Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “I see! So in other words you hoped to lure me into seeking a divorce by promising to let me have the children and then once you obtained the divorce you’d turn around and insist that I was deprived of the children anyway! Well, I’ll never divorce you and I’ll never give up the children—and don’t think either that you can trick me into giving them up!”

  “You’re not keeping those boys.”

  “Nobody,” I said, trembling, “nobody on this earth is going to take my sons away from me. If you try to separate me from Philip—”

  “And Philip is the one child who must at all costs be separated from you! That at least is plain to see! Look here, Janna, I’ll not stand by and see that boy ruined by you—”

  “How can I ruin him! I love him! I love all my children, all of them—I love you, but you’re so infatuated with that shamelessly immoral woman—”

  He hit me. He gave me a sharp stinging slap across the cheek with the palm of his hand. As I gasped and stepped back, speechless with fury, I saw his narrow black eyes blaze with rage.

  “You bitch,” he said. He did not shout. His voice was low and filled with the most bitter contempt. “Oh my God, you bitch. And you hypocrite. You damned hypocrite.”

  It was as if he had struck me again. I stepped back another pace, flinching from his words, and found myself at last with my back to the wall. “Mark,” I said suddenly. “Mark, don’t.”

  “Oh yes!” he said. “Oh yes, yes, yes! I’m going to tell you just what I think of you! I’m going to make you see yourself for the first time in your life! You’re going to take a long, long look at yourself, my dear, and this time you’re not going to pull down the veil of hypocrisy to hide what you don’t wish to see.”

  “Mark, please—”

  “All this talk of love! All these melodramatic protestations that you love me, love your children! My God, you don’t even know the meaning of the word! You don’t love me—you never loved me! All you loved was the money I could offer you, the security, the comfort and the luxury and—as a specially pleasant bonus—the sexual gratification in the bedroom. And don’t think you can make me believe you truly love the children either! You simply love the security they represent and the idea that there are six more people in the world to adore you and tell you you’re wonderful! Why, you don’t even really love Philip—you’re only so obsessed by him because he looks like a little masculine reflection of you, and let’s be honest, Jaņna, let’s not pretend any more, let’s admit the truth to ourselves without hypocrisy, there’s only one person on this earth whom you do love and that one person is yourself! Why else do you put yourself first the whole damned time? Why else is everything always subjugated to what you want and what you desire? You’re a selfish, vain, egocentric woman—cold, empty and emotionally sterile.”

  I began to blunder my way toward the door. My voice said as if from a long way away, “I’ll not hear any more of this.”

  “Oh yes, you will, my dear,” he said. “Oh yes, you will.” And before I could stop him he had darted in front of me, locked the door and pocketed the key.

  “Let me out,” I said unsteadily. “Let me out at once.”

  “No,” he said, “no, I won’t. We haven’t resolved the future yet, if you remember. We haven’t resolved the future of our children. All we’ve resolved is a few home truths about your character, which you’re trying to pretend you haven’t heard, but now you are going to hear me, my dear, because I’m not going to talk over your head any longer in such an incomprehensible manner. I’m going to talk to you in your own language for the simple reason that that’s the only language you’ll ever understand.”

  He stopped. I looked at him. I was trembling from head to toe, my head ached and my mouth was dry. I could not speak.

  He took out a gold sovereign. And another. And he laid them on the small table which stood beside us by the door.

  “There’ll be four hundred and ninety-eight more of those a year for the rest of your life,” he said, “if you let me have the children without any unnecessary dramatic scenes. If you can manage to conduct yourself with the minimum of good taste. I’ll even let you come to visit the children at Oxford whenever you wish and allow them to visit you at the farm if I bring them to Penmarric. The money will, of course, be in addition to the maintenance allowance which I shall be legally bound to pay you.”

  I said at once in a shaking voice, “I don’t want the money. I want my children. Please. I’ll stay at Penmarric—I’ll do anything you like, but—”

  “Then give me a divorce.”

