The Loving Cup (44 page)

The hole - or shaft - was about eight feet across. She had hoped it might be sloping but it was not. The ladder, which at first she could hardly see, was nailed to the side with large-headed iron nails, and to her dismay was not quite continuous; that is to say it ended at one place and began a few inches lower to the right and then six more rungs down it moved to the left again. She guessed it was because the people who put it there - had it been the Kellows? - had round in places that the nails would simply not go into the rock and had had to adjust their ladder accordingly.

She knelt for a minute or two staring down: she could see only one rung actually missing - otherwise they looked sound. Anyway they had borne Ben's weight.

She wondered at her own breathlessness and dizziness. Was it just vertigo and loneliness? How much
had
she drunk last night? Certainly far more than Ross guessed. Her head still throbbed. But she
had
to be alone on this mission, however iron-bound and looming the landscape. The gulls of course had soon seen her and were crying overhead. Otherwise nothing stirred.

She unbuttoned her skirt and unwrapped it and laid it beside the hole. She put a heavy stone on it so that it should not blow away. She tied the cloth bag round her shoulder in such a way that it would not flap or fall forward at an inconvenient moment. She edged her way to the rim of the hole and got her foot far enough down to rest on the first rung. It seemed willing to take her weight. Slowly she manoeuvred herself round, clutching at tufts of grass for support until she was facing the wall of the adit. She transferred her hands to the ladder sides, took a second step down and then a third.

The rock wall was greasy with Saturday's rain; this hole must serve as drainage for a large area of sloping land. The rungs too were slippery. Should she have taken off her boots and come down in
b
are
feet?

She reached the broken rung. She tested it with her toe and a piece of the rotten wood broke off and fell down and landed in the wet sand with a plop. As she would, if she fell. It was not too long a stretch to the next rung; thank Heaven they were only about a foot apart. She stretched down and found it. As she transferred her weight to it
,
it gave an ominous crack. Gripping hard to the sides of the ladder, she moved quickly to the one below. It held her without complaint.

How
far
had Ben said was the side tunnel? Had he said at all? Awkward if she missed it.

Step followed step until she was half way. The circle of daylight at the top was by now scarcely larger than a full moon; that at the bottom was growing ever greater. The sea covered the sand again; bubbles and froth, swirling, bottle-green vomit veined with white. Something fell on her hair, wriggled down her shoulder and was gone.

She saw the tunnel. Another thing Ben had not mentioned was that it was not immediately adjacent to the ladder: you had to make a three-foot stride. Not much for a man. Not much for an agile woman. But an agile woman suffering from the effects of drink, with more than a trace of natural vertigo, and entirely on her own, tends to become more nervous at each step. Her foot slipped on the edge as she fell gasping into the mouth of the tunnel.

Her hands were shaking so much that she could not light the tinder. She sat back against the edge of the tunnel taking breaths to steady herself. Water was dripping here, as if the land were bleeding. Wherever there was water and a sufficiency of light some sort of vegetation grew, whether it was moss or grass or tiny ferns. You could not stop life, could you?

Except by death.

There were splendid colours in the rock here: mottled browns and veins of green and russet streaks and speckled greys, with dashes of ochre and yellow; no wonder they had opened this tunnel.

She began to feel sick. It was all imagination, she told herself. What was she doing with imagination, let alone a queasy stomach, who had been a starving brat not above picking up and eating a half-chewed and rancid bone off the
rubbish heap where someone who could afford to be more particular had thrown it? Thirty years ago. Thirty years of genteel living had so weakened her digestive juices, thirty years of happiness and sorrow and love and childbearing and work and play and breathi
ng the genteel air of Nam
para had so developed her sensibilities and her imagination, that because of one mere night drinking port she was about to be sick, and because of loneliness and vertigo she was trembling scared of attempting to climb the ladder again.

What if she did find herself incapable of returning up the slippery crumbling ladder? Would anybody ever find her? It would be dark when Ross got home. No one would have any idea of where she had gone. Perhaps tomorrow they would scour the cliffs, see the skirt
...

She was sick, and after a few minutes wiped her mouth distastefully on her sleeve and began to feel better. Shutting her mind to her situation she tried the flint again. This time the tinder lighted, and from it the two candles caught. The cave grew around her, dripping here and there, flickering yellow.

