Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “You are ten years old,” said my mother to me during that first confrontation in London, “and you have never seen your Inheritance. I intend to remedy that immediately. We leave for Penzance tomorrow.”

  Evidently this was the sole reason for her request to see me. Ten was judged to be an age when I could clap my hands in delight when I saw my Inheritance for the first time.

  Naturally I was excited at the prospect of seeing Penmarric; I thought I would be able to explore the grounds, ride around the estate and tour the house from top to bottom. This, however, was not what my mother had in mind. After an arduous journey to Penzance, three hundred miles away from London in the southwest, we stayed at a hotel on the esplanade called the Metropole and next morning hired a carriage to begin another wearisome journey north over the moors to the parish of St. Just. I was too young to appreciate the scenery; all I knew was that it was a world away from my home at Gweek, from the peaceful estuary and fishing boats. I looked at the landscape of this alien strip of Cornwall and my child’s mind thought: The devil would feel quite at home here. For the scenery was bleak and powerful, dominated by stretches of arid moors without trace of a tree or house, and the moors snarled into towering hills crowned with outcrops of black rock. The emptiness of the landscape combined with the steep gradient of the road produced sweeping views; I remember looking back toward Penzance and glimpsing the castle of St. Michael’s Mount shimmering far off in the blue of the bay.

  For a moment I wished that St. Michael’s Mount were my Inheritance, although naturally I did not dare admit as much to my mother.

  As we moved inland the mines began to dot the harsh landscape and I had my first glimpse of the copper and tin industry for which Cornwall had been famous for centuries, the stone towers of the engine houses, the black belches of smoke, the eerie piles of slag. There were two mines on the Penmarric estate, my mother told me, but only one, Sennen Garth, was still operating. The other, King Walloe, had been closed for decades,

  “Can I go down the mine?” I inquired hopefully.

  “Good gracious, no, child, you’re not an artisan. … Now, look out of the window and you can see the coast of the North. There! Is it not a magnificent view here from the top of the ridge? There are three parishes side by side which border the sea. St. Just is the one to the west, Morvah is straight ahead of us, and Zennor is to the east of Morvah. Penmarric, of course, is in the parish of St. Just.”

  “Which parish are we in now?”

  “Zillan. It’s an inland moorland parish lying behind Morvah. … Robert, tell the coachman to hurry!”

  We continued westward, through the gray mining village of St. Just and out along the road to Land’s End, but presently we turned off the Land’s End road and headed north to the sea.

  “Now,” said my mother at last. “Tell the coachman to stop, Robert.”

  The carriage rolled to a halt.

  “Get out, child.”

  I did as I was told. The spring breeze blew lightly against my cheek and the sun was warm as it shone from the spring skies. There were wildflowers already by the roadside, and beyond the wildflowers the banks of gorse were poised to burst into a blaze of yellow blooms.

  My mother grabbed my arm. “Look.”

  I looked. Across a shallow valley, beyond a spinney of trees unusual in that barren landscape, stood a castle built on cliffs facing the sea. I gasped and then saw on a second examination that the building was not a castle at all but an immense house built of gray-black stone and endowed with turrets and towers and fanciful architectural fripperies which captivated my childish imagination. Later I was to dismiss the whole preposterous design as a contortion of modern taste, but to me, as I saw the house for the first time through my child’s eyes, it was beautiful,

  “I want that house,” said my mother, echoing my thoughts, and the bond was forged that was to chain us to each other throughout all the quarrelsome years ahead. “I want that house, and I’m going to get it—if not for myself, then at least for you.”

  And I said, “Can we go on? Why are we stopped here? Can we not drive to the house and call on Cousin Giles?”

  She looked at me as if I had gone mad. “Call on Giles? My dear child! Do you really think that after six years of incessant litigation I would be received as a guest under the roof which he illegally claims as his own? What an extraordinarily unintelligent remark! I hope you’re not going to grow up to be a fool.” She turned to our driver, a Cornish yokel who was gaping at our conversation as he struggled to understand our English accents. “Home to Penzance at once, my man. The purpose of our drive is accomplished.”

