Penmarric (70 page)

It was a good legacy for a housekeeper, a poor one for a mistress. In any event it was calculated not to give rise to unfortunate comment.

“… to my butler James Medlyn …”

Every servant was remembered, right down to the scullery maid. The list seemed interminable.

Vincent cleared his throat and turned yet another of the pages.

“After payment of all the above legacies and bequests … after payment of all taxes …”

This was it. I glanced at Jan-Yves again. He was the only one who hadn’t been mentioned so far,

“… all that part and parcel of land known as Penmarric in the parish of St. Just-in-Penwith in the Duchy of Cornwall …”

The legal phrases droned on remorselessly.

“… the house … all my personal chattels in the house with the exception of my papers, writings, articles, manuscripts …”

It was endless.

“
…
and the mine known as Sennen Garth …”

My mine. Sennen Garth. The last working mine west of St. Just. My mine left to a worthless lout I despised.

“… including all rents, profits …”

My mine, I thought, my mine. My cause. My life’s work.

“I hereby devise and bequeath …”

He stopped.

There was utter silence. Then:

“… to my son Philip Castallack,” said Michael Vincent and looked me straight in the eyes.

Why did Richard and the Old King always get on so badly? In many ways their characters were alike …

—The Devil’s Brood

ALFRED DUGGAN

Richard was crowned king on 3 September 1189 in Westminster Abbey… He was anxious to be off on the exciting adventure of a crusade. Already before he was crowned he had ordered a muster of ships.

—King John,

W. L. WARREN

“… ON TRUST FOR LIFE,”
said Vincent, still looking at me, “and on his death to …”

He was saying something about how the estate would pass to my son when I died, or if I had no son either to Jonas or to Jan-Yves as I should appoint by will. But I didn’t really hear him. I didn’t hear anything. All I knew was his voice saying, “ ‘To my son Philip Castallack,’ ” my head ringing with those legal phrases, my mind not understanding, not even trying to understand, only trying to accept that it was mine—on trust but mine—mine for life, for as long as there was breath in my body, for as long as I could wake each morning and look upon the Cornish moors. All the residue of the Castallack fortune, every brick of Penmarric, every square inch of ground within the boundary walls, every fathom of the Sennen Garth mine. The tenant farms, the rows of cottages in St. Just, the black cliffs, the golden sands. The rhododendrons and the hydrangeas and the azaleas, the heather, the brambles and the gorse. All that part and parcel of land known as Penmarric in the parish of St. Just in the Duchy of Cornwall.

And he had left it all to me.

I had cursed him, abused him and threatened him but it was as if I had never spoken a word. I had walked out of his house long ago after scoffing at his money and sneering at all he had done for me, but it was as if all our past quarrels were meaningless. I had thought he had hated me as much as I had hated him, but now it was as if the hatred had never existed and our estrangement had been nothing but an illusion created and fostered by the mine.

And now he had left me the mine. And the money to keep it alive. He had left it all to me, but suddenly I didn’t want it because the gift was so terrible to me that I felt as if it were an invisible rod beating me to the ground. I wanted to retreat, to fling up my arms to protect myself, to run and hide and claw my way to safety, yet there was no going back. I had nowhere to run, no way of turning back the pages of the past. My mistakes were all made and now that my father was dead nothing could undo them. He had left me the mine and the money, and now I had to live with them. I had to eat in the dining room of Penmarric and hear my voice say, “If you close that mine I’ll break you,” to present checks to the bank and hear my voice from the past shout, “You never gave me a penny of your damned money!” to go down the mine every day and listen to my memories crying, “You never understand! You’ve never tried to! You’ve done nothing for me all my life!” So many terrible memories; and I had to live with them all.

