Penmarric (35 page)

It was more private too. When Papa came to visit us she simply told the daily servants not to come in for a few days. “It’s more fun if we can all be alone together,” she said, “and I do so hate to think of servants watching us the whole time. I love to be a little more secluded now and then.” It meant that she was much more busy, but she did not mind. She had to do the cooking and cleaning herself although William and I helped her with the shopping. William used to run many errands for her. He was four and a half years older than I was and was allowed to go out on his own since Mama knew he would not be run down by a cab or lose his way in the bewildering network of London streets.

Papa did not visit us often, at least not when I was very young, and so on each occasion that he did come it was a great event. Mama would instantly cancel all her social duties, even church charity work; the vicar used to be annoyed when she let him down at short notice, but he merely had to endure his annoyance. When Papa was coming everything else was set on one side. The house was cleaned from top to bottom and the larder was stocked with the most delicious food the shops could offer. Mama moved out of the spare room where she always slept when she was on her own and returned to the main bedroom with the double bed and the thick carpet and the water-color paintings on the walls. Vases were filled with flowers, silver was polished, William and I were dressed in our best clothes and Mama took her finest gowns out of their dust covers in the wardrobe.

I used to become sick with excitement. Every time I heard the clatter of horses’ hoofs on the road outside I would dash to the front window and stand on tiptoe to see if the carriage had stopped. William, infuriatingly casual, would be pretending to read the morning paper and pausing occasionally to nibble his fingernails. Mama would wander from room to room, her eyes bright, a spot of color on each cheek, her fingers clasped together as if she could not, bear the agony of waiting one moment longer.

Finally, after a seemingly infinite space of time, a hansom cab would draw up at the gate and Papa, carrying his luggage himself, would walk up the garden path to the front door.

Papa was, as Mama used to say, a very foreign-looking gentleman. He did not look like an Englishman. “Which is hardly surprising,” he used to say, “since I was born and bred in Cornwall.” He was dark, with thick hair as black as jet, an oddly pallid skin and arresting dark eyes which had a peculiarly magnetic quality. We could not take our eyes off him whenever he opened his mouth to speak, but whether that was because we all unashamedly idolized him or because of any hypnotic powers he might have possessed, it would be difficult to say. He was only an inch or two taller than Mama and a trifle stout. “Well-built,” said Mama. “What a fine figure he has!” She never, of course, forgot either of us once during his visits, but it was always unquestioned that Papa came first. Our duty was not to claim her attention at such times but simply to help her make his visit as splendid as possible.

I used to talk about history with him. Papa was a historian—“A very brilliant scholar,” said Mama—and led such a busy life between his researches at Oxford and his estate in Cornwall that he did not have time to visit us for long.

“Indeed,” said Mama, “he’s so busy that we must consider ourselves very, very fortunate that we see him at all.” She would often say that when his visit had ended, and he had gone away. The flowers would droop in their vases, and she would droop a little too, becoming quieter, sighing now and then, putting away her fine gowns and taking out her well-worn day dresses once more. The servants would come back; life would go on; everything would be as it was before.

She would write to him, of course. I was five years old when I was able to read the name on the envelope and learned that Papa’s surname was different from ours. I said to William, “Why isn’t Papa called Parrish too?”

“Because he’s not,” said William tranquilly.

Then why aren’t we called Castallack?”

“Because we’re not.”

“Why?”

“Oh, honestly, Adrian, all you ever do is ask why this, why that, why the other! You’re the nosiest little nuisance I ever met. We’re not called Castallack because Mama
chose
not to be called by that name. She told me all about it years ago. She promised her father she would always call herself by his name, which was Parrish, and that her children would be called Parrish too. He had no son and it was his dying wish that the name Parrish shouldn’t be wiped from the face of the earth.”

“I see,” I said, satisfied, recalling countless dying wishes in fairy tales and picturing Grandfather Parrish on his regal death-bed with his beautiful daughter kneeling heartbroken beside him. In fairy tales she would be the good princess and after the death of the king her wicked stepmother would shut her up in a tower until her prince came to set her free.

