Penmarric (65 page)

I was amused by this, but my mother naturally was annoyed.

“I do hope you’re not becoming too much of a bluestocking, Lizzie,” she said politely. “It’s well known that men despise aggressively intellectual women and prefer girls with softer, more feminine tastes. If you go around openly declaring your lack of interest in motherhood, you can hardly expect men to do anything except shun you whenever you enter a room.”

“I couldn’t care less,” said Lizzie. “Most men are stupid anyway. I’m not even sure I want to get married.”

“Well, dear, unless you do something about your appearance soon it’s possible no one will ask you. Is it really necessary for you to eat so much? It makes you too stout and all those sweet things give you spots. And do you really wash your hair once a week? Greasy hair is so unattractive.”

“Very well,” said Lizzie angrily. “My hair’s greasy and I’m fat and a bit spotty. But I for one don’t care!
You
may think that the most important thing for a woman is to be beautiful and marry successfully and have lots of marvelous children—why shouldn’t you? That’s all you’ve ever done in life! What’s so special about that anyway? Any fool can get married and have a baby. I’m going to do something exceptional!”

I felt I should intervene. “Shut up, Lizzie,” I said abruptly. “You’re being very rude to Mama.”

“Well, she was beastly rude to me!” shouted Lizzie in a rage. “Why should she expect me to be polite back? Parents take the most outrageous liberties with their children and then expect to get away with them—no, I won’t apologize, Philip! If you weren’t so besotted with Mama you’d see it was her fault to start with. Oh, men are so exasperating! Jan-Yves’s the only one who’s got any sense.” And she flounced out of the farmhouse. Since she returned to school a week later it was some time before we saw her again, and she never once wrote to my mother from Cheltenham.

By the time Jeanne entered her convent in the autumn of 1922 Lizzie had left school and was up at Cambridge reading classics. I was surprised that my father consented to this since I knew he was basically opposed to higher education for women, but evidently he had abandoned the struggle to oppose Lizzie’s masculine thirst for knowledge and Lizzie proceeded to fall head over heels in love with academic life. We still saw little of her, but shortly before the Christmas of 1922 she returned to Cornwall for a couple of weeks and on the day after her arrival she called at the farm to see us. Not expecting a visitor, my mother had gone to Zillan, but as it was a Sunday I was at home and found myself obliged to entertain Lizzie in the parlor till my mother returned. At first I wondered what on earth we could find to talk about, but I needn’t have worried; I had forgotten that Lizzie always had plenty to say for herself and soon I had long ceased to worry about where the next word was coming from.

“—so I think even you’d feel sorry for him these days,” she was saying as I recalled my wandering concentration. I had become bored during her lengthy eulogy on the subject of Cambridge. “After all, Marcus is dead, Mariana’s in Scotland, Jeanne’s in the convent, I’m away at Cambridge, Jan-Yves’s at Eton, and as far as Papa’s concerned you’re a total write-off. Who has he got left to keep him company? Of course Hugh calls two or three times a week and practically falls on his nose being the dutiful son, but he and Papa haven’t got much in common and soon get politely bored with each other. It’s true Adrian’s coming home this week for Christmas, but he’s too busy learning to be a clergyman and doing social work in his spare time to be much at Penmarric these days. That leaves William, but he’s hardly much of a companion for Papa since he spends at least three evenings a week with Charity Roslyn—I do wish he’d marry her! Who cares if she
was
the local tart anyway?—so really, when you come to consider the situation it’s awfully lucky that Papa has Alice. If it wasn’t for Alice I think he’d be horribly lonely.”

Alice Penmar.

I thought of the disastrous scene before the war in my father’s study. Alice had been in love with me in those days—or so she had said, but that was long ago now, long, long ago, and times had changed and people had changed with them.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Lizzie was saying blandly. “I don’t get on with Alice myself—she’s much too bossy and self- opinionated for me!—but I have to admit she’s a good conversationalist and nobody’s fool. She always dines with Papa, you know, if William’s spending the evening with Charity and if there’s no one else at home. She and Papa are very … friendly.”

After a moment I said with care, “Does she go out of her way to be friendly toward him, do you think?”

