The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  It was by this time early evening. The haziness of the warm July day had receded in the changing light, and the view stretched with eerie clarity before my eyes as I stood on the southern edge of the circle. I looked beyond Llangennith to the north arm of Rhossili Bay; I looked past Llanmadoc Hill to the bright water of the Loughor Estuary; I looked beyond the rolling farmland to the village of Reynoldston on the spine of Cefn Bryn. So deceptive was the extraordinary light that Penhale seemed barely a stone’s throw away in the valley below, and as the sea wind hummed in my ears I heard the chime of the church clock and remembered how I had once listened to it thundering the hour.

  I spun round. I was standing on the highest point of the wall so that the entire summit of the Down lay before me, and as I turned I saw that on the other side of the fort far below a slim figure in a pale green dress had scrambled up onto the ramparts. The wind hummed again across the ancient lonely landscape, and the evening sun shone fiercely on that unmistakable fiery hair.

  She did not see me immediately but I made no effort to escape. I merely stood motionless, overwhelmed by all the memories I had tried so sensibly to forget, and then at last as she looked up across the circle I knew we both heard the same echo in time.

  7

  I

  SHE WORE HER HAIR UP BUT the wind had whipped it into untidiness; shining strands blew about her face and her long lovely neck. Freckles still peppered the bridge of her nose before fading into that very pale, very clear skin. She wore with her old faded green dress white sandals and no stockings. Her eyes shone with joy.

  Taking her in my arms I kissed her first on the cheek, as a valued friend who had helped me survive a past crisis, and then, before I could stop myself, on the mouth as a lover.

  “How strange it is,” I said at last, “that death keeps bringing us together.”

  “Ah no,” she said, smiling at me. “It’s life that keeps bringing us together. Death’s only a part of life, isn’t it?”

  “God knows what it is. I don’t understand any of it. All I do understand is that life’s so precious and one wastes so much time doing things one doesn’t want to do.”

  We looked at each other and both knew exactly what we wanted to do. The clasp of our hands tightened. Descending from the ramparts into the shelter of the embankment, we moved once more into each other’s arms.

  II

  “Did your husband leave you penniless again?”

  “Yes—for the last time. He died last month in a waterfront brawl in Marseilles.”

  We were lying in a little grassy hollow framed by gorse bushes which protected us from the sea wind. Around us the bracken grew waist-high, and we could see the fronds rippling in the breeze like a wheat field. It was quiet. When a lark burst into song above us we both jumped, but by the time we looked up he had gone and only two sea gulls were drifting across the sky.

  “Myfanwy and Huw say I can stay on at the farm,” said Bronwen, “but I can’t live on their charity so I shall go back to Cardiff, rent a room from my in-laws and get work.”

  “What work?”

  “Housework. I did it last year so that we wouldn’t be turned out of our rooms again.”

  “It must be very dreary.”

  “No, it’s all right if you find a nice lady. I like polishing all the beautiful furniture while I daydream.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  “I dream I have a house with six bedrooms, like my last lady, with a lovely bathroom all tiled in blue and a big kitchen with a refrigerator in it and a garden with flowers, and I dream I have several teapots, I do so love teapots, they’re such a pretty shape, and I dream I have a book once a week—a magazine, ladies call it—with a nice love story in it where the beautiful heroine marries the handsome hero and lives happily ever after.” She laughed, showing her perfect teeth. “Life’s not much like that, is it?” she said. “But that’s why it’s so important to dream a little.”

  “I like to dream too,” I said, “but I dream all the wrong dreams.” And I told her about Constance.

  When I had finished she said, “What will you do?”

  “I can’t imagine. All I know is that I’m in a frightful mess—as usual—and I’d rather not think about it. Will you come away with me for a while?”

  She considered this carefully. “Would it make things better if I did?” she said at last. “Or would it make things worse?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. To be frank I wouldn’t care if all life on earth ceased so long as I’d had a couple of weeks alone with you first.”

