The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  I got out of the car. The hostility seemed to thicken. I experienced a moment of acute uneasiness, but told myself their hostility could not be directed against me personally.

  The next moment I was disillusioned.

  “Here comes the adulterer!” said someone, and that was followed by the comment “We finally managed to get him out of bed!” There was contemptuous laughter. Someone spat at me. Flicking the spittle aside I pushed my way through the crowd, reached the doorstep and turned to address them. Cold sweat was inching down my spine.

  “Good afternoon,” I said strongly, projecting my voice to override the hostile mutterings. My mind, sharpened by shock, was darting in a dozen different directions at once. I was remembering the bullies at school and the necessity of displaying no fear which would heighten their pleasure, but I felt shattered, vulnerable and, most ambivalent of all, enraged that I should be judged in this fashion by men who should have been doffing their caps to me with respect. A second later, however, I saw that the class system could work in my favor and that this time all the bayonets would be on my side.

  “If you want the justice you deserve,” I said, “you’ll treat me with the respect to which I’m entitled. I’m well intentioned but I refuse to negotiate with a rabble.”

  They stared at me. I saw their faces, young and old, still hostile but recognizing an age-old authority which the twentieth century had so far been unable to destroy. Mentally congratulating myself on this successful assertion of my strength, I thought with a bitter humor, That’s the spirit that built the Empire! And I was still savoring my restored confidence when someone threw a clod of mud which hit me in the chest.

  That was undoubtedly the spirit which had led to the General Strike. It occurred to me that the age-old authority was wearing thin after all.

  “Very well,” I said calmly, heart thudding like a sledgehammer. “If you’re determined to be a rabble I can’t help you. Good day.” I stepped down from the doorstep and tried to walk away, but Thornton, the foreman at Cherryvale, intervened.

  “Wait, Mr. John.” He turned to the others. “We must deal with him; there’s no one else.” And he thrust a list of grievances into my hand.

  Immediately a confused babble broke out, during which I heard the words “extortion,” “bare-faced robbery” and “that witch Milly Straker.”

  “We mean no disrespect to your father, Mr. John,” said Thornton hurriedly, “but the old gentleman’s well known now to be at the mercy of others, and One Other in particular.”

  I returned to the doorstep, and when everyone was quiet I said, “My brother’s dying. I must ask you to leave him in peace. But if you can elect three men to come to Oxmoon at sunset, I’ll examine these grievances one by one and see what can be done.”

  They were satisfied. Thornton, who was evidently one of nature’s diplomats, pulled off his cap and thanked me with a humility which both appeased and nauseated me. Someone in the crowd said, “How’s the wife in London?” but a dozen other voices said furiously, “Shhh!” and I pretended not to hear.

  Seconds later I was driving away.

  “My God, you were wonderful, John!” said Thomas, who was enjoying himself immensely. “As good as Jesus Christ!”

  I said nothing. I was suffering from a nervous reaction, and I had to grip the wheel hard to stop my hands trembling. Nausea churned spasmodically in the pit of my stomach.

  As soon as we reached Oxmoon I knew something was wrong, and when I saw the stigmata of violence I found I was bathed in a cold sweat again. Evidently the loutish sons of the disgruntled tenants had not been idle. The windows of the library had been smashed and a slogan had been daubed on the wall by the front door.

  “ ‘WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE,’ ” mused Thomas. “Haven’t I heard that before somewhere?”

  I told myself that I had wanted class war and now I was getting it. In a detached manner which sprang from shock I realized that my primary emotion was again rage. I wanted to shoot every socialist in sight. So much for my intellectual radicalism. Apparently in a crisis reason and humanity counted for nothing and man’s instinct was to return to the pack that had bred him. I knew then that at heart I was never going to change. I was what my class had made me; I was the victim of my education, the prisoner of my privileged life; all else was illusion and self-deception.

  “My God!” cried Thomas, who had just seen the broken windows. “Look at that! Wait till I get my hands on whoever did it; I’ll smash the bastards to pulp!”

  I thought how pleasant it must be to have such a simple outlook, untroubled by any intellectual doubts or emotional complexities.

  “Calm down, Thomas. We’ve got enough bulls in this particular china shop without you trying to join them.” I was wondering if the mob was inside, wrecking everything in sight, but as we jumped out of the car the front door was opened by the village constable.

  “Oh Mr. John, thank God you’ve come—”

  “Where’s my father?”

  “I don’t know, sir; he seems to have disappeared, but Mr. Bayliss summoned me half an hour ago when the windows were smashed—”

  “Where is Bayliss?”

  “He came over poorly, sir, and had to lie down. All the other servants have locked themselves in the kitchens and won’t come out.”

  “And Mrs. Straker?”

  “They say she’s gone, sir—slipped out at first light. Maybe she knew there’d be trouble, sir, today being the quarter day and people so upset with the new rents.”

  “Very well, go with my brother, search the grounds and make sure all the vandals have gone.”

  I went into the house. The servants, cowering in the scullery, unlocked the door when they heard my voice. I asked if anyone had seen my father. No one had.

