Edmund Kempthorne was out walking that morning. He sauntered through Gwithian village dressed in elegant black clothes, his velvet eyes looking out jauntily from under his tricorn hat for any suitable female with whom to pass a pleasant hour or so. The village seemed deserted, the windows of every cottage and house draped in black in mourning for Laurence Trevennor. Edmund was disappointed. He had spent a less troublesome night knowing that Mary Ellen was arriving at Trevennor House later in the day, but that was not until the afternoon, and it seemed a long time away.
Deborah wasn’t at all pleased with the arrangement. She’d pleaded with Edmund to wait until after their uncle’s funeral. But Edmund had thrown a violent tantrum and insisted Mary Ellen and their daughter Morenwyn, come today – his needs were more important than risking the disapproval of any narrow-minded villagers. If they didn’t believe the story that Mary Ellen was a poor unfortunate widow about to be evicted from her home, whom he and his sister had taken under their wing, he didn’t care! He intended to move into Isabel’s residence at Truro as soon as possible anyway, when all the legal arrangements were completed.
Edmund saw no one but the landlord of the local inn, the Leg of Mutton, putting his empty ale barrels outside in his yard. Edmund accepted the landlord’s offer of refreshment and listened patiently to his regrets about ‘dear brave, Mr Trevennor’s death, God rest his soul,’ until he realised there were no serving girls about who might be willing to oblige him. He drank up, thanked the landlord and left to saunter back down the village on the other side of the road.
He made a quick perusal of the churchyard but there was only the sexton tidying up the graves and grass verges to make sure it looked its best for Laurence Trevennor’s funeral in three days’ time. The sexton nodded his head in respect and Edmund walked on. He smiled and his features relaxed at what he saw next. A woman was coming towards him. She was quite alone and although she had a somewhat ragged appearance she looked young and reasonably comely from a distance.
Edmund increased his pace so he could meet the woman away from the houses. Drifts of sand lay across the road and at the grassy banks, blown there by yesterday’s storm. The woman didn’t seem to notice his approach and gave a cry when he presented himself in her path.
‘Good morning,’ he said with a friendly smile, lifting his hat. He was disappointed she was not as pretty or as young as she’d first looked but he thought she was better than nothing. She would whet his appetite before Mary Ellen provided him with a feast.
The woman backed away, but when his good quality clothes and refined voice had coursed their way through her usual mental fog, she curtseyed awkwardly and looked vacantly at him.
‘G’mornin’ sur.’ She made to skirt round him but Edmund moved in the same direction. He was even more pleased she was dim-witted.
‘Do you live in the village?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘Ais,’ then she frowned and thought about it. ‘But not really. Back-along there, along a little path, a little way after the bridge.’ She turned and pointed the way she had come and Edmund moved in closer to her. She was startled to see him looming over her.
‘Do you live there with your family, my dear?’
‘Um, n-no sur. There wus me granny but she died.’ Edmund licked his lips. This was getting better and better.
‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked softly.
‘No, sur…’The woman thought hard. ‘Yes, sur… I think p’raps you’m Mister Kem’thorne, brother to Miss Kem’thorne in the Big House. Mister Trevennor was yer uncle, ’e wus some nice gen’leman.’
‘I’m so pleased to hear you liked him,’ Edmund drawled, and assuming every man’s disposition was the same as his, he wondered just how nice Uncle Laurence had been to her. ‘I adored him, of course,’ he went on, rooting the woman, who looked most uncomfortable and was fidgeting to be on her way, to the spot. ‘I shall miss him dreadfully. I will make sure to be just as kind to the villagers as my dear late uncle was. Tell me, my dear, what is your name?’
‘Nellie, sur.’ And Nellie blinked and tried to clear her blank mind and remember where she had been going before this handsome gentleman had stopped to speak to her.
‘Now, Nellie,’ Edmund purred, keeping his eyes glued to hers, ‘I’m sure you’re a very good girl and would have done anything to please Mr Trevennor. I want to make friends with the villagers, and Mr Trevennor, I’m sure, would have wanted you to help me. I would like to see your home and the conditions you live in. If I find them wanting I will arrange to have the necessary work done on them. And for your help I will give you a shiny new shilling.’