  I allowed myself one last look at Penmarric before I followed her into the carriage. It was four years before I was to see my Inheritance again.

  4

  I was fourteen when my mother won her lawsuit and demanded to see me once more. Again we journeyed down to Penmarric, this time with the intention of crossing the threshold since Giles was no longer the legal owner of the house, but Giles had lodged an appeal against the decision and the matter was no longer resolved but sub judice. The front door was closed and bolted in our faces; my mother, trembling with rage, battered the panels with her fists, but her gesture was worse than useless. Penmarric still belonged to Giles.

  Two more long years of litigation passed, and then came the disaster. The Court of Appeal decided in favor of Giles and the decision of the court below was reversed.

  “I shall appeal to the House of Lords!” cried my mother, wild-eyed with grief. “I shall never give up, never!”

  But the House of Lords rejected her suit. Years of futile litigation and endless expense had ended in the annihilation of her cause.

  Yet still she refused to give up. Something, she decided, must be salvaged from the wreck of her hopes. She would travel down to Penmarric, make her peace with Giles and at least coax him to allow her to visit the house now and then. In vain Cousin Robert Yorke and I pointed out that there was no reason why Giles should pursue a policy of forgiving and forgetting the past twelve years of extreme animosity; in vain we told her she would be wasting her time. She remained—as always when her will was opposed—highhanded, domineering and incorrigibly inflexible.

  “Very well,” I said with all the aggressive defiance of a sixteen-year-old youth who wished to show some independence. “Go alone, if you wish. But don’t expect me to waste my time by coming with you.”

  “You’re coming with me whether you like it or not!” My mother was more than a match for any sixteen-year-old youth anxious to rebel. “Robert, remind the boy of his filial duty!”

  “Mark, you really do owe it to your mother, you know,” said Cousin Robert obediently. “Maud’s worked so hard on your behalf.”

  I gave in with a great show of sulkiness and my mother somehow managed to refrain from boxing my ears.

  It was on this, my third visit to Penmarric, that I first met Giles’s children, my three cousins, Raymond, Harry and Clarissa Penmar. In actual fact Giles had only the one child, my cousin Raymond, who was the same age as I was, but Giles’s wife, who was now dead, had taken pity on an orphaned nephew and niece of hers, and Giles had assumed the responsibilities of guardianship when he had allowed her to bring them to live at his house. Harry, the adopted son, was by this time eighteen; his sister Clarissa was a year or two younger than Raymond and myself. I knew nothing about them beyond these sparse facts, and later, particularly where Clarissa was concerned, I was to wish I had remained in ignorance. Why was it that I disliked Clarissa so much? At sixteen when I first saw her I was certainly old enough to appreciate her looks, but dark girls have never attracted me, perhaps because they remind me of my mother and her domineering attitudes, and besides, my dislike of Clarissa went further than a mere antipathy to her good looks. On reflection I suspect that my dislike sprang into existence on our first meeting on the steps of Penmarric, when she insulted me with the cattiness of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl and gave me forewarning of th
e spitefulness which I was to encounter, with such disastrous results when we were older. Perhaps even when I first saw her I sensed that her influence on my life was not destined to be benign.

  The trouble began when—to no one’s surprise but my mother’s—we were refused admittance to the house by the butler. My mother at once demanded to see Giles in person, but the butler, who was by this time very white around the gills, said that Mr. Penmar was indisposed and could see no one. It was at this moment that I had the unfortunate idea of parleying with my cousin Raymond; I suppose I thought that two sixteen-year-old youths were more likely to reach a friendly agreement than our parents were, but that was my mistake. When Raymond emerged cautiously from the hall the first thing he did was to order me off the porch as if I had yellow fever.

