Penmarric (22 page)

That night after an informal supper we went to bed early. We slept in separate rooms, of course, to preserve the proprieties, but he slipped into my bed before dawn and stayed until it was light, so I was not alone the entire night. In fact the proprieties were hardly observed anyway since we were both unmarried and both sleeping under the same roof with the whole house to ourselves, but as we were to be married so soon and as we did not intend to mingle with society before our wedding, I supposed it did not matter that we paid such scant respect to the conventions.

The next morning for the first time in my life I had breakfast in bed, and afterward my maid offered to draw my bath for me. Oh, the wonder of that long hot bath! By the time I had finished it was almost eleven o’clock. Eleven, I thought, eleven! I remembered my days as a farmer’s wife, the milking and the churning, the cooking and baking and cleaning, the ceaseless routine of morning activity. Yet here it was, eleven o’clock, and all I had done was have breakfast, lie in bed and take a bath!

I began at last to enjoy myself.

That day the dressmaker came, and, being a competent woman, she advised me at once on the wardrobe I required and made various suggestions about patterns and materials. It was an enthralling morning. After a late luncheon we took a drive in the park before visiting Bond Street and Oxford Street and viewing the amazing variety of shops. The next few days passed very quickly; Mark was making the arrangements for the wedding and I was busy trying on the new gowns which were beginning to arrive from the dressmaker’s. I was just starting to adjust to my surroundings and to attain a small measure of self-confidence when Mark announced that the time had come to call on his mother.

Panic overwhelmed me again. I was literally shaking with fright. In vain Mark assured me that I looked so beautiful in my new clothes that he would have taken me to Buckingham Palace without a qualm. In vain he told me that his mother was only a middle-aged woman, very vain, incredibly arrogant and more than a little pathetic in her loneliness. In vain he reassured me that she was not the devil incarnate. All I could remember was that she was the haughty, domineering “Miss Maud Penmar” of Ethel and Millie Turner’s gossipy reminiscences of the local gentry and the quarrelsome, discontented wife who had made Laurence so unhappy during the years they had spent together at Gweek.

“Oh, by the way,” said Mark casually, “don’t forget to address my mother as Mrs. Penmar. She never uses the name Castallack.”

“Mrs. Penmar. Yes. I’ll remember.” I wracked my brains to think of an excuse I could use for avoiding that dreadful meeting, but there was no escape and at length we departed for the house in Charles Street.

“Oh, Mark!” I whispered in an agony of nervousness after an imperious butler had regarded us with a baleful eye and shown us into the morning room. “Could we not go away—leave before she comes? You could say I was suddenly taken ill, that I felt faint—”

“And have her instantly imagine you’re pregnant and that I’m marrying you because I must? Certainly not!”

I was just about to give way to my panic and declare I did not care what motives for marriage she attributed to us when the door opened and a tall, handsome woman swept haughtily into the room and paused without the least embarrassment to survey me through a lorgnette. She had iron-gray hair, the black Penmar eyes which I now felt I knew so well, a tight, ill-tempered mouth and a strong masculine jaw. Rings flashed on her fingers. Her dress, of a grand shade of purple, was strangely becoming to her. As she let the lorgnette fall and came forward again toward me I saw she moved with the air of the privileged classes, the air of coming and going exactly where she pleased whenever she wished, the air of arrogance which had attracted yet irritated me when I had first met Mark.

“Well,” she said disagreeably to her son. “This is a fine how-d’ye-do, I must say. At least she has good looks. I suppose one must try and look on the more fortunate aspects of the situation.”

“Mama,” said Mark in a voice of steel, “if you cannot receive us with the necessary minimum of courtesy, then pray do not bother to receive us at all. I don’t have to have your consent to my marriage—”

“Very lucky for you, isn’t it?”

“—and I certainly don’t intend to go down on my knees and beg for your blessing!”

“I should think not indeed! I detest groveling. Very well, if you ring the bell and stop striding up and down like a bad actor playing Hamlet I’ll ask Tipstock to bring in some sherry. Sit down, Mrs. Roslyn,” she added, not bothering to look at me, and proceeded to lower herself into a formidable high-backed chair from which she could act the part of an inquisitor.

