The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  At Little Oxmoon, I told my caretaker to drive on to the Manor with my luggage and then I joined Robert in the drawing room.

  “Do you want a drink?” said Robert. “Or some food? There’s a cold buffet laid out in the dining room.”

  “I don’t think I could eat and I’m quite sure I shouldn’t drink. Tell me the worst.”

  “I went to see him yesterday morning and said my piece, but he couldn’t take it in—or, to be accurate, he took it in but couldn’t face up to it. He became disconnected with reality again.”

  “Oh God. Robert, I think I will have a drink after all.”

  “A wise decision. Help yourself. You haven’t heard the worst part yet. When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to get a word of sense out of him, I yielded to the inevitable and summoned Straker. She was so competent that my suspicions were aroused. I thought to myself, Hullo, she’s been here before, so after she’d led him off to rest I summoned Bayliss and cross-questioned him till he broke down, poor loyal old man, and confessed that the only reason why he was continuing to endure Straker’s dictatorship was because he was so worried about ‘The Master’ that he couldn’t bear to leave him. He hadn’t planned to confide in me, since I was ill, but he had planned to write to you if things got worse—which they now have. In other words, John—”

  “Papa’s been deteriorating for some time but Straker’s hushed it up.”

  “Exactly. And you can see why. If Papa has a complete mental breakdown we have a legitimate excuse to interfere in his affairs, and naturally the last thing Straker wants is an intervention which curtails her power.”

  I swallowed some whisky and said, “What do we do?”

  “First we must help him over this present crisis. You must give him the reassurance he so obviously needs, and with luck that will restore his equilibrium.”

  “But what the devil’s going on, Robert? Why’s he like this? What’s at the bottom of this instability?”

  “That leads me on to what I was going to say next. As soon as he’s rational we must coax him to see Gavin Warburton. We can’t let him drift on like this without seeking medical help.”

  “But do you think—”

  “No, I don’t. There’s no need for you to look as if we’re all in the middle of your recurring nightmare. I’m convinced we’re not dealing with hereditary madness here.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I’m sure because I don’t think Grandmama was mad—at least, not in any sense that would be accepted today. It was Ginette who gave me that idea. She was mad as a hatter after Robin died, but that was just a temporary nervous breakdown and now she’s her old self again.”

  I swallowed some more whisky. After a while, I heard myself say, “I can’t cope with this crisis, Robert; I just can’t face it, it’s too much for me.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m trying to drill it into your head that Papa’s derangement, such as it is, has nothing whatsoever to do with Grandmama. I know perfectly well that you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about Grandmama, insanity and the Home of the Assumption.”

  “I can’t talk about that.” I got up and began to pace around the room. “I’ve nothing to say.”

  “Maybe not,” said Robert, “but I have. It seems to me—after much speculation on the subject of this peculiarity of yours—that you’ve translated the past into some Gothic nightmare which has very little to do with reality.” He paused to let that sink in before adding in his most soothing voice: “After all, what actually happened? Mama had an unusually awkward problem with her mother-in-law. With Papa’s consent she took advantage of Grandmama’s nervous breakdown to install her at the Home of the Assumption, a reputable asylum, where Grandmama was apparently well treated. Grandmama then submitted—perhaps out of some desire to be punished to our parents’ decision that she should remain there. The situation was tragic, I admit, but hardly worthy of a horrific poem by Poe.”

  “What can be more horrific than shutting up a sane woman in a lunatic asylum? No, I refuse to believe our parents would do anything so fiendish!”

  “Those parents of ours were capable of anything.”

  “No!” I shouted. “Grandmama was insane and they were the innocent victims of her evil!”

  “There you go again, translating a mere melancholy ditty into a raging grand opera! My dear John, you can’t divide these unfortunate people neatly into heroes and villains—it’s simply not that kind of story!”

