The girl with the face like a new-opened ox-eye daisy, as her mother had once described it, was not being quite so open with her family as her reputation suggested. On Friday, having seen young Lobb – son of old Lobb – riding down the valley with the post, she had intercepted him, not for the first time, to ask if there were any letters for her. And on this occasion there had been.
Having opened her letter and read it, she had not announced at dinner – as she well could have done – that she had just received a note from Stephen Carrington. After all, everyone at the table would have been interested to hear. Instead she had slipped it into the pocket of her skirt, buried it with a handkerchief, and mentioned it not at all.
Miss Clowance, dear Clowance, [it ran]
You will have wondered what has become of me. Since we was near caught by the Preventive men and I wonder even now if Jeremy escaped safe, I have bin most of this time in Bristow. There was trouble with my lugger Phillipe because they said I had no right to my prize or could not pruve my right. So I am still in Bristow in Argument and trouble over this. I am sartin I shall not give way for no one has a better Right than me to the prize Money. When tis settled I shall come back to Nampara where my own love is. Miss Clowance I put the tips of my fingers on your cool skin. I beg to remane respectfully Yours.
Stephen Carrington.
A strange letter from a strange man. Imagine her father getting hold of it! Clowance was lost in cross-currents of feeling. But a darker one than all the others moved in that stream.
By the following day, which was the Saturday Jeremy was going to Caerhays, Clowance knew the letter by heart. She repeated some of the phrases over to herself as she walked towards Sawle through the damp misty sunlight with comforts for the Paynters. ‘Back to Nampara where my own love is.’ ‘Where my own love is.’ ‘My own love.’ ‘Miss Clowance, I put the tips of my fingers.’ ‘Miss Clowance, dear Clowance.’ ‘I put the tips of my fingers on your cool skin.’ ‘Back to Nampara.’ ‘Back to Nampara where my own love is.’
As she came near to the first shabby cottage in Grambler village she gave her head a defiant shake, almost unseating the pink straw hat she was wearing. It was a motion more suitable to a swimmer coming up through a wave than to the young lady of the manor out on a charitable visit. But that, to Clowance, was what it amounted to, a shrugging away, a throwing off, of some dark beast that clutched at her vitals and made her blood run thick, her heart pulsate. For the moment let it be forgotten. ‘Back to Nampara where my own love is.’
She saw that Jud Paynter had been put out to air. Put out was a literal fact these days, for at the age of about seventy-eight he had become almost immobile. Prudie, a mere girl ten years his junior, was still active, if activity could ever have been called a characteristic of hers. She was now totally in charge, for Jud could only totter a few steps with a stick, clinging fiercely to her arm. He had lost weight in the body, but his face had become fuller, as it swelled with age and rage and inebriety. Today, it being still March though very mild, he was wrapped in so many old sacks that he looked like a bull frog sitting on a stone. Clowance was relieved to see him out of doors because with luck her business might be concluded there and she would be saved the need to go inside where the smells were strong. Jud spat as she came up and stared at her with bloodshot eyes, half concealed among a pie-crust of wrinkles.
‘Miss Clowance, now. Where’s yer mammy today, an? Reckon as she’s becoming tired of we. Reckon as she’s thought to give us the by-go. Not surprised. When ye get nashed and allish, that’s when ye d’come to know yer friends…’
‘I’ve brought you some cakes, Jud,’ Clowance said cheerfully. ‘And a drop of toddy. And one or two things for Prudie.’
The sound of voices had penetrated the open door, for Prudie came out, wiping her hands on her filthy apron and all smiles, followed by a duck which trailed eight tiny ducklings behind her.
‘So they’ve hatched!’ exclaimed Clowance. ‘All safe? When?’
