Extraits

** Extrait ** de Winston Graham

Chapter One

There could have been prophecy in the storm that blew up at the time of Julia’s birth.

May month was not a time for heavy gales, but the climate of Cornwall is capricious as any child ever born. It had been a kindly enough spring, as kindly as the summer and winter that had gone before it; mild, soft, comfortable weather; and the land was already heavy with green things. Then May broke rainy and gusty, and the blossom suffered here and there and the hay leaned about looking for support.

On the night of the fifteenth Demelza felt her first pains. Even then for a while she gripped the bedpost and thought the matter all round before she said anything. All along she had viewed the coming ordeal with a calm and philosophical mind and had never troubled Ross with false alarms. She did not want to begin so late. Last evening she had been out in her beloved garden, digging round the young plants; then as it was going dark she had found a disgruntled hedgehog and had played with him, trying to persuade him to take some bread and milk, and had only come in reluctantly as the sky clouded and it went cold.

This now – this thing in the middle of the night – might yet be only the result of getting overtired.

But when it began to feel as if someone was kneeling on her backbone and trying to break it, she knew it was not.

She touched Ross’s arm and he woke instantly.

‘Well?’

‘I think,’ she said, ‘I think you will have to fetch Prudie.’

He sat up. ‘Why? What is it?’

‘I have a pain.’

‘Where? Do you mean . . .’

‘I have a pain,’ she said primly. ‘I think twould be as well to fetch Prudie.’

He climbed quickly out of bed, and she listened to the scratch of flint and steel. After a moment the tinder caught and he lit a candle. The room flickered into view: heavy teak beams, the curtain over the door moving gently in the breeze, the low window seat hung with pink grogram, her shoes as she had kicked them off, one wooden sole upmost, Joshua’s spyglass, Ross’s pipe, Ross’s book and a fly crawling.

He looked at her and at once knew the truth. She smiled a pallid apology. He went across to the table by the door and poured her a glass of brandy.

‘Drink this. I will send Jud for Dr Choake.’ He began to pull on his clothes, anyhow.

‘No, no, Ross; do not send yet. It is the middle of the night. He will be asleep.’

Whether Thomas Choake should be called in to her had been a dissension between them for some weeks. Demelza could not forget that twelve months ago she had been a maidservant and that Choake, though only a physician, owned a small estate which, even if it had been bought with his wife’s money, put him on a level from which the likes of her would be seen as unimportant chattels. That was until Ross married her. Since then she had grown to her position. She could put on a show of refinement and good manners, and not at all a bad show at that; but a doctor was different. A doctor caught one at a disadvantage. If the pain was bad she would almost certainly swear in the old way she had learned from her father, not a few genteel ‘damn mes’ and ‘by Gods,’ as anyone might excuse from a lady in trouble. To have a baby and be forced to act genteel at the same time was more than Demelza could look forward to.

Besides, she didn’t want a man about. It wasn’t decent. Her cousin-in-law, Elizabeth, had had him, but Elizabeth was an aristocrat born and bred, and they looked at things different. She would far rather have had old Aunt Betsy Triggs from Mellin, who sold pilchards and was a rare strong hand when it came to babies.

But Ross was the more determined and he had had his way. She was not unprepared for his curt, ‘Then he shall be woke,’ as he left the room.

‘Ross!’ She called him back. For the moment the pain had gone.

‘Yes?’ His strong, scarred, introspective face was half lit by the candle; the upgrowing dark hair was ruffled and hardly showed its hint of copper; his shirt was open at the throat. This man . . . aristocrat of them all, she thought . . . this man, so reserved and reserving, with whom she had shared rare intimacy.

‘Would you?’ she said. ‘Before you go . . .’

He came back to the bed. The emergency had come on him so quickly in his sleep that he had had no time yet to feel anything but alarm that her time was here and relief that it might soon be over. As he kissed her he saw the moisture on her face and a worm of fear and compassion moved in him. He took her face in his hands, pushed back the black hair and stared a moment into the dark eyes of his young wife. They were not dancing and mischievous as they so often were, but there was no fear in them.

‘I’ll be back. In a moment I’ll be back.’

She made a gesture of dissent. ‘Don’t come back, Ross. Go and tell Prudie, that’s all. I’d rather – you didn’t see me like this.’

‘And what of Verity? You specially wanted Verity here.’

‘Tell her in the morning. Tisn’t fair to bring her out in the night air. Send for her in the morning.’

