Penmarric (13 page)

In despair he sent messengers to King Stephen to beg him as his kinsmen to help him … [Stephen] immediately sent the boy who had tried to usurp his crown all the money he needed.

Geoffrey complained of not feeling well… The Count developed a high fever and made his preparations for death.

—Henry II,

JOHN T. APPLEBY

M
UCH TO MY ANNOYANCE
I lay awake for some time that night and thought of Clarissa Penmar. No doubt if I had not thought of Clarissa I would have lain awake thinking of the interview with Giles, but I was making a great effort not to dwell upon that scene in the Tower Room, and in the attempt to suppress all thought of it from my mind it was a relief instead to turn to Clarissa and recall my quarrel with her word for word.

In the past I had met my share of disreputable women, but at least they had made no pretense to be better than they were, and it was easy to blame their lack of respectability on the lot of the lower classes and sundry other social circumstances. To have money and an aristocratic background and still choose to behave in an unprincipled fashion was a phenomenon I had not encountered before. Discreet immorality, yes; I knew as well as anyone what went on in London circles, but flagrant promiscuity by an unmarried girl was rare; most—I had thought all—girls of my class were virgins until they married no matter what might happen to their sense of values in later life. Often this virginity might not have been due to chaste principles at all but more to lack of opportunity, for even when they made their debut in London society they would always be chaperoned. Even Clarissa must have had her chaperone when she had taken part in the London Season, but evidently her chaperone had been very far from omnipresent.

I could not help wondering how many men Clarissa had seduced, and much to my disgust I found myself remembering her with an unwilling but prurient interest. I had told her in the height of my rage that she did not attract me and that was true, but most men have a sneaking interest in a woman they know to be promiscuous and it seemed to my annoyance that I was no exception.

In an effort to turn my mind to other matters I began to think of Michael Vincent. I was so angry with him for betraying my confidence that I found it difficult to think rationally on the subject, but finally when morning came I rode into Penzance to see him.

“Castallack!” he exclaimed as the clerk showed me into his office. “What a pleasant surprise!”

“I think not,” I said abruptly and waited for the clerk to close the door. Then: “Damn you,” I said. My voice was trembling with anger although I had myself tightly in control. “Damn you. If we were not in your office where people would hear any noise we made I’d knock you down and, with luck, break your bloody nose.”

“Castallack …” He was ashen. “I don’t—”

“No, don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about! You damned fool! How dare you tell your mistress about my private life!”

“Mistress!” He looked as if he were about to faint.

“Mistress!” I yelled at him. “Mistress! You told that whore at Penmarric about Rose Parrish!”

“Clarissa’s not my mistress,” he said. “She’s not.”

“You think you can convince me of that?” I could feel my temper slipping away from me again. I tried to grab hold of it before it slipped out of my control. “Why, she’d give herself to any man who offered his services! Good God, she even offered herself to me! So don’t attempt to tell me—”

He stood up. He was shaking in every limb. “You—you …” He could not speak. “You mean you and she—”

“God Almighty, Vincent, don’t be such a bloody fool! Do you think I would have the inclination to fornicate on a threadbare Indian carpet in the morning room at Penmarric after I knew that you’d told her—”

“Oh, God,” he said and sat down again very suddenly. “Oh God.” And he covered his face with his hands.

I stared at him. “Very well,” I said bitterly at last. “Very well. She’s not your mistress. Maybe she’s sleeping with the head groom instead. But if she’s not even your mistress you have even less excuse than I imagined for telling her about Rose Parrish! I told you about Rose in the strictest confidence—I relied on your ethical standards as a lawyer and as a gentleman, but you betrayed that confidence and you betrayed those standards—”

“Don’t talk to me about ethical standards,” he said. “You don’t possess any. If you’d behaved like a gentleman you would never have had to tell me about Rose Parrish in the first place.”

“God damn it!” I shouted. “Don’t you preach to me!”

“Then don’t preach to me either!”

