The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I didn’t know men ever talked such rot. You didn’t believe him, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. He meant it.”

  We were at All-Hallows Court, the Applebys’ home, which stood three miles from Oxmoon on the parish boundary of Penhale and Llangennith. The house, which was considerably smaller than Oxmoon, was what we in South Wales call a squarsonage, meaning that it was a cross between the home of a parson and the residence of a country squire, and the unlikely name was said (erroneously no doubt) to be a corruption of “Hail Mary,” the last words of a group of Catholics slaughtered during the Reformation by a faction group of Gower wreckers dead drunk on contraband brandy. The Applebys were smugglers and wreckers themselves at one time but later they became respectable and produced several vicars of Penhale; that meant they still smuggled, but they gave up wrecking. Probably, as my mother would have said, they felt they had to draw the line somewhere.

  “I just don’t understand,” I said to Ginette. “How could you possibly have behaved in such an appalling fashion?”

  She began to cry. I was aghast. I was not unaccustomed to seeing her in tears for she had always cherished the tiresome belief that weeping was a necessary adjunct of a heroine’s passionate nature, but these tears were far removed from her usual histrionic displays of emotion. They filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks in silence, and as I watched she bowed her head in despair.

  “Ah Ginette, Ginette …” I did not know what to do. We never embraced. I was being educated in a culture that judged it very sloppy for a boy to make a spontaneous gesture of affection. In the end I merely sat down beside her on the window seat and suggested the only possible panacea. “Come home to Oxmoon.”

  “I can’t. There was a dreadful quarrel. Didn’t they tell you?”

  “But they’ve forgiven you!”

  “I haven’t forgiven them. They were horrid about Conor, they said he wasn’t what he seemed to be but that was the whole point: he was. He was real. But nothing else was. I’d been living in a fairy tale.” She blew her nose on a grubby handkerchief before adding unsteadily, “I don’t want to live in a fairy tale anymore.”

  “You’re living in a fairy tale if you believe that villain will ever come back for you!”

  “No. I’m going to marry him.”

  “But you can’t! What about me? You can’t just throw me over as if I no longer exist!”

  She gazed at me helplessly. “I’m sorry, it’s as if we don’t even talk the same language anymore.”

  “But you swore I came first with you!”

  “And so you did,” she said. “You were there in the beginning, you were part of the magic of Oxmoon, and you’ll be with me always in my memory, always to the very end of my life.” She broke down again. I tried to grab her hand, as if I could lead her back to the strawberry beds, symbol of our paradise lost, but she jumped up and ran sobbing from the room.

  I was alone.

  VII

  SHE DID GO BACK to Oxmoon but only for an occasional visit with Lady Appleby and the Applebys’ son, Timothy, who had recently come down from Cambridge. The presence of Timothy annoyed me for I thought him a poor fish, and I became even more annoyed when Ginette, who had once described him as the lamppost the lamplighter forgot, never failed to giggle at his idiotic jokes.

  “You don’t care for Timothy, do you?” I said to her once on a rare occasion when we were alone together.

  “Good heavens, no!” she said. “But he’s very amusing, and it’s nice to have an older friend who’s been out and about in the world.”

  In the autumn she was sent to Germany to spend six months at a finishing school, but she had barely arrived home from Germany in the March of 1898 when she and Timothy announced their engagement. I was at Harrow but my father wrote, my mother wrote and this time even Ginette herself wrote to break the news. Her letter arrived first.

  Darling Robert, she began. Advancing years had taught her how to be effusive, and I knew very well that the more nervous she was the more effusive she became. Something simply too divine has happened and I’m engaged to be married!!! To Timothy!!! I’m so excited I can hardly put pen to paper but of course I had to tell you at once because after all you’re so special to me and always will be, quite the best first-cousin-once-removed that anyone ever had, and I’m sure that when you marry I shall be madly jealous and gnash my teeth and long to be an absolute CAT to her!

