The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  To my horror I find that I’m jealous of her close alliance with Robert. He treats her as an equal. He treats her as if she’s capable of balancing a checkbook. He treats her as a friend.

  I don’t get treated as a friend anymore. That thrilling campaign at Pwlldu was just a romantic interlude. I’ve now been permanently converted into an object labeled WIFE, and I hate it, I hate being treated as if I’m an inferior being incapable of understanding a subject like politics. I know much more about politics now and I would certainly vote sensibly if I were given the chance. … Heavens, I’m beginning to sound like a suffragette! I must stop before I succumb to the urge to chain myself to the nearest railing.

  The truth is it’s no good grumbling about Robert. He has his tiresome side, just as we all do, and I’ve no choice but to resign myself to it until we can embark on our joint venture, parenthood. Once I’m pregnant matters are bound to improve because of course the baby will draw us together.

  Or will it?

  Yes, of course the baby will draw us together. I was feeling drenched in pessimism when I wrote that last sentence because the most ghastly things have been happening in France. But I won’t think of them. Robert’s become convinced that the country can’t continue in wartime with a one-party government, and he talks privately of coalition and reorganization. I now actively enjoy Robert’s reports from Westminster not only because I’m becoming increasingly interested in politics but because it stops me thinking about what might be happening in France.

  Lion’s left now and Edmund’s also due to leave soon. They’re in different regiments, which I think is a good thing because one hears frightful stories of multiple fraternal casualties sustained during a single offensive.

  London seems full of men in uniform now and the whole atmosphere of the city has changed. People say the tough new liquor laws are at the bottom of the new sobriety, but it’s not as simple as that. Everyone I know is still drinking like a fish—more so than ever, in fact, and the social life goes on at a hysterical pace as if to compensate for the abnormal times we live in, but London is darker, mentally darker; mentally London is now gun-metal-gray, and the symbol of this bleakness is DORA, the Defence of the Realm Acts, which give the government dictatorial powers to keep us all in order. Nobody talks about “Business As Usual” now. The talk is all of DORA and the servant crisis and whether so-and-so really is a Swiss and not a German who ought to be locked up.

  But perhaps London seems so bleak to me because today I had the most depressing consultation with a gynecologist who told me I may have damaged myself by indulging in what Mrs. Sanger has described so neatly as “birth control.” It’s the only explanation he can offer for my failure to conceive. I hated him, although I’m not sure why. I hated him for being the bearer of gloomy tidings but perhaps there was another reason too for my deep antipathy. He made me feel like an imbecile. He was Robert in a different guise.

  Damn it, why shouldn’t a woman practice birth control if she wants? It’s her body and no man has the right to dictate to her what she should do with it.

  Oh, I feel so angry sometimes, so angry …

  “Ginevra!”

  “Julie? Is it—can it be Julie?”

  It was indeed Julie Harrington, who had been at boarding school with my old friend Gwen de Bracy. Gwen and I had for some years shared a governess with Angela Stourham, but at the age of fourteen Gwen had been sent to finish her education at Eastbourne and later Julie, her new friend, had spent more than one holiday with her at Penhale Manor.

  “Ginevra, it’s been years! How are you?”

  “My dear, quite overcome that we should bump into each other like this in the middle of Piccadilly—do you have time to pop into the divine Ritz for a cup of coffee?”

  Julie is thirty-four, a few months younger than I am, but unlike me she’s not married and she has a job. Why, I ask her (I know she doesn’t have to work for a living). She says she does it because she likes it. She has a good job. She’s not just an office clerk working for a pittance. She’s an editor on that dreary magazine A Woman’s Place which instructs its readers how to embroider tablecloths, but Julie’s trying to broaden the magazine’s outlook by including articles on modern life. It sounds interesting. She’s interesting. I’m so puzzled about why she’s never married (obviously she must have had her chances) that in the end I ask her directly. She says she’s never fancied it. How peculiar. Can she be a Lesbian, I wonder? How exciting! I’ve never met a Lesbian before and have always longed to find out what they actually do.