  “Oh yes it is,” I said. “It’s got to be. I’ve got to have it quite clear in my mind whom to hate and whom to love or the ambiguity will tear me apart and I’ll go mad. In fact I feel I’m going mad now, just talking about it. I can’t face it, can’t cope, can’t see Papa, can’t be reminded of the past—”

  “You’ve got to see him. There’s no one else. Now look here, John. You’re an intelligent man. It’s inconceivable that you can go on being irrational about this—”

  “Oh, shut up, you don’t understand—”

  But this was exactly the response Robert wanted. “Very well, then explain your feelings to me.”

  I made a great effort. At last I managed to say: “All I know is that I can’t dismiss the past lightly as you can. I’ve suffered too much. I can’t forgive and I can’t forget, and because of this I have to blame someone for what I’ve had to endure, and I can’t blame my parents because it was always so important that they should love me, and anyway I’ve always loved them—although God knows, when you told me about Papa and Ginevra—Christ, that was terrible, terrible, I was so shocked—and so angry too, angry with him for not behaving as I needed him to behave, it reminded me of how I used to feel as a child—I used to feel so angry with him … and with Mama … for being prejudiced against me just because … but I couldn’t feel angry, of course I couldn’t, not really, well, I mean how could I when I loved them and I knew they loved me, I knew they did, of course they did, but oh God, how upset I was when you told me about Papa and Ginevra … But there I was, being a hypocritical prig again. I’ve now treated Bronwen and Constance just as badly as he ever treated my mother, and I’ve no right to be angry with him anymore. I’m just as bad as he is, I’m just like him, and if he now goes mad—as Grandmama went mad—two people who committed murder—all that evil—hereditary madness—oh God, I’m so frightened, so bloody frightened, you don’t know how frightened I am whenever I think what could happen to me in the future …” I had to stop. I could no longer go on. I rubbed my eyes furtively with the back of my hand and tried to drink some scotch.

  Robert waited a moment before saying in his calmest voice: “I never used that word ‘evil’ when I was defending so-called evil people. It usually seemed more accurate to describe them as pathetic or unlucky or stupid. They weren’t fiends in human guise. They tended to be almost boringly ordinary.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m suggesting that you should think of our parents—and of Grandmama and Bryn-Davies—as ordinary people trapped in a situation which was quite beyond them. I think that’s a lot closer to the truth than your Gothic melodrama.”

  I was unable to speak.

  “And try to see Grandmama,” persisted Robert, “not as a fiend lapsing into a hereditary madness for her sins, but as a sexy woman who got in a mess and in consequence had a most understandable nervous breakdown.”

  I tried to consider this. A knot of tension seemed to be expanding in the pit of my stomach. “But if I see Grandmama as—as—”

  “Forgivable,” said Robert.

  “—how do I see our parents?”

  “As two children in their teens who had to grow up fast with disastrous results. They can be forgivable too, John.”

  “But if I forgive everyone, whom do I blame?”

  “ ‘That Monster Fortune,’ to quote Boethius. We’re all locked to the Wheel of Fortune, John, and some of us have a rougher ride than others.”

  I thought about this. Then I said, “Are you
saying we have no control over our fate?”

  “No. I believe Fortune gives us choices and we have to choose. But think how hard it is, John, when one has choices, to draw the right lines in the right places.”

  There was no answer to that. I thought of the wrong line I had drawn when I had rejected Bronwen, and suddenly for one brief powerful moment I saw my grandmother as a pathetic old woman, cut off from those she loved by the wrong decisions which had ruined her.

  I said, “If only I could believe there was no hereditary madness involved. But if Papa’s now suffering from a severe mental disturbance again—”

  “That need only indicate that he too is having some form of temporary mental collapse, but as far as I know nervous breakdowns aren’t hereditary. I’m sorry, John, to deprive you of your melodrama, but the truth is real life just isn’t grand opera. It’s much more in the nature of opéra bouffe.”