  But I knew that once he had the divorce he would make renewed efforts to deprive me of the children. I knew now that once he had the upper hand he would never consent to letting them stay with me. “No,” I said, shaking my head blindly. “Not that. Not divorce.”

  “I’ll pay you for it. How much do you want? Tell me how much you want and I’ll pay whatever you ask.”

  “I don’t want money!” My eyes smarted with tears. My voice was harsh with pain. “I don’t want it!”

  “Dear me!” he said with that cutting London drawl I had always hated, “Dear me! Are you trying to tell me in all seriousness that you’re not for sale? How times have changed!”

  “I’ve never been for sale! Never!”

  He laughed. I flew at him. I was blind with rage and hatred. I tried to hit him but he merely caught my wrist and flung me away from him so that I slipped and fell upon the chaise longue.

  “You’ve never been for sale?” he said, looking down at me. “Well, well, well. How we do deceive ourselves, to be sure.” His voice changed. “Old John Henry Roslyn didn’t buy you, I suppose, when he offered you money and a roof over your head in return for your favors? Oh no, I quite forgot! He married you! That makes it all respectable, doesn’t it, and you don’t even have to explain to yourself why you left that bar in St. Ives and went to live with a man you didn’t love. Perhaps—knowing your talent for self-deception—you even managed to persuade yourself you did love him! But what about the times before old Roslyn? Was that really the first time you’d ever consented to go to bed with a man for the sake of money and a roof over your head? You always told me you were a virgin before Roslyn married you, but you weren’t a virgin, were you, my dear? There’d been other men before him! A woman with a face and figure like yours doesn’t stay chaste till she’s twenty-seven. No, there were other men who paid for your services and the only reason why Roslyn was any different from the others was because he happened by chance to be a decent man and he offered to marry you. And later—why, your actions speak for themselves. When Roslyn died and left you short of money, what did you do to get the money you needed? No, don’t try to tell me you would have gone to bed with my father for sheer romantic love alone! He kept you at that farm and you went to bed with him so that you could stay on at that house! And when he died so inconveniently, what did you do next? Why, I only had to put five sovereigns on the table and you took me straight upstairs to your room. You sold yourself to me for five pounds, my dear, and don’t ever fool yourself into believing you did it for love! But then the gods favored you, didn’t they, because I was so childishly infatuated with your very beautiful and very desirable body that my common sense deserted me and I decided I could not rest until I paraded you to the world as my wife. What good fortune! What incredible luck! Here was a rich young man begging to marry you! Of course, he was rather young and undeniably plain, but with a little mental effort you were ready enough to believe yourself in love with him. It was all so easy, wasn’t it? A few nights here, a few nights there, and lo and behold! You’re a lady living in a mansion and mingling with the aristocracy! Never mind how you got there—no need to think about that now—push it to the back of your mind. You’re a lady now—or so you think, but you see, that was the whole tragedy, wasn’t it, my dear, you never were a lady and you never could be. You’re a whore. You always were and you always will be. Some women never change.”

  He s
topped speaking. Nothing happened. After a long moment I thought: I must go. I must leave. I can’t stay here. But it was strangely difficult to move. Presently I managed to stand up. I could not look at him but I knew he was still standing watching me. I could feel his anger and hatred, and suddenly I was conscious of nothing save the most dreadful foreboding and the desire to escape from that room.

  I stumbled to the door, rattled the handle, but it was locked. I spun around. “Let me out!” I cried. “Let me out of here! Let me out!” Claustrophobia was overwhelming. As I turned to rattle the door again, I knew with that intuitive instinct that women possess that something even more appalling than the preceding scene was about to take place between us. “Let me go!”

  I heard him drawl casually, “Let you go? Certainly—if you’ll first let me go and agree to a divorce.”

