The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I’m glad.” I waited while she poured me some more coffee. Then I added: “I hadn’t guessed. I suppose I’ve been far too preoccupied with my own affairs.”

  “Well, God knows they must be a full-time preoccupation, but all the same even though you don’t have much time at present I do wish poor Bobby would let you help him with Oxmoon. Why won’t he, do you think?”

  I thought of Bronwen urging me to be truthful. “He doesn’t trust me not to play the villain and cheat Robert.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling, you mean he doesn’t trust himself not to give Oxmoon to you and promptly die of remorse!” She smiled at me but her eyes were wary. “And that wouldn’t be such a tragedy for you, would it?”

  “Possibly not.” I kept thinking of Bronwen. “I covet Oxmoon sometimes,” I said. “Of course I do. But I couldn’t take it by fraud or duress. I could only take it if I felt that was what Papa and Robert both wanted.” I smiled at her suddenly and said, “I have to do what’s right if I want to avoid the Home of the Assumption!”

  “Darling Johnny!” said Ginevra, kissing me. “How thrilled your poor old grandmother would be if she knew what a fortifying influence she’d become!”

  I was believed. As I held her hands I was aware of her trust. It made me want to believe too.

  She escorted me outside to my car and when we opened the front door we saw that although there was no moon the stars were shining. It was cold.

  “Thank you for telling me about Gavin,” I said.

  “I thought you might be worrying in case someone got hurt.”

  We embraced again.

  “My God,” said Ginevra, “what a life.”

  “What a life. Never mind. Hold fast, stand firm and soldier on.”

  “Darling, how divine—just like a poem by Kipling! It almost gives me the courage to say bugger Boethius and his ghastly Wheel!”

  We laughed, drawing strength from each other. Then I left her, got into my car and drove on once more into the dark.

  10

  I

  IT TOOK FOUR YEARS TO COMPLETE MY Father’s disintegration and all the while Bronwen and I moved deeper into a gathering chaos. Some of our early troubles were resolved: our domestic difficulties were eased after the advent of Mrs. Wells; Marian recovered from her initial misery; the children settled down tolerably well together. Most important of all Bronwen and I knew a deep personal contentment which created a happy atmosphere in the house, and by the end of 1924 it seemed we had evolved a pattern of life that transcended the differences between us.

  That was the honeymoon. After that life became increasingly less easy.

  At first Bronwen found life at the Manor so intimidating that she spent much time secluding herself in the nurseries and evading the servants, but gradually she adjusted to life in what was for her a large house, and she became less self-conscious. To help her I modified my own mundane daily habits; we did not dine at eight and on our own, as I would have done with Constance or Blanche, but instead ate an informal meal with all the children at seven o’clock. This was far past Harry’s bedtime, but Bronwen’s children seemed to stay up later without ill effect, so to my children’s delight they found their day extended. By the time they were all in bed the evening was far advanced, but Bronwen and I were disinclined to spend much time on our own in Blanche’s drawing room and we would retire to our bedroom, which had soon acquired armchairs and a table. It was here that Bronwen, shying away from the intimidating elegance of the downstairs receptions rooms, was able to relax and soon I too was drawn to the room’s attractive informality. Needless to say it was not the bedroom I had shared with Blanche. There was another bedroom, equally large, on the other side of the house, and Blanche’s room was now set aside for the guests who never came.

  But I was at peace with Blanche. Bronwen, as she had proved to Marian, was not afraid of Blanche’s memory and in her mystical acceptance of Blanche’s past presence in the house I found my own release from past guilt. Once I did say to Bronwen, “You’re sure you’re not oppressed by her?” but she merely answered in surprise, “How could I be? She was a good person. All the memories are benign.” And in these simple statements she brought harmony to a situation that might well have been too complex to endure with ease.

