The Ugly Sister (34 page)

‘Don't call me that!'

‘I'm not sure, Tamsin. When you commit yourself to the idea of marrying someone you come to accept what he does, what he is doing, what his view of life is, even if you personally dislike it.'

‘I don't believe Bram will ever marry you! Why
should
he? You've been a spinster so long that you have these hot fancies! You don't know anything about it! Coming here – coming here – it makes me choke to see you. Cool and collected, just as if you were here to engage a footman and wanted my references! “ If he's respectable I'll have him.” Well, he's respectable enough for me, and he's not for sale!'

I got up. ‘I came to spend the night, Tamsin. I knew this would be a difficult meeting. Perhaps it would be better if I left after supper. I cannot think we should be sweet companions this evening.'

‘Go when you like,' she said. ‘You'll never get a welcome again in this house.'

I shook my head. ‘I didn't want it to be at all like this.'

‘The remedy was in your own hands.'

‘Was it? Somehow Bram has always been between us, hasn't he? There's been a sort of fatal progression. You've always wanted him, and you got him, even though it broke your marriage in the process. Now I want him, and can offer him what you cannot.'

She too stood up. Her face was paper white. ‘And in this cosy domestic arrangement that you have come to – are you supposing that he will give me up?'

‘I have supposed that.'

‘He won't, you know. He won't. He can't!'

‘We haven't discussed you because I felt it was up to him. I want no part in it.'

‘Part in it! You're trying to ruin my life and you say you want no part in it! Well, you shan't!'

I stared at her, still trying so hard not to break into a matching anger.

‘Shan't what?'

‘Take him away from me.' She laughed again. ‘You don't know what you're talking about. He couldn't go on without me, without the use of this house, without the help I give him.'

‘Help?'

She raised her head. ‘Yes, help. That was why we got rid of Slade.'

‘You mean why he was kidnapped?'

‘Nothing of the sort! We made it uncomfortable for him here, so he left.'

‘So why particularly was it helpful to get rid of him?'

‘You ought to know that! You surprised him on one of his little enterprises years ago!'

‘And he threatened me then, you know. If I spoke too openly I might have been beaten. So in the end he was paid in his own medicine.'

‘Yes, but not by Bram! By one of his own seedy kind.'

‘Bram's seedy kind?'

‘Emma, please take your bag and go to the Pardoes for the night. I shall of course tell Bram of your visit when he comes back.'

‘So shall I.'

She was waiting for me to go. I wondered if she felt as badly shaken as I did.

‘I'm very sorry, Tamsin.'

She said in whisper. ‘ You've always hated me, always envied me. Now you're trying deliberately to destroy me. Well, you shan't! Nor shall you destroy my life with Bram. He couldn't leave me. He can't leave me. He wouldn't dare!'

S
PRING IS
so often spoiled by great winds, heavy rains, sudden cold spells under unrelenting cloud, and summer comes late and reluctant with half the blossom lost. But this year we had gentle airs, days of fitful but warming sunshine, showers that seemed to occur by accident to make the birds sing; even the trees, so late in Cornwall, began to unfurl their leaves.

Fetch, now nearing forty and expanding – in all ways – under the undemanding regime of being a lady's maid, revealed important depths of knowledge about birds, and hedgerows and wild flowers, from her early youth on a farm in Madron. She knew, to my shame, far more than I did when as a child I'd had infinite freedom to explore the woods and lanes of Roseland. Often she only had the country names, so I bought a book which helped us on what became a daily tour of inspection of garden and field and hedgerow.

Early wild daffodils, sedum (which she called orpine) scarcely yet above ground, golden saxifrage just showing yellow on the edge of a wet valley in Kea, beside it the Cornish moneywort struggling for space; on the scrubland of Carnon, with its abounding rabbits and whitethroat badgers, redwings, curlews and jackdaws, were many other small flowers and mosses to be stooped over, a little sample of each put into Sally's basket to examine and identify when we got home.

Spring flowers were of course plentiful in the garden, and I compared it to the rectory garden of a few years ago. This was more lush but scarcely more varied. The difference lay in me.

