Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “To suffer,” I said to God, “but not to die.”

  To die would have been unjust. I didn’t want to die.

  “Let me live,” I said, trying not to think of the holocaust of war to which I was soon to return, and suddenly I was not pleading with God alone but also with that two-headed phantom that was justice and injustice, the monster which had mesmerized me all my life. “Give me justice,” I said. “That’s all I want. Give me justice. Whatever it is, give it to me.”

  I bent down over the body. I was trying not to think of Rebecca, of the past, yet I found myself asking her to forgive me, as if she were standing beside me and could hear every word I said. Tears streaked my face and my chest was hurting from the effort of stifling my sobs. Making an enormous effort, I dragged the body to the edge of the shaft and heaved it over into the blackness below.

  After a seemingly interminable time there was a splash, then silence.

  It was over.

  When I got back to the car I sat in the driving seat for quarter of an hour while I tried to get a grip on myself. Sobs still shook me spasmodically, but eventually I controlled them and wiped my eyes with my handkerchief. Presently I struck a match and looked in the driving mirror to make sure I did not look as if I had been crying, but my eyes only seemed blacker than usual and bloodshot as if I were intolerably tired.

  Leaning forward, I forced myself to switch on the engine and back the car down the track to a place where I could turn it around and drive back into the village. Now I had to face the hardest part of all. I had to soothe Isabella’s anger, assure her that nothing was wrong and behave toward her exactly as any loving husband would behave during the last stage of a forty-eight-hour leave.

  I was dreading it.

  3

  I left at dawn to catch the early train to London, and she came with me to the station. There was barely enough black market petrol left for this purpose, but we took the car and drove off alone.

  “Poor Jan,” she said, snuggling up to me as I steered the car over the cold, empty moorland road. “I know you’re upset even though you try so hard to hide it You mustn’t worry because of last night being so brief—it was just so wonderful to lie afterward in your arms … I really think there’ll be a baby this time. My intuition says there will be. And when you next come home …”

  But there was no baby. She wrote three weeks later, a sad short letter, and I wondered what she would have said if she had known how relieved her news made me feel. I wanted no living memory of those forty-eight hours of compassionate leave.

  Such memories as I had were bad enough.

  4

  The letters began to arrive soon afterward.

  “My darling Jan, would you believe it! It seems that Jonas has mysteriously disappeared …”

  “My dear Jan, don’t pass out to see a letter from your elderly semiliterate brother once again, but I thought I must just tell you that everyone is looking for Jonas …”

  “My dearest Jan,” wrote my mother blandly, “no doubt you have heard the news now that Jonas has disappeared. It really is very odd and I can’t think what can have happened to him. They found his bicycle the day after he left us but there is no other sign of him at all. We’re all afraid he’s had some kind of mishap, but the police don’t suspect foul play. A policeman, quite a nice man, came to see me this morning since we apparently were the last people to see the boy, but I’m afraid I couldn’t help him much apart from telling him that Jonas stormed out of here in a rage and that you stayed with me for another couple of hours to cheer me up. I had to go into a little family history to explain why you and Jonas quarreled, but the policeman was very kind and understanding, and there’s no need for you to worry…”

  “… it’s all very odd,” wrote William. “The theory at the moment is that Jonas went cross-country and fell into an unfenced mine shaft, but I don’t agree with that For one thing Jonas was in Morvah parish when he abandoned his bicycle and if he did go cross-country to his cousins’ farm I can’t believe he would have had any trouble. Jonas knew Morvah parish like the back of his hand since he’d lived there all his life, and come to think of it, I doubt his course would have taken him past any old shafts. Do you suppose he accepted a lift from some fellow who was mad? I can’t honestly swallow that either since Jonas was so tough that he would have probably knocked out even the maddest of mad murderers. What do you think?”

  “My dear Jan-Yves,” said a cold typewriter on the headed office note paper of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes. “I am sure you will have been informed by now of Jonas’s disappearance. Mr. Vincent has asked me to write to assure you that everything possible is being done to trace him, and since the police have apparently satisfied themselves that there was no foul play we have engaged private detectives for a closer investigation. I am employing them at my expense since I think Jonas’s disappearance is—shall we say—curious to say the least. The general opinion of the police is that he was in a temper when he left your mother’s farm and when his bicycle developed a puncture he was so exasperated that he accepted a lift from the first car that came and ended up in Penzance to cool his heels. They then think he may have yielded to a common adolescent impulse and decided to run away from home. It was well-known that he was a moody, discontented and difficult boy.

  “However, there are one or two aspects of the situation that I cannot but feel have a certain significance. The first is that I doubt if Jonas would have abandoned that bicycle, even temporarily. He had to earn the money to buy it and it was new and very precious to him. He would have pushed it to Morvah, not left it by the wayside. Secondly, your mother has been giving him money recently. I happen to know this, since he hasn’t been pestering me for extra pocket money for some time, and when I asked him about it he admitted that his grandmother had felt reluctantly obliged to help him financially. His exact words were: ‘She doesn’t want to but she can’t say no.’ I made no comment on this at the time, but since your mother is not inclined to be generous toward that branch of the family at the best of times I thought it odd that she should choose to be generous to Jonas when she had no pressing reason to show any generosity at all. Finally, Jonas had recently learned the truth about his mother’s death and had been trying to trace the ‘doctor’ who conducted the illegal operation. Of course I strongly advised him against this, since the police had already investigated the matter, but he was anxious to find the ‘doctor,’ and through the ‘doctor’ prove once and for all the identity of the man who had reduced Rebecca to the position of seeking illegal medical aid.

