Demelza (11 page)

'What land is it you want, Mark?'

'Over the brow beyond Mellin. There's a piece of old scrub an' furse, an some attle from an old mine ditch. By the bed o' the leat as dried up years ago.'

'I know it…' Her mind went over the issue. 'Well, it is not really in my hand to give it to you. What you must do is think to yourself: I'm an old friend, wouldn't Captain Ross let me have this bit o' scrubland to build my cottage?'

Mark Daniel looked at her a moment, then slowly shook his head. 'Tis not for me to decide, Mistress Poldark. Friends in a manner of saying we been all our lives; grown up head by head. We've sailed together, running rum and gin, we've fished together on Hendrawna Beach, we've wrastled together when we was tackers. But when all's done he belong up here and I belong down there, and - and I'd no more think to take what was his wi'out a by-your-leave than he'd think to take mine.'

All the garden was in shadow now. The bright sky seemed to have no link with the gathering dusk of the valley, the land had fallen away into this abyss of evening while the day still blazed overhead. A thrush had caught a snail and the only sound outside was the tap-tap-tap as he swung it against a stone.

'If tis not in your power to do it,' said Mark, 'then I must see for a piece o' land elsewhere.'

Demelza knew what chance he had of that. She found when she turned from staring at the sky that she could only see his eyes and the firm parenthesis of his cheekbones. She went across and picked up flint and steel. Presently her hands were lit up, her face, her hair, as the first candle sputtered and glowed.

'Take an acre measuring from the bed o' the dry stream, Mark,' she said.

'I can't say more'n that. How you shall hire it I've no notion, for I'm not learned in figures an' things. That's for you an' Ross to make out. But I promise you you shall not be moved.'

The man at the door was silent while two more candles were lit from the first. She heard him stir and shuffle one foot.

'I can't thank you right, mistress,' he said suddenly, 'but if there's service to be done for you or yours leave me know.

She lifted her head, and smiled across at him. 'I know that, Mark,' she said.

Then he was gone and she was left alone with the candles lifting their heads in the lightening room.

SOME GROUND HAZE gathered with the dark, and that night the moon came up like a bald old redskin peering over a hill. In the hollow of Mellin and the barren declivity of Reath beyond, it looked down upon a string of black figures, active and as seeming aimless as ants in the sudden light of a lantern, moving backwards and forwards over the hummock of moorland beyond Joe Trigg's cottage and down towards a path of rubble-scarred ground sloping indeterminately east.

The building was on.

There were nine to help him at the start: Paul, his brother and Ena Daniel, Zacky Martin and his two eldest boys, Ned Bottrell, who was a cousin from Sawle, Jack Cobbledick and Will Nanfan.

First there was the site to be marked; and this must be level enough to support the four walls. They found a patch and cleared it of stones, about a hundred yards from Reath Ditch. Then they roughly marked it into a rectangle and began. The walls were to be made of clay, beaten hard and mixed with straw and small stones. When Ross killed a bullock at the time of the christening Zacky had helped him and had been given a bag of bullock hair off the hide. This was used now, being stirred in with the clay and the stones and the straw to make a binding mixture. Four great boulders were used for the corners of the house, and from one to another of these a rough trough was built of wood about two feet wide and two deep. Into this the clay and stones and all the rest were shovelled and stamped down and left to set while more was mixed.

At eleven the three youngsters, being on the early core, were sent home to sleep, and at midnight Cobbledick turned his long high stepping stride towards bed. Zacky Martin and Will Nanfan stayed until three, Paul Daniel until five, when he had just time to get home and have a plate of barley bread and potatoes before going on to the mine. Ned Bottrell, who ran his own little tin stamp, left at eight. Mark went steadily on until Beth Daniel came over with a bowl of watery soup and a pilchard on a chunk of bread. Having worked without a break for nearly fourteen hours, he sat down to have his food and stared at the result. The foundations were in and the walls just begun. The area of the cottage was slightly larger than intended, but that would be all to the good; there would be time for partitioning off when She was in it. To get her in it: that was his obsession.

