A Fringe of Leaves (6 page)

Mr Roxburgh spoke in the voice he used when expressing fears for himself. She recognized it at once, and its tone brought her lower still.

‘I intend to change,’ she assured him without enthusiasm.

But she continued standing, waiting for her husband to finish dressing and remove himself to the saloon.

Then she tore off her scarf and bonnet, which were not so much wet as limp with moisture. So with all her outer garments. Her habitually well-kempt hair, dulled by salt, had strayed across her cheeks in tails. Her skin, mottled by the imperfect glass and watery stare of dazed eyes, brought to mind some anonymous creature stranded at a street corner in a fog of gin and indecision.

But Ellen Roxburgh did not remain for long oppressed: the canvas crowded back around her, together with the sting of spray, both on the deck of
Bristol Maid
, and farther off, along the black Cornish coast.

On reaching the age of discontent it seemed to her as though her whole life would be led on a stony hillside, amongst the ramshackledom of buildings which gather at the rear of farmhouses, along with midden and cow-byre. Poor as it was, moorland to the north where sheep could find a meagre picking, and a southerly patchwork of cultivable fields as compensation, she admitted to herself on days of minimum discouragement that she loved the place which had only ever, to her knowledge, been referred to as Gluyas’s. She would not have exchanged the furze thickets where a body might curl up on summer days and sheep take shelter in a squall, or the rocks with their rosettes of faded lichen, or cliffs dropping sheer towards the mouths of booming caverns, for any of the fat land to the south, where her Tregaskis cousins lived, and which made Aunt Triphena proud.

Some professed to have heard mermaids singing on the coast above Gluyas’s. Pa told tales of tokens and witches, which he half-believed, and of the accommodating white witch at Plymouth. If Ellen Gluyas wholly believed, it was because she led such a solitary life, apart from visits to the cousins, flagging conversation with an ailing and disappointed mother, and the company of a father not always in possession of himself. She was drawn to nature as she would not have been in different circumstances; she depended on it for sustenance, and legend for hope. (It could not be said that she was initiated into religion till her mother-in-law took her in hand, and then her acceptance was only formal, though old Mrs Roxburgh herself was intimate with God.)

It was Ellen Gluyas’s hope that she might eventually be sent a god. Out of Ireland, according to legend. Promised in marriage to a king, she took her escort as a lover, and the two died of love. Pa confirmed that they had sailed into Tintagel. She had never been as far as Tintagel, but hoped one day to see it. Her mind’s eye watched the ship’s prow entering the narrow cove, in a moment of evening sunlight, through a fuzz of hectic summer green.

She grew languid thinking of it, but would not have mentioned anything so fanciful, not even to Hepzie Tregaskis, her cousin and friend.

Instead she told, with the extra care a lady’s-maid cultivates, ‘Mamma is thinking of taking in a summer lodger. Don’t tell Aunt Tite. She’ll blame it on us.’

That Hepzie told her mother was not surprising (she so seldom had anything worth the telling) and her mother did disapprove, because Aunt Triphena disapproved on principle.

‘Poor Clara! I never thot to see lodgers under any Gluyas roof—like we’m tinners or clayworkers.’ Aunt Tite had forgot that their father had been a travelling hawker.

It was one of Mamma’s bad days. ‘No ordinary lodger,’ she gasped. ‘Acquainted with her ladyship. A gentleman of independent means, but poor health.’ Mamma had to wipe her eyes. ‘A change of air was recommended, and simple, nourishing, farm cooking.’

Aunt Tite laughed. ‘I hope tha’ll knaw, Clara, to take a fair share of the gentleman’s independent means. For sure my brother wun’t knaw.’

Whenever Mamma met with unkindness she did not exactly cry, she trickled.

Aunt Tite would not relent. ‘And who’ll tend to the gentleman’s needs?’

‘I’m still on my feet, Triphena. And Ellen is a strong girl, and willing.’

Aunt Tite smiled her disbelief in a plan she had not conceived herself.

‘The money will help us out,’ Mamma dared suggest. ‘And it will give the girl an interest to have someone else about the place. A gentleman of scholarly tastes, so her ladyship writes. She sent the letter over by the groom.’

Aunt Tite composed her mouth, re-tied her bonnet ribbons, disentangled the three gold chains she wore as a sign of importance and wealth, and drove off in the donkey jingle.

