The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  I finished writing. My father read the letter over my shoulder and said, “Yes, that’ll do,” but on an impulse I scrawled beneath the signature: P.S. Make sure you save a waltz for me at the ball! I wanted a waltz not because it would give me the opportunity to hold her in my arms but because I knew she liked waltzes best and I wanted my dance with her to be a dance she would remember.

  “Well, I don’t care,” I said as I watched my father seal the letter. “Let her marry whom she likes. My friendship with her will outlast any marriage.”

  My father said tersely, “Even if you’d been older your mother and I could never have approved of you marrying her. She’s too alluring and you’re too jealous. She’d make you very miserable.”

  But I was miserable enough already and my misery had hardly begun.

  X

  THE BALL TO CELEBRATE both Ginette’s engagement and her eighteenth birthday was held on the twenty-third of April, 1898. That was when my life finally began. The previous fifteen years and ten months had been merely a rehearsal.

  All Gower came to Oxmoon for by that time my parents were famous for their lavish hospitality. It was their weakness. Everyone, after all, must occasionally have a holiday from hard work, self-help, drawing the line and doing the done thing, and my parents were in many ways a very ordinary Victorian young couple. My mother specialized in what she called “little dinner parties for twenty-four,” but her English talent for wielding power with implacable attention to detail was only truly satisfied by giving balls for a hundred. My father, displaying an inborn Welsh inclination to hospitality, seized the chance to abandon the austerity which he had been compelled to practice for so much of his life, and glide down the glittering road of extravagance. The result of their combined efforts to entertain their neighbors was unbridled sybaritic luxury served up with a shattering military precision.

  At first I had no intention of making more than a brief appearance; I not only loathed the prospect of seeing Ginette with her fiancé but in my misery I knew another of those moments when I was overwhelmed with the drearier aspects of adolescence. Once again I was undergoing a bout of rapid growth; I looked ridiculous in my evening clothes, and as I stood before the looking glass I thought I had never seen a youth who looked more unappealing. There was even a spot on my chin. I never normally had spots. I did not believe in them. But now I found myself obliged to believe, and the next moment I was noticing what a distasteful color my hair was. In childhood it had been pale yellow and attractive. Now it was mud-brown and repellent. My eyes were blue but not bright blue like my father’s; they were light blue, unendurably anemic. It suddenly occurred to me that my looks were second-rate. I would never be classically handsome. A sense of failure overpowered me. I was in despair.

  Then my mother looked in to see how far I had progressed with my preparations and when she saw me she said briskly, “This won’t do, will it?” and hustled me along to her room where my father, golden-haired, classically handsome and every inch a hero was somehow contriving to look elegant in his braces.

  He lent me some evening clothes and life began to seem fractionally less hopeless. Finally I ventured downstairs. The house seemed to be throbbing with a powerful emotion and so strong was the aura of glamour that I did not at first realize that this powerful emotion lay within me and was not some mysterious miasma emanating from the walls. All the main rooms were adorned with flowers from the garden and the hothouses. In the ballroom the scent of lilies, very pure and clear, drifted faintly toward me from the bank of flowers around the dais where the gentlemen of the orchestra were busy tuning their instruments. No amateur trio scraped out the music whenever all Gower danced at Oxmoon; my parents imported a dozen first-class musicians from London. I glanced up at the chandeliers. Every crystal had been washed, every candle replaced. The room was mirrored. Perhaps Regency Robert Godwin had dreamed of Versailles, and as I stood in what I later realized was such a quaint provincial little ballroom I saw reflected in those mirrors the fairy-tale prince of my personal myth.

  The guests began to arrive. The music began to play. The room began to hum with conversation and still I remained where I was, saying her name again and again in my mind as if I could will her back from the brink of her great catastrophe and deliver us both to the happy ending of a traditional nursery fairy tale.

  I was in the hall when she arrived at last with the Applebys.

