Legend of the Seventh Virgin (3 page)

I had been happier since Joe and I had come to Granny than I was before.

But the best thing of all was this bond between us; and I felt it now as I sat beside her at the cottage door.

“They mocked me,” I said. “The St. Larnstons and Kim. Mellyora didn’t though. She was sorry for me.”

Granny said, “If you could make a wish now, what would it be?”

I pulled at the grass and didn’t speak, for my yearnings were something I hadn’t put into words, not even to her.

She answered for me. “You’d be a lady, Kerensa. Riding in your carriage. You’d be dressed in silks and satins and you’d have a gown of bright, rich green and there would be silver buckles on your shoes.”

“I’d read and write,” I added. I turned to her eagerly: “Granny, will it come true?”

She didn’t answer me and I was sad, asking myself why, if she could tell others the future she couldn’t tell me. I gazed up at her pleadingly, but she didn’t seem to see me. The sun glinted on her smooth blue-black hair which was braided about her head. That hair should have been on Lady St. Larnston. It gave Granny a proud look. Her dark eyes were alert although she hadn’t kept those as young as her hair, there were lines about them.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Of the day you came. Remember?”

I laid my head against her thigh. I was remembering.

Our first years — Joe’s and mine — were spent by the sea. Our father had a little cottage on the quay which was rather like this one where we lived with Granny, except that ours had the big cellar underneath where we stored and salted the pilchards after a heavy catch. When I think of that cottage I think first of the smell of fish — the good smell which meant that the cellar was well stocked and we could be sure of enough to eat for a few weeks.

I had always looked after Joe because our mother had died when he was four and I was six and she told me always to look after my little brother. Sometimes when our father was out in the boat and the gales blew, we used to think our cottage would be swept into the sea; then I would cuddle Joe and sing to him to stop him being frightened. I used to pretend I wasn’t frightened and found that was a good way not to be. Continually pretending helped me a good deal, so there wasn’t much I was afraid of.

The best times were when the sea was calm and at harvest time when the shoals of pilchards came to our coast. The huers who were on watch all along the coast would sight the fish and give the warning. I remember how excited everyone was when the cry of “Hevva” went up, for “hevva” means in Cornish “a school of fish.” Then the boats would go out and the catch would come in; and our cellars would be full. In the church there would be pilchards among the sheaves of wheat and the fruit and vegetables, to show God that the fishermen were as grateful as the farmers.

Joe and I would work together in the cellar putting one layer of salt between each layer of fish until I thought my hands would never be warm again or free from the smell of pilchards.

But those were the good times, and there came that winter when there was no more fish in our cellars and the gales were worse than they had been for eighty years. Joe and I with the other children used to go down to the beaches at night to twitch the sand eels out of the sand with our small iron crooks; we would bring them home and cook them. We brought back limpets too, and caught snails with which we made a sort of stew. We picked nettles and boiled them. I can remember what hunger was like in those times.

We used to dream we heard the welcome cry of “Hevva Hevva,” which was a wonderful dream but made us more despairing than ever when we woke up.

I saw desperation in my father’s eyes. I saw him looking at Joe and me; it was as though he came to a decision.

He said to me: “Your mother used to talk to you a lot about your Granny.”

I nodded. I had always loved — and never forgotten — the stories of Granny Bee who lived in a place called St. Larnston.

“I reckon she’d like to have a look at ’ee — you and little Joe.”

I did not realize the significance of those words until he took out the boat. He, having lived his life on the sea, was well aware of what was threatening. I remember his coming into the cottage and shouting to me. “They’m back!” he said. “It’ll be pilchards for breakfast. Take care of Joe till I come back.” I watched him go. I saw the others on the beach; they were talking to him and I knew what they were saying, but he didn’t listen.

I hate the southwest wind. Whenever it blows I hear it as it blew that night. I put Joe to bed but I didn’t go myself. I just sat up, saying “Pilchards for breakfast,” and listening to the wind.

He never came back, and we were alone. I didn’t know what to do but I still had to pretend for Joe’s sake. Whenever I tried to think of what I could do, I kept hearing my mother’s voice telling me to look after my brother; and then my father’s saying: “Take care of Joe till I come back.”

Neighbors helped us for a while, but those were bad times, and there was talk of putting us into the workhouse. Then I remember what my father had said about our Granny and I told Joe we were going to find her. So Joe and I set out for St. Larnston, and, in time and after some hardship, we came to Granny Bee.

Another thing I shall never forget was the first night in Granny Bee’s cottage. Joe was wrapped in a blanket and given hot milk to drink; and Granny Bee made me lie down while she bathed my feet and put ointment on the sore places. Afterwards I believed that my wounds were miraculously healed by the morning, but that couldn’t have been true. The feeling of deep satisfaction and content comes back to me now. I felt I had come home and that Granny Bee was dearer to me than anyone I had ever known. I loved Joe, of course, but never in my life had I known anyone so wonderful as Granny Bee. I remember lying on the bed while she took down her marvelous black hair and combed it and rubbed it — for even the unexpected arrival of two grandchildren could not interfere with that ritual.

Granny Bee healed me, fed me, clothed me — and she gave me my dignity and my pride. The girl I was at the time when I stood in the hollow wall was not the same one who had come exhausted to her door.

She knew this, because she knew everything.

We adjusted ourselves to the new life quickly, as children do. Our home was now in a mining community instead of a fishing one; for although the St. Larnston mine was closed, the Fedder mine provided work for many of the St. Larnston people who walked the two miles or so each day to and from their work. I discovered that miners were as superstitious as the fishermen had been, for each calling was dangerous enough for those who followed it to wish to please the gods of chance.

