Penmarric (25 page)

The butler was a nice old man, very devoted to the Penmars, and, although I suspected he had become too fond of appropriating the best port in the cellar, I decided to give him a chance to turn over a new leaf. After that, turning from Medlyn to the res man and his pregnant scullery girl, sacked an insolent groom on the spot and put the fear of God into all the maids.

“Cleanliness,” I said severely as they boggled at me round-eyed, is next to godliness, as we all know. Now, when I enter a room in future I shall expect to see …” And I delivered a stern lecture about polished furniture, clean carpets, washed curtains, scoured pots and pans, scrubbed kitchen floors and food swathed in muslin to foil hungry mice. Inspired by the subjects I dropped dark hints about the fate which would overtake any servant who allowed cobwebs to flourish undisturbed in corners, and when I had finished at last I had made it abundantly clear that a new era was dawning at Penmarric and that there was no longer any room in the servants’ quarters for the idle, the insolent and the irresponsible.

But new eras do not dawn unaided. For many months after our arrival Mark and I were immersed in our campaigns to improve the house until I began to think we would never be free to enjoy living at Penmarric; we would always have to struggle simply to exist there.

Secretly I cherished the notion of acting as my own housekeeper and fulfilling my ambition to be in charge of the domestic affairs of a large mansion, but of course, ironic though it seemed to me at the time, I was denied the opportunity to prove my skill. I was expected to employ a housekeeper; it would have looked exceedingly odd for a person in my new station to haggle with the tradesmen and deal constantly with the servants, and Mark wasted no time in pointing this out to me. But while I advertised for a housekeeper I engaged more staff, supervised the massive cleaning operations I had initiated, ordered new carpets and materials for new curtains. Mark had engaged an architect, and presently we all spent fascinating hours planning how that dreadful old house could be made not only habitable but pleasant. At last the interior was redecorated in light colors, new windows were installed so that the sunlight could blaze into the gloomy rooms, and the east wing (reputed to be haunted) was transformed into a suite of airy rooms for guests who, not knowing of the ghost’s supposed existence, would not be disturbed by it. An army of plumbers installed two bathrooms, three water closets and running water in the kitchens. A family of cats colonized the mice’s playground in the attics, a battalion of gardeners set out to reclaim the wilderness of the grounds, and by the end of that long arduous summer I began to feel I had the house in a condition resembling working order.

Meanwhile Mark was deeply involved with the estate. He had engaged a new bailiff and spent many hours investigating the affairs of the Sennen Garth mine, which had brought great wealth to the Penmars earlier in the century. I knew little about the tin and copper mines and had always accepted their stone engine houses as part of the landscape and their ugly slag heaps as a source of livelihood to poor men who did not have their own land to farm. “Fish, tin and copper!” ran the famous Cornish toast, but these three keys to Cornish prosperity were not listed in order of priority. Cornwall had been famous for its tin since time out of mind, but in fact in the nineteenth century the mines had produced more copper than tin. There were two world-famous mines not far from Penmarric—Botallack, which was perched on the edge of the cliffs and was truly a marvel of man-made ingenuity, and the Levant, which extended so deep into the earth and so far under the sea that it made the Penmars’ mine Sennen Garth look small in comparison. The Penmars also owned a second mine, King Walloe, but King Walloe had been closed for many years and was no longer of profit to the family. Sennen Garth was hardly profitable either when we arrived at Penmarric; it was still operating but its output had dropped and fewer men were now employed there.

Mining experts were summoned from Dolcoath, the famous mine near Camborne, for consultations; their report was unfavorable and Mark, horrified by the working conditions in the mine and mindful of the enormous expense required to make the mine safe, let alone profitable, decided that Sennen Garth should be closed.

There was immediate uproar throughout St. Just and Zillan, where most of the miners lived. Deputations of protest arrived at Penmarric and Jared led the miners in a noisy crusade to reopen the mine, but of course it was all a waste of time. Mark was adamant. The protests persisted, however, for the men thought that as he was so young he would retract his decision if they bullied him enough, but the tougher they became the tougher was Mark’s attitude. He was as stubborn as half a dozen mules and more than a match for the discontented miners of the Cornish Tin Coast.