  Julie lives all alone in a little flat in Bloomsbury and she has a checkbook. I saw it when she opened her smart leather handbag. (How did we all manage without handbags a few years ago?) Naturally I suspect her of being a suffragette but somehow I can’t quite see her attempting to strip Mr. Asquith naked on a golf course. She’s far too busy enjoying her independent life.

  I wouldn’t like a life like that, of course, but I admire her for having the courage to live it, and we get on very well—so well that finally I tell her what a beastly visit I’ve had to the gynecologist and how horrid doctors can be to women sometimes.

  “Why not go to a doctor who’s a woman?” says Julie carelessly. “I do.”

  A woman doctor! Heavens, how daring. But I like the idea, and when I tell Julie so, we arrange to meet again. I won’t tell Robert, though. He’d just say women are temperamentally unsuited for the upper reaches of the medical profession, and besides … I don’t think he’d care at all for Julie Harrington.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Godwin. I’m Dr. Drysdale—do sit down.”

  The lady doctor was tweedy and foursquare but so kind and she quite understood why I’d spent so much time cutting up sponges into little chunks and drenching myself in oceans of vinegar. She also assured me that it was most unlikely that I’d done myself any harm because she could see no evidence of scarring or infection.

  “However,” she added honestly, “I do think this: if you’ve managed to avoid pregnancy for thirteen years with only douches and sponges to help you, you might well be less fertile than the average woman.” But she added to encourage me: “Even so, that’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a baby eventually.”

  She then asked me about Robert. “He’s anxious for this baby, is he?”

  “Oh yes! He’s been so understanding about it!”

  “Excellent,” said Dr. Drysdale satisfied. “I only ask because sometimes when all isn’t well between husband and wife, the wife becomes too tense to conceive.”

  “Oh, that couldn’t apply to me at all,” I said glibly, but as soon as the words were spoken I began to wonder.

  “Robert, you remember Julie, of course.”

  “Indeed I do—how are you, Miss Harrington—but I don’t think we ever had much to do with each other in the old days, did we? You two girls went off with Gwen while I went off with Gwen’s brothers and the two sets seldom met. …”

  Julie had telephoned me earlier to ask if she could interview me for an article she was writing on the servant problem, so I had invited her to tea and soon after her arrival she had asked me if I had ever thought of writing professionally. Would I be interested, for instance, in writing a thousand words about life in New York?

  “How long’s a thousand words?”

  “A lengthy letter to your best friend.”

  I had been excited by this idea because I knew it would take my mind off the subject of pregnancy. I had told Julie I would try, and then just as our delightful tea party was concluding Robert arrived home from his chambers in the Temple, and having no alternative I had reintroduced him to her.

  For a time all went well. They chatted about the old days at Penhale Manor and discussed the de Bracys. In fact I was just thinking with relief that I had been wrong in assuming they would detest each other when the conversation started heading for disaster.

  “But you would agree, surely,” said Robert to Julie in response to a remark of hers about working wom
en, “that most women find fulfillment in the home.”

  “Yes,” said Julie, “I think I would agree with that. A canary shut up in a cage will find fulfillment by singing. Otherwise it would die of melancholy.”

  “Darling,” I said quickly to Robert, “shall I ring for more tea or are you in a rush to get to the House?”

  “No—no tea, thanks. Am I to take it then, Miss Harrington,” said Robert, settling down to annihilate her with his usual forensic skill, “that you don’t believe women find their greatest happiness in being wives and mothers?”

  “Not being a wife or mother, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Exactly. In other words—”

  “All I know is,” said Julie, “that I’m very happy exactly as I am.”

  “But you don’t pretend to speak for the majority.”

  “No, I speak for myself. I don’t pretend to speak for all women—how could I? All women are different.”

