Penmarric (26 page)

“Oh Mark, don’t be so absurd!”

“But to go to bed with me means less than it used to.”

I told myself he was upset and struggled to suppress my resentment. “No—no, it doesn’t but—” I strained for the right words, strove to make him understand—“but such times aren’t forever, Mark—they come and go and then there’s nothing left. But children—children are for always. Children are
there!
Children make a woman feel secure. Oh, Mark, do try and understand—”

“We seem to be having rather an abortive argument,” he interrupted coldly. “I’ve told you I’m anxious for children. All I’m saying is that for one year I’d like to have you entirely to myself.”

I said, unforgivably I know, but my patience was wearing thin: “And to think you accuse
me
of selfishness! You’re much more selfish than I am!”

“I’m merely demanding what any husband has a right to expect!” We stared at each other. Then: “Will you come abroad with me next month for a holiday,” he said evenly, “or won’t you?”

“Mark, I’ve already tried to explain—”

“Yes or no?”

I thought of foreign cities, foreign people, the agony of being adrift in a strange and unfriendly land. “Perhaps next year—”

“Yes or no, Janna!”

I was only just beginning to get used to Penmarric. I could not face any more changes at the moment. It was his fault for not being more sympathetic, for not even trying to understand. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t want to go this year.”

 There was another heavy pause.

“I see,” he said at last. “I assume that means you don’t want to postpone your next pregnancy.”

I seized at the opportunity to make an apparent concession. “I could try and postpone it,” I said, affecting anxiety so that he would not guess how much I longed for another baby—and for another few months’ respite from my social duties as mistress of Penmarric. “I don’t wish to anger you, Mark. But … well, of course, one can never be entirely certain—I could not guarantee—”

“In other words,” he said acidly, “you’ll make no effort whatsoever to avoid a pregnancy while pretending all the while that you’re taking immense trouble, and then once you’re pregnant you’ll say it was an unfortunate accident and beg my forgiveness.”

It gave me such a jolt that he had seen straight through my attempt at deception that I was temporarily speechless.

“Well, let me tell you this,” he said between his teeth while I was still at a loss for words. “If you won’t sleep with me there are others who will. And if you find yourself pregnant before Mariana is a year old you’ll spend your pregnancy wondering where I’m spending my evenings. Do you understand? And don’t think I wouldn’t be unfaithful to you if you shut your bedroom door often enough because I wouldn’t hesitate. I’ve been patient long enough and I’m not going to be patient any more.”

Such dark threats made in a fit of temper did not seriously disturb me since I knew well enough that I was the only woman in his life, but I was hurt that he should say such things and angry too that he should threaten me in that way.

“Mark,” I said, still speaking levelly, “I have never, voluntarily, closed my bedroom door to you, I—”

“So far,” he said, “you’ve closed it—voluntarily, since you chose to have children—for at least five months out of every year. But that was pardonable since we both wanted children and I was prepared to tolerate the situation. But at the moment I don’t want children and if you become pregnant now after all I’ve said I’ll take the news exactly as I would have done if you’d slammed the bedroom door in my face.”

“My God!” I cried, my restraint snapping in two, my rage making me throw all pretense at calmness to the winds, “don’t you ever, ever think of anything else except what can happen between us in the bedroom? Is it so utterly impossible for you to spend a night without …” And before I could check myself the profanity, the unmentionable word from the gutters, had slipped from my lips. I stopped at once, my cheeks burning, but I was too late.

He looked at me. Then he raised his eyebrows in an expression of amused distaste. “Really, my dear,” he said in his most sarcastic London drawl, “you needn’t have gone to such lengths to remind me where you come from, but since you remind me, I almost wish we were back at Roslyn Farm! There at least I could get what I wanted when I wanted it without all this fuss. What a pity I ever bothered to marry you! You were such a perfect mistress.”

He stopped speaking. For one long moment there was an absolute silence save for the roar of the surf on the rocks far below. Beyond the parapet of the terrace the sea stretched to a misty horizon and the sun shone from a cloudless sky.

I turned and groped my way to the French windows.

