Penmarric (8 page)

“Really?” said my father, who was exhausted by his weekly concession to social intercourse but not so exhausted that he could not look astonished by my remark. “I think you must be mistaken. I dislike gossip, but I had heard that little Miss Barnwell had set her cap a good deal higher than a mere country solicitor. I had heard that Raymond Penmar was interested in her and that she in fact was the reason he was sent abroad to Rome, Athens and Cairo. Giles Penmar not unnaturally wanted his son to marry well and not to become involved with a clergyman’s daughter.”

I gaped at him. “Did Mr. Barnwell tell you that?”

“No, it was Mrs. Barnwell who dropped the hints, but Barnwell was present and did not deny the implications of his wife’s remarks. He later said he deeply regretted allowing his daughter to associate with the Penmars. Young Harry has a bad reputation and as for Clarissa—but that’s gossip I have no intention of repeating. Let it suffice to say that I hope you won’t become acquainted with either Harry or Clarissa while you’re staying with me at Morvah.”

“There’s little likelihood of that happening,” I said frankly. “If I even tried to bid Harry good day I think he’d try and knock me down.”

He was silent, evidently satisfied by my assurance. His housekeeper’s husband, Walter Mannack, drove us out of Zillan parish and across the hills to Morvah, and presently I forgot the Penmars and the rector’s daughter and began to think once more of Mrs. Janna Roslyn.

I called at Roslyn Farm on Monday morning, but the old crone Griselda told me Mrs. Roslyn was “tired” and “resting” and could not receive visitors. On Tuesday I was informed she had gone to Penzance to spend an extra day marketing produce; the market was held three times a week in Penzance, and although the largest market was held on Thursdays, I was told that since her husband’s death Mrs. Roslyn had often been obliged to go to market on Tuesdays and Saturdays as well—presumably on account of trying financial circumstances. On Wednesday I again tried to see her, but she was away visiting a neighboring farm, and on Thursday, of course, she went to Penzance again. By Friday I had received the distinct impression that she wanted to administer a rebuff, but so anxious was I to see her that a rebuff was a mere inconvenience which I was prepared to tolerate. What I could not endure was another day without the prospect of exchanging a few words with her, so on Friday morning I saddled my father’s horse again and rode over the hills past Chûn Castle to the farm.

She was at home. She consented to see me. We drank another glass of wine together in her front parlor and I spoke of London and a dozen other matters, but she said little and I was forced to carry the burden of the conversation. She did not appear to be bored. She did not appear to be especially interested, but she was always faultlessly polite. I think it was then, on that second meeting, that I began to realize I was wasting my time, but by then it was already too late. It was useless to try to tell myself I had best forget her attraction for me and move to fresher woods and greener pastures. I could not turn my back on her, could not continue through life as if she had never crossed my path. I had to go on seeing her. My obsession was utterly irrational but I could not rid myself of it. I knew I was making a fool of myself, and I knew that every visit I paid to the farm was yet another step down a blind alley, but I simply could not stop calling on her. Visits to other women, a useful panacea in the past to ease the raw ache of frustration, now made little difference to my peace of mind. I remained obsessed.

In love, I called it, but it was not love. An infatuation others might have judged it, but it was not merely an infatuation. It was a painful combination of lust, greed, admiration and longing, and above all the desire to possess. My favorite daydream was concerned solely with images of completed possession. I dreamt of her surrendering—but not willingly. That somehow would be less satisfactory. But I dreamt of an unwilling surrender which I had forced upon her yet was not a form of rape. I dreamt of her taking off her clothes, one by one, each article torn from her body by those long sinuous fingers and folded neatly before being placed upon a chair. She would be cool, stony-faced, contemptuous. Since she was a respectable woman she would not undress to the point of complete nudity but would keep on her petticoat, and when she sat down on the bed with her back to me and lifted her white arms to her head to undo her hair I would lean forward and unfasten the hooks of her bodice and slip my hands around her body to her breasts… Her hair would fall silently down her back and I would bury my face in it and pull her down on the pillows and then …

Nothing else mattered. All I wanted was to possess.

