Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “But I’m not a writer!” I stared at him angrily. “I’m not used to writing!”

  “You are an educated man. You can spell words and form sentences. Try it.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s the best compromise I can suggest, Mr. Castallack,” he said politely, cutting short the argument, and after that there was nothing more I could say except “thank you” and “goodbye.”

  I was tempted to “chalk the episode up to experience,” as Alice would have put it, and forget about that visit to London, but I didn’t. I suppose my position was too desperate not to clutch at any straw I could lay my hands on in my sea of troubles, so as soon as I got back to Peņmarric I shut myself in my father’s study, found paper and ink and began to write.

  The odd part was that I took a fancy to it. Perhaps writing wasn’t such an alien hobby to me after all, for my father had been a writer and my mother had for years kept a diary voluminous enough to make Queen Victoria’s journal look like a tear-off calendar. At first I could do no more than make random jottings, but gradually I became more coherent and now—years later—I find I can attempt to edit my writings and shape the most important parts into some sort of order. No, I didn’t send the manuscript to the psychiatrist as he had requested. No, I never saw the psychiatrist again. Why? Because I hadn’t finished the first draft of my life story when I found the solution to my troubles, and once I’d found the solution and accepted it there was no need for me to see a psychiatrist any more.

  For after six months I came to terms with myself. After six months of misery and embarrassment with my wife I asked myself: What can I do to be happy? What can I do to put an end to this wretched situation? And the answer was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was to recognize the truth. I had to admit my failure, meet it face to face and resolve to live with it. It was hard, of course, but I forced myself to confront the facts.

  I didn’t love my wife. I didn’t want to be a husband. I didn’t even want to be a father except to provide an heir for Sennen Garth one day. Least of all did I want a conventional existence as master of Penmarric. I had to live there with Helena certainly—there was no way out of that—but I decided I wasn’t going to let either Penmarric or Helena stop me from living the kind of life I had to live in order to be happy. After all, there was nothing wrong with enjoying myself at the mine, dining more often with my mother at the farm and spending more time exploring the cliffs with Trevose on fine Sunday afternoons. I became more determined than ever to live as I wanted to live and not live as society dictated I should. No more doctors. No more psychiatrists. I’d had enough of all that. I’d had enough of Helena too although I tried always to be as kind to her as possible since I knew I’d given her a rough deal and I wasn’t so inhuman that I didn’t feel guilty about the emptiness of our marriage.

  I went my own way.

  I knew I was wrong. I knew I was treating my wife badly by ignoring her and I knew I was destroying my marriage by pretending it didn’t exist, but by that time the desire to revert to my old ways was so strong that I could no longer make any effort to resist it. Cautiously I began to enjoy life again—but unknown to me I was already enjoying myself on borrowed time.

  For ahead of me, not far ahead of me now, lay the world’s end and retribution. It was 1928. I had two years left, although I didn’t know it then—not two years of being alive, naturally, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, but two years of living and being able to explain why there was some point in being alive. But I didn’t know that. Fortunately I couldn’t see into the future.

  My family seemed not to realize anything was wrong with my marriage, even though I had told Helena she could seek a divorce whenever she wanted one and that I wouldn’t blame her if she decided to leave me for someone else. However, she didn’t leave me and the issue of divorce was thus put in abeyance. It was true that the marriage could have been annulled, but I would have opposed that and Helena herself never suggested it. She too had her pride, and soon I saw she was just as anxious as I was to keep up the façade of our marriage and pretend to everyone that nothing was wrong. The only time when she came close to betraying her true feelings was when Jeanne married Gerald three months after our own wedding. The ceremony was not as pathetic as it might have been since both the bride and groom looked so happy throughout, but Helena broke down and wept.

  Nobody thought this was odd since women are supposed to weep at weddings, but I doubt if Helena would have wept if she hadn’t been thinking how ironic it was that her own husband was no better than her brother in his wheelchair.

  There was no honeymoon, since Gerald wasn’t strong enough to travel, and after the wedding Helena spent an increasing amount of time at Polzillan House. Sometimes I wondered if she spent too much time there, but I felt sure Jeanne was too ingenuous to suspect there was anything amiss between Helena and myself.

  No one suspected anything.

  I saw little of William apart from our routine meetings to discuss the affairs of the estate, and Jan-Yves was too involved in his own affairs to pay me much attention. His house had remained unbuilt and he had had no home of his own since my marriage, but at Christmas he created a sensation by announcing his intention to marry Felicity Carnforth. Felicity was the hearty spinster I had invited to the first dinner party I had given as master of Penmarric. She was six years older than Jan-Yves, an heiress and bore a striking resemblance to the back end of a tram.

  “I suppose you’re making no secret of the fact that you’re marrying her for her money,” I said, trying to hide my contempt.

  “None at all,” said Jan-Yves cheerfully. “Felicity thinks it’s a marvelous idea and so do I. As a matter of fact, we get on very well together. I know she’s plain, but she’s funny and sensible and she’s got a good sense of humor. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be just as happy as you and Helena are.”

