The House on the Strand

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THEY WERE ALL talking at once, and the boys were laughing. I heard Micky say, "We saw you running down the hill, you looked so funny…" and Teddy chimed in, "Mom waved and called, but you didn't hear at first, you seemed to look the other way." Vita was staring at me from the open window by the driving seat. "You'd best get in, she said, you can hardly stand," and Mrs. Collins, red in the face and flustered, opened the door for me the other side. I obeyed mechanically, forgetting my own car parked in the lay-by, and squeezed in beside Mrs. Collins, as we continued along the lane skirting the village towards Polmear.

"A good thing we drove this way," said Vita. "Mrs. Collins said it was quicker than going down through Saint Blazey and Par." I could not remember where they had been or what they were doing, and although the singing in my ears had stopped my heart was thumping still, and vertigo was not far away.

"Bude was super," said Teddy. "We had surf-boards, but Mom wouldn't let us go out of our depth. And the ocean was rolling in, huge great waves, much better than here. You ought to have come with us." Bude, that was right. They had gone to spend the day at Bude, leaving me alone in the house. But what was I doing wandering in Tywardreath? As we passed the alms-houses at the bottom of Polmear hill and I looked across to Polpey and the Lampetho valley, I remembered how Julian Polpey had not waited for the loathsome spectacle outside the geld-house but had walked home, and Geoffrey Lampetho had been one of those amongst the crowd who had pelted the sheep with stones.

It was over and done with, finished. It was not happening any more. Mrs. Collins was saying something to Vita about dropping her at the top of Polkerris hill, and the next thing I knew was that she had disappeared and Vita had drawn up outside Kilmarth.

"Run along in," she said sharply to the boys. "Put your swimming-trunks in the hot cupboard and start laying the supper," and when they had vanished up the steps into the house she turned to me and said, "Can you make it?"

"Make what?" I was still dazed, and could not follow her.

"Make the steps," she said. "You were rocking on your feet when we came on you just now. I felt terrible in front of Mrs. Collins and the boys. However much have you had to drink?"

"Drink?" I repeated. "I haven't drunk a thing."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she said, "don't start lying. It's been a long day, and I'm tired. Come on, I'll help you into the house." Perhaps this was the answer. Perhaps it was best she should think I had been sitting in some pub. I got out of the car, and she was right — I was still rocking on my feet, and I was glad of her arm to steady me up the garden and into the house.

"I'll be all right," I said. "I'll go and sit in the library."

"I'd rather you went straight to bed," she said. "The boys have never seen you like this. They're bound to notice."

"I don't want to go to bed. I'll just sit in the library and shut the door. They needn't come in."

"Oh well, if you insist on being obstinate…" She shrugged in exasperation. "I'll tell them we'll eat in the kitchen. For heaven's sake don't join us — I'll bring you something later." I heard her walk through the hall to the kitchen, and slam the door. I flopped on a chair in the library and closed my eyes. A strange lethargy crept over me; I wanted to sleep.

Vita was right, I should have gone to bed, but I hadn't the energy even to get up out of the chair. If I stayed here quietly, in the stillness and the silence, the feeling of exhaustion, of being drained, would pass away. Tough luck on the boys, if there was some programme they hoped to watch on TV, but I would make it up to them tomorrow, take them sailing, go to Chapel Point. I must make up to Vita too; this business would set us back again, the sweat of reconciliation would have to start all over again.

I awoke with a sudden jerk, to find the room in darkness. I glanced at my watch, and it was almost half-past nine. I had slept for nearly two hours. I felt quite normal, hungry too. I went through the dining-room into the hall, and heard the sound of the gramophone coming from the music-room, but the door was shut. They must have finished eating ages ago, for the lights were turned out in the kitchen. I rummaged in the fridge to find eggs and bacon to fry, and I had just put the frying-pan on the stove when I heard someone moving about in the basement. I went to the top of the back stairs and called, thinking it was one of the boys, who might report to me on Vita's mood. Nobody answered. Teddy? I shouted. Micky?

