Penmarric (81 page)

“All right, but we’d better not have separate bedrooms to begin with or Daddy might smell a rat. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have twin beds, though. Twin beds are frightfully chic these days, everyone says so. Would you mind twins?”

I said I wouldn’t mind in the least and we fondly departed from each other to announce our engagement to our respective families.

Rebecca at once flew into a passionate rage and called me heartless, faithless and a dozen other more unpleasant words besides. I was startled to see how radically the news affected her. For someone who had always, even after her surrender, professed to care nothing for me, she became hysterically vocal in objecting when I put her indifference to the test. Finally after I had spent at least two hours mopping up her tears and offering my usual brand of comfort, she calmed down and became more rational.

“You’re not to blame,” she said, blowing her nose on my sodden handkerchief. “It was wrong of me to blame you. You only turned to another woman because I’d always refused to marry you—I’d led you to believe I would never marry again, but oh, Jan, perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I should have accepted, perhaps … Oh, Jan, let’s get married! I’m sorry I always treated you so badly—I didn’t mean it—I do love you, Jan, I do—”

I was so childishly thrilled to hear such words from her lips long after I had given up hope of hearing them that I followed her example and lapsed into melodrama. I kissed her passionately, swore I’d never love anyone else as long as I lived, told her she was the most beautiful woman in the whole world and that I was the luckiest man who had ever drawn breath to live.

“All the same, darling,” I said at last, “it
is
rather a tricky situation. You see, I really do have to marry someone wealthy. It’s not that I don’t love you, but—well, I have debts and obligations and now that Felicity and I have announced our engagement I really can’t draw back. Supposing she sued me for breach of promise? Damn it, I’d end up in prison with my whole life ruined! I have to marry her—there’s no way out of it now.” In fact, I reasoned to myself, it was now absolutely impossible to draw back. It wouldn’t have been fair to Felicity, and besides I had reconciled myself to the thought of sharing Felicity’s prospects at Carnforth Hall. If I were married to Felicity I could live in the style to which I had long been accustomed and still have Rebecca whenever I wanted her, but if I married Rebecca I’d be in perpetual difficulty trying to make ends meet, particularly if we had children, and I had no guarantee I would inherit either Penmarric or the Penmar fortune. “Listen, darling,” I said quickly. “This needn’t make any difference to us. I must marry for expediency’s sake, and who is there more suitable for a marriage of convenience than Felicity Carnforth? Surely not even you could be jealous of jolly old Felicity! I’ve had a talk with her and we’ve already worked out a sensible arrangement, marriage in name only, no sex at all—even separate bedrooms,” I added, slipping in a little lie to make the case more convincing. “Now I ask you, darling, would you really think I’d be tempted to make love to Felicity? Of course not! You know you’re the only woman in my life and always will be.”

“Oh, Jan—” She burst into tears again.

“Besides,” I said, maintaining a fast pace, “you say you’ll marry me, but are you sure you’re not just making wild promises in the heat of the moment? I’d hate you to marry me, regret it later and then accuse me of tricking you into marriage while you were emotionally upset And would you ever be able to put Hugh’s memory behind you? If we were married wouldn’t his memory always come between us?”

She gulped and blew her nose again. “Perhaps …” She was confused. “Yes, perhaps you’re right, Jan, and I’m being rash in saying I’d be willing to marry you …”

I stifled a sigh of relief. I did love her very much and was terrified of losing her. At the same time I now saw clearly that I must marry Felicity. I felt as if I were walking on skates along a tightrope.

“I would love to marry you in so many ways,” I said gently, “but it wouldn’t be for the best, darling. You know it wouldn’t.”

Her lovely eyes filled with tears again. She looked ravishing. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s just that …” A tear paused on the lush curve of her cheek and glittered like a diamond against her white skin. “It’s so lonely here … and the children need a father. You’re so good with the children, Jan.”

“I’ll come over here as often as I can,” I said, touched. I hadn’t thought of myself being good with children before. In fact I hadn’t cared much for children except for the little girl Deborah, whose shy femininity appealed to me. “Marriage won’t make any difference, darling, I promise you,” I said sincerely. “We’ll go on afterward just as before.”