There followed a grueling quarter of an hour during which my prospective mother-in-law inquired ruthlessly into my antecedents. Mark had urged me beforehand to hide nothing and speak as boldly as if I were as proud of being a fisherman’s daughter as she was of being a Penmar, but that was easier said than done. However, I spoke up as best I could, telling her that my parents had died young, obliging me to go into service at an early age, and I somehow contrived to make it appear that I had worked at Menherion Castle until I had married my first husband; I also stressed that the Roslyns were not tenants but yeomen farmers who owned their own land.

“Hm,” said Maud Penmar and took a large mouthful of sherry. She drank without any pretense of daintiness. “Well, that’s all very respectable, I suppose. Is Janna your real name?”

“No, I was christened Jeanne after my father, whose name was Jean-Yves. But the Cornish cannot pronounce French names.”

“He was French?”

“From Brittany, yes. There was a colony of Breton sailors in St. Ives.”

“Do you speak French?”

“I’ve forgotten it all. It’s so long since my father died.”

“A pity. It would have helped if you spoke French.” She set down her glass and turned to Mark. “When do you intend to be married?”

“Next week. I expect to have the special license any day now and I’ve made arrangements to be married in the Savoy Chapel—”

“Am I invited to the wedding?”

“I wouldn’t dream of putting you in such an embarrassing position!”

“How tactful!” Their expressions became bitter as they stared at each other. Her mouth set itself in a hard narrow line. “Well,” she said, not looking at either of us and pouring herself a third glass of sherry from the decanter, “I don’t approve of your future wife—how could I?—but at least matters could be infinitely worse. There’s no reason why Mrs. Roslyn should not acquire a certain air of gentility, and God knows there aren’t many working-class women one could say that much for. She’s clever and good-looking and if she makes an effort she could even be presentable. I wish you both well and hope you will always call upon me whenever you’re in London.”

The interview was over. Within minutes I was sinking down exhausted against the upholstery of the carriage and savoring the enormity of my relief that my ordeal should at last be behind me.

“Of course,” said Mark abruptly, “she was most embarrassingly rude. I apologize for her. However, that’s an ordeal we don’t have to repeat. You need not visit her again—I’ve no intention of taking you back there to be insulted.”

Relief made me charitable. “I don’t think she meant to be insulting, Mark. She was merely a little outspoken, and I expect her outspokenness sprang from disappointment. She must have hoped you would make a good match.”

“She of all people should approve of the fact that I’m marrying for love! She was angry enough with her father when he stopped her marrying Giles Penmar!”

“She wished us well, Mark—”

“Because she knew that if she did not I would not visit her again, and now that Cousin Robert’s dead she’s at last beginning to wish she was closer to her children. Her motives are entirely selfish and always have been. I despise her.”

I did not answer. Despite all he had said I could not admit I was glad he was not more attached to her and glad I would not have to visit her frequently in the future. He remained silent also throughout the journey back to Park Lane, but at the house once more the uneasy atmosphere was quickly dispelled; on our arrival we found that a messenger had delivered our special license, and that very afternoon we set out for the Strand to make the final arrangements with the clergyman for our wedding.

We were married five days later on the morning of December the nineteenth. I wore a small but fashionable bonnet suitable for my widowed state, a blue silk gown but in superbly stark lines which enhanced my figure while remaining the epitome of good taste, and the most elegantly uncomfortable pair of shoes my feet had ever encountered. Two Oxonian friends of Mark’s were the only witnesses; it was a brief, informal affair, and afterward they joined us for a champagne breakfast at Claridges before leaving us free to return to Park Lane on our own. As soon as we reached the house Mark gave orders that we were on no account to be disturbed, and then we went to my room, locked the door and drew the curtains. I was so dizzy with the unaccustomed champagne and so elated that I was now Mrs. Mark Castallack that I went to bed without thought for any possible consequences, but later I was able to think carelessly: What if it was a risk? What does it matter now? And the sense of security was suddenly so immense that I was overcome with the miracle of my good fortune.

We went to the theater that evening. We had a box as if we were royalty, and I wore my finest new evening gown, white silk and tulle offset with black lace, and all the gentlemen looked at me through their opera glasses when they should have been watching the stage.