  She smiled. Then she said, “Where shall we go?”

  When I had finished making love to her again, I lay on my back and pondered on this question. Finally I said, “Have you ever been to Cornwall?”

  “I’ve never been out of Wales.”

  “I’ve never been to Cornwall either but they say it’s like Wales’ first cousin. I think we’d feel at home there.”

  As we dressed we made our plans. I told her I could leave directly after Robin’s funeral. She said she could leave at any time; she knew her sister would be willing to look after the children.

  “But I’ll have to be honest with her,” she added. “I’ll have to tell her the truth.”

  I paused in the act of buttoning my waistcoat. “Must you?”

  “You needn’t worry, she’ll hold her tongue.”

  “But won’t she be very shocked?”

  “Yes, but I think she’ll be forgiving. She knows what a terrible time I had with Gareth.”

  “She’ll certainly be angry with me.”

  “Why? Everyone knows gentlemen do this sort of thing. She’ll probably think you do it all the time.” She looked at me with a smile and said, “Maybe you do!”

  “No.” But I told her about my mistress in Fulham.

  “Does she love you?”

  “I think she’s fond of me. I’m fond of her. But the fondness merely stems from a mutual convenience.” I slipped my arms around her waist again. “You’re the one I love.”

  She said nothing.

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked up at me steadily. “And I don’t think you know either,” she said. “Not really.”

  “Bronwen—”

  “But I love you,” she interrupted, “and all I want is to spend a few precious days alone with you. Isn’t that all that matters for the moment?”

  Two days later we were on our way to Cornwall.

  III

  I told Robert and my father that I had to return to London, but I wired Armstrong that I had to remain in Wales for a further two weeks. As for Edmund, rushing back to London directly after the funeral, he was far too preoccupied with thoughts of Teddy to query my statement that Robert needed me until Ginevra returned from the nursing home.

  On the morning after the funeral my father’s chauffeur drove me into Swansea, supposedly to catch the train up to town, and my disappearance began. First of all I entrusted my leather bags to the station’s left-luggage office. Then I bought a cardboard suitcase, filled it with cheap off-the-peg clothes and finally, much stimulated by my escape from my upper-class identity, I retired to the men’s lavatory at the station to change. In my new blue suit I certainly looked déclassé, but I was aware too that I looked foreign, un-British, a man outside the confines of the English class system. I knew my accent, that inexorable bondage, would give me away as soon as I opened my mouth but even that would cease to matter in Bronwen’s company since we always spoke to each other in Welsh.

  I felt liberated. I walked out of the station as if I had been reborn.

  Bronwen was due to arrive at ten o’clock on the motorbus from Penhale, and as I walked to meet her I methodically reviewed my list of new possessions to confirm that I had forgotten nothing.

  Outside a chemist’s shop I stopped. I knew what I ought to buy there, but I hesitated, thinking how ridiculous it was that I had reached the age of thirty-one with
out attaining more than the dimmest grasp of a subject which was of vital practical importance. An eighteen-year-old soldier issued with regulation French letters in the trenches would have known more than I did. After several miscarriages with her husband, my mistress in Fulham had had an operation to ensure that pregnancy never recurred, so the question of prevention had not arisen in her company. I had never bought contraceptives in my life. What did one ask for? Armstrong had at least stopped short of asking me to buy his French letters for him, and besides he had never bothered unless he went to a brothel and needed protection against disease. I shuddered. “The women I like can look after themselves,” he had said, referring to his more respectable exploits. I wondered if Bronwen could look after herself. Dafydd was now six. I remembered her admission that she had shared a bed with her husband whenever he came home from the sea, but even though he had presumably been anxious to make up for lost time, she had not conceived again. I decided that indicated a knowledge of contraception. Or did it? I paced up and down outside the chemist’s shop.

