Penmarric

by Susan Howatch

  “Oh God,” she kept saying. “Oh God, help me. Please help me.” But God didn’t lift a finger to help her; my father had hurt her till she was bruised and scarred and bloody and God had just stood by and watched. No doubt He was still standing by as she sobbed for help, and although I tried to help her I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop her sobs or ease her terrible pain. At last she went into the bedroom and when I heard the water running I knew she was trying to wash the pain away, but she couldn’t; it was stamped in her indelibly, and nine months later …

  Nine months later Jan-Yves was born. I was ten years old. I didn’t know then what the word “rape” meant, but I damned well knew what had happened at Brighton. My mother had been raped almost under my nose and I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. No wonder I felt so guilty I wanted to forget Brighton by wiping the entire incident from my mind. My mother had been all alone in the world with only me to protect her and I had let my father rape her—I had stood by while he had hit and bruised and hurt her—and afterward I had felt that by the very act of doing nothing I had connived at his guilt until I was every bit as responsible as he was for my mother’s terrible suffering.

  5

  Someone was saying, “Philip, Philip, what is it? What’s the matter? Philip! Please, Philip, speak to me! What’s happened?”

  It was Helena. I was in Penzance. I wasn’t in Brighton with my mother any more, but somehow that made no difference. It was as if Brighton had become Penzance and my mother had become—

  “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t. It was all wrong. I was beginning to shake from head to foot.

  “Philip darling—”

  ”Tm going to have a bath,” I said and fumbled my way past the double bed into the adjoining bathroom.

  I closed the door, locked it, leaned against the panels. Presently I managed to vomit. I bent over the basin and retched as if I could rid myself of my memories of Brighton, but they remained steadfastly in my mind. I could still see every detail; I didn’t even have to close my eyes. Everything was brilliantly clear, each image rippling through my memory like a strip of moving film.

  I struggled to suppress the memory. I had pushed it to the back of my mind for more than twenty years and what I could do once I could do again. I’d get over it. I had to. I had to pull myself together.

  At that point I raised my head, looked in the mirror over the basin and stared into my own eyes. I knew then.

  I was at once gripped by panic. I—who had scorned panic in others, who had despised panic as a manifestation of cowardice—I was struck down and paralyzed by fear. I could not move. I began to cry as my mother had cried at Brighton, my body racked with great silent sobs, my cheeks burning with the tears I couldn’t stop. I was shivering. In a clumsy movement I wrenched on the taps of the bath and let the noise of the water drum in my ears, and because I was helpless and didn’t know what else to do I took off my clothes, got into the bath and began to wash myself, soaping each limb, rubbing my back with the flannel, dashing water across my face to eradicate all trace of that shocking loss of self-control.

  But still I couldn’t get a grip on myself. Stepping out of the bath, I started to dry my limbs with a towel.

  I began to pray. I had been an atheist for twenty years and I began to pray. Please, God, please. Help me. Please.

  Tears of helplessness blinded me once again. I tried to clean my teeth but couldn’t see what I was doing. At last, dashing away the tears, I again looked at myself in the mirror. I had to pull myself together. After all, if the worst came to the worst there were excuses. It wasn’t the end of the world. I had shamed myself in my own eyes by behaving in such a ridiculous manner, but I had had no witnesses. Only I knew that I had panicked, given way to fear, cried and even tried to pray. No one else knew that except me. No one would ever know, least of all Helena.

  I tied a towel around my waist, gathered my clothes together and blew my nose on the tail of my soiled shirt. I walked to the door. To open it and cross the threshold into the next room required more courage and more will power than I had ever been called upon to display before. For three terrible seconds I could not nerve myself to move, but at last I reached out, turned the handle and stepped into the living nightmare of the room beyond.

  6

  Soon after dawn when the room was growing lighter I got up and began to dress. I found a pullover and a pair of slacks and extricated an old pair of shoes from my suitcase. I had just finished putting them on when Helena said quickly from the shadows of the bed, “Philip?”

