I tried to visualize the future. Perhaps when I went up to Oxford Papa would allow me to spend my vacations either at my rooms there or at the townhouse in London, but the beginning of my first term at Oxford was still more than two years away. Until October 1914 there was nothing I could do but tolerate as best as I could the interested stares, the gossiping whispers and all the miseries inflicted on me by my being obliged to live at Penmarric. But in 1914 I would be free; in 1914 I could begin again with a clean slate in new surroundings. Impatience overwhelmed me. Seizing pencil and paper, I drew up an enormous calendar, just as Philip had done long ago at Allengate, and hung it on the wall so that I could cross off the days.
SIX
They agreed upon a marriage between Henry’s eldest daughter, Matilda, and Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria… As the King’s eldest daughter she was provided with a magnificent outfit.
—Henry II,
JOHN T. APPLEBY
Geoffrey was the favourite bastard of the Old King… Though his life was passed in quarrels he was personally devout and even chaste, a virtue very rare in a Plantagenet.
—The Devil’s Brood,
ALFRED DUGGAN
IT WAS THE AUGUST of 1912. Far away at the other end of Europe trouble was brewing in the Balkans, but not even Alice could summon much interest in the squabbles of such remote and barbaric peoples. At home the endless succession of labor strikes seemed to have subsided at last; Ireland had become troubled again, but since Ireland was perpetually troubled this was hardly a novel item of news, and although there was a bill afoot to broaden the franchise (much to Alice’s satisfaction) I privately thought it had no hope of being passed by the ultraconservative House of Lords even if it did manage to survive a vote in the Commons. In short it seemed an unexciting time of the year, and unable to divert myself from my private problems by studying a series of absorbing issues at home and abroad, I was reluctantly obliged to confront the approaching spectacle of Mariana’s elaborate society wedding.
The ceremony, which had been arranged to take place in Westminster at St. Margaret’s on the second Saturday in September, was to be followed by a lavish reception at Claridges. William had agreed not to be an usher, but Papa still had not approached us on the subject of where we would be staying during our visit to London, and we were just wondering if Mrs. Castallack had decided after all to stay at a hotel when Papa summoned us to his study to discuss the matter with us.
“After some indecision my wife has agreed to stay at the townhouse,” he said, fidgeting with a cigar as if he could not make up his mind whether to light it or not. He did not look at us. “She and I are traveling to London together tomorrow. She decided to stay in London for a fortnight before the wedding so that she could order some new clothes and accustom herself to London society after such a long absence.” He looked at us directly with his opaque eyes and added without expression, “There’s no question of a reconciliation, but we wish for Mariana’s sake to assume some semblance of a marital façade to display to the world for the occasion.”
We said nothing. We simply looked at him, and against my will I thought of my mother rushing with shining eyes to the door of our house in St. John’s Wood and running down the path into his arms.
“Philip will join us early next week—he’ll probably travel up to town with Marcus and Hugh. Miss Cartwright and Nanny will bring the girls and Jan-Yves three days before the wedding. I don’t know what you two would like to do—I leave it to you to decide when you want to leave Penmarric. By the way, I’ve made arrangements for you to stay with Michael Vincent’s brother Peter and his wife. They have a house near Russell Square, and I thought it would be more pleasant for you to stay there than in a hotel. Michael will also be staying with them, so you won’t be entirely among strangers. After you’ve decided when you want to arrive in London perhaps you could write a line to Peter Vincent informing him of your arrangements. I’ll give you his address.”
After a pause William said, “Thank you, sir. It’s kind of Mr. Vincent to have us to stay.”
“Well, Michael and I are such old friends and I’ve met Peter on a number of occasions …” He talked on fluently for a minute or two about the Vincents and we listened to him in polite silence. Then: “About money,” he said, opening a side drawer of his desk. “Of course you’ll find it expensive in London and I do want you to have a pleasant stay and go out and about as much as possible. I thought I’d give you a little extra so you can do as you please without having to worry about exceeding your respective financial limits.”
“No, thank you, Papa,” I said. “Please don’t bother. It’s really not necessary.”
. “Not in the least, sir,” said William, “and besides, you have enough expense with Mariana’s wedding without being over-generous to us as well.”
“Nonsense! I insist—”
“No, thank you, sir,” I said strongly.
“No, thank you, sir,” said William. “It’s most kind of you but we’d rather not accept.”
He shrugged, closed the drawer of his desk again without looking at us. “As you wish.”
There was a tense, awkward silence. I stood up clumsily. Then we’ll see you in London, Papa,” I said. “In case I don’t see you before you leave tomorrow, I hope you have a good journey.”
“Yes indeed, sir,” said William, standing up also. “And thank you for making the arrangements. Good night.”
“Good night, Papa,” I said, opening the door.
After a pause he said, “Good night” and began to shuffle the papers on his desk into a heap.
We went. We crossed the hall, and I began to run up the stairs to the gallery. William followed me to my room. When the door was closed at last and we were alone we looked at each other.