  I whirled around to face him and found with a shock that he was standing right behind me. My nerve snapped. I lost control of myself. “You’ll never make me agree to a divorce!” I shouted at him, and my voice grated Cornish in my ears. “We’re husband and wife and we’ll always be husband and wife and you’ll never make me take one single step that’ll make things otherwise—you’ll never make me do one single thing I don’t truly want to do!”

  There was a split second of utter silence. I sensed a void in the room, then an overpowering blast of a primitive savage emotion.

  “No?” he said very politely. “We’ll see about that.” And then the politeness was discarded like a mask and I saw what he wanted in revenge.

  I stepped backward. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Why not?” He moved forward. “You’re my wife, aren’t you? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to tell me? That you’re my wife and I’m your husband?”

  “Keep away from me!”

  “Hardly the right response for a devoted wife to make!”

  “If you dare lay one finger on me—”

  ”I’m laying every finger I’ve got on you, you bitch, to prove to you what a bloody hypocrite you are!”

  “Get away from me—I hate you!”

  “And by God I hate you too,” he said between his teeth and slammed me back against the wall.

  I screamed and screamed but the door was shut, the windows were closed and the walls were thick. No one heard. No one came. And when at last he let me go and we could look at each other in hatred the silence closed in upon us and shrouded the memory of our dead love like a pall. As soon as I was fit to leave I asked him again for the key of the door and he gave it to me without speaking.

  I left him. I left the room. I left Penmarric and aristocratic society and all the luxury and grandeur which money could buy. And as I stumbled sobbing down the corridor and out of his life all I could think of was not of the future, not of Philip, not even of the terrible humiliation I had just endured, but of Mark, of my husband, of the man I had once loved more than I would have believed it possible to love anyone. I thought numbly: I did love him—oh God, tell me that I loved him once! But God was silent, God did not speak, and all that was left was the truth, which was much too terrible to face and Mark’s own bitter voice saying politely, “You’re a whore. You always were and you always will be. Some women never change.”

  III

  ADRIAN: 1904-1914

  Good and Evil

  He was distinguished from his legitimate half-brothers by his consistent attachment and fidelity to his father… His history is chiefly one of quarrels with his half-brothers.

  —“Geoffrey of York,”

  ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

  Geoffrey, Henry’s natural son, though quarrelsome and high-spirited had always been faithful and earned the praise of his father who [said]: “You alone have proved yourself my lawful and true son, my other sons are really the bastards.”

  —-Oxford History of England:

  From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

  A. L. POOLE

  That Henry had been sincerely in love with [Rosamund Clifford] was made clear by what he did for her and her two sons … the second, Geoffrey, seems to have been a great favorite, with the king.

  —The Conquering Family,

  THOMAS COSTAIN

  ONE

  Giraldus mentions that the King, who had been a secret adulterer, began openly to live with Rosamund Clifford.

  —The Oxford History of England:

  From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

  A. L. POOLE

  As royal mistresses go, she was not expensive, and did not aspire to influence policy. In fact she was popular with certain ladies of good birth and impeccable morals.

  —The Devil’s Brood,

  ALFRED DUGGAN

  I DISLIKED MY HALF-BROTHER Philip Castallack from the first moment that I saw him. I was eight years old at the time, almost nine; my birthday was on December the eighteenth and this made me exactly six months younger than Philip, whose birthday was on the eighteenth of June. I first saw him at Brighton.

  I never cared for Brighton after that.

  Even in later life I never returned to that elegant and popular seaside resort. Even now whenever I hear someone mention the word “Brighton” I think not of the Regency terraces, the shingly beach or the docile sea but of Philip with his tough, hostile mouth and frosty eyes and later, much later, of my father lighting a cigar and saying so carefully in such a meticulously casual tone of voice, “I’m afraid I have something to say which should have been said a very long time ago.”

  That was the first time I realized that good people may do bad deeds. At least, that was how I phrased it in my child’s vocabulary. “But Papa,” I said, “if you and Mama are good, how could you ever do something that was bad?”