  “I can’t sleep,” I said. “I’m going for a walk.”

  She said nothing. I slipped out of the room, the key safely in my pocket, and padded downstairs to the hall. The night porter, dozing at his desk, let me out and I stepped into the clean air of early morning and ran across the road to the sea. Without thinking I headed east, past the harbor where the fishermen were already at work, past the lighted windows of their cottages, through the town to the beach beyond the railway. My footsteps left harsh prints in the sand as I walked toward Marazion, and before me in the hard light of dawn St. Michael’s Mount rose out of the dark waters of the bay, a fairy-tale castle, an ivory tower as unreal as the wedding cake towering above the table of my own wedding breakfast.

  I sat down on the sand to watch the light changing on the shifting sea. I watched for a long time and at last the water hypnotized me and I slept. When I awoke my, body was shivering with cold; hauling myself to my feet, I stumbled quickly back to Penzance to find a café that opened early for the fishermen, a place where I could drink some tea and be on my own. There was a place near the harbor. I bought tea at the counter and hid myself in a corner while I drank it. Time passed. It was seven o’clock, then seven-thirty. I bought another cup of tea to buy myself time, but time wasn’t for sale and soon it was quarter to eight.

  I didn’t know what to do. Our train left the station at nine-thirty and we had agreed to breakfast lightly in our rooms at eight. But I didn’t want to go back to the hotel. I couldn’t face Helena. I was panicking again, giving in to my fear, wanting only to retreat, hide myself, be alone to think.

  I stared into my tea. If I didn’t go back to the hotel what was the alternative? Where could I run away to? Where could I hide? I was being absurd. There was no alternative. I had to go back to the hotel, breakfast with Helena and be on the train to Devon at nine-thirty. What else could I do? Cut short my honeymoon after the wedding night? The idea was inconceivable. What would everyone say? What would they think? I clasped my hands together closed my eyes and tried to arrange my thoughts in a logical formation. The most important thing, as I saw it, was that no one should know. Nothing was more important than that. The thought of anyone knowing the truth was enough to make me sweat. No one must know. Helena knew but she wouldn’t say anything. She was too proud to tell anyone what had happened, or failed to happen, between us. Everyone else would assume that we’d spent a normal honeymoon. For a moment I wondered if matters would be different at Torquay, but I didn’t allow myself to hope that they would be. I was incapable then of foreseeing far into the future, but I knew that as matters stood at that hour I was incapable of making love to any woman, let alone my wife. The memory of Brighton would take longer than the three weeks of the honeymoon to fall out of sight into the bottom of my mind.

  I finished my tea and went outside. It was drizzling. When I reached the Metropole at last I made myself buy a paper, just as I would have done if nothing had been wrong, and walked upstairs to our suite.

  She had ordered breakfast and it had already arrived. When I came in I saw that she was sitting at the table by the window with her cup of coffee steaming before her as she stared out to sea. She turned to face me but I looked away.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said carefully, sitting down opposite her and reaching for toast and marmalade. “I didn’t realize the time. I walked along the shore to Marazion.”

&nbs
p; After a pause she said, “You must be very tired.”

  “I can do without much sleep once in a while.” I looked around for the teapot but there wasn’t one. “Did you only order coffee?”

  “Oh … yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you liked tea for breakfast.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I poured out some coffee, slopping it over the brim of the cup into the saucer. After a short silence I said casually, still not looking at her, “I’m sorry about last night. I—”

  “Oh please … please—it doesn’t matter.”

  “—stupid of me. I suppose I drank too much the night before at the pub, and then with all the champagne at the reception—”

  “I understand. Please don’t worry. It’s all right.”

  “Yes, but I can’t understand it—I can’t think why—”

  But I knew. I understood.

  “—never happened before—”

  The stupid thing was that there was no need to lie. I needn’t have said anything, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had to cover up the truth, so I lied and went on lying.

