Читать книгу The Moor is Dark Beneath the Moon - David Watmough - Страница 9

Davey looked about him over the rows of pitch-pine pews in the squat slate chapel perched on the heathered cliff top. There were five people scattered about the drafty space. For a deceased without immediate family, he surmised, it was the local custom for the coffin to remain in the funeral home until after the service when a hearse would drive it to a churchyard—in this case Pentudy’s—and the undertakers would provide professional bearers before burial. He hadn’t volunteered for the task.

The others were strangers to him. Then Hannah had no relations in Cornwall and only five—if one included Alyson’s three children—in that larger world beyond the windblown headland stubbornly confronting the uninterrupted Atlantic.

In the front row of the sea of empty pews huddled a close-sitting couple. They both looked middle-aged and each wore navy blue belted raincoats. The woman’s head was covered in a gaudy red-and-white kerchief, while her companion, at a dig from her, suddenly pulled off a Donegal tweed hat and placed it on the pew beside him. The action revealed a grizzled head of close-cropped hair. They were wearing rubber boots that evoked the incessant rain prevailing outside. There was something vaguely familiar about the two to the Canadian, and he wondered if, in spite of his conviction that only he and Alyson’s family were left, they might be relatives he’d utterly forgotten. They were both very short, even shorter than he who was only five foot six, and as he eyed them he strove to recall if there had been others in the family who, at a pinch, might have been described as dwarfs. The reflection brought no immediate results, so he turned his attention elsewhere.

Facing the miniscule congregation was their opposite in height—a tall, dank man in a dark brown corduroy suit who announced in a sepulchral voice that he was the local lay preacher on the North Cornwall Methodist Circuit. Davey guessed he might also be the local undertaker. His ashen skin certainly looked as if he’d spent most of his days burying the dead under sunless skies and in driving rain.

Behind and above the preacher’s bobbing, balding head with its few flat strands of carefully arranged hair was a sign curving over the generous pulpit space he occupied. It read COD IS LOVE. Davey took a moment or two to realize that the bar of the G had fallen off or worn away. He sniffed his satisfaction. His sense of geography evidently hadn’t let him down. He recalled that the isolated spot where the chapel was defiantly situated was only a mile or so south of the fishing village of Poltiddy, itself south of Tintagel, where any species of fish, along with the local mackerel, lobster, and crab, provided the fishermen contingent of the local inhabitants with a precarious living. COD IS LOVE seemed more germane there as a source to pray to than obeisance to some remote and distinctly unfishy deity.

The service struck the deceased’s nephew as indecently short. He was subconsciously expecting, if not a full-blooded requiem, at least something that bespoke departure. Along the lines, say, of “Farewell, Thou Christian Soul,” In his mind there were vague echoes of Edward Elgar’s stately Dream of Gerontius, a composition, based on Cardinal Newman’s poem, of which he and Ken were extremely fond. Instead the chapel was filled with the staccato squawks from a dumpy harmonium now pressed into service by a white-haired woman in mackintosh to match, who hunched over her modest instrument in that Spartan Methodist tabernacle as if she were Wanda Landowska at the harpsichord.

But there now reluctantly stirred in Davey a bundle of memories that had been quiescent, if not suppressed, since he’d first headed for North America in the company of Ken. He was remembering the pull from the distaff side of his family of that Primitive Methodist Connection that had determined his youthful attendance in Trelinney Chapel for Sunday Morning Service and Sunday School.

There now vividly returned divers recollections of the battery of onerous Sunday sorties to chapel that had been dovetailed into the equal Sabbath obligations of Anglican Mass and Evensong. As the tiny congregation bawled—with little seeming relevance to the circumstances of Great-Aunt Hannah (or, indeed, the weather)—the sprightly chorus of “Jesus, wants me for a sunbeam,” Davey’s thoughts turned to an onerous past; to those infinitely dull annual Sunday School outings to the surf (forbidden to enter) and sand (only the top part which the tide rarely washed) of Polzeath Beach instead of the church’s more exciting expeditions to more distant places such as St. Ives, Penzance, or Land’s End.

