The Angry Tide by Winston Graham
‘Well, yur were I, Mrs, walking ’ome, sober as a judge, or maybe soberer, and I come to this yur bridge – twas no more’n ten paces acrost – and I started acrost’n, and by ivers, soon’s I put foot pon the planchin, then the planchin began to give way! An’ it slid, an’ it slid, an’ it slid, like you was on a frosty road covered wi’ goose turds. Step I took, one ’pon tother, each one rolling and slipping fasterer than the last un, till at last me feet flew from under me and plosh! I were in the water. Deep, deep, I sank, and a-swallowin’ of un, and tasting like a drang. Twas a mercy I were brave ’nough to find me way ’ome! An’ I never been right since!’
‘Never was right afore,’ said Prudie. ‘Nor never will be. Not till Kingdom Come. Nor after that. Long after that. When the sun d’grow cold Jud Paynter’ll still not be right. Cos you wasn’t born right, see!’
Demelza stayed for twenty minutes, hearing the gossip of the countryside, and then escaped into the more wholesome air outside and, when Prudie followed her, gave her her usual half-guinea. Prudie was pathetically grateful, but long before Demelza was out of earshot she heard the rumble of argument begin again inside the cottage.
Through Grambler and past the gates of Trenwith, and the detour that everyone now accepted to avoid trespassing on Warleggan land. So towards Trevaunance Cove and Place House just out of sight over the headland. Here some oxen were being used to plough a field and she could hear the small boys who were driving them keep up a rhythmic chant of encouragement. ‘ Come on, Fallow, come on, Chestnut. Now then, Tartar, now then, County. Come on, Fallow, come on, Chestnut, now then, Tartar, now then, County.’ So the sing-song drawl went on. She stood to watch them for a time. A ridge of cloud like a woollen blanket hung over the sea.
So down the hill to Pally’s Shop.
Drake was shoeing a horse while the farmer waited. He gave her a quick smile and the farmer touched his hat.
‘I’ll not be long.’
‘Don’t hurry,’ she said, and passed into the house.
III
They had taken tea and talked long and she was ready to go. He had said more to her than to anyone before; partly because she was his beloved sister whom he had not seen for two and a half months; partly because his last and final tragedy was now seven months old. Sick at heart with her own recent memories, she listened to his with the more sympathy.
‘I shall never marry now,’ he said, ‘any more’n I believe Sam will. It is – over. I feel little or nought now. Like that time before, I work. And work and work. One day it seem me I shall be rich!’ He laughed. ‘Maybe it is a good thing if you d’want to make money, to be crossed in love. You’ve little else to think on.’
‘You don’t think about making money.’
‘No. I don’t think about it: I just work and it come!’
‘Drake, you remember the Christmas party of last year? Well, this year Caroline wants to have it there – at Killewarren, instead of Nampara. But otherwise just the same. If she does have it – and we go – I want you to promise to come as you did before.’
‘If you go?’
‘Well . . . it will depend. After London it will depend. I do not know how Ross will feel about a Christmas party . . .’
Drake looked at the expression on his sister’s face and perceived the depth of the issues that waited Ross’s return.
Demelza said: ‘But even if we should not be there, Ross and I, or only one of us, I would still wish for you to go. I know Caroline will invite you and Sam. You must not feel any barrier between you because they are rich. They are my dearest friends.’
‘She’s been very good to me. Any work she can she send over here. And sometimes when she was living down here permanent she used to come herself and chat and talk, just like we were equals.’
‘Well, then.’
‘Let us wait Christmas, sister.’
She looked out at the day. The blanket of cloud had by now drawn itself over the land, putting the sky to bed. ‘I must go. I told them not to wait dinner for me.’
‘There’s rain in the wind. Stay and eat wi’ me.’
‘Not today, Drake. But thank you.’
‘I’ll come part way home – ’
‘No, you’ll lose custom . . .’