He kissed her again.

‘Tell me that you love me, Ross,’ she said.

He looked at her in surprise.

‘You know I do!’

‘And say you don’t love Elizabeth.’

‘And I don’t love Elizabeth.’ What else was he to say when he did not know the truth himself? He was not a man who spoke his inmost feelings easily, but now he saw himself powerless to help her, and only words of his and not actions would give her aid. ‘Nothing else matters but you,’ he said. ‘Remember that. All my relatives and friends – and Elizabeth, and this house and the mine . . . I’d throw them in the dust and you know it – and you know it. If you don’t know it, then all these months I’ve failed and no words I can give you now will make it otherwise. I love you, Demelza, and we’ve had such happiness. And we’re going to have it again. Take hold of that, my sweet. Hold it and keep it, for no one else can.’

‘I’ll hold it, Ross,’ she said, content because the words had come.

He kissed her again and turned and lit more candles; took up one and went quickly out of the room, the hot grease running over his hand. The wind had dropped since yesterday; there was only a breeze. He did not know the time, but it felt about two.

He pushed open the door on the other side of the landing and went across to the bedroom where Jud and Prudie slept. The ill-fitting bedroom door opened with a long squeak which merged into Prudie’s slow rasping snore. He grunted in disgust, for the hot close sweaty smell offended his nose. The night air might be dangerous, but they could surely open the window during the day and let this stink out.

He went across and parted the curtains and shook Jud by the shoulders. Jud’s two great teeth showed like gravestones. He shook again, violently. Jud’s nightcap came off and a spot of the candle grease fell on his bald patch. Jud woke. He began to curse; then he saw who it was and sat up rubbing his head.

‘What’s amiss?’

‘Demelza is ill.’ How call her anything but Demelza to a man who had been here when she came as a tattered waif of thirteen? ‘I want you to go for Dr Choake at once. And wake Prudie. She will be wanted too.’

‘What’s amiss with her?’

‘Her pains have begun.’

‘Oh, that. I thought ee said she were ill.’ Jud frowned at the piece of cooling tallow he had found on his head. ‘Prudie and me could manage that. Prudie d’know all that sort of panjandle. Tedn a ’ard thing to learn. Why, there’s always such a dido about en I never can conceit. Tedn easy, mind, but once you’ve gotten the knack—’

‘Get up.’

Jud came out of bed, knowing the tone, and they woke Prudie. Her great shiny face peered through its tangle of greasy black hair as she wiped her nose on a corner of her night rail.

‘Aw, my dear, I’ll see to the mite. Poor maid.’ She began to fasten a pair of filthy stays over her shift. ‘I d’know how twas with my mother. She telled me how twas when I was on the brew. Shifted I ’ad. Moved I ’ad. Twas a cruel chronic thing, they said. A weak, ailing little mouse, an’ nobody believed I’d see the christening pot . . .’

‘Go to her as soon as you can,’ Ross said. ‘I’ll get Darkie from the stables. You won’t want her saddled.’

‘Mebbe I can ride bare-ridged that far,’ Jud said grudgingly. ‘Though if onct you d’make a slip in the dark, like as not you’re pitched off on yer ’ead, and then snap goes yer neck and where are you?’

Ross ran down the stairs. On his way out he looked in at the new clock they had bought for the parlour. It wanted ten minutes to three. Dawn would not be long. Things were so much worse by candlelight.

In the stable he delayed to saddle Darkie, telling his fumbling fingers that every woman went through this: it became a commonplace of their existence, pregnancies following each other like the summer seasons. But he would see Jud safely off; if the fool slipped he might be hours. He would have gone himself if he could have trusted the Paynters alone with Demelza.

At the front of the house Jud was fastening his breeches under the lilac tree.

‘Don’t know as I shall rightly see me way,’ he said. ‘Dark as a blathering sack, tis. By rights I should ’ave a lantern on a pole. A long pole as I could ’old out—’

‘Get up or you’ll have the pole across your head.’

Jud mounted. ‘What’s to say as he won’t come?’

‘Bring him,’ said Ross, and gave Darkie a slap across the haunches.

When Jud turned in at the gates of Fernmore, the house of Thomas Choake, he observed disdainfully that the building was little more than a farmhouse, though they put on airs as if it was Blenheim. He got down and rat-tatted at the door. The house was surrounded by big pine trees, and the rooks and jackdaws were already awake, flying round in circles and being noisy. Jud raised his head and sniffed. All yesterday they’d been unsettled at Nampara.