Ellen grew that apprehensive she was all thumbs and blushes in advance. She broke the big serving-dish and had to take it for riveting. She fetched it back only the morning of the day Mr Austin Roxburgh arrived. His luggage impressed those who saw it. Although stained and worn by travel, it still had the smell of leather about it. She stood it in his room, and went from there as quick as she could, leaving him staring out of the window at something he had not bargained for, which might have roused distaste in him. Whatever it was, he looked dejected, as well as fatigued by the journey down.

Mamma too, was nervous, in spite of her experience of gentlefolk. She could not remember whether she had put the towel and soap. Between them they made a rabbit pie, to follow a soup with carrot in it, and, for added nourishment, some scraps of bread.

Ellen might have continued apprehensive had the lodger not been hesitant, if it wasn’t downright timid. His conduct lent her courage; until the books stacked in the parlour given over to him robbed her of her new-found confidence. It returned at sight of the medicine bottles arranged on the sill of the bedroom which had previously been hers. The names of the drugs and instructions for use inscribed on the labels filled her with pity once she had overcome her awe.

Mr Roxburgh hesitated, but finally asked, ‘Are there any interesting walks, Miss Gluyas, in the neighbourhood?’ (No one had ever called her ‘Miss Gluyas’.) ‘I’ve resolved to take up walking—for my health.’

‘There’s walking in all directions.’ (Nobody had ever asked her advice.) ‘There’s the sea to the north—it’s wilder op there. And the church. To the south there’s a whole lot of pretty lanes. And chapel. You could walk to St Ives—or Penzance—if you’re strong enough,’ she thought to add.

But Mr Roxburgh no longer appeared interested, as though he had done his duty by the landlady’s daughter.

Then he became dependent on her, to remind him of time (his medicines), to warn him of changes in the weather, or to take a letter on market days when she drove to Penzance.

‘My mother tends to worry,’ he told her; and on another occasion, ‘She is fretting over my brother, who left, only recently, for Van Diemen’s Land.’

‘Aw?’ she replied with simulated interest.

She was unacquainted with Van Diemen’s Land. She had heard tell of Ireland, America, and France, but had no unwavering conviction that anything existed beyond Land’s End, and in the other direction, what was referred to as Across the River.

The void suddenly appalled her, and she repeated with spontaneous fervour the prayers Mamma and Mr Poynter had taught her it was her duty to recite after undressing.

That night she did not dream, and for some reason, awoke with enthusiasm. As it happened, it was the day on which he lent her his ‘little crib of the
Bucolics
’. She looked at the cover of his book as though reading were her dearest occupation. ‘But not while there’s daylight,’ she warned.

She was wearing a coarse, country hat, the brim of which rose and fell, allowing him glimpses of a burnt face engrossed in country matters.

She told him, ‘There’s two lads should come for hay-making, but can never be trusted to.’

‘May I help?’

‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I
suppawse
tha could,’ and at once blushed for her thoughtlessness.

Again she was embarrassed when he came upon her pulling the milk out of Cherry.

‘Is this what you do?’

‘Some of it.’ She dragged so hard the cow kicked and grazed the pail.

They were for ever encountering each other at the least desirable moments.

On one occasion she had to halt him and lead him back across the yard. ‘Not that way,’ she advised, her instincts persuading her that Mr Austin Roxburgh needed her protection.

But he looked back, and noticed the calf pinned to the ground, its throat tautened to receive the knife.

‘They’re killing the calf!’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. (Will had come over to help Pa perform the operation.) ‘You dun’t have to watch, Mr Roxburgh.’

Without thinking, she touched his hand, unladylike, to lead him back into the enclosed existence others had ordained and maintained for him, in which death, she only latterly discovered, was a ‘literary conceit’.

Soon after his arrival her own reasoning told her that books held more for Austin Roxburgh than the life around him.

He read aloud to her what he said was the
Fourth Eclogue
. ‘A pity you’re not able to appreciate the original, but you’ll enjoy, to some extent, the crib I’ve lent you.’

It seemed that poetry was all, and the ‘natural beauty of a country life’.

‘And labour,’ he remembered to add. ‘Over and above practical necessity, labour, you might say, has its sacramental function.’

Yet he retired gladly to nurse his blisters after a morning with the rake, and sniffed and frowned to find pig-dung stuck to the heel of his boot.