‘Ah, twas some time we ’ad wi’ ’em. Nosy didn’ have ’nough feathers to cover ’em all. She were restless as a whitneck, turning back and forth. So seems me if she was to hatch all eight twer fitty she should be ’elped. So I hatched three myself.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Down ‘ere.’ Prudie pointed at her fat bosom. ‘Kep t’em thur night and day, night and day. Twer not uncomfortable day times, but night I was feared I should overlay them.’
‘Proper Johnny Fortnight she looked,’ Jud said. ‘And what ‘bout me? What ‘bout me? She paid scant ‘eed. Never a moment but what she wur thinking of her eggs. “Cann’t do that there,” she’d say, “else I’ll crush me eggs.” “Don’t shake me when I help ee up, else ye’ll shake me eggs.” “Cann’t go out today, cos I’ve got to sit wi’ me eggs.” Great purgy!’
Prudie said: ‘I wish ye’d been buried in a stone box and put away alive; that’s what did oughter’ve been done to ee, twenty year agone when you almost was! Come inside, Miss Clowance, and I’ll make ee a dish o’ tay.’
‘I’m going on to Pally’s Shop,’ said Clowance. ‘But thank you.’
‘And look at ’em now they’m hatched!’ Jud went on. ‘Squirty little things. Hens an’t so durty. Hens ye can live with. Hens drop their droppings like a gentleman, like you’d expect. Ducks squirt. Look at our kitchen floor already, lampered all over wi duck squirtings!’
‘Hold thi clack!’ said Prudie, getting annoyed. ‘Else I’ll leave ee there to freeze when the sun d’go down. Miss Clowance ‘ave better things to do than to listen to ee grumbling away!’
‘Tedn right,’ shouted Jud. ‘Tedn proper. Tedn fitty. All them ducks squirting anywhere where they’ve the mind to squirt. Tedn decent!’
The two women, to his consuming annoyance, walked out of hearing, where Clowance handed Prudie the halfsovereign Demelza had sent. Prudie as usual was so pleased, already translating it into quarts of gin, that she accompanied Miss Poldark a little way down the track through the village, making comments on life as she went.
Chief targets were her immediate neighbours, the three brothers Thomas, who had not only committed the crime of coming to Sawle from Porthtowan a few years ago but had compounded it by closing down the gin shop that had always been there, since they were teetotallers and Wesleyans. However, their religion and their abstention from strong drink did not excuse their sinfulness in other ways, particularly, according to Prudie, their common lechery.
Every day of his life John, the eldest, whose name often evoked ribald comment, visited Winky Mitchell in her cottage on the other side of Sawle: regular as a clock when he was not at sea, five of an evening, tramp the moorland, regular as a clock home he came at ten. What went on there didn’t bear thinking of, for Winky Mitchell, who had an affection of one eye and a deaf and bed-ridden husband, was known for her shameless wanton ways. As for Art Thomas, he was paying an outrageous courtship to Aunt Edie Permewan, who was thirty years olderer than him and as fat and round as a saffron bun. Of course everyone knew what he was about, for with no children to carry on the tanner’s business since Joe died, a strong young man was just what was needed to pull it together again. Twould not be that bad except Art was known to be lickerish after girls; and who thought if he wed Aunt Edie he’d be content with what she had to offer? As for Music Thomas, the youngest, who was a stable boy at Place House, Prudie considered him the most dangerous of the three, because he hadn’t ever actually been caught doing anything. But to be eighteen and still singing treble in the choir, and to walk on tiptoe all the time as if he was a fly …
‘Some folk,’ said Prudie, scratching, ‘d’think he’s a Peeping Tom. Let’n be catched is all I d’say and he’d be tarred and feathered afore you could say knife!’
So it continued until, complaining of her feet, Prudie turned and slopped her way home. Clowance went on, aware that Prudie’s mutterings only lit up a few dark corners of scandal in the village. As for most, she knew it already. Though she lived away from them, distant at Nampara, the villagers were too close not to be personally known. Captain Poldark – though a landed gentleman and now, with Trenwith empty, the only squire around – had always been on closer terms than normal. It could have happened that his wife – a miner’s daughter – might have sought to create a greater distance between them so that there should be no risk of presumption; in fact it hadn’t happened that way. That one of her brothers was the local preacher and had married a girl from Sawle only served to reaffirm the peculiar friendly relationship.
