Penmarric (24 page)

 But I still had moments of acute uneasiness whenever I thought of the future.

To my relief Mark presently began to feel guilty about the quiet life we were leading, and one warm evening in early June, much to my excitement, he took me to dine at the Metropole. The evening was a great success. I had worked so hard at improving myself that I was now able to discuss a variety of topics with him. Taking my courage in both hands, I introduced the burning topic of the hour, Wilde’s play
Salome,
which was destined to be banned from the London stage that year, and echoed the view that immorality should have no place in the arts, but Mark told me that in his view the trend toward such decadence was only just beginning.

We talked of Kipling and Chesterton, I merely repeating the praise I had read in newspapers and magazines but Mark telling me that their popularity was due to the fact that they presented millions of people who led humdrum lives with the chance to sample glamor vicariously. It never ceased to surprise me that Mark’s opinions should so often be at odds with the majority of other people’s, and I could not decide whether this was the result of his advanced education or because he was still young enough to enjoy disagreeing with his elders. However, he paid me many compliments about my newly acquired knowledge and was presently so encouraged by my interest in his opinions that he spoke of politics—a subject about which he always claimed a woman should know nothing—and said he hoped that Mr. Gladstone would soon displace Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister and that Ireland would then at last be granted home rule.

“But they say the Queen does not like Mr. Gladstone,” I said doubtfully.

He thought that was very funny. “My dear, we live in a democracy, not under a despotism! A man can vote as his conscience, not his sovereign, dictates!”

I was not entirely certain what either democracy or despotism meant, but I smiled too and we were so much at ease with each other that my sense of inadequacy and isolation seemed a nightmare of the past, a triviality which no longer existed.

It was late when we left the hotel. We were just walking over to the place where Mannack was waiting in the ponytrap when a little girl with a flushed face and bright eyes ran up to try to sell me a posie of flowers.

“No, thank you,” said Mark curtly to the child and took my arm to draw me past, but I saw myself in each little beggar child in a tattered dress with no shoes and I stopped to fumble in my purse. “Here,” I said, giving her threepence, and stooped to take the posie.

“Thank ’ee, lady.” Her hand was burning. I stepped back, but Mark was already pulling me away.

“The child’s ill,” he said. “Don’t go too near her.”

But I had been near enough. Within days my cheeks too were flushed, my forehead burning, my eyes bright and aching. The doctor came and went and came again. Even the Carnforths’ doctor, old Dr. Logan, visited me from Penzance. I lay in bed, my eyes closed, my thoughts jumbled and confused, and somewhere far away I heard Dr. Logan say, “There’s a lot of scarlet fever in Penzance.”

And after that there was a great dizzy darkness so that for a long time I knew not whether it was night or day until one morning I awoke and my eyes no longer hurt, and I was better.

“You have a strong constitution, Mrs. Castallack,” said Dr. Salter, satisfied. “You should recover very quickly now—if you do as I say.” He had not forgotten how hard I had found it to follow his advice toward the end of my pregnancy.

I lay back on my pillows feeling weak but relieved that the worst was over, but even as I began to close my eyes I heard him say in a low voice to someone outside the door, “Make sure she’s not told yet about the baby.”

He died two days later from the sickness I had given him. Everyone was very kind. I was still weak when I was told the news, but I left my bed and went to the nursery. His poor dead little body was laid out in his cradle, his small serene face waxen in death, and suddenly the pain was more than I could bear and the grief more than could ever be released in tears. I wished he had been stillborn or had died soon after birth—anything but this dreadful death when he had a personality of his own which I had loved, his own character and individuality.

People kept writing kind letters, everyone was so kind, and no one was kinder than Mark. At last when everyone’s hushed sympathy had left me dry-eyed and stony-faced he came to my room and sat down by my side.

“Janna dearest, forgive me but I must talk about the funeral. It’s been suggested to me that the burial should be in Morvah churchyard, but I said that my father was buried at Zillan and that I wanted Stephen to be buried there too. I thought you would agree with me about that … I saw Barnwell then and he consented and now the service is to be held the day after tomorrow. I’ve spoken to Salter, but he says absolutely positively that you’re not well enough to go—”

“But I must!” I said wildly. “I couldn’t stay away from my own baby’s funeral!” With that sentence all my grief seemed to break within me; I began to shake with harsh sobs which tore at my breast and hurt my throat. I wept and wept, but he said nothing, only holding me very close as he waited for the first rush of grief to pass. At last when I was calmer I tried to speak again, but as I looked into his face I saw the drawn lines about his mouth and the sadness in his eyes and with great guilt I suddenly remembered that I was not the only one bereaved.

