Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “What a waste,” I said to my mine, “What a bloody waste.”

  “What did you say?” said the boy behind me.

  “Nothing.”

  I thought of Hugh all the way home, but I didn’t think of those last years of estrangement. I thought of other better days, because they seemed more real to me than those times after we had quarreled. I wouldn’t have quarreled with him if it hadn’t been for my mine; or if I had I would have forgiven him long ago and patched up the friendship, because despite everything I had liked Hugh and he was the one brother whose company I had actively sought. I hadn’t meant the mine to come between us. I hadn’t meant it to happen that way.

  I rode on over the moors, and around me the sun shone, the bracken swayed and the gorse was in bloom. When I reached the farm I broke the news to my mother as gently as I knew how, and afterward I sat with her and suffered her tears and tried as I had tried so often before to take my father’s place at her side.

  2

  It was a month before they found the body. I had a moment of panic in case I was asked to identify it, but my father went to the morgue to make the identification and no one suggested that I should be present.

  After that came the funeral.

  There was no escape from that.

  The funeral of an elderly person—Griselda, for example—is a mere ceremony, a gloomy ceremony certainly, but an experience which usually only grazes the emotions. When you’re old you expect to die; you’ve had your life, lived it and no one can live forever. Death is inevitable, and its inevitability serves to numb the emotions. But the funeral of a young person is a totally different experience. The funeral of my own brother, dead in the prime of life just before his twenty-eighth birthday, was the worst ordeal I had ever endured on consecrated ground.

  It was unspeakable.

  Everyone was there. Mariana even came down from Scotland with her small son, and Jeanne left her convent in London. The service was at Zillan and the body was buried besides the graves of my grandfather Laurence Castallack and my eldest brother Stephen, who had died in infancy. The rector; now over eighty but ageless as ever, was very kind to my mother afterward and suggested that I take her home to rest as quickly as possible.

  All my mother could say was “All my boys. All my beautiful boys.” And she cried until her face was lined and old and exhausted and she looked every one of her sixty-six years.

  “Well, you still have me,” I said, thinking I was offering her consolation, but to my distress she began to weep more violently than ever.

  “Oh, Philip, Philip …” I could hardly hear what she said, and suddenly I no longer wanted to hear what she said because the knives of memory were grinding in my brain, just as they always did when I saw her unhappy, and long-forgotten scenes were crawling out into the light from the darkest corners of my mind. I stood up, but as I moved she cried out, “Don’t throw your life away too, don’t lose your life in the mine—I couldn’t bear it, Philip, if you were killed. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  I saw her crying when I was taken away from her and sent to Allengate. I saw her crying at the townhouse in London during the ill-fated half-term weekend that had marked the beginning of the final rift between my parents. I saw her crying at—

  My mind snapped shut.

  “Mama…” My voice was speaking even before I had decided what to say. I was having to make such an effort to stay in the room that the sweat was breaking out on my forehead and every muscle in my body ached with tension. “Mama, listen—please … Nothing will ever happen to me in Sennen Garth. Nothing. It’s my mine and I know it won’t kill me. I know and love it too well. You need never be afraid that I won’t come home from the mine.”

  But she was not in the mood to believe me.

  Later the rector called and after that she was better. I managed to persuade her to have an early night and also suggested she cancel an invitation she had made to Mariana to visit the farm next day, but she was longing so much to see her grandson Esmond that she refused to agree to such a cancellation. Privately I thought she was making a mistake. I went to bed depressed but found to my surprise the next day that Mariana’s visit was a welcome opportunity to take my mind off the harrowing memories of the funeral. She arrived for morning coffee at eleven, and with her in my father’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce was my nephew Esmond. Her husband, as before, was in Scotland; this time he was recovering from a mild stroke and his health had not permitted him to attempt the long journey to Cornwall.

  “Darling Archie,” said Mariana, remembering him at last. “He was so sorry not to be able to come with me to Penmarric.” Her glance flickered quickly over the farm parlor with her usual casual disdain. “He’s longing to meet you, Mama—I wish you’d come up to Scotland to visit us sometime.” She began to talk of her three homes, the townhouse in Edinburgh, her place by the sea at North Berwick, her mansion in the Highlands. “I just adore Scotland—honestly! I have so many absolutely divine friends in Edinburgh …”

  The divine friends all seemed to have masculine names. I looked closely at her. She was in her early thirties now but looked no older than twenty-five. I studied her hard Penmar mouth, cold eyes and bleakly perfect features and wondered how anyone so artificial could ever attract so many admirers.

  “Philip,” said my mother suddenly as I stifled a yawn, “why don’t you show Esmond around the farm? I expect he’d like to see the animals.”

  “Oh!” cried Mariana before I had had time to look unenthusiastic. “What a lovely ideal. Esmond darling, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? Run along with Uncle Philip, there’s a good boy, and make sure you behave yourself.”

