The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I’m surprised old Daffers hasn’t remarried,” said Edmund as he led the way up the steps into the house. “I know she’s’ plain but she’s tremendous fun. I like girls like that. Dash it, if I had a bean I’d marry her myself! Or is one forbidden to marry one’s brother’s widow? I bet one is. All the really amusing things in life are forbidden, aren’t they … But oh Lord, I didn’t come out here to talk of amusing things, quite the contrary, I came to tell you something awful: Robert’s worse. He’s in a wheelchair. Mama sent me out to warn you so that you’d be prepared.”

  My youngest brother Thomas chose that moment to come slouching down the stairs. Fourteen is a difficult age, and Thomas, who enjoyed being difficult, was making the most of his new capacity for obstreperousness. Spoiled by doting parents who should have known better, he seemed perpetually outraged that his much older siblings and beyond them the world in general paid him such scant attention. However he behaved well to my parents, and I had come to suspect that his pose of enfant terrible had been adopted to counter his fear of being overlooked as the last and least important member of a large family.

  He had a square face not unlike Edmund’s and a wide full-lipped mouth which he kept tucked down neatly at the corners. His golden hair and blue eyes gave a misleading impression of a cherubic nature.

  “Hullo,” I said to him, and added in an attempt to demonstrate a friendly interest, “When did you get back from school?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I sighed, gave up and followed the others into the drawing room, where my parents, having yielded to postwar social change, had authorized that cocktails as well as wine might be served before dinner. This was characteristic of them. My mother disapproved of spirits and my father drank little else except champagne, but when they entertained guests they were lavish in their hospitality and no one could have accused them of being either mean or old-fashioned.

  I saw the wheelchair as soon as I entered the room, and at once I was grateful to my mother for having had the presence of mind to send Edmund to warn us. The wheels with their long spokes seemed symbolic of a medieval ordeal. I felt cold with pity for Robert, then sick with relief that I myself was healthy and finally rigid with guilt that my life should be so perfect while his should be so infused with suffering.

  “Johnny darling!” cried Ginevra, who was clearly far beyond her first glass of champagne. “Come and admire the chariot! Robert now rattles around at a terrific pace!”

  I said the first thing that came into my head. “Ginevra, I do wish you’d stop calling me Johnny as if I were some Edwardian rake who spent his time throwing roses to chorus girls.”

  “But darling”—Ginevra had acquired in America the vulgar habit of calling everyone darling much too often—“think how perfectly thrilling it would be if you were an Edwardian rake tossing roses to chorus girls!”

  “Oh shut up!” said Robert, who often behaved towards his wife as if they were both back in the nursery. “Well, John? What do you think of this latest innovation?”

  I thanked God for my diplomatic training. “My dear Robert, I’m sure it’s a king among wheelchairs—forgive my lack of alacrity in making an immediate obeisance, but I wasn’t prepared to encounter royalty when I arrived here tonight! Is it easy to maneuver?”

  He was satisfied. All pity and sentimentality had been avoided and he could relax.

  Robert’s illness was erratic, striking severely and at random but then receding either wholly or in part. The temporary improvements tended to divert attention from the steady progress of the paralysis. His right leg was immobile, his left was now weak; I noticed he had slight difficulty turning his head, although his facial muscles were untouched and he had had no visual problems for two years. He looked closer to fifty than to forty. His muscles had run to fat, but the power of his intellect, sharpened rather than dimmed by his physical weakness, was kept ruthlessly honed by his incessant reading, and he was even talking of engaging a companion, one of his old Oxford friends, who could converse with him on the classics; he knew well enough that I had closed my mind against intellectual matters after my drudgery at Oxford.

  My father offered me a glass of champagne, and I accepted it with relief. I was feeling in a nervous unreliable frame of mind for reasons which were ostensibly connected with the appearance of the wheelchair but which I sensed also derived from other sources beyond analysis. I was aware of sinister changes, of a fixed world trying to slide stealthily out of control.