“You mean is she his mistress?” said Lizzie with interest. “I don’t
think
so. Jan-Yves and I have private bets about it. He thinks she is but I’m not so sure. I simply don’t think Papa could possibly be
that
desperate. Alice just isn’t the type; I’m not saying all unchaste women have to look like Charity Roslyn, but I do think they have to have a certain something, and whatever it is I don’t think Alice has got it. She’s so prim and proper and spinsterish! I simply can’t imagine her and Papa—well, you know … But Jan-Yves disagrees. He says Alice is just the type who would fall from virtue out of sheer frustration. What do you think?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her about Jan-Yves, whom she mentioned so often, but I did not. I had no real interest in him; we never saw each other since he never visited the farm, and it had long seemed obvious to me that we would remain strangers all our lives.

“What do you think, Philip?” repeated Lizzie, recalling my thoughts to the subject of Alice Penmar, “Can you visualize Alice as a fallen woman?”

I gave a short laugh and moved to the window to see if my mother showed signs of returning from Zillan. “You have an emancipated line of conversation, Lizzie. Is that the result of advanced education?” But even as I spoke several different ideas were flickering through my mind. I was thinking; that there was talk of changing the divorce laws so that a woman could sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery alone instead of adultery coupled with desertion. I was thinking that the last thing my father would ever want would be to see the granddaughter of his old and valued friend the rector of Zillan involved in an unsavory scandal. I was thinking that if I was careful, if I had sufficient proof, if the laws were changed in my mother’s favor, I might just possibly have found my father’s Achilles’ heel and an Achilles’ heel might be more than useful to me if severe difficulties over the mine’s future arose in the years ahead.

“It’s certainly an interesting idea,” I heard myself say at last to Lizzie. “I’ll have to think about it.”

I ran into trouble with my father again soon after that. There had been a lull since our last quarrel but presently I knew we were sure to clash again. In 1923 after paying fair dividends for three years, Sennen Garth had a bad year and went into the red. There was an accident resulting from faulty equipment and naturally I had no choice but to replace the equipment immediately in order to maintain the standards of safety for which the mine was now well known. Since there was no ready money available, however, I had to take out a loan. The loan wasn’t much, but I had to pay interest on it and so more good money went down the drain.

The situation at the mine made me try again to persuade my father to reverse his decision on Hugh’s sinecure, but my father clung on as firmly to his decision as I clung to mine and Hugh remained a gentleman of leisure. Hugh’s fortunes reached a new unjust zenith that year; he was playing the stock market so cunningly that he could afford to take Rebecca to London and live like a lord during their stay there; moreover, his financial affairs improved at home as well; his father-in-law died of pneumonia, and although Joss Roslyn had disinherited Rebecca and left his money and property to Jared’s only son Simon Peter, Jared offered on his son’s behalf to let her have her old home at the rent of a peppercorn a year. Rebecca didn’t want it, but Hugh had other ideas. I could well imagine him rubbing his hands in delight at the opportunity to make some extra money. When they moved to Morvah to take advantage of Jared’s offer Hugh leased the cottage which my mother had given him as a wedding present, and on arrival in Morvah he leased the Deveral Farm lands to the highest bidder. Then, having assured himself of a more comfortable home and a larger income, he settled himself on his backside again and prepared to idle away some more time with his wife and child. As far as I could gather they spent their time picknicking or swimming in one of the nearby coves. Hugh was a good swimmer, and I could imagine him passing his afternoons demonstrating his aquatic skills to his admiring wife and then sunbathing languidly with her on the beach. It was a fine life, I supposed—if one liked to be idle. Certainly there was no one who enjoyed being idle more than Hugh.

My father and I had another bitter correspondence on the subject of Hugh’s sinecure, but it was a waste of time. As the mine teetered on the brink of financial disaster I couldn’t decide whether I hated my father more than Hugh or hated Hugh more than my father.

It was 1924, the year Ramsay MacDonald led the Labour party to power for the first time. I voted for his party, just as most of my friends did, although my mother was horrified by my gesture and saw my political views as “improper.” Despite her background—or perhaps because of it—she firmly believed that it was a matter of good taste to vote Conservative, just as it was a matter of good taste to go to church every Sunday, hold one’s knife and fork correctly and avoid short skirts.