And I went on daydreaming, wiling away hour after hour, and so young was I, so ingenuous in my desires, that it never once occurred to me as I cherished my fantasies that in possessing her I would become myself possessed.

Meanwhile I had quickly adjusted myself to my new surroundings. Walter Mannack, the housekeeper’s husband who acted as gardener and handyman at Deveral Farm, had collected the luggage I had left at the Metropole Hotel in Penzance, and presently in response to a request sent to the housekeeper remaining in charge of Gweekellis Manor I received some more clothes as well as the box in which I kept my writing materials and my notes for the thesis on King John. However, having no desire to resume my historical labors at that point and being anxious to discover some way of passing the time in between my visits to Roslyn Farm, I rode into Penzance and explored the town thoroughly—an excursion which I had never before had time to make during previous fleeting visits with my mother. I found it a curious mixture of a place, the new gentility of the seaside town mellowing the ancient coarseness of the fishing port. The Metropole Hotel was part of the new gentility, a modern building that faced the sea and catered to visitors anxious to breathe the sea air in refined surroundings, but the town’s high street was far older than the esplanade and stood farther inland to remind the stranger that a sea view had not always been considered desirable by the inhabitants. The mixture of old and new was again emphasized, however, by the new market house at the top of the historic Market Jew Street and by the new public gardens with their semitropical vegetation a stone’s throw from the narrow streets and cobbled alleys around the harbor. And beyond the harbor, reducing both the old and the new to insignificance, rose the fairy-tale castle of St. Michael’s Mount, which as a child I had once wished could be included in my Penmar inheritance.

I did not know the St. Aubyns who lived at the Mount but I did meet the heir of Carnforth Hall, a large, wealthy estate which stood a mile or two from the sea east of Penzance. Justin Carnforth was three years my senior and a dreadful bore who could talk of nothing but horses, but he was friendly and hospitable and I did not consider myself above joining the card parties he gave from time to time whenever his parents were away from home. He had a sister, Judith Carnforth, but she was a plain, priggish girl and I was unable to find her congenial company; however, since her fortune was as large as her sense of humor was small, I supposed she would have no trouble finding a husband eventually.

It was through the card parties that I met several other contemporaries of mine, including, my kinsman Roger Waymark, whose family owned Gurnards Grange at Zennor, the parish adjoining Morvah to the east; my father’s mother had been a Waymark of Zennor and it had been through her that my father had inherited Deveral Farm. Waymark was a pleasant fellow, but unfortunately he shared Carnforth’s obsession with horses, and since I have always regarded these animals merely as a convenient form of transport I soon found I had little to say to him. Harry Penmar had formerly been a member of the card-party set but had found it difficult to honor his debts; while he remained welcome at Carnforth Hall he was no longer invited there to play cards. I heard he had his eye on Judith Carnforth, but I did not believe that even Harry Penmar, who was notorious for his debts, could be desperate enough to consider Miss Carnforth as a matrimonial prospect.

I was first introduced to Justin Carnforth—and thus to the card parties at Carnforth Hall—by the young man whose name I had first heard mentioned at Zillan rectory, the solicitor Michael Vincent of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes. I met him on my second visit to the rectory for lunch, and although he too had little in common with me, I soon decided that he was the only one of my new acquaintances whom I could truly consider a friend.

Being the youngest of four sons, he had been obliged to earn his living, but his education and background made him acceptable at Carnforth Hall even if his lack of money and abundance of moral scruples excluded him from the gambling circle there. When I first met him the disparity in our ages was then at its widest; I was still not yet twenty-one, while he was less than three years on the right side of thirty, a qualified lawyer making his own way in the world. Yet he was not sophisticated. When he was not working at his office he liked simple pleasures such as fishing or playing cricket, and although he enjoyed reading he had no taste for historical biography but preferred historical novels. But I found it easy to talk to him of casual matters, of the walks along the cliffs from Penzance to Lamorna, of expeditions to Logan’s Rock, of summer sailing in Mount’s Bay, and easier still to appreciate his good-naturedness and enjoy his company. I needed a friend and I sensed he needed one too; he had not been long in Penzance, and although he was well acquainted with the young men in the Carnforth Hall set I suspected they bored him as frequently as they bored me. Roger Waymark was too immature for him, Justin Carnforth too limited, and although Vincent never said so I was sure he disliked Harry Penmar as much as he worshiped Harry’s sister Clarissa.

