Legend of the Seventh Virgin (4 page)

We could hear the shots all through the day. It meant that there was a house party at the Abbas; we had seen the carriages arriving and we knew what it was, because it happened at this time every year. They were shooting pheasants in the woods.

Joe was up on the talfat with a dog which he had found a week before when it was starving. It was just beginning to be strong enough to run about; but it never left Joe’s side. He shared his food with it and it had kept him happy since he had found it. But he was restless now. I remembered how he had been the year before and I knew that he was thinking of the poor frightened birds fluttering up before falling dead on the ground.

He had banged his fist on the table when he had talked of it and said: “It’s the wounded ones I be thinking of. If they’m dead, there’s nothing ’ee can do, but it’s the wounded ones. They don’t always find ’em and …”

I said: “Joe, you’ve got to be sensible. Don’t do no good worrying about what can’t be helped.”

He agreed; but he didn’t go out; he just stayed on the talfat with his dog whom he called Squab because he found it the day the pigeon whose leg he had mended, flew away and it took the place of the bird.

He worried me because he looked so angry and I was beginning to recognize in Joe something of myself. Therefore I was never sure what he would do. I’d told him often that he was lucky to be able to roam around looking for sick animals; most boys of his age were working in the Fedder mine. People couldn’t think why he wasn’t sent to work there; but I knew Granny shared my ambitions for him — for us both — and while there was enough for us to eat we had our freedom. It was her way of showing them that there was something special about us.

Granny knew I was worried, so she said I was to go into the woods with her and gather herbs.

I was glad to get away from the cottage.

Granny said: “You mustn’t fret yourself, girl. It’s his way and he’ll always grieve when animals suffer.”

“Granny, I wish … I wish he could be a doctor and look after people. Would it cost a lot of money to make him a doctor?”

“Do you think it’s what he’d want, m’dear?”

“He wants to cure everything. Why not people? He’d get money for it and people would respect him.”

“Perhaps he don’t care what people think like you do, Kerensa.”

“He’s
got
to care!” I said.

“He will, if it’s meant.”

“You said nothing was meant. You said people make their own future.”

“Each makes his own, lovey. ’Tis for him to make what he will, same as ’tis for you to.”

“He lies there on the talfat most of the day … with his animals.”

“Leave him be, lovey,” said Granny. “He’ll make his own life the way he wants.”

But I wasn’t going to leave him be! I was going to make him understand how he had to break out of this life into which he had been born. We were too good for it — all of us. Granny, Joe, and me. I wondered why Granny hadn’t seen it, how she could be content to live her life as she had.

Gathering herbs always soothed me. Granny would explain where we had to go to find what we wanted; then she would tell me about the healing properties of each one. But on that day, as we picked, every now and then I would hear the distant sounds of the guns.

When we were tired, she said we should sit down under the trees and I persuaded her to talk of the past.

When Granny talked she seemed to put a spell on me, so that I felt I was there where it was all happening; I even felt that I was Granny herself, being wooed by Pedro Bee, the young miner who was different from all the others. He used to sing lovely songs to her which she didn’t understand because they were in Spanish.

“But ’tain’t always necessary to hear words to know,” she told me. “Oh, he were not much liked in these parts, being a foreigner and all. There wasn’t enough work for Cornish-men some of them did say — let alone foreigners coming to take the manshuns out of their mouths. But my Pedro, he laughed at ’un. He did say that once he’d seen me that was enough. He was going to stay, for where I be that was where he belonged to be.”

“Granny, you loved him, truly loved him.”

“He was the man for me and I wanted no other — nor ever have.”

“So you never had another lover?”

Granny’s face was set in an expression I had never seen there before. She had turned her head slightly in the direction of the Abbas and seemed as though she were actually listening for the guns.

“Your grandfather was not a mild man,” she said. “He’d have killed the one who wronged him as lief as look at ’un. That were the man ’e were.”

“Did he ever kill anyone, Granny?”

“No, but he might have … he would have … if he’d known.”

“Known what, Granny?”

She didn’t answer, but her face was like a mask that she’d put on so that no one should see what was beneath.

I lay against her, looking up at the trees. The firs would stay green all through the winter but the leaves on the others were already russet brown. The cold weather would soon be with us.

Granny said after a long pause: “But it was so long ago.”

“That you had another lover?”

“He weren’t no lover, I’ll tell ’ee. Perhaps I should tell ’ee — for a warning. ’Tis well to know the way the world wags for others, for maybe it’ll wag that way for you. This other one were Justin St. Larnston … not this Sir Justin. His father.”

I sat bolt upright, my eyes wide.

“You, Granny, and Sir Justin St. Larnston!”

“This one’s father. There wasn’t much difference in them. He was a wicked one.”

“Then why …”

“For Pedro’s sake.”

“But …”

“’Tis like you to come to a judgment afore you’ve heard the facts, child. Now I’m started, I must go and tell you all. He saw me; he fancied me; I was a St. Larnston girl, and I was bespoke. He must have made inquiries and found I was to marry Pedro. I remember how he cornered me. There’s a little walled garden close to the house.”

I nodded.

“I were silly. Went to see one of the maids that was in the kitchens. He caught me in that garden, and that was when he fancied me. Promised a job for Pedro that’d be safer and better paid than working in the mine — if I’d be sensible. Pedro never knew. And I stood out against him. I loved Pedro; I was going to marry Pedro; and there weren’t going to be nobody for me but Pedro.”

“And then … ?”

“Things started going wrong for Pedro. The St. Larnston mine was being worked then, and we was in his power. I thought he’d forget me. But he didn’t. The more I stood out, the more he wanted me. Pedro never knew. That was the miracle. So one night … before we was married I went along to him, for I said that if it could be secret and he’d let Pedro alone … it would be better than the way it were.”