  Unfortunately the atmosphere of harmony at the Manor did not extend to the world beyond the gates. No one cut me dead but I was aware that no one was rushing to invite me to dinner, and soon it became clear that I was being treated as a traitor to my class. This by itself did not disturb me since I was more than willing to embrace such treachery, but I was determined out of pride that I was not going to remain a social pariah, and after careful thought I joined a golf club in Swansea.

  I then realized that what everyone had been craving was some sign that I could still be treated as a normal person, and when I played golf with modest competence and stood drinks in the bar afterwards people were soon prepared to turn a blind eye to my private life. I now realized how wise I had been not to live with Bronwen openly. Probably I would have been refused membership of the club in those circumstances, but as a man separated from his wife and keeping up appearances as he lived quietly with his children in Penhale I was, with an effort of will and a little imagination, acceptable.

  I began to be invited out to dine. Later I even gave a dinner party at the Manor and asked Ginevra to act as hostess. Bronwen, who wholeheartedly approved of my determination not to be a social pariah, kept thankfully upstairs. In fact so pleased was I by my success in overcoming the disapproval of my own class that it took me some time to realize how absolutely Bronwen was overwhelmed by the disapproval of hers.

  However as usual when Bronwen’s welfare was at stake, her sister was only too ready to enlighten me once she judged that the time had come to take action. I was told that Bronwen was now so afraid to leave the Manor for fear of unpleasantness that Myfanwy herself had to escort her on her visits to the Home Farm. There had also been anonymous letters pointing out that Evan had been born eleven months after Gareth Morgan’s death. The minister at the chapel was thundering regularly about the wages of sin, and even Anstey the vicar had abandoned his cozy comments on the weather and retreated into monosyllabism.

  “Why the devil didn’t you say something to me?” I said angrily to Bronwen. “I thought you prided yourself on being honest!”

  “I didn’t think I had to say anything. I thought you knew what it was like,” she said flatly; and added in defiance: “I don’t care.”

  But she cared when life became difficult for Rhiannon and Dafydd at the village school, and soon we were arguing painfully about education again.

  “I’m not having them educated above their station!”

  “But can’t you see that’s the kind of view which perpetuates the class system? If all children were educated in the same way—”

  “All right, send your children to the village school! Why do my children have to be the ones to change?”

  “Because private education is better.”

  “Not for them! Anyway you can’t iron out class by treating everyone the same, everyone’s not the same and never will be and to say otherwise is just dangerous socialist rubbish, giving people expectations which haven’t a hope of coming true. I’m all for improving people’s lot in life as Mr. Lloyd George did with his welfare schemes, but I’m not going to ruin my children’s lives by making them misfits!”

  “Well, what do we do about Evan? If you think—”

  “Oh, I know I haven’t a hope of doing what I want with Evan, I know he’ll be sent to boarding school when he’s eight even though I think it’s wicked and cruel—”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The quarrel deepened. The controversy raged. We stood on either side of the abyss of class which divided us and shouted at each other until finally I said, “Class is evil, evil, evil—I hope there’s a bloody revolution to abolish it,” and I went off to play golf. I had work to do on the estate but I felt a
retreat was necessary into my own class, and when I returned I found that Bronwen had gone to see her sister as if she too had felt such a withdrawal was needed.

  We made up the quarrel, but soon the problem reached its climax when Rhiannon became hysterical at the prospect of going to school and Dafydd was stoned in the playground. At that point I arranged for the children to be transferred to a primary school in the nearest suburb of Swansea. There was no difficulty about transport because either Willis or I had to drive Marian into Swansea each day to her private school.

  Bronwen wept with relief; the children, continuing their working-class education, soon settled down, but I knew their dilemma had merely been alleviated. At home they led a solitary life, unable to mix with the hostile local children and uninvited to the houses where Harry and Marian regularly went to play and have tea.

  “Dear me, it’s all so diffy for them, isn’t it?” confided Marian to me. “Almost as diffy as it is for me not being able to invite any of my school friends here.”

