I
The next day Jeremy and Clowance rode over to Trenwith, and they and Geoffrey Charles and Amadora took a walk along the cliffs. Jeremy and Clowance had bathed in the morning, which was sunny and breathlessly still with an enormous incoming tide; by the afternoon as the tide receded one could see piles of seaweed and driftwood along the high watermark and dozens of people sifting it over for anything of value. The afternoon was still quiet but the September sun was streaky.
‘Rain and wind tomorrow,’ said Jeremy.
The path along the edge of the cliff being narrow, the quartet split up, Jeremy and Geoffrey Charles going ahead, the girls fifty yards in the rear, Clowance generally holding them up by picking wild flowers and offering them for Amadora to look at.
‘This path was out of bounds when I was a child,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘Even Morwenna was not allowed to bring me here.’
‘I suppose all mothers are the same,’ said Jeremy.
‘Sometimes it is good to be nervous,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘Amadora is not nervous enough. At least for herself.’
‘You are determined to go back to Spain right after the party?’
‘Determined? I suppose that is as good a word as any. I feel it my duty. And in a sense I look forward – after so many years of being pounded by the enemy I want to be in it when we at last are doing the pounding.’
‘Do you think the war will be over soon?’
‘There are so many fronts now . . . You see the Americans have had a success on Lake Erie. I suspect they will re-take Detroit soon. They can get reinforcements so much more quickly.’
‘So if there is peace in Europe there may be war in America for some years yet?’
‘I confess I should not feel eager to return if I were returning to fight in Canada. Buonaparte is my enemy.’
Not to be outdone by Clowance, Jeremy stopped and picked a stalk of pink willow herb which was blooming by the path. He sniffed at it but there was no scent.
‘Will you do me a favour, Geoffrey Charles?’
‘Name it.’
Jeremy named it.
‘Give me their full names and the address when we get home,’ said his cousin. ‘I’ll send the letter tomorrow.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It may not be possible to put them up in Trenwith. You know our bedrooms. But I think as you say, Mrs Pope . . .’
‘Have you met the Popes yet?’
‘Last week. She called on Amadora. A pretty woman.’
‘Distinctly so,’ said Jeremy.
Behind them Amadora said: ‘This bathing that you shall do today. Do you engage in it in all your clothes?’
‘Oh, no. Mama has made a light costume which we have all copied. Have you seen the Greeks – pictures of the Greeks? They wore a sort of short thin tunic without sleeves. That, of course, was for men, and that was for daily wear, not for bathing. We use something like it for bathing. It is not at all what would be favoured in Brighton or Penzance but it serves.’
‘But does it not display – all of the legs?’
‘Yes. But who is to see?’
‘Oh. I do not think I could do that! With you it shall be just your family. I am not one of your family.’
‘Yes you are!’
Amadora said rather stiffly: ‘Not in that way. I cannot undress myself in the front of Jeremy.’
‘We’ll go on our own sometime – right at the end of the beach.’
‘Maybe. When the sea grows more warm. I used my hand in it last week and it was like the ice!’
‘But this is September, Amadora. This is the warmest it ever gets!’
‘Mother of God, I shall not bear that! I could die of chill.’
‘And this,’ said Clowance, stooping, ‘is samphire. We use it in making pickles. Taste it, the leaves are quite nice.’
Amadora tasted, made a little moue, dropped the leaf. ‘I think in Spain we have something of the sort. Clowance . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘We are the most near of an age, is that not so? There is one thing that shall be worrying me, as you will suppose it is worrying everyone. I have not spoken to your mother though she has been the most kind of all. It shall be worrying me always if I come to live in England.’
‘That is? . . .’
‘My religion.’
Clowance crumpled the other leaves and sniffed them.
Amadora said: ‘I am from a convent, you will understand. In our convent we are taught that those who are not belonging to the Catholic faith are heretics. Must be shunned, avoided, shall be treated as evil people – the anti-Christ. I am taught that heretics cannot even be good-looking, for they have their wickedness written on their faces. This is how I am taught – until I meet the English – and Geoffrey Charles. Then I cannot believe that any more. Afortunadamente, my father, he is a very wise man, very tolerante – I am sorry, in embarrassment I lose my English . . .’
