The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, you’re taking a dim view of the future on the grounds that Straker’s a clever scheming woman, but on the other hand, it’s quite possible that he may have tired of her by Christmas. How long do Papa’s mistresses last, I wonder? If he’s like most men his affairs probably run a predictable course over a predictable period of time.”

  “She has an appalling air of permanence.”

  We were in the dining room where I had just finished an excellent breakfast. Ginevra had gone to Swansea with Robin and his nanny to see Aunt Charlotte off on the train to London. Kester was howling somewhere as usual in the company of his nursemaid. Outside it was still raining.

  “I simply can’t understand what he sees in her, Robert. She’s neither good-looking nor particularly young. It’s a complete mystery.”

  “My dear John, it’s the commonest of all fallacies that sex can only flourish in an atmosphere of youth and beauty. I had the most extraordinary case once involving a man of forty, a woman of sixty-five and a youth of eighteen with a harelip …”

  Robert talked on but I barely heard him. I had begun to remember another most extraordinary case of sexual attraction, the case of a gentleman of twenty-nine who had become obsessed overnight with a working-class girl six years his junior. I was thinking of their two separate worlds, coexisting in time yet unlinked by any bridge but the bedroom.

  “Robert,” I said, interrupting his saga of the homicidal youth with the harelip, “have you ever slept with a working-class woman?”

  He naturally assumed I was still trying to make sense of my father’s affair with Mrs. Straker. “Of course. Why?”

  “Did you find the experience exceptional? I mean … did you find you could talk to such a woman more easily?”

  “Talk! What about? How can one even attempt a serious conversation with such a person? There’s no common ground. Anyway one hardly goes to bed with a working-class woman with a view to conducting a conversazione between the sheets!”

  “No,” I said, “I suppose one doesn’t. … Robert, have you ever known a fellow who actually married a working-class woman?”

  “One does; of course, hear of the occasional blockhead like Oswald Stourham who becomes besotted with a platinum-blond chorus girl, but fortunately such disasters are fairly rare. Don’t worry, John, I believe Papa when he swears he’ll never marry this woman. He’s not a complete lunatic.”

  I was silent.

  “The last thing he’d want is to commit social suicide,” said Robert soothingly. “Even if he could face being ostracized by his friends, how could he ever face being humiliated before his children? No, he’ll stay away from the altar, don’t you worry—he’ll draw the line there.”

  “Draw the line,” I said. “Yes.” I stood up to go.

  “Well, John,” said Robert, preparing to say goodbye, “I’m sorry you spent all last night being racked by loneliness, but if that’s resulted in a better understanding of Papa then maybe you haven’t suffered in vain. Now promise me you’ll come back here tonight instead of incarcerating yourself all over again in that bloody Manor. There’s nothing heroic, I assure you, about preferring suffering to comfort.”

  But I needed more time to consider my plans, and after promising to telephone him later I returned once more to Penhale.

  IV

  Back at the Manor I gradually began to realize that my situation had become intolerable for at least three reasons, and that once more my life required a radical change.

  The first reason involved my father. If I remained in Gower, I doubted if I would be able to avoid clashing with him eventually over the subject of Mrs. Straker—and a clash would be just what my enemy wanted; in fact she would probably do all she could to promote it in order to drive a wedge between me and my father and keep me out of Oxmoon. My best hope of outwitting her undoubtedly lay in being a dutiful, affectionate but distant son until he came to his senses.

  The second hard truth that I had to accept was that despite Bronwen’s understanding words, Blanche’s memory was intolerably painful to me and likely to remain so for some time. I did realize intellectually that my feelings about Blanche would become more quiescent as time passed, and I did think it likely that one day in different circumstances, I might well wish to live again in the house that was so conveniently close to Oxmoon, but at present I could see nothing but the piano and the white roses and know only that I had not loved my wife as I should.