“Everyone’s wondering who you are,” said Mark, highly delighted. “You’re the mystery of the evening.”

The next morning the notice of our quiet marriage appeared in
The Times.
It was then at last, as I stared at the facts set down in black and white, that I was fully able to comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. I believe if I had been allowed then to think upon it for any length of time I would quickly have been beset by all manner of fears, but I was given no time to sit and think. Just as I was beginning to grow accustomed to the strangeness of London life and the dizzy pinnacle of society on which I now found myself, Mark told me that the arrangements had been made for our honeymoon and the next day I was swept off across the Channel to France.

I must have been the only woman on earth who did not fall in love with Paris the moment she set foot in it. I thought it a cold, dreary city full of grand buildings that were supposed to be famous landmarks and rude self-centered women whose language I could not understand. The men were full of false smiles and embarrassing attentions and I refused absolutely to go anywhere unless Mark was by my side. I felt strange, confused and lost.

“But since you’re half French you should feel quite at home here!” Mark protested.

“My father was a Breton,” I said, “and Brittany is different from the rest of France, just as Cornwall is different from England.”

Finally to my relief we left Paris and took a train south to Monte Carlo, and although I remained convinced that France was an abominable country I did like Monte Carlo better than I had anticipated. It was a town set by the sea, and the semitropical vegetation there reminded me of the new Morrab Gardens in Penzance which were filled with palm trees and exotic shrubs. The weather was pleasant, and I might almost have enjoyed our stay if I had been able to conquer my aversion to the richness of French food and the constant flow of French wine. However, as time passed and my queasiness settled into a pattern of appearing remorselessly each morning I realized that French food alone might not be to blame for my malaise. I refused to consult a French doctor, but as soon as we returned to London in February I visited a physician in Wimpole Street who confirmed that I was going to have a baby.

I had not intended to spend the first year of my marriage battling the discomforts of pregnancy, but I had been careless since the wedding and was not altogether surprised by my condition. Finally I decided that since I did want children eventually it hardly mattered whether I began to have them that year or the next, so I resigned myself to the inevitable and even began to feel excited at the prospect of maternity.

Mark was anxious to stay in London so that I might have the best care and attention, but I could not wait to get back to Cornwall. I longed for a glimpse of the Cornish sea, the sweep of the moors, the stone engine houses of the mines. I wanted to breathe Cornish air again and tread on Cornish soil and sleep beneath a Cornish roof. I could hardly endure to remain a day longer in London, but at last, after an interval that seemed interminable, we boarded the train one mild morning in early March and began our long journey home to Cornwall, Morvah and Deveral Farm.

The farmhouse which I had glimpsed from a distance but had never entered was a plain unattractive building, very different from my own beloved Roslyn Farm, but it was spacious and the rooms were pleasantly furnished, so I felt I would be able to settle there well enough for the time being. The new plumbing which had been installed in our absence was a great luxury, and I was able to have a bath every morning whenever I decided to get up after breakfast. Mark had wanted me to consult a Penzance doctor who numbered the Carnforths of Carnforth Hall among his patients, but Dr. Logan was old and snobbish, so I decided instead to see the new young doctor in St. Just, Dr. Salter, who had attended my first husband once or twice during my years at Roslyn Farm. Dr. Salter, when consulted, advised me to take a little exercise after lunch if I felt well but otherwise to rest as much as possible, and although I was secretly amused at the notion of myself spending my months of waiting languishing on a chaise longue I decided to follow his advice and do as I was told.

Our stay in Monte Carlo had enabled us to escape much of the worst of winter, but we did not escape the Great March Blizzard, which raged for twenty-four hours, wrecking ships in Penzance harbor and blocking the railway lines at Redruth. This was a most unusual weather phenomenon and people spoke of it for years afterward. However, soon it was spring and before long spring was melting into summer. I continued to do very little. Sarah Mannack appeared to be an adequate housekeeper and was kind to poor Annie, who at first had trouble settling in her new home. Griselda, cantankerous as ever, had had “words” with Mrs. Mannack on more than one occasion, but since she was now comfortably established in her own little cottage nearby the situation in the kitchens was not as awkward as it might have been.