That was exactly what happened, even though my marriage turned out to be a little different from the prior arrangements I had made with Felicity. We were married nine months after Philip in the spring of 1928 and had a smart wedding in London. Felicity was determined to marry in style and make the most of her unexpected trip to the altar. The food at the reception was delicious, the champagne naturally the very best that money could buy, and afterward we roared merrily away to Paris to celebrate the occasion for another couple of weeks. However, the honeymoon proved to be my undoing. Felicity had wrought miracles with her appearance before the wedding and had bought a quantity of clothes which flattered her figure in the right places. Not content with revolutionizing her wardrobe, she had had her hair professionally styled and, I suspected, had also had a barrage of beauty treatments to enhance her looks. The results were shattering. By the time we reached the privacy of our Parisian hotel I knew that twin beds were going to make little difference to certain physical sensations which I had been forced to ignore during the journey, and by the time she had finally arrayed herself in the sauciest black negligee I had ever set eyes on I knew any attempt at chastity would be hopeless. We had a most successful wedding night and enjoyed ourselves enormously.

“Delightful!” said Felicity the next morning: “I wouldn’t like to think I’d missed out on something. Never mind about the annulment, Jan darling, there’s always divorce. I’m sure we can rustle up a little adultery if we’re hard-pressed for a legal separation later.”

So we continued to enjoy ourselves in Paris and again later when we stopped for a further two weeks in London before returning home. Felicity proved to be tremendous fun. We wined and dined everywhere from Soho to Knightsbridge, and we danced every dance from the fox trot to the Charleston. We danced until we dropped. Long, afterward when I look back on my honeymoon I have a series of blurred memories of a London blazing with modernity—-cocktails, night clubs, jazz bands, flappers with short-cropped hair and scarlet mouths, and all the time dancing, dancing, dancing … But our energy was limitless. When we weren’t dancing all night we were racing around London during the day; we rowed on the Serpentine, walked in the park and even visited the zoo. By the time our honeymoon came to an end we were still enjoying ourselves so much that neither of us wanted to go home. The most extraordinary part of the situation was that by this time I was genuinely glad I had married Felicity and foresaw an amusing married life ahead of us, but as soon as I returned to Cornwall I fell under Rebecca’s spell again and nothing could keep me away from her, not even my respect and liking for my new wife. Of course I never told Rebecca that Felicity and I had had a normal honeymoon, never mentioned that I still slept with Felicity once a week even after the honeymoon was over. I considered I owed it to Felicity to make at least a weekly gesture of appreciation since she was, as the saying goes, such a “good sport” and made what might have been a dreary marriage into a cheerful good-natured relationship.

Felicity and I had a wing of Carnforth Hall to ourselves; however, two or three times a week we were obliged to dine with her father and stepmother in the main part of the house. I was careful to maintain cordial relations with Sir Justin, who was an awful old bore, and he was so grateful to me for providing him with the hope of grandchildren that he was prepared to treat me generously. He increased Felicity’s income by a large margin; Felicity instantly arranged a joint account for us at the bank, and after that I didn’t have to worry about money any more. I bought a splendidly extravagant car—a Hispano-Suiza—and several new suits. Felicity bought some new horses and extended the stables. The only fly in the otherwise unblemished ointment of our happiness proved to be Felicity’s new stepmother, my father’s former housekeeper, Alice Penmar.

Alice and I had always disliked each other; now, linked to each other indirectly by our marriages, we continued to cling to our mutual distaste. She was one of those capable women who love to manage everything they can get their hands on. No doubt she managed Carnforth Hall even more admirably than she had managed Penmarric and Sir Justin even better than she had managed my father (I could never make up my mind whether or not she and my father had been lovers, but it did seem likely that she had been his mistress for a time). Certainly Sir Justin doted on her. She was fond of him, I think, and always treated him kindly, but I’m sure her heart was more in fulfilling her role to the community as Lady Carnforth than fulfilling her role to her husband in the conventional marital manner. At the time of my marriage she was about thirty-seven years old, clever, bitchy and sharp as a needle.