  The third reason which made a departure imperative concerned the woman I did love. If I stayed on in Penhale I would inevitably meet Bronwen again, and then I knew we would be drawn into an affair which she had made it very clear she did not want. It was useless for me to be foolish and romantic, dreaming of establishing her in a neat little terrace house in Swansea. Even if she were willing, such a scheme would be out of the question because the deserted husband would be sure to make trouble, and in the resulting scandal all the children, both hers and mine, would be certain to suffer.

  I had a vision of chaos and shied away from it. I thought of my mother and of how horrified she would have been by the scandal. I thought of my father deciding I had played my cards disastrously after all. And finally, when there was no one else left to think about, I thought of my grandmother and Owain Bryn-Davies.

  At once I made up my mind that I could never see Bronwen again.

  Insanity threatened.

  Destruction was imminent.

  I drew the line.

  V

  I met Harley Armstrong three weeks later at a reception given by my former chief at the Foreign Office, and nineteen months afterwards Armstrong was introducing me to his daughter Constance. I had known for some time that he wanted me to marry her.

  I have often examined this part of my life with scrupulous care, but I have come to the conclusion that in the worst possible way I was destined for Constance. I told Robert later that it was as if a deus ex machina were operating, and Robert promptly embarked upon a dissertation on the Greek concept of fate which incorporated the so-called “madness of doom,” the hell where men rushed to destruction because they were driven by forces beyond their control. However at the time I thought I was being supremely sane and Robert thought I was being commendably rational. Never were two intelligent men more deceived.

  To have avoided Constance, I would have been obliged to avoid London for even if I had somehow managed to elude Armstrong in 1921, I would certainly have met Constance and her sister in 1923 when they were moving in Society. But I did not avoid London. I embraced it as a solution to my problems in Gower. I could have retreated to my lands in Herefordshire, but I recognized that I was going through an interim period of my life, and it seemed to me that such an interim could be most profitably passed in the capital. There I could slip back more easily into a social life which would help me recover from my bereavement, my children were bound to benefit from a stimulating environment and I would, if I were lucky, find some occupation far more congenial to me than my former dull routine at the Foreign Office.

  I was unsure how long my self-imposed exile from Gower would last, but I suspected five years would see the conclusion of my problems. At the end of that time my father would surely have tired of Mrs. Straker, Blanche would be no more than a poignant memory and Bronwen would have faded into a Welsh myth. Then I would be safe.

  Having arrived this far in the new script of my life, I looked around for someone who would lead me to the center of the stage, and immediately I was collared by Harley Armstrong.

  Armstrong was an American of uncertain origins who had made and lost two fortunes on the New York Stock Exchange before the war, recouped his losses afterwards by profiteering in first canned food and then army surplus stock and was now in what he was pleased to call “Europe” to continue his profiteering in the new industries that had been developing fast since the war. He had acquired interests in petroleum, plastics and gramophone records, but his steady income came fr
om his canning corporation, which was based in New York State. However Armstrong was bored with tinned food, and although he had opened a European subsidiary with a factory in Birmingham and occasionally toyed with the idea of launching a chain of grocery stores, his heart was now in plastics. I did wonder why he had abandoned America, but later he told me he regarded New York as an unlucky city for him, the scene of his two earlier lost fortunes, and he was one of those Americans who believe that if one cannot live in New York one might as well conquer Europe for lack of anything better to do.

  During the period of his first fortune, he had contrived to marry a lady who independent sources assured me was far more respectable than he was, but she had not accompanied him to London, and later I learned that they had parted by mutual consent. Mrs. Armstrong lived with her two daughters in her native Boston. When I asked Armstrong what Boston was like, he said, “Even worse than Philadelphia” and shuddered. However he was very fond of his two daughters and dictated long, sentimental letters to them every week. Mrs. Armstrong was apparently interested in the idea that they should enjoy a season in London, and as soon as this possibility had dawned on the horizon, Armstrong was drawing up plans to crash his way into London Society.

  “I’ve got to be in a position to launch my little girls in style,” he explained to me, and at once I knew that at the back of his mind lurked the delicious notion that his “little girls” might marry Englishmen and settle down forever within a mile of his doorstep.