‘Custom can wait.’
So he walked back with her as far as the top of Sawle Combe. By now misty-wet had set in, and he watched her striding away into the damp grey afternoon, cloak over head, long grey skirt, sturdy shoes, until she was lost to sight among the pines of Wheal Maiden. Then he turned and walked home, bending his head into the gentle soaking rain.
When he reached home Farmer Hancock was waiting for him, looking impatient. He had brought two oxen to be shod, and had sent a boy down this morning to tell Drake as much, and Drake had forgot. So the next hour was busy, and when Hancock had gone Drake cut himself a couple of slices from the ham he had bought from the Trevethans yesterday when they killed their pig. This, with bread and tea and two apples, made a good meal, and as soon as it was done another commission kept him busy till four.
So the days went. By now dark was not far off, and the two Trewinnard boys came in from working in his fields, soaked to the skin and anxious to be off home. He let them go, and walked to the gate of his yard to see them scuttling up the hill towards St Ann’s.
Work was less in the winter, few customers came after dark, and the long evenings which he had earlier spent by candlelight making spades and ladders and other things to sell to the mines, he now, since the fire, devoted to building furniture to replace the stuff that had been burned. This he found much more exacting, but it was one of the few things to give him a wholesome sense of satisfaction when done. To begin with he had used inferior wood, but recently he had bought some good oak and walnut, and he was resolved to make over again all the earlier pieces knocked together for quick convenience.
Well, it would not do to stand here endlessly with the wet dripping off his face. No one else was coming now. He had chickens to feed, and some geese he was fattening for Christmas.
He turned away from the gate, and then his sharp eye detected a man in a long coat coming down the hill from St Ann’s carrying a bag. He seemed hesitant, not quite sure where he was going, and sure enough Drake saw him stop at a cottage – the Roberts’s – and, it seemed, ask the way. Mrs Roberts was pointing down the hill. The man came on. He was not smartly dressed but he looked too respectable to be a vagrant or a beggar.
Drake went into the storehouse to get some meal for the chickens. He put it in a bowl to be able to throw it more easily, and fed a few of the chickens, watching them scuttle towards him on long rangy legs and then dart about the yard like thrown knives to jab at the food he scattered.
He heard the click of the gate and went out again. The figure at it said:
‘Would you be so kind as to tell me . . . oh,’ and then in the smallest voice, ‘Drake!’
Drake dropped the bowl, which rolled on its rim into a corner, spilling the rest of the meal everywhere.
‘Oh, my love . . .’ he said. ‘Have you come home?’
IV
She sat opposite him in the tiny parlour, hair still lank from the rain, the lashes of her short-sighted eyes linked with tears. She had dropped her cloak, and sat there in her brown woollen dress like some tall damp bird that had come in for shelter but when it had dried and rested would take flight again. He had knelt to unbutton her black, blunt-toed wet shoes, but she had shrunk from his touch. She was holding a cup of tea, warming her hands with it and trying not to shiver.
‘I left this morning . . .’ she said, speaking rapidly, without pauses. ‘Early this morning; I thought at first – I thought I should leave her a note; but that seemed – cowardly; I felt that if I have sometimes been cowardly in the past, now was the time to stop; so I went into her bedroom before she was up and told her what I was going to do. At first she laughed – did not believe me – then when she saw I really intended she grew . . . swollen with rage; i
He watched her in silence, hardly able yet to believe she was here.
‘She said she would have me stopped; she said she would call the servants, get me locked up – then have me put away, she said, as Osborne had once tried to have me put away; I said she had no right – no one had any right – I was a widow now; anyway, what did she care, I asked her, about me? What did she care? I was only an expense and a nuisance; I was going to leave her my son . . . my son.’
‘Don’t talk, Morwenna, if it upset you.’
‘I want to talk, Drake; I must talk. I must tell you everything I can . . .’
At that point she choked and was quiet for a while. The hot tea was burning colour in her cheeks.
