Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “You have as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Sit down!”

  “Like hell I will!”

  We stood facing each other, fists clenched, muscles taut. For the first time in our lives he was no longer taller than I was.

  “Please!” exclaimed Marcus, scrambling nervously to his feet. “Do let’s be civilized. No violence—nothing sordid. Please.”

  I stepped back a pace, shrugged my shoulders, shoved my fists into my trouser pockets. “What else do you wish to say?” I said crisply to Philip.

  “Just this,” said Philip. “Just this. Marcus and I both need money and we’re not going to tolerate any attempts you may make to stand in our way. If you want to show us your good intentions you’ll help us by doing two things. First, you can find a copy of Father’s latest will and see what it says. You have access to his papers, and if he catches you in his study you can always claim you’re looking for some manuscript or other—good God, you can think up an excuse! Judging from what I’ve heard, you spend half your time in the study anyway. When you’ve found the will, show it to Marcus and Hugh and replace it again as soon as they’ve read it. We want to see how the money is divided so that we can ask for a portion in advance.”

  “If you’re suggesting I should sneak into his study and pry among his papers like some common thief—”

  “You want to show us your good intentions, don’t you?”

  “I don’t display my good intentions by stooping to such degrading behavior!”

  “Damn you, Adrian, you’re not going to stand in our way! We want that money and we want to know what’s in that will and if you don’t bloody well do as you’re told—”

  “Yes?” I said. “What’s the next threat?”

  “—Marcus will see there isn’t a soul in all Oxford who doesn’t know your true relationship to the eminent historian Mark Castallack. You’ll find everyone sniggering at you behind your back when you go up for your first term in October.”

  The wind hummed over the stone walls and cooled my cheeks. I kept my head, managed to remain calm.

  “Marcus wouldn’t have the guts to be such an out-and-out bastard,” I said, stammering a little over the word but otherwise speaking strongly enough. That’s an empty threat if ever I heard one. Very well! So you want me to do your own dirty work for you and find out about the will and now you know my answer. I shan’t. What was the second favor you wanted to ask me?”

  They were all furious. Marcus was red at the implication that he was too weak to carry out a threat. Hugh was white with indignation that I should be so annoyingly insubordinate, and Philip was speechless with rage at my refusal to be browbeaten.

  “Well?” I said. “What is it? You may as well tell me. What was the second thing you wanted me to do?”

  Philip managed to control himself. As he began to speak, the sun went behind a bank of clouds and the wind whistled eerily over the darkened landscape so that his voice sounded distorted and far away. “Go to your friend Alice Penmar,” I heard him say deliberately, “and find out if she’s taken your mother’s place in Father’s bedroom.”

  2

  After a long silence I managed to laugh. “You’re mad,” I said and turned away to my horse.

  “Adrian, if you don’t cooperate with us and do your best to help, it’ll be patently obvious that you’re simply out for what you can get where Father’s concerned. If you had a single spark of fraternal feeling-—”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me of fraternal feeling!” I whirled around, blind with rage. “Fine brothers you’ve all been to me! Why, I believe if I fell off my horse and broke my leg you’d ride straight on and leave me without a second thought! You’re the most shallow, worthless bunch of scoundrels I’ve ever met and I feel sorry for Papa having to tolerate you all and try to fulfill his obligations where you’re concerned. And if you’re despicable enough to suppose that Alice Penmar, a clergyman’s granddaughter, a decent, honest, moral girl, would ever—”

  “Father doesn’t let outward respectability bother him,” said Philip. “Look at your mother.”

  “My God, you—”

  “Please, Philip,” said Marcus tightly, “don’t speak of Aunt Rose like that. In fact don’t even mention Aunt Rose. It’s not right.”