  There was no point in commenting on this and in fact I sensed any further discussion might prove dangerous, so I merely wished him well and let the subject lapse. My mother received the news of the engagement with mixed feelings. Her sentimental streak made her disapprove of the fact that Jan-Yves was obviously not head over heels in love with his fiancée, but her good sense pointed out to her that it was a good match for Jan-Yves not only financially but socially as well. Finally she decided to give the marriage her blessing and began to plan what she should wear at the wedding at Easter.

  Fortunately my mother was the last person to suspect anything was wrong between Helena and myself. She visited us frequently, for she liked Helena and was fond of her. In fact her attitude to Helena contrasted sharply to her attitude to her other daughter-in-law. Relations between my mother and Rebecca had worsened, not improved, with the passing of the years.

  “She’s so common!” my mother would say distastefully. “Deborah should be brought up to be a lady and sent away to a nice girls’ school to escape from that unsuitable rural environment, but Rebecca won’t be bothered. I can see Jonas will grow up into a very working-class young man unless something’s done about him. What a tragedy Hugh died when he did! He would have taken better care of the children and kept his wife in order … I wouldn’t be at all surprised if her morals were rather loose. Her mother Clarissa Penmar was a most immoral young woman and that sort of thing often runs in families.”

  So my mother turned from Rebecca to Helena with relief and never breathed a word against her until July came and with it the day of our first wedding anniversary.

  “Helena does want children, doesn’t she?” she said to me anxiously. “She’s not making any effort to avoid having them?”

  “No.”

  “Dear me, I hope … Of course, she is very slim. Sometimes slim women have difficulty in conceiving as well as in giving birth—or so Griselda used to say.”

  “My God, Mama, give the girl a chance! We’ve only been married a year!”

  “Yes, but by the time I celebrated my first wedding anniversary I already ha
d Stephen …”

  I reassured her, changed the subject and when I felt myself becoming upset I merely told myself that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered so long as she didn’t find out the truth.

  Esmond came to stay for a month that summer. I had a wonderful time with him. We went riding over the moors together and exploring the coast and at his request I took him down the mine and showed him around. He came alone to Penmarric; Mariana was busy in London, where she had been involved in a society divorce suit, and had wanted Esmond to be out of the way while the case was being heard. She herself was neither doing the divorcing nor being divorced, but she had obviously been implicated in an unsavory scandal, and from the newspapers I took care to hide from my mother I realized Mariana had achieved a certain notoriety in London circles.

  But Esmond and I didn’t talk of Mariana. We talked of riding and mining and Cornwall, and I enjoyed myself so much during his visit that I was thoroughly upset when the time came for him to go. After that I felt more depressed and more lonely than I had ever felt before, and it was then, at the emptiest phase of my life, that I turned at last to Alun Trevose.

  TEN

  Richard was suspected of sodomy… Certainly he liked men, especially the trouvères of north France; in spite of the differences in rank, these artists were his constant companions.

  —The Devil’s Brood,

  ALFRED DUGGAN

  The crusade of Richard I belongs to world history… But he found it necessary to withdraw his troops and to abandon for ever the hope of recovering the Holy City [after] the last event of this costly enterprise.

  —Oxford History of England:

  From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

  A. L. POOLE

  OF COURSE TREVOSE HAD always been there. It wasn’t as if I had just discovered him out of the blue. He had been my closest friend for a long time, the friendship beginning when I was twenty and a novice at the mine, and the ten years which separated us had never seemed to matter. But I had been different in those days when we had first known each other. I was young then, wrapped up in my dreams for the mine and believing that everything I touched would turn to tin if I tried hard enough. Now I was changed. I knew what it was to fail and keep on failing no matter how much I wanted to succeed. I no longer believed myself to be invincible. I was disillusioned, cynical and isolated, and the more I became aware of my isolation the more I longed to confide in someone. But there was no one to confide in except Trevose, my best friend, and my troubles were too private even for his ears. I went on suffering my isolation in silence but gradually as the months passed I contrived to confide in him by implication.

  I never mentioned Helena to him, never spoke of my marriage. I sought his company on Sundays, stayed up late drinking with him, had him to an informal supper at Penmarric when Helena was dining at Polzillan House. Inch by inch I saw he guessed what had happened and that although he didn’t know the exact truth he knew, as no one else knew, that Helena and I were privately estranged. Yet still he didn’t speak of it; I never referred to my marriage and never mentioned to him openly that all was not as it should have been between Helena and myself. But I knew that he knew, and I waited for him to make some move to indicate that he was ready to listen if I wanted to confide.

  It was in the summer of 1929 when it happened. We were out walking one Sunday morning along the cliffs when everyone else was at church, and suddenly he said without warning, “What happened between you and your wife?”

  The sea breeze blew in lightly from the northwest. I heard the surf crash at the foot of the rocks far away and felt the gorse scratch at my trousers as we followed the cliff path to Zennor.

  “I’ve always wanted to know,” he said, “but didn’t like to ask. I didn’t want to seem too familiar. None of my business anyway.”

  After a moment I said, “I don’t want anyone else to know about it.”

