Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “Well, sir,” said Trevose rapidly in the nasal accent he had acquired as a child on the Rand, “all I can say is that it’s a fact that the mine’s still honest-to-God rich—there’s plenty of tin left down there under the sea, and under normal conditions—”

  “But these are hardly normal conditions, would you say, Mr. Trevose? A lot of tin beneath the sea is no use to us if we can’t afford to bring it to the surface!”

  “What he means, Mr. Castallack,” said Jared swiftly, “is that under normal circumstances the mine would have made a fine profit for you, and there’s no doubt that when things get back to normal and the Labour Party returns to power to put the country right …” He allowed himself a purple passage of Socialist propaganda before steering his way back to the mine and painting a dramatic picture of the poverty and suffering which would overtake the miners and their families if Sennen Garth closed down. Twenty years’ experience as a lay preacher had sharpened Jared’s inborn flair for rhetoric; he had no qualms about extracting every ounce of melodrama from the situation and flaunting it in a thunderous voice before his audience. By the time he had finished I almost had tears in my eyes myself for the starving little children who cried for a crust of bread while my father dined off the fat of the land at Penmarric.

  But of course my father was interested neither in Socialist propaganda nor in the brand of demagoguism in which Jared excelled. All he was really interested in was his money, which was, as far as he was concerned, tied up in a bad business investment, and at last he interrupted Jared as politely as possible in order to make this clear.

  All Jared could say in resignation was “So you’re determined to close the mine.”

  “After a formal meeting of the shareholders, yes, I’m afraid I see no alternative.”

  There was a silence. We sat there around that long table with the light from the chandeliers playing harsh tricks on aging faces, and the silence went on and on and on until I thought it would never break. I waited. Everyone waited, but finally one by one they all turned to look at me, and I knew that the time was right and that I could put off the moment no longer. The silence was almost audible now. I seemed to hear it humming in my ears.

  I said to my father, taking care not to speak too loudly, “If you close that mine I’ll break you.”

  There was nothing then, just he and I facing each other as we had faced each other so often in the past, and between us like a death’s-head lay the gigantic shadow of my mine, Sennen Garth, the last working mine west of St. Just.

  He went white, but from anger, not from alarm. He was furious that I had embarrassed him before his friends and revealed our hostility so blatantly before Jared and Trevose. At last he managed to say, “You leave me to assume, therefore, that you have no useful comment to make in regard to my decision.”

  “Only that I mean what I say. Close that mine and I’ll make you regret it. That’s all.” I stood up. “Jared,” I said. “Trevose. There’s nothing more to be said.” And I turned without another word and walked out of the room.

  SIX

  It is impossible to know what the Old King was up to with Alice. She may have been his mistress, as most contemporaries believed…

  —The Devil’s Brood

  ALFRED DUGGAN

  The King and Richard played out the last act of Henry’s tragedy …

  —Henry II,

  JOHN T. APPLEBY

  I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT I was going to do.

  I had had the plan in my mind for a long time, and when the matrimonial laws had been changed the previous year I had known it was a plan which I could put into operation whenever I chose. Now at last a woman could divorce her husband on the ground solely of adultery; and since I knew my mother would always do all she could to help me I knew too that I could place my father in an awkward and difficult position—if only I took the time and trouble to lay my plans correctly.

  For I was wary. I could remember that other time twelve years ago before the war when we had threatened my father with such ignominious results, and I had no wish to make the same mistake twice. It was no good accusing him of adultery without some form of proof that he was misconducting himself, but Jan-Yves had often told me he would swear on the Bible that Alice was my father’s mistress and I thought it would hardly be difficult to get the proof I needed from him.

  However, to my disgust I found this was harder than I expected. When I managed to have a conference with him the next day in my office it soon became clear he had no evidence whatsoever for assuming Alice and my father were having an affair.

  “It was only a guess,” he was driven to confess at last. “I don’t know anything positive. Nobody does. Nobody knows the truth—”

  “But you told me you were convinced it was true!” I shouted at him, and then clamped down on my anger. “Well, I believe it’s true anyway,” I said flatly, “and so would any lawyer if the facts were presented to him in the right way. If you could testify to Mama’s solicitor that you’ve seen Alice and Father—”

  “I’m not testifying anything!” He was white with fright. “I’m not standing up in a court of law and giving evidence against my own father! Do it yourself!”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool,” I said, exasperated. “It’ll never get to court! All I want is enough evidence to enable Mama’s lawyers to get as far as serving a petition—if such a move proves necessary. It may not even be necessary to go that far. I’m going to write him an ultimatum first of all and see how he responds to that. But if that doesn’t work I’ll go to the solicitors in St. Ives who handle the St. Enedocs’ affairs and show Father that I mean what I say.”

  “But suppose there’s nothing between him and Alice?”

  “He’d have to drag her through the dirt trying to prove it. No, he’ll never let the case get beyond the preliminary stages, but I still need your help to get the plan moving.”

  He looked at me. The small pink tip of his tongue slid around his lips. He had an expression of strained calculation on his face as if he were involved in some fantastically complicated gamble. At last he said slowly, “I don’t think I could risk it. If Papa found out he’d disinherit me.” He glanced up at me with his sharp little eyes. “You’d have to make it worth my while financially, otherwise I might lose out all along the line.”