‘Don’t hurry . . . Yes, we’re coming!’ Clowance called to the young men.
‘My mother, she is very unforgiving – and also my brother – my elder brother, Martin – he looks the dagger at me, as if I shall be casting myself into the pit. And as for Father Antonio – you need not ask! . . .’ The girl sighed. ‘Yet our love is such we ride over these obstacles – and it will continue so. I know it here.’ She touched her heart.
‘Isn’t that really what matters?’ Clowance said.
‘Of course. Of course. Por supuesto. But now I am here I say to myself: “But to them I am the heretic, the evil one, the anti-Christ. Those who are not having our love to sustain them, how shall they think other?”’
‘Has anyone given you to think so?’
‘Twice or thrice there is the look de reojo from this one and that. And since we have come here Geoffrey Charles has not ever been once to confession – never has he seen the priest, never to the church. It gives me to worry.’
‘Because he has not been following his religion?’
‘Yes.’
Clowance said: ‘Have you spoken to Geoffrey Charles about this?’
‘No, no, no. I could not. How shall I as his wife presume to question him on such matters?’
‘My dear.’ Clowance patted her hand. ‘I do not think Geoffrey Charles feels his religious ties as deeply as you do. I do not think it has upset him deeply that he has not been to church because he cannot take you. And in our church there is no such thing as confession.’
‘Not?’
‘Not. The way we believe, it is not necessary to have a priest between ourselves and God. If – if we have anything to confess, we confess it direct to Him.’
‘And who absolves you? Is that the word?’
‘God does. Who better?’
‘Ah,’ said Amadora, mystified, and they walked on.
Jeremy said: ‘There are a lot of things I want to ask you, Geoffrey Charles.’
‘Such as?’
‘How much would it cost me to buy a commission in the Army?’
Geoffrey Charles looked at his cousin. They were both tall thin men, Geoffrey Charles only the taller by being more erect.
‘Does that mean you wish to go?’
‘I have thought of it. Your advice on all fronts would be helpful.’
‘Have you discussed this with your parents?’
‘Not in detail. They know I might so decide.’
‘And approve?’
‘No. But they will not stand in my way.’
They strolled on a few yards. ‘May I ask what your general reasons are, Jeremy? Do you wish to fight the French? Or have you some desire to get away from your home? Or do you like the idea of travel and living a rough life and finding adventure?’
‘Mainly the second. I wish to get away.’
‘From your parents? That surprises me. When I joined the army it was originally from the same motive, but I was getting away from my mother’s death and from a stepfather whom I hated!’
‘Not from my parents.’ Jeremy kicked at a stone. ‘Can we just say that I have a girl in my blood, and she is privately engaged to marry someone else—’
‘This girl? This one you have asked me to ask?’
‘Yes.’
‘And – that has hit you so badly?’
‘I have tried to live with it. I have failed. To an outsider it will seem stupid but—’
‘Not necessarily. But what do you want from me?’
‘Details. Advice if you care to offer it.’
‘About the army? Willingly if I know the answers.’
‘For one thing,’ Jeremy said, ‘I imagine if I went to my father and told him I had to go, he would buy me a commission. But I don’t wish him to be put to expense. As it happens I have come by some money in a rather peculiar way, and it seems to me it would be suitable if I spent it or part of it in such a manner.’
‘Where does that lead down there?’ Geoffrey Charles asked. ‘I don’t remember it.’
‘A place we’ve called Kellow’s Ladder. Paul Kellow, whom you’ve met – he and his father put a ladder down an old mineshaft and gained access to a pretty little sheltered beach. But the ladder is broken now – no one goes down.’
‘What a view from here,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘Those waves.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s good to be home. I hadn’t realized how good.’
‘I remember hearing my father say once that to him one of the most important things in life was contrast. Maybe I shall come to appreciate this more when I have seen less of it.’