  “Very well.” I turned to the cook. “Make some tea.” I swung round on the footman. “See how Bayliss is and if necessary telephone for Dr. Warburton.” I faced the parlormaid. “Send word to the glazier. I want those windows replaced immediately.” My glance fell on the daily housemaids. “Clear up the mess in the library at once.” At the door I stopped to look back. “I authorize a finger of brandy for everyone,” I said, “and once that’s been taken and the tea drunk, I shall expect everyone to go about their business as usual.”

  Leaving them all bobbing and curtsying, I returned to the hall and ran upstairs. The bedrooms were all empty but as I reached the back stairs I suddenly knew where he was.

  The attics were musty and still. I called, “Papa!” and waited but there was no answer. I walked down the corridor, my footsteps echoing on the floorboards, and found him where I had found him before. He was sitting by the covered portrait of his mother and this time the photograph albums were open in his hands.

  He was crying quietly to himself. He barely looked up as I entered the room.

  “Papa,” I said, stooping to put an arm around his shoulders, “it’s all right now, I’m here.”

  But my father only went on turning the pages of the first album, and in that flickering kaleidoscope of black-and-white I saw the past recaptured, the happy laughing children of long ago, the wife he had loved and the magic house he had resurrected from the grave.

  “Papa …” As I slid my hand over his, the pages of the album stopped turning and he looked up at me at last. But his watery eyes remained bewildered and all he could say was “Who are you?”

  II

  I

  “I’LL TELEPHONE THE HOME of the Assumption,” said Warburton.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “But my dear John, it’s the very best home in the district for mental cases—”

  “He’s never going to set foot in it.”

  “But what are you going to do with him?”

  The district nurse arrived. I left her with Warburton and my father in the attics and ran downstairs to telephone Bronwen. By that time Thomas had returned from searching the grounds, so I sent him away in my car to fetch her.

  When I
returned to the attics I found the district nurse looking flushed and Warburton more troubled than ever.

  “He won’t budge, John, and I’m afraid he might be violent if I try to give him an injection.”

  “Wait.” I bent over my father to coax him to his feet, but he behaved as if he were stone-deaf. I tried to take the album away from him, but he pushed me off savagely and hugged it to his chest.

  “John, I know this is very upsetting for you, but—”

  “Shut up.”

  I went on trying unsuccessfully to communicate with my father, and I was still trying when Bronwen walked in. I noticed that the district nurse immediately pursed her lips in disapproval, but Warburton said, “Mrs. Morgan, can you please convince John that his father must be taken to a place where he can receive the proper medical care?”

  Bronwen said in English, “We’re going to look after him at home.” Then she said in Welsh to my father, “You can’t understand what they say, can you?”

  He looked up at her. She knelt beside him and pointed to the album. “Please can I see your photographs?” she said. “Please will you come with me so that we can look at them together?”

  He went on gazing at her in wonder, but very slowly his wrinkled trembling old hand slid into hers. I helped him to his feet and while Warburton and the nurse looked on with incredulity we led him downstairs and took him home.

  II

  “That arch-cunt Straker!” said Thomas. “How could she have walked out on him like that?”

  We were back at Oxmoon an hour later. My father, still trustfully holding Bronwen’s hand in Blanche’s old room at the Manor, had allowed Warburton to administer a sedative. A day nurse and a night nurse had been requested from the Swansea agency that was providing additional nursing for Robert. Mrs. Wells had risen to the occasion with her usual aplomb and even the vicar had called with a dutiful futility; I was aware of Penhale vibrating with excitement as gossip and rumor reached fever pitch.

  At Oxmoon the constable reported that the servants had named the vandals, and as he bicycled away to make his arrests I realized with a sinking heart that I now had no further excuse for delaying my investigation of Milly Straker’s reign.

  “Bloody bitch,” said Thomas, kicking his heel into the carpet to relieve his feelings. “I hate all women.”

  “Well, fortunately for us men not all women are like Milly Straker.”

  “Sez you. Personally I’d rather fuck sheep.”

  This remark, very typical of Thomas at his most disturbed, was not intended to be taken seriously so I merely said in a mild voice, “Really? I don’t think I’d care for all the wool,” and headed towards the green baize door.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to make a preliminary survey of what I’m very much afraid is a catastrophe. I shouldn’t think for one moment that woman’s left any incriminating evidence of embezzlement behind, but we must make sure.”

  The housekeeper’s room, Milly’s office on the ground floor of the servants’ quarters, proved unremarkable except for the number of unpaid bills piled beneath three large paperweights. We went upstairs to her official bedroom but it had an unused musty air. As I noted the disappearance of all her possessions, I realized she had been planning her escape for some weeks; she had gauged the hour of disaster with precision and when the train had approached the edge of the cliff she had nimbly jumped clear. Rage swept over me again but I controlled it. Rage was a luxury I could not afford. There was no time. “Thomas, I’m going to have to search Papa’s room before the servants start poking around and discovering God-knows-what. Do you want to come with me or would you prefer to wait downstairs?”

  “I’ll come with you,” said my watchdog, and beyond the fierce exterior I glimpsed a shocked and frightened youth who was not yet twenty-one.

