Penmarric (92 page)

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“And she never will.” He ground the burned stub of the match into the rough wooden table before us. His face was without expression now, without trace of pain or grief or regret. “I didn’t find a second Trevose,” he said. “At first I thought I could, but I was wrong. He was unique. I know that now. I’ll never have a better friend than he was to me.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “I liked Canada,” he said. “The mines were interesting and I made plenty of friends, but no friend ever matched up to Trevose and after a while I got tired of looking. Then I found this widow. It was a relief to start living in a woman’s house again by that time, but eventually she wanted an affair and—well, that sort of thing doesn’t interest me. However, by that time I was clearer in my own mind about what I wanted. I saw I liked to live with a woman but I had to have my separate bedroom and my independence. No sex. No emotional scenes. I began to think of Helena again, but I knew I had no right to ask her to come back to me after the way I’d treated her, so I hardly expected her to agree to a reconciliation, let alone a reconciliation on the terms I wanted. But she did. Apparently she had tried an affair while she and Jeanne were abroad after Gerald’s death and discovered she didn’t like sex any better than I did. Ironic, wasn’t it? It turned out that we were much better suited to each other than either of us had ever suspected.” He flicked ash onto the ground and watched the breeze scatter it across the earth. “I think we’re happy,” he said. “We’re certainly happier now than we were before.”

“Yes,” I said. I could think of nothing else to say.

”I’m glad I’m back in Cornwall. I liked Canada but I missed Cornwall a lot. Sometimes the homesickness seemed more than I could bear, but I stuck it out for three years, just as I said I would, and in the end I was glad I did. Those three years helped to give me a perspective on the past and also helped me to know myself better. It’s important to know oneself well.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a pity about Jonas,” he said. “Poor little devil; I don’t think it’s his fault he’s so difficult. It’s a combination of his father being dead and his mother being the woman she is and his environment making him nervous of big houses like Penmarric and the way of life we take for granted. I’ll still give him what assistance I can—if Rebecca will accept it—but he’s not the son I wanted and I was no doubt optimistic in hoping that he ever could be. It’s a pity, but I feel there’s nothing more I can do about it now. I’ve done what I can. If Rebecca wants to blame anyone for what happens next she can blame herself—God knows it’s not the child’s fault that I’ve decided he’s not after all suited to inherit Penmarric one day.”

“You mean—am I to understand—”

“What else can I do? After this incident I have little choice but to change my will.” He tossed his cigarette away and ground the butt to ashes beneath his heel. “Penmarric can go to you if you outlive me, and I wish you joy of the whole bloody inheritance. God knows you’re the only one who seems to have any use for the place nowadays.”

I tried to speak. I tried to smile. But as I began to stammer a few inadequate words to express my gratitude, he got up and walked away in calculated rebuff before turning to smile right back bitterly into my eyes.

It is possible that during the years that followed, Richard himself, and his immediate entourage, began to acquire a respect for the reformed John that then emerged, for he spent them serving his brother faithfully on the field of battle and in the council chamber.

Isabelle of Gloucester played no part in John’s public life, and it is doubtful if she played much part in his private life either; certainly she bore him no children … John set about freeing himself.

—King John,

W L. WARREN

I
T WOULD BE UNTRUE
to say that after this incident Philip and I became close friends, but we were on better terms with each other than we had been before; I began to be invited to dinner parties at Penmarric at last, and occasionally Philip and I would go drinking at the local pub. My position began to improve. I was more likely to be given responsible work. At last I felt I was beginning to leave the most disagreeable part of my life behind, and as the months passed I became less conscious of the memory of my humiliation and disgrace.

Shortly after the scene with Rebecca, Philip told me he had signed a new will in my favor and had left it in the care of another firm of solicitors, Pomeroy and Pomeroy of St. Ives. On this particular matter he had avoided the offices of Holmes, Holmes, Trebarvah and Holmes in order that no word should reach Simon Peter that Jonas had ceased to be heir to Penmarric.