  Now Robert, don’t be too livid with me—a girl really does have to get married, you know, and Uncle William and Aunt Maud were having second thoughts about giving me a season because Timothy was so passionate about me and they thought it would be rather heavenly if I married him and I suppose they didn’t like the idea of me meeting heaps of luscious gentlemen in London, and quite honestly I didn’t care for the idea much either, I decided I’d already had more than enough of luscious gentlemen who promised to love me forever and then disappeared without trace.

  Bobby and Margaret are thrilled, in fact they’re both being simply wonderful, and darling Bobby says he’s going to give a ball for me at Oxmoon on my eighteenth birthday next month, so hurry home from Harrow, my dear (what a collection of breathless aspirants!) because I simply can’t wait to see you! Undying love, yours through all eternity, GINETTE.

  I had barely recovered from this sickening effusion when my father’s letter arrived. After breaking the news of the engagement, he wrote, I myself am convinced that this is the best possible solution for Ginevra and when you come home we’ll have a talk and I’ll explain why. Meanwhile behave like a gentleman and do nothing that would make me ashamed of you—but I have every confidence that your conduct, as always, will be exemplary. Ever your affectionate and devoted father, R.G.

  This elliptical letter seemed curiously empty. I read it and reread it and felt more despairing than ever. I wanted immediate comfort; the promise of future explanations coupled with exhortations to behave like a gentleman merely increased my baffled misery. I wanted someone to say, “Yes, you must be appalled,” and suggest if not a remedy, at least a road to resignation.

  My mother’s letter arrived two days later.

  My dearest Robert, she wrote, Of course you will be appalled by the news of Ginevra’s engagement. But try to be patient. It is a difficult situation but there are arguments in favor of the engagement which I must leave to your father to explain. It is not a mother’s provenance to talk of the Ways of the World to her sons.

  No doubt you will be feeling frustrated that your father hasn’t written at length, but when considering the Ways of the World an oral discussion is more efficacious than an exchange of letters. Also your father is subject to uneasiness when he has to write long letters in English. Remember that he has not had the benefit of your first-class education, and try to understand how sensitive he feels on the subject. It was terrible for him to be sent home from school at the age of thirteen because his father would not or could not pay the bills, terrible for him later when no tutor would stay in a house so impregnated with immorality and corruption. Again, be patient. And have courage. Remember, everything passes, even the most unspeakable horrors. Believe me. I know. I send my best love, dearest Robert, and remain now and always your most affectionate and devoted MAMA.

  VIII

  I RETURNED TO OXMOON two weeks later for the Easter holidays, and on the morning after my arrival my father asked me to accompany him to the library, a long tousled room dominated by the leather-bound collection of books ordered for Oxmoon by my eighteenth-century ancestor Robert Godwin the Renovator. My father, who used the library as an estate office, read only magazines when he was at leisure; he never opened a book. My mother read Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management and, occasionally, moral tracts which she felt might be suitable for the servants’ hall. My parents, in other words, were a perfect example of how to succeed in life without benefit of a worthwhile education.

  “Sit down, Robert,” said my father, motioning me to the chair by his writing
table, but he himself remained standing by the fireplace.

  My father was a tall man, over six feet in height, and he looked like the hero he was. I cannot remember a time when I did not know he was a hero, saving his ruined inheritance, overcoming all manner of adversity, winning a reputation throughout the length and breadth of the Gower Peninsula as a just landlord, a hardworking farmer and a devoted family man. At that time, when I was two months short of my sixteenth birthday, he was still only thirty-six, three years older than my mother, but as he stood facing me in the library I thought neither of his youth nor of his hero’s looks, which were so familiar that I took them for granted, but of his lack of education which my mother had recently underlined to me.

