Penmarric (31 page)

He denied it, naturally. “I would ask you to come with me more often,” he said, “but I know how you hate to leave Cornwall.”

This was true enough, but when I offered to come with him he always had an excuse for going alone, and I knew that his talk of my accompanying him had been a mere gesture of courtesy, an empty politeness that had no meaning. Yet we did not quarrel. He was careful always to be pleasant and courteous to me whenever he was at Penmarric, and so there were no scenes, only perpetual constraint, which was worse than any scene would have been, and after a while my distress became dulled and I could hardly believe we had not always lived together in that fashion.

I knew I was unhappy, but I tried my hardest not to give myself time to think about it. I involved myself with my home, the parish and my neighborhood acquaintances to a greater degree than ever before and kept myself constantly occupied. And the farther Mark and I drifted apart from each other, the closer I became to the children.

They were growing up. Their personalities, blurred in early childhood, were becoming clearly defined. I knew Marcus would always be affectionate toward me, full of candid charm and engaging conversation; he was gregarious and enjoyed having plenty of people around him. I began to recognize an antagonism in Mariana, a resentment of discipline, an inclination to be bossy. She and Marcus were inseparable companions, being only a year apart in age, but it was she, not Marcus, who dictated what games should be played, she who always had the last word. Philip refused to stand such bossiness. He went his own way, conducted his own amusements, and in his wake like a little pale shadow trailed Hugh, a willing but often unwanted companion. Jeanne was still a baby and so somewhat apart from the others, but I thought her a pretty, docile child, quite different from her willful older sister. I became very fond of her. Like Philip and Hugh she was fair, but nonetheless I did not believe she greatly resembled me. Occasionally her serenity reminded me of Stephen, and because of this I felt a warmth toward her that I never felt toward Mariana. I always claimed later that I loved all my daughters equally, but for many years, particularly while they were children, it was Jeanne who remained my favorite.

It was 1902, the Year of the new King’s visit to Penzance and St. Michael’s Mount, the year when I might have been presented to royalty as befitted my place in country society. But I was not presented. Mark was away at Oxford at the time and although he wrote and urged me to accept the invitation to the Mount and go there in the company of the Carnforths, my courage failed me and I was unable to face the ordeal of a social occasion of such magnitude without my husband at my side. Besides, the Carnforths did not ask me to accompany them, and I was not so ill-mannered to press for such an invitation when they had obviously decided I would be better off at home. Nanny and I took the children to the station to wave at the royal party as they arrived in Penzance, but after that we returned to Penmarric and I did not see the King again.

In fact I had too many other matters claiming my attention at that time to dwell for long upon the royal visit to Cornwall Mark had been considering the children’s education and presently announced to me that he had made arrangements for Marcus to go away to preparatory school in Surrey before he was sent to Eton at the age of twelve.

This was no sudden shock to me, for I had long known that my sons must be sent away from home to receive a gentleman’s education, but nevertheless now that the time had come I could not help being filled with misgivings. Marcus was only nine years old and loved his home so much! My heart ached when I thought how homesick he would be far away in Surrey.

However, Marcus himself seemed delighted with the prospect and for a time at least I managed to ignore my misgivings.

“I’m going to school!” he chanted with glee and crowed smugly to Mariana, “No more lessons with you and Alice and Philip and Miss Peach!” Miss Peach was the governess; little Alice Penmar, a very plain child, came over to Penmarric from Zillan rectory during the week to learn her lessons with my children and had shown a surprising aptitude for her studies, I supposed she had inherited her aptitude from her grandfather the rector since neither Harry Penmar nor Miriam had had the reputation of possessing a nimble intelligence.

“You and Mariana and Philip will have to do your lessons alone now, Alice,” declared Marcus proudly. “
I’m
going to school.”

“Well,” said Alice, who had a very acid tongue for one so young, “I wish you joy of it. I’m glad it’s not me.”