‘But I thought one of your great interests is in the development of steam.’
‘So it is.’
‘You’d see nothing of that in the army. Technically they have only just learned to boil a kettle.’
Jeremy laughed, but it was not a very humorous sound. ‘I suppose I’m on a tightrope – don’t know which way to jump.’
‘Well, I may tell you one thing,’ said Geoffrey Charles. ‘You need not pay anything to get a commission. Of course you may buy an ensigncy in a crack regiment and pay through the nose for it: the Foot Guards, the Welsh Fusiliers; the Life Guards most of all. But if you merely want a commission as such, and are prepared to take the regiment you are assigned to, I assure you there is no trouble at all; you must be able to read and write, and have a letter of recommendation from someone holding the rank of major or more. Then you will be in. Three or four months’ training and you will be allowed to kill with the best.’
‘I thought—’
‘A great many people think. But we are at war – constantly expanding our regiments and constantly suffering casualties. Where are the rich men’s sons who wish to pay and fill these vacancies? They don’t exist. I was told last year that the demand for new officers in Wellington’s Army alone is about a thousand a year. Probably half of those are to replace men killed or dying from disease. A fair number resign and a few are cashiered. The rest will be for new units just being formed.’
‘I see. Then—’
‘Of course you will need money to live on. The pay for an ensign is about 6/- a day, and from that there are deductions. You’ll need at least £150 a year to live decently. Then you’ll have to buy your uniform, your sword, your compass, your spy glass; best too to have a horse, even in the infantry. Probably an outlay near on £200. So you see it would not be difficult to spend some of your own money in any case.’
They went on.
Clowance said: ‘Has Geoffrey Charles not spoken to you about your religion?’
‘Yes, yes. He has spoke to my father. They were of accord.’
‘Did he not tell you that you can practise your own religion in England just as in Spain? There are Catholic churches here in Cornwall. I – I’m afraid I don’t know where they are, but I am sure there are some.’
‘Yes, yes, my father says I shall be finding them. But – we have been so busy – it has been malísimo – I have done nothing. It is very guilty of me. I think soon we shall be home.’
‘In England,’ said Clowance, ‘we would not call that a serious sin. Except perhaps among a few.’ She thought of Sam. ‘You used the word tolerante just now. Is that not what we should all try to be? And are we not friends – the Spanish and the English? Do we not fight for the same cause?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Amadora. ‘You comfort me, Clowance. It is good for me to find here such a kind prima.’
‘Prima?’
‘I do not know what the English word shall be. Pariente. I shall call Geoffrey Charles.’
Clowance coo-eed, but when the men turned back she said: ‘This is Kellow’s Ladder. Has Geoffrey Charles ever seen it? Can we not go down?’
‘No,’ said Jeremy. ‘It is dangerous. I tried last month, and the rungs were insecure.’
‘It was well enough last year,’ said Clowance.
‘Well, it is not well enough now, for I almost fell.’
‘Oh, surely we can be careful. It is such an elegant little cove.’
‘No,’ said Jeremy. ‘The ladder is quite unsafe . . . Look, let us turn back here and cut across the fields. Isn’t it time for tea? Let us ask Amadora for some Spanish tea.’
II
They took tea in the summer parlour. It was a pleasant room, clean now, with a few pieces of velvet, cut down from the curtains in two of the bedrooms and draped over damp-stained chair-backs and moth-eaten seats. A lazy wind, the first of the day, stirred the tendrils of ivy growing over the windows; two chaffinches argued and chirruped outside. Drake and Morwenna had gone to see Sam and his wife; it did not appear to be creating too much embarrassment that Drake at one stage of his life had promised himself in marriage to Sam’s wife. Rosina had been the injured party, but it was all so long ago, or she was sufficiently imbued with Sam’s teaching of Christian forgiveness that she let it pass her by.