At the seventh knock a window screeched above the door, and a nightcap appeared like a cuckoo out of a clock.

‘Well, man, well, man! What is it? What’s the damnation noise?’

Jud knew by the voice and eyebrows that he had flushed the right bird.

‘Cap’n Poldark sent me for to fetch ee,’ he said, mumbling. ‘Dem – um – Mistress Poldark’s took bad and they d’need you.’

‘What Mistress Poldark, man? What Mistress Poldark?’

‘Mistress Demelza Poldark. Over to Nampara. ’Er that be going to have ’er first.’

‘Well, what’s wrong? Didn’t they say what was to do?’

‘Ais. Tes her time.’

‘Nonsense, fellow. I saw her last week and I told Captain Poldark that there would be nothing until June. Go tell them I stand by that opinion.’

The window slammed.

Jud Paynter was a man much interested in the malign indifference of man and providence to his own needs, and interested in not much else; but sometimes an accident roused him for other ends. This was one of the accidents. From feeling disgruntled at the simpering softness of Demelza and the misplaced harshness of Ross in turning him out on a bitter May morning without so much as a tot of rum, he came to reflect that Ross was his master and Demelza one of his own kind.

Three minutes later Dr Choake put out his head again.

‘What is it, man? You’ll have the door down!’

‘I was telled to fetch you.’

‘You insolent fellow! I’ll have you thrashed for this!’

‘Where’s yer ’orse? I’ll ’ave him out while you put yer drawers on.’

The surgeon withdrew, Polly Choake’s lisping voice could be heard in the background, and once her fluffy head passed the window. They were in consultation. Then Choake called down coldly:

‘You must wait, fellow. We shall be with you in ten minutes.’

Jud was sufficiently alive to the surgeon’s peculiarities to know that by this Choake meant only himself.

Twenty-one minutes later, in icy silence, they set off. The rooks were still flying in circles and cawing, and at Sawle Church there was a great noise. Day was breaking. Streaks of watered green showed in the north-east, and the sky where the sun would rise was a bold pale orange behind the black ribs of the night. A wild sunrise and a strangely quiet one. After the winds of the last days the calm was profound. As they passed Grambler Mine they overtook a party of balmaidens singing as they walked to work, their shrill fresh voices as sweet and young as the morning. Jud noticed that Will Nanfan’s sheep were all gathered together in the most sheltered corner of the field.

Reflection on the quiet ride salved some of Dr Choake’s annoyance, for when they reached Nampara he did not complain, but greeted Ross stiffly and lumbered upstairs. There he found that the alarm was not a false one. He sat with Demelza for half an hour telling her to be brave and that there was nothing to be frightened of. Then, because she seemed constrained and was sweating a lot, he suspected a touch of fever and bled her to be on the safe side. This made her feel very ill, a result which pleased him for it proved, he said, that a toxic condition had existed and his treatment had brought on a normal and desirable intermission of the fever. If she took an infusion of bark once an hour it would prevent a renewal. Then he went home to breakfast.

Ross had been swilling himself under the pump trying to wash away the megrims of the night, and when he came through the house and saw a thickset figure riding up the valley he called sharply to Jinny Carter, who came every day to work in the house and had just arrived.

‘Is that Dr Choake?’

Jinny bent over her own child, which she brought on her back and kept in a basket in the kitchen. ‘Yes, sur. He d’say the baby won’t be afore dinner at the early side, and he say he’ll be back by nine or ten.’

Ross turned away to hide his annoyance. Jinny looked at him with devoted eyes.

‘Who helped you with your babies, Jinny?’ he asked.

‘Mother, sur.’

‘Will you go and get her, Jinny? I think I would trust your mother before that old fool.’

She blushed with pleasure. ‘Yes, sur. I’ll go right off. She’ll be that glad to come.’ She started as if to go and then looked at her own baby.

‘I’ll see she comes to no harm,’ Ross said.

She glanced at him a moment and then snatched up her white bonnet and left the kitchen.

Ross walked into the low hall, stood at the foot of the stairs, disliked the silence, went into the parlour and poured himself a glass of brandy, watched Jinny’s brisk figure dwindling towards Mellin, returned to the kitchen. Little Kate had not moved, but lay on her back kicking and crowing and laughing at him. This mite was nine months old and had never seen its father, who was serving a two-year sentence in Bodmin Gaol for poaching. Unlike the two eldest, who took after their father, little Kate was a true Martin: sandy hair, blue eyes, tiny freckles already mottling the bridge of her button nose.

