Penmarric (98 page)

“… there’s one girl in particular I’d like you to meet. Honestly, she has everything—beauty, brains, talent, charm—”

“I have no intention of remarrying at the moment,” I said perversely, and if was true. Although I was lonely at Penmarric the final break with Rebecca had left me more wary of marriage than ever and more cynical too in my attitude toward women. “I shall wait until I’m at least thirty-five before taking the matrimonial plunge again.”

But I didn’t wait until I was thirty-five. I hardly waited until my thirty-second birthday, eight months later, because in the spring of the following year I fell in love. On the twentieth of May 1937 I first met Isabella, and after that no power on earth could have kept me from hurtling into marriage faster than all the bullets from a thousand guns.

He married, with her father’s consent, Isabel of Angouleme, the affianced bride of Hugh the Brown, on 30 August, 1200.

—Oxford History of England:

From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

A. L. POOLE

It is possible that John did not stop to consider questions of policy. Rumour had it that Isabelle entranced him.

—King John,

W. L. WARREN

I
SABELLA!

“But you can’t be called that!” I protested. “No one’s called Isabella nowadays!”

“Am I supposed to be just like everyone else?”

Her parents called her Isabel.

“Playing safe,” she said. “Poor dears, they’re desperately conventional.”

She had no brothers and no sisters.

“That’s why they made a splash and gave me a four-syllable Christian name,” she explained. “They guessed even then that to produce an offspring was a feat they wouldn’t succeed in repeating. Poor dears, the triumph must have quite gone to their heads.”

Isabella! Ash-blond hair shimmering in a long fine-spun curtain of white-gold softness, extraordinary wide-set green eyes with brown flecks in the irises, high cheekbones and a mobile full-lipped, provocative mouth.

“Of course, I know I’m not one of the world’s most immortal beauties,” she said. “I know my limitations.”

She was very young.

“No, I’m not going to tell you how old I am or you’ll be put off. Anyway I plan to be ageless. I shall look exactly the same when I’m forty as I look now.”

She spoke as if to be forty was to be verging on senility.

Isabella! Clever, nimble-witted Isabella with her flair for guileless conversation…

“Of course I’m an absolute fool really,” she said. “My parents paid heaps of money to send me to a horrible private school so that I could have every advantage they never had—running up and down a hockey pitch in winter, ugh!—and what happened? I didn’t even manage to get my school certificate. If you knew how simply hopeless I was at maths …”

. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that mathematics had been so badly taught at her school that no one there had been up to the standard of the examination.

I met her on my way home from London.

It was the year of the Coronation, and like thousands of others we all converged on London for the great event William, Charity, Adrian and I came up from the West Country, Lizzie and her family traveled south from Cambridge, and Esmond, who had just succeeded his father as Marquess of Lochlyall, came up from Eton to be present among the other peers of the realm in Westminster Abbey and make his traditional vows of homage to the new Sovereign. Naturally we were all bursting with pride that he should have a role, however minute, in the ceremony, and no one was prouder of him than Mariana, who flew over from France especially for the occasion. It was the first time she had seen him for several years. As soon as her husband had died earlier that year she had been planning her visit, fortified by the fact that there was now no one who stood between her and her son, and when she was finally reunited with him in London I think Esmond was as much affected as she was by the dramatic scene which ensued. However, I’ve no doubt he soon became as embarrassed as everyone else did by her unmistakable fondness for dry martinis, and after the exhausting splendor of the Coronation I had a strong suspicion he was relieved to bid his mother goodbye and return to Eton. Mariana wept copiously at parting from him once more, and had it not been for the fact that she had someone paying her bills for her in Monte Carlo I believe she would have stayed on in England. As it was, she vowed she was going to sever her ties with Monte Carlo and go to live with Esmond in Edinburgh, but when I took her to the airport I soon realized she had come to no definite decision about the future. She was in a most maudlin and introspective state of mind.