“I want no more scenes with Rebecca,” Philip said to me bluntly. “I’ve told Mama I’ve changed my will, and Helena knows, but if the news travels back to the Roslyns I’ll never hear the end of it. Someone’s sure to accuse me of being unfair to the child, poor little devil.”

Jonas had not, of course, reappeared at Penmarric since the disastrous weekend in July, and eventually Rebecca informed Philip by letter that she had changed her mind about sending the child away to school. This was a most foolish decision, since she was depriving Jonas of his chance to have a decent education, but I was determined not to interfere. I had what I wanted and Jonas no longer concerned me.

My reluctance to become involved with Jonas made me reluctant too to become involved with Rebecca. If she had suggested that I visit her I would have gone to Deveral Farm without a second thought, but she made no move toward me and soon when I heard that she had a lodger for the holidays, a schoolmaster from Middlesex, I foresaw that she would make no attempt to renew our affair. I think my reaction to her accusations against Philip had antagonized her; she had turned to me for support only to find me totally unsympathetic. As if in revenge she seemed determined to ignore me—and focus all her attention on the schoolmaster from Middlesex.

Since my estrangement from her she had formed the practice of taking in a lodger during the summer months, and I had often wondered what her relationship was with these men whom she beckoned to Deveral Farm to supplement her income. Her first lodger, a writer from London, had been well into his sixties and obviously beneath her notice, but this schoolmaster was not much more than forty and not even unattractive. I regarded him with suspicion. Nobody else seemed to share my suspicions, but then nobody else knew Rebecca as well as I did. I knew that despite her protestations to the contrary she had a healthy sexual appetite, and I found it hard to believe she could have been without a lover since our last episode in the bedroom over two years before. After the autumn of 1934 she also had more moral freedom; her Uncle Jared, who had always kept a stern eye on her private life, died in September and was buried with his ancestors in Zillan churchyard after a memorial service at the Wesleyan chapel which he had attended for nearly fifty years. We all went to his funeral. He had been a well-respected man in the parishes of Morvah, Zillan and St. Just and was mourned by people from all stratas of society. Simon Peter was the chief mourner, and with him was not only his new wife, whom he had just taken to live at Polzillan House, but also one or two of the Trehearnes of Helston. Among the humbler mourners were the eight surviving daughters, but although Charity sobbed louder than any of them as her father’s coffin was lowered into the earth none of her family gave her any indication that she was no longer disowned by them.

“Whore!” snarled Miss Hope Roslyn, the eldest of the three spinster daughters.

“Slut!” sneered Miss Prudence.

“Bitch!” sneered Miss Grace.

“You wicked, un-Christian old virgins!” screamed Charity. “At least I got myself a husband and the finest gentleman who ever did breathe!” And she flung herself against William’s breast and wept piteously against his shirt front.

William, behaving cunningly in an embarrassing situation, said with immense grandeur, “Come, my dear, let’s not keep the chauffeur waiting. I think it’s time we returned to Carnforth Hall.” To the hostile Roslyns he merely added, “If I didn’t believe grief was the cause of your bad manners and bad taste I wouldn’t be so ready now to overlook your contemptible behavior toward my wife. Good day.” And turning his back on them, he walked off slowly toward the lych-gate with his wife leaning heavily on his arm.

It was the first time I had heard him refer to Charity as his wife. Ever since she had dragooned him to the registry office eight years before he had fought shy of any reference to the fact that he was a married man, but after Jared Roslyn’s funeral all that was changed. He had always been happily married; now he was no longer ashamed to admit it. As he left the churchyard that day with his wife I envied him his happiness and wished I had a wife who could care for me as much as Charity cared for him.

But I had no one. Felicity and I were still good friends, but I knew our marriage was finished and that I should get a divorce so that I would be free to remarry whenever I chose to do so. Yet the idea of divorce saddened me; I lingered, postponing it for as long as possible, but early in 1935 I discussed the situation with Felicity and agreed to commit adultery at a certain hotel in St. Ives known to her private detective. Felicity behaved very sensibly about the whole business—“After all,” she said, “now that Daddy’s halved my allowance and I can’t afford to give you any money, what’s the point of staying married?”—but I became so upset that when the time came for me to commit my adultery I couldn’t take advantage of the privacy of the hotel room but merely sat chain-smoking on the edge of the bed. It was a most distressing and sordid experience.