This morning early the little children had been round before they went off to the fields; then later three or four of their mothers, staying an hour to help and talk or looking in on their way to work. Everyone had taken his cause to heart and no one had any doubt that he would have his house before Sunday. They might have been critical of the marriage since no one wanted a stranger, but Mark Daniel being who he was and popular, people were willing to swallow their prejudices.

At seven that evening Zacky Martin, Will Nanfan and Paul Daniel, having had a few hours' sleep, arrived back, and later they were joined by Ned Bottrell and Jack Cobbledick. At ten another figure came out of the cloud-shadowed moonlight behind them, and Mark saw by his height that it was Ross. He stepped down the ladder and went to meet him. As they neared each other likeness might have been remarked between these men. They were of an age, ran to bone rather than flesh, were dark and long-legged and indocile. But at close quarters difference was more noticeable than sameness. Daniel, darker-skinned but sallow with underground work, had a stiffness that the other lacked, was broader in the jaw and narrower at the temples, his hair straight and close-cropped and black without the copper. They might have been distant relatives branching far from a common line.

'Well, Mark,' said Ross as he came up. 'So this is your house?'

'Yes, Cap'n.' Mark turned and stared at the four walls now nearly roof-high, at the gaping sockets where the windows should go. 'So far as it is made.'

'What have you for floor joists?'

'There's wreck timber enough, I reckon. And these pit props. The planchin' will have to wait till later.'

'For an upper room?'

'Ais. I thought it could be builded in the thatch; twill save the wall-building, for I've no more straw to spare - nor time.'

'You've time for nothing. What of the windows and door?'

'Father will loan us his door till I can make another. An' he's hammering up some shutters for us over home. Tis all he can do with his rheumatics. They'll pass for the time.'

'I suppose,' Ross said, 'you're making no error, Mark. In choosing this girl, I mean. D'you think she will settle down here after roaming the countryside?'

'She's never had no home, not since she can mind anything. That is the more reason why she should want one now.'

'When are you to be married?'

'Monday first thing ef all d'go well.'

'But can you?'

'Yes, I reckon. A fortnight gone she promised she'd wed me and I asked parson to call the banns. Then she changed her mind. This Sunday will be the third time. I'll take her over to Parson Odgers Monday so soon as we're back.'

Behind his words lay the shadow of a fortnight's struggle. The prize had one minute looked close within his hand and the next as remote as ever.

'Mistress Poldark'll 'ave told you,' Mark went on.

'She told me.'

'Did I do right in asking' her?'

'Of course. Take more of this bottom if you wish to reclaim it, Mark.'

Mark inclined his head. 'Thank ye, sir.'

'I'll have the deed drawn up tomorrow.' Ross stared at the shapeless yellow mound. 'It is possible I can find you a door.'

They were not acting at St Dennis but were resting before the long trek to Bodmin tomorrow. This week they had gradually left the civilized west of Cornwall behind and had moved off towards the northern wilderness. For Keren each day had been worse than the last; the weather was too hot or too wet, the barns they played in impossible to manage, leaky and rat-infested or too small to move in. They had made barely enough to keep hunger away, and Aaron Otway, who had been consoling himself as he always did when times were bad, was sometimes almost too drunk to stand.

As if to set her decision on firm lines last night at St Michael was the worst fiasco of all. The persistent rain had kept away all but seven adults and two children, and the players had had to act on wet and smelly straw, with constant drippings on their heads. Tupper had found a fever and had lost the ability (or desire) to make people laugh, and the audience just sat and gaped through it all.

They were to have spent the end of Sunday cleaning up the two caravans ready for a triumphal entry into Bodmin, Otway's idea for attracting an audience on Monday night; but he had been drunk all day and the others were too out-of-sorts or listless to make any move, once they had found a field and turned their animals out to grass. If a wheel fell off tomorrow or an axle broke for lack of grease, well let it. She had her things packed in a basket, and at what she thought to be midnight she carefully slipped out of her bunk and made for the door. Outside it was fine, and with a shawl about her head she crouched by the wheel of the wagon waiting for Mark.

