Penmarric (67 page)

“It’s an attitude I don’t possess, then,” said Jeanne, nearly in tears, and ran out of the room before anything more could be said.

“Poor Jeanne!” said Jan-Yves to me later when the women were washing the dishes and we were alone. “But she’s quite right, of course. She’s not attractive to men. Lizzie’s ten times more attractive than Jeanne, if you ask me, but Mama’s never going to believe that because Jeanne is technically pretty and Lizzie isn’t technically anything except plain and plump.”

Jan-Yves was often at the farm these days. I did not resent his presence—on the contrary, I was glad he had stepped forward to fill the void Hugh’s death had created for my mother—but I still distrusted him. He showered my mother with presents, which was all very commendable, but I often wondered what it was he was trying to buy. I wondered too where he got the money to pursue this present-giving policy and suspected he had Hugh’s talent for doubling a small income by various questionable ways and means.

Hugh’s posthumous son was born during the first week of 1926. There was some ridiculous controversy over his name in which I had no intention of involving myself, and my mother and Rebecca refused to speak to each other after Rebecca had omitted to invite us to the christening. After that there was open warfare between them, but as in all feminine quarrels it was no more than a storm in a teacup with emotions running absurdly high on both sides.

I had other important matters on my mind to spend much time thinking of my nephew Jonas.

The mine was in deep trouble again. Walter Hubert was fending off creditors, the men were seeking higher wages to meet the rising cost of living, and I needed more money to open up a new level and buy new equipment.

“We’ve got to get another loan,” I said. “We must.”

But Walter shook his head. “This is a bad time for raising capital, Philip. The postwar prosperity boom is being affected by the rise in unemployment; the economic climate is getting more and more uncertain and money’s tight. Ask Mr. Vincent or your father, by all means, but I doubt if we’re in a position to issue more shares, and if we take out a third loan on top of the two we already have I think you’ll find yourself in very real trouble before long!”

“But I’ve got to have the money!” I thought about it day and night. I was just discussing the subject with Walter for the umpteenth time when my father astonished me by turning up at the mine and asking for an audience.

I was desperate by this time, and this visit from my father made me more desperate than ever. I was afraid he was going to suggest cutting our losses and closing the mine, and I was right. He did. He put it well and his mild manner was calculated not to give offense, but that was what he wanted. He was suggesting a halt—”Temporarily,” he said, “until the economic situation improves”—but I knew him too well to believe that. Once he had that mine closed no one would ever get him to open it again. Presently all the machinery and equipment would be sold to pay the debts and the levels would be finished, flooded, forgotten.

I began to plead with him. It went against the grain and I was humiliated, but I would have gone on my knees and crawled a hundred miles for that mine, so I gritted my teeth and pleaded as well as I could. To do him credit, he did listen. He kept telling me I was fighting a losing battle, but he did listen, and in the end he did write the check the mine needed so desperately and I knew I’d won.

But it was only a reprieve.

“Now listen to me,” he said in his coolest voice as he handed me the check. “That’s the last penny you’ll ever get out of me for the mine. Do you understand? The very last. And if that mine doesn’t show a profit by the end of 1926 I’m closing it. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, hardly listening, my fingers caressing the slip of paper in my hands. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this.”

“Won’t I?” he said. “I fully expect to. Good day, Philip. I’ll not trespass any longer on your valuable time. I’m sure the mine needs you more than I do.”

And he walked out of the hut, slammed the door behind him and stumped angrily off across the yard, but I was too excited by my hard-won victory to pay attention to his sourness.

I spent every penny of the money. I organized the development of the new level and the working of the new lode. I gave the men new pep talks about how vital it was that we should bring to the surface every scrap of tin we could lay our hands on. I worked all day with them far out under the sea, worked until I barely had the energy to come home at night and roll into bed; I toiled at that mine with every ounce of strength I possessed as if I could inject my own vitality into its tired old veins, but my efforts were all for nothing.

