Penmarric (76 page)

To my surprise the psychiatrist didn’t seem to place nearly so much importance on the scene at Brighton as I did. I managed to get him to agree that it was an unpleasant scene to have witnessed, but when I tried to persuade him to confirm that my mother’s suffering at Brighton was the reason for my present impotence with Helena he remained infuriatingly noncommittal.

“But if Brighton is unimportant,” I demanded, determined to prise a judgment out of him, “why is it that it always comes between us whenever I try to make love to my wife?”

“I thought you said it didn’t always do that. I believe you told me this happened merely on the first occasion—” he consulted his notes—“although naturally you were aware of the memory afterward.”

“Yes, but—”

“The scene at Brighton is of importance, of course,” he interrupted, “I did not say that it was unimportant. But the scene at Brighton in my opinion, Mr. Castallack, is a mere symptom—a symptom of a much more fundamental maladjustment.” I must have looked disbelieving, for he added, “Consider it from this point of view: There is a command built into your mind which says: Do not have sexual relations with a woman. You’re not aware of this command, yet it exists and sends out signals you can’t ignore. When you first had the opportunity to enter into a sexual relationship with your wife the command promptly sent out its signals to stop you—and the signal in this case was the long-repressed memory of Brighton. A drastic signal, perhaps, but it was a drastic event, was it not? For the first time in your life you were being virtually forced to form a sexual relationship. You could not escape from it. It was unavoidable. So the signal had to be so powerful that it would pull you up short on the brink—which it did.”

“Well, no doubt that’s all very clever,” I said dryly, “and I know the human brain is capable of all sorts of things and I certainly wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to argue with you, but what’s the solution? What do I do to cure myself? How can you help me?”

He smiled mirthlessly and shook his head. “There’s no quick cure, Mr. Castallack. It isn’t as if the trouble was a headache for which you could swallow two tablets and presently feel your normal self again. I believe I can help you, but I shall have to see you again many times before any marked improvement is possible. It’s necessary, you understand, for you to talk to me at much greater length, particularly about your childhood and your early years. You’ve given me an admirable thumbnail sketch of your parents and background, but I must have more than a series of thumbnail sketches if I’m to help you as much as I would like to.”

I stared at him in dismay. “But that’s not possible!” I exclaimed angrily. “I have my work in Cornwall, my business interests! I can’t keep running up to London every week to talk to you. Good God, Penzance is nearly three hundred miles from London! It takes hours to get here from there.”

To his credit I must admit he seemed as dismayed as I was. “But I would have to see you at least once a week,” he said at once. “Indeed, in the beginning I would prefer you to come twice a week. Is there no possibility that you could stay in London for a time?”

“None at all. I have to be in Cornwall.”

He sighed heavily and was silent.

“Come, sir,” I said sharply, “there must be something you can do! You must be able to give me more immediate help than that! Why do I have to visit you so many times? Can’t you diagnose the trouble now and tell me what’s the matter?”

“You have to discover the truth for yourself” was all he said. “That may take a long time. If I were to talk to you now in abstract terms you would not only disbelieve every word I said but you would also be unable to relate them to your own situation.”

“Then I see no solution,” I said flatly. “I can’t stay in London and you can’t help me if I go back to Cornwall. I see no solution.”

“Is that because you don’t want to see a solution, Mr. Castallack?”

I grabbed my temper and kept calm. “Naturally I want a solution,” I said coolly, “but I’m at a loss to know how to find one. Perhaps you have a suggestion to make on the subject?”

He hesitated. “You might try writing everything down,” he said with reluctance. “Write an account of your life—as detailed an account as you can possibly make it—and when you’ve finished it, post it to me. I shall read it and study it carefully; and then when you are next in London perhaps you could make another appointment to see me. I’m afraid that’s the best compromise I can suggest.”

“But I’m not a writer!” I stared at him angrily. “I’m not used to writing!”

“You are an educated man. You can spell words and form sentences. Try it.”