It was easy to see the sacks, with a sheet of tarpaulin beside them which presumably had been used to protect them from the damp. The first sack was marked
‘
S' and was empty. So was the one marked 'J'. The third one,
‘
P
’
or 'B
’
had the documents in.

She took them out, read what was on them. Then she took a candle back to the opening of the cave and one by one set fire to the documents, holding them by a corner until they were properly alight and allowing them to burn on the edge before brushing the ashes over into the sea. These all burned, she took up a sack and lit that. It caused a lot more smoke, and the channel of the breeze blew much of it back into the tunnel and made her cough. She went on with the second sack. This was damper and took a long time to lose its identity and its ink initial. Eventually she was satisfied that nothing recognizable remained and she thrust it over the edge like its fellow. And presently the third sack followed in the same way.

The few coins that Ben had mentioned were scattered on the
floor. Among the pennies were to twopenny pieces, which were already becoming rare. She hesitated over these but presently threw them down the shaft.

All that remained was the piece of tarpaulin. Plain black, dirty and cobwebbed, it was unidentifiable, unrecognizable in any way; but it might as well go the way of the rest. As she pulled it forward something clinked and she saw a piece of silver, part fallen down a shallow cleft. She picked it up.

It was a silver cup, very smal
l, but nicely fashioned, with
two handles. Not more than two and a half inches high. Like a toy. But prettily made. She rubbed the tarnished side of it and could see some inscription but could not make it out. Perhaps a foreign language. She dragged the tarpaulin to the edge and tipped it over. At first it caught in some errant draught, but after flapping for a few seconds it collapsed and slowly descended to the waiting sea.

The cup was in her hand. Dangerous to keep? Perhaps. But hard just to jettison. She hesitated and then put it into the bag she had brought. It could be looked at again.

A further circuit of the cave showed nothing more. She snuffed out one candle, then the other, waited until the tallow had cooled before she put them away. She strapped the bag back upon her shoulder. Then she looked out at the ladder. It was a long way away.

The first step was the
worst: three feet to get your foot on the rung. It was much easier coming down because you could hold firmly to the ladder side while you groped for the tunnel entrance. But in reverse, what did you hold on to? There wasn't a convenient outspur of the rock that you could clutch. All the rock was smooth and straight and hard and damp.

She sat down for a minute or two to try to stop her knees shaking and to work this out. She thought, if I think of falling I shall never face it. I shall be here, still crouched here, a trembling, half-frozen, half-starved, pitiable wretch when (if) they find the skirt tomorrow, or the next day. Or perhaps even the next. She could find moisture in the cave but no food. Could you eat fern?

She remembered Cousin Francis going out that rainy
September afternoon so many years ago, and never coming back. He had gone down Wheal Grace on his own and slipped and fallen. Only fallen a little way compared to what she would fall here. But he had fallen into water - and he could not swim.
She
could swim, after a fashion, but the water at the bottom of this shaft was not deep enough to break her fall. The distance was probably less than thirty feet. Well, it would be soon over. She would likely break her back and that would be the end of it.

She again began to take breaths to steady herself. She had decided she must not think of falling and since then had thought of nothing else! Well, what were the choices ? If she tried to climb and failed she was certainly dead. If she tried to climb and succeeded she returned to Nampara as if nothing had happened; no one would ever know she had been down here; That was the whole object of the mission. If she stayed where she was, the chances were that she would be found alive, eventually, though one knew not when. Also, she would then be asked to explain what in Heaven's name had got into her, going down an old adit with treacherous steps, on her own and unaided. If she refused to give the true explanation - as she must — then she would, rightly, be regarded by Ross as a mental case.

Illogicall
y it was the dislike of this that stirred her to make a move. She unhitched her bag again and took out the rope. There was no use for it. There was no way in which she could attach it to the ladder. The rungs were too close to the wall of the adit, and if by any remote piece of luck she was able to sling the rope through a rung and retrieve the other end, an improbable feat in itself, she would be more likely to find it an encumbrance round her waist. She could see herself slowly but helplessly sliding down the rope into the sea.