  I suppose my contempt must have shown in my face, for the next moment he burst out passionately, “No, I won’t take a penny of your damned money! Nobody’s going to accuse me of selling my own father for gain! I’ll do what you want but I won’t take a penny for it. I’m not disloyal.”

  Personally I failed to see how he could have been more disloyal and thought the question of the money utterly irrelevant, but I wasn’t going to bother to understand his tortuous line of reasoning. I had guessed that the rift existing between him and my father since his dismissal from Oxford had never fully healed, so I was prepared for his behavior, but I was still disgusted. It was then that I made up my mind about him after my years of indifferent distrust; to me he was a mere overgrown schoolboy who continued to cling to a juvenile talent for mischief, a worthless individual too shiftless to be trusted and too futile to be taken seriously. He was obviously another Hugh with no purpose in life except to acquire easy money. Yet he hadn’t Hugh’s charm or maturity or able brain. Hugh, I felt, had had redeeming qualities. This ugly, cowardly, disloyal, hypocritical, avaricious, sly, stupid lout had none at all.

  I despised him. Suddenly incredulous that he could ever have been held in esteem by my father, I said as an afterthought, “Are you really Father’s heir? Has he really made his will in your favor?”

  He looked at me swiftly as if he were suspicious, then gave a quick shrug of his shoulders. “To be frank, I haven’t actually seen the will. But who else can he choose now that Marcus and Hugh are dead and you’re more estranged from him than you ever were before? He won’t give it to the bastards. William told me Adrian wouldn’t accept anything except a token legacy anyway and that both
of them had been told more than once that they must always expect to earn their living.”

  I turned abruptly, went to the window, stared at the sea. I was imagining myself trying to work with Jan-Yves over the mine, having to ask him for money, struggling with him as I had had to struggle with my father. Revulsion swept over me again, a disgust mingled with anger that there should be so little justice in the world. I couldn’t understand how anyone could believe there was a God. The world was so corrupt, so obviously condemned to perpetual injustice.

  “Adrian arrives home today for a visit,” said Jan-Yves nervously, fumbling with the door handle. “You’re not going to deliver that ultimatum just yet, are you? I’m sure Adrian will think I had something to do with it.”

  He was even scared of Adrian. My patience snapped. “Oh, for God’s sake get out,” I said wearily. “We’ve said all there is to say anyway.”

  “But the ultimatum—”

  “That’s my concern, not yours.”

  “All right,” he muttered and slipped out of the door as fast as his legs could carry him.

  I watched him until he had disappeared from sight and then turned back into my office with a grimace. I didn’t trust him to be any more loyal to me than he had been to my father, and I couldn’t help feeling he would be a highly unreliable witness if his talent for perjury were ever put to the test in court.

  2

  To my surprise my mother had grave misgivings about my plan, and although she agreed to do what I wanted she remained doubtful of the plan’s success.

  “I’m sure Mark would never misbehave with Alice,” she said. “She’s not at all the sort of woman who would attract him and besides she’s the granddaughter of Mr. Barnwell, one of his oldest, most respected friends… Yes, I know Rose Parrish was from a similar sort of background, but I can hardly believe Mark would make such a fool of himself twice! As for Alice, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had her eye on being mistress of Penmarric one day—after all, she’s given ten years of her youth to that house; surely she must regard it as some sort of investment!—but I think marriage would be what she had in mind, not an affair.”

  But I was not convinced. Privately I thought that my mother’s deep sense of propriety made it impossible for her to see the situation in its true perspective, and that same night after she had gone to bed I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote the ultimatum. It took some time and several drafts but in the end I felt I had said all that I wanted to say. When it was completed I read it through again.

  “Sir,” I had written. “This is to inform you that my mother has a strong desire to avail herself of the new remedies arising from the recent innovations in the field of matrimonial law. Neither she nor I wish to institute what may prove to be some exceptionally sordid legal proceedings, but unless you mend your ways and revise certain regrettable opinions which you hold on a matter which I need not trouble to name to you, you may expect to be the defendant in a petition for divorce on the grounds that you have been committing adultery with Alice Penmar. In case you think this is a mere idle threat which cannot be substantiated, I must tell you that I have sufficient evidence of adultery to justify my mother initiating the petition through her solicitors. In case you think too that this would be a quiet divorce with the details kept to a minimum I assure you that it won’t be anything of the kind. You got off lightly with Rose Parrish. This time you won’t. Bearing in mind the shame and humiliation and pain you’ve caused my mother in the past I don’t think you can possibly term as unjustified any attempt she may make to obtain a divorce from you now and enable you to taste a fraction of the suffering she has had to endure since you married her in 1890. Unless I hear favorably from you my mother will consult her lawyers a week from the day you receive this letter. I remain unfortunately, sir, your son, Philip Castallack.”

  After reading the letter for the final time I decided that it would serve its purpose, so I put it in an envelope and sealed the flap. Then I went to bed and snatched what sleep I could before dawn.