“How beautiful she is!” he would sigh, quite besotted, and would repeat for the hundredth time how hard it was that he had no money behind him and was not in a position to pursue his admiration to its logical conclusion.

But I was still immune to Clarissa. By this time I had seen her once or twice in Penzance, but nevertheless I could only feel cynical about the looks Vincent admired so much. I had seen women before with that full-lipped red mouth and that figure curving lushly to the point of vulgarity, and those women did not usually travel in carriages.

“She may be more like her brother than you think,” I warned him one day.

But he would not hear of it. “I hesitate to say this about your cousin, Castallack, but I wouldn’t trust Harry Penmar an inch. I don’t know why they tolerate him at Carnforth Hall; it’s obvious he only wants to marry Judith because he needs to ally himself with an heiress to please his creditors.”

“Is it definite that he wants to marry her?”

“There’s talk of an engagement. Judith is eager for it, and although Sir James and Lady Carnforth are not so enthusiastic as she is, I think they will eventually give their consent.”

“Well, Miss Carnforth hardly has the face that launched a thousand ships,” I said practically. “She could do much worse than marry a Penmar.”

“Oh, I’m not implying anything against the Penmars as a family! God knows if I had the chance to further my suit with Clarissa—”

I sighed. Vincent was apt to become tedious on the subject of Clarissa and I often wondered what he would say if I were to tell him that I too knew what it was to be obsessed with a woman—a farmer’s widow ten years older than I was. He would probably be profoundly shocked; he was, I was beginning to discover, a very conventional person. I had never realized how unconventional I was until I became friends with Michael Vincent.

“I’m glad you’ve made friends with young Vincent,” said my father to me at breakfast one morning in August. “He seems a steady fellow, not the kind who would lead you into debt or wild ways… By the way, while on the subject of money, are you managing well enough on your present allowance? You seem to spend a great deal of time in Penzance, and I know how easy it can be to spend money when visiting a town.”

I felt both guilty and embarrassed, but I could not tell him I had been supplementing my income by winning money from a set of young men I had met through Michael Vincent In the end all I said was “I manage well enough, thank you, sir.”

“Good, I’m glad. But you won’t get into debt, will you, Mark? You will come to me, won’t you, if you get into financial difficulties? I don’t want you trying to borrow from everyone and ending with a reputation as bad as Harry Penmar’s.”

“No, sir, I won’t get into debt.” My guilty conscience made me add, “I shan’t be going to Penzance so much anyway in future. I want to start writing my thesis on King John. In fact I think I shall make a start on it this morning.”

And I did indeed try to make a start. I went to the morning room with paper and ink, with my notes on the writings of medieval chroniclers, with Kate Norgate’s
England Under the Angevin Kings
and other works which purported to deal with my subject; I even phrased an opening statement: “The purpose of this thesis,” I wrote boldly, “is to refute the implications of the statement made by Mr. J. R. Green (quoting Matthew Paris): ‘Foul as it is, Hell is itself defiled by the fouler presence of King John.’ ”

I had extremely bold views for a man of my age. “Radical” my tutor had called them coldly when I had tried to argue that the traditional public image of King John was based on the gossipy reminiscences of a couple of chroniclers writing long after John’s death. But I was convinced there was a large scope for any historian in a study of John’s reign. During my closing months at Oxford I had become determined to remove some of the notoriety from John’s reputation, and the idea of a thesis exploding some of the famous myths about him had long been on my mind.

I sat and thought about John for some time.

Beyond the window lay the fields and beyond the fields lay the hamlet of Morvah and beyond Morvah lay the cliffs falling sheer to the sea. It was a hot sunny morning. I could go out, I thought, and walk along the cliffs to Zennor and perhaps call on Roger Waymark at Gurnards Grange.