The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Oh my God!” said Uncle John as I sobbed harder than ever, and I loathed myself for reducing him to despair. I felt murderous, suicidal, demented. Huge emotions, black and poisoned, billowed out of my subconscious to blight my entire mind. I was in hell.

  “I’ll call your mother,” said Uncle John.

  Perhaps he expected my mother to clasp me to her bosom and croon soothing endearments, but if he did he had miscalculated. The full blast of her fury hit me as soon as she entered the room. Walking straight up to me, she slapped me across the mouth and shouted, “How dare you disgrace me like this!”

  But this approach I could cope with. This straightforward rage knifed through all my tortuous emotions and gave me no chance to hate myself for my inadequacy. She was doing the hating for me, so all I had to do in return was to pull myself together.

  However I at once realized that this reaction was quite beyond Uncle John’s comprehension, because he too was battling with feelings of inadequacy and he too was busy hating himself for what he nobly considered to be his failure. I heard him say—and every word struck me like a dagger because he was being so heroic, taking all the blame on himself—“I’m sorry, Ginevra, obviously I’ve made a complete hash of this. I can see now he’s still too young to master the advice I was trying to give him.”

  ‘‘Rubbish!” thundered my mother, at once in a towering rage with him as well. “If he’s old enough to talk of marriage he’s old enough to hear what you had to say! It’s about time he started facing facts instead of drifting around in a cloud of adolescent nonsense which bears no relation to reality! Very well, Kester, we’ll go back to the hotel. I’m absolutely disgusted by your weak childish behavior. I didn’t think any son of mine could be quite so feeble.”

  That did the trick. I stiffened my backbone and looked her straight in the eyes. “There’s no need for us to leave so early,” I said in a firm dignified voice. “I was sick because I’d drunk too much port and I cried because I couldn’t hold my drink like a man. It had nothing to do with what Uncle John and I were talking about and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to resume my conversation with him.”

  There was a pause before my mother said tersely, “That’s more like it” and walked out. The door banged behind her. We stood listening as her footsteps click-clacked away across the hall.

  “Kester … if you’d prefer not to hear any more—”

  I wanted to yell and scream and fling myself on the floor and drum my heels with exasperation, but all I said was a crisp “My mother was right. If I’m old enough to talk of marriage I’m old enough to hear what you have to say. Please go on.”

  But poor Uncle John was so demoralized that he could barely bring himself to show me a French letter and give me a few succinct tips about its use. This hardly mattered, as I was determined not to listen to a single word he said, but I kept an attentive expression on my face and remembered to nod occasionally.

  “… so I think that’s about all,” he concluded, sounding weak with relief. “Are there any questions you’d like to ask?”

  “No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I’m very glad to have the information and I’m most grateful to you for taking so much trouble. I do apologize for making such a disgusting mess of your fireplace.”

  I was behaving like a perfect Godwin at last. As we both sighed with relief I glanced again at the picture on his desk and thought of worldly Cousin Harry, taking the lecture in his stride and running off to outwit unmarried fatherhood and venereal disease with consummate skill. No vomiting into fireplaces for Cousin Harry, no grinding awkwardness, no sheer unadulterated hell of humiliation and shame. He would walk out into that foul polluted adult world with a smile and take his place in it without a backward glance.

  But I wasn’t like Cousin Harry and I wasn’t going to live in his world. No contraception, no disease, no married women, no fast girls, no filth, no obscenity, no degradation—not for me, never for me, never, never, NEVER. I was going to marry the Princess of My Dreams and live happily ever after at Oxmoon.

  A dream? Yes, of course it was a dream, but what was wrong with that? If no one ever dreamed of perfection, reality would always be nothing but unalleviated ghastliness, but sometimes a man could make his dream reality—and sometimes, very occasionally, reality was no longer sordid but dazzling, a vision of all that was finest in human nature, a view of the absolute truth, a glimpse of God.

  An idealist? Yes, of course I was an idealist, and what was more I was proud of it. It’s idealism that separates us from swine. Everyone should try to be an idealist. It would make for a better world than the mire in which we’re all currently submerged.

  The next day I telephoned Anna and said I wanted to elope with her just as soon as I had celebrated my eighteenth birthday.

  IV

  “Two fizzy lemonades and two cream buns, please,” I said to the waitress in the Blue Rabbit. It was well before eleven in the morning and we were the only occupants of the restaurant apart from three elderly women who were drinking tea and exchanging medical histories.

  “So you see,” I said to Anna after the waitress had padded away on flat feet, “since Uncle John’s made such a song-and-dance about sex I just have to find out how you feel on the subject. Now, I’ve never done any copulation so unfortunately it’s impossible for me to give you a reasonable estimate of how often I might want to do it, but I have to be honest and tell you I would like to do it occasionally, and not just because I want children. I sort of feel … well, it might be rather fun every now and then—”

  “I don’t know much about it,” said Anna anxiously, “but I’ve heard some extraordinary rumors at school.”

  “They’re probably true, but don’t worry. Mum says sex can be absolutely stunning.”