  We left the servants’ wing by a door that connected with the back stairs, and moved in silence down the long passage to the other end of the house.

  “The place is in a bad way, isn’t it?” said Thomas suddenly, looking at the peeling wallpaper. “Maybe there are even rats in the library, just as there were when Oxmoon went to pieces under Bryn-Davies.”

  “I don’t think we’ve sunk that low this time,” I said, but a search of the bedroom soon changed my mind. I knew then that there were more repulsive symbols than rats of degeneration and decay.

  “Jesus Christ!” said my innocent little brother, blithely opening a wardrobe. “What’s all this?” And we found ourselves confronted, just as I had feared, by an unspeakable collection of erotic impedimenta.

  I was by that time nearly thirty-six, and the days were long since past when I had denied my sexual inclinations by adopting priggish poses, but even so I was appalled. For a moment I wished I were as ignorant as Thomas, but both before and after my second marriage I had read a great deal about sex in an effort to place my sexuality in perspective, and the result was that I knew too much to misunderstand what I now saw. My sexual relationship with Bronwen, the natural result of the extraordinary harmony of our personalities, had always been so satisfying that I had never felt the need to resort to books to learn how I might enhance the experience; but in my efforts to compensate myself for my second marriage I had felt driven to set out down many unexplored avenues, and Constance, strongly sexed herself and quite humorless enough to reduce sex to a suitable subject for research, had egged me on. However, even with Constance I had drawn certain lines. My father, in his frantic efforts to divert himself from intolerable truths, had evidently drawn no lines at all.

  In a moment of revelation I saw at last why he had been unable to remain faithful to my mother. He could never have asked her to share in such perversions. He had loved her too much and would have wanted above all to protect her from such sordidness, although I thought my mother must have guessed the truth in time; her knowledge would explain her remarkable and courageous resignation which could have come only through some profound understanding of my father’s dilemma.

  I then experienced a second moment of revelation as I at last perceived the conflict that had driven him inexorably toward breakdown. My father, fundamentally a good and decent man, would never have been able to forgive himself for the secret compulsions that had driven him not merely to be unfaithful to the woman he loved but to install Milly Straker at Oxmoon, a move that had ultimately led to the dissolution of his family life and the ruin of everything that had been precious to him.

  Thomas was still demanding explanations but I merely ordered him to light the fire.

  “But we can’t burn all that stuff, John—the rubber’ll make the most awful stink!”

  “We’ll bury what we can’t burn.”

  Thomas set alight the housemaid’s arrangement of twigs and coal in the grate and then tried to look at the pornography, but when I saw his expression I told him sharply to stop. “Spoilsport!” he muttered, but I knew he was thankful that he could abandon his perusal without a loss of face. More time passed. We toiled on.

  “Get the pillowcases, would you? We’ll use them to cart away the stuff we can’t burn.” I went on stoking the fire.

  “John, you’ve got to tell me what all this is about, you’ve got to, or else I’ll start imagining things, and imagining things is worse than knowing them—”

  I knew he was right. I made a great effort to control myself but it was hard to find the right words and harder still to adopt the right unemotional manner. Shoving the last pictures of defecation into the flames, I straightened my back and said, “This is all connected with punishment. He seems to have welcomed physical humiliation.”

  “Christ! Why?”

  “Guilt.”

  “Guilt? Oh, you mean all that mess about locking up Grandmama in the loony bin—he was always saying how guilty he felt about that. But how peculiar! Do you mean the bitch just punished him all the time with the whips and this other fantastic rubbish? Didn’t sex come into it at all?”

  “The greater the
punishment, the greater the sexual gratification.”

  “Christ! But if he was so gratified why did he need that false cock over there?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t he who needed it.”

  “Christ!”

  “Stop saying ‘Christ’ and give me a hand with the pillowcases.”

  We began to stow away our unspeakable booty.

  “Hope the material’s strong enough, John. The chains are bloody heavy.”

  But the pillowcases stood the strain. When they were full I poked around in the grate to make sure all the pornography had been destroyed, and then we left the room to conduct the next stage of the operation.

  We buried our haul in the shadow of Humphrey de Mohun’s ruined tower, covered the grave with dead leaves and retreated to the house to drink brandy. The parlormaid told me Bayliss had been taken to hospital. The glaziers were at work on the library windows. The house seemed to be slowly returning to order but the sun was now setting on the bleak landscape, and as I drank my brandy I saw the three representatives from the band of tenants trudging dourly up the drive in pursuit of justice.

  So as usual there was to be no respite. Downing the rest of my brandy I told the parlormaid to show my visitors into the morning room and prepared to face still more evidence of my father’s disastrous decline.

  III

  After promising to review all the rents I sanctioned a delay in payment until my investigations had been completed and promised I would undertake a complete investigation of the estate so that I could straighten out the muddle which had arisen from maladministration. After the men had expressed their gratitude I told them I would see every tenant to hear each grievance, and I asked them if they knew of anyone suffering hardship that required immediate alleviation.

  I was told of three old women who had no fuel and of a widow with five children who lived on bread and dripping. Noting their names, I gave an assurance that their plight would be terminated at once.