  “Naturally you will want this mystery to be solved as much as I do. I trust, therefore, that we will be able to forgo our past animosity and join together in a common cause to discover how Jonas disappeared and why. Yours sincerely, Simon Peter.”

  “My dear Simon Peter,” I wrote back, careful not to fall into any of his traps by deducing from his letter any more than he had actually written, “thank you for your letter and for hiring the private detectives to attempt to solve this puzzling and worrying mystery. I only wish I could offer constructive suggestions about the disappearance, but I don’t think I can. I expect you have already heard from the police that Jonas left my mother’s farm in a rage that night because I had told him in no uncertain terms not to bother her any more. He had been bullying her for money for some time on the grounds that he was morally entitled to a share of my father’s fortune, and since she’s old and frail and sentimental she’s been giving in to his demands for no reason save that he’s her grandson. He really is rather a young thug, isn’t he? I notice you don’t speak of him with any great sympathy, and was interested to hear that you too have been experiencing difficulties similar to my mother’s where Jonas’s financial situation is concerned.

  “He did not mention to me that he was conducting a private search for the quack who killed his mother. Personally I think it’s disgraceful that the police haven’t managed to track down the culprit, but no doubt t
heir files are still open on the subject I’m surprised Jonas thought there was any mystery about who fathered the child. However, since the man was (as far as we know) nowhere near Cornwall at the time of Rebecca’s death, he could hardly have been responsible for finding the abortionist for her. I forget his name, but no doubt Deborah would remember it. I think he was a schoolmaster from somewhere around London.

  “Remember me to your wife. I hear the war is keeping you busy on army legal work, so I was surprised to see the Holmes, Holmes notepaper. I also hear you have a son now in addition to the two daughters, so perhaps the war isn’t keeping you so busy as I had supposed! Yours sincerely, Jan-Yves. P.S. I see no reason why you should carry all the financial burden of hiring the private detectives, and I insist on paying half the bill. Please let me know what I owe you as soon as you have a statement of their fees.”

  His reply was slow in coming, but when it arrived it was satisfactory.

  “… so I’ve called the detectives off the case and left the matter in the hands of the Missing Persons Bureau,” he wrote. “Thank you for offering to share my expenses, and, accepting the offer in the spirit in which it was made, I enclose a copy of the Detective Agency’s bill. However, I would like you to know that I am not satisfied and that in my opinion there has been foul play. Whether anything further will ever be discovered remains to be seen, but I can tell you now that as far as I am concerned the matter will not be completely closed, and I am certain that you will join with me in regretting this unsatisfactory conclusion to a baffling and distressing affair.

  “The army keeps me on the run from one court-martial to the next so that I have become something of an expert on military law. But when I last wrote I was home on leave and took the opportunity to call at the office and dictate a few semi-business letters. My son is called John Henry after my grandfather, and I have already put his name down for Harrow. My wife’s brother always speaks well of the place, and I suppose one should continue to act as though there will be a Harrow—or indeed any English institution—alive thirteen years from now when it’s time for John Henry to go to public school. Still, I confess it’s most pleasing to have a son, and in fact it does inspire one with some degree of faith in the future …”

  “To hell with him!” I growled and tore the letter to shreds. Yet despite the fact that the letter left me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth I began to feel safer. Simon Peter suspected I had killed Jonas but we both knew he would never be able to prove it. Bearing that in mind, I could forgive him for that barbed last paragraph in which he had reminded me not only that he at least had a son to come after him but also that his son would end up as much a gentleman as any son of mine would be.

  I began to long passionately for a son of my own. When I got back from the war …

  But peace was far off. It was still only 1942 and I had another three years in which to try to remain alive.

  5

  On June the twentieth, 1942, Tobruk fell to the Germans.

  Rommel’s triumph was my disaster. I was one of the thirty-three thousand obliged to surrender to the enemy, and eventually after a series of journeys far too sordid to describe I arrived on the barbed-wire doorstep of an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. Why Italy I have no idea. The only reason I could think of was that it was nearer Tobruk than Germany and that the Italians were glad to accept English prisoners after their series of reverses in North Africa earlier in the war. However, so depressed was I by that time that I couldn’t have given a damn whether I was in Italy, Germany or Timbuktu.

  God, evidently in close collaboration with the two-headed monster, had cunningly devised for me a much more interesting punishment than mere death in order to avenge Jonas’s accidental departure from the world. I was an active man who hated enforced idleness and appreciated an active sex life. To have no woman for three years and to be so bored with inactivity that I nearly went out of my mind was the perfect punishment for me.