  My father was a gentleman, a member of an Anglo-Welsh family which had survived in Gower for many hundreds of years, but at that moment I suddenly saw him through the English eyes I was busy acquiring at Harrow and I realized for the first time how hard it would be to place him within the conventional framework of the English class system. His casual country clothes were in impeccable English taste but there was something foreign about the way he wore them; Englishmen are prone to be shabbily, not elegantly, informal. Then his hands were wrong; they hinted at past manual labor, not gentlemanly pursuits. But his voice was the most marked anomaly of his gentleman’s appearance, even more marked than the unfashionable beard which any English gentleman would have been tempted to shave off years before. He had a country accent. In the eighteenth century this would have been unremarkable in a provincial gentleman who seldom went to London, but here we were, almost in the twentieth century, and my father did not speak English as it should be spoken. His accent, the curious hybrid of Gower in which Devon meets and conquers Wales, was not marked, no more than a steady Welsh inflection mingled with Devonian vowels, but it was sufficient to label him an oddity in a society where every man is immediately placed as soon as he opens his mouth. My father was a Welshman living in a little corner of England which history and geography had combined to maroon behind the Welsh frontier, and in his English Welshness Oxmoon stood reflected, English yet not English, Welsh yet not Welsh, a cultural and racial conundrum endowed with an idiosyncratic charm and grace.

  “Well, Robert,” said my father, so charming, so graceful, so anxious to help me in any way he could, “let me explain why I approve of this engagement which you find so detestable. It’s like this: a girl such as Ginevra, a beautiful girl, an heiress, lives in constant danger as soon as she’s old enough to go out and about—and even before she’s old enough; I don’t have to remind you of what happened with Conor Kinsella. Now, an early marriage to a suitable young man is the best thing that could happen to a girl like Ginevra, particularly a girl who’s already got herself talked about in an infavorable way.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Believe me, Ginevra could do worse—much worse. This is a good match. Socially the Applebys are beyond reproach, and I’ve no doubt Ginevra would enjoy the future Timothy has to offer—an amusing sociable sort of life divided between London and Gower. Also the two of them have plenty of friends and acquaintances in common and no one denies marriage is easier when the partners share a similar background. Besides, they find each other good company. I don’t see why they shouldn’t do tolerably well together, indeed I don’t.”

  “I can see the truth of what you’re saying, but—”

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering how she could be happy with a plain boy who wears spectacles and likes collecting butterflies instead of playing cricket. Well, there’s more than one kind of happiness, Robert. He’ll make her happy because he’ll give her a secure respectable status as a married woman. And if she wants a more exciting sort of happiness she’ll be eligible to look elsewhere later.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “No. Well, that’s the way of the world, Robert. A girl like Ginevra is certain to favor the kind of life that in our society only married women are allowed to lead.”

  I went on staring. “But surely when women are married they still have to play the game and stick to the rules!”

  “I’m not talking about God’s rules—we all know what they are. I’m talking about society’s rules, and there are rules governing carnal behavior just as there are rules governing how to eat at table. The difference is that passion’s more important than table manners, and if you break the rules of passion you can be smashed to pulp.” He was still staring into the grate. Then abandoning the fire he moved to the window. As he slipped his hands into his pockets I saw that his fists were clenched.

  “Passion … carnal desire …” He seemed to be working his way towards some vulgar colloquialism but in the end as usual he eschewed all Anglo-Saxon bluntness and when he next spoke I realized he had fallen back on the elliptical but time-honored phrase that had been sanctified by the Bible. He was entrapped not only by his Welshness but by the verbal restraint of his generation. “Acquiring carnal knowledge is like swimming in the sea,” he said carefully at last. “The sea’s so beautiful to look at, so wonderful to swim in, but you must never bathe unless it’s safe. People so often drown in the sea and some coasts are so very dangerous … like the coast of Gower.”

  Drifting back to the writing table he paused to look down at the ink-stained blotter. “As you know,” he said, “I saw a man drown once. I saw a man drown and a woman go mad. And one day, Robert,” said my father, slowly raising his eyes to mine, “one day I’m going to have to talk to you about my mother and Owain Bryn-Davies.”