For 1926 was the year of the General Strike; 1926 was the year all industry dependent on coal suffered a blow below the belt. Even before the year was over I knew that Sennen Garth was bankrupt and that its working life had once more come to an end.

The General Strike lasted for only nine days in May, but the coal miners’ strike, the original cause of the great disruption, lasted another six months. I was torn two ways by what was happening. On the one hand I was behind the miners, who lived on a pittance that could not possibly have enabled them to live decently, but on the other hand I knew a rise in the coal miners’ wages would eventually mean additional demands from my own men, which Sennen Garth could hardly afford to meet. But gradually as the months passed I no longer had any choice except to condemn the strike. The shortage of coal affected Sennen Garth’s output until finally there was no fuel to feed to the furnaces and all activities above and below the surface ground to a halt.

Incoming monies were reduced to a trickle and finally ceased completely. Outgoing monies mostly in the form of wages roared on. And still there was no sign of the coal miners ending their strike and turning the lethal tide of economic disaster.

Finally in September my father called an extraordinary meeting at Penmarric for all those who were in any way connected with the administration of the mine. It wasn’t technically a shareholders’ meeting, although there were shareholders present, but since my father controlled the majority of the shares no one doubted that the outcome of the meeting would be the outcome of any formal meeting of shareholders that convened later to discuss the situation. The purpose of this prior meeting was to give those who were most intimately concerned with the mine the chance to formulate a clear policy for the mine’s future—assuming, of course, that the mine had a future, and I was damned sure that was more than most people were willing to assume.

At the meeting presided over by my father were Michael Vincent, the company’s solicitor, Stanford Blake, the senior partner in the firm of accountants who audited the company’s books, Walter Hubert the purser, and Sir Justin Carnforth, who, like my father, had a substantial financial interest in the mine. With me when I arrived at Penmarric to confront this unpromising gathering were Jared Roslyn, who had long been famous for championing the causes of the working men of the district, and, since he had almost as much say in Sennen Garth’s affairs as I did, Alun Trevose.

Both of them were pessimistic.

“Face up to it, sonny,” said Trevose. “We’ll never talk your dad out of this one.”

“I know your father,” said Jared grimly. “Stubborn as a dozen mules. If he’s made up his mind to close that mine neither you nor I nor anyone else is going to persuade him to keep it open.”

“We’ll see,” I said. That was all I would say. “We’ll see.”

I didn’t intend to let my father get the better of me either now or at any other time.

But I had to admit he was clever. He conducted the meeting in a formal, businesslike manner which allowed no room for loud expressions of disagreement. First of all he summed up the financial plight of the mine and called on Blake and Walter Hubert to verify this. Then he spoke of creditors; Michael Vincent was asked to explain the legal position of bankruptcy. Finally he spoke of the possibility of raising more money; to issue more shares, even to float an issue of preference shares for the existing shareholders, would be a risky venture which would probably result in—at best—a mere postponement of the inevitable. My father then said he himself was not inclined to invest a penny more in the mine, and Sir Justin Carnforth agreed with him and said he wouldn’t recommend the other shareholders to invest more money in the venture either. Walter Hubert said he had already explored the possibility of a loan from the banks, but loans were difficult to obtain at that time and the mine’s present position was considered insufficient to constitute collateral.

Having pointed out that Sennen Garth was broke and that no one was going to lift a finger to save it, my father then said he thought it must be my turn to speak. Did either of my associates care to make any comment on the situation? Perhaps Mr. Trevose would like to speak first.

It was typical of my father’s cunning that he should have chosen Trevose, the least experienced of negotiators, to speak first.

“Well, sir,” said Trevose rapidly in the nasal accent he had acquired as a child on the Rand, “all I can say is that it’s a fact that the mine’s still honest-to-God rich—there’s plenty of tin left down there under the sea, and under normal conditions—”

“But these are hardly normal conditions, would you say, Mr. Trevose? A lot  of tin beneath the sea is no use to us if we can’t afford to bring it to the surface!”