Did that matter? Could she not, when in the sea at the bottom, or somewhere on the way down, grasp the rungs and begin a normal climb?

She thought: This is
not
an adit over the sea. This is
not
a cave from which I have to step to death or safety. This is a step in our back yard, where the calves are fed. Three feet?

Dear life, I could jump
four.
Why should I miss the rungs? Why should I fail to grasp the ladder sides? In any case I don't have to
jump
-I
only have to stretch.
And
balance at
the same time. It's really only standing on the edge and letting yourself gradually fall. If your foot misses, your hand should hold. If your hand misses there's another hand close behind. Judas God, what are you
made
of? Are you one of those elegant, simpering, pampered maidens at Bowood, who have never known the sort of exercise you take every day, who have never ridden a horse astride or f
ought with the waves on Hendrawn
a Beach or scrubbed a floor or fed pigs or milked cows or brewed ale? Come, come, my dear, take a grip on yourself.

So she carefully re-wound the rope around her forearm and repacked it, carefully re-fixed her bag, carefully stepped to the very edge of the adit, below which the sea, bottle-green and vomit-stained with white, swirled backwards and forwards, covering and uncovering the sand like a magician at a fair; and she took a breath, the deepest breath of all, and looked at the ladder only thr
ee feet away, and stretched out
her leg and could not reach and
could
not
reach until she began to fall, and then put out her foot an extra six inches, and clawed with her hands against the slippery rock face, and her foot jarred and held and almost slipped, and her hands, like helpless prisoners in some failed prison escape, slid and clutched and slid and clutched, and then one hand felt something more secure than the rock face, and held on to it. And then she swung, toe only just holding, hand only just holding, while the thirty-foot drop became three thousand feet and the earth swung and the adit swung, toppling her further and further into the gaping, sucking hole. And then her other hand clutched, just in time as her foot slipped off the rung. And she held, kicking desperately for twenty seconds, bruising her knees and her toes; a panic-stricken groping until her foot found a rung again, and her other foot found the rung above it; and, with an immense effort of will, she unloosed her hands from the ladder side and, panting, trembling, shuddering with every. breath, she went up, rung by rung; to the break in the ladder and the missing step, and changed her grip, and blindly, dizzily, reached the top. And crawled out and lay on the rubble near the hole gasping like a newly landed fish but knowing she was safe after all.

Ross left for London late in October, and, the sea routes being no longer hazardous, he sailed from Falmouth in a tin ship. But as usual, it seemed to him, when he was aboard the trip was a foul one, and they did not drop anchor in the Pool - of London until the
11
th of November. There was much to be said for Jeremy's steam carriages, he thought.

He found London returning to normal after the famous junketings he had shunned, and Parliament, whose opening he had now missed, preoccupied with matters which, while certainly of moment, did not in his view embrace some of the more pressing issues of the day. The Houses had expressed their deep regret at the continuing 'indisposition' of His Majesty King George the Third; there had been discussion on the disbanding of the militia; a vote of credit had been passed necessary for the services of the year
1814;
p
rovision made for the household of Princess Charlotte;
l
ong speeches on the thorny matter of the Prince Regent's debts; complaints had even been aired that Parliament had been recalled too early.

And of course that corner of the world where war still raged attracted some attention, and was concerned with the unjust demands of the executive government of America, with the condition of the British army in Canada and its indifferent leadership, with the necessity of negotiating from strength not weakness. One member, speaking of the burning or Washington, referred to the army and its commanders as Goths and Vandals. This was sharply rejected by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who stated that when we witnessed the utmost malice on the part of the Americans we were justified by the laws of
God and man in executing a strict
retaliation.

All very important indeed; but where was the debating '
time
given to the condition of the starving poor of England? Even the Earl of Darnley, who had made an impassioned speech demanding that the rest of the world should follow England's example in abolishing the slave trade, had not dropped a word about conditions in the North of England -
and the Midlands and the West.

Ross was in time for the meeting of his committee, and made some use of his position to explain the basic needs of the tin and copper producers. On the second Thursday he was in London he accepted an invitation to supper at a house in St James's Street, Buckingham Gate.