  “Besides,” said Hugh blandly, “we’re discussing Alice. Aunt Rose is irrelevant to the conversation except possibly as an illustration of Papa’s tastes in that direction. Now let’s try and consider this dispassionately without getting all hot under the collar and losing track of the argument. I’m sure you’re intelligent enough to understand, Adrian, that we’re interested in Alice because we’re anxious to get some sort of lever over Papa. For example, if he shows reluctance to give Marcus and Philip a portion, it may be necessary to exert a little pressure of a certain kind—you understand? Now, considering the available facts, I think it’s highly probable that he has his eye on Alice. Whether anything’s happened yet is a moot point but as far as I can see it’s very likely that something will. Consider the situation. Papa, as we all know, has to have some sort of woman in the background, and no matter how devoted he was to Aunt Rose I don’t suppose he’s been utterly celibate since she died. However, recently he’s hardly moved out of Penmarric. He’s been here all summer working, and meanwhile living in the same house—keeping house for him—is this young woman of twenty-two, unrelated to him by blood in spite of her surname, unmarried and—if I may use a farmyard phrase since there are no ladies present—ripe for the plucking. No, wait! Don’t interrupt! Hear me out! This much is in Alice’s favor: She’s young, she’s quick-witted and she knows how to listen when he rambles on about history. However, she’s also plain and dark—have you noticed how Papa seems to prefer fair women?—and she’s too thin with practically no bosom at all. The question is therefore as follows: Does her youth—men of Papa’s age like young girls—and her intelligence outweigh her obvious lack of physical excitement? Considering that Papa’s probably had enough physical excitement to last him a lifetime and that he’s getting to an age when looks cease to be as important as personality, I think the answer is probably yes. In which case—”

  “If you were to talk to her,” said Philip to me, “test her on the subject, observe her and Papa when they’re together—after all, you’re the one who’s always with them! If you could manage to establish that there was some sort of illicit relationship between Alice and Father—”

  I hit him very hard on the jaw.

  He reeled, toppling over, spinning against the ancient walls, and as he fell he gave a shout of rage and pain.

  “Oh God,” said Marcus, looking sick, “oh God, I knew this wouldn’t work. I knew it.”

  “Be quiet!” Hugh spat at him and swung around on me. “You’ll be sorry for this. You’ll regret it when you go up to Oxford. All we wanted you to do was just to give us the minimum of cooperation to show your good faith, but you couldn’t even give us that! We gave you the chance to be friends and join us, but you deliberately turned your back. And as if that wasn’t enough we have to endure your insufferable priggishness and listen to your self-righteous, hypocritical justification for your self-righteous, hypocritical conduct!”

  I tried to hit him too but he dodged the blow. Philip was picking himself up, spitting blood and using foul language. I was outnumbered.

  “All right, you bastard,” said Philip, “now you’re really going to wish you’d never come here. Get out of my way, Marcus.”

  I had no choice. I turned, ran and vaulted into the saddle of my horse. Hugh tried to stop me as I whipped the horse out of the inner circle, but Marcus caught his arm and I was able to wrench myself free. I rode out of the castle gateway and galloped off along the ridge as fast as my horse would carry me, and when I glanced back over my shoulder I saw the three of them standing by the outer walls, Philip still rubbing his jaw as he stared after me.

  3

  By the time. I arrived back at Penmarric I was shaking fro
m head to toe with a nervous reaction to the scene at Chûn, and the knuckles of my right hand were raw and swollen. I went upstairs to the bedroom, found some antiseptic lotion and bathed my hand, but I was still so shaky that finally I slipped down to the dining room and helped myself to a mouthful of brandy from the sideboard. After that I felt better. In the privacy of my room I tried to think clearly. There was nothing I could do. I could not run to Papa like a lost child and announce dramatically that his legitimate sons were plotting against him. That sort of behavior would smack too much of the telltale sneak. And I certainly could not run to Alice and say how upset I was that Philip, Marcus and Hugh suspected her of being Papa’s mistress. I was helpless. All I knew was that a bottomless rift had opened between myself and my half-brothers and that if Marcus were sufficiently malicious my anonymity of status would be jeopardized at Oxford.

