The Loving Spirit (2 page)

Like other Gothic-influenced novelists, du Maurier uses the motifs of the form to conceal secrets as much as to expose them. Gothic circles around repression and may succumb to it. Du Maurier’s rhapsodic descriptions of the love between Janet and her son Joseph hint at an incestuous element:

On one level this son-lover is an animus-figure like those found in Jungian interpretations of fairytales, he who helps make a bridge for the woman into the wider world. On the level of modern psychobabble, poor Janet would be characterised as a dangerously possessive mother. Feminists might think the male principle is being over-valued and might want to deprecate a mother placing all her desires, potency and ardour in the lap of her son. But the Gothic romance can soar away from this sort of questioning, which is of course part of its charm. It is not necessarily a subversive form; it all depends on what you do with it. And to turn the question around: perhaps a forbidden love may be deftly imaged by separating the lovers into different generations and time-frames; or, perhaps, the enforced separation and ecstatic reunion of mother and son depicted here by du Maurier is simply a powerful image for the losses that afflict us all and for our longing to repair them.

 

Michèle Roberts

2003

Book One

Janet Coombe (1830-1863)

 

 

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:
I see heaven’s glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

 

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

 

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality.

E. BRONTË

1

 

 

J
anet Coombe stood on the hill above Plyn, looking down upon the harbour. Although the sun was already high in the heavens, the little town was still wrapped in an early morning mist. It clung to Plyn like a thin pale blanket, lending to the place a faint whisper of unreality as if the whole had been blessed by the touch of ghostly fingers.The tide was ebbing, the quiet waters escaped silently from the harbour and became one with the sea, unruffled and undisturbed. No straggling cloud, no hollow wind broke the calm beauty of the still white sky. For one instant a gull hovered in the air, stretching his wide wings to the sun, then cried suddenly and dived, losing itself in the mist below. It seemed to Janet that this hillside was her own world, a small planet of strange clarity and understanding; where all troublous thoughts and queer wonderings of the heart became soothed and at rest.

The white mist buried the cares and doubts of daily life, and with them all vexatious duties and the dull ways of natural folk. Here on the hilltop was no mist, no place of shadows, but the warm comfort of the noon-day sun.

There was a freedom here belonging not to Plyn, a freedom that was part of the air and the sea; like the glad tossing of the leaves in autumn, and the shy fluttering wings of a bird. In Plyn it was needful to run at another’s bidding, and from morn till night there were the cares and necessities of household work - helping here, helping there, encouraging those around you with a kindly word, and sinful it was to expect one in return. And now she was to become a woman, and step on to the threshold of a new life, so the preacher had told her. Maybe it would change her, and sorrow would come her way and joy also for that matter, but if she held an everlasting faith in God who is the Father of us all, in the end she would know peace and the sight of Heaven itself. It was best to follow these righteous words though it seemed that the road to Heaven was a hard long road, and there were many who fell by the way and perished for their sins.

The preacher spoke truth indeed, but with never a word of the lovable things that clung about the heart. God alone is worthy of great love. Here on the hill the solemn sheep slept alongside of one another in the chill nights, the mother protected her young ones from the stealthy fox who steals in the shadow of the hedge - even the tall trees drew together in the evening for comfort’s sake.

Yet none of these things know the love for God, said the preacher.

It might happen that he did not know the truth of every bird, beast, and flower, and that they too were immortal as well as human kind.

Janet knelt beside the stream, and touched a pale forgotten primrose that grew wistfully near the water’s edge.A blackbird called from the branch above her head, and flew away, scattering the white blossom on her hair. The flaming gorse bushes breathed in the sun, filling the air with a rich sweet scent, a medley of honey and fresh dew.

It was Janet Coombe’s wedding day. Even now her mother would be preparing the feast for the guests that were to come and her sisters laying her fine wedding gown upon the bed with longing awesome hands.

Soon the bells would peal over to Lanoc Church, and she and Cousin Thomas, her dear husband that was to be, would stand before the altar and be made one in the eyes of God.

Thomas’s eyes would be lowered with beseeming reverence, and he would hearken to the good words of the preacher; but Janet knew her eyes would escape to the glint of pure light that shone through the church window, and her heart would travel out across the sunbeam to the silent hills.

The wedding service would seem dim and unreal, like the town of Plyn in the morning mist, and try as she could, she would not be able to listen when she herself was elsewhere. It was the sinful soul in her that came not at the preacher’s bidding; sinful and wayward as it had always been, since the days when she had been no more than a mite of a child, way back at her mother’s knee.

For her sisters had attended school good and proper, and had learnt to sew and to read, but Janet was forever playing truant, away on the beach beyond the harbour. She would stand on the high crumbling cliffs, inside the ruin of the old Castle, and watch the brown sails of the Penlivy luggers that glittered on the far horizon.

‘Please God, make me a lad afore I’m grown,’ she would pray, and her no larger than a boot, with curls hanging round her neck. Her mother would scold her and beat her, and chide her for a great lump of a boy with heathenish ways, but it was all of no avail. Her mother might have spared the rod for the good it did her.

