Shadow of the Past (20 page)

I chose to ignore the last sentence. How she had discovered what I preferred to keep hidden, I knew not. But it was a topic I was not prepared to engage in. ‘Were I a fine preacher, perhaps I might be tempted. But as to setting an example, getting to know one’s congregation, the city – any city – offers infertile ground. I would be lost in the crowds in London. Here I am known and – I like to think – observed. My manners, indeed, my conduct, must at all times be above reproach.’

‘Like Caesar’s wife,’ she agreed, without enthusiasm, or, I fear, comprehension. Or perhaps she understood all too well. ‘And what is to be the topic of your sermon, Parson Campion? Will it keep those rustics awake?’ She pointed to two old gaffers, nodding over their jugs of ale.

The church was crammed, the warmth of the braziers Simon had set up being supplemented by the press of bodies. The ancient building was decorated with garlands Edmund assured me derived from an older, pagan tradition, but since the beauty brought smiles of joy to the faces of folk who had all too little to admire in their lives, I was sure the Almighty would look down with approval – just as He did on the occasional discords from the little band and the strained breathiness of the choir. What He thought of Lady Dorothea’s performance I cannot tell. Even to think of the lady caused me such a confusion of anger and yearning and desire, all fuelled by champagne, that I kept my mind resolutely on the purpose of our gathering. Even during my sermon, when I tried to look into the face of each in the congregation in turn, I averted my gaze from her.

At least, God willing, I would be able to put a safe distance between us very shortly. The weather had set in fair, as the villagers had foretold, and Jem and I had resolved to set out in but two days. Perhaps it was the thought of our journey that made my references to the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt all the more heartfelt.

Even Furnival thanked me as he left the church, in particular congratulating me on my sermon. To him and too all the others alike, I wished a most joyful Christmas and prosperous New Year.

‘So that is stage coach travel,’ I observed, easing my cramped and chilly limbs to the terra firma of the yard of the London Inn, a spacious modern building, clinging to a hillside only yards from the sea at Dawlish.

As the villagers had predicted, the snow had gone as swiftly as it had come, and we had set off for Devon accordingly.

We had spent more hours than I cared to recall aboard a vehicle apparently determined to stick in the snows of the uplands, or get bogged down where the thaw had set in. The forbidding hills of Dartmoor, which we could see in the distance as we crossed the smaller but hardly less
awe-inspiring
Haldon Moor, were still swathed in snow.

‘It is indeed,’ Jem said as he joined me joined me. The experience was new to him too, but was at the opposite extreme from mine. I had been used to making my journeys in the comfort of one of our family’s luxurious chaises; his had been to accompany them, sometimes with what all too frequently in my family became a veritable luggage train, or leading my horses.

There had no question of his appearing as my groom on this trip. He was Mr James Yeomans again, my friend – though not this time feigning holy orders. Lady Chase’s Christmas present to him, a mark of gratitude, she insisted, for his tender care of Lord Chase, had been a fine suit of clothes, with appropriate shoes and boots. Dear Mrs Hansard had made him some shirts with her own hands.

‘Do you think we shall ever get rid of the smell of onion?’ I asked. We had sat for sixty miles beside a farmer’s daughter with the ear-ache and a baked onion pressed to her head.

‘I doubt it. I believe it has permeated my very skin!’

‘For a complete cleanse, we should try the sea-bathing,’ I agreed, to have my suggestion greeted by the derisory snort of laughter I had hoped for. Dawlish might be milder than Warwickshire, but the afternoon sky over the brilliant sea was that deep clear blue that in winter presages a sharp frost. ‘Pray, Jem, would you see if you can unearth our baggage? I will bespeak rooms for us.’

The serving maid who greeted us pulled a doubtful face when I requested a private sitting room in addition to two bed chambers. I resorted, as sometimes to my shame I did when I wished to win an argument, to imitating my father. Such a sudden access of hauteur sent her scurrying for the landlord. In welcome contrast to the girl, Mr Veale was all that was courteous and obliging.

Both the rooms his wife curtsied us into were clean and well appointed, and I had no doubt that the sheets had been properly aired. Ordering dinner, we set forth swiftly to take advantage of the fading light to see what there was of Dawlish, leaving the sea to our left as we headed inland.

‘The whole place is a veritable builder’s yard,’ he said in
disgust, surveying the work in progress all around us.

There were many fine new residences wherever one looked, with many more half built.

‘Indeed – but with these marshes lying between the village and the sea one could not imagine it to be a healthy place.’

Even as we stared down from a convenient bridge at the stream bisecting the town, a gentleman we took to be a resident accosted us pleasantly, inviting us to see how much work had been done to repair the damage done by what he referred to as the floods.