“But I—”

“It’s the best compromise I can suggest, Mr. Castallack,” he said politely, cutting short the argument, and after that there was nothing more I could say except “thank you” and “goodbye.”

I was tempted to “chalk the episode up to experience,” as Alice would have put it, and forget about that visit to London, but I didn’t. I suppose my position was too desperate not to clutch at any straw I could lay my hands on in my sea of troubles, so as soon as I got back to Peņmarric I shut myself in my father’s study, found paper and ink and began to write.

The odd part was that I took a fancy to it. Perhaps writing wasn’t such an alien hobby to me after all, for my father had been a writer and my mother had for years kept a diary voluminous enough to make Queen Victoria’s journal look like a tear-off calendar. At first I could do no more than make random jottings, but gradually I became more coherent and now—years later—I find I can attempt to edit my writings and shape the most important parts into some sort of order. No, I didn’t send the manuscript to the psychiatrist as he had requested. No, I never saw the psychiatrist again. Why? Because I hadn’t finished the first draft of my life story when I found the solution to my troubles, and once I’d found the solution and accepted it there was no need for me to see a psychiatrist any more.

For after six months I came to terms with myself. After six months of misery and embarrassment with my wife I asked myself: What can I do to be happy? What can I do to put an end to this wretched situation? And the answer was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was to recognize the truth. I had to admit my failure, meet it face to face and resolve to live with it. It was hard, of course, but I forced myself to confront the facts.

I didn’t love my wife. I didn’t want to be a husband. I didn’t even want to be a father except to provide an heir for Sennen Garth one day. Least of all did I want a conventional existence as master of Penmarric. I had to live there with Helena certainly—there was no way out of that—but I decided I wasn’t going to let either Penmarric or Helena stop me from living the kind of life I had to live in order to be happy. After all, there was nothing wrong with enjoying myself at the mine, dining more often with my mother at the farm and spending more time exploring the cliffs with Trevose on fine Sunday afternoons. I became more determined than ever to live as I wanted to live and not live as society dictated I should. No more doctors. No more psychiatrists. I’d had enough of all that. I’d had enough of Helena too although I tried always to be as kind to her as possible since I knew I’d given her a rough deal and I wasn’t so inhuman that I didn’t feel guilty about the emptiness of our marriage.

I went my own way.

I knew I was wrong. I knew I was treating my wife badly by ignoring her and I knew I was destroying my marriage by pretending it didn’t exist, but by that time the desire to revert to my old ways was so strong that I could no longer make any effort to resist it. Cautiously I began to enjoy life again—but unknown to me I was already enjoying myself on borrowed time.

For ahead of me, not far ahead of me now, lay the world’s end and retribution. It was 1928. I had two years left, although I didn’t know it then—not two years of being alive, naturally, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, but two years of living and being able to explain why there was some point in being alive. But I didn’t know that. Fortunately I couldn’t see into the future.

My family seemed not to realize anything was wrong with my marriage, even though I had told Helena she could seek a divorce whenever she wanted one and that I wouldn’t blame her if she decided to leave me for someone else. However, she didn’t leave me and the issue of divorce was thus put in abeyance. It was true that the marriage could have been annulled, but I would have opposed that and Helena herself never suggested it. She too had her pride, and soon I saw she was just as anxious as I was to keep up the façade of our marriage and pretend to everyone that nothing was wrong. The only time when she came close to betraying her true feelings was when Jeanne married Gerald three months after our own wedding. The ceremony was not as pathetic as it might have been since both the bride and groom looked so happy throughout, but Helena broke down and wept.

Nobody thought this was odd since women are supposed to weep at weddings, but I doubt if Helena would have wept if she hadn’t been thinking how ironic it was that her own husband was no better than her brother in his wheelchair.

There was no honeymoon, since Gerald wasn’t strong enough to travel, and after the wedding Helena spent an increasing amount of time at Polzillan House. Sometimes I wondered if she spent too much time there, but I felt sure Jeanne was too ingenuous to suspect there was anything amiss between Helena and myself.

