The Ugly Sister (6 page)

I had only seen him four times but always he was well-dressed in a raffish way. Blue denim trousers over darker blue waterproof shoes, and a high collared almost naval jacket with brass buttons, a tasselled hat which he pulled off as soon as he saw me.

‘Ministers of Grace! I was just thinking of you, Miss Emma! This very moment I was thinking of you and up you pop like a cork out of a bottle and nearly hole me below the waterline!'

To my annoyance I had flushed and my tongue would utter nothing at all.

‘And Fetch. Good afternoon, Fetch.'

‘Good af'noon, sur.'

‘I hope your mistress is well?'

‘Thank 'ee, yes, sur. I b'lieve so.'

‘And mongrel. A well-bred mongrel, I'll be bound. What is his name?'

‘Parish.'

‘What strange names you have at Place! Well, Parish, boy, good day to you too.' Rather to my annoyance Parish made a great fuss of him, so there was a lot of patting and snuffling and tugging at my lead for the next minute or so.

‘Are you returning home?' he asked me eventually, looking me up and down with his mischievous, urchin eyes.

‘Yes.'

‘And you're walking? May I accompany you?'

‘We're crossing at Polvarth.'

‘This far and no farther, eh? I'm content.'

He fell in beside us and with an authority which further annoyed me, waved Fetch to take the dog's lead and to fall a few paces behind.

‘You've
grown
,' he said. ‘And so much fined off. Is that the expression? You're now a beautiful girl with a flawed face.'

I said angrily: ‘So what other discourteous remarks do you wish to make?'

‘Not discourteous,' he said judicially. ‘ Personal, yes. But such comments show interest, not disinterest.'

‘Do you suppose I care?'

‘Well … any woman would. Find me a girl of any class, from the highest to the lowest who does not care to be thought beautiful.'

‘You did not say that. Nor could you.'

‘Oh, could I not! Challenge me if you dare!'

We left the last cottage behind and walked down the dusty country lane. A few wild flowers were colouring the hedges.

He said: ‘This is much like the day I first met you.' When I glanced at him, he said: ‘ Well, cloud and rain and a fresh breeze. It would be agreeable sailing in the Roads today.' He was carrying a stick with a round bone handle, and he flicked at a waving bramble. ‘I was impressed.'

‘Impressed?'

‘By the way you handled my little cutter. Or James Biggs's little cutter, to be precise. You can tell a lady of quality by the way she trims her sails.'

My anger half turned to laughter but I did not show either. My heart was thumping like one of Mr Brunel's steam engines. Here this man was, walking down the lane, pretending to flirt with me.

What was behind it? Did he think that by cultivating Tamsin's sister he would have a friend at court? I had thought that before, when he had asked me to give her a message. But I had not given it to her, and when they met she must have told him this. Or was it just that he was so predatory a male that he could not resist teasing and flirting with any woman, however disfigured?

He laughed, showing the uneven white teeth against the olive skin.

‘What is it?'

‘The expression on your face, Emma. You can't make head or tail of me, can you?'

‘Certainly not head.'

‘Witty as usual. Is it a devil's tail or a fox's tail that you see?'

It came into my mind to say ‘a monkey's', but I just did not dare.

He glanced behind to see that Fetch and Parish were following at a discreet distance. ‘Do not
try
to understand me. That way one's own notions add to the confusion. I am really very easy to understand. My wishes, my hopes, my needs are plain to be seen. As clear as water. As clear as gin.'

We were nearly at the ferry. Tregrundle stood with his new boat ready. It was half tide and one would only need a dozen strokes. I was short of breath. I half turned to wait for Fetch, but he caught my elbow.

‘I want you. As clear as clear. Think on it, little Emma. Now I have exceeded all good taste. All the frilly lace curtains of convention are torn to ribbons. Blown quite away. Polite words are not in me. Shall I ever be forgiven? Not, I'm sure, for this utter disgrace.'

‘Please leave me alone!' I pulled my elbow free.

As he turned to Sally Fetch his face was quite expressionless. We might have been talking of the next regatta.