“Oh, Mark, I’ve been so selfish—forgive me—”

“Shhh …” He stroked my hair. “It’s worse for you than for me, I realize that.”

“Why? He was your only child too.”

But he could not reply. We sat there for a while, united by our common grief, and it occurred to me in a bizarre moment of clarity that for the first time since our marriage we were a husband and wife and not merely a lover and his mistress.

I became pregnant soon afterward. My grief still ached within me, but now the grief was dulled by this new expectancy, and the sense of anticipation helped to fill the void of loss. I was just recovering slowly from my shock and returning once more to the familiar routine of my day-to-day existence when the event occurred that was to alter the course of our lives. Giles Penmar died at last at the end of December, and two-thirds of the enormous Penmar fortune, including the vast estate of Penmarric, fell abruptly into Mark’s hands. My days among genteel middle-class society as mistress of Deveral Farm were over, my years among the aristocracy as Mrs. Mark Castallack of Penmarric were about to begin.

During the first years of the reign she was usually pregnant and so could not often travel with her hard-riding husband.

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

For all the splendour of his household, Henry led a busy, rather drab and workaday life, bearing the constant suits that arose from the confusion of the civil war, settling disputes among his tenants, and ceaselessly investigating and prying into every aspect of the administration of his new realm. He was a severely practical man of business and his major concerns were to establish peace and order … to increase the revenues of the crown …

—Henry II,

JOHN T. APPLEBY

M
ARK WAS BY THIS
time a very wealthy young man. In addition to the Penmar money he had inherited a modest part of his father’s fortune and most of the money left by his mother’s cousin Robert Yorke, who had died soon after Laurence at the end of 1890. Moreover he would inherit his mother’s wealth when she died, so his expectations were still not exhausted. I did not pry into his financial affairs, for he gave me to understand in no uncertain terms that it was not a wife’s place to meddle in such matters, but he did tell me once how much capital he possessed and the very sum made me feel dizzy with amazement. I could not imagine such vast resources; the very figure was meaningless to me simply because it was so large.

The only other major beneficiary of Giles Penmar’s will was Mark’s adopted cousin Clarissa. She returned to Penmarric from London for the funeral and two days after the service, much to our astonishment, she came to Morvah to call upon us.

According to all the Zillan gossips, Miss Clarissa Penmar had more than upheld the family tradition for wildness. It was notorious that she was very fast. Rumor had even whispered that there had been incidents with the Penmarric stableboys, although I found it hard to believe that anyone brought up a lady could ever have stooped so low. I had never met her, for Mark had been estranged from his relations at Penmarric, and even now when Clarissa called at Deveral Farm Mark refused to let me receive her.

“I’ll see her alone,” he said, a little white around the lips. “She and I are old enemies and I don’t want you to be drawn into our quarrels.”

I was surprised by this apparent aversion of his to Clarissa, for she was one of the most attractive girls I had ever seen and I would have thought her feminine blandishments would have appealed to Mark’s susceptibility. However, I did not argue with him but merely waited with curiosity in his study as he spoke to her in the drawing room. I was just thinking I could not contain my curiosity a moment longer when I heard the door of the drawing room open. I waited, listening. To my amazement he took her down the hall to the kitchen and then upstairs to the floor above. So consumed was I by curiosity at this point that I could hardly force myself to stay in the study, but I knew Mark would be angry if I disobeyed him, so I contented myself with leaving the study door ajar and straining my ears to discover what was happening.

Presently they came downstairs again and paused in the hall.

“I still find it hard to imagine why you should want to live here, Clarissa,” I heard him say frankly to her. “I’d have thought you would have had more of an interest in buying my house in London than my house here at Morvah.”