  “But nevertheless, despite the minor differences, you must surely concede that all women want at heart to be wives and mothers.”

  “No. They don’t. I don’t. I disprove that entire thesis simply by my happy existence.”

  “Robert darling,” I said in a rush, “we really mustn’t delay you if you’re on your way to the House.”

  “But Miss Harrington, don’t you find your solitary life very lonely?”

  “Why should you assume my life is solitary?”

  “No doubt you have a wide circle of friends, but when you’re at home don’t you miss the companionship of a husband?”

  “Good God, no!” said Julie amused. “I see my lover two or three times a week and that’s quite enough for me, thank you!”

  I was stunned. I realized I had just seen Robert outtalked, outwitted and outmaneuvered in a debate—I had just seen Robert defeated—and by a woman! Amidst my horror that the meeting should have ended in disaster, a small voice at the back of my mind whispered: “Good—and about time too.”

  “My dears!” I said, somehow finding my tongue, “what an enthralling dialogue! But now I must ask you to excuse Robert, Julie, because he really does have to rush off to Westminster—”

  “—and besides,” said Robert, recouping his losses with professional smoothness, “no matter how enthralling the dialogue I feel too handicapped by my upbringing as a gentleman to bring the argument to any rational conclusion. Chivalry insists, Miss Harrington, that I allow you to have the last word.”

  “How charming of you,” said Julie smiling at him, “but isn’t this supposed to be the twentieth century? We’re not in the Middle Ages now, you know!”

  Robert somehow restrained himself from slamming the door as he walked out.

  “Darling, how lovely—you’re back early!”

  He arrived home soon after eight but not before I had prepared my defenses. I was going to say “Heavens, these feminists—such a bore!” but when Robert immediately announced, “I trust you won’t ask that woman here again—I don’t want you associating with anyone who talks like Rebecca West in The Clarion,” I suddenly found my patience was exhausted.

  “It’s heavenly of you to be so concerned for me, darling,” I said, “but I think I might be allowed to choose my own friends.”

  “Any woman who leads a Bohemian way of life and who is almost certainly a suffragist, if not a demented suffragette, is certainly not fit company for any wife of mine!”

  “Oh, what absolute—” I paused to choose between the New York obscenity and the raw English slang but (no doubt fortunately) he did not allow me to finish.

  “I’m sorry, Ginette, but I refuse to allow you to associate with a woman who despises marriage—she’ll introduce you to the wrong people, she’ll encourage you to take a lover—”

  “You don’t seriously think I’d take a lover, do you?”

  “Well, why not?” he said. “You’ve done it before.”

  I felt as if I had been assaulted, not merely slapped in the face but slammed in the stomach. Turning my back on him I groped my way to the secrétaire and sat down abruptly on the chair beside it. I wanted to remind him that I was trying to have his child and that other men had never seemed less important, but all speech was impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” said Robert at last. I thought he was going to embark on some conciliatory speech but when he could only repeat in misery “I’m sorry,” I saw he had shocked himself as much as he had shocked me. Eventually he added: “I suppose I’m uneasy because I know you’re restless and dissatisfied.”

  “Only because I haven’t been able to conceive! And you don’t make life any easier when you refuse to let me choose my friends and refuse to allow me any control over my money—”

  “Oh God, not that old quarrel again!”

  “It may seem nothing to you!” I shouted. “But it means a very great deal to me! I hate having nothing of my own—God, no wonder I want a baby, what else do I have that’s even partly mine? Everything is yours—yours, yours, yours! It’s your house, your money, your career and your friends whose wives I have to cultivate—boring silly women though most of them are! And then on top of that I find I have no individuality anymore, I’m just your wife, someone who can be treated with contempt!”

  “Christ Almighty, how dare you say that!” He was white with rage. “I’ve made all manner of sacrifices to give you what you want! I love you more than anyone else in the world and yet you spend your whole time being discontented, nagging me because I’ve finally reduced your life to the order you wanted and offered you a world which is compatible with your idea of happiness! Very well, just what the devil is it you want from me—and from life? I’m beginning to think you’re just a spoiled pampered Society woman who can think only of herself!”