I stood up. They all looked at me. Vincent had been reading the passage in which my father had appointed Adrian as his literary executor, but as I rose he stopped. I looked at my sisters, Mariana smart and pretty, her blue eyes ice-cold; Jeanne pale and drawn; Elizabeth cool and hostile. I looked at the Parrishes, at William, large and untidy, his humorous mouth unsmiling, at Adrian, tall and spare, his expression shadowed with an emotion I could not read. I looked at Alice, saw her contempt for me in her tight-lipped face, and then I looked at the rector. He knew. His face was inscrutable yet filled with the knowledge of what that will meant to me. He knew. There was knowledge in Jan-Yves’s face too, not the rector’s knowledge but another knowledge far more bitter, and I saw then that he had known all along about the will. It was the will that had brought him to Roslyn Farm, the will that had spurred him to ingratiate himself with my mother and thus with me, the will that had obliged him to involve himself in my schemes. He had written off an inheritance from my father and was angling for a possible inheritance to come; he had been planning for the future, making sure he was on the right side when my father died.

I stood there looking at them all, and I saw they were as estranged from me as I was from them. None of them cared. Why should they have done? I hadn’t cared for them. All I had cared for was my mother and my mine.

I went out of the room. Nobody said anything. Nobody stopped me. I walked out of the house, down the drive, across the cliffs to the mine, but there was no comfort at the mine, no solace, only the dark mystery of the main shaft and the repellent blast of air from the furnace, and in the end I went on, into St. Just, out toward Morvah, up into the hills, to the moors, to Chûn. I walked and walked and walked. I noticed nothing, I felt nothing. I didn’t even know where I was going. When I reached the castle I almost went down the hill to the farm but then I knew it was too soon, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. The knowledge was obscene. I wanted to talk about it, to try and unload that terrible burden from my mind, but there was no one to talk to, nothing except the sweep of the moors and the occasional gust of rain, and far away on the skyline the ruined engine house of Ding Dong mine.

I walked on to Zillan.

The village was quiet now after the departure of the crowds who had flocked to the church to mourn. There was no one about. I went into the deserted churchyard, and it was peaceful. My father’s grave was heaped with flowers, and the scent floated toward me as I moved down the path. A breeze stirred the exotic blooms, and as I looked at them I remembered that none of the wreaths had come from me. My mother had sent flowers in my name but she had paid for them. I hadn’t spent one penny of my own money in providing an adequate funeral. Not one single penny of my money.

I told myself it was futile to wish I had paid for the flowers. What difference could it possibly have made? My father couldn’t; see the flowers, couldn’t know who had given wreaths and who hadn’t. To be overcome now by an absurd compulsion to lay still more flowers on that already overcrowded grave was not only superstitious but inexcusably sentimental as well.

And yet …

I was at the wall of the churchyard. My mind had ceased to reason; I was conscious only of the large wild daisies still blooming beneath the shelter of the old stones, and I found myself stooping to tear the stalks off at the root. I didn’t hurry. I just went on picking the daisies one after the other until suddenly my eyes were blind and I could no longer see.

The flowers fell lightly from my hands. The ground at my feet was strewn with their petals but all could see was a white blur, and suddenly I put my hands over my eyes and leaned against the wall and cried as I had not cried since I was a child long ago in times I had long since tried to forget.

I cried for a long time. Afterward I felt no better, only empty and sick. I sat on the ground, my back to the wall, and stared at the flowers on the grave, and there was nothing to think about; it was all too late for wishing the past could have been otherwise, and although I tried to pray I couldn’t, I had no belief. I went on sitting there in the churchyard. I had lost all count of time. And then just as I had noticed the lengthening shadows I heard the click of the lych-gate far away and knew that I was no longer alone in the churchyard.

I waited. I heard his footsteps on the path, saw his dark suit black against the gray tombstones. I saw him walk to my father’s grave and close his eyes in prayer, and when he opened his eyes again he saw me watching him as I sat with my back to the ancient wall among those ancient forgotten graves.

We looked at each other for a long time, just he and I, just Adrian Parrish and Philip Castallack, and between us lay the mighty wall of our joint past, a monumental wasteland of hostility which had separated us for more than twenty years.

He took a step toward me, then a step back. It was more than he could do. After a moment he turned, walked quickly down the path and disappeared into the shadow of the porch.

