The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Imagine darling Declan being an M.P.!” she exclaimed to Rory. “Except that he’s a T.D., he says, because the Irish don’t have M.P.s, and I must call the Irish Parliament the Doyle, not the Dayle, even though it’s spelled D-A-I-L. How like Conor he is, so proud of being Irish—oh Rory, let’s look at all my old photographs of your father!”

  Rory thought this was a wonderful idea. Trailing after them with incredulous honor, I stood by in silence while the excavated photographs revealed a shady-looking individual who boasted sly eyes and a smirk. I found my mother’s inevitable rhapsodies the height of impropriety.

  “Well, what’s the matter with you, little Kessikins?” demanded Rory, catching sight of my expression and laughing heartily. “You look as if you’re about to say, ‘For shame, you wicked woman—and my father not yet cold in his grave!’ ”

  That remark both pulled my mother to her senses and underlined to me how brainless my half-brother really was. He was supposed to have charm but I could never see it. In my opinion that carrot-topped nonentity with his beer drinker’s paunch had about as much charm as a lump of lard.

  “That’ll do, Rory,” said my mother. She put aside the album and gathered me in her arms. I feigned reluctance but was secretly overcome with relief, and tears sprang to my eyes as my pride finally permitted me to press against her bosom. “Kester,” I heard her say gently, “you mustn’t mind, pet. Just because I had another life before I married Daddy doesn’t mean I love you and Daddy any less. But this meeting with Declan can’t help but remind me of that other life which I thought had gone forever—it’s as if the past’s coming alive again to comfort me just when I most need it, and you mustn’t begrudge me a little comfort, darling, not when I’ve been through such a terrible time.”

  I said nothing. I was too ashamed of myself for doubting her love yet paradoxically this reassurance that she loved me only made her absorption in her unknown past more objectionable. I felt that if she loved me, Declan and Rory should be superfluous; I felt that if she had loved my father she should have no desire to revive her memories of a man who had been fifteen years in his grave. To me Conor Kinsella was like my father’s illness—an ugly blot on the golden landscape of my parents’ romantic fairy tale, but I was a child and unable to articulate such complex feelings. I merely said, “I want you, you’re mine” and flung my arms around her neck as if I could stake sole claim to her and beat back my Kinsella rivals, living and dead.

  “Poor little pet!” My mother knew quite well what was going on but was uncertain how I could best be soothed. “Would you like to come to Ireland with us?” she said at last, hugging me. “I thought you’d much prefer to be with Bronwen and the babies at Penhale Manor, but perhaps I was wrong—yes, I can see I was—I was wrong and now you feel left out. Very well, we’ll all go to Ireland! Think how thrilling it’ll be for you to meet another brother—and a sister-in-law—and a nephew! Heavens, imagine having a nephew when you’re only eight years old! Won’t Harry be jealous when he hears!”

  She was patronizing me. I pulled together the shreds of my dignity and stood up straight. “I’m not going to meet a wicked villain who fought against our brave soldiers in that horrid Ireland,” I declared. “As far as I’m concerned he’s no brother of mine.”

  “Oh, Lord, don’t take him to Dublin, Ma!” begged Rory. “Declan’ll murder him and the reunion’ll be wrecked!”

  “Shut up, Rory!” said my mother fiercely. Turning back to me she said in her calmest voice, “Very well, Kester. If that’s your opinion you’re perfectly entitled to it; but let me know if you change your mind.”

  I left for Penhale Manor the next day, but although I tried hard to be brave, I did shed a tear as soon as my mother’s car disappeared down the drive. Fortunately Harry had returned to his prep school for the summer term so there was no one there to hiss “Sissy!” in my ear, but Uncle John sighed as if he were wondering how on earth he was going to make a perfect Godwin out of me, and as he took my hand comfortingly in his, he could not resist running true to form by pointing out the absolute necessity of maintaining a stiff upper lip no matter how adverse the circumstances.