“Rather bad taste,” said William, “wasn’t it? Trying to buy us off like that”
A draft from the window made the gas flicker. I went over to the frame and tried to stuff part of the curtain down the crack. It was damp and cold in the room, and since it was August no housemaid had been up to light the fire.
“I’m not going,” I said.
“We must. It wouldn’t be fair to Mariana not to go.”
“Mariana wouldn’t notice!”
“She might. Mariana’s not as hard and conceited as she seems sometimes. I think she’s surprisingly sensitive underneath all that grand talk. Besides, she’s always treated us as if we were her brothers—look how she asked me to be an usher! She needn’t have asked me on Nick’s behalf like that, but she did. She really wanted me to be one.”
The gas flickered again.
“Frankly,” said William, “I don’t trust Papa an inch over this business. I think he’s angling for a reconciliation. Why else should he tolerate the idea of spending two weeks—two weeks!—under the same roof as that woman? God Almighty, they weren’t under the same roof longer than two hours at Brighton and look what happened there!”
“Stop it!” I shouted. I could not bear to think of Brighton. Whenever I thought of Brighton now all I could remember was my mother crying yet struggling to hide her distress from us, my father returning to the dining table yet unable to look her in the eyes. “I don’t want to talk of Brighton,” I said fiercely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
It was as if he had not heard me. “After all,” he was saying, “let’s face facts. Mama was the only person who could keep him away from that woman and even she couldn’t keep him away all the time—” He must have noticed the acuteness of my distress then, for he stopped abruptly. The next moment the familiar casual expression had swept back across his face and he was giving a careless shrug of his shoulders to dismiss the subject “Oh what the hell,” he said idly, wandering over to the door. “Everything’ll turn out all right, I dare say, and it’s silly to waste time worrying about something that may never happen… Well, I think I’ll go to bed. Good night, old chap. Sorry I was so down.”
But I did not answer him. H
e went, easing the door gently shut behind him, and I was alone in the flickering yellow light. The wind moaned across the cliffs; the rain hurled in from the sea to explode against the glass pane. Presently I went to the window and stared out for a long time upon the darkness of the Atlantic, and as I stared I thought of Brighton, of a gray November sea pounding restlessly on an ugly shingle beach. My mind twisted through the past as if searching feverishly for an elusive memory, and then from the recollection of those last days at Allengate I heard Mama say, “Be loyal to Papa,” and I hid my face in my hands as I began to cry.
2
After Papa had gone to London Hugh began to hover at my elbow again and suggested that we could have a moonlight picnic in the cove in belated celebration of his fifteenth birthday. He had the entire exploit already planned, I soon discovered; a bottle of home-made wine had been secretly imported from Roslyn Farm, twenty cigarettes had been smuggled into the house from Penzance, and he was thinking of asking Hannah the tween maid and her sister to drink and smoke with us.
“No thanks,” I said shortly. “I’m not interested.” I was still feeling upset after the scene with Papa, but that evening I became full of remorse at my ungraciousness toward Hugh and decided to seek him out to tell him I had changed my mind. By that time it would be too late to invite the girls and I would be spared the embarrassment of watching Hugh display the precocious interest he had already expressed in Hannah’s anatomy.
But I was fated to be embarrassed that evening. After searching the house for Hugh without success and even journeying down to the cove in case he had decided to hold his party without me, I concluded he must have gone to bed early and made my way patiently to his room.
“Hugh! I called, knocking on his door. “It’s Adrian—can I come in?”
There was a noise as if a glass had been overturned and the faint creak of a mattress. Seeing no reason on earth why he might not wish me to enter, I turned the handle, opened the door and walked into the room.
He was in bed with Hannah. I almost but not quite caught them in the act of fornication.
3
As I was getting dressed the next morning he sneaked into my room and closed the door softly behind him.
“I’m terribly sorry about last night,” he said charmingly, an anxious look in his eyes as if he feared he had given me offense. “You see …” And he launched into a long, story about how potent home-made wine was and how he had met Hannah entirely by accident and … “Well, I had absolutely no intention of beginning anything, but almost before I knew what was happening … well, I’m sure you can understand how it was.”
As he paused for reassurance I stared at him. His eyes were wide and frank. An engaging half-smile hovered at his mouth. He looked as if he had never had a dishonest thought in his life.
“I don’t believe you,” I heard myself say in an unexpectedly hard voice. “Last night wasn’t the first time. You’ve been playing around with that silly little maid for weeks.”
It was odd how certain I was that this was true. Memories of his fascination with the semi-classical postcards, his prurient conversations the previous holidays and his talent for telling lies all converged in my mind to eliminate any doubts I might otherwise have harbored about whether he was telling the truth or not.
“So you knew all the time!” said Hugh. He laughed before relaxing in relief. “Why on earth didn’t you say so? I’ve been putting on an act for you for ages because I was afraid of shocking you and losing your friendship! And I did want us to stay friends because I knew that as soon as you began to take an interest in girls we could have such fun together.” And suddenly he was confessing everything, how he had blackmailed Hannah into sleeping with him the previous holidays by threatening to tell Papa that he had seen her coming out of “a certain someone’s” bedroom in the early hours of the morning—I assumed he was referring to Marcus—and how after the first time he hadn’t had to blackmail her any more. “She thought I was inexperienced,” he said, satisfied. “It really surprised her to find out how much I knew.”