“She warned me against marrying you,” confided Felicity, who didn’t like Alice either. “Isn’t that a hoot? Of course I jolly well told her to M.Y.O.B.—‘Mind Your Own Business,’ I said, straight to her face! I’m sure she thought I was beastly rude, but I didn’t care. Then she started to try to tell me about you and Rebecca, so I said airily, ‘Alice darling, is that all the gossip you can rake up? Jan’s told me the
whole
story already!’ My dear, she went puce with rage. It was so funny.”

I began to feel nervous. I wasn’t ashamed of my affair with Rebecca, but for her sake and for the children I did try to be as discreet as possible. Besides I now had Felicity to consider; I didn’t want Felicity to be embarrassed by unpleasant gossip, but if Alice Carnforth was going to go around being bitchy on the subject of my mistress at Morvah I was going to end up by being thoroughly unpopular with my father-in-law.

I was much annoyed. “I wonder how Alice knew about my relationship with Rebecca,” I said to Felicity as we brooded over the problem together.

“Alice knows everything,” said Felicity. “She’s that sort of woman. She rakes in gossip as easily as other women collect hats, and she can smell an illicit affair when all the couple have ever done in public is smile at each other and say, ‘Nice weather we’re having.’ She’s absolutely amazing. In fact I think her talent for raking in gossip is second only to her talent for twisting elderly men around her little finger. I’ll never forget what a shock it was when Daddy said he was going to marry her. I knew he’d rather fancied her for ages, but I never actually thought he’d go ahead and let her lure him to the altar. After all, he absolutely loathed her father for jilting poor old Aunt Judith donkeys years ago, but Alice, apparently, had no trouble at all in convincing him that her father was doing Aunt Judith a favor by running off with someone else! I honestly think she could make him believe black was white if she tried hard enough.”

We continued to ponder glumly over Alice for some time.

“I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you,” Felicity said sensibly at last. “As long as I’m obviously in the seventh heaven of marital bliss Daddy isn’t going to believe a word against you. All he’s really concerned about is my happiness, and if I’m happy he’ll willingly believe your visits to Morvah are made out of sheer Christian charity to your widowed sister-in-law and your poor fatherless little nephew and niece. So long as Rebecca doesn’t ditch the children and pop off with you for a naughty weekend at Budleigh Salterton I’m sure he won’t even raise an eyebrow of disapproval.”

This was true, but I still felt uneasy about Alice and had a nagging suspicion that she was going to make my life difficult before too many years had passed.

However, apart from Alice I had no complaint to make about my new life as a married man. I still hankered abortively for Penmarric, but even in that direction my prospects were beginning to revive. Philip and Helena had no children and I learned that Helena spent most of her time with my sister Jeanne and her husband Gerald Meredith at Polzillan House. Finally in the spring of 1930 all my doubts about Philip’s sexual inclinations were eliminated; during one Saturday evening in St. Ives with Rebecca I glimpsed Philip and Trevose emerging from one of the seamier pubs in the heart of the artists’ quarter, and it took me only one look to see the whole story.

The odd part was that Philip’s behavior was no surprise to me since I had long suspected him of homosexuality, but I was shocked to the core by Trevose.

I stopped dead to stare at them. They didn’t see me. They didn’t see anyone but each other. Philip was laughing. Marriage had made him somber, but he wasn’t somber now. Trevose was laughing too. His habitual expression of surliness had vanished and his smile was as spontaneous as it was relaxed. They wandered away down the alley together, their hands in their pockets, their movements unhurried as if neither of them had a care in the world. They were at ease, at peace, perfectly attuned to each other.

“What are you looking at?” demanded Rebecca, suddenly aware that my attention had wandered from her, but although she swung around at once to glance about her Philip and Trevose had already vanished from sight.

After a moment I said, “It was nothing. Just a couple of odd artists,” and presently we began to speak of something else.

But I knew then how matters stood between Philip and Helena. The marriage had failed; there would be no children. A few months later I was just reflecting yet again that my chances for inheriting Penmarric were now as good as they had ever been, when all our lives were disrupted without warning by the disaster at the Sennen Garth mine.