Later, while Amadora and Clowance chatted, Geoffrey Charles took Jeremy out and they examined the great table in the hall. Since being placed there three hundred years ago it had resisted all attempts at removal – even George Warleggan’s attempts – but Geoffrey Charles was determined that it must come up for their party. He could not bear the thought of sawing off the central legs, which were of the finest and most imperishable oak; instead the flags of the floor must be dug up, the legs uprooted and the entire table either carried outside, or, if there was no way of getting it through the door, then it must be laid alongside one wall to take up the least possible space. It was the only room in the house big enough for a proper dance, and it was overlooked by the minstrel gallery. So for this occasion it had to be so used. Geoffrey Charles remembered an evening during his step-father’s day when they had danced round the table; but it just would not do.
Jeremy said: ‘What are the officers mainly like in the army? Mostly from the great schools, I suppose?’
‘Not at all. I think I have only met six or seven I knew from my time at Harrow. And not so many titled as you would suppose from reading the newspapers, where of course they always attract the news. The vast majority of the officers are grammar school boys or the like. Such that is as I know and have casually learned from! One does not make it a major topic of conversation . . . You see here – these flags – I think they will lever up. If they crack it would not be difficult to replace them.’
‘The table could stand on its end,’ said Jeremy. ‘The room is high enough and it would be less in the way. I can tell without your trying that you’ll never get it through the door because of the other door beyond. You’d have to take the window out.’
Geoffrey Charles eyed him. ‘Far be it from me, cousin, to deter you from joining the army if you feel you cannot bear to continue to live in Cornwall. But I assure you it is a dangerous and dirty life. Men are dying or being maimed all the time. And you are killing other men – or trying to – all the time. And it is constantly boring as well as dangerous. A fresh young man came out the week of our little fracas at Vittoria; he was attached to the 43rd. Called Thompson. Smartly turned out, good uniform, mighty keen to get into action. Son of a farmer, as it happens. He’d built up little affectations to make him seem more genteel than he was. Wanted to transfer to the cavalry as soon as he could. Was telling me of his amorous adventures in Portsmouth the night before he sailed. Next morning he went out – nothing had really begun – just a little sporadic firing. Stray bullet – couldn’t have been aimed. It killed him just the same.’
‘I’m under no illusions,’ said Jeremy. ‘I don’t believe I am essentially soldier material . . . But were you?’
Geoffrey Charles smiled, his tight mouth a little tighter. ‘No. But I believe I went in with greater reason. I understand you designed the new engine for Wheal Leisure, that you are highly gifted to take advantage of this new era of steam, that you have been working on a horseless carriage. As I said just now, the army will not help you in this pursuit. It seems a pity to set that all aside.’
A long pause followed. They heard laughter.
Jeremy said: ‘I’m glad Clowance and Amadora get on so excellently well together.’
‘Indeed.’
‘What sort of an orchestra shall you hire?’
‘There is one, they say, in Truro; plays at the Assembly Balls. But I shall make sure that they are not too staid. In the army I have become used to many jigs and country dances.’
After a moment Jeremy said: ‘There is another reason which prompts me to go.’
‘May I hear it?’
‘If we are somewhere private. This room is a little large for confidences.’
‘Will the garden do?’
‘If there are no gardeners about.’
‘None comes today until six, when they finish their other work.’
So they went into the garden, and Jeremy told him.
III
They walked beside the pool and Geoffrey Charles said: ‘My God! I don’t believe you! I can’t believe you!’
‘No?’
‘Well . . . No!’
‘I assure you that’s what happened.’
‘Just as you have said?’
‘Just as I have said.’
‘It’s – out of all reason!’
‘Possibly.’
‘Well, why? What reason could you have had?’
‘The obvious one. I wanted money.’
‘And you got some?’
‘Yes, quite a lot.’
‘And – and how have you used it?’
‘So far I have not.’
Geoffrey Charles thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket. ‘You are telling me the truth?’
‘Why should I not? It is not a thing one admits to lightly.’
‘Jeremy, you must have been mad!’
‘A little, no doubt.’
‘And the others too.’
‘I cannot answer for them.’
‘Were they similarly – bereft?’
