Robert would never know of my betrayal, of course. He would die happy, convinced I would stand by his idealistic, moving but fundamentally impracticable dying wish that he could pass to his son his magic house and the life that might have been. Ginevra would be angry at first but I thought it unlikely that she would mind much in the end; she would be certain to return to London once Robert was dead, so why should she want to be saddled with Oxmoon? And as for Kester … well, Kester would undoubtedly be much happier in London with his mother. Naturally some sort of financial reparation would have to be made—and it went without saying that I’d bend over backwards to be generous—but I saw no reason why Kester should miss Oxmoon. How could he? He had never lived there. It hadn’t been bred into his soul as it had been bred into mine.
I thought of soft, girlish little Kester. Without doubt he would be a disaster for Oxmoon. I thought of my bold adventurous Harry, following in my footsteps with ease.
The truth was that for Harry’s sake—and for the sake of Oxmoon—I really had to accept my father’s wishes if he decided—when he decided—to change his will. It was my moral duty. My father would understand that, of course, if—when—I explained it to him. Yes, he would see just as clearly as I now saw that he had to make me his heir; as my mother would have said, it was the right thing—indeed, the only thing—to do. …
VIII
“It would be wrong,” said Bronwen.
“I know.” I covered my face with my hands. “It would mean cheating Robert, cheating Ginevra, cheating Kester, but oh God, how do I draw the line and stand by it, I’m so terrified I won’t be strong enough—”
“I think you will be.”
“But I’m so weak, you know how weak I am—”
“I think that in the end you’ll be strong.”
“But Bronwen—”
“Don’t despair. Go on loving Robert and being truthful with him. Then when he dies I think the pattern of love and truth will alter and reform in an automatic act of magic and you’ll be safe.”
“I—simply—can’t—imagine—”
“I can. And you must. Have faith. Be truthful. And love him right up to the end.”
IX
A few days later on the twenty-third of April, 1928, my father was still alive, thriving at Oxmoon, and Robert finally reached the end of the terrible road he had been traveling since the war.
I went to Little Oxmoon after breakfast and found Ginevra waiting for me. She was wearing green, a color that suited her, and had taken immense trouble with her appearance. Accustomed to her taste for unsuitable clothes I was surprised by her plain dress devoid of ornament. She looked tired but tranquil.
“How is he?”
“I think he’ll be all right. Gavin’s coming at ten.”
We went into Robert’s room. There was a vase of daffodils by the window, but the only scent came from the lavender bags that disguised the atmosphere of the sickroom. Outside the sun was shining.
“Robert,” said Ginevra, “it’s John.” She turned to me. “He can still whisper but come very close.”
“Don’t try to speak unless you want to, Robert,” I said. “I just wanted you to know I was here.”
He blinked in acknowledgment. He looked so old, so gaunt, so waxen, so different from all my memories of him. It was hard to believe that within that wasted unrecognizable body lay the hero of my childhood in that lost world of long ago.
“Shall I talk about—” I murmured to Ginevra, but she said, “No. Not yet. Wait till he wants to speak. Then he’ll be ready,” so we sat in silence with him for a while. Later Warburton arrived and it was soon after he had withdrawn to the living room to wait that Robert tried to speak.
“Yes, I’m here, darling,” said Ginevra, “and John’s with us too, just as he was on my eighteenth birthday. Do you remember him being there? I don’t. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? It really makes it seem as if we’ve arrived at the beginning again … Johnny, tell Robert what you remember—tell us what you saw that night.”
“I saw it all,” I said. “It was such a special occasion and so exciting. Lion was eight and I was not quite six. Edmund was four and too young to stay up, but Mama said Lion and I could wear our sailor suits and watch. I remember it so clearly, Robert—yes, I was there—I was there in the ballroom when the orchestra played ‘The Blue Danube,’ I was there when you danced with Ginevra. If I close my eyes I can see you as if it were yesterday—I can look across the circle, as Bronwen would say, “and hear your echo in time. It’s an echo I’ll hear all my life, Robert, and all my life whenever I hear that music I’ll think of you and remember.”