  I thought at first he was equating himself with Vanderbilt, whose daughter Consuelo had married the Duke of Marlborough, but in fact Armstrong had the kind of vitality which ensured that he would find the upper reaches of the English aristocracy repellently effete. As a self-made man he also possessed what Constance told me later was called an inferiority complex. Shrewd enough to know he was vulgar and ambitious enough for his daughters’ sake to want to do something about it, Armstrong decided towards the end of 1921 that what he needed was a well-bred, well-educated British private secretary—no one too grand, and certainly no one who had a title, but someone diplomatic and resourceful who could teach him how to behave in public.

  He offered me the job on the morning after we had met.

  My automatic inclination was to turn him down but then I thought, Why not accept? I had spent years loathing the stultifying English formality of life at the Foreign Office, and now here was an extraordinary opportunity to work for an unconventional bombastic foreigner. Whatever happened in his employment I was unlikely to be bored and I might even be greatly entertained. It would certainly divert me from the recent past. I therefore decided to accept his offer; the die was cast, and immediately I was whirled into the maelstrom of Armstrong’s private life.

  Within six months I had extricated him from his lavish but unsuitable nine-bedroom flat at the wrong end of Westminster and had installed him in a house with a first-class ballroom at Eaton Walk off Eaton Square. I gave Harrods carte blanche with the interior decoration and the acquisition of the necessary antiques. It seemed safer to trust the leading department store in London than to rely on some fashionable decorator, particularly as very peculiar things were happening at that time in the world of interior decoration.

  Once the house had been decorated I engaged the staff and ensured that the housekeeper and butler reported directly to me. I paid the wages. I organized regular and successful “little dinner parties for twenty-four” to show that I was a true son of my hospitable parents. I reconstituted Armstrong’s wardrobe and told him very firmly what ties he could never wear. I somehow got him accepted as a member of Brooks’s and Boodles. I bought him a suitable country estate in Kent for weekend entertaining and an equally suitable villa in St. John’s Wood for his mistress, a young French tart who had advertised herself as a governess. She had greedy tendencies but I enjoyed haggling with her in French over her allowance.

  In fact I enjoyed every aspect of my new life, and the triumphant finale of my first months in Armstrong’s employment came when I bought him a Rolls-Royce. I could not remember when I had last enjoyed myself so much. John Godwin would have hated the life, but my old self, my true self, was amused by these wrestling bouts with unbridled vulgarity. I kept thinking how Lion would have exclaimed, “What a lark!” and burst out laughing. I laughed too, frequently and spontaneously, and thought how many entertaining memories I would have when I finally retired to Gower.

  Those were the innocent days. They came before that evening in 1922 when he invited me to dine with him to celebrate the. first year of our association. We dined in great style. Then over brandy and cigars he told me I was the son he had always longed for and that he wanted me to become involved with his business empire.

  I was staggered. I had never taken the slightest interest in his business empire; my heart was in neither plastics, nor petroleum, nor tinned food. I was also appalled, in the way that only a man educated at an English public school can be appalled, by this naked display of emotion. But above all else I was touched. Armstrong might be fifty, foreign, florid and frightful; he might periodically infuriate me with his tantrums and his pigheadedness; but there was an element both pathetic and endearing in his gratitude for rescuing him from loneliness in the country of his adoption.

  However I knew I needed to be very careful, and after telling him in all sincerity that I was moved and flattered, I asked for time to consider his offer and retired to my little house in Kensington to analyze my new script.

  To put it bluntly, in the smallest possible nutshell, I was being offered the chance to become a millionaire. I was also being offered the chance to exceed Robert’s success, because with that kind of money behind me there was nothing I could not achieve. Oxmoon would finally cease to matter. I would be able to acquire a bigger and better home for myself than a quaint little Georgian conundrum set squarely on the road to nowhere, and all my old jealousies would be extinguished once and for all.

