The Ugly Sister (36 page)

‘The time will not be too pleasant, I imagine.'

‘Imagine nothing. Think only of our coming together in this way.'

‘And where shall we live?'

‘It will all work out, I promise you.'

‘And how much have you worked out for the day?'

‘Carvoe – the Rev. Mr Carvoe – will ride over from Gwennap shortly before ten. The ceremony will take place at eleven. That is agreed.'

I stroked Mousie, who at once turned her attention to my hand instead of his.

‘I think I shall believe it when it happens.'

‘It will happen, never fear.'

During the week that had still to be passed I was several times on the point of going to see Tamsin again, to see if she was really ill. But I could not risk what would surely be the bitterest quarrel of all. And if she were really ill, not just in a state of nervous frustration at the turn of events … Instead, I called to see Mr Gascoigne again, and spent another hour with him.

I did not write to my mother. I did not write to Caroline Collins, nor to Mrs Treffry, nor to any other of my friends. I did not tell Mr Hempel that I should not be here for my lesson on the following Tuesday. If he had heard any rumours of what might be afoot he made no reference to them.

My only confidante was Sally Fetch. She listened with mounting colour to all I had to say, the arguments I put forward and then decided against, the careful soul-searching, the questions that would never be answered; but her comments were few and ultra cautious. Perhaps she was coming to have doubts about my sanity. After all it was in the family, wasn't it?

The cook, Mrs Bluett, the other two maids and Cannon, the groom, were left in ignorance.

I did not see Bram the day before. We parted on the Sunday evening. He wanted to send a carriage over for me, but I said I would prefer to ride. We would meet at his house at ten-thirty and he could drive me to the church from there.

On Monday morning Mousie disappeared. She had slid out of a kitchen window, a custom she had followed for several weeks now, and we left the window ajar for her to return. But this time she did not return. The bit of rabbit from yesterday was uneaten, the milk in the saucer unlapped.

Fetch and I went out to call her, but there was no response. It was a large property and there were endless places she could hide, if that was her mood, but she had never failed to respond to my voice before. As the morning wore on I began to be convinced that she had been taken by a dog, or possibly a fox.

We went looking for her farther afield. It was a pleasant spring day, and I wondered what tomorrow would bring. Halfway down the hill to Come-to-Good we met Slade limping up. He looked drunkenly askance at me and would have passed again without greeting, but I stopped and asked if he had seen a stray kitten. He glowered at Fetch but avoided my eyes.

‘Nay,' he said. ‘I seen nothing, misses. I just mind my own business.'

We turned back in time for dinner, but I did not eat much. When Sally chided me I said I was worrying about the kitten. The fact that that was even half true shows the disproportion, the imbalance.

After dinner I went out seeking her again. When I returned about four Sally said: ‘You've done scarcely no packing, miss. Shall I come up and help ' ee now?'

‘No. Not just yet. I'm taking very little with me, as you know. But first I have some letters to write.'

In fact I had been drafting a letter most of last night, first in my head as I lay staring at the moulded ceiling, then seated at the escritoire with pen and ink and paper in the window of the room, by a single lighted candle.

About ten, just after supper, Cannon came in to say they had found Mousie down a disused well belonging to Farmer Eames across the road. The kitten was no worse for the escapade. I gave Cannon half a crown and went into the kitchen to inspect a very dirty sticky kitten wolfing her supper and betraying none of the obvious guilt that a dog would have done.

But thereafter, when she was filled and looked a good deal cleaner, I took her up to my bedroom with me and allowed her to sit on my knee at the escritoire while I wrote the final draft of the letter.

Dear Bram, I am sending this letter by Cannon so that you shall receive it before you need to leave for the church. It is to say that, after much heart searching and the deepest possible reflection, I have decided not to marry you. I'm sorry. In some ways I am very sorry. In this letter I am trying to explain just what my reasons are.

In the first place you have to realize that I have known you almost all my life. It is not as the outcome of a brief courtship that I am making this choice. Since I was fifteen I have felt your charm, have known how it worked on me and have seen it at work on other women. But slowly the realization has come to me that at heart – at the final count – you love no one but yourself.

In spite of that you can make women happy, very happy. Could you make me happy? Of a certainty, at least for a time. But why do you want to
marry
me?

The kitten stirred on my knee, turned round, settled into a more comfortable position and purred gently.

Why do you want to marry me? I had insisted that we should have no physical contact before we married. That was understood and I believe that you – however reluctantly – had agreed to observe that veto. That, of course, was before last Wednesday week.

I was supposed to believe – and indeed tried to believe – that was why you were willing to go through the ceremony. You really loved me and wanted me for yourself. You really wanted to set up a home with me and have children and live an ordinary married life, as other people do—though I could clearly see that such a life with you could never be conventional. I would clearly have wished to believe all that. But did it not go against all my knowledge of you over so many years?

So came the Wednesday. Perhaps it would be better, because of all I have to say, if I could claim that what happened on the Wednesday was a heartless contrivance on my part. If I said that you would not believe me and you would be right. I know that day I was truly in love with you. But when our lovemaking began, while it was happening and afterwards – especially afterwards – ignoble thoughts and doubts kept echoing through my mind. I have become hard, Bram, and therefore much more difficult to deceive by your passion – or even by my own.

What I wondered would happen now – now that your desire for me and my desire for you had been temporarily sated? Was it not much more in your nature to try to slip out of or postpone the marriage? Now that I had given way to you once, it was likely to happen again and again, and continue without marriage.

So why marriage? Marriage to me would constrain you – not much but a little – you would not be so free for other women. And you must know me well enough to know I would not be an easy woman to betray.

But what did you do? You asked me soon after for an assurance that the marriage should still take place. So aren't you, possibly might you not really be proposing to marry me for my money?

