Penmarric (61 page)

What my father thought of this rigmarole I have no idea, but my mother was very dubious and said she did hope Mariana hadn’t rushed into the marriage too impulsively.

I made no comment. Mariana was old enough to know her own mind by that time, and if she wanted to live in Scotland with a man old enough to be her grandfather that was her business, not mine.

As for Adrian, I wasn’t much surprised that he had reverted to the pious inclinations he had shown as a child. I could easily picture him wearing a surplice and invoking his congregation to ask God to bless all the poor and suffering. It occurred to me with relief that once he was a curate he would be assigned to some faraway parish and I wouldn’t have to see him any more, and to be honest I admit I found the thought a pleasant one.

But with Hugh’s marriage I was much more heavily involved.

We were at the station to meet him when he came home from the war. His discharge from the army had been delayed by the fact that his cushy little ADC job was just as hard to ditch as it had been to acquire and the VIP whom he was supposed to assist had been busy after the Armistice with security measures regarding the peace treaty negotiations at Versailles. However, now the treaty was signed and Hugh was almost home again; my mother, beside herself with excitement, kept clutching my arm as if she were afraid she might topple over with her joy. I felt excited myself. It had been a long time—over three years—since I had seen him, and distance, as everyone knows, lends enchantment. I forgot his more unfortunate tendencies and remembered only what a good companion he was and how amusing it would be to see him again.

As the train drew into the station we saw him lean out of the window to look for us, and my mother broke away from me and ran down the platform toward him. Within seconds the train had halted, the door had opened and he was falling into her arms.

He looked well, his hair bleached to a pale gold by foreign sunshine, his eyes vivid blue against his tanned skin. He was only twenty-one but seemed older, and his body looked fit and tough and muscular beneath his uniform.

“Trust you to come through the entire war without a scratch,” I said. “I might have known.”

We were still laughing together a second later when my father and Jeanne arrived to provide the welcoming contingent from Penmarric. Elizabeth and Jan-Yves were away at school, and I was relieved to notice that there was no sign of either William or Adrian.

After the first confused moments of the reunions, my father said to my mother, “Would you and Philip like to come to Penmarric for lunch? Only Jeanne and I are at home today, so it would be pleasant if you could both join us to welcome Hugh back to the house.”

“Well,” said my mother, considering the invitation and looking up at me for advice. “Yes, perhaps—”

And then, suddenly, with no warning at all, Hugh left us. He flew down the platform like a bullet from a gun and as he ran I saw Rebecca Roslyn running toward him from the station entrance. She wore a drab coat, but beneath it blazed an emerald green dress, and as I watched I saw her black hair escape from its fastenings beneath her ineffectual little hat and stream behind her like a banner in the wind.

She hurtled into Hugh’s arms and stuck there. The embrace that followed was so intimate that it bordered on indecency, and everyone turned to gape at the exhibition.

“It’s Rebecca Roslyn!” said Jeanne, surprised. “I didn’t know Hugh knew her!”

I glanced at my parents. Their expressions were not encouraging. My father’s narrow eyes became narrower and his hard mouth became harder, while my mother’s wide-eyed astonishment gradually gave way to a wide-eyed disapproval.

“Well, well,” I said, amused. “What a dramatic reunion! Are you going to invite her to Penmarric as well, Father?”

“No doubt Hugh’s already done so,” my father said.

He had. They came toward us hand in hand, smiling sunnily at each other, oblivious of everyone except themselves, and when they reached us they turned and smiled sunnily at my parents.

“Rebecca and I are engaged,” said Hugh with pride, the suave cynicism I knew so well displaced by a sincerity I hadn’t known he possessed. “We’ve waited over three years for this moment, haven’t we, darling? We were secretly engaged before I went away, but we agreed not to tell anyone until I got home again.”

My parents were struck dumb. Jeanne opened her mouth as if to say, “How wonderful!” but closed it again in uncertainty.

“That’s nice,” I said, amused. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations,” said Jeanne quickly, following my lead. “How exciting.” But she sounded nervous about it.

My mother looked at my father. My father looked at Rebecca.

“Do your parents know about this yet?” he said not unpleasantly. “Does your father approve?”

The girl blushed, still starry-eyed. “I haven’t told my parents yet, Mr. Castallack.”