  “I say, I’m reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” said Edmund, providing me with a welcome diversion. “You read it recently, didn’t you, John? Do tell me—who’s the murderer? I simply can’t work it out at all!”

  “Edmund, you don’t ask who did the murder! You read to the end and find out!”

  “I think it might be that attractive girl with the red hair …”

  But I did not want to think about attractive girls with red hair. Evading him I moved over to my father, but my mother intercepted me.

  “Robert looks a little better, don’t you think?” she said. “I think the unexpected mobility of the wheelchair has put him in better spirits.”

  We both glanced across at Robert, and out of the corner of my eye I saw my father drain his glass of champagne and reach automatically for a refill. He too was watching Robert, and suddenly I knew all three of us were united by a grief beyond description. I had an absurd longing to say to them, “I’m here—I’ll make it up to you,” but of course the words could not be spoken, and my parents, as usual when Robert was dominating their thoughts, were oblivious of me. My old jealousy which I had thought dead now rose from the grave to sour my compassion for the brother I admired so much, and I was horrified. Chaos was approaching. At once I drew the line—and as always I felt safe and secure behind it. Consigning my vile jealousy once more to the grave, I too drained my glass and turned to the bottle of champagne for further sustenance.

  The bottle was empty. My father had clearly been helping himself for some time.

  “Open another bottle, John,” he said idly as he saw my plight but my mother said in a voice of steel, “I think not,” and turned her back on him.

  My father, who had been lounging in his usual debonair fashion against the chimneypiece, stood up ramrod-straight and went white. At once I said, “It’s all right, I don’t think I want another glass after all.”

  “Have mine,” said my father, thrusting his glass at me, and stumbled after my mother. “Margaret—”

  My mother was ringing the bell to signal to the servants that we were ready for dinner.

  “—only wanted to be hospitable—special occasion—Edmund’s birthday—”

  “Quite.”

  “… and my dear!” Ginevra was exclaiming to Edmund. “I hear from London that all women are now to look like boys and pretend to have no bosom and no hips! What on earth am I to do?”

  As Edmund guffawed with laughter I was aware of the wheelchair spinning across the room towards us.

  Robert said, “Mama, are you all right?”

  “Yes, dearest, just a little worried about the soufflé after last week’s disaster with the Stourhams.”

  Robert looked skeptical. My father looked painfully anxious. Deciding it was high time I exerted my diplomatic talents to save the situation, I speculated whether Oswald Stourham had yet recovered from his disastrous second marriage to an errant platinum blonde.

  IV

  Despite the underlying tension, dinner passed off better than I had dared hope, first because a failed dinner party was unknown at Oxmoon, second because my parents were superb at keeping up appearances and third because we all drank steadily from my father’s hoard of prewar wine—all, that is, except Thomas, who was too young, and my father, who having consumed far more champagne than normal before the meal now behaved like a man who had taken the pledge. I drank, I knew, far too much and this was most uncharacteristic of me. Indeed my father, whose drinking habits were no
rmally so moderate, had always made it clear to his sons that drinking was not an essential adjunct of masculinity, and certainly I had always shied away from the more dangerous consequences of too much wine, the fatal sense of well-being, the risky loosening of the tongue and the sinister relaxation of the will to behave as one should. I had also shied away from the aftermath of alcoholic excess, the depression, the restlessness and above all the inexplicable frustration which made me feel as if I were a dog endlessly chained up in a backyard and endlessly obsessed with the longing to be free.

  However that night, disturbed by my impression of a clear-cut world slipping inexorably out of focus, I drank to maintain the illusion that nothing had changed, and soon I found I could look at Ginevra’s décolletage without being embarrassed and at my father without remembering Mrs. Straker and at my mother without resenting the fact that she found it hard to love me as she should. I could even look at Robert and not feel ashamed because I found it so much easier to be devoted to him now that he was sick and helpless; I could even look at Robert and pity him because he would probably die before he could inherit Oxmoon.

