Zennor in Darkness Read online

  But the sheets are cold, and her room is not a refuge. Rain skitters down the window. The wind is veering west, and rough gusts blow up off the sea. Her window always bangs when the wind is in this direction. She ought to get up and wedge it with newspaper, but she’s too tired and cold and sore to bother. In the time it takes thinking about it, and being irritated by the irregular banging of window against frame, she could have been up and mended it six times.

  Downstairs her father clatters about. It’s not so much that he wants to wake Clare, as that he finds himself doing the things which will stop her from sleeping. He goes to open the front door – she can’t think why. Then he must have gone back into the kitchen without shutting the door properly because she hears wind sucking and whining down the hall, gathering force until the door leaps open and crashes against the porch wall. She nearly springs out of bed, thinking of the glass panels, but stops herself. Then he leaves the kitchen door open so she can hear him banging about with the saucepans, until he finds one in which he can boil his solitary, pathetic Sunday egg. What a meal for a man. No wonder he has to clash her careful nest of saucepans until the enamel chips. He is angry with Clare in the way children are angry with mothers who suddenly stop their perpetual motion in kitchen and backyard and shops, and take off their aprons and say in flat voices which the children have never heard before: I can’t be doing with it any more. Go on out with this (she bands out doorsteps of bread with no butter or jam) and stay out till your father comes home.

  Clare knows all about this. She knows how she ought to be downstairs, slapping slices of cold pork on to plates; it’s the least she can do when there’s no Sunday dinner made, and he has come back from church cold and wet and out of temper. And she has not gone with him. And he has had no sponge-cake for his Sunday tea for weeks. He likes it dredged with sugar, but they can’t get enough sugar to whiten the surface the way she used to, or to make patterns by shaking the sugar through a paper cut-out. How quickly her father would brighten if she went down now. He would flap about, making her a cup of tea while she sliced bread and butter with a small martyrish smile.

  She twists in the bed, fighting off thoughts which elbow their way through. Hannah has gone home to cook and keep house; she will not slummock in bed indulging herself like Clare. Besides, there’s no room for it. The house will echo like a drum to Aunt Sarah’s weeping. Nan will be helping with her, and no doubt Aunt Mabel and Aunt Annie and Aunt Mag too, gathered round the steaming broth of Aunt Sarah’s emotions. Oh, yes, they’ll be comforting her all right, thinks Clare, and Aunt Sarah won’t know about the avidity in their faces when they talk about her in the kitchen as they bolt down the meal which decorum insists they don’t eat in front of grieving Sarah. Then Grandad’ll lead them all in prayer. Clare shudders.

  They will pray to God for John William’s safe homecoming, their faces red and relieved because they’re doing something for him. Even Aunt Sarah will feel the better for it as she whimpers over the best tea-cups. Poor Aunt Sarah with her red eyes and her red worn hands. And everyone telling her they’ll never take Harry, it won’t be allowed.

  Her bed is as uncomfortable as the bottom of a boat in an uneasy sea. Sam has deserted. Does anyone know but John William and Hannah and me? Hannah thinks I’m safe with a secret. She doesn’t know how I feel about Sam rolling up his big body like a hedgehog in a hole in London, to crouch there behind some girl for the duration. Why should he? Why should it be easy for him?

  I don’t think that John William would desert like Sam, even if the idea had occurred to him. Not because he’s braver than Sam. Sam’s brave enough, when it’s wanted, but he’d say he won’t be brave for nothing.

  ‘Where’s the sense of it?’ that’s what Sam would say. ‘All of us getting killed like rabbits.’

  Perhaps it’s that Sam doesn’t care what people think of him. He doesn’t mind if he loses his place among ‘all the fine young men we’ve sent over there’. He would rather that people looked sidelong at him for the rest of his life than go back to fight – that is if Hannah’s right and they won’t shoot him for desertion once the war’s over.

  ‘I’m not having any more of it. Let the rest of em make fools of theirselves. Not me.’