“Thirty years, darling!” said Ginevra to him. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it? When I was young I used to think thirty years was an eternity, but now it seems no time at all—and even time itself looks different to me … Yes, what is it, darling? John? Yes, of course.”
I leaned over the bed. “I’m here, Robert.”
At first I thought he was going to be unable to speak but then I heard the word he wanted to say. It was his son’s name.
“Yes, it’s all right,” I said. “I understand.” And in that moment the past was forgotten and the future was irrelevant. All I knew was that at that single moment I wanted him to have what he wanted most. I knew he would never choose to die until he was at peace and I knew I was now the only person who could give him the gift of that chosen death.
“I promise you,” I said, “that I’ll look after him as if he were my own son, and I promise you,” I said in my clearest voice, “that so long as I live I’ll see he stays master of Oxmoon.” I still had no idea how I was going to be strong enough to live up to my promises, but that for the moment was unimportant. All that mattered was that I loved him enough to speak what at that instant was the truth.
He whispered something, and I had a flash of panic because I could not understand him and I was terrified he was saying he did not believe me.
“Ginevra, I can’t hear what he’s saying—”
“He’s saying you’re the best brother a man ever had.”
I could not speak but at last I realized he was whispering her name and I knew there was nothing more for me to do except say goodbye. I kissed him briefly, touched his hand for the last time and then I left the room so that Ginevra, with him alone at the beginning of his life, should be with him alone at the end.
X
Warburton left the drawing room when I entered it. I mixed myself a drink but when I found it was impossible to swallow I went to the window and watched the daffodils nodding in the spring breeze.
Warburton did not return but an hour later Ginevra came in search of me. She was calm and when I stood up she smiled.
“It was all right,” she said.
“Did Gavin—”
“No. He had filled the hypodermic but then Robert’s breathing changed and he lost consciousness. So Gavin said he’d rather wait and I said yes and we waited, and then the breathing changed again and some more time went by, but finally everything stopped and it was over.” She sat down suddenly in a chair. “Gavin’s just left,” she added. “Another of his patients is dying—God, what a life these doctors lead!—but he’ll be back as soon as possible.”
“Good. Let me get you a brandy.”
“Oh no, darling, I always think brandy’s just like medicine. Could you mix me a very hefty pink gin?”
When I handed her the glass, she smiled radiantly at me again. “Thanks—oh, Johnny, do forgive me for not bursting into tears, but the truth is I’m mad with relief and joy.”
“I understand.”
“It’s extraordinary what happens to the survivor when a partner takes a long time to die—in the end, after one’s used up every conceivable emotion, one’s just consumed with a ghastly impatience that the dying should be taking so long. How demented that sounds, doesn’t it, but perhaps after years of fighting a grinding battle to keep sane one does go a little mad at the end.”
&n
bsp; “I just don’t know how you endured it.”
“He was my friend,” she said. She spoke as if this were not only the definitive description of her relationship with Robert but the one explanation of her endurance. Then with a laugh she exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so happy! I’d like to celebrate by getting drunk and having a divine nervous breakdown!”
“Sorry,” I said, “not possible. I’ve had it with nervous breakdowns at the moment.”
She laughed again and kissed me. As she tossed off her drink she said idly, “It’s so strange how life turns out—of all Bobby and Margaret’s children you were the one I liked the least, and yet during the past years I’ve often wondered what I should have done without you. I’ve never thanked you, have I, for being such a tower of strength? What an awful old bitch I am!”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “that I would describe myself as a tower of strength.”
But she was not listening. She was musing again on the strangeness of life. “I’m not religious anymore,” she was saying, “but in the beginning when I did have a few hysterical bouts of praying for strength I always assumed that the strength would come—if it came at all—from my friends in London. But in the end it came from the direction I least expected and from a man I’d never liked. I suppose religious people would say God moves in mysterious ways.”
