Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  The waiter arrived with our fish. We sat looking at it for a moment.

  “Please eat,” said Mama in the rapid voice she kept for partings on station platforms. “Please, darlings. Don’t let it get cold.”

  I looked at William. He pushed away his plate, so I pushed away mine.

  “Mama,” said William. “Please tell us. Who—”

  “William, I’m sorry but I simply can’t. I know it’s silly of me but I can’t talk about it. You’ll have to ask Papa.”

  I said in a small voice that trembled, “Is it bad?”

  “Yes,” said Mama, “but don’t be frightened. There’s no need to be frightened at all. Papa will explain everything when he comes back.”

  We did not say anything after that. We merely sat and waited for Papa. When the waiter came to remove our plates Mama with our consent canceled the rest of the order.

  “We can have a tray sent up to our room,” she said, “if we feel hungry later on.”

  We went on waiting for Papa. We waited a long time.

  “Could we go and sit in the drawing room?” I said, shifting uncomfortably on my high-backed chair.

  “No,” said Mama. “Papa told us to stay here, and we shall stay here till he comes back.”

  We went on waiting.

  At last William said suddenly, “Here he is.”

  I swiveled around. He came toward us slowly, not hurrying, and I noticed that when he looked across the room he looked not at Mama but at us. His face was very white and he had two red marks across his cheek as if he had scratched himself too violently with his fingernails.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s settled.” He added to Mama; not looking at her, “I’m so sorry, Rose. I’m so very sorry.”

  Mama did not speak.

  “It’s all right,” he said, taking her hand but still not looking at her. “It’s all over, Rose. I finished it. It’s over once and for all; No more unexorcised ghosts. No more Christmases and Easters in Cornwall. No more living two lives.”

  “Mark—”

  “I finished it, Rose. It’s over.”

  “Mark, please—”

  “I finished it, you see. I ended it once and for all.”

  “Please,” whispered Mama, “please look at me.”

  But he could not. He pulled back his chair and sat down and all he could say was “It’s over. I finished it.”

  Very slowly Mama stood up.

  “Don’t go, Rose!”

  “I want to wait in the drawing room.” Her voice was faint. “Please explain to the boys.”

  “Rose—”

  “I’m quite well,” she said. “It’s nothing. I just don’t want to be here when you tell the boys.”

  “Rose, my darling Rose …” He stood up clumsily and looked at her for the first time. I could not see his expression.

  “It was so squalid,” he said, mumbling so that it was difficult to bear him. “So sordid. I cannot begin to explain—”

  “I understand.”

  “You cannot. It’s too bestial for you to understand.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as long as you—”

  “I do. More than anything else in the world.”

  They looked at each other. We looked at them but they did not see us. My mother was crying.

  “Then everything is all right,” she said, turning away so that we should not see her tears, “isn’t it?”

  “Let me come with you to the drawing room.”

  “No … please, Mark. The boys—”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course. The boys.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the drawing room.”

  “Very well.”

  We all watched her as she walked away out of the dining room and disappeared from sight. Finally Papa sat down again opposite us, motioned the headwaiter and ordered a glass of brandy. As we watched him in silence he selected a cigar, lit it and then said slowly, “I’m afraid I have some thing to say which should have been said a very long time ago.”

  We waited, staring at him. Presently the headwaiter brought him a glass of brandy and Papa drank half of it as soon as it was put in front of him.

  After a long silence he said, “I expect you both wondered who the woman and the little boy were.”

  We remained silent. “I suppose they were acquaintances of yours,” said William uneasily at last.

  “Yes,” said Papa. “They are.” He fidgeted with his cigar and added without expression, “The boy is my son.”

  We gaped at him.

  “Our brother, you mean?” I said, my heart pounding fast.

  “Your half-brother. The woman with him was his mother.”

  “You mean …” I was confused. I could feel my filing and classification system begin to disintegrate, “Isn’t it illegal,” I said at last, “to have two wives at once?”

  “I have only one wife.”

  “Did the lady have a baby even though she’s not married to you?”

  “She is married to me,” said Papa. “Your mother is the one who isn’t married.”

  We looked at him dumbly. He took a mouthful of brandy and began to crush his cigar to pulp again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, more to William than to me. “I should have told you long ago, but we were all so happy and somehow the opportunity never seemed to present itself.”

  William said nothing.

  “But how could you and Mama have decided to have William and me?” I said. “You knew it was bad.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It was bad.”

  “But, Papa, if you and Mama are good how could you possibly do something that was bad?”

  “Nothing is black and white in this world, Adrian. One cannot divide people into two categories and neatly label one ‘good’ and the other ‘evil.’ When you’re older you’ll understand. Life isn’t like that.”

  William said so icily that I hardly recognized his voice, “Why didn’t you marry Mama? Why did you marry that other woman?”

  “Because I thought I was in love with that other woman. I did not realize how much I loved your mama.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then why don’t you divorce your wife at once and marry her?”