“Darling Esmond,” she kept saying morosely. “Daτling Esmond. Just as wonderful as I always knew he would be. I cried when I saw him again, just cried, darling. Honestly. I wish I could be brave enough to leave Monte and go back to Scotland to live with him, but oh, that dreary climate, I couldn’t stand it, and all those dreadful strait-laced people … I love Monte Carlo and the sun and everyone so warm and friendly. You must come to Monte to see me, Jan—no, really, I insist! I could introduce you to such utterly fascinating people, such witty elegant women. You ought to marry again, darling. You know, you’re really quite attractive—did anyone ever tell you that? What a funny thing sex appeal is. S.A.! Do you remember when S.A. used to be called It? Funny to think back to old times. … Lizzie’s husband’s rather good-looking, but oh so dull, never saying anything, but Lizzie talks so much she never gives him a chance to say a word, does she? I wonder if he’s faithful to her. So few husbands are faithful to their wives. If you lived in Monte Carlo you’d know that, no one’s faithful to anybody—anybody, darling, honestly. But I like French men. English men are either dull like Lizzie’s Eddy or else … Well, I don’t know, but no Englishman—or Scotsman—ever treated me very well except for Esmond’s father and he was a poppet, but old, you know, so old and when he was ill it was so dreadfully depressing … I can’t bear people to be ill, you know, darling, I hate illness and waiting for death and I hate old age—do you ever think of old age, Jan? I dread being old—and ugly and alone—like Mama … And I dread a lingering death, like poor Aunt Rose. You didn’t know Aunt Rose, did you? Adrian reminds me of her a little, but perhaps William’s more like her than Adrian, so sweet and gentle and kind. I never met a man like that, except for Esmond’s father, and I ran away and left him because I couldn’t bear it any longer. … Oh, nothing makes sense, nothing! Nothing at all!” And she began to weep.

“How many martinis have you had this morning?” I said as we approached the airport. “Two? Three? Four?”

“One tiny one. Honestly, darling. Just one.”

“You drink too much, Mariana.”

“No, not really. I never get drunk, you know. I’m always very careful about that. I never get drunk.”

And you’re never quite sober either, I thought, but I said nothing.

The strain of seeing her again made me glad when the time came to leave London and return to Cornwall. After Lizzie and her family had returned to Cambridge we all drove down to Exeter, where I left William and Charity to stay with Adrian for a few days before I set off to Penmarric on my own. I did not leave Exeter until late in the morning, and just before the Cornish border I decided to stop for lunch at a restaurant by the wayside.

I had noticed the restaurant before on other journeys from the east, for it stood on the main road which runs from London to Penzance. It was in fact a small hotel, an old house with a thatched roof and plenty of Devon quaintness to attract the passing tourists. I hadn’t stopped here before because it had no license and I usually like beer with my lunch, but this time I stopped primarily because I was hungry but also because the place had been repainted and there was a small sign in the window saying “Under New Management.”

I parked my car nearby and went in. The hall was full of brass knickknacks and well-polished furniture; the ceiling sagged with black oak beams. As I glanced around a woman came out to meet me and said, “One for lunch, sir? This way, please.” She was a pleasant-looking woman with the careful accents of the lower-middle classes, the sort of woman who would chatter away in the most presentable tones for some time but would eventually spoil the presentable impression by letting slip an unfortunate word or phrase that she should have learned long since to eliminate from her conversation.

The dining room was light and airy and very small; there were no more than eight tables, and as I was late the other guests were finishing their meal. I sat down, inspected the menu and decided to order pea soup, steak and kidney pie and strawberries with cream.

“Are you ready to order, sir?” inquired a high sweet voice from nearby, and, turning abruptly, I looked up into Isabella’s eyes.

I cannot even begin to describe the force of that first impression. All I can say is that love struck me so suddenly that I was speechless. Anything less likely to happen to me would have been hard to imagine. I was almost thirty-two years old, very experienced, very cynical, very sure of what I wanted in a woman and which feminine attributes attracted me most. I liked mature women often a few years older than myself, voluptuous women with lush curves, smoldering eyes and long black hair. As for the possibility of love at first sight I had long ago regarded that idea as absurd; no self-respecting man, I told myself, could believe in such a myth.