Clowance knew them all. Next to the Thomases was the elderly Miss Prout – about whom Prudie darkly muttered: ‘Her mother was Miss Prout, and her mother was Miss Prout’ – a large loose jolly woman with no teeth. Then a brood of Triggs, tumbling over each other in the rags and the dirt. At the pump two girls drawing water and giggling, Annie Coad and Nell Rowe, one pock-marked and thin, the other with the wide hips and short legs of a farmer’s daughter. They smiled and half curtsied and whispered together as she passed. On the opposite side Jane Bottrell was standing at the doorway (sister-in-law of Ned) with ragged black curls, eccentric eyebrows and big yellow teeth – her husband had died in a smuggling venture; of five children one survived and worked at Wheal Grace. No one stirred in the next cottage though everyone knew it was full of Billings. Further on came the Stevenses, the Bices, Permewan’s tannery, the field with the goats straggling up to the first empty buildings of Grambler mine. Other cottages were dotted about. Clowance knew them all: she knew the smell of the place, goats and pigs here instead of the rotting fish of Sawle; and of course the open catchpits that emitted wafts offensive to all but the strongest nose. Fortunately, for nine days in ten, a cool clean wind blew.
It was in this village Stephen Carrington had made his home after leaving Nampara; the Nanfan cottage was a bit further on, near the village pond. After years the Thomases were still looked on with suspicion by Prudie and her like, yet Stephen Carrington had been accepted with good grace. Of course he was different; a sailor saved from drowning and recuperating here, not expected to stay and make his home, so arousing sympathy and kindness, not assessment and wariness. He had soon come to be on drinking terms with the men and – possibly – on flirting terms with the women. She had heard whispers. But no village could exist without whispers. What if he came back and really made his home here? How would they take it then? And how would she take it? Her skin crawled at the thought. Quite clearly from his letter he was coming back.
Jeremy left a bit later riding Hollyhock, the little mare Demelza and Sam had bought one day in Truro, and taking with him the pony he had been loaned. He went via Marasanvose, Zelah, St Allen and St Erme, crossing the main turnpike road from Truro to St Austell at Tregony and then riding down the leafy lanes and tracks towards the southern sea.
It was a cobwebby day: after heavy rain very mild with smears of mist and sun, the whole countryside beautifully, wonderfully damp, with pools of clear water and rushing soaking streams. Everywhere the bare twigs of trees and shrubs were festooned in cobwebs picked out in molecules of shining water. Demelza always said the spiders had a bad time when it was like this because no fly would be stupid enough to blunder into nets so plain for everyone to see.
She walked a way up the valley with Jeremy, as far as Wheal Maiden and the Meeting House, wishing as long as possible to share in his excitement and pleasure. Though knowing she was no part of it, she savoured seeing him so vitalized, so tense, so ready to be irritable or to be jolly at the least thing. Not like her Jeremy at all, who, though high-strung in childhood and prone to every minor ailment, had developed into this light-weight young man who seemed to prefer to observe life rather than get involved in it.
From the top of the hill she watched him go. Well, now for better or worse he was involved. The agony and the joy. She only hoped Miss Cuby would be worthy of him. She hoped too she would be kind. Girls could so easily cut deep with their sharp little knives, often not even meaning to. At such a time one was so vulnerable. What did Ross think of it all? He said little unless probed. His elder daughter who had half lost her heart to a handsome sailor of dubious character, and who almost concurrently was considering an interest shown in her by Lord Edward Fitzmaurice – a letter from him had just arrived. His son riding away to see his first girl; in his case a very eligible girl with a beautiful home and an ancient ancestry. It was all happening at the same time. Perhaps that was how it always was: two children, the younger, being a girl, more grown up, so both in the same year coming to sudden maturity and all the travail that that was likely to involve.