In the midst of all this turmoil Mark’s mother arrived unannounced at the Metropole Hotel and wrote Mark a note to say she would not be kept away from her beloved Penmarric a day longer, no matter what excuses he might make to forestall her arrival.

“My God!” yelled Mark in a fit of temper. “As if I hadn’t enough troubles without having her poking her nose around Penmarric and criticizing all we’ve done! How dare she come down here unannounced! How dare she! God, how I detest and abominate overbearing, domineering, arrogant women! I’m going to tell her exactly what I think of her high-handed attempts to gain admission to my house!”

But I could not help feeling a small twinge of sympathy for Maud Penmar. She had visited us only once since our marriage—after Stephen’s birth she had stayed for a week at the Metropole in order to see her first grandchild—and I was sure that now she was anxious to see Marcus and revisit the house she had loved so much in her youth. I could not stop Mark quarreling with her, for they always quarreled violently whenever they met, but after she had shed one large and glassy tear and he had held her hand and told her she might stay a day or two after all, I did my best to be hospitable to her. But she was the most exhausting woman, and I was exhausted enough already, both on account of the reorganization of the house and the fact that I was expecting another baby in May. When Mark finally managed to send her off to Gweek to visit Nigel I was conscious of the most enormous relief and would have stayed in bed for a week if it had not been Christmas, one of the busiest times of the year for us all.

By this time the entire county had noticed our existence, and soon we were so overwhelmed with invitations of all kinds that I was thankful to be pregnant, thankful that I had the opportunity to escape if only temporarily from the more terrifying aspects of my new social station. When Dr. Salter gave me his usual advice to rest as much as possible I seized the chance to lead a quiet life and make renewed efforts to improve myself. Reading had widened my vocabulary and my accent had lessened, but I knew there was still Cornish in my voice and it embarrassed me very much. Finally in despair I advertised discreetly in the Penzance newspaper for a teacher qualified in phonetics and presently engaged a little old lady to come to Penmarric twice a week to help me overcome my defect.

Mark was surprised and protested that I spoke well enough to please him, but he did not protest for long and I suspected he was secretly more pleased than he cared to admit.

The new year came. Sometimes I would lie on the chaise longue and stare at those invitations from the aristocracy of Cornwall, and as I stared I would feel a shiver of panic edge its way down my spine. It was at moments like these that I would feel overcome by that now familiar burden of inadequacy and could think of nothing but Marcus and my future children living their lives in a world which I knew would never fully accept me. And I would say anxiously to myself: I hope I shall be at ease with them. And then with that terrible pang of dread: I hope they won’t be ashamed of me.

Pregnancy was making me morbid, of course. I always made a resolution to beat back such gloomy thoughts and on the whole I succeeded, but sometimes, unable to help myself, I would remain low in spirits for hours at a time and would long uselessly—and ironically—for that quiet uneventful life we had once led at Deveral Farm.

My eldest daughter was born at the end of May when Marcus was a year old. I had taken a fancy to Tennyson’s poetry during the last weeks of waiting, and his poem about the lonely moated grange where the heroine was entombed awaiting her lover had kindled my imagination. I saw the poor girl marooned in a place such as Penmarric had been when we had arrived, and my heart bled for her. When Mark asked me what we should call the baby I said unhesitatingly, “Mariana.”

“After the girl in
Measure for Measure
?”

“After the girl in Tennyson’s poem,” I said, not knowing Tennyson had received his inspiration from Shakespeare, although Mark was quick enough to point this out to me.

“Well,” he added, “it’s a pretty name. But we must call her after you as well.”

“Oh no, Mark! Mariana Janna—imagine it! Let her just be Mariana; Besides, I’m not fond of my own name.”

