Penmarric (46 page)

The old crone muttered something and shook her head.

Hugh said to me, “It’ll be ready in ten minutes. Come and have a look at the rest of the house.”

I followed him silently into the passage. As he closed the door he said, “She knew who you were.”

“How?” I felt chilled by the apparent clairvoyance. “How could she know?”

“God knows! Don’t worry, if she says anything to Mama later I’ll insist she made a mistake and that you were Aubrey Carnforth. You’re about the same height and build as Aubrey. … Now, this is the hall and through here is the parlor …”

I followed him through the rooms. They were beautiful, the furniture old and solid, the spaciousness infinitely pleasing to the eye. Everywhere was spotlessly clean and well-kept.

“What a lovely house,” I said with genuine admiration. “I like it much better than Penmarric. It’s so warm and comfortable and serene.”

“How odd! It doesn’t appeal to me in the least—I much prefer Penmarric! Penmarric is so much more civilized, don’t you think?”

“Because it has a couple of proper lavatories?”

“Well, plumbing is an advantage, you must admit.” He was quite serious. He seemed to have no aesthetic appreciation whatever of the farmhouse. “Do you want to see upstairs?”

“May I? I’d like that.”

Philip had a room facing the moors. On the table by the window were several books on the Cornish Tin Coast, including a volume entitled
A History of the Levant Mine.
I picked it up and flicked through the pages, but Hugh was already going out into the corridor again, so I put down the book: to follow him. Mrs. Castallack had a pleasant room next door with an old-fashioned four-poster near the window and an enormous wardrobe along one wall.

I glanced around. “What a funny little clock!” I exclaimed, wandering over to the mantelshelf. “I like it! Do you know where it came from?”

“Haven’t a clue,” Hugh said. “Do you really like it? I think it’s hideous. … Come over and look at the view. Isn’t it fine?”

We admired the view together and then returned to the kitchen. The pasty was ready. We took it outside, found a sheltered spot behind a stone wall and settled down to an early lunch.

It was delicious. Presently Hugh fetched some cider, and when we had finished both cider and pasty we lay on our backs and watched the wispy clouds drift across the blue sky.

Hugh fell asleep.

I got up and wandered off in search of a lavatory, however primitive, but when my search proved abortive I stepped behind the barn instead. Afterward I moved back toward the house and stole a glance into the kitchen. No one was about. I went in, feeling nervous, and wandered through those beautiful rooms again, my fingers trailing lightly over the furniture. No one disturbed me. I went upstairs and the floorboards creaked beneath my feet. The door of Mrs. Castallack’s room was ajar. I went to the window, then to the bed, then to the fireplace. The little clock sat ticking on the mantelshelf, and as I touched it I looked over my shoulder as if I half-expected to see someone watching me but there was no one there, only a bird singing on the sill and the curtains blowing lightly in the wind.

I left, walked into Philip’s room, picked up the book on the Levant Mine. To my surprise I found it interesting. I sat down and began to read, and the minutes slipped away as morning merged into afternoon.

I was just thinking that I should return to Hugh when I heard a door slam.

I got up, put back the book and went out into the corridor.

From the hall a Castallack voice said, “Perhaps you left it upstairs.”

But it was not Hugh who spoke. It was Philip. I stopped, rigid with horror, and as I felt the sweat break out on my forehead I heard him add, “I’ll go up and look.”

I wanted to run. I looked around wildly at the closed doors of the landing and my panic was so great that I could not even decide which room I might choose as a hiding place.

And then she spoke. Her voice was low and soft, like surf breaking on a beach far away, and she said, “No, don’t bother, darling. I’ll go upstairs and find it. I think I know where it is.”

I could not breathe. My heart was pounding so hard that there was a pain in my chest. I still could not move, but as the stairs creaked beneath her feet I suddenly knew what I must do. I walked forward to the head of the stairs. I went out to meet her, and below in the hall Philip was saying, “I wonder where Hugh is. He said he’d be coming over this morning. I must ask Griselda if—”

I saw her. She looked up at me, and I saw those cool light eyes which I had first seen so long ago in that dining room at Brighton. When she saw me her eyes widened. Her hand flew to her throat and I heard her sobbing gasp of fear.