  “You get away from here!” he yelled with the sort of charm that I at once realized was characteristic of him. He was a tall youth with a spoiled mouth, soft hands and a petulant expression. Pitching his voice loud enough to reach my mother, who was waiting with Cousin Robert in the carriage, he added, “Penmarric will never be yours now, so you can go back to London and rot for all I care!”

  “Well, ---------- you, old chap,” I said politely, in the language I had learned from my years at Eton, and gave in to my overwhelming urge to punch him on the nose.

  He fell like a stone.

  I was just savoring the effectiveness of my handiwork when the front door flew open and I was face to face with a protagonist far more dangerous than my ineffectual cousin Raymond. His adopted brother Harry was tall and tough, with a strong pair of shoulders and a pair of fists that made me decide that the time had come to beat a quick but graceful retreat.

  “Damn you, you bastard,” said Harry Penmar through his teeth. “Damn you, get out of here before you wish you’d never come.”

  And before I could think of a reply his sister appeared, pushing past him and kneeling by Raymond’s inert body, her breast rising and falling rapidly in her agitation. I would have looked at her closely if I had had the chance, but by then I was too busy jeering at Harry Penmar as my feet concentrated on the task of widening the gap between us. “And who do you think you are?” I drawled at him insolently, anxious to disguise the fact that I was in full retreat. “The Light Brigade before the Charge?”

  But it was the girl who answered me. She looked down at me from the top of the steps as my feet crunched on the gravel of the drive, and suddenly I was aware only of dark eyes blazing and a wild passionate mouth.

  “You ugly little brute!” she spat at me. “You fat repulsive cretin, go away and take your abominable mother with you and never—never—come near us again!”

  Despite my natural aggressiveness and the self-confidence infused by a public school education, I was still more vulnerable than I cared to acknowledge. Sixteen is a sensitive age. I knew I was still a trifle stout. I knew that despite sharing a strong family resemblance with my mother I did not share her good looks. I knew too by this time that I would never be tall. But nevertheless I did not like to hear a young woman, particularly a girl of my own age, tell me to my face that I was short, fat and plain.

  I was still staring at her, my cheeks starting to burn with a helpless rage, when my mother called from the carriage in a voice that stopped even Harry Penmar dead in his tracks: “Mark! We leave at once, if you please!”

  My third visit to Penmarric was at an end, as much a failure as my mother’s attempts to retrieve the Inheritance in the courts of law. Our cause was lost; Giles was beyond appeasement; Penmarric was forever beyond my reach.

  It was the first time that I saw my mother cry. She watched Penmarric disappear from sight and shed two large tears, but when Cousin Robert anxiously offered her his handkerchief she pushed it aside.

  “Put that away, you silly man,” she said, autocratic even in grief, and tilted her head a fraction higher. “Well, that’s that, I suppose. I shall return to London and occupy my future time with worthy causes instead of with lawsuits. Women’s suffrage, perhaps. That’s a worthy cause. Or the propagation of birth control.”

  Cousin Robert and I exchanged horrified glances but had enough sympathy for her to remain silent and not risk upsetting her further. We ought to have known that despite everything she would never give up hope of recovering Penmarric, even when all hope was seemingly gone. Where Penmarric was concerned she was too much of a fanatic to accept the idea of a total and permanent defeat, and her resilience was such that by the time we arrived at the Metropole Hotel in Penzance she had recovered her composure sufficiently to consider plans for the future. For the time being at least Penmarric could no longer be discussed, but I was judged to be a worthy substitute.

  “Well, Mark,” she said, having dispatched Cousin Robert on some errand in order that she could speak to me alone, “I have enjoyed seeing you during our struggles for the Inheritance, and I hope that I shall continue to see you even now our struggles are at an end. Why don’t you come to London and live with me at the townhouse? You could have your own suite of rooms, a generous allowance and the freedom to sample the cultural delights of the greatest city on earth.”