“Why, you—”

“Very well, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I told her! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to tell her, it was simply that we were talking of you and she was making some remark about—about you not sharing your cousin Raymond’s good looks, and I said—without thinking—that other women found you good-looking enough—”

“You weak, spineless—”

“I didn’t mean to tell her, I swear it! But I loved her, Castallack, I still love her—when I’m with her I forget everything, I’m clay in her hands—”

“Clay!” I stared at him in contempt. “Why, you poor devil, she’ll break you. She’ll snap you in two! You’re wasting your time because she’ll never love you. The most you can hope for is a few hours in her bedroom at Penmarric before she turns to someone else.”

He hit me so quickly that I did not react fast enough to duck away from his fist. One moment he was slumped apathetically in his chair and the next he was on his feet, leaning forward and punching me across the room. I crashed into three deed boxes, knocked a sheaf of papers off a stool and collided with a wooden cupboard. The cupboard door flew open. Pens, nibs and blotting paper cascaded onto the floor.

“Castallack—are you all right?” He was so completely the gentleman that, he even tried to help me to my feet after he had knocked me down.

I picked myself up; unaided and turned my back on him.

“Castallack, I’m sorry. Look, I don’t want to quarrel with you. Please forgive me and let’s continue to be friends. I know I behaved abominably in betraying your confidence and I apologize from the bottom of my heart, but—”

“I’ll never trust you again,” I said between my teeth and walked out of the room.

The door slammed as I jerked the handle. In the outer office the three old clerks looked up at me curiously over the tops of their spectacles, but I did not stop. Hardly aware of where I was going, I strode out into the street and then, still speechless with rage, blazed downhill to the esplanade and the soothing serenity of the Metropole Hotel.

It was a long time before I returned to that office to make my peace with Michael Vincent; we were to remain estranged for many months to come.

That afternoon I found a suite of rooms for Rose which overlooked the sea and engaged the landlady’s daughter, a pleasant, efficient woman, to look after Rose by doing the cooking, shopping and other household business.

“My cousin Mrs. Parrish is in a delicate state of health,” I said to both the landlady and her daughter after the arrangements; were completed. “Her husband died very tragically only a month ago in France.”

They sighed in sympathy.

“Poor soul,” said the landlady. “Poor young lady.”

“He was experimenting there with a horseless carriage,” I said. “The engine blew up and it went out of control. It was a great tragedy.”

They were round-eyed. They had heard that such things went on in France but this was their first, acquaintance with someone who was directly connected with this latest contribution to modern science.

“All those newfangled inventions” was the landlady’s disapproving comment.

“No good will come of them,” said her daughter. “No good at all.”

They nodded in unison. I left them still pondering on the fate of the mythical Mr. Parrish and visited the writing room of the Metropole to draft a note to Rose. I told her I had taken the rooms and engaged a maid and promised to send a hired carriage over to St. Ives to fetch her the very next Monday.

“You can tell the Treens the carriage is taking you to the station to catch the train to London,” I wrote. “If they want to come with you to see you off, tell them that the strain of a station parting would be too much for you. I’ll try to be at your rooms when you arrive, but if I’m not there Mrs. Polgear and her daughter will be expecting you, so there is no need to worry. I’m leaving twenty pounds for you with the Manager of the Great Western Bank, 16, Market Jew Street, and if ever you are in great need and cannot communicate with me at once you can always go for help to Mr. Michael Vincent, a lawyer in the firm of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes at 3, Bolitho Alley, off Market Jew Street near the statue of Sir Humphrey Davey. I will of course be in touch with you every week …”

I thought that there was no harm in giving her Vincent’s name. No matter what our current relationship happened to be he would always help a lady in distress if the need arose.

I sealed the letter, posted it, returned to my horse. It was early evening by that time and I knew I would have to hurry in order to be home in time for dinner. Accordingly, feeling satisfied that the arrangements for Rose were completed yet still bitter about my quarrel with Vincent, I left Penzance and rode up into the hills through Zillan to my father’s house at Morvah.

I did not see my father when I arrived home. I presumed he was working in his study, and after I had rubbed down my horse and left him in the care of Mannack in the stables I went to my room and began to change for dinner. Presently Mrs. Mannack brought me hot water.