  I did not reply immediately. I could only stare down at the sloping surface of the desk but at last I said in despair, “Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know. I just know I’m upset at the moment because I’m still not pregnant. I’d no idea before how awful it is to want a baby and not be able to start one.”

  “Well, I want a child as much as you do,” said Robert, “but if this is what happens when you attempt maternity I’d rather we remained a childless couple.”

  “Oh yes,” I said drearily, too exhausted to do more than retreat into passive acquiesence, “I daresay I’ve been difficult lately. But you see,” I added, somehow dredging up the strength to make one final effort to clarify my feelings, “that’s why I’ve so enjoyed meeting Julie again. She’s helped to take my mind off the awful problem of pregnancy—she’s suggested that I write an article for her magazine—”

  “Oh, I couldn’t permit that,” said Robert.

  “But I want to!”

  “I’m sorry, I hate having to repeat myself, but I can’t have you associating with that woman.”

  “Robert.” I rose to my feet, dashed away the tears that had collected in my eyes and walked straight up to him. “Robert, you mustn’t go on treating me like this. It’s disastrous. You’re acting as if you’re so uncertain of my love that you have to resort to tyranny to feel secure!”

  “What nonsense! I’m just trying to be a good husband!”

  “In that case could you possibly try not to be such a good husband? You used to behave so differently when we were merely friends—”

  “Of course I did—before we were married we were two independent people! But marriage isn’t about independence, Ginette, it’s about dependence. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, guarded by a web of rights and duties, to encompass the biological fact of life that women are weak and need to be looked after while men are strong and seek to protect them.”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “You wish to be unmarried and independent, perhaps?”

  “No—oh, God, no, I’d hate to live Julie’s kind of life—well, how could I, all those awful men battering away at my defenses, I’d be half-dead with terror in no time, no, I must have someone to look after me, I absolutely must—”<
br />
  “Then I fail to see how you can criticize me as a husband.”

  I gave up. I was miserable, baffled and in utter despair. As usual I knew that rationally he was right—and as usual I sensed that in some way beyond my powers of definition he was absolutely wrong.

  Robert is as thoroughly upset by this conversation as I am, but he won’t give in and eventually, to make life more bearable, I let him think that he’s achieved a reconciliation. How chilling that competence in bed seems now. I lie awake in the dark and think so longingly of Conor that when I fall asleep I dream of him and know all the pleasure that Robert’s failed to give me. I wake up full of joy but then I remember. Conor’s dead. The man next to me in the dark is Robert. This is 1915 and Conor’s been dead nearly two years.

  I don’t suppose I’ll have the baby now. I’ll always be too upset to conceive. Maybe it doesn’t matter but yes, it does, it matters terribly. Both Daphne and Blanche have confided to me that their husbands didn’t spend their honeymoons in idleness, but although I’m trying so hard to be happy for the girls I can’t help feeling twinges of jealousy. I must beat them back before I start to share Robert’s belief that I’m just a spoiled selfish Society woman. Am I so spoiled and selfish? I don’t mean to be, I honestly don’t, I do try not to want the baby but it’s no good, I have such an urgent need to fill the gap that Declan’s left in my life and I find I’m longing for the baby more than ever.

  I shall divert myself by thinking of that article on New York. For of course I’m going to write it. And of course I’m going to see Julie again.

  Oh, I’ve had such fun! I wrote a very racy article and Julie says it’s mesmerizing. The only piece she’s cut is the anecdote about the preacher and his three wives—she’s kept my description of cabarets and she’s even kept my explanation of why streetwalkers are called streetwalkers! (But she says her senior editor may strike this out.) I feel very proud and very happy and for hours and hours I haven’t thought of the baby at all.