Ross Poldark (50 page)

In Francis's dressing gown he sat down on the stool beside her chair and stretched his hands towards the glow of the fire.

There was silence.

Presently out of the fount of Demelza's content sprang an old resolve.

“Did I behave myself tonight, Ross?” she asked. “Did I behave as Mrs. Poldark should behave?”

“You misbehaved monstrously,” he said, “and were a triumph.”

“Don’t tease. You think I have been a good wife?”

“Moderately good. Quite moderately good.”

“Did I sing nice?”

“You were inspired.”

Silence fell again.

“Ross.”

“Yes, bud?”

“Bud again,” she said. “Tonight I have been called both Bud and Blossom. I hope in a few years’ time they will not start calling me Pod.”

He laughed, silently but long.

“Ross,” she said again, when he had at last done.

“Yes?”

“If I have been a good wife, then you must promise me somethin’.”

“Very well,” he said.

“You must promise me that sometime before—before Easter you will ride to Falmouth and seek Captain Blamey out and see if he still loves Verity.”

There was a moment's pause.

“How am I to tell whom he loves?” Ross asked ironically. He was far too contented to argue with her.

“Ask him. You was his friend. He will not lie about a thing like that.”

“And then?”

“If he still loves her, we can arrange for them to meet.”

“And then?”

“Then we shan’t need to do any more.”

“You’re very persistent, are you not?”

“Only because you’re that stubborn.”

“We cannot arrange people's lives for them.”

Demelza hiccupped.

“You have no heart,” she said. “That's what I can’t fathom. You love me but you have no heart.”

“I’m deeply fond of Verity, but—”

“Ah, your buts! You’ve no faith, Ross. You men don’t understand. You don’t know the teeniest thing about Verity! That you don’t.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t need to. I know myself.”

“Conceive the fact that there may be women unlike you.”

“Tom—ti—pom!” said Demelza. “You don’t scare me wi’ your big words. I know Verity was not born to be an old maid, dryin’ up and shrivellin’ while she looks to someone else's house an’ children. She’d rather take the risk of being wed to a man who couldn’t contain his liquor.” She bent forward and began to pull off her stockings.

He watched her. “You seem to have developed a whole philosophy since you married me, love.”

“No I ain’t—haven’t,” said Demelza. “But I know what love is.”

The remark seemed to put the discussion on a different plane.

“Yes,” he agreed soberly. “So do I.”

A longer silence fell.

“If you love someone,” said Demelza, “tesn’t a few bruises on the back that are going to count. It's whether that other one loves you in return. If he do, then he can only hurt your body. He can’t hurt your heart.”

She rolled her stockings into a ball and leaned back in the chair again, wiggling her toes towards the fire. Ross picked up the poker and turned over the ash and embers until they broke into a blaze.

“So you`ll go to Falmouth an’ see?” she asked.

“I’ll consider it,” said Ross. “I’ll consider it.”

Having come this far, she was too wise to press further. Another and less elevated lesson she had learned in married life was that if she wheedled long enough and discreetly enough, she quite often got her own way in the end.

With ears grown more sharp to the smaller sounds, it seemed to them that the silence of the house was less complete than it had been a while ago. It had become the faint stirring silence of old timber and slate, old in the history of Poldarks and Trenwiths, people whose forgotten faces hung in the deserted hall, whose forgotten loves and hopes had drawn breath and flourished here. Jeffrey Trenwith, building this house in fire and faith; Claude, deeply involved in the Prayer Book Rebellion; Humphrey in his Elizabethan ruff; Charles Vivian Poldark, wounded and home from the sea; red-haired Anna-Maria; Presbyterian Joan; mixed policies and creeds; generations of children, instant with the joy of life, growing and learning and fading. The full silence of the old house was more potent than the empty silence of its youth. Panels still felt the brush of mouldered silk, boards still creaked under the pressure of the forgotten foot. For a time something stepped between the man and the girl sitting at the fire. They felt it and it left them apart from each other and alone with their thoughts.

But even the strength of the past could not just then break their companionship for long. Somehow, and because of the nature of their being, the old peculiar silence ceased to be a barrier and became a medium. They had been overawed by time. Then time again became their friend.

“Are you asleep?” Ross said.

“No,” said Demelza.

Then she moved and put her finger on his arm.

He rose slowly and bent over her, took her face in his hands and kissed her on the eyes, the mouth, and the forehead. With a queer tigerish limpness she allowed him to do what he wanted.

And presently the white inner heart of the bud was free of its petals.

Only then did she put up her hands to his face and kiss him in return.