“Mr. Castallack says he would like to see you, sir,” she said, setting down the ewer on the stand. “At your convenience.”

“Very well. Thank you, Mrs. Mannack.”

“Thank you, sir.” She withdrew.

I washed and changed quickly; when I was ready I went downstairs and knocked on the door of my father’s study.

“Come in,” I heard him call.

I entered the room. He was standing by the window and watching the evening light cast long shadows over the moors. I was halfway across the floor toward him before I saw he had a letter in his hand.

I stopped. He turned. His eyes were shadowed and unhappy. He held out the letter.

“Please read this,” he said. He did not say anything else, just “Please read this,” so I took the letter and looked at it and there at the top of the page was the familiar Penmar crest and at the foot of the page the signature “Clarissa Penmar.”

I looked up at him; Nothing happened. There was a clock ticking somewhere, and far away beyond the window the sun was sinking to a bloody death in that opaque Cornish sea.

“Read it,” he said.

I looked back at the letter. “Dear Mr. Castallack,” Clarissa had written in a childish, spiteful hand, “you might be interested to know that your son was here today to beg for money—or so my father told me. It seems Cousin Mark wishes to keep a woman in Penzance, a doctor’s—”

The page drifted from my fingers and fell to the floor without a sound. There was a terrible tightness in my throat. I turned away. After a long while, he said, “Is it true?”

I did not answer. I was by his desk, touching his pen, his inkwell. My fingers trailed meaninglessly over his books. I could not see.

“Is it true, Mark?”

“No,” I said. “No, it’s all lies.”

I was moving all the time. I could not keep still. When I turned away from the desk I saw the letter lying on the carpet like a white leaf and I picked it up and smoothed it, with my fingers and tried to read it again. But I could not.

“All lies?” he said. “But you did go to Giles, surely. Why should Clarissa have lied about that? You did go to Penmarric.”

“Yes.” His chess set was arranged on a table near the door. I picked up a black knight and a black pawn and put them down again.

“You borrowed money from Giles.”

“Yes.”

“But for what purpose?”

“I … needed it.”

“But why didn’t you come to me? I asked you, Mark, if ever you were in debt to come to me for the money, not to go to other people—to strangers …”

“I did not want to ask you,” I said. “I did not want to be a burden to you. The Penmar money is mine by right.”

“But you should have come to me! I told you to! Why did you go to Giles?”

“Only because it was impossible for me to go to you.” My fingers were still fumbling with the chess set, moving the little ivory figures into a disordered line. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“About this woman?”

“There is no woman,” I said. “It’s all lies.”

“Then why did you want the money?”

“It was cards. I got into debt at cards. At Carnforth Hall.”

“So this doctor’s daughter doesn’t exist.”

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t. Clarissa was making it up.”

There was a long silence. The white queen slipped between my fingers and fell to the board with a clatter.

“I’m afraid I don’t believe you,” he said.

There was another silence. I took the black knight again and squeezed it as if I could crush it to pulp. Tears pricked humiliatingly behind my eyelids.

“I think you’d better tell me about it.”

I said nothing. My back was to him. All I could see was the board and the little ivory figures.

“If you please, Mark.”

“There’s no need for you to know,” I said. “Everything is settled. It’s all finished. I’ve made all the arrangements. There’s absolutely no need for you to know about it. I don’t want you to know about it.”

“I don’t understand, I’m afraid. How can it be ‘all finished’ when Clarissa writes that you plan—in the future—to keep this woman in Penzance?”

“It’ll only be for the next few months,” I said rapidly, “and then when she’s had the baby …”

I stopped. There was a deep, appalled silence. I swung around to face him, saw his expression, scrabbled to look at the letter again. And then I knew.

Clarissa had not mentioned that Rose was pregnant. Vincent had not, after all, been totally indiscreet.

“Oh God.” I sat down and leaned my elbows on the chess table and some of the ivory figures spilled onto the carpet. My cheeks seemed to burn the palms of my hands. “Oh no.” Great hot tears sprang to my eyes. I was crying. “Oh no, no …”