practice almost so soon as he had gone into the business.' He dabbed his mouth and coughed again. 'Of course in those days he was far too superior for the likes of mc. It is all a long way back - before ever we had anything of this - and yet tis not forty years.'

Things've altered in more ways than one,' said Cary. 'Nowadays I
own
him, Mr Nathaniel Pearce.’

'Much change you'll
get,’
said George. 'He's in debt all round.'

Cary picked his nose and carefully assayed the mining samples he had dug up. 'Nephew, if you can spend your money one way, buying ramshackle property at big prices in order to put two letters after your name, I too can be extravagant in my own way. I conceit I know more about this town and the doings of its inhabitants than any other man alive; and Mr Pearce's business I have reason to know particular well. And I can tell you that when Mr Pearce dies certain persons in this town will be in something of a taking when the details of all his affairs comes out'

George narrowed his eyes. 'You didn't tell me this. D'you mean he has been using for his own ends some of the monies entrusted to him?'

'That is what I do mean.'

'How do you know? Did he tell you? Are the Boscawens involved?'

'Unfortunately I suspicion not. Or to very small extent. Mr Curgenven, their steward, keeps too close a watch on all transactions, legal and mercantile. But there are others.'

'Can you name them?'

'There is the Aukctt trust. When Mrs Jacqueline Aukett died she left three grandchildren, who were minors, and Mr Pearce was chosen to administer the trust. Then there's the Trevanion family trust. And there's another bound up with Noakcs Peto and the mills he left...'

Silence fell. Nicholas's breathing sounded like a kettle just beginning to sing on the hob.

George said: 'Uncle Cary, are you being selective? Is it just chance that all the people you mention banked at Pascoe's?'

'Not chance,' said Cary. 'Not chance. For in these cases Pascoe's Bank, or Pascoe himself, have been a party to the trusts.'

Nicholas closed the ledger and drummed on the top of it with his broad fingers.

'You're not supposing, Cary, surely, that there could be any risk in this to Pascoe's Bank itself?'

'I'm not supposing that I'm not
not
supposing. It would depend on what other pressures could be exercised at the appropriate
time. Don't forget I have Pascoe
's son-in-law in my pocket.'

George said: 'I know that he still banks with us, but am unaware of the details.'

'Soon after he married Pascoe
's daughter he told me he had a thought to change banks - first having discharged his debts to us out of his wife's marriage portion. But I talked him out of this. I persuaded him to remain, by playing upon his vanity and his cupidity.'

'That may not have been difficult,' said George. 'But tell us how nevertheless.'

'St John Peter does not really like to be beholden to his father-in-law, whom he tends to despise, as a mere banker, so I suggested to him that I should renew his accommodation bills with us at a very low rate of interest. I told him we were anxious for reasons of prestige to retain his name among our customers. Some fools are vain enough to believe anything. I pointed out to him that the money we could offer him would bear 2% less interest than his new money - his wife's money - would be earning for him in Pascoe's. He would therefore gain by continuing to deal with us and at the same time neither his wife nor his father-in-law would know the extent of his then debts.' 'And he accepted that?'

'Being the man he is, why should he not? And since then, living as he docs, the bills ha
ve increased in size and number.

'You think long, Cary,' George said. 'This must have been in your mind for years.'

Nicholas Warleggan was still ruminating on his last remark. '
Pearce
isn't big enough - his affairs aren't big enough - to shake Pascoe's Bank. Pascoe survived the crisis of
'96, when we all felt the wind blow. He might have been vulnerable a few years ago; but now he must have big reserves.'

'Nobody in banking has big reserves, Father,' George said. 'Not even us if the cards were called. But it depends what pretty surprises Cary has up his sleeve.'