Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  I stared at her. I was just thinking in panic that I really didn’t want to hear the truth as much as I thought I did when she said in a rush, “They were just boys from the neighboring school. Three of them. I went out with one, then with the next, and then with the third. It was all terribly secret. If I’d been found out I’d have been expelled.”

  “I see,” I said and thought woodenly: Just a few schoolgirl escapades.

  “And then there was Keith … well, he was terribly honorable and moral and everything, but once or twice—well, we did have a little lapse now and then—”

  “You just told me Keith wasn’t your lover!”

  “No … well, I didn’t mean to … I got muddled—confused—I mean, we were talking of the first time it happened—”

  “I see. So you had an affair with Keith.”

  “Not an affair—just one or two little lapses—”

  “Well, I suppose he was your fiancé,” I said, trying hard to be fair and not to frighten her by a display of anger. “That was excusable.”

  “Oh, Jan …” She flung herself against my chest and clung there. She seemed so small and weak and defenseless. Her body shook with sobs. “Oh, Jan, you’re so good and kind and understanding and I love you so much—I love you a million more times than anyone else in the entire world—”

  I was deeply touched. I smoothed her hair, kissed her forehead and held her tightly against me.

  “I know I’ve been naughty, I know it, but you see I was so bored, Jan, so bored in that horrible prissy school locked up with all those dreary girls day after day, and when my parents left Surrey and came down to Devon I was so stifled by the country and being so far from a cinema and from London and from everything that was gay and amusing—”

  “My darling, of course … I understand.”

  The poor little thing. Nobody had ever tried to understand her before. My heart ached with love for her.

  “If only you knew how wonderful it was for me when you came and sat down in our dining room! You were so glamorous and exciting in your beautiful suit and your old Etonian tie and your gorgeous car—just like a glimpse of the promised land! And you were so charming and attractive and—oh, I adored you right from the first! If you only knew how shallow the others seemed in contrast, how young and inexperienced and so hopelessly provincial! I know just how Cinderella felt when she met her Prince Charming.”

  What else could I do after that but forgive her? We made love passionately for the rest of the night and slept from dawn until noon before resuming our journey to Venice.

  Of course I married for love and not on account of mere sexual desire, but I have to admit that even if I hadn’t married her for the best possible reasons I might eventually have married her for sexual reasons alone. She was tremendously exciting. Her fine-boned, neat little body with its round, hard little breasts and soft milk-white flesh made other women seem gross and clumsy in contrast. Her movements fascinated me. Her limbs were so supple and smooth—and so young. It had not occurred to me before that a young girl could be as stimulating as a mature woman, but it was true. I wondered what she would be like when she was at the height of her beauty and maturity later on, and as my imagination quickened I felt dizzy with delight.

  I was ecstatically happy.

  “We don’t want children straight away, do we?” I said, raising a subject we had somehow never had time to discuss in detail. We had agreed to have children (“Two boys and a girl,” I said; “two boys and an optional girl,” said Isabella) but the timing of each conception was an item we had left unresolved. Now I decided that I didn’t want to see her fascinating little body misshapen by an early pregnancy. I had waited long enough for a son. Another two years would hardly make any difference.

  “Oh, no!” agreed Isabella wholeheartedly. “We can have children later. Let’s have some fun first.”

  So we had our fun. Until the end of the summer and all through the autumn and winter we enjoyed ourselves to the full in Venice, Paris, London and Cornwall, I never thinking of the past, never looking at any other woman, and then on one cold morning in the March of 1938 I received a letter from Rebecca.

  6

  It was very short All it said was “Dear Jan, I’m in bad trouble and there’s no one else I can turn to. Please help me. I’ll be at the house all Friday morning if you can manage to call. Rebecca.”

  I showed the letter to Isabella across the breakfast table. “I suppose I’d better go,” I said reluctantly.

  “Yes, do,” said Isabella. “I can’t wait to know what it’s all about. But why can’t she ask Simon Peter Roslyn for help? Why does it have to be you?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Why don’t you ring her up and speak to her on the phone.”

  “Deveral Farm’s not on the phone.”

  “Really? How inconvenient,” said Isabella and began to flick rapidly through the pages of her favorite fashion magazine.

  We said nothing more about it but presently I left her, got out my car and drove to Morvah. Rebecca must have been watching out for me from the window, for as soon as I drew my car to a halt outside the farmhouse she opened the front door and came out to meet me.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Thank you, Jan.”

  She looked ill. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and an odd drawn look about her mouth. I looked at her closely, aware of a vague undefinable sense of alarm.

  “Where are the children?” I said sharply.

  “Jonas is at school. Deborah’s working as usual—her bank in Penzance.”

  “No lodger?” I said as I followed her into the drawing room.

  “In March?”

  “Well, I heard your summer lodger came back for Christmas last year.”

  She still had her back to me and I could not see her expression. “Yes,” she said. “He came back.”

  “It was a schoolmaster again, wasn’t it?”

  “A new one. He hadn’t been here before last summer.” She hesitated by the fireplace. “Do you want tea?”

