Du Maurier, Daphne (15 page)

One thing was certain: there would be little gaiety at Jamaica Inn.

Mary had walked for an hour or more before she stopped short in her tracks, her further progress barred by a stream that divided and ran in opposite directions. The stream lay in a valley between the hills and was encircled by marshes. The country was not unknown to her, and, looking on beyond the smooth green face of the tor ahead, she saw the great split hand of Kilmar pointing his fingers to the sky. She was gazing at Trewartha Marsh once more, where she had wandered that first Saturday, but this time her face was turned to the southeast, and the hills looked different in the brave sunshine. The brook burbled merrily over the stones, and there was a fording gate across the shallow water. The marsh stretched away to the left of her. The soft wind blew the waving strands of grass, that shivered in company, and sighed, and rustled; and planted amidst the pale inviting green were tufts of coarse brown-tipped grass with yellow stocky strands.

These were the treacherous bog islands, suggesting solidity by their breadth, but their weight was of thistledown, and a man’s foot planted upon them sank immediately, and the little patches of slate-coloured water that rippled here and there would churn into froth and turn black.

Mary turned her back on the marsh and forded the gate over the stream. She kept to the high ground, with the stream beneath her, and followed its course along the winding valley between the hills. There were few clouds today to cast their shadows, and the moors rolled away beyond her, sand coloured under the sun. A solitary curlew stood pensively beside the stream, watching his reflection in the water; and then his long beak darted with incredible swiftness into the reeds, stabbing at the soft mud, and, turning his head, he tucked his legs under him and rose into the air, calling his plaintive note and streaking for the south.

Something had disturbed him, and in a few minutes Mary saw what it was. A handful of ponies had clattered down the hill beyond and splashed into the stream to drink. They clod-hopped noisily amongst the stones, pushing into one another, their tails whisking in the wind. They must have come through a gate on the left, a little way ahead, that stood wide open, propped by a jagged stone, and led to a rough farm track heavy with mud.

Mary leant against the gate and watched the ponies, and out of the tail of her eye she saw a man coming down the track, carrying a bucket in either hand. She was about to move and continue her walk round the bend of the hill when he waved a bucket in the air and shouted to her.

It was Jem Merlyn. There was no time to escape, and she stood where she was until he came to her. He wore a grimy shirt that had never seen a washtub, and a pair of dirty brown breeches, covered with horsehair and filth from an outhouse. He had neither hat nor coat, and there was a rough stubble of beard on his jaw. He laughed at her, showing his teeth, looking for all the world like his brother must have done twenty years ago.

“So you’ve found your way to me, have you?” he said. “I didn’t expect you so soon or I’d have baked bread in your honour. I haven’t washed for three days, and I’ve been living on potatoes. Here, take hold of this bucket.”

He thrust one of the buckets in her hand before she had time to protest, and was down to the water after the ponies. “Come out of it!” he shouted. “Get back will you, fouling my drinking water! Go on, you big black devil.”

He hit the largest of the ponies on his hindquarters with the end of the bucket, and they stampeded up the hill out of the water, kicking their heels in the air. “My fault for not shutting the gate,” he called to Mary. “Bring down that other bucket; the water’s clear enough the other side of the brook.”

She took it with her to the stream, and he filled them both, grinning at her over his shoulder. “What would you have done if you hadn’t found me at home?” he said, wiping his face on his sleeve. Mary could not help smiling.

“I didn’t even know you lived here,” she said, “and I certainly never walked this way with the intention of finding you. I’d have turned left if I’d known.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You started out with the hope of sighting me, and it’s no use pretending any different. Well, you’ve come in good time to cook my dinner. There’s a piece of mutton in the kitchen.”

He led the way up the mud track, and, rounding the corner, they came to a small grey cottage built on the side of the hill. There were some rough outbuildings at the back, and a strip of land for potatoes. A thin stream of smoke rose from the squat chimney. “The fire’s on, and it won’t take you long to boil that scrap of mutton. I suppose you can cook?” he said.

Mary looked him up and down. “Do you always make use of folk this way?” she said.

“I don’t often have the chance,” he told her. “But you may as well stop while you’re here. I’ve done all my own cooking since my mother died, and there’s not been a woman in the cottage since. Come in, won’t you?”