  A hush fell over the tea shop as the three old tabbies abandoned their discussion of gallstones to eavesdrop.

  “Two cream buns, two fizzy lemonades,” said the waitress, plonking down plates and glasses in front of us.

  We bit deep into our buns to hide our confusion.

  “Heavens, Kester!” whispered Anna as the old tabbies abandoned their eavesdropping and began to prattle about gallstones again. “Do you really talk about sex to your mother?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t you talk about it to yours?”

  “Never! In fact I always thought talking about sex wasn’t the done thing!”

  “Well, it often isn’t. But it’s always the done thing to be mad about it.”

  “Goodness, how worrying it all is,” said Anna, forsaking her cream bun.

  “Don’t worry,” I said soothingly again. “Doing the done thing, I’ve discovered, has very little to do with what people actually think. Of course not everyone’s mad about sex, but everyone has to pretend to be mad about it because they’re frightened of being different.”

  “It is frightening to be different,” said Anna. “It’s easier and more comfortable to conform.”

  “But that’s wrong—it must be wrong! One should hold fast and stand firm, as Uncle John would put it—one should stick to one’s principles and never compromise them just to do the done thing!”

  “I agree,” said Anna, “but older people would laugh at us, wouldn’t they? Older people wouldn’t understand.”

  “Older people,” I said, “are too busy living a lie and calling it their moral duty,” and at that point I thought of Uncle John, incarcerated apparently of his own free will in that soul-destroying house in Eaton Walk.

  V

  Uncle John fulfilled his threat to conspire with the Steinbergs to ruin our happiness in order to “protect” us from each other, but because they were clever people who realized their greatest mistake would be to forbid us to see each other, our separation was achieved by more subtle means. First of all the Steinbergs made Anna promise that she would on no account marry before her eighteenth birthday which was then still over a year away. That gave them the necessary time to combine with Uncle John to wage their
war of attrition. The Steinbergs had no objection to me in principle; they had long since reconciled themselves to the fact that I wasn’t Jewish; and in social terms I was undeniably a good catch for Anna, but they were as fervent as Uncle John in believing that we shouldn’t marry too young.

  “Never mind, we’ll simply elope later than we originally planned,” I said to Anna, but I was privately annoyed that the Steinbergs had played on her filial feelings with such skill, and it was hard to control my anger with the older generation as we settled down to survive the war of attrition.

  Anna returned to school soon after that. I saw her once in the Easter holidays, but then my mother whisked me away to the Continent for a month to “broaden my mind” (a repulsive euphemism, I considered, for detaching me from Anna). I began my tour of Europe by sulking beneath the Eiffel Tower but presently I fell in love with Versailles, and to my reluctance I began to enjoy myself. We wandered on via ravishing Switzerland to mesmerizing Italy. Naturally I sent Anna a postcard every day, but by the time I reached Florence I found I wanted to do more than write postcards. I began to jot down notes for a new novel, and despite missing Anna intensely I grew steadily happier in that unique, utterly satisfying way which can come only from putting pen to paper and exercising one’s imagination. Meanwhile my mother was promising to take me to Venice and generally treating me with the deference due from one adult to another. She made me order the meals in restaurants, instruct taxi drivers and distribute all the necessary tips. I began to feel about thirty, and it was not unpleasant. It was far better than feeling, as I always did in Uncle John’s presence, like a recalcitrant child doomed to perpetual immaturity.

  “So you see you don’t have to get married to achieve independence, darling,” said my mother as we traveled back to England.

  I gave her an appalled look but kept my mouth shut. Did she really imagine I wanted to marry simply to demonstrate my independence? I did not need to make a demonstration. When I came into my inheritance the following November the facts would speak for themselves, and later my marriage would be a celebration, not a demonstration, of my status as master of Oxmoon.

  However my eighteenth birthday was still some months away, and as soon as I returned home I was plunged into the final revisions necessary before I took my Higher Certificate examinations. Simon was worried because I had been neglecting my studies during the furor over Anna, but I was sure a little hard cramming would see me through, and besides … I didn’t want Uncle John to know that I had fallen behind in my work.

  Cramming meant I had no time to write more than a few words to Anna each day, but she was working hard too so our formerly voluminous correspondence degenerated into cryptic notes. I realized sourly that my mother was pleased by this so as soon as the exams were over I took care to write screeds again.

  The summer holidays arrived but we only had time for a quick meeting at the Blue Rabbit before my mother took charge of my life once more; we visited Uncle Edmund’s estate in Kent before whirling up to Aunt Daphne’s place in Scotland where a large house party was in progress. Cousin Harry, who had also taken his Higher Certificate exams, was there with Uncle John, Aunt Constance and Francesca, and after talking to him I realized what a hash I had made of my Latin paper. Cousin Harry was planning to go up to Oxford in the autumn to read Greats. I was still too young for Oxford and would have a year to fill in first, but Uncle John said he could think of plenty of things for me to do while I waited.