  “Nothing is black and white in this world, Adrian” was all he could say in reply. “One cannot divide people into two categories and neatly label one ‘good’ and the other ‘evil.’ When you’re older you’ll understand. Life isn’t like that.”

  But I was young and I did not understand. His words confused me and made me feel uncertain. I liked to label everything. I liked to know where I was. I had a passion to identify objects, people, scenes—anything—and then classify them neatly in my small mind so that life might conform to a sensible, comforting, logical pattern.

  “Everything in the world is part of a design,” my mother had said to us when we were very young: “Everything has meaning and purpose and a place in the pattern of existence, only it’s not always possible to understand what that design is. Only God can understand the design, because He invented it. It’s like a magic puzzle. We can’t expect to understand everything. Some things are beyond the bounds of human understanding, but if we trust in God and believe in Him, no harm can come to us. We must have faith in our part of the design—in the part He has given us to play, and if it appears dissatisfying to us we must always realize that He knows best and that everything is part of a pattern more perfect than anything any mortal can ever visualize.”

  The idea of life being a design like a jigsaw puzzle enchanted me. I loved to sift through the jagged pieces and fit them together. For the first eight years of my life the idea that I would ever come across a piece that could not be made to fit into the puzzle would have seemed to me both nonsensical and alarming—if such an idea had ever crossed my mind, but of course it did not. I viewed the world with perfect serenity. Everything was part of a pattern. Everything fitted in. The world became familiar, almost cozy in its warmth and friendliness and security.

  And then, out of nowhere, came Brighton.

  My short past had not prepared me for it. I was born in Truro, a pleasant Cornish cathedral town, but I did not regard myself as Cornish, for we moved to England when I was two years old and my first memories are not of Cornwall at all but of our house in London at St. John’s Wood. It was not a large house and my mother had no servants apart from a gardener and two daily women, one of whom came in to clean and the other to cook. Years later the Castallacks were to say to me incredulously,
“But who brought you up?” and I, not knowing what they meant, retorted, “Mama, of course! Isn’t that what mothers, are for?”

  “But you had a nanny,” they said, “when you were a baby. You must have had a nanny.”

  “Mama took care of us from the beginning,” I said, fearing that a nanny was something every decent person ought to have had, but William said easily, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “She wanted to, you see. She wanted to. She chose to do without a nanny.”

  She did choose to be without resident servants; that was undeniable. At first I wondered vaguely if we were poor and even asked her once if she would like me to go out and sweep chimneys to make some extra money for her, but she only laughed and exclaimed, “Oh, Adrian, how darling, just like poor little Tom in The Water Babies!” and gradually I realized that we would never be poor because Papa was very rich. Mama preferred to live simply. She could have had a bigger house and more servants but she chose to live in that quiet tree-lined road in north London in that peaceful, sunny little house. It was more restful, she said, and much less extravagant.

  It was more private too. When Papa came to visit us she simply told the daily servants not to come in for a few days. “It’s more fun if we can all be alone together,” she said, “and I do so hate to think of servants watching us the whole time. I love to be a little more secluded now and then.” It meant that she was much more busy, but she did not mind. She had to do the cooking and cleaning herself although William and I helped her with the shopping. William used to run many errands for her. He was four and a half years older than I was and was allowed to go out on his own since Mama knew he would not be run down by a cab or lose his way in the bewildering network of London streets.

  Papa did not visit us often, at least not when I was very young, and so on each occasion that he did come it was a great event. Mama would instantly cancel all her social duties, even church charity work; the vicar used to be annoyed when she let him down at short notice, but he merely had to endure his annoyance. When Papa was coming everything else was set on one side. The house was cleaned from top to bottom and the larder was stocked with the most delicious food the shops could offer. Mama moved out of the spare room where she always slept when she was on her own and returned to the main bedroom with the double bed and the thick carpet and the water-color paintings on the walls. Vases were filled with flowers, silver was polished, William and I were dressed in our best clothes and Mama took her finest gowns out of their dust covers in the wardrobe.