  “Oh, don’t be so English, Johnny!” scolded his wonderful Welsh mistress, and suddenly Uncle John laughed and kissed her and became human. I was still too young to have read about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it did occur to me then that Uncle John had two distinct personalities. Without Bronwen he was stuffy, solemn and encased in a dreary Victorian worthiness, but with her he sparkled and exuded charm without insincerity, compassion without condescension, courage without histrionics and decency without priggishness. It was then that he really did become my heroic Uncle John, someone to emulate and admire, someone with far more power to influence me than my intimidating father who had been so divided from me by his illness and by his inability to communicate with children.

  “We’ve been so looking forward to having you to stay, Kester,” said Uncle John with his most engaging spontaneity, his hand tightening on mine as he slipped his free arm around Bronwen’s waist. “I’m very glad you wanted to come to us.” And when I saw he was glad, this moved me very much. Secretly I was often frightened that he despised me and found me a terrible cross to bear, so each spontaneous gesture of affection from him was doubly precious to me.

  Although I had regularly visited Penhale Manor ever since I could remember, I had never stayed there before and so had never had an opportunity to observe how Uncle John lived when he was not roaming around sporting his Old Harrovian tie and discoursing on the virtues of a stiff upper lip. I noticed he spoke a lot of Welsh and laughed a great deal and displayed eccentric habits such as dressing up in blue dungarees and tinkering with the engine of his motorcar. He went out every day on business connected with the Home Farm, and when he returned home he would spend much time pottering around the house mending things that had gone wrong. Unlike Oxmoon Penhale Manor now had electricity, a subject that Uncle John had mastered in his spare time, and when anything went wrong—as things often did—he would appear with his toolbox and put matters right. He seemed to enjoy these diversions (most curious ones for a gentleman) almost as much as he enjoyed the conventional hobby of reading. Since I was a reader myself I was intrigued by his reading habits which I found very peculiar. He always seemed to be halfway through at least half a dozen books at once, but although he tried everything—detective stories, novels, works of moral philosophy and religion, history, biography, tomes on politics and economics, tracts on Welsh nationalism—detective stories seemed to be the only books he could be guaranteed to finish. It was as if none of the more intellectual writings ever satisfied him, although he never gave up hope of finding out what he wanted to know.

  Bronwen read too, but like my mother she only seemed to enjoy love stories.

  “All the stories I read have happy endings,” she said. “I like that.”

  “You mean the hero marries the heroine and they live happily ever after.”

  “Yes.”

  I knew, of course, that she and Uncle John were not married. I knew they “lived in sin,” and although I had no idea what “living in sin” meant, I couldn’t help feeling every time I visited Penhale Manor that it must be a very happy state of affairs indeed. I could not remember my Aunt Blanche, Uncle John’s first wife, who had died before my second birthday, and I had only the dimmest memory of his second wife, my Aunt Constance (I was sick at the wedding), so my knowledge of Uncle John’s family life centered inevitably around Bronwen. I was four when she and my uncle had first begun to live together at the Manor, and she had quickly established herself as a heroine in my eyes when she stopped the children from bullying me during my regular visits to tea. In addition to Harry, who took as much pleasure as Robin in beating me up, my cousin Marian was not above a pinch or two, and I discovered there were two most unpleasant individuals with Welsh accents called Rhiannon and Dafydd who enjoyed following the example set by my cousins and tormenting me as much as possib
le. I was surprised when I eventually learned that Rhiannon and Dafydd were Bronwen’s children. Neither of them reminded me of her in any way.