  Finally, despising myself for my cowardice, I went in but there were women present so I left. The answer, as I knew, was to ask for the trade name but trade names had never cropped up in any discussion on the subject with Armstrong, and I had always shied away from mentioning the matter to anyone else. How could I have permitted myself to remain in such a state of ignorance? I mentally cursed John Godwin for keeping me a priggish adolescent until the age of twenty-nine.

  In the end I decided to postpone the problem. Bronwen was a practical woman whenever she wasn’t dreaming of blue-tiled bathrooms, and if she was worried I judged her sensible enough to say so. If she did, I would at once take action, but meanwhile it was undoubtedly pleasanter to go on loving her without any sordid impediment. Again I thought of Armstrong protecting himself against disease, and again I shuddered in revulsion.

  Abandoning the chemist, I hurried on down the street to the bus station.

  IV

  In the train I took off the wedding ring Morgan had given her and slipped on her finger the plain gold band that I had bought before I had embarked on my quest for cheap clothes. Hours later in Penzance when I wrote Mr. and Mrs. John Godwin in the hotel register I felt as if I had been married to her for years but had somehow mislaid all memory of the wedding. The hotel was small and quiet, and from our attic room when we awoke next morning we could see over the rooftops to the sparkling sea beyond the promenade.

  After breakfast we went out. We found our way down the hill past the harbor, and when we reached the esplanade we paused to gaze across the bay to the fairy-tale castle of St. Michael’s Mount.

  “It hardly seems real,” I said, but it was. We bought a guidebook, and the next day we went across to the Mount and it was all real, all true. The fairy tale had become reality, and reality exceeded all our dreams.

  Later our guidebook led us to Mousehole and Lamorna and Logan’s Rock, to St. Mawes and the Lizard and Kynance Cove. The weather deteriorated but we hardly noticed. We were too busy sitting in country buses and missing much romantic scenery by kissing at the wrong moment.

  At first we were muddled about meals, since Bronwen was unaccustomed to dining at eight, but I had no wish for such formality so apart from our breakfast at the hotel we ate in cafes or at small, casual harbor inns where we could order fresh seafood. Bronwen had never eaten lobster before. I had never eaten baked beans on toast. We laughed and laughed as we saw each other’s expressions after the first taste. In the cafe where I tried tomato sauce on my fried potatoes, we both laughed so much that the good-natured proprietor, thinking us mad foreigners, gave us a free pot of tea and asked where we came from.

  “We’re from Wales,” I said in English, and when I saw his astonished face as he heard my accent I began to laugh all over again.

  We talked endlessly. She told me about the little village above the Rhondda Valley where she had been born and where her parents had worked as cook and gardener for the local vicar. After her father’s death her mother had stayed on at the vicarage, but when she too had died Bronwen had traveled south to join Myfanwy, who was in service at a rectory near Cardiff.

  “… and then very luckily there was a vacancy for a kitchen maid at the Big House and I went to work there, but it was horrible, I hated it, the housekeeper was cruel and the other girls laughed at me because my English wasn’t good and the footman tried to manhandle me and then finally, thank God, Gareth became one of the undergardeners and he began to take notice of me and I thought if I married him I’d be safe and live happily ever after. I was only sixteen and Myfanwy wasn’t in the neighborhood anymore because she’d married Huw so there was no one for me to talk to—oh, I was so weak and silly, but sometimes I think one has to suffer a little in order to grow up strong.”

  I told her about Oxmoon. I talked about how awful it had been to have this great god Robert whom we had all had to live up to and how wonderful it had been when the great god had singled me out for special attention. I talked about Lion. I talked about school and what fun it had been once I conquered my homesickness.

  “Poor little boy!” said Bronwen. “How cruel the upper classes are, getting rid of their children by shutting them up for two-thirds of the year in institutions!”

  “But I loved it! At school no one compared me with Robert—the masters remembered him, of course, but even so, it was easier to escape from him there.”

  “Poor little boy!” said Bronwen again.

  “No, no, I had this wonderful childhood—I was so happy! And then … when I was eleven …”

  “Yes?”