From “Sunbeams” the creaky harmonium led the congregation to the hymn “All Glory, Lord, and Honour,” after which the exhausted throats were reminded by the preacher that “Methody was born in song.” They were then asked to inform their Wesleyan God just how happy they all were to have known his saint, Hannah Bryant, who had valiantly darkened the doors of Cornish Bethels since her remote childhood. This was a detail that was news to Davey who had vaguely been under the impression that her “remote childhood” had been lived in London.

Then it was soon evident from the preacher’s florid oratory that he knew next to nothing about Mrs. Hannah Bryant, other than that she had passed the last few months in an old folks’ home called the Breakers where she’d also expired. He referred to her “valiant battle”—valiant was a favourite word with him—with cancer and, somewhat incongruously, that she was an exceptionally well-travelled woman. His balding head then turned in Davey’s direction as he obliquely added that evidences of that were there in the chapel with them that very afternoon.

The object of the reference quickly bowed his head, not through modesty but in a stubborn determination not to make eye contact with someone who was patently grasping at straws. Such determination was to prove in vain. The preacher was at Davey’s side before he could reach the pitch-pine doors. The man offered him every cliché of condolence in the book before introducing him to the rain-coated couple as “Hannah’s grandson.” The Canadian wouldn’t even have bothered to correct the preacher had not the information invoked immediate and unmitigated looks of hostility from the two dwarfs. Davey was forced to confront them whether he liked it or not. They were both even shorter than he’d first thought. With wrinkled, wind-tanned flesh and dark, furtive eyes, they might also have been brother and sister.

At the threshold to the moan of the wind and the hiss of rain the woman spoke up. “Us didn’ know as how Hannah had a grandson. Ask me husband. Never spoke of ’un, did her, Len?”

By now Davey knew that whatever else had gone, the Cornish dialect hadn’t died out in North Cornwall. “Len” confirmed it. “Oi bide there were none but a nephew and he lived a brave way away. Foreign parts, Oi reckon. By the way, we’m Len and Hilda Verran.”

Davey didn’t extend his hand.

The object of their attention addressed them in a slightly Southern accent, filched from excessive observances of Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. “You are addressin’ the very same! Across the water from where we stand,” Davey added, pointing toward Newfoundland. “I come from afar, ma’am, but I represent her other four kin—all of them residents of this island if not exactly in Cornwall but none of whom, from mental distress or other preoccupations, are able to be here with us this afternoon.”

Mrs. Verran attempted a smile. “We was her closest friends, we was, as well as her Tintagel cousins. She did mention of ’ee, didn’ her, Len? Full of kind words for ’ee, she was. Her was allus speaking of your friend and that lovely house you two do have. Down by the Pacific Ocean, Oi think her did say?”

“Was allus saying,” her diminutive husband interrupted. “Talked of little else when her moind was working. Not that that were too often. Till we persuaded her to go into the Home we had to spoon-feed her, you. And bravun more’n that, Oi don’ moind a-telling of ’ee. If ’twasn’ for Hilda here, Hannah Bryant would have been in some messy state, you. Hilda made her loife worth living these past years. Whole village will tell ’ee that. Little to show for it, though there’s some will tell ’ee otherwise. Spiteful bastards!”

“Come now, Len, no need for bad language,” his spouse reprimanded, offering Davey such a sickly leer that he could have upchucked.

By this time Hannah’s nephew also gathered the Verrans were fluent liars. The old girl would never have mentioned Ken and himself in the same breath, let alone their sharing a house. His betting was they’d been through her correspondence like an avid brace of ferrets. More, he knew of no Tintagel cousins, though the idea brought with it the earlier vague notion that they looked somehow familiar. Not that at that point he sought further elucidation.