The footsteps were quite definite, passing across the old kitchen and then on towards the boiler-room. I went down the stairs, fumbling for the lights, but they were not in the right place, I couldn't find the switch, and I had to grope my way to the old kitchen by feeling for the walls. Whoever it was ahead of me had passed through the boiler-room on to the patio, for I could hear him stamping about there, and he was drawing water from the well that lay in the near corner and was covered up and never used. And now there were further footsteps, but not from the patio, from the stairs, and turning round I saw the stairs had gone and the footsteps were coming from the ladder leading to the floor above. It was no longer dark, but the murky grey of a winter afternoon, and a woman was coming down the ladder, bearing a lighted candle in her hands. The singing started in my ears, the bursting thunder-clap of sound, and the drug was taking effect all over again without having been renewed. I did not want it now, I was afraid, for it meant that past and present were merging, and Vita and the boys were with me, in my own time, in the front part of the house. The woman brushed past me, shielding the candle's flame from the draught. It was Isolda. I flattened myself against the wall, holding my breath, for surely she must dissolve if I as much as moved, and what I was seeing was a figment of the imagination, an aftermath of what had been that afternoon. She set the candle down on a bench, lighting another that stood beside it, and began humming under her breath, an odd sweet snatch of song, and all the time I could hear the distant throbbing of the radiogram from the music-room on the ground floor of the house.

"Robbie," she called softly. "Robbie, are you there?" The boy came in from the yard through the low arched doorway, setting his pail of water on the kitchen floor.

"Is it freezing still?" she asked.

"Aye," he said, "and will do until full moon is past. You must stay a few days yet, if you can bear with us."

"Bear with you?" she smiled. "Rejoice in you, rather, and willingly. I wish my daughters were as well-mannered as you and Bess, and minded what I tell them as you mind your brother Roger."

"If we do it's from respect for you," he answered. "We got hard words from him, and a belting too, before you came." He laughed, shaking the thick hair out of his eyes, and lifting the pail poured the water into a pitcher on the trestle table. "We eat well, too, he added. Meat every day instead of salted fish, and the pig I slaughtered yesterday would have stayed in his sty until Quadragessima was done had you not graced our table. Bess and I would have you live with us forever and not leave us when the weather mends."

"Ah, I understand," said Isolda, mocking. "It isn't for myself you like me here but for the ease of living."

He frowned, uncertain what she meant, then his face cleared, and he smiled again. "Nay, that's untrue," he said. "We feared when you first came that you'd play the lady and we couldn't please you. It's not so now, you could be one of us. Bess loves you, and so do I. As for Roger, God knows he has sung your praises to us these past two years or more." He flushed, suddenly awkward, as if he had said too much, and she put out her hand to him and touched his arm.

"Dear Robbie," she said gently, "I love you too, and Bess, and the warm welcome you have given me these past weeks. I shall never forget it."

The sound of footsteps made me raise my head to the loft above, but it was only the girl descending the ladder, certainly cleaner than when I saw her last, her long hair combed and smooth, her face well scrubbed.

"I can hear Roger riding through the copse," she called. "See to the pony, Robbie, when he comes, while I set the table." The boy went out into the yard and his sister heaped fresh turf upon the hearth, and furze as well. The furze flickered and caught, throwing great tongues of flame upon the smoky walls, and as Bess looked over her shoulder, smiling at Isolda, I knew how it must have been here for the four of them, night after night, during the time of frost, seated at the trestle table with the candles set amongst the pewter plates.

"Here's your brother now," said Isolda, and she went and stood by the open door as he rode into the yard and flung himself off the pony, throwing the reins to Robbie. It was not yet dark, and the yard, so much wider than the patio I knew, stretched to the wall above the fields, so that through the open gate I could see the fields sloping to the sea beyond and the wide expanse of bay. The mud in the yard was frosted hard, the air was sharply cold, and the small trees in the copse stood black and naked against the sky. Robbie led the pony to his shed beside the byre, as Roger crossed the yard towards Isolda.

"You bring bad news," said Isolda. "I can tell it from your face."

"My lady knows you are here," said Roger. "She is on her way to see you, with a message from your brother. If you wish it I can turn the chariot back from the top of the hill. Robbie and I will have no trouble with her servants."