Yet now here I was, confronted with this slim slip of a girl with her long white neck and pointed little chin and ash-blond hair scraped back demurely from her schoolgirl’s face, and I knew straight away that I was irrevocably committed to her. Why it’s hard to say. Perhaps the secret lay in her eyes. There was a light there that I knew and recognized, a light that at once reminded me of myself. Because she was like me, just like me, and I knew it from the beginning. It was the likeness which made the meeting electrifying, the likeness and that strange spark of recognition. It wasn’t until that moment that I knew I had always been alone, even when I had believed myself to be in love; I had not realized until I saw myself so clearly mirrored in someone else that in fact I hadn’t been in love before. I looked at Isabella and in looking at her I saw someone so like me in spirit that I knew we would always be united by the mysterious clasp of a shared identity. I wanted her at once—not as I had wanted women in the past, but because once I had seen the extent of my loneliness in this revelation I knew I couldn’t live without her.

It was as simple as that. I had always thought that falling in love produced a multitude of bewildered feelings, an uncertainty that arose from the fact that one’s judgment was impaired by emotion, but I wasn’t confused at all. Falling in love didn’t produce confusion. It merely made the world seem extraordinarily clear and logical.

My voice said after a long pause, “Pea soup. Please.”

“Rolls and butter?” she said sweetly.

“Yes. And water. Please.”

She moved away busily and disappeared behind the screen which hid the kitchen door. When she came back a moment later and laid the bowl of soup and basket of rolls in front of me I saw that a tiny diamond sparkled on her finger as it caught the light.

“You’re engaged?” I said surprised, without stopping to think what I was saying.

“Yes, I’m getting married in August.” She looked at me boldly, daring me to speak again, egging me on to break every social convention ever invented.

“Then I shan’t bother to come here again,” I said. “What a pity.”

She laughed merrily. “Oh, I’ll still be here! My fiancé has the market garden down the lane and I expect I’ll still come back here to wait at table to help my parents.”

“It’s not a good idea to live too near one’s parents when one’s married, you know. You’d do better to marry a stranger and move away from the area.”

“Really? Do you speak from experience?”

“As a matter of fact I do. My own marriage ended in divorce.”

“Oh? You mean your wife divorced you because your home was too near your parents?”

A shadow hovered close at hand. “Isabel dear,” said the pleasant-faced woman who had welcomed me to the house, “don’t chatter to guests. The gentleman’s waiting to eat his soup.” She smiled at me nervously. “I’m afraid my daughter’s a little forward sometimes. I do apologize.”

“My dear Mrs.—”

“Clay.”

“—Mrs. Clay, there’s no need to apologize. Your daughter’s charming.”

She looked more nervous than ever and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchens. However since she re-emerged a moment later and stationed herself by the sideboard while she pretended to observe the swaying honeysuckle beyond the window, I was obliged to finish my meal in decorous silence. Isabella waited on me with downcast eyes and a demure expression. I was about to decide that Mrs. Clay was more conscientious than any Victorian chaperone when a large man with a military mustache poked his head around the dining-room door. “Phone for you, Hilda,” he said to Mrs. Clay and vanished without waiting for her reply. The other guests had all gone by this time. As Mrs. Clay withdrew reluctantly I was alone with Isabella.

“I must confess I can’t see you as a market gardener’s wife,” I said. “Do you honestly want to spend the rest of your life pruning roses?”

“There are other more interesting things to prune?”

“Perhaps I could show you my conservatory sometime.”

“Your conservatory? How grand! Do you have one of those marvelous mansions where the gas lights flicker and the heroine screams at intervals and the skeletons rattle in the cupboards as soon as the sun sets?”

“Come and see it,” I said, “and find out.”

“Oh dear, I hope that doesn’t mean you throw it open to the public and charge sixpence admission every day except Sunday with children half price!”

“I haven’t yet been reduced to that degree of penury!”

“Thank goodness! In that case—” the door opened as her mother re-entered the room—“would you care to have coffee in the lounge, sir?” said Isabella meekly.