  I looked at him, a man afflicted by tragedy, and at once despised myself for my cowardice. “Hold fast,” I said aloud to myself. “Stand firm. Soldier on.” And those phrases, so reminiscent of the simple world of John Buchan where the heroes never had any trouble being as brave as lions, were comforting to me as I struggled with the complexity of my emotions. “How weak I’ve been,” I said ashamed to Robert, “and how very unheroic.”

  “Ah,” said Robert, “but the real heroes of this world aren’t the men who preen themselves on how well they’re doing their moral duty. The real heroes are the men who somehow nerve themselves to face a crisis even when they want to shit with fright at the thought of where it’s all going to end.”

  I took a deep breath. Then I said, “I shall be all right now,” and I set off on the road to Oxmoon on the first stage of my journey into hell.

  XII

  “Good afternoon, Mr. John,” said my enemy, emerging briskly into the hall as I was handing Bayliss my hat. “Would you care to come into the drawing room, sir?”

  Thanking her with equal civility, I allowed myself to be led across the hall. Mrs. Straker was immaculate in dove-gray, not a hair out of place on her sleek head. Her black eyes were inscrutable.

  We entered the drawing room. The door closed. We stripped off our masks.

  “I understand my father’s not well.”

  “Well, that’s just it, dear, I’m afraid he’s not well enough to see anyone at present.”

  “He’ll see me. Go upstairs, please, and tell him I’m here.”

  “As a matter of fact, dear, he’s not upstairs—I’ve coaxed him out into the garden to see if any of the strawberries are ripe yet. They won’t be, but at least he’ll have a breath of fresh air. He’s been shut up in his room talking of you-know-who until I’m ready to scream. … By the way, you look a little peaky yourself, dear, you really do—would you like a whisky?”

  “No, an explanation. When you say ‘you-know-who’—”

  “That mother of his, dear, and her ruddy lover. Why those two couldn’t have managed their affair better I can’t think. Pure selfishness, if you ask me. In fact she must have been a very stupid woman, letting her lover get out of hand like that—and why kill the poor old homo husband? Most homos are ever so sweet when you get to know them, and he probably only drank because she treated him like dirt. Still, never mind me, I’m prejudiced—I’ve never had any patience with women who do everything wrong from start to finish. Now, what are we going to do about you? Frankly I think if you see him you’ll make him worse.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “You have put the cat among the pigeons, haven’t you, dear! Not that I blame you. That girl’s got something all right—I admire your taste, and I wouldn’t say no to hers either! I’m sure you make very tuneful music together, and I hear there’s ever such a lovely baby!”

  “Mrs. Straker—”

  “All right, I suppose it’s no use hoping you’ll take yourself off, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Christ, there he is! Now, what’s he doing by the summerhouse? He’s supposed to be in the kitchen garden. Well, dear, do we toss for it? Who goes to the rescue, you or me?”

  I made no reply but opened the door and stepped out onto the terrace. “Has Dr. Warburton been consulted?” I demanded over my shoulder.

  “Don’t be daft. Bobby’s tough as old boots when it comes to keeping doctors at arm’s length—he’s too afraid of being carted off to the loony bin.”

  I closed the door in her face, crossed the terrace and ran down the steps to the lawn. My father, dressed casually in gray flannels and a tweed jacket, was standing motionless in front of the summerhouse with his back to me. I went on walking. Eventually Glendower saw me and gave a bark to warn my father of my approach, but my father, apparently absorbed in some private meditation, took no notice. Sweat prickled on my back. I was seized by the nightmarish fear that when I saw his face I would find it changed beyond recognition, and in an automatic attempt to steady my nerves, I called a greeting and broke into a run to cover the last yards which separated us.

  My father glanced idly over his shoulder. To my profound relief he appeared to be normal.

  “Hullo, John,” he said. “I was just thinking that the summerhouse should be repainted. Looks a bit shabby.”

  He held out his hand. Controlling my rapid breathing I took the hand and shook it. We smiled at each other, and that was the moment when I realized his behavior was abnormal. He ought to have been distressed and angry. His casual affability indicated a mind that had deliberately disconnected itself from pain.

