The Ugly Sister (32 page)

W
E HAD
not been living in the house long when Sally Fetch discovered a stray kitten starving to death in the long grass behind the stables. When she brought it in it was too feeble to stand and flopped over on its weak legs, its mouth opening and shutting in inaudible miaows. One of its hind legs had an open wound, and the fur was matted with dried blood. Either it had been caught in a gin or it had been attacked by one of the farm dogs.

We carried it into the kitchen, put a blanket in a basket and tried to feed it with milk. The kitten's startling green eyes glazed over now and then, but presently by squirting drops of milk into its mouth with a tube designed for ear drops, we began to bring it round.

During the next two days life centred round the kitten's basket. The leg did not seem to be broken, so I bathed it with melrose water and hoped for the best. The best was that the kitten was soon able to walk on three legs, to lap its milk from a saucer and presently chewed delicately at a few morsels of fish.

‘You'd think there was
bones
in it,' said Fetch indignantly, ‘ and me at such pain to see there was not!'

‘Cats are like that,' I said, not really knowing. ‘She's on the mend now for sure.'

I had intended as soon as I settled in to get a dog. At Place in my childhood Parish had been around, but I had found Uncle Francis preferred not to have animals in the house. For the moment this scrap of mewing skin and bone with its brilliant eyes and pointed top-heavy tail fascinated me. We called her Mousie because Fetch had thought it was a mouse when she first found it stirring in the grass.

Bram called twice in the week following my return from Blisland. He was on his best behaviour – something he had never been before with me – and I was able to endure his visits with a greater degree of calm than usual. It was virtually the first conversations we had ever had which were not spiked by sexual challenge. I wondered, after his second visit, whether I had ever really known him at all.

He had an alert mind, but one which seemed to slip from subject to subject without warning. (Was he even in this not unlike a fox?) His perceptions were acute, but he seemed to have made up his mind on everything before he spoke. He still laughed too much and without proper cause. But his knowledge of so many aspects of life – particularly Cornish life – were unexpected and startling. Superficially at least he knew as much about railways as any man I had ever met, saving only Charles and Mr Brunel. He knew of the progress and of the latest plans to complete the railway to run without break from London to Bristol next year. He knew of plans within the county to extend the line into Cornwall, of an ambitious idea to run along the spine of Cornwall feeding Bodmin and Truro, and of a rival plan to take in Liskeard and the coastal towns.

He knew all about the controversy and rivalry between the advocates of the broad and narrow gauge railways and had made up his mind that Brunel, advocate of the former, was fighting a losing battle against the weight of the Midlands and the manufacturing north. He knew everyone I knew and was confident of the way in which each would lean, where expansionist decisions had to be made – and why. Land, property, commercial and political interests, he understood them all and who deferred to whom in the hierarchy of the county. However he used it, he had an exceptional brain and an exceptional memory.

He seemed to enjoy talking to me but usually dismissed my ideas as lacking in a simple appreciation of the facts. I accepted this without demur but frequently wondered, sometimes audibly, if his own information was impeccable. He laughed at this, showing his teeth, and simply became more overbearing, in a jocular way.

Once as he left he said: ‘You're the best fun of any woman around here, Emma. Cannot say that is why I so much took to you in the first place all those years ago! Must have been foresight.'

‘I congratulate you on your judgment,' I murmured, as I showed him out.

What must it be like to be married to him, I thought, as my new stableman, John Cannon, came round the corner to help him mount.

Substance was added to those eccentric thoughts three weeks later, when he came in half a blizzard and stayed nearly two hours waiting for the snow to stop.

I said: ‘You should not go back this afternoon. I can't offer you accommodation here, but Mrs Eames, who is only a hundred yards down the road to Come-to-Good would have a comfortable room.'

He laughed. ‘The snow is melting as it falls. I shall slither my way home safely enough. But I'll hold on a while longer for the wind to abate.'

‘As you please.'

‘But on that point, is there any valid reason why I should not stay here the night? We do not have to take account of the Mrs Grundys of this world.'