She followed him in, bending her head as he did under the low door.

The room was small and square, half the size of the kitchen at Jamaica, with a great open fireplace in the corner. The floor was filthy and littered with rubbish; potato scrapings, cabbage stalks, and crumbs of bread. There were odds and ends scattered all over the room, and ashes from the turf fire covered everything. Mary looked about her in dismay.

“Don’t you ever do any cleaning?” she asked him. “You’ve got this kitchen like a pigsty. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Leave me that bucket of water and find me a broom. I’ll not eat my dinner in a place like this.”

She set to work at once, all her instincts of cleanliness and order aroused by the dirt and squalour. In half an hour she had the kitchen scrubbed clean as a pin, the stone floor wet and shining, and all the rubbish cleared away. She had found crockery in the cupboard, and a strip of tablecloth, with which she proceeded to lay the table, and meanwhile the mutton boiled in the saucepan on the fire, surrounded by potato and turnip.

The smell was good, and Jem came in at the door, sniffing the air like a hungry dog. “I shall have to keep a woman,” he said. “I can see that. Will you leave your aunt and come and look after me?”

“You’d have to pay me too much,” said Mary. “You’d never have money enough for what I’d ask.”

“Women are always mean,” he said, sitting down at the table. “What they do with their money I don’t know, for they never spend it. My mother was just the same. She used to keep hers hidden in an old stocking and I never as much as saw the colour of it. Make haste with the dinner; I’m as empty as a worm.”

“You’re impatient, aren’t you?” said Mary. “Not a word of thanks to me that’s cooked it. Take your hands away—the plate’s hot.”

She put the steaming mutton down in front of him, and he smacked his lips. “They taught you something where you came from, anyway,” he said. “I always say there’s two things women ought to do by instinct, and cooking’s one of ‘em. Get me a jug of water, will you? You’ll find the pitcher outside.”

But Mary had filled a cup for him already, and she passed it to him in silence.

“We were all born here,” said Jem, jerking his head to the ceiling, “up in the room overhead. But Joss and Matt were grown men when I was still a little lad, clinging to Mother’s skirt. We never saw much of my father, but when he was home we knew it all right. I remember him throwing a knife at Mother once—it cut her above her eye, and the blood ran down her face. I was scared and ran and hid in that corner by the fire. Mother said nothing; she just bathed her eye in some water, and then she gave my father his supper. She was a brave woman, I’ll say that for her, though she spoke little and she never gave us much to eat. She made a bit of a pet of me when I was small, on account of being the youngest, I suppose, and my brothers used to beat me when she wasn’t looking. Not that they were as thick as you’d think—we were never much of a loving family—and I’ve seen Joss thrash Matt until he couldn’t stand. Matt was a funny devil; he was quiet, more like my mother. He was drowned down in the marsh yonder. You could shout there until your lungs burst, no one would hear you except a bird or two and a stray pony. I’ve been nearly caught there myself in my time.”

“How long has your mother been dead?” said Mary.

“Seven years this Christmas,” he answered, helping himself to more boiled mutton. “What with my father hanged, and Matt drowned, and Joss gone off to America, and me growing up as wild as a hawk, she turned religious and used to pray here by the hour, calling on the Lord. I couldn’t abide that, and I cleared off out of it. I shipped on a Padstow schooner for a time, but the sea didn’t suit my stomach, and I came back home. I found Mother gone as thin as a skelton. ‘You ought to eat more,’ I told her, but she wouldn’t listen to me, so I went off again, and stayed in Plymouth for a while, picking up a shilling or two in my own way. I came back here to have my Christmas dinner, and I found the place deserted and the door locked up. I was mad. I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. I went back to North Hill, and they told me my mother had died. She’d been buried three weeks. I might just as well have stayed in Plymouth for all the dinner I got that Christmas. There’s a piece of cheese in the cupboard behind you. Will you eat the half of it? There’s maggots in it, but they won’t hurt you.”

Mary shook her head, and she let him get up and reach for it himself.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “You look like a sick cow. Has the mutton turned sour on you already?”