‘Come along, Fetch, your mistress is waiting.' He bowed slightly. ‘Dutiful respects to your sister and your mother, Miss Emma; it has been a privilege.' He turned and left us, and we stood and watched him walking back the way he had come. Parish barked a farewell.

We still stood there.

At length Fetch said: ‘I wouldn't trust 'im, miss, no further 'n I could spit!'

W
HEN WE
reached Place a guest had called. He was an old man of about fifty, a clergyman and relative, Canon Francis de Vere Robartes, who had come over from Blisland at the foot of the Cornish moors, where he was the incumbent, to visit the two invalids. A great-greatgrandfather Spry, according to Desmond, who made a study of these things, had lived at Blisland and had been an attorney-at-law, practising in Bodmin and Plymouth. Canon Robartes was a distinguished cleric and had made a new translation of the
Apocrypha
. He was not well to do, but had good family connections, and he was disappointed to find only one invalid here and she an active convalescent, anxious only to talk about Clive and David, who had appeared to her in a dream last night.

So he had to make do with Mama and Desmond and Mary and me. Tamsin was out sailing. What she would have given to have been walking with me in St Mawes! (What he had said! – it was a vulgar ribald jest surely – he could not have been even a quarter
serious
? My flesh crept.)

Canon Robartes took tea but refused an invitation to sup. He would sleep at Tregothnan, he said, and go to see the Admiral in the morning. When he was leaving a name caught my ear as he talked to Desmond. The name of a man who came and mesmerized us six months ago.

Apparently there had been a meeting at Bodmin among the landed gentry last week about the prospect of building a railway between Bodmin and Wadebridge, and a Mr Brunel had spoken at it. The idea was that the railroad should be eight miles long, with a six-mile extension to Winford if the line were a success. It would be chiefly for the transportation of goods and ore, but passengers might be taken on later. The type of propulsion had yet to be decided. Most favoured a form of steam power, probably by means of an engine drawing wagons, as was usual following the success of the Stephensons; but Mr Brunel had proposed having stationary engines at intervals along the line and drawing the trucks by atmospheric suction. It had been a most interesting meeting, Uncle Francis, as he told us all to call him, said. He had only been invited to deputize for young Mr Agar-Robartes of Lanhydrock, his cousin, who was travelling in Europe. He himself, as everyone knew, had to depend on his stipend, and had no spare resources to invest in such hazardous schemes. Mr Brunel, he had to admit, was most impressive for one so young and already had a number of achievements to his credit.

The Canon raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘So young, Desmond, so young. One trembles for a man's judgment at such an age.'

‘Was Mr Brunel on his own, sir?' I ventured.

‘No, my dear.' Uncle Francis glanced at my disfigured eye and smiled forgivingly, as if someone ought to be forgiven for such a distortion. ‘ He had an assistant with him. Equally young, I may say, equally young. Long, was it? Or Lane? But it was Mr Brunel who spoke and who made the greatest impression. Do you understand the properties of steam, Desmond?'

‘I'm afraid not,' said Desmond, and looked out of the window to see if Tamsin was returning.

‘Well well, I must leave you all. Pray present my loving respects to your mother. £25,000 is the capital needed.'

‘Needed?'

‘To build the railway. It is a very large sum, and of course as in all such ventures the estimate is bound to be exceeded when it is put into practice. There's great interest. Great interest indeed. I wish I had money to invest. I believe I should indulge in a little flutter.'

T
HE FOLLOWING
spring Falmouth was greatly excited by the visit of the Queen of Portugal. She was only tiny – nine years old – and no doubt, Desmond said, a pawn in some political game. Portugal was in chaos, and England and France were involved – for once on the same side – trying to bring a measure of political peace to the warring factions. What purpose there was, if any, in Queen Maria's visit to Britain's westernmost port I was never able to find out. No one, in fact, ever did seem to know.

But she was already acquainted with Mrs Elizabeth Fox – widow of Robert Were Fox, one of the dignitaries of the town – and it was arranged that the Queen should visit her friend at her home in Arwenack Street, where a reception would be held.