“Then isn’t this rather … premature? I presume you intend to ask Mr. Roslyn’s permission, Hugh, for his daughter’s hand.”

“Come, Papa,” said Hugh, happy as a lark and just about as unconcerned, “you know what Joss Roslyn would say if I did! Rebecca’s twenty-one in August, so we’ll get married as soon as possible after that. We all know Roslyn won’t approve of the marriage, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get married as soon as Rebecca no longer needs his legal consent.”

“I see,” said my father in his politest voice. “Very interesting. Well, the station platform at Penzance is hardly the place to discuss such important family matters. I suggest you lunch with us at Penmarric, Miss Roslyn, and we can discuss the situation in more detail later.”

“I’ve already asked her to lunch,” said Hugh gaily, “and she says she’ll come. Will there be room in the car, Papa, or shall Rebecca and I hire transport of our own?”

“There’ll be room for you both in the car,” said my father shortly. He turned to my mother. “Janna, if you would care to travel with us in the car, Jeanne can go in the ponytrap with Philip. It would be more comfortable for you and I’m sure you want to talk to Hugh.”

We sorted ourselves out and presently Jeanne and I set off in the ponytrap as the car roared away from the station ahead of us.

“Well!” I said. “That’s set the cat among the pigeons! I wonder what line Father will take. It’s obvious he And Mama will be opposed to the marriage.”

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” murmured Jeanne, who was incurably romantic at heart. “She’s pretty, isn’t she? I can see why Hugh likes her. Oh, I don’t care if it
is
unsuitable! It’s lovely to think of them writing to each other for nearly four years, each faithful to the other …”

Knowing Hugh’s sexual inclinations, I doubted if he were capable of maintaining a strict celibacy for four years, but naturally I couldn’t say this to Jeanne. She was already taking the dewy-eyed feminine view of the situation and planning what she should wear at the wedding. I wondered what would happen at Penmarric.

In fact what happened was predictable enough. For once my parents were in complete agreement with each other; neither of them wanted a grandchild who had Joss Roslyn’s blood in his veins. After lunch my father said to them in his politest voice that while he and my mother bore Rebecca no ill-feeling whatsoever they really felt they couldn’t accept the engagement until Hugh had obtained Roslyn’s consent.

“Well, of course we’ll get married anyway,” said Hugh nonchalantly in private to me later. “After Rebecca’s twenty-one who the hell cares what our parents think? Besides, I don’t see how Papa can disapprove of the marriage for long—he married when he was younger than I am to a woman of a lower class than himself.”

“And took how that ended!”

“Yes, but that’s no good reason for assuming my marriage will automatically end in the same way!”

“True … It’s a pity she is who she is. I don’t think they would be half as opposed to the idea if she was anyone but Joss Roslyn’s daughter.”

“But God damn it, that’s not her fault! Poor girl, she’s terrified of him. I can’t wait to get her out of that house. She’s had a miserable existence there, and now her mother’s ill things are ten times worse than they were already.”

“What’s the matter with her mother?”

“I’m not sure. I’m afraid it might be serious because she refuses to discuss it with Rebecca.”

There was a pause. After a moment I said curiously, “You weren’t faithful to Rebecca in France, of course.”

“I didn’t fall in love with anyone else. She’s the one I love.”

“But you—”

“Oh God, of course I made use of the camp women! What the devil have they got to do with it? Could you conceivably exist for over three years without having a woman of any description?”

I was silent. I had never understood Hugh’s compulsion to go to bed with a woman whenever he had the opportunity. It was true I had sometimes considered having a brief affair in an attempt to discover why such a pastime should be so irresistible to him, but I had never met a woman who had attracted me enough to override my wariness of all the risks that were involved. I had no wish for rumors of any bad behavior of mine to reach my mother’s ears. I don’t say she wouldn’t have understood if I had had my fling with the village girls, but she had suffered enough from my father’s fornications, and I didn’t intend her to suffer from mine.

In an effort to change the subject I said abruptly to Hugh, “What are you going to live on when you get married? You’ll need a job-—Papa won’t give you anything while he’s in a hostile mood, and it’s no good expecting a penny from Joss Roslyn.”