The fire had not been lighted this morning, and there was no sign of breakfast. Ross raked the ashes but they were dead; he picked up some kindling wood and set about lighting it, wondering irritably where Jud had gone. There must be hot water, he knew, and towels and basins; nothing was being prepared down here. Damn Choake for his impertinence, not even waiting to see him before he left.

Relations between the two men had been cool for some time. Ross disliked his inane wife, who had gossiped and whispered about Demelza; and when Ross disliked someone he found it hard to hide the fact. Now he fumed that he should be at the mercy of this obstinate stiff-necked unprogressive old fool who was the only physician within miles.

As the fire began to take Jud came in, and wind came with him and rushed round the kitchen.

‘Thur’s something blawing up,’ he said, eyeing Ross out of bloodshot eyes. ‘Seen the long black swell, ’ave ee?’

Ross nodded impatiently. There had been a heavy ground sea since afternoon yesterday.

‘Well, tes breaking all ways. Scarcely ever did I see the like. It might be as someone was lashin’ of un with a whip. The swell’s nigh gone and the sea’s all licky-white like Joe Trigg’s beard.’

‘Keep your eye on Kate, Jud,’ Ross said. ‘Make some breakfast in the meantime. I am going upstairs.’

At the back of his mind Ross was aware of the sound of wind rushing about in the distance. Once when he glanced out of the bedroom window his eyes confirmed that the swell had in fact quite broken up and the sea was stippled with white-lipped waves which crossed and re-crossed each other in confusion, running heedlessly, colliding and breaking up into wisps of futile spray. The wind was as yet only gusty on the land, but here and there eddies rushed over the water, little winds, vicious and lost.

While he was there Demelza made a big effort to be normal, but he saw that she wished him gone. He could not help her.

Disconsolate, he went down again and was in time to greet Mrs Zacky Martin, Jinny’s mother. Flat-faced, competent, bespectacled and sneezing, she came into the kitchen with a brood of five small children dragging at her heels, talking to them, chiding them, explaining to Ross that she had no one to trust them with – Jinny’s two eldest and her three youngest – greeting Jud and asking after Prudie, commenting on the smell of frying pork, inquiring about the patient, saying she had a touch of ague herself but had taken a posset before leaving, rolling up her sleeves, telling Jinny to put the colewort and the motherwort on to brew, they being better than any doctor’s nostrums for easing of the maid, and disappearing up the stairs before anyone else could speak.

There seemed to be a child on every chair in the kitchen. They sat like timid ninepins at a fair, waiting to be knocked off. Jud scratched his head and spat in the fire and swore.

Ross went back to the parlour. On the table was a bundle of crochet work that Demelza had been doing last night. A fashion paper which Verity had lent her lay beside it – something new and novel come to them from London; there had never been anything like it before. The room was a little dusty and unkempt.

It was fifteen minutes after six.

No birds singing this morning. A moment ago a ray of sunlight had fallen across the grass, but had been quickly put out. He stared at the elm trees, which were waving backwards and forwards as if with an earth tremor. The apple trees, more sheltered, were bending and turning up their leaves. The sky was heavy with racing clouds.

He picked up a book. His eyes scanned the page but took nothing in. The wind was beginning to roar down the valley. Mrs Zacky came in.

‘Well?’

‘She’m doing brave, Cap’n Ross. Prudie and me’ll manage, don’t ee worry an inch. Twill all be over long before ole Dr Tommie d’come back.’

Ross put down the book. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Well, I’ve had eleven o’ my own and there’s three of Jinny’s. And I helped wi’ two of Betty Nanfan’s twins and four of Sue Vigus’s, the first three out of wedlock.’ Mrs Zacky hadn’t fingers enough to count. ‘This won’t be easy, not like Jinny’s was, but we’ll do a proper job, never you fear. Now I’ll go get the brandy an’ give the maid a tot o’ that t’ease her up.’

The house suddenly shuddered under a gust of wind. Ross stood staring out at the wild day, anger with Choake rising in him and seeking outlet like a part of the storm. Common sense told him that Demelza would be all right, but that she should be denied the best attention was intolerable. It was Demelza who suffered there, with only two clumsy old women to help her.

He went out to the stables, hardly aware of the storm that was rising about them.