Bram turned up when Fetch and I were pulling up some rank grass in a corner to make way for the bluebells. His shadow fell across us before I knew he had come over the mossy grass.

‘Bram! You startled me.'

‘Is there something then that can still startle you? Good afternoon, Carry.'

‘Af'noon, sur.'

‘I trust you are well? Your mistress also?'

‘Oh yes, thank ' ee, sur. I – er – and the mistress, I believe.'

‘Thank you, Sally,' I said. ‘We shall have to put off our gardening for a while.'

We watched her go towards the house, carrying her basket and trowel.

‘Carry is putting on weight. Her buttocks are spreading.'

‘I think she is happy.'

‘Her mistress puts on no weight. It is strange to think what a fat little girl you were when I first met you.'

‘Shall we go in?'

‘I'm well enough here, if you are. Can the difference between you and your maid be that you are not entirely happy and not yet fulfilled?'

‘I hope if I ever am I shall not broaden as a result.'

He looked me up and down. I peeled off my gardening gloves and faced him. His face was dark, determined, the derisive laughter not lurking at the back of his eyes.

‘I came last week,' he said. ‘You were away.'

‘I was visiting the Treffrys.'

‘What did you want with them, if I may ask?'

‘I've known them for years.'

‘You did not go on to see Jonathan Eliot?'

‘No, I did not.'

He tapped his boot. ‘So, having broken the news of your intention to your sister you decided to go away until the air had cleared?'

‘I did not suppose the air would clear at all.'

‘Nor has it. Tamsin, as I am sure you know, was greatly upset by your accusations against me.'

‘I do not think that was so much the cause of her distress.'

He laughed softly. ‘Is it true what you say, that Slade is still alive?'

‘He survived his ordeal. He is only a mile or so away if you need proof.'

‘So he is spreading these vindictive rumours about me, is he?'

‘He told me them when I pressed him to speak. He's too afraid of what will happen to him if he talks openly.'

‘And to whom have you passed on his lies?'

‘To Tamsin – that is all.'

He swished idly at a rhododendron branch, breaking off the bud. ‘Is Slade crippled?'

‘He is hobbling with a stick. A doctor would perhaps have amputated his legs, but they have not seen a doctor and he seems to be slowly mending … And vowing vengeance …'

‘So if pressed he will talk …'

‘I don't think you need worry. Everyone is afraid of you.'

‘Do you believe those stories of me, Emma?'

‘You're spoiling that bush. Use your crop on something else.'

‘Such as you?'

‘Does it matter what I believe?'

‘You are willing to marry me.'

‘I said I was. If something can be done to appease Tamsin.'

‘Even if you believed Slade's stories to be true?'

‘I think I said to Tamsin that when you commit yourself to marry someone you have to accept what he does, what he is doing with his life even though you may not altogether like it.'

He came up and took my shoulders. I half withdrew and glanced around, but he tightened his grip. ‘ There's no one to see us. That tree screens us from the house.' He kissed me. I half turned away my face so that the still-scarred side showed.

‘How can you appease Tamsin?'

‘I'll think of a way.'

‘That's not good enough. She accuses you of using Place House in some way.'

‘So I do. I use it as my headquarters.'

‘For what purpose?'

‘All sorts of things. In my legitimate pursuits it's good to have a central base from which to operate.'

‘And your illegitimate ones?'

He laughed against my face. ‘I've broken a few laws in my life, but they are not the laws given us by God.'

‘Slade said something like that to me once to justify his smuggling.'

‘Did he? Well, well. Look, Emma, I have an idea.'

‘You're hurting my shoulders.'

‘You have good arm muscles – not prominent, but strong.' He released his grip. ‘Emma, I believe that if we go to see Tamsin together and tell her we propose to marry, she will explode a bomb of hysteria upon us. But if we were to marry suddenly, unexpectedly, quietly in some little private chapel and she was presented with a
fait accompli
she would dissolve in tears and eventually make the best of it.'