As Jeremy’s figure dwindled into the distance and then disappeared around a turn in the ground Demelza looked towards Grambler and saw her daughter returning with her aunt. Demelza’s sister-in-law was leading a young bull calf by a cord round its neck and nose, and Clowance was bringing up the rear, giving the calf a friendly shove when it chose to be obstinate, as it frequently did.
Years ago when it seemed that her brother Drake was breaking his heart over his lost Morwenna, who was hideously and irrevocably married to the Reverend Osborne Whitworth, Demelza had thought to save him by introducing him to the pretty young Rosina Hoblyn, the surprisingly intelligent and refined daughter of Jacka. Drake had presently agreed to marry Rosina, but an accident to Mr Whitworth had intervened, sadly for Rosina but in the end joyfully for Drake, and the planned wedding had never taken place. After the break-up Demelza had continued to befriend Rosina but had studiously avoided putting her into social contact with Sam, her other brother, who was smarting under a broken love-affair of his own. Enough was enough. Matchmakers could be a danger to the community. She had burned her fingers.
Sam, indeed, with Salvation to sustain him, went joyfully on his way, without an apparent thought for any other woman than his lost Emma (and precious few one would imagine for her). When Drake and Morwenna moved to Looe, Drake to take over management of Ross’s boatbuilding yard, Ross had offered Pally’s Shop to Sam. Sam had prayed about it and refused. His flock was centred round Nampara, Mellin and Sawle, the Meeting House on Poldark land. It would take him too far away. Better to remain a humble miner, not become a tradesman, putting himself in a superior position to most of his Society. Apart from which, he was no wheelwright and none too smart a carpenter.
So for a while Pally’s Shop remained empty and its fields fallow.
But whatever the joyous certainty of salvation and glory in the life to come, this life has to be lived, and Sam, though doggedly sustained by his convictions, suffered from his loss more than people realized, and often felt his loneliness in the cheerlessness of Reath Cottage. And one day, walking to Sawle on a mission of hope, he fell into step with Rosina Hoblyn and her married sister Parthesia, and could not help noticing the great difference between the two sisters. Parthesia younger, noisy, tooth-gapped and laughing, clutching two dirty children and followed by a third, while Rosina was so quiet, so well-mannered, and yet capable-seeming, with a certainty and a strength of mind that much impressed him. He already knew that Rosina was not of his religious persuasion but was nevertheless a steady attender at church. Almost as an after-observation, he took in the fact that the girl was attractive, dark-eyed, small-featured, soft-cheeked, with clean tidy black hair and a slow but winning smile.
So, very gradually, with Demelza holding her breath and crossing her fingers but scrupulously doing nothing to help, an attachment had built up. Rosina, twice jilted through no fault of her own, thirty years old in 1803, too refined to be a common miner’s wife but not well-bred enough to attract a gentleman, was the ideal wife for a Methodist preacher who himself was low born but through his sister related to the Poldarks. Not to mention his special relationship with God. But for all his high-flown language which verged on the pretentious, a truly good man in the absolute sense of the word. And in the autumn of 1805, a month before Trafalgar, and after a two years’ courtship, they married.
As a wedding present Ross had again offered Sam the now dilapidated Pally’s Shop, and this time it was accepted. So in the end Demelza came to have a sister-in-law living there as she had once planned. It was all very strange and strangely very satisfying. Since then, in five and a half years, Sam had re-established the business – though it was never the skilled trade it had been in Drake’s hands – and Rosina, her true character and energies released at last, had transformed the house and turned the six acres into a small-holding crammed with corn, vegetables and livestock.
Hence the present procession. Although they had no children – a sad disappointment for them both – a bull calf had recently been born into their establishment and Ross had offered to buy it from them. It was now on the way.