At the stable door he glanced over Hendrawna and saw that clouds of spray had begun to lift off the sea and drift away like sand before a sandstorm. Here and there the cliffs were smoking.

He had just got the stable door open when the wind took it out of his hand, slammed it shut and pushed him against the wall. He looked up and saw that it would not be possible to ride a horse in the gale.

He set off to walk. It was only a matter of two miles.

A hail of leaves and grass and dirt and small twigs met him as he turned the corner of the house. Behind him the wind was tearing off mouthfuls of sea and flinging them to join the clouds. At another time he would have been upset at the damage to his crops, but now that seemed a small matter. It was not so much a gale as a sudden storm, as if the forces of a gathering anger had been bottled up for a month and must be spent in an hour. The branch of an elm came down across the stream. He stumbled past it, wondering if he could make the brow of the hill.

In the ruined buildings of Wheal Maiden he sat and gasped and groped for breath and rubbed his bruised hand, and the wind blew bits of masonry from the gaunt old granite walls and screamed like a harlot through every slit and hole.

Once through the pine trees, he met the full force of the storm coming in across Grambler Plain, bringing with it a bombardment of rain and dirt and gravel. Here it seemed that all the loose soil was being ploughed up and all the fresh young leaves and all the other small substances of the earth were being blown right away. The clouds were low over his head, brown and racing, all the rain emptied out of them and flying like torn rags before the frown of God.

Down in Fernmore, Dr Choake was beginning his breakfast.

He had finished the grilled kidneys and the roast ham and was wondering whether to take a little of the smoked cod before it was carried away to be kept warm for his wife, who would breakfast in bed later. The early ride had made him very hungry, and he had set up a great commotion because breakfast was not waiting when he returned. Choake believed servants should not be allowed to get fat and lazy.

The loud knocking on the front door was hardly to be heard above the thunder of the wind.

‘If that is anyone for me, Nancy,’ he said testily, lowering his eyebrows, ‘I am from home.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He decided after a sniff to take some of the cod, and was irritated that it was necessary to help himself. This done, he settled his stomach against the table and had swallowed the first knifeful when there was an apologetic cough behind him.

‘Begging your pardon, sir. Captain Poldark—’

‘Tell him—’ Dr Choake looked up and saw in the mirror a tall dripping figure behind his harassed maid.

Ross came into the room. He had lost his hat and torn the lace on the sleeve of his coat; water followed him in a trail across Dr Choake’s best Turkey carpet.

But there was something in his eyes which prevented Choake from noticing this. The Poldarks had been Cornish gentlemen for two hundred years, and Choake, for all his airs, came from dubious stock.

He got up.

‘I disturb your breakfast,’ said Ross.

‘. . . Is something wrong?’

‘You’ll remember,’ said Ross, ‘that I engaged you to be with my wife in her lying-in.’

‘Well! She is going on well. I made a thorough examination. The child will be born this afternoon.’

‘I engaged you as a surgeon to be in the house, not as a travelling leech.’

Choake went white round the lips. He turned on the gaping Nancy.

‘Get Captain Poldark some port.’

Nancy fled.

‘What’s your complaint?’ Choake made an effort to outstare his visitor; the fellow had no money and was still a mere youngster. ‘We have attended your father, your uncle, your cousin and his wife, your cousin Verity. They have never found reason to call my treatment in question.’

‘What they do is their own affair. Where is your cloak?’

‘Man, I can’t ride out in this gale of wind! Look at yourself! It would be impossible to sit a horse!’

‘You should have thought of that when you left Nampara.’

The door opened and Polly Choake came in with her hair in pins and wearing a flowing cerise morning gown. She gave a squeal when she saw Ross.

‘Oh, Captain Poldark! I’d no idea! Weally, to see one like this! But the wind upstairs, faith, it upthets one to hear it! I fear for the woof, Tom, that I do, an’ if it came in on my head I should be a pwetty thight!’

‘You’re not a pretty sight peeping round the door,’ snapped her husband irritably. ‘Come in or go out as you please, but have the goodness to decide.’

Polly pouted and came in, and looked at Ross sidelong and patted her hair. The door slammed behind her.

‘I never get used to your old Cornish winds, and thith ith a fair demon. Jenkin says there is five thtlates off of the butterwy, and I doubt there’ll not be more. How ith your wife, Captain Poldark?’

Choake slipped off his skullcap and put on his wig.

‘That will not stand in the wind,’ said Ross.