  Bronwen was freckled and had beautiful white teeth (I was enrapt to discover that she had never been to a dentist), and she talked in a down-to-earth sensible way in a gruff foreign voice (it took me years to realize how sexy that voice was). Her voice sounded foreign to me not only because the local Gower accent was more reminiscent of Devon than of Wales but because Welsh was Bronwen’s first language and she had not been brought up in a bilingual area like Swansea where English predominated. I spoke no Welsh although of course I knew I was Welsh; although I had been born in England I could not remember my early life there, and anyway all the Godwins were Welsh. However, meeting someone like Bronwen always underlined to me how un-Welsh I was. At an early age I found the subject of nationality confusing, and I used to discuss it with Bronwen, who on this point was far more understanding than my mother. When I said to my mother, “If England and Wales went to war with each other, which side would I be on?” she just said, “Don’t be ridiculous, pet, England and Wales got over all that sort of nonsense hundreds of years ago and we’re all British now.” But Bronwen said to me, “You belong in the land where you feel most at home and that needn’t necessarily be the land where you were born or even the land where you were educated. It’s the place to which you’re tied by a magic rope, and the magic rope always tries to tug you back if you go too far away.”

  That settled that. I was tied to Gower with a magic rope and my birth in London was irrelevant.

  One of the nicest things about Bronwen was that she was always so interested in what one was saying even though one was only a child. Most adults have a tiresome habit of treating children as mental defectives, and even my tutor Simon Maxwell, whom I liked, was occasionally guilty of this attitude, particularly when I made a mess of conjugating my Latin verbs. I was five when Simon arrived at Little Oxmoon, and soon afterwards, to my horror, Harry began to visit us daily in order to share my lessons, but Simon managed the situation cleverly, keeping all competition to a minimum to reduce the possibility of open hostilities. In the end our hours in the schoolroom passed placidly enough, but I was always sorry if I was sent to tea at the Manor later on. To escape Harry’s company I formed the habit of sticking close to Bronwen and the baby, Evan, whom I soon realized Harry disliked.

  “I think Evan’s very nice,” I said to Bronwen as we played with him in the garden. “It must be exciting to be a girl and to be able to order a baby whenever you want one. … Bronwen, I’m very worried about my future. You see, when I grow up I’d like to have two boys and two girls, but I know boys can’t have babies and I’m so anxious in case I can’t find a girl who likes me enough to have babies on my behalf. Do you think I could grow a baby in a test tube? You know all Harry’s test tubes I sort of wondered … hoped …”

  “You funny little boy!” said my heroine laughing. “What a lovely idea but Kester, I don’t think the baby would be happy in a test tube. It wouldn’t be warm or dark enough for him.”

  “Do babies really grow in tummies, Bronwen? Mummy said they did but Nanny says the stork brings them.”

  “No, babies grow in wombs which are different from tummies—they’re like little balloons which the baby blows up bigger and bigger in order to make room for himself.”

  “Gosh!” I said, picturing infantile lips blowing hard to inflate the womb. “How clever!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” said Bronwen pleased. Then she added, patting herself in front. “It’s happening to me at the moment—oh, I’m so excited!”

  “You’re having another baby?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Bronwen hugged me. “Isn’t it wonderful!”

  “Wonderful!” I agreed, deeply impressed. “How clever of you!” I added admiringly, and when I returned to Little Oxmoon that evening I immediately told Nanny the good news.

  Nanny went bright red and said in a strangled voice, “We won’t talk of that, dear.”

  “Why not?” I was astounded.

  “You’ll have to ask your mother. It’s not for me to say.”

  So going straight to my mother I asked her why Nanny had looked about to burst when I told her the thrilling news that Bronwen’s next baby was busy blowing up the womb.

  “Busy doing what?” said my mother, and added, aghast: “For God’s sake, what baby?”

  “Bronwen’s having another baby—she said so!”

  “Ye gods and little fishes!” exclaimed my mother, and rushed to my father’s room (it was eighteen months before his death). Eavesdropping shamelessly at the door I heard her say, “God, Robert, that girl’s pregnant again!”

  “Can’t be true. John couldn’t be such a fool.”

  John? I pressed my ear harder against the panels and wondered whether I had misheard. As far as I could see Uncle John was quite irrelevant.