It was hard to know which I enjoyed most—fairy tales, legends or historical myths. “When I’m grown up,” I said to Papa one day, “I shall go on a crusade like Richard Coeur de Lion and wear a white cross on my chest and rescue damsels in distress—”

“That was St. George,” said William loftily, “and anyway, silly, there aren’t any more crusades.”

“Then I shall make one,” I said firmly. “I shall go out into the world and fight Evil.”

“To fight
is
evil,” said Papa, but he was smiling at me and holding my hand in his, and suddenly I was so pleased merely to be walking down a street with him that it did not matter that his words made no sense to me. I could feel my heart almost burst with love for him because he was so good and wise and kind.

“Why doesn’t Papa live with us always?” I said to Mama longingly. “Why doesn’t he stop being busy and come to live with us in St. John’s Wood?”

“He does live with us when he can,” said Mama reasonably, “but he has great commitments at his estate in Cornwall and of course he has work to do at Oxford. We mustn’t expect him to come more often.”

“Dear Jesus Christ,” I prayed idly, watching the sunlight stream through the church’s stained-glass windows as the vicar reached the most boring part of his sermon. “Please make Papa come to see us more often. Please make him come to live with us. I’ll be good forever and ever. Thank you. Amen.”

Since I saw no reason why such a natural and reasonable request could be refused I was not in the least surprised when my prayer was promptly answered. Papa had decided to spend most of the year in Oxfordshire so that he could conduct his historical research and writing within easy reach of the library there, and when he bought an old manor house in the village of Allengate ten miles from Oxford we all left St. John’s Wood to be with him. He still had to spend Christmas and Easter at his distant Cornish estate which had consumed so much of his time in the past, but apart from these two holidays and a week or two during the summer months he promised he would be living with us all the year round.

At first the prospect seemed too splendid to be true. I spent some hours thinking nervously that the unknown Allengate Manor might be a horrible place, but I need not have worried. The manor was the most beautiful house I had ever seen, and so enormous after our little house in St. John’s Wood that we could hardly believe our eyes when we first saw it. There were acres of grounds, including lawns, flowerbeds, a vegetable patch, an orchard and even a sunken rose garden. Beyond the lawns a stream ran a tumbling course through tall beech woods and was dammed at one point to form a small pool. Near the house were the stables, and next to the stables was yet another outbuilding, this one housing the carriage and the ponytrap. We had to accustom ourselves to the presence of grooms and gardeners and, inside the house, a butler, a parlor maid, a scullery maid, a ’tween maid and a cook.

“Papa must be very rich,” said William, amazed, to Mama. “How can he afford all this?”

“Darling, Papa is a gentleman of considerable means and he is very used to living in this way. Such gentlemen do not have to worry about money. Now, we must try and adjust ourselves as smoothly as possible to his way of life because he was always able to adjust himself so easily to ours when he visited St. John’s Wood.”

William said slowly, “Papa is really much grander than us, then.”

“Yes, darling, much. As you know, my poor papa was only a country doctor and he and I had a very modest house in Devon with only a cook and a gardener to help us. Your papa has always been accustomed to large houses and grand surroundings and innumerable servants. He is of the aristocracy even though he has no title, but I am simply from the middle classes. But it doesn’t matter. You needn’t be one jot ashamed that so far you’ve only had a modest middle-class upbringing. There’s nothing shameful about that at all. The middle classes are the backbone of England and Papa is as proud of that fact as I am. Heavens, we can’t all be born with silver spoons in our mouths! The most important thing is not that you should be aristocrats but that you should be gentlemen. A true gentleman may go anywhere in the world and be both accepted and respected by all levels of society.”

It did not take us long to settle down at Allengate, and soon I had decided that I liked it much better than St. John’s Wood. The only aspect of life at Allengate that I did not like was the pretend game. We had never had to play it at St. John’s Wood, for Mama had never invited guests to the house while Papa was there, but at Allengate she would assist Papa in giving dinner parties for his friends and when the friends came and we were presented to them we had to pretend that we were not Papa’s sons but his wards and that our real father had died some years before.