She looked as though she had seen a ghost.

She said a name, a man’s name, a name I knew, but before I could speak Philip was pushing past her, Philip was rushing up the stairs toward me, Philip was shouting, “You bastard, get out of here! Get out, get out, get out—”

I went downstairs. As she turned and stumbled away from me I called out, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come. I’m sorry.”

She slammed the parlor door.

“You damned bastard!” Philip was still shouting. “If ever you show your face here again—”

Hugh was in the hall. His eyes were the same cool blue.

“It was he who suggested I come,” I said in a shaking voice to Philip. “He said it would be all right. He said—”

“Absolute lies,” said Hugh. “You insisted on coming. You followed me all the way to Chûn.” He turned to Philip. “I did my best to turn him out, but—”

“You liar!” I shouted. “You miserable rotten—”

Philip hit me on the jaw. I fell backward against the hall chest, picked myself up and moved to the front door. Philip was edging in to hit me again. I wrenched open the door, stumbled out into the porch and ran down the path to the lane. The air was sweet with the smell of herbs and the sun still shone serenely from that limpid southern sky. I looked back.

She was watching me from the parlor window, but before she stepped behind the curtain I had a glimpse of her face. It was white and crumpled as if she had been crying, and as I made my way blindly to the stables to get my horse I wondered if she was upset simply because I was her husband’s bastard or upset because she had thought for one long terrible moment that I was the ghost of my grandfather Laurence Castallack, come back from the dead to remind her of the past.

The lady Alice was sent to the court of King Henry … it seemed all to the good that he was said to have taken a fancy to the child.

—The Devil’s Brood,

ALFRED DUGGAN

The heir of [Brittany’s] duke was a daughter named Constance … the Breton barons hated Norman domination.

—Oxford History of England:

From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,

A. L. POOLE

I
RODE INTO ZILLAN
village. I had stopped crying by the time I reached the rectory. I was completely composed. Alice was out buying milk and eggs from a neighboring farm, the cook told me, but the rector was in his study preparing his Sunday sermon.

I talked to him there for a long time.

“Am I like Laurence Castallack?” I said. “Am I?”

He smiled. “Yes,” he said, “there’s a likeness. I must confess that that was one of the reasons why you interested me so much from the first time I saw you. Laurence and I were old friends.”

I made an enormous effort. It cost me a great deal but I managed to say, “He was my grandfather. My guardian is my father, not a distant cousin.”

After that everything was easy and I did not want to cry any more. “Poor Mrs. Castallack,” said the rector later. “Yes, no doubt it did give her a severe shock to see you—and to see you in such an unexpected manner. What an unfortunate thing to happen! Hugh was very wrong to have tried to wash his hands of you but I expect he was more afraid of falling into his mother’s bad books than of incurring your anger. … You must make allowances, you know. Mrs. Castallack was not an attentive mother—she had too many troubles of her own—and as a result her children are perhaps overanxious to win her attention and favor.”

“I don’t know why they bother with her!” I said fiercely. “She was content to live without them for nearly seven years!”

“Ah, now you’re speaking too hastily.” And he began to talk about Mrs. Castallack in such a calm, dispassionate voice that soon I had forgotten that he was speaking of a woman I had resented so intensely for so long and was listening instead to the story of a woman who had suffered an orphaned poverty-stricken childhood, raised herself with great difficulty to the respectable level of a farmer’s wife and then jeopardized her happiness by an unwise marriage which had finally brought her nothing but the most bitter distress.

“Poor woman,” said the rector, “she was caught between forces which she could not master at all. I was seriously worried about her when the courts deprived her of the children. She had a difficult pregnancy which she had to endure without one single gesture of assistance from her husband. She was, believe me, greatly to be pitied.”

I was silent. I had not thought of Mrs. Castallack from a sympathetic viewpoint before and the experience was so novel that I found it hard to know what I wanted to say. In the end all I could say lamely was “If she’d given my father a divorce I don’t suppose he would have been so harsh to her about the children’s custody.” But even as I spoke my words seemed to condemn my father and exonerate Mrs. Castallack from blame.