  “… and of course there’s no denying we farmers have done well out of the war,” my father was saying after the women had retired and the cloth had been drawn, “but times are changing so rapidly now, and sometimes I worry about the future of this place.”

  “Oh, Oxmoon’s all right,” I said, finishing my glass of port. “A large estate can always survive, given good management, Oxmoon’s all right. I could run Oxmoon and run it bloody well, changing times or no changing times, although of course I don’t want Oxmoon, wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, it all goes to Robert, everyone knows that. However if I ever did wind up with Oxmoon—”

  “You never will,” said my father, “so that’s that. You’re still going to outlive me, aren’t you, Robert?”

  Robert, who was smoking a cigar, said sardonically, “John evidently has his doubts.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I exclaimed, half knocking over my glass. “Just because you’re in a bloody wheelchair you needn’t act as if you’re in a bloody coffin!”

  “Steady on, old chap,” said Edmund.

  “You’re not going to die just yet, are you, Robert?” said Thomas, who had somehow reached the age of fourteen without mastering the art of being tactful. He had just sneaked and wolfed a glass of port from the decanter while my father had been busy lighting a cigar.

  “Unfortunately not,” said Robert drily. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  I spun round on Thomas. “What the hell are you doing swigging port on the sly and asking bloody stupid questions?”

  “My God, you are bad-tempered!” exclaimed Thomas, livid that I had called attention to his stolen drink. “And don’t think we can’t all guess why! You’re fed up because you have to make do with measly old Penhale Manor when you think you’re so bloody perfect and so bloody wonderful that you ought to be ruling the roost at Oxmoon!”

  I leaped to my feet with such violence that my chair was flung over behind me, but my father shouted, “Enough!” and my fury was checked. Then as I remained motionless, he said in a level voice to Thomas, “Did I give you permission to drink port?”

  “No. But I didn’t think you’d mind—as it’s a special occasion—”

  “Nobody drinks port in this house before they’re eighteen, special occasion or no special occasion. Very well, that’s the end of your evening. Excuse yourself to the ladies in the drawing room and go to bed.” He waited until Thomas had slouched off in a fury before adding, “Robert, will you please oblige me by going with Edmund to join the ladies. I want a word with John on his own.”

  “I’m afraid I provoked John, sir,” said Robert. “I must ask you not to hold him responsible for this debacle.”

  My father said nothing. Robert then apologized to me but I shook my head to indicate that no apology was necessary. Retrieving my fallen chair I stood stiffly by it as Edmund and Robert left the room.

  “You’ve drunk too much,” said my father to me as soon as the door closed.

  “I know. Unpardonable. I’m very sorry.”

  “Why did you do it? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Couldn’t be better.”

  “So it would seem, certainly. You’ve got well over two thousand acres in Herefordshire, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you have nearly three hundred acres here together with one of the finest old manor houses in Gower?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you have money on top of all that, haven’t you, and good health and good looks and a devoted wife and two fine children?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve everything a man could wish for, in fact?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let’s have no more nonsense about Oxmoon. It goes to Robert and if Robert dies before I do it goes to Robin and that’s my last word on the subject.”

  “I absolutely accept that, sir, and what’s more, I always have accepted it. I can’t think why you should be taking Thomas’s idiotic remark so seriously.”

  “A man’s private feelings aren’t so private when he starts to drink, and God knows I can recognize avarice when I see it. I remember how Owain Bryn-Davies used to covet Oxmoon while my father was still alive.”

  “I’m not Owain Bryn-Davies! And how dare you compare me to such a bastard, why are you always so bloody unfair to me, it’s unjust and I resent it, I resent it, it’s not my fault I look like—”

  “Be quiet! That’s enough! Take yourself home at once and don’t show yourself here again until you’re sober!”