  The sweat began to trickle down my spine. “How are you, Papa?”

  “Wonderfully well,” said my father. “I admit Robert did upset me yesterday, but I’ve quite recovered from that now.”

  “I’m sorry Robert upset you. It was I, in fact, who asked him to call.”

  “Robert’s very cruel sometimes,” said my rather. “Like Margaret. They mean well—when they interfere, they call it ‘sorting things out’ and ‘setting things straight’—but they don’t understand how muddled life is, how confusing.”

  “I’m sure Robert didn’t mean to be cruel, Papa. He just wanted to explain—”

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t believe a word he said; I knew it wasn’t true. You wouldn’t do what he said you were going to do. You’re a good decent boy. You’d draw the line.”

  “Ah. I can see he gave you a wrong impression.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead and shoved back my hair in a quick movement of my hand. “Why don’t we go and sit in the summerhouse? I’d like to talk to you and explain everything.”

  “Oh no,” said my father, “not the summerhouse. Quite definitely not the summerhouse. They meet in the back room.”

  “Met. They’re dead.”

  “Yes, I know. But everything’s come a full circle and now it’s all happening again.”

  “No, Papa, the past never happens twice. People play their cards differently, don’t you remember?”

  My father turned away and began to wander towards the bench by the tennis court. “My mother and Owain Bryn-Davies,” he said, “used to meet in the back room of the summerhouse but that was a long time ago, and now we keep the tennis net there during the winter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thomas will put up the tennis net,” said my father, “when he comes home from school in July. Thomas plays tennis with the Bryn-Davies boys.” He paused to survey the tennis lawn before adding carefully: “The Bryn-Davies boys are called Owen and Peter. Owen is spelled the English way, which I think is a pity, but their mother’s English so what can you expect? Their father is Alun, who was at Harrow with Robert, and Alun’s father is my friend Owain the Younger, and his father was my mother’s lover who drowned on the Shipway at the Worm’s Head. A little accident with the tide tables. Have you ever taken Harry and Marian out to the Worm for a picnic, John? It’s such a beautiful spot. Blanche would enjoy it too.”

  We seated ourselves on the bench, and my father, crossing one leg over the other, whistled for Glendowe
r.

  “Papa,” I said, “Blanche is dead. I’m married to Constance now, but it was all the most appalling mistake, and I’ve decided—”

  “Did I say Blanche? Stupid of me! Old age. Awful. I’m sixty-two—no, wait a minute—am I? Yes. It’s 1924, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I’ve been married to Constance for five months. However I now realize—”

  “Wonderful wedding that was, had the time of my life. Wonderful champagne too—Veuve Clicquot, wasn’t it? I’m always very partial to Veuve Clicquot.”

  “Papa, I’m in love with this Welsh girl Bronwen Morgan, and I intend to marry her once I have my divorce from Constance. There’s no question of living in sin indefinitely. Bronwen’s an honest respectable woman, and I intend that she should remain so.”

  “Honest respectable women don’t have bastards.” He stood up again and moved restlessly back towards the summerhouse. “My mother had two miscarriages when she was living with Bryn-Davies,” he said. “It was disgusting. She was quite without shame. I was humiliated. She broke all the rules—and terrible things happen,” said my father, tears suddenly streaming down his face, “as I well know, to people who fail to stick to the rules.”

  Far away Mrs. Straker had emerged from the house and was descending the steps of the terrace. The sight of her seemed to come as a relief to my father. He tried to wipe his eyes on the cuff of his jacket. “Ah, here’s Milly—expect she wants to know if you’re dining tonight. Wonderful woman, Milly, quite remarkable, don’t know what I’d do without her. She wants to marry me, of course, but I won’t because it’s not the done thing for a man in my position to marry someone like that. Got to stick to the rules, you see—and then nothing very terrible can happen.”