"No trouble now, perhaps," she answered, "but later she could do harm to you, to Robbie and Bess, to this whole place. I would not have that happen for the world."

"I would sooner she razed the house to the ground than cause you suffering," he said.

He stood there, looking down at her, and I knew instinctively that they had reached a point in their relationship, through proximity and sympathy during the past days, when his love for her could no longer smoulder and be contained, but must burn up and reach the sky, or else be quenched.

"I know you would, Roger," she said, "but any further suffering that may come my way I can bear alone. If I have brought dishonour on two houses, my husband's and Otto Bodrugan's, which doubtless will be said about me down the years, I'll not do the same to yours."

"Dishonour?" He spread out his hands and looked about him at the low walls encircling the yard, the narrow thatched dwelling where the ponies and the cows were housed. "This was my father's farm and will be Robbie's when I die, and had you sheltered here for one night only and not fifteen, you would have lent it grace enough to last through centuries."

She must have sensed the depth of feeling in his voice, and possibly the passion too, for a sudden shadow came across her face, a wariness, as if prompted by an inner voice that murmured, 'Thus far, and no further.' Moving to the open gate she put her hand upon it, and looked out over the fields to the bay beyond.

"Fifteen nights," she repeated, "and on each one of them, since I have been with you, and in the daytime too, I have stood looking out across the sea to Chapel Point, remembering that his ship would anchor there, below Bodrugan, and this was the bay he sailed when he came to find me in the Treesmill creek. Part of me died with him, Roger, the day they drowned him, and I think you know it."

I wondered what Roger's dream had been, and whether, as we all do, he had created a fantasy that their lives would somehow fuse; not in marriage, not as lovers, even, but in some sort of drifting intimacy, intuitive and silent, that no one else would ever share. Whether it were so or not, the dream was shattered; by speaking Bodrugan's name she had made this plain.

"Yes," he said, "I have always known it. If I have given you cause to believe otherwise, forgive me."

He lifted his head and listened. She did the same, and beyond the dark copse above the farm came the sound of voices and tramping of feet, and then the figures of three of the Champernoune servants emerged through the naked trees.

"Roger Kylmerth?" one of them called. "Your road is too rough to drive the chariot down to your dwelling, and my lady waits within it on the hill."

"Then she must stay there", answered Roger, "or come on foot, with your assistance. It's one and the same to us."

The men hesitated a moment, conferring under the trees, and Isolda, at a sign from Roger, turned quickly and passed across the yard into the house. Roger whistled, and Robbie came out of the door where the ponies were stabled.

"Lady Champernoune is above, and some of her servants," said Roger quietly. "She could have summoned others between here and Tywardreath, and we may have trouble. Stay within call should I need you."

Robbie nodded, and went back into the stables. It was growing darker every moment, colder, too, the trees in the copse etched more sharply against the sky. Presently I saw the lights of the first flares on the crest of the hill; Joanna was descending, three of the servants with her, and the monk as well. They came slowly and in silence, Joanna's dark cloak and the monk's habit blending as though the two were one; and standing beside Roger, watching their progress, it seemed to me that the group had something sinister about it; the hooded figures could have been walking in procession through a churchyard to a waiting grave.

When they arrived at the open gate Joanna paused and looked about her, then she said to Roger, "In all the ten years you served my household you never thought to bid me welcome here."

"No, my lady," he replied, "you neither asked for refuge nor desired it. Consolation was ever ready for you under your own roof."

The irony did not touch her, or if it did she chose to ignore it, and Roger led the way towards the house.

"Where must my servants wait?" she asked. "Have the courtesy to direct them to your kitchen."

"We ourselves live in the kitchen," he told her, "and Lady Carminowe will receive you there. Your men will find it warm enough in the byre amongst the cows, or with the ponies, whichever they please." He stood aside to let her pass with the monk, and followed after, and as we crossed the threshold I saw that the trestle table had been pulled close to the hearth, the tallow candles set upon it, and Isolda sat alone at the head of the table. Bess must have gone to the room above. Joanna stared about her, at a loss, I think, to find herself in such surroundings. God knows what she had expected — some greater attempt at comfort, perhaps, with furnishings pilfered from her own abandoned manor house.