  “No, thank you, Mama.”

  “Why on earth not?” She was affronted by such an abrupt refusal. “How ungrateful!”

  “My home is at Gweek with my father.”

  “Your father! Your dull provincial country squire of a father who always has his nose buried in those dry-as-dust history books! My dear boy, you can’t convince me that you have anything in common with him! Now, listen to me, I—”

  “No,” I said, suddenly losing my temper, “you listen to me! You abandoned me when I was four, dragged me along for a week to Penzance when I was old enough to be interested in your schemes, pulled me away from my home when I was fourteen, kept me with you for a few weeks longer, wrote to me—a big concession, that one!—once a term, and now you have the insufferable insolence to suggest I should abandon everything and become one of your satellites, like poor Cousin Robert!”

  It was her turn now to lose her temper. We must have hurled insults at each other for at least ten minutes before she screamed, scarlet with rage, “Go back to your decaying manor home in Gweek, in that case! Go back to your dull, dreary father, and good riddance, and don’t come crawling back to me later when you realize your mistake and want to live as a young man about town in London!”

  “And don’t come crawling back to me,” I yelled at her, “when you find yourself face to face with a lonely old age!”

  And as I returned to Gweek and to my father I firmly resolved never to set eyes on her again.

  5

  I thought my father would be pleased that I had finally removed myself from my mother’s influence, but he said nothing. Although he had allowed and even encouraged me to see my mother whenever she demanded it, he never questioned me afterward about my visits, and even at the age of ten I sensed he had no more wish to discuss my mother’s schemes to regain Penmarric than he had to discuss my mother herself. The unspoken subjects became a barrier between us, and as I grew older it seemed to me that although he always treated me with kindness and interest his conventional parental attitude, so faithfully produced for my benefit, masked a wall of estrangement which hurt as much as it baffled me. I knew I must often remind him of my mother. I could see that Nigel’s facile good-naturedness was easier for him to respond to than my own more complex behavior. But I was his elder son, the son who shared his love of history—how hard I had worked at my history!—and it seemed unjust that he should unwittingly be prejudiced against me on account of my mother and all the more unjust since I was the one who yearned to be like him, to live as he lived and to share his standards and beliefs.

  He was a quiet man. I could understand why my mother thought he was dull and provincial, for he loathed city life and was always happiest in the tranquil Cornish backwater of Gweek where he could ride a little, mingle occasionally with his friends among the local gentry whom he had known all his l
ife, and, most important of all, write his historical articles and monographs in peace and seclusion. My father did not talk much about honor and justice, the concepts which my mother so dearly loved to brandish, but there was no need for him to talk of them; he gave neither Nigel nor myself long lectures about moral conduct but merely took it for granted that we would follow in his footsteps. For my father was a good man and he was chaste, and the example he set us was so clear that there was no need for it to be defined in words.

  So strong was my desire to be like him that I managed to suppress my Penmar inclinations until I was nearly seventeen, but the Penmars were adventurers; whatever virtues they possessed, chastity was not one of them.

  Curiously enough it was the quarrel with my mother that proved to be my undoing. It was illogical and incomprehensible to me, but I missed her and would have written to mend the breach between us if my pride had permitted it. But my pride did not permit it, so I reached out instead for the sex my mother represented, and in a fit of depression I turned my back on my father’s standards during a casual visit I paid one day to Mullion Cove.

  The woman was a fisherman’s wife. Her husband was away at sea and she needed money as well as companionship, so I gave her five shillings. She was grateful—and so was I at first, but as soon as the episode was over I found my guilt made me feel even unhappier than I had felt before. To make matters worse I found it impossible to behave as if the incident had never happened and return to a life of abstinence. Finally in a muddled effort to make amends both to my conscience, which was making me miserable, and to my father, who remained unaware of my weakness, I flung myself into my work more energetically than ever before and vowed I would not rest until I had become as fine a scholar as he himself was.