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Meeting Demelza - A Short Story By Winston Graham



Below is the short story of Winston Graham called 'Meeting Demelza'. This is the last published work that Winston Graham wrote before he died on 10th July 2003. It came about by chance because of Simon Parker. Simon is an award winning Author, Playwright, Editor, Publisher and Journalist.

In May 2002 Simon met with Winston Graham to interview him as promo for Bella Poldark, the twelfth book in the Poldark saga which had just been released. In that meeting he happened to tell Winston that he was working on a new literary project which was a journal called Scryfa. This was to be a collection of the best of contemporary Cornish writing. Simon has revealed that he was surprised and delighted when in the spirit of supporting this new Cornish venture and of sharing, Winston offered to contribute a short story for the journal. Simon considered this a coup given Winston Graham’s high profile and notable status as an acclaimed author. The outcome was 'Meeting Demelza' and Simon believes that it was probably in the month of January 2003 when Winston gave him the final draft of this short story. Passing away around three month later Winston would live to see this story of his published and released in April 2003. It had been included in the very first volume of Scryfa  which ran to a total of twelve volumes and which are presented on Simon Parker's site SCRYFA 

It is perhaps true to Winston's love of Poldark that his last published work would be for this saga. Also Winston Graham once named Demelza (along with Ross, Dwight and Caroline) as a favourite character of his. Perhaps she was his most cherished since he did disclose that she was loosely based on his own beloved wife. It is therefore also fitting that his last story would serve as a dedication to Demelza where his awe at meeting her is not amiss and he seemed to presents as a fan of his own creation of her.

Unfortunately Scryfa Volume one is completely out of stock. However, Simon Parker has said he feels confident that Winston Graham, who he found to be a lovely and generous man, would want this story to be shared far and wide and read by his admirers. It is indeed a gift for those who love the Poldark story and there is abounding gratitude to Simon that he made this happen and allows this to be shared here. Enjoy!

Meeting Demelza
by
Winston Graham 

(Copyright: https://www.scryfa.com/ )


It was when I was walking down a Cornish lane one evening that I met Demelza. It had been a cloudy day, with only a few gleams of sky, but towards evening the sultry weather cleared and the sun, now setting, shone brilliantly through the crouching trees, sending shafts and spotlights across the lane. The high sky was ethereal green with wisps of smoky vapour. 

As she came near I doubted my eyesight, but the recognition was mutual. She was wearing a simple dimity dress of pale blue with a darker blue silk sash and a light cotton headscarf matching the sash.

 “Demelza!” I exclaimed. “Is it...this is strangely met.”

“I live here,” she said simply.

“So do I,” I said. “At least in...” I was going to say “in spirit” but thought that under the circumstances this might not be appropriate.

“Well,” she said, “you did ought to know. You created me.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “At least, in a way.”

“You are not quite like I expected,” she said.

We stood there for a long time, smiling at each other, eye searching eye, in mutual recognition of a strange bond. I felt an extraordinary moving intimacy with this woman whom I had never met before. I felt as if I could understand her closest feelings, even her most personal bodily secretions, the stirring of her spirit within her, as well as I ever had my own.

At length she said: “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you create me?”

“It’s a bit of a mystery. What I do know is that I created you out of love, as all children should be created. And I created you out of ambition, because I wanted you to be exceptional, unique, successful, as all parents want their children to be.”

“And do you think I have been?”

“Successful? Surely.”

“You called me this strange name.”

“Demelza? Yes. You were half alive already as a starveling brat at Redruth Fair, but I had no name. Nothing I could think of would suit you. You were a wilful child even then. Then one day, driving to London across the Goss Moor just past Roche Rock, I saw an ancient signpost marked Demelza. I knew instantly that was it.”

“There are others called that now,” she said. “Across a beach you will hear the name called, and they are not calling for me.”

I thought there was a shade of reproach in her voice and then I saw her smile.

“Well, you were the first.”

“But where did the name come from? What does it mean?”

“I know no Cornish, but a student of the language said the ‘de’ meant ‘thy’ or ‘the’, the ‘melza’ comes from the same root as the French word ‘miel’ meaning ‘honey’.”

“The honey,” she said. “That sounds a small matter odd.”

“I prefer to think of it as ‘Thy Sweetness’. D’you mind?”

“That’s nicer...but that is just the same, like. Where did I come from? Folks say that you copied me from your wife.”

“Not at all. Not at all. Some characteristics, yes...her vitality, her resilience, her warmth that made so many people care for her, her ability always, always to find pleasure in small things, perhaps most particularly her gamin wit. But she was not at all like you in appearance or any other way.”

“Or that lovely girl who played me on television?”

I was startled that she was so up-to-date.

“No, not she either. You are dark, she is fair. She is small, you are tall.”

“Not tall.”

“Well, taller. She created something slightly different, something of her own. Cezanne said once that he did not reproduce nature, he represented it. The Welsh girl represented the Cornish girl and delighted millions.”

“Who is Cezanne? Is he a Cornishman?”

“No, a Frenchman. Or was.”