She wandered to the gramophone. “It’s odd too about ‘The Blue Danube,’ ” she said, winding the handle. “I came to hate it so much—you see, I didn’t fall in love with Robert when he fell in love with me; I fell in love with Conor, and later when Robert made it our special tune I always felt it was such a mockery that I wanted to scream whenever I heard it. But now you’ve put that right. I shan’t mind hearing ‘The Blue Danube’ in the future. Whenever I hear it I shall remember you having the courage to make those promises which Robert had absolutely no doubt you’d keep—I shall remember you having the humanity which enabled him to die in peace. And whenever I hear it I shall think of Robert whispering that you were the best brother a man ever had.” She put the record on the turntable and set the needle in the groove. “You’ll remember it too, won’t you?” she said, looking back at me, and as the music started to play she smiled at me with a trust I knew I could never break.
So in the end it was Ginevra who gave me the strength which never afterwards wavered, and “The Blue Danube” which saved me once and for all from the temptation that had tormented me for so long. I tried to imagine how I would feel whenever I heard that tune if I knew I had cheated the brother who had trusted me and embittered the woman who had already suffered so much, but of course I could not imagine it. It was unimaginable. I could only recognize it as the road to hell and slam the gates shut on it forever. I could only say to myself: “This far but no farther,” and draw the final, the ineradicable line.
The sound of violins filled the drawing room and outside the daffodils were still dancing in the spring breeze.
When the record was over Ginevra said simply, “Yes. I don’t hate it anymore now” and closed the lid of the gramophone. Then she exclaimed, “Oh, Lord, I’ve forgotten Kester! Darling, could you come up with me to break the news? I cancelled his lessons today so he’s probably got his nose buried in The Prisoner of Zenda. He’s developed rather precocious literary tastes, and he’s simply mad on Ruritania at the moment.”
Setting down my glass in obedience I went with her to take my first long hard resigned look at the child who was going to usurp me.
XI
Kester’s room was in one of the towers attached to the bungalow, and its most noticeable features were the bars that had been placed on the windows after Robin’s accident. The room was no tidier than Harry’s room at the Manor, but it had a different atmosphere. Harry’s room was filled with his toy trains, his bricks, his building set, his so-called scientific experiments, his fossil collection, his cricket bat and all the other paraphernalia essential to the life of a normal nine-year-old boy. Kester, still seven months short of his ninth birthday, appeared to care only for soft toys, watercolors and books. When we entered the room we found him lounging on his bed amidst his collection of Teddy bears and greedily reading a handsome edition of Anthony Hope’s classic romance. Putting the memory of Harry carefully from my mind, I bent my entire will towards being benign to the child I had promised to treat as a son.
As we came into the room he put aside his book with reluctance and stood up. He was tall for an eight-year-old, rather willowy. As usual his thick curling auburn hair needed cutting, and I thought again, as I had thought so often before, how out of place Robert’s pale eyes looked below the rich tints of that hair inherited from Ginevra, and how strange her wide, full-lipped mouth looked when set above the ascetic fine-drawn line of Robert’s jaw. His large nose, which he had apparently inherited from no one, gave him an elfin look. He gave the impression that he might dress up in green tights at any minute and vanish under the nearest toadstool.
“Hullo, Mum,” he said. “Is he dead?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Gosh, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, wonderful!” There was a pause in this extraordinary dialogue while she hugged him.
“You’re awfully ginny, Mum. Are you drunk?”
“No, pet, just well buffed. Say hullo to your heroic Uncle John. I don’t know what I would have done without him—he’s been absolutely top-hole.”
“Hullo, heroic Uncle John,” said Kester, very pert.
“I simply must go to the lavatory,” said Ginevra, “or I’ll burst. Excuse me for a moment, Johnny. Kester pet, tell Uncle John how far you’ve got with The Prisoner of Zenda.”