  “I don’t see your difficulty, Marian. Just say Bronwen’s the nanny and that Rhiannon and Dafydd are her children.”

  “But how could I explain why they take their meals with us? They’re both so common and it all looks so odd—”

  “I’m sorry you should feel that’s so important.”

  “Well, of course it’s important!” stormed Marian, abandoning her precocious sophistication and becoming a tearful little girl of ten. “It’s absolutely beastly, and I wish I could live with Aunt Daphne!”

  Later I said to Bronwen, “That damned Daphne’s a bad influence on Marian. I know she thinks it’s monstrous that Marian should be brought up in these circumstances.”

  “Well, you can’t stop Marian’s visits to her. That would be disastrous.”

  “Everything I do with Marian’s disastrous,” I said. “Everything.”

  “It’ll sort itself out once we’re married.”

  “Ah yes. Of course,” I said, but I knew that since Daphne would judge the marriage a hopeless mésalliance, Marian’s embarrassment would continue.

  Amidst all these difficulties I found it a welcome relief to teach Thomas as much as I could about estate management. I was in fact having a difficult time with my estate, and if my other troubles had not been so numerous I might well have become depressed by its ailing fortunes. My original plan to grow a surplus of cereals for sale with the aid of a motor lorry was sound enough, but a series of wet summers in the early Twenties had wreaked havoc with my adventurous schemes, and in addition the price of wheat had fallen from its postwar level of seventy-two and eleven a quarter to forty-nine and three in 1924, a year that turned out to be one of the wettest on record. I was considering a complete return to cattle breeding and growing cereals only for winter feed, but in the end I decided to wait, reasoning that both the weather and the price of wheat could only improve.

  Meanwhile I thought I might try raising pigs. Thomas was keen on pigs and it occurred to me that the best way of keeping him out of mischief was to encourage an interest that gave him the chance to prove himself. Accordingly, to the Merediths’ horror, I sanctioned the idea of a piggery and soothed them by promising to build it with an eye to the prevailing wind. Thomas was very excited, and as I listened to him “expounding on the best methods of porcine castration I realized he was more of a farmer than I would ever be: I was interested not in farming for farming’s sake but in farming as a business, and although I knew enough about farming to realize it could not be conducted in the same way as a manufacturing concern, I still tended to regard my estate solely from an accounting point of view. When my profits fell for reasons beyond my power to control I found myself growing impatient and restless, but I knew that a true farmer, while being equally disappointed, would have been able to console himself with the fact that he was still leading a life that satisfied him. No such consolation was available to me. I knew I was once more discontented with my career as a minor squire, and I began to wonder if I could carve out some business opportunities for myself in Swansea which as a large industrial port no doubt contained many attractive boardrooms. I resolved to cultivate the magnates of my acquaintance at the golf club.

  However although I was privately dissatisfied with my situation Thomas was happy with his pigs, and fired by his enthusiasm I even began to share his interest in the brutes. They had a quick turnover. They bred frequently and in quantity. As far as I could see they stood a chance of being steadily profitable. I was intrigued.

  I was also relieved that Thomas was enjoying his life at Penhale Manor. I gave him a certain freedom, as much as any young man of his age had a right to expect, but I drew up a set of rules which I insisted he should obey: he was to be civil to Bronwen; he was not to use bad language in front of the children; he was to be punctual at mealtimes; he was to drink wine or beer but on no account to touch spirits, and he was to report to my study for work at nine o’clock each morning. In exchange for obeying this elementary code of civilized behavior he received the instruction he wanted, a roof over his head and stability. This did not transform him instantly into an angel but he did improve.

  I was interested to discover that he was by no means stupid despite his aversion to school, and although his strong opinionated humorless personality was not to everyone’s taste, there was a childlike streak in him which I found touching. His devotion to me, once he had decided to bestow it, was so fierce that I sometimes felt in his presence as if I were accompanied by a large dog whose heart of gold lay beyond bared teeth. Bronwen, who was a little alarmed by him at first, soon found it easy to be friendly.