  I thought: I must leave Penmarric. I have to get away.

  Yet I hated to think I was fleeing from my half-brothers and the unpleasantness they had created. Some element of stubbornness in me rebelled against taking a course of action which I might later judge cowardly and weak. I went on considering the problem, my thoughts twisting restlessly as I sifted each minute of the scene at Chûn, and at last I began to think with an uneasy clarity of my friend Alice Penmar.

  I knew there was no immoral relationship between her and Papa. I knew nothing of love affairs but I could remember how different Mama had always been in Papa’s presence, how bright and joyous and gay. Alice was always exactly the same. I could remember too how Papa had looked at Mama sometimes; he had not once looked at Alice as he had looked at my mother, and in fact his attitude toward her was so obviously paternal that I wondered why I could not dismiss the notion of a relationship between them without any difficulty at all. But I could not dismiss it. I kept thinking of Hugh’s repellently logical analysis of Alice’s flaws and attractions to a man such as my father, and not for the first time I had the uneasy suspicion that beneath Hugh’s questionable statements there might lurk a small unpalatable core of truth.

  It was not impossible for Papa to fall in love with her. He would not love her as he had loved Mama, of course, but he would like her and respect her and perhaps if she were willing—

  I tried to tell myself that she would not be willing, but I could not.

  My mother had been willing.

  I got up, went downstairs again in a fit of restlessness and began to pace up and down the billiard room. I found I was unsure of my own feelings, aware of a confusion in my thoughts. In my own way I loved Alice myself, and at one time when I first knew her I had admired her to the point of adolescent infatuation, but I knew well enough now that my feelings for her were those a brother might feel toward an older sister to whom he was deeply attached. I had not once felt toward Alice that embarrassing chain of physical reactions that had accompanied my meetings with her cousin Rebecca Roslyn; in fact my love for Alice, even at its most fervent, had always been entirely on an unreal, idealistic plane. But I did love her. She was very dear to me, and the thought of her being sought by my father for an immoral purpose was distasteful in the extreme.

  I stopped by the window and stared out onto the terrace. The urge to escape from Penmarric now was so strong that it made me feel dizzy. It was not simply because my half-brothers were openly my enemies. It was because I could not bear to watch a second version of my father’s association with my mother, another unfolding of a love that could not end in marriage, another episode in which two good and decent people became entangled in a sordid and degrading relationship. I was filled with revulsion. All my worst memories of Brighton welled up inside me in a wave of nausea and all I was conscious of thinking was: I must leave. I have to get away from Penmarric. I can’t stay here any longer.

  Voices echoed in the hall.

  Philip said, Tell my father we want to see him, Medlyn. At once,” and Hugh added something else that I could not hear.

  Far away across the hall I heard old Medlyn quaver, “No, Mr. Hugh, I haven’t seen Mr. Adrian. I thought he was out riding with you, Mr. Marcus, sir.”

  I went out into the passage in time to see them disappear into Papa’s study and close the door.

  Medlyn ambled away across the hall. It was quiet. I went into the drawing room next to the study but the wall was thin being a mere partition erected when the old gunroom had been divided into two; when voices were raised in anger I could hear too much that I did not want to hear, so I walked through the open French windows into the summer morning outside. At the far end of the terrace I leaned on the parapet and stared out to sea. Surf boiled on the black rocks of the cove far below and the sea was flecked with white before ending in a hard angry horizon.

  I watched the sea for a long time. Finally I straightened my back and returned to the French windows, but before I could reach them I heard Alice call from the drawing room beyond.

  “Philip!” Her voice was sharp and clear. “Philip, may I speak to you for a moment?”

  I drew back, not knowing why, and waited, leaning against the wall by the open window.

  “Please,” she said. “Just for a moment.”