‘You’re not going out, Tom? But you could not wide and scarthely walk. An’ think of the danger of falling twees!’

‘Captain Poldark is nervous for his wife,’ Choake said whitely.

‘But thurely ith it that urgent tho thoon again? I wemember my mother said I was eight and forty hours a-coming.’

‘Then your husband will be eight and forty hours awaiting,’ said Ross. ‘It’s a whim I have, Mrs Choake.’

Pettishly the surgeon flung off his purple-spotted morning gown and pulled on his tail coat. Then he stumped out to get his bag and his riding cloak, nearly upsetting Nancy, who was coming in with the port.

The wind was a little abeam of them on the return. Choake lost his wig and his hat, but Ross caught the wig and stuffed it under his coat. By the time they climbed the rise near Wheal Maiden they were both gasping and drenched. As they reached the trees they saw a slight figure in a grey cloak ahead of them.

‘Verity,’ said Ross as they overtook her leaning against a tree. ‘You have no business out today.’

She gave him her wide-mouthed generous smile. ‘You should know it can’t be kept a secret. Mrs Zacky’s Betty saw Jud and Dr Choake on her way to the mine, and she told Bartle’s wife.’ Verity leaned her wet face against the tree. ‘Our cow shed is down and we have the two cows in the brewhouse. The headgear of Digory’s mine has collapsed, but I think no one is hurt. How is she, Ross?’

‘Well enough, I trust.’ Ross linked his arm in Verity’s and they began to walk after the stumbling, cloak-blown figure of the physician. He had often thought that if a man were allowed a second wife he would have asked his cousin, for her kindness and generosity and for the soothing effect she always had on him. Already he was beginning to feel shame-faced at his own anger. Tom Choake had his good points and naturally knew his job better than Mrs Zacky Martin.

They caught up with Choake as he was climbing over the fallen elm branch. Two of the apple trees were down, and Ross wondered what Demelza would say when she saw the remnants of her spring flowers.

When she did . . .

He quickened his pace. Some of his irritation returned at the thought of all the women milling about in the house and his beloved Demelza helpless and in pain. And Choake going off without a word.

As they entered they saw Jinny pattering up the stairs with a basin of steaming water, slopping some of it into the hall in her haste. She never even looked at them.

Dr Choake was so distressed that he went into the parlour and sat on the first chair and tried to get his breath. He glared at Ross and said:

‘I’ll thank you for my wig.’

Ross poured out three glasses of brandy. He took the first to Verity, who had collapsed in a chair, her fluffy dark hair contrasting with the wet streaks where the hood had not covered it. She smiled at Ross and said:

‘I will go upstairs when Dr Choake is ready. Then if all goes well I will get you something to eat.’

Choake gulped down his brandy and passed his glass for more. Ross, knowing that liquor made him a better doctor, gave it him.

‘We will breakfast together,’ Choake said, more cheerful at the thought of food. ‘We will just go up and set everyone’s mind at rest; then we will breakfast. What have you for breakfast?’

Verity got up. Her cloak fell away and showed the plain grey dimity frock, the bottom eight inches embroidered with mud and rain. But it was at her face that Ross looked. She wore a full, uplifted, startled expression, as if she had seen a vision.

‘What is it?’

‘Ross, I thought I heard . . .’

They all listened.

‘Oh,’ said Ross harshly, ‘there are children in the kitchen. There are children in the still-room and children for all I know in the clothes closet. Every age and size.’

Verity said: ‘Ssh!’

Choake fumbled for his bag. All his movements were clumsy and he made a great deal of noise.

‘That is not a grown child!’ Verity said suddenly. ‘That is not a grown child!’

They listened again.

‘We must go to our patient,’ said Choake, suddenly ill at ease and faintly sly. ‘We shall be ready for breakfast when we come down.’

He opened the door. The others followed him, but at the foot of the stairs they all stopped.

Prudie was on the top step. She was still wearing her night shift, with a coat over it, and her great figure bulged like an overfull sack. She bent to look at them, her long pink face bulbous and shining.

‘We’ve done it!’ she shouted in her organ voice. ‘Tes a gurl. We’ve gotten a gurl for ee. ’Andsomest little mite ever I saw. We’ve knocked her face about a small bit, but her’s as lusty as a little nebby colt. Hear ’er screeching!’

After a moment’s silence Choake cleared his throat portentously and put his foot on the bottom step. But Ross pushed him aside and went up the stairs first.