  No. That’s not Sam either. What the rest of them think and do has always been important to Sam. He was proud to swing Hannah on his arm because all the boys were after her and she could sew so fine and earn her own living. He’d got what the rest of them wanted.

  Clare turns her face into the pillow and grips it. Hannah hinted at something in Sam’s letter; something which had happened to Sam, and changed him. There must be things I don’t know and can’t begin to imagine. Experiences which no one in England can share. But now I know how Hannah feels after Sam has gone.

  John William won’t ever desert. I know that – I am sure he won’t. He will never give people that chance to scorn him. He’ll call himself a fool, but he’ll rather die than give anyone else the right to name him one. He might mock them for making him an officer, but he’s glad that it forces fools to respect him. And Sam will survive in his burrow in London, doing what any creature in its senses does when it hears the guns. Doing what you get shot for doing now. But John William’s on the train, laughing maybe and talking to men whom I don’t know and who will never hear of me – not from him. They’ll ask if he had a good time at home and he’ll smile and say something which will satisfy them but give away nothing. John William is good at smiling and giving nothing away. He never got into rages. If you lose your temper, you lose yourself. Other people learn what you want. Now I must hold myself still, like him, thinks Clare.

  ‘My cousin Clarey.’ He’ll hold a letter from her, creased and rumpled from being reread as the guns boom and the men wait, tense, to go over the top. Or he’ll tuck a bit of her hair under his tunic.

  You fool, you fool, she tells herself, thumping the pillow.

  ‘Men don’t want spoiled goods,’ says Nan. ‘A man’ll say anything on God’s earth to get you to go with him, and then you’ll never see his face again – you’ll see nothing but the back of his britches when he sees you coming.’

  It was advice given to Hannah and meant for her and Clare. Clare might be half a lady but all girls need watching, in Nan’s experience. There’s nothing worse than a fool who’s a fool to herself.

  Clare turns and lies on her back. Runnels of rain run down straight now, breaking their channels, sluicing the window.

  What did Mr Lawrence say to John William, all that time they were walking together? What did John William tell him, that he couldn’t tell me?

  Fifteen

  I was on Tom Stevens’s croft.

  And that’s where you saw em?

  That’s it. Brazen as you like, sat there on the cliff-top. He didn’t give tuppence who saw em, nor by the look of it did she neither.

  That’s one in the eye for the Treveals.

  It is.

  Well, now, who’d a thought it. Clare Coyne. Go on. What did you see?

  I’d stopped by with Tom. He was cutting furze with the two lads and I stopped to inquire after Ettie. He was telling me that brendy cow of his isn’t doing. Well, we were standing there like I said; you know how Tom Stevens’s croft run down to the cliff-path?

  I do.

  And we see em there, the two of em at it in God’s good daylight.

  And Tom Stevens being strong Chapel too. Must a bin a shock for him.

  He is. A powerful voice for the Lord, Tom Stevens.

  Course the Coyne girl’s a Roman.

  That’s so. Not that I’ve anything against the Romans…

  No.

  They have their ways and we have ours.

  That’s just so. You hit it. And coddling and kissing with foreigners in brazen daylight isn’t our way.

  Mind, I’m not saying there was anything in it.

  Oh, no!

  But a young girl and a married man.

  That’s just it. No hiding thei
rselves either. You can see that red beard of his six miles off.

  You can.

  And the girl with her red hair too.

  Hot

  blood

  wonder if it’s the same red down below

  like a couple of foxes getting together

  stink

  smell of my Susan when she’s got her visitor

  So what did you do then?

  Went back. Tom had a couple of pigs to alter.

  She wants to get him altered, that wife of his does. Keep him and his red beard safe at home.

  Then after he left her he went on over to the Hockings.

  Teaching Stanley Hocking French, it is now. And piano. I heard William Henry tell it at Penzance market.

  Piano. I wonder the Hockings don’t throw him out of their house. Sits there in the kitchen like he belongs there, talking against the war.

  What’s Tom getting for his pigs now?

