The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  The top floor of Oxmoon consisted of a chain of rooms crammed with Godwin possessions which ranged from family treasures to junk. Early poverty had encouraged my parents to hoard anything of value, but the tradition of accumulation had preceded my father’s rule and there were even tin trunks marked R. CLIFFORD, which had been the name of Robert Godwin the Renovator before he had prised his way into the inheritance of his cousin the imbecile. But my father was not wandering among the relics of the eighteenth century. I found him seated by a collection of old books in the room where my grandmother’s portrait was kept under a dust sheet. When he saw me he rubbed his eyes as if making a desperate attempt to concentrate.

  “Are you looking for something, Papa? Can I help you?”

  He shook his head. I saw then that he was too afraid to speak in case he mixed up past and present, and I found his awareness of his condition far more terrible than any ignorance would have been. My last doubts about the pretense of employing Bronwen dissolved. Putting him out of his agony, I promised I would stick to his rules.

  After he had shed a tear or two of relief he said, “Thank God you’ve come to your senses. I really thought you might marry her, and of course that would never do.”

  I was silent. The last thing I wanted was to upset him all over again. I told myself there would be time enough to face that crisis when I had my divorce.

  My father began to stack the books nearby into a neat pile, and as he worked I saw they were not books at all but old photograph albums. I thought of my grandmother, and suddenly before I could stop myself, I pulled the dust sheet from her portrait.

  “I suppose she called Bryn-Davies the bailiff,” I said, “when he moved to Oxmoon.”

  “No, she never bothered. Awful. I was so ashamed.”

  I thought of Dr. de Vestris saying, “It’s always the children who suffer, isn’t it, when the parents go off the rails.”

  A coldness gripped me. Covering the portrait I turned away once more from my grandmother and in my mind drew the line which would separate me from her.

  But the line seemed very fragile.

  “Hope you won’t be too bored living at the Manor,” said my father unexpectedly, providing a more than welcome diversion, and when I faced him I saw that although he still looked ill with exhaustion, the lines of strain seemed less pronounced. His voice was normal. Sanity had apparently been regained.

  “I shall be all right.”

  “Nothing much for you to do there.” My father had been keeping an eye on the estate for me since Edmund’s marriage. “It would be a full-time occupation for Edmund, of course, but not for someone like you.”

  “I’m not ambitious, not anymore.”

  My father gave a short laugh and said, “That’s because all you can think about at the moment is the woman. But you’ll feel differently later.”

  “Perhaps. But I do have my lands in Herefordshire. I’m sure I can keep myself busy.”

  “I can’t change my mind about Oxmoon, John.”

  “I know. But I’m not interested in Oxmoon anymore. I just want to live quietly with Bronwen at Penhale Manor.”

  “The pond’s too small, John. You’re a big fish.”

  “Then I’ll have to find a bigger pond eventually, won’t I?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said my father.

  At once I turned to face him. “There’s no need to treat me as a fanatic who would stop at nothing.”

  “No? You’re behaving like one—walking out on your pregnant wife, smashing up your home, stopping at nothing to get that woman—”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it? I don’t see much difference. If you stop at nothing to get a woman, why shouldn’t you stop at nothing to get an estate?”

  “Because you stopped at nothing to get an estate, Papa, and I’ve seen what that’s done to you. No, thank you! I’m not playing my cards as you played yours!”

  He broke down again. There was a long and distressing interval during which he clung to my hand and said how glad he would be to have me living nearby but how frightened he was in case he became old and feeble and allowed me to persuade him to cheat Robert.

  “… and then I’ll be damned utterly,” he said, crying again. “This is my one chance for redemption, my one chance to right a terrible wrong.”

  “I understand. But you’re safe, Papa—I’d never interfere with your affairs—I’d draw the line.”

  Or would I?

  Yes, of course I would. I’d draw the line to stop myself ending up like my grandmother. But supposing … supposing I drew the line but the line became … eroded by circumstances beyond my control? Or supposing I drew the line but it became my moral duty to rub it out?

  The nightmares burgeoned.

  Chaos multiplied.

  In terror I blotted the entire subject from my mind.

  VIII

  Meanwhile the chaos was streaming into my life as the result of the wrong line I had drawn when I had married Constance.

  The moment I returned to London to resume the ordeal of winding up my life there, Marian’s governess gave notice, and although I made no attempt to detain her, I was becoming very worried about Marian who had now lost her stepmother, her nanny and her governess in rapid succession. Nanny too had given notice as a gesture of protest, but she had expected me to beg her to stay, and my immediate acceptance coupled with the necessary glowing reference had shocked her to the core.

  “How jolly awkward!” said Daphne unsurprised when I told her of the governess’s decision. “Simply too diffy for words, my dear.” She then told me that if Bronwen were to be the new nanny I would never find a governess who would stay. “Governesses can’t bear being upstaged by nannies, John. It’s one of the horrid facts of nursery life.”