  “I have no grounds for obtaining a divorce,” said Papa evenly. “I would marry your mama if I could, but I can’t.”

  I said cautiously, tracing a little pattern on the tablecloth to help me concentrate, “It’s just as if you really were married to Mama, though. We’re just like any other family really.”

  “Yes, indeed. In fact we’re more of a family than many families I know.”

  “Well,” said William in a loud, rude, disagreeable tone, that was quite unlike him, “in that case I can’t think why anyone bothers to get married. If one can live just as happily without God’s blessing and be a family just like anyone else, why is there an institution of marriage at all? If you marry the wrong person and everything turns out to be a mess all that happens is that lots of people are made unhappy and you can’t marry the person you should have married in the first place. If you never marry anyone, then no one would ever be unhappy. I shall never, never get married, never as long as I live.” And he pushed back his chair abruptly and ran out of the room.

  I stared after him and then turned to Papa. He looked shaken and old. There were dark shadows under his eyes and deep lines about his mouth.

  “Never mind, Papa,” I said, taking pity on him because he looked so tired. “We can play the pretend game a little differently, that’s all. We can pretend to ourselves that you and Mama really are married.”

  He shook his head without speaking.

  “Papa, was it not true about Grandfather Parrish wanting Mama to keep his name?”

  “No, that was a story Mama told—foolishly or otherwise—in an attempt not to hurt you when you were younger. It was a great pity she—I—did not tell you the truth from the beginning.”

  I trac
ed another pattern on the tablecloth. “Does God think I’m sinful and wicked?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “But you and Mama are.”

  “We love each other. God will understand and forgive us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course! How could God ever think Mama was wicked?”

  “But she did a wicked thing.”

  “Everyone does wicked things,” said Papa. “Only saints are good all the time and I don’t love Mama because she’s a saint. I love her because she’s human.”

  “Then it’s all right for people to live as if they’re married when they’re not because God will forgive them.”

  “No, I didn’t say that.” As always, he was endlessly patient with me. “What I’m saying is this: That if two people love each other as deeply as Mama and I do, yet for some reason cannot marry although they want to very much, then I do believe that God, being merciful, will forgive them for their sins. But for two people to have a casual affair—that is to say, to meet, to act for a few hours, days, months, as if they were married yet possessing no intention whatever of marrying each other—that’s the sort of relationship which is wrong and which God doesn’t forgive easily. God can forgive love but not lust.”

  “How can you tell when it’s love and when it’s lust?”

  “Adrian,” said Papa, “if there was a simple answer to that question there would not be nearly so many unhappy husbands and wives … But that’s something you can’t possibly understand at the age of eight. Come, I think it’s time we joined Mama in the drawing room and found out what’s happened to William.”

  Mama was alone. Papa left me with her while he went off to discover where William had gone.

  “Poor Mama,” I said, hugging her. “Don’t look so sad! I don’t mind in the least! It doesn’t make any difference to me so long as God isn’t cross with us for being bad. But Papa says we’re good anyway.” I had a bright idea. “Let’s go upstairs to our sitting room,” I suggested, wanting to cheer her up, “and I’ll read aloud to you from the book I’ve brought with me from the school library.”

  “No, darling, the hotel manager is changing our suite. Papa decided be didn’t like the rooms and so the manager said we could have another suite instead.”

  “Oh, I see …” I fidgeted. “Is the lady staying here with the boy?”

  “No, they’ve gone to another hotel. Papa was going to leave too and take us somewhere else but when he heard she was going he decided simply to change suites. So we must wait here until the porters have finished moving our luggage and everything is ready.”

  We waited for some time, Mama looking at a magazine and I sitting beside her so that I could see the pictures.

  “You’re not still sad, are you, Mama?”

  “No, Adrian. Not now.”

  Papa came into the drawing room alone at last and, walked over to us. “William’s gone to bed,” he said. “We had a long talk together.” He glanced at me. “You should be in bed too. It’s very late.”

  I suddenly became aware of a great emptiness. “I feel hungry,” I said surprised. “Very hungry.”

  Mama smiled a little. I was relieved to see her smile again. “I think I’m hungry too! Perhaps we could have a tray sent upstairs for us, Mark.”

  “What a good idea,” he said. “I’ll order it straight away.” He took her arm, stretched out to grasp my hand; together we left the drawing room and began the journey upstairs to the privacy of our new suite of rooms.

  The evening was over. But nothing was ever the same again.

  3

  The next morning I said to William, “Do you mind?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’m never going to let it show. I’m going to go through life pretending I don’t give a damn.”

  I was rather shocked by this swear word although after six weeks at boarding school my ears had become accustomed to this sort of vocabulary. “Why?” I said, not understanding his defiance.