  He came. The door banged behind him and he said roughly, “I’m sorry, Alice, but I’m not anxious to delay here. I’ve just quarreled with my father.”

  “I know,” she said. “I listened. I heard every word.”

  I tried to move away but could not. I was riveted to the ground. I heard Philip say, “Then perhaps it’s true that eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves! Now if you’ll excuse me, Alice—”

  “Listen, Philip.” For the first time I was aware of the tension in her voice, although she still spoke with a swift precision. “You were wrong in assuming I was—or might become—any more than simply your father’s housekeeper. Your father has always treated me with the greatest propriety, and even if he had made any advances I would have rejected them. He’s not the man I love.”

  “Oh? Well, to be frank I don’t give a damn who you love or who you don’t love, and I’ll talk to you some other time, if you don’t mind. I’m not in the mood to talk to you now.”

  “Please, Philip. You can’t be unaware of the way I feel. I loved you from the very first moment that I saw you after your return to Cornwall, and I’ve loved you ever since.”

  “My God, Alice, do you really have to make such a fool of yourself? Of all the embarrassing, ridiculous confessions—”

  “But it’s the truth, Philip, the truth! I don’t love your father, I love you! I shall never love anyone else except you! I—”

  “God Almighty,” said Philip, wrenching open the door, “as if I didn’t have enough to cope with without having a hysterical woman screaming foolishness at me. Leave me alone! I’m not in love with you! Go away and stop being so silly!”

  “Philip, please—please listen—”

  But he went out into the hall and slammed the door in her face. I waited, speechless and stricken, listening to the dreadful aching silence that remained, and finally as I leaned against the wall and pressed my burning forehead upon the cold stone I heard her harsh, painful sobs as she began to weep.

  4

  The war came.

  I enlisted, of course. I did not even hesitate. I did not have to run away from Penmarric because I was called away by my country, summoned by my patriotism, inspired by the notion that if I could not wage a violent battle against my family I could at least go and fight the Germans in a good, glorious, noble war waged for the benefit of the world.

  I braced myself, prepared to ride into battle bearing aloft the standards in which I believed so passionately, prepared to die if necessary for the cause I thought so worthwhile.

  But I did not die. Nor did I ride into battle on a milk-white charger like some mythical crusader lost in the corridors of time. I went to the trenches. I went to places from which no man save I returned alive.

  I saw war, and of course it was evil, the most appalling evil I could ev
er have imagined to exist on the face of the earth. I went out and I met evil face to face, and it was then at last that my soul was stripped naked before my eyes and I saw a truth so terrible that I felt as if I were a part of that evil and that my standards were as dust. For I had been at war all my life. I had always been fighting. I had fought my father and fought my brothers and fought most bitterly of all against the pattern which God had marked out for me from the moment I entered the world.

  And when the trenches ran with blood and the air reeked of putrefaction and my comrades died like flies at my side, all I thought was: God Almighty, let me get home to Penmarric and I swear I’ll never go fighting again.

  IV

  PHILIP: 1914-1930

  Truth and Falsehood

  Contemporaries held varying opinions about the character of Richard I. He was hot-tempered and irresponsible, generous and accomplished … above all he was a superb soldier.

  —Oxford History of England:

  From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

  A. L. POOLE

  The young Duke was later called “Richard Oc e Non”—“Richard Yea and Nay”—because he always said exactly what he meant; his yea meant yea and his nay meant nay. He never troubled to dissimulate and he scorned lies … He minced no words in telling his father what he thought of Henry’s treatment of his Queen.

  —Henry II,

  JOHN T. APPLEBY

  Richard was his mother’s favourite.

  —The Conquering Family,

  THOMAS COSTAIN

  The company of his mother may have affected Richard’s character …

  —The Devil’s Brood,

  ALFRED DUGGAN

  ONE

  The crusade was Richard’s dominating passion … He worked with a singleness of purpose to remove every obstacle that might stand in the way of its early and successful achievement.