‘What would “ the best of it” amount to, Bram? D'you want us both on different nights?'

‘Yes. But I know I could not have that.
You
would not accept that, I'm sure. But I have a great influence over Tamsin. She is not a strong character like you. She adores Place House and wants to live nowhere else. She has lived there all her life. She takes particular pride in being Mrs Spry of Place, with the rest of the family sulking in Truro and London. The chatelaine. She does not entertain a lot, but she has special friends. And being who she is she has the respect of the neighbourhood.'

‘People have accepted your friendship with her?'

‘Many.'

‘And she would lose that respect, that position, if she denounced you?'

His eyes, so close to mine, darkened. He looked a corsair. ‘ That was not what I was going to say, but, yes, if you put it that way, yes. She's involved with me. She depends on me. She would not throw her present way of life away just for spite, for spiteful revenge.'

‘And you would continue to frequent Place, after you had married me?'

‘I have to. Most of my arrangements are made there.'

‘You know what the marriage service says? Forsaking all others.'

He laughed, very quietly for once. ‘I want you, Emma. To get you I'm prepared to marry you. I believe you want me just as much.'

H
E SAID
: ‘ Years ago I came in for a house from my aunt. It is near Ponsanooth. You have never been there? I'm always in the position of being the visitor, am I not? That shall be corrected. Come tomorrow. It's a small place but well kept. I live alone except for one manservant. Can you come tomorrow?'

‘D'you mean ride over?'

‘Yes. Bring Fetch if you fear to be alone with me. The church is St Stithians, about two miles away. I will see someone in the morning and get the banns read for the first time on Sunday.'

‘But—'

‘If they are read at Kea everyone will know. But I spend little time at Penmartin and your name will not arouse interest there. Cornwall, as we all know, is a hotbed of gossip, but these smaller inland villages are close-knit – farming and mining, you know – and I'm told that St Stithians is very poorly attended. There is no resident vicar, but a curate comes weekly from Gwennap.'

‘D'you suppose this can be done in secret?'

‘Let us try. It can do no harm. If it succeeds, so much the better.'

‘I had always thought of a big wedding, Bram – all in white, with four bridesmaids in ice blue and two page boys …'

He laughed. ‘ Very droll. But isn't it true to say that for the largest part of your life you did not suppose you would have a wedding at all?'

‘So even my closest family is not to know?'

‘Your mother remarried without informing you. Your sister we have good reasons for concealing it from. Desmond? Mary? Samuel? Do they count at all?'

‘Not as much as my sister. I am dealing her an underhand blow.'

He sighed. ‘All's fair in love and war, I know. A dreary aphorism. But even so I have to confess I have sometimes been in that predicament.'

‘As for instance being unfaithful to your first wife?'

He took my hand. ‘What one does in one's youth is not necessarily what one does in middle age. I am not looking for endless adventures any more, dear Emma. I am – shall be – content to have the challenge of you as my wife. Do you not believe that we shall be a challenge to each other?'

‘Indeed I do.'

I went to his house the following day – with Fetch – and on the Sunday after that the banns were called for the first time. Penmartin was at the end of a lane and looked over a valley of woodland and pastures. In spite of its being close to the mining districts there was not a chimney in sight.

I did not go to the church, but from a distance it looked ready to vie in dilapidation with the St Anthony of twenty years ago, before Desmond restored it. Would there be someone in that sparse congregation who would rise up when the parson asked if anyone here present should know of just cause or impediment? …

But what impediment could there be? Bram was a widower, I had never married. Some woman clutching a child by the hand and swearing it was Bram's? Did that invalidate or make impossible a church ceremony?

The house, as he said, was small. It had been built by a mine captain in the last century, square and functional, and it was furnished without much taste. Had Bram any taste – except one for music? I wondered if this was where he had lived with his first wife. He did not volunteer, and I would not ask him. At least now he seemed to be using it only as a base. Place, perhaps, had now become his chief home. If I married Abraham Fox, would Samuel allow me to renew the yearly lease on Killiganoon?