Read Online Penmarric by Susan Howatch - Free Book Online

waist to her neck and back to her waist again before I remembered my manners and stared out of the window to regain my composure.
    “Will you be long in this part of Cornwall, Mr. Castallack?” she asked effortlessly while I struggled with an unexpected wave of self-consciousness. I was suddenly much too aware of my youth, my lack of inches, my plain features and my thickset frame.
    “For a few weeks, perhaps.” I made a great effort, determined to overcome my reserve. She was, after all, only a working-class woman, despite her airs and graces. There was no need for me to feel so paralytically shy. I took a sip of the home-made wine and began to explain that I had just finished my studies at Oxford and had decided to visit my father, who was spending the summer at Deveral Farm. The wine, powerful as only home-made wine can be, soon enabled me to summon the boldness to question her about herself: Had she always lived in Cornwall? Were her stepsons in the habit of persecuting her in such a distasteful fashion? Had it been hard for her since her husband died? I learned that, yes, she had always lived in Cornwall and in fact had never been east of the Tamar, and that, yes, her stepsons entertained nothing but ill-will toward her since her husband had left the house to her in his will, but she was not afraid of her stepsons since there was nothing they could do to evict her from her home. She managed well enough; she had had to work harder since her husband’s death, but she had help; the young servant girl Annie was half-witted but very biddable, and there was always Griselda.
    “Griselda?” I said.
    “Griselda came with me from St. Ives when I married,” said Mrs. Roslyn, and some small edge to her voice told me that she did not wish to pursue the subject.
    “I hear St. Ives is a very picturesque town,” I said after a slight pause. “I’ve long wanted to visit it some day.”
    She smiled but said nothing, and I realized then that the distasteful subject was not the unknown Griselda at all but the town where she had lived until her marriage.
    “I have friends there,” I said rapidly. “The St. Enedocs—or at least Russell St. Enedoc was a friend of mine at school although I haven’t seen him for a year or two now …” And I went on talking of matters of no particular importance, the parts of Cornwall I knew best, the local gentry with whom I happened to be acquainted, my impressions of Morvah and Zillan, until at last her polite silence hinted that she was waiting for me to leave.
    I rose to my feet so clumsily that I almost upset my empty wineglass. “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Roslyn, I think I should be on my way.”
    “Ah yes,” she said, “you told me you were on your way to Zillan when you became lost and decided to stop at the farm to seek directions.” Her clear eyes looked straight into mine and I thought I saw a flicker of irony in her expression as she repeated the lie I had told her. “Take the lane down to the road, then cross the road and you will see Zillan before you across the moors.”
    “Thank you.” We were in the hall by this time and she was opening the front door. As she turned to face me again I held out my hand and after a slight hesitation she put her hand in mine. Her fingers were long and sinuous. I could imagine how they might feel under different circumstances, and because my imagination was unusually vivid I held her hand too long and she was obliged to withdraw it to preserve the proprieties.
    I said clumsily, “May I call again?”
    “Please do,” she said, “if you happen to be in this neighborhood.” But her voice was merely civil. It was not an encouraging invitation. “The mornings are the best time,” she added, just as I was beginning to feel unpleasantly rebuffed, “because in the afternoons I try to rest or at least to do some sewing or ironing before I cook the evening meal. But don’t call on Thursday. Thursday is the big market day in Penzance and I