I realised she was shouting at me. “You’d neither right nor leave to order this to be done! Who gave you leave?”
“The mate of the Kinsale has already been here complaining,” I said sulkily. “There is commotion in Penryn. Nothing now could be moved. But there is no need: it was all gone before the alarm was raised.”
“In future, Maugan, come to me before you take decisions on yourself. My sister and I always have first pick of any cloths or jewellery that come in.”
She began to cough again, and this time could not stop. Her long pale face crimsoned with the strain, the old veins bunched at temple and at neck; she sat up and shook convulsively. As the spasm went on she became less the tall lean fierce woman I had known all my life and instead was just an animal fighting for life and breath. Her eyes ran, her bottom lip Stuck out quivering, her long broken teeth were parted in a snarl.
I patted her on the back, I brought water for her to sip. It seemed that no human frame, especially an old one, could endure the strain, and I thought she would die.
But at length the spasm began to subside, and finally nothing was left but the old tired wheezing of the lungs. She looked up at me with no more favour in her eye than before the attack began.
She said: “When I die, boy when I die, then you shall draw the shroud over me as you will. But so long as I occupy this bed, this room, this house, then direction as to the affairs of the house come from me they do not originate in your mind. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She wiped her cheeks with a square of silk. “l shall tell your father and ask him to punish you … But perhaps you do not care. You are young. Anything can be borne when you are young; nothing when you are old.”
“May I go now, ma’am?”
“Nothing when you are old, Mauganl D’you hear me?” She was shouting again.
“Yes, I do.”
“But you do not understand! You don’t listen! Why should you even try? … People talk of the consolations of age … They do not exist.” Her fingers went slowly along the sheet, creasing it into a ridge, the nails leaving a line on the linen. “They do not exist. It is not just illness, infirmity, loss of husband and old friends, loneliness, the contempt of younger generations it is not just these things.” She coughed again but this time checked it. “Age does not only take away the things one prizes, one by one; it takes away the sweet taste of life itself. Understand: the sweet taste. When you are young all sensations have savour, all the fruits are for plucking. In age one by one the fruits begin to lose relish. At first that does not matter; there are always new ones to try but quickly, oh so quickly, the new ones pall and fade and turn pulpy like the others. The flowers droop as soon as picked. Are you listening? “
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re listening but you’re only waiting to go; you think, here is an old woman, in her grey hairs, drooling nonsense that does not concern me … But it Will. Mark me, if you live long enough it will. Pray each night, boy, to die at forty. It is better to lose the world while it is worth losing. That way your last thoughts can be regret.”
“And religion, grandmother? Does that not bring you consolation? “
“Do not be insolent … In a week or so your father will be home. I will tell him of your disobedience.” She narrowed her eyes moodily at the candle flame. The heavy gold brocade of the bed curtains was dark with age where they merged into the shadows of the beamed ceiling; they made a canopy over her as if she were riding in a litter or a royal chair. “It will be an important day for the Killigrews when he returns for he will bring back with him the future mistress of Arwenack.”
“Oh … I didn’t know that.”
“You don’t know everything, young man.”
“It is settled, then?”
“It will be settled.”
“Jane Fermor … When are they to be married?”
“Not yet, but soon; within the year. It’s time, and I want to see the succession.”
“I trust she will be pretty.” I got up to go.
“Pretty?” She spoke the word with distaste. “There belongs more to marriage than two pair of bare legs. She has been carefully chosen. She will bring money and influence. That is what matters.”
“Perhaps, grandmother, John will think otherwise.”
“I wonder how she will feel coming to this house. I remember how I felt as if it were yesterday. I was a widow of twentythree with a child of four. We had rid all day over rough moors, and darkness was falling. Our escort of six seemed scarcely enough … When we reached this house I thought in the dark that it was in ruin … Your great grandfather and great grandmother were at the door to meet us. I recollect how they were dressed … Yes, how they were dressed. He had a curled moustache like your father’s but was a bigger man and wore a gold chain to his knees. She had golden yellow hair and a gown of tawny velvet. After the bleakness of our journey the elegance of their living was a great comfort to behold.”
“But the house was in ruin?”
“Ah, no. In the morning I saw it was still building. This room was complete and all this wing; but the north wing was not above shoulder level. And the great hall was not finished for many years, not until your father was thirteen …”
I went to the door. “You have memories to look back on, grandmother. Why should you have wished to cut them short?”
She was a long time answering and she seemed to have forgotten me. But as I took the door latch she said:
“Perhaps that is not so … Perhaps it would be better never to have been born. For what has the effort been worth? Memories or no memories, what has it all been worth?” She lifted an unsteady hand. “A few needs met, a few ambitions gratified, a few pains suffered … Food and wine and the coarser appetites. A leap from the womb and a plunge into the grave … Then well, then it is gone and there is nothing to show, nothing worth showing, nothing to leave, nothing worth leaving, only the only the carved stone in the church, a stale Latin tag, bones mouldering, and the end of a life which need never have begun I”
I could hear her begin to talk again after I had closed the door.
We had all waited with a sense of anticipation to see Jane Fermor, this girl who had been chosen by my father for his eldest son I in particular, for except for an accident of birth the girl would have been chosen for me. Yet when she came I was out hawking and the first intimation was extra horses in the stables and strange servants in the hall.
Supper was almost ready, and Sir George Fermor came down first in company with my father. Sir George was an erect fierce man of around five and forty, with the tight mouth and bowed legs of a captain of horse. He was a man, you would think, who would regard an enemy pikeman, a wild boar or an unleapable fence with the same haughty and fearless stare. His voice was harsh and made itself heard above everything like a carpenter’s saw; his footsteps clanked as if with the echo of spurs.
Behind him in a few minutes, accompanied by Mrs Killigrew, came his fifteen-year-old only child. She wore a gown of silver lace with puff sleeves of white taffeta, and had a carcanet of seed pearls round her hair. Everything she wore was expensive but nothing she wore could disguise her thick figure, her big feet and hands, the solidity of her stride. Nor was she pretty, being very pale with little dabs of red ochre on her cheeks. Her hair was jet black and fell down either side of her face like curtains through which her ears peeped. Her eyes were blue, small, but bright and magnetic. Her skin was milky and fine. She spoke little through supper and seemed indifferent to the embarrassed boy, a month younger than herself, who sat at her side. But I saw her eyes move assessingly about the hall, taking in the livery of the servants, the~Pavia tapestry, the quality of the plate we used, the sprawling dogs like a breathing undulating rug before the fire.