Edmund Kempthorne had not met Nellie far enough down the road to be unobserved. From an upstairs window in the parsonage, Charlotte Thomas had seen him walk past and the moment she had seen why he had quickened his pace she had flung herself out of the room and down the stairs. She had nearly knocked her husband, who had just left his study, off his feet. The papers he’d been carrying were strewn all around them.
What is it, Charlotte, my dear? Has one of the children—’
‘Nothing is wrong with the children, Perran,’ she said hastily, stooping down and thrusting a piece of paper at him. ‘I’m sorry about that. I have to go out for a little while, dearest. There is something I must attend to and it cannot wait.’
It couldn’t even wait long enough for the Reverend Perran Thomas to be given his customary kiss. His wife rushed out of the door without even tying the ribbons of her hat and cloak.
Charlotte attended to her ribbons as she marched down the road towards Edmund Kempthorne and Nellie and she was absolutely fuming. She had had just about enough of the way men like the abominable Gyver Pengelly and this lecherous, smooth-talking dishonest gentleman used Nellie. The poor soul possessed a child’s mind because of Pengelly’s brutal ways. She could not tell the difference between right and wrong and was quite unable to protect herself. It was time to do something about it!
‘Good morning, Mr Kempthorne, Nellie,’ Charlotte said loudly as she approached them.
They both swung round. Edmund looked angry but lifted his hat politely. Nellie looked guilty and confused. Charlotte had heard her say in a panicky voice, ‘But Mr Pengelly wouldn’t like it!’
‘Run along to the parsonage kitchen, Nellie,’ Charlotte said. ‘There’s some work for you there and Cook has a nice big breakfast waiting for you. Tell her I sent you.’
‘Th-thank ’ee, Mistress Thomas,’ Nellie blurted out. Gyver Pengelly allowed her to speak to Perran and Charlotte Thomas, but only lest they object to her silence and try interfering in her life. She took to her heels and ran all the way to safety.
‘Are you taking the morning air, Mr Kempthorne?’ Charlotte said coldly to him.
‘Indeed, I am, Mistress Thomas,’ he said, employing his voice softly. ‘That strange young woman stopped me and said she was sorry about my uncle’s death. She said it over and over again. I couldn’t get away from her.’
‘I’m glad you could see that poor Nellie has only limited mental faculties. I like to keep a keen eye on her. I’m afraid of people taking advantage of her, you see.’
‘That would be most wicked!’ Edmund exclaimed, feigning indignation.
He had swept his eyes over Charlotte Thomas and found her most attractive. She was about twenty-eight, and he had to agree with his sister’s unusually glowing accolade of her yesterday. Looking at her, he knew why Deborah had spoken in that way: she wanted him to seduce and disgrace the curate’s wife because she hated Charlotte Thomas for having all the things that Nature had denied her. Charlotte’s skin was clear, her thick dark hair tumbled down about her slender shoulders owing to her haste, her brown eyes shone and her cheeks glowed. Edmund thought she was a woman who could be aroused to many passions. How fortunate for the curate, he mused. She obviously didn’t deny him since she had presented him with so many squalling brats. It would be a pleasure to find out what the young parson was receiving in their private moments…
Charlotte had a good idea what was going on inside his head. She decided to retreat before she couldn’t stop herself from smacking his face. ‘Please give my regards to Miss Kempthorne. If you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to at home. Do enjoy your walk, Mr Kempthorne. May I suggest a walk along the cliffs? The cold fresh air will do you good.’
Edmund smiled and bowed to her and then watched her darkly as she walked sedately away from him. His mouth twisted as he thought about the morally upright woman. His observations would make good pillow talk with Mary Ellen later in the day.
From an upstairs bedroom window next door in Trevennor House, Deborah Kempthorne, too, had been watching her brother. Her face was coloured by hate. Edmund had not let her down and had made a good start with what she wanted for Charlotte Thomas, but she was unhappy about the smarmy little curate’s wife’s interest in Nellie. Nellie had to be got rid of before she talked in one of her feeble moments.