‘Geoffrey Charles, tell me, if you love Amadora as I love this girl, and you knew she was to marry another man only because he had sufficient money, which you had not, how would you feel? Just tell me that!’
‘I should feel – if it is the way you describe it – that the girl is worthless.’
‘But would it stop you loving her?’
‘God knows! God Almighty knows! My dear cousin, how can anyone know what another feels? I am sorry if I called you mad. And yet . . .’
‘A little mad,’ said Jeremy. ‘I accept that. For I know that what I stole could never be enough to win the girl from the man she is promised to. That is my chief madness. Even if we were lucky with the amount we got – as we were – I would have had to take a further risk by putting it to immediate use – indeed gambling with it in some way – for it to produce the sort of sum I needed. Instead of which – once done – once accomplished – I found the – the protest over-sufficient of itself. For the time being. So far I have done nothing with the money at all!’
‘But the others have?’
‘The others have. Cautiously. They no more wish to suffer the consequences than I do.’
‘That’s the great danger now. These are local young men?’
‘I cannot tell you that.’
Geoffrey Charles grunted. ‘But the risk of recognition . . .’
‘We were all disguised after a fashion.’
‘But how did you do it? You say it was in no way a – a stand and deliver?’
‘The coaches only seat four inside. We booked our seats and booked the fourth for a fictitious man, who of course did not turn up. Once inside we drew up the blinds and cut through the back of the coach into the safe box under the coachman’s seat. It nearly all went to plan.’
‘Nearly all?’
‘Well, there was one hitch that almost ruined it. A fat elderly lawyer called Rose insisted on taking the empty place inside from Liskeard to Dobwalls. However hard we tried to put him off, he would sit there; so for that length of time we were held up – part done but the work hidden until he left.’
‘I wonder you kept your nerve. And it was all your plan, you say?’
‘Months before, my – er – one of the others brought in a London newspaper telling of a robbery on a Brighton coach. No one could imagine how it could have been done. I worked out one way in which it could be done.’
‘Well, my God! . . .’ Geoffrey Charles blew out a breath. ‘This takes the biscuit! I have never . . . And whose money was it you stole? Did that ever come out?’
‘Oh, yes, we knew that from the beginning. It all belonged to Warleggan’s Bank.’
‘War . . .’ Geoffrey Charles stared at his cousin. ‘It belonged to – to my step-father?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause and then Geoffrey Charles let out a great explosive shout of laughter. Startled birds rose from the other side of the pond.
‘You stole it from – from Step-father George? From Smelter George? But how appropriate – how singularly, excellently, divinely funny! Do you not see it as funny, Jeremy?’
They had stopped and were standing facing each other.
‘Not funny.’ Jeremy was wooden faced. ‘Maybe appropriate.’
Geoffrey Charles took out a handkerchief and blew his nose and wiped his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I should not have been amused. It is no matter for amusement. A Dieu ne plaise! But I have to confess I am relieved that no widows or orphans are suffering for your crime!’
He took Jeremy’s arm and they walked on.
Geoffrey Charles said: ‘This is the place where Drake planted the frogs night after night, just to annoy my stepfather. I laughed hysterically then. But it nearly cost Drake his life. So in a sense, though in many ways vastly different, there is a similarly personal note in my amusement. And this might have cost you your life! Still might.’ The grip on the arm tightened. ‘Why have you told me this?’
Jeremy shrugged. ‘It seemed – necessary.’
‘Like the robbery?’
‘No. I think a better reason.’
‘Confession being good for the . . .’
‘Maybe. Certainly I would never have spoken to anyone else. When I came this afternoon I had no intention of saying anything even to you!’
‘You have told no one else?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, I counsel you to Trappist silence. I am embarrassed in a sense that you have asked me to share this secret with you. Of course you can rest assured your confidence will never be abused . . . But do you see this act – you clearly do – as another reason for getting away? Is it because of something in yourself or because of the risk of discovery?’
‘Something in myself, I suppose. Not the latter. I think now we are reasonably safe.’