“You’re jealous!” said Mariana. “Marcus can’t wait to go!”

This was certainly true. But on the day of his departure he cried all the way to Penzance station, and on the platform he clung to me and wept that he did not want to go at all.

I was horribly distressed. If it had been any of my other children perhaps I would not have been so upset, but Marcus was such an affectionate child that it wrenched my heart to think that we were sending him away all on his own as if we no longer loved him. It was no consolation for me to tell myself that his grandmother was meeting him at Paddington Station and would look after him until the time came for him to board the school train from Waterloo the next day; Maud Penmar was such a hard, unsympathetic woman, and Marcus would be so lost and bewildered …

“Don’t send me away,” he was sobbing pathetically, burying his face against my skirts. “Please. I’ll be so good you’ll never scold me again.”

“Oh Marcus!” I could not bear to see him looking so pathetic. I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks as I hugged him. “Marcus darling, we’ll take you home—you shan’t go.”

“What’s all this?” Mark, who had been organizing the luggage, reappeared beside us on the platform. “What’s all this fuss and nonsense? Come, Marcus, this won’t do at all. Pull yourself together and be your age—it’s high time you stopped clinging to your mama’s skirts. Now, have you got everything? Then take my handkerchief, blow your nose and get on the train at once. We don’t want it to leave without you.” Marcus sobbed into his father’s handkerchief.

“Mark …” I began but broke off as I saw his expression.

“I think,” he said, “you’d better wait outside in the carriage.” And later when the train had gone and he was in the carriage beside me his first furious words were “That’s the last time I ever allow you to see your children off to school!” He was keeping his voice low so that there was no chance of Crowlas overhearing our conversation beyond the cramped interior of the carriage. “Marcus would never have become so distressed if you had remained calm—he looked to you for support and you gave him none. The whole unfortunate scene was entirely your fault.”

“But I couldn’t help—”

“No, you couldn’t help it because you don’t know any better, but in future you’ll say goodbye to Marcus at Penmarric. Sensibly. Without any ill-bred embarrassing scenes.”

And it was then at last that we had our long-postponed quarrel.

I said I was sick of him always sneering at me, always hinting that I wasn’t good enough for him, always behaving as if I were too common, too uneducated and too old to matter to him any more. Mark said that was a pack of lies and I was obviously too distraught to know what I was saying, so I reminded him how he spent most of the year away from Penmarric and how even when he was at Penmarric he took care to avoid me most of the time. He said that he thought he was doing me a kindness by leaving me alone; he was well aware that I had never forgiven him for his affair with Rose Parrish because ever since I had found out about her I’d never been the same in bed. Besides, it was patently obvious that now I no longer wanted more children I found my marital obligations not only unattractive but also so unbearably tedious that I was anxious to escape from them whenever I could.

“That’s not true!” I cried. “It’s just not true! I do love you still—I do want you—but can I help it if your behavior toward me makes me feel so nervous that I sometimes seem cold and ill-at-ease? The truth is that you’re just using my apparent coldness, my failure, as a convenient excuse! If you can convince yourself that I no longer want you you’ll consider you have a right to go elsewhere—which is all you truly want to do anyway!”

“If you cannot face the truth squarely, there’s no point in discussing the matter further,” he said. “I think we’ve spoken quite enough on the subject. There’s nothing more to be said.”

We drove on to Penmarric. We did not speak. On our arrival home we went our separate ways, I to my room, he to the library, and the gulf of our estrangement yawned between us until it seemed to me as if it were an abyss no bridge would ever span again.

He came to my room that same night. I suppose he regretted the quarrel as much as I did; certainly we both tried to make amends, but afterward I felt convinced not only that I had failed him but that he had found it no more rewarding than I had. He had simply made the gesture to be kind to me; I was certain in the cold hard light of early morning when I looked at myself in the mirror that he could have had no other reason for coming to my room, and all I knew was that I did not want him to come any more if he simply came on account of kindness.