  “Kester says Bronwen’s just told him. Heavens, Robert, what will they do? Another baby would absolutely put the lid on any attempt to pay lip service to the conventions!”

  Lip service? Conventions? The unfamiliar words struck my brain and bounced off again. I held my breath in order to hear better.

  “She’ll have to have an abortion.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Robert; she’s not the type—she’s mad about John and probably wants to have as many of his babies as possible.”

  His? I forgot the word “abortion” and let it bounce off my brain along with “lipservice” and “conventions.” I was too busy struggling with the image of Uncle John ordering the baby (where from?) and somehow (how?) maneuvering it into the right position to blow up the womb.

  “Even if that girl’s bent on being a Celtic fertility symbol, Ginette, I can’t believe John’s mad enough to make a career of fathering bastards. I shall ask him outright if he’s had difficulty acquiring a supply of French letters.”

  We were now apparently in the realms of foreign literature but as far as I was concerned they might have been talking Chinese. I crept away and tried to sort out the conversation but it was beyond, me. I could not confide in Nanny; I knew she would only go bright red again and talk as if she were being strangled. Yet I felt I had to confide in someone. I was feeling too upset by all the appalled disapproval which contrasted so sharply with Bronwen’s joy, and in the end I sought out my mother, burst into tears and begged her not to be angry with Bronwen who was always so kind to me.

  “… and why shouldn’t she have the baby anyway?” I sobbed.

  “Oh Lord,” said my mother. As usual she was exasperated by my tears. “Oh, stop that crying, for heaven’s sake—it does so get on my nerves! That’s better Well, you see, Kester, Uncle John and Bronwen aren’t married, as you know, and people who aren’t married shouldn’t go around producing babies. Later when you’re older—”

  “You mean it’s not the done thing?”

  “Not exactly, no. I mean, no, it isn’t.”

  “You mean Uncle John’s not doing the done thing?”

  “Living in sin’s hardly the done thing either, darling!”

  “But I thought it must be if Uncle John was doing it!”

  “Oh Lord,” said my mother again. “What do I say, let me think …” She closed her eyes for inspiration, opened them again and took a deep breath. “No,” she said firmly, “living in sin’s not the done thing and having babies when you’re not married isn’t the done thing either, but we have to be kind, we have to be charitable and we can’t condemn people just because they get in a mess.”

  “But why’s Uncle John in this mess?”

  “Well, he married this simply too dreary American girl, pet, and it was an awful mistake and he should have married Bronwen and he now wants to marry Bronwen but he can’t get a divorce and get unmarried from Constance because Constance wants to stay married to him. So Uncle John’s in this ghastly mess, which goes to prove that even the best people can get into ghastly messes, even heroes like John, and t
hat’s why we must never judge other people too harshly because although they can make awful mistakes they can still be very nice people. Making mistakes doesn’t mean that you’re a villain, you see, it simply means that you’re human. We all make mistakes, all of us, it’s human nature.”

  “Yes, I do see that, but Mum, I still don’t understand about this baby. How did Uncle John place the order and get it into the womb?”

  “Oh Lord!” said my mother, and added in a rhetorical aside: “Can I cope with this? I suppose I’ll have to.” She took another vast breath. “Well, Kester, when two people are madly in love they share a double bed and do something called copulation which you’ll understand better when you’re older and I certainly don’t intend to go into the quite splendid and blissful details now except to say that it’s kissing and hugging and much more besides and it’s absolute heaven and most people are wild about it. Then sometimes after copulation the women finds she’s having a baby and it’s as much the man’s baby as hers because they’ve been copulating together. Now run along to the nursery, there’s a pet, and see if Nanny’s ready with your bread-and-milk.”

  After pondering on this information I tried without success to find “copulation” in the dictionary. (I was spelling it COPPERLAY-SHUN.) Further meditation followed on Uncle John’s situation, and presently I broached the subject with Cousin Harry during one of our midmorning breaks.