Mary watched him return to his seat and spread the hunk of dry cheese onto a scrap of stale bread. “It will be a good thing when there’s not a Merlyn left in Cornwall,” she said. “It’s better to have disease in a country than a family like yours. You and your brother were born twisted and evil. Do you never think of what your mother must have suffered?”

Jem looked at her in surprise, the bread and cheese halfway to his mouth.

“Mother was all right,” he said. “She never complained. She was used to us. Why, she married my father at sixteen; she never had time to suffer. Joss was born the year after, and then Matt. Her time was taken up in rearing them, and by the time they were out of her hands she had to start all over again with me. I was an afterthought, I was. Father got drunk at Launceston fair, after selling three cows that didn’t belong to him. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you now. Pass that jug.”

Mary had finished. She got up and began to clear away the plates in silence.

“How’s the landlord of Jamaica Inn?” said Jem, tilting back on his chair and watching her dip the plates in water.

“Drunk, like his father before him,” said Mary shortly.

“That’ll be the ruin of Joss,” said his brother seriously. “He soaks himself insensible and lies like a log for days. One day he’ll kill himself with it. The damned fool! How long has it lasted this time?”

“Five days.”

“Oh, that’s nothing to Joss. He’d lay there for a week if you let him. Then he’ll come to, staggering on his feet like a newborn calf, with a mouth as black as Trewartha Marsh. When he’s rid himself of his surplus liquid, and the rest of the drink has soaked into him—that’s when you want to watch him; he’s dangerous then. You look out for yourself.”

“He’ll not touch me; I’ll take good care of that,” said Mary. “He’s got other things to worry him. There’s plenty to keep him busy.”

“Don’t be mysterious, nodding to yourself with your mouth pursed up. Has anything been happening at Jamaica?”

“It depends how you look at it,” said Mary, watching him over the plate she was wiping. “We had Mr. Bassat from North Hill last week.”

Jem brought his chair to the ground with a crash. “The devil you did,” he said. “And what had the squire to say to you?”

“Uncle Joss was from home,” said Mary, “and Mr. Bassat insisted on coming into the inn and going through the rooms. He broke down the door at the end of the passage, he and his servant between them, but the room was empty. He seemed disappointed, and very surprised, and he rode away in a fit of temper. He asked after you, as it happened, and I told him I’d never set eyes on you.”

Jem whistled tunelessly, his expression blank as Mary told her tale, but when she came to the end of her sentence, and the mention of his name, his eyes narrowed, and then he laughed. “Why did you lie to him?” he asked.

“It seemed less trouble at the time,” said Mary. “If I’d thought longer, no doubt I’d have told him the truth. You’ve got nothing to hide, have you?”

“Nothing much, except that black pony you saw by the brook belongs to him,” said Jem carelessly. “He was dapple-grey last week, and worth a small fortune to the squire, who bred him himself. I’ll make a few pounds with him at Launceston if I’m lucky. Come down and have a look at him.”

They went out into the sun, Mary wiping her hands on her apron, and she stood for a few moments at the door of the cottage while Jem went off to the horses. The cottage was built on the slope of the hill above the Withy Brook, whose course wound away in the valley and was lost in the further hills. Behind the house stretched a wide and level plain, rising to great tors on either hand, and this grassland—like a grazing place for cattle—with no boundary as far as the eye could reach except the craggy menace of Kilmar, must be the strip of country known as Twelve Men’s Moor.

Mary pictured Joss Merlyn running out of the doorway here as a child, his mat of hair falling over his eyes in a fringe, with the gaunt, lonely figure of his mother standing behind him, her arms folded, watching him with a question in her eyes. A world of sorrow and silence, anger and bitterness too, must have passed beneath the roof of this small cottage.

There was a shout and a clatter of hoofs, and Jem rode up to her round the corner of the house, astride the black pony. “This is the fellow I wanted you to have,” he said, “but you’re so close with your money. He’d carry you well, too; the squire bred him for his wife. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

Mary shook her head and laughed. “You’d have me tie him up in the stable at Jamaica, I suppose,” she said, “and when Mr. Bassat calls again he wouldn’t be likely to recognise him, would he? Thanking you for your trouble, but I’d rather not risk it all the same. I’ve lied enough for your family, Jem Merlyn, for one lifetime.” Jem pulled a long face and slid to the ground.