‘You will never be reasonably safe, Jeremy – not at least while the money is unspent – not for years. But the fact that you have spent nothing of it and now wish – or are considering – joining the army suggests to me that you are looking on this crime as something that needs to be expiated.’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as that.’ Jeremy did not like the question. It was too close to the truth, yet in some way departed from it. He couldn’t simplify his feelings to that extent. He did not feel exactly remorseful for what he had done; he didn’t actually regret having done it. It was not expiation he needed so much as escape – escape from the circumstances which had provoked it – to be no longer surrounded, stifled by them. For a while in astonishment and self-disgust he had no longer had any desire for Cuby at all. That had not lasted; the action, the crime had killed feeling, killed sensation; but after a while the insensibility had worn off. His latest meeting with her in the music shop, and his contriving a future meeting at the Trenwith party was totally in accord with his old behaviour, as if the robbery had never taken place, as if he were still the stupid gangling boy, following her, hoping for the kind word, the light flirtation, and knowing all along its utter uselessness. It was his acute consciousness of this return to an old situation, and his vehement rejection of it, which had prompted everything he had said to Geoffrey Charles today.
‘You will not mind using this – your share of the money in buying a commission or in the ordinary expenses of a military life?’
‘No.’
‘But don’t wish to use it in furthering your experiments in steam?’
‘That may be.’ Jeremy said something of his meetings with Goldsworthy Gurney. ‘It is a choice I must make within the next few weeks.’
They had strolled out into the fields and towards the wood where Geoffrey Charles as a young boy had first met Drake. In the distance Will Nanfan was seeing to his sheep. They waved.
Geoffrey Charles said: ‘Well, since you have told me all this, I imagine you may be soliciting my advice.’
‘I have said so.’
‘Not that you are likely to take it. From talks in camp and mess, I generally assume if someone asks my advice he really wants support for the thing he has already decided to do.’
Jeremy half smiled. ‘That may be. I don’t know. I don’t promise to follow your advice but I should greatly value it.’
‘There has been no shadow of suspicion so far – cast upon any of the three of you?’
‘No.’
‘Then I think I should stay and face it out. This is a prime paradox! For isn’t going to fight a little like running away? These problems you are facing are really within yourself. Are they not? How you came to do what you did will still be an issue even if you are fighting on the Pyrenees. When the war is over . . .’
Geoffrey Charles paused and looked towards the main gate. Three people were coming through it. When they saw the two young men they waved and broke into a run, which clearly became a race.
‘Let me know your choice. I would wish to know.’
‘Of course.’
Drake was winning the race, with Loveday running clutching at her skirts just behind. Morwenna, who tripped quickly rather than ran, brought up the rear. As they came on, Geoffrey Charles wondered if he had given Jeremy the right advice. His cousin did not seem the stuff of which soldiers were made. If he had the sort of sensitivity of feeling which had driven him into the mess he was now in, how would he adapt to a world in which death was the daily possibility, one’s friends were mutilated and one’s feelings ever blunted by the harsh realities of camp life and of war? And yet, as Jeremy had pointed out, had he not himself entered the army as a raw youth who until then had lived a privileged and cushioned life? It was too far back for him even to recognize himself as the youngster who had loved Drake and been under the too gentle control of Morwenna as his governess. It belonged to another life, another person.
Now, just now, after so many years of strife and comradeship and inner loneliness, he had found Amadora . . . But Jeremy had lost his love. This girl must be seen, a girl on whom Jeremy so doted that, when he saw himself likely to be deprived of her, he lost his judgement, his caution . . . Did not one still have some belief in the Commandments? Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet . . . Thou shalt not kill . . . Who did not break these Commandments?
‘D’you know,’ said Drake breathlessly. ‘I met Ellery. Peter Ellery! Y’know, we went on that venture together to France to rescue Dr Enys. We was always some close. After all these years – he’d hardly changed at all.’
‘Nor have you, Drake,’ said Geoffrey Charles.
Cuby Trevanion was the name. She must be quite an exceptional girl. Geoffrey Charles very much hoped she would come to the party.