‘I do not know what your reputation is, Bram, but mine, I believe, is still good.'

‘And would be tarnished by my presence for one night under the same roof?'

‘I think so.'

‘Dear, dear. If they but knew!'

‘That was long ago.'

‘Yes, yes. Oh, yes, yes. My little starfish. But seriously, Emma.'

‘Seriously?'

‘You and I belong to ourselves alone. You are unmarried, I am unmarried. There is no one else to consider.'

‘Tamsin naturally is not worth a second thought?'

‘She is worth many thoughts. She is a pretty wayward creature, but I am not tied to her apron strings.'

‘No doubt she accepts that?'

‘I think so.'

‘And would she accept that you were free to make a close acquaintance with her sister?'

‘She need never know.'

‘Nothing is private in Cornwall. You should be aware of that.'

‘Our meeting at Blundstone's Hotel has gone unrecorded.'

I bit my lip. ‘I think this time I am looking for a more settled relationship.'

‘Which this could well be. I am not again likely to be imprisoned for debt.'

‘Why not?'

‘Do you wonder how Tamsin continues to thrive at Place and pay the rent? It is a result of the provision I make for her. I can indulge my friends.'

‘You'd like me as a kept woman?'

His eyes glinted. ‘I would.'

‘How much would you pay me?'

‘As much as you needed to continue to live here.'

I stared out at the falling snow.

He said: ‘Emma, I suppose you must often have thought of marriage.'

‘Not often,' I said. ‘Sometimes.'

‘So you must – it must have crossed your mind that you could now marry me.'

His voice was actually hesitant as I had not heard it before. Could this joke really mean something to him?

‘I don't think it had ever occurred to me as a possibility.'

‘Why not? You are careful of your reputation. And you said you were looking for a settled relationship.'

‘And do you suppose marriage to you would add to my reputation?'

‘It would do it no harm, I assure you. What is amiss with me?'

I said: ‘Look, the snow is stopping. You will be able to leave soon.'

He said: ‘ Marriage to you would be an adventure.'

‘It could be looked on as an atonement.'

‘No one else could think so – you could regard it as that if you wished.'

There was a brief silence.

I said: ‘Thank you, but I would not consider it.'

‘May I ask why not?'

‘We should drive each other to destruction.'

‘I am not of destructible material, Emma. And I suspect that under your elegant appearance there is a rock-hard centre that could sustain any number of shocks.'

‘Which you would administer?'

‘In course of time, perhaps.'

‘And you suggest I should go into such an attachment knowing all the hazards?'

‘You'd be twenty times more alive married to me than with most of those weak, conceited, wishy-washy men you might otherwise join yourself to.'

‘Have you someone in mind?'

He put his hand lightly on my arm (which was safely covered today).

‘Don't you realize what excitement we should have together? Loving, quarrelling, adventuring – not a life for the mealy-mouthed or the faint-hearted. Bram and Emma fighting for a common cause?'

His face was close to me, the eyes glinting.

‘Cause?' I said.

‘Yes. The cause of our own advancement. I have money as well as you. We can—'

‘How do you know what money I have?'

‘A sweet question, sweetly put. How else could you maintain the style you do here?'

‘I might be spending it all to attract a title.'

‘Jonty Eliot? He's no good for you. I am.'

‘Bram,' I said smiling. ‘You know too much. You're forgetting that I know something about
your
life too.'

‘That is to the good. Neither of us would enter into it with our eyes closed.' He kissed me.

‘Don't think,' I said, pushing him gently away, ‘that I am agreeing to anything at all. Thank you just the same.'

‘Please do not hurry,' he said. ‘Think it over, little Emma. It would be a great adventure.'

T
HE COACHING
road ran immediately outside my gates, and the mail coach stopped there as a matter of course. Taking this coach to Falmouth was a pleasant trip, if the weather was fine, and we had a very fine and mild spell following the snows of January.