  Through the open front door I saw their carriage coming up the drive and although I wanted to retreat to the ballroom in order to pretend I was barely interested in her arrival, my feet carried me inexorably past the staircase, through the doorway and out into the porch.

  I saw her and for the first time in my life I found myself old enough to recognize feminine perfection. I was reminded of the silver cups which I regularly collected at school in my compulsive quest for excellence. She was a prize. She was waiting to be awarded to the man who came first, and when I finally realized this I knew I had to have her; I knew I had to win.

  True to the conventions of the fairy tale I was instantly changed. The long tedious journey through adolescence was terminated as abruptly as if my fairy godmother had waved a magic wand, and at that moment childhood lay forever behind me and only manhood was real.

  “Robert! My dear, isn’t this thrilling! What a birthday treat …” She swept on, radiantly oblivious of my transformation, and disappeared into the ballroom. Presently I found I had to sit down. Then I found I could not sit down but had to stand up. I was beside myself. All the famous love poetry which I had previously dismissed as “soppy” and “wet” now streamed through my brain until even the rhythm of the iambic pentameters seemed impregnated with a mystical significance. Like the author of the Book of Revelation I was conscious of a new heaven and a new earth. I stumbled forward, broke into a run and hared after her into the ballroom.

  “Ginette, Ginette—”

  She heard me. I saw her turn her head idly and give me a languid wave with her fan. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten!” she called. “I’ve saved the first waltz after supper for you!” And she began to dance away from me in Sir William Appleby’s arms.

  Some sort of interval passed which I can only presume I spent dancing with the girls I was supposed to dance with and behaving as I was supposed to behave. I must have shown some semblance of normality for no one inquired anxiously after my health. Did I eat any supper? Possibly. I have a dim memory of sipping a glass of champagne but giving up halfway through because I was afraid I might go mad with euphoria.

  “Oh good, this is your waltz, isn’t it, Robert? Thank goodness, now I can relax! I never before realized how exhausting it must have been for Cinderella having to be radiant to everyone in sight … Lord, I’m in such a state, Robert, does it show? I feel so excited I don’t see how I can possibly survive—in fact maybe I’m already dead and this is what it’s like in heaven. … Oh, listen—Johann Strauss—yes, that proves it, I am in heaven! Come on, Robert, what’s the matter with you? Let’s dance!”

  And that was the moment when we danced together beneath the chandeliers at Oxmoon as the orchestra played “The Blue Danube.”

  “Oh, this is such paradise!” exclaimed Ginette, echoing my thoughts word for word but glancing restlessly past me to the doors of the ballroom as if she could hardly wait to escape. “I’ll remember this moment forever and ever!”

  “I’ll remember it till the day I die. Listen, Ginette, wait for me, you’ve got to wait—”

  “What? I can’t hear you!” The orchestra was blazing into a new coda and as we whirled by the dais I saw her again look past my shoulder at the open doors in the distance.

  “I said you’ve got to wait for me because—”

  She left me. The orchestra was still playing “The Blue Danube” but as she ran the full length of the ballroom all the couples stopped dancing to stare at her. She ran swiftly and gracefully, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground, and suddenly there was a flash of diamonds
as she pulled off her ring, tossed it aside and carelessly consigned her engagement to oblivion.

  He was waiting for her in the doorway. As I have already mentioned, I had no trouble recognizing Conor Kinsella. He was smiling that charming Irish smile of his and as she flung herself into his arms he kissed her with appalling intimacy on the mouth.

  The music stopped. No one moved. A great silence fell upon the ballroom and then in my mind’s eye I saw the mirrored walls darken, the chandeliers grow dim and my fairy tale turn to ashes to foul the perfumed festering air.

  2

  I

  SO MUCH FOR ROMANCE. Later I considered it fortunate that this early experience had granted me immunity, and I was never troubled by such irrational behavior again.