“We’ll still be friends, won’t we?” I said unhappily to Felicity afterward. “We’ll still see each other now and then?”

“Of course!” said Felicity. “Why not? No hard feelings.”

“I feel I’ve treated you so badly in so many ways—”

“Bunk,” said Felicity. “We had some jolly good times and I don’t regret a moment of it. Just think—if you hadn’t married me no one would have done it! Be thankful for small mercies, that’s what I say. Don’t go all conscience-stricken and pile on the sob stuff, there’s a good chap, or I shall start howling myself. I say, why don’t we go to the Metropole and have dinner and a bottle of champagne? No sad regrets! No going weepy on each other’s shoulders! Let’s go out and get tight and have a marvelous time!”

We did. But at the end of the evening we became maudlin, much against our better judgment, and she cried a little and said she’d loved me all along but had thought the only way to keep me was to give me as much freedom as I wished.

“Perhaps it would have been different if I’d had a baby,” she said. “I hoped I would have one but then I went to a gynecologist—no, I never told you. Why? Oh, I don’t know. I expect you were having one of your Rebecca moods when you simply didn’t notice me at all … It doesn’t matter now. We aren’t suited to each other, I know that really, and it’s much more sensible to be divorced.”

However, even when Felicity was granted a decree
nisi
in August of 1935 I found there was no one I wanted to marry. My depression deepened. Filled with a desire to escape from it, I went to Cambridge for a fortnight and was welcomed by Lizzie with open arms. She was pregnant again but feeling well, and she and her husband entertained me so hospitably that I soon forgot my troubles and began to enjoy myself. She seemed very happy. Her little girl, my niece Theodosia, was by this time two years old and already learning the Greek alphabet.

“Poor child,” I said, amused.

“Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “She enjoys it. I wish someone had tried to teach
me
Greek when I was two instead of letting me languish in ignorance until I was sixteen.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be educated,” I suggested, but this idea was dismissed as too frivolous to be taken seriously.

It was while I was staying with Lizzie that I became sufficiently diverted from my personal affairs; to take some interest in national events. In fact it would have been impossible to stay with Lizzie and not be forced to take an interest in at least one of the current issues under discussion—in this case the intellectual pros and cons of pacifism and its effectiveness in coping with the rising Fascist tide.

“But isn’t fascism just a fad?” I said vaguely, “a reaction to all that Bolshevik hysteria of the Twenties? You surely can’t take people like Mosley seriously! Of course I know that Fascist rally at Olympia last year was a bit of a disgrace, but—”

“Mosley!” said Lizzie, eyeing me as if I were a very unintelligent schoolboy. “Olympia! What about Hitler and his purges—if you’re going to talk about last year’s Fascist excesses what about the Night of the Long Knives in Germany? And what about Abyssinia and Mussolini, and Hitler adopting conscription in direct contradiction to the Treaty of Versailles? And what about—”

“Well, that’s all abroad,” I said, assuming a placid, self-satisfied air to tease her for her impassioned harangue. “Here at home things are all right, aren’t they? Unemployment down, the economy cheering up at last, the Silver Jubilee—”

“Sentimental absorption in an admirable royal family,” said Lizzie severely, “is no excuse for ignoring the political realities of a menacing international situation. The only hope of avoiding international chaos is by the propagation of pacifism—unilateral disarmament and individual conscientious refusal to fight are the only morally tenable solutions to present European problems in my opinion.”

“Well, Baldwin still seems to believe in the League system,” I said comfortably. “Look how he’s replaced Hoare with Eden as Foreign Secretary.”

“Politicians!” snorted Lizzie. “They believe whatever they want to believe, depending on how soon the next election is! I’m tired of watching Baldwin flirt with the idea of rearmament!”

“I don’t suppose it’ll matter if we rearm or not,” I said soothingly. “Nobody’s going to indulge in full-scale war again, not even your favorite bogeymen in their black shirts and swastikas. There’s a limit to everything, after all.”