“No!“
She said: “I have known for years that nearly all my friends are different circumstanced from me. It was by accident perhaps that I made such friends. My mother knew yours and she knew also the Bonythons and the Arundells. So it happened that I sometimes often~ame to be invited where my father and mother were not, because I was of a suitable age for their children, because my manners were not amiss, because I have been taught well. But all the time there was this difference which now my father’s bankruptcy or your father’s ruthless ways has pointed. I’m not of their world, Maugan, and I never shall be.”
“Do you think I am?”
“Well … I don’t suppose in your case it will make so much difference. Although you your mother is unknown, your father is the biggest man in all these parts. He’ll be able to establish you in some way; or you will be of value to him here, While he lives you cannot want, And if he dies you will remain a Killigrew, with relatives in the highest places in the land …”
As we got to the great hall Belemus came out with a jangle, for he was wearing the cap and bells of a jester.
“Ah-ha! ” he said on seeing us. “There’s more than one skirmish going on about the house this night. My, your tongue must be black, Maugan.”
“What do you mean?”
He peered at Sue and laughed and went bounding along the passage.
I said: “I’m sorry for my cousin. Becoming a jester has shaken his wits.”
She stopped and looked up at me with that sober elfin stare. Then she opened the door into the hall. At once all the light and heat and noise rushed out like a furnace flame. They were dancing a round dance, and my father and his guests were in figures of eight at one end of the floor, while the mummers and servants were at the other. Job and Carminow and Foster were gulping beer out of the barrel by the further door; my mother was talking to Parson Merther who had come to call the younger children to bed; in a corner beyond the fire” place Henry Knyvett and Lady Jael and Digby Bonython were at dice together. One of the candelabra had slipped askew and the candles were smelling rank and dripping grease: it was the game in that particular figure of eight so to manoeuvre that your partner was hit by the grease and you were not. Three dogs had slipped in through an unguarded door and were quarrelling over the bones of the swans which had been thrown on the floor.
Sue, who had released my hand when Belemus came out, took it again.
“D’you wish to join in?” I shouted.
“No, let’s stay here and watch.”
I was happy just then, feeling her fingers in mine. I was content that she was my friend again and not at all concerned that Belemus’s conclusions were wrong or to think how much happier I might have been if they had been right.
Mr Killigrew sat up all that night dicing with a succession of his guests. They one by one took themselves off to bed until at dawn he was left only with Lady Jael and Digby Bonython. He was in pocket on the night, and so was happy about it, but as a consequence few stirred until well into the afternoon of the following day, which was St John’s. At dusk John and Sinobia’~nys arrived. He was three weeks younger than I but she was just 21. They matched with the Boscawens, except that Sinobia was pretty and featherheaded while Grace Boscawen was plain and intelligent. In the evening there was another procession, headed by the Lord of Misrule and tonight he was followed by a hobby horse, who was Rose the groom, and after him came Maid Marion, our kennel man, Long Peter, the tallest man in the house, dressed in woman’s clothes. It was the night for practical jokes. Someone sawed the back legs of Penrudduck’s stool and melted the ends of two candles on to the stumps, so that when he sat down, he collapsed backwards into the fireplace. Little Odelia Killigrew was terrified of spiders, and her brothers John and Thomas captured three hairy ones out of a loft and released them on her platter just as she was about to eat. Six of the servants were served with small beer which turned out to be cow urine.
Nor were the guests exempt. Jack Arundell was given a meat pie which contained a live mouse. This ran along the table and caused upset wine cups and shrieks of laughter. Digby Bonython’s chair was smeared with wet paint. Henry Knyvett contrived to set off a firework under the table between Lady Jael and himself, but Lady Jael was too concerned for the sparks on her skirt to join in the loud laughter.
The next night, which was Holy Innocents’ night, we danced ‘Kiss in the Ring’,‘The Spanish Lady’,‘Lumps of Pudding’ and ‘Up Tails All’. Most of these were kissing dances, and I kissed Sue five times. But each time she turned her cheek and it was not as exciting as that moment in the dressing-room holding her shoulder. Meg Levant with one kiss had spoiled me for cheek kissing for ever.
My father had been shamelessly pursuing Mrs Gertrude Arundell of Trerice all the week, so that the least of us could not miss his intentions; I pitied my stepmother who had little choice but to sit through it all. Jack was boiling, and I could see that he would take his mother away as soon as ever he could. Another affray, subtler and more suspicious, was that between Digby Bonython and Lady Jael, who was far from being so correct as Mrs Arundell. I did not know until near the end of the holiday whether my great uncle Sir Henry was aware of what was going on, but in the middle of the first week in January, Belemus came to me in delight and told of a great quarrel which had taken place that morning.
The Carews and Jonathan Arundell of Tolverne and Sue rarnaby left on the last day of December. The day before they left a dozen of us went over the neck of land dividing the house from the promontory of Pendennis and climbed the hill to the castle. It was a clear bright day with a north-westerly breeze flicking a few white waves beyond the shelter of the bay.
Carminow let us in and we climbed the narrow spiral steps to the topmost turret. In later years I have seen some of the big residential castles of England, and realise that compared with them Pendennis might be more properly called a fort. We admired the guns in the ramparts, walked round the walls, chatting and laughing together. Some wanted to see the dungeons under the keep, but Sue said she had no taste for cells and she would like to climb down the rocks to the edge of the water. I said I would go with her.
It was a scramble, but when we got down we were in the sun and quite sheltered from the wind. For a while we sat there watching a barque from Amsterdam furling her sails as she came slowly into the harbour. Neither of us spoke, but as the warmth seeped into us Sue unfastened the tie of her cloak. She knew she was leaving on the morrow.
After a long silence she said: “I have a feeling it will be the last time I ever come here to Arwenack, I mean. It has been a wonderful week, Maugan, in spite of what went before.”
I said: “Write to me, will you, when you have time? I want to hear from you.”
She nodded. “But I’m not very smart with a pen.”
“I’ll come and see you. After all you’re only at the head of the river. It will be quite easy to take a boat and go up with the tide.”
But I think we both knew it wouldn’t be so easy, neither writing nor meeting, and we both knew that, even if we contrived both, it would not be the same as the week just gone. My heart felt like lead. I desperately wanted to say something important to her or to get some declaration from her before it was too late; but my tongue would not frame the sentences. What I felt was not something you could blurt out in a few words, but I had not the wit or the experience to frame them in a way that I imagined would be acceptable to her; the alternative was silence.
There is no ache like the ache of youth. I knew Arwenack would never be so empty for me again as it was going to be tomorrow.