  After the ball life went on. I admit I did wonder at the time how it could but it did, and presently the natural human instinct for self-preservation nudged its way to the forefront of my mind. I suddenly saw that no one must know how I felt. Sweat broke out on my forehead at the thought of people pitying me. Horrifying visions smote me of a future in which my unrequited love made me an object of derision throughout Gower, and in panic I realized that my only hope of avoiding such humiliation lay in exercising an iron will and concealing my feelings behind the facade of my quasi-fraternal friendship. If I followed this course I could permit myself a certain amount of fractious moping because it would be expected of me, but I had at all costs to beware of extremes; I had to keep eating, talk to people, go about my daily business. Eventually I would have to pretend to recover and this would be a formidable challenge, but sheer pride alone made it imperative that I should succeed.

  I began to rehearse a series of appropriate remarks which I could use later to deceive my parents. “Ginette? Oh yes, I suppose I was a trifle possessive, wasn’t I—rather amusing to look back on that now. …” Endless scenes in this endless charade of indifference slipped in and out of my mind. My inventive powers impressed me but unfortunately they were unable to relieve my misery whenever I thought of Ginette with Kinsella. My imagination, never normally intrusive, was now a torment to me. So was my sexuality. Together the two demons destroyed my sleep, gave me a consumptive look and did their best to destroy the grand illusion of resignation which I was trying so hard to propagate.

  Meanwhile, as I floundered in the toils of my adolescent’s nightmare, Kinsella had taken advantage of everyone’s paralyzed stupefaction to sweep Ginette off on horseback to Swansea, our nearest large town, and bear her away by rail to Scotland where the lax matrimonial laws had long been God’s gift to clandestine lovers. There he had married her despite the fact that she had been made a ward of court, and afterwards they had evaded legal retribution by slipping into Ireland on a ferry from Stranraer to Larne. They had sailed to America from Cork a week later.

  There was much talk about what could be done to preserve Ginette’s fortune but the debate soon lapsed as her well-wishers acknowledged their impotence to alter her fate. Before long general opinion favored treating the disaster as a fait accompli and making the best of it. No one knew how Kinsella was earning his daily bread, but later, when the lines of communication had been renewed, Ginette’s letters indicated a life of affluence with no sign of an apocalyptic retribution hovering in the wings.

  Timothy Appleby was dispatched on a world cruise to recover from the catastrophe and had all manner of adventures before meeting a rich widow in Cape Town and settling down in Rhodesia to make a study of the butterflies of Africa. Ginette’s defection was undoubtedly the best fate that could have overtaken him, but the more I heard people remarking on his lucky escape the more I wondered how Ginette could have treated him so badly. The situation had no doubt been abnormal but her deliberate entanglement with a man who meant nothing to her continued to puzzle me and when we had drifted into a faultlessly platonic correspondence I asked her outright for an explanation. In reply I received a typical letter, full of romantic hyperbole and feminine flutter, which I knew meant she was still struggling with her guilt and remorse: … yes, I know I behaved like a serpent, and believe me I’ll have poor Tim on my conscience till my dying day, but the truth is quite simply that I was mad. Aunt Maud drove me mad, intercepting my letters from Conor and lecturing me about chastity and sending me to that ghastly place in Germany which was just like a prison—or worse still a convent—so in the end I saw clearly that my only hope of escaping her was to marry and the only man (or so I thought) who wanted to marry me was Timothy. I knew I’d still have to spend part of the year at All-Hallows but at least I would have been my own mistress instead of Aunt Maud’s prisoner and at least I would have been able to spend most of the year in London where I would have met all sorts of exciting people and had a simply heavenly time.

  So that was why I decided to marry Tim. I had no way of communicating with Conor and (thanks to Aunt Maud) I’d given up all hope of hearing from him.