Davey’s palms sweated with discomfort. These two unwholesome relics of Aunt Hannah’s final phase of life, he told himself, reeked of cupidity. A brace of money-grubbers, they obviously scented potential recompense from him. Perhaps they’d also discovered the fact that his aunt had died skint, that she didn’t even own Lanoe, the house she’d lived in, as that had reverted to Alyson and him when Hannah’s sister-in-law, their Aunt Nora, had died

As Davey stared down at the Verrans, he imagined how, as arduous little maggots, they must have wriggled their way into his aunt’s trust as her pain-wracked body moved steadily toward its final state of collapse. Whether they had or not, peasant cunning determined that he now be regarded as a potential stone to be turned carefully over lest there be further trove from an unwanted link to Hannah they hadn’t contemplated, turning up now at her funeral.

He told himself he hated them for that—detested them for thinking he was going to be an easy make. Then he drew back. Where, he thought, suddenly bewildered, was his mind taking him? A kind of contempt for their mercenary attitudes over his aunt was one thing, but he was experiencing visceral feelings that went far beyond that. Whence came this vigorous loathing of an odd little couple who had been utter strangers until minutes earlier?

He decided to blame it on the recently experienced funeral service. It had jabbed strange questions and released doubts in him that had lain dormant for decades. In their thick Cornish accents this couple merely confirmed with a vengeance that he was back in his ancestral lands. It had all happened too quickly, with not enough space between the jerky train and the thick fog of his depression and the driving up to the chapel on the blustery headland and being pitchforked back into the bluff and energetic Methodism that had pursued him in his childhood.

He sought now as alternative to play little games with the Verrans—wild fancies that would curb his sudden animosity and hopefully distance himself from the pair. “Aunt Hannah was so modest,” he began. “She never wanted to talk about all that coal-mine money Uncle Petherick left her after he immigrated to Pittsburgh. And I guess she told you more, as her best friends, than she ever told me about the Texas property of old Petherick’s daughter, Loveday, and the oil well she inherited from her second husband?”

Stroking a beardless chin, Davey looked out of the tall doors at the leaden sea. “Funny,” he mused, “I guess most of the fortune she was left came from the United States rather than Canada where all she got was the Alberta ranch. I don’t expect she left too much over here, did she? Then the house was never exclusively hers, of course. When her dear sister-in-law died, Cousin Alyson and I divvied up the proceeds of Lanoe House with her and let her stay there rent-free while she lived. Not that she needed anything like that with all the American loot. Then who am I telling? You got all the information when the will was read, of course.”

Hilda Verran could contain herself no longer. She let out a hiss of air surprisingly loud for one of her stature. What will? We b’aint heard of no will! There bin no will read, has there, Len? Jest a penny or two lying about the house, and bits o’ furniture that was hardly more’n matchsticks. Curtains was in rags from the first day Oi see’d ’em!”

Her husband glanced up at Davey’s face and probably saw the smirk lurking there. He grabbed at her sleeve. “There were a derelict old Austin out back. No more’n a pile of junk that was! Least it help pay getting her into the Breakers. Otherwise she’d have been on the parish.”

Davey thought the man was expecting his sympathy, when he felt much closer to erupting in laughter. Fortunately for the Verrans that was the moment the organist and preacher elected to depart. There was a smile for Davey from the uncertain musician, who then accorded the preacher a grudging nod as the tall figure, now wrapped in a bright yellow oilskin, bolted the doors of the chapel behind all five of them. He gave his erstwhile congregation a deep-throated adieu before stepping toward his muddy vehicle and, Davey hazarded, another funeral on his scattered circuit of rural Primitive Wesleyan chapels along the North Cornwall coast. The lady left on a bicycle.

The three remaining regarded one another. In accordance with his earlier resolution Davey smiled at them both as two upturned faces, their expressions flitting from anxiety through skepticism to outright hostility with the regularity of traffic lights.

Their disconcerted looks were matched with an excited, high-pitched babble. Mr. Verran was the loudest, his spouse the more voluble, but it still remained a hysterical chorus from the little couple. “Will? Oh, no, sir! No bloody will!”

“Her never, ever mentioned that money, did her, Len? Money in America? Money in H’Alberta? Never! Never! Be sure on that, maister. Her allus claimed to be as a church mouse. What a hussy! And her hiding a bloody fortune?”

