Penmarric (3 page)

“Well, ---------- you, old chap,” I said politely, in the language I had learned from my years at Eton, and gave in to my overwhelming urge to punch him on the nose.

He fell like a stone.

I was just savoring the effectiveness of my handiwork when the front door flew open and I was face to face with a protagonist far more dangerous than my ineffectual cousin Raymond. His adopted brother Harry was tall and tough, with a strong pair of shoulders and a pair of fists that made me decide that the time had come to beat a quick but graceful retreat.

“Damn you, you bastard,” said Harry Penmar through his teeth. “Damn you, get out of here before you wish you’d never come.”

And before I could think of a reply his sister appeared, pushing past him and kneeling by Raymond’s inert body, her breast rising and falling rapidly in her agitation. I would have looked at her closely if I had had the chance, but by then I was too busy jeering at Harry Penmar as my feet concentrated on the task of widening the gap between us. “And who do you think you are?” I drawled at him insolently, anxious to disguise the fact that I was in full retreat. “The Light Brigade before the Charge?”

But it was the girl who answered me. She looked down at me from the top of the steps as my feet crunched on the gravel of the drive, and suddenly I was aware only of dark eyes blazing and a wild passionate mouth.

“You ugly little brute!” she spat at me. “You fat repulsive cretin, go away and take your abominable mother with you and never—
never
—come near us again!”

Despite my natural aggressiveness and the self-confidence infused by a public school education, I was still more vulnerable than I cared to acknowledge. Sixteen is a sensitive age. I knew I was still a trifle stout. I knew that despite sharing a strong family resemblance with my mother I did not share her good looks. I knew too by this time that I would never be tall. But nevertheless I did not like to hear a young woman, particularly a girl of my own age, tell me to my face that I was short, fat and plain.

I was still staring at her, my cheeks starting to burn with a helpless rage, when my mother called from the carriage in a voice that stopped even Harry Penmar dead in his tracks: “Mark! We leave at once, if you please!”

My third visit to Penmarric was at an end, as much a failure as my mother’s attempts to retrieve the Inheritance in the courts of law. Our cause was lost; Giles was beyond appeasement; Penmarric was forever beyond my reach.

It was the first time that I saw my mother cry. She watched Penmarric disappear from sight and shed two large tears, but when Cousin Robert anxiously offered her his handkerchief she pushed it aside.

“Put that away, you silly man,” she said, autocratic even in grief, and tilted her head a fraction higher. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. I shall return to London and occupy my future time with worthy causes instead of with lawsuits. Women’s suffrage, perhaps. That’s a worthy cause. Or the propagation of birth control.”

Cousin Robert and I exchanged horrified glances but had enough sympathy for her to remain silent and not risk upsetting her further. We ought to have known that despite everything she would never give up hope of recovering Penmarric, even when all hope was seemingly gone. Where Penmarric was concerned she was too much of a fanatic to accept the idea of a total and permanent defeat, and her resilience was such that by the time we arrived at the Metropole Hotel in Penzance she had recovered her composure sufficiently to consider plans for the future. For the time being at least Penmarric could no longer be discussed, but I was judged to be a worthy substitute.

“Well, Mark,” she said, having dispatched Cousin Robert on some errand in order that she could speak to me alone, “I have enjoyed seeing you during our struggles for the Inheritance, and I hope that I shall continue to see you even now our struggles are at an end. Why don’t you come to London and live with me at the townhouse? You could have your own suite of rooms, a generous allowance and the freedom to sample the cultural delights of the greatest city on earth.”

“No, thank you, Mama.”

“Why on earth not?” She was affronted by such an abrupt refusal. “How ungrateful!”

“My home is at Gweek with my father.”