For a day's shopping one did not have to be in a hurry. The horses were winded after their long climb out of the Kea Valley and had to be eased down the long descent to Carnon Bridge. Then, after winding beside a tributary of Restronguet Creek for a couple of miles, one began the slow ascent of the next hill before another downward slope to Penryn.

Fetch came with me, and we shopped in Arwenack Street (where the young Queen of Portugal had paraded on her way to Bank House). We had nearly done when Fetch touched my arm. ‘There's Mrs Foster. You mind her: she was cook when you was a baby.'

A little old woman in the inevitable black. I knew her at once. As a child I remembered her as fierce, fretful but generous. Just seeing her brought back memories of her giving me a slice of squab pie as we came in on a winter's day hungry long before time for supper; or a tasty piece of roast swan that was going to be served to the adults but not to the children. While I was ill with the recurrent fever she had regularly sent up a bowl of cow heel soup to tempt my appetite.

She did not at first recognize me but when she did she showed red gums in a grin of welcome.

‘Mistress Emma!' I was just able to detect. ‘' Ow you've grown. My dear life an' body. Well, Mistress Emma …'

I was as gracious as I knew how, for I was genuinely pleased to see ‘Cook' as she would always be thought of. (Why had she left? Something to do with Slade? Had she disliked him intensely or liked him too much?)

We carried on a brief conversation, Fetch acting as interpreter because of Cook's lack of teeth. I thought of her recipe for saffron cake, which she had taught me and which I still knew by heart. So I quoted it to her:

‘Half a dram of saffron, two pounds of plain flour, one pound of butter, four ounces of sugar, two ounces of candied peel, one pound of currants, one ounce of yeast, pinch of salt, warm milk.'

She was delighted with this recital, and I could just see one blackened tooth at the back of her mouth. I always hate the act of giving money personally but got Fetch to take her address so that something could be sent to cheer her up.

A coach would be leaving at five, and we had yet to walk to the quay where it would be waiting.

‘Sorry to hear about Mr Slade,' I said experimentally. ‘ He was not very old, I suppose?'

Cook's face changed. Her expression was in any case more attuned to disaster than to pleasure.

‘Aw, my dear. No one d'know 'ow it ' appened.' She went on chuntering but I could not make it out.

‘Did you go to the funeral?' I asked, still uncertain what her private feelings were for the butler.

‘Funeral?' She stared. ‘Funeral, mistress? No, mistress. Not yet. 'E bain't dead …'

‘What?' Was she getting deaf? ‘
Slade
, I said. Slade the butler who was at Place in your time.'

‘Slade. That be the one, mistress, and no mistake. Oliver Slade. He bain't dead yet, mistress.'

‘I – I was told he had a stroke and died at his aunt's cottage near Feock.'

Cook blinked. ‘No, mistress. He were in some sort of a fight wi' some of his friends, and he got both his legs broke. Just above the knee, they d'say. 'E's livin', sure ' nough. I seen 'im last Tuesday. Old devil, 'e be. Takes some killen, I reckon.' She showed her gums again in a pink grin.

D
URING THE
wintry days of February and March I saw little of Desmond and Mary. Samuel had been down at Christmas and had called on me. He was polite enough but colder than in London, and it occurred to me that it might have become known that Bram was visiting me as well as Tamsin. I could well understand some resentment in the family that two of their Cornish houses were occupied by the two daughters of a younger brother, and that, because of Samuel's weakness or lack of conviction in not turning at least one of them out, they were debarred by their own prejudices from using either of them.

Meanwhile Mousie grew and grew and became an inseparable friend. Fetch was a little put out that the kitten so obviously preferred me. When I was in the house she followed me everywhere, and after a while came to sleep at the foot of my bed. Then I got used to having a soft paw touch my cheek in the middle of the night and allowing her to settle beside me.

Bram's courtship of me progressed slowly. He came and talked and exercised his coercive charm. We argued and occasionally quarrelled; he laughed a lot and I a little, still keeping a guard up. He held his explosive temper under strict control.