  “Something happened but I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Later she said, “In Penhale they still talk of your grandmother and Mr. Owain Bryn-Davies. What was your grandmother like? Do you remember her well?”

  And then I told her everything.

  V

  After some days we moved on to North Cornwall. The Cornish moors reminded us of the Gower Downs; even the mining territory around St. Just seemed to echo the industrial wilderness east of Swansea, and as we gazed at the ruined engine houses silhouetted against the sea, Bronwen said the coast must be almost as fine as the coast between Rhossili and Porteynon. But we agreed Gower was unsurpassable. Our bus crawled on along the coast road, through the hamlets of Morvah and Zennor until finally we reached the crest of a ridge, and there before us in a brilliant panorama of sea and sky lay the curve of a vast bay and the famous fishing town of St. Ives.

  The town sparkled in a hot, bright foreign light, and beyond the beaches the sea was a rich glowing Mediterranean blue. We found a guesthouse in a cobbled alley in the heart of the town, and having shed our luggage we wandered through the narrow twisting streets to the harbor.

  “I think the weather will stay fine now,” I said rashly, and despite this tempting of fate, the sun continued to shine. We became idle, heading every morning for the beach and returning every afternoon to the seclusion of our room. From our window we could watch the gulls swooping among the crooked chimney pots as the fishing boats returned to the harbor, and in the evenings when the town became bathed in its golden southern light, we would wander to the summit of the hill behind the town and watch the sun sink into the sea.

  “We’re like pilgrims in a legend,” I said to her once, and we talked of Welsh legends and read about Cornish legends in our dog-eared guidebook. I told her about French legends too, and described my visits to France before the war when I had been studying modern languages up at Oxford. She asked about Oxford but could not quite imagine it. I told her about Paris. She could not conceive of such a place, but was enthralled. We never mentioned London.

  “I’d like to travel one day,” she said. “I’d always accepted that I’d never leave Wales, but now that I have … oh, I must read books about travel, real books with hard covers; I shall talk to the lady of the traveling library and ask her advice, and then I shall read and read and read so that when I talk to you in the fu
ture—”

  We looked at each other. She blushed painfully, but I pulled her to me. I did not want her hating herself for mentioning a future neither of us dared imagine.

  When I had kissed her I said, “Of course I could never marry Constance now.”

  She made no effort to disguise her relief, and in her honesty I saw how vulnerable she was. But still she had the courage to say: “You must do as you must. I don’t want you blaming me later and saying I ruined your life by spoiling all your fine prospects in London.”

  “I don’t care about London anymore. I’m going back to Gower.” We were watching the sun set again. The sun was a brilliant red, the blue sky was streaked with gold and the sea was a glowing mass of fiery light. It was the most alluring prospect, the kind of prospect that would tempt even an unimaginative man to see visions of paradise, and I was by no means an unimaginative man.

  “Now that poor child’s dead Oxmoon will come to me eventually,” I said at last. “My father may promise Robert out of kindness that Kester will be the heir, but that promise will die with Robert. My father prefers Harry to Kester, and besides … I know very well that my father feels closer to me now than he does to his other sons.”

  After a pause Bronwen said, “But do you think you’re suited to a country life at Oxmoon?”

  I was startled. “Why should you think I’m not?”

  “I remember Huw saying after your wife died that he wasn’t surprised by your decision to go to London. He said he thought you’d become bored with being a gentleman farmer at Penhale Manor.”

  “Being a gentleman farmer at Penhale Manor is one thing; being master of Oxmoon is quite another and would certainly provide me with the challenges I need to stave off boredom.” I tried not to sound annoyed. “That’s a jaundiced judgment from your brother-in-law!”

  “Oh, you mustn’t think that,” she said quickly. “He admires you so much. But he finds you a puzzle—and so do most people, if you really want to know. ‘Mr. John’s a dark horse,’ they say. ‘Doesn’t seem to know what he wants. Up to London, back to Gower, up to London again—rushing around like an inklemaker in a drangway,’ as they say in their funny Gower English—”