“I am,” he said. “Well, perhaps if we have another girl…”

We were not certain how many children we wanted but thought in terms of four or five. After Stephen’s death I had had a frantic desire to have several children as quickly as possible to exclude the likelihood of ever again having to enter a silent nursery and wished only that children could come more rapidly than once a year. But not long after Mariana’s birth Mark said, “There’s plenty of time and now we have two children—let’s take care for a while and enjoy ourselves. I’ve been working very hard for a year and so have you in spite of your pregnancy. Why don’t we go away for a couple of months’ rest? I’d like to go to Italy or Switzerland, or perhaps France again. I feel I need a holiday.”

Why I should have shrunk so absolutely from his suggestion I do not know. No doubt one of the reasons was because of my experiences on my honeymoon when my homesickness, insecurity and constant sense of inadequacy had set me against traveling in foreign places. Perhaps another reason was that I was struggling so hard to adjust to my new life at Penmarric that I simply felt I could not cope with the ordeal of a journey abroad. But whatever the reasons I knew at once that I did not want to go.

“Mariana is still too young for me to leave her,” I began uncertainly, but to my dismay Mark saw through my excuse at once and made some sharp remark about it being a wife’s duty to attend to her husband as well as to her children. This upset me, for I had made enormous efforts to please him and improve myself so that he would not be ashamed of me when we mingled with his social equals, but he made no effort to apologize and merely stalked away before I could protest the injustice of his remark. Afterward I tried to forget the conversation, but soon I found myself turning the disagreement over and over in my mind until at last, unable to endure worrying about it a moment longer, I decided to broach the subject of the holiday with him again.

“Mark,” I said as the September sun blazed upon the terrace the next afternoon and the soft sea breeze fanned our cheeks, “Mark, about the holiday …”

He glanced at me, his black eyes veiled with the speculative expression I knew so well. “How curious that you should mention it,” he said. “I was just about to introduce the subject again.”

“Oh.” I was so taken aback that speech deserted me.

“What were you going to say?”

“I … merely wished to apologize for—for not wishing to go just yet. But, Mark, I didn’t mean I shall never want to go abroad for a holiday again! Perhaps next year—”

“Next year,” he said cuttingly, “you’ll be pregnant again and we’ll still be unable to go.”

Now it was my turn to be angry. “Would it be so odious to you if I were pregnant? I thought you wanted children!”

“Not all at once!” he retorted. “Why do we have to hurry so? Can we not spare a little time to enjoy each other’s company? Why, think of it from my point of view—if you’re capable of considering any point of view other than your own! You’ve had three children in four years, and while that may be very pleasing and satisfying to your maternal instincts it hardly enables you to act in a way which is pleasing and satisfying to my instincts! I think it’s about time you considered me instead of yourself. I’m tired of being an occasional husband even if you thrive on being an occasional wife.”

With an immense effort I kept a tight rein on my self-control. “Other husbands manage. Other wives have a baby a year.”

“It’s only the working classes these days who breed like a bunch of rabbits!”

“And I—as you never cease to remind me—am from the working classes! Is that what you mean? Are you trying to tell me it’s ‘not the done thing’ to have a baby a year nowadays? Are you?”

“Oh, don’t be so damned sensitive!” He was taut with annoyance. “Damn it, Janna, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a large family, but I simply don’t see why we could not wait two years—a year even—before having another child.”

“I haven’t the time to wait,” I said in a low voice, and now I too was trembling with annoyance, for the ten years’ difference in our ages was a subject I never even liked to think about, let alone discuss with him. “I don’t have all the time in the world.”

“You have at least ten child-bearing years in front of you,”

“Childbirth becomes more hazardous after the age of forty. That leaves five years, not ten.”

“So you intend to occupy the next five years by having as many children as possible—and providing yourself with the excuse to avoid me for several months out of each year!”

“That’s not true!”

“Isn’t it true that a doctor doesn’t recommend a woman to have sexual intercourse at certain times before and after her pregnancy?”

I hated it when he spoke so bluntly of such private matters. I felt demeaned by such frankness. I was no longer a barmaid or even a farmer’s wife accustomed to hearing the crudest and coarsest conversations among those around me, and I resented Mark treating me as if I were.

But when I was silent he made no effort to change the subject. “Do I displease you in some way?”