‘To be sure,’ said he, in the slow warm accent of a Devonian, ‘it was hoped that by confining Dawlish Water – or as the villagers call it, the Brook, as if there were only one in the kingdom – to a single stream we would make a pleasant park. But we had terrible floods two years back, and all the good work was undone. But now we are trying again, with weirs – do you see that one there? – to stem the flow.’

‘You are doubly at risk, I take it,’ said Jem, ‘from the waters coming down from the moor, and the sea making incursions inland?’

‘Exactly so. And there are other streams too – those propelling our watermills. But if we are to develop the town to its fullest – and we have wonderful sea bathing here for gentlemen such as yourselves, with bathing huts along the eastward shore – we must improve the air.’

‘And while you have marshes, you have miasmas?’ I observed.

‘And many rheumatic complaints. There is quite a little pilgrimage from here to Bath every winter. ’Tis much easier now the stage comes here – why, only two years ago, the nearest the stage stopped was Chudleigh. The rest of the journey had to be made by horse.’

I snorted. ‘If the invalids’ journeys are anything like ours, they will need to recuperate on their return – from bruises and bangs.’

‘Dr Penhallow holds such agitation of the vital organs to be extremely healthy,’ our interlocutor assured us, perhaps offended.

It was now so dark as to give an excuse to move away. As we doffed our hats, he produced a pasteboard card. ‘Samuel Twiss, Builder, at your service,’ he declared, swiftly recovering his composure in the interest of potential profit.

We said all that was proper, returning to the inn to be greeted by a roaring fire and a welcome bowl of hot punch.

The following day being the Sabbath, there was nothing we could do to pursue our enquiries. We took the path beside the brook, on which the bright sun made dazzling patterns, to St Gregory’s, a church in a quite alarming state of dilapidation. There was a very small congregation for matins: I hoped and prayed that there was a better attendance back at Moreton St Jude, where one of Toone’s friends, a man with a fine reputation as a preacher, was standing in for me. The harassed-looking parson was a man in his later thirties. Identifying me by my bands as a brother clergyman, he greeted me warmly, but with such an apologetic air, I truly felt for him.

‘There must – shall – be a subscription started to repair, even replace this poor House of God,’ he assured me.

‘Indeed, you must have many new residents who will be delighted to assist you,’ I observed.

He spread his hands in a speaking gesture. It was true, I had to admit, that not many of the occupants of the fine houses
had wanted to commit their presence to the old church, as if it were beneath them, let alone their money to a new one. ‘All too many of the properties are merely to be rented out for the summer,’ he continued, ‘to people leaving London when it becomes too hot and unhealthy there. I understand that a great number of naval officers are also likely to grace us with their presence, here and in Teignmouth, over the great hill, there, or across the river in Exmouth. Some will be true gentlemen, of course, but others will merely be fighting men laden with prize money.’

We spoke for a while about the village, and in particular about the curious redness of the soil.

‘If you were minded to walk along the shore, you would see an even stranger phenomenon – the cliffs are decidedly rosy as they tumble to the sea,’ declared a familiar voice.

Our conversation had been interrupted by our acquaintance of the previous evening, Mr Twiss, who swiftly introduced his wife and two daughters, Catherine and Julia, bearing us from the church on a tide of further encomiums about his beloved village. My father would swiftly have depressed the pretensions of such a mushroom, but it occurred to me, Sabbath or no Sabbath, that Mr Twiss might well be a source of information about the Larwoods, whose house we still had to locate. In any case, had I wished to decline their company, I was too late: Jem already had Miss Twiss on his left arm, and Miss Julia Twiss on the other, and was showing very sign of being charmed by the feminine attention as he was led towards the sea.

One could readily understand why Mr Twiss and his builder colleagues might wish to control the Brook and institute pleasant walks beside it. The beach it concluded in
was truly excellent, with firm golden sand on which one might envisage boys kicking a ball or playing at cricket. To the west end of the beach fishing boats lay safely beached. Beyond the outcrop that sheltered them lay another fine cove, with two strange-shaped red rocks off-shore.

Mr Twiss roared with laughter when I asked about them. ‘They are statues of you and Mr Yeomans.’

Mrs Twiss, a gentle-faced lady of much quieter disposition than her husband, shook her head in some embarrassment. ‘Nay, Parson Campion. Take no notice of him, I pray you. We do call them the Parson and Clerk, indeed. Mr Twiss refers to a legend that an ambitious man of the cloth was led into the sea by the devil himself and there he sits to this day, his anxious clerk before him.’

Twiss, called thus to order, blushed and coughed and hoped we had not taken offence – ‘For none was meant, I do assure you.’

‘And none taken, my dear sir,’ I assured him heartily.