That was the first expletive Davey had heard fall from the lady’s lips.

“Her left nothing in Lanoe that a Gypo would drop by for!” Len chimed in. “Oi can tell on ’ee that! Cryin’ poor mouth, with all that tucked away over there! Regular miser, then, was our Hannah Bryant! Devious biddy!”

“Miser and hypocrite! A lettin’ of us slave over her all them years! And to think her could’ve had a regular bunch of servants awaitin’ on her every wish and whim!” Hilda paused for a breath.

Davey shifted his weight onto the other leg. Their frantic litany was beginning to bore him. It was then he came to a decision that was to have far-reaching implications, far more than he could have ever anticipated. Besides, his adopted playfulness was shot with cunning. He suddenly saw a way of temporarily ridding himself of these tiresome two who claimed to be cousins and at the same time extending their punishment for their greedy insinuation into old Hannah’s life.

“Maybe she did make a will,” he began, “and then hid it somewhere in the house. Auntie was so suspicious about a lot of things.” A fresh inspiration sustained his invention. “Of course, it would be made out to you people. There was really no one else, you see. She told Cousin Alyson and me that the proceeds from the house would be all we’d ever get. She might have mentioned the North Cornwall Hunt or some dogs’ home in Newquay as beneficiaries, but that would have been before you guys moved in. I mean, before she had your help and loving care.”

They exchanged quick glances. Davey felt he could feel them secretly slobber over the references to both fox hunt and dogs’ home. He felt sure they would be aware of the two incidents in his aunt’s life of which she moaned endlessly. One involved the littering of her land by defecating foxhounds, the other her spirited defence of her treacherous dog who apparently had turned on her, disfiguring her face and nearly biting her to death.

The Verrans couldn’t contain themselves. “Oh, her would’ve had no truck with the loikes of they!” Hilda shouted.

“Sued the master of hounds over the North Cornwall and the shit its dogs dropped all over her lawn!” her husband exclaimed. And, as further elaboration: “And Oi reckon she were moinded to have all bloody dogs outlawed after she were savaged by her own. No, my handsome, there’d be no money going to them outfits. Not bloody likely!”

“More than that Oi reckon we got no more to say.” Whether Hilda was merely upset by her husband’s language or whether she was fearful of one of them saying too much—now that the prospects of personal enrichment had become so much closer—Davey was unsure, but he opted for the latter. Articulation was always risky where he and they came from: he recalled afresh how deep went Cornish superstition.

“I have an idea,” he volunteered. “Why don’t we all slip over to Lanoe and see what we can find?” Then, lest they were reluctant to accompany him, he added, “There’s a problem of time, you see. I mean, if in Canada and the U.S. they don’t hear of a will, they might simply regard her as intestate and hand over all her assets to the state.”

Even as he said it, Davey thought his spur-of-the-moment argument crass, but he realized at that juncture he was relying not so much on his powers of persuasion as on the blindness of the greedy. He blew the gods a kiss as the Verrans scrambled over each other verbally to shout their instant agreement with his cockeyed proposal.

In a matter of minutes both their ancient Morris Mini van and his rented Rover were revving loudly against the cry of the wind. As the two vehicles headed south on reaching the coastal highway, the dwarfs quickly passed him and he lost sight of them. That didn’t faze him, though. He was looking forward to driving at a leisurely pace through the network of narrow, leafy lanes on leaving the main road and heading for Pentudy with its fondly remembered Celtic cross dominating the village green. It was at least twenty years since he’d seen the village where “Lanoe” was his family’s “dower house” and where each Bryant generation had gone in succession from the neighbouring parish where the eldest sons had always farmed so that the two village churches shared in the family christenings, marriages, and occasional burials over at least three centuries.

But during that return to the past Davey was to learn that the “new Cornwall” he was about to experience, albeit briefly, was savagely different from the one he’d left behind. Of course, he was about to change his mind concerning a whole lot of things, not least about his relatives dead and alive, his lifetime companion back in British Columbia, and finally himself.