  “Sure. I understand. Stands to reason.” We walked on a little farther and the sun shone and the translucent water around the offshore rocks of Gurnard’s Head was the color of Helena’s eyes. “It was no good,” I said at last. “I shouldn’t have married.”

  “I told you,” he said, and the ugly colonial accent which predominated in his voice blurred in sympathy and became softer, more Cornish. “Didn’t I? I told you.”

  “You told me.”

  We walked on, turning out onto the spur of Gurnard’s Head. The cliffs were black and sheer, the white foam frothing on the rocks far below.

  “Everyone’s different,” said Trevose. “Some people have to get married and some people have to run around after women and some people don’t. Not all people are alike. Stands to reason.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re like me. I knew what suited you better than you yourself did. You ought to have listened to me.”

  I laughed at him, mocking his seriousness for some reason I did not understand. “And what would you have told me if I’d listened to you?”

  “Not to get married.”

  “Just that?”

  “Just that.”

  “Being a bachelor isn’t everyone’s idea of fun!”

  “There’s bachelors and bachelors,” said Trevose. He glanced out to sea. There was a ship on the horizon, far away, scarcely moving, a little man-made toy floating on the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean. “There’s fun to be had,” he said, “if you know where to go. St. Ives can be fun in the summer. I go there now and then. I prefer it to Penzance. Penzance is an ordinary sort of place. Dull really.”

  “I didn’t know you ever stirred out of St. Just!”

  “I don’t announce it to all and sundry.” He was still watching the ship, his hands in his pockets. “I don’t go often. Maybe one Saturday night once in a while.”

  “But how do you get there?”

  “Thumb a lift. Or there’s the bus.”

  “You stay overnight?”

  “Usually have to. No way of getting home late at night. But I don’t mind. There’s usually a free bed somewhere.” He rubbed his nose absent-mindedly. “Why don’t we go together some time? We needn’t get involved in anything if you didn’t want to but there’s a place I know … Interested?”

  “Not much,” I said frankly. “I don’t want to waste my Saturday nights picking up women.”

  “But I wasn’t talking about women,” said Trevose.

  2

  After all had been made clear between us I said, “I’m sorry, I’m not that kind of man. And even if I was I’ve no intention of laying myself open to blackmail. I’ve got more sense.”

  “True,” he agreed, unembarrassed. “You’ve got more to lose than I have. All right, let’s forget it.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m not averse to driving into St. Ives one evening and having dinner at that little fish restaurant by the harbor. Why don’t we do that instead?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Sounds like a good idea. When shall we go?”

  We agreed on a date and drifted into a discussion of lobsters. Later on he said to me, “Sorry I brought up that other business,” and I said, “Don’t be so bloody silly! There’s no need to apologize. I’m not a prig and I don’t care what you do for amusement. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  But I found it did. We went to St. Ives a couple of times and had some grand hours dining together and wandering around the town afterward, but on our third visit we went drinking and visited a pub he knew.

  I didn’t like the people there and wanted to leave, but Trevose was busy talking to an old friend and there was no dragging him away. In the end I told him I’d meet him at the car and left him with his friend, but although I waited a long time he didn’t come. Finally I fell asleep in the car and only awoke when he opened the passenger door and slipped into the seat beside me.

  I opened my eyes. It was dawn. “What the bloody hell were you doing?” I said in a burst of fury and saw his eyes widen as he lit a cigarette.

  We quarreled. I lost my
temper but he kept calm and let me shout at him without making an attempt to interrupt me. When I had finished at last all he said was “What’s the matter, sonny? Jealous?”

  I stared at him dumbly, and as I stared he put his hand on my shoulder in the gesture of comradeship he had made so often at the mine and said with an odd, contrite honesty, “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. I just wanted to show you, that’s all.”

  There was a silence but when I said, fumbling for my words, “Show me what?” he said, surprised, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “The truth, of course. What else?”

  3

  We had a year together. That was all. Just a year. What Helena thought, I don’t know. She must have realized that there were nights I never came home, but she said nothing to me and I said nothing to her. I hardly ever saw her. I saw more of my mother, whom I visited regularly every week, than I saw of Helena. Toward Christmas I began to drop in at the farm with Trevose from time to time, but my mother didn’t like Trevose. She couldn’t have had any inkling of the state of affairs which existed between us, but although she was very civil to him I could see she was glad when I came on my own.

  Spring came, the spring of 1930. The end was very near now, although I didn’t know it. The end was coming very soon. At the close of April it was only four months away. There wasn’t much time left.

  May passed. Then June and July. There was no warning, no hint of what was to come. We went to the mine every day and left the “dry” in the evening just as we always did. There were no premonitions, no portents, just our ordinary working life all through the summer until the very end of August.

  And then, on the thirty-first of August 1930, my world came to an end.

  It was a day just like any other. I went down the mine in the morning and later ate my sandwich lunch at “croust-time” with Trevose at the two-forty-fathom level beneath the sea. When we had finished I said, “I’d better go to the surface now, I suppose. Someone from the freight company is coming to see me about that damned timber problem and I have to have a meeting with him in my office. I’ll see you later.”