  “I’m not drunk!”

  The door opened, interrupting me, and swinging around I saw my mother had returned. “Please,” she said, not to me but to my father, “could you go to the drawing room and deal with Thomas. He’s making a fuss and I can’t cope. I’m afraid everything’s quite beyond me this evening.”

  “Of course,” said my father, greatly agitated by this unprecedented confession of defeat, and left the room.

  My mother sank down on the nearest chair.

  “Mama …” Shock sobered me. When I stooped over her in anxiety I found she was crying. “Mama!” I was appalled. I had never seen my mother cry, not even after Lion died. I drew up another chair and sat down beside her. “Mama, what is it?”

  But she was already controlling herself. “Nothing. But I live under such strain and sometimes I hardly know how to bear it.”

  I was deeply distressed. “What can I do? I’m so sorry, I had no idea, tell me how I can help.”

  “Oh, you can’t help,” she said flatly. “You have too many problems of your own.”

  “What problems?”

  “My God,” she said, “how’s that poor child Blanche ever going to cope?”

  “Mama, I think you’re a little overwrought—”

  “Overwrought? Oh yes, I daresay. Lion dead, Robert dying, Edmund shell-shocked, Thomas impossible, Celia cut off in Heidelberg, you cut off in some dangerous world of make-believe—”

  “My dear Mama—”

  “—and Bobby,” wept my mother, “Bobby no longer strong enough to live as he longs to live … a decent life … free of scandal … It’s so terrible to see a good man, someone one loves, slip deeper and deeper into degradation—”

  “There must be something we can do to stop it, there must be!”

  “No. There’s nothing.” She wiped her eyes clumsily with the back of her hand before adding: “This is retribution. People pay for the wrong they do, and then hell exists not in the hereafter but now, right here on earth—and here we are, 1921, thirty-nine years after that terrible summer, and I’m in hell, Bobby’s in hell and that man’s still drowning on the Shipway and that woman’s still being destroyed in her asylum.” She wiped her eyes again and managed to say in a calmer voice, “Sometimes I ask God to remember how young we were. Young people
are capable of such brutality but it’s because they know nothing of life. All they understand is the instinct driving them to survive, but sometimes the price they have to pay for survival is so very terrible.”

  There was a silence. I did not know what to say. I was consumed with the longing to terminate this morbid stream of quasi-religious reflection which I found both tasteless and embarrassing, yet at the same time I was moved by my mother’s grief and I desperately wanted to help her. I racked my brains for a consoling diplomatic response, but when it continued to elude me I realized that this was because it did not exist; no words were appropriate and she was inconsolable. In bewilderment, not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around her and kissed her gently on the cheek.

  This was evidently the right approach. Her fingers clutched mine. She looked up at me with gratitude. “Dear John,” she said, “how very good and kind you really are.” Then she said with more than a hint of her old self, “You must have too much to drink more often!” and she smiled as she kissed me in return.

  “Forgive me—I’m afraid I’ve just had an appalling row with Papa—”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll put it right. So much has gone wrong tonight that I’m almost past caring. It’s just so sad about Robert,” said my mother, weeping again. “I couldn’t bear to see him in his wheelchair.”

  If I had been sober I would have murmured a platitude. As it was I said painfully, “I couldn’t bear it either, but you shouldn’t retreat into religion, Mama, in order to make sense of the suffering—you shouldn’t start flagellating yourself with concepts like retribution. You’re the heroine of this story, not the villainess.” And when she covered her face with her hands, I put my arm around her again and said, “I don’t care what you did in the past. You’re a wonderful woman—a magnificent woman—and we all love and respect you so much. If you’re suffering now it’s unmerited, I know it is—it can have nothing whatsoever to do with that vile summer back in the Eighties.”

  My mother let her hands fall. She stared at me. Her eyes shone with tears. “Oh God forgive me,” she whispered. “To think that you should be the one who loves me enough to say that.”