  “Not now.” I looked at her again. She seemed different. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was suspicious now, on the alert for the “trouble” she had referred to in her letter, and my eyes saw more than they would have done otherwise. Her face was a fraction fuller; I noticed that her breasts, though not larger than usual, seemed oddly taut, and suddenly I heard myself say in a flat, disbelieving voice, “You’re pregnant.”

  She looked at me in amazement but said nothing.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” She lit a cigarette. I had never seen her smoke before. Her hand trembled as she held the match.

  After a moment I said, “The schoolmaster?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The schoolmaster.” And as I stared at her, my anger against that unknown man mingling with my pity for her, she said in a rush, “I was so sad all last summer, Jan. I tried not to be, but I couldn’t help it. When someone tried to offer me a little happiness—”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t trace him. I wrote to his address but his landlady in London said he had gone without leaving a forwarding address. I couldn’t believe it at first. After all, we’d been very close—he’d come down and spent Christmas with us—I … I was quite pleased when I first found out about the baby because I thought then that he might—”

  “Marry you?”

  She did not deny it. All she said was “I’ve been a widow such a long time, Jan. It’s hard to be widowed when you’re only twenty-seven.”

  “But look here, Rebecca, if this man’s left you and you can’t trace him—”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I know. I’ve thought it all out. Don’t worry, I didn’t ask you here to give me advice about what to do. I know what has to be done. I simply want you to help me do it.”

  Uneasiness made my scalp prickle. I said sharply, “Just what the devil do you mean by that?” All I could th
ink was: I want no part of her troubles. Not now. Let Simon Peter help her. He’s her cousin. Let her turn to him.

  “Please, Jan!” Her, eyes were dark, beseeching me for pity. “Please help me! If you could tell me where I can go to get an abortion—Hugh used to tell stories about places in the back streets of Penzance, and I thought that if you could find someone there for me, someone reliable …”

  She stopped. There was a long silence. Finally I managed to say, “No.”

  “Jan—”

  “No.”

  “All right,” she said sullenly. “I’ll go my own way. I’ll find someone somehow.”

  “A back-street quack? Good God, don’t you know what a risk you’d be taking? I’ve heard about that sort of abortion! Charity had one years ago—William told me about it once. She nearly died, and later when she wanted to have children she found out that the abortionist had made such a mess of her that any idea of children was out of the question. Also she knew girls who—but I won’t talk about the ones who died. Listen, I’ll tell you what you must do. Get Simon Peter to take you to London and bribe a gynecologist to do the job properly for you in a decent hospital where there’d be no danger of anything going wrong. I’m sure if one paid enough money—”

  “But Simon Peter’s a lawyer,” she said, “and abortions are against the law. I couldn’t ask Simon Peter—I couldn’t ask any of my Roslyn relations for help! Think what they’d say! They’d never speak to me again, never! As it is I’m terrified of them finding out what’s happened.”

  “But damn it, Rebecca, what am I supposed to do? Leave my wife and take you to London myself? What am I to say to my wife? How am I to explain to her?”

  “I don’t expect you to go to London,” she said levelly, her eyes dark in her strained face. “I don’t expect that. How could I go to London anyway? What could I say to the children? I couldn’t even go to London on my own.”

  “You must. Look, I’ll phone Donald—Donald McCrae. He’s in London now. He’ll meet you off the train and look after you and he’ll know the name of a man who’ll do the job safely in the proper surroundings—don’t worry about the money. I’ll pay. But you must go about this thing in the right way, do you understand? It’s no good going to a back-street quack.”

  “I couldn’t take your money,” she said.

  “Don’t be absurd. I don’t mind helping you out financially.”

  “But what could I say to the children?”

  “Say you’re not well. Say it’s nothing for them to worry about but your doctor has advised you to consult a London specialist. Be open and above board and they won’t even question it. Is that clear? Are you listening to me? Will you do as I say?”

  “Yes,” she said in a muffled voice. “Yes, Jan, I will.”

  But she did not.

  Two nights later Deborah telephoned me in a panic from the nearest callbox and said that her mother was very ill but had forbidden her to send for a doctor.

  “She asked for you,” Deborah whispered, crying into the phone. “Oh, Uncle Jan, I’m so frightened … she’s so white and there’s this terrible bleeding—”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said. “Don’t worry, Deborah. It’ll be all right” But as soon as I had finished speaking to her I got hold of the operator and summoned the ambulance from Penzance.

  7

  “All right,” said the doctor at the hospital to me an hour later. “You’d better tell me. Who was the butcher? Whoever performed this operation deserves a life sentence to prevent other women from falling into his hands.”

  “I don’t know,” I said blankly. “I don’t know who it was.” I felt cold with shock. “I refused to help her find a quack. I was going to send her to London—to a gynecologist. She didn’t want to go because she was afraid her strait-laced relations might find out and she didn’t know what to say to the children, but I thought when I last saw her that I’d persuaded her to see reason.”

  “Your child?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I wanted to help. She’s my sister-in-law.”

  “I see.” He paused. “I’m sorry” was all he could say when he spoke again. “I’m very sorry.”