The rector said simply, “The marriage meant a great deal to Mrs. Castallack. Also she was convinced that even if she had divorced your father he would still have tried to deprive her of the children. You mustn’t judge her too harshly.”

“No,” I said with an effort. “I can see why you say she was to be pitied, but …” I stopped but the next moment I was saying, unable to help myself, “My mother was to be pitied too.”

“Yes indeed,” said the rector at once. “She must have had many appallingly difficult times.”

“Then my father was wrong to hurt them both so much,” I said, trying to sort it out. “It was my father who was at fault.”

“Not entirely,” said the rector. “In a way they were all at fault—your mother, your father and Mrs. Castallack; it would be unjust to blame your father alone. He did wrong, certainly, but he was far from being a wicked young man. He was lonely. He longed for affection from his father, but Laurence was—without meaning to be unkind—more inclined to show his deepest affections toward others. He expected no affection from his mother, who was a very difficult woman. He was a plain young man, not particularly attractive to the ladies, who was anxious to find companionship of a certain kind whenever he could. In many ways it was inevitable that he should have entangled himself in such an unhappy domestic situation.”

We talked for some time longer, and soon I began to feel infinitely better. When Alice returned presently from her shopping expedition I stayed to lunch and by the time I was on my way back to Penmarric that afternoon I had fully recovered from my visit to the farm.

On my arrival at Penmarric I discovered to my disgust that Hugh had planted himself in my room to wait for me.

“Adrian!” He sprang to his feet in concern as I came in. “God, I was getting worried about you! Look, old chap, I’m terribly sorry about that scene at the farm—”

I had had more than enough by that time of his talent for facing both ways and I told him so, but he was so full of apologies and winning smiles that I found it impossible to be furious with him for long.

“After all,” he pleaded, “how was I to know Philip and Mama would return early from Penzance? How was I to know that Mama would take the wrong handbag with her by mistake and that she and Philip would reach Market Jew Street to find they had only half a crown between them? It was just a piece of the most awful bad luck.”

“Well, all right,” I said reluctantly, not wanting to be uncharitable. “But if you turn against me again as you turned against me today at the farm, that’s the end of all friendship between us. I don’t believe in having a friend unless he can stand up for me when I’m in trouble.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Hugh. “So we’re friends again? Good! I’m so glad. Look, why don’t we ride into Penzance together one day next week? I went over there the other day with Philip and I discovered the most fascinating shop down by the harbor. Come to my room and I’ll show you one or two of the things I bought there.”

To my disgust I discovered that his purchases consisted only of three postcards, each a garish photograph of a scantily clad woman in an artificial pose.

“They’re called ‘semi-classical’ poses,” Hugh explained. “Classical means nude. I tried to get some completely classical cards but it was no good—the man refused to sell them to me. However, you’re tall and could easily pass for at least eighteen—if you came with me I’m sure the man wouldn’t refuse to sell them to you.”

“But why on earth do you want to buy them?”

“Why, to look at, of course!” He gave me a scandalized glance. “Don’t you do that sort of thing at school?”

“No, I’m too busy working or reading or trying to play cricket.”

“Girls are much more fun!” He sighed. “If only I wasn’t so short! If I were two, three, four inches taller I’m sure I could have any girl I wanted just by snapping my fingers.”

“I wouldn’t want to be in that position anyway,” I said flatly. “I expect I shall get married one day, but until then I don’t want to have anything to do with girls. I find the whole business of casual affairs repulsive.”

“Really?” said Hugh. “I find it utterly fascinating. I say, you’re not in love with a boy at school or anything, are you?”

“Do you have to be so absolutely revolting?”

“I take it that means no. In that case, why aren’t you interested in girls? I spend almost every day wondering what it’s like to … incidentally, I found out from that shop where I bought the postcards that there’s a woman who does it with boys our age. But she charges a guinea. Rather pricey, isn’t it! I don’t suppose by any chance—”