  “Because they don’t give a damn. They don’t mind not being married—they don’t care what people think. They say they’d like to be married—well, of course they have to say that, but they can’t be married so they don’t care. And why don’t they care? Because they know they’re as good as any husband and wife. Well, I’m going to be as good as any legitimate son, and I shall think of myself as legitimate, but if anyone ever calls me a bastard I shan’t knock his teeth in because that would show I cared, so I’m going to laugh and say ‘what the hell’ and then no one can ever ever insult me because I shan’t care enough to feel insulted.”

  I listened to him, dazed. I had never heard William talk with such passionate intensity on any subject before. After a long moment I said, “What’s a bastard?”

  “Us,” said William. “It’s a swear word like devil and bitch and bloody.”

  I was shocked. “Well, if anyone ever calls me that,” I said at once, “I shall fight him. I’ll knock him down and beat him till he apologizes.”

  “Save your energy! It’s not worth it!”

  “But I must!” I said, even more shocked. “It’s a matter of principle! Nobody’s going to go around calling me bad names when I’m good.”

  “But you are a bastard, you little silly! It’s true!”

  “I’m not bad,” I said stubbornly, clinging to my pattern, my neat classification and my immaculate filing system, “and no one is going to go around calling me bad names.”

  “Then you’re just asking for trouble,” said William, “Practically begging for it.”

  But I did not believe him.

  4

  We began to hear more and more about the Castallacks after that. Appalled, we learned that the boy we had seen at Brighton was not an only child; he had two brothers and three sisters, and—most appalling of all—Papa wanted to bring all of them to Allengate to live with us.

  “It’s very kind of Papa to think we might like other children to play with,” I said to Mama after she had informed us of this proposal, “but please tell him not to worry. Allengate is just right for you, Papa, William and me. I don’t think we want any other people here, thank you.”

  “Absolutely not!” said William loudly. “And I think it’s quite wrong of him to suggest it.”

  “Well, really!” said Mama strongly. “Shame on you both! Think how fortunate you are! You have a beautiful home with everything you could possibly want and two parents who love each other. I think you should spare a thought for others less fortunate than yourselves. Those children have been brought up in a dreary isolated mansion with parents who have been too preoccupied by unhappiness to spend much time with them, and now that their mother is seeking a judicial separation from Papa it must seem to them that fate has treated them even more harshly than before. You should be anxious for them to come to Allengate, if only so that you can show them what a truly happy home is like.”

  I hung my head in shame but William said abruptly, “I know Papa said he couldn’t divorce their mother, but why can’t she divorce him? If she’s seeking a judicial separation why can’t she seek a divorce? And what’s the difference between divorce and a judicial separation anyway?”

  “Divorce is a very drastic step,” said Mama, “and Mrs. Castallack may have found herself unable to take it for moral or religious or social reasons. A judicial separation means that she will remain Papa’s wife—but in name only. He is not allowed to treat her as if she were his wife and she cannot expect him to visit her as he did in the past.”

  “That sounds just like a divorce,” I said, puzzled.

  “It’s similar in some ways. But in a judicial separation the marriage still exists, while in a divorce the marriage is dissolved so that the parties are free to marry again.”

  “She should divorce him!” said William angrily. “What’s the point of insisting on only a judicial separation? It’s not fair!”

  “I know her decision—right or wrong—is very distressing for us,” said Mama without
hesitation, “but we must all three of us remember that it’s even more distressing for Papa because he hates to see any of us unhappy. So we must be very careful not to complain to him. Also Papa has so many other worries at this time that it’s all the more important that we shouldn’t add to them in any way. For example, I know he’s most concerned about those six children. He and Mrs. Castallack cannot agree where the children shall live now, and that’s why he’s had to make these frequent journeys to London ever since you both came home for the holidays—he was obliged to consult the judge since only the judge can make a firm ruling on the matter.”

  “Will the judge decide in Papa’s favor?”

  “We don’t know what he will decide yet. But I thought you should know that the children may all be coming here to live. Mrs. Castallack has been behaving a little unwisely and so the judge may even decide that she should not be allowed to keep her daughters with her. But whatever happens to the girls it does seem almost certain that Papa will receive custody of the boys, so—”

  “All the boys?” I said. “Even the one at Brighton?”

  “Philip? Yes, of course. He’s only a little older than you and so I’m sure you’ll soon become good friends with him.”

  I was silent. I knew even then that Philip and I were not destined to be friends.

  At the end of the Christmas holidays William became ill and I was not allowed to go back to school until I was safely out of quarantine. He had diphtheria. Mama devoted every hour of the day to nursing him while Papa, looking ill with exhaustion himself, spent his time traveling between the sickroom at Allengate and the courts of law in London. However, at last I was allowed to return to school, and William, who was by this time a little better, was left to recuperate slowly at home. Mama took him abroad to Switzerland for two weeks in March to complete his convalescence. I felt envious of him enjoying himself among the Alps while I was having to work so hard at school.

  When I came home for the spring holidays, Papa met me at the station and there on the platform beside him was a thin, pale William recently returned from Switzerland.

  “William!” I bounced over to him joyously. “Did you have a nice time? Thank you for your postcard! Is your heart still strained?”