“And the rest of me? Where did all that come from? You must know.”

“I don’t – except that you began as I have told you, and presently you were made flesh.”

“That sounds irreligious.”

“Not meant to be.”

I looked at her again. She was stirring the sandy pathway with one foot. A wisp of dark hair was blowing across her cheek.

“Where do you live?”

“Just over the hill.”

“May I come home with you?”

“I’d like you to.”

She took my hand. Her fingers were slim but strong. We began to walk.

“’Tis queer,” she said. “You have covered little more than thirty-five years of my life but that has taken – what? – mebbe fifty-six years of yours. How is that?”

“I have to live in a temporal world. When I die...”

“Shall I die too?”

“It depends. On other people.”

“But I shall not be able to grow older.”

“That depends. It...” I hesitated. “It is all a mystery, my dearest. I don’t understand these things. I am only mortal.”

We began to walk, hand in hand.

“All these years,” she said. “How have you known what I should do, what I say?”

“That’s part of the mystery. I almost instantly know in any given situation what you are going to say next.”

“D’you know what I am going to say now?”

“No.”

“There you are, then.”

“What are you going to say?”

“That I wish I had created you.”

This was certainly unexpected. “Whatever for?”

“So that I could have got my own back.”

We both laughed.

“Would I have been safe in your hands?”

“Can’t promise.”

“Well,” I said judiciously. “Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded.”

With the setting sun a sickle moon could be seen riding high in the sky.

“I have minded,” she said. “Sometimes.”

“When?”

“I minded badly over Julia and Jeremy.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“Have you any children?”

“Two.”

“Have you lost any?”

“No.”

“Well, then...how did you know how it felt?”

“Perhaps I did not?”

“You seemed to.”

There was a good deal of feeling in her voice, so I thought to change the subject.

“How is Ross?”

“Ross? Quite well. He should be at home, just over this next rise.”

Gulls were circulating in the fading sky. There was a remoteness about the land.

She said: “He complains that breakfast comes round too quickly every day.”

I laughed. “I know the feeling.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Ross? Rather in the same way as yourself. I took much of his appearance from an airman I met during the war. Even to the partly-healed scar.”

“And his name?”

“I had a valued friend called Polgreen, who died young. I chose to use that name, which is quite unusual in Cornwall, but after a while it seemed to me that ‘Polgreen’ was a thought too gentle for the man I was depicting. So I changed the ‘green’ to ‘dark’.”

“You made the name?”

“Yes.”

“So no one else is free to use that?”

“There’s no copyright in a name.”

“What is copyright?”

“No matter. Demelza?”

“Yes?”

“Are you a dream?”

She smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe you are as well.”

We climbed the winding lane together. Darkness followed us up the hill.

“So you knew no more of Ross than that?”

“No more than that...What is that smoke?”

“From the chimneys of Nampara.”

“It looks like smoke from the Wheal Grace.”

“No. They’re only cooking a meal.”

“Shall I be welcome?”

“Of course.”

“So,” I stammered, “if I come down with you I shall meet many of my old friends.”

“Creations,” she corrected. “And some of them, I s’pose, may have a complaint or two to make.”

“Against me?”

“Well, Jud will, anyway.”

I laughed. “He’s still there?”

“Just.”

“But you,” I said, “you have no complaint against me?”

“Not if you look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you love me.”

“I think I do,” I said, and then stopped. “Of course technically it is the gravest error. A writer should never get so close to his characters – not so close as that. He has to be both attracted and detached.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said.

We came not so much to the brow of a hill as a turn in the pathway. Below us, half a mile away, was a house. I recognised it at once. Two-storeyed, it straggled, L-shaped, built of grey stone, mostly roofed in heavy Delabole slate, but a few bits at the back still thatched. It crouched a little, being so near the sea. A stream ran down beside it. A walled garden had been built in the shelter of the L.

I said: “How are your hollyhocks?”

“Better this year. They had something wrong with them last year. Dwight called it rust.”

I sighed. “Is that Ross just going into the house?”

“Yes.”

“I am afraid.”

“Do not be.”

I turned to look up the valley to see if Wheal Grace was still working, and she took her hand out of mine.

I blinked. In spite of the moon it was becoming very dark. I looked back, and in place of the house there was only some may trees, a pond, and the bubbling stream.

“It is very dark,” I said to her. “We’ll have to go careful because of the rough ground.”

She did not reply. I looked round and she was not there. Where she had been were waving grasses and some bracken and hart’s-tongue fern.

I was suddenly very lonely. But the pressure of her hand in mine, the pressure of her fingers, was still warm.

On the gathering night
From the faint harmony of an errant dream
I woke and found the moon’s quiet light
Quiet in the gathering night
Echoing its theme.

Then in the early dawn
Sadness was mine and the desire to stay
Lest the rich theme so young new born
Fading in early dawn
Wither away.

Now in the clamourous noon
Nothing is left me but an empty husk
Yet do I wait and hope for soon
Gone is the clamourous noon
Welcome the dusk.

 The End.




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