  “I suppose you were sleeping with beautiful girls like that since you were younger than me,” said Thomas gloomily, and recognizing this remark as a plea for guidance I said, “Not exactly” and told him of my protracted virginity, which had resulted in my rush to the altar while I was still emotionally immature. Thomas, who was obviously bothered by the subject of women, was so much cheered by this account of my youthful chastity that I took the opportunity to give him some useful information about sex. He was enthralled and gratified.

  “I think you ought to be canonized as the patron saint of chaps my age,” he said, and seemed surprised when I remarked drily that most people would consider me quite unfit to bring up an adolescent boy.

  “Most people? I hate most people,” said Thomas, closing the argument in his usual belligerent fashion, but although he talked truculently out of habit I never worried that he might get into trouble as the result of any violent behavior. I might have had acute anxieties in my private life, but they never centered around Thomas.

  The anxieties deepened as time passed and Constance refused to change her mind about a divorce. In the end I gave up calling on her to discuss the situation. She made me too furious and Francesca made me feel too guilty. Photographs of Francesca arrived regularly but I could not bear to look at them and locked them away at once. Bronwen suggested it might be better if we looked at them together, but I found it impossible to agree and when she realized there was nothing she could do to help me the subject continued to lie between us like a lead weight.

  Edmund sent me the occasional photograph of his children. His first son was followed by a second; he was blissfully happy. As he had soon regretted his decision not to remain on speaking terms with me, we did meet for a drink on my rare visits to town but he always made excuses not to visit Gower. No doubt Teddy found my father’s domestic arrangements as objectionable as mine and had ruled that both Oxmoon and Penhale Manor were beyond the pale.

  At first I thought that my father would be hurt by Edmund’s desertion, but later I realized he was glad not to be obliged to entertain him. He had become more of a recluse. I suspected this was because he had come to distrust his ability to conduct a normal conversation, for Oswald Stourham, one of the few of his old friends who still saw him regularly, reported to me that “poor Bobby wasn’t the man he used to be,” and I realized he had been shocked by s
ome new evidence of my father’s decline. When I called at Oxmoon my father seemed pleased to see me, but he would not come to the Manor. He appeared to be withdrawing deeper and deeper into his home, and the house seemed to be withdrawing too, sinking in upon itself, the paint worn from the window frames, the walls stripped of the dead creeper, a slate or two missing from the roof. Once I had spoken to my father about the need for repairs, but he had only become angry so I learned to keep my conversations with him colorless. During my visits with my family he was always courteous to Bronwen but he never discussed her with me, and always, treating her as the nanny, he addressed her as Mrs. Morgan. With a cruelty that both enraged and staggered me, he took no notice of Evan at all.

  “It’s probably easier for him to pretend Evan isn’t yours,” said Bronwen, but I knew she was hurt. By that time Evan had fair hair, green eyes and a bright, intelligent little face. I thought any man would have been proud to have such a grandson, and I felt bitter.

  When Evan was two, Bronwen said for the first time that she felt worried because he had no one to play with.

  “He’ll go to nursery school when he’s older,” I said.

  “Yes—where everyone will know he’s your bastard!” she cried and burst into tears.

  The days were long since past when we could say to each other, “Everything will come right once we’re married.” I did start to say I would talk to Constance again, but Bronwen shouted, “You know bloody well that’s useless!” and rushed upstairs to our room.

  A very difficult conversation followed during which Bronwen admitted her unhappiness and said she thought I was unhappy too. I said I was unhappy only when I knew she was unhappy, and I offered to leave Gower to set up a home elsewhere.

  “No, that would be disastrous.” She spoke so promptly that I knew she had been dwelling on the idea for some time. “If we left it would mean that I’d cut you off entirely from your family and friends.”