Penmarric (59 page)

Personally I disagreed with this, but I realized I couldn’t be expected to understand a bereaved female, so I said nothing. In my opinion Mariana was much too calculating to let her bereavement impair her judgment and was already cheering herself up with the prospect of hunting for husband number two.

My father wrote back to my mother to say he agreed with her letter, so presumably he tried to persuade Mariana to stay in Cornwall. But as I had suspected, Mariana was anxious to jump back on what remained of the aristocracy’s social merry-go-round. Friends in Scotland invited her to stay and after declaring that Penmarric was “positively too dreary to tolerate a second longer” she went north to Edinburgh and spent the next two years flitting from one country mansion to the next like a lost butterfly.

“Not at all proper for a young widow,” said my mother, but by this time she sounded more disapproving than anxious. “She’ll get herself talked about if she’s not careful.”

“Come, Mama!” I said in an effort to dispel her gloom. “What’s wrong with visiting friends?” But my mother pursed her lips and shook her head and—to my relief—kept her darkest thoughts to herself.

I had too much on my mind at that time to bother myself about Mariana. We had found considerable wealth under the sea and both the miners and the Government were well satisfied. However, our success meant that there was so much to organize that often I did not get below ground at all but was kept busy attending to endless details at the surface. We hired more miners, organized the shifts, appointed the shift bosses, employed men to work at the surface in attending to all the subsidiary jobs required to keep the mine in order. Sawyers and carpenters were kept busy working at the timber which the mine was now devouring as fast as we shipped it to St. Just. Pitmen began their task of regular inspection of the pumps, and in the count house there was paperwork to do, forms to fill in, accounts to keep. I engaged an experienced purser to assist the inadequate civil servant whom the Government had appointed and spent long hours with my father’s solicitor, Michael Vincent, who kept hovering around to see that everything was done according to the law. My own position still remained theoretically vague, but in practice I continued to be in charge. How I managed this I don’t know, but despite my inexperience Trevose never took a big step without consulting me and neither did the Government’s puppet of a managing director and neither did the purser. I was the boss. It was all most mysterious, but since the net result was that I spent as much time as I could below ground with the miners I was happier than I had ever been in my life before.

The Government paid me a generous salary, part of which I gave to my mother and most of which I put in the bank. I had more respect for money than I had had when I had walked out of my father’s house in London five years earlier, but now that my mine was well provided for money was of little interest to me.

The months passed. I had just managed to absorb myself in my work so entirely that I had forgotten all my worries, even my guilt about the war, when my father sought me out a week before my twenty-first birthday and steam-rollered me into accepting his invitation to dine at Penmarric.

I had seen my father now and then since the mine had been reopened, for he would usually attend the regular monthly meetings held to discuss the mine’s progress, but it had evidently been his decision to interfere as little as possible with the proceedings, and since he seemed determined to remain in the background as far as the mine was concerned, we managed to avoid quarreling with each other. We might have seen each other more often than once a month, I suppose, but we did not. To be honest I must admit that this was my fault, not his. He had congratulated me after the lode had been discovered and had several times invited me to Penmarric to see him, but I had always found an excuse for not accepting his invitations. I would have refused this invitation to dinner too if it had come in the form of a written note, but it did not. This time he was too clever for me. He turned up at the mine, met me when I came out of the “dry” one evening and publicly issued the invitation. Since we were surrounded by a dozen miners, all with their ears flapping, I found myself unable to think of a reasonable excuse, so I accepted. It was for that same evening, so I could not even invent an excuse later on. I did try to say I had no evening clothes to wear, but he said we would dine informally; Jeanne and Elizabeth had gone for a week to Exmouth with their governess, Jan-Yves was at school and William was to be out for the evening; we would dine alone together.

“My mother—” I began.

“I have the note written to send to your mother,” be said. “One of the stable boys can ride over to Roslyn Farm with it at once.”

He had thought of everything.

“Very well,” I said ungraciously. “If you like.”

We rode back to Penmarric together, neither of us speaking, and on entering the house we went to the library while we waited for dinner to be served.

My father offered me a drink.

“I never touch spirits,” I said.

“How wise. Perhaps you’d like some cider?”

“Beer.”

“Certainly,” he said and told the butler to bring me a bottle from the pantry. There was a new butler at Penmarric. Old Medlyn had retired to nurse his gout at last, and James, the first footman, who turned out to be young Medlyn, had taken his father’s place. Young Medlyn was a soft-footed fifty-year-old, very deft and sure of himself. I wondered how he got on with the housekeeper, but of course I did not like to introduce the subject of Alice Penmar.

My father tried to make conversation with me about the mine, but I wasn’t interested in discussing it with him, so I said little. In fact I wasn’t interested in discussing anything with him, and he soon realized his mistake in inviting me to dine at Penmarric as if we were old friends.

Dinner was a disaster. He tried to talk about the mine again, but that was still no good. Presently he asked me about my friends and on hearing that they were all working-class men he asked if I was still in touch with any of my school friends.

I said I wasn’t.

He asked if I heard from Peter Waymark, George and Aubrey Carnforth and Francis St. Enedoc, all of whom were my contemporaries fighting overseas.

I said I hadn’t.

He asked me if I ever saw the Waymark girls, Peter’s two sisters, who lived at Gurnards Grange.

“No.”

“I suppose you don’t meet many girls.”

“No, I have enough on my mind at present without coping with women as well!”

“Perhaps you’re wise. It would be a pity if you fell in love now and wanted to get married. It’s a mistake to marry too young.”

I helped myself to more vegetables. “You should know,” I said.

We were silent for some time after that. Finally it was he who spoke first.

“It’s your twenty-first birthday next week, isn’t it?” he said. “How unfortunate that the war’s on and everyone’s away! However, we should have some sort of celebration. What would you like to do?”