  I shuddered, but the sheer awfulness of Aunt Daphne’s house party prevented me from dwelling on his threat for long. I yearned to write; I was lusting to develop the notes that I had jotted down in Florence, but time and privacy were in short supply at Aunt Daphne’s that August and I found myself becoming more and more frustrated. Finally, locking myself in my room away from the mindless girls who bored me and the kindly married women whom I now—thanks to Uncle John—found extremely sinister, I scribbled myself into a state of exhaustion until Uncle John said I was being rude. After that I did try to participate in all the stupid social activities, but to compensate myself I got up at four in the morning and put in five hours before breakfast. I didn’t mind doing this but by the time evening came I was wilting and once I even dozed off at the dinner table.

  “Honestly, darling,” said my mother, who knew quite well what was going on, “can’t the masterpiece wait till you get back to Oxmoon?”

  “No,” I said. When I’m obsessed I’m unstoppable, and as I saw my mother give me a very strange look indeed I sensed she was recognizing this secret side of my personality which had been stealthily developing as I grew older. “Darling,” she said uneasily, “you must be wary of obsessions, you know. Writing’s a delightful hobby but you mustn’t let it take over your life. That would be an escape from reality—that would be running away.”

  “Rubbish!” I said without a second’s hesitation. “It’s this idiotic house party which is the escape from reality! What you’re pleased to call my obsession is the only thing that’s real here!”

  My mother went white. I thought she was angry and at once I began to stammer an apology for my frankness which I now realized must have sounded abominably rude, but I broke off when I realized she wasn’t listening. She had moved to the window. Beyond her across the loch I could see the towering slopes of Ben Nevis shimmering in the summer sun.

  “I have been here before,” said my mother, and pressed the palms of her hands against her cheeks as if deeply disturbed.

  I suddenly realized this conversation had become like no conversation I had ever had with her. I was so accustomed to being in tune with my mother that I had come to take our harmony for granted, yet now all I could hear was the discord. For a brief vile moment I felt wholly cut off from her, as if a door had been closed between us.

  “Mum—”

  “Kester, you must stop being so obsessive,” she said, letting her hands fall as she turned to face me. She spoke in a low rapid emotional voice which I found both embarrassing and alarming. “I can’t bear these obsessions.”

  “What do you mean?” I was stupefied.

  “Oh, your obsession with that girl, your obsession with writing, your obsession with Oxmoon—it’s just so—so alien to me, I’ve never brought you up to be like that, how can you be like that when you’re like me, everyone says you’re like me, everyone.” She got a grip on herself, and not a moment too soon. To my horror I realized she was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  After a pause I said, “I just don’t understand why you should be so upset.”

  “No. Well, your father had his obsessions too, Kester, and they didn’t make him very happy.”

  “But—”

  “One day,” she said, staring out of the window, her eyes still bright with tears, “I’m going to have to talk to you about him.”

  “The very last thing I want,” I said at once, “is for you to upset yourself by thinking you’re under some repellent maternal duty to rake over the painful past. I know you and Daddy were miserable when I was growing up, I know he could be an absolute bastard—but that doesn’t matter now, none of it matters, because I’m old enough to see beyond the results of that ghastly illness to the Truth, and the Truth, the beautiful romantic Truth which must always triumph over vile reality—is that my father wasn’t a bastard at all, he was a hero who fought tooth and nail to get me Oxmoon and who had this dazzling romance with you, and that’s Beauty and that’s Truth and that cancels out all the awfulness that came later.”

  My mother began to cry quietly to herself. This was so unlike her usual passionate exhibitions of emotion that I felt frightened.

  “And anyway,” I said, my fear making me sound rude and defiant, “what exactly were these obsessions of his which made him unhappy?”

  But my mother merely wept without replying.

  “I don’t believe they made him unhappy at all,” I said. “I think if he was un
happy it was because other people called them obsessions and told him they weren’t the done thing.”

  My mother broke down utterly.

  I couldn’t bear to see her so upset. It was easier to pretend she was being very silly and deserved to be left alone.

  I walked out.

  VI

  “Mum, I’m sorry I walked out on you but I was rattled because you were being so unlike yourself. Why don’t you tell me now about Daddy? Then maybe you’ll feel better.”

  “Oh no,” said my mother. “Not now. I can’t.”

  “But why not? You always tell me everything! You’ve always been so truthful and honest!”

  Tears welled in her eyes again.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mum!”

  “Yes, I will tell you,” she said rapidly, “I’ll tell you everything one day, but you must let me choose my moment. I told Declan everything when we were reconciled, and he understood, he accepted everything and forgave me—it was terrible for Declan, terrible, when I married Robert—”

  “I don’t want to discuss Declan.” I turned away.

  “Kester, the day you can discuss Declan is the day when you’ll be old enough to understand my two marriages and hear what I have to say.”

  “I have no interest whatsoever in hearing anything about your first marriage. That’s got nothing to do with me. I just don’t want to know.”

  She bowed her head in silence.

  “Now for the last time, Mum, what were these obsessions of my father’s?”

  The silence lengthened.

  I went away.

  VII

  “Are you sure you want me to be honest with you?” said Aunt Julie a week later.