“Well,” said Kester, preparing to enjoy himself, “you see, it’s really the story of two cousins. One of them’s King of Ruritania but he’s no good. However he’s got this cousin who’s just an untitled Englishman, but he’s a hero and absolutely first-rate, just as all heroes are, and he decides to take his cousin’s place on the throne—for the best possible reasons, of course—”
“Yes, I do remember the story. Has Rudolph been crowned yet?”
“Yes, pages ago—I loved it when Black Michael was so livid!” Unable to resist the lure of the story any longer, he inclined his long nose towards the pages again.
After a moment I sat down beside him and said tentatively, “Kester, I’m so sorry about your father, but I thought you’d just like to know that at the end he—”
“No, thanks,” said Kester. “I don’t want to know at all. I’m sick of people dying all over the place.”
It was seldom that I felt nonplused by a child, but I now found I had no idea what to do next. I felt he should know about my promise to Robert, but faced with Kester’s complete lack of interest I appeared to have no chance to demonstrate my paternal concern. In the end, convinced that something should be said but unable to conjure up an attractive speech, I merely murmured: “I promised your father I’d look after you for him.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” said Kester, turning a page of his book. “Actually I think fathers should be abolished.” His pale eyes skimmed over the print. “I say!” he said excited. “I do like the villains in this book! The hero’s really rather a bore, always keeping a stiff upper lip and doing the done thing, but I’m just wild about Black Michael and Rupert of Hentzau!”
I stood up abruptly and moved to the barred window. I was remembering Ginevra’s remark, “I suppose religious people would say God moves in mysterious ways,” and as I looked back at the profoundly unattractive child for whom I was now responsible, I decided God was evidently plumbing new depths of convoluted intrigue. However as far as I could see there was nothing to be done to ease the burden. All I could do was my inadequate best, like the miscast hero that I was; all I could do, once again, was hold fast, stand firm—and soldier on.
PART FOUR
Kester
1928-1919
INCONSTANCY IS MY VERY essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my w
heel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top. Yes, rise up on my wheel if you like, but don’t count it an injury when by the same token you begin to fall, as the rules of the game will require. …
Boethius
The Consolation of Philosophy
1
I
“I’M WILD ABOUT THOSE two villains Black Michael and Rupert of Hentzau!” I said wittily, unable to resist the temptation to shock stuffy old Uncle John to the core, and Uncle John looked at me as if I ought to be in a home for wayward boys. What irked him most was that I wasn’t “doing the done thing.” A boy of eight who has tragically lost his papa is supposed to fight back his tears like a brave little fellow and whisper humbly to his sainted uncle who has just made all manner of rash deathbed promises: “Oh, sir, will you be my father now? Oh please, sir, please!” What he is not supposed to do is say something like “Whoopee! Daddy’s dead!” and launch into a eulogy of two villains. Uncle John clearly thought this was very low behavior, and I could see he was racking his brains wondering how the devil he was going to make a decent Godwin out of me.
Oh, heaven preserve me from my family!
At the age of eight I already knew I was the black sheep. Long before my father died in the spring of 1928, I had become aware of my family regarding me with baffled incredulity, and as I grew older I realized why they were so flabbergasted. I was the Godwin who ought to be written quietly out of the family tree but by a malign twist of fate I was also the Godwin destined to be permanently on display as master of Oxmoon. Oh, my poor family! My uncle Thomas used to look at me as if he had already gnashed his teeth to the bone and was busy grinding the stumps. My grandfather could never remember who on earth I was. Uncle Edmund used to muse occasionally, “Funny to think he’s Robert’s son, isn’t it?”—which, since my father was universally acknowledged to be a hero, was quite the most beastly comment Uncle Edmund could have made. In fact he was outdone in beastliness only by my brutal half-brother Rory Kinsella, eighteen years my senior, who used to say, “Sure Robert must have been half asleep when little Kessie was conceived!” Only stuffy old Uncle John—my “heroic” Uncle John, as my mother called him—had the sheer nobility of soul to keep his inevitable opinion of me to himself, but that was out of loyalty to my father. However my father’s opinion of me had been equally low.
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