‘So when she had shouted at me for – for a long time, then she said, all right, I could go, but if I went, she said, I must take only what I stood up in, and if I went I must never come crawling back; I said I would go and never come back, I said . . . crawling or any other way. So then I left and walked to a farm near by, and the farmer gave me a lift in his cart to Grampound, and there, after waiting hours, I caught the stage to Truro; then I had to wait again until I found a wagon coming this way; it came as far as Goonbell, and then – I walked from there; I had to ask often because I had really no idea – where you lived.’
He stared at her and stared at her. The last time he had seen her close to like this, personally, in quiet conversation, was more than four years ago. He was recognizing her all over afresh. Eventually she looked up at him and he looked away.
‘You’ve eaten?’
‘This morning.’
‘I’ve got some ham. And there’s a morsel of cheese. And there’s apples. Bread.’
She shook her head, as if dismissing an irrelevancy.
He said: ‘Let me get ee a blanket to wrap yourself with.’
She said: ‘Drake, I have to tell you about April.’
‘Does it matter now?’
‘It does to me. I have to tell you. Even if it hurts you to tell you.’
‘Go on then. I mind for nothing of that, though.’
She picked some strands of damp hair off her brow. Her eyes were like pools lying in shadow.
‘You know I never cared for Osborne?’
‘You hated him.’
She considered this. ‘D’you know, when I was young I didn’t know what hate was? I never – it never entered my being. Only after I married. It’s a terrible thing. It shrivels up all that’s good in you. It’s like a child becoming an old woman in a few months.’ She shivered. ‘I’d like to forget I ever felt that for him – or for any man. Drake, can I just say I never cared for Osborne?’
‘So be it.’
‘After John – my baby – was born I was ill, and I was more ill and sick in spirit when I found that Osborne, while I was ill, had taken another woman; I cannot tell you who it was, but to me it was so physically degrading – so degrading – not that I ever wanted him back! . . . Oh, I am telling this so very badly!’
He got up and took the cup from her, refilled it and gave it back to her. He noticed again how she seemed to shrink at his touch.
‘Then after some months – I can’t recollect how many months – this other woman, she left, and he wanted to resume his relationship with me. I refused – and we had vile quarrels. I continued to refuse him, and made terrible threats. For a long time – I think it must have been two years, I did not let him touch me . . . But then, only about six weeks before he died it – came about . . . well, he forced himself on me. And after that. Not just once, you see. When it had begun, it happened again and again . . .’
He clenched his fists. ‘Do you have to tell me this?’
‘Yes! For I have to explain that when he died I felt contaminated – as if the mere thought of the contact between flesh and flesh – any flesh – would turn me sick and demented. Sometimes earlier when I had denied him he had called me demented – but I was far nearer to that just after he had died, after he had died, than at any other time in my life! Do you understand it at all, Drake? All that was – was beautiful between us, all that was tender, all that was true – all that perhaps there might be between any young man and any young woman – though I can scarce believe many felt it so deep as we did – all, all that was turned to ugliness, beastliness, vileness . . .’
She put the teacup down on the table, her hand not too certain. The fire Drake had lit was crackling with new wood, and the hem of her skirt was drying.
She said: ‘When I was about fifteen I went with my father once to St Neots, where he was preaching. On the way home on the following day we happened upon a stag hunt, and I saw a young deer killed . . . I shall never forget it. Suddenly all its grace and lissom beauty were stretched on a rock, and a knife came and slit open its belly, and all its entrails, its heart, its liver, its bowels, were pulled out to steam and stink in the sun!’
‘Morwenna!’
‘But it was the same deer, Drake, the same deer! And when you came I could see only the physical contact of two bodies which would turn my mind to the deepest revulsion, my flesh to shrivel and creep, my stomach to retch. So you see I was – a little – still am a little – demented.’