“Granny!”

“It shocks you, lovey. I’m glad. But I’m going to make you see I had to do it. I’ve thought of it since and I know I was right. It was like what I told you … making your own future. Mine was with Pedro. I wanted us to be together always in the cottage and our children round us … boys looking like Pedro, girls like me. And I thought what’s once if it’ll buy that future for us? And I was right, for it would have been the end of Pedro. You don’t know what he were like, that long-ago Sir Justin. He didn’t have no feelings for the likes of we. We were like the pheasants they be shooting now … bred up for his sport. He’d have killed Pedro in time; he’d have put him on the dangerous work. I had to make him leave us alone because I could see that this were like a sport to him. So I went to him first.”

“I hate the St. Larnstons,” I said.

“Times change, Kerensa, and people change with them. Times is cruel hard but not quite so cruel hard as they were when I was your age. And when your children come, then times’ll be a little easier for them. It’s the way of things.”

“Granny, what happened then?”

“It weren’t the end. Once weren’t enough. He liked me too well. This black hair of mine that Pedro loved so much … he liked it, too. There was a blight on my first year of marriage, Kerensa. It should have been so fine and grand, but I had to go to him, you see … and if Pedro had known, he would have killed him — for passion ran high in his dear heart.”

“You were frightened, Granny.”

She frowned as though trying to remember. “It were a sort of wild gamble. And it went on for nigh on a year, when I found I was to have a child … and I didn’t know whose. Kerensa, I wouldn’t have his child, I wouldn’t. I saw it all through the years … looking like him … and deceiving Pedro. It would be like a stain that would never be washed out. I couldn’t do it. So … I didn’t have the child, Kerensa. I was very ill. I came near to dying, but I didn’t have the child; and that were the end as far as he were concerned. He forgot me then. I tried to make up to Pedro. He said I was the gentlest woman in the world with him, though I could be fierce enough with everyone else. It pleased him, Kerensa. It made him happy. And sometimes I think the reason I was so gentle with him and did all I could to please him, was because I’d wronged him; and that seemed strange to me. Like good out of evil. That made me understand a lot about life; that was the beginning of my being able to help others. So, Kerensa, you should never regret any experience, good or evil; for there’s some good in what’s bad just as there be bad in good … sure as I sit here in the woods beside you. Two years later, your mother was born — our daughter, Pedro’s and mine; and her birth nearly killed me and I couldn’t have no more. It was all along of what had happened before, I’m thinking. Oh, but it were a good life. The years pass and the evil is forgotten and many a time I’ve looked into the past and I’ve said to myself you couldn’t have done different. It was the only way.”

“But why should
they
be able to spoil
our
lives!” I demanded passionately.

“There’s strong and weak in the world; and if you’re born weak you must find strength. It’ll come to you if you look.”

“
I
shall find strength, Granny.”

“Yes, girl, you will, if you want. It’s for you to say.”

“Oh, Granny, how I hate the St. Larnstons!” I repeated.

“Nay, he is dead and gone long since. Don’t hate the children for the parents’ sins. As lief blame yourself for what I did. Ah, but it was a happy life. And there came the day of sorrow. Pedro had gone off for his first shift of the day. I knew they’d be blasting down in the mine and he were one of the trammers who’d go in when the fuses had been blown and load the ore into trucks. I don’t know what happened down there — no one can ever truly know, but all that day I waited at the top of the shaft for them to bring him out. Twelve long hours I waited, and when they brought him — he weren’t my gay and loving Pedro no more. He were alive though … for a few minutes — just time to say goodbye afore he went. ‘Bless you,’ he did say to me. ‘Thank you for my life.’ And what could he have said better than that? I tell myself even if there hadn’t been a Sir Justin, even if I’d given him healthy sons, he couldn’t have said better than that.”

She stood up abruptly, and we went into the cottage.

Joe had gone out with Squab, and she took me into the storehouse. There was an old wooden box there which was always kept locked and she opened this and showed me what was inside. There were two Spanish combs and mantillas. She put one of the combs in her hair and covered her hair with the mantilla.

“There,” she said, “that was how he liked me to look. He said when he made his fortune he would take me to Spain, and I’d sit on a balcony and fan myself while the world went by.”

“You look lovely, Granny.”

“One of these is for you when you’re older,” she said. “And when I die, they are both for you.”

Then she put the second comb and mantilla on my head and as we stood side by side it was surprising how much alike we were.

I was glad that she had confided in me something which I knew she had told to no other living person.

I shall never forget that moment when we stood side by side in our combs and mantillas, incongruous among the pans and the herbs. And outside the sound of the guns.

I awoke to moonlight, although not much of it came into our cottage. There was a silence about me which was unusual. I sat up on the talfat and wondered what was wrong. No sound of anything. Not Joe’s breathing nor Granny’s. I remembered that Granny had gone out to help at a childbirth. She often did and then we never knew when she would be coming home, so it was not surprising that she was absent. But where was Joe?

“Joe!” I said. “Joe, where are you?”

I peered to his end of the talfat. He wasn’t there.

“Squab!” I called. There was no answer.

I descended the ladder; it did not take more than a second or two to explore the cottage. I went through to the storehouse but Joe wasn’t there either and I suddenly thought of the last time I had been in here when Granny had dressed my hair and decked me out in Spanish comb and mantilla; I remembered the sound of the guns.

Was it possible that Joe had been such a fool as to go into the woods to look for wounded birds? Was he mad? If he went into the woods he would be trespassing, and if he were caught … This was the time of year when trespassing was considered doubly criminal.