“What he means, Mr. Castallack,” said Jared swiftly, “is that under normal circumstances the mine would have made a fine profit for you, and there’s no doubt that when things get back to normal and the Labour Party returns to power to put the country right …” He allowed himself a purple passage of Socialist propaganda before steering his way back to the mine and painting a dramatic picture of the poverty and suffering which would overtake the miners and their families if Sennen Garth closed down. Twenty years’ experience as a lay preacher had sharpened Jared’s inborn flair for rhetoric; he had no qualms about extracting every ounce of melodrama from the situation and flaunting it in a thunderous voice before his audience. By the time he had finished I almost had tears in my eyes myself for the starving little children who cried for a crust of bread while my father dined off the fat of the land at Penmarric.

But of course my father was interested neither in Socialist propaganda nor in the brand of demagoguism in which Jared excelled. All he was really interested in was his money, which was, as far as he was concerned, tied up in a bad business investment, and at last he interrupted Jared as politely as possible in order to make this clear.

All Jared could say in resignation was “So you’re determined to close the mine.”

“After a formal meeting of the shareholders, yes, I’m afraid I see no alternative.”

There was a silence. We sat there around that long table with the light from the chandeliers playing harsh tricks on aging faces, and the silence went on and on and on until I thought it would never break. I waited. Everyone waited, but finally one by one they all turned to look at me, and I knew that the time was right and that I could put off the moment no longer. The silence was almost audible now. I seemed to hear it humming in my ears.

I said to my father, taking care not to speak too loudly, “If you close that mine I’ll break you.”

There was nothing then, just he and I facing each other as we had faced each other so often in the past, and between us like a death’s-head lay the gigantic shadow of my mine, Sennen Garth, the last working mine west of St. Just.

He went white, but from anger, not from alarm. He was furious that I had embarrassed him before his friends and revealed our hostility so blatantly before Jared and Trevose. At last he managed to say, “You leave me to assume, therefore, that you have no useful comment to make in regard to my decision.”

“Only that I mean what I say. Close that mine and I’ll make you regret it. That’s all.” I stood up. “Jared,” I said. “Trevose. There’s nothing more to be said.” And I turned without another word and walked out of the room.

It is impossible to know what the Old King was up to with Alice. She may have been his mistress, as most contemporaries believed…

—The Devil’s Brood

ALFRED DUGGAN

The King and Richard played out the last act of Henry’s tragedy …

—Henry II,

JOHN T. APPLEBY

I
KNEW EXACTLY WHAT
I was going to do.

I had had the plan in my mind for a long time, and when the matrimonial laws had been changed the previous year I had known it was a plan which I could put into operation whenever I chose. Now at last a woman could divorce her husband on the ground solely of adultery; and since I knew my mother would always do all she could to help me I knew too that I could place my father in an awkward and difficult position—if only I took the time and trouble to lay my plans correctly.

For I was wary. I could remember that other time twelve years ago before the war when we had threatened my father with such ignominious results, and I had no wish to make the same mistake twice. It was no good accusing him of adultery without some form of proof that he was misconducting himself, but Jan-Yves had often told me he would swear on the Bible that Alice was my father’s mistress and I thought it would hardly be difficult to get the proof I needed from him.

However, to my disgust I found this was harder than I expected. When I managed to have a conference with him the next day in my office it soon became clear he had no evidence whatsoever for assuming Alice and my father were having an affair.

“It was only a guess,” he was driven to confess at last. “I don’t know anything positive. Nobody does. Nobody knows the truth—”

“But you told me you were convinced it was true!” I shouted at him, and then clamped down on my anger. “Well, I believe it’s true anyway,” I said flatly, “and so would any lawyer if the facts were presented to him in the right way. If you could testify to Mama’s solicitor that you’ve seen Alice and Father—”