  I wasn’t interested in children. They bored me and I hadn’t the patience for them. But I liked Esmond. There was no reason why I should, since he was the son of a sister I had never liked and of an elderly Scottish peer I had never met, but for the first time in my life I found a child who caught my attention and held it. At the start I did not intend to take him for more than a cursory tour of the farm, but he was so well-behaved and intelligent that I found myself smiling at his questions and taking trouble over my replies. He was still a few weeks short of his fifth birthday, but he was tall for his age, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and suddenly I saw myself in him so strongly that I understood why it was that men wanted sons and cared that there was someone to come after them when they themselves were gone.

  I was thirty years old. It occurred to me for the first time that if I were to die tomorrow as Hugh had died I would leave behind nothing except a tombstone in Zillan churchyard, a few memories among the miners of Sennen Garth and a number of possessions in my bedroom at Roslyn Farm.

  I knew I ought to marry, but the knowledge blunted my enthusiasm for a son and made me feel listless. There was no woman I wanted to marry. I had never been in love. I found the idea of marriage depressing and decided that it wouldn’t hurt if I put it off for another five years or so. Why should I hurry to get married? I was happy enough as I was.

  But Esmond had disturbed me. Long after I had waved goodbye to him I kept remembering his small bright face upturned to mine, and although it was some time before I saw him again the memory of his visit to the farm never entirely faded from my mind.

  3

  With the funeral over at last the memory of Hugh’s death began to recede slowly and life reverted to a more normal pattern. Adrian returned to the Oxford parish where he had just become a curate; Lizzie returned to Cambridge, where she won a first in her final examinations and decided to stay on at Girton for further studies; and Jeanne stayed at Penmarric instead of going back to her convent. When questioned about her decision to leave the Order she would only say that while she had enjoyed the nursing she found she hadn’t the vocation to be a nun.

  “Thank goodness for that!” said my mother to me afterward. “Now perhaps if Jeanne bought herself some smart clothes and had her hair styled fashionably and made an effort to meet more people—”

&nb
sp; But Jeanne had other ideas. She wanted to live quietly at Penmarric, take an interest in parish affairs and do some charity work.

  “But Jeanne,” said my mother, horrified, “that’s all very well for a married woman, but it would be so dreary for a young unmarried girl.”

  “Then I’d like to be dreary, if you don’t mind, Mama.”

  “But you’ll never meet any men if you just—”

  “It’s no good simply meeting men, Mama, one has to attract them as well. I found that out when I was in Scotland with Mariana. And I’m not attractive to men.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” said my mother angrily. “Absolute nonsense! Any girl can attract a man if she wants to. It’s simply an attitude of mind.”

  “It’s an attitude I don’t possess, then,” said Jeanne, nearly in tears, and ran out of the room before anything more could be said.

  “Poor Jeanne!” said Jan-Yves to me later when the women were washing the dishes and we were alone. “But she’s quite right, of course. She’s not attractive to men. Lizzie’s ten times more attractive than Jeanne, if you ask me, but Mama’s never going to believe that because Jeanne is technically pretty and Lizzie isn’t technically anything except plain and plump.”

  Jan-Yves was often at the farm these days. I did not resent his presence—on the contrary, I was glad he had stepped forward to fill the void Hugh’s death had created for my mother—but I still distrusted him. He showered my mother with presents, which was all very commendable, but I often wondered what it was he was trying to buy. I wondered too where he got the money to pursue this present-giving policy and suspected he had Hugh’s talent for doubling a small income by various questionable ways and means.

  Hugh’s posthumous son was born during the first week of 1926. There was some ridiculous controversy over his name in which I had no intention of involving myself, and my mother and Rebecca refused to speak to each other after Rebecca had omitted to invite us to the christening. After that there was open warfare between them, but as in all feminine quarrels it was no more than a storm in a teacup with emotions running absurdly high on both sides.

  I had other important matters on my mind to spend much time thinking of my nephew Jonas.

  The mine was in deep trouble again. Walter Hubert was fending off creditors, the men were seeking higher wages to meet the rising cost of living, and I needed more money to open up a new level and buy new equipment.

  “We’ve got to get another loan,” I said. “We must.”

  But Walter shook his head. “This is a bad time for raising capital, Philip. The postwar prosperity boom is being affected by the rise in unemployment; the economic climate is getting more and more uncertain and money’s tight. Ask Mr. Vincent or your father, by all means, but I doubt if we’re in a position to issue more shares, and if we take out a third loan on top of the two we already have I think you’ll find yourself in very real trouble before long!”

  “But I’ve got to have the money!” I thought about it day and night. I was just discussing the subject with Walter for the umpteenth time when my father astonished me by turning up at the mine and asking for an audience.

  I was desperate by this time, and this visit from my father made me more desperate than ever. I was afraid he was going to suggest cutting our losses and closing the mine, and I was right. He did. He put it well and his mild manner was calculated not to give offense, but that was what he wanted. He was suggesting a halt—”Temporarily,” he said, “until the economic situation improves”—but I knew him too well to believe that. Once he had that mine closed no one would ever get him to open it again. Presently all the machinery and equipment would be sold to pay the debts and the levels would be finished, flooded, forgotten.