A bull calf is a naturally perverse animal and progress was made in stops and starts. It seemed from a distance that Rosina, the gentler of the two young women, was less determined in pulling at his head than Clowance was in shoving at his hindquarters. As they came up the rise towards the pine trees Demelza could see them exchanging pleasantries and laughing. She wondered with a twinge whether this was not the life most suitable for Clowance as well as Rosina: simple, hard-working, uncomplicated, close to the earth and the sea, ruled by daylight and the dark, the wind and the weather, the crop and the harvest, the cycles of the seasons. Was there any better life than this, if in partnership with the man you loved? But the last was the qualifying factor. Rosina had had a hard life before she came safely to this harbour. Perhaps Clowance would be luckier. Pray Clowance would be luckier.
‘Mama!’ Clowance said. ‘I thought you were baking today! Not a headache?’
‘Not a headache,’ said Demelza smiling, and kissed Rosina. ‘How are you? Are you bringing Eddie or is Eddie bringing you?’
‘So you remember his name!’ said Rosina. ‘Reckon I shall be glad to get’n off my hands, he’s so thrustful, gracious knows what he’ll be up to next!’
Rosina was not at all fat, but contentment and rewarding work had given her slender body a compactness and solidity. Her limp was only just detectable, her skin glowed with health and her beautiful eyes had become less expressive, and more mundane with the achievement of marriage and position. Demelza did not think it had ever been a love-match between her and Sam but it had worked for them both.
‘How’s Sam?’ she asked.
‘Handsome ‘andsome. He was to’ve brought Eddie, but Clowance called in just in time, so I said we’d come, her and me, Sam being wrought with other things.’
Rosina had been ‘saved’ six years ago, and though her language never matched Sam’s, her phrases had taken on some of the same colour. The three women turned together to escort Eddie back to Nampara. As they did so the little calf came snuffling up to Demelza and licked her hand and arm with its soft wet mouth. For a moment she felt very queer, faint; for she was taken back a quarter of a century to the night when she had come to the conclusion that her only way of remaining at Nampara when her father wanted her home was to induce Ross to take her into his bed. It had been in the evening, and she was out meating the calves for Prudie, and there in the back of the byre with the calves tumbling around her and their wet mealy mouths plucking at her frock and hands she had had the idea. He had been away, in Truro, trying to save Jim Carter from a prison sentence, and when he came home she had gone into him and made pretty plain to him what she had in mind.
So it had happened, and a few months later he had married her, and they had had four children – one lost – and now the middle two were in the grip of the same overpowering emotion she had felt that night. Perhaps it was only just stirring in them, a sea dragon moving as yet sluggishly in the depths of the pool. But once roused it would not sleep again. It would not sleep until old age – sometimes, from what she’d heard people say, not altogether even then. But in youth an over-mastering impulse which knew no barrier of reason. An emotion causing half the trouble of the world, and half the joy.
‘Are you sure you’re well, Mama?’ Clowance asked. ‘You don’t look well?’
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ said Demelza. ‘Just something walking over my grave.’
It was, to begin, a small party at Caerhays: just the family and Jeremy and Joanna Bird, a friend of Clemency’s, who was staying for some time. Jeremy was flattered.
Not that it was such a very great house when one got inside; it was shallow, the impressive ramparts deceptive. Nor was it quite like home, where everyone talked incessantly at meals and joked with each other and passed the food round and everyone behaved, within reasonably polite limits, according to how they felt at that moment. Here, it seemed, the mood was decided by Major Trevanion, whose position at the head of the table was no nominal one. A florid-faced man, though still in his early thirties, with blue eyes gone bloodshot and fair starched hair growing thin at the front, he wore a plain black silk coat and tight fawn-coloured ankle-button trousers. He seemed untalkative, or was temporarily in an untalkative mood, and this was the cue for the rest of them, all except Cuby, the youngest, who wasn’t quite so altogether subdued. Old Mrs Bettesworth, his mother, though she didn’t look very old, was tight-lipped and made no effort to brighten the meal. Food was different: pea soup, a codfish with cucumber and shrimp sauce, grilled oysters, a green goose roasted and for dessert apples and oranges and nuts and raisins.