“But, Mama, things have changed since the war,” I pointed out reasonably. “We have to have a new Government with new views to fit the new times. The country’s in an appalling mess—the poverty among the working classes, the misery—”

“They should work all the harder instead of grumbling so much and going on strike,” said my mother firmly. “If you want to get on in life you have to work hard and not sit back in idleness.”

“But how can they work when there are no jobs? There are millions of unemployed and the numbers grow every day. These people have spent four years fighting for their country—and for what? To line up every day at the labor exchange? To face the humiliation of being unable to earn money to support their families? To live in condemned hovels because of the housing shortage? There have got to be some radical changes to improve things, Mama, and the Conservatives are hardly known for their radicalism. Neither are the Asquith Liberals, and the Lloyd George Liberals aren’t much better. Look what a mess the coalition government’s made of things! We need something quite new now, not more of the same ineffective recipe.”

“Merely because an idea is new,” said my mother tartly, “doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any better than old and proven ideas.”

I gave up. It was no use trying to persuade her to abandon her ingrained convictions, but when Ramsay MacDonald came to power I remained convinced that matters would soon improve throughout the country. They did improve slightly at Sennen Garth, but even though it was a better year for the mine I still had to take out another loan. Walter Hubert was beginning to look grim whenever the subject of money was mentioned but I didn’t care. I was determined that 1925 was going to be the year when matters would be righted and loans paid off.

But although I didn’t know it then the mine’s faint improvement was destined to last only a short time longer than the Labour Government—nine months. By the beginning of 1925 I was beginning to worry again, but I was still optimistic enough to be able to suppress my doubts most of the time. I was in a cheerful frame of mind when I rode back to Zillan one May evening from the mine—and found my mother entertaining the last person on earth I would have expected to see in the parlor of Roslyn Farm. At first I thought it was my father. I heard his laugh ring out as I crossed the hall, and his voice drawling lazily, “So there we were! Wasn’t that amusing?”

My mother laughed too. I had not heard her laugh so spontaneously or so happily for a long time.

I was amazed. Wondering why my father had chosen to call and display such extraordinary good humor, I flung open the door and walked into the room.

They were sitting at the table, just as my mother had sat facing my father when he had called to see her after Marcus had died. I still thought it was my father. It was not until the man turned and I saw his face, his black hair untouched with silver and his cynical, humorous mouth so different from my father’s that I knew who he was.

It was Jan-Yves.

“Philip!” he said gracefully. “How nice!” And despite his voice, his drawl and his marked physical resemblance to my father, I seemed to hear an echo of my mother in his manner and choice of words.

He stood up. He was six inches shorter than I was but tough and well-built. I remembered him as being a fat child, but now he was merely stocky and muscular. He moved with a curious grace, again unexpectedly reminiscent of my mother, and despite his calculating Penmar eyes he had a wide, innocent smile which reminded me at once of Hugh.

I distrusted him. My mother was saying with shining eyes, “Isn’t this exciting, Philip? After all these years! I could hardly believe it when I saw him riding down the hill from Chûn.”

I managed to say to Jan-Yves, “I thought you were up at Oxford?” I knew he had gone up to Christ Church in the autumn of the previous year and since it was still only May I was surprised to see him back in Cornwall again. “What are you doing in Zillan?”

“Mending my ways,” said Jan-Yves with his innocent smile. “Is it ever too late to reform? Egged on by Papa and Mr. Barnwell and my conscience, I decided to ride over to Roslyn Farm bearing the olive branch of peace. Mama quite naturally nearly fainted with shock, so to revive her we selected the best bottle of elderberry wine and—well, here we are! It’s as simple as that!”

Of course it wasn’t as simple as that at all. It turned out that he had been sent down from Oxford for some reason which he glossed over with great adroitness, and it seemed obvious enough to me that having blotted his copybook so badly with my father he had decided to compensate himself by seeking a little attention elsewhere. When I went outside later to see him off I was about to say as much to him when he launched into a speech full of such lavish praise for my mother and such lavish regret that he had not visited the farm before that I was caught off my guard, and before I knew where I was I was promising to have a drink with him after work the next day in the bar of Charity’s pub in St. Just.