Nick and Isabel walked in silence for some twenty minutes. Then Isabel, slipping back into her natural voice now they were alone, asked solemnly, ‘How many perished on The Bountiful, Nick?’
‘Was that her name?’ he answered, sighing heavily. ‘About thirty or forty, I reckon.’
‘Those poor people,’ Isabel said, knowing it was an inadequate statement.
‘Aye, ’twas terrible to hear their screams…’ They were back on the coastline, tramping over patches of dead rust-coloured heather, the sea two hundred feet below. This was some of the wildest terrain Isabel had seen, with no way down to the virtually shoreless bottom of the cliff. There was always a headland, in front or behind them, stretching out fat fingers of land.
The clouds lifted and a determined sun shone down warmly and helped dry out Nick’s clothing. Isabel pushed back her hood and let the warmth, the fresh salty winds, and the secure feeling of being with Nick, sweep all worries and melancholy away. She was getting used to the sea – its vastness, its sounds and smells, its multitude of shifting colours, its many mysterious rocks rising out in various shapes from its depths.
‘Where are we going next?’ Isabel asked.
‘Perranporth – ’tisn’t far. We’re going round Cligga Head now.’ He stopped to study some driftwood and ship’s rigging bobbing pathetically in a narrow inlet of dark blue water at the bottom of the cliff. ‘That probably comes from another ship,’ he said, pointing it out to Isabel. ‘There hasn’t been time for wreckage from The Bountiful to get here yet.’ Gazing up at the sky, he smiled at the sun. ‘You know, I think after yesterday’s storm we’re in for a fine sunny day.’
The wreck of The Bountiful was put to the back of their minds. Isabel had no difficulty scrambling up and down the drops they met, except for one which was sheer and steep, covered in loose scree which shifted under her feet and trickled away in front of her. She froze.
‘Move down in sidesteps or run down and I’ll catch you,’ Nick called up to her.
In the end Nick good-humouredly climbed back up and carried her down. Near the bottom he slipped and they landed in a heap of hysterical laughter.
They entered the sand-driven tract of Perranporth from part of the cliff called Droskyn. They passed the pilchard seine boats pulled up there for safekeeping through the winter months and entered the hamlet itself down a steep winding road. Nick bought pasties, bread, cheese, ale and water from the shops and street hawkers. A young girl approached laden with a tray of food almost too heavy for her to carry and he bought two sweet-pigs. He gave one to Isabel as they strode along. She had never seen a sweet-pig before and studied the pig-shaped pastry case, its belly filled with plump currants, with a child’s delight before eating it.
Nick spoke to a chapman. He didn’t want to buy one of his pamphlets full of popular tales and scandals, but chapmen were a good source of gossip. He found out that the news of Laurence Trevennor’s death and Isabel’s assumed demise was fully abroad. Nick gave the man a farthing for his trouble.
From there he and Isabel trudged along under the foothills of Perranporth, on fine golden sands, two long miles of it. The cliffs here were dark, honeycombed with caverns. After Isabel stopped to shake the sand out of her shoes, they started climbing again.
‘I’ve never climbed up and down so many times in my life!’ she exclaimed.
She marched on without complaint and Nick silently admired her long-legged strides. She could now recognize rabbit burrows, molehills and badger setts. She chatted about St Piran, the county’s patron saint, of how his eighth-century oratory, the first cell he built after crossing over from Ireland on a millstone, was about half a mile inland, buried somewhere in the sand towans they had just left behind. Uncle Laurence had told her about it when she had become interested in a similar oratory on a site at Gwithian. Nick said he knew about that, of course, and she asked him if he also knew that a whole town was buried under Gwithian’s sand towans and a village was buried under Perranporth’s – bones were continually coming to light. Nick replied that he thought he had heard about it somewhere and teased her that she wasn’t as soft-brained as he thought.