‘My love—’
‘Also,’ she said, ‘I found – I knew that week that he died – that I was with child by him again.’
Then . . .?’ He looked at her, instinctively glanced at her waist.
‘I lost it – two months ago. Oh, not deliberate. I did nothing. But I think perhaps the poor little thing knew that I . . . hated it. That word! I said I’d not use it again. I lost the baby. It just happened.’
He breathed out slowly. ‘And so – now you have come.’
‘Now I felt I could at least come to see you.’
‘More’n that, I pray. Where else can you go?’
‘To Trenwith.’
He did not speak, but went to the fire to stir it again, crouched there, then went swiftly down the two steps to the kitchen, cut a piece of bread and sliced some ham thinly upon it, brought it on a plate. ‘Eat this.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Ye need it. Must need it after so long a fast.’
Reluctantly she bit a corner, chewed and swallowed, bit again. He watched her. When she had done she half smiled at him.
‘Why Trenwith?’ he asked.
‘It is the best place to go. My cousin’s father and mother live there.’
‘Do you want to see them special?’
‘They were always kind.’
‘But you came here first.’
‘I had to see you – to explain.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes . . . that’s all.’
A long silence fell between them.
Drake said: ‘When I came Truro to see ye, I thought to bring you away, to ask you to marry me so soon as ever twas decent after his death. I was – in such a hurry – an impulse – I should’ve known better.’
‘You were not to know what I have told you.’
‘But now . . . Will you not marry me, Morwenna?’
She shook her head, not looking at him. ‘I can’t, Drake.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of what I’ve told you. Because I feel as I do feel.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s so little I can give you.’
‘You can give me yourself. That’s all I want.’
‘That’s just what I can’t do.’
‘Why not, my love?’
‘Drake, you haven’t understood. Because I am still – contaminated – in my mind. I can’t look on – on love – on what marriage means – without revulsion. If you were to kiss me now I might not shiver, for other people have kissed me. It could be just – a salute. But if you were to touch my body I would shrink away because instantly, across my mind, would come the thought
‘Yes.’
‘Well, shoes particularly I could not – not stand. But everything. Because I am demented. A little. In that respect. The thought of – of lying with a man – the bodily contact – and what follows it . . . the – the very thought! . . .’ She put her head down.
‘Even with me?’
‘Even with you . . .’
She took her glasses out of her bag and rubbed them on a handkerchief. ‘I had to take them off when I was walking here because the fine rain blinded me. Now I can see you better. Drake,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘I must go. Thank you for welcoming me. After the way I treated you in April, you are so good, so kind.’
He stood up, but not over her, keeping his distance. ‘Morwenna, I must tell you that just before he – Mr Whitworth – died I had engaged to marry a girl in Sawle called Rosina Hoblyn. I’d thought that you were lost to me for ever. Kind friends thought my life was being wasted, lost. So twas. So I engaged to marry Rosina. But when I heard he was dead, I went to see Rosina and asked her to set me free. This she did, for she’s a straight, honest, good girl. And I came to Truro. And you turned me away. But when you turned me away I didn’t go back to Rosina – even if she’d have had me. I resolved never to marry ’tall. I told my sister – she was here, today – I told her only today that I should never marry ’tall. And that is the honest truth, without a word of a lie! So . . .’ He looked down at her.
‘So?’
‘Would it not be better to marry me than to see me have no wife – all my days?’
She put her free hand hard to her mouth. ‘Drake, you still don’t understand.’
‘Oh, yes, I reckon I do.’ He moved to sit on his haunches in front of her, but checked himself in time. He crouched some way away. ‘Be my wife in name – marry me – in church proper – that’s all I ask. Love – what you call love – carnal love – if it d’come some day it come. If not, not. I shall not press. Twill be for you always to say.’
She released her mouth long enough to say: ‘I couldn’t ask it. It wouldn’t be fair on you. You love me! I know that. So how could you – how could you keep a promise it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to make?’