This had no connection with metals, but perhaps rather too direct a connection with the matter of his own sympathies. His host was an elderly landed gentleman called Major Cartwright, whom Ross had known on and off for fifteen years; but only as it were on nodding acquaintance, and of course by reputation. Cartwright had been one of the stormy petrels of England for as long as most people could remember. Long long ago, at the outbreak of the American war, when offered a high position in the Army under Howe, he had rejected it and shortly afterwards brought out a pamphlet entitled 'American Independence the Glory and Interest of Great Britain'. A major in the Nottinghamshire Militia for seventeen years, he had been cashiered for celebrating the fall of the Bastille. He had begun the first Corresponding Society which had been the forerunner of the many others that had become the revolutionary nightmare of successive British governments.

When Ross had taken Gwyllym Wardle's side in the House in
1809,
in his attack on the principles of the rotten boroughs, Cartwright had written Ross a warm letter of congratulation. Ross had replied politely but had gone no further. The war was on, and though he had spoken his mind on Parliamentary reform it must all wait until the menace of Napoleon had been removed.

Cartwright was the brother of the clergyman who had invented something called a power loom which was revolutionizing production in the work places. This Cartwright,

John, was a tall thin straight old man with a smiling, open face and a plain brown wig concealing his white hair. He greeted Ross warmly and they went into a salon half full of men. Only two women were present and they quickly absented themselves. Ross sipped a very good Canary wine and munched a biscuit while being introduced to this guest and that.

Most he had not met before but some he knew by name. A
youngish middle-aged man called Clifford, who wrote on
l
egal matters and was making a name for himself as an advanced radical. Henry Hunt, of about the same age, known for his size and his bombast and his inflammatory speeches. A very young man with a broad Lancashire accent whom Ross took to; Samuel Bamford, he said his name was. Beside him was Henry Brougham, the radical lawyer who had helped to found the
Edinburgh
Review
- temporarily without a seat in the House. Samuel Whitbread, the "brewer's son and sworn pacifist, was there, but he looked ill-at-ease.

But the guest of honour, if there was such a thing tonight, was a
40
-odd-year-old mill owner and reformer called Robert Owen. Uneducated and poor, he had, it seemed, been apprenticed to a draper at the age of ten, but by the time he was nineteen by some alchemy of his own had come to have the management of a mill in Manchester employing
500
people. Since then he had become the philanthropist owner of the New Lanark Mills on the Clyde where amazing experiments had been carried out in welfare, child education and profit sharing. His recent book,
A
New
View of
Society,
had created a big impression last year. Ross had read it during the summer, so was able to congratulate its author when they met.

The evening was a pleasant one, and after they had supped and brandy was circulating Major Cartwright said, nodding towards Robert Owen:

'A
New
View
of
Society,
eh, Poldark. Isn't it what we all seek?'

‘
it is what most of us here seek,' said Ross,
I
'm not sure you could answer for the country as a whole.'

^‘
it depends how you define the country. Not, I agree, among the nobility. Not among gentry such as ourselves -

'Nor among the mercantile classes, the bankers, the mill-owners, the trading folk
...
But of course I take your meaning.'

‘
it is an ideal I have been fighting for all my life.'
I
know. No one has done more.' Ross added:
I
have recentl
y read your
Letters
on
a
Reform
of
the
Commons.
A very good piece of reasoning. I'm sure it will have due effect.'

'Due effect. Small effect, I fear.'

'Oh, I would not say that,' Ross began, and then stopped, aware that his host probably spoke only the truth.

Cartwright said: 'Someday a historian may write that reform in this country has been put back fifty years by the example of the French. Those who promote peaceful evolution in Britain are instantly suspected of contriving it by bloody revolution. There is a continuing impasse; a continuing misunderstanding not of ways but of means.'

'Now the war is over, Parliament will be much more susceptible to your ideas.'

I
hoped, sir, you would say
our
ideas!'

'Very well. Let us say that.'

Cartwright thumped one hand into the other. 'So much remains to be done! We particularly lack parliamentary help, people who can speak for us in the House, persuade, argue
-
advocate. Look at tonight! Apart from yourself the only member of the House here is Whitbread, who for all his splendid gifts is no longer well — and driven to distraction, I believe, about the Drury Lane Theatre. You may know I have stood for Parliament often but have never been elected. We, the forerunners, the Radicals, who want no other than to proceed by constitutional means, we are looked upon with suspicion and distrust, the breeders of discontent and sedition!'