  I respected him far too much to ask what connection there could possibly be between this hoary old skeleton in the family cupboard and Ginette’s disastrous engagement, and presently—as usual—he backed away from the subject without imparting further information.

  “So you be careful of that shining sea,” he said, and as he spoke I thought how Welsh he was, wrapping the truths of life in metaphors and serving them up to me on a salver of myth. “Be careful as I was—and as I am.” He paused. His very blue eyes seemed unnaturally clear and when he looked straight at me again I found it was impossible to look away. “A good wife’s the only answer,” he said. “Anything else isn’t worth the risk of drowning. You’ll notice I don’t just say marriage is the answer, because if you choose the wrong wife it’s no answer at all. There’s no hell on earth like a bad marriage. My parents … yes, I must tell you about them someday when you’ve seen a little more of the world. They didn’t stick to the rules, you see—neither God’s rules nor the rules of society—and in breaking the rules they were both destroyed.”

  There was a pause in which nothing moved in the room but the flames of the fire in the grate.

  “So,” said my father, suddenly altering the mood by giving me his most charming smile, “I’m sure you can understand now how dangerous life could be for Ginevra and how we must do everything in our power to ensure her safety by encouraging her to make a satisfactory marriage.”

  “Yes, of course she’s got to have a husband to look after her, I quite understand that, but as far as I’m concerned there’s only one possible solution: I must marry her myself. Now, I do realize I’m a little young at present, but—”

  “I concede,” said my father, “that I married at nineteen and it turned out to be quite the most fortunate thing that’s ever happened to me, but I’m afraid I could never consent to you marrying while you’re still in your teens.”

  “But this is an emergency!”

  “I think not. I recognize that you feel a very deep affection for Ginevra, but you in your turn should now recognize that it’s fraternal.”

  “Oh no, it isn’t!”

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re jealous. I know you’ve been unhappy since she left Oxmoon. I know this is all a nightmare for you, but you must try to be grown up, try to be sensible, try to accept that this is something you can’t change.”

  This maddened me beyond endurance. “I’d like to kill him!” I shouted i
n a paroxysm of rage. “That would change things soon enough!”

  The next moment my father was slamming me face down across the writing table and the scene had dissolved with terrifying speed into violence.

  IX

  HE NEVER DID IT. He never beat me. I cried out in shock and the cry paralyzed him. For five seconds he held me in an iron grip but then with a short painful intake of breath he released my arm which he had doubled behind my back. As he walked away from me he said, “Never, never say such a thing again.” He spoke in Welsh but as it was a simple sentence I understood it. However a moment later, realizing he had used the wrong language, he repeated the order in English. The English was broken, a foreigner’s attempt at an unfamiliar tongue. He sounded like a stranger. I was terrified.

  “We don’t talk of murder at Oxmoon,” said my father.

  “Forgive me, I didn’t mean what I said—”

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, behaving like a spoiled child all over again—and to think you have the insolence to talk of marriage! It’ll be a long time before you’re fit for marriage, indeed it will—all you’re fit for at the moment is the nursery!”

  “I’m sorry but I’m just so damnably unhappy—”

  “Unhappy! Don’t talk to me of unhappiness, you don’t even know what the word means! My God, when I was your age—”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t be angry with me anymore, please—”

  “Then sit down at that table and stop whining like a pampered puppy! That’s better. Now take a sheet of notepaper and write as follows.” My father hesitated before continuing with appropriate pauses: “ ‘My dear Ginette, I must apologize for not writing earlier to send my best wishes to you on your engagement, but I’m very much looking forward to celebrating the news with you at your birthday ball at Oxmoon. After all, I’d be a poor sort of friend if I couldn’t share your happiness! I shall be writing separately to Timothy to congratulate him but meanwhile please do give him my warmest regards. I hope you will both be very happy. Yours affectionately’—or however you close your letters to her—‘Robert.’ ”