And the wall between us crumbled into dust, the wasteland became a mere mirage of past jealousy and I was free.

I went after him. At first I thought he had gone into the church but I was wrong. He was still in the porch, still lingering as if he didn’t know what to do, his hand on the old iron ring which lifted the bolt and opened the door. My shadow fell across the doorway, he looked up, and there we were, face to face at last, and—for the first time in our lives—equals.

“But we were always equals,” said Adrian. “That was the whole problem. We each wanted the best for our mothers; and both of us—in our different ways—gave our father a tough time in consequence. No wonder we never got on. How could we? We were traveling the same road all right—but in opposite directions so that when we met it was always in a head-on collision.”

I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me.

“You thought you were the only one who ever gave Papa a hard time? My dear Philip! I might not have used the same tactics as you did but I’m sure there were times when he was at his wits’ end to know what to do with me. Yes of course I was a little pest at Allengate. Wouldn’t you have been if you’d been in my shoes? I was jealous and insecure and haunted all the time by the dread that my illegitimacy made my position inferior to yours.”

He had feared his position had been inferior to mine. I couldn’t take it in. My mind balked at it.

“Yes, of course I did my best to get on well with Papa—why not? It was my best insurance against that enormous insecurity. When I wasn’t worrying him silly with my erratic behavior I did all I could to win his affection. Yes, I did like history and yes, I did share some of his interests, but would I have liked them so much if I hadn’t so often been falling over myself to win his approbation? I wonder. You see, I wasn’t really very like him at all. I realized that clearly when I went up to Oxford after the war and tried to follow in his footsteps.”

I tried to say something, but there were no words. All I could do was listen.

 
“I saw the truth then,” said Adrian. “I realized that I liked history well enough—but as a hobby, an intellectual exercise. Nothing more. I could never have made a good historian. I hadn’t the … how shall I put it? I hadn’t the passion for it.”

The passion.

“But Papa was different. History was his passion. It was his cause, his life’s work. Have you ever read any of his books? Have you ever read any of his articles, his theses? Didn’t you hear of the academic feuds he had with other historians whose views were opposed to his own? Didn’t you hear of his great friend at Oxford—the one he quarreled with and brought to ruin? No, I don’t suppose you did. You weren’t interested in history, after all. You were too busy with your mine.”

My mine. I was dumb. Speech was beyond me.

“I tried to pursue history as Papa pursued it, but I couldn’t do it. The hours of patient research, the fanatical attention to detail, the total self-absorption in the events of long ago to the point where you can sink yourself into the personalities involved and think as they thought—no, it was beyond me. I hadn’t the ambition. But Papa had the ambition. I think if I’d presented an original historical thesis which had been heavily criticized by academic experts I would have fled in shame and hidden myself in a corner to lick my wounds, but Papa wasn’t like that. He was tough and he didn’t care how much criticism he had to face because he was convinced he was right and they were wrong. He rode roughshod over all opposition because nothing else mattered to him except the views which he believed to be true. With him, historical truth as he saw it was so important that nothing was allowed to stand in its way, not even an old and valued friendship. But I couldn’t have been that ruthless. It’s not in me. I was really so dissimilar to him. We were cast in such different molds.”

There was a silence. At last I managed to say something. I don’t remember what it was.

“No, it was a logical will,” said Adrian. “It was just and fair. He knew Jan-Yves was too immature to cope with a large inheritance. He knew it would have been foolish to leave the estate to either William or me—not simply because we were illegitimate but because neither of us needed it. William has no ambition; he’s happy enough as he is, and I—well, what would a clergyman want with a large inheritance? It would have been more of a hindrance than a help to me, and I never liked Penmarric anyway. That left you. But you needn’t think he was forced to leave it to you simply because there was no one else. He wanted to leave it to you. That makes sense, doesn’t it? When it came down to the basic facts, what did all the quarrels matter? You spoke a language he could understand. That was what mattered. He seldom saw you but he didn’t have to see you often to know you well because you both spoke the same language and it was the language he had spoken all his life.” I said nothing. There was so much I could have said but none of it would have been enough.