As I dressed that morning I stared out of the window at the rain slewing into the stormy sea, the ugly black cliffs surrounding that bleak ugly mansion, and after a while it seemed to me that I would be much happier if I were not continually worrying about maintaining the shreds of our old relationship. It was obvious that Mark no longer wanted me, and if I could only reconcile myself to this truth and accept the fact that our physical relationship was dead, then his indifference could no longer hurt me. Perhaps I would no longer even mind so much that he went to other women—for I knew Mark too well by this time to assume naively that he was not unfaithful to me whenever he had the chance. I knew he had other women. What I should also have known was that I did not have to demean myself by competing for him as if I were his mistress, utterly dependent on retaining his favors. I was his wife, the mother of his children and the mistress of his house, and nothing could ever change that.

At breakfast when we had a moment of privacy I said to him carefully, “If you don’t wish to come to my room in future I quite understand. I apologize for the scene in the carriage yesterday. I didn’t mean to place you under any kind of obligation in regard to our affairs as husband and wife.”

He looked at me for a long moment. At last all he said was a curt “It’s your decision.”

“I merely thought it would be easier for both of us if—”

“Quite.” But he wasn’t listening to me. When I was silenced he said with that coarse bluntness I had always detested, “Sleep alone if you wish but don’t expect me to follow your example.”

I tried not to let him see how much his words hurt. I simply said, “I’m sure you’ll be very discreet” and turned my head away sharply so that he should not see my tears.

He did not bother to reply and a second later he had left the room. I was on my own, listening to the sound of his footsteps dying away in the distance until at last all sound faded into nothingness and there was nothing else to listen to except the silence.

My chair toppled over as I sprang to my feet. I went after him, but he was gone by the time I reached the hall and when I stopped the silence wrapped itself around me in thick suffocating folds. It was hard to breathe. I glanced around wildly, ready to clutch at any small trifle that would help me maintain my self-control, but there was nothing, only the dark shadows of that deserted hall, and at the top of the stairs the cynical smile of the first Penmar as he looked down at me from his enormous frame and brandished his pair of loaded dice.

The disparity of age between Henry and Eleanor was perhaps primarily responsible for their growing animosity; at forty-five she had patted the prime of her beauty, while he, eleven years her junior, was still in the full vigour of his lustful passions.

—King John,

W. L. WARREN

Eleanor began to dislike her husband, Presumably be was now more blatantly unfaithful even than before …

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

L
ATE SUMMER MELTED INTO
autumn; a mellow light came to the moors, a cooler wind blew in from the sea, and at last to my embarrassment and regret it became increasingly evident to me that I was going to have a child.

The news was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. It was the first time Griselda’s old-wives’ tales had proved of no use to me in preventing such a situation, for all my other pregnancies had either been wanted or at least due to a carelessness that I had not regretted later on. But this time I had not been careless. I had not wanted another child, and when my unfortunate condition was confirmed I was at first so disgusted that I could not even bring myself to tell Mark what had happened. However, there was no need to tell him immediately. Concealment was easy enough for the first few months, for he went away soon after the child was conceived and spent some time at London and at Oxford before returning to Penmarric for Christmas. Even then we saw so little of each other that he did not guess anything was amiss, and in the new year he returned to Oxford so that I was once more on my own.

He had bought a house now, a manor house in a village called Allengate not far from Oxford, where he could entertain his friends in greater style. He said it was more comfortable than living in rooms and that anyway he preferred a house in the country to cramped quarters in town. He even invited me to join him at Allengate Manor, but of course he knew I would refuse; he knew how I had hated Oxford during my one and only visit there, how uncomfortable I had been among his intellectual friends. My one consolation was that he planned to live at Allengate only during the academic year, and when he left Penmarric in early January he promised to return at Easter to see the children during Marcus’ school holidays.

When he did return I was seven months pregnant and no further concealment was possible.