The Ugly Sister (17 page)

My mother and I were fortunate because we were on the side farthest from the hasp, so that we were thrown against the plump elderly women who shared the interior, and it was their misfortune to bear the shock of our weight and the jolt of being crushed against the woodwork of the coach. All the same I had a bruised shoulder which troubled me for a week or more after. My mother's travelling handbag spilled out on the floor of the coach and the contents had to be regathered and replaced.

We were an hour late reaching Bodmin and I missed my waggonette, so stayed on the main coach as far as the crossroads near Whitecross. From here it was less than a three-mile walk, and I had only a piece of hand luggage.

As I made my way along the country lane to Trewint, my mouth was very dry and I felt faint. It was nothing to do with the accident. It was nothing to do with the exertion. I was not hungry or tired or ill. I was just faint and sick.

My mother's travelling bag was larger than an ordinary woman's handbag, being of leather fastened at the top with a thong. In theory this should have been quite secure, but if the bag was tipped up the contents, or certainly the smaller contents, found their way out through gaps and spilled on the floor. This was what had happened in the coach and I had knelt on the floor as soon as it was level, untied the thong and scooped everything back again. She crouched beside me helping.

She was rather addicted to medicines of one sort and another and so I was not surprised to pick up a phial of Solomon's drops, tolu lozenges, and a box of Dr Lamb's pills. There were also things like kohl sticks, roseate powder, and tiny lace handkerchiefs. All these were put back, and among them was a little brooch, which I glanced at just once before slipping it in. I had seen a similar one before. This one was not very new because the gold pin at the back was tarnished. But there was no mistaking that the brooch was a coral starfish.

S
HORTLY AFTER
my twenty-first birthday Canon Francis Herbert de Vere Robartes asked me to marry him. It was still January, with the darkest evenings just past and a chill wind blowing from the north-east. It was the one wind that made the Canon's study untenable, that is if there was a fire to smoke, so he had moved temporarily into the drawing room, where the spinet was. I had brought him tea, Tom had brought three candles in from the hall and I had poured the first cup. It would soon be time for me to read to him – which I did for half an hour each afternoon before leaving him to his meditations.

As soon as Tom left he said: ‘Put two of the candles out. We finished Pascal yesterday and I feel in the mood to talk. We shall not need the extra light.'

I sipped my tea, which Francis had persuaded me to take without milk or sugar, saying it was better for my health.

He then put his proposition to me. By then I had finished my cup but was frozen into a position where I did not like to move to get myself or him another.

‘I am sure, my dear child, that this will come as a big surprise to you. But you have been with me here over these years and you have made yourself lovingly indispensable. You I know are still a girl; I an old man, but I fancy we could get along in a way not very different from the way we do now. Please understand,' he hastened on, as if afraid I might interrupt. ‘Please understand I am not proposing any change in our – er – physical relationship. If – if we became man and wife, though I hope we should grow spiritually more together, you would continue to occupy your room, and I mine. It would be a loving partnership, just as if you were my daughter. After all, when I was laid up with bronchitis, you sat up with me two nights.' His full eyes twinkled suddenly behind their spectacles. ‘Many a wife I know would not do that.'

‘You had such trouble breathing—'

The slight moment of humour had helped to relax me, and I got up and poured tea again, then went to the fire, which was sulky.

‘This coal is bad,' I said. ‘I must talk to Robins when he comes.'

He said: ‘The idea that I have put to you may not please you at all, but I ask you not to reply at once. Sleep on it. And, if you will, pray on it. Keep it by you for a few days – or weeks, if need be – and try to think the proposition through … The coal is slow but it is economical. I don't think one needs to have the bright coal that burns away like dry wood.'

I gave the fire an experimental poke, and a blue flame began to lick at the slack.