  I began to plead with him. It went against the grain and I was humiliated, but I would have gone on my knees and crawled a hundred miles for that mine, so I gritted my teeth and pleaded as well as I could. To do him credit, he did listen. He kept telling me I was fighting a losing battle, but he did listen, and in the end he did write the check the mine needed so desperately and I knew I’d won.

  But it was only a reprieve.

  “Now listen to me,” he said in his coolest voice as he handed me the check. “That’s the last penny you’ll ever get out of me for the mine. Do you understand? The very last. And if that mine doesn’t show a profit by the end of 1926 I’m closing it. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, hardly listening, my fingers caressing the slip of paper in my hands. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this.”

  “Won’t I?” he said. “I fully expect to. Good day, Philip. I’ll not trespass any longer on your valuable time. I’m sure the mine needs you more than I do.”

  And he walked out of the hut, slammed the door behind him and stumped angrily off across the yard, but I was too excited by my hard-won victory to pay attention to his sourness.

  I spent every penny of the money. I organized the development of the new level and the working of the new lode. I gave the men new pep talks about how vital it was that we should bring to the surface every scrap of tin we could lay our hands on. I worked all day with them far out under the sea, worked until I barely had the energy to come home at night and roll into bed; I toiled at that mine with every ounce of strength I possessed as if I could inject my own vitality into its tired old veins, but my efforts were all for nothing.

  For 1926 was the year of the General Strike; 1926 was the year all industry dependent on coal suffered a blow below the belt. Even before the year was over I knew that Sennen Garth was bankrupt and that its working life had once more come to an end.

  4

  The General Strike lasted for only nine days in May, but the coal miners’ strike, the original cause of the great disruption, lasted another six months. I was torn two ways by what was happening. On the one hand I was behind the miners, who lived on a pittance that could not possibly have enabled them to live decently, but on the other hand I knew a rise in the coal miners’ wages would eventually mean additional demands from my own men, which Sennen Garth could hardly afford to meet. But gradually as the months passed I no longer had any choice except to condemn the strike. The shortage of coal affected Sennen Garth’s output until finally there was no fuel to feed to the furnaces and all activities above and below the surface ground to a halt.

  Incoming monies were reduced to a trickle and finally ceased completely. Outgoing monies mostly in the form of wages roared on. And still there was no sign of the coal miners ending their strike and turning the lethal tide of economic disaster.

  Finally in September my father called an extraordinary meeting at Penmarric for all those who were in any way connected with the administration of the mine. It wasn’t technically a shareholders’ meeting, although there were shareholders present, but since my father controlled the majority of the shares no one doubted that the outcome of the meeting would be the outcome of any formal meeting of shareholders that convened later to discuss the situation. The purpose of this prior meeting was to give those who were most intimately concerned with the mine the chance to formulate a clear policy for the mine’s future—assuming, of course, that the mine had a future, and I was damned sure that was more than most people were willing to assume.

  At the meeting presided over by my father were Michael Vincent, the company’s solicitor, Stanford Blake, the senior partner in the firm of accountants who audited the company’s books, Walter Hubert the purser, and Sir Justin Carnforth, who, like my father, had a substantial financial interest in the mine. With me when I arrived at Penmarric to confront this unpromising gathering were Jared Roslyn, who had long been famous for championing the causes of the working men of the district, and, since he had almost as much say in Sennen Garth’s affairs as I did, Alun Trevose.

  Both of them were pessimistic.

  “Face up to it, sonny,” said Trevose. “We’ll never talk your dad out of this one.”

  “I know your father,” said Jared grimly. “Stu
bborn as a dozen mules. If he’s made up his mind to close that mine neither you nor I nor anyone else is going to persuade him to keep it open.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. That was all I would say. “We’ll see.”

  I didn’t intend to let my father get the better of me either now or at any other time.

  But I had to admit he was clever. He conducted the meeting in a formal, businesslike manner which allowed no room for loud expressions of disagreement. First of all he summed up the financial plight of the mine and called on Blake and Walter Hubert to verify this. Then he spoke of creditors; Michael Vincent was asked to explain the legal position of bankruptcy. Finally he spoke of the possibility of raising more money; to issue more shares, even to float an issue of preference shares for the existing shareholders, would be a risky venture which would probably result in—at best—a mere postponement of the inevitable. My father then said he himself was not inclined to invest a penny more in the mine, and Sir Justin Carnforth agreed with him and said he wouldn’t recommend the other shareholders to invest more money in the venture either. Walter Hubert said he had already explored the possibility of a loan from the banks, but loans were difficult to obtain at that time and the mine’s present position was considered insufficient to constitute collateral.

  Having pointed out that Sennen Garth was broke and that no one was going to lift a finger to save it, my father then said he thought it must be my turn to speak. Did either of my associates care to make any comment on the situation? Perhaps Mr. Trevose would like to speak first.

  It was typical of my father’s cunning that he should have chosen Trevose, the least experienced of negotiators, to speak first.