“You mean—before Hannah—”
“Yes, I went to that prostitute in Penzance but I wouldn’t honestly recommend that. She was old,” said Hugh fastidiously, “and used a very vulgar scent. I had no desire to go back to her afterward.”
“But …” For a moment I was speechless. “How could you?” I said at last “Of all the sordid things to do I think that’s about the most degraded I can imagine. And you were fourteen—fourteen years old! It’s almost too disgusting to talk about!”
His eyes changed subtly. They were lighter, clearer, more expressionless. “My dear Adrian, you talk as if there were an eleventh commandment saying, Thou shalt not fornicate at the age of fourteen!”
“I can’t help it,” I said, upset. “I’m sorry, but I think it’s so—so low, so utterly despicable—”
He lost his temper. With a jolt I realized I had not even known Hugh had a temper to lose. The smile was wiped off his face, the urbane affability fell away like a mask, and into his eyes blazed the violent ungovernable rage of the Penmars. It was then that I saw the real Hugh, saw beyond the surface resemblance to his mother to the personality which lay beneath, and the personality was the personality which spoke silently from the Penmar portraits in the gallery, the personality of an adventurer, a clever, dangerous adventurer without scruples of any kind.
“Damn you!” he yelled. His eyes glittered. His face was scarlet with fury. “Damn you! You bloody prig, don’t you dare preach to me!”
“I wasn’t preaching. I was just telling you—”
“You were just telling me what a bloody stupid prig you are! You don’t know anything, do you? No, don’t bother to tell me how well you do at school—I don’t care if you get a hundred percent in all your exams, the fact remains that you still don’t know one damned thing about anything that matters. You can’t imagine, can you, what it could be like to be the cleverest, best-looking member of a large family and yet be so overlooked that most of the time no one knows whether you’re there or not! If no one appreciates me inside my family, why shouldn’t I spend time with people who admire me as a person in my own right?’ Hannah may seem just a ‘silly little maid’ to you but to anyone who knows anything about life at all she’s a prize any man would be glad to win—and if you really want to know, she says she finds me the hell of a lot more exciting in bed than your bloody bastard of a brother!”
“Why, what do you—are you trying to say—”
“Yes, I thought you hadn’t guessed! I suppose it must be very shocking to you to realize your beloved William isn’t as perfect as you think he is!”
“You say one more slander about William and I’ll—“
“I’ve often wondered why Papa was so besotted with his bastards. Of course he’s more besotted with you than he is with William, but—”
So confused was I, so stunned, that all I could say was an automatic “Papa doesn’t have any favorites.”
“What!” He stared at me incredulously and then burst out laughing. “Could I possibly have heard you correctly? Did you really say ‘Papa has no favorites’? Why, you silly fool, how dare you stand there and say such a thing when we only had to spend one night at Allengate to discover who his little blue-eyed boy was!”
But all I could say was “It’s not true. It’s just not true.”
“It is true, damn you! It is true!” He was so angry now that he could hardly speak. “Christ Almighty, do you think we haven’t noticed how Papa is always talking to you at meals, sitting with you on the terrace, discussing history with you in his study? Do you think Marcus has never worried in case Papa should leave all his money to you in his will? Do you think you’re not the main reason why Philip won’t visit Penmarric? Has it never occurred to you that Philip won’t be friends with Papa not just because Papa put his mistress before his wife but because he puts you before us! How do you think we felt when we were bundled off to Allengate and thrown in
to a house where you and William were the little lords of the manor? Why, it was as if we, not you, were the bastards! We hated you! We always hated you! We still hate you! Mariana didn’t even want you at her wedding to embarrass us all publicly—but she had no choice in the matter! It was no good telling Papa that he couldn’t bring his favorite son to his daughter’s wedding. But let me tell you this: When Papa dies, you’ll be out and William with you. We’ve had enough of you bastards to last us a lifetime and as soon as we get the chance we’re going to kick you as far away from us as we possibly can.”
I managed to say, “If you call me a bastard just once more—”
“Bastard,” said Hugh and spat on the floor at my feet like a guttersnipe.
I hit him. We fought each other to a bloody, bitter standstill. I was bigger than he was and had a much longer reach, but he was muscular and tough. We fought each other until we were gasping with exhaustion and stopped only when someone flung open the door of my room to interrupt us.
It was William. “What on earth’s going on in here?” he demanded in amazement. “I could hear you from the end of the corridor! What the devil—”
Hugh spun around, his fury undiminished. “—you,” he spat at William in the language of the gutter, “—you both, you bastards.” And as William’s eyes widened he pushed past him and slammed the door in his face as he left the room.
I sank slowly down on the bed.
“For God’s sake!” exclaimed William, stupefied. “What was all that about? I’ve never seen Hugh so angry! What did you say to him? What happened? Tell me!”
But when at last I was able to speak again all I said was “I’m not going to that wedding.”
4
William and I talked for two hours, but I would not change my mind.
Penmarric Page 39