‘If you consented to become my wife, I would still pay you your housekeeper's salary; but you would be altogether in a stronger position than you are now. You would be Mrs de Vere Robartes. You would come with me to convocations and ordinations and social gatherings – which I cannot take you to now. In the village you would immediately be elevated to a new status. All that would give me great pleasure.'

‘Is that why you have asked me?'

‘No,' he said. ‘No. But I was attempting to point out the advantages which would come to you.'

I looked at him and smiled. ‘Then what is your reason?'

‘Because I am afraid to lose you.'

‘Why should you fear it?'

‘You're very young. I know you are handicapped. Oh, without that handicap I am sure I would not have brought myself to this – this proposal. A pretty young woman of twenty-one is soon in demand. Some young man would come round, and you would be off and away. It might still happen, but now, as you are, as misfortune has made you, such a man may not come. But even so you are young and vigorous and may feel the outside world offers you more than I can.'

I straightened up from the fire and put the poker beside the brass tongs.

He said: ‘ Freda went off quite suddenly. We had no quarrel. I did not know she was discontented. I was – very upset. But not upset in the way I should be if you left. I have not before had such company and service as yours. Your mind is so bright – if often wayward – I have talked to you and you have talked to me. I need you, Emma, I need you while I am alive. I need you to be beside me when I die.'

‘Why should you think of dying?'

‘A Christian should always think of dying. He should accustom himself to it, he should have beliefs that convince him he need not fear it.'

‘Well …'

‘Given that full and enduring faith, which of course I have, there should be no fear at all in the soul. Nor is there! But one cannot always maintain a clear division between the spiritual and the corporeal. It would take a long time to explain, my dear Emma. Suffice that I need you now, here on this physical earth, and I don't want to fear losing you. And whatever the depths of my religious conviction I want to have someone – and someone who cares a little – to be beside me at the end.'

I looked at him sidelong. ‘It is not quite the customary reason for a proposal.'

‘Indeed no. But it can be just as heartfelt. Also …' I waited, and he smiled. ‘Though you are I am sure still far too young to think of your future in material terms, I believe … When I die of course my stipend will cease, as will the possession of the rectory. But the small investments that I have, if managed carefully, would enable you to face a youth and middle age of small independence.'

I did not answer. ‘Think it over,' he said. ‘There is absolutely no hurry at all.'

N
OTHING MORE
was said between us for a couple of days, then he was in Bodmin for two nights, and returned with a bronchial chill; and so a week passed.

The week lengthened into a month, and that into two, with nothing more said on the subject. I knew he was waiting for me to respond, but as yet I could not.

I had not written to my mother to tell her of the Canon's proposal. Twenty-odd months had passed since the coach accident, and our letters since then had been sparse and unyielding. At least they had been so on my side – clearly she had not been aware that I had seen something in her bag which should not have been there, so the lack of warmth and detail must have come just from me. My mind still reeled from the shock that the sight of the brooch had been; I had tossed and turned through many horrible nights. What its presence meant I could not be sure, but it seemed it could only mean one of two things – each more hideous than the other. Self-preservation had made me shut the thoughts away, otherwise I should drown.

As the days lengthened and the winds warmed, came a letter from Charles Lane to my uncle. Did the Canon know, the letter said, the Bodmin–Wadebridge Railway, which had been incorporated last year, was now in once-weekly experimental operation. Last year there had been a formal opening of the line when a first train, with distinguished passengers on board, had run from Wadebridge to Bodmin. Now, to mark the first anniversary and an increase from one train a week to six, it was hoped to re-enact the celebration, this time starting from Bodmin, for the benefit of shareholders who lived in or nearer Bodmin or who had been unable to participate in the rejoicings of last year. It would give the company great satisfaction if the Canon would join this party, dinner being served at the Molesworth Arms and carriages being supplied for those travellers who wished to return to Bodmin. A footnote added that if the Canon would care to bring his niece, she would be more than welcome.