After dinner there was still a little daylight and Jeremy daringly suggested Cuby might accompany him in a walk to the seashore.
She said: ‘It’s raining.’
‘I believe it has almost stopped.’
‘Well, I have a fancy for the rain.’ Mrs Bettesworth looked up from her sampler. ‘Joanna and Clemency will go with you. The air will do them both good.’
The other girls were none too willing, but when Augustus Bettesworth said he would go too there was a change of heart. Presently the five young people left the castle and began to walk down the muddy garden path beside the lake towards the sea. Jeremy had been right, the brief flurry of rain had moved on, leaving pools luminous in the early twilight. A half moon was veiled in gauzy cloud. After the north coast the sea seemed docile, unobtrusive.
‘What do you do, Poldark?’ Augustus asked. He was about twenty-eight. A good-looking young man with a fine head of fair hair tied in a queue, boots that creaked even in the damp; flat feet.
‘I help my father,’ said Jeremy. ‘Chiefly in the mine.’
‘Your father had a big reputation in Cornwall a few years ago. Still has, I s’pose. Members of Parliament are two a penny, but few enough live in the damn county. It says in the Gazette he’s just back from a mission. What’s a mission? Where has he been?’
‘It was government business,’ said Jeremy shortly. ‘Portugal, I believe.’
‘Well, thank God we’re still fighting the Froggies. I thought when Prinny took over it would all change. Wish we had a few good generals, though.’
‘My father speaks highly of Wellington.’
‘That Sepoy general! I doubt if he understands British troops! As for Chatham: he’s no more a leader of men than a stone statue on a plinth covered with pigeon droppings! Look at the mess he made at Walcheren, where my brother died! We’ll never beat Boney till we breed a few Marlboroughs again.’
‘I’m also interested in the development of steam,’ said Jeremy.
‘Steam? What d’you mean, man? The sort you make in a kettle?’
The girls laughed.
‘Very much like that,’ said Jeremy, refusing to be provoked. ‘Only it can be put to better use. As it is in our mine engines. As I believe it will be in time on our roads.’
Augustus stopped and stirred a puddle with his stick. Because he was in the lead and the path narrow, the others had to stop too.
‘My dear Poldark, you can’t be serious. You mean a road carriage of some sort with a big kettle in the middle and a fire under it.’
‘That sort of thing.’
‘Driving the wheels?’
‘Yes.’
‘It couldn’t be done. You’d have to build so big a kettle that the wheels would collapse under the weight!’ More laughter.
‘If you used atmospheric pressure only,’ said Jeremy, ‘what you say would be true. It was true twenty years ago. But if you increase the strength of your kettle so that instead of its bearing 4 lbs pressure per square inch it can bear 100 lbs, then you increase its power against its size beyond all belief.’
‘Ha!’ said Augustus. ‘Beyond all belief! Beyond my belief of a certainty.’ He went on, marching towards the sea.
‘It already has been done,’ said Jeremy to Cuby. ‘Ten years ago.’
‘Hey, what’s that you say?’ Augustus stopped again. ‘Has been done, d’you say? Only by that lunatic – what’s his damn name? – Trevithick. I heard tell of that. Nigh on blew himself up, didn’t he? Killed people right and left. It’s what you’d expect, isn’t it. Let your kettle – or boiler, or whatever you like to call it – let your kettle be subjected to that sort of pressure and zonk! it explodes like a charge of gunpowder someone’s dropped a spark in! Stands to reason, unless you’re an unreasonable man.’
‘A safety-valve is built in,’ said Jeremy. ‘Then if the pressure rises too high, this blows out to let off the excess of steam.’