  When I remained silent, forcing myself to face this unpalatable truth, Daphne said impulsively, “John, do let Marian stay here with Elizabeth! Harry’ll be all right, he can share Kester’s tutor, and so long as he has you perhaps he won’t need a mother so much as Marian does, but Marian … Darling, don’t be livid with me, you know I’m on your side, but what is it going to be like for Marian with your working-class mistress at Penhale Manor? Marian’s nearly nine now, and she needs—”

  “What Marian needs,” I said, “is her father, working-class mistress or no working-class mistress, and I’m not going to abandon her by palming her off on you. She’s coming to Penhale and that’s my last word on the subject.”

  “I doubt if it’ll be Marian’s,” said Daphne drily, and she was right. Marian, who was great friends with Elizabeth and who liked her cousin’s nanny and governess, took a poor view of yet another upheaval in her small world and stormy scenes inevitably followed. These were exacerbated by the fact that Daphne, the nanny and the governess all secretly sympathized with Marian and thought I was behaving irresponsibly. At that point I knew Marian had to be removed as soon as possible, so after Ginevra had engaged the domestic staff I made a rapid visit to the Manor to install Bronwen and her children and then returned to London to tackle the nightmare of collecting my children from a home neither of them wanted to leave.

  Marian became hysterical. Elizabeth became hysterical. Daphne was no use at all. I suddenly decided I disliked Daphne very much and could not imagine why Lion had married her. In my distress I needed someone to blame for this harrowing episode, and Daphne filled the role of scapegoat to perfection.

  I had always thought with what I now classified as ignorant conceit that I was a good father, but at this point I found out that parenthood involved rather more than reading bedtime stories, patting little heads and distributing pocket money on Saturday mornings. I was alone with my children on the train to Swansea. There was neither a nanny nor a governess to cushion me from the realities of nursery life. Marian sobbed and screamed and sulked. Harry spent his time either picking fights with her or else misbehaving in some other way in order to gain my attention. Twice I restrained myself from spanking
him but on the third occasion I did not, and afterwards I was as miserable as he was. I felt a complete failure as a parent.

  My caretaker Willis, now restored to his former position as head gardener, met us in the car at Swansea, but at once the children were fighting again, this time for the honor of sitting on my lap. More tears and screams ensued. Willis looked shocked. I was exhausted. I had begun to think the journey would never end but at last we reached the Manor and Bronwen came out into the drive to meet us.

  To this day I cannot recall what she said. But I can see the children looking at her, looking and remembering, and I knew she was reminding them of that other time when their mother had been alive. Their tearstained grubby little faces became smooth and still. Rhiannon and Dafydd were in the hall but I did not wait to see the reunion; I thought Bronwen could manage better without me, so I retired to my study and mixed myself a very dark whisky-and-soda.

  A week later, just as I was thinking with relief that my home life was stable enough to permit me at least to attempt to find a new governess, I returned from a visit to Swansea to find that all my new domestic staff wanted to give notice.

  IX

  I made no effort to detain them. Employers do themselves no favor when they cringe and crawl before their servants, and I knew the only answer was to start afresh. The worst part of the disaster, however, was not the dislocation of life at the Manor but Bronwen’s deep distress.

  “It was because we shared the bedroom openly,” she said. She was trying not to cry. “I overheard some remarks about it. I should have had my own room by the nurseries.”

  I had known that to preserve the proprieties fully, Bronwen should have had her own room, but the prospect of her position at the Manor being an exact mirror image of Milly Straker’s position at Oxmoon was so repulsive to me that I had found this final hypocrisy intolerable. Now I realized that I had been stupid but at the same time I found myself unable to make more than a minor compromise.

  “We’ll set aside the room,” I said, “but I’m damned if you’re ever going to use it. We’ll go to bed together in my room and wake up together in my room, just as if we were married, and I won’t tolerate anything else.”

  “But no staff will stay—how will we manage …” She was crying, saying how frightened she was in case I already regretted my decision to live with her.

  I stopped her tears. Then when I was sure she was convinced I had no regrets I told her not to worry, swallowed every ounce of my very considerable pride and went begging to Milly Straker.

  X

  She was very good about it. It would have been so easy for her to be smug, savoring my humiliation, but she was brisk and businesslike.

  “Yes, I thought Mrs. Robert was making a mistake engaging good-quality servants,” she said flatly. “I’m surprised they even stayed as long as a week. Never mind, dear, I’ll talk to the agency I use in Swansea and get you a cook and a couple of maids—but what you really need is the right housekeeper, someone who’ll flog everyone into shape and turn a blind eye to your sleeping arrangements. Let me telephone my friends in London and see what’s going in the waifs-and-strays department. Whoever they suggest won’t have references, but I’ll make sure she’s dead straight about money.”

  “I …” It was hard to find the right words. “She must be a decent woman. I couldn’t possibly consider employing anyone who wasn’t.”

  “Don’t worry, dear, the victims of this world are usually a lot more decent than those who play their cards right. I’ll see if I can find some able respectable woman whose employer asked her to be a bed warmer and then ended up with cold feet. After a dismissal with no references and a visit to the nearest back-street abortionist, a woman like that would think Penhale Manor was paradise and you were the Angel Gabriel.”