Ross sipped his brandy. 'What you have advocated all your life, Major Cartwright, is. not so very far from Tom Paine's "Rights". A vote for every man, pensions for the old, the secret ballot, annual Parliaments, and the rest
...
Is it? I am sure it is all good and will come in
time
; but the full programme, read on a single sheet of paper, does look alarming to the average Member.- Do we not first of all want much more
practical
measures to alleviate distress
now!
'
'Such as what?'

'Well
...
a system of supervision of the working conditions in factories, a law forbidding the employment of children under a certain age, a law limiting the number of hours any one man, woman or child may work in a day, some amendment of the Poor Law which, while not removing the incentive to work, allows people in distress a minimum means of comfort and food?'

'And why do you suppose such measures would have a greater chance of Parliamentary support than those I advocate? Of course all these I would urge too and press for equally; but the need for a total change in the representation or the people is central to all the others!'

'Why do I think such measures would have a greater chance? Well, because, as you well
know, a fair number of Whig gentl
emen — you could name a dozen influential ones - and a fair smattering of Tories - have some compassion in their bowels,
and know the hardships and the
poverty, and would like it to be alleviated. The tragedy of the Enclosures has to be reversed somehow. But that is an
economic
change. What they fear to face is
political
change
...
It will come, of course, even if we do not see it. The whole system is out of date - has been rendered out of date by events elsewhere; but it will be a long haul
...
One sees all this in so influential a member as George Canning, who is greatly in favour of helping the poor - but not in favour o
f helping the poor to vote.'

'Oh, Canning, yes,' Cartwright said in a derogatory tone.

'Masters of the Commons are few. Any one of those few is invaluable to any cause.'

'In the event,' said Cartwright, 'he cannot help us from his rich and luxurious ambassadorial house in Lisbon
..
.
’
He sighed. 'No, it is on men such as yourself we depend, Poldark. Men of integrity. Men of known stability. Men of proven patriotism.'

So it was out.

'You have my good will,' Ross said after a moment. 'That I can promise. And vote, of course, if it comes to
a vote. I feel much more urgentl
y for your cause now the war is won. But I believe I am too old to be of great practical use to you. At fifty-four
...'

I
am seventy-four, Captain Poldark.'

Ross half smiled.
'Touché
.
What I meant is that at heart I am a Westcountryman who feels he has already been a member of parliament too long and is looking forward to retirement. I do not really like the atmosphere of Westminster, but while the war was in progress
...
The war was my cause. It seems to me too late to take up another cause, however sincerely I may support it.'

'However sincerely. I take some comfort from that.'

'Oh, have no doubts of my support. My
regret is that it may not be of
the extent you are seeking.'

'Have you ever met Cobbett?'

'No.'

I
think you should. He is a great man.'
I
have no doubt of it.'

'You may have read his recent article on the rotten
boroughs.'

'No. But, Major Cartwright, I have to remind you that I sit for one of the rotten boroughs myself.'

'But that does not mean you support the system! You have said so!'

'Certainly I do not. But there are - courtesies to be observed. Lord Falmouth is my patron. He and his father before him have always treated me with particular consideration and tolerance. Within reason I have felt free to take up what attitudes I chose, and when I, made my speech in the House in support of Wardle, it did not occur to me that I had any duty to write to my patron and explain. But a solitary speech is one matter. An open campaign against some principle to which the Falmouths are committed is another.'

'Such as the abolition of the pocket boroughs?'

'Yes.'

'You should resign and contest an open seat, as Canning did at Liverpool. Of course even that sort of election is inadequate and corrupt; but at least you would have no master to serve.'

Ross never very much liked being told what he should do, but he smiled easily and said: 'You perceive the difficulties in my case. My instinct - and perhaps it is a lazy one - tells me enough is enough. To embrace your good cause would mean going against that instinct to the extent of a total re-assessment of what I am to do with the rest of my life. Beginning with a determination to try to return to Parliament, where I have never had the greatest success, and to fight for an open seat on policies which would almost certainly result in my d
efeat. I
don't see it as a practical proposition.'