  Yet if I accepted Armstrong’s offer I would inevitably be cut off from my family, for I would be too busy to journey regularly to Gower. What had happened to those moral obligations about which John Godwin had once talked so loudly, particularly the obligation to be a pillar of strength to his father and brother in their declining years? I shuddered as the depth of my hypocrisy now stood revealed to me. I could see that although I had genuinely wanted to help my father and Robert, I had been concerned first and foremost with myself. I had wanted to take advantage of Robert’s illness by ingratiating myself with my father and becoming the favorite son—a triumph which would have represented a final victory over Robert and which in turn would have been symbolized by my acquisition of Oxmoon.

  For one long clear-eyed moment I thought of Oxmoon, that seductive focus of all my past discontent. I knew I still wanted it. Probably I would always want it. But at least now I was not obliged to regard it as the only panacea for my private unhappiness. Besides, the truth—the truth which I had always been too muddled and unhappy to accept—was that I was never going to inherit that place. If Robert outlived my father, nothing would stop Robin inheriting. If Robert failed to outlive my father, Robin would still inherit—as the favorite grandson. My father had made that perfectly clear, and no matter how strong his new affection for me I could not see him disinheriting the elder son of his eldest son when Robin was a child of such exceptional promise. I was already well provided for. My father could not be blamed for thinking his moral obligations lay elsewhere.

  The only sane conclusion I could draw from all these clear-eyed deliberations was that I was not destined for a life in Gower; in fact, as I could now see so well, I would be a fool not to realize that my fortune lay elsewhere and an even worse fool to turn my back on the dazzling new script I was being offered by Armstrong.

  Yet I was wary of dazzling scripts.

  In the end I told Armstrong that I liked the idea but felt I needed another year to prove to us both that I had the necessary talents to master the world he was offering me,
and Armstrong, impressed by the fact that I was making no immediate attempt to grab every penny in sight, suggested that I took charge of his two new charities to find out if I enjoyed wielding power from an office desk.

  I enjoyed it. I also excelled at it. The Armstrong Home for Wayward Boys was in Battersea and the Armstrong Home for Distressed Gentlefolk was in Putney, and within six months I had organized them into formidable charitable machines. Throughout my labors I took care to ensure that Armstrong’s name as a philanthropist was much quoted in the press, for by now it was 1923 and it was time for me to put the finishing touches to the American gentleman I had created out of the New York gangster I had met eighteen months before. Far away in Boston Mrs. Armstrong was preparing to launch her daughters across the Atlantic for their London season, and their social success was heavily dependent on my skill in promoting their father as a respectable generous benefactor who could be welcomed at even the highest levels of society.

  “You’ll like my daughter Constance,” said Armstrong as the day of the girls’ arrival drew nearer. “She’s intelligent and well educated, just like you.”

  I knew an order when I heard one. My role in the script was being amended so that I could play Prince Charming as well as Heir Apparent, but although I expressed diplomatic enthusiasm, I knew I was still in no hurry to remarry. By that time I was well aware that my decision to marry at the absurdly young age of twenty-two had been prompted in part by the belief that sexual satisfaction could be safely obtained only within the framework of marriage, but now I knew that other frameworks were available. Naturally the idea of consorting with prostitutes was repugnant to me, and naturally I shied away from the loose-living Society women whom I met in increasing numbers, but eventually I encountered a gentle, unaffected young widow who was a seamstress. She visited my house regularly to attend to Marian’s clothes, and one afternoon when I was on my way to the Boys’ Home in Battersea I gave her a lift in my car to her room in Pimlico. Later I paid the rent on a flat for her near the Fulham Road, and when I realized how lucky I was to have found someone so pleasant, so grateful even for the smallest kindness and so anxious never to be demanding I started paying her a small income. Needless to say I spent much time worrying in case this arrangement marked the beginning of an inexorable decline into profligacy, but as the months passed I finally dared to admit to myself that I was doing the right thing. At least it guaranteed I did not rush into marriage a second time out of sheer sexual frustration.