"So…" she said at last, "this is the retreat, and snug enough, no doubt, on a winter's night, apart from the smell of beasts across the yard. How do you do, Isolda?"

"I do very well," as you see, "Isolda answered. I have lived better here, and had more kindness, in two weeks than in as many months or years spent at Tregesteynton or Carminowe."

"I don't doubt it," said Joanna. "Contrast ever whetted appetite grown stale. You had a fancy for Bodrugan Castle once, but had Otto lived you would have become as weary there and of him as you have of other properties and other men, including your own husband. Well, this is a rich reward. Tell me, do both brothers share you here before the hearth?"

I heard Roger draw in his breath, and he moved forward, as though to place himself between the two women, but Isolda, her small face pale in the flickering light of two candles, only smiled.

"Not as yet," she said. "The elder is too proud, the younger too shy. My protestations of affection fall upon deaf ears. What do you want with me, Joanna? Have you brought a message from William? If so, speak plainly and have done with it."

The monk, who was still standing by the door, took a letter from his habit to give to Joanna, but she waved it aside.

"Read it to Lady Carminowe," she said. "I have no desire to strain my eyes in this dim light. And you may leave us," she added to Roger. "Family matters are no longer your concern. You meddled with them enough when you were my steward."

"This is his house, and he has the right to be here," said Isolda. "Besides, he is my friend, and I prefer him to stay."

Joanna shrugged, and sat down at the lower end of the table opposite Isolda.

"If Lady Carminowe permits," said the monk smoothly, "this is the letter from her brother, Sir William Ferrers, which came to Trelawn a few days since, Sir William thinking his messenger would find her there with Lady Champernoune. It reads thus:

'Dearest Sister, the news of your flight from Tregesteynton has only reached us here at Bere within the past week, because of the hard weather and the state of the roads. I am at a loss to understand either your action or your great imprudence. You must know that by deserting your husband and your children you forfeit all claims on his and their affection, and, I am bound to say, on mine as well. Whether Oliver, in Christian charity, will receive you at Carminowe again I cannot say, but I misdoubt it, fearing your pernicious influence upon his daughters, and for my own part I could not offer you protection at Bere, for Matilda, as Oliver's sister, has too much sympathy for her brother to offer hospitality to his erring wife. Indeed, she is in so sore a state since hearing you have deserted him that she could not countenance your presence amongst us with our five sons. It seems, therefore, there is only one course open to you, which is to seek refuge in the nunnery of Cornworthy here in Devon, the Prioress being known to me, and to remain there in seclusion until such time as Oliver, or some other member of the family, may be willing to receive you. I have every confidence that our kinswoman, Joanna, will permit her servants to escort you to Cornworthy.

Farewell, in the power of Christ,

Your sorrowful brother,

William Ferrers'"

The monk folded the letter and passed it across the table to Isolda.

"You may see for yourself, my lady," he murinured, "that the letter is in Sir William's own handwriting, and bears his signature. There is no deception."

She barely glanced at it. "You are very right, she said there is no deception."

Joanna smiled. "If William had known you were here and not at Trelawn, I doubt if he would have written so generously, nor would the Prioress at Cornworthy be willing to open her convent doors. However, you may count on me to keep it secret, and arrange your escort into Devon. Two days under my roof to make the necessary preparations, a change of attire, which I can see you need, and you can be on the road." She leant back in her chair, a look of triumph on her face. "I am told the air is mild at Cornworthy," she added. "The nuns there live to a great age."

"Then let us dwell behind convent walls together," replied Isolda. "Widows, when their sons marry, as your William does next year, must needs find new shelter, along with erring wives. We will be sisters in misfortune." Proud and defiant, she stared at Joanna down the length of the trestle table, and the candlelight, throwing shadows on the wall, distorted both their figures, turning Joanna, because of her hooded cloak and widow's veil, to the likeness of some monstrous crab.