Granny Bee would sit for hours telling me stories of the mines. My grandfather had been a miner. She told me how a didjan had to be left to placate the evil spirits, and that meant a good part of a hungry man’s lunch; she spoke angrily of the system of paying tribute instead of wages which meant that if a man had a bad day and his output was small, his pay was correspondingly so; she was equally indignant about those mines which had their own tommy shops at which a miner must buy all his goods, sometimes at high prices. When I listened to Granny I could imagine myself descending the mine shaft; I could see the men in their red-stained ragged clothes and their tin helmets to which a candle was stuck with sticky clay; I was conscious of dropping down to darkness in the cage; I could feel the hot air and the tremor of the rock as the men worked; I could feel the terror of suddenly coming face to face with a spirit, who had had no didjan, or a black dog and white hare whose appearance meant imminent danger in the mine.

I said to her now: “I’m remembering.”

“What brought you to me?” she asked.

“Chance?”

She shook her head. “It was a long way for little ones to come, but you didn’t doubt you’d find your Granny, did you? You knew if you went on walking far enough you’d come to her, didn’t ’ee now?”

I nodded.

She was smiling as though she had answered my question.

“I’m thirsty, lovey,” she said. “Go get me a thimbleful of my sloe gin.”

I went into the cottage. There was only one room in Granny Bee’s cottage, although a storehouse had been built on and it was in this that she brewed her concoctions and often received her clients. The room was our bedroom, and living room. There was a story about it; it had been built by Pedro Balencio, Granny Bee’s husband, who was called Pedro Bee because the Cornish people couldn’t pronounce his name and weren’t going to try. Granny told me how it had been put up in a night to fit the custom which was that if anyone could build a cottage in a night they could claim the ground on which it was built. So Pedro Bee had found his ground — a clearing in the copse — had hidden in the trees the thatch and poles, together with the clay which would make the cob walls; and one moonlit night, with his friends to help him, had built the cottage. All he had to do that first night was make the four walls and the roof; gradually he would put in the window, the door, and the chimney; but Pedro Bee had built what he could call a cottage in a night and satisfied the old custom.

Pedro had come from Spain. Perhaps he had heard that according to legend the Cornish had a streak of the Spaniard in them because so many Spanish sailors had raided the coast and ravished the women, or having been wrecked on the rocks had been befriended and settled down. It’s true that although so many have hair the color of Mellyora Martin’s, there are as many again with the coal-black hair and flashing dark eyes — and the quick temper to go with them, which is different from the easy-going nature that seems to suit our sleepy climate.

Pedro loved Granny who was named Kerensa — as I was; he loved her black hair and eyes which reminded him of Spain; and they married and lived in the cottage which he had made in a night and they had one daughter who was my mother.

Into that cottage I went to get the sloe gin. I had to pass through it to reach the storehouse where her brews were kept.

Although we had only one room we also had the talfat which was a wide shelf about halfway up the wall and which protruded over the room. It served as a bedroom — mine and Joe’s; and we reached it by means of the ladder which was kept in the corner of the room.

Joe was up there now.

“What are you doing?” I called.

He didn’t answer me the first time and when I repeated the question he held up a pigeon.

“He broke his leg,” he told me. “But twill mend in a day or so.”

The pigeon remained still in his hands and I saw that he had constructed a sort of splint to which he had bound the leg. What surprised me so much about Joe was not that he could do these things for birds and animals, but that they remained passive while he did them. I had seen a wild cat come to him and rub her body against his leg, even before she knew he was going to feed her. He never ate all his meals but kept some back to carry about him, for he was certain to find some creature who needed it more than he did. He spent all his time in the woods. I had come upon him lying on his stomach watching insects in the grass. Besides his long, slender fingers that were amazingly clever at mending the broken limbs of birds and animals, he had an extra sense where animals were concerned. He would cure their sickness with Granny’s herbs and if any of his charges needed something he would help himself from her store as though the needs of animals were more important than anything else.

His gift for curing was a part of my dream. I saw him in a fine house like Dr. Hilliard’s, for doctors in St. Larnston were respected; and if people thought more highly of Granny Bee’s remedies, they wouldn’t bob a curtsy or pull a forelock for her; in spite of her wisdom she lived in a one-roomed cottage, whereas Dr. Hilliard was gentry. I was determined to raise Joe up with me; and I wanted the rank of doctor for him almost as passionately as I wanted that of a lady for myself.

“And when it’s mended?” I asked.

“Well then he’ll fly away and feed himself.”

“And what’ll you get for your pains?”

He didn’t take any notice. He was murmuring to his pigeon. If he had heard me he would have wrinkled his brow, wondering what he should get beyond the joy of having made a maimed creature whole.

The storehouse had always excited me, because I had never seen anything like it before. There were benches on each side and these were laden with pots and bottles; there was a beam across the ceiling and attached to this were different kinds of herbs which had been hung up to dry. I stood still for a second or so sniffing that odor which I had never smelt anywhere else. There was a fireplace and a huge blackened cauldron; and beneath the benches were jars of Granny’s brews. I knew the one containing sloe gin and I poured some into a glass and carried it back through the cottage and out to her.

I sat down beside her while she sipped.

“Granny,” I said, “tell me if I’ll ever get what I want.”

She turned to me, smiling. “Why, lovey,” she said, “you talk like one of these girls who come to me to ask me if their lovers will be true. I don’t expect it of ’ee, Kerensa.”

“But I want to know.”

“Then listen to me. The answer’s simple. Clever ones don’t want the future told. They
make
it.”