They talked easily as they walked, sharing their knowledge of local history and legend. Everywhere they looked they saw only a marvellous beauty, awesome in its loneliness. The sense of mystery, myth and legend touched the roots of their Cornish blood.
Nick pointed to a long rugged headland out in front of them. ‘That’s Penhale Point with the Gull Rocks out at sea. Just before that there’s a little sandy cove. No matter what the weather’s like, ’tis sheltered from the wind unless it’s blowing in from the sea, which it isn’t today. If you want to freshen up you can do what I’m going to do, swim in the sea. Can you swim, Isabel?’
‘No, I cannot,’ she answered, frowning, wishing she could.
‘Well, you can splash about on the shore.’
‘But surely it’s too dangerous to swim in the sea so soon after a storm.’
‘You’re right,’ he grinned. ‘Worried about me, are you? I won’t swim but I do intend to strip off and roll about in the water.’ He waited for her to blush but she only raised an eyebrow and smiled a little. He touched his cut cheek. ‘Got a few cuts and bruises to clean up.’
It was a tricky climb down to the cove. The path sloped sharply, zigzagging back and forth on itself and was but a foot wide and covered with tough foliage which they had to take care not to stumble over. At the bottom they jumped the last three feet down onto soft sand warmed by the sun. The cove swept round in a typical semi-circle. It was about five hundred yards long and stretched to about the same when the tide was out. The tide was out now.
‘This is surely a smuggler’s cove,’ Isabel said enthusiastically.
‘Aye, a bit obvious and rarely used for that now.’
‘It’s like being in another world.’
Nick tossed aside his bag and jacket and pulled off his boots. Isabel laid her cloak out carefully and sat on it. She took off her shoes and stockings and discarded the bandages. As she rubbed her feet and looked for fresh blisters she said, ‘Oh, for a hot strong dish of tea.’
She looked up to see Nick running towards the sea and clapped her hands over her face. His strong muscular body was completely naked. Moments later she peeped between her fingers and watched him leap into the waves then lie down near the shoreline to allow the gentler waves to lap over him. She put her hands down. He was too far away for her to see anything improper.
Laying aside her shawl and tucker, she pulled the rough material of her borrowed dress down over her shoulders to let the sun warm her exposed skin. She gathered up Nick’s clothes which he’d discarded in a line leading to the sea and left them in a heap so he could dress at a more discreet distance. Even so, she thought she ought to move further away. Picking up the cord with which he tied back his hair, she walked slowly to the other end of the little beach, enjoying the feel of warm sand massaging her feet.
She used the cord to tie up her own hair and stopped to pick up pretty spiralling shells, the like of which she had never seen before her flight. Eagerly she took in the fascinating habitat of the seashore, the small narrow world that lived between land and water. The seashore, the most dangerous of environments, was pounded daily by waves, scoured and damaged by sand and stones, harsh cold winds, and fresh water from rain and streams. Despite the harshness of the tidal zone, all its little creatures had adapted themselves to withstand its natural hazards. After what she had been through, Isabel felt at that moment she could adapt to whatever the future held. Brought up as she was, she had never known adventure, had never owned an adventurous spirit. With Nick, and because of Nick, she had experienced so many new things. It had been terrible and frightening at first. But the incident with the rat and a night in Nick’s arms, the heady knowledge that he desired her and she herself could flame that desire so quickly, gave her a strong sense of her own unique femininity. She knew now that she was more than just a passive mate required to do her duty in an unexciting marriage bed. Here in the little cove she felt carefree for the first time in her life. And she wished she could spend one more night like the last up on the cliffs with Nick Nancarrow.
She stood on the firm wet sand and gingerly let the water lick at her feet. It was foam-topped, icy cold. She shivered, but slowly she walked a little further into the sea, and a little more, lifting up her dress in stages until the water was up to her knees and the dress up to her thighs. Far, far out a long strip of turquoise green caught her eye, such a beautiful colour, as though the sun had illuminated it with a long beam of extraterrestrial light. Isabel waded, then ran, in and out of the waves becoming giddy with exhilaration and abandoned delight.
Then she noticed that Nick was watching her.