Like a lad she grew, tall and straight, with steady hands and fearless eyes, and a love of the sea in her blood. For all that she was a girl at heart, with her tenderness for animals and weak, helpless things, and it was this that made her have a care to her dress later, and pin a flower to her bodice, and comb her black curls off her forehead. The men would wait for her outside the gate of her father’s house, and ask her to walk up the cliff path on Sundays; they’d stand with awkward hands and silly sheep’s eyes, as if their tongues were too large for their mouths, but Janet gave them a laugh for an answer, and a toss of her head.

She would go with the lads if she could run with them, and climb the hedges, and have them admire her for her skill; but not to walk side by side with hands touching, for all the world like a pair of lovers.The time would come soon enough when she’d be wed, and have a husband and home to look after, and a bothering long skirt around her ankles, and a cap on her head, tidy and respectable.

It would be a man she’d want though, and not a great hulking boy with never a word to say for himself, and nothing better to do than to hang around in hopes of a soft look or a gentle word. So reasoned Janet when she was eighteen past, and when her sisters were all for tying ribbons in their hair, and watching the men in church over their hymn books.

But Janet scorned their ways, though she was not better than them for listening to the preacher’s words, for her thoughts travelled away across the sea, where the ships sailed into strange lands and distant countries.

Often she would wander down to the shipbuilding yard, at the bottom of Plyn hill by the harbour slip. The business was owned by her uncle, and though it was only small as yet, it was thriving steadily, and was growing larger every year. Besides, her uncle was helped by his hard-working nephew, young Thomas Coombe, Janet’s second cousin.

Cousin Thomas was serious and steady, he had been to Plymouth to study, and he had a quiet way about him that impressed his uncle, and also the lazy good-for-nothing men who worked in the yard.

Soon, maybe, the firm would tackle heavier and harder work than the building of fishing luggers.Young Thomas would become a partner; on his uncle’s death the business would be his.

He was a brave man, was Cousin Thomas, well-spoken and handsome enough, if you came to think of it. He had no time for love-making and walking up the cliff path on Sundays, but for all that he had his eye on Janet, and he thought to himself what a splendid wife she’d make, a worthy life partner for any man.

So it happened that young Thomas fell to calling at the house of an evening, and chatting to the father and mother, with his mind to Janet the while.

He pictured the house half-way up Plyn hill, ivy-covered and with a view of the harbour, and Janet waiting for him when the day’s work was done, her children at her knee.

He waited a year before speaking his mind to Janet, he waited until she had come to know him as well as one of her own family, and trusted him and respected him the same.

Soon after her nineteenth birthday he told her father and mother that he wished to make Janet his wife. They were pleased, for Thomas was making his way in Plyn, and was as sober and honest as any parent could hope.

One evening he called at the house, and asked if he could see Janet alone.

She came running down the stairs, dressed neat and tidy, her locket pinned to her breast, and her dark hair parted smoothly in the middle.

‘Why, Cousin Thomas,’ she cried, ‘it’s early you’ve come to us this evenin’, and supper not yet laid; and only findin’ me for company.’

‘Yes, Janet,’ he answered quietly, ‘an’ I’m here special for a certain purpose, an’ a question which I’m desirous to put to you.’

Janet flushed, and glanced to the window. Had not her sisters whispered something of this to her some evenings back, and she had laughed at them, heeding them not.

‘Speak your mind, Cousin Thomas,’ she said, ‘maybe I shall not find it hard nor difficult to give an answer.’

Then he took her hand in his, and drew her to the chair beside the hearth.

‘For twelve months, Janet, I’ve come here to your house regular, and watched your ways, and hearkened to your words. That which I’m preparin’ to say to you now, is not the outcome of anythin’ hasty, nor the result of wild thinkin’. It’s twelve months I’ve seen you, and come to love you for your own true heart and simpleness, an’ now the feelin’ is strong upon me to speak my mind. It’s that I’m wishful for you to be my wife, Janet, and to have you share my home and my heart; an’ I’ll work my life to bring you peace an’ sweet content, Janet.’

She suffered her hand to rest in his, and thought awhile. It seemed to her that she was scarce grown from a child to a girl, but that she must change into a woman - and forever. No more could she lift her skirts and run about the rocks, nor wander amongst the sheep on the hills. It was a home now to be tended, and a man of her own, and later maybe, and God willing, the child that came with being wed.

At this thought there was something that laid its finger on her soul, like the remembrance of a dream, or some dim forgotten thing: a ray of knowledge that is hidden from folk in their wakeful moments, and then comes to them queerly at strange times. This came to Janet now, fainter than a call; like a soft still whisper.

She turned to Thomas with a smile on her lips.

‘It’s proud I am for the honour that you’ve done me, and me not worthy and wise enough, I reckon, for the like of you, Thomas. But all th’ same it’s terrible pleasant for a girl to hear with her own ears as there’s someone who’ll love and cherish her. An’ if it’s your wish to take me, Thomas, and bear with my ways - for I’m awful wild at times - then it’s happy I’ll be to share your home and to care for you.’

‘Janet, my dear, there’s not a prouder man than me in Plyn today, for sure, nor ever will be till the day I sit you for the first time by our own fireside.’

Then he stood up and held her to him. ‘Since it’s settled we’m to be wed, an’ I’ve spoken to your parents t’other night, them being agreeable, I reckon it would be seemly enough and no harm done if I was to kiss you, Janet.’

She wondered a moment, for she had never kissed a man before, saving her own father.