The path being too narrow for three, Jem had to surrender Miss Catherine Twiss to my care. She was swathed like her sister and mother in a fur-trimmed velvet pelisse – hers was the deep rich green to which poor Bess might have aspired. With a pang I realised how little thought I had given since arriving in this pleasant place to Bess, still in Shropshire caring for Hugo, or to young Willum, who had insisted on coming to Warwickshire with us, and was presently caring for our horses under the careful eye of the Hansards’ groom. How strange it must be for both of them, to have spent the festive season, no matter how luxuriously compared with their existence hitherto, so far from all that was familiar, if not loved?

But it would be uncivil not to make pleasant conversation
with the pretty damsel beside me, who was mightily forthcoming on the matter of assemblies here, in Teignmouth, Shaldon or even Newton Abbot. Lest I feel she was dwelling too much on the western side of the town, she enumerated the charms of Exeter, Exmouth and far distant Lyme. Clearly she was well travelled in the pursuit of pleasure, and highly discriminating between the dancing of one company of militia and another.

‘As for Dawlish,’ she assured me, ‘although we could be considered a little thin of company, it is not often that we stand up with fewer than ten couples when my parents have a card party.’

I was beginning to regret that neither of us had brought evening clothes, with an agonising realisation that Jem did not possess such garments. But no invitation was forthcoming. Relinquishing her hold on my arm, she darted off up the hillside waving vigorously.

Her sister followed suit, leaving her parents to apologise to us for their being such sad romps. Secretly I suspect that Mr Twiss was proud to be able to declare that the couple they were racing towards were London friends of the girls.

Although the Londoners were swathed to the ears, my heart beat strongly. Surely a lock of ginger hair was escaping from the bonnet Miss Julia pushed back as she embraced her friend. For one precious moment it appeared that two groups might merge into one large party, but it was clear that the girls’ hail was also to be their farewell. The young man and woman were pointing up the hill and again at the sky, as if to warn that there was very little daylight left. Waving, their laughter carried in the still air, they retraced their steps up the path they had but two minutes ago descended.

The sun having sunk suddenly behind the headland, we were plunged into instant dusk, and as the Misses Twiss ran back I was in terror that one might fall and break a
well-turned
ankle.

But all was well, and we too wended our way from the shore – but not to the inn. At some point – I knew not how, I knew not when – it had become understood that we should be their guests for dinner.

‘Nothing grand,’ Mr Twiss protested. ‘Nothing hot. Just a cold collation, it being the Sabbath. And I would take it mighty fine, Parson, if you would lead us all in a prayer this evening before we read from the Good Book. Indeed, were you to say a few words, it would make a marvellous change from one of Mr Blair’s sermons, though Catherine reads them aloud very pleasingly, I do assure you.’

I did not doubt it for one moment. Catching Jem’s amused and assenting eye, I was happy to accept on behalf of us both.

Cold collation it might have been, but there was nothing of the hair shirt about the evening. The food was excellent and the wine well chosen, with no ostentation. In trade Mr Twiss certainly was, but in his elegant new home he behaved and spoke like a gentleman, not changing his attire himself lest we felt out of place in our breeches and boots. I suspected the Misses Twiss might have pouted a little when their mother gave instructions that they were to eschew evening wear too, but their walking dresses were replaced by the most modest and tasteful of gowns, as was Mrs Twiss’s.

Over an excellent sherry, with ratafia for the girls, I was able – without appearing particular in my enquiries – to ask who the young couple were that we so nearly encountered.

‘As I said, they live in London town. He has a position with the East India Company, I think, and is well on his way to making a fortune. Mr Larwood’s parents live here – they farm out Holcombe way. Little Miss is their first grandchild, so you may understand how pleased the Larwoods are when they all make the long journey down here.’

‘And Miss Marsh, as was, her parents come from up at Ideford, so they share the pleasure too,’ Mrs Twiss added. ‘They’re second cousins, once removed, though you’d never think it to look at them – almost brother and sister they might be, with their guinea-gold curls.’

If I thought that that was carrying euphemism too far, I did not say so. Neither could I observe, as I wished, that their daughter must seem like a foundling. I cast round for something to say. ‘I think I may have heard of young Mr Larwood,’ I mused. ‘I believe he is the friend of someone working at the bank my father patronises – Drummond’s. And once I briefly met Mrs Larwood, and Miss Emma.’ It was painful so to mislead such good people.

‘You’ll be wanting to call on them then. I will furnish you with their direction before you leave,’ Mr Twiss declared.

‘I am scarce on visiting terms,’ I protested truthfully.

‘They are such hospitable folk they’d want you to call. Old Mr George Larwood, Mr John’s father, is housebound with the gout much of the time, and loves new faces. With the lanes so dirty at the moment you can scarce drive a gig up them, he doesn’t have as much company as he would like.’