The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  III

  I had anticipated neither my mother’s anger nor her attitude to my father’s behavior, and for a moment I was too distressed to marshal my defenses. I was very fond of my mother. Lion was supposed to have been her favorite, but it seemed to me I had been favored too because I sensed she made special efforts to be loving towards me. In early childhood I had taken this warmth for granted but later when I was all too aware that my resemblance to my grandmother might make me repulsive in my parents’ eyes, I had gratefully interpreted my mother’s marked affection as a sign that I was not to be condemned to a low place in her esteem.

  But this resolute determination of hers to be just was characteristic behavior. What I admired most about my mother was her infinite capacity for rejecting wrongdoing, and whenever she said, “I draw the line,” I felt an overwhelming relief and gratitude. My mother was the bastion against madness, chaos and catastrophe. In a world where I had known from childhood that absolutely anyone was capable of absolutely anything, my mother offered an infallible recipe for normality: one set oneself high moral standards, one drew the line against what was wrong—and one survived with one’s sanity intact. My fear of my father had long been ameliorated by the knowledge that my mother would always stop him if ever he began to breach his own rules too flagrantly.

  I thought she would stop him now.

  “Mama, please do forgive me but I came here this evening with the very best intentions—”

  “Your father is not to be upset like this! He needs compassion and understanding, not pigheaded intolerance!”

  “Well, all I can say is I think it’s time he showed some compassion and understanding! What about us? What about his family? I can’t stand Blanche being exposed to scandal like this—”

  “Have you told her?”

  “What about?”

  “The past.”

  “What past?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, John! Sometimes I think this Welsh evasiveness will drive me mad!”

  “I’m not Welsh, not at all, I’m English by education, inclination and temperament.”

  “Good. Then perhaps you’ll now practice the Anglo-Saxon virtue of calling a spade a spade. Have you or have you not told Blanche that your father was driven to kill his mother’s lover and shut his mother up in an asylum for the rest of her life?”

  “Good God, no! Of course I’ve never told Blanche that!”

  “Then may I suggest that you should? Quite apart from the fact that she’s your devoted wife and deserves your confidence, she’s also a compassionate intelligent girl, and I think if she knew the full tragedy of your father’s past she would be willing to forgive him now for putting you both in such a difficult position.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, making a great effort to remain calm, “we’re ostensibly conversing with each other but I’m beginning to think no communication’s taking place. Are you trying to tell me that you’re refusing to draw the line against Papa’s immorality despite the fact that this is an occasion when the firmest possible line should be drawn?”

  “I do draw the line,” said my mother. “I draw the line against your un-Christian, uncharitable and unforgivably priggish behavior. I find it repellent.”

  “But it’s his behavior that’s repellent! How can you tolerate him keeping Mrs. Straker in Penhale—Straker the parlormaid whom you had to dismiss from Oxmoon because he couldn’t keep his hands off her! I think the entire episode’s disgraceful, and how you can stand there and criticize me when all I’m trying to do is prevent innocent people from suffering as the result of his despicable conduct—”

  My mother slapped me across the mouth. As I gasped, I saw not only the rage but the dislike blaze in her eyes.

  The world went dark. The past began to suppurate. Chaos had come again.

  “I don’t pretend to understand you,” said my mother. “I never have. I’ve always made a special effort not to be prejudiced, but really it’s very hard not to be prejudiced when I see Bobby upset like this. I know just what’s going on in his mind—he used to lecture his mother about her immorality and now he must feel as if her ghost has crawled out of the grave to lecture him in return!”

  “But I had no idea I’d remind him of—”

  “Oh, be quiet! Can’t you see how you’re tormenting Bobby by treating him as if he’s in danger of ending up like his mother?”

  “I just want him to live up to his own high standards—”

  “He would if he could but he can’t. That’s the truth of it. Your father’s haunted by the past. He thinks it’ll drive him mad unless he uses every means he can to control it, and I think he’s right; it’ll drive him mad if he can’t live with the memory of what happened. Women help him live with it. I don’t know why. He doesn’t know why. It doesn’t matter why. What matters is that women keep him sane. I don’t care about the mistresses. I did once, but not anymore; I don’t give a damn. I’m the one he loves and that’s all that counts—and as for Milly Straker, I tell you frankly that she’s the best thing that’s happened to Bobby for a very long time. I concede it’s unfortunate that he has to keep her in Penhale, but now that he’s getting older it’s no use expecting him to travel up to London or even as far as Swansea in order to get what he must have. I accept that she has to live in Penhale, but that’s all right; that’s a concession I’m prepared to make because Mrs. Straker, provided she’s paid well, won’t cause trouble; quite the reverse. She’s clever and discreet, and if he has to have a whore at least I have the satisfaction of knowing he has a whore who has high standards and sticks to them. I can respect someone like that, no matter how common and vulgar she is, and besides I’m sufficiently practical to understand that there are worse fates for an elderly lecher than Mrs. Straker. Gervase de Bracy died of syphilis. Oswald Stourham’s taken to drink. In contrast Bobby’s healthy and reasonably happy—whenever you’re not making him miserable by reminding him of his mother. Now go home, talk the whole matter over sensibly with your wife and never, never let me find you making such a scene here again.”