“Stand my friends a round of drinks in the pub,” I said. “Play darts with Alun Trevose. Have dinner with my mother.”

“Why don’t you bring your mother to dinner at Penmarric? The girls will be here and we can invite—”

“No thanks.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to come on your own for a short time. We can all drink your health in champagne.”

“No thanks.”

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

We finished our meal. After the cloth was drawn he offered me a glass of port, which I declined, and I was just wondering if I could make my escape when Young Medlyn tiptoed into the room with an envelope on the silver salver.

My father took one look at it and went white to the lips.

“This just arrived, sir,” whispered Medlyn. “Special messenger. Penzance post office.”

It was a telegram. My heart began to thump against my chest. I thought: Adrian’s dead. Then as I stared at my father I thought, unforgivably: Serve him right. But I clamped down on the thought at once and tried to hope for his sake that Adrian was alive.

My father took the envelope. Medlyn backed away and hovered by the sideboard. Finally, not being able to invent an excuse to linger in the room, he padded away into the hall and closed the doors softly behind him.

We were alone.

“Dear me,” said my father, tearing open the seal. “I’m afraid this must be bad news.”

He took out the slip of paper, unfolded it methodically and stared at it for a long time.

I heard myself say rapidly in an uneven voice, “Is it Adrian? Is he dead? Is Adrian dead?”

He looked up at me. His face was ashen and his eyes were bloodshot with pain. “No,” he said. “Marcus.” He got up then, levering himself to his feet like an old man, said “excuse me” in a very polite voice and walked blindly out of the room into the hall.

The sudden death of the Young Henry from dysentery was a sad blow to his father… The Young Henry was the only member of the family who gave no evidence of political sagacity, military skill or even ordinary intelligence but such, after all, are not looked for in a fairytale prince … He was tall, handsome, gay and splendidly improvident.

—King John,

W. L.
WARREN

Richard was practically an independent ruler in Aquitaine. He … behaved as though England were a foreign power…

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

A
FTER A WHILE I
read the telegram. Marcus hadn’t even been killed in action. He had died of dysentery three weeks after his twenty-third birthday.

I got up, walked to the window, drew the curtain. Outside lay the grounds of Penmarric, the lawn where Marcus and I had raced when we were children, the Cornish night air cool beneath the pale evening sky. I remembered the last time I had seen him, heard his voice and his careless laugh and his confident “I give the Germans exactly six months!” I thought how he had irritated me, how impatient I had been with him, how often I had dismissed him as a fool.

My blunt nails bit into the palms of my hands.

I began to walk up and down the room and every few minutes I would pick up the telegram and read it again. In spite of myself I began to remember all the things it would have been best not to think about, how much he had enjoyed life, how much he had hated fighting, how little he had deserved this early grave. Even his manner of dying seemed undeserved; Marcus should have stopped an enemy bullet and died a hero’s death, but no—even that was denied him. Instead he had rotted away with some disgusting disease and now he was dead; I would never see him again, and death was the end because there was no God, no after-life, nothing at all except nothingness and non-existence and non-being.

There was sweat on my forehead. My hand shook. I went through the hall and let myself out of the front door into the drive. I stood there, taking great gulps of fresh air, and then I ran to the stables, got my horse and set off down the drive at the gallop. I rode as hard as I could, as if I could outpace my primitive and shameful fear of death; I rode until my horse was sweating with exhaustion. I rode until I reached St. Just and then I dismounted, entered the pub and ordered the largest shot of brandy I could buy.

Mr. Barnwell came from Zillan rectory to be with my mother, and my father even rode over from Penmarric, but there was little either of them could do. As for myself I felt useless, too aware that I could not help her, too upset by what had happened, too resentful that my father should have intruded on her grief and attempted to supplant what small comfort I might have been able to offer her. When he and the rector left at last I could only feel relieved, despite my secret reluctance to shoulder the burden of my mother’s distress. I hated to see her unhappy. I couldn’t stand to see her grieve. But I stood it and tolerated it as best as I could until gradually she became resigned to her loss and began to pick up the threads of her normal life again.

However, she was fated to have more than her fair share of bereavement in 1916. In the autumn her great-aunt Griselda died at last, and although Griselda had been a difficult old woman my mother was saddened to lose her. Griselda had cared for her during her childhood, and in turn my mother had later cared for her; a lesser woman would have abandoned such an unpresentable reminder of a poverty-stricken past, but even when my mother had been mistress of Penmarric she had seen that Griselda lived comfortably in her own little cottage on the estate.

1917 came. In retrospect I think 1917 was the worst year of the war—at least for those of us who remained in England. It’s easy now to look back and say things can’t have been too bad because peace was only a year away, but at the time peace seemed more remote and the war more oppressive than ever. By this time shortages of all necessities were chronic; we learned later that at the end of April the stores of food for the entire country could be stretched to last only six weeks. The German U-boats were trying to starve us into submission, and during the first few months of the year nearly two million tons of shipping ended up at the bottom of the sea. Easy now to look back and say that the U-boat sinkings propelled the United States into the war and made the vital difference in the balance of power, but at home the long-range view was obscured by the immediate consequences of rationing, deprivation and hardship.

In London Asquith had been ousted and the Government was in the hands of Lloyd George—a good thing, I thought, since Asquith’s gentlemanly passivity hardly lended itself to effective wartime leadership, but by then the discomforts of civilian life had reached the point where a new hand at the helm made little difference to the man in the street. Abroad the muddled bloodshed streamed on unabated; an advance of five miles wiped out thousands more of our men at Passchendaele, while Russia, in a state of military collapse, was dissolving into revolution. Not that we cared much in Cornwall about Russia, but we did care about the carnage at Passchendaele.