"You forget," she said, playing with her multitude of rings, slipping them from one finger to another, "I have a licence to remarry, and can do so whenever I choose to pick a new husband from a chain of suitors. You are still bound to Oliver, and furthermore disgraced. There is a second course open to you other than the nunnery at Cornworthy, if you prefer it, and that is to remain as drab here to my one-time steward, but I warn you the parish might serve you as they served my tenant this day in Tywardreath, and have you riding to do penance in the manor chapel on the back of a black ram."

She broke into a peal of laughter, and, turning to the monk who was standing behind her chair, she said, "What do you say, Fr+¿re Jean? We could mount the one on a ram and the other on a ewe, and have them jog-trot together or forfeit the Kylmerth land."

I knew it must happen, and it did. Roger seized the monk and threw him back against the wall. Then, bending to Joanna, he jerked her to her feet.

"Insult me as you please, not Lady Carminowe," he said. "This is my house, and you shall leave it."

"I will do so", she replied, "when she has made her choice. I have three servants only in your cow-house in the yard, but a score or more waiting by my carriage on the hill, only too willing to pay off ancient grudges."

"Then summon them," said Roger, freeing her. "Robbie and I can defend our home against every one of your tenants, the whole parish if you will."

His voice, raised in anger, had penetrated to the sleeping-room above, and Bess came running down the ladder, pale and anxious, to take her stand behind Isolda's bench.

"Who's this?" asked Joanna. "A third for the sheep-fold? How many other slatterns do you harbour in your loft?"

"Bess is Roger's sister, and so my own," answered Isolda, putting her arm round the frightened girl. "And now, Joanna, call your servants so that this household can be rid of you. God knows we've borne your insults long enough."

"We?" queried Joanna. "Then you count yourself one of them?"

"Yes, while I receive their hospitality," said Isolda.

"So you do not intend to travel with me to Trelawn?"

Isolda hesitated, glancing first at Roger, then at Bess. But before she could reply the monk stepped out of the shadows on the wall and stood beside them.

"There is a third choice yet for Lady Carminowe," he murmured. "I sail from Fowey, within twenty-four hours, to the parent house of Saint Sergius and Bacchus at Angers. If she and the girl care to accompany me to France, I know very well I could find asylum for them there. No one would molest them, and they would be safe from all pursuit. Their very existence would be forgotten once they were in France, and Lady Carminowe herself be at liberty to start life anew in pleasanter surroundings than behind convent walls."

The proposal was so obvious a trick to get both Bess and Isolda out of Roger's care and into his own charge, to dispose of them as he wished, that I expected even his patroness to round upon him. Instead, she smiled, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Upon my word, Fr+¿re Jean, you show true Christian feeling," she said. "What do you say, Isolda? Now you have three alternatives: seclusion at Cornworthy, life in a pigsty at Kylmerth, or the protection of a Benedictine monk across the water. I know which I would choose." She glanced about her as she had first done when she entered the house, and moving round the room touched the smoke-grimed walls, grimacing, then examined her fingers, wiping them with the handkerchief she carried, and finally paused by the ladder leading to the loft above, her foot upon one rung.

"One pallet amongst four, and louse-ridden?" she asked. "If you travel into Devon or to France, Isolda, I'll thank you to sprinkle your gown with vinegar first."

The singing started in my ears, and the thunder. Their figures began to fade. All but Joanna's, standing there at the foot of the ladder. She stared towards me, her eyes opening wide, and I did not care what happened afterwards, I wanted to put my hands round her throat and choke her before she vanished, like the others, out of sight. I crossed the room and stood beside her, and she did not fade. She began to scream, as I shook her backwards and forwards, my hands round her plump, white neck.

"Damn you," I shouted, "damn you… damn you…" and the screaming was all around me, and above as well. I loosened my grip and looked up, and the boys were crouching there on the landing at the top of the back stairs, and Vita had fallen against the bannister beside me, and was staring at me, white-faced, terrified, her hands to her throat.

"Oh, my God!" I said. "Vita… darling… Oh, my God…" I fell forwards on to the bannister rail beside her, retching, seized by the uncontrollable, blasted vertigo, and she dragged herself away up the stairs to safety beside the boys, and they all started screaming once again.