“Oh …” Hugh yawned as if this were a very minor detail, “I’ll get some job which pays the maximum of money for the minimum of effort. I’ll think of something.” He smiled at me lazily with his innocent blue eyes. “I’ve always been rather good at making money.”

I smiled too, but if I had known where his future source of income was to come from I wouldn’t have smiled at all. Unknown to us both, our friendship was already sailing blithely toward the waiting rocks to wreck itself beyond repair.

They married six weeks later after running away to London immediately after Rebecca’s twenty-first birthday. Somehow they managed to keep their engagement a secret from Joss Roslyn, but Rebecca had told her mother, who had encouraged the affair as vigorously as she could whenever her husband’s back was turned. But the vigor she possessed was too weak to give them more than token support; she died a month before Rebecca’s birthday and was buried according to her wishes—and contrary to her husband’s—at St. Just by the Penmar family tomb.

What Joss Roslyn thought of his daughter’s elopement so soon after his wife’s funeral can well be imagined. He shut himself up in his farmhouse for a week, spoke to nobody and allowed his anger to simmer in silence. When he left the house again he rode to St. Ives—“To see his lawyer there,” said my mother’s servant, Ethel Turner, who always knew everything, “to cut Miss Rebecca out of his will, as like as not. Joss Roslyn got a powerful lot of money when he upped and married Miss Clarissa Penmar, that we all know and he won’t be a-wanting Miss Rebecca to get the money now.”

My parents were at first as furious as Roslyn, but Hugh had enough charm and cunning to wind anyone around his little finger if he tried hard enough, and he soon softened my mother’s heart with two treacly letters in which he laid on the sentiment with a shovel while begging his darling mama’s forgiveness. I wasn’t in the least surprised when she finally relented far enough to have them to stay at the farm when they returned to Cornwall from London and even gave them the tenant farm up the valley as a wedding present; this was a cottage which had belonged to Jared Roslyn, but my mother had bought him out when she had returned to the farm to live and it had been empty for some years. I supposed I ought to offer some sort of a wedding present, so I offered to pay to have plumbing installed, the walls painted and the chimney swept.

“Oh, that would be kind!” exclaimed Rebecca with shining eyes. “Thank you so much.” She turned to her husband. “We’ll have a home of our own after all, Hugh!”

“Yes,” said Hugh, who had always turned up his nose at agricultural dwellings. “That’ll be nice.”

The next day he rode over to Penmarric to try to make his peace with my father.

On the whole he had more success than I had anticipated. My father refused to pay him an allowance in future or offer him any financial help, but he said he would like to see Rebecca again and asked Hugh to bring her to Penmarric to dinner at the end of the week. When they arrived he gave them a dinner service and a canteen of silver and said he hoped they would have a happy married life together; he was too clever to give them a check in lieu of a gift, and even as it was Rebecca had a struggle to prevent Hugh pawning the silver. However, they were now on speaking terms with my father and were accepted at Penmarric, so Hugh felt he had made a step in the right direction. He was confident he would soon be able to persuade my father to renew the monthly allowance, and I had a suspicion my father would in the end capitulate, finance the marriage and forgive them.

Unfortunately Joss Roslyn was not prepared to follow my father’s example. He stormed over to the farm on the Sunday after their return from London and told Rebecca in front of us all that he never wanted to see her again and that as far as he was concerned she could go to the devil along with her mother.

We all rose to speak. Hugh was scarlet with fury, my mother pink with indignation, and I’ve no idea what color I was. But Rebecca silenced us all. Up till that moment she had always been so quiet and polite that my mother had privately called her colorless, but now at last we saw the real Rebecca and it soon became clear that the word “colorless” no longer did her justice.

We gaped at her.

“Don’t you dare speak of my mother like that!” Her words rang out across the farm kitchen, and her quiet over-refined little voice was suddenly harsh and wild and full of Cornish. “My mother was a true lady and why she married you I’ll never know since you never had a good word to say for her morning, noon or night. Once you’d got your filthy hands on her money you never had a moment’s time for her! I know! She told me! You only married her so that you could set yourself up in a big house with a lot of land and try and make yourself out to be a landowning gentleman. You—a gentleman! My God! You weren’t even fit to shine my mother’s shoes, let alone share the house she lived in!”