You may feel that I am putting you in a situation in which anything you do, whichever way you act, it can be interpreted to your discredit. If you gradually tried to withdraw from the wedding, it would show you up as a calculating seducer. If you press me to go ahead with the wedding, you are chiefly calculating the financial gain.

But as the background to this – perhaps in defence of myself – since I saw how your intentions were moving, I began to make enquiries about you in Truro and elsewhere. My lawyer, Mr Gascoigne, tells me that you are heavily in debt. A great deal of money comes to you, he says, from time to time, but with this he says you only discharge some debts and incur others. He also tells me that with your many connections you would have no difficulty at all in discovering the amount of money left to me by Uncle Francis. So I suspect, forgive me but I suspect, that that money is what you want most from the marriage. Is it not so? You clearly desire me well enough for myself, but not so much as you desire my fortune.

Another suspicion, even more ignoble than the first, comes from the feeling that Tamsin has been so quiet. Having been a party to your plans for so long she must surely know that you are in desperate straits and,
very much
against her will, she has come to agree with you that a marriage to me – of convenience – will solve
her
problem – of staying on at Place – as well as yours?

The ink was watery. I wished I had had the inkwell refilled before beginning the long letter.

This will be ill reading for you, Bram, as it is very ill writing for me, but I have to tell you that I believe most of Slade's stories. When I went to see Tamsin and told her we were to be married, her manner and incautious remarks convinced me that she knew Slade's accusations to be more or less true. Last month on a visit to the Treffrys of Fowey, the subject came up and Mr Joseph Treffry, who was High Sheriff last year, told me he had recently met Sir Anthony Pryce, who is Collector of Customs for Devon and Cornwall. Sir Anthony told him of a number of cases that had been brought to his notice, of intimidation and violence connected with the running of contraband goods. This was within the last year, and there was a lot of disquiet about it. Several persons were under suspicion, and attempts were being made to track their activities more closely and to muster reliable witnesses who would be prepared to give evidence at a trial. Although no names were ever mentioned, some of the references did point to you. I said nothing whatever about Slade, or about you at all, but it seems clear to me that you are in some danger of being accused of more serious crimes than owing money and you would do well to leave the county while you can. With my money to buy off your creditors the situation might have been different.

Sometimes I feel as if I am letting you down. You need me – but for the wrong reason. Once, eight years ago, I so very badly needed you.

Emma

A
LONG
restless night. Only the kitten slept. At eight I sent for Cannon, and gave him the sealed envelope, telling him to deliver it to Mr Abraham Fox at Penmartin House, Ponsanooth. He should be there well before ten. He was to deliver it into Mr Fox's hand, and no other. He was not to wait for a reply but to come straight back. Fetch stood squarely in the doorway and watched him go.

‘Well, miss …'

‘Yes, Fetch?'

‘That means? … Does that mean? …'

‘Yes, it does.'

‘Glory be to God!' she said.

‘I do not believe Glory exists anywhere in this,' I said sourly. ‘Or God either.'

Later in the morning I took Fetch upstairs with one of the maids to clear out the attic which had been undisturbed since we took up residence. The house had been greatly extended by Uncle Davey when he bought it for Betsy Slocombe, so presumably she alone must have been the hoarder. I had never met her. After leaving the house she had gone back to Manaccan where she was born. Three faded heliographs showed a tall bosomy dark-haired woman with pink cheeks, smiling eyes and dimples. On the back of one was written in even more faded ink, ‘ Dearest Betsy, from Davey, Xmas 1820'.

There was only this one attic; and from its dormer window one had the best view of the outer gate and the drive running up to the house. A bright day with a few clouds riding high. A group of reddish cows in the distant field were lying down. Fine weather. Good weather for a wedding. I did not look at my watch but turned back from the window where I had been studying the heliographs. This tedious sorting out of an old attic was intended to provide a diversion, scant enough, but a sort of different focus for the attention when so very much greater a matter was at stake.

The room was full of cardboard boxes, with three chests, a bureau with a broken leg, a commode, a clutter of pots and pans, a naval uniform, two bottles with ships inside, a set of croquet balls and mallets, a target for archery, some fishing tackle. The two women were standing waiting for instructions.

‘Well, start somewhere,' I said, and went across to the rickety bureau, fought to get a drawer open and found inside a mass of papers, crammed down, and overflowing. At the top they were all bills, but underneath were piles of letters, tied in bundles with pink ribbon. I opened one and saw it was a letter from Uncle Davey beginning, ‘Dearest Betsy, I hope to be with you at Easter. Pray do not worry about the baby, I will look after you.' I re-folded it, feeling it was prying. So Betsy had had a child. What had happened to it? Died, or given to a foster mother? Or raised by Betsy's parents?

Fetch was opening one of the chests. Three naval hats, but midshipman style, two women's bonnets, a short female jacket with fur collar and cuffs, these badly eaten by moths. Dust rose in the room and the maid, Ethel, sneezed. The difficulty lay in deciding how much of all this stuff to throw away. I lacked the initiative today to come to any decision; yet I would not possibly relax downstairs practising singing or working a sampler.

About noon there was a tap on the door, and Cannon stood there.

‘I give the letter, ma'am. The servant wanted for to take it but I would not leave it out of my hands.'

‘You saw Mr Fox?'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘Did he open the letter when you were there?'

‘Yes, ma'am, but he only read the first few lines, then he sort of crumpled it up and looked at me and said, “Thank you, that will be all.” '

I said: ‘I would like you to be around the house for the rest of the day, Cannon. I am not at home to anyone. If – if someone comes who insists on seeing me, tell them I have left for London.'

‘Very good, ma'am.'

‘Oh, but Mr Hempel will be coming at three! I had forgot. Will you please offer him my sincere apologies and say I am unwell today but shall hope to see him next week.'