I heard him say, “Janna …” but I did not stop. I opened the door, blundered against a small table, knocked over a vase of flowers. Presently I was in the passage leading to the hall. It was cool there, but dark after the brilliance of the afternoon light. I had difficulty in seeing. In the hall I thought: I want to go home. I hate this house. I hate it.

I went outside again and the drive stretched before me to the trees by the gates, and the contorted spinney thrust its twisted boughs toward that azure Cornish sky. As I crossed the lawn the sun felt warm upon my back and the distant moors, shimmering in the heat haze, seemed mysteriously to beckon me across the land which separated us.

I walked and walked. I walked to St. Just and I walked beyond St. Just and away from the road onto the moors which stretched into Zillan parish. The moors were gray-green, shimmering beneath that summer sun, and the rocks of Carn Kenidjack pointed jagged fingers to that brilliant southern sky.

I stopped, looked back.

He was following me, but some way behind, and when I stopped he stopped too. I thought I heard him call out to me, but I could not hear, I was too far away, and I turned and stumbled on once more through the heather to Zillan.

I went on walking. My feet began to hurt, so I took off my elegant shoes and walked barefoot over the moors, barefoot back into the past until in my mind’s eye I was no longer on the moors at all but in the dirty reeking alleys of St. Ives. And suddenly I saw my father coming home from the sea, my poor, gay, generous father who was always so kind to me, and he was asking where my mother was and where he could find her. I saw the painted shutters of Shrimp Street, the coarse sailors, the smashed bottles, the drunken brawls. I saw hunger and want and hard times, the woman from the evangelist mission saying, “The wages of sin is death, my girl, and don’t you forget it,” the minister murmuring, “Poor child, such a sad case,” and Griselda, dearest Griselda, holding me close to her and screaming at them all, “She’s my kin! I’ll keep her! Thee’ll not take her away while I’ve breath in my body!” And I thought: I want Griselda. No one else. Just Griselda. I shall go and see Griselda because Griselda was always there, even in the beginning, and she’s still there, even today.

I was confused then, thinking she was living at her little cottage at Morvah and not remembering until a minute later that she now had a cottage at Penmarric. I was walking in the wrong direction, every step I took carrying me farther from her, but still I did not turn back.

I went on into Zillan parish.

I walked and walked, and sometimes I turned to see if he had drawn nearer, but he kept his distance. And suddenly it was as if I were alone on the moors, as if I were a farmer’s wife again snatching ten minutes of precious leisure, and before me at last lay the ruined walls of Chûn.

I went into the inner circle of stones and stood there. It was peaceful, sheltered from the wind. I stood motionless amidst the bracken and the soft grass, and glancing back over my shoulder, I watched him as he came toward me across the heather.

When he reached me I saw his eyes were veiled again, his mouth hard, his face closed and empty of expression. We stood perhaps six feet apart for ten full seconds and then he crossed the ancient turf which separated us and touched my arms slowly, lightly with his fingers.

I closed my eyes, felt the tears stab like hot needles behind my lids, tilted my head aside, but he kissed me just the same. And suddenly my knees were weak and my whole body trembled and I burned for him.

“Forgive me,” he said. That was all. He made no excuses. Just the cool “Forgive me” in the voice I loved, and I forgave him because I loved him and because I had not realized before how desperately important it was that he should love me too. Yet he did love me. It was because he loved me that he had married me and not left me to struggle on alone at Roslyn Farm. So long as he loved me nothing mattered, nothing at all, and when I looked into his face then and saw that he loved me still I clung to him for one long shuddering moment as we embraced beneath that hot September sky. Our embraces became dizzier, unbearably urgent; at last we lay in the shadow of the castle walls, and it was there on the hard Cornish earth of the moors he was to love so well that my best-loved child was conceived.