  “—in the past—”

  “Please, Philip—don’t let’s talk of it any more. I understand, and anyway … well, what does one night matter? There’ll be plenty of others. Please don’t worry about it. I hate to see you upset.”

  “I’m not upset. Just annoyed.”

  “Well, don’t be—please! For my sake!”

  “I can’t help it,” I said. “I am.” I opened up the newspaper, pretended to read it and then glanced at my watch. “There’s not much time, is there? I suppose I must hurry or we’ll miss the train.”

  But we didn’t miss the train. We arrived at the station, found our reserved compartment and settled ourselves for the journey, and soon after half past nine we were on our way out of Cornwall as the train headed east to the Tamar.

  NINE

  Richard’s attitude to his wedding, and to Berengaria, was one of complete detachment. Strangely enough, he was not of romantic disposition…

  —The Conquering Family,

  THOMAS COSTAIN

  The feminine environment of his youth may have reinforced mother trait of his character… [He] never had an acknowledged mistress.

  —The Devil’s Brood,

  ALFRED DUGGAN

  ON THE THIRD DAY I went to the public library, dug out a medical dictionary and tried to make sense of the jungle of technical terms there, but I wasted my time. The days dragged past. To make matters worse the weather was bad and there seemed nothing to do. I was restless and ill-at-ease. I longed to return to Cornwall, to the mine, to the life I knew and loved, but was too afraid of what people might think if I returned early from my honeymoon; besides, when I had mentioned to Helena the possibility of cutting short our visit to Torquay she had been so upset that I hadn’t pursued the subject further.

  “Please, Philip,” she begged. “Please—not that. If you don’t want to stay here perhaps we could go somewhere else? I wouldn’t mind that. But to go back so abruptly to Penmarric—oh no, Philip, please! If you love me don’t take me back there before we’re due to return.”

  I didn’t know who was more unhappy, she or I. There was no pretense between us any more. I no longer bothered to make an effort to entertain her. She spent most of the day reading in the privacy of the hotel while I wandered alone through the wet streets and across the rain-soaked sands, and in the evening she would sit for a time in the hotel drawing room before going upstairs to bed and I would go out to a pub where I could drink in peace. I could no longer talk to her. Her presence unnerved me so much that I couldn’t wait to escape for a few precious hours of solitude. I became obsessed by my inadequacy, so conscious of it that I could think of nothing else. It was both mysterious and baffling. Helena embarrassed me so acutely now that I no longer felt any degree of arousement in being with her, and after a while I couldn’t help wondering if the fault was with her and that I’d be all right with someone else. It was useless to try to push the thought from my mind. Once it was there it stayed there and I had to find out what the answer was. One evening after dinner I picked up a prostitute, but that was no good—on the contrary it was worse than I could have imagined it would be—and afterward I paid her again as if by paying I could somehow erase my humiliation and my grief and my pain.

  Pain made my throat ache and pricked my eyes like hot pins. I was awash with pain, soaked in it. I didn’t know it was possible to be so unhappy. I longed for my home, not for Penmarric but for my room at the farm, longed for the comfort of dining with my mother in the farm kitchen, longed for my mine, for the galleries far out beneath the sea, for tin ore beneath my fingers and tin dust pricking in my nose. I longed for my friends too, for my fellow miners, for Trevose. I ached for their rough talk and good-natured companionship. They would be at the pub, I knew; they’d be drinking slowly, pausing for a game of darts or skittles. I could picture them all. Willie, Tom, Harry, Dave, Jack, Ray—and Trevose, always Trevose with his ugly face and his stocky build and his callused miner’s hands with their black-grimed broken fingernails. It seemed an eternity since Ï had last spoken to Trevose.

  I said to the clerk at the reception desk, “Is there a telephone I could use?”

  “Yes, sir, just down the corridor by the billiard room.”