The Queen arrived in a black and gold British frigate, accompanied by Lord Clinton, who was a Trefusis; they came ashore at Custom House Quay in a gilt barge rowed by twenty sailors, and were met by rippling rows of dainty white-clad girls, all of about the same age as the Queen, who strewed flowers in the pathway of the procession as it walked up the narrow street until it reached Bank House.

My mother had somehow contrived an invitation for herself and her two daughters and nephew Desmond to the reception, which was crowded.

By this time I was becoming slightly less self-conscious about my disfigurement. It was there for everyone to see, so what point was there in hiding it? (A few of the walls that I had built around myself were beginning to crumble.) All the same I would have shunned such a public occasion and made my usual excuse were it not for a confidence Sally Fetch had bestowed on me. Sally's sister was a maid in the Robert Were Fox household and she had said that although the old man had disapproved of Abraham Fox as thoroughly as the rest of the family, his wife had always had a soft spot for the young man, and when she became a widow had tended to indulge him. Therefore I went, and was not surprised to see the elegant figure of Bram standing beside his aunt at the entrance.

It was a total and disagreeable surprise to my mother, who froze at the sight of him and, once they had bowed, took a firm if theatrical grasp of Tamsin's arm and steered her away from him. She clearly felt that I was in no danger, so could fend for myself. So great was the crush that, except for a circle at the end of the room, with a slightly raised dais and a chair on which the little Queen was seated, it was not difficult to be lost to view.

The Queen was a pretty little thing, thin and dark-skinned but gracious. Already learning the deceitful arts of the court, no doubt. I wondered what her fate would be. (I had just been reading a book on Catherine de Medici, so my mind was full of intrigue.)

The reception lasted about an hour, and I had withdrawn into a slightly quieter corner of the room where I could be less expected to join in, when across the room I saw Bram talking to my mother. Yes, they were
talking
. I could not see Tamsin, so perhaps temporarily they had become separated. Bram was speaking to my mother with that half-cynical, half-admiring expression on his face that I already knew so well. The disillusioned charming smile that was never far away came and went like a fitful sun. She replied to him firmly but not with any special hostility. Being an actress, my mother had great control over her features and perhaps she had decided that a social gathering in royal presence was not the time to show her active dislike of someone.

Then she half smiled at something he said, and her eyes narrowed and glinted as if she were summing him up afresh. He laughed out loud at what she said, and even amid the hubbub of talk it came clearly to me. I knew there would never be anybody else for me. And what chance had I got?

Desmond squeezed between two people and came to me. ‘Emma? Can you come to Thomasine? She is not feeling well.'

I followed him, pushing our way among the dignitaries of the town, and found Tamsin sitting on an oak chair with two solicitous friends beside her.

‘It is nothing,' Tamsin said sharply, pressing a handkerchief to her lips. ‘Nothing more than the heat and the crush. Forgive me, it is quite nothing. Where is Mama?'

‘Just over here,' I said. ‘I will fetch her.'

A
DMIRAL
D
AVEY
Spry, Admiral of the Red, dropped in the following month to see his mad wife.

He had lost weight and his face was smaller, but as quick as ever to flush up at the least constraint. His men must find his humours as hard to predict as a wind in the Channel. But today he seemed good-tempered, and he was lucky to find Aunt Anna in one of her lucid moods. They talked together about old times and he was able to tell her that their eldest daughter was pregnant again. This would be number three in three years, so she was clearly going to outdo her mother. Uncle Davey was able to remind his wife of a practical joke he had played on their first nursemaid. It was something to do with apron strings, but that was all I heard amid his shouts of laughter. Aunt Anna laughed too but her laughter had a hollow sound as if she were looking down a well.

No one knew it then, but it was the last time they were to meet. When Uncle Davey got up to leave he stooped to kiss his wife, who was still in bed, and I saw her put an elderly, white-nailed hand round his back as if to hold him longer. When he straightened up he picked at a tooth defensively and half scowled at her.

‘Be sure you're up next time I come,' he said. ‘This shilly-shallying in bed … it don't do you any good at all.'