  It was after nine when I arrived at Penmarric to deliver the letter, and the house lay quietly in the September sunlight as I rode up the drive. The lawns were white with a premature frost and the flowers were pinched after the chill of the night. Leaving my horse with a groom, I went up to the front door and rang the bell.

  One of the footmen opened the door, but the butler was in the hall almost before I had crossed the threshold.

  “Good morning, Medlyn,” I said. “Is my father in the dining room?”

  “He’s not up yet, Mr. Philip. He wasn’t feeling so well this morning. Is there a message?”

  I hesitated, fingering the envelope in my pocket, and as I paused by the front door a well-remembered voice called out, surprised, “Good morning, Philip! Isn’t it rather early for social calls?”

  A shadow fell across the wall below the first Penmar portrait, the next moment my half-brother Adrian Parrish, looking unclerical in a pullover and slacks, was strolling down the stairs toward me.

  We looked at each other, and as I looked into his eyes I saw back into the past. Hatred gripped me like a vise and made me wooden.

  “How are you?” I said. “I suppose you’re doing well.”

  “Well enough, thanks,” he said. “Life’s treating me kindly at the moment.”

  That was no surprise. Life had always treated him kindly. Probably half my resentment of him sprang from the fact that life had treated him a damned sight better than it had ever treated me.

  The injustice of the world sneered at me again. I turned aside, taking the letter from my pocket.

  “Give this to Father, would you?” I said, holding it out to him. “With my compliments.”

  Before he could reply I was on my way outside to fetch my horse.

  3

  Jan-Yves was in my office when I reached the mine. He had overheard the scene in the hall with Adrian and had immediately run out of the house, taken the short cut along the cliffs and reached my office seconds before my arrival. It turned out that he had had second thoughts about the entire scheme. He was sorry but he really didn’t think he could go through with it.

  “You bloody—!” I yelled at him, falling back on Trevose’s vocabulary in my rage. “Can’t you make up your mind about anything? You’re not even worth the shirt on your own back! Are you such a bloody coward that you can’t even stick to a decision once you’ve made it? You sicken me! I wish to God I’d never bothered with you!”

  “And I wish to God I’d never got involved with you and your damned mine!” he yelled back at me. “Don’t you dare call me names and tell me I’m not worth the shirt on my own back! What kind of a man do you think you are anyway? No, don’t tell me how wonderful you are to your mother and what a hero you are at the mine! Don’t tell me what an outstanding example you are to the community! My God, to think you have the nerve to say I sicken you—why, however much I sicken you it’s nothing compared to how much you sicken me! You make me want to vomit!”

  I hit him, not hard, just enough to knock him over and make the room spin a little before his eyes. He shook himself, recovered his balance, scrambled to his feet.

  “Get out,” I said.

  His eyes were empty. He rubbed the place on his jaw where I had hit him and watched me with those empty black eyes. I had cut open his lower lip; I had to suppress a shudder as the blood trickled down his chin.

  “You’ll regret that one day,” he said. “I have a long memory. You’d be surprised if you knew how long it is; I don’t forget easily.”

  I stepped forward, crowding him, but he turned without hurrying and pushed open the door. Cool air from the yard outside fanned my cheeks. Beyond Jan-Yves I could see across the slag-heaps and along the coast to Penmarric.

  He stepped outside. I was just about to slam the door after him when I saw him freeze and whirl to face me.

  “Adrian’s coming,” he said.

  4

  Miners working underground ca
n sometimes hear a disaster even before it reaches them. If water floods the galleries above them the air is trapped and the pressure rises in their own gallery until the men can hear a high-pitched ringing in their ears. If your ears begin to ring, that’s the time to get out and to get out as fast as you can because that’s disaster time and by the time the noise stops you may not be alive to hear the silence.

  I wasn’t underground, but I felt as if I were. I stood there high on the Cornish cliffs on that cold September morning and my miner’s sixth sense told me it was disaster time and I seemed to hear that high-pitched ringing in my ears telling me to escape.

  But there was no escape. Not this time. This time I was trapped.

  I turned my back on the doorway. “He probably wants you,” I said to Jan-Yves, “not me.”

  I rustled some papers on my desk, tried to find a cigarette. When I next looked up Jan-Yves was back in my office and closing the door behind him. “Something’s happened,” he said, frightened. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see anybody from Penmarric.”

  “Pull yourself together, for Christ’s sake.” I found a cigarette, lit it. I wanted to turn him out but my strength had deserted me and we stood there, the two of us, six feet apart, and waited in silence for what was to come.

  We went on waiting. I was just wondering how he could possibly be taking so long when I heard the clatter of his horse’s hoofs in the yard and the next moment the ring of his riding boots on the old granite paving stones as he walked up to the hut.

  “Oh, God,” said Jan-Yves violently, and as if he could not bear the strain of waiting a moment longer he reached out and pulled open the door.

  Adrian was on the threshold, but Adrian didn’t see him. Adrian saw no one except me. Adrian brushed aside Jan-Yves much as one would brush aside a troublesome fly and took two long paces toward me until we were inches apart from each other in that small, quiet room …