We had missed the formal opening last year because the Canon had been afraid of catching a chill; but a few weeks later we had met Charles Lane by chance in Bodmin, in the company of a Mr Dunstan, who was Chief Superintendent of the new railway, and Charles had pressed us to go at once and inspect the line. This we did, although the one engine was at Wadebridge at the time so we could not see that. Charles, who was much more at ease than I had seen him, explained that originally it had been thought the carriages and trucks would have to be brought up the gradient to Bodmin by a team of horses, but it had been found that the engine had sufficient power of its own. He also told us of his recent marriage to a young Devonshire girl called Effie Farrow. He came down to Cornwall only about once a month now, the daily working of the line being left to Mr Dunstan. I asked after Mr Brunel.

A shadow crossed Charles's craggy face, but it was not an unfriendly one.

‘Goes from strength to strength. He is so busy, I see little of him nowadays. But we were able to persuade him against the atmospheric propulsion for this line.'

‘And also to convince him of the virtues of the narrow gauge,' said Dunstan.

‘I don't think you will ever convince him of that,' said Charles. ‘He accepted it here from the beginning because the survey and estimates were already in existence, it being designed in the first place for a horse-drawn tramway.'

I waited for a day or two to learn of my uncle's decision on this second invitation, but the weather was mild and sunny, no cold winds blew, so eventually he accepted it.

Then the weather changed; he was caught in a fearful shower and retired to his room with a chill. So a letter went countermanding his acceptance, and I resigned myself to disappointment.

By horse and trap from Bodmin came a letter from Charles regretting the Canon's ill fortune and hoping for his quick recovery. But in the meantime might the Canon's niece be permitted to come on her own? Transport would be provided, it said, and there would be a number of ladies of quality travelling, including Lady Molesworth, Mrs Joseph Austen and Mrs Thurston Collins.

The Canon was reluctant to say yes, but seeing my expectant face he relented.

It was after all a fine day when the same trap came for me, but my uncle would not change his mind at the last moment. When I got to where the Bodmin train stopped (as yet there was no station at this end, the line finishing with buffers and a big mound of sand) Charles was waiting for me; he took both my hands, grasping them warmly and led me up three steps to the wooden platform on which a number of notables were gathering, down the other side and into a big shed in which stood the engine. It was a not very large, shiny, polished machine with a barrel body, a very tall chimney and a cab at the end. It had six wheels, attached to each other by strong steel rods, which themselves were part of a complex structure of iron and steel running in and out of the belly of the engine. Behind it was another truck which carried coal and water, Charles explained – a ton of coal, 370 gallons of water – and was called the tender. Behind that was a long string of wagons roofed and unroofed.

The first-class carriages, Charles pointed out, were furnished in blue cloth stuffed with hay. The lower panels of each passenger coach were painted ultramarine blue, the upper panels white, with a bright red underframe. It all looked shiny and smart. Two men were busy shovelling coal into the back of the engine, and there was steam beginning to issue from various parts of the machine, most particularly from one of the two domes along the top.

‘Is this,' I asked, ‘going to pull all this?'

‘Yes. That's not an unusual load. We shall be off in ten minutes, all being well.'

‘How did you get the engine onto the rails in the first place?' I asked. ‘Was it built in Cornwall?'

‘No. Neath Abbey. Shipped by sea to Wadebridge and assembled there. It weighs ten tons and cost us £275.'

‘Is that its name?' I asked.

‘
Camel
, yes. It seems appropriate, don't you think?'

‘And how is this line going to make money? Not on the number of passengers on a normal day?'

‘No, we take passengers at present for only two days of the week. Sea sand for the farmers, carried at a much cheaper rate than horse-drawn carts. Coal for Bodmin, and other smaller items. Back to Wadebridge we shall take granite, and timber and ore from the mines … Emma.'

I looked at him. ‘ Yes?'

‘All those elegantly dressed folk will occupy the three first-class carriages in the centre of the train. The rest, the open ones, are for the second class. Do you wish to join the elegant people?'