Patrick White - The Fringe of Leaves

Captain Purdew was still shouting, ‘… advise you … below,’ as he stooped to initiate her descent by the companion-ladder, ‘… Mr Roxburgh waiting on his breakfast … steward bringing … appetite ….’

Lowering her head she mastered a sudden distaste for the last of the flung spray. Or was it the captain’s damping words? In any event, Mrs Roxburgh returned by stages to the close, and by now sickening, constriction of the cabin, where she found her husband groping for his boots and complaining a great deal.

‘We got what we wanted at least. From the word go, we are at sea!’ Nor could he find his shoe-horn.

When finally he straightened up, Mr Roxburgh exclaimed, ‘Do you know what a sight you are? You are soaked!’

‘Yes.’ The crude little glass nailed to the wall for their convenience confirmed it. ‘Not soaked, that is. But a sight.’

‘You’ll do well to change at once, and not run the risk of being laid low with rheumatic fever for the rest of the voyage.’

Mr Roxburgh spoke in the voice he used when expressing fears for himself. She recognized it at once, and its tone brought her lower still.

‘I intend to change,’ she assured him without enthusiasm.

But she continued standing, waiting for her husband to finish dressing and remove himself to the saloon.

Then she tore off her scarf and bonnet, which were not so much wet as limp with moisture. So with all her outer garments. Her habitually well-kempt hair, dulled by salt, had strayed across her cheeks in tails. Her skin, mottled by the imperfect glass and watery stare of dazed eyes, brought to mind some anonymous creature stranded at a street corner in a fog of gin and indecision.

But Ellen Roxburgh did not remain for long oppressed: the canvas crowded back around her, together with the sting of spray, both on the deck of Bristol Maid , and farther off, along the black Cornish coast.

On reaching the age of discontent it seemed to her as though her whole life would be led on a stony hillside, amongst the ramshackledom of buildings which gather at the rear of farmhouses, along with midden and cow-byre. Poor as it was, moorland to the north where sheep could find a meagre picking, and a southerly patchwork of cultivable fields as compensation, she admitted to herself on days of minimum discouragement that she loved the place which had only ever, to her knowledge, been referred to as Gluyas’s. She would not have exchanged the furze thickets where a body might curl up on summer days and sheep take shelter in a squall, or the rocks with their rosettes of faded lichen, or cliffs dropping sheer towards the mouths of booming caverns, for any of the fat land to the south, where her Tregaskis cousins lived, and which made Aunt Triphena proud.

Some professed to have heard mermaids singing on the coast above Gluyas’s. Pa told tales of tokens and witches, which he half-believed, and of the accommodating white witch at Plymouth. If Ellen Gluyas wholly believed, it was because she led such a solitary life, apart from visits to the cousins, flagging conversation with an ailing and disappointed mother, and the company of a father not always in possession of himself. She was drawn to nature as she would not have been in different circumstances; she depended on it for sustenance, and legend for hope. (It could not be said that she was initiated into religion till her mother-in-law took her in hand, and then her acceptance was only formal, though old Mrs Roxburgh herself was intimate with God.)

It was Ellen Gluyas’s hope that she might eventually be sent a god. Out of Ireland, according to legend. Promised in marriage to a king, she took her escort as a lover, and the two died of love. Pa confirmed that they had sailed into Tintagel. She had never been as far as Tintagel, but hoped one day to see it. Her mind’s eye watched the ship’s prow entering the narrow cove, in a moment of evening sunlight, through a fuzz of hectic summer green.

She grew languid thinking of it, but would not have mentioned anything so fanciful, not even to Hepzie Tregaskis, her cousin and friend.

Instead she told, with the extra care a lady’s-maid cultivates, ‘Mamma is thinking of taking in a summer lodger. Don’t tell Aunt Tite. She’ll blame it on us.’

That Hepzie told her mother was not surprising (she so seldom had anything worth the telling) and her mother did disapprove, because Aunt Triphena disapproved on principle.

‘Poor Clara! I never thot to see lodgers under any Gluyas roof — like we’m tinners or clayworkers.’ Aunt Tite had forgot that their father had been a travelling hawker.

It was one of Mamma’s bad days. ‘No ordinary lodger,’ she gasped. ‘Acquainted with her ladyship. A gentleman of independent means, but poor health.’ Mamma had to wipe her eyes. ‘A change of air was recommended, and simple, nourishing, farm cooking.’

Aunt Tite laughed. ‘I hope tha’ll knaw, Clara, to take a fair share of the gentleman’s independent means. For sure my brother wun’t knaw.’

Whenever Mamma met with unkindness she did not exactly cry, she trickled.

Aunt Tite would not relent. ‘And who’ll tend to the gentleman’s needs?’

‘I’m still on my feet, Triphena. And Ellen is a strong girl, and willing.’

Aunt Tite smiled her disbelief in a plan she had not conceived herself.

‘The money will help us out,’ Mamma dared suggest. ‘And it will give the girl an interest to have someone else about the place. A gentleman of scholarly tastes, so her ladyship writes. She sent the letter over by the groom.’

Aunt Tite composed her mouth, re-tied her bonnet ribbons, disentangled the three gold chains she wore as a sign of importance and wealth, and drove off in the donkey jingle.

Ellen grew that apprehensive she was all thumbs and blushes in advance. She broke the big serving-dish and had to take it for riveting. She fetched it back only the morning of the day Mr Austin Roxburgh arrived. His luggage impressed those who saw it. Although stained and worn by travel, it still had the smell of leather about it. She stood it in his room, and went from there as quick as she could, leaving him staring out of the window at something he had not bargained for, which might have roused distaste in him. Whatever it was, he looked dejected, as well as fatigued by the journey down.

Mamma too, was nervous, in spite of her experience of gentlefolk. She could not remember whether she had put the towel and soap. Between them they made a rabbit pie, to follow a soup with carrot in it, and, for added nourishment, some scraps of bread.

Ellen might have continued apprehensive had the lodger not been hesitant, if it wasn’t downright timid. His conduct lent her courage; until the books stacked in the parlour given over to him robbed her of her new-found confidence. It returned at sight of the medicine bottles arranged on the sill of the bedroom which had previously been hers. The names of the drugs and instructions for use inscribed on the labels filled her with pity once she had overcome her awe.

Mr Roxburgh hesitated, but finally asked, ‘Are there any interesting walks, Miss Gluyas, in the neighbourhood?’ (No one had ever called her ‘Miss Gluyas’.) ‘I’ve resolved to take up walking — for my health.’

‘There’s walking in all directions.’ (Nobody had ever asked her advice.) ‘There’s the sea to the north — it’s wilder op there. And the church. To the south there’s a whole lot of pretty lanes. And chapel. You could walk to St Ives — or Penzance — if you’re strong enough,’ she thought to add.

But Mr Roxburgh no longer appeared interested, as though he had done his duty by the landlady’s daughter.

Then he became dependent on her, to remind him of time (his medicines), to warn him of changes in the weather, or to take a letter on market days when she drove to Penzance.