It was slow waiting, and she was not a patient girl, but tonight she was so set on leaving her present company that she stayed on and on, cursing the summer chill of night and wishing he'd make haste. Minutes passed that seemed like days, and hours that might have been months. Crouching there with her head against the hub of the wheel, she fell asleep.

When she woke she was stiff and chilled through, and behind the church on the hill was a lightening of the sky, the dawn.

She came to her feet. So he'd let her down! All this time he'd been playing with her, making promises he had no intention to keep. Tears of fury and disappointment started into her eyes. Careless of noise she turned to go in, and as she touched the handle she saw a tall figure hurrying across the field.

He came at a shambling half run. She did not move at all until he came up with her and stood seeking his breath and leaning against the caravan. 'Keren…'

'Where've you been?' she said wildly. 'All night! All this night I've been waiting! Where've you been?'

He looked up at the window of the caravan. 'You got your clo'es? Come.'

His tone was so strange, short of its usual respect, that she began to move with him across the field without arguing. He walked straight enough now but stiffly, as if he could not bend. They reached the lane.

At the church she said angrily: 'Where've you been, Mark? I'm chilled to the marrow! Waiting all the night through.'

He turned to her. 'Eh?'

She said it again. 'What's amiss with you? What's kept you?'

'I was late startin', Keren. Late. Twas no easy job building a house. The last…there was last things to do... Didn't start till ten. Thought I should make up by running all the way…But I mistook the road, Keren. I ran wrong... kept on the main coach road instead o' turning for St Dennis… I went miles... That's why I came on ee from be'and... Lord save us, I never thought to find ye in time!'

He spoke so slow that at last she realized he was dead-tired, almost out on his feet. Surprise and disappointment made her snap at him, for she had always been pleased at his strength. This was a letdown; surely this great moment of his life should have been enough to liven him up all over again.

They walked on quietly until full day, when a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea seemed to give him a new lease, and from then on he steadily came round. She had put aside some dough cakes from last night's supper, and these they shared at the side of the road. Before they made St Michael he was the stronger of the two. They stopped at a tollhouse and bargained for some breakfast and rested. The sight of Mark's clinking purse put Keren in a good humour again, and they set off brightly enough on the next lap with her arm linked in his. Only another eight or nine miles to go and they would be there well before noon. She was quite excited now, for novelty always appealed to her; and though she had never in her darkest dreams thought of marrying a miner there was something romantic in the idea of running away and in going to church and making solemn vows and going back with him to a house specially built for her, for them. It was like one of the plays she acted in.

After a time came the discomfort of sore heels, and she went lame. They rested again and she bathed her feet in a stream. They went on, but not very far, and at length he picked her up and began to carry her.

She enjoyed this for a time, it was so much easier than walking and she liked to have his great arms about her and to feel his lungs breathing in the air. People stared, but she did not mind this until they came to a hamlet and walked down the winding muddy lane between the cottages, followed by a trickle of half-naked jeering urchins. She was indignant and wanted him to lay about him, but he walked stolidly on without a glimmer of a change of expression.

After that he carried her in the open country and set her down when a cluster of cottages came in sight. So they made progress but it was slow, and the sun, peering through a rift of cloud, was high as they reached the gates of Mingoose.

A mile and a half to Mellin; then two miles to Sawle Church. If they were not there before noon the wedding would have to wait until tomorrow.

He hastened his steps and at last set her down on the Marasanvose track, with Mellin just over the next rise. They had no time to go and see his cottage. She washed her face in a little pool and he did the same. Then she combed her hair with a property comb she had 'borrowed,' and they limped down into Mellin.

Little Maggie Martin saw them first and went screaming in to her mother that they were here at last. When they reached the first cottage everyone had turned out to meet them. Most of the able-bodied were asleep or at work; but the very old and the very young and one or two of the women did their best to make it a hearty welcome. There was no time to waste in talk, and Mark Daniel and his bride-to-be set off at once for Sawle. But now they were the head of a comet with a tenuous tail, made up of Grannie Daniel and Aunt Betsy Triggs and Mrs Zacky and Sue Vigus and a sputter of excited toddlers.