  “Thank you.” I found the kiosk, squeezed my way inside. Within five minutes the landlord of the pub in St. Just was on the line, and, adopting a Cornish accent to disguise my voice, I asked if Trevose was in the bar.

  “Yes, he’s here. I’ll fetch him for ’ee.” I waited, and suddenly there he was, terse and suspicious.

  “Hullo?”

  It was hard to speak because it was so good to hear him but I managed to say, “And how’s the mine doing without me?”

  “Jesus Christ!” he said, thunderstruck. “What the hell are you doing on the bloody phone?”

  “Making sure my friends aren’t on strike in my absence.”

  There was a lump in my throat. Tears stung my eyes. “How are things going?”

  “Fine!” he said brightly in the tone of one unaccustomed to addressing an inanimate instrument. “No news. Everything as usual.”

  “Good.”

  “What’s it like where you’re at?” he said perkily. “Been much rain?”

  “Too much. We’re at Torquay in Devon.”

  “Torquay? Is that like Penzance?”

  “A little.”

  “How’s Mrs. Castallack?”

  “She’s fine. Look, have a drink for me and tell the boys I’ll be back at the mine on Monday… Will you be at the pub on Saturday evening when I get home? Maybe we could meet for a drink.”

  “I’ll be there. I’ll eat my tea and be at the pub by seven.”

  “I may be later than that but you can order a pint of bitter for me if you’re there first.”

  “I’ll do that! So long, sonny, all the best. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Seven on Saturday. ’Bye, Trevose.”

  I put back the receiver, fumbled for a handkerchief and blew my nose. I felt better. There were only four more days to go now. Four more days would soon pass and then I could go back to Cornwall, to Sennen Garth, to my old way of life and old friends and old habits.

  I could hardly wait to leave.

  2

  When we arrived at Penmarric on Saturday afternoon we found all the servants lined up to receive us in the traditional fashion. Helena was presented with a bouquet of flowers by the cook’s niece and Young Medlyn made a speech. At last when our official welcome was behind us and we had dined alone, I slipped away to the village and stayed drinking with my friends till closing time. I felt better after that. On returning home I found Helena had already gone to bed, and rather than disturb her I slept on the couch in my dressing room. As a result I succeeded in having the best night’s sleep I had had since my marriage. I felt my old self again when I awoke the next morning and didn’t even balk at the tradition of taking Helena
to church at St. Just so that the villagers could have their weekly glimpse of the Master and Mistress of Penmarric paying their respects to a nonexistent God.

  Afterward at Penmarric we lunched with William and Jan-Yves. Jan-Yves, who was staying with William and Charity, had so far made no plans to build a house for himself and I began to suspect he had already spent the money I had given him for the purpose; the answers he gave when I questioned him about his future plans were ominously vague. As always it didn’t take me long to feel annoyed with him. He really was a tiresome youth.

  Meanwhile Helena was inquiring after Charity and expressing surprise that she hadn’t joined us all at Penmarric for lunch. There was nothing of the snob about Helena. She knew what Charity was and what she had been but she was still willing to be friendly toward her—within limits, of course. She wouldn’t have invited Charity to dinner—or to a lunch that wasn’t informal, but she meant well and I didn’t blame her for paying lip service to the conventions.

  However, William was more of a snob than Helena and evidently saw nothing strange about keeping his marriage morganatic. “Charity’s shy of Penmarric,” he said lightly, “and of you too, I think, Helena. You’ll have a hard time getting her to call here.”

  The prospect didn’t seem to bother him too much. He showed no signs of trying to change his wife or raise her up to his own social level, so I supposed he was content for her to remain as she was. It was certainly a curious marriage. I couldn’t see how it could ever be a success.

  After our guests had left Helena and I motored over to Zillan to see my mother. I enjoyed the couple of hours we spent with her, and by the time we returned to Penmarric I was feeling less embarrassed by Helena and more at ease in her presence.