When Will came over, as for the slaughter of the calf, he would stay on and have a bite of something with them in the evening. It was a custom which did not meet with his mother’s approval. She was for ever searching her son’s face for bad news, and her niece’s for worse. As children they enjoyed a rough-and-tumble, with Hepzie joining in, till Aunt Tite found they had outgrown childish games. They exchanged kisses only in the presence of relatives at Christmas and New Year; nobody could have objected to that. Birthdays, marking the advance towards maturity, were more questionable. On her fifteenth birthday Will had been unable to disguise the pleasure her company gave him; he fumbled at her outside the dairy. Whether she had enjoyed it, Ellen was afraid to consider, for Aunt Triphena’s becoming a too sudden witness.

‘I’ll get vex with you, Will, if you act disrespectful to Ellen. She’s as close as your own sister, remember.’

Will grew moody, took to kicking at the flagstones, and would no longer look her way. Nor kiss at Christmas. Until, on an unofficial occasion, he gave her a cuddle which flooded her with a delight that surprised her.

It was not repeated. With the advent of Mr Roxburgh she acquired responsibilities. She must look serious and neat. Her head was full of dainty puddings.

Will inquired on the day they killed the calf, ‘What’s th’ old codger op to—on ’is own—i’ the parlour?’ And chewed off a crust in such a fashion that his naturally handsome face looked ugly.

‘He idn’ old,’ Ellen Gluyas reminded her cousin. ‘An’s a scholar an’ a gentleman.’ She was so enraged.

Pa laughed, and winked at Will. ‘An’ ’as got the girl stickin’ ’er nawse where’t never was before—in books!’

Ellen went to fetch Mr Roxburgh’s tray from the parlour.

He seemed to be waiting for her; he looked anxious, and was walking up and down. ‘Ellen,’ he said (he had never called her ‘Ellen’ before) ‘I’ve mislaid the pills which normally stand on the bedside commode.’

‘Aw,’ she answered, flushing, ‘they was there this mornin’, Mr Roxburgh.’

He looked at her so quick and startled he might have forgot the pills. ‘They
were
, were they?’ He continued gravely looking at her.

Did he think she had taken something she valued so little? except that he set store by them.

In the bedroom she moved the heavy marble-topped commode, and found the bottle which had fallen down against the wainscot.

‘There!’ she said. ‘I knawed they couldn’ uv gone far.’

His gratitude forgave her any possible lapse.

When she took the tray out to the kichen Pa and Will were looking at their plates, the two of them moody by now it seemed.

The guest outstayed his welcome. The hay was made and stacked. The leaves began to turn, as a warning against early cold.

Mamma always grew tearful at the approach of winter. ‘And to clean an extra grate! And fetch in wood!’

But Mr Roxburgh’s cheeks became pink-tinged. He was taking longer walks, in a tweed cap, and a comforter which his mother, he said, had knitted for him. He had even walked as far as St Ives, but hired a fly to bring him back.

On an occasion when the days were drawing in, the girl remarked, ‘By now you must have seen everything,’ and realized that she dreaded the reply.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I have, but would like to be better acquainted with what I know superficially.’

It made her sorry for him: that his life should be so empty, and at the same time, complicated.

He was setting out on one of his walks. Without intending to encumber him, and in no sense prepared (she was wearing her apron, not even a cap, let alone a bonnet) she found herself bearing him company. The going was rough, for they were headed into the black north, the bushes catching at their clothes with twigs on which sheep had left their wool.

‘There’s a storm coming our way out of Wales.’ It was not a rare enough event for her voice to lose its equanimity.

After drawing the comforter tighter at his throat, it occurred to Mr Roxburgh, ‘Do you think you’re suitably dressed—that is to say, warmly enough?’ His ordinarily mild eyes looked almost fierce in consideration of her welfare, or was it, again, only his own?

‘Aw, yes!’ She laughed, her arms hugging each other against the apron. ‘We’re used to our own weather.’

They crossed the road and stumbled on, into the gale, when it had not been her intention to accompany him farther than a stone’s throw from the yard.

As they were walking recklessly, so they had begun reckless talk.

‘This is nothing’, Mr Roxburgh shouted, ‘to anyone who has crossed over by the Swiss passes into Italy—or even the English Channel into France.’