By this time little Henry was the eldest of an increasing family. His sister Matilda had been born in 1156. In 1157 another son was born in Beaumont Palace, Oxford, and christened Richard … The queen was kept busy, and must live in retirement for long periods every year. That gave Henry more scope for his adulteries …

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

W
HEN I FIRST REALIZED
my condition I was extremely dismayed. First of all I was conscious of annoyance that I should have become pregnant unintentionally just like any refined woman who had no idea such a condition could be avoided, but presently my annoyance was replaced by my dread of having to tell Mark. Yet even my dread was lessened by my secret pleasure and relief; the ordeal of giving a ball at Penmarric in the new year could be postponed a little longer. We would have to extend the nursery, engage a nursemaid to help Nanny, tell Marcus the good news that soon he might have a brother to play with …

But first I had to tell Mark that soon he might have another son.

We were in London at the time; after the scene at Chûn I had told Mark I would go abroad with him as soon as he wished, but he, generously, had compromised by suggesting we spend a few weeks in the capital instead of making the more arduous journey to the Continent. In London we found everyone was talking of “The Books,” Aubrey Beardsley’s notorious
Yellow Book
and the more salubrious
Jungle Book
by Kipling. So agog was I to see the wicked Beardsley drawings that I wondered if I might acquire a copy secretly, but Mark bought a copy openly enough and even left it in an unlocked drawer so that I could peep at it whenever he turned the other way. He said he found the sketches “clever but facile” and “not altogether to his taste.” They were not to my taste either, I soon discovered, for the drawings were much too bizarre to strike me as being “naughty.” However, I did not admit to being disappointed, since it was the fashion for everyone to find them shocking, but merely turned my attention to other cultural events instead. We went to concerts, hearing the new Tchaikovsky symphony which had been first performed the previous year, and to the theater, sampling everything from the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan to one of those dreadfully gloomy dramas by the foreign playwright Ibsen. We visited picture galleries, dined at a dizzy number of fashionable restaurants and paid the occasional nerve-wracking social call—and then at last after several weeks had slipped by I steeled myself once again to see my Wimpole Street physician.

“… so you don’t have to be musical to appreciate opera,” Mark was saying that evening at dinner. “Opera is such a splendid spectacle independent of the music. Of course this new stuff by Richard Strauss is abominable, but some of the Italian composers… Is anything the matter?”

When one has been dreading something continuously for several hours the anticipation is often worse than the event. For one long moment after I had told him he was so still that I felt my scalp prickle with fright, but then he shrugged and smiled and said lightly, “And after all that fuss! What a waste of breath that scene was! I should have known it was pointless to quarrel.”

I said tensely, “This was not what I had in mind, Mark. I realize you must feel angry, but—”

“My dear, what right have I to be angry? You could hardly have become pregnant without my help. Let’s try and forget that wretched quarrel and put it behind us once and for all.”

So I made no more efforts to apologize, but I felt wretched, for I was sure he suspected I had deliberately sought such a condition. He was very thoughtful and considerate to me throughout the journey home and we even reached the point of discussing names for the baby together, but in the new year he became immersed in his writings again after a long spell away from his historical papers, and in February he traveled to London for three weeks to do some research. I missed him dreadfully. I hated eating alone in that enormous dining room, hated being waited upon so meticulously throughout each course, hated sitting on my own in that silent drawing room in the evenings. In the mornings I visited the nursery, but Marcus, though adorable, was hardly old enough to offer much companionship and Mariana was cutting teeth and very fractious. In the afternoons I tried to devote myself to my parish responsibilities and to my correspondence, but I was afraid of sending letters unless Mark had read them to ensure that they were correct, and when ever I picked up a pen I became so nervous that I found I knew not what to write. It was hard to know how to pass the time. When Mark returned home at last I was painfully glad to see him.

Yet even after his return I saw little of him in the mornings he would work in his study. In the afternoons he would be out riding or walking or attending to estate matters and in the evenings he would once more be secluded with his books. Once a week, sometimes twice, he would go into Penzance and spend the afternoon at Carnforth Hall before dining with his old friend Michael Vincent, but I was careful not to object to this increasing taste for male companionship. I personally thought Mr. Vincent was a very boring man, but Mark was surely entitled to see as much of his friends as he wished and I did not want to weary him by complaining of his lack of attention.