“Your father! Your dull provincial country squire of a father who always has his nose buried in those dry-as-dust history books! My dear boy, you can’t convince me that you have anything in common with him! Now, listen to me, I—”

“No,” I said, suddenly losing my temper, “you listen to me! You abandoned me when I was four, dragged me along for a week to Penzance when I was old enough to be interested in your schemes, pulled me away from my home when I was fourteen, kept me with you for a few weeks longer, wrote to me—a big concession, that one!—once a term, and now you have the insufferable insolence to suggest I should abandon everything and become one of your satellites, like poor Cousin Robert!”

It was her turn now to lose her temper. We must have hurled insults at each other for at least ten minutes before she screamed, scarlet with rage, “Go back to your decaying manor home in Gweek, in that case! Go back to your dull, dreary father, and good riddance, and don’t come crawling back to me later when you realize your mistake and want to live as a young man about town in London!”

“And don’t come crawling back to me,” I yelled at her, “when you find yourself face to face with a lonely old age!”

And as I returned to Gweek and to my father I firmly resolved never to set eyes on her again.

I thought my father would be pleased that I had finally removed myself from my mother’s influence, but he said nothing. Although he had allowed and even encouraged me to see my mother whenever she demanded it, he never questioned me afterward about my visits, and even at the age of ten I sensed he had no more wish to discuss my mother’s schemes to regain Penmarric than he had to discuss my mother herself. The unspoken subjects became a barrier between us, and as I grew older it seemed to me that although he always treated me with kindness and interest his conventional parental attitude, so faithfully produced for my benefit, masked a wall of estrangement which hurt as much as it baffled me. I knew I must often remind him of my mother. I could see that Nigel’s facile good-naturedness was easier for him to respond to than my own more complex behavior. But I was his elder son, the son who shared his love of history—how hard I had worked at my history!—and it seemed unjust that he should unwittingly be prejudiced against me on account of my mother and all the more unjust since I was the one who yearned to be like him, to live as he lived and to share his standards and beliefs.

He was a quiet man. I could understand why my mother thought he was dull and provincial, for he loathed city life and was always happiest in the tranquil Cornish backwater of Gweek where he could ride a little, mingle occasionally with his friends among the local gentry whom he had known all his life, and, most important of all, write his historical articles and monographs in peace and seclusion. My father did not talk much about honor and justice, the concepts which my mother so dearly loved to brandish, but there was no need for him to talk of them; he gave neither Nigel nor myself long lectures about moral conduct but merely took it for granted that we would follow in his footsteps. For my father was a good man and he was chaste, and the example he set us was so clear that there was no need for it to be defined in words.

So strong was my desire to be like him that I managed to suppress my Penmar inclinations until I was nearly seventeen, but the Penmars were adventurers; whatever virtues they possessed, chastity was not one of them.

Curiously enough it was the quarrel with my mother that proved to be my undoing. It was illogical and incomprehensible to me, but I missed her and would have written to mend the breach between us if my pride had permitted it. But my pride did not permit it, so I reached out instead for the sex my mother represented, and in a fit of depression I turned my back on my father’s standards during a casual visit I paid one day to Mullion Cove.

The woman was a fisherman’s wife. Her husband was away at sea and she needed money as well as companionship, so I gave her five shillings. She was grateful—and so was I at first, but as soon as the episode was over I found my guilt made me feel even unhappier than I had felt before. To make matters worse I found it impossible to behave as if the incident had never happened and return to a life of abstinence. Finally in a muddled effort to make amends both to my conscience, which was making me miserable, and to my father, who remained unaware of my weakness, I flung myself into my work more energetically than ever before and vowed I would not rest until I had become as fine a scholar as he himself was.

I went early to Oxford. It will sound immodest if I write that there was no more they could teach me at Eton, but I yearned for deeper studies and was anxious to escape from the restrictions of school life to the freedom of the Varsity. I took my final examinations in the summer before my twenty-first birthday and was awarded a first, a great rarity for a young man only twenty years old. My tutor wanted me to stay on and devote myself to an academic life, but I was weary of studies at last after so much concentrated effort and told him I wanted to rest for a time before coming to any firm decision about my future.