T
HEY WENT HOME THE FOLLOWING DAY AFTER AN EARLY DINNER, WALKING as they had come, by way of the cliff path and Sawle Village and Nampara Cove. They had said goodbye to their relatives, and were again alone, striding off over the heather-covered moor.

For a time they talked as they had talked last night, desultorily, confidentially, laughing together and silent. There had been rain this morning, heavy and windless, but it had stopped while they were at dinner and the sky had cleared. Now clouds had gathered again. There was a heavy ground swell.

Demelza was so glad that her ordeal was over, and decently even triumphantly over, that she took his arm and began to sing. She took big masculine strides to keep up with his, but every now and then would have to give a little skip to make good lost ground. She fitted these in with her song so that her voice gave an upward skip at the same time as her feet.

Before the sun set, the black day broke on the horizon and sea and land were flooded with light. At the sudden warmth under the lowering clouds, all the waves became disordered and ran in ragged confusion with heads tossing and glinting in the sun.

Demelza thought: I am nearer sure of him than I have ever been before. How ignorant I was that first June morning thinking everything was sure. Even that August night after the pilchards came, even then there had been nothing to compare me with. All last summer I told myself it was as certain as anything could be. I felt sure. But last night was different. After a whole seven hours in Eliza beth's company, he still wanted me at the end. After a talk all to themselves with her making eyes at him like a she-cat, he still came to me. Perhaps she isn’t so bad. Perhaps she isn’t such a cat. Perhaps I feel sorry for her. Why does Francis look so bored? Perhaps I feel sorry for her after all. Dear Verity helped. I hope my baby doesn’t have codfish eyes like Geoffrey Charles. I believe I’m
going thinner, not fatter. I hope nothing's wrong. I wish I didn’t feel so sick. Ruth Treneglos is worse than Elizabeth. She didn’t like me making up to her hare-and-hounds husband. As if I cared for him. Though I shouldn’t like to meet him in a dark lane with nobody near. I think she was jealous of me in another way. Perhaps she wanted Ross to marry her. Anyway, I’m going home to
my
home, to bald Jud and fat Prudie and red-haired Jinny and long-legged Cobbledick, going home to get fat and ugly myself. And I don’t care. Verity was right. He’ll stick to me. Not because he ought to but because he wants to. Mustn’t forget Verity. I’ll scheme like a serpent. I would dearly love to go to one of George Warleggan's card parties. I wonder if I ever shall. I wonder if Prudie's remembered to meat the calves. I wonder if she burned the heavy cake. I wonder if it's going to rain. Dear life, I wonder if I’m going to be sick.

They reached Sawle, crossed the shingle bar, and climbed the hill at the other side.

“Are you tired?” Ross asked, as she seemed to lag.

“No, no.” It was the first time he had ever asked that.

The sun had gone down now, and the brows of the sky were dark. After their brief carnival the waves had reassembled and rode in showing long, green caverns as they curved to break.

And Ross again knew himself to be happy—in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightenment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to this pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza's birth in the squalor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end—and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone—a Latin poet—had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come.

He thought: if we could only
stop
life for a while I would stop here. Not when I get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side.

He knew of things plucking at his attention. All existence was a cycle of difficulties to be met and obstacles to be surmounted. But at this evening hour of Christmas Day, 1787, he was not concerned with the future, only the present.
He thought: I am not hungry or thirsty or lustful or envious; I am not perplexed or weary or ambitious or remorseful. Just ahead, in the immediate future, there is waiting an open door and a warm house, comfortable chairs and quietness and companionship. Let me hold it.

In the slow dusk they skirted Nampara Cove and began the last short climb beside the brook towards the house.

Demelza began to sing, mischievously and in a deep voice:

There was an old couple and they was poor, Tweedle, tweedle, go twee.

Winston Graham
was the author of forty novels, including
The Walking Stick, Angell, Pearl and Little God, Stephanie
, and
Tremor.
His books have been widely translated and his famous Poldark series has been developed into two television series shown in twenty-four countries. A special two-hour television programme has been made of his eighth Poldark novel,
The Stranger from the Sea
, whilst a five-part television serial of his early novel
The Forgotten Story
won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival. Six of Winston Graham's books have been filmed for the big screen, the most notable being
Mamie
, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Winston Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1983 was awarded the OBE. He died in July 2003.

1. When Ross arrives home after years of fighting in America, he discovers that Elizabeth, the woman he loved, was engaged to marry his cousin Francis. This causes several confrontations, most notably the argument that Ross and Francis have down in the mine that nearly results in Francis drowning. Ross says that the incident had not only shown the extent of his anger, but its limitations as well. Do you think that Francis realized this? What do you think that Ross and Francis's reactions to this incident say about each man?