  I remained very worried but when Mrs. Wells arrived for her interview I found my worries were at an end. Good-looking but meticulously refined in her manner she had for the past five years been employed in a home where the wife was an invalid, and Mrs. Wells, having enjoyed a large amount of autonomy in consequence, was more than capable of taking sole charge of the household. This was exactly what I wanted. I engaged her.

  “What did she do?” I said afterwards to Mrs. Straker. I despised myself for my curiosity, but I felt I ought to find out. “Was it the employer?”

  “No, dear: his seventeen-year-old son, but keep Mabel away from hotheaded young men and you’ll have no trouble at all; quite the reverse. I’m sure she’ll suit very well.”

  For the next two weeks Mrs. Straker called daily at the Manor to make sure the new staff were behaving themselves. Bronwen said the servants used to tremble in their shoes, but I noticed the standard of my domestic comfort was rising. Mrs. Wells, established in her authority by Mrs. Straker, proved both capable and pleasant, treating Bronwen and me exactly as if we were married. Mrs. Straker had ruled that any servant who was rude to Bronwen was to be dismissed on the spot. Bronwen thought she was wonderful.

  “She’s been very kind to me, Johnny.”

  “She mistakenly thinks you need her compassion.” I found I loathed Mrs. Straker all the more now that I was so absolutely in her debt, and I did not like being thwarted in my loathing by evidence that she could be kind.

  However our bizarre alliance continued and was even strengthened when Thomas arrived home for the summer holidays and declared he had no intention of returning to Harrow in the autumn. This led to rows at Oxmoon, but my father, who always prided himself on his ability to manage children, evidently found himself unable to ask me for help. It was Mrs. Straker who cornered me during one of my visits and told me what was going on.

  “Bobby’s getting upset again,” she said. “It’s no good expecting him to cope with a boy of seventeen, he’s too old and he hasn’t the stamina to solve the problem—and Thomas is a problem, make no mistake about that. He might have a nice nature, but who can tell? He spends all his time being bloody-minded. I’m fed up with him.”

  I felt the last thing I needed at that moment in my life was a bloody-minded adolescent, but I said I would do what I could. Thomas was out at that time but I left a note asking him to call, and rather to my surprise he rode over to the Manor that same evening and tramped truculently into my study for his audience.

  XI

  “Of course I know why you want to see me,” said Thomas, flinging himself down in the best armchair and swinging his feet insolently onto my desk. “You’ve heard I’m refusing to go back for a final year at that bloody school and you want to give me some bloody lecture about the glories of education.”

  “Oh? Then let me set your mind at rest; I don’t give lectures, bloody or otherwise. I say, would you mind very much if you took your feet off my desk? Try the fender; it’s a far more comfortable height. … Thanks.”

  “I’ve had enough of school. I think education’s a load of balls.”

  “I’m sure many people would agree with you. Too bad Papa isn’t one of them. Cigarette?”

  He grabbed the cigarette with such alacrity that he nearly pulled the case out of my hand. With compassion, I realized he was nervous, and in the knowledge that he was vulnerable I looked at him more closely. He was as tall as I was by that time but built differently. He was broader, heavier, more like my mother’s side of the family than my father’s, and he had a square, mulish jaw which reminded me suddenly of frightful Aunt Ethel in Staffordshire.

  “Well,” I said when our cigarettes were alight, “what do you plan to do now?”

  “Raise hell, get drunk and fuck every woman in sight.”

  “Oh yes? Well, I agree that takes care of the nights. But what are you going to do during the day?”

  Thomas immediately assumed his most belligerent expression. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Sheer mindless curiosity.”

  “What are you after?”

  “Why do I have to be ‘after’ anything?”

  “Most people are,” said Thomas, and
I heard an echo of Milly Straker’s cynicism in his pathetic attempt to appear worldly.

  “I’m not most people, I’m your brother and I’m sorry that you and Papa should be at loggerheads. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “How about minding your own bloody business?”

  “Certainly—if that’s what you really want.”

  There was a silence while we smoked and eyed each other. Then in a gust of embarrassment Thomas stubbed out his cigarette. “Well, if that’s all you want to say I’ll be off. Unless you intend to offer me a drink.”

  “No. Just help.”

  “But what do you get out of helping me?”

  “Abuse and bad language, apparently.” I stood up and opened the door of the study. “Goodbye, Thomas.”

  He hesitated. He looked very young, and suddenly I was reminded of the scene in the summerhouse after my mother’s death when he had been a frightened fourteen-year-old whose world had collapsed overnight.

  I closed the door again. “What’s it really like at Oxmoon,” I said abruptly, “with Papa and Milly Straker? And how do you think you’ll get on living there all the year round in their company?”

  “Mind your own bloody business,” said Thomas, and elbowed his way past me into the hall.

  “Well, when you’re ready to talk,” I shouted after him, “remember that I’m always ready to listen!”

  But the front door slammed in my face.

  XII

  Ten weeks later in October I received a letter from Constance, and as I ripped open the envelope at the breakfast table I found myself praying that after the news I expected, I would find the promise of a divorce.

  My darling John, Constance had written, our daughter was born yesterday at six o’clock in the morning and weighs exactly seven pounds. As we agreed earlier, she will be called Francesca Constance unless I hear from you to the contrary.