A friend invited me to stay at his family’s house in London to sample the remainder of the Season, and I accepted. It was a peaceful summer that year, the summer of 1890. England was marking time; the Irish question had been manipulated into abeyance by the conservative government of Lord Salisbury; the labor strikes of the early Nineties were still to come. The world was between international crises; nobody was rattling their sabers at one another and even the spirit of Jingoism had temporarily abated. In London after my toils at Oxford I too began to feel as lulled into false security as the world around me, but then suddenly without any warning my mother entered my life again and I became shackled to the chain of events which was to lead me to that country churchyard in Zillan and to Janna Roslyn’s eyes wide-set and black-lashed behind her widow’s veil.

Stephen’s heir was his elder son Eustace, and he had tried to ensure Eustace’s succession … In 1153 Eustace suddenly died.

—The Saxon and Norman Kings,
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE

In despair Stephen gave up the interminable struggle. He had not long to live and he knew it; now that his destined heir was dead his sole remaining wish was to die still King of England … he acknowledged as his heir Henry fitzEmpress, Duke of Normandy …

—The Devil’s Brood

ALFRED DUGGAN

I
WAS ABOUT TO
rent chambers in Bruton Street when I met my mother again. I had no wish to outstay my welcome at my Oxonian friend’s house, and although I had earlier planned to return to Gweek after sampling the delights of the Season for two or three weeks, I now discovered that this course of action was no longer open to me. My father had temporarily closed Gweekellis Manor in a gesture I found surprising to say the least and had retreated to a small property he owned in the parish of Morvah on the Cornish North Coast about five miles from Penmarric. He had inherited the property, Deveral Farm, long ago from his mother, who had belonged to a land-owning family in a neighboring parish, but the land had been leased to tenants for decades and I think he had almost forgotten he had property there until in the spring of 1890 the tenant died, the long lease expired simultaneously and certain legal problems connected with the estate required a visit from the landlord. While I was still up at Oxford I had received a letter from him saying he was considering staying on at Morvah for two or three weeks; Nigel was by that time abroad on a Grand Tour of Europe, I was to be staying in London and Gweekellis Manor had suddenly seemed lonelier than usual; besides, his thesis on the subject of Henry II’s coinage reforms was not going well and he thought a change of scenery might improve matters.

Evidently it did; I was in London by the time his second letter reached me and I learned that he had closed Gweekellis for the summer after deciding to remain at Deveral Farm until the autumn.

“After so many years spent in South Cornwall,” he had written, “I had quite forgotten how beautiful it is here on the starker, more spectacular North Coast, and I find I have a craving for solitude which my circle of friends would not permit me to assuage at Gweek. Perhaps I shall end my days as a recluse! Let me know when you wish to return to Gweek and I shall make arrangements to open the house for you, but no doubt you will stay in London until the end of the Season and then I dare say you will have invitations to a variety of country houses …”

This was true; I had indeed planned originally to remain in London until the end of the Season and I had no doubt there would be invitations to the country, just as he had foreseen, but I had been quickly disillusioned by the Season and had found my opportunities to meet so many young girls of my own age and class unrewarding. I might be the elder son of a country gentleman, but I had no title, no wealth apart from my modest quarterly allowance and, as Clarissa Penmar had pointed out so painstakingly, no good looks. To the married seamstress and unwed chambermaid at Oxford I might have seemed rich and aristocratic enough to be attractive, but to young girls of my own class and their aspiring mamas I was a nonentity.

However, it was exciting to be in London even if the Season did not measure up to my expectations, so after receiving my father’s letter I resolved to stay on in town and make the best of the situation. I did toy with the idea of joining him at Morvah, but he had not asked me to stay, and I was too proud to arrive on his doorstep uninvited as if I were a wayward puppy running up to his master for a pat on the head.

I was just walking down Piccadilly one morning on my way to Bruton Street to inspect some chambers which were for rent when I met my mother face to face outside the Royal Academy.