  She left the room. For a long time I stayed by the billiard table, my forefinger tracing meaningless patterns on the green baize, but at last I slipped furtively out of the house and drove home in misery to my family.

  IV

  “Hullo, darling! There you are, Marian, didn’t I tell you Papa would be back in time to say good night? Let me see if Harry’s finished his bath. … John, is anything the matter?”

  “No, everything’s fine,” I said. “Couldn’t be better.”

  “Papa, I’ve chosen my bedtime story,” said Marian, who was going to be six in the autumn.

  I read a fairy tale about a handsome prince who fell in love with a ravishing peasant girl. After interminable vicissitudes they succeeded in getting married and living happily ever after.

  “That’s like you and Mama, isn’t it, Papa?”

  “Well, Mama was hardly a peasant girl, Marian, but yes, we did get married and live happily ever after.”

  Blanche returned to the night nursery with Harry in her arms.

  He was two years old. He looked very clean after his bath and very fresh in a newly laundered little nightshirt. A faint scent of talcum powder drifted towards me. His dark hair, much darker than mine, had been neatly parted and brushed.

  “Kiss Harry, darling,” said Blanche to Marian as Nanny hovered in the background with the customary approving expression on her face, “and then Papa will hear you say your prayers.”

  Harry yawned again. His small head drooped against my chest to betray how tired he was after yet another stimulating day. Then, conscious that I was smiling at him, he looked up and smiled brilliantly back at me.

  I thought of spoiled little Robin and tedious little Kester and knew a moment of intense pity for Robert, but a second later I had recognized this pity as an ambivalent emotion and was suppressing it rigorously. It would never do to enjoy Robert’s misfortune, and it would certainly never do to savor th
e notion that my life was turning out to be more satisfactory than his. These were contemptible thoughts indeed, suggesting hidden jealousies which could not be permitted to exist.

  Chaos as always was waiting. And as always I drew the line.

  “Darling,” said Blanche uneasily several hours later when we were in bed. “I know something’s wrong, and I do wish you’d tell me what it is. I must be a poor sort of wife if you feel you can’t confide in me.”

  “Don’t be absurd; you’re a perfect wife, you know you are!”

  “In that case—”

  “I’m worried about my father, but I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Ah.” I heard her sigh in the dark. “I wish there was something I could do when you’re troubled,” she said, laying her cheek gently against my shoulder. “I hate feeling I’m incapable of helping you.”

  I knew at once how she could help me but I spent a great deal of my married life trying not to exploit her love by giving vent to selfish inconsiderate behavior, and I now shrank from taking advantage of her. She had been exceptionally generous to me only the night before.

  “I wouldn’t dream of—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  There was a silence while I tried to work out what was the right thing to do. No decent husband imposed himself on his wife on two consecutive nights. On the other hand if the wife expressed willingness this could be held to exonerate him, although if she was merely expressing willingness in order to be a good wife, then the consent failed to be genuine and restraint was called for.

  “Darling …” She pressed closer to me. To my humiliation I was conquered, and despising myself I embarked on the most pleasurable way I had yet discovered of forgetting what I had no wish to remember. The exquisiteness of that pleasure never failed to appall me, and that night after Blanche had fallen asleep I found myself struggling afresh with memories that not even the most exquisite pleasure could annul. I knew all too well what could happen to those who became addicted to carnal pleasure—and the next moment I was back in the past again while my grandmother screamed for mercy, my mother struck her to control the hysterics and my father shouted at me in Welsh at the top of his voice that insanity and ruin lay waiting for all those who failed to draw the line.

  V

  I had no respite when I fell asleep because that night she invaded my dreams, just as she always did when I was seriously upset. My grandmother had died in 1910 but for me in 1921 she was still alive. The straight line of time bent so that 1903 kept recurring interminably in my mind, the Christmas of 1903 when I had been eleven years old.

  My grandmother had been sixty-two. She had not aged well. She was thin and haggard. She had bony hands which she twisted together continually. Her glance darted furtively hither and thither among her grandchildren, as if she were trying to pin us all in her mind so that she could savor us during her lonely months in the asylum where we never visited her. We all thought her both pathetic and a bore, a perpetual blight on our otherwise exuberant family Christmas, a cross which we had to undertake in the name of Christian charity. Grandmama was mad and not normally a fit subject for discussion, but once a year her portrait had to be brought down from the attics and hung in the dining room, and once a year for a few hours we had to endure her presence. We sighed and groaned and yawned but every Christmas submitted ourselves to the tedium of the inevitable.

  The Christmas of 1903 began in unremarkable fashion. On Christmas Eve my father fetched my grandmother from the Home of the Assumption. On Christmas morning we all racketed around in our noisy fashion, pulling all the gifts out of our stockings, eating a huge breakfast and setting off for church. The presents under the tree were never unwrapped until after dinner which at Christmas, in order to spare the servants, was taken in the middle of the day. When we all returned from church my mother went to the kitchens to see how the dinner preparations were progressing and my father remained in the drawing room to keep an eye on my grandmother. It had only recently occurred to me that my parents never left my grandmother alone with their children.