  And then—just after my engagement had been announced—Conor finally managed to outwit my jailer! He sent over from Ireland the most extraordinary gentleman called Mr. O’Flaherty who posed as a jobbing gardener and managed to smuggle a letter to me by seducing the second housemaid—my dear, I can’t tell you how romantic it was and the housemaid had a thrilling time too—and then I told Mr. O’Flaherty about the ball at Oxmoon and Conor sent word that I was to leave a packed bag beforehand with the second housemaid who would take it to Mr. O’Flaherty who would be waiting in the grounds of All-Hallows by the ruined oratory—my dear, I was simply ravished by excitement, in fact when the orchestra was playing “The Blue Danube” and I saw Conor had finally arrived I’m only surprised I didn’t swoon in your arms! At least when I die I’ll be able to say: well, never mind, I’ve lived. Oh, but what a nightmare it was before Conor came, thank God I’ve escaped, thank God the ghastly old past can’t touch me anymore. …

  Years afterwards when she and Kinsella paid their first and last visit to England I said to her, “If All-Hallows was such hell, why didn’t you come back to Oxmoon?”

  “But my dear!” she exclaimed as if astonished that I could be so obtuse. “Margaret would have been just as bad as Aunt Maud! Can’t you imagine all the homilies on drawing the line and doing the done thing?” And we laughed together, just two platonic friends, just first cousins once removed, just two strangers who had been childhood playmates long ago in a little Welsh country house in the back of beyond, but I wanted her then as strongly as I had ever wanted her and although I concealed my feelings I knew that they had remained unchanged. It was as if they had been frozen in time by the shock of her sudden desertion; it was as if, so far as my deepest emotions were concerned, I was still dancing beneath the chandeliers at Oxmoon while the orchestra played “The Blue Danube.”

  This should have been romantic. However in reality—the reality I had to master when I was sixteen—it was both inconvenient and bewildering. I had read enough novels by that time to know that a hero in my position had to yearn for his lost love in impeccable chastity and perhaps hunt big game in Africa to relieve his feelings, but I had no interest in game hunting and no interest, as I presently discovered to my horror, in being chaste.

  It took me a few months to realize this, but when I returned home for the summer holidays I found I finally had to face the prospect of Ginette’s permanent absence. In other words, for the first time in my life I had to live with the concept of losing.

  I did not know where to begin. Then I gradually became aware that I wanted to conquer this new world of carnality and prove I was still capable of coming first. At that point I should have confided in my father but two factors inhibited me. The first was that I was so obsessed with acting my charade of indifference towards Ginette that I shied away from any conversation which would have betrayed my true feelings, and the second was that I could so clearly remember my father talking of the dangerous sea of carnality and telling me a good marriage was the only answer.

  I struggled on in silence, utterly confused, utterly mis
erable, but then one morning I got up early and on wandering downstairs I found a very junior housemaid polishing the floor of the drawing room. Immediately I recalled my recent letter from Ginette on the subject of the erring housemaid at All-Hallows, and immediately I saw what possibilities had confronted the mysterious Mr. O’Flaherty. One thing led, as I fear it so often does, to another until at last, to put a turgid episode in the shortest, most salutary sentence, she stooped, I conquered and we both fell from grace. I was back at school by the time my father was obliged to make a financial provision for her and I was still at school when to the relief of all concerned she miscarried and emigrated to Australia, but when I returned home for the Christmas holidays I found a most unpleasant reception awaiting me.

  It was my mother who had found out. Her chilling expression was bad enough but the worst part of the affair was that my father was entirely at a loss. He was stricken. His expression of bewilderment, his painful halting attempt to reprimand me, his air of misery all formed more of a punishment than any violent demonstration of rage, and in an agony of shame I begged his forgiveness.

  “I’ll turn over a new leaf, sir, I swear I will,” I added desperately, and on this edifying note of repentance the conversation ended, but I knew, as soon as I had left him, that my problems remained unsolved. I was just wondering in despair if I could secretly ask the local doctor for a drug that would suppress my carnal inclinations and was just trying to imagine the celibate future studded with cold baths that lay ahead of me to the grave—for of course I could never marry if I could not marry Ginette—when Lion banged on the door and shouted that my mother wanted to see me.