  I was there until the end of the war. My intense restlessness channeled me unawares into leadership among the prisoners. I organized concerts, poetry recitals, gymnastic displays and a dozen other activities to keep everyone including myself occupied. For someone who had displayed nothing but rebellious non-conformity at school, I developed the most astonishing community zeal.

  “Yer nuffin but a ruddy tornado,” said our tame Cockney wit. “On the go all the ruddy time with all these smart ideas. Major Smart-aleck, you are, not Major Castallack. You was named wrong at yer christening.”

  I did not try to escape. I helped four men get away, including my best friend, and was just preparing to join them later when they were all brought back and shot. After that I stuck to my concerts and gymnastics.

  I began to dream more, dreaming during the day as well as at night. When I was asleep I dreamed of Cornwall and Penmarric. I dreamed of Isabella. And I dreamed of other times long ago, of my old nanny slipping teaspoonfuls of gin into her tea and reading me stories about hobgoblins before I went to sleep. I dreamed of my father saying, “Nanny’s gone away. You’re going to have a new nanny now and share the nursery with Elizabeth.” And there was Lizzie, plump and black-haired, with a lollipop in her hand. I saw Mariana too, radiantly beautiful, the belle of the ball, coming down the great staircase at Penmarric, and Marcus was behind her, gay, charming Marcus, so effortlessly aristocratic, and suddenly Jeanne was clutching me and saying, “Oh, Mariana’s so pretty! If only I could be as pretty as that! What a lovely ball this is!” But then the ball merged into the Penmarric stables and Adrian was muttering unhappily to William, “Do you think everyone has guessed by now who we are?” And suddenly my father appeared, his hand on Adrian’s shoulder, until the scene was changing and Philip was shouting something about the Sennen Garth mine and the next moment I was down at the two-hundred-and-forty-fathom level and Trevose was saying with a laugh, “One bloody glass of cider wouldn’t turn an elephant bloody pink!” And after that came the funerals, so many funerals, and deaths, so many deaths, and death wanted me too but I was alive and I was going to stay alive, and I was sane and I was going to stay sane because Isabella was waiting for me, and one day I would be coming home.

  I dreamt I was home, running up the long twisting drive of Penmarric, and the rhododendrons were in bloom. Isabella was waiting at the porch and she was wearing a long white wedding gown and she was smiling at me as I ran toward her. So I ran and ran and ran, and I could smell fresh-mown grass and the salt wind from the sea, and the sunshine was bright and warm, and at last I reached Isabella and she was a mere waxen image and when I pushed my way past her into the hall, the house was dusty and deserted and the roof had fallen in.

  “Isabella!” I shouted. “Isabella!”

  I was sweating, but when I opened my eyes Penmarric vanished and I found myself in my hard prison bunk.

  “For Christ’s sake!” complained someone from close at hand.

  “Shhh. it’s only Major Smart-aleck reciting the Queens of Spain. Nothing to get excited about. Happens every night.”

  I fell asleep again. I was dreaming of Simon Peter Roslyn now, Simon Peter in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce while I stood by the roadside and took off my hat and bowed as he passed by, and as I returned to my plow I was thinking that nothing mattered, not even Penmarric crumbling into ruins, because I had Isabella and Isabella loved me and Isabella would be waiting for me when I came home …

  I was at a station, a big station, Waterloo, I think, and I was coming home at last and there were huge crowds everywhere so that it was difficult to see her. When I did see her at last she had her back to me and I thought how odd it was that she should have her back to me when she should have been searching for me as eagerly as I had been searching for her. I ran the whole length of the platform, in and out among all the people, and when at last I reached her I saw she wasn’t Isabella at all but a strange woman I had never seen before. So I pushed my way through the crowds, and as I fought my way through the maze of people I began to shout
her name.

  “Isabella! Isabella! Isabella!”

  “Shut up, Johnny, there’s a good chap. You’re giving us all insomnia.”

  “Chrissakes—”

  “Recital’s lasting a long time tonight. More value for money.”

  Isabella was waiting for me. Isabella would be there when I came home. All I had to do was stay alive. All I had to do was to stay alive and stay sane because Isabella was waiting for me and one day I would be going home.

  I dreamt of the purple heather and green bracken and gray walls of Chûn Castle and I would smell the wild roses around my mother’s front door, and the banks of the narrow country roads would be gay with pimpernels and harebells and buttercups, and the garden of Penmarric would be a blaze of exotic colors. Isabella was there, in the garden of Penmarric, and Isabella was smiling and walking toward me and Isabella was saying, “I’m so sorry, Jan, but you see I thought you wouldn’t come home. I was so bored, Jan, and so stifled, and—well, I’m afraid I just didn’t want to wait any longer. I know you’ll understand. You’re so understanding, darling, and I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I really loved Keith all the time. It was your fault for coming along and sweeping me off my feet when I was too young to know better. But don’t blame yourself, darling, don’t reproach yourself for the way things have turned out. I forgive you utterly. In fact I pray for you every day and hope that when you have a free moment you’ll come and see us in Devon.”

  But of course that was all a dream, and I knew it was a dream as soon as I opened my eyes, because Isabella loved me and she was waking for me, and one day—