  “But isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Everything possible will be done, I promise you. Meanwhile perhaps we’d better do something about the children. How old is the girl?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Better tell her the situation isn’t too good and that it would be as well for her to stay at the hospital for a while. The boy would be better off away from it all probably. Are there any relations he could go to?”

  “I’ll telephone Simon Peter Roslyn.”

  “The solicitor?”

  “Yes, he’s their cousin.”

  “Good. Ask him if he’d be so kind as to come to the hospital straight away.”

  “Very well,” I said dully and walked slowly away down the white sterile hospital corridor to the cupboard in the hall where they kept the public telephone.

  8

  She spoke only once. A plainclothes policeman was at the bedside on the chance that she would reveal the name of the abortionist, and the doctor and nurse were present, but otherwise the only people there were Simon Peter, Deborah and I. Simon Peter would not look at me; he had his arm around Deborah, who was crying soundlessly into her handkerchief, and his eyes watched Rebecca. No other member of the family was there; Jonas was in the waiting room with Simon Peter and Deborah and I imprisoned by those four hospital walls, and before us on the bed Rebecca lay motionless, her eyes closed, her lips ashen, her life-blood ebbing away before our eyes.

  All I could think of was the past. I thought of fourteen-year-old Rebecca Roslyn in her gingham dress on the rectory lawn, of twenty-one-year-old Rebecca Castallack just married to my brother Hugh; I thought of her sudden widowhood, Jonas’s birth, her tortuous recovery from her bereavement. I saw her in that scarlet satin dress again, her first capitulation, our long uneven relationship spread over ten long difficult years. But I didn’t think of the quarrels, the stormy scenes, the words we always regretted later. I thought only of the happiness, the joy and the laughter; I remembered only my pride in her when I took her out for an evening, my comfort in lying close to her in the bedroom, the longing for her which drew me back time and again to that farmhouse even after our worst quarrels. For ten years she had been the most important woman in my life, the woman I loved better than all the other women in the world. I had not loved her as I now loved Isabella, but I had loved her nonetheless and she had loved me. Then why, since this was so, had we so often made each other unhappy?

  It was her fault, I told myself as the tears blurred my eyes, all her fault. She never trusted me when I told her I loved her. She refused to marry me and then refused to forgive me when I wouldn’t marry her later. She was selfish and hurtful and made no effort to understand.

  She spoke.

  Her lashes flickered and her lids opened but her eyes beneath were blind. She opened her mouth, said very clearly in a strange, quiet voice, “Hugh?” and then after that there was nothing except for the knowledge that it was not her fault but mine, that I had been a mere clumsy, insensitive substitute who had never understood her, and as I watched, too stricken with grief and guilt to speak, a small shallow sigh escaped from her lips and she died.

  9

  I went out into the night

  It was dark and windy and the rain lashed against my face and mingled with my tears. I crawled into my car and sat there, unable to drive, marooned on a street in Penzance early on one sightless, stormy March morning, but at last I managed to drive up onto the moors and halt the car for a while. Dawn came. The sun was rising in the east beyond Marazion, and the wet gray spear of St. Michael’s Mount rose from the cold morning sea like a tarnished dream.

  After a long while I went home.

  “Yes,” I said to Isabella. “Yes, I’m upset. I can’t help it. I’m sorry bu
t I can’t help it. Please forgive me.”

  “Oh, Jan darling, as if there was anything to forgive!” She put her thin child’s arms around me and pressed her soft young cheek to mine. After a moment she said, “I mean, there isn’t anything to forgive, is there?”

  I looked at her. “What do you mean?” I said dimly. My mind was in a haze of shock still and I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nothing, darling.”

  “If I ever find that schoolmaster who got her into trouble in the first place, I’ll—”

  “Yes, darling. I know.”

  “And who could she have gone to for the abortion? I hope to God the police find out who did it.”

  “Yes, darling, yes. I expect they will.”

  “If only she’d done what I told her to do! Why did she have to panic like that? I could have organized her journey to London for her—she needn’t have been afraid! But I suppose she was in an irrational state when she saw things out of proportion and the prospect of a visit to London seemed suddenly more than she could cope with. She must have made up her mind to save herself the trouble—save me the trouble—she must have convinced herself that a quick visit to Penzance was the best way—”

  “Darling, don’t think about it any more. Please! It’s wrong to blame yourself like this. You did your best for her, but she didn’t take your advice—and that’s all there is to say. Try not to worry about it any more. The police will soon find out who did it, I’m sure. Try to get some rest.”

  She took me off to bed. It was only there, with my head pressed against her breast as she lay quietly beside me, that I fell at last into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion.

  10

  Rebecca was buried in Zillan churchyard beside Hugh on a cold blustery afternoon a few days later. Her children were both there and so were all the Roslyns and her friends in Morvah. Her cousin Alice Carnforth came over in Sir Justin’s chauffeur-driven Daimler and William and I arrived in my new Lagonda. No one spoke to us. Simon Peter was white-faced, tight-lipped and hostile, and even Deborah, usually so affectionate toward me, hurried away afterward without pausing to look in my direction. It was a sad, somber, depressing experience, and the memory of it was to upset me for many months to come.