  Robert, always aloof, had wandered off somewhere in search of solitude. Ginevra was absent in America. Celia and Lion were playing an acrimonious game of cribbage while Edmund looked on. I was reading a book, Kidnapped by Stevenson it was, I remember it well, just as I remember glancing up from the page and seeing my grandmother watching me from her position by the hearth.

  My father was talking to her casually in Welsh about his plans to redesign the kitchen garden. He was just saying, “And I’ve a good mind to double the asparagus beds” when Ifor the footman rushed pell-mell into the room and gasped that the head parlormaid was having what he described as a “pepper-leptic” fit in the dining room.

  “Good God!” said my father, and hurried out. “Heavens!” said Celia, and rushed after him. “This sounds too good to miss!” said Lion outrageously, and bounded away with Edmund, the constant shadow, pounding at his heels.

  I was just setting aside my book after making the obvious decision to follow them when my grandmother said suddenly, “Johnny.”

  I was called Johnny in those days. I had always thought the name John very dull, redolent of John Bull and English stuffiness, and I had long been envious of Lion’s racy evocative first name.

  “Yes, Grandmama?” I said politely in Welsh.

  She beckoned me. Trying to disguise my impatience, I drew closer and thought, Poor mad old crone.

  “I want to give you a little present,” she said, “a special present, every year I’ve brought it to Oxmoon to give to you and every year I’ve never had the chance to see you on your own.” She looked nervously at the half-open door. Her eyes were bright with fear. “Take me somewhere private, Johnny, where they won’t find us.”

  I thought this was possibly some new manifestation of madness, but I was intrigued by the thought of a special present and she seemed harmless enough.

  “Very well,” I said politely, helping her to her feet. “We’ll go to the music room. We’ll be quite private there.”

  We set off, she clutching my arm in an agony of nervousness, I feeling gratified that I had been singled out for special attention. Bayliss the butler was passing through the hall when we left the drawing room, but he was too busy to do more than cast us a passing glance, and a minute later we had reached our sanctuary. I was just saying kindly, “There! You’re quite private now!” when to my horror my grandmother embraced me amidst floods of tears.

  “Forgive me.” She saw how alarmed I was and at once she withdrew, but the tears continued to stream down her cheeks. “I couldn’t help myself,” she whispered, “I’ve loved you so much for so long, such a fine boy you are, the finest in the family and so special to me, but of course I never dared say so in front of Margaret because that would make her angry and then she might not let me come home anymore, and if that happened I’d never see you and that would break my heart because I love you so much, so much love I have and no one to give it to, not anymore, but just for a little while at Christmas I can look at you and love you without Margaret knowing about it—oh, how frightened I am of Margaret, turning my son against me, keeping me from my grandchildren, so hard your mother is, Johnny, so cruel and unforgiving, but never mind that now, all that matters is that I have you on my own at last and I mustn’t waste any time.”

  She produced a carefully folded handkerchief and held it out to me.

  “Here, take this, take it, it’s something to remember me by, something that will always remind you I love you better than anyone else does, better than your parents do, such a large family they have, so many claims on their affection, but never mind, you come first with me always although you mustn’t tell Margaret or she won’t let me see you anymore. Yes, unfold the handkerchief, I used my best handkerchief specially for you, yes, it’s a ring, a man’s signet ring, it’ll be too big for you now but you can wear it later in memory of me. It belonged to the man I loved. They took it from his corpse after h
e was drowned. I asked Bobby for the ring and he saw that I got it but I don’t know if he ever told Margaret. Margaret wouldn’t have wanted me to have it, oh I’m so frightened of Margaret, and that’s why you must hide the ring from her, Johnny, hide it until you’re grown up, because if Margaret ever finds out that I’ve given you the ring which belonged to—”

  She stopped. Her eyes dilated in terror. Spinning round I found that my mother had soundlessly opened the door.

  “So there you are,” said my mother, very composed. “Bayliss said he saw you disappearing together down the corridor to the music room.” Stepping back into the passage she called, “All’s well, Bobby. I’ve found her.”

  My grandmother began to tremble. She had backed away against the wall. As I watched, paralyzed by the guilt and fear that emanated from her, I saw the tears flow down her cheeks again.

  My mother stepped back into the room. “Dearest Grandmama,” she said kindly, “how generous of you to give Johnny one of your little mementos. Mr. Bryn-Davies’s ring, isn’t it? Yes, I thought I recognized it. However I’m afraid Johnny couldn’t possibly accept such a gift. It wouldn’t be fitting.”

  She spoke as always in English. I had never heard my mother speak a word of Welsh and yet I suspected she understood more than she would admit. I had no idea how much of my grandmother’s speech she had overheard but I could see that my grandmother feared the worst and was petrified.

  “Johnny dear, give Grandmama back the ring, please.”

  “Mama, please don’t be cross with poor Grandmama—”