  Ten and eleven-three a score, last I heard.

  Is he now?

  Selling em up to Redruth bacon factory. Ask him yourself at St Ives Saturday market.

  And then the girl went home?

  Back along the cliff-path.

  And he don’t know nothing, her father?

  Too busy going over Newlyn himself, I reckon. But that’s an old story.

  Same as May Foage’s an old story.

  Ah, well that’s just the beauty of it for the Romans. It don’t matter what they do all week just so long as they go along into the box and tell the priest all about it on a Saturday. Then there they are, ready to start up again on Saturday night. Just like magic.

  But he’s not a Roman, is he? Red-beard?

  He’s purely Godforsaken. Said as bold as brass to Rector he didn’t hold with Church nor Chapel. Said a man should take care of his soul for hisself.

  That’ll’ve pleased Rector.

  It did. He called Red-beard a snake in the grass, outside church Sunday before last. Tom had it from Jo Quick. Said we should remember how the serpent spoke smooth to tempt Eve.

  The Rector sits at his desk. A blob of ink wavers on the end of his nib, but the flat creamy sheets of paper on which he writes his sermon are still blank. Words run through his mind:

  The serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. Dear people, my dear people, consider what these words mean. None of us, alas, can hope to see the Garden of Eden with our earthly eyes. With the hope given to us by God’s infinite mercy we may trust that one day our eyes will be opened. Our eyes are clouded by sin. Our minds are dark and wretched, but even in our darkness we struggle to turn towards the glorious light of our Redeemer. But there are some who love the darkness. When they see the light of God they hide their faces and hate it. They love their own sins and abominations more than the light. They cling to them. Their Prince is the Prince of Darkness. They will come to you with words like honey; they will speak to you with as smooth a tongue as the serpent’s when he spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and drove the children of this world to damnation. They will speak with the tongue of the Great Deceiver who is their Lord and Master and if you listen they will tempt you.

  He imagines the upturned faces of his parishioners, shrewd, subtle, earthly. ‘Rector give it us hot this mornin.’

  And then there’s his insolence. The way he looks at me. One day I met him in the churchyard. What was he doing? Looking at the sundial, he said. That beard of his. It ought to be shaved off. His clothes. He’s a figure of fun. And his wife’s a madwoman or worse. Consider a serpent with the head of a man. Here I am holding back darkness. My people are never far from it. They speak of witches and loggans and mermaids and when I come by they fall silent. Once I thought I would write down the old stories and kill off their magic, but the stories still slip from mouth to ear, born in darkness and told by lamplight. There was a witch up here who worked her magic in the shape of a hare, and even when four strong men carried her up to God’s holy churchyard in her coffin they couldn’t hold her. The coffin shivered and turned over like an eel in their arms and there she went fleeting across the grass..

  He dips his pen and begins to write. The first few words stick as his pen digs into the paper, then his fingers relax and lines of black firm writing fly down the page.

  Evil goes fleeting across the earth, making a mock of all that good men hold dear. It will mock your wives and your daughters. It will mock your country and all we are fighting for. All those fine young men who have answered the call of King and Country, soberly, advisedly, knowing what is asked of them – are they to be made a mockery? Evil will mock at them and make a bonfire of their sacrifices. It will hiss and whisper in your ears. There is evil everywhere, prowling our countryside, waiting for the breach through which it can enter. It will settle here and make a home for itself. It will work through our land like a snake, and make rotten where it touches.

  He stops writing and chews his pen. He knows that he will never say these words aloud; not as they stand. They are to be dropped, one by one, a word here and a murmur there.

  He blots the paper and folds it over, stamping the crease with the side of his fist. These are notes to himself. They will keep his purpose firm.