No one suspected anything.

I saw little of William apart from our routine meetings to discuss the affairs of the estate, and Jan-Yves was too involved in his own affairs to pay me much attention. His house had remained unbuilt and he had had no home of his own since my marriage, but at Christmas he created a sensation by announcing his intention to marry Felicity Carnforth. Felicity was the hearty spinster I had invited to the first dinner party I had given as master of Penmarric. She was six years older than Jan-Yves, an heiress and bore a striking resemblance to the back end of a tram.

“I suppose you’re making no secret of the fact that you’re marrying her for her money,” I said, trying to hide my contempt.

“None at all,” said Jan-Yves cheerfully. “Felicity thinks it’s a marvelous idea and so do I. As a matter of fact, we get on very well together. I know she’s plain, but she’s funny and sensible and she’s got a good sense of humor. I see no reason why we shouldn’t be just as happy as you and Helena are.”

There was no point in commenting on this and in fact I sensed any further discussion might prove dangerous, so I merely wished him well and let the subject lapse. My mother received the news of the engagement with mixed feelings. Her sentimental streak made her disapprove of the fact that Jan-Yves was obviously not head over heels in love with his fiancée, but her good sense pointed out to her that it was a good match for Jan-Yves not only financially but socially as well. Finally she decided to give the marriage her blessing and began to plan what she should wear at the wedding at Easter.

Fortunately my mother was the last person to suspect anything was wrong between Helena and myself. She visited us frequently, for she liked Helena and was fond of her. In fact her attitude to Helena contrasted sharply to her attitude to her other daughter-in-law. Relations between my mother and Rebecca had worsened, not improved, with the passing of the years.

“She’s so common!” my mother would say distastefully. “Deborah should be brought up to be a lady and sent away to a nice girls’ school to escape from that unsuitable rural environment, but Rebecca won’t be bothered. I can see Jonas will grow up into a very working-class young man unless something’s done about him. What a tragedy Hugh died when he did! He would have taken better care of the children and kept his wife in order … I wouldn’t be at all surprised if her morals were rather loose. Her mother Clarissa Penmar was a most immoral young woman and that sort of thing often runs in families.”

So my mother turned from Rebecca to Helena with relief and never breathed a word against her until July came and with it the day of our first wedding anniversary.

“Helena does want children, doesn’t she?” she said to me anxiously. “She’s not making any effort to avoid having them?”

“No.”

“Dear me, I hope … Of course, she
is
very slim. Sometimes slim women have difficulty in conceiving as well as in giving birth—or so Griselda used to say.”

“My God, Mama, give the girl a chance! We’ve only been married a year!”

“Yes, but by the time I celebrated my first wedding anniversary I already had Stephen …”

I reassured her, changed the subject and when I felt myself becoming upset I merely told myself that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered so long as she didn’t find out the truth.

Esmond came to stay for a month that summer. I had a wonderful time with him. We went riding over the moors together and exploring the coast and at his request I took him down the mine and showed him around. He came alone to Penmarric; Mariana was busy in London, where she had been involved in a society divorce suit, and had wanted Esmond to be out of the way while the case was being heard. She herself was neither doing the divorcing nor being divorced, but she had obviously been implicated in an unsavory scandal, and from the newspapers I took care to hide from my mother I realized Mariana had achieved a certain notoriety in London circles.

But Esmond and I didn’t talk of Mariana. We talked of riding and mining and Cornwall, and I enjoyed myself so much during his visit that I was thoroughly upset when the time came for him to go. After that I felt more depressed and more lonely than I had ever felt before, and it was then, at the emptiest phase of my life, that I turned at last to Alun Trevose.

Richard was suspected of sodomy… Certainly he liked men, especially the trouvères of north France; in spite of the differences in rank, these artists were his constant companions.

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

The crusade of Richard I belongs to world history… But he found it necessary to withdraw his troops and to abandon for ever the hope of recovering the Holy City [after] the last event of this costly enterprise.