I can still remember Papa telling us that we had to play the pretend game. It was the night before we moved to Allengate and he was alone with us while Mama was in the kitchen.

“You see,” he said in an odd voice, “if people realized that you were my sons yet did not have my name they would think all kinds of bad things about Mama. So in order to protect Mama—”

“But why would people think bad things about her?” I said, mystified.

“You’re much too young to understand,” said William grandly, and added to Papa, “Yes, I can see why we must pretend for Mama’s sake, but why can’t we simply change our name from Parrish to Castallack? Wouldn’t that be much simpler?”

“I’m afraid,” said Papa, “that’s not possible, William. You see—”

“Of course it’s not!” I was scandalized. “Remember the promise Mama made to Grandfather Parrish, William!” I turned to Papa again. “Papa, I still don’t see why anyone should say nasty things about Mama.”

Papa tried to speak but took a mouthful of brandy instead. His cigar had gone out. As he laid its mangled body down upon the plate I saw to my amazement that his fingers were trembling.

“Adrian, you’re such a baby,” said William, exasperated. “I know you can’t help it, but you are. People might think he and Mama weren’t married if they misunderstood the situation and that would be very horrible for Mama, so—”

“I don’t understand.” My filing and classification system had been put out of joint. “How can there ever be any question of Mama and Papa not being married? How can people have babies if they’re not married to each other?”

“Oh, honestly!” said William, scarlet with embarrassment. He looked at Papa under his lashes and twisted uncomfortably in his seat. “They just can, that’s all. Marriage is just the blessing of the church and children don’t have anything to do with it, except that marriage is a holy thing and children are supposed to be the result of a holy thing. That’s why no one wants to have children without a marriage because if they did it wouldn’t be holy.”

“Children after marriage are good, you mean,” I said, classifying again after my uncomfortable moment of confusion. “And children before or without marriage are bad and unholy. I see.” I turned to Papa again. “You mean people might make a mistake and think we were all wicked and sinful if we didn’t play the pretend game.”

“Children are innocent victims,” said Papa, not looking at us. His hands were dissecting the cigar and tearing it to pieces. “No one would think badly of either of you. But they would indeed think Mama was sinful and wicked.”

“How cruel!” I said angrily. “Mama’s the best person in all the world! In that case, let’s play the pretend game and then no one will ever have the chance to think such horrible things.”

So we played the pretend game, but I hated to listen to Papa saying, “These are my two wards, William, and Adrian Parrish,” and although she never said one word to us about the situation I knew that Mama hated it too. The guests were always kind and interested and usually asked us one or two questions but sometimes they looked at one another and I wondered if they had seen through our pretense. Everyone always looked very hard at William. I knew why. William had inherited Papa’s unusual eyes although otherwise he looked much like Mama.

I looked like nobody. My eyes were bluer than Mama’s and a different shape. My hair was fair but darker than Mama’s and not so fine and silky. I did not resemble Mama at all in features, but neither did I resemble Papa except in one small respect. My hands were like his. They were squarish hands with strong fingers and crooked thumbs, odd hands, rather ugly.

Time passed and at last came the summer of 1904 when Mama and I had to travel to London together to buy my uniform and all the quantity of shoes and other garments I needed to begin life at boarding school. William had already been going to preparatory school at Rottingdean near Brighton for two years and was by this time well accustomed to leaving home for long periods at a time, but as summer drew toward autumn I became more and more nervous at the prospect of going away and secretly longed to remain at Allengate and continue to do my lessons with the vicar every morning.

Mama seemed nervous too when she and Papa came to the station to see us depart, and for a panic-stricken moment I thought she did not want me to go any more than I wanted to leave. But then she smiled and I decided she was not nervous at all, only excited and happy that I should be on the brink of a new adventure.