  Lawrence isn’t writing. He has his flower and vegetable gardens to keep up, both the little plot which goes with the cottage at a shilling a year, and the two plots he has rented from the Hockings. The land is full of granite stones, standing upright or leaning over so that you think in a year or two they’ll fall. But they don’t fall. In a hundred years they might add a fraction of an inch to their angle. Here and there shoal-places break the surface of the fields. The stones are thick as fish under thin soil. He has learned to cultivate around the stones without driving his spade or hoe against them. The stones have been here longer than anyone knows. Long ago the first Celtic farmers shaped their small fields around granite boulders, and their granite hedges remain. Druids left the stones, as thick a crop of them as you get anywhere in this world. The work of the farms goes on around them so that you might think no one thinks of them or looks at them. But how can these stones fail to enter you somewhere? There are the shadows of them falling on your back as you earth up potatoes, or spray soapy water on blackfly-ridden runner beans. Or they stand at the base of the hedge in a froth of montbretia and wild fuchsia, their grey sides licked by purple and scarlet and flame. As you go down the little deep lane to the Hockings, tall stones stand in the field on your right, peering over the hedge at you. You might believe that at night when there’s no one to watch them, they walk.

  Walking stones. Lawrence thinks of the moon-blank loggans the night before, and the sweat on John William’s face. Hawker. Who was Hawker? What was it that John William saw when he dropped to his knees on the road to Zennor?

  The night-owl was flying. If a man believed in souls, how many of them would be flying now, looking for home? Thousands of them released every evening into the low grey skies above the Flanders plains, hungry for the lives they had been torn from, wanting to tell someone. Like souls in the Inferno they would press forward, naked and shivering, drifting like brown leaves on the banks of the Styx, squeaking. Behind them there crowd the next battalions, more and more until they are beyond counting. He thinks of the sigh that would go up from them.

  He finds he is standing still, holding his hoe, too tired to grub up the weeds between another row of beans. He has some rare things planted. There are scorzonera and salsify, vegetables new to William Henry, who touches them with curious fingers and asks what they are good for. But where is Frieda? She left a note that she had gone out walking. She is so careless. She never says where she is going, though there are cliffs and dangerous places all around. She might stumble and turn her ankle, then call for hours. He smiles. He cannot really imagine Frieda calling for hours, and nobody coming. All her life people have come. She is as irresistible as wind or sun. Besides, she is not really careless. She knows that there are risks but she still takes them, j
ust as she did when she gave up house and husband and children and threw in her life with Lawrence after knowing him for six weeks.

  How quiet the cottage is without her. He potters through the kitchen, washing pearly scarlet and white radishes, tapping the bottom of the loaves he made earlier. They are perfectly baked. He lays out china on the little table, and sets their black-bottomed kettle on the fire. Soon she will be home, bursting open the cottage door, dropping a bunch of bluebells on a chair, unpinning her hat. The room will flare with life and vigour.

  ‘Ah, Lorenzo!’ she will exclaim, shedding gloves as she claps her hands for joy at the sight of the tea laid ready. ‘Such a walk! You cannot imagine…’

  And she will sit down opposite him and make a festival of the meal.

  But it is late and she is not home. He cannot get the sound of John William’s voice out of his head. For once, briefly, he allows himself to think how much he needs his wife.

  Sixteen

  ‘Father.’

  Francis flails his Times open and hits the dish of rhubarb jam. There is no marmalade; there never seems to be any these days. Every day starts wrong for him as he bites through a greasy layer of margarine and then tastes this jam which leaves a metallic coating on his teeth for the rest of the morning. Why hasn’t Clare got any butter? Surely to God, she ought to be able to manage it, with all her family slipping each other parcels of this and that the whole day long. And the damned paper won’t fold in the middle either.

  Clare pokes a spoon critically into the jam dish. Yes, she thought as much. There wasn’t enough sugar when she made it and now the jam is beginning to ferment. There’ll be mould frilling the jars in a few more days. Perhaps if she boils up the jam again with a bit more of next week’s sugar which she’s hidden in a blue canister marked ‘salt’? But it takes a lot of fuel to boil jam. Nothing on the table is as it should be. The bread is grey. The margarine tastes like axle-grease, Father says, though how he knows what axle-grease tastes like she can’t imagine.