‘But it killed people, didn’t it. Didn’t it?’
‘In London, yes. The engine was neglected by the man looking after it and he left the valves closed. After that Mr Trevithick added a second safety-valve, and there was no more trouble.’
‘But folk have been killed in Cornwall by it! It’s a lunatic business, suitable only for lunatics!’
‘I’m obliged to you for the compliment,’ said Jeremy, touching his forelock.
‘Augustus means nothing,’ said Cuby. She lifted her cowl against the wind. ‘Augustus would have the half of England confined to Bedlam for the smallest of offences against his prejudices.’
‘And a larger proportion of Cornwall,’ said Augustus. They had at last reached the gate where Jeremy had first hidden. Now they crossed onto the beach. In the soft damp twilight Cuby hopped, skipped and broke into a run towards the sea. It soon became a race, with Jeremy’s long legs making him a clear winner. Panting they turned to walk towards the low cliffs on their right and went by two and three.
‘It’s so different from the north coast,’ said Jeremy. ‘The fields are greener, the cattle fatter, the trees … well, we have no trees such as these.’
‘Last year I was going to Padstow,’ said Cuby, ‘but it rained and blew so hard we abandoned the visit.’
‘You must come and see our piece of coast. My mother said she would like to meet you. If we gave a little party, would you come?’
‘What, on my own?’
‘I would fetch you.’
‘I’m not sure that my mother would approve of that.’
‘Perhaps Clemency would come with you? Or even Augustus.’
Cuby laughed. ‘He barks easily, Augustus. Even growls sometimes. But his teeth are not so very sharp. I’m sorry if he offended you.’
‘I’m too content to be here,’ said Jeremy; ‘and too happy to be here. I believe no one could offend me.’
‘I’m glad you shaved this morning. Your looks are improved by it.’
‘Do you think Gauger Parsons would recognize me?’
‘Dear soul, I hadn’t thought of that! Shall we turn for home at once?’
‘It will soon be dark. The risk is worth it.’
‘Mr Poldark, do we have to take such long strides? I do not believe myself to be short in the leg or disproportionately built but –’
He slowed immediately. ‘Forgive me. It was no more than following my natural instinct.’
‘Which is what, may I ask?’
‘The instinct to outpace your brother and sister, so that I may speak to you alone.’
‘Well, they are well back. Shall we wait for them?’
‘Not willingly.’
They had reached the cliffs at the side of the narrow bay and now turned back towards the castle in an arc, their footsteps showing blacker against the darkening sand.
‘Now that you have me alone,’ she said after a glance, ‘why do you not say anything?’
‘Because I’m tongue-tied.’
‘That always has seemed to me a stupid expression. Have you ever tried to tie up anyone’s tongue, Mr Poldark? With a piece of string, or elastic, or a ribbon? It really isn’t possible.’
‘To begin, then, may I ask you not to call me Mr Poldark?’
‘I used to call you “boy”, didn’t I? But that would be discourteous now that I know you to be a gentleman. Mr Jeremy?’
‘Jeremy, please.’
‘My mother would think that very forward of me.’
‘Then in private?’
She looked at him. ‘Do you suppose we are going to have many conversations in private?’
‘I pray so.’
‘To whom do you pray, boy?’
‘I think it must be Eros.’
They came to the rocks. In the half-light Cuby sprang ahead of him, clambering, long-skirted but fleet-footed, over the boulders. He tried to keep up with her, to overtake her; his foot slipped on a seaweedy rock and he blundered into the water. He laughed and limped splashing out of the pool, sat on a boulder and held his foot, rubbing it.
She came back and looked down at him accusingly. ‘You’ve hurt your foot again! You are always doing it!’
‘I’m always, it seems, running away from someone or running after someone.’
‘Which is it this time?’
‘Running after.’
The light from the sky, reflected in the pool, was reflected again in her eyes.
‘I think I like you, boy,’ she said.