“On the contrary,” said Clarissa Penmar in her silky, well-bred voice, which I instantly distrusted. “I’m so bored with London! Bored, bored, bored! My dear Mark, surely you at least can understand? You forsook London society for this place—London society must have bored you just as much as it now bores me. I’m bored with the convention which expects girls to marry as soon and as well as possible, bored with dances and dinners and tedious social events, bored with having to stay either with friends in London or else entomb myself in that dreadful mausoleum on top of the cliffs—and why you want to live
there,
my dear Mark, I simply can’t imagine—oh, I’m so bored with being bored! At least now that Papa is dead I have the means to do exactly as I wish and can come and go as I please. As soon as I heard Mrs. Barnwell talking about this house and saying how comfortable and pleasant your wife had made it, I knew I would like to try to live here for a while. I may not stay long but at least I would like to try, if only for the sheer novelty of living in what was once a working-class farmhouse! I’m obsessed by novelty at the moment. Novelty is the only antidote to boredom, in my opinion, and for people like us the working classes must necessarily seem more novel than—my dear Mark, don’t glare at me like that!
I
don’t disapprove of you marrying a farmer’s widow! Personally I think a love affair with someone of a lower class is rather stimulating.”

And as I caught my breath in fury I heard Mark drawl, “Yes, I had heard of your partiality for the grooms of Penmarric., Good day, Clarissa. If you wish to buy this house you can notify my lawyers in Penzance and they will conduct the sale on my behalf.” And he barely gave her time to say goodbye before he shut the front door with a bang.

Later when I heard that Clarissa had made up her mind to buy Deveral Farm I was glad that Mark disliked her so much. The parish of Morvah and the parish of St. Just shared a common boundary, and Deveral Farm and Penmarric were less than six miles apart. Clarissa was very much the kind of woman who fancied other women’s husbands, particularly if she were living in a remote hamlet with nothing else to divert her, and six miles is hardly more than a hop, skip and a jump to a woman in that frame of mind.

The time had come to leave Deveral Farm, but Mark did not want me to cope with the strain of moving house when I was by this time far advanced in pregnancy and favored staying at Morvah until after the baby was born. However, I had an irrational fear of giving birth to another child in the house where Stephen had died, and although Penmarric was then the most depressing mansion imaginable I was passionately anxious to move without delay. Mark consulted Dr. Salter, they agreed to humor me, and on a brilliant summer day in May my second son was born at Penmarric in the great Tower Room which faced the sea.

This time the birth was easy, my recovery rapid. I decided I was right after all and that having a baby was a very simple affair. The baby thrived quickly; soon he showed signs of being as delightful as Stephen. I wanted to call him Mark after his father but Mark said it would be too confusing in later years, so we called him Marcus instead. His hair, scanty as it was, was so dark that I guessed it would turn into the thick black hair of the Penmars, but he had my blue eyes and fair complexion, so it seemed he might grow up to resemble both of us. Soon I saw that his personality was more volatile than Stephen’s; he cried more, laughed more and demanded more attention, but I could not help noticing he was not as forward as Stephen had been, nor as quick to learn new things.

But I could not pine at length for Stephen. There was no time. As soon as I had recovered from my confinement I found myself confronted with the challenge of that terrible old mansion which was now our home, and presently I discovered that there was such an incredible amount to do that all my energies were turned toward the task of making the place habitable.

Words almost fail me when I attempt to describe Penmarric. It was the sort of mansion that makes me pity the aristocracy who are obliged to spend their lives in such gloomy, drafty, dismal surroundings. It was built of the usual gray Cornish stone and the main part of the house was old, dating back to Elizabethan times, so Mark told me. There was even some evidence in the title deeds to show that there had been a fortified tower on the site before the house had been built, for the North Cornish coast had long been a prey to Irish pirates and Penmarric’s position on top of the high cliffs would have been an advantage to the defenders. However, some of the present house was modern, new servants’ quarters having been added earlier in the century by Mark’s great-grandfather, the adventurer, and the entire house had been renovated a generation later to give it a fashionably Gothic appearance. Its appearance was actually the most engaging part about it; the exterior was fancifully decorated with a quantity of romantic pseudo-battlements and flying buttresses and roof gutters ending in gargoyles, and on either wing of the building was a squat round tower commanding superb views of the sea, the moors and the cairn. It was certainly an impressive mansion from the outside. But inside! It was unbelievable. Peeling walls, threadbare carpets, skirting boards ravaged by mice and worse, mildew, damp, decay … I was horrified. The plumbing was primitive or nonexistent, the kitchens unsanitary and hopelessly old-fashioned, the housekeeping methods preposterously uneconomical. I asked the housekeeper to see the accounts; she referred me to the steward; the steward referred me back to the housekeeper. After much slyness and evasion I discovered some incomplete records which Giles Penmar had obviously never asked to see, and the very next day I told both the steward and the housekeeper that they might pack their bags and leave.